This sermon was presented at Stevens Chapel on Sept. 8, 2002, by Rev. Dr. Judith Campbell.

IT Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This!

This was supposed to be an easy sermon for me. You know, one of those "start-up" back to the regular schedule, type of things….and by now I should know better,… Sermons are never easy, or quick, and I have never in my life "tossed one off"….So, my welcome back sermon will be a collage, a quilt if you will, a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a lot of reflections of what was and is wonderful and terrible in our lives…and hopefully the wisdom to make a difference in one and to savor the other…….and being back here with you all again, doesn’t get any better than this!

When I dreamed up the title somewhere in July in the wilds of south Plymouth, I had managed to not be thinking about 9/11 and the terrorist attack for a while. I say for a while, because every thing I see, read or hear in the media over the last two weeks has been relentlessly reminding me of the senseless savagery of what happened a year ago….and just as relentlessly garnering popular support for a military offensive against Iraq. So, I could not stand with you today, and not say that I was shattered by the events of a year ago, and I wonder if we have learned anything about being the richest nation in the world and sharing so very little of it. Sadly, I don’t think so…and it could get a lot better than this…and if it doesn’t, and if we as a nation and as individuals don’t wake up, we will be setting ourselves up for another tragic lesson in humility and helplessness in the face of such disparity between the rich and the poor.

And we don’t have to go to Iraq or Afghanistan or Transylvania or Peru to find poverty and anger and disenfranchisement…or to see and feel it’s results. ..It’s got to get better than this…and it starts right here with each and every one of us, at our computers or telephones or our writing desks, and in our own wallets!

When I think of the most recent salaries for professional baseball players, and then I think about abandoned boys in Peru, or the woman in Nigeria who is sentenced to be stoned to death….after the child she conceived out of wedlock is weaned or think about the millions of dollars spent by politicians so they can slander each other in what is referred to as an "election", I ask, where are our values as a Nation? And they are all too obvious It has to get better than this (Incidentally, I have the Amnesty website where you can sign a petition protesting the stoning.)..

But in the coming year, here in our little church – which you may have noticed is growing!!!! - we will be doing something…we will have an active social concerns committee, and we will make a difference….and it will get better than this!

You may have noticed the quilt and the weavings up here at the front of the church. I did make the time this summer to turn myself loose in my studio, and the fabric and the pins and the thread flew in all directions….and I still have several that will need some finishing before my upcoming show on October 19… but that’s really not as important as the weavings that are with them and what they represent.

Many of you know that I have been helping to support a Transylvanian artist who is a long time close friend of Judit Zizi Gellerd who visited us last Spring, and our Partner Minister, Denes Farkas. Last spring, I got the brainstorm to set up a show for the two of us over here….Impossible dream right?….a show of weavings on Martha’s vineyard for a Transylvanian Unitarian Weaver…..Well folks…without dreams and visions there would be no tomorrows to look forward to and nothing to work towards. I wrote to Klari and asked her if we could get the money would she come….she has NOTHING!!!!…but the money I send her from the sale of her weavings and the money another kind soul from the Norwell church named Peg Carpenter. Peg traveled with us to Transylvania the last time we went, and met Klari when I did, on the day of her husband’s funeral. Peg, too has been sending money to help support Klari’s brilliant children while they were in college. In Romania, college is free….but living expenses while at college are not…..$250 a year will support a kid and her appetite for one year. That is a cell phone bill over here! Think about it…and think about the disparity!

Anyway, Klari said yes, several people have offered money, and I am still collecting. (We got a good deal on the airfare, it’s only $501…IF she can get a visa…and that is still up in the air.) I approached Holly Alaimo at Dragonfly, who said yes, and she is even talking a much smaller commission on Klari’s work! Klari will stay with us part of the time and with the Norwell people the other part of the time. (And hopefully, she won’t have any weavings left to bring up there with her when she goes!!!!)…it doesn’t get any better than this!

In between my fabric rampages, I collected lots of stones and beach glass on White horse beach and got the darkest (sunblocked) tan I have ever had in my life…and I didn’t gain any weight either!…It didn’t get any better than that.

My computer crashed…big time….with the first draft of this sermon, 2 weddings, the peace and healing service and today’s order of service on it….It could have been a lot better than that….but, the crash required a computer genius to attend it, and that was an old dear artist friend who came to the rescue, and instead of spending my last few days in contemplative solitude in my studio overlooking the kettle pond and the sea beyond, I chatted with Richard and listened to my computer make weird noises…and then no noises…and breathed a great sigh of grateful relief when he said he had saved all my word folders, and I remembered that I had downloaded all of my poetry just two days earlier! It could not have been better than that.

One of the reasons we keep the condo in Plymouth is so that we can spend time with our children and their children. But enter Grandchildren….exit peace and quiet! Enter peanut butter and jelly on the rug, cats that will hide for days only to come up and throw up or miss the cat box before their next three day disappearance, half empty juice boxes stuck to the coffee table, one undiscovered pre-owned pamper asserting itself from somewhere obscure, and a thousand, no make that ten thousand, sentences that begin with "why….. "…and finally end with…"Because I said so…that’s why!" Grandchildren can leave more sand in your house than they ever found on the beach…and in some of the most creative places. You want to spend quality creative time, they want to watch "Bob the builder" until you think your brain is turning into mush. When they want to spend quality creative time, it almost always coincides with their nap or bed-time. Go figure – and we’re MORE than ready for bed or a nap…dream on! And you spend hours fixing a really nice meal, and they want mac cheese…. NOW!!!!!!!

And it doesn’t get any better than this….only it did.

In the age old tradition of women teaching women and passing the wisdom on to the next generation, our eldest granddaughter Leah wanted to learn how to sew and to use the sewing machine. She just turned nine! I made my first outfit on an old treadle sewing machine when I was nine, so I figured it was time. In less than 15 minutes, she had mastered how to use a sewing machine and made a quilt square out of some of my left over patches. We worked together on a quilt for her younger sister Anna, and strengthened the seams of a relationship with her that I must work on in installments….when I am in "America"…or I can bribe them to come here…and I shamelessly do…and believe me…it doesn’t get any better….ever.

The point is…in this little personal and global ramble, is that in everything I have described today…all of the little vignettes from my summer musings, I have found something to be hopeful about… and in several cases overwhelmingly ridiculously joyful about….and I have found ways to take action and participate in that hope and joy. It’s not that I’m special it’s just that I am one determined activist optimist….my husband and kids would call that a willful control freak….but I prefer to think of myself as a positive activist…come hell or high water!

When the Island Peace Council asked me to host one of their peace and healing services, it was no coincidence that I asked to do it on Sept 11. I knew with all of the maudlin mawkish war-mongering rehashing of that awful tragedy, that I did not want be a another "wallower" beating my breast and rattling a metaphorical sword and trying to make sure that "God" is on our side…as we fight the war on terrorism…with terrorism! No. I didn’t want to do that. … I wanted to acknowledge the grief, but also to focus on the healing and the hope…the lessons, the future, the chance to work for peace on a personal and global level, and to join my heart and my hands with people of all traditions right here…and no where else! I hope you’ll join me on Wednesday evening at 7pm. It’s going to be a little different….are you surprised! In creating this service, the "committee" is choosing to be hopeful about the future…choosing to learn, and choosing to work…and to make it better than it is right now, like ripples in a stream, ever moving outward from the source.

I could have torn my hair out ten days ago when my computer crashed…actually I gave it serious thought, but since it is pretty short anyway, it would have been a meaningless gesture. I was also pretty bummed when, after it crashed, I had someone sitting for hours in MY chair in MY office and MY studio…when I wanted to be alone with my muse, writing great sermons and powerful meditations and creating wonderful patterns in fabric. Instead, as Richard ministered to my terminal computer, I moved onto some of the more routine work of my quilting, the hemming of the edges and the outlining of patterns as we chatted our way through the cyber megabyte mess. The virus won, my computer is toast, but Richard and I have found a new and much deeper dimension in our friendship…and he will create for me another even better computer. And what I lost….I lost…I didn’t lose everything….and with all of that empty space just waiting for me….who knows what I’ll fill it with! (2 hour sermons maybe…..just kidding!) And it will get better….because I believe it will. And that is the key…believe it will, and then because hope isn’t enough, work your tail off to see that it does.

This gift of life is a curious thing. There are no promises. We can’t really make deals with a big daddy in the sky. Life is not always fair…and the good guy does not always win, and miserable ratty people stay alive being miserable and ratty and good wonderful kind people die young…and inexplicably…and tragically….I did three of those funerals in the past six months.

There are no fixed answers… if we think about it, all we can do is make the best of what we are given…if we listen and learn from our triumphs and our mistakes and those triumphs and mistakes of others, and try to leave clean and gentle footprints behind us when we pass on.

The tragedy of September 11 happened because we would not listen to the anguished cries of the poor and the helpless and the disenfranchised in the Middle East and else where. We must change that.

This gift of life is also a series of interruptions…9/11 was a serious interruption of our willful negligent complacency. We can be thrown off stride and wail and complain as a result of these interruptions or we can see the interruptions as steps on the journey… bumps in the learning curve, sand in the salad bowl, which wouldn’t have been there, if I had not offered to take the grandkids for the day, or the chance to deepen a friendship rather than cry over a spilled and spoiled computer. It doesn’t get any better than this….as long as you think so and work to make sure it keeps getting better.

That’s our job!…and we certainly have our work cut out for us!…and it doesn’t get any better than this! Amen.