One is Silver and the Other's Gold

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© Hannah Wells

March 14, 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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Two Poems By Herman Nelson:

Hold to that Breed (Kyrielle)

For all who hiked life’s rugged trail

to find new paths, triumph or fail.

A search for Truth, their only creed.

Hold firmly to that precious breed.

To those who bartered all to teach,

and sow their Truths in hope to reach

some mind to nourish fertile seed.

Hold firmly to that precious breed.

Those friends whom you can count in strife,

remain steadfast throughout your life,

such loyalty is rare indeed!

Hold firmly to such precious breed.

Our 49th

“Till death us do part!”

When young, in love,

those are only words.

It is not until they act,

you learn their meaning.

This 49th anniversary

of our wedding day,

without you,

I ruminate this knowledge.

I chew it up

unable to spit it out.

It is bittersweet

with the joy of you in memory,

the despair of living on and on

without your light to guide me.

I find solace in our children.

We mingle in their blood – ever –

and the blood of their children

and their children’s children

to the end of all eternity.

Sleep, now, my love, my lover,

and do not dream,

for dreams, spawn pain,

however pleasant.

You are eternal as atoms.

Wait for me.

Let us ride the stars together.

PRAYER:

The Ides of March are upon us, “beware the Ides of March!”

What have we to fear?

May we seek the wisdom of confronting our fears within ourselves, and not without. May we see that the fear we give permission to, can be asked to leave. May we not betray ourselves.

May we see that we can change our minds. That, even our most prized notions of integrity and self-reliance may in fact be the enemies of pride and separation, disguised.

May we know who our true friends are. May we know that humility and gratitude for life can be embodied in reaching out to these friends in our times of need.

May we see that the power to nurture what we choose to is in our own hands. We can nurture our fears, or we can nurture health and wholeness through actions, through initiative, through allowing ourselves to be known.

And may we see that it is in our power to ensure what is most important of all: that we do not have to be alone, that there are friends to make in unlikely places.

In a world that demands our attention, that demands our allegiance to icons that can seem hollow and distant, may we put our faith in what is in us and among us, and is most easily seen and touched:

Our intimacy and affection for each other – may we give it more freely, and when we are given it,

may we receive it.

Amen.

SERMON:

When I was very depressed at the beginning of last summer, I decided to go see a psychic who had been referred to me by a friend with very high recommendations. When you’re depressed enough, you’ll try anything! I thought she might be able to provide me with some hope and direction for the future – I figured even if she was a crackpot, I could still use the placebo effect!

I went to her house and we sat in her garden. She began by asking me questions “to get a feel for me,” she said. She asked me who were the dead people hanging around me, and I said I didn’t know, perhaps my grandmother. Already I eyed her suspiciously. She asked me why I was carrying so much pain in my body and I explained about the surgery on my left shoulder, and the slipped disk in my lower back. Then she asked me a question that absolutely knocked the breath out of me. She asked, “who sees you?”

Three simple words. It took my breath away because it got right down to the bottom of my loneliness. Who sees me? Meaning, who understands me? Who sees the REAL me? Not the me who tries to look good in front of others, or tries to please whoever I think needs pleasing, but sees me inside and out, all my passions, all my secret fears, all the bare, honest parts of me that show who I really am?

At first, because of the sadness and self-pity I was feeling at the time, I drew a blank. My god, I wondered, does anybody really see me? Am I really this alone? But then I smiled with relief because I remembered. Of course. I answered the psychic’s question, “my friends see me.” And then I added, “my friends keep me sane.” She laughed and said, “yes, that’s what friends are for.”

And so I want to begin this morning by posing the same question to you: “WHO SEES YOU?” Who is there in your life that you can let every single guard down for, with whom you can let your super-ego take a rest. Who sees the parts of you that so often seem to go unnoticed? And these don’t have to be the wounded parts of you – perhaps they’re the sides of you that you absolutely love but one would have to know you pretty well to see them. Maybe it’s the side of you who is sensitive to beauty, has a sly sense of humor, or cares very, very deeply about something. Who sees and understands where you are vulnerable? The parts of you where you lose your adultness, and become like a child again? Who can see all these things about you?

It is often not our parents or our children who can see these things. It’s because we can never be quite on the same level with them. We can never have the shared experience of living in the same generation. Have you ever imagined what it would be like to meet one of your parents as a peer, as the same age you are now? I’ll never forget my father’s reaction to the last scene of the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams. In this scene, through a magical baseball field, a father comes back from the dead as the same age of his son, who is living. They are both in early adulthood, and the father is even a little younger than the son. Imagine meeting your parents even younger than yourself!

There had been ill will between the father and son, and it truly was a dream – to get a chance to reconcile this relationship with a simple game of catch. But what was truly dreamlike about this meeting was juxtaposing a father and son as peers. As two peers who could easily be friends. It was like Kevin Costner’s character couldn’t see the vulnerability in his father and have compassion and forgiveness for him until he saw him as he was as a young man.

I had never seen my father cry and I was in High School. He cried the whole way home in the car and my mother had to drive. I know that my father didn’t feel like he ever had much of a father-son relationship with his dad, let alone a friendship with him. My grandfather was still alive at the time, too, but it was obvious my father was mourning for what was irretrievably lost: to do the things that so many boys do with their fathers as they grow up. Just playing catch.

It’s important to make distinctions about age differences when we talk about friendship. At a senior lunch I attended recently at the church, Stan Hutchison and some others got on the subject of friendship. Stan said there’s a difference between the friends you make before you’re forty and the friends you make after you’re forty. I asked him later why he thought this was?

“Because when you’re younger,” he said, “there’s more energy for friendships, there’s more time and energy to get out and do stuff. There’s a bond in those older friendships. Those are the kinds of friends that you could drop in from out of town anytime without warning and knock on their door. But when you get older, you become more consumed by the relationships in your family.”

Many of us long to be friends with our parents and our children, and we are lucky when there is that semblance of friendship. But even when that is true, they are not the same as the friendships we have with our peers. It has something to do with what Jesus once said: “A prophet is not rejected except in his own town and in his own family and in his own house.”

What does that mean exactly? No, we are not prophets, but each one of us has a ‘prophet-part.’ Basically what this means is that there are parts of us that our families of origin will never “get,” because there are parts of us that have to grow away from them. Try as they might, our parents and our children will never see exactly who we are. The gulf of difference between children and parents is actually supposed to be a kind of soaring grace, and Kahlil Gibran picked the perfect metaphor to describe it in his poem of The Prophet. He talks about not being able to understand your children because they belong to the future “which you can never visit, not even in your dreams.” Then he compares parents to the bow and children to the arrows. He says to the parents, “The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and bends you with might that the arrows may go swift and far. Let you bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness.”

What an image! That the effort of parenthood produces a soaring arrow! It is this prophet-part of us that is one of the greatest distinctions between childhood and adulthood. It is the part of us that, once actualized and known to ourselves, marks a milestone of differentiation from our parents. No matter how much love there is between children and parents, there’s always going to be parts we don’t see. And this goes both ways – our children will never see us completely, either. As human beings, each one of us could not possess such a unique spark if we were so easily understood by our families.

To me, this is the absolute spice of life, this is humanity’s most enchanting quality – that we are each so different. What this means is that one of life’s greatest challenges is to understand others and to be understood. I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of being understood.

In a sermon about friendship, it’s important to talk about loneliness. It is strange how, as the population grows bigger, more people live alone and feel isolated. And when family life fails us, we can feel isolated in a home full of people. I am convinced that the number one ill effect of modernity is isolation. So much of modernity contains this dehumanizing side effect, whether it’s technology or increased competition in a market society – it is all compounded by one of the most foundational American values: self-reliance. Emerson meant well, but it is an inflated emphasis on self-reliance that can serve to keep us isolated from one another. There are times when we can’t and shouldn’t rely on ourselves alone. When you’re feeling bad, how good are you at asking others for support? Do you hesitate and try to figure it out by yourself, first?

They say that’s what friends are for, and that is absolutely true. We cannot be understood unless we allow ourselves to succumb to times of weakness in our lives. Times when we need to confide in another and say, “I don’t know.” Whether it’s with partners or friends, we need this intimacy in our lives to come to our full humanity, to understand and to be understood. Paula Weisner, a member of this church who has been a mentor to me, has a certain way of describing intimacy: intimacy, means ‘in-to-me-see.’ It’s only when you allow others to ‘in-to-me-see’ that this very human emotional need can be met.

There are many different kinds of friendships with different levels of intimacy – but what’s more interesting from a spiritual point of view is how friendship functions as nourishment for the soul.

One thing I’ve noticed in my studies for ministry is that friendship seems to be overlooked as an essential part of our spiritual lives. Where in the Bible does it talk about friendship? There are not too many places. Did Jesus have friends? Followers are not friends. Did Jesus ever talk about the human need for friendships? Not according to the authors of the gospels. One thing that is quite overlooked when people talk about Jesus is the fact that Jesus himself needed salvation, that he himself was in search of it, and that much of his teachings come out of a deep drive to be loved himself, to be understood. I believe this is true because I believe he was merely a human, like you and me.

In liberal religion, we tend to speak of salvation as worldly, and I believe very strongly that one place we find this salvation is in our friendships – to be profoundly understood is a kind of salvation. Salvation in friendship can come about in two important ways:

The first is what I have been speaking of – to be seen, to be known, to be understood in all our complexity and vulnerability and beauty. The second has very much to do with the conventional theology of salvation: to be forgiven. To be forgiven, despite our faults and our mistakes, despite our ‘sins.’ I don’t think most of us buy into the traditional theology of absolution – that Jesus died for our sins. I don’t think most of us are consciously concerned with whether or not God forgives us. But we do care that our loved ones forgive us, we do care that our friends forgive us for our mistakes, we do care that our friends accept us as we are.

Because as you know, friendships can have as many ups and downs as any other kind of close relationship. All of the aspects of love – passion, tenderness, separation, anxiety, anger, disillusionment, even triangles and unrequited affections – essentially all the emotions that render us human – emerge in friendship.

I know who my best friends are – they’re the ones that no matter how badly I screw up they’re not going anywhere. There’s nothing I could do that would make them stop loving me. It is a lot like ‘God’s love’ that traditional Christianity speaks of. It’s unconditional. Personally, I can find salvation in God’s love. However, quite frankly, I prefer the love of my friends over the love of a God who can seem abstract and distant. I know God is in me and loves me and has much to offer and teach me – but I need the down-to-earth, laughing, crying, hugging love of a friend more. It means more to me to talk with my close friends than to talk with God.

That has a classic heretical ring to it, doesn’t it? But it’s because life is for the living! For now! On this earth, in this present moment! It’s the people we can touch with our hands, hear with our ears, and see with our eyes that matter the most. I’m a Universalist – I already know God forgives me, that’s a done deal! But it is in and among the living where I seek unconditional love. It is within human relationship where true salvation comes to pass in this life. That is the Kingdom of God Jesus spoke of.

It is the kind of salvation Frodo experiences when Sam Wise doesn’t give up on him, even though Frodo cast him away toward the end of his dangerous journey. Sam Wise knows that his friend is going through a rough time, a rough patch – and he knows his friend well enough that he didn’t really mean what he said – he knows his friend still needs him and he stands by, and forgives Frodo without a thought. And quite literally, he saves him. I realize that’s not how it was written in the book, but nevertheless it’s comforting that these kinds of friendships are being modeled in our mainstream media.

And what about the unlikely friendships in our lives that turn out to be some of our greatest blessings? There is a story in the Bible that speaks of this well. The Book of Ruth. Ruth, who is of a different ethnic background than her mother-in-law Naomi, and has no incentive to follow her back to Judah, where people of Ruth’s kind are hated, says this: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” It’s amazing what good can come when we don’t burn bridges! There is a definition of evil that says evil is the rupturing of relationship. So the opposite must be to salvage relationship. Perhaps the opposite of evil is not “good” – which is such a subjective term, but simply ‘relationship.’

I interviewed Herman Nelson for this sermon because I wanted to hear about his wife Helen, who died just over a year ago. Davidson remembers vividly the memorial service held for Helen at the church. “There were droves of people!” he said, and with some reflection he said, “I think it was because Helen was a good friend. She had many, many friends.”

Herman confirmed this and said Helen was always honest, straight-forward with everyone, and that she cared about people. He could not stress that point enough, how much she really cared about others. When she was ill, some women at the church here made her a lap blanket, and when she received it, the first thing she did was make a list of other people in the church who could use a lap blanket. She really paid attention to the needs of others.

She was a good listener, “which was lucky for me!” Herman said. Helen was good at keeping in touch with people – she loved to write very newsy letters to her friends who were far away from her. But perhaps the quality that attracted friends to her most was this: she could overlook their faults. And as Herman put it, “you dismiss the faults of others because you know you have your own.” Forgiveness is a natural, mutual extension of friendship, and Helen seemed to know this. When she heard the news that she had pancreatic cancer, the first thing she said was, “It’s been a good life.”

Talking about Helen brought up many memories for Herman. But it wasn’t until we’d already been talking for a half an hour that he paused, and held tears at bay to say, “it wasn’t just love! We were friends.” I asked him what he thought the difference was between love and friendship, and while sometimes there can be differences, after a few minutes we concluded that there can’t be true love without friendship. So it is friendship that is the foundation love is built on.

I would like to share a friendship story of my own. It’s my favorite one. When I was a freshman in High School, I met Erin, who had just moved to Illinois from Texas. Erin was different – she dressed different, she was a bit rebellious, and I thought she was very cool. We had lots of fun together. But Sophomore year brought personal crisis into Erin’s life and one of the results was dropping me as a friend. I was devastated! It was my first broken heart. I was sad for months about it, but slowly it turned into an uneasy hatred, and even though we had classes and worked as waitresses at the same retirement village together, we did not speak to each other.

The last thing we did together as friends was go to the local aquarium to buy fish for our fresh water fish tanks at home. That day I bought a beautiful creme colored Angel fish, that when the sun light shone on its scales, they turned iridescent colors. I LOVED that fish, and I let this fish have the whole fish tank to itself, because that’s what Angel fish prefer, anyway. Whenever I entered my bedroom the fish would greet me by coming up to the corner of the fish tank. That fish stayed alive almost throughout the rest of High School, well into the Spring of my Senior year. One day I noticed the fish tank’s heater had become unplugged, but for some reason, I didn’t plug it back in. I was too distracted by senior year.

A day or two later the fish died. And I held myself responsible for not plugging the heater back in. How could I? I felt terrible. I remembered I had bought that fish with Erin and I thought the only way I could feel better was if I called her up, even though our estrangement had gone on for two whole years. I guess I figured I had nothing to lose.

We talked for two hours. And toward the end of the conversation, Erin told me that she was a lesbian. It was the first time anyone had ever come out to me. It made sense, then – she had figured it out around our Sophomore year and didn’t know how to handle feelings she was having for me, for other girls in our group of friends she had abandoned.

We graduated a few weeks later after that telephone conversation, and it didn’t happen right away, but eventually we became very close friends again. She was just here with her partner and their new baby at Christmastime – they listened to me preach in the cry room. And you may have seen them recently on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, as they just got married in San Francisco and have received a lot of media attention with a very cute 8 month old baby.

Erin and I often wonder if we would still have become friends again if I hadn’t called the night my fish died. How else could she have safely come out to me, how else could we have begun to build our trust in each other anew? I realize now that in the same way I gave the fish space to herself, that was what Erin had needed too – she had needed space for herself. And even though I loved that fish, I am so glad that it died!

There’s a song I learned in Girl Scouts that is sung in a round: Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold. Stan is probably right – that the friends we make before we’re forty are different from the friends we make after we’re forty. Even at 30, I’m finding fewer opportunities to make the kinds of friends I have from High School and College. But this is a product of what kind of lives we have – we can choose to reach out more. We are never too old to make new friends.

And no matter how many years have passed – I assure you this never matters – we can track someone down and rebuild. Or we can rebuild the broken friendships that are nearer to us. It’s never too late to make the ‘dead fish call.’ When we give a friend who has hurt us another chance, we are doing sacred work because we are giving permission for relationship to bloom once more.

If it is true, as I believe, that the Kingdom of God Jesus spoke of as among us and in us is the salvation we find in human relationship, then to heal and nurture our friendships is sacred work. And to make an unlikely friendship possible is radical sacred work – when we choose to make the conditions possible for such an unlikely friendship to sprout in. We are surrounded by seeds of potential friendships!

I need to help the good seeds grow, until they’re close enough to “in-to-me-see.” Because I need that “in-to-me-see.” I’m betting that you do, too.