This is not the first time I have stood in this pulpit, though not on a Sunday morning.  About three years ago, Steve Van Kuiken, Joanne Sizoo and I did a “service of healing for those involved in abortion.” It was very powerful. I’ve attended concerts here; I’ve attended Sunday services here.  I feel very much at home here. Yet I realize that while some of you know me by name and some of you have seen me before, or talked with me, you don’t know who I am.  Except for the bio–and how much can you put in one of those?–you don’t know by what authority I come to speak with you this morning; you don’t know what experiences I’ve had, what griefs or what healings; what storms I’ve walked through or how long I’ve been in them.

So I’ll begin by telling you some things about me. For the most part, I’m an Optimist.  My favorite book of childhood was Pollyanna–the glad girl.  My favorite heroine of song and dance was Nellie Forbush, the corny Kansas nurse from South Pacific.  My optimism has served me well.  I remember the time I appeared before the Unitarian Universalist Ministerial Fellowship Committee–that last hurdle before ordination. The rumored test of that year was that you must have a personal theology of “Evil” in order to convince the Committee you are eligible for ministry.  I prepared mine, and practiced it over and over until it sounded spontaneous. I can’t recall now everything I said, but it included something about Evil not being something out there; evil, I said, was connected to the shadow side of each of us; a personal struggle that all of us had to endure. Someone on the Committee asked me, as the last question, what was my personal.    My mind went blank.  I couldn’t think of anything wrong with me.  I was kind, and loving; intelligent and thoughtful; I was optimistic and . . . good looking.  I could see at that moment no shadows on my own soul. They aren’t going to pass me, I thought, pessimistically.  So I told them the truth. I said: I’ve been thinking optimistically for the last two weeks, only positive thoughts to get me up for this ordeal. And I can’t for the life of me think of a negative thought at the moment.

They laughed, and they said, Enjoy your ministry.

So I’m still an optimist.  But like the author of the reading Transcending Boundaries, I find my optimism no longer shuts out negative experiences, no longer makes me forget sorrows and travails, no longer shuts down the grief process or dries up my tears.  And this is a very good thing.  Too much optimism–that’s a shadow side I’ve struggled against. I’ve had to learn to take solace from my griefs and nurture from my fears.

The year I began seminary was such a joyful year.  I had taken a three-year sabbatical from my job in the business world to write a novel. I had looked at the very scary possibility of not returning to a well-paying job to throw myself into the unknown of professional ministry.  I had survived bargaining with God: Okay, God, if this is what you want, see that my house sells, I’ll have enough money to pay for my education –and took the cash payment that came two weeks after I put on the house on the market, and was accepted by the seminary of my choice. I loved the work.  I adored my community of colleagues. I knew I had made the right choice.

The year I began seminary was the most awful year of my life. My son, who loved being alone and had taken a job in the mountains of Colorado where he was out of contact for weeks at a time, disappeared.  Vanished. Left no reason, no trace. My family rallied round and we hired a private detective.  My sister and mother agreed to be the contact point since I didn’t have a private phone at school. They told me to go on with what I was doing. What a year.

There’s an old African American spiritual that goes like this:

I’ve been in the storm so long, children.
Been in the storm so long.
I’ve been in the storm so long, children,
Gimme a little time to pray.

That’s what it felt like.  Being in a big storm.  You know how when the winds get so strong you can’t keep your feet?  You know how when the rain is so heavy that you feel like you’re breathing water?  You know how when the thunder is so loud you can’t hear anything else, can’t believe anything else is going on outside its precinct?  That’s one of the ways I remember that year.  Been in the storm so long.

But an optimist can’t live in a storm.  It’s not in her nature.  It’s not her element.  I retreated to hope.  I took shelter in hard work.  Oh, thank God for being in seminary.  I don’t know when I’ve had to work so hard, or enjoyed it more.  I could blow around, taking extra courses, and create counter-winds you wouldn’t believe.  I could argue theory all day and the warmth of my arguments would dry out rain or tear.  I could talk philosophy all night and the sound of my own voice drowned out anything and everything. 

I was severely anemic that year and I often fainted when I bled out each month.  Been in the storm so long.

I kept up the pace and increased it.  I did my required academic work in two years instead of three.  I got one of the best internships available way over on the west side of the continent where I’d never been before–Seattle, Washington.  It was nothing like home, like the Midwest.  Nothing to remind me of anything I’d done or been before. I could make myself up as a went along–myself and a life without care to go with it.  I graduated seminary with the prize in academics.  I was called to my first church before any of my classmates–back in Seattle, where I’d never before and had no family and no friends and nothing to remind me of anything I’d done or been before.

I was lonely in Seattle because it’s hard to make friends in the ministry, and I got married to a man I really didn’t love, but who was kind.  Been in the storm so long.

I took on a second church because they were both small and didn’t need me full time–at first.  They both grew.  I was a successful minister. I joined the local ministerium and did all kinds of volunteer work with them. Peace rallies.  Food pantries. Interfaith services.  One of my congregations bought a new and bigger church building and we had room to bring in the outside world.  I helped to start a shelter organization for local gays and lesbians.  I helped to start a book store.  We considered sanctuary and a pre-school. I appeared on radio and television as the liberal minister spokesperson, the one whose church didn’t mind if she spoke out on controversial subject. I was busy.

My marriage wasn’t working and my spiritual tank was running dry.  I couldn’t sleep and I started to have anxiety attacks.  Been in the storm so long. Gimme a little time to pray.

Gimme a little time.

But I had vast amounts of time.  I had all those hours when other people slept. And I did pray.  I blessed people and I blessed buildings.  I asked for help for anyone who needed it. Why that’s when I wrote most of the prayers that ultimately went into the book that was printed this spring. I could pray interfaith prayers that didn’t offend Christians and Jews and Muslims at the same time.  I was asked to pray everywhere, including the chambers of the state senate.  I was good at prayer. But I was not touched by prayer.

 From what I’ve seen and read, many of us–most of us–when confronted by a personal storm of monumental stature, get busy.  We get busy to build a shelter against the storm, and brick by brick we shut out the storm, and shut out the rest of the world; shut out any possibility of being touched by prayer. Three years of seminary and four years of serving everyone but myself, and  I knew that no matter how strong my shelter was, I was still in the middle of the storm. I was angry. I thought I’d gotten used to not knowing where my son was, and I had to admit to myself that I hadn’t–that I couldn’t look at old photographs or recollect old memories of joy.  Seven years after my son disappeared, I finally had to sit down with myself and reach into this armor I had erected around the event, had to try to grasp a reality that had no physical presence. I had to allow myself to think negative thoughts. I had to learn how to pray all over again.

 I prayed let me feel my pain, so that I might be relieved of it.  I prayed, let me consider the awful reality of what is–that my son is not living among us and there is a very strong possibility that he is dead.

I prayed, Been in the storm so long.  Gimme a little time to pray. For the first time in seven years, I wept. For the first time in seven year I prayed for understanding and peace. May he rest in peace.  May I know the depth of my sorrow. May I feel the pain of my grief.  May I feel anything again, something else beside numbness, self- inflicted. May I feel my appropriate anger. May I allow the storm to pass.

Funny thing about this kind of experience.  Once I got the knack of this deep, personal praying, of getting in touch with my real feelings and my shadow and the evil that I was creating in my physical body with my spiritual denial, I wanted to share it.  I told my family that I had to allow that my son was dead so I might grieve. And they were so angry. They told me I was an unnatural mother. They told me I had to keep hoping.  I was telling them they’d been in the storm so long and needed a little time to pray. And they heard me saying to them, You’re doing it wrong.

I told my colleagues at the next ministers’ meeting that I had been in denial for seven years and was just beginning to grieve the loss and to heal.  And they were angry. They told me I need to have faith.  I was telling I”d been in the storm so long. And they heard me say, I’m a person of faith who can’t dispense faith.  I knew then I wasn’t the only person singing that song without even knowing the words.  Been in the storm so long, children.  Gimme a little time to pray.

Mine is not a unique story except for the details.  There is no house that has never known grief. There is no community that has not suffered sorrow, disappointment or a fear of failure. My story is not even exceptional, except to me. There is no individual here that could not tell a story of loss and grief.  Your community’s recent shared sorrow is yet an open wound, and the telling of that story has only begun.