Matters at Hand

a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine

on Sunday, October 8, 2006

at The First Parish in Lincoln

“Rescue the drowning – and tie your shoelaces.”

– Henry David Thoreau

READING:

1. Our first reading this morning is a poem by Mary Oliver from a new collection of her poems called Thirst. When you hear it, you realize this poem is very close to her heart – and she has read it at most of her appearances this year. She included it in her talk last June at the Unitarian-Universalist General Assembly in St. Louis. The poem is called “Oxygen.” Here it is:

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,

while it calls the earth its home, the soul.

So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its

lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel

before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs

lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,

are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches

all day. You are breathing

patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is

your life, which is so close

to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of

separation. And what does this have to do

with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises

and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red

roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds

as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:

our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

She dedicated this poem to her partner of more than forty years, artist Molly Malone Cook, who died this year. So take a deep breath of our purest, sweet necessity and read it one more time.

2. Our second reading is a single verse from the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 6:34:

“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”

Johnny Depp, the actor whose star turn as the pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow,

was what made the movie Pirates of the Caribbean so successful

was asked in an interview why he and his family make their home in France,

as if choosing to live in France is somehow subversive these days.

He said, “The only thing about France that’s very different for me is that the phone rings less.

I don’t ever have to think about movies. Where we live, our little place, it’s very simple,

so you think about matters at hand. Dinner, playing with the kids.

What’s the weather like. Check the garden. Go wander.”

I was on vacation when I read that interview last summer,

so the matters at hand for me were very much like the ones he mentioned –

wandering, feeling grateful for a sunny day, reading a good book, playing with grandchildren.

The wonderful line from Thoreau on the cover of this morning’s Order of Service is relevant here:

“Rescue the drowning – and tie your shoelaces...”

it’s his way of saying: do try to save the world, but remember to take care of the basics.

“Tie your shoelaces” means: remember to do the things that keep you whole.

Go wander somewhere on a beautiful day.

Check the garden.

Lay in wood for the fire.

Call up an old friend.

Listen to music.

Play with your kids and, if you have them, your grandkids.

Prepare a meal at the end of the day.

When life is as good as it gets, these are the matters at hand.

But as some of us know all too well, the matters at hand can change in an instant.

We learn of a serious illness – our own, a family member’s, a friend’s.

A fall, a broken bone.

The loss of a job.

The death of a parent.

The death of a child.

Life can be turned upside down in an instant.

And the matters suddenly at hand can be exhausting; sometimes they are unimaginable.

What do you do when the man who lived down the road,

a man you knew because he collected milk from your dairy farm,

what do you do when he kills your thirteen-year-old daughter?

We have all shared in the horror and the grief of the Amish families in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania

because how could we not: many of the kids knew the man

who walked into their schoolhouse with a gun, sent the boys outside and tied the girls up.

The oldest girl was thirteen – her name was Marian Fisher.

When she saw what the man was about to do, Marian told him to kill her and spare her classmates.

But he shot them all, then killed himself.

The Amish community buried four of the girls last Thursday and a fifth girl on Friday.

Their graves were dug by hand.

Their pine coffins were home-made; their white dresses hand-sewn.

These were the matters at hand.

Two of the girls were seven years old, one was eight, one was twelve; and Marian – just thirteen.

On the way to the cemetery in their black and gray buggies,

the girls’ parents had to pass right by the killer’s house.

How do you deal with that?

Marian’s parents invited his widow to come with them.

The Associated Press led its story on Thursday with these two lines:

“They came from across the Pennsylvania countryside dressed in black –

bearded men in hats and suits, women in dresses and bonnets.

They were famous for keeping the surrounding society out;

their mourning was remarkable for what they let in: forgiveness...”

They did what they had to do: face what happened, build coffins, dig graves, sew dresses,

touch their children’s bodies one last time, read some lines from scripture –

and they did what they did not have to do – try to forgive the man who killed their children.

Meanwhile, donors from all over the world are sending money to a fund set up by Amish leaders

to help with the families’ medical bills –

and to help the killer’s widow and her three children.

Living as we do in an Age of Information, the surrounding world is brought close,

and even if our own days are blessed with normal routines,

we mourn along with the families in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania,

we hope the United Nations will intervene in Darfur,

we pray for an end to the war in Iraq.

And we know that if we haven’t already, we will someday face a difficult matter at hand of our own,

as Mary Oliver did earlier this year with the death of her partner,

whose life had been so joined to her own for so many years

that she “would not know where to drop the knife of separation.”

In her poem, Oxygen, she is kneeling in front of the fire, stirring the logs.

She anchors the poem in a simple task many of us have done ourselves.

She does not want the fire go out, so she stirs the logs, letting them lie more loosely.

So they can breathe.

Her life partner is in the upstairs room,

where the “merciful, noisy” oxygen machine helps her breathe –

the sound of its “lung-like voice” floats down the stairs.

Stirring the fire, she listens and thinks about the life they have shared.

These are her matters at hand: tending the fire and taking care of the one she loves.

Mary Oliver was once asked: what do you do every day to take care of yourself?

“I go outside,” she said.

For the natural world, and for “the invisible gift: our purest, sweet necessity: the air.”

Some matters at hand are the stuff of normal life – dinner, gardening, playing with the kids.

Some matters at hand are so hard they can exhaust us, even bring us to the edge of despair.

And some matters at hand – every now and then – are sublime moments of grace.

One of the most famous landscape photographs ever taken is by Ansel Adams.

It’s called “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.”

He took it in October, 1941.

He was driving in his Pontiac south to Santa Fe when he came to the small town of Hernandez.

The moon, almost full, was rising in a darkening southern sky

but the town itself was still lit by the last light of the sun;

he pulled over into a ditch, nearly crashing his car,

and scrambled to grab his camera and get set up.

He couldn’t find his light meter so he guessed at the shutter speed

and took the shot just seconds before the sun set and left the town in shadows.

So his picture shows the moon in a vast dark sky with a band of brightly-lit clouds below it,

mountains on the horizon, and in the foreground, luminous in the last light,

an old adobe church, a few houses, and the white crosses of a cemetery,

all glowing as if lit from within.

Sometimes the matters at hand are routine.

Sometimes they are as hard as life ever gets.

And sometimes they are a moment of grace.

One thing you notice if you read, in the bible and elsewhere, about how Jesus lived his life day to day,

is that he was very good at dealing with the matters at hand, whatever they were –

he was a master at being in the moment, being fully present, and doing what needed to be done.

When the religious police got on his case because his disciples had picked corn on the Sabbath,

he stuck up for them, and when desperately ill people came to him hoping for a cure,

he stirred the fire inside them, helping it breathe so they could be whole again.

We think of him as a holy man, a spiritual being, but he was also very physical.

Think of all the miles he walked, the hills he climbed.

He loved a good meal and a good time.

He was not afraid of bodies – think of all the sick people he touched.

He urged his followers to “clothe the naked and feed the hungry.”

These were the matters at hand.

He wanted us to stir the fire and let our own faith breathe.

He spoke about a God who loves us without question or condition.

Start there, he said; then be there for each other.

Try to take one day at a time – try not to worry about tomorrow.

Let what is in front of you today be sufficient for the day.

The current professor of preaching at Yale Divinity School is a man named Tom Troeger.

He remembers a cartoon in which a lone religious pilgrim has come to a fork in the road

and he is staring at a sign with two arrows on it:

one arrow points toward “the meaning of life,”

and the other arrow points toward “cheese and crackers.”

Tom Troeger says that if the pilgrim really understands what Jesus was trying to tell us,

“he won’t hesitate for a second – he will head straight for the cheese and crackers,

where others will have gathered to eat and talk, and perhaps to sing and dance.”

“Being human is not a private affair – being human is something we do together,”

as we said in our opening words to begin this service;

now here we are at the end, and we have cheese and crackers for you back in the Stearns Room.

There is also an address for the Nickel Mines Children’s Fund, if you want to send some money.

“Rescue the drowning – and tie your shoelaces.”

Amen.

________________________________________

Notes:

The interview with Johnny Depp is in Rolling Stone, July 13-27, 2006

The quote by Tom Troeger is from The Living Pulpit, April - June, 2006

The address for donations to help the families in Nickel Mines whose children were killed or hurt is:

The Nickel Mines Children’s Fund

c/o The Coatesville Savings Bank

1082 Georgetown Road

Paradise, PA 17562