Walking Together

Rev. Millie Rochester

September 28, 2008

Rosh Hashanah has been mentioned in the news lately, since many lawmakers (even non-Jewish ones) hurried home from Washington DC for its observance.

Today marks the halfway point of the Jewish High Holy Days. These ten days have, since ancient times, been set aside for reflecting in prayer: for assessing past deeds and recognizing our transgressions. Yom Kippur, "The Day of Atonement," marks the end of the High Holy Days.

Literally, Yom Kippur means the Day of Cleansing – cleaning up relationships. From considering how one has fallen out of right relationship, the focus shifts to considering how to establish or re-establish harmony.

Every human being has, at one time or another, fallen out of right relationship with others, with oneself, and with the transcendent. For Jews, the culmination of prayerful reflection deals with how one has fallen out of right relationship with God.

"God and man have a task in common," according to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was an internationally known scholar, author, activist, and theologian. In two of his most important books, God in Search of Man and its companion volume, Man Is Not Alone, Dr. Heschel focuses not on man's search for God, but God's search for man, the pursuit of right relationship between people and God.

"High Holy Days" are descriptive words that identify this as one of the most spiritually significant holidays of the world's traditions. I happen to be of Jewish ancestry, but that is not my faith identity. Yet, I have no trouble at all relating to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These holidays celebrate more than a historical event, more than a season, more than a person. They celebrate the human capacity to change and grow. For a non-theist, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur serve as a time to turn from broken-ness toward wholeness.

The idea of taking moral inventory is daunting, make no mistake about that. It isn't easy to embark on this process fearlessly, especially if we are serious about rectifying mistakes so as to not repeat past errors. It's hard, if it's to be done authentically; can test faith. We might want to bolster our courage by drawing wisdom from our rich heritage.

The prophet Amos asked, "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" His message addressed the northern kingdom of Israel, but the context is familiar. It was a time of prosperity, but there was a sharp contrast between the luxurious life of the nation's leaders and the oppression of the poor. Amos preached the urgency of social justice, and the threat of impending divine judgment.

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" he asked. Superficially, it seems an easy question to answer. Of course we can – or can aspire to – at least agree to disagree. But all around us, we see the results of failures to dissolve the barriers that divide us - in personal, national, even global relationships that have fractured – historically and currently. Setting aside differences, finding common ground, can obviously be a monumental struggle.

The Transylvanian Unitarian priest Francis David, some fifteen hundred years after the prophet Amos, answered the question when he said "You need not think alike to love alike." This was the premise for John Sigismund, the only known Unitarian monarch, to issue the historic Edict of Torda – a proclamation of religious liberty – in the year 1568. David had convinced Sigismund that however we describe, name, or teach the path we walk pales in importance compared with how we walk our path.

That doesn't mean we never disagree, never feel personally out of sorts or even act out in anger. But that emotion is too limiting to let it define us, to let it define our relationships. Our forebears understood that mending broken relationships begins with the internal work of forgiveness, and so the process became a ritual.

The power of forgiveness, as my colleague the Reverend Patrick O’Neill says,

Is first and foremost a gift to ourselves. It is an act of self-love, self-care, self-respect, self-healing. It is the permission we give ourselves to let go of the pain of the past so that it does not define us for the future... There is only so much room in the human heart. And if all your heartspace is taken up with a collection of unforgiven hurts...and the bitter resentments that you have never managed to clear out through forgiveness, then your heart is all occupied, unavailable when the good stuff comes along...

Only when you let go of hurt, Patrick is saying, can you be receptive to all the other things life yearns to give you. Forgiveness opens a closed heart formerly filled with pain, allows us to willingly shift our gaze from that pain, so we can make room for the other things. Let it go. Let its leaving make room for other things life yearns to give you – laughter, gratitude, joy, fulfillment.

We don't need to reach back to biblical stories to find examples. Consider Nelson Mandela. As familiar a figure as he has become, try to imagine yourself in his place, in his situation: For twenty-seven years, Mandela was a political prisoner in South Africa. He had been a leading member of the African National Congress, the ANC, which opposed South Africa's white minority government, and its policy of apartheid. The government outlawed the ANC in 1960. He was captured and jailed two years later, convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison in 1964. President F.W. de Klerk finally lifted the ban on the ANC and released Mandela in 1990. In the meanwhile, Mandela had become a prison-bound martyr, and a worldwide symbol of resistance to racism. Once free, Mandela used his stature to help dismantle apartheid and form a new multi-racial democracy. And remember this: he and de Klerk became partners in working toward that goal, sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela was elected the country's first black president in 1994. He continues to model a life of peace.

How much easier it might have been for Mandela to live in a place that nurtured his pain, rather than open his heart and let the pain go. But life yearned to give him other things, and he realized the potential in walking together with de Klerk to forge a new world.

Ruptures in relationships are usually not so dramatic. I see some sad effects, though, as a Good Offices representative, both for the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association and the Liberal Religious Educators Association. I serve as a minister to other ministers, and to religious educators, when a listening ear is needed. Over the last year, I have been consulted from as far away as Washington State and as near as right here in Florida.

There is no shortage of potential disagreements, even estrangements. Life is complicated and impermanent. We lose companions, jobs, what is familiar and cherished. We feel strongly about the opinions we hold, but may not prevail in decisions of consequence. And in a nearly homogenous group, thinking differently can be lonely. Last year, someone confided in me that she looked ahead to this year with worry that she might feel unbearable discomfort in this religious community – her church home – because it's an election year. As we spoke, someone walking by overheard our conversation and chimed in, "Me too!" Theological differences among us sometimes are easier to reconcile than political ones, and there's nothing like a looming election to reinforce that truth.

The Rev. David Rankin related an experience from just before the 1968 presidential election. He wasn't excessively impressed with either Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey, and was mindful of Internal Revenue Service guidelines for churches, so he just recommended at the end of his sermon that "everyone would vote for the most intelligent, experienced, and compassionate candidate." Imagine his surprise when a man confronted in the reception line and angrily shouted, "How dare you use the pulpit to support Hubert Humphrey!"

Sometimes we forget that ours is a living tradition, that change can occur even within our faith. The seven Principles we see each week on the back of the Sunday order of service have become embedded in denominational life – some say they have become a pseudo-creed – but they are not permanent expressions of our beliefs. They are not even the same now as when they were originally adopted at the time of Unitarian and Universalist merger. No, in fact they have been modified three times: by General Assemblies that met in 1984, 1985, and 1995. They continue to be reviewed regularly, so further modification is possible. (You can learn more about this by going to the Commission on Appraisal link at the UUA website.)

General Assembly in 1995 was the first one I ever attended. It was the final year for debate on whether to adopt a sixth source from which we draw our living tradition: Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature. Delegates stood in lines at the "pro" and "con" microphones, stating in turn their views. The process made quite an impression on me. I do enjoy process, I admit it.

I was a Director of Religious Education at the time, and listened to the debate seated next to the minister of my congregation. When it came time to vote, we chose different sides. The measure passed by just a handful of votes. As the plenary session ended, we rose from our seats and went out for coffee together, secure in knowing we "need not think alike to love alike."

Our living tradition draws on Sufi as well as Jewish thought, among others, and so our hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, includes Rumi’s poem:

 

Come, come, whoever you are:

Wanderer, Worshiper, Lover of Leaving,

Ours is no caravan of despair.

It's a beautiful poem of inclusion, but as it's printed in our hymnal, it's incomplete. What is missing is a phrase that particularly speaks to me at this time of year: Though you have broken your vows a thousand times is the phrase. "Come, yet again, come." It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times. Come, yet again, come. Come back to relationship.

The ritual observance of the Jewish Holy days comes at the time of harvest, not the time of planting seeds. It is a time to come to terms; to intentionally begin to mend old wounds and restore harmony among people; to remember together inherent goodness, to practice letting go together. But even then, we can't kid ourselves that perfection is attainable. Kol Nidrei – the prayer at the beginning of the Yom Kippur service – seeks transformation, not perfection, reaching out with trust in the power of healing.

I share with you A Kol Nidrei, composed by the UU minister Mark Belletini:

 

Let's set it all down, you and me.

The disappointments.

Little and large.

The frustrations.

Let's open our fists and drop them.

The useless waiting.

The obsession with what we cannot have.

The focus on foolish things.

The pin-wheeling worry which wears us out.

The fretting.

Let's throw them down.

The comparisons of ourselves with others.

The competition, as if Domination was the best name we could give to God.

The cynical assumptions.

The unspoken, shelved anger.

Let's toss them.

The inarticulate suspicions.

The self-doubt.

The pre-emptive self-dumping.

The numbing bouts of self-pity.

Let's sink them all like stones.

Like stones in the pool of this gift of silence.

Let’s drop them like hot rocks into the cool silence.

And when they're gone, let's lay back gently and float, float on the calm surface of the silence.

Let's be supported in this still cradle of the world, new-born, ready for anything.

To live fully is to acknowledge that we have and always will make mistakes. We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done. We have transgressed against others and we have endured transgressions. To deny this would be to deny our human-ness. Not realistic, much less healthy. When we acknowledge hurt that we feel or have caused others, and vow to correct it, we transcend the hurt and we can move on.

Understanding the source of separateness, even pain that we carry or know we have caused, is the first step. This is so important, it deserves our genuine soul-searching. We may be recovering from injustice as Nelson Mandela experienced, or from a thoughtless remark spurred by disagreement, or an act of violence that caused untold devastation. But even in our struggles, maybe because of them, we are connected and called to compassion.

In Judaism, every individual act of compassion is a mitzvah – a commandment, or religious duty. Every good deed, every act of kindness, every time we live out in our day-to-day lives the religious values we profess to hold, we are helping to repair the fragmented world.

Like much of life, the High Holy Days are paradoxical – intensely personal, yet observed in community, not solitude. The human heart is best nurtured in loving company, in a sense of belonging that's a vital ingredient of community. Here at UUC, one of the ways we grow and nurture that awareness is through a ministry of Covenant Groups, which meet monthly.

You can learn about the nuts and bolts of the program right after the service – Helga Reaves, who coordinates it, other facilitators, and I will happily answer your questions – and you can start the process of joining a group. Process is important in this instance, because these are covenantal groups, not "drop-in" groups, or casual social circles. They are opportunities to form trusting relationships, where exploring ideas from the heart as well as the mind is safe and rewarding. New groups are being formed now, so do check in with Helga!

Life issues no guarantee of a calm, undisturbed ride, so the consolation of community is all the more a blessing. During these High Holy Days, let us remember that we can, together, begin again anew; begin again in love, though amid imperfection and uncertainty.

We will recognize true optimism amid that uncertainty when we are able to embrace the words of Charles S. Stevens, Jr., who writes:

 

I wish for you a troubled heart at times

As woes of world and friend come close beside

And keep you sleepless.

 

I wish for you the thrill of knowing

Who you are,

Where you stand,

And why.

Especially why.

 

Not prosperity, but dreams I wish for you;

Not riches, but a sense of your own worth I wish for you.

Not even long life, however proud we'd be to have it so.

But life that is crammed with living,

Hour by hour.

 

And love I wish for you;

May you give it frequently.

I wish for you solitude in the midst of company,

And a mind full of company within your quiet times.

Full todays I wish for you, and full tomorrows.

Blessed be. Amen.