UU
Fellowship of
The light
at the End of the Tunnel
Margaret
Kiihne.
To begin, I dedicate this service to Kevin who showed me the light, to
Yesterday, I actually saw “the light at the end of the tunnel.” Tunnel #3 to be exact, on the Elroy Sparta Bike Trail, a former
railway track.
The dark just swallows and surrounds you for 3/4’s of a mile. And it’s
not just the dark that makes you want to get to the other end: it’s muddy and
puddle-y underfoot. It’s cold. You hear the sounds of water
everywhere--swooshing down the concave rock walls, rushing beside you on both
sides of the path, and dripping or streaming in very confident rivlets upon your head. Ray and I pretty much held on to
each other, pointing our flashlights to see the path and to be seen by anyone
walking from the other end. You do see that other end, but it’s just a
glow at first.
The best part was seeing the tiny lights of other people’s flashlights
coming toward us. It was as if they were bringing the light to
us: they were tangible proof that there was life, sunshine, warmth at
the end of the tunnel. We stepped a little more confidently,
giggled a little more, played with our flashlight beams a little more, knowing
that 1. the end was near and 2. that
people would be here, next to us, soon, so we wouldn’t be in the dark much
longer between the cold stone walls. Those people were our connections
to the light. They were the “light-keepers” for the light at the end of the
tunnel.
This morning I want to add 3 stories about “light-keepers”: people who have
found and brought light to those in tunnels of despair, grief, poverty.
The first story is a poem. Jim Armstrong, with his wisdom for connecting poetry
and people, invited the poet Naomi Shihab Nye to WSU.
And when she read this poem that I’m going to read to you, I could “feel” the
practically palpable connection each person in the auditorium made to the
strangers in that New Mexico airport.
Gate 4A,
by
Naomi Shihab Nye
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her.
What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four
hours late and she
Did this.
I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti,
stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?
The minute she heard any words she knew -- however poorly used -
She stopped crying.
She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in
Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late,
Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her -- southwest.
She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.
Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.
Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call
some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.
She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies --
little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag --
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from
The lovely woman from
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There [are] no better
cookies.
And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --
Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.
And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands --
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,
With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling
tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.
Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped
-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.
They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.
But, of course, sometimes people don’t want to listen to a familiar language, are
not drawn to the light, and instead depression and loneliness overcome
their desire to live. Many of us in this room have friends or relatives who
struggle with depression and you have been the connection; you
have been the light in their tunnel.
Rebecca Parker, formerly a Methodist minister, is now president of the UU Starr
King Seminary in
A group of people were gathered there, talking excitedly, where they’d set up
telescopes and were examining the night sky. One fellow saw her and invited her
to take a look into the telescope. She did and saw a bright red-banded planet
which he told her was Jupiter. "Isn't it great?",
he asked her. She had to agree with him. The young man's enthusiasm was so genuine, the other people’s thrill at seeing the planet so
infectious, that it overcame her depression and desire to die.
Parker says that that ordinary yet unexpected pleasure of seeing that planet
didn't make her sadness disappear, but it did connect her with the universal
web. She was included in the universe once more, and that's what saved
her. She explained that for her, there is a web of connection we live in
that is greater than any of our senses or intellect can explain.
When people with telescopes or Arabic or powered sugar cookies or roses in the
winter time make those connections, it provides the light of hope. It reminds
me of Matt Schultz telling us what Wendell Barry tells him: “Practice
resurrection.”
My last story is about film-maker Mark Johnson. His project started when he
heard a guy named Roger Ridley singing on the street in
Johnson built the project into the foundation “Playing for Change. “ Bill
Moyers interviewed him and asked what he hoped would come from this:
“My ultimate thing [with this music] would be that people understand that in a
world with all this division, it’s important for us to focus on our connections.”
Johnson told Moyers the story of his pivotal journey, to South Africa, where he
finds a musician he’d been looking for, and in the backyard of a neighborhood
with a lot of sorrow, a lot of poverty, he put on a little concert because the
people needed “something to celebrate.”
They loved it: “people came out and just started dancing and celebrating this
music. It was like they were now filled with all this joy and connection
to us and to each other. “
Johnson has made that connection permanent: His foundation has built a school
in that same backyard where kids can get together and have something positive
to look forward to. And people everywhere can log on to the internet and
watch recitals and concerts in the schools he’s building.
Johnson said to Moyers: “The only choice we have is to come together. And to inspire
each other because that's the way that we'll create a better world for us
now and for the kids tomorrow. The most important thing is while we're
here, let's make a difference together. That's what Playing for Change is
trying to represent.”
Music? Telescopes? Powered
sugar cookies? Light.
Connections and Hope.
So, let's watch, play those rhythm instruments, sing, and smile along with
musicians all over the world through the magic of YouTube--and our own Jim
Armstrong with a few computer things!
Closing: May faith inspire us to work and create the
light.
May Love move us to stand by one another.
And may Hope sustain us so we say “yes” to every morning.