"Life is an Odyssey"

READING

Say you finally invented a new story
of your life. It is not the story of your defeat
or of your impotence and powerlessness
before the large forces of wind and accident.

It is not the sad story of your mother's death
or of your abandoned childhood. It is not,
even, a story that will win you the deep
initial sympathies of the benevolent goddesses
or the care of the generous, but it is a story
that requires of you a large thrust
into the difficult life, a sense of plenitude
entirely your own. Whatever the story is,
it goes as it goes, and there are vicissitudes
in it, gardens that need to be planted,
skills sown, the long hard labors
of prose and enduring love. Deep down
in some long-encumbered self,
it is the story you have been writing
all of your life, where no Calypso holds you
against your own willfulness,
where you can rise
from the bleak island of your old story
and tread your way home.

Michael Blumenthal

SERMON

From time to time, at gatherings of Unitarian Universalist ministers, a senior minister presents the odyssey. The odyssey is a spiritual autobiography. It is the story of how we came to ministry, and where our calling has taken us, internally and externally, over the years.

This April, I will be the one to present my odyssey to my colleagues. I am already contemplating what to say and wondering what I will learn from the exercise. I notice that I have already told much of my story, in installments, over the years, in sermons. “I was always an anxious child,” I might start off; or, “I come from an interfaith Jewish Christian family, and my parents decided to join the Unitarian Universalist church.” Whatever I say, it will be selective. But it will also be true. Somehow I will compose a story of my life.

The "Odyssey" is also an epic poem. It tells the story of Odysseus, hero of ancient Greece, whose struggles were far more arduous than those of any minister. He spent ten years fighting in Troy and another ten years trying to get home to his family. In all that time, his wife Penelope and son Telemachos knew nothing about what had happened to him. Penelope spent her life fending off unwanted suitors. Telemachos grew up, became a man, and set off on his own journey to search for his father.

In the years of wanderings and adventures, Odysseus overcame many obstacles, natural and supernatural. Up above, the gods manipulated and interfered with all his efforts. When he finally arrived home, even his reunion with his wife and the requisite annihilation of her suitors was orchestrated by Athene, militant goddess of wisdom.

I couldn’t help but think about the "Odyssey" when I accepted my assignment to speak to the ministers. For the "Odyssey" is a work of the imagination, not a recounting of facts. And the stories it tells convince the reader that the gods, not the humans, call the shots. Odysseus is a brave man but he is also a pawn of the real players, as Zeus and Athene act out their own drama through him. If life is an odyssey, we have even less to say about it than we think we do.

The "Odyssey of Homer" and the contemporary spiritual biography, however, share much in common. They tell of struggles and triumphs. They don’t pass over the wanderings, which may at first have seemed pointless, but took us where we needed to go. And we who tell these stories hear the larger meanings emerge; they instruct us and make us whole. “Deep down in some long-encumbered self, writes Michael Blumenthal, “it is the story you have been writing all your life, where no Calypso holds you against your own willfulness, where you can rise from the bleak island of your old story and tread your way home.”

Everyone has a story to tell. Dan Wakefield, author of "The Story of Your Life," a guide to writing your spiritual autobiography, observed, “No doubt the first humans, sitting around the fires of their caves, told stories relating their life experience to the power and mystery of the universe.” And for many people, not just Odysseus, the role of God - or gods - has been central.

Dan Wakefield also mentioned in his book that the Puritans - our Unitarian spiritual forbears - cultivated the personal testimonial as religious expression. People of faith frequently spoke about the role of God in their lives. Their churches even required such speeches before admitting them into membership. We dropped that requirement a long time ago. But the spiritual autobiography is still a lively part of our faith tradition.

I will soon get my chance to tell my story. Ministers listen carefully to the telling of the odyssey. I can remember when I, much younger, heard this narrative for the first time. The story was compelling, but even more memorable were the respect and the fellow-feeling the group brought to the occasion. It is perhaps the only time in life when a group of people (especially other ministers) will listen for an hour, with rapt attention, to one of their peers.

The same time I accepted the task of composing my odyssey, I began to think about what it would be like for our congregation, if some of you took a turn offering your spiritual autobiography to us. What if, once or twice a year, some of our senior members prepared an odyssey, and a group gathered to listen to the story of that life? It’s something I’d like to see us try sometime.

Dan Wakefield noted that this can be a very powerful experience. You may already have a feeling for the potential in such an exercise. If you are a journal writer, you know the sense of altered reality that comes from recounting your personal history. High school seniors working on college admission essays get a taste of how much can ride and fall on the way we represent ourselves in words. Some of you may be writing memoirs, or assembling family histories for grandchildren. Whatever the purpose, the story of a life is a powerful tool and builder of human connections. Especially in the telling of it.

One of the participants in Dan Wakefield’s spiritual autobiography class observed, “what I found is I could write something and read it to myself and it would probably have little impact, but if I’m with someone else and read it aloud, there’s something about another persons’ presence that makes it ‘ring true.’ It’s much more powerful.” It’s not just the writing of the story, it’s being heard by another.

What ‘rings true’ is honesty. Honesty is a relational value. It discloses our true selves, and builds understanding between people. It deepens our bond with others.

Telling our story can also heal us. Recent brain research has shown that people recover from trauma when they are able talk about it. What happens is something more than simply discharging a bad memory. Constructing a narrative of our experience changes the brain and consolidates the recovery.

Speaking our history transforms our past. It becomes a story, with selected events and interpretation. We create a view of ourselves that allows us to understand and forgive our failings and misadventures. Dan Wakefield says, “Since our past experience only exists now in our own mind – it only ‘lives’ in our recreation of it - our changed experience of it becomes the reality, and in that sense we really do have the power to change our own past.”

This transformation is not denial or wiping out of memory. It’s not “rewriting history like a totalitarian government which recreates its nation’s past to fit the latest political dogma.” Rather, through writing and telling, we re-experience our past from the perspective of who we are today. That knowledge and distance give new meaning to who we once were.

“Say you finally invented a new story of your life,” writes Michael Blumenthal. “It is not the story of your defeat or of your impotence and powerlessness before the large forces of wind and accident.” It is another story, one that tells the truth, and heals the soul, and makes you wise. “It is the story you have been writing all your life.”

The new story is also an old story, rooted in the common ground of all humanity. Perhaps this is why it is so important to have someone to listen. For it truly is something we share.

Each story is related to every other story. Not just stories from today, but the story of every seeker and wanderer, who, like Odysseus, wants only to find the way home. A larger pattern emerges out of the myriad details and trials of life. It shows us who we are against the backdrop of mystery: heroes, like Odysseus, in a life we can never fully understand. The pattern shows how we prevail, each in our own way, in the purpose of becoming fully ourselves. It is a struggle worthy of an epic poem all our own, one that only we can write.

References used in this sermon include "The Odyssey of Homer," translated by Richmond Lattimore (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); "The Story of Your Life," by Dan Wakefield (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990).