On The Edge of Despair

A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian and Jonalu Johnstone

The First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday October 16, 2005

Ancient Reading

Job Chapter 3—(NRSV adapted)

…Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth … “Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, “A man-child is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! Let clouds settle upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Yes, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it … Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none; … --because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb, and hide trouble from my eyes.

“Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?  Why were there knees to receive me, or breasts for me to nurse? Now I would be lying down and quiet; I would be asleep; … why was I not buried like a stillborn child, like an infant that never sees the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest …

“Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures; who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave?  Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in? … I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes.”

Modern Reading

“September”  Jennifer Michael Hecht

From “The Next Ancient World”

Tonight there must be people who are geting what they want.
I let my oars fall into the water.
Good for them Good for them, getting what they want.
The night is so still that I forget to breathe.
The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving.
Tonight there are people getting just what they need.
The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart.
I remember you in a black and white photograph
taken this time of some year. You were leaning against
a half-shed tree, standing in the leaves the tree had lost.
When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over.
Tonight, there are people who are so happy,
that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow.
Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow.
My hand trails in the water.
I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.

Prayer and Meditation

The Reverend Jonalu Johnstone

October 16, 2005

Let us take a moment to open our minds and heart to the spirit of life and love.  In the atmosphere of meditation and prayer, let us reflect on our lives and our journeys, knowing we bring with us today celebrations and sorrows, delight and despair.  I share a meditation by UU minister Jane Rzepka.  (“The Idiocy of Flight,” from A Small Heaven, p. 44)

A well-known poem by Robert Graves speaks of butterflies – their “honest idiocy of flight,” “lurching here and there by guess and God and hope and hopelessness.”  …

Publicly we speak the civilized language of human beings who have things under control.  No idiocy, no lurching.  The world sees that we function well and happily.  Other people believe it, and even we begin to believe it.  Life moves forward as always.

Privately, though, we experience long stretches of turbulence and occasional sudden downdraft.  So many in our church feel alone when things go poorly at home, when they feel their age (whatever it is), or when they grieve.  So many feel alone in their money worries or career problems.  Awful life situations seem to set us apart from one another.

Normal lives include these awful parts.  They don’t always show from the outside; it’s hard to believe any other folks at coffee hour are feeling the same kinds of screaming pain, or emptiness, or entrapment, or panic, or precariousness, or low-grade worry.  Lives, even lives well-lived, don’t stay in place for long – at least that’s how it seems from the peculiar vantage point of the minister’s study.

It’s a help, I think, to accept “the idiocy of flight,” the butterfly flight-pattern so firmly implanted in the human mind and heart.  Let the lurching, then, be no surprise…

Tossed on seas and storms, victims of the idiocy of flight, May the Spirit of Love fill our hearts and minds as we move through our lives.  May the Community of Concern be with us in our struggles, in our losses, and in our delights.  So may it be.  AMEN.

On The Edge of Despair

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday October 16, 2005

The standard advice given to ministers serving a new church is to delay making changes in worship for about a year.  This reflects the reality that liturgy plays a bigger role in worship than we tend to realize.  It may come as little surprise that I have a hard time with Standard Operating Procedures.  I made immediate changes to what we do in this hour shortly after beginning my ministry here in 2001.

Those of you who came to First Church sometime prior to 2001 may remember being asked to stand up so that you could be welcomed to our community and receive a “stick on” red heart. The intent of this kind of welcoming is well founded.  It is intended to make sure all our guests receive a warm, hospitable, welcome.  The effect is frequently very different.  For many, simply rising to acknowledge that they are visitors makes the pulse race, the face flush and elicits an overwhelming desire to bolt for the exits.

This reaction is far from universal.  There are some who would not only enjoy rising on their first visit but would like a few minutes to tell of their journey.  You know who you are.  More people, though, are averse to this kind of introduction.  Perhaps they’re shy.  Perhaps, having heard mixed stories about Unitarians, they are uneasy about being in “a church like this.”  Perhaps they are nervous about being in any church.  Some simply want to fly “under the radar” and don’t appreciate being “outed” as new.  There are a dozen or so reasons that this kind of public welcome, while well intentioned, may be uncomfortably received.

In fact, there is a simple reason that I decided to break away from that visible welcome.  Experience shows that many people arrive at church “On the Edge of Despair.”  There are some among us who will suddenly, of their own volition, decide to try something new.  There are some who will wake up one Sunday morning and say “I think I’ll go check out that colonial looking church with the big white pillars at 13^th and Dewey.”  Some seek us out from a high point overlooking their life.  More often, though, people decide to seek out a church because something in them aches.  What it is that aches, where the pain comes from, or what will assuage the hurt they don’t know.  Sometimes they may not even be aware of the depth of their pain.  Perhaps they are mostly numb.  My guess is that for every person who strides confidently through our doors there is at least one other who comes in a bit dazed.  They aren’t sure what—but they hope to find something that will be a balm for their suffering.

Forrest Church, in “Life Lines,” writes of an anonymous letter slipped under his study door at All Souls Unitarian in New York.

What is the meaning of adversity?  I don’t think I can handle it anymore.  Nothing it seems has gone right in my life.  If you can tell me the reason for suffering or pain or adversity, please tell me.  I know people do not have an answer, and I know many people overcome adversity but I am tired of it.  I feel absolutely hopeless.  Is there a god or is there not a god?  If I feel there is not a god what is the sense of going on?  And for whom?  I know this letter sounds crazy, but I am tired of it.  A Parishioner.  P.S. yes, I’ve had therapy and medication—now you must really think I’m crazy—but I remain hopeless.  Please help me.

My experience is that more of us, new-old-and-in-between, carry that kind of hurt through those doors than any of us can imagine.  I find it helpful to imagine that every one of you arrives wearing a button: “Human Being Inside, Handle With Care.”

After Church received that pain filled cry for help, he did what any minister would do.  He tried to figure out who the unsigned parishioner was.  He and his staff went through their list of prime candidates but after discrete inquiries none of that group seemed to have written the note.

He could be the shy man whose name I do not know who sits in the last pew and leaves right before the benediction.  She could be the unemployed teacher with cancer; the single mother with two hyperactive children; the accountant with a gambling problem who just declared bankruptcy; or the homeless man, once a successful banker who can’t seem to stay on his medication.  But just as likely she could be the successful Wall Street analyst or the big corporate lawyer with the stunning family … When it comes to despair, playing the odds according to looks or fortune is a fools game.

My experience is that for every person whose suffering can be seen—those who have suffered loss of loved one, health, esteem or confidence—that there are many who edge close to despair camouflaged to the prying eyes of the world.  They are camouflaged even to the eyes would love help them.

The ubiquitous nature of suffering and despair is something I try to hold in prayerful awareness as I do my ministry—whether it is though the public act of preaching, one on one interactions, the minutia of administrative planning, serving on community boards or teaching classes.  I try to remember that none of our lives are exactly what we show the world and the task of church is to help each person get the most out of the gift of life that they possibly can.

It is the primacy of that task that Jonalu and I try to establish symbolically from the beginning in this hour of worship and assembly.  “This day is a gift,” we say.  “A gift of love, a gift from God, a gift from life itself.”  We say that because it is so very easy to forget.  It is so very easy to think that we have a right to our lives, a right to be alive, a right to have things go our way.  Now some of you may ask why, if we are so aware of despair, do we continue on—“A day to live in, a day to love in and, in time, a day in which to die.”

I guess one could see that as tempting the fates…holding a match to a fuse…but it isn’t really.  I see it as an honest assessment.  We are alive.  One day we will die.  Our task is to live and love; to share and care. We do very few people a favor by cloaking the finality of life simply because despair encroaches.  In times of despair we don’t need to be shielded from the truth—we need to be reminded of the gift, of the every growing hope that the truth shall set us free, that only truth can make us whole. 

According to F, Scott Fitzgerald, “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”  In those times when we walk on the edge of despair we must set aside that which is not truth, that which is not real, because false hope is really no hope at all.  False hope is bulk that fills the belly but doesn’t curb hunger or sustain life.  The only real hope I know is to return to the gift.  Even when we can’t imagine it, our only hope is that life is a gift not a reward.  Life is not something we earn or are awarded.

Perhaps it is a bit callous—and I don’t begin with this—but when people ask me (or when I ask myself) “Why do I suffer?  Why is despair my companion?”  I ultimately ask them if they have ever questioned the presence of goodness in their life?  If one is to ask “Why do I suffer?”  then one must also ask “Why do I laugh?”  If one asks “Why do I deserve to see all around me crumble?” then one really should ask “Why was I lucky enough to have this in the first place.”

Of course, sometimes we know why we suffer.  Sometimes we are lucky enough to discern that our greed and insolence set up the despair we feel.  I say we are sometimes lucky to discover that we are complicit in our despair because despair which is invited in through identifiable acts can be exorcised.  It is important that our consciences be neither dulled nor set aside before they are fully exercised.  In a world of balance and karma one can seek atonement and to redress the causes of our suffering.  Still, there are times when we don’t deserve what receive.  There are things no one deserves.  That is the edge of despair to which we turn today.

Our ancient reading came from Job in the Hebrew Scriptures.  I offer that as therapeutic study for those of us who seek the cause of our unjust suffering.  I will warn you that while the study of Job is therapeutic that it offers no solutions to the problem of suffering.  Job finally admits that he is not in charge.  If there is a plan to the world—and that remains a big “if”—that Job is not the architect.

That is thin salve for suffering, but there is a power in acknowledging the things we can change and the things that are beyond our responsibility.  I’d like you to think about the experiences that I started with today.  Go back to that hurting person coming to this community—whether for the first time or the two thousandth.  Go back to that anonymous sufferer who slid a note under the parson’s door.  They have something in common.

What they have in common is that somehow they knew—that even if one suffers—that despair does not demand solitary suffering.  We human beings are communal at a deep and abiding level.  There is something in us that tells us to seek out others in our times of pain.  Somehow we know that the path away from the edge of despair is best navigated with others at our side.

Howard Thurman offers words that may serve as a marker on the path that turns us away from despair.

I share with you the agony of your grief,

The anguish of your heart finds echo in my own.

I know I cannot enter all you feel
Nor bear with you the burden of your pain;

I can but offer what my love does give:

The strength of caring,

The warmth of one who seeks to understand

The silent storm-swept barrenness of so great a loss.
This I do in quiet ways,

That on your lonely path
You may not walk alone.

That’s about it.  Pain and suffering are real.  None of us are immune from despair but our hope is that together we can walk a path of solitude not loneliness.  Somehow, no matter how frightening our dark night of the soul, I don’t think it is the despair that ultimately destroys us.  The thing that steals our humanity is the fear of isolation, the pain of invisibility.

On this day I pray that each of us know the gift and share the gift of life with one whose days have drawn them too close to the edge of despair.  On this day know that as a community we aspire to support and nurture and love both life and the living.  In the hours of your despair, I pray that you discover that other hearts will hold you, that other hands will care for you.  Know that life is something larger and more majestic than any one moment—or all the moments—of our one precious and precarious life. 

Love and be loved.  Care and be cared for.  Call out and hear a kindly echo return from the edge of despair.  AMEN