“Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arch
holding up the astonishing bridges.”
The soaring imagery of Rilke’s poem
might strike some of us as fanciful and unrealistic. I would ask you to begin with me remembering
what it was like to play as a child.
Imagination was and always will be our very best friend. It was mine.
My younger brother didn’t arrive into our house until I was seven and so
for the first years of my life, and many more beyond that, I kept company with
an imaginary friend. I called him Rocco. I don’t know why I called him Rocco, except perhaps
I knew such a friend in a previous life or I lived in a town inhabited by
Italian and Irish immigrants who came to build the Hudson River rail line. But Rocco was, and occasionally still is, my
confidant and the wings of delight. I
speak to him out load still to this day.
And in those early years we imagined ourselves, building cities, saving
families and soaring on imaginary wings over the chasms of reality that all too
often weigh us down, certainly by the time we become adults. In many ways my entire ministry has been
about re-awakening in others those early winged energy of delights in
simply living and being together that take us over the drab chasms of bills,
children, parents, jobs and relationships.
The actions we are called to
do, the company we enjoy are the wings that help us soar to deeper
understanding over the chasms of barren reason and a world in such pain.
And lest you think
that this is just not the reasonable faith of Unitarian Universalism, let me
remind you that Emily Dickenson, Buckminster Fuller and Kurt Vonnegut were all
Unitarian Universalists. Count among you, poets and dancers and musicians and cooks and
caretakers and story tellers along with engineers, and teachers and
creators. All of us have been holding up the most astonishing bridges. While we might lose sight of how good we are
at meaning making by what troubles us, I only ask that you look deeper; each of
you is an original blessing of creation.
And we are not alone; indeed we ride in the wake of an emergent spiritual renewal.With Grace and Grit, John
