Peter Brydon “The Cosmic Connection”
Good morning. My name is Peter Brydon, and I am one of your three Lay Chaplains. Along with my colleagues, Margaret Rao, and Margaret Kohr, I am privileged to participate in the worship service this morning. Our theme for this service is the circle of life. At this time of year we draw a line in the circle of the seasons and call it the end of one year and the beginning of another. So today we will take a look at circles and cycles, at beginnings and endings and at continuing connections.
Last week our minister the Rev. Shawn Newton quoted Albert Einstein saying, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Until retirement, I spent my career as a high school science teacher, and I think for most of that time, I lived my life according to Einstein’s first sentence – that nothing is a miracle. But let me tell you how I began to see some of my science lessons as miracles. I don’t remember when it was I first heard the reading from our hymnal # 530. It is by Robert T. Weston, and it starts, “Out of the stars in their flight, out of the dust of eternity, here have we come, stardust and sunlight, mingling through time and through space.” My first response was to its lovely poetic expression. But later on it reads, “Out of the stars, rising from rocks and the sea, kindled by sunlight on earth, arose life….. Out of the sea to the land, out of the shallows came ferns. Out of the sea to the land, up from darkness to light, rising to walk and to fly, out of the sea trembled life.”
And then I thought, “That’s exactly what I teach in my classroom! I go to a church that celebrates these very science concepts!” I certainly was excited by that idea – and it helped me to feel even more at home in this congregation.
But I left out a line – I think my eye skipped over it back then, but later I started to pay attention to it. Let me reread that quote properly: “Out of the stars, rising from rocks and the sea, kindled by sunlight on earth, arose life.
Ponder this thing in your heart; ponder with awe:
Out of the sea to the land, out of the shallows came ferns.
Out of the sea to the land, up from darkness to light,
Rising to walk and to fly, out of the sea trembled life.”
“Ponder this thing in your heart; ponder with awe.”
Only when I began to think of the reading as a whole – the formation of the universe in the big bang, the formation of the solar system and the earth, and 4 billion years of the evolution of life on this planet, an evolution which started with the tiniest bacteria, some of whose descendants persist to this day, an evolution which produced gigantic dinosaurs, now long since gone, an evolution which has produced beautiful green hummingbirds and the colourful flowers which depend on them for pollination – only then did I realize that I had missed the miracle. Maybe as a Science teacher I was pretty good at taking miracles and turning them into chalk dust. Here’s another miracle – in some ways it really is the circle of life. First the chalk-dust version: The chloroplast in a green plant can take in six molecules of CO2 and six molecules of H2O and with the aid of sunlight turn them into a molecule of glucose and 6 molecules of oxygen. An animal can eat that plant to get the glucose, breathe in the six molecules of oxygen, release the stored energy and return six molecules of CO2 and six molecules of H2O to the environment for the plant to use again. Did you get all that – there’ll be a test during coffee hour.
But this is how it happened in this congregation. Some time ago, Larry Wulff announced that in his next life he is coming back as a sunflower. I wanted to tell him two somewhat contradictory things: first of all, don’t hurry, Larry, you’re doing really well in this life. The second thing is why wait for your next life? You can be a sunflower right now. Just go and stand in front of one and breathe! In fact, because we are continually passing molecules back and forth with the plant world, we are all sunflowers right now, and the sunflowers are us. That for me is another miracle. So:
“Ponder this thing in your heart, life up from sea:
Eyes to behold, throats to sing, mates to love.
Life from the sea, warmed by sun, washed by rain,
life from within, giving birth, rose to love.
This is the wonder of time; this is the marvel of space; out of the
stars swung the earth; life upon earth rose to love. This is the marvel of life, rising
to see and to know; Out of your heart, cry wonder:
sing that we live.”
Margaret Rao “New Beginnings: The Meaning and Purpose of A Child Dedication”
Peter spoke to us of the circle of life in terms of our intimate and intricate connection to the cosmos.
My story this morning speaks to the human family connection in the great circle of life; specifically, a most joyous and relatively rare occasion, at least for us lay chaplains, the Child Dedication. A Child Naming or Dedication always brings to mind for me the words of a poem by Sophia Lyon Fahs, beloved Unitarian Universalist, children’s religious educator; “Each night a child is born, is a holy night – a time for singing, a time for wondering, a time for worshipping”.
Except on this particular occasion it was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning and our normally nondescript library/chapel was miraculously transformed into a beautiful worship space for a sacred moment in time. The sun sparkled through the stained glass windows and onto a side table where a shimmering bowl of water, a shiny glass vase holding a single red rose and a slim white candle sat. The proud parents and godparents stood just to the right of this resplendent scene while the four grandparents, plus stepgrandmother sat to the left.
In between, and bouncing from knee to knee and side to side of the room, were the boisterous young grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
Younger and older voices intermingled in a rapidfire exchange of English, French and Portuguese, as both sides of the family hailed all the way from Montreal to mark this important milestone.
This extended family was both thrilled and thankful to have found a welcoming and suitably solemn environment for such an occasion.
A hush settled over the room as the candle was lit. Five month old Mathias Almeida-Doelle smiled and cooed, as if on cue, as all eyes fell on his bright face. From the candlelight to the baby’s lit smile, we became witnesses to the birth of the light and the miracle of new life.
“Each night a child is born is a holy night. Fathers and mothers feel glory in the wondrous sight of life beginning”.
The ceremony commenced with the welcoming of the newborn child into our midst and into the larger community. Continuing in a more serious vein, our words spoke of the responsibility adults bear for the caring and nurturing of all children. The inherent worth and dignity of every person, our first principle, is the foundation upon which we build our commitment to one another. Finally, we dedicated this child to the highest ideals of truth and love. Weighty words for a lightweight bundle of energy but fitting for the historic gathering of the clans.
Thinking back to our own childhood, perhaps we were not all privileged to receive a formal and public child dedication, baptism, bis, christening, or initial rite by any other name. Not that we would have any clear memories of our own significant early life passage. But this is not the main point of a child dedication. The dedication ‘per se’ refers to the grown-ups’ dedication, to the spiritual nourishment and growth of the child.
As individuals, as a community and as a society, it is good to know that it’s never too late to dedicate and to re-dedicate ourselves to the all-important task of nurturing the next generation of responsible and caring members of society.
Each and every Sunday that we meet here together is, in fact, an opportunity to do so. What memories are we creating right here and right now for our children and our youth, within and without the walls of our congregation?
In this intergenerational religious community we are all seekers and teachers together. As a past participant in Children’s Chapel in Shaw Hall, I was taught both in word and gesture that, “This is the church of the open mind, the caring heart and the helping hands”.
In the presence of a child, we are offered the gift of our own childhood again, a chance to become reacquainted with our own “inner child” and to the children in our midst. Together, we make meaning of our lives as we live our questions and answers into being.
“And so the children come. They ask: When or how will this new life end? Or will it ever end? Each night a child is born is a holy night”.
Let us continue to open ourselves to the child within and the children amongst us.
Margaret Kohr “Reflecting on the End of Things”
Funerals, and in particular memorial services, are not just to remember the dead but to comfort the living. My mother’s funeral did neither.
When my mother died in June 1970, we knew that because she was well known and well loved by so many, her funeral needed to be somewhere that would hold a lot of people. Although we did not go to church – my parents choosing to live a life based on principles rather than dogma -- my mother had been raised Anglican and my grandmother and aunt still attended a large church in our neighbourhood. It seemed logical to hold the service there. The minister who conducted the funeral didn’t know my mother nor did he attempt to meet with us – her husband and daughters, to find out who she really was or to talk to us about our loss. The funeral was a standard liturgy and could have been for anyone. There was nothing that reflected my mother – her warmth and wit -- and there was certainly nothing to comfort us.
In fact the only part of the service that was truly representative of her was the coffin. My father and I had gone to buy it shortly before she died. It was important that we honour her as best we could. So we chose the cheapest casket: plywood covered with grey felt. While the funeral director tried desperately to steer us towards the elaborate brass trimmed oak and mahogany caskets we knew that my mother would really roll over in her grave if we spent that kind of money for a box to bury her in. She was a founding member of the Canadian Association of Consumers and had campaigned strongly against the high cost of funerals – the least we could do was make sure we didn’t fall into that particular consumer trap. So there at the front of the packed church was the casket in all its humble glory – a grey box – the only thing that kept me centered as the words drifted around me. In hindsight, I realize that others at the funeral were probably shocked at what must have seemed like disrespect, without realizing it was the only authentic aspect of the service.
In last month’s Chaplain’s Chat, I confessed that I was relieved that I had not yet had to conduct a memorial service – that in spite of the courses I had taken and the excellent mentorship of fellow chaplains I was still feeling doubtful about my ability to do a good job. After all, a memorial or funeral is the most intimate service Lay Chaplains perform for the community. It is our gift of compassionate outreach to people who are looking for some meaningful service to help them through this dark time. We are meeting with families and friends as they are most vulnerable in their grief. There may be anger or confusion or unmanageable sorrow. There may be conflict between family members, each of whom has had their own relationship with the deceased as to the way the service should be done. In a very short period we are given a glimpse of the deceased from which we hope to create a service that provides a full and honest picture of their life. And of course a service that comforts those left behind. Could I do that? I just wasn’t sure. And then, inevitably, I got that phone call … a woman dying of cancer wanted a female Unitarian Lay Chaplain to perform her memorial service. Her husband was spending all his time at her bedside but her two sons could meet with me…. The details were like déjà vu. Not only was this woman the same age as my mother when she died but she had the same kind of cancer. She had two young adult sons who were losing her too soon and a husband who needed to be with her to the end. My heart went out to them. My doubts vanished. I knew I wanted to give them what I didn’t get – a service that honoured all that this woman had been in her life; a service that acknowledged the pain of those left behind; a service that reminded them of the joys they had shared that would be with them forever; a service that gave them comfort. It was as if by doing this I could complete something unfinished in my own life – how unexpected are the gifts of Lay Chaplaincy! My meeting with her sons was very moving for me – they were caught between sorrow of losing their mother and relief that her suffering would soon be over. How well I understood this place of conflicting emotions. We talked about that and then moved into their memories and stories of her unique and quirky qualities. When they left I had a good idea of their mother and her no nonsense personality. I met the rest of the family – her husband, mother and siblings, at the funeral parlour. They had lined the walls with picture collages of her life and each took me from one to another explaining their significance. The pictures and stories guided my choices for the components of the service: the words of welcome, candle lighting, benedictions and closings.
In an ironic parallel, because so many people were expected at the service, arrangements were made to hold it in a United church that none of the family attended. The church minister who was required by church policy to participate in some way, read the words that I had selected for the call to worship and to extinguish the candle. It was a good experience for both of us. The service went well – the emotions were palpable. People laughed and cried and held each other. This is what I would have wanted when my mother died. This is what I want when I die. This is what we all want: to be remembered well and to know that those we leave behind will have some solace.
My mother’s death was marked by a church ritual that could have been about anyone. As Unitarian Universalists we have a different approach— one that does not focus on the uncertain comfort of the hereafter but the certain comfort of the here and now. Our funerals and memorial services recognise the individual and acknowledge the pain of those left behind. And as UUs we have the opportunity to influence the way we are remembered. We can do more than just think about what we would like in a service but we can influence its creation by writing out what we want. In fact Shawn has a form that can be filled out and left with him in confidence – an insurance policy, as it were, for a good service. In fact you could even write your own eulogy – after all who knows you better. Believe me it would be a welcome gift for anyone charged with that awesome task. And when your favourite hymns are sung people will feel your hand on their shoulder – they will remember you.
As for me and my mother — well, as I was writing this I realised it was not too late to have a meaningful memorial service for her . This summer when my sister is up at our cottage we’ll gather round a bonfire – just the two of us with our husbands and children. We’ll share memories and we’ll cry a little. I have almost finished her eulogy.
