The Promise of Living / River of Peace

Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway, The Promise of Living

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I watched a PBS Nature film “My Life as a Turkey.”

Joe Hutto incubated wild turkey eggs and waited.

The chicks hatch, see Joe.

Through this imprinting, they see him as their mother.

Joe spends each day mothering.

Like parents of children, he cares for his family around the clock.

He raises sixteen turkey chicks.

World religions, prophets, poets tell us only love will save us.

How does love manifest among creatures?

How does love save our country?

Can love bring well-being, housing, health care, education for 100% of us?

Can love save us when we get frustrated, angry, want to strike out?

How does love show up in church meetings?

With people who push our buttons?

How does love manifest in humans and turkeys?

My Life as a Turkey – what a crazy wonderful little film!

Joe walks so carefully, cautiously slowly, tenderly on the earth and with the young turkeys.  So many grace-filled moments.

Turkeys teach him to love and to let go.  It takes effort.  But Joe finds being with turkeys is something he can do well.

He discovers their intelligence, learns their language, witnesses their joy.

Joe sees how in the present moment turkeys are, how they mourn a death,

how fierce they can become.  One attacks him.

Turkeys aren’t always easy to be with.

Your family is probably not easy to be with all the time either.

I’m not always easy to be with.  Not even for myself.

Maybe you aren’t so easy either.

Joe learns a lot from his family of turkeys.

If your life, you learn lessons Joe does.

We learn a lot from one another.

A group gathered to share personal stories of the monthly theme ~ grace.

One woman speaks of the physical effort it now takes for her to swim.

She pushes herself.  Swimming is in no way effortless.  Yet a moment comes, when she is afloat and sky appears overhead, clear and blue.  A moment of grace.

A man tells of growing up a scrawny guy and thinking he mattered to no one.

In high school, he discovers the under 95 pound wrestling division.  He remembers the moment of feeling he could do something well.

A woman tells us she lost her job, and then her partner lost his.  Previously when her parents had died, her dog had seen her through their deaths.  She needed her dog again for comfort and support.

But the veterinarian told her it was time to put the dog down.  Not right then, but soon.

She and the dog went home.

The woman listened to a tape of the teacher Starhawk speaking on death.  Her dog was deaf, but it seemed almost like she could hear.  The dog curled up in her lap as if to say, “Now is the time.”

The vet came to the house.  The woman lay down beside the dog under the backyard apple tree.

This death, the woman, says was the most grace-filled event of her adulthood.

Another person spoke of her mother’s death.  She wanted to know more about her mom’s life beyond being her mother.

One day she found a box of her mother’s doggerel verse.  She hadn’t known her mother wrote such poetry.   She writes this kind of verse herself.  What a discovery to know they shared this same love!

The woman visited her brother, shared her delight, and left him with the box of verse.

When she returned, she asked her brother for the box.   He told her he had shredded the pages.   What!  How could he!

Her brother dislikes clutter.  He always gets rid of stuff.

She flew into a rage!

And then suddenly something stopped her.   She could hold on to her righteous fury or have a relationship with her brother.  She let go.

Relationships aren’t easy.

Joe Hutto lived with turkeys.

They could be gentle.  They could be fierce.

Family members can seem like real turkeys.

And turkeys can become family.

Turkeys, Joe grew to love them.

Moments of grace happen.

We can grow to love one another.   This is the promise of living.

Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway, River of Peace

I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.

Barbara and I were in Yosemite recently.

We read John Muir’s meditations.

In that magnificent place he said,

“We are reminded that everything is flowing.”

I’ve been thinking about all that flows.

Breathe in…and out.  Breath flows.

Blood streams through arteries and veins as, thump, thump, my heart beats.

Look up at the starry sky.  The stars are in motion.

The whole Universe is flowing.

High snow melts and streams downward, moving rock and sand.  Huge avalanches down trees, move mountains.

Streamlets, like lace, converge into streams, into rivers,

fly over granite precipices, fall, moving, crashing.

The calm at the bottom is misleading, for even the still surface, reflecting tall oaks and pines and domes and peaks,

down under Is moving ever onward, through the valley,

as the River of Mercy, the Merced, leaves the valley floor and sparkles and glistens as it falls again,

in rapids, down the mountain side.

Everything is flowing.

A river of golden t-shirts, proclaiming

“we’re standing on the side of love,”

flows through the streets of Richmond.

I am with sixty of you walking to end hunger.

We raise over six thousand dollars.

Everything is flowing.

Tires roll.  Cars enter the church parking lot.

Flow to the big truck.  Bags and boxes,

all sorts of containers flow from car to truck

from your hands to those of children and youth loading

the gifts of your food,

flowing down to Richmond,

to the Emergency Food Pantry,

flowing to the homes of hungry families.

Ten thousand pounds, or dollars, it all flows

to keep our humanity, to feed our hungry neighbors.

Everything is flowing.  Peace like a river.

Tears like the raindrops.

Pain like an arrow.

Occupy Wall Street.  Occupy Boston.  Occupy San Francisco.

Occupy Oakland.  Occupy Kensington.

Everything is flowing.

The people are rising.

Occupy your body.

Occupy your breathing, flowing, life-giving.

Drums beat the rhythm, thousands flow through the streets,

99% seeking economic justice.

Schools close.  Jobs lost.

Record profits on Wall Street.

Where is the violence?

Nurses, teachers, longshoremen, ministers,

everyone seeking a better way.

A new generation of leaders seeking a better way.

I see no violence on the streets,

But there is the one child with a sign saying,

“Don’t pepper spray me.”

Everything is flowing.  Peace like a river.  Strength like a mountain.

200 people flow into this building,

last evening,

into the Social Hall, into the welcoming presence

of our people, of our values, of our dreams.

Miss Representation:

Strength like a mountain, the vision of gender justice,

Strong girls.  Compassionate boys.

The empowerment of all people.

You are beautiful, just the way you are.

Occupy your body.

Proclaim your presence.

Dream of mutuality,

and reach out your hand to make it happen.

Everything is flowing.

Joy like a fountain.

Love like an ocean.

Peace like a river.

In my soul, and in yours.

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