MAYDAY! Mayday. Mayday??

MAY-DAY

For thou, O Spring! canst renovate

All that high God did first create.

Be still his arm and architect,

Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;

Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,

Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,

New-tint the plumage of the birds,

And slough decay from grazing herds,

Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,

Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,

Purge alpine air by towns defiled,

Bring to fair mother fairer child,

Not less renew the heart and brain,

Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,

Make the aged eye sun-clear,

To parting soul bring grandeur near.

Under gentle types, my Spring

Masks the might of Nature's king,

An energy that searches thorough

From Chaos to the dawning morrow;

Into all our human plight,

The soul's pilgrimage and flight;

In city or in solitude,

Step by step, lifts bad to good,

Without halting, without rest,

Lifting Better up to Best;

Planting seeds of knowledge pure,

Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.



Ralph Waldo Emerson



HOMILY



"Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick," Susan Sontag notes. "Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."

“Mayday” is not an international distress call… but Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! is. It triggers a coordinated response: communications focus upon the vessel in distress, other vessels rush to assist, and humans move swiftly and intentionally.

The key is knowing when to call mayday: too soon, and you create a boy-who-cried-wolf situation; too late, and all may be lost.

“Mayday!” the distress call, comes from the French word venez m'aider. Everywhere humans are crying out, to God, to other humans, to stronger countries… Help us. Help. And all too often, help doesn’t come.

Learned helplessness.

But even when help is at hand, we sometimes wait too long, ignore the smoke in the cabin, the water in the bilge, and the way our plane keeps losing altitude.

Pride and individualism. (the Western UU “sin”)

I spent almost a week in Nyomat, and I had lots of time to think about the world: theirs, ours, and the one we both inhabit. Even before I arrived, Be’la told me there were a lot more problems in the village than before 2008: financial, interpersonal, medical, and spiritual, each of which affects the others. I was somewhat prepared for distress.

But it was Spring, every fruit tree in bloom, red tulips everywhere, the sun was warm every day, and gorgeous breezes swept into open doors of small adobe cottages where the heat was off for the first time in months. It was Easter in our Unitarian homeland, and the sermon was not about the resurrection of the body, or even of the spirit, but the renewal of individual empowerment and hope against hope. The story Be’la used was the myth of Sisyphus/Jesus in the tomb. Someone has to roll away the stone.

In my talk, I told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and the hope of planting seeds. The seeds of personal faith and the seeds of friendship and partnership. We ate heartily, a freshly killed lamb and garden fresh potatoes and cabbage and soup and home cooked bread from wheat grown in the fields. The rooms were not filled with wailing but with laughter, delight in the children, and conviviality. On Monday the Lord of Misrule visits as green boughs are decorated and hung on the gates of all eligible females, and men and boys go from house to house, reciting poems and getting rewards of dyed eggs, chocolate, and palinka. It was May Day~~Beltane disguised as Easter Monday.

There is another May Day: International Workers’ Day. I have never seen any people who work as hard as the Hungarians. Even the very elderly, their backs bent and their ankles swollen, their hands deformed with pain and swelling, work in their gardens, their homes, and in the nearby city from dawn until dusk. When they sit down to talk, they often talk about their families, their ailments, and about the lack of money. They told me that they think Americans believe money is happiness. They see America on MTV and equate our culture with money flowing freely and a surplus of things. It occurred to me that while they are obsessed with money and the poor employment prospects, they do little, collectively, to better things. There is a kind of habit energy that drives them on, and on fueling despair and all too often, suicide, as in the case of Peter, the lay president of our church, who carried a length of rope in his pocket for years, or the father of Joszef, the new president, who took his life after being imprisoned and tortured by the Communists during the collectivization process.

Each of these three May day myths come together because each presents a human need, hope or aspiration:

Celebration, justice and self-realization, and comfort in times of need.

Each of the three roads in Nyomat come together, too. The one the old lady lived on with edit; the one Peter hanged himself on; the one on which Joszef lives, strong-willed and determined to do the Sisyphean task of raising his family out of the perpetual cycle of grief and survival.

At the center of the three roads is the church.

We need one another. This is the function of the church. To remind and encourage one another to be a place of celebration, even misrule, to force us to sing, dance, laugh, play even when we feel least inclined. To be a place where we stand united against injustice, poverty, hunger, want and abuses of all kinds. To be a place of succor and comfort, when we are in despair.

But most importantly, the church is here to remind each human that she is not the center of the universe. Ideally (church as control tower) we will answer when Mayday is called, helping one another and, in the process, ourselves.

Writes Jacques Ellul:

"The church can only be a counter-community. If it is anything other than that, it has already compromised itself."

At the same time as the church is a gathering place and a communal place, it must stand against the status quo, it must always question and challenge the forces that oppress and exploit, and it must uphold the spirit of urgency and the human condition in its palm.

"Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick,"

Health is a process, not a thing or state. It is ongoing, dynamic, and ever changing. Health is a direction, not a destination, a once-and-for-all property.

We move toward health of body, mind and spirit, of institution and economy, of nature and of people, in increments and learning to receive the Grace that is offered even as we endeavor to advance justice, freedom, and joy.

Even now, someone is calling you: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!



-

The Beauty of Japan....

Our services throughout the church year have focused upon the arts and the ways they intersect with what we call "spirit."

This week's topic was Beauty & Spirit. I wanted us to think about human ideas of beauty, not of nature, music, or literature, but of faces and bodies.

Last week, before we had any idea what would transpire in Japan on Friday, March 11, I asked Christopher McKnight to speak about his perspective on the topic. Chris, a hairstylist, stand-up comedian, and one of Lexington's "beautiful people," had lots to say, and he even stayed home from the Lady Gaga concert to prepare his talk! It was so heartfelt and touching. If you missed it, you missed something very, very special. I am loathe to even ask him for a copy, because the courage and intimacy with which he delivered it were key to the message.

So, when it became clear that we could not gather for worship without remembering Japan, and sending up our goodwill and love, I decided to keep the week's topic the same (we also had a guest musician, a fabulous violinist!) but to add a few moments of pensive solidarity.

TOKYO

We spoke into the silence the names of Japanese friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances.

And then I played this slide show, in which I combined images of all the beauty the Japanese have given us: origami, Ikebana, tea ceremony, ink drawings, kimono designs, bonsai, gardens, architecture... so much more, with a single image taken on Friday, of a military rescuer carrying an old Japanese man upon his back from the rubble, an image that, for me, captured all of the hope, the humanity, compassion, and bravery these dreadful tragedies make room for.

If you missed the service and want the full effect, play Bruce Springsteen's song from THE RISING called My City of Ruins  along with the images and go through them about one every 7 seconds!

May they help you when the images of destruction threaten to overwhelm you. If there's one thing we can be pretty sure of, it is the endurance, resilience, and creativity of the people of Japan. May it prevail.

Japan

View more presentations from Cynthia Cain.

FOOD, ART & SPIRIT

February 20, 2011



READING: “The Attack of the Squash People” by Marge Piercy



And thus the people every year

in the valley of humid July

did sacrifice themselves

to the long green phallic god

and eat and eat and eat.

They're coming, they're on us,

the long striped gourds, the silky

babies, the hairy adolescents,

the lumpy vast adults

like the trunks of green elephants.

Recite fifty zucchini recipes!



Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;

sauté with olive oil and cumin,

tomatoes, onion; frittata;

casserole of lamb; baked

topped with cheese; marinated;

stuffed; stewed; driven

through the heart like a stake.



Get rid of old friends: they too

have gardens and full trunks.

Look for newcomers: befriend

them in the post office, unload

on them and run. Stop tourists

in the street. Take truckloads

to Boston. Give to your Red Cross.

Beg on the highway: please

take my zucchini, I have a crippled

mother at home with heartburn.



Sneak out before dawn to drop

them in other people's gardens,

in baby buggies at churchdoors.

Shot, smuggling zucchini into

mailboxes, a federal offense.



With a suave reptilian glitter

you bask among your raspy

fronds sudden and huge as

alligators. You give and give

too much, like summer days

limp with heat, thunderstorms

bursting their bags on our heads,

as we salt and freeze and pickle

for the too little to come.

READING: (from lecture)

Marjorie has read Harry Potter seven times. The books I read more than once, voluntarily, included Heidi by Joanna Spyri. If someone were to ask me, twenty, thirty, forty years later, what Heidi was about, I would say: mountains, goats, a grandfather and a girl, a loft window and a corner cupboard that held fresh baked bread, warm goats’ milk, and homemade cheese and butter. The imagined aroma, texture and flavor of these simple foods have been solidly ensconced in my memory. To me, they represent the warm, nurturing, health-inducing, and pleasure-sharing relationship between the Grandfather and Heidi, a delightful memory to a young girl whose own widowed father, although distant and moody, expressed his affection with home-cooked soups, beaten biscuits, fresh-picked vegetables, and apple dumplings on very special occasions.

Revisiting Heidi after many decades, the hunks of fresh bread, the golden cheese toasted over an open fire on the end of a fork, and the bowls full of fresh goats’ milk were a trigger for the same sensations of childhood safety and nurturance they had engendered long ago. Food, unlike many other fictional elements, is at once universal and decidedly particular. Its description employs all of the senses, from the visual and tactile to scent, taste and even sound. It is something we humans share, covet, work for, long for, take for granted, use and abuse, and die without. Wars are fought over and civilizations built around access to and production of food.

Food is a source of pleasure. Good literature feeds us with imagery and sensory detail. Loving food, like enjoying other sensual pleasures, was frowned upon by our repressive forbears. The Protestant ethic, from which most of us take our ascetcism, advocates hard work and self-control. Catholicism has Lent and fasting; Judaism severe dietary restrictions. Religions are the source of this repression. Pleasure is the enemy of piety. Food and sex are inextricably interwoven.

Mark Morrison-Reed, one of our best known UU ministers and author of Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, spoke of this Puritan ethic at our Institute last week. A central theme was the future of Unitarian Universalism. We don’t believe our own first principle, he said, speaking on an evening panel. We don’t really believe in our own inherent worth and dignity. We push ourselves too hard, we never give ourselves a break, and we are so tied to perfectionism that we fail to just be and to acknowledge our own worth, inherent, without having to always prove something.

His words were simple, but true. His point was that we cannot expect to be compassionate and helpful to the world, and hence to grow and live into our vision of Standing On the Side of Love unless we can love and accept ourselves, just as we are, and be loving to each other within our congregations. He is right.

Isabel Allende opens her book Aphrodite with these words:

I repent of my diets, the delicious dishes rejected out of vanity, as much as I lament the opportunities for making love that I let go by because of pressing tasks or puritanical virtue. Walking through the gardens of memory, I discover that my recollections are associated with the senses.

As with the attack of the squash people, there is in all things, even religion, the danger of too much, of over-indulging. We would be wise to learn what is known as the “French paradox,” whereby, in spite of drinking more and eating more butter and meat than most of us, they do not suffer from heart attacks or raised cholesterol at nearly the same rate. Allende suggests this is due in part to the way they eat: the French eat sitting down, with calm, enjoying each mouthful… one key word defines the French paradox: moderation.

Moderation is very different than deprivation. Think of what we call “fast food.” The very term is an oxymoron. And yet, eating such food is the equivalent of fasting, for it has no history, no character, no soul. It nourishes neither body nor spirit. Real food ties us to the earth, to community, and to our history. As Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement, says, “taste is like an umbilical cord. We all return to our grandmothers, no matter how many detours we take along the way.”

The world of greed and consumerism which dominates so much of life today would have us lose our memory, our ability to discern with our senses, and our self-worth.

And this brings us back to the first of our principles. Say it with me: The inherent worth and dignity of every person. Including me. When we truly believe it for ourselves we will be practicing what we preach.