Over the past five years I have been so focused on the work of preparing for ministry that I sometimes was unable to experience the beauty of the ministerial path, or the grace of my own life unfolding. For thirty years, other people have been pouring out their time, money, experience, and compassion so that I could grow, so that I could be trained to love. The amazing truth is that their effort – your effort – has succeeded in shifting my experience of life from one of obligation to one of joy.
Victor Frankl warned that “What is to give light must endure burning.” Some of us burn without seeing our own glow. You give us the gift of your reflection. Standing here, I can see the light of seven new stars flickering in your faces.
A few days ago I was awakened by the moon, just beginning to set amongst the trees and streetlights of Berkeley. She was so intoxicating I had to rise for her, to praise this divine face of God. And I realized that this is how we communicate with the stars, burning back to them not only with wood and smoke but through the intense flame of our lives.
Those of you who know my life story know it hasn’t been easy for me to heal, to accept the deaths that would lead to my own rebirth. But those deaths came whether I accepted them or not, and the rebirth that followed was nothing short of a miracle. I have been released to look at my own life, in which hope is sprouting beside joy.
Last year one of yoga teachers asked me to consider “the many lifetimes of good karma that have allowed me to come to this place.” If you had asked me at any point in the previous twenty-nine years I would probably not have agreed I was lucky. But she was right—I am upheld in blessing, as all the ordinands are, by those in this room and across the globe who love and believe in us, holding mirrors toward our light as we burn.
Every person who has touched our lives has brought us to this day. Their spirits are overflowing the back rows. Together, you have formed guiding constellations as we crossed oceans in the dark.
Meister Eckhart said that if the only prayer we say in our lives is “Thank you,” it will be enough. I want to take a moment to hold the mirror to you, in thanks. Look at the glow of your own life as you are burning. How lucky are you? And how blessed?
Today, I am hoping my prayer will be enough: a prayer of gratitude for those who have woven the web, perhaps without seeing, that allowed me to live and serve others in need. The texture of my life has been transformed by love into love. Thank you for loving me, for loving us, from near or far, knowing or unknowing, and allowing us, by the cumulative power of that love, to shine – guiding others as they cross oceans in the dark.
____________________
Sermon given at Ordination, Sept. 25, 2010
