"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?  Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water...

"Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought Death had undone so many,
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet...

"What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal"
                         From The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot

GROWLTIGER was a Bravo Cat, who lived upon a barge:
In fact he was the roughest cat that ever roamed at large,
From Gravesend up to Oxford he pursued his evil aims,
Rejoicing in his title of "The Terror of the Thames."

His manners and appearance did not calculate to please;
His coat was torn and seedy, he was baggy at the knees;
One ear was somewhat missing, no need to tell you why,
And he scowled upon a hostile world with one forbidding eye.

The cottagers of Rotherhithe knew something of his fame,
At Hammersmith and Putney people shuddered at his name. 
They would fortify the hen-house, lock up the silly goose,

When the rumor ran along the shore: GROWLTIGER'S ON THE LOOSE!

Woe to the weak canary, that fluttered from its cage;
Woe to the pampered Pekinese, that faced Growltiger's rage.
Woe to the bristly Bandicoot, that lurks on foreign ships.
And woe to any Cat  with whom Growltiger came to grips!


BUSTOPHER JONES: THE CAT ABOUT TOWN

Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones—
In fact he's remarkably fat.
He doesn't haunt pubs—he has eight or nine clubs,
For he's the St. James Street Cat!
He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers
Or such an impeccable back.
In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names is
The name of this Brummell of Cats;
And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!

By T. S. Eliot

Dramatic Reading: Scene from The Bald Soprano by Ionesco

Presented by two members of the congregation.

     (In the scene from Ionesco's play a man and a woman meet on the train and begin a conversation as strangers. Little by little they establish that they live in the same town, on the same street, in the same apartment building, indeed in the very same apartment. Finally in disbelief they realize that they, two strangers, are husband and wife.)

      Thirty years ago, I was in a marriage something like that.  When I tried to break through the distance that separated us, my husband would become annoyed.  One day in a fit of consternation he blurted out "You are absolutely incapable of getting into any kind of a rut!"  I considered that to be a profound compliment.

     How does it happen?  How do we get so cut off, so distant, so caught up in obligations rather than the joy of living?  I believe there are at least two attitudes or ways of looking at life that contribute to this state of affairs.

     The first is living in terms of  other people's expectations.  I was a good girl.  I did well in school, married a nice young engineer, had two children, and took care of a cute little house in the suburbs.  I had everything a young woman is supposed to want.  Why wasn't I happy? I never thought to ask what I  wanted or needed, only what I was expected by others to do.  I buried my needs and I was angry, but I didn't know why, so I tried not to show it.  I became distant.  I married someone distant.  We couldn't afford closeness because it might unleash the buried anger and the unmet needs. 

    The second attitude that contributes to our alienation from each other is living in the future.  My in-laws scrimped and saved and denied themselves all their lives so that when they retired they would have money to fulfill two big dreams—to design and build their own beautiful home and to take a trip to Europe.  When they retired they did build a beautiful home in the mountains.  They lived in it less than a year when he fell ill and died.  The home was too large and expensive for her to maintain it, so she sold it.  And they never did take the trip to Europe.  I thought it was the saddest possible way to live and I said, "Not me!  I'm going to enjoy life."  But just a few years ago, I heard myself saying to my children, "We'll have more time together after I get my degree.  We'll take a vacation when I get a better job, when I have more money."  And there I was living my life in the future, too, letting the present slip by unnoticed and unenjoyed.  Ric Masten's song about Robert and Nancy says it well:


      When we live out a stereotype, meeting other people's expectations, we shrink ourselves and ignore our own human needs.  We cannot be open to the present, lest our needs and anger show.  We feel distant, trapped, and life passes us by.  When we live in the future instead of the present we lose contact not only with other people, but with nature as well.  We have no time for flowers or sunsets in our drive toward the future.  We can also ignore pollution.  We wind up with neither people nor nature to sustain us.
     Why does it happen.  What are we afraid of  in the present and in ourselves?  One time in New Jersey, the minister of a Fellowship I belonged to called me early Friday morning before I left for work.  "Shirley" he asked " Can you speak Sunday morning for one minute on psychological truth?"  "Psychological Truth in One Minute?" I said, "Sure!"  He invited a poet, a scientist, a painter, a musician, and me, a psychologist, to speak on our particular brands of truth.  When we got together on Saturday to share what we planned to say we were struck by the fact that we all mentioned a moment of terror, of profound anxiety.  The artist facing a blank canvas, the individual in therapy having to let go of an old self in order to face what she might become, the scientist proposing a new hypothesis—all face that moment of terror.  At that moment we must put forth our own perceptions of the world and risk the anger of our families or the strictures of our society to be our authentic selves.  At that moment we are on a cold journey in the dark, all alone. 
     For most people today, God is dead, heaven is an illusion and hell is here and now.  T. S. Eliot labeled the situation well when he called it The Wasteland.  It is indeed terrifying to live in a wasteland, where all the old securities have become a heap of broken images.
     I have to tell you about the first time I read "The Wasteland."   I hated it—all those tragic stanzas.  I was young and I wanted to believe that life held more than that.  So I flipped through the book to see what else Eliot had written and I came upon Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  I loved them.  Not great poetry perhaps, but to me it was important that in the midst of the wasteland the poet was able to express his delight in the personalities of these adventurous cats. 
     If hell is here and now, so is heaven.  The moment of fearful truth is also the moment of possibility.  We still have what religious people have always had—ourselves and the natural world.
     Wallace Stevens in his poem "Sunday Morning" describes a woman enjoying a Sunday morning breakfast on her porch with the smell of coffee and oranges and the colors of a cockatoo in the sunshine.  But then the shadow of  past religious teachings crosses her mind and the poet, affirming her need to move beyond those teachings, writes:


The creator of "Peanuts" says it another way.  Please join me in using the cartoon sequence in your program as a responsive reading.  (People on one side of the room read Lucy's part; people on the other side read Charlie Brown's part.)

---

YOUR FAITH HAS MADE YOU WHOLE

by Shirley Ann Ranck

READINGS

Demeter and Kore

 adapted from Merlin Stone

The Mysteries of Demeter were known throughout the land.  Some tell of winding passageways that the waters had cut deep into the rocks, and women making their way through these damp caves filled with unknown terrors—to recall the darkness that the Maiden must have seen, to recall the fright that the Maiden must have felt.  Some speak of the opening at the other end of the darkness, the green and gold of the fields, where wreaths of flowers and myrtle leaves were placed upon each woman as she once again emerged into the wondrous sunshine, to dance and sing on the Rarian Field, the first field in Greece ever to be ploughed and sown, near the Well of Kallichoros where women first danced for Mother Demeter to bring the harvest.

So the memory was kept alive, the memory of the time that Death took the young Maiden to a land beneath the earth, and the Mother grieved and searched.  Holding back the rain, parching the summer's crops, Demeter caused the land to lay in unproductive drought.  So frightened were the deities of Olympus that the Maiden was returned to be reunited with Her Mother, and those who loved Demeter joined Her in joyous song and dance to celebrate the coming home.  Yet even this joy was dampened by the knowledge that the Maiden had partaken of the pomegranate seeds, some say four, some say six, and for the seeds that were eaten, the Maiden was to return each year to the Land of the Dead—one month for each seed.

So it came to be that the women carried sacred molloi cakes, the honey and sesame that was shaped and baked in the image of that sacred part of the body from which each and every human life emerges.  Carrying the sacred molloi that symbolized the arrival upon earth, each year it was remembered that the Maiden must part from Her Mother, yet each year She would return—in the midst of laughing, dancing, singing, celebration.

Let My People Go

 adapted from Marilyn Hirsh

Long ago, the Jews lived in Egypt.  The kings of Egypt were called Pharaohs.  One pharaoh made the Jews become slaves.  They were forced to work long hours every day, building great stone cities.  In their misery they cried out to their God for help.

Moses became a leader of the Jews.  He went to Pharaoh and said “Let my people go.”  At first Pharaoh refused.  But then Egypt was troubled by a series of terrible plagues, swarms of flies and locusts and finally the deaths of many children.  At last Pharaoh, believing that the God of the Jews had brought all these troubles to the land, cried out to Moses “Go, take all the Jews and go.”

Moses told his people “We must go quickly before Pharaoh changes his mind.”  There was no time to make regular bread, to wait for the yeast to make it rise.  The people mixed flour and water and baked hard flat bread called matzoh to take with them.  They escaped across the Red Sea and into the desert.

Every year at Passover, in the Spring, Jewish families gather for a special dinner to celebrate their ancient escape from slavery.  Bitter herbs are eaten to remember the bitterness of slavery.  Matzoh is eaten instead of bread.  Some of the matzoh is wrapped in cloth and hidden about the house.  When the ancient story has been told, and a great dinner has been eaten, the children are sent to hunt for the hidden matzoh.

Moses’ cry “Let my people go!” has echoed down the centuries and the story of the great escape from slavery has empowered oppressed people around the world.

The End Becomes the Beginning

 adapted from Sofia Lyon Fads

After Jesus was put to death, the remaining eleven disciples and the women who had been accustomed to travel about with Jesus returned to Galilee brokenhearted.  In their grief they clung to one another for comfort.  They gathered in each other's homes and tried to talk.  Surely one so sincere, so overflowing in good will, did not deserve the punishment due a criminal.  For many days no one could find an answer to these tormenting thoughts.

But slowly a strange thing began to happen.  As these men and women gathered day after day in each other's homes, they began to recall the wonderful experiences they had had with Jesus.  They told one another of happenings they had almost forgotten.  The very tone of Jesus’ voice and the look on his face would come back to them so vividly that it seemed sometimes as though Jesus were again right there with them.

In addition to these experiences together, some had dreams in which Jesus came back and talked with them.  In these dreams, Jesus seemed so real that the dreamers could not tell whether they had been asleep or awake when they saw him.  Some declared positively that they had seen Jesus again.  He had talked with them.  They were sure of it.  They believed as never before that Jesus was different from other men.  They believed also that Jesus would actually come back again to live on this earth. 

But the years passed by.  The men and women who knew Jesus died.  Their children and their children's children also died.  But Jesus did not come back.  Nearly two thousand years have come and gone.  Still Jesus has not come back.

Others believe that Jesus, the carpenter's son, will never live again on the earth.  What has been handed down to us from generation to generation regarding his life is the world's treasure.  His spirit never needs to die.  When he lived on the earth, only small groups could listen to his words.  Today his teachings are heard and his story is told weekly in thousands of houses of worship.  At first but a small circle of friends tried to spread his message.  Now the followers of Jesus are numbered by the millions.  They live in every land.  They speak all languages.  Just as a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, yet from it there grows a new plant that bears new fruit and new seeds, so was Jesus’ death.

SERMON

It's Easter.  The world is warm and green, the flowers are blooming and out of my childhood comes Wordsworth's poem about the daffodils.  “And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.”  Just what is it that we celebrate today?

Each of the stories we heard this morning tells of a journey through a time of darkness and grief into freedom and the renewal of life.

A few years ago I entered briefly into the Christian preparation for Easter by speaking at an ecumenical Good Friday service in an Episcopal church.  We had entitled the service “Musings from the Cross.”  What might Jesus have thought that day as he looked back over his ministry?  I spoke about the conflicts he generated by remaining true to his inner vision of what was just and loving, by maintaining his integrity.  As I read through the biblical material in preparation for that service I was struck by the many times Jesus is quoted as saying “Your faith has made you whole.”  The sentence kept leaping out at me on every page.  Your faith has made you whole.  It seemed to me that this statement was at the heart of the ongoing conflict Jesus had with the customs, laws, assumptions and expectations of the people around him.

He wanted people to be whole, to live fully, to have compassion for each other.  Now, what's wrong with that?  It sounds very agreeable.  Why should such a ministry cause incessant conflict and ultimately betrayal and death?  I think it is because Jesus kept saying “Your faith has made you whole.”  And because he himself was able to be whole, which means he was able to trust his own convictions and to act on them in every situation.

He was tempted as we all are to go after the usual kinds of wealth and power conferred by others in the society.  But he had discovered an inner power and knowledge which he considered more important—the power to heal, to elicit the good in people, to put them in touch with their own capacity to see clearly what was just and loving and to act on that vision.

Conflicts arose because so many people had abandoned their own real feelings and perceptions in order to obey customs and follow ways which gave them status and the appearance of virtue.  Because they could no longer feel their own feelings or think their own thoughts they became hypocrites.  They objected when Jesus healed people on the Sabbath.  To Jesus it was clear that human need came first, that if one had the power to heal and failed to do so, keeping the Sabbath would be an empty virtue.

Martha objected when Jesus did not send her sister Mary back to the kitchen but encouraged her to develop her intellectual and spiritual life.  He made the astonishing assumption that women were full human beings fit for more than drudgery.  Often he was gentle in his challenges but sometimes his impatience and anger burst forth as when he overturned the tables of the money-changers in the temple.  But the heart of the conflict I think is his demand that people set aside the phony rules and customs and rationalizations and look with their hearts at what they are really doing, to themselves and to others.

And so Jesus brings me back to that most difficult task of learning to trust my own perceptions, my own vision, allowing my faith to make me whole.  So often when I get in touch with and begin to express my real feelings and convictions I find that I am in conflict with almost everything around me.  It's truly frightening for example to know that if I actively oppose arming for war, say by not paying my taxes, I will have to take on the federal government as an opponent.  Is it worth it?  Would it make enough difference to do any good?  And most disturbing of all, if so many other well-meaning people think armaments are good and necessary, am I just some crazy individual who doesn't really understand what is necessary in the world?

What happens then to my faith?  Many UUs have a further problem.  If I reject the god of Judaism and Christianity where then do I look for that which will sustain my integrity?  Ancient myths and modern poets have long been pointing the way.  The way to joy and hope and the promise of new life.  The ancient deities who died and were reborn each year were the deities of vegetation.  The return of Persephone to her mother Demeter each year signaled the renewal of the earth, the blossoming of spring.  Moses led his people into the desert where they survived and made their way to a new land.  Jesus often went into the wilderness to meditate and pray.  The exuberant cycles of nature spiral down the centuries.  Our hypocrisy and arrogance, our failure to find integrity are symptoms of our alienation from nature.

It is the miracle of the natural world within and around us that is the source of renewal and hope.  Easter means dawn and is one of the many names of the Great Goddess of old.  In the old religions when people came together they cast and stood in a magic circle.  The circle was divided into quarters and each direction was related to one of the basic elements of earth, air, fire and water.

This morning let us rediscover and meditate on some of the rich symbolism of nature.  The East corresponds to the element Air, to the mind, dawn, spring, to pale airy colors, white and violet, to the eagle and high-flying birds, and the power to know.  And now as you breathe, be conscious of the air as it flows in and out of your lungs.  Feel it as the breath of the divine, and take in the life force, the inspiration of the universe.  Let your own breath merge with the winds, the clouds, the great currents that sweep over land and ocean with the turning of the earth.

The South corresponds to the element Fire, to energy or spirit, to noon, summer, fiery reds and orange, to the solar lion and the quality of will.  Be conscious of the electric spark within each nerve as pulses jump from synapse to synapse.  Be aware of the combustion within each cell, as food burns to release energy.  Let your own fire become one with candle flame, bonfire, hearth fire, lightening, starlight and sunlight, one with the bright spirit of the universe.

The West corresponds to the element Water, to emotions, to twilight, autumn, to blues, grays, deep purples, and sea greens, to sea serpents, dolphins, fish, to the power to dare.  From the West comes the courage to face our deepest feelings.  Feel the blood flowing through the rivers of your veins, the liquid tides within each cell of your body.  You are fluid, one drop congealed out of the primal ocean.  Find the calm pools of tranquility within you, the rivers of feeling, the tides of power.  Sink into the well of the inner mind, below consciousness.

The North is considered the most powerful direction.  Because the sun never reaches the north, it is the direction of Mystery, of the unseen.  The North Star is the center, around which the skies revolve.  North corresponds to Earth, to the body, to midnight, winter, brown, black and the green of vegetation.  From the North comes the power to keep silent, to listen as well as speak, to keep secrets, to know what not to say.  Feel your bones, your skeleton, the solidity of your body.  Be aware of your flesh, of all that can be touched and felt.  Feel the pull of gravity, your own weight, your attraction to the earth.  You are a natural feature, a moving mountain.  Merge with all that comes from the earth: grass, trees, grains, fruits, flowers, beasts, metals and precious stones.  Breathe and feel the power of earth, of your body.  Feel that power travel down your spine and flow into the earth.  And relax.

At the end of his book Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis makes what I consider to be a most tragic comment.  He writes: “But what, in conclusion, of Joy?  For that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about.  To tell the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian.”

Tragic because it is a neglect or abandonment of that very inner vision or longing which Jesus himself kept trying to call forth in people, that faith, that connectedness with all of life which would make them whole.

I would like to close with these words from an old tradition.  I believe they are not very different from the message contained in many of the teachings of Jesus. 

“I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me.  For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe.  From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return.  Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.  Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.  And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery:  if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.  For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.”  -Starhawk.

    “In the durable Victorian fantasy, Flatland, the characters are assorted geometric shapes living in an exclusively two-dimensional world.  As the story opens, the narrator, a middle-aged Square, has a disturbing dream in which he visits a one-dimensional realm, Lineland, whose inhabitants can move only from point to point.  With mounting frustration he attempts to explain himself—that he is a Line of Lines, from a domain where you can move not only from point to point but also from side to side.  The angry Linelanders are about to attack him when he awakens.
    “Later that same day he attempts to help his grandson, a Little Hexagon, with his studies.  The grandson suggests the possibility of a Third Dimension—a realm with up and down as well as side to side.  The Square proclaims this notion foolish and unimaginable.
    “That very night the Square has an extraordinary, life-changing encounter: a visit from an inhabitant of Spaceland, the realm of Three Dimensions.
    “At first the Square is merely puzzled by his visitor, a peculiar circle who seems to change in size, even disappear.  The visitor explains that he is a Sphere.  He only seemed to change size and disappear because he was moving toward the Square in Space and descending at the same time.
    “Realizing that argument alone will not convince the Square of the Third Dimension, the exasperated Sphere creates for him an experience of depth.  The Square is badly shaken: ‘There was a dizzy, sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line that was no Line; Space that was not Space.  I was myself and not myself.  When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony: either this is madness or it is Hell.
    “’It is neither,’ calmly replied the voice of the Sphere.  ‘It is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions.  Open your eyes once again and try to look steadily.’
    “Having had an insight into another dimension, the Square becomes an evangelist, attempting to convince his fellow Flatlanders that Space is more than just a wild notion of mathematicians.  Because of his insistence he is finally imprisoned, for the public good.  Every year thereafter the high priest of Flatland, the Chief Circle, checks with him to see if he has regained his senses, but the stubborn Square continues to insist that there is a third dimension.  He cannot forget it, he cannot explain it.”

a. devotion to the humanities: literary culture
b. the learning or cultural impulse that is characterized by a revival of classical letters, an individualistic and critical spirit, and a shift of emphasis from religious to secular concerns and that flowered during the Renaissance. 
c. devotion to human welfare: interest in or concern for humanity, humanitarianism.

 “There is nothing at all absurd about the human condition.  We matter.  It seems to me a good guess, hazarded by a good many people who have
thought about it, that we may be engaged in the formation of something like a mind for the life of this planet.  If this is so, we are still at the most primitive stage, still fumbling with language and thinking, but infinitely capacitated for the future.  Looked at this way, it is remarkable that we've come as far as we have in so short a period, really no time at all as geologists measure time.  We are the newest, the youngest, and the brightest thing around.”

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