Sunday Sermon

Please pardon the sermon.  I know that it has been a while since I posted and I was hoping for something more entertaining, but today this seems to be what I am sitting with -- lucky you :). 

It feels that in the past few weeks, I have been speaking with people more than usual about unexpected situations – monumental changes – those moments where life sweeps in and presses the reset button.  As a therapist I have become mildly used to this phenomenon – these are the moments that often bring people to see a therapist.  But recently, to me, they seem more meaningful – more important – more . . . profound. 

When I left the church, I initially thought I was giving up on the spiritual and the sacred - concepts having to do with religion seemed toxic to me.  I wanted to keep things grounded, firmly planted in the real.  I did not wish to ascribe spiritual properties or mystical ideas to life’s phenomena.  However, the more I experience life, the more I examine the intricacies and the daily flow, the more I have come to experience the sacred in these profound real moments.  I find that I am deeply moved by the divine in these moments.  Moments where life shifts, alters, transforms.  These are not moments were something merely happens.  These are moments where something changes.   After these moments everything is different. 

I am filled up with several images:

A sister, a wife and a brother-in-law holding the hands of their beloved as his life slips away far too soon.

A new police officer, in the face of imminent danger shooting and killing an assailant.

A girl on the bus searching to find the person calling her name – frantically looking and finally realizing no one is there, it's all in her mind.

A man looking at his wife of seventeen years from across the room and realizing that he no longer loves her and has to leave.

And many more . . .

These are not my experiences, but my privilege has been to serve as a witness, a confessor, a willing recipient.  As I hear these stories and let them sit with me, I too am changed by them.  I find myself reverencing them and honoring them.  They are so much more than the stories – more than the words that contain them.  These moments hold the shifts of entire universes – the currents of vast oceans and the unexpected forks in the road of countless journeys.  More than anything I wish to honor them.  I wish to somehow put them in the appropriate location – the appropriate place to acknowledge their vastness.  I don’t see them as good or bad experiences - they are much bigger than good or bad.  They are the powerful moments without which life would cease to be life. 

So, for this Sunday’s sermon, I choose to acknowledge the sacred moments – both my own and those that I have been blessed to witness.  They are woven deeply into the fabric of who I am.  They give me faith, hope and compassion.  They are a testament to the human spirit.  In all of this, perhaps, I have found my new religion – a new way to worship.  No need for temples or chapels, elaborate rituals or ceremonies.  No books of scripture or levels of priesthood.  Instead, within this faith, we hold sacred these moments.  We cherish their humanness and we stand with each other.  Could there be a more noble pursuit - a more righteous cause?