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Debra Haffner's Sermons index.
Transitions and Transformations There is an irony- or perhaps a synchronicity—to the timing of this sermon. I had to decide the subject of this sermon in the middle of September. It was before the Annual Meeting, before Frank’s announcement to us about his retirement in June of 2013. We had just dropped our youngest child, Greg, off at college a few weeks earlier, and I was deeply grieving our new empty nest. Yes, I said grieving. I knew I would be sad leaving him at college…but I hadn’t expected to experience his leaving so dramatically, so painfully. I quite literally felt heart sick for the first two weeks, and a profound sense of loss. One of my friends suggested that I was going through "post departum depression." Now, perhaps I should have had a clue that this would hit me so hard. I’ve had friends who’ve talked about sleeping in their college freshman’s home bedroom for weeks, or sending daily care packages. The week before Greg left for school I had taken him to CVS…where I purchased him a small pharmacy of his own…just in case. Using a 20% off coupon, we bought Advil, Nyquil, Neosporin, band aids, cough drops, Benadryl; hand wipes…anything I could think of that he might need over the counter. I felt increasingly sad as we shopped, and when I got to the counter, and put it all out, I looked at the women sales clerk, and said, "I’m sending my baby off to college next week, and I wanted to make sure he’s prepared." She asked me, "Where’s he going?" I answered, "Sarah Lawrence in Bronxville, NY." She looked at me with a deadpan face. "I’m pretty sure there’s a CVS in Bronxville," she said. So much for sympathy from strangers. I realized as the days went by after the drop off and my grief didn’t go away, that what I was grieving was not about Greg in College but the end of my role as a full time mother. The empty nest – when the last child leaves home -- is a real transition for parents with children. We will never be parents in the same way again. We will never know exactly where are children are, we will speak to them less, we will have to create new relationships with our partners if we are married to their other parent. We will go from a child centered focus back to a couple centered focus, something we haven’t done or been for 18 or more years – in our case, 27 years. I would need to figure out how to parent a college age student all over again, and how to let go. The grieving period has gratefully passed, but the transition from child rearing to empty nest is still something Ralph and I are going through. Transitions always begin with an ending, then a period of disorientation and recalibration, a gap between what will happen next, and then finally a new beginning. You all know that TS Eliot quote, "to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." We are all going through transitions all the time…a job change, a new relationship, a new marriage, going back for a degree, retiring, moving out of our family home, starting school, a partner dying, the diagnosis of a serious illness, getting well again. How many of you have gone through at least one major transition in the last year? Often the hardest thing is to make the decision to begin a planned transition, and to make an ending. I’ve been fascinated learning more about Steve Jobs in the weeks’ past his death. Jobs resisted the idea that he was dying, even that he had cancer. His new biography tells us that he refused conventional treatment after his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer for nine months. I hadn’t heard about his commencement address at Stanford in 2005 before his death, but I loved what he had to say about creating a life. "When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, 'if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.' Since then…I have looked in the mirror each morning, and asked myself, 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Your time is limited…don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition…Everything else is secondary." Sometimes we have to listen to that "no for too many days" and make the difficult decision to let go of what we know and take a leap into the unknown. But we also know that not all transitions are voluntary… sometimes they happen unexpectedly. And it is those unexpected transitions that can rock us to our core. But all transitions involve first a shift in our external situation or our internal understanding, and then the psychological process we go through to adapt to or assimilate to those changes. It is often that middle period between the ending – and the announcement of the ending – or in our case as a community is the most difficult, because it is in that period that we experience uncertainty, anxiety, disorientation, or disillusionment, and where we feel the risk of failure in the new beginning. One of the best pieces of advice Ralph and I received about the impending empty nest was to plan a travel adventure for the two of us, to like people from traditional societies, to remove ourselves from our everyday lives, and have an experience far away together. I had wanted to go on a safari for at least 15 years, and so we went to Kenya at the beginning of October for 10 days. It was exciting, thrilling, anxiety provoking and because of the poverty there, heart breaking all at once. We spent time in a Masai village one afternoon as part of a tourist excursion. Those of you who read my blog or the Religious Institute newsletter know that I was heartbroken over the conditions of the village, the fact that 10 people slept in a 200 square foot mud hut with no electricity or water, that more than one in 10 women in the village die in childbirth, that mothers and their nursing children were covered with flies. It made me even more committed to the work the Religious Institute is doing to educate faith communities that one woman dies every 90 sections in childbirth or from a pregnancy related complication in Africa and that with education and health care services, women do not have to die in childbirth. We also heard a lecture by a 22 year old Masai man who had gone to high school and college, and who worked as the naturalist at the safari camp we stayed at. He talked to us, in part, about the rites of passage in his village. Women have two stages in life, childhood, and then with puberty and female genital mutilation, her entry into adulthood, which most certainly include marriage and motherhood. Our lecturer told us he knew such practices were dangerous and he believed that would be changing. Men have three distinct passages: boyhood, public ritualized circumcision at the age of 15, which leads to a stage of warrior hood and manhood, and then elder status after becoming a grandfather. He told us that the goal of the public circumcision was for the young man not to show any pain or discomfort, or even flinch. Men who do are considered failures and are reduced to secondary status in the village. I was also struck by how few rites of passage WE have for our different life transitions. Our coming of age ceremony is one rite of passage as our baby namings, weddings, and funerals…but how do we mark as a community a woman’s miscarriage? Or someone coming out? Or a person transitioning from one gender to another? Or a woman of my age entering g menopause? Or the empty nest, widowhood, divorce, and so on? Or a minister leaving after 29 years? The fact is that transitions are part of all of our lives, throughout our lives, and I think we need more support on how to handle them well. Scripture is full of stories of people going through transitions and their struggles in the middle stage after an ending…the Israelites in the desert, spending forty years trying to reach the Promised Land, often rebelling against Moses, complaining mightily about the food, the heat, wanting to turn back to what is familiar. Last spring, facing a major transition in my work place when my closest associate of 7 years announced she was leaving for a new job and the painful decision to let another staff member who was not working out go, and knowing that another staff member was leaving in two months to return to school, I faced a moment of complete despair. Just passed five, I put my head on my desk and sobbed, thinking that perhaps these were all signs to begin to close down the Religious Institute, even though we had just had a very successful 10th anniversary celebration. I truly did not know if I had it in me to rebuild a staff. And then I remembered these words Jesus whispers from the Easter story: God, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want, but what you want. (Matthew 26:36-44, Luke 22-42, Mark 14:36) Jesus knows his end is near. He has taken himself on a journey to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane. He has predicted that not only Peter will deny him three times, but that he is about to be betrayed. The text says that he is "agitated and grieved." Jesus asks the disciples to stay awake while he prays alone, and they are asleep each of the three times he checks on them. I believe that we all have been at this place. We too have felt alone, betrayed, denied, and hopeless. It might be about something in our workplace, in our family or marriage, with our friends – or what’s going on here at church. All of us know what it is like to be agitated and grieved, let down and alone. And so what does Jesus do? He prays to God, with some version of these words three times: take this pain from me, take this burden from me, please don’t let me suffer like this. And then he says, "Not what I want, but what you want" or a few lines later, "if this cannot pass, your will be done." I find this passage surprisingly comforting. It says to me that we are not alone and that everyone, even Jesus, knows what it is to despair. If we are theists, we can rest in God’s love for us, knowing that it is not in today’s vernacular all about me, but that God is precisely most with us in these times of struggle. When I don’t know what to do next or how to move from these moments of despair, I can remember that it is God who has brought me to this time and place, and that I must discern God’s will for my next steps, my next decisions, for where I am to go next. God’s will be done. And I can seek to understand where this time of transition may be taking me. In the case of the Religious Institute, it led to me recommitting to my work and to hiring two new fabulous staff people who are doing amazing work with us. But if we are not theists, I think this passage can speak to us metaphorically. We are not alone. We have family and friends who can support us. We can believe that our life is unfolding as it is supposed to be. We can reach out for that support: make a phone call, ask for help, reach out to someone we know we can count on, or do something nice for someone else. Frank has shared with us that he has struggled during the last few years with coming to the decision about the ending of his wonderful ministry here in Westport, and that he could feel himself wrestling with the angel to come to a date, even though three years ago, he had told us he had a sense it would be five years. I asked Frank, who is in Maine this weekend for his own retreat from his every day world, what he wanted you to know. He asked me to share with you, and these are his words, "Once I named the date, I felt a couple of things – I felt relieved…after a lot of struggle leading up to the decision, and I felt enthused about my next chapter…there are things I’m looking forward to…especially some long delayed projects…and I feel tremendously gratified in my ministry here…my highest aspirations were fulfilled. The congregation is in very good shape …to go into a new time, a new chapter. We still have a lot of good work to do together." And so we begin our transition as a church community with this announcement of a future ending, and for many of us, this is now a time of uncertainty, anxiety, feelings of grief and loss…we are in that middle ground, between the ending and the new beginning…and we are likely to be in this transition for not only the next 20 months, but the two years of interim ministry that is to follow before a new senior minister is named. Many of you have spoken to me of your anxieties: will Frank be able to do your or your loved one’s funeral? Will he be able to stay a part of the community? Will the rifts in the congregation that some of you are feeling deeply be healed? It’s not unusual in this type of circumstance to think first about how this change will affect you personally – for me, whether I continue as your endorsed community minister in covenant with the senior minister is an unknown, as my agreement is with both you as a congregation and my ministerial colleague. We are a little bit at the beginning of the wilderness. But like most transitions, we are not alone and we are not the first people to be dealing with this situation. In the midst of an unexpected transition, finding out we’ve been fired or that we have a serious illness, or any number of unwanted changes, we may feel that we are alone in facing these issues. But we know that other people have been fired, that other people have had cancer, that other people have had spouses leave them and that they have survived. In the case of a ministerial transition, there is both an orderly process recommended by the Unitarian Universalist Association and by our own bylaws here in Westport. Indeed what is unusual is the length of time that Frank has served here. In seminary, I remember my field education professor telling us that we would all be "interim ministers": that our ministries with specific congregations or community agencies would have beginnings and they would have endings, that no one serves a church or a nonprofit forever. It may surprise you to know that on average UU ministers stay only 8 years. For those of you who that may have just raised anxiety about what if we don’t get someone who will stay as long, let me assure you as minister in our association and as a member of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, that there are fabulous ministers out there who I know will be very interested in making Westport a long term home. The UUA guidelines and the UUMA guidelines allow us to vote as a whole congregation to name Frank Minister Emeritus, and I will put in my recommendation now and publically that we indeed plan to do that next year, at the annual meeting, followed by a celebration. Doing so will allow us in the words of a document you can find at uua.org to "affirm a continued relationship of mutual affirmation, regard" and that will ultimately include a covenant between Frank and the congregation, and Frank and the new settled minister about his future roles with us. We will have help in this process from our District Executive and the UUA Settlement Office. Our constitution, newly adapted and ratified, spells out the process for the Search Committee selection and its role, which includes that the Search Committee is elected by the entire congregation, that although the Board nominates its 9 members, that anyone can run for the Search Committee by submitting a petition signed by 30 members, and that the Search Committee only recommends the candidate. All members will all vote on the candidate for the new settled minister, who is only likely to accept a call here if at least 90% of us vote yes. But what are we to do – and who are we to be to each other – in the meantime, during these next two years and then the two after that…I think we need to hold each other accountable to the words of our affirmation – to dwell together in peace, to seek AND TO SPEAK the truth in love, and to help one another. I encourage you strongly to attend the meeting on November 7th that Frank and Jim Francek will lead on "Resiliency in Times of Change." We know that social support is key in transitions, both personal and communal. We know that we have to create a climate of trust and transparency. We know we have to focus on dealing with our grief and loss, and we have to have compassion for ourselves and each other. There are key things that we know help during endings and transitions, both personal and communal. Twelve years ago, when I was going from my position at SIECUS to seminary, I found a wonderful little book, "Transitions" by a man named appropriately enough William Bridges. I’ve read it again in the past two months, and I recommend it to you highly. I resonate to Bridge’s question, "what would be left undone if your life ended today?" I remember questions that I had struggled with a decade ago. Pablo Neruda asking, "Whom can I ask what I came to make happen in this world? " Dawna Markova, in her wonderful little book, asking questions that I return to again and again when I am struggling about an important life decision, "What is it too soon for, what is it too late for, what is it just the right time for?" Or Mary Oliver, as I preached about last fall, asking "What will we do with our one and wild and precious life?" There are key suggestions that Bridges makes about how to deal with endings and the in-between space before the new beginning. He says we need to remind ourselves that transitions will take time, and to go slowly. I feared in mid September that I would still be grieving the empty nest at Christmas – last week, Greg came home for three days and I think it’s fair to say we were all ready for him to return to school at the end of that! Of course, more dramatic transitions will take longer, and so it is important that we recognize and accept our own anxiety and discomfort during the middle times, to surrender to it, and to have compassion for ourselves. I know that’s not easy for me…someone asked me while I was so upset about Greg what I would say to one of you and how I would feel if you told me that you were sad much longer than you expected when your child left…I realized immediately I would be much much more patient with you and more compassionate than I was being to myself. We need to have compassion for each other during our coming year, knowing we will respond to the church transition in many different ways, and all feelings are valid. We need to take care of ourselves and each other. We need to remember how we have handled transitions in the past, and we need to trust that in community we will share our collective wisdom and experience that will get us through. We need to remember that it is in the transitions of our lives that we may experience the most growth. It helps if we can imagine the benefits of the new beginning in our lives, and to think through what is waiting to be born now. Last spring after my despair about the RI and again this fall, I felt myself to be inside a chrysalis. I did not know what was coming yet, but it seemed that the quiet dark place was where I needed to be. One of my close friends, who is also a minister, said to me, "You know what happens if you break the chrysalis before it is time?" We have a magnet on our refrigerator at home that says, "one day the caterpillar will learn that she is really a butterfly." There is an Indian story about a poor man who sells cocoons for his living. A boy watched him every day, and one day the man called him over. "Do you know what beauty lies within this chrysalis? I will give you one so you might see for yourself. But you must be careful not to handle the cocoon until the butterfly comes out." The boy was enchanted with the cocoon and hurried home to await the butterfly. He could see the butterfly beating its wings against the hard wall of the chrysalis, until it appeared it would surely perish if it didn’t come out. Wanting only to help, they boy pried the chrysalis open. You know what happened next. Our flopped a wet, brown ugly thing which quickly died. The boy went to the man crying. He explained to the boy, "In order for the butterfly to fully develop, it is necessary that she beat her wings against the walls of the cocoon. Only by this struggle can the wings become strong and beautiful. When you denied her that struggle, you took away from her the chance to survive." We can remember that it is in times of transition that we will learn what we need to become strong and beautiful. May we have the compassion, care, wisdom and knowledge to go through our struggles – our individual ones and the ones facing this community, long enough to emerge as the beautiful butterflies we know we can be. My colleague and friend Rev. Wayne Arnason wrote a short prayer that might work for us these moments. I think he is praying a similar prayer to Jesus in the garden, to the wrestling in the middle of the night with the angel, to the Israelites in the desert, to each of us today:
May it be so. Return to Rev.
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