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Let us support a stained glass soul today. Let us begin with the transient and end with the permanent. Let us begin with sand and end with stained glass.

In late summer - if you were to travel to Ocean City, Maryland, a few hours from my childhood home, you could stroll down the boardwalk, and it's a safe bet you would see some of Hofman's work. He's been doing it now for 20 years.

He creates extraordinary sculptures out of normal beach sand and sea water in front of a hotel on Second Street, and he's also worked at South Padre Island, Texas. An ordained minister since 1985, Hofman now earns his living as an artist and views his sand sculptures as his ministry.

Sand sculpting, which is growing in national popularity, is a purposely temporary and fragile art form. Here today, gone tomorrow, taken by tide, or rain, or wind. The impermanence of sand is part of the magic, part of the beauty.

Hofman says, "Make something beautiful now, because the tide will wash it away later." He prays as he creates, and thus, his artistic practice becomes his spiritual practice.

"Why?" is a question often put to the Tibetan Buddhist monks who create colored sand mandalas only to obliterate them later. The monks crawl on their knees, leaning over a 6' diameter circle of a mandala, letting colored sand drop, grain by grain, to make an extraordinary pattern.

The pattern will be similar to others but as unique as a snowflake. After hours and days of painstaking labor, of monks moving here and there, dropping just this color of sand in a few grains, or just that color, and to have an exquisite design, after all that- before they leave- whoosh, it all turns into a muddy pile of ordinary looking sand again.

The art goes from common sand, to a work of art, to chaos.

Ordinary beach sand could remain as it has always been- formless, vague, patterned only by the sea & sky in swirling loops, stretching endlessly along the shore, flat, formless and undistinguished- or- the sand can be molded by the hand of an Artist who can fashion it into something beautiful while the window of opportunity is open.

It is the very sameness of sand, the fact that you can find it just about anywhere, its blandness, its ordinariness that makes sand castles so refreshing.

Part of the beauty, the risk and the tragedy is knowing the sand sculptures are frail and will fall.

Part of our risk, our own beauty and our own tragedy is knowing the same about ourselves.

Whether we recognize it or not, we are made of sand & water - of "dust" as Genesis tells us (2:7). Our days are numbered. Our time here has inherent restrictions. The tide is rising. The wind is blowing.

When we risk being willing to create something, despite the fact that rain & wind will one day take it down- we will find beauty inside us, around us, beyond us.

This kind of beauty is eternal- it is there for every one.

Randy Hofman constructs sand structures knowing they will collapse. But it was great for the sand! And for the Artist. And for those who had a chance to see it.

And we too, can put together the structures of our lives, we can work for social justice, we can risk venturing into the public square with our convictions.

We can attempt to leave the world a better place than we found it. And we know, one day, our personal efforts will cease.

But with perseverance, they will have contributed to something much bigger and longer lasting than us.

And it will be good for us, and good for our communities, and great for those who had a chance to experience it with us. Sources: Hofman, Randy. Telephone interview, February 26, 2003. McCafferty, John. Ocean City Today. August 26, 2002, Arthurwiebe.com.

And every once in a while, the temporary art, stands the test of time. Some of the work of our spiritual predecessors have stood the test of time, have resisted time & tide's slow destruction.

Some of their work has become polished, it gleams, it reflects our heritage back to us, and it helps us transmit our values in the here and now.

Let us shift from sand. From sand comes silica, and from silica comes glass. From the ephemeral comes the near eternal.

I like stained glass. It's also called art glass. First, there is the craft aspect. You can go to a one day workshop and come out of it being able to make a stained glass panel.

The copper foil technique, which I use, is pretty straightforward. It doesn't cost as much as some diversions to get started. Although I haven't done anything in it since I got to St. Louis, I liked it in Connecticut because designing and fabricating stained glass is so unlike the rest of my life.

For one thing, most of the work is done in silence. Just me, some glass, some copper foil, solder, a soldering iron, and a design.

And unlike much of the rest of my life, at some point a piece of work is finished, done, ended. So much of the rest of my life does not seem finished, done, ended.

It is also physical, you can hold it in your hand. You can look at it, weigh it, feel it's heft, you can let whatever beauty it has shine through or reflect from it.

There is a quiet timelessness to it. Being quiet & looking at something beautiful. All the swirling colors in the rainbow. "Color is to the eye as music to the ear," said Louis Tiffany, America's foremost stained glass designer. He did more to awaken our love of stained glass than any other artist of the 20th century.

An interesting thing about Tiffany, and one of the reasons his windows are in so many really old Unitarian churches, is that he wanted his fellow Americans to understand how sacred ecstasy could be found as easily in nature as in saints and symbols.

So he put his biblical figures in American landscapes and gave those landscapes the mutated colors and abstracted shapes of a wilderness charged with emotion. In other words, Tiffany was the great American Impressionist.

The American painters who tried to copy the French Impressionists inevitably came off as mere imitators. But Tiffany and his fellow art-glass pioneers, especially John La Farge- created a distinctively American variation on the late-19th-century urge to loosen the bounds of objective realism to try and show a subjective view of the world.

But their pictures were not made from paint, but from glass. Geoffrey Himes, "Tiffany's treasures," Baltimore Citypaper, August 25-August 31, 1999, Citypaper.com.

You can see La Farge's locally. There are a couple of good pieces at the St Louis Art Museum.

Tiffany was a genius at his work- probably better at stained glass than his father was at jewels. He used many layers of glass to create a 3-D effect. He also developed the so-called drapery glass to replicate the look of drapes and clothing.

He and a colleague invented Favrile (fuh-vreel) glass, the type most used in his lamps. It is a combination of opalescent & antique glass.

Opalescent is the glass used by the early cosmetics industry to bottle its creams and ointments: it's kind of pearly looking.

Antique glass is just another name for clear colored glass used in stained-glass windows for centuries. But the combination of opalescent & antique to create Favrile, makes it very interesting.

This is because how art glass appears is a matter of point of view. Hand-rolled opalescent is beautiful in both reflected and transmitted light. But how it looks depends on your point of view.

Particularly striking is his use of dichroic glass, which- in many of his lamp shades- appeared green in reflected light but orange in transmitted light. Bob Brooke, "Tiffany lamps shine brighter than ever," Bob Brooke Communications Web site, Geocities.com/bobbrooke/tiffanylamps.htm. Retrieved February 10, 2003.
One color in Reflected light. One color in Transmitted light. Some art glass has a texture and a color which appears one way when it is reflected light, and is a completely different color and has a lack of texture when it is transmitting light instead of reflecting it.

Hold that thought. What about us? Do we reflect a spiritual light? Do we transmit a different light?

Spiritually speaking, occasionally we do reflect light - the light of the Spirit of Life, the Light of God. We can seem to be the source of light for others.

Sometimes, people can see the "shine" in us. They are attracted to it. They want some of it for themselves. This is why some couples first get together: one or the other sees in this person something shine- something they want to be close to, something they want to drink up or consume or get lost in.

And sometimes, when such couples find themselves wondering how they got together, one of them realizes it wasn't the person they wanted, it was what was shining from that person. And what is shining is Glory, it is the Spirit of Life, it is the glint of creativity, it is a gleam of God.

Other times, it is reflected light they looked for. They cannot see themselves directly, and so when they are attracted to another person, they see their own reflection, and not so much the individual who is actually there.

And they may search & search, looking into one mirror after another- sometimes liking what they see, other times hating it.

Sometimes we transmit light. Sometimes we reflect it. Sometimes, we can speak or we can sing, and it is as if it is not us singing or speaking. It is Grace flowing through us; it is Grace using us a vessel and we are listening to the voice, even as it comes from our body.

It's beauty or power strikes us, just as it does everyone else. And although it is coming through us, it is as if we were channeling the Divine.

These can be extra-ordinary moments of direct religious experience.

Of course, whether reflecting divine light, or transmitting it, as windows of grace we're not much good in storage.

We're not much good hidden away in a dark closet. We're not much good without a Light source. We're not much good if dirt, grime and dust are allowed to accumulate in our souls.

We may not be stained-glass Unitarians, but we certainly seek to find, reflect, and transmit the light of Truth. And to do that, you gotta get out of your closet and into the light.

I think when we use different perspectives, when we use different skills & abilities, when we try out new spiritual risks, we can see things differently, even though we're the same person- the difference between a reflected light and a transmitted one, even though it is the same piece of stained glass.

If our faith is "experience passed through the fire of thought" as Emerson put it, then when we are clear about our spiritual values and our spiritual lives in the public square, we will reflect and transmit that light, but each in our own way, each with our own clear color.

Because we value spiritual- among other types of diversity- if we imagined the people of Eliot Chapel as glass, we would not be a monolith.

We would not be a paperweight. Despite our many swirling activities, I doubt we would be a snow globe. I also think we would not be a mosaic- set in grout forever- but a large, intricate, stained glass window.

Would stained glass would be beautiful if it was all made of the same color? No, of course not. When we use different talents and abilities, they are going to be seen at different times, and sometimes the light of the moment will hit one ability and make it shine, and then hit another ability, and make it shine.

We don't always see this about ourselves. We don't always stop and look around and admire the beauty and intelligence of our friends and family. Here's a story for you:

We were hiking in the mountains out West when I saw the stone - a small one, about the size of a half-dollar, with smooth, rounded edges.

Ordinarily I would have passed it by, not being a rock hound. It might have remained there for another thousand years, a mere pebble among the larger stones on the trail.

But this one caught my eye. It was special. Glinting in the sunlight, it seemed to reflect all the surrounding colors, as though trying to mirror nature. Into my pocket went the rare find.

All the way home to the East Coast I thought about where I should display it so its beauty could be most enjoyed. I finally placed it in a curio cabinet, next to some jade and carved ivory. I forgot it for a while.

Then one day, while dusting, I was surprised to see that the stone had completely lost its luster. It sat on the shelf among the other lovely objects, a hard, gray chunk of nothing, downright ugly. I was shocked. What had happened to the prize I had so carefully brought back with me across the continent? Where were the sparkle and the colors that had attracted me so much?

Disgusted, I snatched it up and started for the trash can in the backyard.

Then, just as I opened the kitchen door, a beam of light struck the stone. As though by magic, it began to shimmer, to glow again. In an instant the beautiful jewel tones shone brilliantly.

Had they returned? Or had they always been there, dormant, waiting to be released? Wondering, I glanced up at the sky. Sunlight? That was the answer. The rays from the sun were all my stone needed to come alive (Source unknown).

And what light source is all that is needed to make you come alive? What light needs to shine on you, so that you can reflect glory?

What light can be transmitted from deep within your soul to express the essence of your religious values?

And if you find that light, are you willing to let it shine?

Let us sing:

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine,
let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Everywhere I go...

Put it under a bushel- no!

Benediction

Now may the love of truth guide you,
the warmth of love hold you, and
the spirit of peace bless you,
this day and in the days to come. Amen.

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