John Morris
October 13, 2024
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
Henry James, commenting on writing fiction, warned, “Tell a dream, lose a reader.” This is good advice for talking about dreams too: You really shouldn’t assume other people will find your dreams as fascinating and pregnant with meaning as you do.
Nevertheless, I’m going to start this sermon with the unpromising topic sentence:
Let me tell you about a dream I had a few nights ago.
Sorry. But I’ll ask for your indulgence on this one, because I really think it’s shareable, and I’ll make it quick.
I dreamt it was Sunday morning at Seekers, and something had gone horribly wrong for me. It was one of those dreams that opens in medias res, so I don’t know what started it all. All I knew was that I felt like a criminal, a failure, and that everyone here disliked me and held things against me. To make it worse, “here” was not our beautiful sanctuary, but some huge, dark, scary-looking cathedral-like building which was evidently Seekers’ home in this dream-world. I found myself refusing to participate in the service. I was supposed to play the Prelude – I said no. Two of my favorite Seekers started yelling at me that I was letting them down and what was the matter with me? I probably didn’t even know how to play the Prelude; what a phony! I curled up into a ball on the floor, hid my face, and still refused to play. Fortunately Alvin from the Dongo family showed up and I told him to go play the Prelude, which he did, very well, on a big pipe-organ. After worship, yet more Seekers ganged up on me, accusing me of something; I guess if I’d started the dream at the beginning I would know what, but I don’t now. I fought back, called them names, wept, and would not back down. They could accuse me of anything they wanted but I knew I was doing what I had to do.
Wow. I woke up from that one thinking, Uh, is this a dream about recommitment?
The next morning, after a cup of coffee, I considered the question. My usual line about recommitment is that it’s a no-brainer – each year I renew my bond to Seekers without a qualm. As Peter said to Jesus, where else would I go? Seekers is my home and my family. Many of my friends are here. I’ve accepted a role as a servant-leader. What more is there to say?
But I decided to treat the dream as the dark side, the shadow side, of my recommitment. Are there questions I’d prefer not to look at, each October? Do I ignore or suppress some of the disturbing feelings that the dream presented to me?
As I worked with this dream, I saw that there were no simple answers to these questions. Of course I have negative feelings about Seekers that I mostly ignore – I have negative feelings about everything that I mostly ignore, and so do you. We couldn’t engage in civilized behavior otherwise. But that’s not the same as denying that those feelings exist, and I’m pretty aware of what my personal gripes and grievances are. Do the Seekers I love most also, at times, confuse, distress, irritate, and even frighten me? Yes, they do. That is called “being in community.” So no surprises here.
But there are a couple of specific elements in my dream that I paid attention to. One is the fear it shows that my gifts won’t be appreciated. This goes back to very early childhood, when we are all narcissists. We crave unconditional acceptance, no doubt at that age still retaining memories of getting that acceptance as an infant. Suddenly, our parents impose conditions. Every single thing we do is no longer praiseworthy. There is a difference between a gift of song and a gift of . . . well, we’re trying to teach you toilet-training, OK? Some of us never get over this wound to our narcissism. But even those of us who mostly do, still seek out communities where our gifts are seen and valued, where we can be ourselves to a significant degree without worrying about overt rejection. My old therapist used to say, “Of course you want to ‛be yourself,’ but you can’t be yourself all over the place!” This is part of emotional maturity – we find the places and times to drop the mask.
And of course, sometimes the gifts we bring are prophetic. For a long time I resisted this understanding of being a prophet, because it was so unfamiliar to me. But now I can accept that – to name only two out of many I could have named – Sandra speaks with a prophetic voice about how we treat prisoners, and Kolya speaks to us out of prophecy about creation and the environment. I believe I also can sometimes be in touch with prophecy when I talk about animals and our human responsibilities to them. I think Seekers is unusually welcoming to prophets. Not only do we listen, we respond, we make changes if their voices are compelling.
Still, my dream revealed some anxiety about this. All of us, really, can’t help but wonder: Are my gifts still important here?
The other element I noticed was the way the dream ended: my stubborn, belligerent refusal to quit the field. Those beloved Seekers could say what they wanted about me, I wasn’t going anywhere. The feeling, I realized, was very much that of a family quarrel. In all but the most dysfunctional families, there is never a real threat that you will be cast out, or forced to leave. At the end of the day, furious and anxious, insulted and insulting, you still sleep in your own bed, and so do the rest of the family. With grace, a new day will offer rebirth.
Reflecting on all this, I realized that yes, this really was a recommitment dream. Seekers is a place where my gifts, my sense of who I am, are pretty consistently valued. So it’s one of my deepest fears, as the dream reveals, that it might turn into the opposite. But the point is that it’s not that unloving, unwelcoming place. The horror I felt in the dream was a sense that Seekers had changed somehow, and I wouldn’t have felt that horror if I hadn’t expected my usual warm and loving community.
As for the family-quarrel part, I’ve seen many examples of how tolerant and open Seekers is, how it’s possible here to get really upset, and to really upset others, and still have a place. I have also seen the limits of this. A few Seekers have felt they had to leave in anger or hurt. I believe that one or two have been asked to absent themselves from worship for a while, but that is a dreadful and difficult decision that no one here would make lightly. And as we well know, it is never a question of being shunned over some kind of doctrinal dispute, but rather a question of mental health issues that the community is unequipped to handle.
So, acceptance . . . I will recommit to Seekers because I feel accepted.
I want to talk about one more reason I recommit each year, that didn’t show up in the dream but instead seems to show up nearly every day in my waking life.
One of the things I love about Seekers is that it’s a good place to be when you need to lament. Lament is a lovely word that means “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.” There is a lot to lament about these days, and I very much fear it will only get worse in the coming months. Seekers is a place where tears are held sacred, where despair is given its due, and where most of us do not expect God to reward the righteous and punish the wicked, at least not in this life. Our community doesn’t just tolerate lament, we encourage it.
The story of Job is an interesting contrast, I think. When we first meet him, Job is surrounded by people. He has a wife, ten children, a large number of servants, and at least three good friends. His sons are always throwing parties, which seems to have worried Job a little, since we learn that he would have them purified after each bacchanal.
Two chapters later, who does he have left? His children are all dead, killed in a windstorm. All but one of the servants have been murdered by Sabean and Chaldean raiding parties. He has a terrible argument with his last remaining family member, his wife, and she tells him “Curse God and die!” and he calls her a foolish woman. Not much comfort here, in other words.
So then his three friends enter the scene. His dialogue with them will take up most of the rest of this book, but we often overlook how it starts. The friends have all heard about the catastrophes that have beset Job, and they gather together to visit him to “sympathize with him and comfort him.” When they see him, they can barely recognize him, and they weep and mourn with him. And here is the remarkable thing: Job 2:13: “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” We’re so used to thinking of Job’s comforters as these bombastic, reproving, useless friends, but that’s not how it started. For an entire week they sit with Job in silence, and share his pain.
Then, and only then, does Job feel able to speak. He “opens his mouth and curses the day of his birth.” And by the time he’s done lamenting, and begging God for an explanation, his three friends are also ready to speak. They proceed to tell him everything he must have done wrong, culminating in this blasphemy before God. Job denies it, and then all three have another go at him. When they run out of breath, presumably, they recruit a new lecturer to give Job a hard time – some random guy named Elihu. Elihu, we are told, is angry at everybody – at Job, for “justifying himself rather than God,” and at the three friends, because they weren’t able to refute Job. He starts in, and it’s all the same argument: Stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop lamenting, and search your soul for what you did wrong.
We know how the story ends: Eventually the Lord does speak to Job, and Job recants, and in a probably-tacked-on conclusion Job is given back everything he lost. In our Unholy Trinity class this week, we talked a lot about the meaning of this story, including whether the ending actually makes anything better. But this morning I want to stay with the theme of community.
Would you agree that Job’s community let him down? It looks that way to me. His friends were loyal and compassionate . . . until they weren’t, which coincided with Job actually speaking about his pain and his sense of injustice. If I were committed to that community, I sure wouldn’t recommit.
So, among other things, the Book of Job is a tale of awful loneliness. When I picture Job, bereft of family, crying out to his God, it is truly a terrible situation because he is so alone. There is literally not a soul on earth who understands him or can show him compassion.
I believe we do better than that, here at Seekers.
We have suffered losses in our community, and we have mourned together. We have also celebrated our joys and successes. We offer a great deal of support, of standing-with, and very little in the way of judgment or advice, no matter how well meant. Rather remarkably, we place our community bonds first, and mostly don’t let personalities get in the way. The only other community I’ve seen that is at all similar is the fellowship of 12-step recovery, but there’s an important difference as well, especially when we think in terms of recommitment.
It’s a truism among people in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction that regular attendance and participation in meetings is essential for sobriety. This is a sort of daily recommitment, believe me. There’s an old AA saying, “There are two times when you especially should go to a meeting – when you want to, and when you don’t want to.” The don’t-wanting-to is just part of recovery, but there is an underlying warning as well. This whole recovery thing is not about improving your lifestyle, or finding a group of people you like, or learning interesting stuff. It’s not like picking some optional activity you might enjoy or benefit from. It’s not even about finding a spiritual home, though many do. No, I kinda have to participate in 12-step recovery because if I don’t, I might die. That’s putting it as bluntly as possible.
And that’s the difference with Seekers that I was referring to a minute ago. Our reasons for recommitting, or not, to Seekers aren’t nearly as dire. No one will fall victim to a dreadful illness if they stop coming on Sunday. The motivation to be here is not like that.
It’s perfectly reasonable for a Seekers member, or someone who is considering being a member, to look at the pros and cons of Seekers, to ask themselves whether, a year from now, they’ll be enriched in ways they might otherwise not be if they stayed away. There are many reasons I could point to that influence my decision each October, but in this sermon I’ve talked about three that are on my mind and heart: Seekers is a place that accepts our gifts; Seekers is a place that accepts our angers and confusion; Seekers is a place where we can lament – no one will try to talk us out of it or blame us for doing something wrong.
Perhaps there is one word that captures all of this, and I will end with a very short poem by Raymond Carver that uses this word:
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Amen
