Rev. Joseph Boyd

When the weather gets warm, we like to leave doors open with a screen door so we can welcome a nice breeze and the sounds of the outdoors into our homes. We hear various kinds of birds – barred owls, robins, cardinals, and catbirds – birds that sound like a cat. Our three cats will often perch or stand on their hind legs to smell the outdoors and see what’s out there. Sometimes another cat is outside. And their energy suddenly shifts and becomes more intense. They’ve been discovered. And who is this other cat who has discovered them? They don’t really know. And the not knowing can either be curious or quite threatening. Their body straightens up, their tail poofs, and every cell of their body is awake. Perhaps it’s an invader, perhaps it’s a potential friend, maybe a mix of both. They don’t know. I don’t think we’re too different. When a new discovery comes to us we can react in many different ways. I heard a story about children with aging parents, and their father was quite ill.

And the children thought it would be a nice gift to get the father one of those DNA tests that can tell you your ancestry. The children were all excited to see what they might discover. They were Australian and figured they were mostly English, perceiving themselves to be white. They found out when they got the results a high percentage of their DNA was Chinese, and it proved that their father’s father was not the biological father after all. The children who were older were thrilled with the discovery in a way. They’re Chinese, or part Chinese, who knew! The father was devastated finding out his father was not his real father. Discoveries are like that. Sometimes they’re thrilling, sometimes they’re heartbreaking, depending on where you are at a given moment. The thing about discovery is we think perhaps initially that we are discovering something outside of us: whether it’s our father, our ancestry, what we think of as the outside world. But in practice we can’t really discover, without being discovered too. We’re changed in the process of discovery.

I really like the Anne Sexton quote that it doesn’t matter who my father was. It matters how I remember him. You have probably heard before that memory comes from the part of our brain that is also used for creativity. Every time we remember, we are actually creating a new thought each and every single time. It is not like there is a database in our brain full of memories, and we take the same memory out each time. But we often can think that’s true. That our memories are like a photo album, a moment that is tucked away forever. But that’s not really the truth. Memory is an act of creativity; we recreate our reality each and every time we remember. And many of those memories are guided by habits, so it’s likely we’ll remember slightly different variations that seem more or less the same. But that’s not because the memory is stable, it’s because our habits of mind give us the sense of stability. But if that shifts, and it often does shift, we’re back in the process of discovery.

 

I’ve definitely been in the situation, perhaps you have to, where a sibling or someone you know has a completely different recollection of an event or set of events. A common reaction might be: That’s not true, I remember it this way. But I’ve learned to welcome those moments as a process of discovery, not just a discovery about a past event, but a discovery into how my mind works, and being curious about what I have yet to discover. I think anytime we look at the past, we are allowing more of ourselves to be discovered. The stories we have about our past, about who we are, who our fathers are, about what this country is about – all these are important, and there is always more to discover. I find there is a joy in this discovery especially in small moments that can remind us of parts of ourselves. And that discovery can be liberating. I’ll give you an example. I remembered with my siblings that my father who passed away had this strange tick, when he was really excited he would gallop like a horse. In the middle of our small house, he would gallop. And he wasn’t a small man.

The house would seem to shake a little while he galloped from excitement. And he would get excited about things that we’re simple, that I’ve yet to see a grown man get this excited about: something like pizza will be arriving at our door soon. He would get this ball of energy and excitement, and gallop spontaneously. Remembering that moment, opens up possibilities in myself, and that memory is now my own discovery. Now when food is about to arrive, I think: “Wow, this is actually really exciting,” and who knows, maybe I’ll gallop.
I find small moments like that is where the greatest joy of discovery is. It’s not always in the most dramatic or obvious moments, it’s the moments that seem to be about nothing more than a spontaneous, joyful response to being alive, to being a person. This weekend is also Juneteenth, which is now a national holiday, remembering the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. And the theme for the Juneteenth celebration this year in Youngstown is Sankfofa, a very powerful and resonant concept.

It’s an African term, from Ghana, which has been translated to retrieve, or go back and get. The term comes from a proverb that it is not shameful to go back and get what you have lost, there is nothing wrong with going back to get what you have forgotten. Juneteenth is a celebration of life. It’s about emancipation, freedom, and truly feeling that emancipation, liberation and freedom. King said that no one is free until we’re all free. Juneteenth is about remembering and celebrating that possibility. I think we’re just now beginning to recognize that it is impossible to enslave without also enslaving yourself. That’s always been our predicament as Americans. We still think deep down based on habit that we can cut corners and reap benefits at the expense of others, and that belief or habit limits us into a narrower life than is possible right now. It’s a mistake to think that one can be truly liberated, if it requires the cost of human servitude. We still have a myth that if I can just get into the right income bracket, or right room, I can be one of the free and emancipated, and all these people who are left behind, I guess they better just try harder.

We still think that emancipation can be bought or should be earned. The ideals that supported slavery, a market economy that comes at great human and environmental cost, are still very much with us. But I think so is emancipation, liberation, the possibility of joy and celebration. And I think that emancipation may be found in the process of discovery, as long as we don’t forget that we are creative creatures with all the resources at our feet to support us being free as a community.
Sharing those resources is part of the mission of this church, and I think sharing in the joy of being discovered is possible for all of us. If any one of us looks back to our past, to our specific family, from where we’ve come from it is possible to discover almost anything: joy, sorrow, deceit, hope, fear, resilience. It’s all there. And in a real sense it’s all here. It’s here in ways that are incredibly unique and particular to each of us, and ways that are also universal.

And finding that meeting place of our own particularity and the universal is the place of joy. It’s where the greatest discoveries are. Any father here, all of us with fathers, whether we knew them well or not, is part of that discovery. It’s ultimately allowing ourselves to be discovered, to accept there is more here, more to us, than we’re used to thinking.
It all depends on where we enter the story. I think Nikki Giovanni is wise and right. Where we enter any situation, any memory, any relationship it will not guarantee where we end up, but it will help us find the joy of discovery, the joy of being discovered. I’ve sometimes entered the story of my father’s life from different places. I can enter it through the birth of rock n roll. I can enter it through ice cream and peanut butter, two of his favorite foods. I can enter it through a suit and tie, and through his favorite attire, pajamas – silk and wool pajamas.

I can enter it through the upheaval of the 1960’s, I can enter it through the 1980’s, when he looked like Tom Selleck with a thick mustache. I can enter the story of his life now, June 19, 2022, 20 years after his death, a story still being told, created in this moment. There are endless places to enter. Where do we enter to discover liberation, emancipation? I think that will take some creativity on our part. And maybe a bit of wonder. I think if we feel stuck, even imprisoned by a certain set of circumstances or memories, perhaps it would be helpful to pay attention to where we’re entering. And how we’re entering. “Where do you enter? At the same place I enter you with balance and trust and a jazzy sense of adventure.” I think we can develop a trust that we’re up for the adventure. I feel that now during this time. Trusting that we’re up for the adventure may sound on the surface to be kind of glib, especially given the hardships that are here, but I think a certain attitude may be beneficial: an attitude that we are not so much trying to understand, as we are willing to discover together.

Perhaps no one including myself really understands what is happening, or what we should do. Perhaps that’s the wrong question, a distraction really from the most important question: How do we live? What’s a way we can live with balance and trust, and a jazzy sense of adventure? How do we maintain a sense of humor, a sense of wonder? How do we respond to discoveries about ourselves that are either welcome or unwelcome?
A few years ago I might have thought these are distractions, and maybe they are, and that’s the point. I think sometimes we need distractions from the life we are convinced we’re living. And sometimes it’s good to notice there are many different ways we could enter this moment, countless ways actually. And the way we enter is not to try to control our reality, but the opposite, to open ourselves more fully to it. To open to the memories, the yearning, the sadness, and also the love.

To open to the possibilities of entering a story through places we might not have noticed before: to enter through the land, the ecology, the peoples both remembered and perhaps forgotten for generations. To enter a story through the lens of a people who have been enslaved, and then notified of emancipation. To wonder what is enslaving our community today and why, and who will notify us of emancipation. Who will finally tell us there is another way to enter this story, that liberation is here. Who will be the one to show us that? And in the joy of discovery, perhaps we find we already had the answers to all these questions the whole time. The answer was always there: discovering, remembering, creating. Going back to retrieve what was lost. Listening to experiences and stories from different people, being willing to enter from a different place.
There’s something about being in a different space where new ideas and experiences can come. Now that we’re down in Channing Hall, I put the robe away, and we enter worship from a different place.

And we can do that in our lives too at home. We can enter different places without even moving or going anywhere. Just open up the blinds, open up the doors if you have screens, let the world in. Let the problems in too. They’re not expecting an answer, just an acknowledgement, they want to be discovered. Just like us. For all the father’s here, happy father’s day. For those who are able to spend time with their fathers, enjoy that time. For those whose fathers have passed, and those who didn’t really know their fathers, remember the process of discovery is infinite. That’s the case no matter what.