Our Hearts’ Own Song

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, September 12, 2010

Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke about hymn singing in Unitarian Universalist churches.  It goes like this:  Question:  Why are the hymns always so quiet in Unitarian churches?  Answer:  Because everybody’s reading ahead to see if they agree with all the words they’re gonna have to sing.

I didn’t hear any of you stumbling over that last phrase in the verses we just sang of “Here We Have Gathered”:  ‘our hearts’ own song.’  I’m not sure what that phrase means to you, but you didn’t seem like you had any objections to it.  When I looked at the hymn awhile back, I wasn’t sure I could define what ‘our hearts’ own song’ might be, so I decided to think about it some more and to figure out whether I would personally object to singing it and whether or not it might actually mean something interesting.

So I want to take that phrase apart today and see what we find.  Just four little words, ‘our hearts’ own song,’ so it shouldn’t take too long and we’ll get to our picnic in good time.

As I look at that phrase again, ‘our hearts’ own song,’ the first word that jumps out at me is the word, “heart.”  Where is your heart?  Well, it’s right here in the middle of our chests.  When you hear the word heart, you probably think of the organ that pumps blood through your body and keeps your cells supplied with oxygen.  Pretty much all of us have one of these organs.

You may have seen a picture of a human heart organ, shaped more like a potato than like a valentine heart;  I’m told that your heart is about the size of your fist.  You might, if you sit really still, be able to feel it beating there in your chest cavity.  If you could sit really, really still and be really, really quiet, you might even start to feel the heart of your neighbor sitting near you.  (Maybe not today…)

I’m not sure, though, that the author of this hymn, Alicia Carpenter, meant that kind of heart when she wrote this hymn.  Instead of the organ in your chest that pumps blood, she may have meant that other ‘human heart’ - the almost mythical place at the center of our beings that we imagine is the home of our deepest feelings, the place where we love, where we wish, where we long to feel some connection with others and with the world. 

But is that your heart or is that your consciousness?  It’s really a definitional problem but it’s also spatial and locational.  If you call what she’s talking about your consciousness, then you might think of tht as being located in your head somewhere, in your brain, in a tiny little place in the amygdala area of your brain.  If Ms. Carpenter means both things, both the consciousness you think of being in your head and the heart you think of being in your chest, maybe the heart Ms. Carpenter means in this hymn is more like an integration of both of them.  In fact, going one step further, maybe she means to integrate all the chakras:  your head, your chest, your gut, and the others, up and down.  That seems to me more like what makes up the ‘heart’ she’s talking about:  the center of you, the essence of you, all of your life a song.

 

Looking back at that phrase again, our hearts’ own song, you see that Ms. Carpenter is not just talking about one of our hearts, whether in your chest or your head or all of you put together.  She’s talking about a bunch of hearts, all our hearts:  by using hearts’ in the plural possessive form, she makes it quite clear that she’s talking about all of our hearts together.

This brought to mind for me the relationship between individuality and togetherness, what it means to talk about one heart individually vs. talking about all our hearts collectively. 

In the reading this morning, Edwin Friedman says there must be a balance between the individual and the group, and in his work with people and with organizations, he was far more interested in making sure that individuals grow up enough to emotionally differentiate themselves from a group.  If they don’t, he says, then especially in times of high anxiety in a system, you get not evolution where things are moving ahead and growing and getting more able to cope with life, but devolution where things are moving backward and regressing and getting less able to cope.  That’s Friedman’s focus in his life’s work in Family Systems Theory:  that we need to differentiate ourselves from others in order to grow up and become emotional adults.

There is another point of view, however.  Instead of thinking of us as individuals and as totally discreet entities, there’s another side of the coin that says we’re all one. 

We’re all one?  It doesn’t feel like that when my ego is looking out of my eyes and your ego is looking out of yours.  But if we back off just a little, we can begin to see that our existence is intrinsically linked with all the rest of creation.  You don’t have to back very far out in space to see the human activity here on this planet as all one process, as an ongoing operatic dance, a long string of events that’s changing the Earth, changing Creation, sometimes for the better, often times not.  It may seem like slow change when you’re down in the middle of it.  But if you back off and take a little longer view, things are changing very, very fast because there are so many of us and it begins to seem that our human activities all blend together as if we’re all one organism.

That, to me, is a paradox - an place where the ideas at both ends of a spectrum are true at the same time.  We are individuals, we have our own likes and dislikes, we make our own choices, we need a certain amount of autonomy to grow up and be healthy, which is what Edwin Friedman says.  And at the same time, like the Hindu Vedas say, we are one.  There is no distance and no difference between you and me.  We’re all one.  We’re all in this together.  It’s as if we’re all part of one organism here on our Blue Boat Home, changing things for better and worse.

 

Now back to the phrase in the hymn, ‘our hearts’ own song.’  What ‘song’ do you think Ms. Carpenter means?  ‘Cause she’s a Unitarian Universalist and she must know that we don’t have one standard song that everybody sings.  Some of us sing pop songs, some of sing classical stuff, some opera, some country, some hip-hop.  You may not even think you can sing at all.  But you have a song - we all do -  in the poetic sense, and in that sense, your song is whatever you’re doing with your life.  You may sing, you may dance, you may philosophize, you may wash the dishes, you may build houses, you may raise children, you may write software. Whatever you do is your song, in such a poetic sense.

What is your song?  What does your life sing out to those around you?  You’re not often encouraged to think about or talk about such things out there in the world, but if you can think about that and talk about that to anyone, I’d hope you could talk about it here, among your fellow members and friends of this church. 

I’d hope, in fact, that the song this church sings invites you to sing your own song as loud and as proud as you can sing it.  The way I hear it, the song of this church has at least two movements heading in two different directions…

Again, it’s a little bit of the paradox between the individual and togetherness - they’re at opposite ends of a spectrum, but both true at the same time and here they are:

Our song, on the one hand, should be that each of us should pay attention to our emotional and spiritual health as individuals, that we should go on a free and responsible search for truth and meaning supported by this faith community, and that we should endeavor to grow up to become the adults we are called to become.

On the other hand, our song should be that we should pay attention to the community, caring for each other and for the world, reaching out to help others and sharing the blessings we have received in our lives with others.

I think those are opposites, but I think they’re both true.

 

I myself have a song that I sing, and I can tell you about one piece of it right now.  Many of you have heard me sing this song from this pulpit before.  This part of my song has just four words:  “People need this church.”

There are churches in our area that are dying because they have become so locked in tradition that they can’t change and grow and admit new realities.  This church has shown its ability to honor its past and to practice its traditions but also to change and grow and build new traditions to suit the new realities we face.  People need this church to be a place where the past is remembered and honored, where the present is active and alive, and where the future unfolds not in certainty but in hope.  People need this church.

There are churches in our area where huge church fights have taken their toll and driven good people away.  We’re not perfect - we have our squabbles and we’re facing even more momentous decisions in the next few months and years.  We don’t always communicate in healthy ways with each other around here, but we’re growing and learning together, and people need this church to be a place where we’re held accountable, and where, when we make a mistake, we admit it and we ask forgiveness and we make amends with each other and we move on.  People need this church.

There are churches in our area that are vibrant and growing, no doubt.  But from everything I hear, those are churches that tell you what to believe and how to believe it and as long as you believe their one way to honor God, follow Jesus, and be a good person is the right way, you’re in good shape there.  But people need this church to be a place where there is no one right way and a place where you can find help and support along your own spiritual path so that you can honor God and Goddess, follow Jesus and the Buddha and the dictates of your own conscience, and be a good person without forcing yourself into a mold that doesn’t fit.  People need this church.

 

It’s an old song, but it’s mine, and I’ll keep singing it:  “People need this church.”  When you put that song together with your song, what song are we singing together?

This is what I hear.  It’s like an operatic hip-hop country song and dance.  Whatever beat we can keep is not the same one as our nearest neighbor.  We’re not all following the same melody;  often as not, we’re not even in the same key.  Our lyrics are all over the place, our metaphors don’t match, some of us are in the middle of a verse while the rest of us are finishing the chorus and others have moved on to the bridge while some sit silently.

This is quite the song.  If you’re only interested in perfection, forget about it, that ain’t happening.  The important thing is not that it’s perfect.  The important thing is that you are included and you get to sing and your neighbor gets to sing and we all get to participate and grow and care and be cared for and learn to love better. Do you want to learn to love better?  If so, you’ve come to the right place.

 

So may it be.