Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

September 9, 2007

“Muddy Water Rising”

Rev. Kathy Duhon

Life is muddy sometimes, quite a mess, actually, and in so many ways. When we come back from vacation, as Jon and I did this past week, there’s always piles to go through – laundry, mail, messages, work stuff, and relationships that have been on hold and need tending. I try to prioritize, as I’m sure you do. But still it is a mess for at least a week, before that last suitcase gets put in the closet.

I always remember the advice I got as a new mother in the hospital. We were given parenting classes, and in amongst the ideas for how to get babies to go to sleep, and how to bathe a baby so that the folds of their necks don’t end up with icky, stinky green goo, there were some quick tips on housekeeping. They figured we’d be overwhelmed and life would be messy in many ways. So the instructor said, “Get a big basket or box or bag of some kind and go from room to room, picking up what shouldn’t be in any given room and delivering it, room by room, to the room it should be in, meanwhile, picking up more misplaced items along the way. It’s like a rolling river – this approach to cleaning the messy buildup – and very efficient. Even without babies, I still often use this practical way of keeping in check the mucky pile-up of stuff.

Life is muddy sometimes, quite a mess. And we’re tired. And anxious. How will we literally clean up the waters that keep us alive, and how will we clean up the air so that the muddy waters quit rising so dangerously in this time of global flooding, global warming, global muddying? In Costa Rica, our daughter Anna is dealing with a mudslide from the previous category 5 hurricane to hit Central America last month, which destroyed the road to her university – they’ve been meeting elsewhere for 3 weeks. Muddy waters are rising, taking our roads and homes and sense of safety. So much to do. How will we spiritually muck off the mud of our tired, anxious, depressed souls?

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,” writes Wendell Berry, “I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.” If we intend to save our planet for the living, we had best live out in our natural environs, by the water, in the water, and not so much of the time inside of our four walls. We had best dwell in beauty and stillness, when despair for the world grows in us.

The muddy waters of relationship surround us. Who amongst us has not had a problem with someone we care about – with our parents or our children, our sisters or our brothers, our friends or our co-workers, our spouses, our beloveds? Perhaps there has been a draught of interaction, or a flood of tears, or a cascade of words. Tired, anxious, overwrought muddy waters encroach in every loving relationship at some time or another. How do we rinse clean the miscommunications and missteps, the missed opportunities and missing hope? How do we muck off the messy, muddy waters from our personal lives?

We can look to the rivers – they lead the way. With some help from environmental activists like the Riverkeepers, with better laws and their enforcement, as well as with the natural cycle of cleansing, the rivers are coming back. Hope keeps rolling through our neighborhoods in the waters of the Housatonic, the Green River, Rawson Brook, the Konkapot, and all the other bubbling, dancing, flowing streams. We look to the rivers – they keep flowing and the mud keeps flowing – it’s the only way not to get stuck. If we don’t want to be a stick in the mud, or become a marshy quagmire, a slough of despair, a pile of messy build-up, then we have to stay moving forward like a river, in our relationships, in our hearts, in our caring for the world.

Our reading noticed that muddy waters actually provide the nourishment for the lotus, a metaphor for enlightenment. Our muddiness, our impediments, are the stuff from which we rise and grow and find hope and create love. “My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” Langston Hughes wrote.

You know which folks I find are not bogged down by muddy water? The ones who have seen the promised land, been to the mountaintop – those great spiritual souls – and those others who have at least peered over the edge of the cliff. They have been diagnosed with cancer, or some other horrible disease, or else their spouse or child or parent or best friend has. Their loved one has been in a terrible accident, or else they have. The water becomes crystal clear, at least for a time. Life, death, love, joy. What else is more real and clear in the river of our lives?

Water is the very stuff of life. Muddy water can kill you, or make you sick, but all water is muddy sometimes. The world out there and the world right here, in our spheres of relationships, can be very muddy. To keep flowing with hope, to keep alive the possibility of tomorrow, of healing, of redemption; that is our task. We are in the midst of muddy water rising, and we have to find a way to come together to face all the challenges before us. As beloved community, we can keep our souls nourished and strong, and we can muck off the mud of tiredness, anxiety, and despair.

Water is a powerful force. “The highest good is like water”, says the Tao te Ching, like the Way of the Spirit. The water of life, death, love, joy, is muddy, and crystal clear, and we are in its rising tide. Blessed Be.