Learning to Dance in the Rain
April 4, 2010 (Easter)
The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
“A promise through the ages rings,” writes the hymnist, that even in the depth of winter’s coldest and darkest hour, “always, always, something sings.” This, she says, “is the message Easter brings.”
Easter was the furthest thing from my mind a couple of months ago when I was sitting at my computer, checking and responding to e-mail. It was cold and rainy outside – a perfect match for my gloomy disposition. I can’t even remember now the cause of my gloom – perhaps it was simply the state of affairs in our country at the time, when the distortions against Health Care reform were at their highest, and strong responses from our leaders were at their lowest.
At any rate, my eye was caught suddenly by a tag line – or “signature” – at the bottom of an e-mail from Linda Fitzgerald: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, but about learning to dance in the rain.” Ahhhh….I smiled, and began to hear something sing!
Now, the truth is, as I have said here before, I generally love the rain! Rarely will you hear me say after three days of steady rain that I’m ready for it to stop; instead, I become annoyed when it ends sooner than was predicted, or worse, doesn’t even show up, as was the case this past week. I really hope it doesn’t disappoint me again tonight!
I suppose one might surmise from my love of gloomy weather that I’m a depressive personality type; but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case! I think what I appreciate is the honesty, as Garrison Keilor calls it, of Fall and Winter, and the knowledge that after the rain, after the storms, comes the smell of fresh grass and the stunning beauty of new growth.
So reading that quote was just the perfect reminder to me: Don’t just sit around being depressed in hopes that it will just pass; embrace this time for the richness it can provide, knowing always that the hopefulness of life still sings to us – the divine presence of Love still holds us, and that the storm will eventually pass and bring new growth.
The Jewish and Christian tradition of Passover and Easter hold out this promise to us, and encourage us to fully experience both the shadow and the light. They call on us to allow both in.
Passover could just take us from the story of the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt, to their arriving at the Promised Land 40 years later; it could just skip over the most depressing part. But it doesn’t. Instead, we are reminded of the brutality of their enslavement, the panic of their flight from Egypt, and the long wandering in the desert that must have seen so much pain and despair.
Through the re-telling of the Passover story, we are reminded of all the injustices in our world today, and the need to face them and bring our world to the “Promised Land” of peace and justice. Passover is a joyous celebration lasting several days, but it does not ignore the darkness; indeed, to deny the pain that preceded the Promised Land would be to miss the point, and to rob Passover of its depth.
Easter, too, is a joyous day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion; but it follows three days of very somber re-telling of the story – of how Jesus and his most trusted friends entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover with a Seder dinner, but ended that first night of Passover with the arrest of Jesus by the Roman authorities. It tells how one of Jesus’ friends actually led the soldiers to him, and another denied having even known him; how on the next day – what’s referred to as “Good Friday” – Jesus was sentenced to death, and forced to carry his own heavy cross through the streets while crowds jeered him, and was finally crucified between two common thieves; how on the next day he was gently laid to rest in a tomb; and how on the third day – what is now Easter Sunday – the tomb was found empty, and Jesus was alive again.
Christians are called to walk that journey with Jesus – to experience on a spiritual level the fear and agony of Good Friday and the grief of Holy Saturday, before moving on to the redemption of Easter. To skip through those days preceding Easter would be to miss the point, and to rob Easter of its depth.
Sometimes I think we want to either wallow as a victim in the storm of darkness, or pretend it’s not happening and just skip mindlessly through to the cheerful sunshine. I remember in high school a classmate who everybody liked because she was always smiling, always cheerful. One day I mentioned to my mother that I wished I could be like that. She said, “Oh, that would be so annoying! I never trust anyone who’s always happy; they’re usually just hiding something!” (Ahhh, thank you Mom!)
On the other extreme was a classmate in Seminary, who was so concerned about women facing injustice and poverty in the world that she could talk of nothing else. I don’t recall ever seeing either smiles or laughter in her, only despair. And what was perhaps most unfortunate was that because of her obsession with despair, none of us took her – or her concerns – very seriously after awhile. The issues she raised that would have normally engaged our compassion, lost out because of her refusal to abide anywhere but in the darkness.
What that student seemed to overlook was that our Unitarian Universalist faith is one of hope – not a shallow wishfulness that refuses to see the reality, but a hope that, as Cornel West once said, sees everything exactly as it is, and presses on anyway toward the visions of Wholeness.
Our UU Principles speak of the “inherent worth and dignity of every person;” of “justice, equity and compassion;” of “acceptance of one another” – not just tolerance, but acceptance; of “a world community with peace and liberty for all;” and of an “interdependent web” that makes us one with all existence. But these Principles didn’t develop out of nowhere; they were grounded in a long tradition that affirmed the basic goodness of people, the love of a God that would not abandon any of its children, and the unwavering belief that we can each make a difference in the world.
But such a faith does not evolve from us sitting around hoping for the dark storm to pass, either personally or politically. Nor does it evolve from us ignoring the storm and pretending everything is just fine. We must engage both the storm and the peace that follows; we must love and learn to dance in them both, for that is where the richness and the healing can be found.
Perhaps nowhere in recent times have we witnessed this engagement with both the shadow and the light more profoundly than in one of the stories after the earthquake in Haiti almost three months ago.
It had been a week since the tragedy occurred, and already tens of thousands of people had died, and an estimated 1,000,000 were homeless. Hope for any more survivors was fast disappearing. And then suddenly a rescue team from Mexico heard the sound of a woman singing. They risked their own lives to tunnel through the rubble to where 70-year-old Ena Zizi lay. According to United Methodist missionary Paul Jeffrey, Ena’s words were inarticulate because she was so dehydrated; “but her joy was infectious.” Her rescuers began crying, and workers nearby stopped what they were doing and applauded.
Later, Ena Zizi told a reporter that she had yelled for help for the first few hours after being trapped in the fallen building. When no help came, she talked to a priest also trapped nearby. But when he fell silent, she simply “talked …to God.” Ena did not despair of the darkness, nor did she give up; she kept faith with another human being and with her God of Love…and then she sang.
Some of you have experienced terrible – even unimaginable – loss in your lives. But most of us simply experience, from time to time, a Winter in our Soul. Yet here we are today – a testament to our ability to sing in both the darkness and the light, to dance in the storm and in the sunshine.
Rabbi Michael Lerner calls it “a persistent (human) tendency…to affirm the possibility of possibility – to continue …to affirm a Force of Healing and Transformation inherent in the soul of every human being.”
Perhaps that is the “promise that through the ages” sings – compelling us to witness for peace, to stand with the poor and disenfranchised, to answer the lies of fear and hatred with the truths of radical love.
So let us close with a prayer by the Reverend Jane Rzepka:
O Spirit of Life and Renewal, in this – the season of steady rebirth – we awaken to the power so abundant, so holy, that returns each yar through earth and sky.
We will find our hearts again, and our good spirits. We will love, and believe, and give and wonder, and feel again the eternal powers.
The flow of life moves ever onward through one faithful spring, and another, and now another.
May we be forever grateful. Alleluia. Amen.
© 2010 Rev Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
