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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 22, 2013
Solstice is the night, holy to the ancients, where we wait in darkness for the return of the light. What kinds of things spark in us to lift us from a place of unseeing, a place of uncertainty?
In cultures all across the northern hemisphere, the human race is performing rituals to honor the longest night of the year, rituals to call the light back, lighting candles, bringing greenery indoors. During the darkening time, in the early fall, we have had days of repentance from the Jewish tradition, we have had the days of the dead in the Christian tradition, we have the dance with the dead on Hallowe’en in the pagan tradition. We have watched the dark grow long, we have felt the cold gather in. The light has been narrowing, shortening, getting pale and chill. On this Solstice night, last night the sacred dark will be at its deepest. Some say the dark is a time for stillness but for many of us, this is the liveliest time of the year. In our particular climate, some of us hibernate in the stifling heat and we come to life in the cooler winters. The heat slows us down around here, school is out, we do less, our brains slow down.. I don’t know how you are, what your body’s rhythm is. It has one, and it’s good to pay attention to what it is. Are you feeling the strain of activity at this time of year? Maybe you need stillness in the dark months. Maybe you are humming in the cool weather, getting your house decorated, buying and sending presents, planning meals, having parties, invigorated. Our winters here are not somber and gray. We have sun and esperanza flowers, so ceremonies that talk about the bleakness of winter don’t ring true here.
Maybe it’s your spirit that’s bleak, though. Maybe you are tired, working, giving exams, taking exams, too much shopping, too many expectations, too little money, too much trying to be perfect and lovely and strong. Solstice tells us is that the wheel is going to turn. Things will change. The cool weather comes, and it goes. The light comes, and then it goes, then it comes again. The wheel turns.
Sing
Her name cannot be spoken, Her face is not forgotten
Her power is to open, Her promise won’t be broken
All seeds She deeply buries, She weaves the thread of seasons
Her secret, darkness carries, She loves beyond all reason
All sleeping seeds She strengthens,
The rainbow is Her token
Now winter’s power awakens, In love all chains are broken
She changes everything She touches
And everything She touches changes
We are Changers, Everything we touch can change
Change is, Touch is, Touch is, Change is
Change us, Touch us, Touch us, Change us
IT is ridiculous to call the spirit by a pronoun. “She” is as wrong as “he,” as wrong as “it” or “them.” As we continue to sing it throughout the sermon, use whichever one is comfortable for you. I will use She, as that is how we sing this in my village.
What I want to say to you today is that you can count on a change. If you are feeling lost, numb, confused — it’s temporary. There will be a spark that will signal the turning of the wheel.
“If you have your ears open,” says novelist Frederick Buechner, “if you have your eyes open, every once in a while some word in even the most unpromising sermon will flame out, some scrap of prayer or anthem, some moment of silence even, the sudden glimpse of somebody you love sitting there near you, or of some stranger whose face without warning touches your heart, [these moments] will flame out, and these are the moments that. .. in the depths of whatever our dimness and sadness and lostness are, send us off on an extraordinary journey for which there are no sure maps and whose end we will never fully know until we get there.”
If you are content, if you have things figured out, under control, it’s temporary. There will be a falling apart, a darkening, a time for growing your roots, a time for not knowing what’s going on, a time for learning everything all over again. The human learning pattern is a spiral. We come around to the same place over and over and we say “Am I here again? I never thought I would be having to learn this again, having to figure this out again, yet here I am!” You are in the same place, but you are farther along than before. You know things you didn’t know before. You have experience you didn’t have before. In nature, darkness is necessary for life. There are processes in the trees that need darkness to happen. We are using “darkness” here, not to talk about evil or wrong, but to talk about the necessary and inevitable times when we can’t easily see what’s around us, when it’s perilous to move quickly, when we can’t be certain what to do. What this time of year tells us is that it’s into the darkest time that the light is born.
It’s born in the form of a spark, in the form of a Divine Child, it’s born in an unexpected way, helped along by unexpected things. It’s in danger from the moment of its birth, yet it escapes to grow and flourish. That is the story of the divine Christ child, and it’s the story of many other divine heroes throughout the ages. A human whispers “yes” and the light is born.
How do we whisper “yes” so the light can be born? How do we invite it? How do we open to it so that our confusion can be lit with a dawning clarity, so our lost-ness can be guided by a light through the trees, so our despair can be pierced by love?
Sing
Everything lost is found again, In a new form, in a new way
Everything hurt is healed again, In a new time, in a new day
Bright as a flower and strong as a tree
With our love and with our will
Breaking our chains so we can be free
O Great Spirit, turn the wheel.
She changes everything She touches
And everything She touches changes
We are Changers, Everything we touch can change
Change is, Touch is, Touch is, Change is
Change us, Touch us, Touch us, Change us
What if this were a turning point for you? What might the Spirit touch to turn the wheel? Your fears?
If you could surrender those your heart might be changed. Touch our fears.
What about your resentments? If you can surrender your resentments the wheel might turn. Touch our resentments.
Your expectations of how things should be? Your feeling that you should do things a certain way, just right, and that there is no room for mistakes? Touch our expectations.
Sing
She changes everything She touches
And everything She touches changes
We are Changers, Everything we touch can change
Change is, Touch is, Touch is, Change is
Change us, Touch us, Touch us, Change us
The first Sunday in January you will be invited to come up to put your own individual wishes, prayers and elements in need of transformation into the fire. We will have our Burning Bowl service on Sunday the 5th.
Ritual is a way to open our eyes, our ears, our hearts. Coming together to worship is a way to open, singing, laughing, listening, eating together all are ways to open to the spark, to have a word
“flame out, some scrap of prayer or anthem, some moment of silence even, the sudden glimpse of somebody you love sitting there near you, or of some stranger whose face without warning touches your heart, [these moments] will flame out, and these are the moments that… in the depths of whatever our dimness and sadness and lostness are, send us off on an extraordinary journey for which there are no sure maps and whose end we will never fully know until we get there. “
May it be so for each one of us, as the light is born.
Song Kore’s song.
Adapted from chant by Laura Liebling and Starhawk
She changes everything She touches
And everything She touches changes
Her name cannot be spoken, Her face is not forgotten
Her power is to open, Her promise won’t be broken
All seeds She deeply buries,
She weaves the thread of seasons
Her secret, darkness carries,
She loves beyond all reason
All sleeping seeds She strengthens, The rainbow is Her token
Now winter’s power awakens, In love all chains are broken
She changes everything She touches
And everything She touches changes
Everything lost is found again, In a new form, in a new way
Everything hurt is healed again, In a new time, in a new day
Bright as a flower and strong as a tree
With our love and with our rage
Breaking our chains so we can be free
With our love and with our rage
We are, Changers, Everything we touch can change
Change is, Touch is, Touch is, Change is
Change us, Touch us, Touch us, Change us
A bad diang
There is a woman who weaves the night sky
See how She spins, see Her fingers fly
She is within us, beginning to end
She is our Mother, our sister, our friend
What can spark us into a new journey? Breaking Bad “I’m awake!”
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.
http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776
