Contemplating Courage

There are a few newcomers here this morning. So I’d like to start with just a sentence or two about the house of worship you have entered. We are an Interfaith church. All are welcome. It is not that we give up our own faith when we enter this sanctuary. It is NOT that we give up our own differing, deeply held and very personal beliefs when we walk through that door. It is rather that we covenant to respect and to honor: both the differing faiths and beliefs of all who worship here, and those of our brothers and sisters beyond these walls. We look at the universe and our world and say there is no one “right” spiritual answer; that all of our spiritual traditions point us towards the imperative to love and respect one another.

So much for the plug. You can find membership information, just inside the front door.

Every month this year we have been meditating on a universal value shared by our First Peoples. This month that value is courage. It seems singularly appropriate. Courage comes in many, many forms. And today, it is much too apparent that we need them all.

We face a world in turmoil and hurt. The cold war I grew up with has ended: replaced by wars of economics, power, religion. We face global warming: the extinction of thousands of species, perhaps even our own. We face our own country: divided by race, ethnicity, religion, gender, power. And, of course, we face the individual and very personal hurts and trials that each of us, individually, will meet in the course of a lifetime.

Faced with all this, what are we to do?

Many have seen this world of hurt and turned inward. It’s just too much. Some of us become bitter – and live in that world of bitterness and anger. I would submit that in this world that we live it takes courage to enjoy the gift of life.

I would like to tell you of a friend. She has ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease. She at one time sang in the choir up north. Then she needed a cane for balance. Then she had to sit when everyone else stood to sing. Then she had to quit choir and needed a wheel chair. Then she needed help moving and eating. Now she needs oxygen four times a day. But she loves and lives every moment of her life. And it’s infectious. She’s a delight to be around. She takes joy from the play of squirrels, from the sun on the water, from guacamole … from life. And she teaches me about courage every time I see her.

It takes courage as well to remain engaged with this frustrating world. Many of us say, I can’t do anything about the world. I need to take care of myself. If we do that our world becomes small and thus has the illusion of being manageable. I look out for number one…and maybe my family, or even a friend or two … if I’m really broad minded. I feel there is nothing I can do, so I count my value in things. Toys. Food. That, indeed, is the consumer culture in which we live – a culture, I submit, that encourages us to give up and just indulge, because, as the TV tells us “we deserve it.” It takes courage to say no. It takes courage to say I may not live to see the outcome I desire; but I remain committed to nudging the world in that direction. And who knows? A lot of people nudging together just might make the difference.

If not now, then for our kids. We are taught from our first commercial that anything worthwhile must come immediately. It takes courage to be in it for the long haul.

So where does church come into this? Oh, come on! You knew I was going to slip church into this somewhere! Right?

Why do we come here on a Sunday morning? One reason is to recharge, if you will, our courage batteries. The courage both to engage the world AND to enjoy the world.

It is the courage we heard sung of so beautifully by our choir just a little while ago. “I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there.”

The courage both to engage AND to enjoy the world.

It’s not always easy. And it can lead to a bit of chaos. One of my favorite quotes is from T.S. Eliot I have it on my wall at home. It captures the dilemma of that dichotomy. He wrote, “When I arise in the morning, I am torn by the twin desires to reform the world and to enjoy the world. This makes it difficult to plan my day.”

It does indeed. What Eliot hints at is that we need a balance. We need the courage to do both: to engage the world and to enjoy the world. Too much of one kind of courage or the other can distort our lives.

Some of us will see a magnificent old tree and in seeing that tree see only the dangers of clear-cutting, of unscrupulous development and perhaps global warming. We lack the courage to see the tree for itself, to enjoy the majesty and the beauty and the pure wonder it represents.

Some of us will see only the beauty of the tree, and the little spider-web that hangs from it. And it’s fall and perhaps the leaves are beginning to turn. We lack the courage to engage the world, to take the actions needed to ensure that our children and their children will be able to enjoy the incredible mystery of trees.

I will confess, that much of my life I have suffered under an over-abundance of engagement. I lacked the courage to let go. But I’m working on it. And I have loving friends who remind me rather bluntly from time to time just how far I still have to go.

We indeed need both kinds of courage; and in equal measure. If we can find that balance, we will indeed be blessed. We will be a blessing both to ourselves and to those around us.

So. What is the courage required of us, as practitioners of Interfaith? It is, I submit, the courage to stand up for what we believe. Not to be silent, not to avoid the subject, the courage to stand up for and articulate what we believe, and yet truly respect what the other person may believe. Not tolerate, not patronize. In Western culture particularly, this is something rather new: the courage to respect a belief that is not our own.

I submit to you this morning that that takes a huge amount of courage. Let us draw that courage from each other. Let us sustain each other. Let us nudge the world in a new direction. And let us enjoy our lives as we do.

May it be so.