Sermon: What the Living Do

Reading.

What the Living Do
Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

SERMON
(Unity Spiritual Center in the Rockies. Colorado Springs. September 13, 2020)

The question is what is the gate that ushered you into the embrace of your fully human life.
What is it? What was it?

Despite the excuses (I’m busy. I need to be doing this or that. I can’t walk through the gate, not right now. Later)

Despite the fear. Understandable fear.

What happened when the Israelites took their journey towards freedom and liberation? Being chased, you’ll remember, by Egyptians that would keep them in captivity. They’re escaping Egypt, and suddenly the Red Sea is in front of them.

Some say that the Red Sea didn’t open up until the first person was brave enough to step into that. Courage. Take that first step.

Even so, you think. Well, it is opened up now, but can i make it all the way across. So it takes courage to take the second step and the third too and to keep going.

Understandable fear, but courage calls you.

What is the gate that ushered you into your fully human life? That opened the seas so you could march on towards freedom and liberation? What ushered you into the cherishing of your life?

— —
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days.
Some utensil probably fell down there.

— —
So begins this poem by Marie Howe, a true contemplative.
— —

Who is Johnny? We don’t quite know yet. We know that the dishes are piling up. We know that the plumber hasn’t been called.

— —
If we don’t know quite yet who Johnny is, we sure know what a pile of dishes are in the kitchen sink.

Immediately, in the poem, we are in the world of the familiar and the everyday. But we are also in the unfamiliar, right? We are glimpsing into this person’s world and we can recognize some things but not everything.

This is true, no matter what, yes? Even in our everyday, there are things beneath the surface that we don’t fully, truly know yet.

— —

These dishes, the uncalled plumber, this is the everyday we spoke of. We spoke of.

— —

Uh oh. Johnny is past tense. An old lover, perhaps? living now somewhere else, or only in the poet’s mind’s eye.

Past tense. Loss. Absence. Memory.

— —

John is Marie Howe’s younger brother.. She says that he was funny and wise. They’d be sitting at a restaurant and he’d say: This is what you’ve been waiting for! And Marie would say, “What?” And he’d open up his arms in an all encompassing gesture: “This!”
— —
In the 1980s, John got the AIDS virus, a death sentence in the 80s. He died. She was devastated. Broken. Lost. AND, AND, his death was the gate she received to fully embrace her life.

— —
The Gate
Marie Howe

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This — holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

— —

If you wrote a poem called The Gate, what would the subject be? What was your gate? The gate that you’d step through to finally enter this world.

— —

The poem is presence and absence. Present: dirty dishes. Absent: Beloved brother John. Poetry knows. Poetry knows presence and absence. Poetry knows that we are somehow, miraculously, alive and poetry knows that this will not always be true. We will, at least in this form, die. Alive and dead. All at once.

I’ll tell you about one of the gates I have walked through and I also had no idea it would be like this. I am a hospital chaplain. I see people making decisions every day about whether to continue treatment or stop it, whether to move to hospice. I see people almost every day die.

I thought I’d always be in the parish. I didn’t go to seminary to work in a hospital. But here I am.

And people ask me: How can you do it? Well, God’s grace.

And the gate that this work represents for me is this. I know life is precarious and precious. So I cling less tightly to the idea of being alive. It is a total paradox.I do not cling to needing to prove my worth. I do not cling to needing to make a ton of money. I know that one day I will be wrinkled and pooping my bed. And it is okay. No need to be sad. No need to cling to life.

And by not clinging I am freed up to enjoy what comes my way.

— —

What is the gate through which you entered the world?

— —

This is the every day we spoke of.
It is winter again.

—

The sky is blue. The sun is strong.
She can’t control the heat, so the windows are open.

It is not perfect. The drano smells nasty
And the heat is on too high and she can do
nothing about it.
None of it is complaint, it seems to me.
It is just observing the every day,
the sacred ordinary.

Hear me now. Remember this:
God comes, if God comes at all,
Disguised as your life.

— —
The gate is not on top of a mountain
you have to climb naked, chanting.
Or most likely not.
If it is or was, please buy me coffee
and tell me all about it. I will not say
one word until you are done.

Most likely, it is something as simple
and profound as your brother’s
Death, your mother’s illness,
Your diagnosis, a single paragraph
you read in a 400 page book
that saves your life when your whole
identity is shaken.
The chance meeting of the gorgeous
woman working in the
mail room of your seminary,
while you’re indexing a book on
Bonhoeffer. You grumble and mumble
until you look up and
see how gorgeous she is and the
Next thing you know it is 10 o’clock
at night and you’re sitting in a booth
with her at the Georgetown Diner,
Watching the capitals lose a playoff
Game.

— —
Walking on the cobblestone, brick sidewalk
In Cambridge, the grocery bag breaking,
the coffee spilling on her wrist and her sleeve.
This is it.
— —

At some point the church fathers put forthca liturgical calendar for the christian church. Advent, Christmas Tide, Lent, EasterTide. But you know what is the biggest section of the christian liturgical calendar? Ordinary time.

— —
God comes to you disguised as your life. In the everyday. The ordinary.
Remember the beginning of The Wild Geese?
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
— —

Back to the poem.

I thought it when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

That yearning. In the midst of our everyday, there is a yearning. A longing.

What more, you may ask, do we want? … We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. — C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

While we are alive, in the midst of the ordinary sidewalk and the dirty dishes, there is underneath it all a yearning, a holy longing. It is not all mundane. It is not all that you haven’t yet called the plumber. There is beauty. There is the phone call we want to receive, more and more of it we long for. My soul longs for you O God and it cannot rest until it rests in you.

The yearning. That which makes us alive. And then, what does she say next: That which you gave up. There it is again. Life and death. Presence and absence. Poetry knows.

In the midst of the everyday, in the midst of the losses, there is a yearning. And then the poem adds One more crucial element. A cherishing.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

In spite of it all. I am sometimes gripped by a cherishing. And what does she cherish? her hair blowing in the wind, her chapped face (cause it’s winter again) and her unbuttoned coat. the ordinary, the everyday.

This is what the living do. the dishes. call the plumbers. this is what the living do: Grieve and yearn and cherish.

This is the gate she went through to finally enter the world, and what is it full of? Dishes, a chapped face, a thermostat she has no control over. Loss and grief and death. And occasionally life, life abundant. Here, now.

God comes, if God comes at all, disguised as your life. What was your gate? What is it? Walk thru and be born into the world.
Remember it and be born anew.