by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
on June 14, 2015
Tying up loose ends – it’s an expression I use often when I feel a certain sense of urgency about tasks and decisions that I perceive are waiting to be taken care of by me. Tying up loose ends has been my modus operandi these last few weeks as I prepare to wrap up things before heading out on my summer study leave and break, which begins on June 29.
As I attempt to tie up the loose ends of scheduling meetings, sending e-mails, finishing reports, and other tasks, I have admittedly worked up quite a To Do list for myself. And, so, I came into Northwest on Monday morning with a clear agenda and ready to get down to business.
But, first, I checked my voicemail messages.
As I played them, the recorded voice of an elderly woman came through the receiver. She said, “Mr. Smeltzer, this is Mary Brown (I have changed the caller’s name to “Mary Brown” for this sermon). Mary said, “I would really like a visit from you. There are some things I’d like to talk with you about. Please call me.” And then she left her number.
Mary Brown and I have met before, but it had been at least a year since I had last seen her. I had tried to visit her on a few occasions, but we could never find a time that worked. At 93 years old, I learned that Mary keeps a very busy schedule.
Perplexed about the Mr. Smeltzer reference, I called her immediately.
“Mary?” I said. “This is Rev. Terry Davis at Northwest. You left a message that you’d like Mr. Smeltzer to visit. Did you mean me – or someone else?” After we talked for a few minutes and straightened out the Mr. Smeltzer thing, Mary said, “Yes, I’d like for you to visit, but I don’t know when. I’m so busy.”
Like me, Mary had a few loose ends on her calendar to tie up.
“What about lunch tomorrow?” I suggested. “I’ll be leaving for my summer break soon, and it would give me a chance to see you before I go.”
Mary said yes, and so we had a date.
The drive to the retirement community where Mary lives was a nightmare. With plenty of traffic and my poor sense of navigation, I arrived to our appointment late and feeling guilty about it.
Her high-rise building was a mouse’s maze of hallways and different elevator banks, which made me later still. A few calls from the front desk to her apartment produced no response, which made me wonder if something might have happened to Mary.
A friendly worker finally helped me locate her unit. I knocked on the door, and Mary opened it up. “Come in,” she said. She was smiling and wearing a white striped blouse. I stepped through the doorway and my heart skipped a beat.
Her living room was filled with lots of natural light. The walls were painted a pale green and on every square inch of them hung paintings. There were so many paintings . . . still lifes . . . landscapes . . . portraits. I stepped up to the wall to take a closer look and noticed that Mary’s signature was on many of them.
Colorful and elegant rugs were on the floor. Glossy china teacups and dishes were stacked up here and there on antique tables and displayed in cabinets. Everything in that living room was lovely and seemed to be in just the right place.
I let out a deep breath. “Mary,” I said. “This is beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “Let’s go to lunch.”
We had lunch in the downstairs dining room. Again, I was pleasantly surprised and delighted when another resident and someone I knew joined us – Mary’s 95 year-old friend Manny, who was the former president of my college.
After a long chat, which included Mary kidding Manny about being a theist, and Manny sharing an essay he had penned for their weekly writers’ group meeting entitled “I was embarrassed,” Mary and I returned to her apartment.
There, she pulled out a file folder stuffed with poetry she had written over the years and read some of it to me. We talked about the meaning of spirituality.
We pondered some of life’s big questions, such as why any of us are here and whether or not there is such a thing as a soul.
Our lunch turned into a four-hour afternoon. And, thank goodness it did . . . because I needed a break.
I needed a break from my To Do list. I needed a break from the self-centeredness that often drives my ambition to get things done.
Today, I didn’t need to tie up loose ends. Instead, I needed to be late. I needed to get lost in the hallways of an Atlanta high-rise. I needed to step into a room filled with bright light and beautiful art.
I needed to sit with a 93 year-old poet and painter and see that I must keep pursuing truth and meaning for as long as I live. I needed reminding that some of life’s big questions, such as “Who am I doing and why am I here?” may linger like loose ends in my head and in my heart.
Questions about my nature and existence and the nature and existence of all things will always be waiting for me, inviting my curiosity and consideration. And, that’s as it should be. Because to live a fully engaged life means that I am going to experience the beauty, the mystery and the frustration of questions and more questions.
In the brief next few minutes we have together, I’d like to examine with you what it means to take a break . . . not a summer vacation or some other break from our everyday routines, which we all need periodically.
Rather, I’d like to look at what it means to break away from thinking and behavior that isn’t working for us any more . . . that has us chasing life’s loose ends in such a way that we overlook those things that really feed us.
The parable about the prodigal son and his brother that Neal read this morning, offers an interesting opportunity to look at this. Perhaps like those of you who were raised in the Christian tradition, I was always taught that this story was a lesson about the downside of pride and the power of forgiveness and love.
The prodigal son’s prideful decision to squander his inheritance eventually left him destitute and despairing. The father’s loving decision to welcome his son back home without rancor or judgement provided an opportunity for healing and wholeness. These are the familiar themes of this ancient parable for me.
But the lesson that I want to lift up today is not the one contained in the pride and fall of the son or the forgiving character of the father, but in the bitterness of the brother – the loyal, hard-working brother, who was busy being responsible and tying up loose ends on his father’s estate.
His response to his wayward brother’s return was not one of joy, but of envy and anger. He was hurt, disappointed. He felt unappreciated. His heart was closed to the miracle of his brother’s repentance and rebirth.
This parable, which is told by Jesus in the gospel of Luke, contains a message that Jesus offered his disciples over and over again throughout his ministry . . . the message that a life lived busily tying up loose ends is a life that risks missing out on deep and meaningful connections . . . connections to God, to love, and to one another.
Jesus’s life is portrayed in the Christian scriptures as one that was centered on people – visiting them in their homes, sharing meals with them, teaching them, and celebrating with them. Nothing else is said about the way he worked. The text offers no details on whether Jesus was someone who met deadlines or dropped balls, or whether he was punctual or late.
Rather, what is emphasized is his belief in a loving God and his desire to help us understand how important it is to love one another.
As Unitarian Universalists whose religious heritage includes this gospel teaching, we have an invitation to carry this message of radical love and a responsibility to put people and matters of the heart at the center of our lives.
Can we do this? Can we take a break from those things that get in the way of living more in line with our hearts . . . and trust that the loose ends that need to get done will . . . and that we needn’t worry about any of it?
A few days after I saw Mary Brown, I was walking my puppy Miles down my street and I encountered my neighbor. She is a young mother and physician . . . and she’s fighting a very aggressive type of breast cancer with an aggressive chemotherapy regimen.
She was hurriedly walking down the front steps of her house, getting her 6- and 3-year old boys off to school.
We had exchanged e-mails a week or so back. Not knowing her religious beliefs and never having had a conversation with her about this, I had offered instead to watch her boys, to take her a meal, walk her dog, or drive her to chemo – in essence, help her tie up some loose ends.
But when I met up with her on the street, she thanked me for my offers and asked for something quite different. “I’d like to sit down and talk with you,” she said. “I have asked so many people to pray for me, and now I’m wondering what I even mean by that.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and I realized in that moment that what my neighbor needed wasn’t my help, but my attention. She needed me to put aside my offer to do, and just be with her. She wanted me to join her in exploring some of life’s big questions – just as Mary had asked me to do a few days before.
“We can put the dogs in the backyard with the kids, just sit on the porch and talk,” she said. “How does that sound?”
Well, it sounded like an invitation I would never, ever want pass up.
One of the poems that Mary shared with me in her quiet and pretty apartment wasn’t written by her, but by former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. Entitled “The Parade,” it speaks to the fleeting nature of life . . . and to the necessity of taking a break from the habits and thinking that pull us away from its urgent beauty.
How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags –
the flag of desire, the flag of ambition.So many of us streaming along –
all of humanity, really
moving in perfect sync,
yet each lost in the room of a private dream.How stimulating the scenery of the world
the rows of roadside trees,
the huge blue sheet of the sky.How endless it seemed until we veered
off the broad turnpike
into a pasture of high grass,
headed toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality.Generation after generation,
we shoulder forward
under the play of clouds
until we high-step off the lip into space.And I should not have to remind you
that little time is given here
to rest on a wayside bench,
to stop and bend to the wildflowers
or to study a bird on a branch –Not when the young
keep shoving from behind,
not when the old are tugging us forward,
pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength.
As we go from here, may we recognize when we’ve had our fill of tying up loose ends. May we know that little time is given here . . . that beauty and connection wait for us always . . . and that it’s up to us to take a break and let it stream in.
May it be so, for you and for me. Amen.
(image credit: “Railway Workers: tie up the loose ends and make the trains go rolling again!” by Flickr user Erich Ferdinand)