Tomorrow, at 2:00 pm, I will lead the memorial service for Donald Rex Eberhart. I am so honored to be able to do so for Don and Betty and for his family. It will be the last time I lead this congregation from this pulpit, for at least several years. The Ministerial Settlement Office of the UUA, in its guidelines for ministry specifies a Three Year Rule. This is how it reads:

For three years after the completion of a student ministry, ministerial internship, [take note future intern committee members] or interim ministry, a minister may not accept any professional position in the same congregation. This rule also applies to ministers who have done student field work or ministry, or filled other ministerial positions in the congregation.

It is a good rule, and as I wrote in my last column for the church newsletter, it is one I plan to abide by fully and respectfully. The rule is meant to insure that the direct influence of the outgoing interim minister truly comes to an end for a significant enough period that the in-coming settled minister can establish their own place and unique ministry within the congregation in an unfettered way. Lord knows that establishing a durable, deep and mutually caring ministry is, in itself, an arduous enough task without a dis-embodied ghost interfering in the process---let alone an embodied ghost!

So for some of you, perhaps many of you, then, this is in fact goodbye. I will not serve "the Word" to you again.

Difficult. Touching . . . it touches my heart. Necessary. Predictable. Predictable from the very start, since the agreement from the "Get-Go" was that this was an interim ministry, and they usually end after one year, but never more than two. So, yes, Goodbye it is.

And therein lies the subject for a damn good sermon. Let¹s see if I can deliver one last time.

"To live in this world
you must be able do three things:
to love what is mortal:
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."
~ Mary Oliver ~

The amazing and so difficult paradox here is that the right time to let go comes with each and every moment! But how can that be, you may wonder, if we are tasked with taking hold of life, with trusting it to be there for us, with trusting our own capacity to hold on to what is good, how can we do that, if we are also supposed to be letting go every moment?

Such a powerful question. Such a leading question. Leading us into the terrain where authentic, courageous and passionate life is really lived, at the very root of paradox. Hold on, with courage and trust and will and deep, deep desire. Let go, with willingness, with sincere abandon, with trust and with vulnerability. Hold on. Let go. Hold on. Let go.

I have been privileged for little over a month to attend a very special group that meets each week in Berkeley in the study of Claudio Naranjo, one of the world's great researchers of human consciousness. It is lead by a woman, a very wise crone, a story teller par excellence, a seer, and a genius of community. In the course of our time together, she tells a story after which, for about twenty minutes, we step into the most profound silence I have ever experienced; she then asks us to imagine something that is usually taken from the story. Last Sunday, after we had each shared the images that had come to us, she took us further. She took us one, very deep step further; she asked, "What is it, that after you let it go completely, continues to abide in your deepest self?" "What is it, that after you let it go completely, continues to abide in your deepest self?" The silence that I entered, that all of us there entered in that little book-lined room, was enormous. It was liberating. It was stunning, stunning to the busy, gabbling mind so wordy and hyperactive. It was a silence that put all conflict to rest. It was a silence into which I fell, like a stone in a clear, deep and very still pond. It was a silence that consumed me, that surrounded me and filled me. I want to tell you what I discovered in response to that question, but first...

I am reminded of a poem by Antonio Machado, it is called Last Night and is a mastery of that deep paradox of holding on, of experiencing passionately---and of letting go. In the poem he begins each short stanza with two lines: "Last night, as I was sleeping, / I dreamt---marvelous error!---." and then he goes on with a vivid image of what he dreamt. As we move into the poem we realize that it is not an error he is dreaming of at all, it is, rather, a metaphor, a metaphor that keenly, richly, deeply describes his true inner experience. The paradox is that his conscious mind must label such metaphor as an error. The tension that is set up is right at the center of liberated consciousness---for, you see, our authentic and unfettered awareness finds not only its fullness, but also its ultimate freedom, by holding the tension of opposites, of polarities, in stillness and compassion; when we do this, we receive an opening into liberating and life-giving insight. But I'm talking too much. Like the late Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek said in the wonderful film rendering of Nikos Kazantzakis' book, "Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything." So, rather than weigh this poem down further, let me read it:

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt---marvelous error!---
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt---marvelous error!---
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt---marvelous error!---
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt---marvelous error!---
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

This is a sermon about saying goodbye. That is why the language I must use, must include vital and active, living and life-giving metaphor. Metaphor that is at home in, that gives rise to, paradox.

To live in this world, fully, we must ultimately embrace the paradox that fairly shouts in our death-fearing ears that letting go is an act, not of resignation, but of liberation---not of defeat, but of maturity and fullness.

In her second candidating service, on the day that you voted to call her as the other settled minister for your shared ministry team, the Rev. Amy Zucker told a Lithuanian Jewish tale about a Rabbi whose congregation said of him that when he went into prayer, he went right up to heaven. In truth, each week, he actually went out to serve the poor and those in need. One man, who secretly watched the Rabbi serving the poor when he was supposed to be in private prayer, would always say, when the people said their Rabbi went right up to heaven, this man would say to himself, ". . . if not higher." The implication is clear: what is higher than other-worldly spirituality is this- worldly compassionate action.

When we act upon our love for the world, we know that kind of action. When we allow ourselves the deep wisdom and strengthening that comes in affirming that our lives do indeed depend upon our loving the world, we know that kind of action.

And when we let go, when we let go of our demand that things should not change, that people should not go out of our lives, even if only for three years; when we let go of our demand that we should not have to experience loss and pain, the very act of that letting go is grounded in compassion, is an act of compassionate action---and it is an act that frees us and empowers us to even further and even more focused action.

What I became aware of during the group on Sunday, as I sat in silence with the question "What is it, that after you let it go completely, continues to abide in your deepest self?"---what I became aware of was my breath. It is always there no matter whether I am conscious of it or not, just as you all have been breathing, in and out---in and out---throughout this whole service without being conscious of it, deeply, unconsciously trusting that it will go on, that your living body will respond and act to bring air into its depths for nurture, for life. What is more profound, however, is to be conscious of your breath, and still to let it go, still to let your body do its work of sustaining itself, and this something that you call your "self." And that was where the deeper awareness came for me Sunday night in response to the question, "What is it, that after you let it go completely, continues to abide in your deepest self?"

It was consciousness itself.

The problem is, for me, and probably for all of you, most of the time we are actually not fully conscious---most of the time we are, as the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche points out, most of the time we are centralized into our selves: consumed by inner voices, inner ruminations and floods of feelings that bind us to maintaining a personal identity and a vision of the world that actually misses the truth of what is . . . by a millimeter, and that millimeter makes all the difference between being awake and being . . . not awake. What I saw and sustained for the period of our silence was that my consciousness is a vital reality that is inextricably bound to/with/throughout my very being; and, that being "in touch" with it is an enormously empowering and vital act, that, in fact, is the expression of my deepest and fullest humanness.

Perhaps this seems abstract to you today, but I can assure you that it was as palpable as my own flesh, as practical as my eyesight---and around that experience was the sense that it was more durable than my body; that it was, and is now, connected to the world around me in ways I, in what I think of as my self, my daily living self, simply does not comprehend . . . fully, and most of the time, even partially.

It is important to offer each other the consolation of our care and regard for one another as we say goodbye. It is important that we share the very human feelings of respect, loss, emptiness, sadness and hope. This is all so important. I have been sharing that with many of you in recent days, and will continue to do so for another week.

What I want to leave you with, in addition to all of that very good, warm sharing is my conviction that we are so very much more than we realize as human beings, that there is a field of consciousness that we can learn to live out of that is sustaining beyond anything we can even imagine. I also want to share that for me, the most significant experiences of that reality have come as a result of my commitments to serve others, and to risk moving into life out of a deep sense of Not Knowing. Not Knowing what is going to happen next; not knowing how I will manage financially; Not Knowing whether I will truly make a difference on the streets of San Francisco, in its halls of governance and its institutions of service, and with those who suffer the most from a system that is designed to maintain the false reality of "Us" and "Them." It is in profoundly accepting that we truly do not know what will happen next that we can be open to authentically give from unfettered hearts, from a place that is not attached to an outcome of our making.

Albert Schweitzer, world famous humanitarian and Unitarian, said it so succinctly. Two statements: "One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve." And, second, lest we make the first into pabulum, he also wrote, truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now---always, and indeed then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances.

May all of you, in the days, months, and, years ahead---which I deeply hope you will be blessed to experience---have the good fortune of giving authentic service to those truly in need. May you also come into a living experience of the truth that has no special time, but is now, is always, and that calls us to risk and live deeply as fully alive human beings.

Blessings on you all.

Ashé-Amen-Ameen. Shalom. Blessed Be.
Gracias y Namasté.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Kurt Kuhwald