For There is Always Light ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
March 20, 2022
The fog yesterday sent me into a very pensive state of mind. I stared for long periods at the patterns created by the bare tree branches, which was about all I could see. I find fog depressing, but also fascinating. Fog obscures our view, and makes it hard to see. But looked at in a different way, fog also softens our view, softens the hard edges of what we usually see, and offers a different perspective.
And of course yesterday was such a sharp contrast to the spring day on Friday. I had lunch outdoors with two colleagues. We couldn’t remember the last time we had seen each other in person. We happily watched the parade of people passing by; all the new babies born last fall and winter; life bubbling up once again – irrepressible, emerging every chance it gets. And then the fog returned, the chill dampness, the dimming of light and loss of vision.
Of course, these different kinds of days describe our human lives, from start to finish; we know there is sunshine and fog, life fully on display and then withdrawing again. But right now, during this time of the two-year anniversary of the start of the Covid pandemic, that cycle of emerging and withdrawing feels particularly present in our lives as we step forth once again following the Omicron surge.
These last two years have served up many challenges. First and foremost for everyone has been the challenge of safety and maintaining our health. But besides that, one of the hardest aspects of this pandemic period has been to witness the casual cruelty and frequent nastiness that humans have shown one another.
I am a student of history and have long been fascinated by the Epidemic of 1918. I’m sure some of you have heard me say that whenever I wondered whether that could happen again, in this era of modern medicine, I was always comforted by my faith in science and knowledge, and would reassure myself that that we would be unlikely to repeat such a catastrophe.
Well, so much for that.
Sadly, I have been disappointed over and over again, as people ignored and flouted public health advice, rejected science, were drawn in to conspiracy theories, and were hostile and abusive to each other, particularly to anyone perceived as an authority. From behaving badly on airplanes to yelling at teenage store clerks, some people have been at their absolute worst in the last two years.
I have had to work hard to sustain my faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity, and in what the earlier Unitarians used to proclaim as the progress of mankind, onward and upward, forever.
Our theme for the month of March is Renewing Faith. This can be such a challenging topic for Unitarian Universalists, and never more so than right now, as we try to recover from the roller coaster of the past two years; the roller coaster of emergence and withdrawal, over and over again, only now to be daily confronted once again by the war in Ukraine – by images of the cruelty that humans can inflict on one another. We have seen the sunshine alternating with the fog and we wonder where the truth of life lies. We worry about our country; about the fabric of goodwill and faith in the common good that has so badly eroded. Will goodness or evil prevail?
We can never be completely sure, from one day to the next, when our view is so often obscured. And that is where faith comes in.
I always begin a conversation about faith with challenging how we define it. What do we mean when we use the word ‘faith’? As I have said before, we often use the word ‘faith’ incorrectly. We use it when we mean religious belief – we will say, for example, that a person belongs to the Catholic faith, or to the Jewish faith, or maybe people will say that they have no faith.
But faith is so much more complicated than religious belief, so much larger, and as I said briefly last week, faith is available to anyone at all, whether or not you follow the tenets of a traditional religion. No one should ever feel that they are outside of faith. After all, the origins of the word are closely tied to fidelity, or trust. It’s about commitment, and loyalty.
If we’re not careful, religious beliefs can function like the fog closing in around us: they can limit our view, keep us from seeing the wholeness of life, and the interconnectedness of all life. Faith, on the other hand, encourages us to open ourselves; open our eyes, our ears, our minds and our hearts, to all that we can see in the bright sunshine. And faith reminds us always that the sun will return; that throughout our lives we hold the brightness and the gloom together, the goodness and the evil.
“Faith,” wrote UU minister Daniel Kantor, “is an orientation to life. It is looking out at the world from a particular perspective, and using that perspective to consider the meaning of our existence.” (Kantor, Daniel Chesney, Faith for the Unbeliever.)
Renewing our faith invites us to ask ourselves about our perspective. To what are we loyal? What do we believe in?
I find the use of the word ‘orientation’, or perspective, to be very helpful. It speaks to our own view of the world, how we see life unfolding, and how we find the meaning in life. In our religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, we encourage everyone to grow in faith by developing their own answers to questions such as these. Of course, the wider world has often distilled this message into saying that “UU’s can believe whatever they want.” In truth, it’s more complicated than that. Unitarian Universalism wants everyone to examine their own perspectives, to learn about their own orientation, about their loyalties, and their commitments. How do you see the world? Where do you find meaning?
I’ve pondered these questions throughout my life. I’ve realized, over and over again, that I am oriented toward the forces that generate life and sustain it, that I am watching for these. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the story originally told by Fred Rogers – TV’s Mr. Rogers, who said that his mother taught him whenever there was a crisis to ‘look for the helpers.’ I am oriented toward the helpers. They are there: you will see them when you look, and they offer us faith and reassurance in the goodness of people. I am oriented toward other things as well: humor, for example. No sooner did the Covid-19 pandemic arrive on our shores, then so did the jokes. A good laugh helps keep us going, orients us away from despair, fear, and anger, back toward life and each other. I am oriented to community; toward knowing that what we face, we do not have to face alone. I am oriented toward the arc of the universe that bends toward justice. And I am oriented toward the generative and sustaining force of life itself, which I call Love. If we look for this life force, we see it everywhere, all the time. We see it even here in early March, as the earth begins almost imperceptibly to return to life. We trust the sun, and the tilt of the earth’s axis.
And we see the life force in Ukraine, in the midst of war and chaos, even in the midst of suffering and death. We see it in peoples’ defiance, in their willingness to fight to maintain a society that will enable people to flourish.
We have spoken of faith from different perspectives this morning; we heard the story of Queen Esther risking her life out of loyalty and of love of her people. We have heard the words of poets: “Breathe in firefighters and rubble; breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds.” (Judyth Hill, “Wage Peace”)
“Whence comes that drive in us?” asked our Pakistani poet. “We look to the starry sky and love storms in our hearts. Whence comes that storm? The journey of love is a very long journey.”
(Mohammed Iqbal, “The Journey of Love”)
Every day now we are confronted with images of death and destruction: buildings burning, people fleeing. What we are seeing is hatred trying to conquer, and Love fighting back. In video after video we watch as firefighters put out fires in burning buildings, and carry out injured people. We see all the helpers – the folks helping refugees, the organizations providing food and clothing and shelter, the doctors trying to save lives as supplies dwindle. Love emerges in these times. Love fights back. Look for the helpers. We have been so inspired by the heroic example set by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I watch him in motion: rallying his nation, exhorting the world to help, fighting for his citizens and their country, and I see Love in action. “Whence comes that drive in us?”
Beneath everything we have talked about today is one simple thing: Love. Love as the force of life, Love as the orientation we must place our faith in, and turn towards always.
Day by day, we live trying to maintain a balance between all the forces; fog and sunshine, goodness and evil. It is impossible to tell, from one day to the next, what will prevail. The view, as Theodore Parker once told us, is a long one. “I do not pretend to understand the moral arc of the universe. My eye reaches but little ways,” he wrote. But like him, we must decide on our perspective, to choose how to frame our vision, and what to look for. Parker famously went on to say: “I can divine (it) the moral arc by conscience, and from what I see I am sure that it bends toward justice.”
May your faith be in the force of Love, underneath everything, some days in full view, on other days obscured.
“When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.” ( from Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”)
Blessed Be.
Amen.
