Rev. Joseph Boyd
The Winter was usually a time when my family would go to the Oregon Coast. If there is anything that Oregonians crave more than sunshine, it is solitude, and my father enjoyed the prospect of avoiding crowds. The Oregon Coast is often moody, grey, with giant jagged rocks. A light drizzle of rain mixed with wind made me feel like I was out at sea, even when I was on dry land. It often felt like we were about to enter the eye of a storm. We would put on our rain jackets, rubber boots, and we never brought an umbrella. My father grew up in Oregon, and now that he’s deceased there are all the questions I wish I would’ve asked. Questions that never occurred to me at the time. My father grew up in a small town within 30 mins of Portland, and my sense is that he rarely if ever went to the Oregon Coast, even though it was very close to him. I wonder now if the Oregon Coast felt like a new world, a world he entered with me and my siblings on long rainy car rides. I know for my mother it was a new world, though she too must have had a relationship with the Pacific Ocean living in Fiji. Fiji is an archipelago containing more than 300 islands, at least 300 different worlds with rugged terrain, palm trees, coral reefs, and lagoons so clear you can see to the bottom. I only know this from reading. I’ve never been.

I have traveled and lived in some different places, but I’m now understanding that one does not need to travel anywhere to enter a new world. A new world is the beginning of recognizing fundamental changes. Geography is not limited to a particular place or country, or particular set of islands. Geography was a term first used by Eratosthenes, who used the word to try to understand natural complexities, how one thing becomes another, how islands form, how land changes based on weather, plant and animal life. It was a term to try to understand how new worlds are formed, how one thing that looks solid and steady is actually in constant motion. That is how mountains form which you might already know: two tectonic plates collide as they move toward one another, and it gives birth to a mountain which is a piece of the earth that juts upward in the aftermath of the collision.

There is a great maxim that the “map is not the territory.” What that means is that we can trick ourselves into thinking we know someplace by looking at a map. We can think we understand how it feels to be alive in a particular region by reading about in a book, or looking at pictures and coordinates on Google earth. Broadly speaking we also can think we know what it means to be alive during this time by ingesting commentary, articles, news, sermons. But this isn’t really being alive, not all of it anyway. It was a statement made by a scientist, a Polish American named Alfred Korzybski, who gave a presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in late December 1931. The presentation emphasized how we often confuse models of reality for reality itself. We confuse maps and think it’s the territory, the whole thing, all we need. Maps are helpful, and I think it’s true to say that maps can be comforting. They can give us a sense that we know where we’re going. A map can tell us how to drive from here to the Oregon Coast. A map can give us a detailed account of all the beaches, all the highways that lead to beaches. If we are using technology, we can also get an in-the moment weather forecast. But all these tools, all these maps, all these descriptions are only that: descriptions. There is a gap between what we think we can know and what our actual lived experience is, and it seems that we can’t accurately predict what our lived experience will be until we’re actually living it at that moment. Have you ever had the experience of really looking forward to something that you thought would be enjoyable, fun, and then have it be disappointing in some way? Or alternatively have you ever dreaded something, and then when the moment came it wasn’t too bad, perhaps it was even fine. There is a gap between what we can know, and what our actual experience in the moment will be. But maps are helpful. They are helpful when we know they are just maps, not the entire territory. The territory of our particular inner experience coming in contact with conditions at a particular moment at a particular time, conditions which will never be repeated again in all of human history, this is also important to notice. I really like the poem by Derek Walcott, the Nobel Prize Winning poet from Saint Lucia (Loo shu) in the West Indies. Walcott is familiar with islands, and like most of us knows what it’s like to embark on an Odyssey. I don’t think the Odyssey for Walcott was moving from a Caribbean Island to living in the United States. It was the Odyssey that all of us take, even if we are born and raised in the same place. It’s the experience which I think happens to nearly all of us of leaving a familiar shore for something unknown: leaving a familiar relationship, a familiar way of being, a familiar way of thinking and reacting. Walcott points out that our minds are map making machines. We will construct a harp out of sheets of rain, we will construct something solid from something that is coming and going, passing through. And this is beautiful and wonderful, as long as we know what we’re doing. We are constructing new worlds for ourselves, worlds full of music. But if we don’t know what we’re doing, we can construct nightmares, a world where we are certain that suffering will be great and total. But the truth is we don’t know. That reality may be true, it might not. We might actually be creating a new world that is very difficult for us, but the way we experience that world is dependent on innumerable conditions that are completely unknown to us now.

Right now many smart people are working on maps for a new world. There are some who say we are in a new normal, and are working on creating a map to guide us through this new normal. Some are saying that we have left the shores of normalcy, but the shore is still there, and in time we will sail back to it: changed for sure, but those shores are waiting for us in due time. Regardless of which map you put more faith in, it’s helpful to know it’s a map. Regardless of where we’re going, the truth is each of us is on an Odyssey where we are being asked to depart from familiar shores and discover for ourselves the meaning of the ocean, the meaning of the rain, to discover for ourselves our body and heart in motion. To ask ourselves a very simple and daring question: What is this like for me? No map can tell you that. Where would I like to go in my life? No map can tell you that either. One has to decide for ourselves where we intend to go before we pick an appropriate map. A map to Oregon may lead you to Fiji in due time, but if you intend to go to Fiji, it might save some time to find an appropriate map.

It’s perfectly reasonable and alright to have no idea where we intend to go in our life, in terms of how we wish to live and embody our life. But we should know that there is no standing still and there is no pause button. We are on the Odyssey whether we are intending to go anywhere or not. We are moving. And if we don’t have intention, our journey might be fine. If we are in a large enough ocean, and we have enough food, if we can get some Wi-Fi on our vessel, we can probably coast along for a good while, maybe our entire life. That may be possible, and that’s not all bad. Our journey may be perfectly alright, but we may lose sight that we are taking this Odyssey with every living creature, and this earth all at the same time. I actually think it matters less where we’re going, as it is how we intend to travel together. I would rather go to hell with all the creatures of the ocean, sky, and everywhere in between, than pretend that I’m going to heaven in my own vessel. That’s just pretending. Our Universalist tradition says ultimately we are all headed to the same place, ultimately. That has become a pillar for me these last couple years. I find that thought inspiring. It doesn’t matter if we feel lost, and in the large scheme of things it doesn’t matter if we are presently dealing with misfortune or fortunate circumstances. The point of the journey is not to get somewhere better than my neighbor, or to even necessarily avoid the jagged rocks. It is to do what we can to help and encourage each other. Maybe the smart thing sometimes is to head toward the jagged rocks, to help those who are shipwrecked so they can continue the journey. Perhaps that is the wisest thing. In a time when circumstances seem dire and discouraging, I wonder if this new outlook can help us. It is not so much about where we’re going, as to how we perceive and live the Odyssey, trusting that we are all ultimately headed to the same place. For those who believe there is nothing after death, that should be added encouragement to pay attention to how we are living with ourselves, how we intend to live with the creatures of the ocean and sky and everywhere in between. It becomes less about trying to avoid difficulty, trying to avoid hardship, and paying more attention to how we intend to live together as a community with difficulty, and how we intend to live as a community with hardship.

There are opportunities for us to live in this new world together. The truth is, we are already doing it. We are already living in this new world together. When we can feel and perceive that, transformation takes place. All the maps that have tried to distract us from this present reality of living together are being seriously questioned and challenged. Maps written by our predecessors that said that one group of people is less deserving of care and concern than another: like when we discovered the world was not flat, that map is being thrown out as antiquated. Except we still use those maps to get around, and on some level, many of us know that is ridiculous and harmful. We are living in a new world that we don’t have maps for yet. We are on the Odyssey, and we don’t know where we’re going yet. But that’s because I don’t think the most important question anymore is where we’re going, but how we’re going. That is the question of our time, that is the question of this year, and I think this question will build momentum in the coming years. It will not be about the destination, because we all desire different destinations, but how we will live together on this Odyssey.

I feel extremely fortunate to be with you all together during this time. I think this is the best time in human history to be alive. I feel so fortunate. We are living through a time when the maps that have been written don’t exactly apply to our lived experience anymore, and in that disconnect we are coming to greater understanding: that it’s not about where we’re going, but about how we’re going to live together. In understanding that we are not alone on this journey, a moral compass emerges for us. We pursue justice, act mercifully, and care for one another – not because we’re trying to get somewhere, but because we’re already there. We’re already here together. Perhaps heaven is not a destination or a place, but a realization that we are and have always been here together. We don’t need to travel the globe, we don’t need to leave our seat, we don’t need to leave our current life, to enter this new world. We grow less afraid of rain, we grow less afraid of leaving familiar shores. We realize the opportunity we have: to heal the broken, to bring encouragement to the despairing, to bring health to the sick. And even these dichotomies break down in this new world.

By being with the broken, including the brokenness in ourselves, we are healed. By being with the despairing, including the despair in ourselves, we are encouraged. By being with the sick, including sickness in ourselves, we are healed. When we live a life in accordance with what is here, not just what is mapped out, we are transformed.