Sept 1, 2019 | Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
This sermon was given the day after the mass shooting in Odessa/Midland which killed at least 7 and injured dozens.
This Sermon is Part 3 of a three-part sermon series entitled Unitarian Universalism and the Crises of Life | Unitarian Universalism has sometimes been accused of failing to provide sufficient comfort & guidance during the crises of life. This sermon series will refute that view, providing both theists and humanists with a (not the!) Unitarian Universalist approach to these common human struggles. We will draw from a new emerging “myth” contributed by process theology and our belief in the “interdependent web” of all life. ((This sermon series is loosely based on A Faith for All Seasons: Liberal Religion and the Crises of Life by UU minister William Murry))
For the last several months, I’ve been getting phone calls from a man named Jeffrey. He’s planning his funeral.
When he calls I listen and take pages and pages of hand-written notes not only about what hymns and readings he’d like, but also what he believes about the afterlife, or lack thereof, and what he believes about this life. He also sends me letters telling me stories of his life, and how he came to believe what he believes.
You should know that Jeffrey does not anticipate that he will die any time soon.
He’s healthy as far as he knows, and he’s happy most of the time. But he wants to make sure that when the day of his death does come, he is remembered the way he wants to be remembered, and that his service reflects his life and beliefs. His family does not approve of his beliefs. They fear he will go to hell. He struggles to stay in relationship with them given their scorn for him. We Unitarian Universalists are his second family, he told me. He lives too far from our congregation to attend in person and mostly, he wants our help, when his time comes, to tell his story. ((Jeffrey gave me permission to tell this story.))
I love that Jeffrey is thinking about his memorial service now, about his death.
He is not alone:
Our church member Betty Lewis, who died a few weeks ago, wrote her own obituary before she died.
Our emeritus minister Rev. Les Pugh, before he died about a year ago, sat down with me and showed me the binder he and his wife Jettie had assembled with their wishes for their memorial services.
Last year, I officiated here a service for a woman named Virginia who was unknown to our congregation. But I was able to know her not only through the stories her husband and children told but from the notebook they shared with me – a notebook Virginia began writing in when she was diagnosed with a terminal illness. In this notebook, she shared with her family her important passwords and financial information… and also her hopes for them, her favorite memories, her thoughts and wishes.
There are two reasons I’m glad that all these folks have thought about their deaths.
The first reason is almost a selfish reason. We Unitarian Universalist ministers face a unique challenge when it comes to memorial services. We don’t have a set liturgy we use for every memorial service; we don’t have a list of beliefs we can assume all our members hold about death, life, and the afterlife. We create a unique service that reflects their particular theological beliefs. It is such a gift to your minister – and more importantly to your loved ones – to let them know what you want for your memorial service.
The main reason I’m glad these folks have thought about their deaths is because they show us how being in conversation with our mortality can lead to a deeper embrace of life.
There are many reasons we typically avoid thinking about our deaths.
Especially after a day like yesterday, when we are faced with the possibility of an unexpected or frightening death, it can be scary to face our own mortality.
When imagining our last day, we may fear the uncertainty of what happens next, the possible pain or loss of control, the feeling of ending, the letting go, the leaving behind those we love, the questions about our legacy, the sense of things left unsaid or undone, the letting go.
That is all big spiritual and psychological work.
The Buddhist teacher Frank Ostaseski says: “To imagine that at the time of our dying we will have the physical strength, emotional stability, and mental clarity to do the work of a lifetime is a ridiculous gamble.” ((The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski))
The poet Mary Oliver, who died this year, wrote about her fear of, and hopes for, her death:
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world
And so we can spend our lives practicing for our deaths. That may sound morbid, but the truth is death is always with us: As Ostaseski says:
Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight.
Death is always with us because in part death is about surrendering, and our lives are full of opportunities to surrender:
Every day we have opportunities to surrender to the mystery of what we do not know.
Every day we can practice letting go of our need to control and fix.
Every day we can try to pour ourselves into the present moment.
Every day we can act in the world even though we know not what ripples our actions will make.
Every day we can practice the vulnerability of loving our loved ones thoroughly and completely even though we will one day lose them.
Again, the poet Mary Oliver:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
And so the Buddhist teacher Frank Ostaseski has for us five invitations “to sit down with death, to have a cup of tea with her, to let her guide you toward living a more meaningful and loving life.”
I could do a whole sermon about each of these, but today I just wanted to set them before us briefly. (See below for further reading.)
Today’s sermon is the final installment in a three-part sermon series about how our tradition – despite – or because of – its embrace of mystery over certainty…can provide grounding during times of crisis. (Here is Part 1 and Part 2)
Today we are considering the crisis of our own mortality. So I don’t want to leave this topic without talking about some of the answers our tradition gives to the question of what happens when we die.
We UUs have diverse understandings of the afterlife or lack thereof. And Unitarians and Universalists have traditionally shifted our focus – just as I have done so far today – to how we might live in this life, not what happens when we die.
But, again, what can we say about what happens when we die?
In this sermon series we’ve talked about a new myth informed by process theology, embraceable by theists and atheists alike. This new myth says that all life is an interconnected, ongoing process – and we are embedded and interwoven in that process.
So I’ll talk about just two implications of this for our own deaths.
My first point emphasizes the word process:
What if, when we die, all that we are goes on, continuing to flow into all that is.
If we are thoroughly secular humanists, we can think of this in terms of our legacy – all the good and truth we created lives on, contributing toward the ongoing effort toward greater good. If we lean more toward the spiritual, we can think of this perhaps in the way Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson did. Emerson said at death our souls are reabsorbed into the “eternal OverSoul.”
My colleague Tom Owen-Towle explains Emerson’s views this way:
The distinctive life-energy each of us embodied during our earthly existence flows back toward the center of the universe itself. The whole of cosmic reality is altered, because our unique being was present upon the earth for a stretch.
Even the great rationalist Bertrand Russell expresses this idea when he compares our life to a river flowing into the sea:
Gradually, as the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and, in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.
The second thing we might say about our deaths overlaps with the first, and emphasizes the interconnected element of this new view:
We are not separate from each other or from nature. In our universe, things die to make room for new things…moreover: things die to create new things. Death is natural and right.
Even Eva Saulitis, a woman dying from terminal cancer – a death none would wish, found comfort in the naturalness of death. She writes:
Facing death in a death-phobic culture is lonely. But in wild places like Prince William Sound or the woods and sloughs behind my house, it is different. The salmon dying in their stream tell me I am not alone. The evidence is everywhere: in the skull of an immature eagle I found in the woods; in the bones of a moose in the gully below my house; in the corpse of a wasp on the windowsill; in the fall of a birch leaf from its branch. These things tell me death is true, right, graceful; not tragic, not failure, not defeat. For this you were born, writes Stanley Kunitz. For this you were born, say the salmon. ((“Learning How to Die” by Eva Saulitis, Orion https://www.utne.com/mind-and-body/facing-death-zm0z14fzsau))
And just as the salmon feed the bears; just as the decaying leaf turns into rich matter for the forest, our lives, too, are wound and bound with all that is.
We are interwoven and held in the mystery beyond all our knowing.
My colleague Tom Owen-Towle says: “Dying appears to be a supreme act of confidence that the same Creation that breathed us into existence will assuredly catch us, as well as clasp, us forever. The bottom line: we’ll be alright when we die.”
Every day we have opportunities to practice surrender: loving and losing, acting and trusting…
And here in this church we’ll have a quite concrete opportunity to talk about death: On the last Sunday of October, after our Día de Muertos service, I’ll hold the tradition of a death café. At a death café, people drink tea, eat cake, and talk about death in a circle of compassion and openness. Participants choose from a list of questions that which speaks to them. I’m also considering holding a workshop – as I believe this church has done in the past – for us to create documents sharing our wishes for our memorial services.
Some days like yesterday place the realities of our mortality perhaps too painfully before us. But every day, we have the opportunity to practice our mortality, embracing life more fully as we do so.
Engaging this practice with clear eyes and full hearts ((Friday Night Lights!)) will lead us to a view from our deathbeds that will warm our hearts and remove all fear.
May it be so for you, for us, for all.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
FURTHER READING:
The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
The writings of Eva Saulitis (in Orion, The Sun, Utne, etc)
A Faith for All Seasons: Liberal Religion and The Crises of Life by William R. Murry
Process Theology: A Basic Introduction – C. Robert Mesle
On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process by Catherine Keller
Monica A. Coleman. Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology