Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
September 14, 2003
When a friend of mine was ten years old, she was bucked from a horse. Kathy suffered a few bruises, but the worst bruise was to her courage. She cried and said that she never wanted to ride a horse again. But Kathy had always wanted to ride horses since she learned to talk, and she had dreams of riding in competitions. Her father encouraged her to get back on the horse, telling her how important it was to face those fears that defeat you and prevent you from becoming what you want to be. He explained that the alternative was to be like a butterfly who's afraid to leave its cocoon. Kathy brushed away her tears, squared her tiny shoulders, and climbed back onto that spirited horse. She didn't know what would happen next, but she was resolved to try. Although she went on to win many competitions, she never demonstrated as much courage as the bruised 10 year old girl who climbed back on the horse.
Today I want to reflect on courage. What is courage? What is its source? What squashes and squanders courage? How can we as religious liberals live with more courage in our lives?
To answer the question, "What is courage?" I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary.
Courage is related to the French word coeur, which means "heart." The first definition listed is this: The heart as the seat of feeling, thought, etc.; Spirit, mind, disposition, nature. It mentions that having courage means to bring a thing into good heart.
The second definition of the OED: What is in one's mind or thoughts, what one is thinking of or intending. The examples given are "To speak one's mind" and "To tell all one's heart." So courage has a lot to do with honesty, sincerity, and being up front with oneself.
The third definition: Spirit, liveliness, lustiness, vital force or energy. Isn't this interesting? The word courage, as it evolved, came to mean one's life force!
It is only the fourth definition that gets at what our culture identifies with courage: Bravery, boldness, valor; that quality of mind which shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking.
It was no accident that I chose to address the topic of courage on this week, two years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Today our country is filled with anxiety. Fear abounds in many public offices as our nation's leaders speak of the inevitability of future terrorist attacks. Understandably there is a great desire to protect ourselves, to do everything possible to make us immune to attack. The only problem is that life doesn't thrive when cooped up, when freedoms are threatened, or when there is no opportunity for relationship outside one's protected walls. The desire to keep fear and anxiety at bay results in ever-more gated communities, proliferating security alarm systems, and a frenzy of many to arm themselves.
How can we learn as a country to get back on the horse of living fully, openly, and from a place of heart? How can we live without too much fear that another attack won't buck us into terror? It takes courage to get back in the saddle. We won't know what is going to happen, but we can't move forward without trying.
A primary function of religion is to help people cultivate courage to live honestly, openly, and fully. Sages of all traditions are clear. Courage comes from our capacity to be vulnerable, that our power comes with making peace with our powerlessness, and that there is a love that never dies that ever waits for us to re-discover our courage. The source of courage is available to all. It is the love that is at the heart of all life, the love that casts out fear, the love that never fails. Some of us call it God, others of us the most important resource of the human spirit.
When we are in the grips of fear and anxiety, it is easy to cut ourselves off from this source. Courage doesn't have anything to do with the technology we have at our disposal or the amount of armor we wear or even with the muscular strength we might cultivate. Instead courage has to do with our humanity, not with attempts of making ourselves invincible.
I have a confession to make. I like Superhero movies. I recently saw the movie Spiderman. And yes, I really liked it. What surprised me was that tears welled up inside me after the movie ended. I was virtually sobbing for a good quarter of an hour following the film. Ever since the attacks of two years ago, my assumptions about the world have been called into question. I find myself quicker to jump to anxiety and a little slower at moving through my fear. There's a part of me that wishes I could just have superhuman qualities as if this would alleviate my fear. As the sobs caught in my throat while I walked out of the Cineplex, the irony of the human condition became clear. We as human beings are limited, vulnerable creatures and yet we are capable of being present to the world with courage.
There is always temptation in me to turn away from courage for fear that I am not good enough or strong enough or talented enough or smart enough. That's probably why I have wished, especially when I am feeling at my most vulnerable, I could manifest a bright gold S on my chest. I'd love to be Super-Alan or Super-Minister or Super-something! Because I'm not, there is a temptation to believe that I'd be better off turning away from my growing edges so that I need not confront the fears that line them. It is the same temptation that urges me to seek ever more layers of protection and invulnerability rather than seeking to bring my heart into relationship with the heart of the world. As much as I might want to be a superhero, it is my humanity that will serve me far more effectively.
I have a fondness for folk music. Catie Lee Curtis sings a tune called Heroes in which she comments upon the superhero syndrome that many of us wrestle with.
I'm still hoping you aren't made of steel
Superman is all right, but I want someone who is real
Heroes, I don't know any, so stop trying to be one
Just try to be somebody, someone who can be a fool
someone who can love me, and not be silent and cool
love is a mystery but you can't solve it like a crime
love is a puzzle but you can't leave it to your mind
I'm getting tired trying to get your heart to speak
Love cannot make you strong until it can make you weak
I love that last line: love cannot make you strong until it can make you weak.
The same thing goes for courage. Remember, the first definition of courage is of the heart. There's a lot of us around who try to be superheroes whether it is in a relationship or at work or in the eyes of acquaintances.
A member of my former church brought up the all too human struggle of reconciling the seemingly contrary needs at work of being professional and being spiritual. That is, when dealing with the public from her government job, she is expected to withhold feelings, to keep just to the facts, and refrain from offering words of empathy with someone who is struggling. There is an expectation in most "professional" settings that you will be "in control," "rational," "serious," "analytical," and guarded so as to keep your boundaries. But what happens when a situation at work calls for a more fully human response? How are you to be compassionate, empathetic, relational, open, or even emotional?
It is an important question. It takes courage to bring more humanity into the workplace. It will always be a struggle, as long as there are expectations to be more like an unfeeling robot. I am heartened by the number of people who call for more spirituality in the workplace. People with heart can bring to the workplace, especially corporations, the humanity corporations need to operate ethically, responsibly, and thoughtfully. But this takes continuous acts of courage on the part of people with heart. (And we all are people with heart, whether or not we act that way!)
No matter where we are on life's journey, courage is available. Virginia Cowling is 85 years old, and for 20 years she has traveled all over the worldÑalone. Her husband died in 1982. Not knowing what to do with all the time on her hands, she began to travel. It wasn't long before she needed two hip replacements and underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery. Yet she found herself beckoned to travel to distant lands and encounter what life is like in other parts of the world. On one journey, she visited a remote tribe on the island of Siberut, off the coast of Sumatra. Often she struggled to keep up with the guide and much younger travelers as they slogged through swamps to reach a tribal people relatively untouched by the outside world.
Most travelers, not to mention a then-77-year-old solo female traveler barely 5 feet tallÑwould be content to snap a few pictures of the native people, take a meal, rest, and head back to civilization. But Cowling was faced with an unexpected opportunity. The tribe's medicine man was intrigued with her and her age as evidenced by her wrinkled skin. He couldn't believe she had all her teeth and good muscles. The tribe's medicine man claimed that his mother's spirit had gone to America and had returned with Cowling. He told her he wanted Cowling to come and live with him. Some of her fellow travelers advised her not to go. After determining that she wouldn't need to be tattooed and confident that she could communicate by pantomiming, she decided to take the chance and visit the medicine man's family. The next day, the native man loaded Cowling into a small canoe and paddled her down river to his house. It was an opportunity to see the local village from the inside, all because she didn't shirk from what life offered.
None of us will be asked to join a tribal village for a day, but all of us face opportunities of engaging with the world. Most of us aren't in our 80s, but regardless of our age, we all have growing edges waiting to be broadened. We all have fears, but we need to understand that fear is not our enemy but instead a border experience that we can choose to cross. It is perfectly natural to hesitate in the face of fear, but if we take stock with a deep breath, opportunities presents themselves to identify our fears and move beyond them or at least move forward despite them. Whether you turn away shirking the fear or take a deep breath deciding to step towards and perhaps through the fear, is a decision you can make. Growing people who push their own boundaries face new fears all the time. Fear will always be present when we live with courage, for fear is actually an opportunity to grow.
During a radio broadcast this past week, I heard the story about a young woman who was pregnant when she was widowed on September 11th. With an eighteen-month-old toddler on her knee, she said, "We know we are more than our losses." The courage and hope she has found is available to anyone who has known loss and despair in their lives.
The events of September 11th 2001 marked a spiritual turning point. While it behooves our nation to attend to security vulnerabilities, there is a limit to what we can realistically achieve. For some the turning point was retreat ever further into fear. For others it shook people at their foundations to urge them to live despite their fear. I know many young people who lived with a philosophy of "No Worries!" or hakuna-metata as young Simba did while he shirked his true calling and the deep responsibility that called to him. It causes me hope that many people in the last two years have waken up realizing they have far more responsibility for their lives and making a difference than they had previously imagined. Sometimes it takes a terrible event to push us to that turning point. As Mary Tyler Moore once said, "You can't be brave if you have had only wonderful things happen to you."
All of us have been thrown off horses. While it is true that some horse accidents can be very dangerous, it doesn't mean we shouldn't ever get on to a horse again. Life is too precious to cower behind fortresses of protection. There will be more terror, I am sure, and more disease, and more sorrow. But that shouldn't stop us from seeking the saddle of a full life. Far more tragic than losing your life is to find at the end of many years that you have not begun to live.
In these uncertain times, have courage my friends. Remember there is a love that never ends, a love that never fails, a love that casts out all fear. So seek to bring your heart to the heart of your world and seek the saddle to which your life beckons!
Blessed be. Amen.
