Sermons
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A Question of Authority01/29/2012
Everybody Loves Whales - Blair
01/22/2012
Third and Sixteen - Blair
01/15/2012
Epiphany - James Walker
01/8/2012
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12/24/2011
Hannah, Mary and Elizabeth - Blair
12/18/2011
1-16-11 E Peratrovich
01/16/2011
1-16-11 Maggie Kuhn
01/16/2011
1-16-11 Martin Luther King, Jr.
01/16/2011
1-16-11 Anchorage, Alaska 2011
01/16/2011
For Whom the Bells Toll 12-26-10 O'Connell
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A Sign, Lord, Please Send a Sign 12-19-10 O'Connell
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My Dear Theophilus 12-5-10 O'Connell
12/5/2010
"Angels: They're Everywhere" 11-28-10 O'Connell
11/28/2010
"Baptism: God's Rite" O'Connell
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"Remembering Our Saints" O'Connell
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"The Word: Preach It" Rev. O'Connell 10-17-10
10/17/2010
"Creation: Ya Gotta Love It!"
10/10/2010
"Peace: Even with Infidels?"
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Rev. O'Connell 9-26-10 Lazarus: Who Is He For Us?
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Unfair! The Tale of the Sneaky Steward
09/19/2010
Jubilee: Roots & Wings
09/12/2010
"Repent! Or Words to that Effect" Rev. O'Connell
09/5/2010
Christian Brain, Peaceful Brain, Kate O'Dell
08/29/2010
I'd Still rather be Dancing! by Marcia Brumbaugh
08/27/2010
Everything Will Be All Right, Kathleen Bailey
08/15/2010
Three Rules for Parenting, Angela VerPloeg
08/1/2010
Meditation on a Word, Eric Johnson
07/25/2010
Sinning Into the Kingdom
04/18/2010
Adam Reconsidered
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Faith of the Father
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Desert Days
01/24/2010
Keeping Covenant: Worship on the Move
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The Tongue of Love
01/10/2010
One for All
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Bedtime Stories
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The Congregational Way
11/8/2009
"I'd Still rather be Dancing! by Marcia Brumbaugh"
"I'd Still Rather Be Dancing"
Marcia Brumbaugh
August 22, 2010
In late June, I stood up here during announcements and told you that while we
were in between our minister and our prospective interim minister, we needed to
fill the pulpit. I suggested that you all had stories to tell us about how in your own
way you have learned, in the beautiful words of Micah," to do justice, love
kindness, and walk humbly with your God." And I encouraged you to find a quiet
place in which to discover those words and to find the courage to stand up and
share them with us.
And many you have. In inspirational ways and words, you have stood up at this
pulpit and told us your story. I feel honored and humbled and deeply
appreciative that you have done so. I am proud to be a part of a congregation
where this is possible. Thank you.
And I'm up here today because I didn't think it was right for me to challenge you
as I did without challenging myself at the same time. I've done this only before,
seventeen years ago. Then, as many of you remember, John Bury was our Interim
Minister. I was Moderator. One of John's conditions when he accepted
employment was that he and I have lunch once a month to get to know each
other and to talk about the state of the church. I enjoyed these lunches very
much, and we did, in fact, get to know each other pretty well. After several
months, John began to challenge me to tell you my story. I think it took him over
a year before he was finally able to convince me that I had something to say that
people might actually be interested in.
The process of finding those words and sharing them was scary and ultimately
very rewarding. I didn't know exactly what I felt, what guided me, what helped
me walk with my God until I forced myself to give my feelings and ideas words.
Thank you, John.
So when I committed myself to talk this Sunday, I went back and read that old
sermon of mine, which I'd entitled "I'd Rather Be Dancing," primarily to ask
myself if I am still guided in the ways I was then. Had my ideas changed? And if
not, what more did I have to say?
Certainly, my life has changed significantly. When I talked to you 17 years ago, I
had just come out into the light after spending some years in a sometimes pretty
dark and challenging tunnel. This time, not only am I older - and not necessarily
wiser - but my dear husband Mark has entered my life and we have been happily
married for the last 13 ½ years. In so many important respects, life is easier now
because I have him to share life's joys and challenges with, because, in other
words, I have him to dance with.
As I read my old sermon, and filter its ideas through the screen of a happy
marriage and the challenges of growing older, I realize that what I had to say
seventeen years ago is even more important to me now. So I feel compelled to
share some of it with you again. In the highly unlikely possibility that any of you
out there might remember that first sermon, I apologize ahead of time if I bore
you. I promise to add some twists and some new ideas.
I love to dance. I'm not remarkably skilled, and I don't dance as often as I did
seventeen years ago, but I LOVE TO DANCE. I love the feeling of my body moving
in rhythm to lots of different kinds of music; I love the feeling of moving with
another person to that music. One day when I was dancing many years ago, I had
an epiphany. I realized that dancing was not only fun, it brought me joy, deep,
resounding joy. And I realized that when I was joyful, I couldn't help sharing that
joy with others. Let me tell you, when you're in a room or on a dance floor with a
whole lot of joyful people, that happiness feeds your spirit.
So it is natural that I would again enlist an oftenused metaphor, the dance, to
symbolize the ways in which we might face life as Christians. Let me give you a
couple of examples of this metaphor in song.
The first appears in a song written by a local folksinger named Libby Roderick
called "Dancing in Front of the Guns." Ellen and I sung it for you eons ago at
family camp. Some of the words to the song go like this:
We're facing the guns again,
We have faced them before,
Humanity's longing, after so many deaths,
For something more human than war.
But part of me whispers,
"Take your body and run away,
Leave the vision to somebody else,"
then I hear myself say
I'd rather be dancing
At the edge of my grave.
I rather be holding you close as we
March forward loving and brave.
I'd rather be singing
In the face of my fear.
I'd rather be dancing in front of the guns as long as I'm here.
To me, this song is more than an antiwar song. It is also a song about the ways in
which we chose to face the wounds within ourselves, or the conflicts that we
encounter in our personal lives. It is a song about acceptance and courage and
compassion and joy and laughter. It is a song about the dance that I'd like to talk
about today.
This dance is the dance which I believe Christ leads us in. Consider these words in
"Lord of the Dance":
Dance, then, wherever we may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, says he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
I'll lead you all in the dance says he.
What is the nature of this dance which Libby Roderick says she'd rather be
dancing at the edge of her grave? What is the nature of the dance which Christ, as
the Lord of the Dance, leads us in today as his followers? I'd like to suggest that
two of its components are joy and compassion.
Perhaps it doesn't surprise you that I believe the first component of this dance is
joy. Deb and Dennis recently suggested to us that an additional commandment
should be "Thou Shalt Rejoice." I couldn't agree more. I think we should throw
ourselves into whatever gives us joy - whether it is dancing, being outofdoors,
reading, playing baseball, eating vegetables, fishing, making quilts, being with
children, baking bread or standing on our head. And when you involve yourself
insomething that brings you great joy, I believe firmly that you are rejoicing. Watch
insomething that brings you great joy, I believe firmly that you are rejoicing. Watch
Fermen and Jeanette when they sing. Does anyone doubt that they are rejoicing?
I also believe that laughter and silliness can be a component of rejoicing. So I
suggest a corollary to Deb and Dennis' commandment: Thou shalt laugh, as hard
and as often as you can. And if you can get away with abject, harmless silliness,
as the children and I just did, Amen.
I'm sure Biblical scholars have a lot to say about what Jesus meant when he said
that we should become like children, when he said that to children belongs the
kingdom of heaven. Is it possible that Jesus meant, at least in part, that we should
laugh and experience and share joy as fully and unreservedly as does a child and
that by doing so we experience "the kingdom of heaven?"
I don't know how to explain what happens to us physiologically or psychologically
when we share laughter with another. I just know that we feel better, and that
we relax and bond. My dear friend Lisa Balivet and I bonded many years ago at
our church family camp when she taught us "Ruptasha." I am told Better Midler
once said, "If you make me laugh, you have a friend for life." Lisa, I'm yours.
I don't think there's any question that laughter can also help us heal. My sister is a
nurse who works in a pain management unit at Queen's Hospital in Honolulu
where she often treats people who are in chronic pain. In doing so, she has
discovered that laughter and humor not only eases their pain but actually helps
them to heal. So she has spread the word of her discovery in a couple of ways.
One is by creating character named Ivy Push who sits in on a portable commode
in a supply closet when her shift ends and talks to God. Ivy has also talked to a lot
of doctors and nurses at medical conferences all over the United States.
The other thing my sister has done has been to create a nonprofit business which
provides to hospitals who subscribe an everchanging collection of healthy and
funny videoed skits she calls "The Chuckles Network." Patients in these hospitals
can then watch the Chuckles channel on their television. And laugh. And,
hopefully, heal.
I think my sister named her business after our father. His name was Charles, and
people called him the usual derivations of that name: Chuck, Charley. In his later
years, some friends and family began to call him "Chuckles" because he loved to
laugh. He often said he didn't care what people called him as long as it wasn't
late to dinner. He knew that was an old, perhaps stale joke, and that fact just
made it funnier for him. My father's laughter was infectious: he laughed so long
and hard that soon everyone in the room was laughing with him. Ultimately, we
were all on the floor, holding our sides, and crying. And my father took his humor
seriously. He knew that his humor not only amused but comforted people. His
humor was his gift and perhaps part of his personal ministry. The picture I have
here, of the laughing Jesus, is his gift to our church.
Although our Puritan ancestors did not agree, I obviously think there's a real place
for healthy humor and laughter in our religious celebrations. There is a genre in
the joke world called "church jokes." Do you remember the old joke from The
Family Circus comics strip? In this particular strip, the children in this family come
home from Sunday school and they tell their father that when they sang their
mommy's favorite hymn, they learned God's name. "You did? "asks their father.
"What is it?" "Andy," his son said firmly. And he proceeds to sing, "And he walks
with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own&." "Funny," says the
father, "I thought I was your mother's favorite him."
There are a lot of truly funny church jokes out there like that wonderful moldy
oldie. But I would like to suggest that place of joy and laughter in our celebrations
and in our faith has a much deeper importance. When we are joyful, when we
laugh together, when we rejoice, we celebrate our shared belief that God loves us
unconditionally, and that with that faith, we can fight the darkness. So, as I asked
the children, does God like it when we laugh? Does God like it when we are silly,
and especially, when we share laughter with others? Does God like it when we
use our humor as we dance with others to ease their pain? Perhaps especially
then.
That brings me to the second component of the dance that I'd like to talk about
today: compassion. I believe that we dance together when we share joy and
compassion. In "Lord of the Dance," Christ says he "danced on a Friday when the
sky turned black; it's hard to dance with the Devil on your back." While it may
seem obvious that it is hard to dance when "the sky turns black," when we are
wounded, when we are hurting and grieving and in anguish, I would also suggest6
that at those moments, we need the dance the most and, at the same time learn
the most about how to move in the dance.
Like all of you, I am sure, my life has had its challenges. The death of my mother
when she was 41 and I, 11; a tumultuous adolescence with a stepmother with
whom I seriously clashed; the end of a marriage for which I once had much hope;
several significant health issues; and sixteen years as a working, single parent all
gave me much need for the dance. How, under these circumstances, could I
believe Jesus' words: "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh?"
Laugh? Survive maybe. Endure, I'll do my best. But laugh?! Dance?!
I did come to laugh and dance again. The compassion and support of other
people made all the difference and were essential to my recovery.
There are many examples of this caring. They include my friend who daily rose at
5:30 am to run two miles with me in the empty California dawn during those early
months of my divorce; my eleven year old sixth grade daughter, Lesley, who set
aside her emerging adolescence to voluntarily get up a half an hour early to make
breakfasts and lunches for us so I could begin my long commute to law school at
7am,; the friend who, after my cancer surgery, kept me company every evening at
the hospital, sometimes bringing his work in to do at my bedside, because he
knew I was most afraid and alone during those hours. And then there was the
friend who came to see me at home when I was recovering from my mastectomy.
He handed a catalog page on which was a picture of a stylish woman's suit with a
simple jacket. He thought I might need it, he explained, and asked me, with a
straight face, whether I would be able to wear my doublebreasted suit coats any
more. If I busted a stitch when I howled with laughter, I didn't care.
The immeasurable support of these and many other loving people helped me to
accept the finality of my mother's departure, the end of a marriage, the loss of a
breast and the hearing in one ear, the threat of the return of breast cancer or
another crippling MS episode. Though when I was sick or was facing surgery, I
knew no one else can be sick or have that surgery for me, I learned that when my
friends shared my loneliness and fear and pain with compassion, my pain eased. I
also came to see that when my wounds were understood and felt and shared and
seen as integral to our human condition, I could accept them.
And I learned something even more important. I learned that when we accept
our wounds and let our pain, fear, and despair give rise to compassion for others,
we become "wounded healers," people who have found a way of accepting their
own wounds and who, in the process, have found a way of making their wounds a
source of healing power for others. Isn't this exactly what Paul meant when he
said that God comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort
those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves receive
from God?
Rabbi Kushner, who's Book When Bad thing s Happen to Good People I prize
highly, describes this process very beautifully. He says that we who have been
hurt can take "the white heat of our pain and anguish and send it into someone
else's life, so that their life will be warmer and brighter because of us." He says, in
fact, that God comes to those who are wounded in the incarnation of good and
loving people, people who have chosen to "blow on the embers of the heart."
Rabbi Kushner tells a wonderful story which describes this process well. There
was a little boy, he says, whose bicycle had been run over by a car and destroyed.
The boy cried over this loss. Several days later, he was late returning from school.
When his mother asked him where he had been, he said he had stopped to help
another little boy down the street whose bicycle had also been damaged. The
little boy's mother asked him, "Why did you stop to help? You don't know how to
fix bicycles. "I know, "said the little boy." I stopped to help him cry."
I would like to suggest when we take our wounds, whether they result from the
death of a person we loved, the rebellion of our own body, or the loss of a
relationship and extend the compassion we have gained from our own experience
to ease the pain and comfort the wounds of others, we are dancing. And
likewise, when we share our joy, our play, and our laughter with others to ease
and to comfort them, like my sister does, we are dancing. We who have wept,
laugh. We become like children. Is it too much to suggest that in this moment, we
are experiencing the kingdom of God?
Like those people who comforted me in my lowest moments, you are also
wounded healers. In my 23 years in this church, I have seen you over and over
again wrap your arms around others who are ill, or struggling with challenges of a
handicap or of old age, or mourning the end of a relationship, or grieving the
unbearable loss of a child or another loved one. You have comforted me more
times than you know. And I can tell you that that the "white heat" of your care
and love and compassion is lifegiving. You somehow make the unbearable,
bearable.
And something else happens to us as wounded healers when we share our lives,
our pain, and our joys with others. We, too, are strengthened. In some very real
and spooky and humbling way, we find God, and we transcend our own mortality.
We experience God's grace.
We are all wounded healers. And as we hold each other and move in our dance,
we move in a rhythm, sometimes exuberant and joyful, sometimes slow and
solemn, a healing rhythm in which Christ leads us. This is the dance I want to
dance. And I'd still rather be dancing, my dear friends, with you.