This sermon was presented at Stevens Chapel on August 1, 2004 by Rev. Judith Campbell

 

Waking up and smelling the coffee………………Just what does it take?

 

Somewhere in the course of our living, there comes a day when we truly realize that our days are numbered and that we won’t live forever.  Something or someone has made us sharply aware that the life we are living is the only one we will likely know, and we might, in fact, be closer to its end-point than we want  to think about.  We have come smack up against the fact that human life as we know it is fragile and fickle, and despite the “Life insurance” actuaries that tell us that the average lifespan in this country is at or above 80, there are digits all around that statistical average that represent real human beings, living breathing men and women with hopes and dreams, fears and fancies, whose days may far surpass, or not come anywhere nea, that impersonal number on the chart.

 

I remember the day when my younger son called to tell me that he and his wife had just made out their (first) will.  He called me, as he always does when something shakes him up.  “Gee, ma”, he said in the deep rich voice that still surprises me all these years since his sweet-voiced childhood.  “Gee ma, it makes you really think. I mean, we just did it, because we got the house and everything, I mean, it’s not like we really need to or anything, I mean, not yet, but well, we just did it. But it makes you think.”

 

 He had just turned 30. 

 

And it does make you think.  But, in the way of most 30 year olds, he has dashed on with his life, and he really is not thinking about it, blessed with the divine ignorance of youth, that life is forever, statistics happen to other people and that making out a will was in reality a gesture to the establishment and to his tenuous maturity.

 

I felt that way when I filled out the forms for my retirement plan at age 29.  It’s never gonna happen, but I’ll do it anyway.  Guess what?  I’m there. No, make that I’m here, and aware of being here in a way that I might not have been earlier, here in the full awareness that being here and all that it carries with it could change at any moment.

 

When we were away in Virginia, last week, I woke up one morning with a severe headache, so severe that I woke Chris and told him I needed help.  I knew that severe headache and accompanying nausea was a serious warning and not to ignore it.  Within minutes two huge police officers were at my door, followed in even fewer minutes by two paramedics and an ambulance. As I was leaving, I managed to send cancellation messages for the three major things I was responsible for that day. Once at the hospital, they checked everything they could, and recommended a Cat scan.  The scan revealed that I did in fact still have a brain in there, but that an inner sinus was totally blocked and impacted, and the cause of the pain.  I was given a shot for the pain and nausea, which did its work, and I went back to the conference and slept the entire day.  The conference went on as scheduled. It did not collapse on the spot because I could not give my scheduled paper, lead the morning worship or sing in Church Latin, the role of Mary Salome, in the Chancel Drama we were rehearsing for performance the next day.  The conference went on; people shifted, filled in and lovingly rejoiced when I surfaced and wobbled around the following day, slightly spacey from the medication, but upright and very glad to be there.  Two days later, another conference member was taken to the same hospital and admitted, with a real stroke, several hundred miles from his wife and family.

 

But this is not about strokes or aneurysms or a possibly hazardous conference atmosphere, this is about those unexpected life events that remind us that, as I said earlier, life is fragile and fickle and a gift of grace beyond all measure.  It is sad that it often takes a catastrophic event or a near miss to make us realize it, to make me realize it.  We need to be reminded. 

 

I would not like to wager how many million tons of self-help books, theological treatises, scripture, programs and entire courses of study there are devoted to awareness of the gifts and miracles of the everyday; but there’s a whole lot.  And there is a whole lot because it would appear that many to most of us multiply gifted humans can’t seem to do it on our own, can’t seem to fully appreciate the richness of the moment we are living in because we are too busy racing towards the next.   We are not smelling the coffee or the roses or the sweet smell of a baby’s hair or the pine woods after a rain.  We are only smelling the tired scent of our own exhaustion, because all too often, we are running around in circles.

Circles of guilt

Circles of perfection

Circles of acquisition

Circles of escape

Circles of anger

Circles of grief

Circles of power

Circles of revenge

Circles of denial.

Here is another story from the book I read from earlier which offers a slightly different  perspective.

 

Helene was running from her feelings in a circle of perfection.

What circle are you running around in?

What circle am I running around in?   There are even some days when I find I am capable of running around in two circles at once. And that scares the beans out of me, because I’m supposed to know better. I do, but I’m human and I need to be reminded to wake up and smell the coffee, sometimes on a daily basis!

 

This is not a new sermon. But it’s not a re-run either.. One of our members, Ken Beebe, preaches it from time to time as well.  But it is one of the themes I return to on a regular basis, because I believe we continually need to be reminded to step off the treadmill and remember to breathe and once we catch our breath, forget the to-do list, and not only smell the coffee and the roses, but take the time to drink the coffee with a friend, pick a rose and give it to someone you love,  or maybe give it to someone you don’t love and say “I’m sorry. Let’s talk.”

 

The Reading # 419, in the back of our hymn book, from the Ancient Hindu says it this way:

 

“Look to this day

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

            The bliss of growth

            The glory of action

            The splendor of beauty.

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow only a vision;

But today, well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore, to this day.

 

Blessed be. Amen.