A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—or maybe it was an alternate universe—there was a ship called The Rainbow. The Rainbow carried Unitarian Universalists to places far and wide. There’s a famous story about The Rainbow, and maybe you’ve heard it. It goes something like this:
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from a New Bedford port
Aboard a tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,The skipper brave and sure
A few UUs set sail that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Rainbow would be lost, The Rainbow would be lost.
The ship set ground on the shore of some uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The skipper too,
The millionaire and her wife,
A movie star
The professor and Marianne,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.
So … our heroes have found themselves stranded on a desert island, but just as the original cast of Gilligan’s Island seemed to want for nothing—plus they had all those camera crews milling about—our intrepid fellow UUs have access to food, water, and shelter, not to mention craft beers and unoaked chardonnay. But, heavenly days, their phones don’t work, so they have no way to call for help, and since the island is uncharted, the Coast Guard doesn’t know it exists. So the consensus is that they’re going to be stranded for quite some time and they may as well hunker down.
The first few days are rough, as everyone has to detox from their phone addiction. They make it through, though, thanks to someone having a deck of cards on them and one of the craftier passengers fashioning a makeshift cribbage board. (It takes two days alone just to explain the rules to the minister.)
And then, much to everyone’s surprise, something wonderful happens: Time slows down. Pulse rates drop, blood pressures stabilize, and the tropical colors, scents, and sounds that surround our friends captivate them. The iridescence of parrots, literal flying rainbows, the trill of spoonbills and tanagers, the floral and fruity fragrances of coconut and papaya wafting through the air … if our shipwrecked protagonists weren’t so worried about their situation, they’d swear they’d landed in Paradise.
But there’s only so much cribbage one can play, and after a time, everyone is confronted with the same question: What now? How do I spend my hours? My days? I have no idea how long I’ll be here. How can I not merely pass the time, but spend time meaningfully? Where can I find joy in the midst of all this strandedness?
Well. Aren’t these the questions we sometimes ask ourselves even when we’re off island, stranded, if you will, on our big blue marble? I mean, barring space travel, here we are. We have no idea how long we’ll be here. How do we not merely pass the time, but spend time meaningfully?
I suppose the answer has many parts, but today I’d like to focus on joy. It happens to be our worship theme for April, but I think I’d want to go there anyway. I think we could all use some joy reminders, for it can feel a bit challenging to find joy in the midst of the present age.
So let’s pretend we’re on that island in the sea. Don’t worry, you will be brought back to shore safe and sound by around 11 o’clock. Imagine you’ve brought a tote bag, in fact it’s the only item you brought on board. And in that bag is what brings you joy.
Notice I didn’t say “the things that bring you joy.” I brought my bag with me today, but I’d like you to think of its contents not as things, but as symbols. Each of them speaks to something invisible. And even though this is my bag, my island joy survival kit, I’ve packed what I hope are some universals, some generic joy reminders that speak to our common human experience.
So, what’s in the bag? Five symbols.
Hourglass
Time. Look how easily it can be contained! The sand in this hourglass runs out in thirty minutes. It’s about a handful of sand, which is roughly about 10,000 grains. Doesn’t that make a half hour seem like more than half an hour?
Just think how large an hourglass for our entire lifetime might be. What if there were a web page showing us our hourglass and how much time we had left? www.lifetime.ugh. Funny, but when I typed in that made-up web address, Microsoft Word automatically created a hyperlink, which took me to a page that said, “That site can’t be reached.” And that’s the joy of it: We don’t know. We never know just how big our own hourglass is, which on the one hand is a troubling uncertainty, but on the other hand is the very reason we don’t simply spend our lives watching the sand fall from top to bottom.
The late Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church liked to say that religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. Whether we dwell on this fact or not, it is that uncertainty of exactly how much time we do have that sparks what might be called the joy impulse—the will and desire to find joy in the tiniest of moments, like marveling at a vibrantly colored parrot resting on a branch nearby, or letting a rainbow flag remind us of the simple fact that we love everyone, and that everyone has an inherent worth and dignity.
The reminder here is this: Time is a friend. It’s a uniquely human dimension—I doubt the planet Jupiter is worrying about the passage of time—and it pokes and prods us to claim our joy, which, believe it or not, we can choose to do at any moment.
Telescope
Ah. We could have used this on our boat! Maybe we wouldn’t have wound up marooned.
This telescope is here to remind us to gaze up at the stars, not to guide our way, but to maintain our sense of awe.
Awe is a difficult emotion to define. What we do know is that it lifts our mood — by shifting our perspective outward, beyond the self and toward something extraordinary. It’s a sense of wonder, a sense that, the more we cultivate it, the greater our capacity for joy—and the greater our reach for an extraordinary moment, a moment of silent awe.
Awe makes you pause. The fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system dials back a little. You might feel more calm. You definitely are stilled, pulled away from the ordinary, reminded that for you, the universe was made.
It can come from something grand such as the shifting hues of an aurora borealis. Or the tiny geometry of a fragile insect. Scents, sounds or tastes can spark it, too.
In Unitarian Universalism, a transcendent sense of mystery and wonder is the first source of inspiration for our living tradition. I think it’s first for a reason.
Mystery Box
Know what this is? It’s a mystery box. This reminds me of another mystery box a young boy encountered nearly 50 years ago in a magic shop.
And no, that boy wasn’t me. It was J.J. Abrams, the Hollywood director. Abrams, who has brought us Star Wars and Star Trek movies, as well as the TV series Lost, recalls one day when he was a boy and his grandfather took him to a magic shop in New York City where he lived. There Abrams purchased what was called a Mystery Magic Box—a big cardboard box with a giant question mark on the outside. The box cost fifteen bucks, but inside were fifty dollars’ worth of magic tricks. So, a bargain. But you didn’t know what you’d bought until you got home and opened the box. I can tell you that as a kid magician, that would have been like the best Christmas ever.
Abrams is 58 now, and he still has that box. In fact, he keeps the box in his office. But all these decades later, he has never opened that box. It’s still sealed with the original packing tape. Abrams says that his box represents infinite possibility. That it represents hope and potential. That mystery is the catalyst for imagination, and imagination is something that has served Abrams very well. Of his Magic Mystery Box, Abrams said, “Maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge.”
If you think of what theology is, literally, thinking about God—the word derives from the Greek theos for god, lowercase g, and logos for words or utterances—then just about any theology, including one that is not god-centered, is essentially a theology of mystery. And that’s what makes our fourth principle, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, all the more, well, meaningful.
Because we’re not just searching for truth; we’re searching for how to live with more questions than answers. That’s the meaning part. And it’s not about finding joy in the answers, although that is a perfectly fine outcome. The greater joy is in the search itself, joy in the many discoveries we make along the way. Our journey through this life in fact takes us to many islands—and mystery itself is an island in a sea of knowledge.
Or, as Abrams said, “My gosh. There are mystery boxes everywhere!”
Paintbrush
Now, we have some fine artists among us at First Parish, and not just painters. We have woodworking artisans, bakers, chefs, farmers practicing soil sorcery, chandlers … and, I am sure, a few poets and writers of prose, fiction or non-.
But this brush is here in my bag to paint a bigger picture, one about creativity. An act of creativity brings joy—just think of the making of a pound cake, where the baker enjoys the doing—notice that word, en-joy—and the result, a rich and buttery poundcake, brings joy to those who get to eat it.
Creating, though, is even larger than that. It is also an act of faith. In his book, The Source of Human Good, Henry Nelson Wieman, a Unitarian Universalist minister and liberal theologian, wrote that the source of human good is something he called creative interchange. Creative interchange as the act of living together to co-create the conditions for continued creativity. In other words, the more we allow ourselves and others to be creative and think creatively, the more good we do in the world. And there’s joy in that.
Wieman, though, believed creativity is not limited to artistic expression but is fundamental to all aspects of life, fueling human freedom and ethical development. He saw a commitment to creativity as a means to enhance human freedom and promote solidarity, care, and justice within communities.
It's almost as if we have a deal with God: We were given a world in which to create, and whether it is a painting or a chair or a Japanese haiku, whether it is thinking of ways to resist tyranny or put on a fashion show fundraiser, whenever we create we are adding to the world’s beauty, acting a bit godlike in our ability to fashion something out of nothing.
And so we are nothing less than co-creators of this world, and there can be joy in the authorship.
Hammer
What’s this doing in here? I suppose it could help us build a tiki hut, but I suspect this is in here to symbolize the joy we take in building something worthwhile. Whether it is a more just and equitable world or a platform from which to shout, to speak truth to power, when we all work toward a common goal, it isn’t just the goal that brings us joy—because, let’s face it, sometimes we don’t reach our goal, or, as with civil rights, we see hard-won gains clawed back. It’s that we take joy in the journey. Joy in working together and being together.
Yesterday, those of us who took part in Hands Off! rallies around the country may have stopped for a moment to take a look around and see all the people, or if some of us watched activity online, and if this cause was important to you, it likely lifted your spirits to know not only are you not alone, but there are multitudes reaching out to one another in love. Putting the hammer down.
So those are a sampling of joy reminders. You may have a different set, smaller, larger, or maybe your bag is empty because you prefer to improvise. All perfectly okay. The point is not what fits in your bag, because in reality, real joy cannot be contained, and besides, you can’t be dragging around a heavy tote bag all over an island or a planet.
No, the real container for your island joy survival kit is boundless and limitless, porous and flexible, allowing your capacity for joy to breathe and grow every time you choose to find joy in any given moment. That container is your heart. Your heart remembers what the brain cannot; it can reach for joy when your thoughts falter. It grows whenever you allow love in. And you carry it with you always. It’s lighter than air. And so, in fact, never are you stranded, and always there is joy waiting for you, a timelessness in time, a silent awe, an exquisite mystery, a burst of creativity, a building of dreams. The joy is in the seeking, and every goal reached a little life raft to carry you home.
May it be so, and blessed be.