Light Bulbs and Ideas: A Canvass Sermon

Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana

October 6, 2002

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Reading:

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Even if you are not a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. If we look even more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the logger who cut the tree, the wheat that became his bread, and the logger's father and mother. Without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist. In fact, we cannot point to one thing that is not here -- time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat, the mind.  Even at midnight touching the sheet of paper, I touch sunshine. Because without sunshine, no tree can grow. So touching the tree, I touch the sunshine. Without a cloud, there would be no rain and no forest can grow. So the cloud is in there. Touching the paper I touch sunshine. The trees are in there. The sunshine, the minerals from the earth, the earth, time, space, people, insects— touching the paper I touch all these things. 

Sermon

This is a flame and this is a light bulb.

How did we capture the light of the stars?

There is a well known story about a God named Prometheus – a favorite among Unitarian Universalists – this God formed humans from clay – as Gods often have.  Then he became attached to the mortals and he decided to bring them fire that they might benefit from it.  He snuck into the temple of Zeus and hid fire in a reed tube and stole it back to earth.  Zeus was so angry that he chained the thief to a Rock and sent an Eagle to peck out Prometheus’ liver every day for one thousand years.  It was a high price to pay.

I can’t help but think that there must have been an episode of Nova – maybe when so much attention was on the vast etching on the Nazca Plains of Peru and the theory  that they might have been markings and landing routes for spaceships – I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some colorful theory that we were dropped off – like maybe on the Nazca Plain by our ancient ancestors from space and left with, maybe, a pack of galactic matches so that we could make fire – like a gigantic extraterrestrial outward bound program. 

However, most likely we acquired fire in a dim, ancient time in human evolutionary history.  A time when some bold person – or perhaps a long line of bold and no doubt blistered persons encountered the reality of fire and had the idea of capturing it, catching it so that humanity could use it.  It would have been a bold and pains- taking process in time – costly to limb and life.  Not a gift on a silver platter at the cost of some God.  Not the inheritance of some stellar emissary or parent.  But the product of human labor trial, error, and success.

Billions of fires, countless experiments, and thousands of years later in 1873 Thomas Edison produced an incandescent light bulb – it took him hours and days of time to produce it – but he was working in service of a vision – an idea. 

When I turn on a light bulb magic happens – light radiates.  But an even greater magic happens -- I click on the light and I am connected with hands, blisters, thoughts, sacrifices, and ideas – I am connected with all those generations of people who shared fire, sparked fire, invented new fires, and transformed our world – just to bring me that light. Perhaps I paid 75 cents for this bulb – a low cost – but that’s because the cost has been spread out over centuries and generations.  There is no thing that we touch that does not carry a costly history with it. 

Like the lines layered into the Grand Canyon and the way the river carved out the land so that today we can read those lines – nature makes it clear that history bears witness around us.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s reflection on the cloud in the paper reminds me of all that things carry.

“Touching the paper I touch sunshine.  The trees are there, the minerals from the earth, the earth, time, space, people, insects — touching the paper I touch all these things.” He said.

Everything carries with it its history, its place in the world, and everything that came together into the fire or the sheet of paper.  So I take no sheet of paper for granted – and no light bulb.  Inspired as I’ve been by the Zen teaching on the cloud in the paper I was even more excited when I found this passage in a sermon that the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones actually gave here – in Lafayette in June of 1897.  And I’ll admit it’s dated –

The dinner for which you begrudge seventy five cents is bought for no such paltry price.  A man, given to figures published his computation on the meal, ‘The pepper he said came from ten thousand miles away.  It grew on a bush, which must have had a growth of at least five years.  The pepper was picked green and dried in the sun – employing women.  It took one ship and one thousand miles of railroad to bring the pepper to the United States.  The flour of which the bread was made came from Dakota -- and so the man went on until he said – the supposed simple dinner represented directly or indirectly the employment of 500,000,000 of capital and five million people.’  However, the computation, Jones continued, is childishly inadequate.  In the costly alembics of nature were made the elements of that dinner… out of the experience of generations came the tutored hand of the farmer.”

I suspect that Jones’ insight came from both the farmers and the ministers in his family.  I know that his namesake – his Uncle Jenkin died while milling to keep the family afloat when they first came here.  His insight came from a real reckoning of the costliness and pricelessness of life. 

When we touch our paper with awareness we are enriched – this is a simple sheet of paper and so much more than that – when I see the cloud in the paper I am richer, less alone --a beneficiary.

When I eat my meal and know its history – see its story I am more deeply nourished by my meal.  Aware of all that went in to this paper, these lights, this pulpit, this place, I become the grateful recipient of immeasurable gifts.  My net worth outreaches this time and all space.  I am rich beyond count – in this sheet of paper.  Jones said: That soul is rich that can put one hand upon the daisy and the other hand upon the star and say we are one kin.  I am kin and heir of all that is and was.  What more do I need?

I love the world of matter – it is for me incontrovertibly real – I do not imagine that I touch it – I do touch it.  I do not imagine the beauty of flowers, of living things, of canyons, clouds, of fire, and humanity – these are real – and have inherent worth.  These things are not the pale shadows of some deeper, truer realm – a place of forms and ideas.  The flowers, canyons, clouds, fire, and humanity are our world and our web of life.  However, it’s not so very simple – as we are not so very simple.  We’re poor if we live only in the world of matter – for when we do we cannot even see the cloud in the paper or the world in the meal – we miss the great ideas of which the world is also made.  The ideas that harvested the pepper and captured fire.  We are poor, too, if we live only in the world of ideas – starving, powerless, hollow.  This world of matter is the lover, partner, the feet and hands of ideas.  The idea of heat, of flavor, trade, light, chairs, shelter – these transform the world of matter and are transformed by it.

The pepper on the bush is cheap.  The matter of the meal is not as costly as the idea of making each part or bringing it together.  Let’s take it one large step further – to the idea of enough food – that the person who picks the pepper and every person who helps in the production of the food is given something for their contribution to the meal.  The ancient Hebrews had the idea that a corner of each field should be left unharvested for the hungry to reap.

It’s easier to invest in matter – clearer – pay this/get that.  To invest in ideas is tougher – less tangible.  Ideas can take generations to materialize – fire could shoot from the sky with lightning, erupt in the presence of gasses – but to capture it would take risk, vision, effort.  Nothing, finally is free – the air we breathe is part of a great exchange of life, The life we are given is maintained in every way at a cost to the world, there is no free lunch – and, above all, our ideas do not come free.  I am richer for the ideas of so many -- my list goes on and on – take a moment to reflect upon those whose thoughts have graced, perhaps even saved your life.  Each person who advanced the world, brought the world further along, sacrificed hours, years, wealth, and even life – that we might be nourished by their ideas.

There is a bumper sticker that says – Think Education is expensive?  Try Ignorance – well – darned if I didn’t find Jenkin Lloyd Jones asking “ Does it pay to invest in ideas?  They are hard to get and troublesome to hold.  The answer is to be found in the study of the cost of ignorance.  He was a man who invested in ideas.

To get an idea seldom really comes like that cartoon notion of Newton sitting beneath a tree and having an apple clop his brain into an understanding of gravity – it was all the, so to speak, fruitless days and hours, the years of study and experimentation, all that time and work and reflection that prepared him for that time of insight.

Albert Camus said – great ideas come into the world as gently as doves – perhaps in a sense they do whisper in – but he goes on to say that it will be every one of us in our joys and suffering who will build for all – will take those winged ideas and make them solid in the world.  Camus said we can only hear those ideas beneath the clamor of nations and of men when we work hard to hear them into being.  He studied socialism, fascism, racism, existentialism, survived revolution and war and out of all of that spoke in tones that live today.  Only if we give our own joys and sufferings – only if we give our lives into keeping vibrant, current, those tones. 

These ideas have come at great cost – the equality of the sexes – that idea is by no means completed – we are still striving after it.  Emancipation of the slaves came at colossal cost and is not yet truly fulfilled.  The struggle for religious freedom has been one of the costliest ideas.  Dearly bought and dearly kept.

Here I confess that I’m wary of ideas again.  Too often, the idea is counted more valuable than the means to attain it – the end justifying the means.  Whenever the call is to betray one fine value for another -- the cost has run too high.  When a person becomes the very thing he or she was struggling against – the cost is too high.  When freedom is destroyed in the service of some so called higher ideal – the cost is too high.

The finest treasures are those things that make us more freely, deeply, more fully human.  That help us embody the best humanity, the most creative, the most generous.  No need to search the world for treasure.  Walt Kelley said, “There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand.”

Nevertheless, we are not free of the cost – to keep our ideas alive we must honor, practice, speak of them, advocate them, teach them, pass them on. 

Our wealth is in those ideas that make all lives better.  When a person learns what real wealth is – there is freedom.  With real wealth there is room for the world to pass through the gate of heaven with us.  Jones said, Deep is the poverty of a man, church, or state to which added means does not bring the added sense of responsibility.  The more we have the more we can give – the more we need to give – for we have earned what we each earn not by or for ourselves but by and for our world.

Yesterday Mary Andrus-Overly reminded us that in our pledging we are limited by two things – one you cannot much change – your own sensible budget or modest means – the other you can change right now -- that is your sense of commitment.  Your willingness to commit to this place to this reasoned faith, so it doesn’t fade.  To risk and believe in it with your hands and resources. 

This is our heaven—this place and this time – we’re not waiting for a promised land -- we’ll build the promised land that can be.  With the materials in our storehouse of the greatest ideas.

We, at this church do not need to sally forth.  We are bearers of a free religious voice in a time of the narrowing of minds, we are faithful to diversity in a time of growing intolerance, we reason despite reaction and panic, we honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person when that might be too easily sacrificed, we cherish the web of life, we preach, we practice, we teach, we sing, we set an example of the freedoms – of the ideas for which so many people have already given so much -- we do this here in this church.  When you pledge this is what you pledge to – this harbor of peace and freedom, of spirit and reason, of knowledge and wisdom.

Yesterday as the canvassers met and talked about our uncertain times, we reminded ourselves that in this place is something certain – solid.  Reach out to the person next to you.  Feel it in their hands.  Though the hands change over decades they remain clasped in commitment.  Solid.

Oh yes – we need lightbulbs, to fix our ceiling, to pay our expenses – but what we really keep here – alit in this chalice – symbol of our ideas – is this fire wrestled from ages of effort.  Where do you give?  To preserve tolerance, save the trees, create housing?  These are worthy efforts – but it is time to go to the root – beyond the Band-Aid to heal the body and treat not symptoms but causes.  The world is starving – poor in justice, in democracy, in peace, in equality, in freedom, in reason, and poor in spirit – but these are the things we keep here, and give to one another and to our children.  These are the treasures, which we hold in trust for a world limited in vision.  This is our fire – inherited from many generations and places.  If the world flies in negative chaos around us, we are anchored by this place and by one another.  This chalice is a symbol of the illumination we find and create here.  This place holds sacred and teaches bright thoughts and practices of freedom, justice, and peace.  It is in our ideas – in human thoughts and hearts that our world will first change.  How committed are you to changing root causes instead of symptoms?  How much power would you like this idea to have – how much of a voice in the world?  In proportion with your means, invest in the world you hope to see – for we can build it together – as long as we make a good place for this voice, as long as we spread our inclusive vision, and teach our reasoning word.  We are limitless together.  We are the rich inheritors of generations of free thought – we are the ancestors of the future. 

The cost of a light bulb is not much – the cost of a chalice merely material.  Our fire – is precious beyond count – therefore give in good faith in generous faith to this fire – to these principles – to this church and this world which so truly needs your gifts.