Grace and Giving
Copyright © 2010, Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway
"B
lessed are those who keep their hearts open.”That’s Psalm 1 of the Hebrew Scriptures as adapted by Stephen Mitchell.
Blessed is an open heart.
If this is true, then Jim was cursed.
He was an angry man.
Anger was closing his heart.
His family was afraid of him.
Everybody kept their distance.
Jim could really work himself up.
And when he was really angry, he was full of hate.
Once he was steaming, he was so angry with another man.
He began to imagine holding that man’s heart in his hand, squeezing the life out of it, and watching the man drop.
At this same time, Jim developed severe heart disease.
He was only forty-six years old.
There was no history of heart disease in his family.
As the anger continued, Jim’s chest pain worsened.
Do you believe his wanting to squeeze the life out of someone’s heart could cause his own arteries to block?
Anger was Jim’s protection from vulnerability and intimacy.
But this wall of protection was closing in on him, threatening his survival.
He was walling out other people, even those closest to him.
“The heart narrows as often as it opens.”
Those words are from a line of poetry by Mary Oliver.
The heart narrows as often as it opens.
What causes the heart to contract, harden and become mean?
My heart closes when I feel angry, frustrated, and cynical, when I hold on to old hurts, focus on fears, work myself into a state of anxiety. My heart closes when I act like everything depends on me.
What opens hearts?
Cardiologist and medical professor, Dr. Dean Ornish is known for literally opening closed hearts and clogged arteries. Impossible as it first seemed, clinical research has shown that Dr’s Ornish approach of life-style changes: a low-fat vegetarian diet, exercise, and meditation can reverse even severe heart disease.
Jim came to Dr. Ornish.
The life style changes were helpful but not enough to relieve Jim’s pain.
Jim didn’t necessarily have to want to spend time with the man with whom he was so angry, but Dr. Ornish counseled him to tell the man he had wished him dead and to ask for his forgiveness.
It wasn’t easy.
Finally weeks later, Jim admitted what he done and asked for forgiveness.
Then Jim and his family went into counseling to learn to communicate better.
Jim’s relationships began to be more open and loving.
He has had no chest pain since.
The progression of his heart disease has even begun to reverse.
Better still, he says, he feels more intimate and joyful.
Can you believe it?
One case doesn’t prove anything, yet Dr. Ornish was deeply touched by his experience with Jim.
Some years later, Dr. Ornish published Love and Survival. In Love and Survival Dr. Ornish sites scientific studies which support the healing power of intimacy, community, and giving.
Do you feel better after you’ve come to church? According to studies, just being here regularly enhances life, lessens illness and premature death from all causes. Participation in spiritual community brings healing even when there can’t be cure.
Healing, wholeness, and holiness all come from the same root.
Scarred physical hearts and scarred emotional/spiritual hearts heal through community and compassion.
In this community, we practice speaking our truths respectfully and listening to one another with empathy. We are learning to see, hear, and love one another into more life.
As New York Times book reviewer John Leonard use to say, “It takes a lot of practice to become a human being.”
Compassion offered, word by word, gesture by gesture, begins to heal wounds. Hearts open a little more. We don’t necessarily like everything about each other, but we accept each other, we grow to care for and love each other.
Grace is an open heart.
Thursday night after supper, Community Minister the Rev. Jane Ramsey led the 7:00 worship. Jane said all the world religions speak of forgiveness and compassion.
Together we read these words from Rabbi Chaim Stern, words of assurance, of the possibility of turning lives around, of reversing closed hearts,
“A new heart will I give you,
a new spirit put within you.
I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh,
and give you a heart that feels.”
This is a gift we can give each other.
Giving is really a gift to yourself. Giving frees you from loneliness and isolation, connects you to others and gives you life.
Church member Stephanie Ann Blythe has loved trains all her life. She has ridden trains and collected miniature train sets. One recent Sunday she saw 10 year old Kaeden here at church wearing his train engineer cap. In a flash, Stephanie Ann thought of her trains sets at home in boxes on the shelves. She talked with Lucinda and David, Kaeden’s parents, and learned Kaeden would be having his 11th birthday the next Sunday. The timing was perfect. Stephanie Ann gave Kaeden her trains. She says it felt so good to follow her impulse to give without reservation or condition. Giving was a gift to herself.
Small miracles happen here on Sundays, moments that are life-giving.
We feel connected to something larger than ourselves.
So much “preaches” to us on Sundays, so much opens our hearts…
The building itself, the wood and stone, is here for us.
Last Thursday night at the weekly supper, people were invited to express appreciation. Here is their litany of gratitude—
I’m grateful for the quality materials that went into the original construction of the church. Vertical Grain Fir is a beautiful wood; its presence tells us “you are worthy; this beauty is for you.”
I’m grateful for the silence the congregation holds before the spoken meditation and prayer.
Sundays I feel encouraged to be my best self, to be of service.
I am grateful for our stands on marriage equality and health care reform, our reading in the schools, serving at the shelter, stocking the food pantry.
We are learning to move through conflicts in a way that brings deep change.
We’re challenged to go deeper.
We are involved in the larger community and in global issues.
We respond to communities in need, like Haiti, through the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
We experience acceptance for who we are.
Our minds, hearts, and spirits are engaged.
We offer hospitality and welcome and support in difficult times.
I am comforted by people, even those I don’t know, but whose faces have become lovingly familiar.
In Chalice Circles, Extended Families, and other small groups we really get to know each other.
No one has ever listened to me as attentively as I have been listened to here.
I come here every Sunday and am refilled, reminded, and recalled to my highest self.
The love I feel here supports me for my work in the world.
I receive so much I can’t help but feel waves of gratitude.
The more gratitude I feel, the more I want to give.
I’m grateful for multi-generational friendships, for modeling living for one another.
Frances Hanna and Donna Davis know each other well through Blended Voices, a church group where members present scenes from plays. Donna has been visiting and reading a scene with Frances weekly for months. On a recent Sunday, 102 year old Frances who has had a series of falls, sprains, bruises and a broken bone, presented to the group a dramatic spunky, funny monologue she had learned by heart. What a gift for everybody! Frances’ motto is living is giving. Giving truly keeps her living.
Hearing O Holy Night sung at the 10:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service, people said that for the first time in their lives they felt like falling on their knees. The beautiful music opened our hearts to the oneness and divinity possible for us humans, opened us to humility and gratitude.
We are connected with Unitarian Universalists far and near. Friday and Saturday, over 200 of us from northern California met here to imagine Unitarian Universalism for the 21st century. Here are parts of the stories shared in a workshop on the difference this faith makes.
When I came here I had lost my wife, my children and my job, this church saved my life.
I thought I had to be totally self-reliant, but this congregation connects me to a power higher and deeper than myself.
Before I came, I thought religions saw God as an old white man. Here I explore what’s divine.
I find the divine in myself, in others, and in the universe.
I brought my husband to this church when I thought I was dying, and it has supported us both in living.
Young Religious Unitarian Universalists YRUU saved my life when I was in 8th grade.
I was terrified when I first came and found it is okay that I identify as a gay man. I’m not singled out for that; I am part of the congregation.
I am allowed to be myself and to explore the deep issues of life.
Here I am seen and heard and loved.
I have celebrated all my milestones here—two weddings, two births, and three memorial services and I feel those connections here.
One Sunday this fall John Cahoon stood here and pointed right there to this spot where he and Lynne were married on June 12, 1965.
On this same spot, 42 years later in 2007, John and Lynne’s children brought their children, John and Lynne’s twin grandbabies, to be welcomed into the world and blessed by this congregation.
If these stones could speak….they would tell of this spot, where couples pledge their love, children come of age, youth drape their arms around one another and sing, where flute and violin harmonize.
The stones would speak of children gathering for stories, candle lighting, dances, choruses when the music makes you weep and hold the silence because the moment is so deep and you want to make it last.
The stones would speak of prayers, of memorial services when the deepest essence of a life is remembered and the person’s presence is felt.
The stones would speak of calls to action, of feeling deep connection to members who share their stories, and now after today’s story of the boldness and vulnerability of members appearing here in wet suits, inviting us to dive deep together, to explore giving 5% -10% of our income to this congregation we love.
The stones would speak of laughter and tears, of blessings and the continual renewal of life.
Our gifts were given to us not to keep but to give. We dive deep, thoughtfully engage in what we can stretch to give. We give to live. We give and we receive, a continual flowing like life blood through unblocked arteries. The giving flows among us; one can hardly tell what is giving and what is receiving.
Opening our hearts is how each of us blesses ourselves and this place this day and for all the days to come.
Amen.
Grace and Giving from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.
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