Breathe, Pray, Be Kind, and Try Not to Grab
a sermon given by Cricket Potter
on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 13, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
Click here to listen to this sermon.
“Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being “drawn toward.” Love is active, effective…. For this reason loving involves commitment…. (It) is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others.”
-Carter Heyward
READING:
Our reading this Mother’s Day is a piece by Maxine Clair called "Journeys.” It is from a book entitled 3 Minutes or Less: Life Lessons from America's Greatest Writers. In this piece, Clair describes her journey through motherhood looking at the different moments as if they were snapshots.
The first one is of me. I'm on my way. I'm wearing one of those green, backless numbers. That's my mother. She's plying me with crushed ice. My husband was out of town and so he isn't in the picture. That sign--can you make it out?--it says "Delivery Room" but it's really the universal sign for "One-Way Street." What I don't know here is that I will do this three more times. Each soul that finds its way through this body will be like a separate country that I must find my way across. Each will have its own language, its own spectacular mountains, active volcanoes, and vernal places. Each will have swamps and seas as calm as oil.
This one is of son number one, pedaling his very first tricycle. When he grows into a flower he'll be a bird of paradise.
I'm downright fat in this one, walking through the same door in a different city, and my mother isn't there. It's another son, this one more like a bouquet of baby roses, all bud and thorns, but give him time.
And here a few years later, still another son--the sunflower--wild and radiant, hard to miss.
You've seen one like this before, but this time it's a gift and her trip has been taxing. If she were a flower she'd be African violet--stunning, fragile--quietly insinuating herself into the land.
Here's me sitting on our kitchen counter reading The Yellow Wallpaper on a sunny afternoon. The four of them are making their own peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches at the table and making their own towers and tunnels with the jars.
This one seems out of place. It's the five us at the dinner table. That's son number one. If this were a video you would catch the attitude in his voice. He's saying how nobody else's mother goes out on dates, and when his brother--the one with the fork in his hand--points out that Mrs. So-and-So down the street has a "friend", number one says that's because Mr. So-and-So is dead, and "Dad's not dead," he says. "He's just divorced from us and living somewhere else."
This one is of me with Webster's Collegiate in my lap. I'm looking up the word "heartfelt," or was it "patience"?
At first glance at this one you think "adorable, so handsome, so intense. Look closer. He's swallowing a worm and he's grinning.
This one is of us ready for church. I have just buttoned my daughter into her cute pale blue outfit. That's not blood down her front. It's red shoe polish. She wanted her Stride-Rites to shine.
There she is in her plaid jumper, her hair in braids with a riot of barrettes, her first book bag slung over her pink Huffy bike.
Here it's autumn and we're out back. I'm supposed to be teaching them touch football, but tackle is all the boys know. See how the oak tree blazes? I never fell. I've got the ball. They're hanging on, and their weight holds my feet on the ground. I've thrown my reading aside on the stoop: Wouldn't Take Nothin' for My Journey Now.
This is me on the phone disowning number two the time he locked the principal out of her office.
This is me on the phone to the poison control center with my finger down number three's throat.
This is me calling 911. The skewed angular thing attached to my daughter is her arm.
This is me holding the phone that cannot ring again until the bill is paid.
This is us on leftovers night--lasagna and mashed potatoes.
This is me with American Heritage this time. I'm looking up the word "endure."
Now here's my son number two, the thorny one who locked out the teacher. We're at his baccalaureate. He has earned that piece of paper he's got rolled up in his hand. He's asking me why I cried the whole time.
Here's my son number three, seeking his fortune, painting sun-flowers on blue jeans for a fee.
This is Miss African Violet, skipping school to be with her friends.
Here's son number one, away at school. Far away.
Here's the girl who wanted to marry him.
Here's the guy he ended up with.
Here I am, practicing my smile in the mirror.
Here are the five of us that winter in the backyard. I'm trying to get them to stomp the word "Joy" into the snow. They're trying to get me to make snowballs.
This is the Cross pen set they chipped in for when I got my MFA. An investment, they said. Make us rich.
That's my first-born son, my six-foot bird of paradise and me--two faces on a park bench in April. I'm holding on to him, he's crying. The test has come back positive. Let me flip back to the slide of him on his first tricycle where he's pedaling fast.
There's number two! That's New York, in front of Spike Lee's place. He's the young businessman come full bloom.
There's number three on MTV, my son--would you believe--doing a commercial in his sunflower jeans.
And that's my baby girl with her book bag, heavy with Torts and Civil Procedure.
Finally, here are the five us playing touch on Christmas Day. I asked for an Unabridged. They've given me a Coach bag instead, and a walk-around telephone. But, thanks to them, I know the definitions by heart.
Heartfelt, patience, endure.
These are the words Maxine Clair wants to look up in her dictionary
as she progresses through her journey of motherhood.
And ultimately, these are words whose meanings any of us need to learn
if we are to venture down the path of relationship.
These aren’t the only words, though.
Each one of us could add many others
whose meaning we have learned on our own journeys with the people in our lives.
Challenging words like forbearance, forgiveness, resilience, restraint, letting go;
words we would deny have any reference to us like anger, resentment, fear, pain;
and delightful words like hope, joy, intimacy, play, and love.
No one ever said that this relationship stuff was simple or easy.
As I am learning in my own experiences of motherhood,
relationship can bring out the very best and the very worst in us.
I think it has something to do with the fact that when we are with another,
all those different parts of ourselves eventually come out whether we want them to or not.
I remember during my daughter Haley’s three-year-old year –
a year, frankly, that I thought that would never end.
I despondently asked a friend,
“Why is it that this thing I have waited so long to do
can make me feel so ugly inside sometimes?”
Thankfully, my friend was wise enough to just put her arm around me
and simply be with me in my struggle as a new parent.
She knew that I would live into my own answer over time --
that, like Maxine Clair, I too would learn the definitions to some key words
whether I wanted to or not.
I would learn them, just as we all have to in relationship,
if we plan to stick with it.
It wasn’t like I, as Haley’s mother, could say, “That’s it – I’m leaving.
I don’t have the patience to cope anymore.”
Although, perhaps like me, some of you have fantasized about an occasional leave of absence.
I would learn, as we all do, because being with another in any committed sense
involves bumping up against our own humanity.
By our humanity, I mean the paradox of how
our own high hopes and aspirations have to contend, on a daily basis,
with our doubts, fears, and oh-so-human shortcomings.
It is a tricky landscape to negotiate, for sure.
As Maxine Clair says of her experience,
Each soul…(is) like a separate country that I must find my way across. Each will have its own language, its own spectacular mountains, active volcanoes, and vernal places. Each will have swamps and seas as calm as oil.
And frankly, motherhood has put that challenge before me like no other experience.
My daughter, through no fault of her own, just has a way of activating the volcano hidden in me,
as much as I would like to deny that one even exists.
I’ve had to come face-to-face with how angry I can get and how short-sighted I can be.
I’ve had to reconcile with how impatient and stubborn I can be.
But thankfully, I have also come to know how loving and understanding I can be
and to trust that I can offer comfort and support, that I can be there for Haley,
even when I don’t think I have the strength to be.
The challenge is to come to terms with that mix that exists in ourselves and in the people we are with.
And I am learning that this is one of our greatest tasks as individuals, parents, human beings,
and creatures who were created to be in relationship –
not just to uphold the good parts,
but to understand and be more forbearing about the less good parts.
That’s where the quote from the cover of your order of service comes in.
As the feminist theologian Carter Heyward writes,
Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment,
attachment, or being “drawn toward.” Love is active, effective…. (It) involves commitment…. (It) is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others.
Love involves commitment.
It is a choice – a willingness to be present to others.
It’s concrete, active, effective.
Relationship and community involve all these things.
We choose to walk the path together.
We choose to work on our growing edges together.
We commit to being present even when things start to get challenging.
And, as I’ve already said, things do get challenging and messy when people come together
This is a central theme in all of Anne Lamott’s books --
the messiness of relationship
and yet the grace to be found in sticking with it.
In her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith,
she writes about the challenges of coping with her son’s adolescence.
Clearly, this is a very messy chapter in their relationship.
I’m sure some of you can relate.
Lamott writes:
The day after Sam turned thirteen, we were going through our usual hormonal transformations together, which is to say, sometimes the house got crowded. There was Sam at thirteen – usually mellow, funny, slightly nuts. But when the plates of the earth shifted, there was the Visitor, the Other. I called him Phil. Phil was tense. Also sullen and contemptuous. Then there was me at forty-eight – usually mellow, funny, and slightly nuts – and there was the Menopausal Death Crone.
Some days were great, because Sam and I at these ages were wild and hilarious and utterly full of our best stuff; but other days, when Phil and Death Crone dropped by, were awful. We sniggered impatiently, and sighed and gripped our foreheads, and we fought. . . .
The usual things helped: some distance, prayer, chocolate. Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won’t admit how horrible their children are. There’s a great book on adolescence that I can turn to, (it’s entitled) Get Out of My Life but First Could you Drive Me (and Cheryl) to the Mall? I taped things to the wall that give me some light to see by. One pink card says, “Breathe, Pray, Be Kind, Stop grabbing.”
Breathe, pray, be kind, and stop grabbing.
That’s some no-nonsense advice that’s worth listening to.
And, Lamott offers that out of her own wrestling with the paradox of being human
and being in relationship --
the earnest trying and the messing up,
the apologizing and the accepting we need to do to move forward together.
And isn’t that really what anything important that we want to commit ourselves to is about –
being honest and sticking with it through the growing edges,
being open and not grabbing onto things out of fear of change?
I say this today, on Mother’s Day, because I have learned this lesson best as a mother.
Yet, it is a lesson we all learn in any number of ways and in any number of relationships.
I am thinking of all of you who form a very special kind of relationship right here –
a relationship framed by covenant
and centered on coming together to grow in faith, grow in our humanity,
and aimed toward reaching out to the world around us with care and compassion.
Part of this relationship is negotiating the spaces between us
whether these spaces pertain to differences in experience, faith,
needs, opinions, or even vision.
Dwight Gertz and Steve Johnson, two of our esteemed deacons,
have both spoken about how we actually make this work here at First Parish.
Basically, we agree that we can disagree.
We sing each other’s hymns from the different hymnals;
we pray each other’s prayers honoring the many traditions we draw strength and wisdom from.
And something that few other churches can do,
we even give latitude for one another’s rituals
whether it be baptism, child dedication, or even communion.
And as if that wasn’t enough, you are now being asked
to consider making room for one another in new ways.
This involves change and space renovations and money.
And if you’re anything like me, you want to make a fast exit when any one of these topics comes up.
Yet, change is already happening here by the very fact that you so resoundingly called Claire
as your assistant minister last year.
With all her energy and talents, Claire brings the possibility of new programs and ideas,
new areas of growth and care.
You will also have a new director of religious education next year with her own strengths and ideas,
as Barbara O’Neil moves on to the next chapter in her career life.
And of course, you as a community are considering possible space renovations
to the sanctuary and the Parish House
to accommodate the many ways you gather and learn together.
Not an easy task.
Yet, I trust deeply that your commitment to one another will sustain you through the rough spots.
I trust deeply that you will pull together and partner in a shared vision
of where First Parish can go in the years ahead.
I trust deeply that you will choose to show up, really listen to one another
and stick with the conversation,
giving careful thought to all the possibilities that lie before you
even if they aren’t exactly what you had planned.
And returning to Maxine Claire’s life lessons from her journey as a mother,
I trust that you can become the living definition of heartfelt, patience, endure.
You will need to be patient through one another’s growing edges
and be open to the very real and heartfelt concerns you each bring to the journey ahead.
That’s sticking with one another.
Sadly, for me, I won’t be here to engage with you as you do move forward.
My two years as your student minister come to a close in a month.
And what powerful years they have been --
truly a journey filled with learning, growing, challenges, and blessings.
Above all, I will leave this wonderful place with a deepened sense of community and teamwork.
You all just know how to work together.
My prayer is that when I come back to visit –
thanks, I might add, to the generous invitations Roger extends to former student ministers --
I will see how you have continued to stretch and grow with one another.
I will hear your stories of how you have stuck with one another through the messiness of it all.
And, I will feel how the commitment you made has only renewed your care for one another.
Remember:
breathe, pray, be kind, and try not to grab onto things if you can.
May it be so.
Amen