Sermon written by Rev. Junella Hanson, read by Jim Hanson
December 8, 2002

To make a commitment is an awful risk, as is not making a commitment. We must chose where we will allow ourselves to tremble. We must decide which Gods we will allow to be born. This is the burden and the job of human freedom.

The sermon this morning is about the inner life. It does not deal with the burning issues that have become such a real part of our daily life, the threat of war, crime, hunger, poverty, the economic situation with the stock market. But I've tried to address directly what seems to pervade all these problems to some degree: peoples seldom articulated and often unrecognized desire to a real home in this world, a sense of connection.

A few years ago, my husband Jim and I visited Flathead Lake and Glacier Park in the state of Montana. We had many surprises sand experienced moments of profound appreciation. The surprises stemmed from the fact that we were experiencing a different eco-system. I'm sure that all of you have had similar experiences of seeing something new, different, and strange, and how it seems to heighten your seeing so that you feel an increased connection to your surroundings. If you are out at night on a beach or in the mountains, you may look up and see the night sky in a way that most likely we no longer can where we live. When you see this way , it is easy to understand why earlier people cared so deeply about the heavens. You gain a hint of the connection those people had with the earth , the sky, and you can understand how powerful that connection must have been. Intimacy is about experiencing such a connection. Intimacy is also about an inexplicable longing that exists deep in the heart of every human being.

Patricia McKillip is one of my favorite Science Fiction writers. Years ago she a wrote a charming magical fantasy entitled, "THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD." She tells the story of Sybel, a beautiful wizard, tail and strong with slender bones, ivory hair and black, fearless eyes, who lives in the mountains of Eld. She has great power; the power to control various animals in her environment. They all share their wisdom with her, protect her and do her bidding.

Although she has the power to call any animal to her side at any time there is one great white wild bird with wings that glide like snowy pennants unfurled in the wind whose name is Liralen. Liralen does not respond to her call, and Sybel experiences an unceasing longing for the Liralen. One day Sybel is leafing through the parchment pages of a collection of ancient writings, and she finds the following lines: "THERE IS A FEARSOME MONSTER, WHICH AWAITS AROUND THE DARK CORNERS , THROUGH DARK DOORWAYS IN THE BLACKEST HOURS OF THE NIGHT. ONLY THE FEARLESS SURVIVE LOOKING UPON IT. IT IS CALLED BLAMMOR." Of course, Sybil thinks it would be fascinating to control such a fearsome monster, and, finding the proper incantation, she calls it to her side. And the monster, Blammor comes as a black mist with fire-white eyes, seeing and yet sightless. Sybel is filled with fear and turns her head away from the sight of Blammor....and he leaves as quickly as he came with a plea: "BE FEARLESS, SYBEL."

This is not the whole of the story...only a part of it and I share it because it represents what happens sometimes when we feel a deep longing or hear what the poet Maxwell Anderson has dubbed:" A CRY TOWARD SOMETHING DIM IN THE DISTANCE." Very often we shut it out from consciousness because of vague fears or pain that it evokes. It is elusive, mysterious, and so we run from it. We are programmed to run from it.

To understand that programming we need to all go back to the time when we were in our mother's womb. Everything was there for us; we were part of another and the "other" was a part of us. Our first experience of physical separation was our birth, and our primary care giver was probably our mother, who fed us, sheltered us, comforted us, held us in her arms to allay our fears....and it was with her that we made our first attachment. We formed a symbiotic bond within which we did not yet know self from the other. As months passed, this infantile attachment became less global, more differentiated. We a began to distinguish self from other and to develop the capacity for identification....for the internalization of another into our psychic life.

Infancy passed. We left our mother's arms, crawled on the floor, eventually we stood straight and walked. This was a period of separation and individuation for us...a time when the "I" and the "you" became increasingly more distinguishable. It was also the period when the issues of separation and unity became apparent and we lived in ambivalence...wanting unity and also wanting separation and independence.

You've all seen a small child at play who at one moment is holding a toy in utter fascination, drops it and rushes back to the mother, climbs onto her lap, holds her tightly, almost urgently. And just as mother prepares to comfort the little one, the child breaks away and hurries back to the toy.

Separation and unity...those are the themes that dominated that period of our lives, and for all of us the anxiety created by the fear of abandonment began sometime in this period. Each of us went through this, perhaps in different ways; and every child will go through this because there is no parenting that can avoid it. There is no possibility of meeting and assuaging every anxiety a small child experiences. It is simply not in the nature of life, and may not even be desirable. The parent who seeks to shield a child from the anguish of separation does him or her as much harm as the parent who thrusts the child into separating prematurely. ......And so, separation and unity....the excitement and fear, the triumph and the anxiety they generate remain continuing themes in our adult lives.

When in adulthood we find ourselves in an intimate relationship; we experience again, even if only in a highly attenuated form, those early struggles around separation and unity. We return to both the agony and the ecstasy of that first union. That is why some levels of intimacy are very difficult to achieve. Sometimes they bring pain as well as pleasure.

One time I asked a large group of people to share their individual definitions of intimacy and I received a lot of different answers:

One person said," INTIMACY IS A HISTORY OF SHARED EXPERIENCES"....Another said,"INTIMACY IS KNOWING THERE'S SOMEONE WHO CARES ABOUT YOU."

"INTIMACY IS SITTING THERE HAVING A CUP OF COFFEE TOGETHER AND WATCHING THE 11:00 NEWS." "IT'S KNOWING YOU CARE ABOUT THE SAME THINGS." "IT'S KNOWING THAT HE'LL ALWAYS UNDERSTAND." "IT'S KNOWING SHE CARES WHEN I'M HURTING." All of those answers describe how intimacy fleshes out in our individual lives when we break through the barriers of fear and anxiety and allow ourselves to be known to another.....in love.....in friendship...in work.......in play.

Have you ever found yourself in the presence of another person whom you trusted.....a time perhaps when you were completely yourself, and felt totally accepted...when you and the other person were equally engaged in a completely authentic way. It is during those moments when I experience an awakening .... almost like the awakening of a part of myself that has been lost from my everyday consciousness. The outstanding quality of that kind of intimate experience is the sense of being in touch with my real self; a sense that there is more to me and life than what I normally experience. Those are moments of spiritual awakening and often bring tears to my eyes.

So far, I've been using the interpersonal human relationship model as a prototype for intimacy. But the interpersonal is not the only form of intimacy. There are others that are powerful and transforming. I speak of the intimate relationship the musician has with his or her music. An example this morning is the intimacy that Mary San feels, with not only the music, but the instrument itself.

There is always a deep connection between artists and their art form. When you hear their poetry or look at their paintings or photographs or pottery you get a glimpse of that connection. There are people who feel a profound sense of kinship with the earth; its mountains, oceans, flowers and trees. There is a common dynamic, however, between all examples of deep connection and intimacy: They are always covenantal in nature, are freely chosen, require commitment, intentionality and courage. These same dynamics operate in the life of a successful religious community: FREELY CHOSEN, REQUIRE COMMITMENT, INTENTIONALITY, AND COURAGE.

One of the vehicles for connection within religious community....is contained in the worship service. My understanding of worship is that it is an intentional sacred time and space in which we gather as a group to celebrate life, be challenged on deep levels, to feel empowered, find comfort. renew hope, feel love, sense our interconnectedness with one another and give thanks. It is a personal commitment and publicly spoken praise. It is music, words, an inward renewal of the values we serve and the ideals we cherish. It is a time when we may all hear that cry toward something dim in the distance because there is always something new waiting to be born. There is always a greater promise, the potential of an expanded awareness, a more encompassing compassion.... a fuller humanness...all waiting within to be given form and expression in this world. And when we give ourselves permission to open and receive the worship experience we can renew the very center of our most authentic selves.

We may at times even feel tearful because worship's primary purpose is to allow us to commune with the deeper recesses of the heart, mind and the spirit.

When we hear that cry toward something dim in the distance what do we do? To move toward it requires enormous courage because in our success oriented society which is based on efficiency and control, we are taught that we must compete, even fight, for the right to be appreciated and loved. We are unable sometimes to appreciate other people's talents without feeling diminished by them, and we often cannot truly celebrate another's uniqueness without feeling less unique ourselves. What we do with that is to create the phenomena known as the "other" and create distance. This fearful distance is most apparent in an exaggerated form when we look at our prisons, mental hospitals and homeless shelters, often built far away from the places where so-called normal people live. A philosophy professor at St. Michael's college in Toronto named Jean Vanier lived for more than twenty years with mentally and physically handicapped people and observed how these people evoked fear in the hearts of those who regarded themselves as normal. He realized that as long as these people remained the "others" they became the victims of either cold distancing or suffocating over protection. Jean Vanier started an organization that brought handicapped people into individual homes; homes designed to offer an intimate place to people whose handicap is different from ours. I mention this because what Jean Vanier learned about intimacy within community is profound.

When he speaks about intimacy, he often stretches out his arm and cups his hand as if it holds a small, wounded bird. He asks, "WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I OPEN MY HAND FULLY?"

We say: "The bird will try to flutter its wings and it will fall and die."

Then he asks: "But what will happen if I close my hand?"

We say: The bird will be crushed and die"

Then he smiles and says," Intimacy is like my cupped hand, neither totally open nor totally closed. It is the space where growth can take place." He goes on to say, "It is difficult to offer such a place, precisely because we are fearful and find it hard to let the other enter our place and reveal to us our own fears. But when we are willing to confess both to ourselves and to the other that we, too, are broken, that we too, have a handicap, and that we, too, need a place to grow, we can offer each other an intimate place."

My ministerial colleague, John Corrado, wrote a poem about relationships, and in that poem there are four very important lines:

"None of us are Prince Charmings or Sleeping Beauties
We are all frogs,
And we are waiting for all the other frogs
To come close and see our warts."

It is true we are all different and differences are important, creative, vitalizing and expanding. But we also know that in the vast majority of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors, we are very much alike. Our angers, our sadness, our rejections, our pain and our joys are more similar to each other's than they are different. We all need the cupped hand of intimacy.

Jean Vanier discovered something else about intimacy in community from the people he lived with. They all learned that it is impossible to live together as wounded people if they simply depended on each other to provide the intimate home they sought. The lesson learned here is that our wounds, whether visible or hidden, are too deep for us to offer each other a place totally free from fear. In an attempt to find that place, we often put superhuman demands on each other and when those demands are not met, we feel hurt and rejected. The people in Vanier's community discovered that they needed to have faith; faith in something larger than their own lives; a commitment to values that would sustain them, bring them hope and a "peace that passeth all understanding."

Intimacy requires that we understand and accept our personal neediness, our feelings of ambivalence, our vulnerability, our unfulfilled longings and our desire to control, which brings me back to the story of Sybel, that beautiful wizard who lived in the mountains of Eld. I think of the many animals she controlled and the beautiful white wild bird called the Liralen that she longed for so passionately, but was unable to capture.

When I hear that "cry toward something dim in the distance," I feel an inexplicable longing similar to Sybel's as described in the story. I know that I, too, long for the Liralen and that longing will probably stay with me the rest of my life. Perhaps intimacy is a path to the Liralen. Perhaps not. I may never know. But what I do know is there is for me an evocative power in this story; a communication that goes deeper than my rational mind is yet able to go. And like other stories that speak the language of myth and magic, it points me in a direction. So, I share with you the last part of that magical fantasy in the hopes that it will speak to you and your life in somewhat the same fashion.

In the final chapters of the story, Sybel returns to the mountains after many years of traveling. She took an exciting heroine's journey in search of the great white wild bird. Like the classical hero's journey of Odysseus, it was filled with danger and she bravely overcame all obstacles in her way. She also fell in love for the first time in her life and experienced her own vulnerability.

The love she felt was strong, but it still did not quell the deep longing for the Liralen that she carried in her heart. She returned to Eld, tired, sad and alone.

She called each of the animals she controlled to her side and gave them all their freedom. One by one they left her and then she called for the monster, Blammor. He came just as before; "like the mist of a shadow between the great pines, it's moon- colored sightless eyes white as snow." This time she was not afraid and she looked straight into its eyes. But before she could speak to it, the fluid crystal of its eyes melted downward, curved into white, clean lines, a long fluid slender neck, white curve of breast, a broad sweep of snowy back and long trailing wings. Yes, it was the Liralen. Sybel reached out to touch it, the feathers strong, yet sleek beneath her hand, and the Liralen's voice drifted into her mind and said: "You are growing wise, Sybel. I came a long time ago, but you could not see me. I was always here."

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