My Holy Experience

Sun appearing to burn through a large bush at sunset

by Rev. Terry Davis

Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
on December 20, 2015

Five, four, three, two, one! If I were eight years old again, that countdown would likely be going off in my head. Five days until Christmas! The anticipation of this holiday and its magic filled me with excitement. Santa didn’t hold back on the gift giving back then. And, interestingly, while a few of the toys and games we received from Old St. Nick each year weren’t on my list, they sure did make my father happy.

A miniature pinball machine one year . . . a train set, a baseball mitt, a ping-pong table – it was funny how Santa seemed to find those gifts that also made my dad’s eyes sparkle like he was eight years old again.

All these years later, I still look forward to Christmas, but for different reasons.
I like the interruption in my regular routine. I like the festive decorations that light up the city’s buildings and the houses on my neighborhood street.

I love the holiday music that is so beautiful . . . and feels so odd to sing at other times of the year. And, I’m grateful for the invitation it brings to toss aside my worn-out plea that “I’m too busy” and make time to connect with old friends.

The Christmas story of the miraculous birth of Jesus to the young virgin mother Mary still moves me today. Not because I believe it, but because I need it. I need its message of love and hope. And, I need its message that unexpected, amazing things do happen in the routine lives of ordinary people. I need to know that holy experiences are possible.

Growing up Catholic and learning the Bible stories, it seemed to me that the ancients had all the luck when it came to having holy experiences. They seemed to experience the presence of God every time they turned around.

Moses, in particular, had a knack for being in precisely the right place at the right time, although he was more scared than thrilled with his first holy experience of God, who called out to him from a burning bush. Similarly, Jacob’s first holy experience wasn’t a happy one, as he found himself in an all-night wrestling match with God and was left with an out-of-joint hip and life-long limp.

In the cases of Moses, Jacob and the Virgin Mary, it seems that they not only experienced the presence of God, but they were also nominated by the Deity to be of service to humanity. Jacob became the patriarch of the Israelites. Moses liberated the Israelites from slavery. And, Mary helped make it possible for God, through Jesus, to enter fully into the human experience so that he could reestablish his love for all people and bring a message of everlasting life.

Today and as Unitarian Universalists, many of us have a broad understanding of what it means to have a holy experience. No supernatural deity is needed as a qualifier. But, we might observe from the examples offered today by Elizabeth and Hannah that a holy experience does retain its ancient purpose as an invitation to be of service to humanity and all of existence.

The stories shared by Elizabeth during Story Wisdom, for instance, are reminders that holy experiences take place when something moves us to give the best of ourselves through acts of care and compassion. We may not understand why one particular child is strongly motivated to serve others, but my guess is that we might agree that there is something holy about that child’s passion and selfless deeds.

Their holy experiences connect them to something much larger than themselves and create a ripple effect of goodness.

In Hannah’s personal reflection, we’re reminded that holy experiences also serve our own spirit. We feel a “homecoming,” as Hannah put it – a sense that we have connected in the deepest way to the fundamentals of human existence, which she defines as love, compassion and vulnerability.

Our holy experience doesn’t even have to personally happen to us, as Hannah suggested. We can be moved by others’ experiences of joy, struggle, courage and compassion. Through their stories, we get in touch with our own hopes and fears, and we can know, once again, that we’re not alone in our journey.

We might feel like this topic of holy experiences in everyday life isn’t anything new. In fact, we might say we’re here precisely because we believe that the holy exists in ways that are much different and much more accessible than what we were taught in the places of worship of our youth.

While some of us may have had burning bush-like experiences, I think by the show of hands at the start of the service, the majority of us have had holy experiences that manifest in less fantastical, but not less meaningful, ways.

This morning I’d like to suggest that the frequency by which we experience the holy in our day-to-day lives is the biggest indicator of one’s spiritual health. In other words, the more we recognize that nearly every one of our life experiences is a holy experience, the more will open ourselves up to be transformed by all that we do into persons who hold love and wonder at the center of our lives.

This might sound like an irresponsible thing to say in light of the violence that is being committed in the world in the name of holy experiences, so let me clarify.

As I said earlier, I believe that holy experiences create a ripple effect of goodness. Holy experiences connect people, they don’t destroy them. Holy experiences bring healing and hope, not pain and despair. Holy experiences are abundant and available to many, not to only the chosen few.

Holy experiences are born out of and bring forth the best and most sacred part of ourselves – the part of us that knows we belong to everyone and everything.

I had an opportunity for a holy experience of my own just yesterday. I received a call from the caregiver of a long-time Northwest member – a 93 year-old man who is in hospice and is a co-founder of this congregation.

I had visited him earlier in the week. He was weak then, but able to visit for a few minutes. Now, according to his caregiver, he was much worse. Family members had arrived in from out of town. After receiving permission to come by for a visit,
I said that I would be there in an hour.

Saturday, as you may recall, was a cold, but beautiful day. The sky was so blue and so clear. I remember thinking, once again, how grateful I am for Nature’s simple and amazing beauty.

As I drove up onto the campus of the nursing home, I passed a wooded area. Through the trees, I noticed a dozen or so Canadian geese sitting and swimming on a small brown pond. They were slender and quiet, and I imagined that their bodies were being warmed by the December sun, even as their webbed feet were plunged into the frigid water below.

I parked my car in front of the facility and made my way to the lobby and down the hall to the elevators. A woman with golden hair and burgundy medical scrubs covered in a white snowflake pattern was talking on her cell phone, her English spoken with a heavy Caribbean accent. When we got on the elevator, she ended her call, looked at me, and shrugged.

“My mother,” she said smiling. “She lives with me and calls me all the time. She talks nonstop.”

I smiled back and wondered what it was like to be that connected to one’s parent.

When I arrived to the Northwest member’s tiny room, he was not awake. His breathing had a raspy, labored sound. The shades had been drawn and the room was in semi-darkness, lit only by a small lamp over a sink.

His long-time caregiver was in his room, as were his two sons whom I was meeting for the first time. One son had arrived from Taiwan, the other from Chicago. After exchanging greetings, I sat in a chair and we started talking – first about their dad’s health and what was happening, and then about their dad’s life, and finally about their relationship with him.

As they revealed the tremendous influence their father had had on their lives, it felt as if we were diving deeper and deeper into sacred space.

The younger son from Taiwan had been impressed with his father’s life as an executive for an international company. He loved the traveling they did together and especially the time they spent living in Japan.

“My dad is the reason I went into international business and why I live and work in Asia,” he said. “His passion influenced my own.”

The older son from Chicago told me he is a curator and director of a sculpture museum. His father’s love of the arts and the trips they took when he was a young boy to museums and art galleries in New York and London opened up his own interest in the arts.

“I was a rebel,” he told me, “and I was pretty sure the corporate life wasn’t going to be for me. Dad, however, always encouraged me in my pursuit of the arts. His support meant a lot to me.”

As the conversation continued, I glanced over at the father from time to time, who was lying in bed and breathing with great effort. His caregiver was holding his hand. I looked around at the walls of his room. They featured framed photos of his sons when they were small boys, pictures of his deceased wife, and of his grandchildren and other relatives. Hanging from the ceiling were beautiful banners painted with elegant Japanese calligraphy.

As I took in all of this, I wondered what the father knew. I wondered if he knew how close he was to death. I wondered if he knew how much his sons credited him for helping them find their paths and passion in life. With his sons gathered in his small room, expressing their love and gratitude for him, I wondered if he would have thought of this moment as a holy experience.

I know that I did.

Actually, it was holy for me from the moment I pulled out of my driveway and noticed the clear, blue sky and the black and gray geese on the muddy pond. It was holy when I encountered the smiling Caribbean nurse in the elevator who had a mother who needed her so.

It was holy for me when I met two men who had twinkling eyes and round faces like their father, and who spoke with love and gratitude for the man he is and for the men he helped them to become.

Yesterday was a holy experience for me because I had been invited to intimately connect to the pulse of life – to its sights and sounds, to its colors and its temperature, to its breathing, and to its inevitable dying. I opened my heart to what the day was bringing and, because I did, I once again felt moved and changed.

When I asked about their father’s theology and how he might understand his own approaching death, his oldest son said:

“You know, my father comes from a long line of persons who were highly opposed to organized religion. We are relatives of Ethan Allen, who was a freethinker and critic of Christianity.

“Yet, Dad was a long-time Unitarian. He liked the freedom of thought and belief that the Unitarians stood for. So, he was a member of the United Liberal Church (which, for those of you who don’t know, was a Unitarian congregation located in downtown Atlanta many years ago). And he helped found both UUCA and Northwest.”

Well, so much for being opposed to organized religion!

He continued:

“As a child, I attended the United Liberal Church on Boulevard Street. Our church was integrated during the time of racial segregation. I remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. coming to our Sunday school class and talking with us children. That made a very big impression on me.”

Then, his voice breaking, the son said:

“To this day, while I don’t attend church and I often feel that organized religion is what’s wrong with the world, I also can’t deny that my Unitarian upbringing helped make me who I am.

“It has helped me see that people are people . . . and that our skin color – or anything else, for that matter – really doesn’t make us different from one another.

“We all belong to one another. My father gave me that.”

In that moment, it seemed that his father was still giving . . . to his son . . . to all of us.

As we later said our good-byes, I reached out my hand to shake each son’s hand and was met with warm embraces. I thought about all I had been privileged to experience.

****

If we’re waiting on a burning bush to let us know that the holy is with us, I imagine most of us will be waiting a very long time. If, instead, we open ourselves up to the possibility that holy experiences abound, inviting us to be of service to others and our own spirits, we will be amazed at how our ordinary lives stand waiting to transform us.

May we keep our eyes and hearts open today and every day for our holy experiences. The more we look for them, the more we’ll see that they are absolutely everywhere.

May it be so. Amen.

(Photo credit: The Burning Bush by Paul Walker)