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<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/div>\nSermon given Sunday, December 13, 2020 for Magic ValleyUnitarian Universalist Fellowship<\/a> Zoom Worship Service<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n I am so grateful to be here with you virtually Like many of us during this year of global For many years, the one constant in my life has Then COVID-19 came\u2014and before we get too far, I Here\u2019s what my calendar looked like in the last On Saturday, March 7, I attended the Depressed That evening, I attended the Idaho Democratic On Sunday, March 8, I attended what would be On Monday, March 9, my 48th<\/sup> birthday, On Tuesday, March 10, I hosted a Mayan A week later, we would learn that someone in On Wednesday, March 11 my students were That night, I attended what would be my last in And here\u2019s why the pandemic with all its chaos So in desperation, I prayed to whatever gods On Thursday, March 12, I taught what would be So the choir sang for us instead. The director The music that night was exquisite, and tears ran On Friday, March 13\u2014Friday the thirteenth On Saturday, March 14, the big Latter-day Saint And on Sunday, March 15, the gods answered my desperate What could this mean? At first, we all thought And just like that, I had the one thing I could So I sewed masks. Like many of you, I baked\u2014a During my walks, the hymn my son\u2019s choir sang \u201cCome and Come and And I wondered, What is so hard about stillness Some people turn to religion in times like Or our thoughts may turn to the Jewish Rabbi Have you climbed mountains seeking something? I In yoga, the hardest posture for me is This time of enforced quiet has definitely not been I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m taking But I\u2019m also focusing on my breath. At its In the stillness, the second hard lesson I On my daily walks last spring, I began to In the traditional Christian liturgical (Fun and slightly sacrilegious fact from Life But seriously, when you think about it, isn\u2019t hope My children and my students keep asking me when In mental health advocacy, we have a saying: But most importantly, if we\u2019ve learned the Closing Song Bothell High School<\/a> “Come and Find the Quiet Center” arranged by Kirk Marcy<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Or my son\u2019s Sonous<\/a> choir directed by Seth McMullen: at minute marker 28:10-30:35\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\ntoday and look forward to the time when we can be together again in physical
\nspace. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts about this
\nmonth\u2019s theme: stillness.
\npandemic and tremendous change, I have begun to categorize my life into the
\nBefore Time and the Now. As some background, I\u2019m a mother of four children (two
\nin college, two still in high school), a wife, a community college English
\nprofessor, and a mental health advocate.
\nbeen chaos. I\u2019m betting more than a few of you can relate. What was your life
\nlike in the Before Time?
\nhave a confession to make. The pandemic was definitely all my fault. No,
\nreally! Let me explain.
\nweek before everything changed.
\nCake Shop fundraiser for Boise\u2019s Interfaith Sanctuary homeless shelter and
\nconnected with my dear friend and fellow mental health advocate Valerie Van Gelder
\nand her sister and equally dear friend Jodi Peterson, director of Interfaith
\nSanctuary. My children and I had baked \u201cdepressed Oreos\u201d for the event\u2014sad
\nlooking dark chocolate cookies with grey cream cheese frosting filling, but
\nwhen you bit into them, you saw a rainbow of cheery pinks and blues and yellows,
\nreminding us that mental illness doesn\u2019t define who we are.
\nParty\u2019s gala. When I bought my tickets, I had been over the moon at the thought
\nof hearing Mayor Pete, then ecstatic over the prospect of Elizabeth Warren,
\nthen when they both cancelled, I was just happy to attend and catch up with good
\nfriends. Remember when we could hang out together? took my last groupies that
\nnight, and now, it seems like another world to me when I look at those photos.
\nWe were all so physically close! None of us was wearing a mask! (It was a
\nwonderful night).
\nthe last in-person service of the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. There
\nwere murmurs then about COVID\u2014cases popping up in Seattle and New York\u2014but here
\nin Idaho, nothing seemed out of place just yet.
\nI taught my usual English classes at the College of Western Idaho, and my
\nsweetheart took me out to Rice, one of my favorite Asian restaurants, for what
\nwould turn out to be my last supper inside a restaurant in 2020.
\narchaeologist for a guest lecture at the College of Western Idaho for my survey
\nof world mythology students. More than 30 students and community members
\nattended. We passed around a heavy rubber ball used in pok a tok, the traditional
\nMayan ball game that figures heavily in the Mayan creation story.
\nthe building that night with us had tested positive for COVID 19.
\nbeginning to ask questions\u2014and I did not have answers. I blithely told them not
\nto worry\u2014that if we went online, I had years of online teaching experience and
\nwould be able to support them during the few weeks we would not be able to
\nattend class together.
\nperson choir rehearsal at BUUF\u2014and realized to my horror that I had
\naccidentally double booked myself for the coming March 15 Sunday services.
\nis my fault. I had said yes to playing for BUUF\u2019s choir and to playing the
\norgan at my children\u2019s Mormon church\u2014at exactly the same time! Reverend Sara, the
\nmusic director, and I began a frantic flurry of emails trying to come up with a
\nnew order of service that would allow me to play at one church before racing up
\nthe road to the other one. But no matter how we looked at it, the logistics problem
\nseemed insoluble. It looked like I would have to let someone down and accept
\nthe consequences of my poor planning.
\nmay be that somehow I could get out of the mess I had created for myself. And
\nhere we are.
\nmy last in-person classes\u2014the last time I stepped onto CWI\u2019s campus–until the
\nFall semester of 2020. That night, I attended my son\u2019s last minute choir
\nconcert at Northwest Nazarene University. His choir had been chosen from all
\nthe high school choirs in the Pacific Northwest to perform at the American
\nChoral Directors Association annual meeting\u2014which had abruptly been cancelled
\nearlier that week because of fears about the pandemic.
\njoked (with foresight, it turns out) that it was probably the last time singing
\nlike this would be legal for a while. In case you haven\u2019t heard, it turns out
\nchoir is pretty much the perfect superspreader event.
\ndown my cheeks as these high school students whose entire world was about to
\nchange began with their signature piece, a hymn called \u201cCome and Find the Quiet
\nCenter.\u201d We\u2019ll come back to that hymn in a minute, but for now, let\u2019s continue
\nthrough the last week of my Before Time.
\n(haha). I learned that my college had decided to start Spring Break early and
\nextend the break for three weeks. That three-week break turned into five
\nmonths\u2014and while I have returned to campus to teach a few in person classes,
\nwearing a mask and socially distanced, of course, most of my colleagues are
\nstill working remotely.
\nmental health conference I had been looking forward to attending, featuring former
\nBrigham Young University quarterback Tanner Mangum, was cancelled. That
\nafternoon, I went to the fabric store and purchased cotton prints and flannel
\nbacking to make masks. It was the last time I would set foot in any store other
\nthan a grocery store for a while.
\nprayer. I was no longer double booked because everything was cancelled! Everything
\nthat day, and the next day, and the next, stretching into months, was cancelled.
\n
\nit would be a few weeks. Then we thought, maybe a few months. Then we realized
\nthe awful truth: 2020 was cancelled.
\nnever find enough of: time.
\nlot\u2014and thought about planting my garden. I developed a daily practice of
\ntaking long solitary walks around my neighborhood.
\nwould often fill my mind. I want to share the words with you.
\nFind the Quiet Center\u201d by Shirley Erena Murray
\nfind the quiet center in the crowded life we lead.
Find the room for hope to enter, find the frame where we are freed.
Clear the chaos and the clutter, clear our eyes that we can see
all the things that really matter, be at peace and simply be.
\nanyway? Why is it so hard to \u201cbe at peace and simply be\u201d? The answer is not an
\neasy one. In the sudden enforced quiet, we\u2014all of us\u2014have been forced to face
\nthe truth of our own mortality. We might get sick and die, or we might not. Our
\nloved ones might get sick and die, or they might not. But we all have to face
\nthe truth: none of us gets out of here alive. We are powerless over life and
\ndeath.
\nthese. We may think of Jesus calming the wind, the waves, and his disciples\u2019
\nfears with a simple command: \u201cPeace, be still.\u201d Or we may think of the Biblical
\nseventh day, the Sabbath, a day created specifically for rest and contemplation
\nof the Divine.
\ntradition, especially during this week of Hanukkah. Speaking of another sacred day,
\nYom Kippur, the \u201cSabbath of Sabbaths\u201d and holiest day in the Jewish calendar, <\/span>Rabbi Marc Margolius<\/a> of the West End
\nSynagogue in New York City wrote
\nthat stillness is \u201c<\/span>the quintessence of Yom Kippur itself: the necessity
\nfor human beings to be, rather than to do; the necessity to be still, rather
\nthan to speak; the necessity to seek out the authentic and eternal, not the
\nartificial or temporal.\u201d
\nMargolius further observes that \u201cSome of Judaism\u2019s most powerful religious
\nmetaphors are internal; they invite us to seek God not atop a mountain or in
\nheaven, but within ourselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhave. But these days, I am spending more time seeking God within myself.
\nsavasana, corpse pose, where we lie silent and still on our mats. It\u2019s also the
\nmost essential-part of my daily practice: to quiet my busy brain, to say
\n\u201cPeace: Be Still.\u201d I have found that as I focus on being instead of thinking or
\ndoing, I can feel myself connected to the world in marvelous ways, experiencing
\nwhat it means to exist in the glorious eternal now.
\nall fun and games though. In the stillness, I learned some hard things about
\nmyself. I learned first that I was tired. We are all so tired.<\/i> Living
\nwith mundane, quotidian existential dread has a way of doing that to us. From
\npandemics to politics, our poor limbic systems are stuck in panic mode.
\nantidepressants and doing tons of telehealth therapy to cope with even little things
\nlike grocery shopping right now. As a mental health advocate, I know there\u2019s no
\nshame in this. These times are hard, and I\u2019m grateful that there is help, and
\nthat I can access it.
\nsimplest, breathing is the essence of existence. And as we breathe, we can \u201cClear
\nthe chaos and the clutter\u201d so that we can see what really matters to us. As I
\nhave seen what really matters to me, I have experienced a profound sense of
\ngratitude.
\nlearned was that any sense of control is an illusion. In the Before Time, I
\nthought that I was the master of my own fate. I tricked myself with Outlook
\ncalendars and social media and other tools of modern existence into believing
\nthat I could control what happened to me or to the people I loved. I can\u2019t. You
\ncan\u2019t. To \u201cfind the frame where we are freed,\u201d we must first free ourselves
\nfrom this illusion of control.
\ndevelop what the poet Amy Clampitt called \u201ca limitless interiority\u201d where
\nanything seemed possible. I watched ducklings grow from balls of yellow fuzz to
\nmature confident adults. I watched buds swell on tree branches and slowly
\nunfold their petals to the sun. Every day, a few more blossoms opened until the
\ntrees were splashes of pink and white against the blue spring sky. Those buds
\nwere hope. I watched as the blossoms faded, the trees greened then turned to
\ngold. The leaves carpeted the sidewalks, and still we waited.
\ncalendar, December is a time of waiting. During advent, Christians wait each
\nyear for the birth of their god in human form.
\nHacker Joel Cunningham<\/a>\u2014if you buy an advent calendar the day after Christmas
\nthis year, it will count down the days to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris\u2019s
\ninauguration).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfor a better world, in its simplest form, at the heart of religion? We are
\ncalled, all of us, in this season of waiting, of hope, of light, to \u201cCome and
\nfind our<\/i> quiet center.\u201d
\nwe will return to normal. I have good tidings for them\u2014and for you: We won\u2019t.
\n\u201cNormal is a setting on the washing machine.\u201d If we\u2019re lucky, we\u2019ll emerge from
\nthis time of stillness with something important to say and do. When our eyes are
\nopened to the things that really matter\u2014to social justice and equity for our
\nBlack and Brown brothers and sisters, to stewardship for our fragile earth, to
\nthe future we want to leave our children and their children\u2014we will \u201cfind the
\nroom for hope to enter.\u201d
\nlessons of these challenging times, we\u2019ll enter our new world, whatever it
\nlooks like, secure in the knowledge of how to return to our quiet centers, \u201cto
\nbe at peace, and simply be.\u201d That peace is my wish for myself and for all of
\nyou, in this season of waiting, of stillness, of hope, joy, and light.