by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation on
January 3, 2016
This past Friday, on New Year’s Day, I engaged in what has become an annual tradition in our family.
I didn’t take the Polar Bear Plunge into Lake Lanier (which I understand was cancelled anyway this year due to the heavy rains and rising lake level). And I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions.
I did something much easier. I ate black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread for good luck and prosperity. Did anyone else do that?
Before meeting my spouse Gail, who is from the South, I was completely unaware of this New Year’s tradition. And, quite honestly, I don’t think that black-eyed peas and collards would have made it on my dinner plate any other way.
While I like the taste of beans and greens now, as a child I have a vivid memory of my Italian grandmother cooking something called Minestra, which was basically a greens soup made with escarole, chicory, cabbage or sometimes wild greens that she and my grandfather picked. The smell of those dark greens boiling in a big pot in her kitchen was so horrible, that when she finally served the Minestra for dinner, I burst into tears and begged not to have to eat it.
All these years later, I still don’t think I would have touched black-eyed peas and collard greens if Gail hadn’t introduced them to me. Like boiling Minestra, cooking collards is a stinky business. Gail does that part, and that dark, leafy vegetable has easily smelled up our entire kitchen and more.
After several years of cooking fresh collards and enduring their nasty odor, Gail has since resorted to buying them canned. We’ve noticed that the canned collards disappear quickly from the grocery shelves, so it seems we’re not the only ones who are eager to skip the smell or the hassle of cleaning and preparing them.
While peas and collards were turned into good luck symbols by southern folks, the good luck tradition of eating black-eyed peas is also said to have roots in the Jewish faith. As far back as 500 CE, persons were encouraged to eat these good luck beans to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
Whether or not you’re a fan of this January 1st meal, I think it’s safe to say that New Year’s Day beans, greens, and cornbread represent yet another example of how much many of us cherish our inherited or adopted rituals. Comforting and, sometimes, quirky traditions can connect us to past generations and past stories. They help us see that, despite the changes we experience as we move through our lives, our basic desire for happiness and security remain the same.
On this first Sunday in the New Year, I imagine that many of us are hoping for more of just that in 2016. We want to be well. We want our family, our friends, and the world that we live in to be well.
Our desire for wellness and wholeness can motivate us to make promises to ourselves and others. These aspirations can encourage us to put some of our best energy and best thinking to work . . . to improve our bodies, our finances and our relationships, as well as to help make the world a better place.
And, yet, I imagine that we don’t always meet the expectations we set for ourselves. I know I certainly don’t. Each New Year, it seems that I’m more aware of what stretches before me rather than the ground I’ve already covered.
While I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with looking ahead at what I’d like to accomplish, I’ve also been thinking of the beauty and serenity of simply taking in and appreciating my unfinished business.
Unitarian Universalist minister Richard Gilbert suggests that embracing our unfinished business is exactly what our weary, ever-striving spirits need.
He writes:
In the midst of the whirling day,
In the hectic rush to be doing,
In the frantic pace of life,
Pause here for a moment.
Catch your breath;
Relax your body;
Loosen your grip on life.
Consider that our lives are always unfinished business;
Imagine that the picture of your being is never complete;
Allow your life to be a work in progress.[ref]Richard Gilbert, “Life is Always Unfinished Business,” What We Share: Collected Meditations, Vol. Two, Patricia Frevert, ed. (Skinner House Books, Boston, MA: 2002), 61 – 62. [/ref]
He continues:
Do not let incompleteness weigh on your spirit;
Do not despair that imperfection marks your every day;
Do not fear that we are still in the making.
Let us be grateful that the world is still to be created;
Let us give thanks that we can be more than we are.
Let us celebrate the power of the incomplete;
For life is always unfinished business.[ref]Ibid.[/ref]
Richard Gilbert’s words offer us a way to look at the New Year and all of our ambitions with a sense of calm anticipation rather than self-criticism. Incompleteness . . . imperfection . . . unfinished business . . . Gilbert says these traits and experiences simply describe the human condition we all share.
Rather than feel irritated or discouraged about them, he says we should celebrate them! When we celebrate and acknowledge that we’re always a work in process, I believe we essentially invite greater acceptance of ourselves and others into our lives.
And when we do that, we are creating the conditions for compassion, reconciliation and peace to flourish.
While Gilbert suggests that there’s a kinder, gentler way to view our unfinished business, I don’t think he’s implying that we should abandon goals that have gone long unrealized – or that we should move slowly and steadily towards achieving them. My guess is that we can all think of circumstances where it benefits us and others to be absolutely relentless about finishing our unfinished business.
As an example, in his New Year’s Day address this past Friday, President Barack Obama made fighting gun violence his chief New Year’s resolution for 2016, calling it “a major piece of unfinished business” for his White House administration.”
The President announced his plans to meet tomorrow with the U.S. Attorney General to discuss options that will reduce the tolls of deaths and injuries from firearms. “My New Year’s resolution is to move forward on our unfinished business as much as I can,” he said. “That’s especially true for one piece of unfinished business, our epidemic of gun violence.”
While the issue of gun control continues to polarize the U.S. legislature and divide our nation, some gun control advocates also expect President Obama to announce executive action to expand background checks on gun sales before his State of the Union address on January 12th.
So, in matters that are personal and in matters that involves the well-being of others, I join Gilbert in saying “blessed is our unfinished business.”
Blessed is our unfinished business for reminding us of those human imperfections in need of acceptance and forgiveness. And blessed is our unfinished business for reminding us of those human injustices in need of our committed and ongoing action.
****
As we head into this New Year, there is some unfinished business that I am hoping we will all take up right here in Georgia. On January 11th, the Georgia General Assembly will convene once again . . . and the unfinished business of creating laws to promote justice, security and well-being for all Georgians will once again be on the agenda of our elected representatives.
Given that racial, economic, and social injustice is still alive and well in our state, I believe we need to make the Georgia General Assembly’s unfinished business our unfinished business.
Just to get an idea of what’s ahead, I glanced at the 27 bills that have been pre-filed by the Georgia House of Representatives. (If you’re interested, you can find them, too, on the Georgia General Assembly website.) As you might imagine, there were a number of proposed new laws that seemed intent on making Georgia more just and helping Georgians live better lives.
For instance, there’s a proposed bill to establish a state-wide organ donor registry that would be accessible to organ tissue and eye banks.
There’s another bill that would require those who are applying for a weapons carry license to show proof of having first completed a firearms safety training course (Really? I thought to myself when reading this one. You mean Georgia doesn’t already require this?).
There’s another proposed bill that would permit disabled persons to establish tax-exempt accounts to help them pay for qualified disability expenses. And, there’s another that would permit the state to use Medicare and Medicaid funds to help war veterans with their living expenses.
All of these bills seem positive and forward-thinking. All of them unfinished business that we might want our elected representatives to spend their time and energy on.
Of course, there was one piece of unfinished business that caught my eye . . . and I think should catch yours, too. It’s House Bill 29, entitled “Preventing Government Overreach on Religious Expression Act,” introduced last year in the state Senate as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Some of you may recall that proponents of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act say that it would ensure that state or local government would not “substantially burden” a person’s exercise of religion. It’s a bill, they argue, that would emphasize the protections of the First Amendment and make sure that all Georgians could freely uphold the beliefs and doctrines of their faith.
Many others, however, – including me – see the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as nothing short of a license to discriminate. If passed, the bill would allow a legal defense for businesses and private individuals to deny service to gay and transgender Georgians, to women seeking to purchase birth control, and likely to other persons.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in the Senate last year but died later in the Georgia House after an attempt was made to add anti-discrimination language to it. The bill’s supporters, however, see their defeat only as unfinished business and will be back at getting it passed this year.
I’m asking you to do the same – that is, to see the fight to defeat this bill as our unfinished business and join me when we’re called to witness for justice.
I’ll be participating with other Georgia clergy and religious leaders in some specialized training later this month to help ensure that our efforts will be effective. You can be assured that the proponents of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act will be doing the same.
This is not one of those times where we should let others do our work.
If you can join me down at the Georgia State Capitol once the legislature is back in session that would be great. If you can’t, I’ll pass along information about other ways you can make your voices heard.
****
Rev. Richard Gilbert’s advice that we not let incompleteness weigh on our spirit seems to speak both to letting go and diving into life’s challenges. As Elizabeth suggested in today’s Story Wisdom, there are times when it is important to let things be . . . to live with our unfinished business for a while, feel the butterflies in our stomach, and see what we can learn from our discomfort.
And, there are other times, when justice needs to be served – when we cannot and should not remain silent or still.
Even then . . . even as we dive into the ‘fray and work towards a goal of justice and change, we may find that we will need periods of rest and reflection . . . times when we check in with our hearts and our motives before we move forward again.
This business of unfinished business makes me think of a symbol of incompleteness that I encountered as a college student that sticks with me to this day – and that I’d like to leave with you.
As many of you know, I’m a graduate of Oglethorpe University here in Atlanta. Among Oglethorpe’s many Gothic revival-styled campus buildings, is the magnificent, but incomplete Hermance Stadium, whose façade borders Peachtree Road and is adjacent to the campus entrance.
Construction of Hermance Stadium began in the 1920s with funds donated by Harry Hermance, a prominent Atlanta businessman. Original plans called for a bowl-shaped, combined football/baseball arena with seating for 50,000.
However, on October 29, 1929 – three days after Mr. Hermance dedicated the first completed phase of the stadium (which included only the Peachtree Road façade and the lower-level stone seating behind it) – he lost his entire fortune in the stock market crash. And, so, the hopes and dreams for a grand Gothic sports arena became Oglethorpe’s monument of the Great Depression and Harry Hermance’s unfinished business.
If you’ve visited Oglethorpe’s campus, you know that the stadium doesn’t make a complete circle around the field. Rather, it’s shaped more like a comma and can seat about 5,000 spectators – not insignificant, but nowhere close to what Harry Hermance intended for it to be.
When I was a student, I marveled at the stadium’s impressive architecture . . . and I still do. And I’m vividly reminded that unfinished business doesn’t necessarily mean The End of everything. Oglethorpe survived its lean Depression years even if its stadium didn’t. Today, the university thrives and moves on.
I believe that we, too, can not only survive the unfinished business in our lives, we can thrive and move on. We can do so if we pay less attention to those hopes and dreams that are attached to our wants and focus more what hopes and dreams are attached to what we truly need in order for our spirits to soar.
Unfinished business can call us back to living with acceptance and appreciation and forgiveness. And, it can motivate us to work to help end oppression and usher in a new era of justice and compassion.
So, as we move forward in this New Year, in the words of Rev. Gilbert:
Let us be grateful that the world is still to be created;
Let us give thanks that we can be more than we are.
Let us celebrate the power of the incomplete;
For life is always unfinished business.
Blessed is our unfinished business. Blessed be and Amen.
(Photo credit: Unfinished Bridge by Elyob)