AT THE WEST CUMMINGTO CHURCH
Sunday morning, May 17, 2009

CALL TO WORSHIP

L: If prayer would do it
P: I’d pray.
L: If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
P: I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.
L: If discourse would do it
P: I’d be sitting with His Holiness every moment he has free.
L: If contemplation would do it
P: I’d have translated the Periodic Table to hermit poems, converting matter to spirit.
L: If fighting would do it
P: I’d already be a blackbelt.
L: If anything other than love could do it
P: I’ve done it already
ALL: and left the hardest for last.
ALL: AMEN.

~ Stephen Levine in “Breaking the Drought” ~

READING

On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We are all there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt and I too am lying there. First we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her . . . .

~~ from James Agee, A Death in the Family ~~

AT 88 A FEW KEYS STILL STRIKE A CHORD

The Sermon by Arnold Westwood

I must begin with words of gratitude. How do I tell you what this community means to me! Being with you this day – able to share the few thoughts that seem to erupt from some un-understandable vent deep inside me – thoughts – bubbles – froth, perhaps – but a product to share with you, nonetheless, on this eve of my 88 th birthday my heart is filled with thanksgiving.

It’s amazing to me to be caught up in “The West Cummington Way”; living here in these hills – so remote, yet so close to the world – finding myself in this magical oasis – able to share in the heady spirits of this room – Steve’s sharing so much of himself in so many ways –nourishing us – feeding us – making each of us strong enough to overcome our fears as we discover – each of us our own God – our own personal God we didn’t know was there – with us all the time – helping each of us discover newfound peace and purpose and power.

Anyhow, it is good to be here with you this day and I am grateful to what happens to me – Sunday after Sunday in this place – grateful to this community for taking me in when I needed your company so badly.

It was eight years ago this coming Memorial Day that Carolyn died. It took me a good while – almost three years of therapy – to discover I was a whole person again in my own right – that half of me had not also died – that all that was Carolyn was not lost – that at least part of her indomitable spirit could now be in me.

And through it all when I needed people – friends – yes, intimates – support – you took me in. I was made a Sherpa. Together we started the Auctions and much more. You welcomed me – with open arms – found places for my energy – let me in and get involved – you did so much to help me overcome my grief. After a while you had me believing I had always belonged here. It was a miracle. And I needed one!

I am so very grateful. Thank you. Thank you.

* * * * * * * *

Now, generally, when one receives a great gift, you want to give something back in return. Perhaps you are expecting me to share some wisdom. I find it hard to fit into the mold of the wise old man. After all, there is nothing so special these days about being 88 – the number of keys there are on a piano – still at 88 most of the people my age are already dead. The rest of us are struggling to keep up with the pace of you who are so much younger than we.

Moreover, I don’t feel so very wise. Actually, a lot of the time now I feel like a kid – sometimes like a teen-ager. Nonetheless, please let me share a few thoughts.

I was talking with a group of friends the other day about aging, telling them that I had lost my fear of death. My dad certainly had prepared me. One day when I was quite little, when bandaging my finger, with the usual twinkle in his eye, he declared, “You know, you’re going to die after this.” We laughed. He made it easy.

Since then I have had, of course, many encounters with death – at a roadside after an accident – at a hospital beside – quite a few precious times in the last days at a parishioner’s bedside preparing for the funeral, picking out music, readings and hymns and what needs to be said – finally, of course, being with Carolyn as she slipped out of consciousness in the midst of a conversation – never to return.

It is mostly we, the living who endure so much of the pain and the loss.

Aging is an altogether different matter. Since the beginning of April I’ve been trying three days a week to work in the fitness room at the Dalton Recreation Center. In addition, I’m getting weekly coaching from a Pilates teacher. Neglect exercise at your peril! Believe me, even after a few weeks of not moving enough, at 88 you start to waste away. And drop off for a year or more and you really have your work cut out for you!

What else can I share with you?

You’d better understand your own temperament.

I need people. I’m not a very good alone. Solitude doesn’t work for me. When I was active in the ministry my life was full of people. Afterwards, in those 17 years that Carolyn and I had the Bed & Breakfast business – those years between my retiring in ’84 and just before her death -- we had all the people we wanted around us.

When you’re elderly and widowed, or younger and divorced, the world does not come to you. If you want company it’s up to you to find your own friends. Emerson tells you how to go about it in his incredible essay – his thesis – “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” – The essay tells us very well how to go about it.

The hard part is loving, as the passage we read together begins to tell us [Buzz Bussewitz found it for us. Thank you, Buzz.]

I pose as no expert on how to be a good lover, though I sense I am a loving person and am sometimes perceived as such.

Emerson’s rule, I believe, also applies. The only way to become loving is by being loved.

I was certainly loved as a child. My mother’s only child, I was born when she was 43 years old. And she loved me totally, unconditionally, almost, if possible, too much. My dad loved me, too. My older brother and two sisters loved me. [Brief explanation: Dad’s first wife tragically drowned. My mom was her first cousin and available as dad’s second wife.] So, little Arnold grew up in a home surrounded by the attention and affection of 5 loving older ones, cuddled yet, unfortunately, over-protected.

First Grade was a different matter. Entering the world of neighborhood kids, wearing glasses, not knowing how to throw a ball or hit one with a bat – always the last one picked when choosing up sides – a good student yet devoid of the social skills ordinary kids gained through peer experience – so elementary school bordered on devastation.

Then, for 6 th and 7 th grades, dad & mom went on the road and had to place me in a boarding school. There I experienced the whole bit of an abusive housemother and sexual molestation.

Redemption slowly began in California where I rejoined my parents. High School was OK; college was great; graduate school was terrific; meeting Carolyn was bliss.

Now, don’t get the idea that all my adulthood was easy. Whose is? I have no need to recite its ups and downs. You’ve had or are having your own. During the last year of my therapy was not so much about losing Carolyn as about my childhood and my father. Simply put, I now feel myself still bathed by my mother’s love.

But, believe me, I have still more to do.

The really, really hard part for me is to truly begin to love myself. I’m discovering for me it all has to begin there. It’s sort of like being retooled. The amount of being loved by family and friends doesn’t do as much as what you have to keep on loving yourself – and it runs all the way from accepting all the complications and embarrassments that come with an overactive bladder to my no longer needing to call attention to my petty virtues and several accomplishments. I know I’ve done a lot. I just don’t need to tell other all the time. My chorus to myself is: “Westwood, leave it alone, you’re OK.”

So, at 88, I still wrestling with my ego needs and expect I will be until I die. And as death approaches I hope they will pretty much disappear. That will be heaven.

In conclusion, I suspect unconditional love must be akin to what so many others experience as the love of God. Love to draw upon when it’s the only love there is.

So now, I use my days and what energy I have doing what I am able. May I give back something of what has been so abundantly given to me – by this incredible church, by my loving family, by the five congregations I’ve been chosen to serve, and above all, by my multitude friends.

And when I’m stupid enough to get discouraged or feel neglected and sorry for myself, I always have the starry nights we are blessed with here up in these quiet hills and I look up at the heavens and all their shining brilliance and know a joy that passeth all understanding.

Friends, All these eruptions are supposed to strike a familiar chord with you. If they do, God bless you. In any case, God bless us all.