The Five Stones, Pt. II: Broken Twigs

Rev. Jude Geiger, Minister of Community Engagement

August 13, 2023

We’re at our second sermon in a five week preaching series on the ethics of James Luther Adams – an early to mid 20th century Unitarian Harvard professor who was committed to combating the rise of Nazism both abroad, and at home. We’ll take a circuitous route today through a few stories that all touch upon his second of five stones (it’s a later editors’ reference to the David and Goliath Story where with five stones, an oppressive attacker was beaten back by a kid with a sling.) It goes – “Relationships between people ought to be free — mutuality and consent are both ethical and theological principles.”

First Story:

A few years back – prep-pandemic – I  attended ten days of working conferences for religious professionals. One part of those conferences was primarily about having difficult conversations. How do we as leaders, how do we as religious people, have the difficult conversations around the big topics: money, race, death and sexuality. I was also asked to lead part of the workshops around race, identity and racism. Not surprisingly, the week started with the comparatively easy (I kid) topic of money, and (not surprisingly) saved sexuality for the last day.

One of the premises of the conference was that we needed to understand our frameworks around each of these topics if we’re to have the difficult conversations within our communities of faith. Where we start from, when we’re thinking about race or death, has as big (or even bigger) an impact than any set of facts or subset of knowledge on the topics. What’s our story about money or sexuality, and how do we tell it? One of the odd stand-outs for a very unusual conference for religious professionals, was realizing that if something happened to me, my husband would have a hard time figuring out where all of my investments, or retirement portfolios are, where my bank accounts are and so on. That’s something we’re still working on fixing, but it taught me something about myself that I hadn’t quite realized: Part of me is still living, in some ways, a story of individuality.

“Relationships between people ought to be free — mutuality and consent are both ethical and theological principles.”

Don’t get me wrong; almost everything that impacts our household goes through a rigorous schedule of fretting, and arguing – like any very happily married couple. But there are some habits of the single years, that I haven’t quite put to rest – even now 8 years into married life: shared documentation, shared calendars, and negotiating where we go for Thanksgiving and Christmas – all still trip us up – even after 8 years married and 13 years together. How do we start a shared google calendar – has become a seasonal refrain that despite all my tech savvy, I find extremely onerous. Individuality runs deep in our culture, and it’s a hard practice to unlearn – and I don’t think I’m alone here on this.

Another side of individuality is isolation. We all live in isolation at some time in our lives, even if we’re surrounded by people all the time. (And we don’t have to be alone to be in isolation.) It’s another story we tell ourselves: how alone are we…We can become most aware of it when we’re going through times of crisis – whether or not we have all the communal support we can ever dream of – how we relate to crisis can determine if we tell our story as individuals, or tell our story as part of something larger. Do we fight that struggle with cancer as lone warriors, or do we let ourselves lean on our friends and neighbors for moral support, even knowing still that we are the ones that have to go in for chemo? When our relationships wither, do we reach out, or do we hunker down? Having good friends and family – even when we have many of them – doesn’t necessarily mean we let them in when the road gets rough. Sometimes that might be the right choice – only you know that answer for yourself – but sometimes we think isolation is the best choice – even when it’s not.

Second Story:

I was listening to an interview with a comedian some of you may know, Patton Oswalt. He was being interviewed on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. At the time - He’s a man in his mid to late forties with a 7 year old daughter. His wife suddenly died in her sleep – there was no warning. She had been working very long hours and he finally convinced her to stay home and get some sleep; there was an accidental and very tragic dose of sleeping medication…. He’s been very public with his grief, and he took a long break from his work in comedy. Something he said about grief in the interview really struck me as true. “If you don’t talk about it, then grief really gets to setup and fortify its positions inside of you and begin to immobilize you. But the more you talk, the more you expose it to the air and to the light, then grief doesn’t get the chance to organize itself, and maybe you can move on better and easier…

…[grief] can’t be remedied, it must be endured – and it’s the endurance, oddly enough, that becomes the remedy.”

He goes on to talk about how he’s found that not only has talking about his grief with others helped him to move forward with his life as an individual and then as a widowed dad of a young child, but he’s learned that his sharing has helped others in extreme grief find avenues for healing. Speaking our stories has a healing power that can help us get back to living more fully after times of great loss.

“Relationships between people ought to be free — mutuality and consent are both ethical and theological principles.”

Third Story:

This reminds me of the old folk saying about twigs. Take any twig you find and try to snap it. It’ll break pretty easily. Put that same twig into a bundle with other twigs, and it gets harder and harder to break. I think when we separate ourselves too long from one another, from community or friends, we can become like that singular twig. Life’s pressures can become too much; grief or loss can become too much – and we don’t have to do it alone.

Alone or together – the story we tell about our life changes us. British fiction author Terry Pratchett said, “People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.” Well, we are a people of story. Most of my sermons start by telling another type of story – basically parables of daily living. For us, we don’t have to imagine being a people of story as much as consciously realize how deeply stories impact our lives and our living.

What are the stories you come back to year after year? What stories do we raise our kids on, and why? Which stories defined your character, or pull on your heart strings, or get you in the gut when they resonate with what’s happening in your life? As Pratchett writes, people are shaped by stories – we should choose our stories wisely. And we should choose the stories we tell about our lives just as wisely. What negative story do you choose to try to convince yourself is true about you? I spoke about separation and isolation before, but there are many other stories we tell about ourselves that harm more than help.

Fourth Story:

Some time ago, a colleague of mine was sharing a story about their congregation on Facebook. (I have permission to share this here.) He wrote, “One thing that I never expected to be quite so good at – helping calm really little kids down who are missing their parents. I wonder if this sort of inherent knowledge came when I was hired as a DRE, or if it was there all along.” On one level, there’s a story we all tell about our capacity to be in the world; what we’re good at, what we’re bad at, and what our roles are in our lives. But on the spiritual level, his story reminded me about the central purpose of communities of faith – and I don’t say this flippantly. All religious life is essentially helping one another struggle through our separation anxiety: our sense of separation from the Holy, from God, from one another. In times of grief, we remember those who have died in our lives. In times of change, we hold one another’s hands to remember we’re not alone. In the every day, or maybe for you only a few times in your life, we struggle with whether there is meaning and depth to this world; whether we’re part of something greater. For some the answer is community, or compassion, or justice-building. For the more mystical among us, I believe we’re never truly alone – but despair sets in when we forget that truth. Religious life is helping one another through our struggle with separation and isolation, through grief and loss. And the other side of that struggle is a question of the spirit – and an answer that draws us back out – again and again.

“Relationships between people ought to be free — mutuality and consent are both ethical and theological principles.”

Fifth Story:

Let me try out today a new metaphor: The parable of the Chili Bake. I hope this will explain all things. Social media is sometimes an odd place to be in my friendship circle. One mid-western colleague was talking about the sounds and looks of horror in a NYC deli when she asked to put Lox on a Cinnamon Raisin Bagel, and further out west,  a bunch of my Texas friends and colleagues were talking half-seriously (but very half-seriously) about Texas state politics and a recent accusation that a certain candidate (who will remain nameless here) puts beans in his Chili. There were gasps, and comments of, ‘well this is getting dirty now isn’t it.’ Then enters the Jersey-boy/New Yorker and I slowly raise my proverbial hand and ask, “If you don’t put beans in your chili, what do you put in your chili.” Insert more gasps.

Two Texas colleagues came to my rescue and explained what their bean-less chili is – how to my Italian ear what they were describing was actually just spiced sauce – no, no, no, there’s too much meat in there for it to be sauce. Which then sounded like they were talking about hamburger helper, which produced more gasps and not a few sighs. No, no, no, it’s straight beef, not ground meat. And on, and on. I recall saying that, “Wow, it’s like we use the same words but they have different meanings.”

Then one saint stepped in and performed what I will call “Chili exegesis.” Rev. Joanne Fontaine Crawford.

She explained: “The Authenticity answer: chili is cowboy food. On long cattle drives, you didn’t have room to carry a lot of supplies. Certainly not beans. 

Texan Foodie answer: a properly made chili has no need of beans. It is not like what passes for chili in other places just minus the beans. It is usually slow cooked for hours and is full of chiles, spices, and good meat (not ground beef, shudder) and you want to taste that without the “filler” of beans. In a proper bowl of Texas red, you can stick your wooden spoon in the middle of the pot, and it will stand up straight with no help, because it’s that thick. 

Practical answer: in Texas, chili isn’t just one dish. Chili is an ingredient. It’s thinned and poured over enchiladas, thick and added to hot dogs, used to make frito pie, etc. You eat beans on the side.””[1]

It’s almost as if we are using the same words but they mean different things. And they’re both still chili; just a chili that addresses the answers for the people in the place where they are (whether that answer be cowboy food, an ingredient in another more elaborate dish, or a entrée of its own.) As my theology professor, Dr. James Cone, would often repeat, “Theology is how we make and understand meaning in the world.” Each community, each people, is going to wrestle with the answers and questions before them in their own way. (And yes, it’s still wrong to put Lox on a Cinnamon Raisin Bagel.)

“Relationships between people ought to be free — mutuality and consent are both ethical and theological principles.”

I made a choice in this sermon to focus on the everyday side of this second stone of James Luther Adams. A bunch of stories about everyday togetherness, mutuality and daily free exchange of ideas, stories and life. Consent would be a series of sermons all on its own. And we’ll get there over the years together. But I made the choice to focus on the everyday – right-relationship side – of this message because we all could benefit from honing in on how to rebuild that when we don’t all see the world the same way. Here in Metro NY, that is our next goal. Rebuilding relationships that understand what mutuality means when we don’t all understand the world in the same way; because we simply don’t – as the news daily reminds us.