Yes, it hurts when buds burst.
Why otherwise would spring hesitate?
Why otherwise was all warmth and longing
locked under pale and bitter ice?
The bud, covered and numb all winter
what fever for the new compels it to burst?
Yes, it hurts when buds burst,
there is pain when something grows and when
something must close.
Yes, it hurts when the ice drop melts.
Shivering, anxious, swollen it hangs,
gripping the twig but beginning to slip --
its weight tugs it downward, though it resists.
It hurts to be uncertain, cowardly, dissolving,
to feel the pull and call of the depth,
yet to hang and only shiver --
to want to remain, keep firm -- yet want to fall.
Then, when it is worst and nothing helps,
they burst, as if in ecstasy, the first buds of the tree,
when fear itself is compelled to let go,
they fall in a glistening veil, all the drops from the twigs,
blinking away their fears of the new,
shutting out their doubts about the journey,
feeling for an instant how this is their greatest safety,
to trust in that daring that shapes the world.

---Karin Boye

The first time I reflected on Karin Boye's reading, I was looking out a window at a tree whose buds had not yet burst. It was early Spring. This tree took up most of the view out my second story window and had offered me many moments of meditation.

It seemed a sure thing on this March day, me simply staring at this large tree whose visible buds had not yet burst, a sure thing that special insight would enter in my thoughts if I stared long enough. The daring that shapes the world was happening right before my eyes.

As I was watching the tree, the room began to move. I felt off balance in my chair -- suddenly disoriented -- until I realized that it wasn't the room but the tree that was suddenly falling. My whole equilibrium was thrown off -- I felt a surge of fear as I watched the tree descend to the ground.

I got up to look beyond my normal view and saw two workers at the base of the tree. I hadn't heard them working on the tree nor paid much notice to the noises outside. At first I thought, "how dare you take away my inspiration?" But then I realized that parts of the tree out of my view were severely damaged and it was time to fell the tree before it fell and injured someone.

The jolt of what I perceived as a sudden loss of this friend the tree remained for some time beyond the presence of the tree. Change, as we know, often catches us off guard. But as one resident theologian recently reminded us in a study group, "shift happens".

I had to find new sources of inspiration out that window. I had to get accustomed to a significantly changed view. Whether I was ready or not, what I had come to count on was no longer there. I had to let go of the familiar to embrace what remained. What I witnessed out that window was far different than expected and far more meaningful than imagined.

This timely demonstration brought home once again, that every moment will transform into another, and yet each moment possesses a fullness and resilience beyond our understanding.

In fact the movement of life, which learns as it goes, taking all memory and possibility with it, is the daring that shapes the world. It is the constant engagement with the unknown, inviting new information to inform the next moment. It is cherishing the wisdom of the past to accompany the future. It is letting go, letting be and choosing life, in its unpredictable fullness.

On January 28th, 1986, a group of social studies students watched the t.v. screen with millions of others across the nation as their teacher Christa McAuliffe lifted off in the space Shuttle, Challenger. Moments later they witnessed the explosion as blue and white smoke mingled with the debris of the space craft and crew.

Many of the students were interviewed ten years later in an attempt to describe what for them and many others was a defining moment in their ability to trust life. I caught the words of one man, then in his twenties, on the radio as I was driving home. "It made me realize," he said, "that in one brief minute you can go from celebration to mourning. In one brief moment all that's before you can change." Others spoke of how the experience of watching the shuttle explode made them nervous about life, uneasy about counting on things. The young man had worked through many of those anxieties and simply concluded not to take anything for granted and to live each moment as best as he could. He felt permanently changed -- a little more wary of risking and yet more willing to cherish life.

It is said that seconds before the explosion, the crew knew what was about to happen and so one crew member suggested they all hold hands. Connected in crossing the threshold of their lives together, they lived that final moment with grace and courage. They lived that final moment knowing that they had each other, trusting in the power of life's embrace, known from hand to hand.

"We can only be said to be (fully) alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." Thornton Wilder once wrote, "for our hearts are not strong enough to love every moment."

Each of us can identify defining moments in our lives when something fundamental about our sense of life changes; when, perhaps, our trust shifts emphasis, or our expectation feels betrayed or our faith challenged. Each one of us knows times when we do not feel grounded, safe or sure of how to live our lives because of an experience of profound sorrow or exquisite joy.

These defining moments call us to account: they remind us in an instant that we are both vulnerable in this larger life and have depths of response as yet unknown. They remind us that our lives are fragile and yet the power of our lives reach beyond our imagining.

Trusting in the daring that shapes the world is about accepting change and accompanying that change into the next moment. It is about finding the beauty in and of the moment which includes its sorrows and uncertainties. It is about knowing this moment, too, will evolve into another. And it is about trusting that the depth of feeling we experience nurtures our ability to embrace all our life.

When I saw the title of this sermon phrased differently on the sign by the road, reading "Trust is the daring that shapes the world", I thought about changing it to my original title "Trust in the daring that shapes the world." But I didn't, because I like that title just as much. Essential, trust is the daring that shapes the world. Trust in life.

All our moments, all the seasons of our heart have a place in the pulse of all that is. With that sacred knowing, we can better accept the changes that throw us off kilter because we can see them as thresholds toward deeper meaning and wisdom.

The aches, the weariness, the anger, the fear, the surprise, the doubt, the joy, the stillness that restores...All these and more are with us most moments, they simply ebb and flow in our awareness. Each moment is full of celebration and mourning, each moment has about it birth and death, yearning and renewal, the known and the unknown.

When trusting in the daring that shapes the world, we are acknowledging that as creatures who grow we are an integral part of this transforming world. When we dare to trust, we can go forward with confidence in our ability to face any wilderness.

This is the time of year when the Hebrew legend of the parting of the Red Sea is told. It is the legend of the Israelites who escaped slavery in Egypt with Moses leading the way. I hope that most of you also have heard the part of the legend less told but for me most significant: the piece that speaks to that moment before the sea parted. For you see, someone had to step into the sea before it would part. Someone had to risk their safety by trusting in the possibility of getting through. That person was Miriam, Moses' sister, who was used to risking, having done so years before in making sure her then infant brother made safe passage in his basket down the river to the Pharaoh's daughter.

>From this comes the familiar spiritual: "Wade in the water, wade in the water children...wade in the water..God's a gonna trouble the water..."

Trust -- a brave, enlightened choice that acknowledges both the lack of complete control and the acceptance of a depth and breadth of a life that will not fail us.

There are patterns in our experience that can remind us to trust, like the knowledge that a fallen tree will eventually fertilize growth of other trees, given space and time. Like the presence of sudden memories of people lost that bring them in our mind's sphere once again to keep us company. Like the knowledge, when looking back, of lessons learned and wisdom earned from what we have survived which now gives us the tools and opportunity to thrive. Like the opportunities we have every moment to recognize our fellow travelers and to realize the healing presence that dwells in our midst -- through our hands, in our eyes, with our stories, and by our compassion.

We know the promise of strength in life through relationship, to the earth, to ourselves, and to each other. We find and form our trust in the way of things by fostering community, creating space and time to make the connections. We break through our fears and hesitations, we gain our courage, by the power of love: love of self, love of life, love of each other. That is the security -- that is the safety within the daring -- praising life, fostering love and finding its worth.

Love adjusts to all things because it is what affirms and welcomes the essence of life itself. Love is brave. It lets go, it lets be and it lets live. Love of life means trusting its wisdom and choosing to abide in partnership with it.

It is up to us to choose to trust in the daring that shapes the world. It is also our choice to be trustworthy. And it is our choice to meet our circumstances as best as we can. If that trust is present, then healing love will always be available in any part of any journey and it will always bear the wisdom of how to cope with what is new.

This community has been challenged with many changes, more in these last years, perhaps, than most. In this room of strength and beauty are also sadness and shadows. We would not be a community of faith without these many moods and memories. And we do not want to control any of the many reactions that have and will be a part of a long heritage of celebration and mourning.

The work of community is to encourage each other to keep an open heart, for an open heart will allow for the passage of anguish or confusion into a gentleness and acceptance of the new. It means holding each other in our thoughts, to uplift another when we can and receive comfort when we need. The work of community is to defy crises of courage, which come upon us all from time to time. The work of community is to generate a strength that comes and goes in each individual but remains alive from person to person within the group as a whole.

In most faith stories, those who suddenly meet a wilderness in response to a change of life or circumstance have a companion or community with them for the passage. That is because our strength is in each other and in our ability to be with one another in our choosing and our trusting and our daring to go on.

Before buds burst and through the season of bare trees we can see the intricate design of branches, making the connections within these majestic trees starkly visible as they frame the sky. We know as well that the roots below are growing, nourished in the darkness and by the soil, which had received the falling leaves to nourish the ground.

Ralph Waldo Emerson a 19th century Transcendentalist who encouraged the Unitarian movement to trust in the daring that shapes the world, reminded us that: "All natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence." He believed the happiest person "is the one who learns from nature the lesson of worship."

As in nature, faith does not remain stagnant, it grows as we grow, reforms as we meet obstacles, regenerates as we find resources within to seek and affirm life. It begins with embracing where we have come from and continues with the impulse, known in our struggles, nourished within the darkness, to reach for what's possible.

Let us be gentle with one another. Let us encourage one another. Let us challenge one another. Let us praise what we have learned in our collective endeavors and be proud of what we have experienced, weathered, built and created as a community. And let us have confidence, always, in our constant becoming.

So may it be. Amen.

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