The Sea Will Hold You

“You know more than you think you do.”

If I had a re-do that would be this morning’s sermon title. We will get to the sea will hold you a bit later. But first these words from Dr. Spock, the pediatrician, author, and later war protestor, who turned the world of parenting expertise upside with his 1946 The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care, in which he urged mothers (changing it to parents in later editions) to trust their instincts, declaring “you know more than you think you do.”

I believe we all know more than we think we do. I believe that collectively we hold a vast store of knowledge. In the congregation gathered today, here in the sanctuary and on YouTube, we probably know half a dozen different languages, written or spoken. We can probably change the oil on a variety of imports and American made cars. We can probably properly set a table for a formal dinner for eight. Write a paper conforming to either The Chicago Manual of Style or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Transpose a piece of music from one key to another. Make five different kinds of pickles, and 15 different jams and jellies. Name the winners of the World Series in any random 15 years. Calculate the volume of a cylinder. Tie a bowtie. Teach grades pre-K through post-grade. File a lawsuit. Hem a skirt. Bake 7 kinds of bread. And a few other things.

Of course, in the internet age, with a bit of time and determination, any one of us could learn all these things and a million more from Google or YouTube tutorials. And maybe sometimes that fact makes us feel empowered because we can learn and do so many things, and maybe sometimes it makes us feel that we’ve been given a break from having to remember facts and figures and when Daylight Saving Time begins and ends and other things we only need to know once or twice a year. Or maybe sometimes it makes us feel insignificant or obsolete, that so much of what once was our specialized and hard gathered knowledge is widely accessible without our involvement.

I argue that, computer-age-explosion-in-accumulated-knowledge aside, we still know more than we think we know–and what we know has saved us and will save us again and again..

We know in our brains or in our hearts or in our bodies, in our souls which are the wholeness of brain/heart/body:

how to be a friend, an ally, a sibling, a lover, a partner;

what it feels like to have the love and support of a friend, an ally, a sibling, a lover, a partner;

how estrangement feels and reconciliation, too;

how forgiveness feels from both side of that blessing;

how to recognize kindness;

how to be kind;

how to wail and lament;

what it is to be awash in grief and devastation and emerge alive;

how to celebrate momentous triumphs and every day joys;

how to laugh, to sing, to dance.

We know:

how to recognize lies–not always but often;

how to keep speaking the truth;

how to seek out allies and forge alliances;

how to take risks when lives or principles are at stake;

We know:

the plot to our favorite bedtime story;

the melody of a lullaby our parent or grandparent sang to us when we were young;

the food and music of our cultural heritage;

of the skills of our particular trade;

ways to move our bodies to bring calm or relief.

We know:

fragments of the old articulation of our Unitarian Universalist principles;

bits of the new articulation of our Unitarian Universalist values, with love at the center;

that a flame burning in a chalice signifies a community which welcomes all people but not all behaviors

We know in our brains or in our hearts or in our bodies, in our souls which are the wholeness of brain/heart/body:

the phases of the moon;

the movements of the tide; the turning of the seasons;

the cycles of life and death.

We know all these things and so much more.

Jane Rzepka, in our first reading this morning, was onto something, back in the late 1980s when she wrote that piece, with her fear that they were “changing the changing”. Daylight Saving Time no longer begins on the last Sunday in April. The good news for us is that we no longer have to worry very much about it. Most of our watches and phones spring ahead automatically, and our social media feeds contain multiple reminders of the time change. Look at you all–you got to church on time! Still, probably each of us recognizes her desire –“to be solidly in the know, to [have] a little something I could keep on a scrap of paper in my desk, something I could count on.” We probably felt that way often enough before the inauguration, before the election, simply due to the pace of the expansion of knowledge in the 21st century, coupled with update about everything imaginable coming at us 24 hours a day. Now, well, a lot of what we know changes by the hour. Now having a little something we can tuck away somewhere to look at every day and know that it is real, solid, dependable, unchanging, true seems both an impossibility and a necessity for survival.

The good news is that we know more than we think we do, and all that we know–the things I listed and things I didn’t think of–all that we know is the sea that will hold us when we tire on the long thrash to our island. Whether we are tired by the efforts of ordinary daily life or by the chaos of the extraordinary time even now unfolding, all things that we know, even the things we don’t know that we know, are a sea that will hold us, if only we trust our knowing.

The sea of what we know about being a congregation of many generations, and diverse backgrounds, and varying theologies, and contrasting and complementary passions, that sea to help us build sustaining and sustainable community far beyond these walls.

The sea of what we know already about exposing injustice and greed, that sea will hold us as we work toward justice and equity in unprecedented times.

The sea of what we know about the rhythms of nature, that sea will hold us as we seek organic, durable strategies for returning compassion and generosity and generativity to our public sphere.

The sea of what we know about where we came from and how that has shaped us into the person we are for good or for ill, that sea will hold us in the struggle to remain true to ourselves in the face of misinformation and manipulation.

The sea of what we know about loving expansively and celebrating extravagantly, we can lie gently and wide upon that sea, and survive, with refreshed spirits, and replenished energy to act boldly and faithfully day by day.

We know more than we think we do. And that is already saving us, on our long thrash home to a global island of abundance, possibility and peace. May our trust in that sea of knowing keep us steadfast along our way. Amen.