“How Do We Sustain the Flame?”

a sermon by Rev. Kimi Riegel
Delivered October 2, 2005 at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church

How do we sustain the flame? How do we keep the glow? How do we say yes to life and love? As the character in the Tom Robbins novel says. “How do we make love stay?’

These are questions we ask about our love lives but they also apply to our love of our careers, the vision we have of the future and yes, even to our projects here at church. How do we keep ourselves on track? How do we stay happy and loving? We may have found what we want, we may even have what we need, how do we keep it fresh and lively and real?
Our church example is a powerful one for many of us. We have been working for over a year to build a building. We have fallen in love with this dream of a worship space that is welcoming to all and draws people in with its expansive architecture and green components. It’s a chance to live our principles as we make more room for more liberal religious people. When I say we have fallen in love, that is not an overstatement. We want this building the way one wants the love of their lives. We knew right away this was the right move for us. We have raised the money; we have our love in hand. Then comes the tough part: to sustain the attraction, to keep moving, to stay together, to not lose sight of our goal.

We have had some set backs. We had to adjust our plans to satisfy the city and our budget. We have had to go back and back again to the city hoping they will be happy with our plan. We got through one hurdle Wednesday night. Our plan passed the public hearing stage and now moves on to city council. After that it will have to go to the Zoning Board and …. . This was not what we were expecting. We are on the move. We want to see a backhoe pull up in the front of the church right now.

It's kind of like after the first few months of dating you see that your true love has really big feet, and they aren’t very attractive really big feet either. It’s kind of like when you get your once-in-a-life time vacation planned and you break your leg. It’s kind of like when you take the perfect job and one week in the company replaces your wonderful supervisor. It's kind of like finding out your very smart child has a few learning problems. OK maybe the building set backs are not as tough as some of those, but you get the picture.

We wanted this baby of ours to grow without any snags. That was unrealistic and to some extend we knew it. I guess we figured why burden the first date with asking to see their feet. Wow, that’s a mix of too many metaphors!

With any big dream or love of our life, we want to keep it alive and we can if we but realize and practice a few things. Many of the ideas I want to present this morning come from Harville Henricks. Dr. Henricks is a therapist working with relationships. His theories have helped hundreds with books like "Keeping the Love You Find and Getting the Love You Want". His ideas struck me as not only useful for relationships at the personal level, but also for how we keep all our wishes and dreams alive. The feelings we have for our partners and children are not the same as the feelings we have about the church, but there are similarities. It might even help our relationships at home if we first practice these skills on something less personal like the building project at church.

The first suggestion for how to keep the flame burning is to keep it in front of you. It is hard to keep the light alive if we don’t know it's there. For couples that might mean, making a date once a month, looking at vacation picture together or telling each other the story of how you met and how you felt on that day at every anniversary. For us at church it means reading the newsletter columns about the project, showing up to meetings where the project will be discussed or looking at the pictures of the new building. I keep it alive by looking out this window and imagining what a different and incredible sight will be here in just a few years. We started this project to make a beautiful worship space for many to share for generations to come. As long as we remember that, as long as we tell each other that, it will happen.

This next one isn’t as much fun. In order to have our dream come true we must keep it in front of us and also accept that it is difficult and will take work. There is a notion in America that if you have the right dream, the right plan, the right partner and maybe drive the right car, all will come easily for you. Unfortunately that’s an old fairy tale ending that is just getting a new spin. You and I will not, despite our best efforts, live happily ever after. It will take physical and mental work, hard words, and sitting through tough times to have the relationships we want. It will take the same: physical and mental work, hard words, long meetings and sitting through hard times to have the building we dream of. Admitting that, facing that, gives us courage along the way. We acknowledge that it will get hard. Then, when the hard part comes, we are somewhat prepared. Life partners can look at each other in the middle of the fight knowing the love is there and these are the inevitable workings of loving and keeping a dream alive.

Now we can’t be prepared for everything. Sometimes life gives us things that put an end to our dreams no matter our hard work. But then the hard work is creating a new dream with which to carry on. This congregation is dedicated to the building and it will happen, but if it doesn’t we know that we are capable of holding on until the next dream comes along. It’s the same with our relationships. You might have to build a new and different dream but that hard work can be done too. I always cringe a bit at weddings as these sweet young things promise to be together through the hard work of being a couple forever. They have no idea what lies ahead. However, it is my firm belief that, if they know it will be hard work sometimes, they will be more likely to hang in there.

In this hard work area Harville Henricks talks about closing the exits. Failure is not an option. The hard work is real but it’s even harder if you are constantly worried about someone jumping ship. There are no other greener pastures. Each pasture has its own piles to be avoided.

The same is true for us. It will be hard work to finish this project and other projects might look easier or clearer from here. One of the joys of this church project is recognizing that we are all in this together. While there will certainly be times of disagreement, we all want the same thing. There is sustenance in recognizing that, even in the conflict, we are allies not enemies. We will finish this project together. It will be hard work but there are no exits and failure is not an option. We could change our dream, and it will change to some extent, but each dream, no matter which one, will have struggles and hard work.

The Indigo Girls have a song, “Love’s Recovery.” In it they sing of sitting in their storm of a relationship and drinking a toast to the slim chance of love’s recovery while their friends have left each other in search of fairer weather. The song ends with, “Nobody gets a life time rehearsal, as specks of dust we are universal. To let this love survive would be the greatest gift we could give.” It is hard work but the hard work we do now will be rewarded by seeing our gift to the future be born.

And in addition to keeping the dream in front of us, and knowing it will be hard work, we have to believe that we are worthy of being successful. This one is Henricks all the way. He goes pretty deep with this one. Dr. Henricks believes that it can be much more than surface poor self esteem that keeps us from succeeding. Sometimes, he writes, we have come to associate good things with punishment and shame. As children we were taught to curb our impulses – it feels great to punch someone back but we mustn’t. Candy is wonderful in large quantities but it makes us sick. This list of pleasure and the resulting punishment can get less and less Sunday morning service appropriate; I won’t continue - you get the picture. This connection between feeling good and punishment Dr. Henricks suggests is below the level of our reason back into our instinctual brain. Thus it can interfere with our lives in ways that are hard to see. This connection between feeling good and being wrong interferes with our ability to enjoy our relationships. It interferes with successes. I know I can get the haunting feeling in the back of my mind that things are going too well sometimes. We might even be inclined to create trouble just to have it feel familiar. There is a sense that we have to have some bad times and so, if there are none, we begin to worry.

It just isn’t so. You deserve a loving happy relationship. And we deserve a beautiful new worship space. It’s not the kind of deserve like entitlement but after all the hard work we need to not sabotage ourselves. Things are going well and we deserve it. Let’s keep an eye on each other for that low self esteem and we will be successful.

Finally, for a loving relationship, a dream to survive, everyone must be willing to grow and change. Our vision of a new building is changing. It will not be the same as the day we thought of it. It will not be the same now as when it is built. We will not be the same people/community when it is finished. It’s true in friendships and loving relationships. We all need to be willing to grow and change to have our dreams come true.

I have to be willing to hear the ways I can make the relationships in my life better and truly try the changes. We have to be willing to consider changes to our project as it moves along. The roof might not be as tall as we hoped. We might not be able to finish it in the fancy way we would like. Growth and forward movement don’t happen without willingness to change. Acceptance of the fact of change doesn’t mean giving up on the dream. Refusal to change might. If I am unwilling to consciously remember to thank my spouse for his time and energy, something he likes to hear, it will make reaching our dreams that much more difficult. I can’t be the road block here at church either.

The Quakers taught me a few things in this regard. I loved working for them as their DRE. Everything, every decision in the meeting house was done by consensus. Oh my goodness that took a long time. How I longed to call for the vote. But the Quakers have one mechanism that is so helpful; “the option to stand aside.” A person or group who has strong feelings state their case and then offer to “stand aside.” Sometimes it is offered to them, “would you be willing to stand aside?” The question really is, “Are you willing to change?” Are you willing to let this be different then what you had wished?

In order to keep our dream alive we have to let it change and grow. We have to be willing to change and grow with it. What is a good dream if it doesn’t change us in some way? If we are not changed by our dreams, what is the point in having them? If I am not changed by the loving relationships in my life, what is the point in having them? If we are not changed by the building of this church there will have been no point to the dream. We will change and we will grow!
We will keep the dream in front of our eyes. We will expect it to be hard work. We deserve success and we will have it. It will change us and that will be good.

Now for the hokey part. Jan found this idea in an RE book, she thought it was too hokey to do with the kids so I decided to bring it to the adults. This is a glow stick. It has chemicals inside that, when they connect to one another, they glow. They are a lot like us. When we connect to each other we can help keep the dream alive and glowing. When we work shoulder to shoulder through the hard stuff, we are glowing and when we glow, just like the chemicals, we are changed. I don’t suppose the chemicals have to deal with the whole issue of success guilt but one metaphor doesn’t do it all. Anyway, I am going to pass around this basket of glow sticks. Make them glow. Hand them to people as a way of saying thanks for making us glow, thanks for keeping the glow alive. I will have them in the office, if you need a glow stick for yourself or someone else come and get one. Take this metaphor as far as you want. If times are tough for you, remember you can always come here to get a glow stick. Maybe you could even give one to your life partner. I certainly expect to see a few people here covered with glow sticks.

Thank you for helping us to sustain the glow.
Namaste.