Rev. Joseph Boyd
I remember where I was the first time I heard the World Trade Centers fell. I was living on the West Coast, and both towers had fallen by the time I arrived at school at 9 am Pacific time. I was 15, beginning my freshman year of high school. I’m sure many of you can remember where you were when you heard the news, many of you I know were fully grown adults on September 11, 2001. I was thinking about those who are entering their freshman year of high school this year or last year and wondering how Covid-19 will shape their understanding of life. It is common to characterize the generation I’m in, as the generation that was shaped by 9/11. We were old enough to know the world before, and most of our life will be lived after that event. I’m sure the generations behind me will be shaped by Covid-19 in their own way. Most definitely tragedy shapes us in ways that are profound and elemental. But I don’t think that is the only power that shapes our life: the tragedies that happen to us both personally and on a national and global scale.

There is something else that has the power to shape our life in lasting and profound ways, and I would like to spend the rest of this morning discovering together this other thing.

I have been shaped dramatically by Unitarian Universalism, and Unitarian Universalist congregations. In a time of doubt and searching, and simple curiosity about what it really meant to live a good life. I certainly brought all of my experiences: everything that ever happened to me, every relationship I had, every world event I lived through, including 9/11. Like any human being, like any single one of you, I brought the complexity of being the product of both what has happened to me in my life, and also that something else.

The theme for this month is Embracing Possibility, and this theme was chosen in May of 2021 when there was great optimism that we were turning a corner in the pandemic, and soon would be finished with masking, distancing, and quarantining.

As we know, the Fall has been different than many of us have anticipated. I know there is great disappointment, some anger, and an overall deflation of the human spirit, which I feel both one on one in talking with many of you, and I feel it on a national level. The national mood right now seems to be exasperation. And it would be tempting to assume that the sum of our experience in this moment is dictated by what is happening to us. It most definitely impacts us, and this impact must be respected, and it’s good to come together as a community where we can be reminded there is also something else that dictates our experience.

I think this something else is our birthright, something that comes naturally to each and every one of us. I think this something else comes to both the sage and the fool, and everybody in between. I think this something else comes to the religious person and the skeptic, and everybody in between.

I think this something else comes to the courageous and the fearful, and everyone in between. I think this something else comes to the optimist and the pessimist, and everybody in between. I think it comes to us when we are young and when we are older, and everybody in between. I think here at UUYO we cultivate this sense of something else.

          I call it something else because at first it was difficult to put words to what it really is. But I’ll try. This something else is the capacity that each and every one of us has to form a response to what happens to us, we have the power to form a response to life that is true and life giving. And history has shown that if you get a group of two or more people together who wish to cultivate and practice this life-giving response, it becomes possible for an average human being to accomplish this.

In short, if someone asked me if 9/11 has shaped our world and our nation, I would say yes, but our response has shaped us much more than the actual event.

And the same can be said during this time of Covid-19, social unrest, and rampant injustice. It is not the event that shapes us most, it is our response to these events. But the funny thing is, if we only just react to what happens, we can forget that we have this great power as our birthright: the power to intentionally respond.

I’ve been thinking how I’d like to respond during this time, and I invite you to imagine with me. I would really like beauty to have the last word. I would like beauty, the beauty of a human life, the beauty of being alive with each other, to be what guides my living and my endeavor. I would like to meet fear and hatred with the overwhelming and unceasing power of beauty. Each season has its beauty, each season in nature, each season in a human life. I would like to remind the hopeless and the weary, including the hopeless and weary parts of myself, that we are surrounded by beauty.

When I say beauty, I’m talking about more than aesthetics, or how something appears. I’m talking about a radiance, a zest, a sense of life being complete and itself in every moment.

When I look back to 2001 after the towers fell, we also saw the collective and unstoppable beauty of New York City coming together as a community to rebuild and build up each other. We witnessed the beauty of honoring those in the fire department, the police, and all those who risked and sometimes lost their life in the hope of saving someone else. We witnessed the best that our humanity can offer – people giving blood, people volunteering, bars giving free drinks so people could come and just be together. We witnessed great beauty this past year, a response to death and horror, that can too quickly be forgotten. Nurses, front line workers, people who have responded with care and concern, and humaneness to an overwhelming situation.

I know now there is great fatigue, especially among hospital staff and frontline workers. I know that working in the school system is overwhelming right now. But we do get a response that we can find worthy and live giving, and by supporting each other as a community in articulating that response for ourselves, we make it possible to live into. This chosen response becomes our compass, our North Star, and when we get distracted and overwhelmed, this committed response can right us and show us where we are. It can help us to be impacted by our circumstances, but not at their complete mercy.

I’m grateful to be part of a church that allows me to choose a response to life, a church that gives me the support and tools I need to live into that response. I’m grateful for the reminder that service is love: an act of service is both a form of self-love as well as a love for our world and the love of being alive.

An act of service reminds us that we are not alone in our predicament. An act of service reminds me that we are more than the collection of what happens to us. There is also something else, something else that makes us human, something else that is our birthright.

Embracing possibility is simpler than we think. Embracing possibility is clearly feeling and noticing that there is something else that is part of our life, a capacity for response that is life giving and boundless. I think each of us is more than we think we are. We are more than the collection of our circumstances, more than what happens to us, or what doesn’t happen for us. We are shaped by all of that, but there is something else. I think that may be one of the key ingredients of transformation, which is the heart of our mission. We come to realize that each of us possesses this something else, and this something else is not extraordinary, it’s common: in fact, it’s what we have in common.

There is a beauty to this time of year when the promise of Fall is in the air. Beauty can be poignant and full of yearning and memory. Those are the feelings I tend to have in the Fall, a kind of wistfulness, a kind of introspective wonder at the beauty of fallen leaves, the wonder of a fox, the wonder at being alive for another season. I notice the gradual changes in sunlight, how it gets just slightly more muted even when it’s at its brightest. My favorite Fall colors are in Youngstown. I prefer them to New England and the Mid-Atlantic. I don’t need the shocking, bright colors: the bright reds and yellows. I prefer the subtle muted colors you get here, a softer entrance into Fall. I like driving in Mill Creek Park, and seeing the rows of trees that line Lake Glacier, and I like to see the gathering of leaves that fall into the lake. We’re not quite there yet, but I’m looking forward to that.

And it may sound counter-cultural, but I’m looking forward to the months ahead. I know that the news is dire, and there are a lot of facts to feel discouraged about.

But I’m more interested in a response, in a response to life, a response to being alive during this time. And this is the best time ever to be alive in human history. We are on the cusp of realizing how much power each of us really has – not just the power of destruction, but the power of reconstruction, the power of renewal, the power each of us has to embrace possibility. One of those possibilities is tenderness – a tender response we can offer each other, a sign of our connection to each other. Sometimes just a simple smile, a nice comment in the chat box, sometimes just turning your camera on – that’s all that’s needed sometimes to show us possibilities.

When the world pulls back, and goes deeper into the ground, deeper into itself, letting go of what is no longer needed – there is great beauty in that. But most of the leaves I see are still green. We are still at the tail end of Summer, and I’m reminding myself to enjoy that.

The quote on our Wayside Pulpit sign facing Elm Street is from Kierkegaard: “Hope is passion for the possible.” Passion comes in many forms. It is not always extroverted and demonstrative. Sometimes it is quiet and steady. Sometimes it is just a small lit candle, not a raging bonfire. Passion is this “something else.” Passion is this beauty. It is the beauty of this season.

The chalice symbolizes this passion. We light it every Sunday as a reminder that when the light goes out, you must take the action of lighting it. And when we put it out at the end, this is not a defeat or a tragedy, it is the natural flow of time and things coming to an end. We can tolerate ends, because we know they are also new beginnings. We remind ourselves of that each Sunday. We teach each other not to be afraid – not to be afraid of the seasons changing, not to worry about the changing light, but to hold fast to what is beautiful and worthy – our connection to one another – something that survives every change, in every season.

I think it is the greatest journey any of us can take, in deciding how we intend to respond to being alive. It’s a great adventure to join other travelers in this intention to get in touch with this passion at the heart of our living. It is a joy to realize that we can respond to tragedy with unity, service, and smiles to each other. It’s really not a big deal. It’s just human. It’s part of us. It’s just our birthright, something that came along with us in being born. I am grateful to be alive during the greatest time in human history, in one of the best cities in the world. I can’t believe my great fortune in having found this place, and my finding you here. I trust where there are two or more of us gathered, a response to our life is possible. I’m reminded there is great beauty that surrounds each moment of our lives – that was true last year, and it is true now, in this season where we get the chance to respond by embracing possibilities for tenderness, justice, and humane compassion for ourselves and each other.