For the Facing of This Hour?

Our opening hymn is one that was carried over from the old blue Hymns for the Celebration of Life in our new–now 30 year old–gray Singing the Living Tradition. I’ve sung it most of my life, and it lives in my brain and in my heart. It feels like home to me–that part of my meta-home that was a pew on the lectern side of the sanctuary, about halfway to the front, on the outer aisle, where my family sat (and some of them still do) Sunday after Sunday. The rousing tune energizes me and makes me want to do bold things. And as a pretty much life-long Unitarian Universalist theist, I appreciate the bold prayer for wisdom and courage. But I seldom choose "God of Grace and God of Glory" for worship. Partly because I’ve served some congregations where appeals to or even references to God were troublesome to many members. But the final phrase of the refrain is the main reason I've been hesitant to use this hymn in worship.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.

What hour? What hour in our communal or societal or global life raises to the level of calling for a public petition to the Holy for wisdom and courage? Because I’m a native Minnesota, with a native Minnesotan’s inclination toward avoiding intensity and extremes, I can think of only a very few such hours over the course of my ministry thus far–9/11 and the pandemic and January 6 among them. But our theme for October is courage, and this is a great courage hymn. So here we are.

And here’s the thing, Sunday, October 2, 2022 is an hour for the facing of which we need wisdom and courage. And so was yesterday. And two weeks from next Wednesday. The hurricane passed us by, this time, but it doesn’t always, after all. Not only that, our lives are built of hours for the facing of which we need wisdom and courage.

Two weeks ago we heard a poem from Rainer Maria Rilke with the line "Nearby is the country they call life./You will know it by its seriousness." As much as I like that poem as a whole, there is something in me that protests that particular sentiment.

Someone told me this week that they like my sermons because they are upbeat. While I responded by saying I can’t promise all my sermons will be upbeat, the truth is I am committed to holding forth the possibility of hope. As one of my role models in ministry has said, “the minister is the one with the urgent sense of good news.” Maybe a bedrock vision of hope or urgent sense of good news comes across as upbeat. Yet, it is also true that I am equally committed to studying life as fearlessly as I can and describing it honestly. I can’t deny that life isn’t serious. So, I wouldn’t want to get rid of that line of the poem altogether; I’d just be happier with it if it had said, "Nearby is the country they call life./You will know it by its seriousness./But sometimes it’s quite delightful." Trouble is, then it wouldn’t have been Rilke’s poem. (Though he did write elsewhere: "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." So maybe Rilke and I are on the same page in this after all).

The seriousness of life and the beauty and delight of life both call for wisdom and courage if we are to face the hours which hold them, live into and through those hours and on into the life we are meant to live.

Unplanned pregnancy. An unexpected, potentially life-altering invitation that carries amazing opportunities and also upends everything safe and familiar and comfortable. The betrayal of a trust. The birth of a baby or adoption of a child. Natural disaster. The first day of college or military service for you or your child. The death of a loved one. The decision to come out as gay or trans or bi. Political upheaval. Pledging your life to another in marriage or another form of committed relationship. The diagnosis of a terminal illness. Job loss. New love after previous heartbreak. A change in your level of physical ability. All the situations described in this morning’s first reading. All hours of import and solemnity and gravity no less than 9/11 or the pandemic.

The Serenity Prayer, made most famous by its association with Alcoholics Anonymous and attributed, though not definitively, to American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, suggests that wisdom and courage are two different traits, that we most rightly call forth under two different circumstances:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

The courage to change the things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Courage is for taking action, in order to change things in ourselves or our lives or our environment, and in other moments (other hours) when taking action is frightening, the first step, daunting. Wisdom is for knowing, not only the difference between what we can and cannot change, but for knowing in a multitude of circumstances when distinguishing between two or more alternatives is vital yet challenging, confusing, paradoxical or deceptive. If we are wise enough, we believe, we will more easily know the difference between right and wrong, between the proper course and the one that will lead us astray, between good and evil, between generativity and rot. This distinction between the two is pretty standard, I think. We operate most of the time from an understanding that there are situations that call for courage. And there are other situations that call for wisdom. But if we ponder it for a moment, I believe we’ll find that wisdom and courage go together more often than it first might seem.

It takes wisdom to discern whether or not to change careers or go back to school for a new degree or certification entirely different from the one we already hodl. And it takes courage to register for the first class or seek a position in the new career. It takes courage to continue breathing after a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition, and wisdom to know what treatments to choose and reject and how to spend one’s life with limited energy and perhaps limited weeks or months. It takes courage to risk loving again after heartbreak or betrayal or loss, and wisdom to know the time and the person has arrived for that courage. It takes courage to take to the streets in protest, and wisdom to know that the moment is now, that the future is in our hands. It takes courage in oh-so many situations to give up control, and wisdom to know that leadership or power or control rightly belongs in other hands. On and on. Wisdom and courage are companion qualities that combine to show us the path forward and help us start along the way.

To pray (or sing) grant me wisdom, grant me courage would make fine daily spiritual practice, whether one is praying to God or to the Holy Mystery or the Spirit of Life. Or even to one’s inner self. For as John O’Donoughue and Susan Ludvigson say in their poems, the kindling that lights the spark of courage is already within our means to gather to heart, and so is the memory of all the times we have previously known ourselves to be courageous. And while humanity has made a nearly universal practice of seeking wisdom in gurus and teachers across faiths and spiritualities, it is also true that many of those gurus and teachers have admonished seekers to find wisdom within their own hearts. George Santayana put it this way:

O WORLD, thou choosest not the better part!

It is not wisdom to be only wise,

And on the inward vision close the eyes,

But it is wisdom to believe the heart.

I don’t know what you are facing at this hour. Whatever it may be, I pray for you wisdom and courage–from within your heart and from the Holy–in this and all the hours of your life. Amen