This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on January 4, 2004, by the Reverend Judith Campbell.

Enough Already #2

When the newsletter deadline says it’s time to give Judy Neeld my sermon titles, most of the time, I have them ready at hand; but every so often, I sit there with a large empty space where a title is supposed to be. When that happens, I create some sort of a catchy phrase, that will lend itself to absolutely anything and then challenge myself to write a sermon with that title. This is one of those sermons, which, after some false start, has come together in a way I might never have imagined, and - courtesy of a snow storm in December - has undergone further revisions to transform it into a first of the New Year sermon, which, because of the timeliness of the subject, I think it lends itself even more to a first of the year sermon.

The “enough already” subject is really aimed at the intensity -a condition I call the "toomuchishness" - of daily lives, which is dramatically intensified with the onset of the Holidays. But the holidays are over and we are still feeling it. I’m still feeling it.

When I think of the Holidays, I wonder how did the spirit of giving turn into the feeding frenzy of buying, and how did the wonder of the holidays turn into the pressure cooker they have become? How did the miracle of the light of hope in the darkness disappear into a darkness which descends upon our very soul and stays there from just after Thanksgiving until the Christmas tree has been carted off to the dump, and longer? The quick answers are money, greed, peer pressure and apathy. We don’t like it, but sometimes it takes more effort to fight the rising tide of commercialism and social pressure than to just shut up and go along with it, and all the while feeling more and more depressed and anxious and angry.

When I think of other "toomuchishness" in my own life, I think of things like reality TV, with each successive reincarnation even more bizarre, risky and (I believe) cruel than the last one. Trust me, I do not make a habit of watching them. But now and again, when I am “charnel” surfing, I land on one, and stay only long enough to redefine banality for myself before moving on.

I think of some of these forensic reality shows which take us to the scene of the crime or the morgue, and show us far more than I know I want to see. But the sad reality is, that kind show wouldn’t be there, if it weren’t being watched.

I think of the so called sic-coms. Hmmmmm, I meant to write sit-coms, and sick-coms came out. (See what I mean about sermons having a mind of their own?) I think about sitcoms which have more stupid bedroom jokes and double entendres that Carter has little pills, and I wonder who in heaven has the courage to sign their name to this drivel.

I’m hardly a prude nor am I a fuss pot. But I seem to be watching the world around me go into overdrive on just about everything, and I’m wondering if the whole thing will one day just implode and fold in on itself. And then I ask what could come after that? Where else can reality TV go? And then it did. Has anyone been unfortunate enough to “catch” the "bachelor show, the one where one handsome, rich dude has his pick of a dozen or so impossibly beautiful and, of course, slender, and most likely rich - did I say vapid - women. Various "contenders" speak of spending weekends together and then crossing one another off the list. What message is this giving to our own real life kids, or to us for that matter? Be thin, gorgeous, and greedy and willing to open your private life up to public scrutiny on network television. And then what? Here’s what, and it wasn’t pretty.

So, when the media grave robbers ran out of rich and not-so famous egotists, they pushed the envelope the other way and did the "Average Joe show" with short or fat or "geeky " or otherwise so called ordinary "Guys" who accepted their less than wonderful looks and shapes and were hoping to make it on personality alone. How demeaning. I found it to be anything but reality, and I found it to be terribly terribly sad. To partially quote Mick Jagger: why is too much never enough?.

And I know full well that I am preaching to the choir here. I believe that most of us here share many of these feelings. The question is: so what do we do? Do we simply turn off the TV, not buy the salacious book, avert our eyes, as I did last year in the QUILT shop here, when a young woman came in to buy some yarn, with her drawstring sweat pants slung SO LOW I was truly embarrassed? I wanted to suggest she knit herself some underwear. I didn’t.

Enough already.

But the real reality is we humans keep "pushing the envelope". My question is why? What are so many of us lacking in our diet that we need more and more and higher and higher and faster and faster and newer and improveder until we find ourselves flat against a very uncomfortable wall? What is driving us? More importantly, why are we allowing ourselves to be driven? And where or how is it going to end? That is the scariest question of all.

Now at the same time that I was asking myself these questions and struggling with this sermon, I was also struggling with a children’s story for the magazine I write for. And curiously enough, the two issues became the substance of my talk this morning.

I had been given the challenge of writing a story about spirituality for children, a story that defined spirituality. NO EASY TASK! It’s tough enough to try to define spirituality for adults, many of whom can get their minds around more abstract concepts, but most 7-11 year old kids who are living breathing "isn’t real if I can’t see it or touch it literalists" are a whole ‘nother dimension. I was struggling.

But, we all know that to teach something, or to explain something clearly, you really have to understand it yourself.

My editor wanted me to get my two characters into trouble. She wanted to have them do something really bad, so bad they really felt "soul-sick" inside, and then get themselves right again, by listening to their own inner voices and responding to their own higher principles and remembering other lessons from their past. As I said, NO EASY TASK! But, like this sermon, after a lot of pondering, and looking at other sources, and being present to the muse, the story began to unfold. But in writing down the story, I had to look at my own spiritual nature and think how I would be able to express that part of myself either to another person, or in a poem or in this case, a story for children and have it be authentic, age appropriate, and of personal value.

And like this sermon, after a number of false starts, it did come together.

In the case of my two fictional children, the kids first had to acknowledge the fact that they were feeling very uncomfortable with something they themselves had done before they could begin to make it right. So they would be in right relationship with themselves, so they would be in spiritual Sync or spiritual harmony with themselves.

And here is where I will return to the title of my sermon, "Enough already".

What do we do with our own strong feelings of dismay, the spiritual angst or sadness or heaviness some of us feel about the ways we are being pushed and/or pushing ourselves into places we would rather not be? And what do we do with the feeling of powerlessness in the face of this accelerating and proliferating madness when we desperately want to get off the treadmill or the not-so-merry-go-round? How do we stand firm against a tide which is rising relentlessly, and pushing us faster and faster ahead of it, before it engulfs us completely? How can we keep our spiritual selves intact when our physical, emotional, financial and cultural self is being stretched to the limit and the frenzy is all around us pressing to get in or to sweep us away with it?

We deal with it in any number of ways, not all of them spiritually healthy.

Some people obviously drown it all out with more and more "thrills", pushing the envelope until it has no shape at all and is nothing but a frantic blur of compulsive activity. Others find a false relaxation in the form of addictions and or medications prescribed or self administered. These are false Gods, and they will fail us. I know, I’ve tried some of them, and they have failed me. I was lucky they didn’t kill me.

According to the Christian Calendar, we are approaching the feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, the day when the three wise elders came to the place where Jesus was born; and upon seeing him they suddenly KNEW that this was a person who would change the world forever more. (They had an Epiphany of the Holy Spirit). In pre-Christian Pagan times, it is the time immediately after the solstice, and we know the light is returning to a darkened earth and Spring will come again. In both the Christian and Pre-Christian traditions, it is a time of reflection. It is a time of "centering down" to use a Quaker term. A time for making a place for the returning light in the darkness, making room in your own soul for the light of hope to be rekindled again and to say no to those pressures which threaten at every turn to undo us.

I said earlier, in so many ways, I’m preaching to the choir. I do that a lot here. We know that the frenzy of toomuchishness is all around us, and we, more than any other group I know, are really good at actively resisting it. Because we are enlightened, we are activists in the causes we believe in. But whoever and wherever we are, there is always more we can do. And therein is the dilemma.

Where is the balance between doing what is right and just and spiritually and politically correct and driving ourselves into the ground doing it? We can be just as driven to spiritual exhaustion by doing good and making a positive difference and pushing that socially responsible envelope as the thrill seekers on reality TV adventure elimination shows that are seeking more and more because they already have too much, seen too much and done too much, and they are bored with it.

This is a time of lingering darkness, a time when other growing things are gathering strength in the dark and frozen earth, and preparing for new growth in the coming light. We can do that, too. We can take this time return to our own spiritual center, and, once there, to find and remember what it is we value and what we love as we move again towards the light.

Our closing hymn has the most wonderful and deeply powerful words which I think speak to this. I would like to close my talk today by reading the first and last verses, and then after the offertory, let us sing them together, and more importantly, let us hear them in our hearts.

…".Dear mother father of mankind, forgive our feverish ways, reclothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence praise.

Drop thy still dews of quietness ‘till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of thy peace.….."

Let us sing them together Hymn #274, and as we sing the words with our mouths, let us hear them in our hearts.

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Enough Already #2