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After taking a few years off, I'm back in seminary here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, at United Theological Seminary. What a wonderful place to be! Surrounded by friends old and new, I'm exploring my call to Unitarian Universalist ministry with friends, classmates, and the world around me. I am watching for the spring and feeling it unfold within myself.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

"Blessings of the Heart"

a sermon by Erin Margit Dajka
November 14, 2010
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis


You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.

In its simplest form, a blessing is a wish, passed from one individual to another, for goodness. May your way be blessed. Have a good day. I hope you feel better. In greater complexity, it is a feeling of connection that cannot be described and seems to embrace all there is in the greatest depth of beauty.

Sometimes, blessing occurs simply when we recognize its presence. We stop for a moment, naming something as what it is – a blessing. Maybe it occurs in the natural world, hiking on a summer day, seeing the rays of sunlight make their way among the leaves of the trees to kiss the damp earth. Maybe it happens upon realizing how the presence of a friend over the years has made life easier or better. Maybe the blessing appears in receiving unexpected help at that exact moment when it was needed. Where do you recognize the blessings in your life?

Blessings stay with us. I remember a time when I could not have been more than nine years old. My mother was playing in a string quartet, which had been rehearsing in the choir loft of a church in Beloit, Wisconsin for a wedding. After their rehearsal, I helped carry one of the violinist’s box of music to her car. Once everything was loaded, the older woman lay a hand on my shoulder and said, “God bless you.”
Most of you know that I was raised Unitarian Universalist in a largely Humanist congregation not unlike this one, and you will probably understand that I was surprised by what she had said. However, I was also touched by it. While she probably thought nothing of her action, I remember it as though it were the first time those words were spoken to me. I pondered them over the long drive home, and I have pondered them many times since. She had said “God bless you” to me and meant it.
However, I found myself wrestling with whether or not I wanted to have someone say to me: God bless you. Was such a statement a judgment that there was something wrong with me that only God’s blessing could fix? Was she somehow aware of my non-Christian religious background and using her statement as a subtle suggestion toward conversion? Did I want a blessing from a God that I did not know?
These questions I found myself asking might for some of you feel familiar. Maybe you, too, have been taken aback from such an expression. Such a reaction is natural – when it feels as though someone is pushing you to accept a truth that they hold which you, in fact, do not. Even worse is that sinking feeling that whoever said it had simply assumed that you hold the same truth. Of course you believe in God – or celebrate Easter or Christmas. Doesn’t everybody?
For many, blessing has taken on an assumption of its source being divine. God blesses people or events. Wishing a blessing upon someone must inherently involve some outside power to bestow it. I want to reclaim the language, though. Blessing is such a powerful action. It expresses caring and understanding and the desire for others to experience goodness in their lives. The action of blessing happens within the fully human connection between people. People bless each other. God is in no way necessary.

Choose to recognize blessings.

There was a morning when I was interning as a chaplain in a hospital that I encountered a man with whom I shared blessing. After spending a night in-house at the hospital, the chaplain was expected to report to the pre-surgical area at seven o’clock the following morning. Most surgical patients had arrived by this time, and it was a chance for the chaplain to check in with the families in the waiting room and the patients preparing to be taken in for their surgeries. The pre-surgical area was a large room with patient areas lining the walls, each one curtained off for some semblance of privacy. I made my rounds, announcing my presence at each patient area as best I could with no manner of knocking. I would ask each patient if she or he wanted to speak with a chaplain. Some would say that they were fine. Others would ask for a brief prayer. Others yet would share with me their stories, welcoming me in to know them and their families as they held on to normalcy in the face of great fear combined with hope.
One elderly man I remember in particular. The curtain to the area where he was lying was partially open when I came upon him. I introduced myself as the chaplain and asked if he would like to speak with me before his surgery. He looked at me with deep questions in his eyes, as if he were trying to make sense of what I said but could find no frame of reference. His daughter was with him, and she tried to explain. “This lady is a pastor. Would you like to pray with the pastor?” Her attempts did not help. He became somewhat angered as he said that he did not want to talk to me. “She isn’t a pastor. She can’t be a pastor.” The daughter began to apologize to me while she also tried to help her father become receptive to my presence. “This lady is here to pray with people. She prays with people before their surgeries. Would it be okay if she prays with you?” This calmed him down, and he reluctantly agreed to let me pray with him.
As I walked up beside his gurney, I saw in his eyes fear and worry for where he was, the procedure he was about to undertake, and the loss he could foresee. I took his hand and, instead of bowing my head as I often did in prayer with patients, I looked him in the eye and spoke his fear to him, the world, and the God to whom he needed to reach out. As I prayed, our eye contact did not break, and our humanities met each other. I saw the tears well up and fall upon his cheeks because he knew that I had truly seen him and the pain he held. Through my words, his fear came to light, and he felt that he could be relieved of some of its burden. He and his daughter thanked me, but I had already received from him so much more through the connection we so briefly shared and his tears.
In that moment, the connection transcended our perceptions of one another. He recognized my humanity as credentials to be with him in that moment, even if he would never accept me as a pastor because of my gender. I reached out despite his reluctance to accept my presence and touched his humanity in a moment of need. The blessing was a reality for both of us. Just as I expressed blessings for him, his family, and his recovery, I received a blessing from him in the connection we experienced. That space was filled with knowing on a level beyond words. “Blessing is as hard to dissect as a breeze.” It is there to be recognized simply for what it is.

Choose to be present.

Blessing occurs in community, when we can know one another deeply enough to recognize the ways in which all of us are simultaneously broken and whole, strong and week, capable of offering a blessing and in dire need of one. Such a space can be difficult to find in this world, stuck in a world-view that keeps us interested mostly in ourselves – our own successes and failures, our desires, our paths, our individual passions that prevent us from taking the time to look more closely at the experiences of others. We wear the masks that hide who we really are in the hopes that our fears and shortcomings will not be noticed by those around us.
When you are having a bad day and someone asks, “How are you?” how often do you put on a smile and simply say, “Oh, I’m fine. How are you?” These questions are empty in their serving a perfunctory use of greeting. This, too often, is the extent of our reaching out to one another. We are afraid to lay out our struggles before our neighbor. Afraid to hear what is difficult. Afraid to stop our self-interest long enough to recognize the extent to which everyone around us similarly struggles.

Choose to drop your mask, showing your humanity.

I am not suggesting that each one of us stop and take the time to connect with each other person every day on a deeper level. I do believe, strongly, that in order to be fully true to ourselves, we must make a space in which we can be open to give and receive blessing. A space where we can tell our deepest and truest stories without fear of being hurt. A space where our brokenness is accepted and embraced. We need a space where blessing is present.
I experienced such a space many years ago. I was a part of the senior high youth group at my church. Each week, we gathered in a room we could call our own, and we were present to one another. We went around the circle, each of us in turn sharing our monologue about the week past. The others were not allowed to interrupt, they could only listen to what their friend had to share. Together, we shared our triumphs and losses. We listened to the struggles of one of our advisors as he was slowly dying of cancer. We listened to concerns about grades, parents, friends, and siblings. I gained the strength I needed to sit with my best friend through her months of chemo. We mourned break-ups. We held one another in times of great sorrow. We celebrated with a vigor unique to teenagers.
Youth group was a special space, and who we were in that room could be more real than what we showed the rest of the world. I went to high school with three other members of that group. The connections we made at church only lasted so far once we crossed the threshold to school, but on some level, they remain to this day.
You see, our youth create something that so regularly eludes us adults. They hold conferences with deep-felt worship services where they sing to one another, whether they have previously met or not. I remember an element of some conference worship services that we called “Sufi Dancing.” We would break into random pairs, grasping hands and walking in a circle as we sang, “All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.” Then, our pairs would break apart as we spun away from each other, bumping into others, and finally connecting with another youth with whom we would then dance. “All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.” We looked each other in the eyes as we sang. No matter whom I danced with, as I met their eyes and sang, I saw them, and I loved them. And, I believe that they saw me and loved me. The song was a blessing.

Our adult culture makes such intimate encounters nearly impossible, and I am not saying that we must all get up and start Sufi Dancing. (I won’t stop you, however, if you are interested.) I do believe that there is room for us to meet each other on a deeper level. For years now, this congregation has held Discovery Groups for the purpose of connecting to one another in the spirit of community and blessing. The groups have gone out of favor over time, though, and groups have been offered for which no one signed up.
Many of us are exceptionally busy and feel as though adding one more obligation is going to force a tipping point. I believe in the power of blessing one another, however. Meeting in a group provides the necessary space to be wholly present to listen and to share. Within that space, you may feel safe to let down the mask. Your companions will protect you just as you protect them in the warm blanket of recognition, acceptance, and care.
We often extol the virtues of our Unitarian Universalist communities as a place where we can find “like-minded people.” However, are you looking to know those sitting here around you on a deeper level? This is a level in which the connections made are no longer simply a meeting of minds, but one in which you can reach out with your heart. And, as you reach out, you will find others. It is the space in which you can learn to recognize and partake in the work of blessing.

Choose to seek out opportunities to go deeper.

The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will
a moving forward into the world
with the intention to do good.
It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.
There is an embrace of kindness,
that encompasses all life,
even yours.
And while there is injustice,
anesthetization, or evil
there moves
a holy disturbance,
a benevolent rage,
a revolutionary love
protesting, urging, insisting
that which is sacred will not be defiled.
Those who bless the world live their life
as a gesture of thanks
for this beauty
and this rage.

Minister, theologian, seminary president, and poet Rebecca Parker extends the concept of blessing to include the world. For her, the work of justice is the work of blessing. It is deeper than simply intending to do good. It involves both the recognition of beauty in brokenness and the fury with which true action can come to fruition. “Those who bless the world live their life as a gesture of thanks for this beauty and this rage.” Choosing to bless the world includes both recognizing the blessings already present and working to create blessings. Where will you recognize blessings? How will you create them?

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.

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