New Years’ Resolutions

A sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

February 2, 2003 

Readings

Readings from Isaiah

Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.

Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cummin with a stick.
²⁸ Grain must be ground to make bread;
so one does not go on threshing it forever.
Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it,
his horses do not grind it.

Sermon

Yesterday, when President Bush addressed the nation with words of consolation following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, he quoted the prophet Isaiah – “Lift up your eyes to the heavens”.  He said that the souls of the astronauts were now shining, as the others stars, in the heavens.  Indeed – though from an astronaut’s-eye view every one of us is shining in space.  Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist on the Shuttle said: “When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.”  A caller into NPR spoke of being inspired by the way that Chawla had looked out through the shuttle window and seen her own reflection and seen the reflection of the earth in her eyes reflected in the window.  All that light moving between the earth and the children of the earth who still move nearby.  We are all lighting the heavens – reflecting the light of our star.  We are stargazers, when you come down to it.  We move and look into space, seeking patterns and meaning, a window into ourselves.  I grieve for the families of the astronauts, for the ground crew, and the astronauts still circling the earth in the space station.  But I am sure that every one of those astronauts reckoned the cost and went with a passionate heart. 

We have always had a relationship with the stars – drawn to their beauty and distant mystery.  We reach out to them just as a child reaches toward its parent – we reach toward the stars, which birthed us – formed our elements in fire eons past.  We know that answers to our questions await us in the heavens.  Countless questions also await us and we seek those, as well. We are stretched between our love of the mystery and our hunger for certainty.  Our desire to live in the world and our desire to have an equation – a story that explains it all.

The Chinese Calendar contains our elements – earth, fire, water, and air.  That we are elemental is one of the messages of the Chinese New Year.  Many firecrackers are set off – almost as though this people – whose culture was advanced for so much of early history – are calling back to the noisy crackling cosmos.  Little stars exploding with tiny cosmic echoes.

Every calendar is a somewhat arbitrary thing – imposing order on the passage of time.  This imprint of our hand onto the minutes, days, and weeks is an anchor.  We shape and organize time.  We live our lives by clock time.  A healthy or an unhealthy hunger for it seems to vary from place to place.  In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie – two young men in their late teens are sent from the city to the country – during the Cultural revolution.  They are sent to be reeducated by the country folk who are thought to be unpolluted by modern civilization.  The small town they are sent to is without timepieces.  When the sun rises the headman tells the town and all wake up.  But one of the young men reveals that he has – an alarm clock.  Even more ironically, the clock has the figure of a rooster on it.  It is a faux rooster for a faux morning.  This rooster will wake you – not at the start of day – but at your command.  The town becomes intrigued with it.  There is a sort of air of authority about the clock – and the boys put this to good use.  When they want to sleep in they set the clock later.  The headman respects the clock.  Eventually, though, the clock is reset so many times that it looses all accuracy and reference to real time -- they no longer know the real time.  The days pass as they ever did, the sun rises and sets with a varying certainty.  To be exact – to control time and life perfectly – isn’t so easy.  Uneasy is the hand that sets the clock.  Yet, it puts us on a common ground – for example – we meet here at 10:30.  It keeps us from being lost in space.

Last year at this time a neighbor – an older Chinese man – appeared at my door with a paper plate loaded with Chinese Dumplings.  “Eat for dessert,” he explained.  I wondered what had brought this on – until some weeks ago, I read that bringing these special dumplings to your neighbors was a traditional way to honor the New Year.  He was anchoring the neighborhood.

There are many New Year’s traditions.  This holiday is also known as the Spring Festival – a time to celebrate surviving the tough winter and seeing another spring – a time of scaring off the dying season of winter and entering the risky season of birth and planting.

There is an ancient Chinese tale about a monster named Nian – interestingly in Modern Chinese the word Nian means "year".  But in some primordial time it was the name of a monster would prey on people the night before the beginning of a new year. This monsters had wide jaws and a great hungry mouth and could swallow number of people all at once. 

A wise man appeared and claimed he could tame the monster.  Using flattery he managed to convince the monster to kill only beasts of prey – animals more powerful than humans.  He also managed to convince the monster that humans were puny and unworthy opponents.  So the monster became a predator’ predator.  So the monster became a predator’ predator.  Eventually the monster and the old man rode away into the distance together.  But before he left he warned people to hang up many red things in the windows and to decorate their homes at the end of every year to scare off the monster Nian – in case he came back – for Nian hated red. 

The Chinese Calendar reminds me that all calendars are invented.  But it is based, like most cultural calendars – the calendars of peoples, on a moon cycle of seasons and phases.   Like all calendars it has a good bit of complexity. It is as old as China itself – but it was the emperor Huang Dhi, who lived in the 27^th century before the common era who perfected the calendar, so that it is twelve months long – with the months consisting of 39 days apiece.  Huang Dhi was a soldier, scientist, and emperor.  Chinese word characters were developed in his reign. He is said to have invented the magnet and the wheel, built the first brick structures and an observatory for studying stars, corrected the calendar, and redistributed land.  Many cycles have passed since the time of Huang Dhi A cycle consists of sixty years – five sets of twelve years each – our current cycle will end in 2044. 

In addition, anyone who has ever eaten at a decent Chinese restaurant will know that there’s an animal assigned to each one of the twelve years – and this is the year of the Sheep – the Ram.  Some of the animals are noble and glorious dragons, tigers, snakes – some humble.  One story goes that when the Buddha was dying he called all the animals to him.  But only twelve showed up.  In gratitude he named a year for each of them in the order in which they arrived.  Since the Buddha lived and died long after Huang Dhi it seems certain that the animals – the zodiac – came about long after the calendar was developed.  I won’t ask you to raise your hands – but how many people in this room know their sun signs – I’m a Sagittarius.  Like the Western Astrological System – the Chinese one is quite detailed – and there are layers of interlocking causes and effects.  I’m not sure that the Chinese Zodiac has any more accuracy than the sun signs.  But we know in our bones, feel in our blood, intuit – that all the forces that were in existence at the moment of our birth and in the many moments of our living touch and shape us – in many ways.  Can we put this in the language of Roosters, Pisces, Geminis, Tigers?  We speak and live in metaphors.  This is the year of the Sheep.  Gentleness and comfort.

At the new year dragons and lions dance in the streets.  Coins are given for prosperity, forgiveness offered, wrongs righted – and the house is cleaned.  Just as our house here has been cleaned – our carpet washed – we’re trying to begin anew with one another and within ourselves.  The broom moves sweeping away the old year, sweeping out the old debris, the bad feelings.  Making room for a fresh beginning.  There is no magic about the new year – a fresh beginning is always available but it requires harder work than sweeping.

You can’t sweep history away so easily -- it clings to our brooms and our hearts – lives in our bodies and our habits, and moves with us into the present.  It’s not so easy to get a monster to leave either.  It will follow us.  I know that whether Punxatawny Phil sees his shadow or not, ours follow us.  Our winters remain with and within us until we envision new ways of being, emerge from our own private darkness, make new choices, and change the seasons of our hearts. 

So, we gather on this day when our path is not swept clean and simple.  While we celebrate holidays – and we rejoice to do so they are still the filter through which we see the day and the year – through which we see our world.  At some point every religion – even ours dreams it can take the filters away and allow people to see the in truth.  But, perhaps they capture a truth we can’t quite put into words – a mystery that – while it can be spoken around cannot be spoken of – not because it lives far away – on a distant mountain, in the starswept heavens, in a galaxy far, far away – but because it is so very close – so much in our world, our selves, and our hearts that we would kill it and all if we grasped too hard at it.  A line in an ancient Chinese poem speaks of the nature of the passing year as a snake that speeds into a hole in the ground too fast to catch – and if you caught it – you would have to grip so hard as to kill it.  Not quite as harmless as the herd of daschunds instead of the thousand head of oxen on the sprint ad.  Our words and their dangers are famous. 

Every word and symbol sends us along a path and I listen to what the president says to hear the subtext and meaning.  Our words and symbols must be chosen with care – I am sure that his are.  A commentator said that the President relies on his religion. I decided, yesterday to open the Bible and study Isaiah – it is Isaiah who calls justice to rain down like waters.  But Isaiah is not speaking for a God of consolation – oh no – he is speaking for a God of rage and vengeance and order through bloodshed.  It is possible to read any passage slant -- “Lift up your eyes to the heavens” is not followed by the President’s other words –words of consolation for the bereaved and for the shining souls of the lost. 

Lift up your eyes to the heavens”. 

hear me, my nation:
The law will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations.
⁵ My righteousness draws near speedily,
my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations.

Isaiah speaks of the justice of the Lord which will come in a storm and flood  “The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror. ²⁰ The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around.” And only the righteous will be lifted up and this by another miracle.   Should this epic work be left in the hands of Gods? – whose sight perhaps – would be more accurate than our own – but not if we study the old texts carefully – even the Gods are foolish.  And this god speaks – perhaps to remind himself and perhaps to us –

²³ Listen and hear my voice;
pay attention and hear what I say.
²⁴ When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?
Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?
does he not sow? 
²⁷ Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin; 
You can turn the zodiac on its head, see the stars interpreted differently with a tilt of the earth’s axis.  But the power we need – is the power we have sitting here right now – you can see it in tea leaves or wheels within wheels or in two heavy books, or one or none or all – but the real heart of it is here in us – some beyond our ability to capture in words.  Iris Dement sings --

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory
and I ain't saying it ain't a fact
but I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory
and I don't like the sound of that
I believe in love and I live my life accordingly
but I choose to let the mystery be .

I, too will let the mystery be – but I will not leave it in the hands of politicians. I will use my reason with all my might – And look beyond the texts to new truths.

Isaiah says Raise the war cry, you nations, and be shattered!
Listen, all you distant lands.
Prepare for battle, and be shattered! 
propose your plan, but it will not stand,
for God is with us.

But any God – if any God there is – and that’s another subject for another day any God would be there for us all – be hoping for us all.

I know that if we are with one another and allow our many filters to rest for a moment – to allow the Gods to have tea and let the zodiac spin – if we thank them for their help in interpreting our world and seek something clearer – we will see it in one another. 

I wanted to celebrate the Chinese New Year – because it is about humanity – about seeking for tender wisdom, making the house welcoming, offering peace and mercy to all who require it.  So may we be with one another.  Let us not run our cartwheels over cumin, but reach our to one another with our tender and strong hands – our hands made of stardust and all the elements of the cosmos.  Let us seek wisdom for ourselves and our leaders – not through prayer alone – but with our voices raised and our minds clear.  We cannot live on false consolation nor on the blunt answers of the past – good and evil are tricky to interpret Isaish warns

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,

Wisdom hard to find for the illusions are in every one of us.  The violin story.  we must create finer and smarter answers in the future – in the present – answers that we see in one another. 

Our leaders are seeking easy answers – but astronauts know that the answers are hard and risky – they may cost you your life – but that is the life you have to give.  Your precious life.  One woman called NPR in tears and said that she hoped that as we grieved these noble people that we would recall the sanctity of all life and rethink the counsels of war.  Certainly, it was love of life that drove the seven who died into space – and will draw us again.  Let us seek the stars in the heavens and make justice on earth – let us begin with one another. Certainly peace and long life are things you must actively make – peace is not a failure to act or to confront evil – but a way of confronting evil – actively – with risk – as these seven faced mystery actively with risk.

Let us begin by blessing one another.  Let us begin by calling forth from ourselves and one another the courage that is needed for our times – our turn of the wheel, our cycle of the eons.  Let us bless one another in our glories and our losses, in our freshened home and our visions of the future.  Let us be with one another here in the present – for that is the time that we have – let us celebrate – the Sheep, the Rooster, the dog, the snake, the tiger – and most of all one another.

Children of the Moon

By Theodora Lau

She shines above us like a beacon of love,

Her guidance ever present in the seasons and tides.

We need not shield our eyes from her lovely light

As we must from the glaring sun.

Her radiant beauty holds us forever in awe,

Enthralling us with her many moods, soothing us,

Intriguing us with a multitude of transformations.

Yet, through millennia we seek to understand her mysteries

For we are her children and know

She is our loving patroness.

Mother Moon is the great influence on all growth around us.

We sow and reap by her nurturing hand.

And count the days and journey by her reckoning in the heavens

Which have never forsaken us.

She knows us all as Earth Branches of the Tree of Life.

And though the branches are many, the root is One.

Reaching out in unison, upward and outward,

We grow under the benevolent auspices of Mother Moon.