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Transitions, Turning Points, and Tooth Fairies
A Sermon Given by
The Reverend Douglas A. Taylor
on January 2, 2000
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Readings Ecclesiastes 3:1-12
To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under the
heavens.
A time to be born and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot;
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to break down and a time to build up;
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time for mourning and a time for dancing;
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get and a time to lose;
A time to keep and a time to throw away;
A time to tear and a time to mend;
A time to keep silence and a time to speak;
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time of war and a time of peace.
What profit has he that works wherein he labors? I have seen the
travail which God has given everyone to keep them busy.
Everyone is made beautiful; we are given a sense of time past and
future, but no comprehension of God's work form beginning to
end. I know there is no good in us, but to rejoice and do good in
our lives.
Newton's first law of motion
An object in motion will remain in motion
unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
Sermon
According to Newton's physics, motion is the standard form of
existence. Our lives are always moving along. It has been said
that change is the only constant in the universe. This isn't always
easy, in fact it usually hurts quite a bit. Like the passage from
Ecclesiastes. Change is not always about love and laughter and
healing. It is also about hate and tears and killing. "A time to
search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to give
away, a time to tear down and a time to build up, and a time for
every purpose under heaven." For good or bad, we are constantly
struggling with change.
I once heard of a culture where the name used for God, translates
literally as "struggle." I shared this fact with a new friend who
was having a hard week and he said, "Is that supposed to make me
feel better?" I paused, taken aback, I felt like saying "oops."
Instead I said, "No, just that you're O.K." We all go through hard
times and sorrows, and we also have many thanksgivings and joys.
What I want to lift up today is that our hardest struggles and our
greatest joys arise from major life changes.
We are a very symbolic people. Why else would we fix so
strongly on the number 2000 in our calender, a symbolic
representation of the passage of time. Yes, technically, the new
millennium begins 2001. But we are a symbolic people and the
potential meaning of the roll over of three zeros is too big to pass
by. Someone told me that the year 2000 is the "people's
millennium." And the scholar's millennium will come next year
and we'll probably have another big party.
We had a good time here at the church this weekend with our New
Year's Eve party. It was informal, but classy. We had fun.
Around the world, the major catastrophes predicted did not come
to pass. The major events which did occur were purely human
events which could have happened on any day. George Harrison,
the former Beatle, and his wife were stabbed. Boris Yeltsin
resigned the presidency of Russia to Vladimer Putin. Several
hostages were set free. These are all extremely significant events
to some people, but they hardly register as major turning points in
global history and culture. Y2K has not been the vehicle of
monstrous change or great spiritual transition.
Perhaps this is because major transitions and turning points in the
history of the world, or in the history of one life, do not occur by
the arbitrary cues of a calender. Turning points come when ever
they do, and are not controlled by human will. In literary terms,
a turning point is the event in the story on which everything
hinges. Everything preceding the turning point leads up to it, and
everything after the turning point is because of it. In the story of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, everything leads up to the moment
when the bears find her in bed. Then the story quickly resolves,
but we all imagine that for years to come both the girl and the bear
family live their lives differently because of that one event. In real
life, wars and the lives of significant people tend to be historical
turning points.
In my own life, my children were a turning point. Let me tell you
a bit about my major life turning point. I was in my second year
of school, moving toward a Bachelor's in Drama. I hadn't had too
many romantic relationships as a teenager. I had never really
rebelled against my parents like my other siblings had done. But
I made up for that. Within a year my life went through several
dramatic changes. When my relationship with my girlfriend, Sidra,
grew serious, my siblings and parents questioned whether I was
doing the right things. They felt I was not ready for the level of
responsibility which marriage entailed.
But I persisted, and Sidra and I were married. We both transferred
to a new university, where I switched to a Psychology major. I got
my first real job working with developmentally disabled adults, and
we rented a little apartment in town. We had to pay our own bills
and manage our financial resources. Our daughter, Brin, was born;
and I made the dean's list twice with 3.8's on a 4.0 scale. This
from someone who had almost not graduated from high school due
to bad grades. This series of changes culminating with the birth of
my first child are my major life turning point. I suspect that with
so much to do and with so many changes, I felt fully engaged in
life. And the rest, as they say, is history. Well, not really. If the
rest were history, I would now be a psychologist with one child.
We must remember Newton's first law of motion, always changing.
I went through more transitions since that one major turning point.
Now, transitions are just slow turning points; sort of like the
distinction between evolution and revolution. I have a good
example, again from my own life, of a transition which at first
glace looks like a turning point. This is about "How I got the
Call." I had just finished off a good undergraduate education. Our
second child, Keenan, was born. I had a beautiful family to
support and love. I was all lined up to go on to an osteopathic
medical school for further education (yes, I almost went on to be
a Doctor of Osteopathy), when it all came to a screeching halt.
Well, it felt like a halt, but of course it was not. Newton's physics
again, always moving. So there I was and I was left like that,
suspended for about two weeks, not knowing what I was going to
do. My career objectives were wiped blank, my aspirations were
on hold, my family was left hanging. All this gut wrenching effort
against inertia because something changed.
Something changed inside me. I'll try to explain it, but I suspect
that the explanation is as subjective as the experience itself. I
began to realize that in some way what I had been doing had
always been either what someone else told me to do, or what I
thought was expected of me to do. My own voice was never a part
of the equation in my journey up to that point. Looking back on
that from today's perspective, I think perhaps I did not believe in
my own voice. What changed then, was that I finally stopped and
listened to myself. I had a gut feeling that Osteopathic medicine
did not fit with who I really was.
Now, let me tell you, it is one thing to be able to figure out what
your vocation is not. And it is another thing altogether to figure
out what it really is. And the answer here is the reason why this
is a transition rather than a turning point. I think I knew that I was
going to be a minister when I was four years old. I just didn't
realize it until twenty years later. And people ask me, "why four?"
What happened when I was four that I now feel I was then
determined for ministry? Two things really. One of the stories we
tell in my family is that when I was four years old, I demonstrated
enough interest and skill with the piano that my mother decided to
start me out with Suzuki lessons. Over the years, I have poured
much of my energy into music. I wrote songs as a teenager to
expressed the angst and despair I felt. Music was an outlet in
times of struggle, and it was a medium through which I could also
express joy, have fun, and share my story with people. It led me
to a lyrical understanding of story and narrative, and of life. This
is all very central to my ministry.
The second event that happened when I was four was the
separation of my parents. Divorce is a difficult reality for young
children, and is compounded when alcoholism is a factor. As an
adult I have received a Bachelor's degree in Psychology. I have
become conversant in both psychotherapy and family systems
psychology. I have been in therapy, and I have reconciled my
relationships with the members of my family. I can look back
from today's perspective and recognize that what occurred when I
was four was a crisis of belonging. As my life at home grew less
reliable and predictable, I found my life at church to be a place of
comfort and a source of self-identity.
I know that "belonging" is an early stage in faith development.
We need to feel we are a part of the group. It is known as the
affiliative stage of faith. I found my affiliation at church. I share
this personal element of my story this morning not as pulpit-therapy. I share it to illustrate the point that major life struggles
are character forming. As Kahlil Gibran wrote in this morning's
meditation, "The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was
oftentimes filled with your tears." "Is not the lute that soothes
your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives."
So it is hard for me now, when people look at me and say, "Wow,
a minister, really? That's interesting. Why are you doing this?"
I doubt they want to hear a long-winded psychoanalysis of my
youth. And I don't have any one radical eye-opening event to
point to such as falling off my horse in a fit of convulsions on my
way to Damascus! I mean, for major conversion experiences,
wandering around an Osteopathic University feeling apprehension
just doesn't cut it. I don't feel I was CALLED to ministry. I think
it's more like I was whispered into it. That is why I feel this to be
a transition rather than a turning point.
Change is hard. I could tell you about fifty different examples of
these transitions and turning points. And if we were in a small
group or alone, you would no doubt be telling me to shut up so
you could share your fifty-some stories, too. But that is not what
I want to happen with all this. What I really want to focus on is
the Tooth Fairy.
Now, I bet you have all been wondering, "What the heck is he
going to do with the tooth fairy?" "What do teeth have to do with
major life changes?" Well, a lot! Losing teeth is a major time in
the life of a small child. When I was writing this, I thought,
"Well, getting a partial or dentures is a major change in the life of
an older person, . . . " but I am not really qualified to talk about
that, so I'm going to stick with when children lose teeth. Besides,
those of you with partials were not visited by the Tooth Fairy.
So, there are these little kids growing up healthy running around,
everything is great, when all of a sudden: their bodies start falling
apart. I doubt they remember how hard it was to get those little
teeth, but they're not positive they're really going to come back.
They might be thinking "How am I going to eat?" Or (impressed)
"Hey, cool! I wonder what else is going to come out?" Or
(panicky) "Hey! What else is going to come out!?!?"
Now we as parents know the answer. Losing baby teeth is just a
sign that our little babies are growing up too fast. But it is not
easy to explain that to some children. Enter: the Tooth Fairy.
Tooth Fairies smooth over the transitions. They make loss more
agreeable. They make change easy, and if the current rate is
similar to what I remember, not only do they come when there is
a change, they bring with them and leave change. So how do they
make it seem so easy and good?
Maybe it's the magic, maybe it's the money. Maybe it's just that
it means something. The loss of a tooth was marked by the
magical visit by the Tooth Fairy, and sometimes by the tearful
sighs of the parents. The Tooth Fairy did not serve as a therapist,
nor did she fix the problem. Rather she served as a vehicle of
affirmation and affiliation. The point is that the event was noticed
and it meant something to the people in the family.
And this is how it is with religious institutions as well. I draw on
two quotes to support this statement, one from a saint, the other a
sociologist. The primary purpose of religion at it's earliest level,
according to the sociologist Emile Durkeim in his ground-breaking
book Elementary Forms of Religion, was not to put people in touch
with God, but to put them in touch with each other. When I first
came across this little sound byte of knowledge I thought: "Aren't
getting in touch with God and getting in touch with other people
really the same thing?" I recall a statement made by Saint Teresa
of Avila in her book Interior Castles. This second is a quote I
used in an earlier sermon, but I find it to be so profound as to
necessitate my use of it over and over again. St. Teresa was
reflecting on Jesus' commandments to love God and to love your
neighbors. She writes, "The surest sign that we are keeping these
two commandments is, I think, that we should really be loving our
neighbors; for we cannot be sure if we are loving God, although
we may have good reasons for believing that we are, but we can
know quite well if we are loving our neighbors." (p. 115) Religion
may be about God, and I have had a few good discussions about
that premise with my Humanist friends, but the way of religion is
how we relate to others.
We have as one of our Principles the free and responsible search
for truth and meaning. Wisdom says that meaning is harvested
from the soil of your celebrations and sorrows, from the peak times
in your life of both joy and adversity. So come Sunday, bring with
you your turning points and transitions, and let this community of
caring souls be your Tooth Fairy. Share what is in your hearts
with one another. Offer up a sacrifice of your deep sorrows and
great joys, and that will be a harvest on which you can depend.
How many times have you heard it said that Cedar Lane Church is
a wonderfully caring community? I have heard it at least three or
four times and I have only been here four months. When life goes
through changes, I know I can bring my sorrows and celebrations
to my place of worship. And it means something.
And so, we are always changing. Give me another day and
another challenge so I can learn something new. Change is good.
Our closing hymn today will be "My Life Flows On In Endless
Song." It is one of my favorite hymns because I try to live my life
as water flowing to Newton's laws of physics. Turning and
moving; forever in motion, and in meaning.
In a world without end, may it be so.
Now let us sing!
Closing Words
May your life be full of both burdens and boons.
May you come to your transitions gracefully,
and may your turning points come to you when necessary.
May your sorrow give definition to your joys,
and may your joys define your sorrows.
May they both give meaning to your life.
Lahayyim! (To life)
cluuc@his.com
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