Rev. Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
RevAnnFox@aol.com
Unitarian
Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
In the Valley of the Shadow
a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
November 16, 2008
Note: A sonnet is attached, which you might like to read first
The poet said, “Death is not too high a price to pay for having lived.” (See attached sonnet.) When you think of death, what memories rise up in your mind? Do you think of a loved one you’ve lost, a national tragedy, a pet, or are you too young to have lost a dear one? If I had known, I would have mourned my beloved grandmother’s death but I was 3,000 miles away and no one bothered to tell me until three years later when I was visiting family in England. I thought of asking my aunt if I could have a hat pin of Nanny’s (for Nanny is what we called her). I loved to watch her put her hat on and then put a looooong pin in it, wondering in my child’s mind how she possibly could stick it through her head and not yell in pain. Or perhaps I could have one of her Victorian, sparkly brooches that she changed frequently on her coat, knowing that she had inherited them from her foster mother. However, it was experience in my UU congregations that gave me ongoing experience of loss. But these were experiences of my own loss not thoughts of death.
Perhaps most of us have to reach a certain age before the shadow of death casts a real shadow. It has been in my ministry with you that I’ve had my greatest learning. I have been impressed by how hospice programs, hospitals and nursing homes ease the journey of families when their loved ones are dying.
When I heard in 2007 that the famous UU minister Forrest Church (son of the famous environmental senator Frank Church) was gravely ill I wondered how it was to be part of his congregation at that time and even now. He is minister of our 1500-member All Souls Unitarian Church on Lexington Avenue, New York City. Forrest Church is also a writer and a scholar of history and, of course, theology, or theological musings. I have a few of his books. Then, in June of this year, at our annual General Assembly of Untarian Universalists, I noticed that Forrest Church was listed as a speaker. So he was still alive!
My colleague and I arrived early for his talk, which was a good thing because the large lecture hall quickly became completely full, with many standing in the aisles. As he revealed to us the story of his illness and what he has learned in his life, this audience of about 1,000 hardly moved a muscle. And there were many of us in tears when we gave him a standing ovation. I decided then that I would buy his book, which he told us that he had written in two weeks. It is called Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow. I was intrigued that in the book’s title he had put “Love” first, Love and Death. I felt deep down that I must share at least some of it with you. And I will put it in the church library so you can read it for yourself. It is well worth reading.
The Forrest Church before us this day was a far slimmer, gaunt man than when I had seen him a few years before delivering the eulogy of our mutually beloved mentor, the Reverend Rhys Williams. I was gratified then to hear him put into words what I had only felt about Rhys: that his life and ministry was not about him but about you, indicating to us all that life was not about the individual, but all of us. He said that although he had realized this belatedly, he had learned it well recently.
This day, Forrest was smiling and his voice sounded strong, remarkably so since he has cancer of the esophagus. He told us the story of his illness and the lessons he has learned in his life and during the time of his now “long goodbye.”
Just as his wife was leaving on a trip to India, he was told in October of 2006 that he had an aggressive, inoperable cancer and that he had only months to live. He persuaded his wife to continue her important work in India and anyway, he told her, he had a sermon to write. When I read that I burst out laughing. Would he really write about the published topic, I thought? Actually, no; instead, he wrote a sermon called “What I Believe,” gathering up all his thoughts about life and love and pouring it into a sermon, without mentioning his illness, his mortality. I have often noticed that getting busy is the way a lot of people, including myself, handle life threatening or tragic news.
Forrest shared his awful news with the staff at All Souls Unitarian Church. A few weeks later, after a CAT scan, he received news that his cancer was, after all, operable. He wrote to his congregation about his illness for he would have to take a leave of absence to go through chemo therapy treatment. When he was able, he spent his time writing more of the few books that he had under way and he published his tome called So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the Great Battle over Church and State. I recalled that he is a trained historian.
After the treatment, he received news that he was cancer free so he returned to the pulpit at All Souls. However, this miracle of modern medicine was not to last long for at the end of 2007, the cancer was back with a vengeance and this time it was definitely and entirely inoperable. This is when he sat down and wrote in two weeks his book, Love and Death.
His book is more about life than death. He repeats again what he wrote in other books that “Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.…The goal is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.” He tells us about the most important things in his life. One major one was when he stopping drinking just before the year 2000. He embraced the journey that is defined by Alcoholics Anonymous, that of taking a rigorous moral inventory and making amends to those he had harmed. Later he came up with his mantra for life. It is this:
Want what you have (This mutes the pangs of desire.)
Do what you can. (You discover what is possible and not possible.)
Be who you are. (Helps us avoid delusions; be straight with self and others.)
He insists that when we understand that life is not about US, it is liberating because we rise out of our state of self-pity and shake off the tendency to whine, “Oh, woe is me!” He advises us to live every day as a miracle that is rich with possibility. He says, “This is the day we are given—make the very best of it and count your blessings.” He entreats us to think about the loves in our life and whether we have forgiven those who we think have hurt us. And he cautions us that an over-examined life is not worth living. This is in contrast to Emerson’s statement that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” There has to be a balance.
Forest confesses that for much of his ministry he avoided using the word “God” but finally came to realize that “God is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each….[that] theology is poetry not science…[and that] the creation is our book of revelation…[and that] to be at home with life we must make our peace with death.”
More than anything, he wants us to know that he believes that life is about love and little else. He tells us that the year between February 2007 and February 2008 was the happiest year of his life. He certainly focused on the love in his life during this time and this included his love of his parishioners and he told them during the closing words of every service that he loved them. And he kept coming back to his mantra: Love what you have; do what you can; be what you are.
He could not face his death completely without pondering what death is. He was impressed by the thousands of accounts of people seeing tunnels of light and hovering over their bodies during surgery. He was impressed by those who said they didn’t want to return to life in the body because of the peace they had experienced. He noticed that all the world’s finest teachers teach about peace and he came to believe that he couldn’t determine anything about an after life but whatever it is, it involves peacefulness—peace of death, peace of everything. He thinks that passing through the “valley of the shadow and dwelling in the house of the Lord forever” is the peace we seek in life and also in death.
His rigorous moral inventory of some years earlier had given him a sense of addressing “unfinished business” but he realized that the unfinished business was not only his. Surely, one’s family and friends have unfinished business with us. So he spent the year 2007 allowing his children and close friends their unfinished business. He asked his daughter how she felt about his death. This unleashed her unfinished business with him and her grief, her tears and their laughter. If we do this with our family members and close friends, Forest urges us to then “Shut up and listen!” Letting people grieve is a way of letting them love you, he said. I know that many of you have done this expressing of what you feel about your loved one’s life without being asked and have benefited from it. It is good.
Forest acknowledges that in spite of all the pondering about what death is and what it will bring, he doesn’t truly know the truth. But what he does know is that the love we put into the world goes on and on.
Nowadays, Forest gives outlandish tips to taxi drivers. And he knows that someday soon, he will return to the pulpit of All Souls Unitarian in New York City to deliver his final sermon and give his final farewell and then he’ll say his final goodbye’s one by one to dear friends and family. And then he will let go, “Let go for dear life” he wrote. Perhaps he has lasted even this long in order to bring us his wise and loving messages.
His book has prompted me to form my own mantra and to also to ponder what work I need to do with others. I wonder whether Forest ever read the sonnet that was read earlier about “Death not being too high a price for having lived.” It was written by a UU woman poet. I think Forrest would like it very much. I’ll send it to him.
The hymn before the sermon said, “Just as long as I have breath, I must answer yes to life, yes to truth, yes to love.” I wonder if Forest will choose that hymn for his celebration of life service! Our final hymn is “Life Is the Greatest Gift of All,” #331. I think he would like that one as well except that I think he’d change “Life” to “Love” for that’s what it is all about—LOVE!
Reference:
Church, Forrest. Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow, Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. (Note: you may borrow this from our church library.)
”THE COST” by Dorothy Monroe from Stopping
Places
Death is not too high a
price to pay
for having lived. Mountains never die,
nor do the seas or rocks or endless sky,
Through countless centuries of time, they stay
eternal, deathless. Yet they never live!
If choice there were, I would not hesitate
to choose mortality. Whatever Fate
demanded in return for life I'd give,
for, never to have seen the fertile plains
nor heard the winds nor felt the warm sun on sands
beside the salty sea, nor touched the hands
of those I love - without these, all the gains
of timelessness would not be worth one day
of living and of loving; come what may.
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox