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 Luke 2:41-52
I have a question for you: What are your passions? What is it that, deep inside of you, has been in the core of your being for a long time and is seeking expression? What is the voice that for a long time has been asking for a hearing?
Start by asking yourself, "What in my life gives me the greatest fulfillment? What gives me the deepest satisfaction?" Or, as Joseph Campbell said, "what is your bliss?" What is the real stuff for you?
I am not talking about sentiments or flighty whims. You know what I'm talking about - your most profound passions, when you connect with an energy that compels you and, when released, spontaneously begins to help you become who you were born to be.
I'm going to talk for a moment about three of my passions. Each is important. Each is different. Each is essential to my balance and my well-being.
One is being on my little boat in the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Maine. Doing this is increasingly important to me. When I'm on the water in that boat, something happens that happens at no other time in my life. I feel a connection. It's hard to describe it, but it's a oneness. I sense a fusion with the universe. And there's a little drama that always happens in the last moment of the last day of my summer vacation when I take the boat to the marina for them to lift it out of the water for another season. There's always a tug of profound sadness. And, on occasion in that last run, I have shed a tear or two. Sometimes I have bawled.
I mentioned this to Ron Svenningsen, our church chef, who also has a boat on the coast of Maine, and he said, "Arthur, I know exactly what you're feeling, because I have done the same thing." People have said to me they get the same experience from being on their hands and knees gardening. Some get it in the mountains and some walking through the woods. But we need these connections with something we are passionate about, for our well-being, for our balance, for our renewal and for our restoration.
Another of my passions is people - in particular, my family: my wife, my children, my stepchildren, my grandchildren and my friends. It is increasingly important for me to spend quality time with them. I'm not talking about great profound moments, but simply being with them.
It wasn't always that way with me. For too many years I postponed my relationships. I was anxious and always moving on to the next thing. "Some day I'll get to it. Some day I know I'll get to it," I'd say to myself. And then I got a gift, and the gift was a major, life-threatening illness and a condition which will be with me for the rest of my life. As soon as I was confronted with the gift of a major illness - and I say "gift" because it was a gift and it is a gift - my priorities did a complete shift. All of a sudden relationships became of primary importance and I developed a passion for them.
What I find myself doing now is collecting special moments as they happen serendipitously. I remember a special moment on the eve of my birthday a couple of years ago when my granddaughter Isabella was five. My son and his family stay on an island just about a mile from where we stay in the summertime, and she had asked if she could have a sleep-over with us.
I picked her up in the boat and brought her across, we all had dinner, and then she brought out a book she wanted me to read to her. It was a pretty big book. "How much do I have to read?" I asked.
"The whole book, Granddad." And so for about forty minutes, I read the whole book and she paid attention, and then she went to sleep. Some time in the night I heard her crying and sobbing, so I got up and sat on her bed and hugged her until she went back to sleep.
The next morning she said, "Granddad, did you hear me cry last night?"
"Yes. Do you remember my coming to you and holding you?" and she said, "No."
"Why were you crying?" I asked.
"I got scared and wanted to go home. Then I changed my mind and I stayed."
"Thank God," I thought, because getting across the bay at that hour of the night...
At breakfast the three cereals we had in the house were not acceptable to her, so I offered her an English muffin. As she was eating it, she said to my wife, "I just love to study the texture of my foods."
My third passion is my vocation. It is what I do, what I am about, what my calling is. I've always wanted to be a minister from the time I was a little boy. People have commented how fortunate I was always to know what I was supposed to be, and there are advantages. I didn't have the struggle so many do - "Who am I? What am I about?"
But there are disadvantages too. When it comes too easily you miss a lot of the struggle, for in the struggle is the growth. The struggle refines and teaches us. And so I had to have struggle in another way.
I have what I believe to be the best job in the whole wide world - to be the minister in your lives. And it is also the best job because I have the privilege, every single Sunday, and many days during the week, of giving good news. How badly we need the good news that God loves us, and that the spirit of Christ is a transforming and powerful presence.
The secret is all about connecting with our passions and understanding the absolute necessity - now hear me, because some of you are dodging dealing with your passions - the absolute necessity of connecting with your passion so that in time you will discover why you're here and what you're supposed to be about. When you do that you will discover the possibility of the fullness of your life. You will really live.
Jesus framed it in language, which increasingly has become more meaningful to me, in a scriptural text from the third chapter of the gospel of John. This passage has been interpreted in many different ways, but the interpretation which means the most to me has to do with discovering and living out our passions. Jesus said, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free." You will seek and know your truth. You will search diligently for the truth that is in you and, as you discover that truth, as you connect with it, you will find a freedom which is unbelievable. The wind will be at your back. You will know why you're here. Yes, you'll have suffering. Yes, you'll have hardship. Yes, you'll have losses. Yes, all of the vicissitudes, all of the slings and arrows, as Shakespeare said, will come at you, but you'll know why you're here and your life will be fulfilled because you will have known your truth.
I've got a suggestion. Following the suggestion is not simple, because life is complex and challenging, but it can be communicated in a simple phrase. The phrase is the title of a book of genius, by a man named Parker Palmer. He is a man who has done his work - emotional work, mental work, and spiritual work. Parker Palmer is an educator, a communicator par excellence. His brilliant little book has the title Let Your Life Speak, and that's the suggestion I have for you today. Let your life, let who you are, speak. Let your life speak, and you will find fulfillment.
Let me quote some things from the book:
The biggest question is not what ought I to do with my life? but... who am I? What is my nature?
Some of us are continuously asking that question: "What is it I'm supposed to be doing?" and looking for an answer out there somewhere. But the question is, "Who am I? What is my nature?" and that answer can only come from inside.
Here's another insightful thing he says:
Our deepest calling is to grow into our authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be.
Our parents have the idea of who we ought to be. Teachers do, friends do, our society does. It might sound good, but their idea may not be it. We must get down into genuine selfhood.
How do you get there? The question is what we're about this morning. In answer, Parker quotes theologian Frederick Buechner, who has one of the most insightful, practical minds of any theologian of any age, and he has the added gift of writing like a poet. This is what Buechner said:
Vocation is where your deep gladness meets the world's deepest need.
Vocation is where your deep gladness meets the deepest needs of the world. When you connect with the passion of your authentic self, and what you're about ties into what the world needs, then there's real fulfillment. We won't even talk about happiness. This is way beyond happiness. It transcends what we call happiness.
Then Parker addresses the issue of self-care. When we are in this search we're going to be dealing with ourselves, and sometimes we feel guilty about spending time on ourselves. We should be doing for others, we think - which is true, but hear what he says:
Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on this earth to offer others.
The other day I had a conversation with a member of this staff. Like all members of the staff of this church, she works very, very hard and is completely passionate and involved in what she's doing, and she does an extraordinary job. I said to her, "What have you planned for this year so that you will pace yourself and take care of yourself?"
She said, really she hadn't dealt with that. She has a friend with whom she talks regularly about this very subject, and its part of her struggle to get to the point where she takes care of herself. When we do intelligent self-care, we don't burn out. If you read through the gospels, you will see that every few pages there is some reference to Jesus' leaving the crowd, leaving the responsibilities and busyness and going to a quiet place - to the seashore, to the mountain, to a garden or to a lonely place, where He could think and meditate in prayer. Really, what He was doing was self-care.
Parker Palmer was set on the search for authenticity and self-understanding when, in his forties, he had two major bouts with clinical depression. Those of you who know anything about depression know the depths, the dark black hole that it is, and the hopelessness, the helplessness you feel when you're depressed. Talk about the dark night of the soul!
Parker says that depression is the ultimate state of inner disconnection and, seeking to get out of it, he once went to an older woman, someone he'd always admired, to get some advice. He had heard people say, "Have faith and the way will open," which I say myself - and in time the way does seem to open for me.
But this woman said to him, "In my sixty-plus years of living, the way has never opened for me." Parker said he went into the spinning depths of despair when he heard this. He had come looking for hope, and this seemed hopeless. But then she said, "But a lot of the time the way has closed behind me, and that has had some guiding effect." And that is true, isn't it? Sometimes the direction is not clear ahead, but the doors that close behind us are an indicator of the direction to move in.
Parker said that in his struggle to find a therapist who thoroughly understood him, his psyche and his depression, one day he was in conversation with a therapist who said to him, "You seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as a friend pressing you down to ground on which it is safe for you to stand?" This therapist suggested that he embrace his apparent descent into hell as a part of his journey toward selfhood and toward God.
Parker wrote that he had always thought God was found by looking up, and now he realized that God is found by going down. We descend into the valley of the shadow, and when we're in the valley of the shadow, the light, in time, comes on.
Remember how Jesus, at twelve years old, stayed behind in Jerusalem after his parents started on their way home, and they searched for days and found him in the temple? He had the courage to be himself. He was trying to follow the passionate voice within, even at that young age, and He had the courage to listen to the voice, and to connect with his passion.
So I commend this to you, that if you connect with your passions, you will eventually release the energy of your authentic self, and in the process you will find - and it takes time and it's a struggle - in time you will come to who you really are. When you discover what your nature is, the wind will be at your back because you will have found your reason for being. Let us pray.
You bless us, O Lord, with life, and You bless us with challenge, with struggle and with difficulty. You bless us even with darkness. So help us in these moments, Lord, to take the time to think about and connect with these inborn passions, that we might live to serve and glorify You. Amen.
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