"Burning Passions for a New Year"

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The Rev. Suzelle Lynch
January 4, 2004

I'd like to begin this morning with a story from Joseph Bruchac, a Native American storyteller and writer from the Abenaki people. (The story is "How Coyote Stole Fire," from the book "Four Ancestors: Stories, Songs and Poems from Native North America.")

Long ago, the people had no fire. All the fire in the world was held by the Fire Keepers, powerful beings who lived in a crater on top of a mountain. These beings, called Skookums, guarded the fire and shared it with no one.

In the winter, the people were very cold. The animals had fur coats to keep them warm, but they saw how the people were suffering and took pity on them.

"We must help these people," Coyote said. The other animals agreed. So Coyote chose four other animals to help him: Cougar, Squirrel, Antelope, and Frog. He told each of them to hide and wait for him to come down the mountain with fire. Then Coyote crept up to the crater where the Skookums stood guard.

There were four Fire Keepers. Three would sleep while one guarded their precious fire. Coyote watched them take turns and saw that the smallest Skookum was not as mindful as the others.

Coyote watched and waited until the smallest Skookum stood guard. The he crept closer. Closer and closer he came. Suddenly he grabbed a burning stick and ran away with it!

The four Skookums followed Coyote across the snow, breathing fire. The First Skookum grabbed at Coyote with its burning claws but only brushed the end of his tail. His tail turned black and is black to this day.

Coyote came to the place where Cougar was hiding in the trees. He threw the burning stick to Cougar, and Cougar ran. The Skookums were close behind. The Second Skookum grabbed at Cougar with its burning claws, but only brushed the tip of his tail. It, too, turned black.

When Cougar reached the plains, he tossed the stick to Antelope. The Third Skookum was so close that it grabbed Antelope's long tail and burned it off. To this day, Antelope has almost no tail. But Antelope leaped away and ran until he came to the river where Frog waited.

By now all that was left was a glowing ember. Frog swallowed it. The Fourth Skookum leaped at Frog and grabbed his tail, but Frog jumped and twisted and his tail broke off. To this day, Frog has no tail.

Then Frog dived into the river, where the Skookums could not follow. He swam across the river and crawled out on the other side. He spit the ember into the wood of (a tree on the riverbank).

Then Coyote went to the people.

"Little brothers and sisters," Coyote said, "we have brought you fire. It was not easy for us, but we have done it because we pitied you. The fire is hidden in those trees down by the river. If you take dry sticks from those trees and rub them together, sparks will come out. Those sparks will grow into flames. Then you will have fire to warm you and to cook your food. We know that you will continue to hunt us, but show us respect and remember that we have brought you this gift."

So it was that Coyote and the other animals brought fire to the people. And the people, who show respect to the animals, have never forgotten that great gift. (end of story)

Anyone who has ever burned themselves - even a little burn from touching a hot saucepan or a curling iron or even a sunburn - knows what it feels like to be "on fire." A burn hurts in a way unlike any other injury - a persistent kind of pain that can be surprisingly motivating.

But imagine having your tail on fire! A burning passion is like that -- it is something that will not let us go, something that has a persistent presence in our consciousness. And while the things about which we feel passionate are not always a painful presence, it is more true to human nature that something unpleasant or unfulfilled commands our attention far longer than something easy, already-achieved or pleasurable.

There's something about the New Year that seems to highlight the places of discomfort in our lives. Time moves on physically unmarked by the shifting from one year to another; it is invisible and merely a human construct, and yet there is a power in the turning of the calendar from December to January each year that pulls on our souls, if not on our tails!

Could this pull be the mild cultural pressure we feel to make New Year's resolutions? Resolutions are actually a practice that grew out of the early centuries of the Christian church when it was trying to temper the wildness of Roman New Year celebrations. I suspect for most of us the making of resolutions, if indeed, we even think about them, is not the pull we feel.

For many of us, resolution making evolves over the years sort of like this: Resolution #1, 2001 - I will read 20 intellectually-challenging books this year. 2002 - I will read 10 good books this year. 2003 - I will read five bestsellers this year. 2004 - I will finish reading Reader's Digest this year. Or Resolution #2, 2001 - I will go to church every Sunday. 2002 - I will go to church as often as possible. 2003 - I will go to church at least on Christmas and Easter. 2004 - I will read Suzelle's sermons on the website….

So if it's not the urge to make resolutions that pulls at us as the calendar page turns, what is it?

I have a spiritual practice that I usually undertake each year at this time. I am a journal-keeper, and each year after Christmas, I sit down with my journals and scan through the year as I wrote it down. This year as I looked back over twelve months of challenge, excitement and transition, of endings and beginnings, three themes caught my attention. I might even go so far as to call them life lessons, though I expect that I may always be in the process of learning and living them. And who better to inspire and describe these than the poets Rilke, Rumi, and David Ray.

Rainier Maria Rilke lived through the time when the 19th century met and gave way to the 20th century. He wrote of this turning from year to year, from century to century, like "a great leaf, that God and you and I have covered with writing … we feel the sweep of it like a wind." Not long ago, we too, stood on the edge of a century, indeed, on the edge of the millennium. Did you feel the wind at that turning? Rilke envisions the New Year as a bright new page, "where everything yet can happen."

Rilke reminds us, though, that the future belongs to the realm of things that are beyond our control. The fates measure the page, but they are unmoved by us, they do not speak to mortals. Yet despite our utter helplessness, there is brightness, a hope, for in the future, for "everything yet can happen."

When everything yet can happen, it is like being forgiven for anything and everything we have ever said or done. We pause now on the edge of the turning year and are free to begin anew - the rest of our life is before us, alive with possibilities.

Rilke speaks to me of my beginning with you, our entering into this new ministry together. And his words point to my first lesson: to remember not only that we can begin anew, but also that we are forgiven. The New Year is a new page where everything yet can happen; we need not drag with us all of the evidence of what did or did not work in the past. It is simply up to us to begin.

David Ray's poem recalls a question someone put to the poet Robert Frost towards the end of his life. "Do you have a hope for the future?" Yes, Frost said. "And even for the past." Frost said, "that (the past) will turn out to have been all right for what it was,.."

What great grace there is in Frost's words. He seems to be saying that in the future we will see that everything we have gone through - all the trials and tribulations, all the failures and disappointments, all the work and achievements -- will prove to have been worth it.

I have very personal associations with this related to my previous congregation. I can't imagine a minister leaving a church without the hope that the work they did there "will turn out to have been all right for what it was." Often we hope for more, that the future will prove our ministry to have been really good for the church.

But I also can't help but read Frost, and David Ray's interpretation of him more universally, as a hope that the future shall reveal that the way I have lived my life did not result in too endless a burden for my child, for your children, for all of our great-grandchildren.

Can we, with Robert Frost, have a hope that this will be so? The optimist in me wants more than anything to shout "Yes, yes!" But David Ray's poem makes me think about global warming, about war, about the national debt. It makes me think about the pollution my living causes each day, all the electricity and water and food I waste every day. It makes me think of all the things I believe, about the values I have but have not truly lived.

Why does it make me think about these things? Because the past, present and future are inextricably linked, they are one long chain of actions, outcomes and hopes. What I do today will be a part of the past that shapes the future. And if in the future I am to be able to bear that past, to be able to live with the consequences of that past, I must pay attention to the way I am living now. And if I am going to leave a livable planet, a civilized culture, a legacy of authentic democracy, a path toward deeper spirituality, for my descendants, and yours, I must change my life. May Robert Frost's unexpected words, "yes, and hope for the past, too, that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was," give us courage and impetus to change our lives. That is the second life lesson I feel pulling on me as we leap from year to year.

Sufi mystic and poet Rumi reminds us that to be human is to be more than our conscious decisions and personal memory. In our night dreams or absorbed in our work, we spring loose from the four-branched, time-and-space cross and the limits of personal self and we "nurse the milk of millennia." We stream into the vastness of what he calls "the loving nowhere," because despite conscious belief that we are finite and small, there is also the part of us that knows the largeness of our participation in the collective soul of all living things.

Rumi's imagery speaks easily to my imagination: when we die, our bodies become the dust-grains of a hundred thousand years, floating and flying in the will of the air, but despite our deaths, we live on in the collective soul as it bubbles up every moment into the lives of all those who dream.

It has been a sadness and an honor for me to lead memorial services for four members of our church since September. Listening, yesterday, as Joy and Dan Gander gave the eulogy for their mother, Joan, brought Rumi's lesson home again, that to be human is to live a paradox: we are immortal AND transcendent; the same force that guarantees our immortality also binds us back to the world of living and dying. Ultimately, no matter how we live on in the personal memories of our loved ones or via the genetic legacies we pass to our children, the purpose of our being here on Earth may have nothing to do with who we are as individual personalities. The truth is that to be human is to be both exalted and humble. I am told that Hasidic Jews have a tradition that reminds them about this. In one pocket they carry a piece of paper that says, "You are dust and ashes," and in the other pocket, a paper with the words, "the world was made for you." This is part of the power that pulls us as one year gives way to the next: we are mortal AND transcendent.

And thus we pause, aware of the blank bright new page turning overhead, its wind calling us to begin anew. Aware that we must change our lives so that the way we live increases the chances for love, compassion, justice, and the preservation of our precious planet. Aware that with our mortality comes our continuing participation in the soul of the world.

And when we pause, what becomes possible is to look to the places where we are burning. Where we are uncomfortable, physically, emotionally, spiritually, morally.

A member of the church I served in Washington once told me a story that serves as an image for me of this possibility, this need. He was out hiking in the mountains one afternoon, and by the time he hit the trail to head back to his car, it was dark. The only thing he had with him to illuminate the path and keep him from stumbling or falling over a cliff was a cigarette lighter. And you know what happens when you keep a lighter lit for a long time: it becomes hot enough to burn your fingers; too hot to hold. It's a good metaphor for how our lives work - the thing that hurts us, that burns us, is also the thing we need to see our path, to see where we are going and where we need to go on life's road. The places we burn are the places from which our real New year's resolutions might arise, resolutions that will spark our passions, compel us to action.

Think of Coyote, Cougar, Antelope and Frog. They stole fire from the Skookums and gave the knowledge of it to the people for they were driven by pity, by fellow-feeling for the people, by the knowledge that they could help the people, and by their need for respect. The story says they forever bear the scars of their success. What is it YOU care for so deeply that you might risk your tail to make it happen?

As we pause today just over the edge of the New Year, ask yourself: What would you like to change in your life? What, in the deepest, hidden, corner of yourself are you ashamed of? What is it within you or beyond you that makes you uncomfortable? What are you putting off today that you'd regret not having attended to if you were to die tomorrow? What do you notice in our wider world that needs to change? What is keeping you from working to create that change? What loving gestures, what words of forgiveness, are you withholding from yourself or others?

As we celebrate the beginning of the New Year together, you need to know that who you are and what you do matters. I believe this wholeheartedly - each of us matters. Our lives have value, worth and importance. The places where you ache for change, the things that will not let you go, your burning passions, are important.

And so, as that great leaf covered with the writings of God and you and I turns overhead, may your burning passions bless you and compel you and sustain you through all the days and weeks and months of the year ahead.

Amen.