We First Community clergy were asked to write a column for the church newsletter based on the theme of Senior Minister Glen Miles’ January 2021 sermon series, “The Next Right Thing.” This is a bit expanded version of what I wrote:
Timothy Egan, a New York Times columnist I respect, had a recent Op-Ed piece entitled “The Next 3 Months are Going to be Pure Hell:” that is, winter is here and the pandemic and its effects are far from over.
Actually, the pandemic allowed me to do what many people in the country were not able to do this Christmas, to be with my family in my hometown of Aurora, Illinois, during actual Christmas week, for the first time in maybe 25 years.
I am fortunate. We all quarantined ahead of time. I tested negative for COVID after being compromised due to a hospice visit, and so felt safe to not be carrying the virus. Because I was busy up until that time, my oldest daughter volunteered to have my presents delivered to her home, and to even wrap them, a gift from heaven. The mother of my three children, and her husband, a longtime friend of mine, hosted us all on Christmas Day with food and celebration. I could watch musicals with the teenage granddaughters, play on the floor with the five little boys, and hold 4-month-old granddaughter Aria, all unmasked.
But, you know, there were many Christmases, when we were first divorced, the children were young, and I was living in Columbus and all of them in Illinois, when those visits were so incredibly heart-breaking, when there was still so much tension between their mother and me, when it hurt so much to say goodbye that I’d be crying as soon as I left their driveway. Meanwhile, the three kids developed a ritual of all running down the sidewalk with me as I drove away, and my heart heaves and I tear up even in the memory.
Although it was wonderful to be with them, it was also pure hell. But it was a deep pain worth having, hard as it was to keep going back, to keep going back again and again. And so I did. And there is nothing heroic about it. Though in my early 30’s I was emotionally immature, allowing resentments I had to build up without being honest about them, and not communicating unmet needs I imagined I had. My own narcissism was unconscious. Added to it all, was my own misguided thinking that everyone would be better off if I was on my own—my own personal “It’s A Wonderful Life” experience of worthlessness. Because everyone involved, including me, was able to cope and to go through, and work through, the pain and suffering involved, everyone has actually fared well, but great prices were paid by my family and me. Finally, I am blessed to have extremely forgiving children. There is nothing heroic about it: I just couldn’t keep away from those little loves, much as it hurt to leave them time and again.
What does this have to do with “the next right thing?” Just showing up is often the most difficult thing anyone can do. Exemplifying this in my January 3 sermon I use this portion of John Blase’s poem, the bravest thing:
maybe the bravest thing
is opening your eyes in the
morning and placing your
two feet on the cold floor and
rising up
against the gravity
of the night.
maybe that’s the brave thing
from which all other bravery flows,
the bravery to seek ye first.
maybe that’s the single thing
God requires of you,
the spiritual discipline
that takes all your will to muster.
Maybe the next right thing is just placing your two feet on the cold floor in the morning and rising up against the gravity of the night.
Timothy Egan ends his essay by offering this advice to get through the next three months: “Hibernation—taking a cue from our fellow warm-blooded mammals. Looking inward, discovering the nuance and overlooked dimensions of things long neglected.”
This is a natural mammalian move in winter: to hunker down, to take the inner journey—not as a road to feeling sad and depressed—but to go deeper than that to discover the “nuanced and overlooked dimensions of things long neglected,” like the mysterious treasure trove of riches at the center of our being.
The next right thing could be to do nothing at all. Just show up. Just be. And maybe discover, by simply being present, the deeper Love that is our true Ground and Source.
– Rev. David Hett is the Spiritual Director of The Burkhart Center
