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The Joy of Renewing Our Lives
A Sermon Given
by Roger Fritts
on March 31, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Early in the spring we celebrate an ancient festival called in English,
Easter, a name derived from the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess called
Eostre.
- For many Christians it is the
time for the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
- For
many Jews it is the time of the Passover, celebrating their liberation from
slavery in Egypt.
- For
all who live in the northern hemisphere it is the celebration of the beginning
of spring.
This time of year people gather to celebrate the victory of life over
death, of hope over depression. Easter is for all of us who have come
through the winters of our lives and are reborn.
This time of the year, as the plants start to turn green and the cheery
trees begin to blossom, I think of an expression that first got stuck in
my head about twenty-five years ago. A minister named Lex Crane,
now retired, preached about the expression to his congregation, and
sent a copy of the sermon to me. Lex's wife had died in a fire two
years before, just before I had become his student minister. When he
gave the sermon, he was about to remarry. The sermon did not
mention the engagement. Instead it told the story about the origins of
the expression "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think."
Some of you may remember that the phrase "It's later than you think"
was once used as a slogan by a fundamentalist church. The members
of this church convinced themselves that the end of the world was
here, and they wanted to warn others. For a time they bore down
heavily on this slogan. People ran into "It's later than you think" on
every street corner.
More of you may remember "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think"
as the title of a popular song. These were some of the words:
Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink
The years go by as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself,
Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.
In the 1990s Woody Allen, seeing irony in the song, used it in a
movie. The scene took place in a funeral parlor. In the movie suddenly
all of the corpses jump out of their coffins and start to sing "Enjoy
Yourself, It's Later Than You Think."
Recently a self-help guru named Michael Levy dispensed an additional
blow to the seriousness of the expression. He published a book using
Enjoy Yourself--It's Later Than You Think as the title. He filled the
book with simplistic clichés and unimaginative advice about how to be
happy.
After being used by a fundamentalist religious group and in a popular
song and now as the title of a unsophisticated self-help book, the
expression "Enjoy Yourself, It's Later Than You Think" has lost
nearly all of its meaning. The superficial way people used the
expression over the years greatly weakened its original force.
This was not always the case. Sixty or seventy years ago, when the
expression first reached the reading public, it made a tremendous stir.
Years ago the expression was deeply moving and beautiful to people.
It conveyed a thought freshly and uniquely, expressing an important
idea in only seven words. It affected the lives, thoughts, and feelings
of many people. Originating from China, it was what scholars call a
proverb, a condensed saying embodying an important reality taken as
true by many people.
A doctor named Loomis, Dr. Frederic Loomis, seems to have been the
man responsible for the introduction of the expression into our part of
the world. He got it from a woman he had met briefly and forgotten,
and she in turn got it from a brass plaque on a garden wall in Beijing.
It happened like this. Loomis was a busy obstetrician. He was capable
and much in demand. His work kept him active night and day. One
day at the hospital he noticed a chart listing a woman patient who was
also named Loomis. He had a few minutes to spare. He thought he
would drop in and say hello, and remark on the coincidence of their
names. She was another doctor's patient, and, this doctor told
Loomis, when asked, that he was not sure the lady would want to see
anybody. Her child had died the day before. Loomis thought he might
be able to help a little, so he went along to see her.
His brief visit somehow meant a great deal to the woman. So much so
that two years later she wrote to him from Beijing in China. She
explained where she had met him. She described how much she had
appreciated the kindness and sympathy that he expressed in that small
hospital room in the midst of a busy day. In the letter she said that she
knew he could not possibly remember her. Still for her, his short visit
had been a turning point, a renewal of strength, courage, and
confidence.
"As you sat there," she said, "I noticed that you look tired. The lines
in your face were very deep. I never saw you again but the nurses told
me you worked in the hospital many hours each day." Then she went
on to tell of an odd thing that happened on the day she wrote the
letter, the day two years after her stay in the hospital.
"This afternoon," she said, "I was a guest in a beautiful Chinese home
here in Beijing. A high wall enclosed the garden, and on one side was
a brass plate about two feet long. I asked someone to translate the
Chinese characters, and what they said struck a responsive chord in
me. The plate said:
Enjoy yourself,
It is later than you think.
"I began to think about it for myself," the woman when on in her
letter. "I had not wanted another baby because I was still grieving for
the one I had lost. I decided that I should not wait any longer."
"Then, because I was thinking of my child, I thought of you and the
tired lines in your face, and the moment of sympathy you gave me.
Those few minutes you spent with me meant little or nothing to you
of course, but they meant a great deal to a woman who was
desperately unhappy."
"So, I am so presumptuous as to think that in turn I can do something
for you also. Perhaps for you it is later than you think. Please forgive
me, but on the day you get my letter, when your work is over, sit very
quietly, all by yourself, and think about it."
It had been a long time since Loomis had taken a vacation. The next
morning he went into his office and told them that he was going away
for awhile.
He telephoned his closest friend, a man nicknamed "Shorty" and asked
him to come to the office. When Shorty arrived, Loomis told him that
he was going to take a trip to South America, and that he would like
to have him come along.
Shorty said he would like to come. He would like to very much, but
he just could not. He was on the verge of closing an important deal he
had been working on for months. In fact, he had so much to do in the
next few months that it was just out of the question. He could not be
away even for a week, not even for a few days.
Loomis then gave him the letter to read, the letter from a woman in
Beijing. After reading it, Shorty sat quietly for a moment, assessing his
life from a new perspective. Finally he spoke. He said, "I have waited
four months for those people to make up their minds on this deal. I am
not going to wait any longer. They can wait for me now."
So they went on the trip to South America, these close friends did.
They went because of a brief meeting between a man and a woman in
a hospital room, and because of a brass plaque on a garden wall in
Beijing. They went because of a letter. They spent day after day
relaxing on a comfortable freighter, feeling their preoccupations
slipping away. They felt their tired bodies and minds become refreshed
and renewed by the days of peace, beauty, and tranquility.
A few years later, when Shorty lay dying, Loomis was with him. As
he lay there, Shorty could look back on a long and fruitful life. One
thing that most stood out, one of his best memories, was the time he
spent with his friend. He told Loomis about this. He told him openly.
"Thank heaven we did not wait to long," he said.
Early in the spring, at Easter, people all over the world gather in one
way or another to celebrate the victory of life over death, of hope over
depression. It is a spring festival of faith. The celebration of Easter
requires no theological test or standard of orthodoxy. It is for all of us
who can come through the winters of our lives and be reborn. It is for
all of us who can go forward to live again. May this rebirth occur in
all of you . . . and may you have a happy Easter!
This sermon is based on a story told in a sermon by Rev. Lex Crane
called "Moonlight Really Looked At."
Office@CedarLane.org
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