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Rev. Beverly Waring Sermon
November 27, 2011
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Reading From Oprah Magazine by Life Coach Martha Beck
I used to think I knew how some caterpillars become butterflies. I assumed they weave cocoons, then sit inside growing six long legs, four
wings, and so on. I figured if I were to cut open a cocoon, I'd find a butterfly-ish caterpillar, or a caterpillar-ish butterfly, depending on how
far things had progressed. I was wrong. In fact, the first thing caterpillars do in their cocoons is shed their skin, leaving a soft, rubbery
chrysalis. If you were to look inside the cocoon early on, you'd find nothing but a puddle of glop. But in that glop are certain cells that
contain the DNA-coded instructions for turning bug soup into a delicate, winged creature—the angel of the dead caterpillar.
Sermon
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.” “That which doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” When life gives you lemons, make
lemonade.” These are three of numerous sayings or clichés that came to mind when I first thought about writing this sermon. I am sure if
I had told you the theme for this service was where we find our strength in the tough times; does our suffering make us bitter or
better…angry or grateful; and what is the source of our thanksgiving?;
you would have a few of your own.
Then I remembered a time when I heard someone speak some of those words.
A young woman I counseled after being rape and finding out she was pregnant from that attack was being pressured by her mother to
have an abortion. Her response, “This baby growing in me deserves life, he didn’t do anything wrong. I can handle this; God wouldn’t
have allowed this to happen if He didn’t think I could handle it.”
A family I met with in NYC after 9/11 who also lived in the neighborhood where the plane crashed on Veterans Day that same year was
looking with horror at their neighbor’s house that had been destroyed by that plane. The 10 year old boy asked his father, a NYC police
officer who had survived the falling towers just a month earlier, where the one surviving family member from that house would live and
what would she do now that her parents and siblings were dead.
His response, “She will stay in this neighborhood, she will finish high school with her friends and she will be okay. She survived the worst
thing imaginable and she will be stronger because of it. And we will help her see that.”
These are extreme examples of finding strength in tough times. May you never face such adversity. But knowing that many of you
already have faced and triumphed over difficult times, let me share a few more examples.
Some of you may have heard of or even read the Sun Magazine. I recently received a few old issues on Freecycle. There is a monthly
feature in the Sun called “Readers Write.” Each month, readers are invited to submit reflections, memories or very short stories inspired
only by a single word or short phrase.
The “Readers Write” theme for September 2003 was “Blessings in Disguise,” perhaps another saying or cliché I should add to my list
above, but listen to some of the submissions…ordinary people describing stories of tragedy transformed into strength, times of disgrace
becoming a mirror for painful honesty, feelings of vulnerability leading to unexpected delight.
• An anonymous seminary student wrote about sinking into a deep depression after his wife left him. But then with the help of a
friend he came to accept his homosexuality and fell in love with another man. He finally realized how absolutely right his wife had
been to end their relationship.
• Tammy, who endured years of verbal abuse from her husband. But after the first time the violence turned physical and he hit her
in the face, she found the courage to leave him. She said that if not for that horrible, violent action on his part, she would have
stayed with him forever, her soul and life invisibly fading away.
• Roger, a 45 year old prison inmate described himself as someone who “destroyed, ruined or abused everything good that crossed
his path.” Prison, he says, forced him to stop and get enough rest to clear the drug and alcohol induced fog that had clouded his
brain. It allowed him to remember his love for reading and writing and animals. He now reads three or four books a week, writes
poetry and has been published. Prison, he concluded, “didn’t just save his life, it gave him a life to look forward to.”
• J. H., the daughter of two survivors of the holocaust, told of trying to reconcile the horrors of this time with what she was being
taught about a benevolent God in her religious education classes. Both her parents, who met in the camps, witnessed the murder
of their first spouses. But when J. H. questions her mother about how she can still love a God that would let people suffer so, her
mother replies, “If not for Hitler, you never would have been born.”
Every story tells of a quiet epiphany, a deep awakening or personal transformation, brought about by encountering and facing a
circumstance that was at the very least unwelcomed and in many cases tragic.
All these stories are amazing yet ordinary. They are not unlike our own stories, simple descriptions of things we all experience because
we are human and we are alive. Circumstances we encounter, live through and which transform us into the people we are today.
Embedded in these stories is the messy yet oftentimes hidden part of the transformation….the shedding of the skin, the time when we are
soft and fragile like the chrysalis waiting and struggling to become the butterfly. The time when people who love us can only stand by with
love and concern but no one can do for us what needs to be done.
But it is one thing to think of personal struggles, of facing a tough time ourselves and finding the strength, the courage to get to the other
side. But what of watching our children, (whether young or adult) or someone we love struggle?
How many of us cannot resist jumping in and fixing things, protecting another because it seems easier or safer for us to do so?
What we oftentimes fail to appreciate, though, is how much growth, how much satisfaction, and feelings of self-worth is gained from our
own most difficult of struggles. There is nothing quite as fulfilling as working through an especially tough challenge and coming out the
other side feeling more confident, more whole.
No one can help the caterpillar shed his skin. Nothing is accomplished – in fact harm is done - if we muck around in the puddle of glop
that simply needs the DNA-coded instructions and patience for the caterpillar to be transformed into the butterfly.
So, even if we think we are “just helping” the reality is no one can do the really hard work for us. How many of us have asked our
children to “learn from our mistakes.” I know my son James certainly heard those words from me on more than one occasion. I simply
wanted to spare him the pain or trouble that all young people seem to have to experience in one way or another.
Yet we all have to make our own mistakes, have to figure out things for ourselves, have to experience our own triumphs over adversity.
Yes, we all need support, encouragement, someone to stand by us in our darkest moments (someone of spirit or someone of flesh) but
only we can put the broken pieces of our lives back together.
And by doing so, we learn that ultimately, our strength comes from within ourselves. And then something amazing happens and we
realize that we are stronger than we previously thought. We begin to understand that courage and wisdom is there waiting for us to tap
into it, waiting for us to acknowledge its presence and our need for it.
In a book called Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, author Joan Chittister explores how, when one perseveres through any
significant struggle, when one keeps wrestling with an issue and presses through to the other side, those struggles turn out to be
openings that allow in new blessings, new gifts. They are doorways into a transformed self.
Chittister writes, “There is no one who does not have to choose, sometime, someway, between [just] giving up and growing stronger. And
yet if we give up in the midst of struggle, we never find out what that struggle would have given us in the end. If we decide to endure it to
the end, we come out of it changed by the doing of it. It is a risk of mammoth proportions. We dare the development of the self.”
If we let our children struggle, let them take responsibility for actions, let them overcome feelings of helplessness or vulnerability, the
resulting gift of independence will last their lifetime.
If we let our children face their fears, the resulting gift of knowing the strength of their own courage will serve them well.
There is an African saying, “The blessing is next to the wound.” I hear in this the suggestion that no matter how profound or horrible our
experience is, we have the power, we possess the inner resources necessary to heal, to learn, to grow from it and ultimately to move
forward in a positive way.
But additionally, I understand this to mean we have to do this for ourselves. We have to find the meaning in the struggle, interpret the
experience and its effect on us and define the blessing next to the wound in our terms. The blessing is next to the wound but it is not the
wound itself. An important distinction to be made. A distinction that turns victims into survivors, burdens into opportunities.
What I hear in this lesson is if we are wounded by the words of another, we do not have to believe or accept those words as truth but we
may learn something about ourselves from our reaction to those words.
The blessing is next to the wound. What I hear is that even if we are angry or sad or confused when someone we care about leaves a
relationship…a minister for example…we can understand ourselves better if we first let ourselves feel those emotions and then look
ahead with excitement at the new door open to us. Acknowledging the wound, feeling the sadness or anger is important but so is looking
for the blessing next to that wound, see the possibilities and opportunities that await us.
I’d like to close with a true story from author Dawna Markova’s book called No Enemies Within: A Creative Process for Discovering What’s
Right About What’s Wrong. She wrote, “When I was in the hospital, the one person whose presence I welcomed was a woman who came
to sweep the floors with a large push broom. She was the only one who didn’t stick things in, take things out, or ask stupid questions. For
a few minutes each night, this immense Jamaican woman rested her broom against the wall and sank her body into the turquoise plastic
chair in my room. All I heard was the sound of her breath in and out, in and out. It was comforting in a strange and simple way. My own
breathing calmed. Of the fifty or so people that made contact with me in any given day, she was the only one who wasn’t trying to change
me.”
“On her next visit, she looked at me. No evaluation, no trying to figure me out, she just looked and saw me. Then she said simply, ‘You’
re more than the sickness in that body.”
Each of us must always remember that we are more than any of the struggles we face. We are more than our illnesses or disabilities.
We are more than our greatest insecurities, more than any of our current challenges, more than the scars from past struggles.
It is important to stop every once in a while and appreciate all that we’ve been through in our lives, acknowledge the challenges we have
endured and the triumphs we have experienced and be thankful for the people we have become because of it
all.
Amen and Blessed Be
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Finding Strength in Difficult Times
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