For a Reason

First UU Church of Berks County
For a Reason
Rev. Sandra Fees
July 17, 2011
Last year, Guardian news asked readers to recommend songs about luck and destiny.
(“Readers Recommend Songs about Fate and Destiny: The Results” by Rob Fitzpatrick,
guardian.co.uk, September 23, 2010) Included among their top ten list was Joni
Mitchell’s1970s song “The Circle Game,” in which she sings "we're captive on the
carousel of time.” Talk Talk made the list with their song, “Life’s What You Make of
It,” which as its title suggests advances the theme of self-determination.
Another contender was “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”, known to many
of us through Doris Day. It declares “the future’s not ours to see. What will be, will
be.” Or as my parents always said: “It is what it is.”
Do things happen for a reason? Did God have a hand in it? Was it a roll of the dice,
Lady Luck as Meg Barnhouse suggests in our reading for today? Are there forces at
work driving our lives? If everything has a purpose, is that purpose always a positive
one? Is everything predictable and predestined? Is it chance, fate, serendipity,
synchronicity, God’s will, natural forces, or randomness at work in the universe?
Humans have been trying to decipher the complexities of why things happen from
earliest times. This is the kind of question we ask ourselves when we are trying to
make sense of the struggles we face. It is the kind of questions we wrestle with when
we read the newspaper and watch tragic events unfold on the TV screen.
Many people paid close attention to the recent Casey Anthony trial. There were some
pretty strong responses to the verdict. The death of a child evokes strong responses.
Caylee Marie Anthony was killed when she was only two years old. Her mother was the
prime suspect. The murder of a child is unthinkable in and of itself. To have the
mother be the most likely killer makes it that much worse. The verdict elicited anger
and disillusionment. How do we make sense of Caylee’s death especially when it isn’t
clear who to blame? According to Dr. Stephen Diamond, writing in Psychology Today,
prior to the trial:
One of the things juries - and the rest of us - instinctively seek is some way of
making sense of evil deeds like the one Casey Anthony stands accused of having
committed. Forensic psychology and psychiatry can offer explanations … for
destructive or evil behavior. … Forensic psychology and psychiatry can help
disclose the human frailties, pathologies, selfishness, rage and tragic
circumstances that motivate or drive defendants to commit evil deeds, providing
perplexed jurors and observers with ways of understanding not just what the
physical evidence suggests, but why we humans behave badly. (psychologytoday.
com/blog/evil-deeds, “Did Casey Kill Caylee?” June 2011, Psychology Today)
Consider another example. Some of you know my father has Alzheimer’s and dementia.
He still knows me and his other children. But he no longer knows day from night, or
which day of the week it is. Since my mother’s death, he once told me, “I think about
her. I miss her. I wish I could remember her more.”
His cognitive decline, though, is more than a matter of forgetfulness. He can no
longer manage his finances or make key decisions. Anyone who lives with dementia
struggles to make sense of it. Science is uncovering more and more information about
how the brain works, what causes dementia, and how to treat it. Forensic science,
genetics, biology, and psychology can help us explain why these things happen, but
these explanations do not help to make Caylee’s death or my father’s dementia
meaningful. What, if anything, can make our difficulties matter?
In the eyes of traditional Western religion, everything is in God’s hands and whatever
happens is God’s will. In other words, God acts with purpose in this world. The future
is preordained, even if known only to God. We may act freely within our daily lives
but the ultimate outcome is part of a bigger plan and pattern. We can find comfort
and meaning in knowing that a larger ultimate plan does exist.
In Hinduism, difficulties are the result of karma. Those who struggle are paying off
the karmic debt of past lives. In its most rigid and traditional expression, karma led to
the caste system. This included the untouchables who are now known as dalits, or the
downtrodden. This religiously institutionalized structure of suffering was denounced
as early as Buddha’s time, but was not outlawed until 1950.
A contemporary idea that has been achieving popularity is that “things happen for a
reason.” This belief may or may not leave God out of the picture, but recognizes a
force or agent at work. That force seems to have some special insight. Out of the
difficulties of life comes some lesson we needed to learn, some growth toward selfimprovement,
or advancement toward some higher cause.
Scientific perspectives have shifted from the 17th century view of events as
mechanistic clockwork to quantum physics. Quantum physics recognizes the
uncertainties of reality. But science also notes the patterns that emerge.
As Unitarian Universalists, our nontraditional way of religion means taking traditional
ideas and reinterpreting them in the light of reason, human dignity, and a respect for
both the known and the unknown – for what science can tell us and also what it can’t.
We balk at traditional theologies that teach us that we are born paying for sins we
don’t even know we committed. No one, in our estimation, deserves to suffer to right
a cosmic balance sheet, especially one they didn’t even know they had a part in.
Individuals do sometimes contribute to their own pain and to that of others. We know
this. And we do learn and grow from some of the painful and disappointing situations
we encounter. Yet, individuals are not destined to a programmed future of someone
else’s making, at least not entirely. And if we speak of karma, we are typically
reinterpreting it in liberal religious ways to suggest that we have a part to play in
creating our own reality – both good and bad.
We temper the idea that tragedy is part of a master plan, seeing the future as open
and change as an ever-present possibility. The idea that a loving God would allow
atrocities to occur was rejected by our Universalist forebears. Rev. William Sloan
Coffin was a prominent contemporary Christian leader whose son died in a climbing
accident. At the funeral, the preacher conducting the service described the events as
part of God’s plan. He said, “We just have to accept this as God’s will!” Coffin didn’t
agree. He impulsively shouted back, “The hell it is! When my son died, God was the
first one who cried!” (quoted in “God as the Suffering Servant” by Tony Campolo,
http://spiritualprogressives.org/ newsite/ ?p=641). We share Coffin’s sentiment.
Our commitment as religious liberals is to discover some ultimate significance. We
strive to infuse meaning and purpose into the events of everyday life. Our meaningmaking
efforts won’t be as neat and tidy as we may like them to be. They certainly
won’t erase the pain we feel. But they will keep us from despair and give us hope.
They will assure us that renewal and change are possible. Historian Karen Armstrong
says, “Our neocortex has made us meaning-seeking creatures, acutely aware of the
perplexity and tragedy of our predicament, and if we do not discover some ultimate
significance in our lives, we fall easily into despair”. (Twelve Steps to a
Compassionate Life).
To do that, we need an approach. Rabbi David Wolpe has written extensively on loss.
In his book, Making Loss Matter, he says that when we ask the question “why is the
world so constructed that we lose what we love?” what we need to seek is not an
answer but an approach. What we need is to find a way to make the loss meaningful.
As Wolpe says, “from misfortune, meaning; from sadness, significance.”
When dealing with suffering and loss, we need to kick into action. Bradley Shavit
Artson, writing in Tikkun magazine, describes it this way:
When bad things happen we are not supposed to become passive; we are not
supposed to lay back and say, ‘oh well, this was meant to be.’ We are supposed
to fight the undesired outcome with every insight we can muster, every last
ounce of strength. When a loved one is sick, we provide the best possible
medical care we can find for them. When someone under our care needs our
help, … we surround them with love and caring. …When injustice is evident,
and we can oppose the harm, it is our obligation to stop it. We ourselves
embody and mobilize the “natural goodness” that is at the core of the
universe. (“Your Inheritance,” May 2, 2011, Tikkun)
Let me share a story of what it looks like to keep hope alive and to oppose harm, of
what it means to embody that goodness. The late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach used to
travel around the world giving concerts, praying, and inspiring people. People usually
welcomed him warmly. On one trip, he visited a small town in Eastern Europe, after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people there were distant and cold, except for
one man, who was loving and open.
The rabbi wanted to know why. He said, “I realize why [the people of this town] want
nothing to do with a singing rabbi from the West. After all, they were devastated by
the Holocaust … then lived for close to 50 years under … communism. I understand
their anger. … [but] why are you so loving, why are you so … different?”
Here’s why. The man had lived in that town his entire life. One night, when he was a
child, before the First World War, a rumor swept through town that there was going
to be a pogrom. The Cossacks were coming to loot, pillage and destroy. Parents took
their children to the rabbi’s house. It was winter and very cold, and the children slept
on the floor. The man, then a child, was curled up in a corner. He couldn’t sleep
because he was so cold. The rabbi slipped his cloak over the child’s shoulders and said
“Good child, sweet child.”
“You know” said the man, “It has been 75 years since the rabbi spread his coat on me
– but it still keeps me warm.”
This is what it means to create meaning in the midst of suffering. We face our
struggles knowing we will be kept warm. We need to know that there’s a cycle of
renewal. We need to know that we can make loss matter. We need to know that there
is some “natural goodness” at the core of the universe.
May we respond to life’s losses and suffering with compassion and hope. May we find
in this community the cloak of warmth to help us on the cold nights. May we take our
heart break and turn it into something meaningful.
May it be so.