A Journey of Return:
A Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 2009
Jan K. Nielsen
So what do most of us do these days
when we have a question and we’re in need of an answer?
We go to Google, of course,
that popular internet search engine.
Seems you can “Google” just about anything and,
yes, the dictionary now recognizes “Google” as a verb.
I was delighted awhile back when Lee sent me email
that included actual photos of church road signs,
the kind with sayings
designed to grab your attention.
They ranged from the hokey –
“Down in the mouth?
Come in for a faith lift.” –
to my favorite.
The oversized sign read:
“There are some questions
that can’t be answered
by Google.”
How true.
It’s those eternal questions without easy answers
that have brought people
through our doors here at the Universalist Church
for the past 188 years.
Now, in our 189th year,
it’s still the big questions that bring us here.
Where did we come from?
Where are we going?
Is there a God?
Amid all that comes at us in a day –
all the worries, the demands, the stresses -
what is false, and what is true?
What is real?
When we come to the end of our days here on this earth,
what will matter most?
How can we best live the life we have been given?
What is our purpose in this life?
If you’re visiting us for the first time today,
let me say this right up front:
no one here will ask that you accept any set of answers.
Some of us may have formed some ideas for ourselves
about some of these questions,
but no one here will tell you what to believe.
That’s not our way.
We do promise to walk with you on your journey,
and to offer you along the way
our support, our respect, and our love.
Each week, as we say our covenant,
we reaffirm our promise “to seek the truth in love.”
Those are not empty words,
but a promise we hold dear.
A sincere respect for differences
runs deep in our Unitarian Universalist tradition;
it is a central value of this Universalist Church.
We stand together today at the beginning of a new season.
As we near the autumnal equinox,
the morning air is cool on our faces;
our nights are growing longer.
Autumn officially arrives on Tuesday afternoon,
the half way point between summer and winter.
Fall is a threshold time for the soul;
it is both a time for new beginnings
and a time of return.
These autumn days are a time
for returning to that place deep within us
where we can be born and reborn again – our soul.
We are in a season of reflection.
Last night at sundown Muslims marked the end of Ramadan,
a time in the Islamic tradition
for fasting and spiritual reckoning.
The questions of Ramadan are universal,
questions any of us in this season would do well to ask:
How am I living my days?
Can I do a little more to help
a sister or a brother in need?
Am I giving enough time to what matters most in my life?
What am I giving from my soul to the world?
Today is Eid-al-Fitr, that feast day that comes at the end of Ramadan.
Eid is a day of celebration and thanksgiving for Muslims,
a time when loved ones gather to eat good food and give gifts.
The Arabic root of the word “Eid” is “awd,”
a word meaning “to return” or “to recur.”
Ramadan is a time to inventory one’s life,
to ask where we have gone astray
and how we might return again to right living.
After the spiritual work of Ramadan comes the blessing of Eid,
a time for returning to one’s true soul.
This is also a time of reflection in the Jewish tradition
Friday night at sundown,
Jews marked the beginning of a new year with Rosh Hashanah
and entered into the Days of Awe,
the ten days of spiritual reflection that end with Yom Kippur,
the holiest day of the Jewish year.
These are days of teshuvah.
Teshuvah is the Hebrew word for “turning” and “returning.”
This is a time for turning away
from the mistakes of the past
and returning to right relationship
with our God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves.
The questions of the High Holy Days,
like those of Ramadan, are universal:
How did I do, as a soul, over the past year?
When have I lived with integrity?
And when have I fallen short?
Whom have I wronged?
From whom do I need to ask forgiveness?
Is mine a life that brings blessings to the world?
These questions invite both reflection and repentance,
for none of us gets it right, all the time.
Each of us is human; we all fall short, and we all carry regrets.
Rev. Sarah will say more about regret next week
in her sermon for Yom Kippur.
The blessing of Rosh Hashanah is the chance to start over,
and begin again.
It is a time to turn away from all the regrets
that weigh upon our hearts
and to return to our better selves.
For generations, humans, whatever their faith tradition,
have known the spiritual need
to clear away the burdens of the soul
and to begin again.
The human soul needs what you might call
periodic “time outs” –
whether as a part of traditions
like Ramadan or the Days of Awe
or maybe just quiet time in the morning or before bed.
These are times to ask, “How can I best live this life?’
If, instead, we try to ignore this need of the soul
and just keep going from day to day, year to year,
doing what we’ve always done,
making the same mistakes over and over,
where do you think we’ll end up?
We’ll end up where we’ve always been,
and we may never fully live out our life’s purpose.
The way I see it,
that’s no way to use the gift of this life.
I believe each of us has a calling,
a purpose,
a reason we are here on this earth,
a way we can bless the world.
If we keep racing down the road of this life
with no time outs to look into our souls,
we may never find our way into living our souls’ purpose.
And without a purpose,
no matter how fast we manage to run down the road,
we’re wasting time.
Life brings us near constant reminders
that we have only so much time here on this earth.
People we’ve never met,
but who have been part of our lives forever, it seems, get sick --
and then no more do we hear the Senator speak,
or the folksinger sing,
and we are surprised when we feel as if
one of our own family has died.
The people we have loved and always looked up to,
if only sometimes in secret,
leave this Earth –
grandparents, aunts, uncles, a mother, a father,
or that older person who, though she wasn’t a close relative,
took time to mentor us and always treated us like family.
Our life partner dies leaving us feeling
as if a part of ourselves is gone.
We may feel the pain of their physical absence
even as we know, without a doubt,
their spirit is with us, and never leaves.
And then there are the life events that confound us,
and hit us hard.
Parents in their prime get sick and die and,
sometimes, so does a young child in our midst.
Why these things happen no one can truthfully say.
It is hurtful when people casually say, as they sometimes do,
“Well, it was God’s will.”
The God I know in my heart would never “will”
a parent to leave a child or a child to get sick and die.
When these things happen,
easy explanations do no one any good.
When the worst happens among us,
I believe we are called not to attempt answers, but instead,
to love one another.
Hurting people need the love of other humans,
whether it comes as a kind word,
a touch on the shoulder,
or a listening ear.
It is our love for one another
that makes way for God’s love to heal our hearts.
Love in this life, whether in times of sorrow or joy,
is never a waste of time,
for the journey of learning to love and to be loved
is how we find our way back to our best selves, our true selves.
Much in this life can seem to push and pull us
in so many directions at once.
Whatever our age, wherever we are along life’s journey,
there can be demands aplenty.
We can worry about fitting in and making the grade,
keeping up and getting ahead,
keeping all we’ve managed to acquire.
The danger is that we can lose ourselves in the demands.
The spiritual challenge is to find our way
through all that life brings
without becoming a stranger to our true selves,
without sacrificing our souls,
without giving up on love.
Love, the poet’s wisdom reminds us,
can bring us back to the home of our souls.
Life is a journey of return.
The detours can get us off track,
and sometimes lead us astray.
Everyone’s detour may be a little different –
but we’ve all been there and we all know what it is to get side tracked.
Maybe yours is despair, addiction, fear, self-doubt.
Our detours can make us blind to our true self;
they can lead us,
if we catch a glimpse of our true self, to see a stranger.
The spiritual wisdom of the generations, though,
teaches that we can circle back
and begin again.
With each cycle and season,
we can choose to return to the home of our souls.
One day recently I heard someone say,
“I know I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to be doing.
Those words resonated with me.
When I heard them, I knew I was hearing from someone
who had made the journey to the home of his soul.
When we know where we are supposed to be,
and that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing,
we can give of who we are, at our core,
and we can offer our blessings to the world.
Each of us, in our own way, can choose to bless the world.
The blessing you offer may be different from mine, and mine different from another’s.
This troubled world, though, needs all our blessings.
We’ve been given only so much time.
So take the gift of this autumn day,
the gift of this season.
Take the gift of time.
“Great yourself,” says the poet.
I say greet your true self --
the helper, giver, teacher, or creator only you can be.
Bid your soul welcome.
Sit.
Eat.
Feast on your life.
Live.
Love.
Celebrate, always celebrate, enduring love.
Don’t put it off.
Don’t wait for another day, another season.
From the shelter of your soul,
reach out,
and choose to bless the world.
The Universalist Church
West Hartford, Connecticut
September 18, 2009