"One Night Stand" - the Reverend Alison Hyder

August 24, 2003 - the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

We’ve all admired it
even as we’ve cursed
the matted roots, white fingers
pointing toward new frontiers,
the tangled tapestry stubbornly
weaving the world in place.

Imagine living that way.
Imagine knowing from the ground up
that you are tied to the whole,
that you are undefeatable,
that below the surface
indefinable discoveries
are always taking place.

Don’t you think there are
things worth holding onto
with a thousand arms,
Ten thousand gripping toes?
Aren’t the undaunted
particularly blessed?

Before you deride the faithful
consider carefully
where you will put your roots.

MEDITATION: by Rev. Richard Gilbert “The Courage of Patience”

When we are overwhelmed with the world and cannot see our way clear;
When life seems a struggle between tedium and apathy,
Frenzy and exhaustion;
When today seems a punishment and tomorrow a torment;
May we find the courage of patience.
We know stories of prophets and seers, heroes and heroines
Who muster courage for the ultimate challenge.
We know common people who exhibit uncommon courage in the face of crisis.
May we also know courage in ourselves and our companions that is not dramatic,
That elicits no fanfare, that commands little notice by the world.
May we know the courage of patience exhibited by those who live one day at a time,
Who see the long path of suffering and do not despair,
Who inspire us by their patient courage when we are impatient and afraid.
May we experience the courage of patience in our impatience, in our fear,
and quietly celebrate its presence among us.

READING: by Paul Tillich

Although waiting is not having, it is also having. The fact that we wait for something shows that in some ways we already possess it. Waiting anticipates that which is not yet real. If we wait in hope and patience the power of that for which we wait is already effective within us. He who waits in an ultimate sense is not far from that for which he waits. He who waits in absolute seriousness is already grasped by that for which he waits. She who waits in patience has already received the power of that for which she waits. He who waits passionately is already an active power, the greatest power for transformation in personal and historical life.

SERMON: “One Night Stand” - Rev. Alison Hyder

Doug Morgan Strong is the Unitarian Universalist minister in Plano, Texas. He writes,
In our sunroom grows a huge cereus cactus plant. It covers a good third of the glass wall – providing needed shade in the hot summer. The cereus spends nearly a year preparing to bloom and then flowers one night and one night only. The flowers are the size of your two fists together, with a sweet aroma, that some might call pungent, filling the entire house.
Last Tuesday was the night – eighteen individual blooms burst forth with such profusion that we could hardly breathe. It was truly a breathtaking experience.
I sat looking at the flowers – stark white against the wall of green leaves – realizing that the plant’s whole purpose culminates in a one-night stand. To work so hard for such a brief performance on the stage of Life seems sad, somehow. It gives one pause. [First Days Record, October 2000]
What if you had one night to shine: one night to make your impression on the world, to make a difference. What would you want to say? What would be your legacy?
Our sense of time is limited. When we are kids, each day is an event, and Christmas vacation can seem like an era, with it’s own special rhythm and atmosphere. But as we get older, time moves more quickly, and our perspective of life takes on a broader view. We get used to the idea of outliving our beloved pets and losing parents and friends. And yet there are many plants that flower for a week and are gone; insects whose entire lifespan lasts a few days. Some species of frogs can lie dormant in the dirt for years, only awakening when there is enough rain to resuscitate and sustain them. Time has little bearing on a being’s worth or purpose.
We’ve all heard Shakespeare’s statement: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.” [“Twelfth Night”]. Still, most of us doubt that we will ever achieve anything of importance in the world, much less of prominence or greatness. All we can expect, we despair, is a sort of plodding responsibility, enlivened by the occasional promotion, a recognition of our efforts, or maybe the sale of our work. We know that our children need us, that all children need us. We are loved by our friends. We matter to the people around us.
And yet, in these days of reality TV, with “Survivor” and “American Idol” bringing instant celebrity to just one percent of all the eager candidates, there seems to be a widespread hunger for consequence. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. Is it meaning we crave, or just attention?
Some of the most important people in our lives were just doing their jobs. They taught us to read, and hundreds of children like us, year after year. They got up in the morning and made us lunch and found our raincoats; they paid the rent. They were sitting at the stationhouse when the fire alarm rang, and they threw down their cards and coffee and answered the call. Unseen heroes sterilized the forceps and fixed our power lines and guided in our plane. Each day is the gift of thousands of workers and dreamers, researchers and inventors, obscure and lost to time. As tenacious as crabgrass, as patient as a cactus flower.
Life may never demand any more of us than this: that we live with integrity and kindness, caring for ourselves and cleaning up our own mess. And at that, we wouldn’t be doing too badly, frankly. The world could use a few more thoughtful, responsible people, a return to the virtue of duty. Because people who are clear about their values are more conscious of their actions. They know how to act with integrity and courage because they have practiced it everyday, whether they are sick or scared or just plain bored. They have worked through these feelings, and committed themselves to their better selves. They have learned – at least tentatively, reluctantly - to put service ahead of their personal inclination, day by day.

This is not a failure of creativity. It is not that these people are bores or nerds who can’t envision the pleasures of playing loose with their time, or falsifying their expense statements, or spending the child support on jet skis. Instead, their imaginations are so immense that they can picture how other people feel, their wants and hurts and dreams. Their hopes aren’t limited to themselves, but encompass the needs of others. They practice understanding.
It’s all very mundane. But so is practicing the scales, and memorizing Spanish vocabulary, and learning CPR. Yet they are necessary steps to achieving skill and fluency. Only by identifying and rehearsing those things we really value – compassion, generosity, playfulness, courage - can these actions become natural and automatic. The more we exercise our virtues, the easier they become. They begin to form part of our identity. We know who we are.
And isn’t this what we crave? Self-assurance and knowledge, trust in our own integrity and basic goodness. These aren’t just business skills, they are spiritual tools. They are the means to our meaning. Some of our qualities may be used every day, like patience or optimism, others saved, stocked in the cabinet, for some one special purpose, that one night of pungent beauty and fervor. A moment that calls us by name. A sense of destiny, or even of desperation.
In the spring of 1992, the city of Sarajevo was devastated by war and ethnic hatred. Only one bakery remained open. As usual, a long line of people stretched out the door and into the street. Then one afternoon, at 4 o’clock, a mortar shell hit the center of that breadline and 22 people were instantly killed.
Vedran Smailovic lived nearby. Before the war he had been the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera. According to one article,
…it was a distinguished and civilized life, and one to which he deeply and patiently longed to return. But when he saw the carnage that day outside his window, he was pushed beyond his capacity to absorb and endure any more. He resolved to do the one thing he could do best…. Every day thereafter, at 4:00 pm, Vedran Smailovic put on his full, formal concert attire, took up his cello, and walked out of his apartment into the battle raging around him. He placed a little stool in the blood-stained, glass-spattered crater where the shell had landed, and every day, for 22 days, he played Albioni’s Adagio [in G minor] as tribute to the 22 dead. [The music he played was reconstructed from a manuscript found in the wreckage of Dresden after the Second World War. It survived the firebombing, as Sarajevo would survive this horror.] Snipers fired at him (they missed), mortar shells fell all around him, but he played that music to the abandoned streets, the smashed trucks, the burning buildings, and to the terrified people still hiding in the cellars, who heard him. [Paul Sullivan, Hope magazine, March 1996; also reported in the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor; referenced in a sermon by Rev. Victoria Safford]
Smailovic was an ordinary person – long hair, cowboy boots, joking and friendly, a regular guy. Not at all exceptional or brave. But that day he achieved a greatness. In that moment, all his practicing, his love of music and beauty, his deep sense of community, even his skill at focusing on his work, became a source of healing and encouragement. He transformed outrage into a gift of hope.
Smailovic later moved to Belfast, Ireland where he played in Irish streets and craters, his journey forever altered by that one shattering sight and the conviction that peace must be created one life and one heart at a time. It started with his own.
Fortunately, most of us will never be called to face death and terror. It is hard to imagine what would compel us to act with such courage. But Smailovic wasn’t planning to be a hero or a martyr, or anything but an accomplished working cellist. That was his life, fulfilling and useful. He was no activist. Like most others in his town, he was besieged by the campaign of hate. And yet in the midst of that carnage, Smailovic achieved a purpose both extraordinary and profound. Something within him flowered. The occasion found him, and he rose to it. He rose.
Rita Dove, past US poet laureate, states, “One moment you can be “nobody” – you can be an ordinary person, you can be somebody who is not going to be in the history books, and the next moment you can do something heroic. Whether it is recognized or not by history is a moot point. But … all of us do heroic acts everyday. Sometimes simply by surviving, or by doing something with grace or with courage.” [Rita Dove, on The Charlie Rose Show, June 1999]
In a recent book of poetry Dove highlighted the story of Rosa Parks. At 43, Rosa Parks was the secretary of the Montgomery, AL, NAACP and the NAACP Youth Council advisor. She had attended strategy meetings and discussions on non-violent resistance. Parks had seen many cases of abuse that were never brought to justice because the victims were too intimidated to persist. So when she was told (once again) to give up her seat to a white man that December evening in 1955, she was prepared to resist. Rosa Parks had had enough – seen enough. She knew the bus driver would confront her. She knew she would be arrested. And she was ready to take her stand. Parks knew that she was the right person for her time. She wasn’t loud or aggressive or threatening. She was a modest, dignified, working woman and she had paid her fare. Parks became the face of the Black Civil Rights movement. Her picture appeared in Life magazine and remains one of the most recognizable images of the twentieth century. Her courageous decision sparked the Bus Boycott in Montgomery Alabama, and brought the Civil Rights Movement into national focus.
“It’s such a quiet moment to have made such a big noise in history,” explains Rita Dove. “Such a quiet moment…Quiet in its origin and the way she embodied the moment: doing nothing is really what happened. She refused to get up, and yet the way she embodied it was important.” [ibid]
Parks did not intend the confrontation, but she was ready when it happened. She had examined her ideals and her motivations, she had faith in her own strength and in the integrity of the movement. It could have been someone else riding the bus, another driver, a slower night. We may never have heard her name, all her quiet integrity and intelligence expended instead in her normal daily chores. But Rosa Parks would have been the same heroic person, living with grace and courage. Because she embodied the changes she sought to create.
We would all like to feel that we matter; that we were born for some special and obvious purpose. We want confirmation that our lives made a difference. Yet we don’t know if we will be put to the test or called to a great moment of purpose or fulfillment. Very few can achieve the impact of a Vedran Smailovic, or stand in the fulcrum of history. All we can do is maintain an open and active willingness. Instead of seeking superficial notoriety, we can find the deeper satisfaction of caring relationships and principles that ground our every act.
It is as theologian Paul Tillich said: “If we wait in hope and patience the power of that for which we wait is already effective within us. …He who waits in patience has already received the power of that for which he waits. He who waits passionately is already an active power, the greatest power for transformation in personal and historical life.”
Shakespeare said it more simply: “The readiness is all.” It doesn’t matter your class or ability or age. Do you remember Samantha Smith? Her Unitarian Universalist Sunday School emphasized peace and understanding, and the inherent worth of every person – even our enemies. In the midst of the cold war, Samantha wrote to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov, urging him to declare himself for peace. Their correspondence altered the political dialogue between our countries. She initiated open person-to person contact between people in the United States and the USSR. She was 12. But in that one simple action, she managed to alter history.
Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak up openly. Do you value honesty? Then act with sincerity and truth. Do you believe in democracy? Then involve yourself in your government. Listen to others with respect. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.
If you are clear in your principles, you anticipate a better society. You create it in your very soul, in the beating of your heart to the world’s song. One shining moment of truth. One night of flowering beauty. Day by day, with purpose and meaning.

CLOSING WORDS When Audre Lorde, the black lesbian author and activist developed breast cancer, she was asked (repeatedly) about her diagnosis. Lorde replied,
A better question is – how do I want to live the rest of my life and what am I going to do to ensure that I get to do it exactly or as close as possible to how I want that living to be?
I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes, everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a …meteor.
And she did.

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