Rev. Joseph Boyd
There was a time I was committed to being an actor. It would not be an exaggeration to say it was my religion, and the theatre was my church. I saw the capacity of the theatre to elevate humanity, to elevate the human story, and challenge the culture. I was moved by the morality plays of Arthur Miller, challenging expectations of American prosperity with tales of spiritual isolation, competitiveness and loneliness. The great playwright August Wilson showed garbage men in Pittsburgh to have the breadth and depth of any Shakespearean character, women with strength and dignity, black families with hopes, dreams, pains, and humor. I intuited something then which I still believe now – that you have to live something to really know it. It’s not enough to read about the Depression in a book, or to read about what it means to be a salesman, or what it means to be an immigrant to a new country seeking to keep the dream of prosperity alive. You have to put yourself in those circumstances, and if you can’t do that, imagination must lead one to wonder at the vastness of it all, the details, the little jokes, the everyday triumphs and defeats.

I have the great privilege as a minister to witness different kinds of people navigate their journey from womb to tomb. I get to in some small way be part of all the ups, downs, frustrations, even mundane boredom of being alive, and seeking something which if we’re honest with ourselves is difficult to fully articulate. I think all of us on some level seek some kind of transcendence. We know deep down that our circumstances are not the full definition of who we are, that there is something else, even if we can’t name it, touch it, live it completely. But I think we want to live it, this capacity for transcendence, something greater than our best thoughts. For me, years ago, acting was that path of transcendence. Many people think that actors like to play different kinds of people. This is true on one level. But for anyone who consistently committed themselves as an actor, there is a greater path at work. It’s actually the opposite. In playing different characters in varying circumstances, we discover the breadth and depth of our humanity – our capacity for good, our capacity for evil, our capacity for vengeance, self-sacrifice, and resilience.

One thing I love about the theatre is that once you step foot on stage, you’re committed to the play. It makes no difference if you don’t know what you’re doing, it makes no difference whether you had a good day or a bad way, whether you’re feeling weak or strong, prepared or unprepared. Once you go out on stage and you feel the lights brighten your face, you’re in the play, and you have to go on that ride. I’ve often thought it’s like being born. We come into this world both woefully unprepared and completely ready with everything we need to take the next breath, and then the next, and then the next. We rely on the love of someone to literally help us through, to teach us to talk, feed ourselves, formulate and articulate both our plight and our dreams. If we are lucky, we get to feel like this every day, a babe, completely dependent on a world that is here to support us into growth and fulfillment, even as it challenges us and breaks our heart. A big part of drama, even really good comedy, is allowing your heart to be broken, to feel moments of defeat, and still take a next breath.

For years now I’ve had the silent aspiration to consciously commit to that journey, to commit to not knowing what will happen, to commit to going through the moments I like and the moments I don’t, to commit to all of my life – to really live it, not just think about living it. To let go of endless strategizing, and endless risk assessments, endless waiting for what I think is some opportune or more convenient moment. Just live it, whatever it is, and practice gratitude in living it. What I’ve discovered is something that I share with you often – my life is really not just my life. My life is related to your life, so committing to myself is also committing to you. Some of you may be wondering, how do you commit to others without losing yourself? For me, I come back to the breath, my breath that is actually a shared breath with all of you. I feel all of you, here in this pulpit, in Youngstown, Ohio. When I breathe out, I wish good things for you: peace, happiness, meaning and fulfillment. When I can remember to do this, to see my life this way, it naturally changes how I treat myself and how I treat others. The key is when I remember it. And I often forget, and get wrapped in busyness, and have to be reminded to come back to my actual life. I need to be constantly reminded that my life is large and vast, connected, and I’m not alone.

          I felt this powerfully and acutely this week after hearing the news of the terrible shooting of six Asian women in Atlanta, GA. I’m East Indian and Caucasian and I’m connected to a group of Unitarian Universalist colleagues who identify as Asian, Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern. Most of these colleagues are American, but some are living across the world – in the Philippines and other countries. There was an email from some of these colleagues who needed support processing this, and I was glad to be included in that process. This act of violence reminded me of other incidents not toward myself, but people in my family. I was reminded of something I had forgotten about. Days after 9/11, my brother who has a darker complexion than I do, was driving on the Interstate, and a white driver in a truck called him a derogatory name for someone in the Middle East, and threw something heavy on his windshield, cracking it, nearly killing him. My brother is East Indian and not Middle Eastern, but hatred doesn’t seem to be too discerning. I think it must be terribly lonely. It must be lonely to not see how other’s life is also your life. I think many people think that the world is out to get them, and that must be very scary. Which is why a church like this is so important. I think many of us act as if it is us against the world. Even if we have good intentions, I think it can feel like that. We can hold the mistaken view that is us vs. racism, us vs climate change, us vs the Republicans, etc. I think many of us have had moments where we feel we are like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up hill, or we might feel like taking a break and watching boulder after boulder fall down the hill, feeling helpless. I think it is an art to fully commit to living our life without falling into the trap that is us vs. anyone or anything.

I learned doing fight choreography on stage that to make a fight look convincing, you have to be really attuned and committed to protecting and not harming your partner. There is a high level of trust, and it is more like a dance, with specific choreography. I think a commitment to our life begins with the commitment to not harm another or ourselves. This actually may be the biggest commitment. A commitment to not making matters worse. It may sound kind of silly, even wimpy, but I’m starting to see this is perhaps the most important thing. It actually may be more important than doing good or something actively beneficial. Just committing to not harming and making things worse. This means not speaking harmful words, harboring thoughts of harm toward others or ourselves, acting with anger and bitterness in our heart, recognizing ignorance and greed in ourselves. To practice applying this kind of restraint I think transforms our lives in ways that are extremely powerful and long lasting.

I’ve heard commitment is a scary word for some. I know more than a few people have told me that they’ve really valued being open and available to whatever comes, so in a way they’ve been committed to non-commitment. This makes sense to me. I think in many ways it is better to not be committed than it is to commit ourselves toward something which is too narrow, and ultimately harmful to ourselves or others. An example of this is feeling you have a responsibility to do something, and then measuring how much or how little you’re doing. We can judge that we’re doing too much, get burnt out, or back off from our original commitment. Or we can feel that whatever we’re doing is not really enough, and maybe we tell ourselves it’s never enough, so we always feel mildly guilty and defensive. I think both of these can be common traps. I see commitment as something very different.

Maybe because I’m an American, and personal responsibility is not a dominant value of ours, I don’t find it as compelling to stay committed to something over time because I feel like I should. I think that doing things out of a sense of responsibility, in my experience, often leads to weak or shallow effort over time. What do I mean by weak or shallow? What I mean is doing something out of a sense of responsibility divides our life in two – between what we want to do and what we feel we should do. Our effort is going to be weak if we divide ourselves up like that. But when we can find a way to put our full selves into what we’re doing, even if it looks like the same amount from the outside, it has a very different quality than if we think we’re just fulfilling our responsibility.

In the past, I’ve had people comment that in my invocation that they were struck by the assertion that this day has an expectation of them. They often interpret that as a sense of responsibility, but that’s not what I mean. I sense that this day is available to us and expects us to fully participate in it. Why? Not because we need to fulfill our responsibilities. It is because it is a joy to give ourselves over to the full living of our life, which is a commitment to the full life of every single one of us. This day is like a gracious host that is expecting us for dinner and dessert, a nice drink and wonderful, stirring conversation. The host is expecting you. Certainly, we don’t need to feel pressured out of some sense of responsibility. Why do we come? We come because we’re hungry, and we’re lonely, and we are being offered a feast with friends. So, when I say this day is expecting you, this is what I mean. It is a feast meant just for you, with friends to enjoy it with. For me that is what this life is. It is not a projection of my to do list, with endless responsibilities I need to fulfill to prove I’m a good person. It is a feast waiting for me to be willing to sit down finally and enjoy it. When I see that your life is also my life, committing to life takes on whole new vistas of joy and purpose. In closing I’ll read a poem related to this by Derek Walcott called “Love after Love,” maybe you’ve heard it:

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.