YOUR BACK SHOP

Your Back Shop

a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine

on Sunday, February 11, 2007

at The First Parish in Lincoln

“He went up into the hills by himself to pray.”

– Matthew 14:23

READINGS:

1. Our first reading is a short collage of verses from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. During his short public life, how did Jesus – who was in his early thirties – gather the inner resources to say and do what he did? We have only a few hints – often just a verse or two. Here are several, beginning with two verses from the first chapter of Mark:

“The Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, and angels attended him.”

– Mark 1:12-13

Then, sandwiched in between two dramatic stories, there is this verse in Matthew 14:

“...he went up into the hills by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone...”

– Matthew 14:23

Finally, from Luke 22, on the last night of his life:

“He went as was his custom to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place he withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them and knelt down to pray. ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.’” – Luke 22:39-42

2. Our second reading is from a book called Sunshine and Rain at Once by the late Unitarian Universalist minister, Clarke Dewey Wells. I want to thank my friend, John Gibbons, who is senior minister of The First Parish in Bedford, for introducing me to this book. In this passage, which I have shamelessly updated and amended, the Reverend Mr. Wells is in his church office opening the morning mail, and sitting there he starts to imagine the letters he wishes were in the stack. He writes:

The mail at church generally consists of advertisements for steel chairs and folding tables. Flyers arrive, impersonally addressed “To the Pastor.” I open them. But my mind wanders and my eyes refocus as I open the next few letters and read...

Most Reverend,

Because of your clear understanding of Rome’s agonies and the Pontiff’s desire for fresh strategies, We pray for an audience. O’Malley in Boston will arrange flight. Kindly accept, under separate cover, the small El Greco as token of our Fatherly esteem. – Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican City

Dear Reverend Wells,

You don’t remember me but I remember you and the sermon seventeen years ago that saved my life. Enclosed, tickets for round-the-world trip. To ease that beautiful conscience of yours, matching funds have been sent to Doctors Without Borders and the National Parks Conservation Fund. – Grateful Anonymous

Esteemed Colleague:

Rival factions in both of our denominations agree on you as the only possible arbitrator, and will accept your judgments as final. Thanks for saving us in all our endeavors.

– Bill Sinkford, President, Unitarian-Universalist Association

and John Thomas, President, The United Church of Christ

Dear Dr. Wells,

Kate and I would be honored to have you officiate at our wedding at Westminster Abbey this June. We know that you can help us create a ceremony with no false notes. At your convenience, we will make ourselves available in your office. – Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton

Dear Clarke,

The market for sermon collections has been dead for years. But we smell a new wind and frankly want to be the first to publish your sermons! See you at Locke-Obers on Tuesday for the reception in your honor and to sign a contract. – Editor-in-Chief, Harper Collins

A last letter begins, “Dear Preacher Man,” and says that Air Force One is standing by at Hanscom Air Base. The handwritten note reads: “I hope you like the nickname I gave you. Although I am not now nor never have been a member of your denomination, I am told by reliable sources that you could offer the guidance I need in these difficult times...”

I stop. My eyes refocus on the steel chairs and folding tables. So it goes...

Is it foolish to imagine letters that you are, to put it softly, unlikely ever to get?

Well – is it foolish to imagine world peace?

Is it foolish to imagine a world where everyone has a home and no one goes hungry?

Part of us thinks: it’ll never happen; another part of us thinks: I won’t give up on the possibility.

The problem is that the steel chairs and folding tables block our view.

So we all need a place where we can refocus our eyes and imagine a better world.

Where we can imagine a better version of ourselves.

During the Renaissance, Montaigne wrote that every one of us needs an “atelier boutique” –

a “shop in the back of the shop.”

Your back shop is the private place you go to for your deepest transactions.

The shop out front is your public self – everything you do out in the world;

your back shop is where you do all your soul work –

it’s where you gather the resources you need to do what you do out front.

Your back shop is where you reflect and renew, but it’s not a solitary place.

You have lots of company: the quotation you’ve stuck on the wall,

the pictures of people and places that matter to you,

the poets and philosophers whose books have guided you.

So this morning, let’s spend a few minutes thinking about our back shop, yours and mine.

How much time are you able to spend there?

Do days or even weeks go by when you have to spend all your time out front?

When you finally do get some time in your back shop, what do you do with it?

The first chapter of Mark tells us that “The Spirit sent Jesus out into the desert,

and he was in the desert forty days – and angels attended him.”

So the desert was one of his back shops.

Mark says that “angels attended him” there.

So he was not alone.

There are always angels in your back shop.

Some are there because you invited them – their pictures are on the wall, their books on the shelves.

Other angels show up uninvited.

They come because they have something to say that we need to hear.

The angels in your back shop attend to you, encourage you, tell you the truth,

and help you come a little closer to the person you most want to be.

They also give you what you need to be there for the people you love.

The late Andre Dubus, a wonderful writer, had some powerful angels in his back shop.

He was a Marine captain when his father lay dying at home in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

One of his angels was the major who gave him emergency leave so he could fly home.

Another angel was the gunnery sergeant who took care of his work while he was gone.

There are angels masquerading as people walking around all over the world.

During Andre Dubus’ flight to Louisana, there were other angels at work.

They gave him what he needed to sit by his father’s bed and hold his hand.

They were both shy, and they had never said much to each other – not in so many words.

“As a boy, when we were alone in the car, we were mostly silent.”

When Andre left home to join the Marines,

he says “my father and I tightly embraced, then looked at each other’s damp eyes.

I wanted to say I love you, but I could not.”

So, years later, he wanted to say those words to his father before he died.

On the afternoon of his last day, his father, being a good southerner,

asked his son to make him a bourbon and water with crushed ice, and give him a cigarette.

“I brought the bourbon in a tall glass that I did not hold for him.

I do not remember whether he lifted it to his mouth,

or rested it on his chest and drank from an angled straw.

I put one of his cigarettes between my lips, lit his Zippo,

then looked beyond the cigarette and flame at my father’s eyes:

they were watching me.

“All my life at home, I had felt him watching me,

a glance during a meal or in the living room or on the lawn

had felt as if he was trying to see my soul, to see if I were strong and honorable,

to see if I could go out into the world and live in it without him.

His eyes watching me light his cigarette were tender, and they were saying goodbye.”

He never told his father that he loved him that day, and for years he regretted not saying the words.

“I did not understand love then,” he says.

But he was there: he crushed some ice, made his father a drink,

lit a cigarette and placed “it between the fingers of a man

trying to enjoy tobacco and bourbon and his family as he dies.”

Andre Dubus came to see that each of those things he did was a kind of sacrament.

And the thing about sacraments is: they speak volumes without using words.

Thanks to his reputation as a writer,

he could tell the story of his father’s last day to his readers –

and we all need some way, some place, to do the same.

And one place where it can happen is the church – whether in a study group

like the one Claire led about death and dying or the study group Cricket is starting this week,

or one of our small groups which meet simply for the sake of being together.

A small group, at its best, can be one of your back shops.

When we give other people even the smallest window into who we are and what matters to us,

something inside us opens and changes – just because other people have really listened; it’s one of the ways we become each other’s angels.

In the life of this church, we try to form one or two new small groups every year;

if you aren’t in one and would to like be, let Claire or Cricket know,

or ask someone who’s in a small group what it’s like.

If the presidents of our two denominations ever did ask me how to resolve their differences,

I’ll suggest that they create a lot more churches like this one.

Mary Oliver once wrote that in any given situation,

if you’re wondering what the best thing to say or do is,

always choose the most loving response you can think of.

In a movie I recommend called In Her Shoes, Cameron Diaz is Maggie, a beautiful but aimless blonde

who flunked out of college, gets drunk and passes out at her high school reunion,

and lives with her sister but trashes her apartment and steals her clothes and her money.

In other words, Maggie is a mess.

When her sister throws her out,

she moves in with her grandmother, Ella, who is played by Shirley MacLaine.

Ella is a no-nonsense senior who lives in a retirement village in Florida,

and when she catches Maggie stealing money from her, she thinks of a loving response:

if you’ll go to work in our assisted living section, I’ll match whatever you earn.

Maggie reluctantly takes the deal.

And working in the assisted living section is where she finds herself at last.

She gets attached to a retired English professor who is both blind and bedridden.

One day after she empties his bedpan, he hands her a book and asks her to read to him.

She is silent, then makes an excuse – I can’t, I’m too busy.

But he doesn’t give up.

The next time she comes into his room, he hands her the book again.

And again she is hesitant, silent, and he softly asks her, “Is it dyslexia?”

He doesn’t wait for her answer – he knows that’s what it is.

He coaches her on how to read by sounding out the words in her head before saying them.

He assures her that she’ll be fine, and she starts reading to him.

Not only does she read well, the books he gives her are great literature,

full of enduring poems and stories, and reading them has a transforming effect on her:

slowly, day by day, Maggie comes into her own.

Up until then, Maggie had been living with no back shop.

That’s why her life was such a mess.

When they met, the professor, who had spent a lot of time in his back shop,

chose the most loving response he could think of:

he taught her how to read to him – and to read not just anything, but the classics.

He was one of her angels.

She helped him, and he helped her find her own back shop.

Toward the end of the story she recites a love poem by e.e. cummings:

i carry your heart with me (I carry it in

my heart) I am never without it (anywhere

I go you go...

She recites cummings’ poem so beautifully that for months after the movie came out,

it was the most googled poem on the Internet.

It ends with these lines:

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which

grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (carry it in my heart)

Every one of us carries someone else’s heart in our own – often more than one:

a life partner, a parent, a child, a sister or brother, a close friend.

And beyond our closest relationships, we can choose to open ourselves to each other.

I believe that is what can make a church so valuable:

it invites us to make room for each other,

and for people in other parts of the world who we will never meet.

That is the root of the root and the bud of the bud.

That is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.

That we are each carried in the heart of God, and we can do the same for each other.

Amen.

Notes:

Andre Dubus’ story about his father is part of a larger essay, “Making Sandwiches for My Daughters,” in the book God is Love: Essays from Portland Magazine.

The movie In Her Shoes is available on video and on HBO