God Bless Greenbelt, Maryland
Responding to the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting (12/14/12)
Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley
December 16, 2012
Hearts cut out of red, light blue and pink construction paper were passed out to the children of the congregation. Hearts were left on all of the chairs in the Sanctuary as well. All of the participants in the Religious Education classes as well as all of the members of the church were invited to share their feelings about the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting by writing them down on paper hearts. The congregants were invited to place their hearts on a special altar at point in the service, whenever they felt so moved. The children of the congregation were invited to place their hearts on the altar in the beginning of the service so their classes would not be interrupted. We allowed ourselves to be lead by young hearts that day.
Words of Gratitude for the Children
Our leaders here have written…well, can you tell me what you did? You had hearts, right? What did you… Did you write anything on them? [No.] No? [No.] You just dropped them off? [Yes.] Do you know why? [Yes.] Why? [Because we are sad about what happened in Newtown, Connecticut.] Thank you. Thank you for doing that.
So, a couple of things before I start. I wanted to say that the reading was from Ravi Shankar. I think it was Tuesday last that Ravi Shankar past away at 92 years of age. Ravi was a brilliant musician and wonderful emissary of love. He took his sitar all over the world and played it everywhere. I am particularly interested in him now because of my interest in George Harrison and his connection to Ravi Shankar and to musics of the world and Ravi was very plain and very clear about not understanding rock and roll because [in his view] it didn’t bring you any closer to God. And George Harrison at the time said, “I know exactly what you mean. It was a very interesting conversation that they had and a very interesting connection that they forged. So, in honor of Ravi Shankar, his words are here.
The second thing today is a little bit of an indulgence. I need to ask you—or I would not be being honest… On December 14th, 1992, a friend of mine was killed ona college campus in a shooting. So, I created a little collage with his image at the bottom. His name was Galen Gibson. I was trying to ask him for some wisdom about how to deal with what is going on today. He was silent but stayed with me as I wrote these words. I just wanted you to know that that’s the backdrop. Galen was awesome. So, get set.
Sermon
I want go to India—there, to lay my burden down. God had blessed India and I wanted to touch and to taste that blessing. I want to love it with the fullness of my heart. I wanted to hear and to discover that place of music and majesty. There in India, I know my deepest, heart is living. I know this in my core. I’m sure of this. There somewhere in India, I know, I know, I know…
And I want go to Jerusalem—there, to lay my burden down. God had blessed Jerusalem and I wanted to touch and to taste that blessing. I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I wanted to hold in my own hands. I wanted to love it with the fullness of my heart and right out loud. I wanted to hear and to discover that place of light and majesty that I have always imagined. There in Jerusalem, I know my deepest, spiritual questions will be answered—all, somehow—and by just being there. I know this in my heart. I’m sure of this. There in Jerusalem, I know, I know, I know, I truly do.
And then, of course, I want go to Rome—there in Rome, to lay my burden down. God blessed Rome and I wanted to touch and to taste that blessing. I wanted to see it with my own eyes. I wanted to hold it to my heart. I wanted to know it in my bones and in my soul. I wanted to hear and to discover that place of light and majesty that I have imagined since before I was a child. There in Rome, I know my deepest, spiritual needs will all be met, by just being there. I know, I know, I know… I’m sure of this.
And I wanted go to Mecca and to Medina, insha’Allah—there, to lay my heavy burden down. God blessed Mecca and Medina and I want to go and pray a while. I want to give my whole heart freely, unafraid of the theft that might strip me of my spirit. I wanted to go and I wanted to pray and I wanted to touch and to taste that sweetness, that tenderness that embraces the devoted. I wanted to be so dearly loved and so lovingly protected. I wanted to go and I wanted to see such loving protection with my own eyes. I wanted to hold it to my heart. I wanted to know it in my bones and in my soul and in the bones of my soul. I want to hear and to smell and I want to smile and to discover that place of light and majesty that I have learned about and longed to witness before the end of this journey of years and years. In Life’s embrace. In gentleness and in prayer. In stillness deep. In clarity, in silence, in laughter. In grace and in beauty, Insha’Allah. There in Mecca and in Medina, I know, the longings known only by God will be honored and cherished and loved and protected all my life. I know, I know… I know this in my heart. I know and I am certain of this. I know…
I want to go to India and to Jerusalem and to Rome, to Mecca and Medina. But how to get there? They are all so very far away.
I wanted to go to the holy places that only planes can actually get me to. Planes approached by buses and by trains and by fleets of automobiles—each of them driven by that soul-power that we most often call fossil fuels. Electricity and gasoline, coal-fire coal and ethanol…or a hybrid of some kind. It doesn’t really matter much right now. I just need to get there. Anything. Just to get me to the land that I’ve been promised, the land that I deserve, my birthright, my destiny, my paradise, my own holy heaven here on earth. Can you help me? Because I really want to go.
To be completely honest with you, by God, I have done my very best—short of sacrificing my integrity and somehow finding myself in ruins. I swear by God, I have done my very best. I know I have. I have asked myself the deepest questions—questions on which, I truly believe, life actually depends—life, along with happiness and joy and compassion worth the giving, laughter and lightness and empathy and depth and meaning and so much more. More like radical forgiveness…that final station of the spirit’s journey, that station that provides such great energy (it’s supposed to provide great energy anyway…if, of course, you believe in that sort of thing).
In any case, I have done my best. I have tried to reach for God’s blessing in India and I tried in Jerusalem and I tried in Rome and I tried in Mecca and I tried in Medina. I truly did…and I would have settled for any of those, but I failed. I totally failed and I wound up in Greenbelt! In Greenbelt, Maryland. Behind the Target, off Route 495.
Oh…my…God!
How far, far, far I have missed my goal. Oh, God (if you believe in God, that is. I don’t want to offend anyone).
You have to be careful with the concept of God in a liberal church. [Did you notice that? It is my code, so I don’t get in too much trouble? I said, “You have to be careful with the concept of God in a liberal church.” The concept of God… It’s safer than saying that you have to be careful with God in a liberal church—particularly the Christian kind of God. Saying that can be too direct. It can sound like your making assumptions…and, if I said that, I probably would be making assumptions but my assumptions would not be the point.
There is a poem by Ric Masten who was a Universalist minister in California and it was this. The last lines were:
Western civilization
Waiting for the punchline and missing the point
Let's not miss the point.
God is supposed to be ineffable—ineffable, meaning “too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.” God is unutterable (if there is a God). “If there is a God”—which, for me, is almost to say, “if the best in us is possible.” That’s what God is to me. God is “the unimaginable best in us becoming possible.” But it’s more than that because God is ineffable. Unutterable. No words will do. Not “love” and not “hope” and not “river” and not “god” and not anything, for crying out loud. Still, somehow, we cling to what we can say, to our ideas. We hang on and we probably shouldn’t…at least, not so tightly, at any rate.
Theologian Alan Watts explains that it is unwise “to use ideas about the universe and about God as something to hang on to in the spirit of Rock of Ages Cleft for Me…” He says,
There is something very rigid about a rock. We are finding our rock getting rather worn out in an age when it becomes more and more obvious that our world is a floating world. It is a world floating in space where all positions are relative and any place may be regarded as the center…a world which doesn’t float on anything and, therefore, the religious attitude appropriate to our time is not one of clinging to rocks, but one of learning how to swim. If you get into the water and you have nothing to hold on to and you try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. If, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. This is exactly the situation of faith.
It is hard for us to trust ourselves to the water. We get pretty nervous. We think pretty well…and we protect ourselves with thoughts. They are our armor…but we tend to get stuck in our armor, in our ideas, in our beliefs somehow—beliefs, like the one that says God lives somewhere in India…or in Jerusalem…or in Rome…or in Mecca or…in Medina…and, presumably, not in Greenbelt, Maryland. But this isn’t so. The concept of God that makes sense to me doesn’t have a zip code. How did I come to imagine a thing like that? How did we?
The answer is that when it came to the concept of God, I was always stealing back into my childhood. In my childhood, there was Santa and there was Elvis and little Michael Jackson and there was God…the flowing, white beard, grandfather kind of God. I believed in all those guys, those guys…those guys…all men. What's up with that? I was stealing back into childhood like an inefficient thief, trying to pilfer my own spiritual goods and sell them to myself at a mark up in light conversations. My ideas of God were anthropomorphic and gendered and racialized and ridiculous but, most of all, they were comfortable. More accurately, my concept was familiar. My family gave them to me. I only made room for the part of God that I could recognize. That’s why I doubted God’s existence every time the world fell apart. And the world fell apart in Newtown, Connecticut on the morning of December 14th in 2012.
In ways, it is far too soon to make much sense of things. Too many of us have died and far too soon. I spoke to Reverend Jeanne Lloyd at the Mattatuck Unitarian Universalist Society in Woodbury, CT, eleven miles from Sandy Hook Elementary. I let her know that we would be holding her community in our hearts and prayers today. It will take a lot of heart to return to the fullness of life. Maybe we can send this much to them. Fred Rogers—Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers fame—said,
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world.
Number we among these. Fred Rogers was so uncool when I was a kid. I didn't like the sweater. I was kind of a little bit annoyed by the train. I secretly wanted to ride it but I didn't want to look uncool. But Fred ROgers is giving us gifts. Number we among the helpers.
Let us be caring people for all of the children of Sandy Hook, for their families, for their teachers, for their community…for the fire fighters, the local and state police, the media. Let us send them our strong hearts. We need them to survive—in body and in spirit. Let us send them our strong hearts, our brave hearts, or loving hearts. Let’s send our hearts across the sky to make the best in us possible.
Take the heart that you’ve were given with your order of service and will on it or write on it a wish of kindness, a prayer of compassion, a gentle grace and whenever you are finished—during the closing of the sermon, during the music of the offertory, during the closing hymn, whenever—place you heart, your wish, your prayer on the table or on the floor to the right of the pulpit in the front of the Sanctuary and we will gather them up and send them to Newtown, either directly or through the church is Mattatuck. Survival, even now—especially now—is possible. We learn this in incredibly powerful ways. Greg Gibson, the father of the poet I used to know, said this.
We all carry these untapped reserves of strength and grace. So, when you get in a situation where they are truly needed, they come forth—you know, like the 105 pound woman who lifts up the car that has trapped her baby. I think it all comes from God, who we are and what we carry. I’m not a particularly religious man, but if you meditate even briefly on the miracle of consciousness, all this follows.
If tragedy strikes and knocks you down, what to you do? Greg Gibson says, “You get back up, dig your heals in, circle the wagons and help one another get through it.”
Greg Gibson knows the trauma of December 14th. On December 14th, he lost his son, Galen, on the campus at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Western Massachusetts back in 1992—twenty years to the day before the tragedy in Connecticut.
We must honor that grief that we feel. We honor it and we learn how to survive. We do this together. We care for each other, pray for each other, love one another. We fall down, to be sure, but we get back up, we dig our heals in, we circle the wagons and we help one another get through—every need supplied. This is how we are asked to survive.
“Life.”
I wanted that to be the last word I said today. And before that, “love” or “God” or “hope,” even if these are problematic. The word “life”—I knew, at least—should be the last of these. This is the time—it is precisely the time—to strengthen our hearts. “Life” is the last word I wanted to say. I wanted to say “life” with the soul force and passion of India, Jerusalem and Rome, of Mecca and Medina and, of course, of Greenbelt, Maryland. I wanted to say, “Life” and I wanted to say a most resounding “yes!” to life.
So, let us move on with our grief and let us, of it, fashion wings. Let us flower [our grief] somehow, to give it beauty, to give it life.
May it be so. Blessed be and amen and may the people say, amen.
