THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation

"Forever Beginning Again"
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
(Preached December 31, 1995, at
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu)

There is a traditional Unitarian Universalist Christmas sermon, variations upon which will be preached all over the country in Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships this year. The traditional theme is the rebirth of newness.

It is the theme of the Winter Solstice. The light is waning. The nights are getting longer. The mythic image is the threat that the darkness will overwhelm the light; that all of our hopes will be swallowed up in hopelessness, our dreams will die a-borning, all that we have loved and valued will pass away. Death will finally conquer Life.

But right at the darkest hour, when it seems that all is lost, a glimmer of light signals a promise of return and rebirth. The sun will not continue its travel down the sky into darkness, but will turn; is turning; is going to come back. Our hopes and dreams are not to be finally thwarted. Not yet. We can still begin again, hope again, dream again.

The theme is archetypal. The hope of the re-birth of newness lives somewhere deep in the human soul, expressing itself in the endless variations of festivals and celebrations at this season of the year.

It is seen in the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights. For Jews the image of hopelessness is caught up in the desecration of the Temple in 165 BC. The Syrian armies had taken over the Temple at Jerusalem. The Hebrew guerrillas under Judas Macabeus heroicly recaptured it, only to find that it had suffered the most blasphemous of sacrileges. Their enemies had sacrificed a pig on the altar of Yahweh before the Ark and the Holy of Holies. Surely, Judaism was dead. The covenant with the Lord, breached. Israel's faithlessness had finally reached a point of no return.

Oh, yes. They could cleanse the Temple, rededicate the Altar; but it would take eight days to get new oil for the lamp that must burn before the altar. And there was barely enough left for one day. Surely, there was no point. It was too late. They had failed.

They re-lit it anyway. In the face of their own hopelessness and disappointment, they cleansed and dedicated and prayed. Just as courage is not lack of fear, but keeping on in spite of fear; just so, they kept on. Not in faith, but in spite of their lack of faith. What else was there to do ?

And a miracle occurred. One day's oil burned for eight days, and the Temple of the Lord lived again. So it is reported. What is known is that, once more, Israel rose from the ashes of defeat, hopelessness and loss of faith to live again.

The cynic points out that Christians moved Christmas to this time of year because the priests were having difficulty keeping the faithful out of the pagan festivals of the Solstice and the Saturnalia. And it's true. They did. If the birth stories contain any kernels of truth at all, Jesus was not born in the winter. No self respecting shepherd would have had his flocks out upon the hillside in the dead of a Palestinian winter. But the priests could have moved any of a number of Christian celebrations to this time of year to keep the people home from first century office parties. The Bishop reached into his own collective unconscious, selecting the one that matched those archetypes that are deeper and older, perhaps, than religion itself, and moved Christ's Mass to December.

The theme is the re-birth of the world's hope in the birth of a child. Yes, it is the birth of Jesus. Some say he was the son of God--very God of very God, as the creed says. Some say he was he was a teacher whose message has the power to transform the world, if we would but heed it. Some say he is the archetype of faithfulness; a model each of us might follow of selflessness and love of neighbor.

But there is more. For, in celebrating the birth of that child, we celebrate the birth of all children. Each instance of that special human miracle contains the same potential for the re-birth of wonder and hope and newness in our midst.

And there is yet still more. For, in celebrating the birth of that child, we also celebrate the continuing possibility of the re-birth in each of us of that child-like openness to newness and transformation. Just so, we honor children and give them gifts. It's the least we can do in return for the gift they give and are to us.

Still, I think we go too quickly, in those traditional images, from the dark night of the soul to the optimism of rekindled hope. That other side of the archetypal image of the re-birth of newness--the dark side, as it were, of the Christmas Season--deserves more attention. There is often a certain anemic quality to the holiday that is born of a too quick skipping over to the miracle. There is a certain amount of Scrooge in me that is, I think, traceable to this skipping.

Seriously, even in the most primitive pagan culture, how many Solstice Celebrations does one have to participate in before the thought dawns, "Wait a minute. The sun always does return."

How many Hanukkahs does one need to celebrate before it is realized, "Wait a minute. The Temple now actually has been destroyed, altar, eternal flame and all. The Romans leveled it in 70 A.D., leaving only that pitiful piece of Wailing Wall; and that, often as not, in enemy hands. Yet, Judaism still exists. It could have survived without the Hanukkah miracle as well."

And with the birth of the child we don't Just get the re-birth of newness. We also get--every time--dirty diapers, 2 AM feedings, the perpetual emergencies of childhood, adolescence, teen-agers and more adults. That is to say, along with the re-birth of newness we also get the continuing NECESSITY for the re-birth of newness.

The darkness comes again. The desecration of all we once held Holy happens AGAIN ! All newness eventually becomes . . .old.

We are forever having to start again.

THERE is the dark side of Christmas that our holiday frivolity keeps us from looking squarely in the eye.

I propose a holiday for IT. All Saints Day has its Halloween. Easter has its Good Friday. This holiday season also needs a dark companion. It will be the special holiday of dieters, of ex-smokers, of changers and would-be-changers, of all of us who ever find ourselves having to begin again.

Perhaps this experience is most poignantly present to us in grief. It is as if there were a physiologically built in hiatus at the loss of a loved one. Food doesn't taste the same. None of the familiar joys and pleasures of life have quite the same flavor for awhile. There is a pause. And this is as it should be, for our loved ones are not expendable. The loss is real. The ragged hole left in our lives by the absence of the missing, missing other is real. There is a necessary time that it takes to adjust to the strangeness, the unfamiliarity, the difference that loss inevitably means.

Perhaps this day--the last day of the year--is a good one for that dark companion. For this holiday we might set aside at least a part of the day to hear each other's grief. To hear each other's loss. To experience each other's--and our own-- emptiness. No festivities. No parades. For God's sake, no Hallmark cards. We will not make resolutions. We will not make promises. We will . . . pause. We will listen for our own emptiness that we may have a space to be filled.

How much of your life is made up of tasks, jobs, projects or events that have an end to them such that, when you're done you're done; and you can go on to something else ? Something new ? If it's like mine, your life is over-populated with things that can never be quite finished. Closure is an event whose existence is at least as doubtful in my mind as the existence of Santa Claus.

We are forever having to begin again. There are not only no final victories; it seems as if there aren't even any final defeats. Bowed and bloody or laurel wreath crowned, you still have to get up the next morning and fight the good fight all over again.

"As we 'begin' again, it is important to recall that we always begin as already having begun. In the very act of beginning, I discover my ineradicable belatedness and inevitable secondariness. Thus, in one sense I can never begin. And yet the irrepressible priority of beginning suggests that beginning is unending. In another sense, therefore, I am always beginning or, more precisely, am always beginning again." *

"As we begin again, it is important to recall that we always begin as already having begun."* Oh, it often feels as if we were always having to begin all over again at the beginning. And yet, in truth, that is a rare event. One few will experience, and seldom twice. No, in all our beginnings we all but invariably hit the ground running, as it were. And who got us up to speed ? A whole rich, diverse heritage; people hand in hand reaching back for generations; people who have each added their small piece of wisdom, skill or knowledge "In the very act of beginning, I discover my ineradicable belatedness and inevitable secondariness. Thus, in one sense -I can never begin."* At least this small voice talking to me on the inside of my head, this I of mine, that takes such self-righteous and perverse pleasure in . . . (sigh) . . . having to begin again; I always pick up where a host of others have left off. That host has lain the ground-work for my task, contribute to--no, given me--what little wisdom, skill or knowledge possess, or they are my co-workers in the vineyard even if we are each unaware of the other's existence.

"And yet the irrepressible 'priority' of beginning suggests that beginning is unending. In another sense, therefore, I am always beginning or, more precisely, am always beginning again."*

And therein lies the real ground of hope. Not in a mythic promised re-birth of newness, but in the mutual illusoriness of beginnings and endings.

There are no beginnings: we always start standing on someone else's shoulders. Occasionally even our own.

As the late James Baldwin said when he still was, "I have to be an optimist because I am still alive."

There are no endings. Or, more accurately, there is only one ending apiece. "It isn't over until it's over."

And it is finally that rich heritage, of which I am only a temporary rider of the crest of the flood, and you, my fellow crest-riding peers, and the human connectedness that streams out from us; THAT is what it is finally all about. It is what the Solstice and hoping again in the face of hopelessness is all about. It is what Hanukkah and valuing again in the face of the desecration of the holy in our lives is all about. It is what the excitement and promise of everybody's imagined Christ Child is all about; and Santa Claus and Christmas trees, and precious gifts from loved ones of things we do not need.

Yes, it is a celebration ! An affirmation that in the face of all that and all that, Joy is yet Justified !

Joy to you, and to your loved ones; and Joy to those whose shoulders we have stood upon through another year. Joy to you and peace.

* from Erring, by Mark C. Taylor, University Chicago Press,
1984, p.97.

Naked Before the Stars
by Mike Young

Will you not stand naked before the stars,
And rise into the mystery of life unbound, unfettered ?
Who are you to carry all this baggage ?
Every dent in a fender is moaned over
As if it were your own shin; or worse,
Your own honor somehow marred.
Ancient witches turned princes into frogs.
We work a weirder magic still.
We turn ourselves into things and roles
And imagined images conjured into
Stuff and non-sense glued like camouflage
So successfully that we have disappeared.
We must disenthrall ourselves.
We are not the things. What thing
Have you not survived the loss of ?
What role have you not put on
And taken off again like a mask
At a masquerade ball ? Even this mortal flesh
Which does seem so substantially you
Completely exchanges its molecules
With the ever enveloping universe
Every seven years or so. Your Past,
What you have done, you are not bound to;
Nor your future. If your dreams and desires fail
You are not destroyed. Or, if you succeed,
You are not bound to that either.

Will you not stand naked before the stars
And know that you have surrendered nothing ?
What is it that could be lost ?
The things are gone, but you knew that they would crumble.
Your image, so carefully manicured,
Has changed a dozen times or more.
Your roles were for the doing of this and that,
And when this or that are done
They are like an out grown, sloughed off snake skin.
Whatever small or large amount of truth
And worth was in that image of your self
Lives in the memory of those who loved you.
That's all you wanted of it anyway.
The rest was sham to start with.
Your body, too, will change. But it was changing daily,
And you got so used to that you hardly noticed.
Past and future are as much yours as they ever were.
You will be on to other things, as you always were
For all the anxiety and nostalgia you indulged in.
And if you die ? Ah, if you die,
Your relationship to what's out there has changed,
That's all. It always was, from day to day,
And is no more or less unknown now than then.

Will you not stand naked before the stars
And let that icy anxious thrill transform itself
From fear to ecstasy ?
To set your baggage down and shed your armor,
To peel away the layers to the silent naked center,
Is not loss; is not becoming less, but more.
In the stillness of the moment after
That sharp intake of breath, Ah,
There ! There is a brief glimpse
Of a you worthy of standing naked before the stars.
Under the layers of all that and all that,
Were you not there, before the stars,
Naked always after all ?
Will you not therefor rise
Into the mystery of life unbound, unfettered ?

--Mike Young

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