Month of Sundays Service

Is Anything "Meant To Be?"

Opening Words
No. 418, "Come into the circle of love and justice"
From Singing the Living Tradition

Hymn
No. 93 To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love
from Singing the Living Tradition

Children's Story
"The Healing Power of God"
by Mary Ann Moore

Once a boy went to visit his grandparents. At his grandparents' place there was a tree, and this boy climbed up into the tree just as he had done many times before. But this time, for some reason - maybe it was his smooth-bottomed church shoes - the boy suddenly slipped and fell out of the tree. He fell onto his right elbow, and by the time he was through falling, his arm hurt terribly. It hurt so much he cried.

His family all came running. When they saw his arm they knew something was really wrong, so they quickly took him to the hospital. There the doctor took an x-ray of his arm and found that the elbow joint was twisted out of place. The doctor said, "Don't worry. I can fix it." Soon the joint was back in place and the boy's arm was in a cast.

The doctor said to him, "Your arm is going to be as good as new, but healing takes time. The cast will have to stay on for four weeks." They gave him a sling to help hold up his arm, and the boy went home with his family. When he got home he ate a little bit, but he was so tired and soon went to sleep.

The next day he had to lie still and rest a lot, and his arm still hurt. His family brought him food, and his uncle cut up one of his shirts so it would fit over the cast. Other relatives and friends came by to see him. They told him how sorry they were that he had injured himself, and they tried to amuse him. They brought a balloon that said, "Get well!" And they made cards that said, "We're sorry you fell out of the tree. Get well soon. We love you!" And they brought him some video movies to watch. By the end of the day the boy was feeling better.

As the days went by the boy felt a lot better. His arm didn't hurt any more, and he got pretty good at doing things with his left hand. He even learned to write and draw with his left hand, although he usually used his right one. But he was tired of not having both hands and arms to do things with. He said to his parents, "I'm tired of not being well. I want my arm to get well right away. I want to take off this old cast! When can I take it off?"

His parents said to him, "We know you're getting tired of having the cast on, but healing takes time." They showed him on the calendar how many more days it would be before his arm would be thoroughly healed and the cast could come off.

"That's too long," the boy said. "I want to get well right now! Maybe God can make me well right now, or at least by tomorrow."

So the boy talked to God. He said, "God, you probably noticed that I fell out of the tree and twisted my elbow out of joint and that the doctor put it back right and that now I have it in a cast. They tell me it'll be lots more days before it's healed, but I'm tired of having a cast. Couldn't you make it heal faster? Couldn't you make it well right now or at least by tomorrow?" And the boy waited to hear what God would say.

Finally the boy heard God say, 'Yes, I know you've hurt your arm and I'm sorry. I know it must be hard to wait for it to thoroughly heal, but taking time is one of the ways that my healing power works."

'What are some of the other ways?" the boy asked, hoping there was a quicker way to get well.

'Well, you've already been using my other ways. You went to the doctor and he used his knowledge of how elbow joints work to get your joint back in place. One of the ways that my healing energy works is with medicines and with doctors' skills."

'What other ways of healing do you have?" the boy wondered.

'Well, tender loving care is another," God said. "And you've been getting that, too. Your family and your friends have been giving you lots of love and care, bringing you good wishes with balloons and cards and videos. My healing energy is in the tender loving care of family and friends. I know it's hard to wait, but you will be well soon."

So the boy said to God, "Okay, I guess I should be glad that you have all those different healing powers. I'm glad to know that my arm will be all well again." And the boy decided to go and draw another of his left-handed pictures.

Meditation
No. 481, "It is our quiet time"
from Singing the Living Tradition

Reading
by Frederick Beekner

Exactly a year ago tomorrow, a very good friend of mine died. He was an English man, a witty, elegant, many faceted man. One morning in his sixty-eighth year he simply didn't wake up. Which was about as easy a way as he could possibly have done it. But it wasn't easy for the people he left behind because it gave us no chance to say good-bye.

A couple of months later my wife and I were staying with his widow overnight in Charleston, South Carolina, when I had a short dream about him.

I dreamed that he was standing there in the dark guest room looking very much the way he always did, and I told him how much we missed him and how glad I was to see him again. Then I said, "Are you really there, Dudley?" I meant, was he there in fact-and-truth, or was I merely dreaming he was? His answer was that he was really there, and then I said, "Can you prove it?"

"Of course," he said, and he plucked a strand of blue wool out of his sweater and tossed it to me, and I caught it between my index finger and my thumb, and the feel of it was so palpable and real that it woke me up. That's all there was to the dream.

When I told that dream at breakfast the next morning. I had hardly finished when my wife said she had noticed the strand of wool on the carpet when she was getting dressed. I rushed upstairs to see, and there it was, a little tangle of navy blue wool.

The dream may very well have been just another dream. And you certainly don't have to invoke the supernatural to account for the thread on the carpet. Maybe my friend really did come—in my dream, or maybe all that's extraordinary-about-it, is the fuss I'm making.

Dreams like that happen every day to somebody. They're a dime a dozen, they may mean absolutely nothing. Or, dreams like that are momentary glimpses into a mystery of such depth, power and beauty that if we were to see it head on, in any way other than in glimpses, I suspect we would be annihilated. If I had to bet my life, and my children's lives, my wife's life on one possibility or the other, which would I bet on? Which would you bet on?

On 'Yes there is God in the highest?" or if that language is no longer viable, "There is mystery and meaning in the deepest?" Or [would I bet] on "No, there is whatever happens and it means whatever you choose it to mean, and that's all there is?"

Of course, we can bet yes today and no tomorrow. We may bet one way with our lips, our minds and even our hearts and another way with our feet. But all of us bet and it's our lives themselves we're betting with, in the sense that the betting is what shapes our lives.

And of course we can never be sure we bet right because the evidence both ways is fragmentary, fragile, ambiguous. A coincidence, as somebody said, can be God's way of remaining anonymous or it can be just a coincidence. Is the dream that brings healing and hope just a product of wishful thinking or is it a message maybe from another realm? Whether we bet yes or no is equally an act of faith.

Reading
By Jane Rzepka

Katie [the ministerial intern] and I are each going to tell you a story that we made up together. We're each going to tell this same story. Katie is going to tell it from the point of view of one theological position, and I'll tell it from another theological position. The theological stances we take are fiction, pure fiction—any resemblance to our own theological tendencies are purely unintentional... Here's Katie's.

I. The Ice Storm: It Was "Meant to Be" - Katie Lee Crane

I can't believe this day! The roads are covered with ice, it's treacherous under foot and they're forecasting more freezing rain and sleet. Wouldn't you know it? This is the day I have to be at the office for a meeting by 9:00. I've got to get going!

I'd better leave now. Skip the dishes. Get going. I'll bet the highway is backed up for miles. Think I'll take the back roads today. Probably safer and less congested.

The roads are even worse than I'd imagined. What a mess! I can barely crawl...

Ohhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
What was that? That branch just missed the windshield. It's a miracle I wasn't hurt! Someone was definitely looking out for me that time! Guess I'm not supposed to go this way. I have a feeling I should take Rte. 128. I know myself well enough to follow my instincts. I'll just turn around here and get on at the next exit.

I'm late for sure, but with roads like these, everyone else is going to be late, too. Besides....

Uh Oh ... here we go again. This car's going to spin off the road!!!

Thank God I'm alive. And, as far as I can tell, the car's OK too. Whew! Another close call. What's going on here? I wonder what this is supposed to mean?

I'll figure that out later. What am I going to do now? There's no getting out of here without help. If someone stops, what should I do? You hear all sorts of horror stories. No, I'll know. I'll just know. I'll have to trust that the person who stops was sent to help me. In fact, I'm confident someone will be sent to help.

This is one of those times when I wish I had someone. I enjoy being single but right now I'd trade my independence for a person who could come and help me out. What am I talking about? Think of it. Two near misses. And I'm fine. The car's fine. What's the message? I'm sure there's a lesson here somewhere.

Is it about this car? Should I sell this car? No, something tells me it's more than that. It's about....

Someone's stopping. A guy. He looks kind of familiar. Oh, I can't believe this! It's Butch.

"Butch, is that you?"
"Kathie? Kathie Stevens? I don't believe this! Can it possibly be you?"
"It is and, you know, I'm not at all surprised to see you."
"What do you mean you're not surprised to see me? I haven't seen you in... when was it... it had to be our tenth high school reunion and that was...
"Fifteen years ago!"
"Fifteen, is it really that long? This is just amazing. Just amazing! It's the middle of an ice storm, I just moved to Woburn last month, I wasn't planning to take this route—only came this way because traffic was backed up on Rte. 93—and, when I stopped, I had no idea it was you who was stranded! And you're not surprised to see me?"

"No, clearly you were led to find me. And I'm not surprised because I had a dream about you the other night. Now I realize it was some kind of premonition or sign. Butch, there are no coincidences. Something or someone is bringing us together again after all these years. This is something more than chance. This is some kind of message from the universe. I guess we have some unfinished business, eh?"
"Yup. Hop in. Where to?"
"Next exit, take a right."
"This is amazing, isn't it? Absolutely amazing!"
"Not really, Butch, I truly believe it was meant to be."

II. The Ice Storm: "What a Coincidence" - Jane Rzepka

I can't believe this day! The roads are covered with ice, it's slippery and they're forecasting more freezing rain and sleet. Wouldn't you know it? This is the day I have to be at the office for a meeting by 9:00. I've got to get going!

I'd better leave now. Skip the dishes. Get going. I'll bet the highway is backed up for miles. Think I'll take the back roads today. Probably safer, less congested.

The roads are even worse than I'd imagined. What a mess! I can barely crawl....

Ohhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
What was that? That branch just missed the windshield. Dumb luck that I wasn't hurt. Given the high wind velocity, it would make more sense to take a highly traveled road. I'll take 128. That's good thinking.

I'm late for sure, but with roads like these, everyone else is going to be late, too. Besides....

Uh oh... here we go again. This car's spinning off the road!!! But I'm alive. And, as far as I can tell, the car's OK too. Whew!

Another close call. But with driving conditions like this, I should expect as much.

What am I going to do now? There's no getting out of here without help. If someone stops, what should I do? You hear all sorts of horror stories. I'd have to assess the person quickly - chances are quite promising that somebody will stop, given the volume of traffic. This whole thing is such an utter waste of time.

Someone's stopping. A guy. Looks kind of familiar. Oh, I can't believe this! It's Butch.
"Butch, is that you?"
"Kathie? Kathie Stevens? I don't believe this! Can it possibly be you?"
"It is - I love these small world things—they happen so often."
"Wow. I haven't seen you in... when was it... it had to be our tenth high school reunion and that was..."
"Fifteen years ago!"
"Fifteen, is it really that long? This is just amazing. Just amazing! It's the middle of an ice storm, I just moved to Woburn last month, I wasn't planning to take this route-I only came this way because traffic was backed up on Rte. 93-and, when I stopped, I had no idea it was you who was stranded!"

"Well, an awful lot of people from our old town in New Jersey wind up in the Boston area. And you always liked skiing, and sea food, and the Celtics, same as me. It's not so surprising that we both ended up around here. And you know, because our next reunion's coming up next week, I had a dream about you and the old gang. It's great to see you in the flesh - maybe we'll decide to ride down to the reunion together."
"Could be. But for now, hop in. Where to?"
"Next exit, take a right."
"This is amazing, isn't it? Absolutely amazing!"
'Yes, this is one delightful coincidence."

[Quick dialogue, Katie and Jane].

Katie: "It was meant to be!"
Jane: "What a coincidence!"
Katie: "I feel led to my actions; drawn to them."
Jane: "I evaluate the situation, make a decision, and I do it."
Katie: "Sometimes I need to learn a lesson, and I am given the opportunity."
Jane: "Sometimes I need that like a hole in the head."
Katie: "Everything is part of a larger plan."
Jane: "Luck. Chance. They're an important part of life."
Katie: "Something, someone, is looking out for me."
Jane: "We're on our own."
Katie: "It was meant to be."
Jane: "What a coincidence."

Sermon
"Is Anything Meant To Be?"
by the Rev. Jane Rzepka

Here at the church, our "Is Anything 'Meant to Be?"' theology discussion was scheduled for last Monday evening. I had ulterior motives, of course: I had imagined that the conversation would include, broadly speaking, two groups of people-those who do believe that cosmic intention is likely - those who believe that what happens was indeed "meant to be," - and those who think the very notion is preposterous poppycock, who believe that to the extent that anyone decides, we decide what happens.

On Monday, if you remember, we had a storm. Of the seven meetings here at the church that night, four were cancelled. But I was here in hopes of having the discussion (after all I needed the input for this sermon). People did arrive, and to a person, they fit into the group that is of the opinion that we direct our own fates. The other group, the group that believes in cosmic messages, presumably looked out the window, noted the sleet, ice, wind, cold, slush, and treacherous footing, and knew without a doubt that this meeting, just wasn't meant to be.

In the story that Katie read, the character, a fictitious composite, to be sure, was a person who felt comfortable attributing meaning and intent to a wide variety of aspects of life. She might have seen significance, for example, in the fact that the ice storm occurred on the anniversary of her best friend's divorce, or she might believe that tea leaves, or the position of the planets and stars, hold messages.

Or maybe not. Maybe she believes not in those particular avenues of meaning, but she does believe that there's one special someone out there destined for her to love; or that dreams hold powerful clues to future courses of action; or that there's significance in the fact that when the phone rang, it was just the person she'd been thinking about; or that if her throat hurts, she would do well to examine what it is she's reluctant to "voice."

Or maybe she doesn't look at life in those particular ways, but she does believe that when she hits all the green lights, the universe has found a way to smile on her; and when she needs a hysterectomy, she knows she wasn't "supposed" to have had children in the first place; and that when her shutters blew off her house, or her mother-in-law came to live with her, or she won the coin-flip, that those things happened for a reason—indeed, everything happens for a reason. Our first character believes there are no coincidences, that events are predestined.

The character whose story I told, on the other hand, lives in quite a different world. Sore throats occur because of viruses or strep, and because you're worn out. Ice storms always occur on the anniversary of something; it's the luck of the draw. True love? You have to work at it, cultivate it, make it happen. Tea leaves are, well, tea leaves. Dreams can prompt interesting flights of fancy—amazing what neurons and synapses can do. You can time the green lights if you want, but usually you might as well leave it to chance. There are no hidden meanings. If you do the math, you find that the probability is quite high that someone you've been thinking about will call you on the phone - it's happened to just about everybody. "Small world" theory tells us that though the incidents may be counter-intuitive, "normally occurring abnormal occurrences" are a predictable part of the natural world. The "Argument from Personal Incredulity" [Richard Dawkins], i.e., "if it seems impossible to me, it must be impossible," holds no weight.

The hysterectomy? A certain percentage of women have them; it might as well be you. The coin-flip. We know from chaos theory that over time, you can count on the fact that coin tosses will result in heads about half the time, and tails about half the time - a dependable pattern. But any one flip of the coin? Who knows?

When the shutters blow off, or when you toss a coin, for that matter, you know that in a perfect world, with the perfect computer, and an infinite amount of input, you could have set up the equations, the weather patterns and wind velocities and shutter strength. You could have done the math and the physics and calculated the moment of flight. But short of all that, the loss of the shutter is experienced as random, and meaningless, too. That's how it is, living in a neutral universe.

This is the character who identifies with Don Marquis's typing cockroach, Archy, who reports, "i once heard the survivors/ of a colony of ants/ that had been partially/ obliterated by a cow s foot/ seriously debating/ the intention of the gods/ towards their civilization."

Obviously, neither of our characters is real, and the portraits don't describe any one of us. Most of us here either take less extreme positions, or more extreme positions, or we occupy some middle ground. Moreover, we understand that neither point of view is free of danger.

For example, taken to the extreme, our "it was meant to be" character has an over-riding sense that the way things are is the way things are supposed to be. She could believe that if she is being abused, she is supposed to be abused; if some people are poor, they are supposed to be poor; and - most horrifying - the Holocaust was supposed to happen.

If she gets sick, it's because she needs to learn some lesson, and the universe needs to provide her with a "teaching"—it's her fault that she's sick. This person, on the far end of the continuum, believes that suffering is inherently of value.

Furthermore, again in an extreme case, because she believes something outside herself is calling the shots, she may feel "led" to destructive courses of action—who knows what she'll feel called to do. It was meant to be.

The way I see it, the "it was meant to be" character needs to fight against a tendency to relinquish personal control, she needs to guard against abdicating her individual responsibility, and she needs to watch her inclination to throw careful, reasonable judgment to the winds. She needs to seek out "reality checks," for when she goes with the natural human inclination to discover meaning in events, she could always be dead wrong. She is a person who sees constellations, not stars.

Of course the "it's all a coincidence" character takes a dangerous position too, for she sees the stars, but not the constellations. She sees no meaning anywhere unless she creates it herself. For her, the universe is not warm and caring; it just "is." She would say, with the biologist Richard Dawkins, [River Out of Eden], that "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

This, our second character is in danger of living in a world of profound cosmic loneliness, emptiness, and despair, where experiences, both good and bad, can come out of the blue with no redeeming value. She has to make life worth living, all on her own, and she may neglect to create that meaning. She will have to remember to celebrate the ups and downs of emotion, she will have to put extra stock in the depth of human interaction, and fun, and natural mystery and awe. And, like the first character, having viewed life through this particular lens, she could always turn out to have been wrong.

Now. We all know that as Unitarian Universalists, it's perfectly OK to take either character's position. But as a Unitarian Universalist minister, a person whose job it is in part to put forward our particular religious history and tradition, I want to point something out: As a religious movement, we are the people who defined ourselves in the late 18th and 19th Centuries as the religion that does not believe in predestination. We broke away from Calvinism precisely because we did not believe that anything was "meant to be." Our sermon titles in 1759 read, "Natural Religion, as Distinguish'd from Revealed," [Ebenezer Gay], and they were about the "Power of Self-determination, and Freedom of Choice." We were the people who defined ourselves as those who "responded to the monitions of conscience and the dictates of reason." [The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America, Conrad Wright, p. 114]. That's what Unitarianism was.

If we were to become a movement primarily of people who do believe that events are "meant to be," that would be a landmark change in Unitarian Universalist theology as we have practiced it up to now. We have changed before and we will change again—we are, after all, also the people who have always believed that "revelation is not sealed," but I need to tell you that a theological change like that would be major.

The other rabbinical point I would underscore (rabbinical in the sense of carrying the tradition forward), is the message of our second reading, and the message being taught to our Fifth Graders as they study the Biblical story of the battle of Jericho and try to decide what really made the walls fall: In Unitarian Universalism, the method matters. Regardless of our theological conclusions, our way as Unitarian Universalists is to put reason to full use. From the beginning, as a religious movement on this continent, we have cared about judgment, and intellectual integrity, and conscience. This imperative doesn't dwarf the full fruits of experience, and emotion, and sensitivity, but it does compel us to include all powers of reason in our theological decision-making.

Oh, as usual, I know we have only scratched the surface today, I know we could talk about Robert Frost stopping on a Snowy Evening, and why, and the piece of blue wool on the rug in the reading, and the ice storm. We could make a thousand cases for living in a predetermined world, and a thousand more for a random universe. And if we got started on "isn't it a small world" stories we'd be here for the rest of our natural lives. After the service, if you have time, do come back up here to the sanctuary once you've grabbed your coffee, and we'll talk more in an informal discussion. And meanwhile,

If there is a god,

If there is any power larger than us, larger than elephants or whales, larger than

clouds that burn with sunset color, larger than hurricanes that crush and fade,

If there is any cosmic thought or ideal

that brooding, watches over us,
guiding or wishing us toward goodness and health, If there is a will or presence
that grieves at our destructiveness
and glories in all our acts of love and of mercy, May that presence possess our hearts
and inspire our steps toward kindness.

And if there is not,

if no life or consciousness or purpose exists
except amid the yellow-leafed dying
and the merciful greening of this obscure, blessed earth,

May that same hopeful spirit still possess our hearts, and with a power more

needed than ever, inspire our steps toward mercy
yes, and again, toward every act of kindness.

[Ken Sawyer]

So may it be with us. Amen.

Hymn
No. 128 For All That Is Our Life
from Singing the Living Tradition

Closing Words
No. 700, "For all who see God"
from Singing the Living Tradition

Questions for Discussion
by Joy D. Gasta

1. How do you respond to Jane Rzepka's assertion, "If we were to become a movement primarily of people who do believe that events are "meant to be," that would be a landmark change in Unitarian Universalist theology as we have practiced it up to now?"
2. Emotionally, how do you tend to view life-as "meant-to-be" or coincidence? Does this tendency match your theological view of life, or is it at odds with it?
3. Is Rev. Rzepka correct that when we as a religious movement "care about judgment, and intellectual integrity, and conscience," that does not "dwarf the full fruits of experience, and emotion, and sensitivity?"

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Last updated June 12, 2005