Happy Holy Days

22 December 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

READING: “Why is it easier to love from afar?”

Some say that Mary was a virgin mother singing in glorious chorus of a savior, and that shepherds, overcome, went down and found him in a manger. While wise ones, prophet-led, brought gifts. And all these mysteries took place beneath a star so bright that all the world remembers.

Why is it easier to love from afar?

To love a family wrapped in myth and time?

To see great beauty in a mother’s face

As she radiantly smiles upon the canvas?

The child fashioned in paint or sculpted in stone is ever sweet. He does not cry and stamp his feet upon the ground and summon every shred of patience ’til his need is met. He waits there quietly, convenient to our time, An easy object to adore.

To love a child, here, now, just as they are

is quite another thing, and hard to do.

Beloved story, inspiration, rock on which so many rest, direct us still. Lead us tonight upon the path of love, for this we know; What ever blessings,

miracles or gifts were heaped about him, there was one priceless gift that made him whole” And that was love.

This is the goal our faith has set; to spend our strength that there may be;

laid at the feet of every child, someday, the gift of love that we have offered him, the infant Jesus this once-a-year, for nineteen centuries and more.

This is the mystery we seek to solve” and this we strive to know; not that this man was strong and good, but how came he so?

HOMILY: Thoughts on Christmas

– Cathy Harrington

Bah humbug. In the past few years, I have grown to dread Christmas like a toothache. Why do we have to get into such a frenzy every year? I used to love Christmas! There is no avoiding it! It’s everywhere. Even my jazzercise class this week was exercising to an entire hour of Christmas music. Not the good Christmas music, either. The tacky stuff, like “Rockin around the Christmas Tree.” Can you imagine? I worried that I might throw up. I even put off writing this sermon until almost the last minute.

Out of sheer desperation, I did the only thing a good intern could do, I went to see my mentor. The wise Old Theologian.

In this emergency consultation with “the master,” I was tricked into reminiscing about Christmas’ past, while he listened thoughtfully. Do you have the picture?

Well, I said, I think I began to despise Christmas when I worked at the mall and I saw the truth about the Christmas season in retail business. It’s so commercial and hideous! The whole year depends on Christmas sales! Or maybe I just burned out on the whole huge job of decorating and shopping and cooking, trying to make Christmas special for my family year after year after year. OR maybe, I said, with tears choking my words, I lost the Christmas spirit the year that my father had a massive stroke and almost died. We spent Christmas in the intensive care waiting room wondering if we were going to lose him. In a way, I did lose my dad that Christmas. He couldn’t speak or swallow for over a year. He was my confidant, my advisor, my hero. I missed him so much. Yeah, maybe that was why I dread Christmas. It will never be quite the same.

But Davidson, that wise old theologian, wouldn’t let me stop there, he asked more questions…

and slowly it came to me; I have so many wonderful memories of Christmas! Christmas magic that lives in my heart and mind. Maybe that’s why we do this every year, to keep the magic alive.

Christmas time is when Love is reborn. When sacred moments are framed and stored in the recesses of our minds. The story goes that the angels brought the good news of great joy for all of the people, the birth of a savior, a messiah who is Lord. Angels were defined in my Christian Science childhood as “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect. The inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality.” And God or Lord, was defined as Love. Yes, that’s what we are welcoming into the world at Christmas, the coming of Love.

“What was Christmas like when you were a child?” he asked.

My goodness, when I was a little girl, my mother decorated the whole house and there was even a small Christmas tree in the kitchen where she hung homemade cookies and we could choose one each day before Christmas. I can still remember the wonderful smells of cookies baking and the candy cane cookies with crushed peppermint on top.

I was the youngest of four children and I remember that my father made us drink a glass of eggnog before we could go down stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left us. I hated eggnog and would choke it down. Each of us had a corner where Santa left a huge stocking filled with candy and always a navel orange in the toe, and toys, so many toys and dolls. We would charge down the stairs as fast as our little feet could carry us.

As we got older, the presents were all wrapped and we had to take turns opening them so everyone could share in the unwrapping and make it last as long as possible. We lived, by then, in a hundred year old house with six fireplaces and twelve-foot ceilings. At Christmas, the three fireplaces downstairs would be crackling with a roaring fire. In the living room, there was a huge bay window, and some friends who sold Frazier firs from Canada, cut us a special tree every year that would fill the bay window and reach to the ceiling. I can almost smell the warm crackling fire and see the twinkle of lights and ornaments. We had wonderful gatherings of feasting and story-telling. My father and my grandfather were wonderful storytellers and sometimes meals would last for hours as they traded the floor and held us spellbound. I remember laughing until it hurt and being moved to tears all in the same wonderful meal.

We had a special tree lighting ritual every year that included a champagne toast (sparkling cider for the kids) and I”ll never forget the year, my big sister’s Jewish husband spent his first Christmas with us. He was so excited and wanted to string the lights on the tree. It required a stepladder and he spent what seemed like an eternity on the job. The time came, finally, for the tree lighting and the champagne toast and we soon discovered that Stephen had put the male plug at the top of the tree. He was mortified, but we just laughed until we cried, and then we all pitched in and took off all the lights and strung them from the top to bottom.

My grandparents, Wilbur and Olga McCullough, always drove down from Indianapolis to spend Christmas with us. I can still remember watching for their big boxy Chrysler to pull into the driveway. Granddad never owned anything but Chrysler. After hugs all around, he would carry in presents to put under the already overflowing tree and we would run and snoop at each one shaking them and trying to guess what was inside.

My grandparents always gave each other the same presents every year! I loved it because you knew exactly what was going to happen. Grammy would open that familiar little package and say with feigned surprise, “Oh, Wilbur, Channel # 5! How did you ever know?” And then he would show the same funny surprise and thrill over his favorite pipe tobacco and a jar of pickled pigs feet. Amazing. It was so dear to watch and it has always been one of my favorite memories, but I only just recently discovered what it was that made that moment so special, year after year.

As Davidson listened attentively to me reminisce, he was reminded of a book in his collection. It’s a book that was written by one of his favorite professors at Chicago, Joseph Sittler, called Grace Notes, and Other Fragments. (Fortress Press) He loaned it to me and I was immediately captivated.

This grand old preacher had this to say about the title of his book, “A grace note in music can be dispensed with. It does not carry the main melody; it is not necessary to complete the structure. But it has a function. It accents a beat, underlines a moving turn of melody, freshens a phrase, turns something well-known into something breathtaking.”

In one of his stories, he speaks of marriage as ‘the mutual acceptance of the challenge to fulfill the seemingly impossible.” An enduring and difficult commitment to hang in there during the hard times and the dull times year after year, and the times when you don’t even want to talk to each other. As one person put it, “It’s just kind of nice to know that there is someone there that you don’t want to talk to.” But, there is a reward that comes with the years of toughing it out. ‘then there is something that is really worth the human effort.” (Grace Notes and Other Fragments by Joseph Sittler)

To illustrate, Sittler borrows a story by Flannery O”Connor of “an old couple who lived all their lives in a little cabin overlooking the opposite mountain. They were sitting there “both very old people”in their rocking chairs on a spring day. The man said, “Well Sarah, I see there’s still some snow up there on the mountain.” Now he knew there was snow on the mountain every year. She knew there was snow on the mountain every year. So why does he have to say it? Because to perceive that, to know that at times there is snow and at times there is not snow’this was part of the observation of an eternal rhythm which made their life together. In marriage you say the same things over and over, you give each other the same presents every year, and this is ho-hum in one way. But it is breathtaking in another.” (Sittler)

When I read those words, I thought, “Yes, that’s it!” It seems ho-hum, giving each other the same gifts every year and staging the show of mock surprise and genuine delight. But it wasn’t ho-hum. It was breathtaking. It gave us little kids the rare chance to see our own grandparents sharing that eternal rhythm of giving and receiving gifts that were always expected, always cherished. It moves me to this day. It is a sacred memory. That’s why I can still remember it so fondly all these years later.

The grace notes. December 25th is just another day and could be simply ignored and the world would still spin and the sun would still rise and set. But, when we take the time to celebrate the sacred, create memories and give space for Love to be reborn in our lives, it is like magic. Like the grace notes are to a melody, accenting a beat, underlining a moving turn of life, freshening a year, turning something ho-hum into something breathtaking.

To think I might have missed that sweet drama acted out year after year, or more likely in one form or another, day after day, by my grandparents. I might have missed it and never would have known what I know now about Love”it’s the magic of Christmas.

Something Holy happens when we can see through the ho-hum of yet another Christmas and listen with expectation for those sweet and sublime grace notes. The breathtaking exchanges of simple gifts, the shouts of glee and the quiet and warm looks of gratitude for simply being together again.

It makes all that frenzy worth the effort. Yeah, It really does.

Merry Christmas!

SERMON:

“For unto you is born this day…”

Davidson Loehr

Like Cathy, I often have to fight the bah-humbugs at Christmas. I have to remember that these are supposed to be holy days, and do some work to build the manger where holy days might have a place to be born.

I read this Christmas passage in the Bible, to try and get in the mood:

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day a Savior….

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, to people of good will.”

That’s really pretty. Though when I ask what this has to do with our world today, nothing comes to mind.

But unless miracles like that still happen, unless a Savior, a child of God, can still be born and the angels can still sing out, these are just old fairy tales.

I”ll admit that having a child dedication ceremony as we did awhile ago makes it easy to be reminded that each of those children is a miracle, and a child of God. But is that all the old Christmas story can remind us of – babies? After we’re born, are there no more miracles? Is that all there is?

In this frame of mind, the story I thought of isn’t exactly a Christmas story. It involved real people: people I knew. And it happened at Christmastime, twenty-one years ago.

Merry spelled her name M-e-r-r-y, but the happy name didn’t describe her. We dated for a little while, then decided we made better friends. She was 23, bright as could be, in her fourth year of graduate school, having finished college at 19. I had been attracted by her brilliance.

But there was a great sadness in her, which came from a deep place. She never felt good enough, and the voices telling her she wasn’t good enough were very old.

I introduced her to Phil, a 60-year-old man who taught religion and psychology and who was, I imagined, a creative psychotherapist. They hit it off, and I heard sketchy updates from Merry over the next few months.

It was tough. You never know where or how a bright and attractive young woman first picks up the message that she isn’t good enough, though of course it happens.

Finally in one furious therapy session, Merry acknowledged for the first time a deep rage at her mother.

Phil got creative. He used the Gestalt therapy technique of putting an empty chair in front of Merry, facing her. “I want you to imagine your mother is sitting in that chair,” he said. “And I want you to tell her everything you wish you could say to her.”

Within fifteen seconds, she was screaming. And for several loud minutes, it poured out. Pent-up anger over years of feeling put-down, demeaned, dismissed. She remembered an old dream she had had where she was invisible to her mother, no matter how hard she tried. She told the empty chair she had never felt loved, not once.

At their next session, Phil asked her to go sit in her mother’s chair, and as her mother, respond to the charges Merry had leveled against her.

It took a little longer, but within about a minute, Merry said, she had become her mother. Her voice, her face, her posture became aggressive and accusatory. She began shouting back at Merry’s chair:

“You are such a complete failure! You have been the biggest disappointment of my career! You weren’t smart or pretty enough to get by without work, and you never worked hard enough. I wanted a daughter I could be proud of, and I got you! I am ashamed of you! You aren’t worth loving!”

Looking back on it, Merry said the voice was just horrible, like the screech of ancient Greek Harpies. It poisoned all the air in the room.

Then Phil did a second creative thing. He suggested that the two of them take a walk around the block for some fresh air. He took her mother’s chair out of the room as they left.

It was a week before Christmas in Chicago: cold, snowy and windy. When they returned, Phil did something else very creative. He took another chair, the nicest one in the office, and put it where Merry’s mother’s chair had been. He asked Merry to sit in the new chair. He told her this was God’s chair. He asked her now to become God, and see what God had to say to Merry.

At first, she just sat there, trying to imagine what it should feel like to be God. Then she leaned forward, looked straight into the invisible Merry’s eyes, and spoke. It was a voice so gentle, so tender, neither of them knew where it had come from:

“Oh, my Merry,” said God. “You are my beloved daughter and in you I am much pleased. Inside of you I placed a soul so vulnerable it has never dared to come forth. More than anything in the world, I want you to let that soul give birth to the Merry that I created. Be happy, my daughter. Be whole. Know that you are precious and know that I love you.”

God stopped talking. Merry went back to her own chair. She looked at the place where God had appeared and said “Oh, praise God!” Then she cried, and cried, and cried.

She had occasional therapy sessions with Phil over the next couple years until she graduated, but she said that day when she became God had been the turning point of her life. It was the birth of a new Merry that was slowly but surely becoming whole and happy.

A couple years later, when we got the happy news that Merry had gotten married, I told Phil the story as Merry had shared it with me, and I asked him how he would describe what happened, psychologically. He gave me kind of a mechanical explanation, saying that through the empty chair exercise she began to move into a more positive self-assessment by using the projected voice of her loving God to trump the projected voice of her hateful mother.

It sounded funny to hear it all described like that, though in its own way it was probably accurate. But he left out the most important part. Because on that day when Merry was reborn, a miracle happened. And far above them, in the heavens, I know that an angel cried out,

“Fear not: behold I bring you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day a Savior, the daughter of God.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, to people of good will.”

I know in my heart that it happened just like that. Merry Christmas, good people, Merry Christmas!