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by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered to Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation on August 18, 2013
On the last weekend in the last week of my summer vacation, I did something I always used to do in the summer as a child. I went to Scranton. Well, to be more exact, I went to the Scranton area – the northeastern Pennsylvania towns of Clarks Summit where my father’s sister and her husband now live, and to Pittston, where she and my father grew up.
My memories of summers in this part of the country are bound to the time spent with my Aunt Sandra. They are also bound to a memory of water – a small mountain lake, to be exact. I never really considered before how my most cherished memories and water were connected. Yet, it may be that water flows through our lives and our life stories so frequently and so naturally, that it is really hard to separate the two.
And, so perhaps like many of you, I bring with me to share with you today a story that’s more than about water and my summer travels. It is about a little sacred piece of me – just as I imagine your stories will be about a little sacred piece of you. It’s a story about my love for what was my most favorite time of the year with my favorite aunt. It’s a story of about family bonds and how those bonds were strengthened by fun in the sun and, most especially, by mountain water.
So I will tell you my water story by telling you about my Aunt Sandra.
Aunt Sandra is my father’s younger and only sister, the middle child of three. She has a quick wit, and I have always enjoyed not only her jokes, but also the fact that she laughs at them herself with a deep chuckle. I have often thought that Aunt Sandra’s humor is her greatest strength and her secret weapon. She uses it to extend hospitality, defuse tense situations, and speak the truth in what Quaker Parker Palmer would call a “slanted” sort of way – that is, in a manner that isn’t head-on, but gets her point across nevertheless.
Not that my Aunt Sandra shirks from conflict or is mild mannered. On the contrary, her willingness to stand her ground and confront what she thought was an injustice earned my respect. As a child, I often hoped I would grow up to be just like her – someone who wasn’t afraid to take on challenging persons and situations and speak the truth. She was my personal hero.
Aunt Sandra also was my personal Social Director. Each summer, she would take time off of work to take my sister, me and a few assorted cousins on excursions in and around the northern Pocono Mountains. A favorite destination was Gouldsboro Lake, named after Jay Gould, a wealthy 19th century railroad owner whose former railway runs along the eastern border of the state park where the lake resides.
Gouldsboro Lake had a small beach and, beyond a string of bright orange buoy markers, there was a floating diving platform. The water was cool and a respite from the summer heat, but it wasn’t exactly the crystal clear mountain lake you might imagine. After an afternoon of swimming and floating, the algae in the water would turn our bathing suits – and sometimes our hair – an interesting shade of green.
But, green or no green, we enjoyed ourselves anyway . . . because we were with each other and hanging out with my cool Aunt Sandra.
And, let me just say, from my 12 year-old perspective, my Aunt Sandra was really cool! She was tall and tanned. She had frosted short hair and drove a brand-new1973 Plymouth Barracuda. And, when our day at the lake was done, we’d all pile into that awesome muscle car of hers with sandy feet and sticky hands and plop our wet and green bathing-suited bodies onto those pristine white vinyl seats.
My Aunt Sandra would take the wheel, light up a Salem cigarette and pop an eight-track tape into the deck. And, with the windows rolled down and a hot summer breeze whipping our hair, we would sing along to Deep Purple’s rock hit “Smoke on the Water” all the way home. Ah, these were the best of times – swimming with my cousins, riding in a Barracuda . . . and an aunt who liked heavy metal music! I felt alive and free in those moments.
Forty years later, my Aunt Sandra is still cool, even if her two-door sports car has long been replaced by a four-door sedan. She told me on my visit last month that she thought that Gouldsboro Lake might no longer exist . . . and so I have none of its blue-green water with me in my little vial this morning. Problems with the lake’s dam led to a decision to drain it completely in 2005 so that repairs could be made.
I’ve since learned that the mountain lake has been refilled, and so I happily imagine that others are now making their own memories in its cold waters.
This story of my Pennsylvania summers is, of course, more than a story about good times at the lake. It’s a story about the fountain of my life . . . that is, it’s a story about those people and experiences that are at the center of my being . . . those people and experiences that stream forth in effervescent and cherished memories.
These water memories fill me with a sense what it means to love and be loved. They flow in and through me, forming a clear, crystal pool which I visit and drink from often. They quench me when I am feeling spiritually parched. They restore my soul.
American Author Norman Maclean wrote, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” Our lives are shaped and merged together by the memories that run through them, just as wide canyons and narrow gorges are carved and creviced by flowing rivers and streams.
My Aunt Sandra shares these water memories with me and it creates a sacred connection between us. It’s these stories that bind us as family and give our lives meaning.
What water stories – which are now your water memories – will you bring to this community today? I believe when we share our water memories today, we’ll not only reveal those sacred bonds we have with special people and places, we will also be forming sacred bonds with this place. Your water stories will comingle with the stories of others – like the waters we will blend in our community bowl – and then your stories will also become our stories.
That’s the beauty of being in community and why we celebrate our ingathering this morning. Because in community, all things eventually merge into one and we find that a beautiful and mighty river runs through it.
Let’s join our water and memories this day . . . and let us rejoice in their sacred meaning together. May it be so.
Amen.