Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation

River of Life

THE RIVER OF LIFE
Northwest UU Congregation
August 28, 2011
The Rev. Dr. Morris W. Hudgins

Introduction
            As we share our water from our travels this morning, I would like for us to think about “The River of Life.” What does our bowl of water represent? In a few moments, I will invite you to bring your water forward and pour it in the common bowl.
Before you do, you can share something of the meaning of the water. I am less interested in where your water came from then what it means to us. In this sermon, I hope to give you some ideas. Did you learn something in your travels? Did you find your water close to home? I could share my water from Charlotte or Blowing Rock, NC, or the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, or clear blue water from the Tellico Lake close to my home in Tennessee.
            As many of you know I grew up in St. Louis.   You would think my first memories of the river would be of the Mississippi. That is not the case. We rarely went to the Mississippi when I was growing up. Rather, we would go to Illinois to the Wabash River. My first memory of a river when I was a small boy recalls my first fishing trip to an unknown river. I remember catching my first fish, then watching as the “huge” fish came off hook, and I went sliding down the back to catch it before it got to the water. I grabbed the fish with my hands and began crawling up the bank to the top when I dropped the fish and it slit back to the river and went away. I was left disappointed.
            Some of my favorite memories of a river are of my summer days in West Virginia when I lived in Pennsylvania. I would get up early in the morning and walk down to the creek to fish. The river has taught me many things in those days and I would like to share some of them with you now. As I talk of these things think of the river as life itself. The river is life. The river is in each of us. We are part of the river.
            One of my favorite preachers of the 20^th century is Howard Thurman, Dean of Rankin Memorial Chapel, Howard University, co-founder of the Church of the Fellowship of All People, San Francisco, dean of Marsh Chapel, Boston University, and friend and an inspiration to many Unitarian Universalists. Dr. Thurman wrote an essay titled, “Deep River.” In this essay he combines two themes: the universal human desire to return to the source of life. Some call this source, “God”, others may prefer to call it the “Primordial Sea.” Whatever we call it, the need and the desire are there Thurman uses the poetry of Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, written in 1925. Hughes wrote:

            I’ve known rivers ancient as the world
and older than the flow of human blood in human veins,
            My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
            I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young,
            I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep,
            I looked upon the Nile and raised the Pyramids above it,
            I hear the singing of the Mississippi
when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
and I’ve seen the muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
            I’ve known rivers’
            Ancient, dusky rivers;
            My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Thurman begins with creation, but he does not end there. He sees this process as happening with the individual human soul as well. He writes:

Your life and my life began as a simple form, moving through varying stages of prenatal fulfillment, until by a great climactic spasm you and I were born. Then, once again, in simple beginning, increasing in anxiety, in turbulence, sometimes in depth, often in breath, we make our way across the broad expanse of the years.

For Thurman, life is the river—as in Taoism-- we are the bank of the river. Life flows by us but we are part of life. All of our life we yearn for the pace and tranquility of the river. We always want to return to the sea from which we began. So it is with life. Thurman ways it this way:

The goal of the river is the sea. The river is ever on its way to the sea, whose far-off call “all waters hear.” All the waters, in all the earth, are in route to the sea. Nothing can keep them from getting there. We may build huge dams, there maybe profound disturbances of the earth’s surface that throw the river out of its course and force it to cut a new channel across the bed of granite, but at last the river will get to the sea. It may twist and turn, fall back on itself and start again, stumble over an infinite series of hindering rocks, but at last the river must answer the call of the sea. It is restless till it finds its rest in the sea. (p. 739)

As the river goes to the sea, so does the human family seek its own unity. This is my second message this morning. We are all one in the beginning and the end. As water is the life blood of the earth, so should the church be the unifier of all people throughout the world. We symbolically add our water to the bowl this morning as a symbolic gesture of our commitment to the life universal.
All people depend on water. Yes, we can add color to it. We can add taste. We can take out the salt from sea water. We can call it holy water. But we cannot do without water. As the summer has given us rejuvenation, so does water rejuvenate life. Water is the life-giving spirit.
We all experience illness and loss in life. We were once stagnant and lifeless and we can become refreshed. Our spirit is regained. Our life finds new meaning. We enjoy life once again.
The first good friend I lost to death way college room-mate, Skip. He died in his forties due to lung cancer, because he worked his way through college as a barber where people often smoked. When Skip died I had to return to Missouri and help bury his ashes in a river he often frequented. Skip returned to the sea from which he came. I returned to find refreshment and new life when I faced death.
In closing, this morning, I see the Ingathering Water Ceremony as a time of renewal as a congregation. You are revisiting your vision. You are committing yourself to the earth, to the waters of the earth, to new beginnings. Our symbolic act of creating a bowl of water, is a return to your source, the primordial waters of the sea, and to all the peoples of the earth. We all come here as separate individuals, but we are all part of humanity, and the interdependent web of all existence. Howard Thurman says it this way:

. . .The river maintains with all the banks it touches. Every bank that is touched by a river gives itself to the water. . .Life is like that! If we think for a moment of the individual as the bank of the river and of life as the river. . . Or as Tennyson puts it on the lips of Ulysses:
            I am a part of all that I have met.
            Yet all experience is an arch where through
            Gleams that un-traveled land whose margin
            Fades forever and forever when I move. . . .
The source—the water, the beginning and the end—unifier, regenerative, refreshing spirit.
            Thou has made us for thyself and our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee,” says Augustine. Life is like a river, as the Negro Spiritual says,
            “Deep river, my home is over Jordan—
            Deep river, I want to cross over into camp ground.”
So may it be. Amen.


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River of Life