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Poet Mary Oliver experiences in her hand: a grasshopper. She wonders at the miracle of life held captive in tiny things. She really looks, really notices, really wonders, and writes it down for us. Her poem The Summer Day reminds us to ask the big questions: who made the world?

Some religions draw from just one scripture; Unitarians draw from many. Today we draw from Mary Oliver. Her poem moves from the (1) big picture to (2) what’s right in front of us, (3) to a religious response, to (4) who is the True U?

(1) The big picture: who made the world? (2) what’s right in front of us: who made this particular grasshopper in my hand eating sugar? (3) a religious response: I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. (4) The True U: what is it you plan to do with your one wild & precious life?

Welcome to summer’s end. School buses are getting in our way again, the leaves will soon turn, and for a moment– for right now– we stop and wonder– how is it we are spending our one wild & precious life?

We may not use the word “prayer” much, but we do know “how to pay attention.” We know that everything living dies at last, and too soon, and so we wonder. Are we living the life we were meant to live? The life we want to live?

I used to have long hair. When I was pre-candidating, the search committee had pix of me and Bonnie. When they met us in person they were surprised to see I had long hair– it wasn’t obvious in the picture of me. Who was the “true” me?

Someone said “an aging long-haired hippie minister I wouldn’t take to my Rotary Club meeting.” Some folks were unhappy I had long hair; others weren’t unhappy about my hair but unhappy that a few in the congregation were unhappy I had long hair. So, to simplify things, I cut my hair, sent it off to “Locks of Love” which makes wigs for children who’ve lost their hair.

And all the unhappiness went away. Or most of it. Was I a different man before or after my hair was cut? No, not really. But I was seen differently, and perceptions are important.

Do you ever wish you had taken a different path? So that maybe people would see you differently? Do you ever wonder who you would be if you had a different career? A cable TV show is recruiting right now.

“Here is your chance… Faking It is a transformational battle against the odds. It tells the story of what happens when real people take up the challenge of converting themselves into someone entirely different. Our hero/heroine is plucked from their daily lives and given four weeks to master a skill well enough to fool a group of expert judges. During the month of intensive training, top practitioners, famous in their field, mentor the faker and try their best to help them succeed.

We are looking for candidates who have always wanted to be one of the following but do not have any prior experience:

Catwalk Model (female); Swim wear Model (female), Vegas Casino Hostess (female), Biker Chick (female), Fashion Designer (female), Flair Bartender (male), Stand-up Comic (male), Martial Artist (male), Ballroom Dancer (open), Actor (open).”

Note, they’re not asking for ministers, doctors, teachers, accountants! Too bad they’re not looking for the next Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa, huh? How many “flair bartenders” does the world need?

It’s a documentary, so the “winners” don’t even get paid, “the experience of being on the show is its own reward.” Huh, kind of like real life: the experience of being true to yourself is your own reward.

How do you know who you are? When we’re teenagers, we’ll try different ways of being ourselves, maybe pick up a new nickname or do something that affects our identity.

As a teenager, I became a cigarette smoker. Time went by, I smoked a pack a day for 20 years. Within a few weeks of starting, I had a new identity, I was a smoker. You can talk about somebody you just met to a friend of yours, and if the newcomer is a smoker, sooner or later you’ll find yourself saying: she’s a smoker, yup. It becomes part of who they are.

When I smoked, everybody knew it. There was the smell of cigarettes in my hair, my clothing, my car, it was everywhere. And everyone knows how hard it is to quit– many people try over and over again, and don’t make it.

I saw a movie once and a guy said to someone who was thinking about quitting: look, either you’re a smoker or your not– it’s part of who you are. If you’re not a smoker quit. If you are, don’t bother trying to quit.

I realized I had thought of myself as a smoker who would one day quit and eventually become a non-smoker. But when would that day come? Then one day, a guy who had 6 months to live told me he was going to quit smoking because he didn’t want to die gasping and wheezing.

So that motivated me. And I knew I’d be a chaplain in a hospital, next to families with a loved one dying of lung cancer, and that motivated me. And I realized that I wanted to be a father one day, and I didn’t want to be a father who smoked.

I quit cold turkey. It was certainly the most difficult thing I’ve ever done at that point in my life. But 10 years ago I quit and it changed my identity. Now, I have another identity: I am an ex-smoker, so watch out!

Then I gained a new identity, one I wasn’t expecting. I grew up a skinny kid. I never had a weight problem. After I quit smoking, I gained 40 pounds. Not all at once, but over time. My identity became one of a portly person. A minister I know said to me once, “oh you look like you never missed a dinner in your life.” Gee, thanks a lot, pal. It became part of my identity. When you looked at me, you saw an overweight, middle aged guy.

Last March, I decided I wanted to risk changing my identity in a major way. I wanted to lose that 40 pounds. But, like quitting smoking, I knew it would be very difficult. I might get to be difficult to be around. Maybe all I’d talk about for months would be how difficult dieting was, etcetera. I’d end up boring myself with all that diet talk.

But as of last week, I’d lost 32 pounds, I lost 6 inches off my waist, and inch and half off my neck, and added an inch and a half to my biceps. I have literally changed my identity. Now, I’m not so overweight anymore. I feel better, and I did it all on a whiskey & bacon diet– better known as Atkins.

While I was trying to quit smoking, and while I was on this diet, from the beginning right on through to the end– I never really knew if I would succeed. I had to be willing to fail. I think what kept me smoking for 20 years, and what kept me overweight for 10 years was the idea that I didn’t want to fail. For then I would be overweight and a failure which was worse than just being overweight.

On the show Faking It, Joanna Weatherill changed from a kick boxer to a ballroom dancer. She now says:

"After Faking It finished I went straight back to kick boxing. My mentors gave me some dancing shoes. But they're in a box in the loft. I did become more girly for the filming, but that was all a front. As soon as filming finished I was straight back in my old clothes. I haven't worn a dress or a skirt since I finished filming.

"During filming my confidence grew in one direction, but shrunk in another. I stopped caring about the shame of it. I just thought, well, you'll never be able to go out again.

"Faking It confirmed that I don't like dancing. It confirmed everything I'd imagined about ballroom dancing but was a hundred times worse. I think you have to love yourself to be a ballroom dancer." "Faking It: Where Are They Now?" Channel 4 Web Site, Channel4.com/entertainment. Retrieved 12/19/2003.

Sometimes, we have to try out ballroom dancing to know we don’t like it. Sometimes we have to eat that yucky looking vegetable to confirm or deny our first impression. Sometimes we don’t explore the True U, because we’re afraid of what we’ll find.

to be a ballroom dancer”. It sounds like she doesn’t love herself. Why would you want to try something that would remind you that you don’t love yourself? No wonder we resist trying new things– what if we are reminded of our failures?

Some religious people say, Failure or success belongs to God, not to us. Everything happens through God’s will, and we are undeserving of our own life or the grace that can change our identity, can transform who we are.

Our religion teaches us that we can be change agents. It is not God’s will, it is our will. Our failure and our success belong to us and to those who are with us in our struggle.

      It is indeed possible to change who you are. It is possible to figure out who the True U is.

It is then possible to begin to take steps to transform yourself into that True U, the one you really want to be, the True U waiting to be born, waiting to be mid-wifed into this world through your efforts, and through the patience and kindness of your friends & family.

Who is the True U? What does it mean to really want or yearn for something that you don’t have? What if you’re single and don’t want to be? What if you want to have a child, but you don’t seem to be able to get pregnant? What if the True U is a gay or lesbian but you spend a lot of time hiding that?

What if the True U is hidden– a little bit, but most of the time– hidden even from you? What if there is something your soul aches for? I mean something you really want deep down, something that makes you cry– if you think about it too long. (Pause) Yeah, that kind of thing.

At some level, we know other people quit smoking, lose weight, find a suitable life partner, get the job they really want, have children or adopt. We can read their story, we can see their testimonials on Oprah or in advertising. We may be in a struggle to get something we really want– to change our identity, and we wonder if it is possible.

We know it is possible for other people– but is it possible for us?

There is a rock & a hard place waiting to crush us. One one side: are we willing to risk failure? On the other side: are we really willing to go the distance?

Big lifestyle changes are difficult. That first week is hard, the second week is more difficult yet; the third is a tightrope with the safety net gone– our fears grow, our doubts multiply, our resolve begins to waver. It is no wonder passing through to the True U is so difficult.

We have to be willing to fail, and we have to be willing to stick it out for the long term. We have to be willing to live with doubt we will be successful. We have to be willing to continually work on and monitor the only thing we really have any control over– our attitude.

Are we willing to tell our kith & kin that by God, we are going to quit smoking or lose weight, or go to China to get that baby. We are putting our hip boots on to wade the deep river, we are putting on our mountain gear to climb that steep mountain, we are girding our loins to ride out and meet Goliath. We are putting our courage, our strength, our sacred honor to the test! And we don’t really know, if we will come back with triumph or if we sag back defeated and near despair.

The miracle isn’t that people are successful in adopting a child, quitting smoking, losing weight, overcoming an addiction, or coming out of the closet– the miracle isn’t in the success, the miracle is in the trying. There is grace. In that struggle, in that effort, there is where Grace lives & moves & has its being.

            On the other side of the rock & hard place, lives Grace.

Of course sometimes, we discover we cannot or will not make it, and so our idea of who we are changes. But if we gave it our best shot, then we gave it our best shot. We know in our heart of hearts, in the secret recesses of our soul– we know whether or not we gave it our best shot, and if we did, then even if we failed in our experiment, we succeeded in getting beyond wondering about our life, and moved more firmly into knowing our life.

What is important is our authenticity and our trying hard. We tend to learn more from our failures than our successes. And success without failure leads to feelings of entitlement, rather than feelings of satisfaction.

Here’s the process: (1) pay attention; (2) notice where your serious dissatisfaction lies; (3) try something new to get unstuck; (4) find gratitude waiting for you.

Doug Briscoe is an itinerant scissors sharpener. "I sharpen shears," he tells Fast Company magazine (January 2004). "This is what I do. I go from hair salon to hair salon, all over eastern North Carolina."

"What's happened to quality?" he asks. "By God, that's the only thing I've got. They know immediately if I did a good job." Every shear he sharpens will shave hair off your arm.

There's no faking it in Briscoe's work. "If the shear's not sharp," he asks, "what have I got to go on?"

If you’re not living as the True U, what do you have to go on? Uncovering, and discovering the True U is a path that promises a good conscience and a peaceful heart

A preacher says, "Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness, touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

Welcome Home. Welcome to this house. Welcome to a place where you are encouraged to find & develop the True U.

Let us sing it out, shall we? Let us rise & sing. I’ll line out the verses for you.

Benediction

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