"On Making Decisions"

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 8^th of June, 2003

Mark Belletini, Minister, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
to celebrate our whole lives in freedom.
In this hour we both give thanks for our gifts
and decide how best to share them.
Embraced by this community,
and touched by something even greater
signed by both the light of the farthest star,
and the rhythm of our own breath, we pray

May our reason and our passion keep us true to ourselves,
true to each other, and true to those shared visions of what we can together become.

Preface to the Great Silence [Next] [back to top]

Decisions. Decisions.
What shall I say this morning
before my words trail off
on the elusive path beaten by the temple bell?

Do I mention the weather,
so cold and strange at this time of the year?

Do I refer to the hopeful new talks
between leaders in the Mid East?

Do I mention the construction out in back,
the deep trenches and forbidding fences?

Do I bring up anything that might suggest
my quite typical fatigue of spirit mid-June,
or is it disquieting to let the personal
blossom in the communal field?

Shall I decide to use metaphor today?
Shall I speak plainly this morning?

Decisions. Decisions.

Ah, makes no difference any more.
The time for making decisions is over,
The time for letting silence embrace us
and hold us has come upon us.

(Silence)

Let there be a time for us when the world
of our hearts, that stretches outside these walls
opens for us, and brings us close in spirit to those who are close to us…those for whom
our heart beats, day by day, minute by minute,
loved ones, friends, those we miss…we name them, aloud or silently, and by that naming, call ourselves to ever deeper loving.

(naming)

Now let the music bless us,
music sung by those who decided
not to let the world control their journeys,
but who dared to take a first step,
and then another.
May we too decide to opt for freedom,
to opt for peace, to opt for joy.

First Reading [Next] [back to top] is a two decade old poem by Canadian Hungarian poet Eva Tihanyi called Easter Weekend Among Friends.

In our far sunroom,
at the far end of the house
where the only invasion
is the spread of plants
and our most pressing choice
is beer and wine,
we ease our well-fed bodies into wicker,
discuss Issues.

Easy for the mouth to travel
where it doesn't have to live.

We haven't crawled into gardens
on hands and knees
nor left by way of the roses
catching ourselves on thorns.

We haven't seen the hells
of which we speak.

Second Reading [Next] [back to top] is a justly famous folk tale imbedded by its editors into the biblical book called Melakim in the original, or Kings in English. The story may be very old, and based on a tale from another kingdom.

Two single mothers came into the courtroom of King Solomon. The first woman said:

"My lord, this woman and I share a house. In the time I have been living with her, I had a child. Three days after I delivered, she also had a child. As new mothers, we spent a lot of time together in the house; we have had no boyfriends during this time. Now this woman's child died in its sleep…she rolled over on it. So when she realized what happened, she got up, and took my child from my side while I was sleeping. She placed my child at her breast, and then took her dead child and placed it in my bed. When I got up at early dawn to nurse my baby, I found the baby to be dead. But then when the sun brought more light, I was able to examine the child more closely and I realized it was not my baby."

"Not true," piped in the other woman. "The living baby is mine, the dead baby is yours."

But the first woman shouted back at the same time "No! No! The child is mine, not yours."

And they continued to fight so in front of the king.

So the king interrupted their fight by speaking thus. "What can I do? One of you says the living child belongs to her, the other claims that the exact opposite is true, and that the living child is actually hers. So, now, let my swordsman be brought in."

So the swordsman was brought into the court. The king said to him "Take your sword, and cut the living baby into two. Give one half to the first mother, and one half to the second mother."

When the first mother heard this, her motherly tenderness toward her son came to the fore, and she cried out "NO! NO! Do not do such a thing. Let this other woman have him. But do not kill the poor child."

The other woman interrupted, "It shall be neither mine nor yours. Let the child be divided."

So King Solomon spoke again, saying: "Now give the living child to the first woman, and by no means slay it, for she is his true mother."

Now when the whole nation heard how the king had decided this impossible case, they stood in awe of his wisdom, for they saw that the divine wisdom within him would actually bring justice to the people.

Sermon: "On Making Decisions" [Next][back to top]

As I mentioned in my newsletter column, Helen Kovach Tarakanov, my beloved Russian professor at Oakland University, was buried last week.

She was a very important person in the story of my life, and I have much to thank her for.

Especially, the stories of her life. She would tell me a few of these tales late at night when a certain wistfulness would bend her heart to remembering.

Of aristocratic parentage from Ukraine, but born in what used to be called Yugoslavia, she grew up during the difficult 20's, 30's and Second World War of the last century. Just before the war, she met a Hungarian man, a fellow young law student at the university, named George. They fell in love, married, and decided to settle in Buda Pest, in George's homeland. Now the newly-formed Communist government of Hungary did not truck any opposition to its policies. George, apparently, was quite an outspoken person, and the authorities didn't approve of his well-stated opinions. They warned him several times to keep quiet. But he did not. So one day as he and Helen (now pregnant with their child) were walking down the street, government agents came up and arrested him.

Now it was very clear to both of them, who were quite realistic about such things, that they would probably not see each other for years, maybe decades. As he was being hauled off, he looked Helen in the eye, and with tears splashing on his face said quite simply "Divorce me, so they won't throw you in prison too." And as they dragged him off, Helen came to a decision. She loved him, but it was too dangerous for her and her soon-to-be-born child to stay in Hungary. So she took off her wedding ring, and threw it in the street. She filed for divorce, and eventually, once her son George was born, she left her adopted Hungary for good. Moving to East Germany, she one day managed to crawl on her hands and knees across a sunlit wheat field, muffling her infant son's betraying cries with her hand, until she made it to West Germany. After a time, she emigrated to Windsor, Canada, where she worked as a maid, and finally, to Detroit, where she was able to find different work, not in the jurisprudence of her education, but in teaching Russian, one of the several languages she knew fluently.

In this brief overview of the story of her life, you will note that Helen made several decisions. She decided to become a lawyer, and so went to school. She decided to get married. She decided to emigrate. But clearly the most poignant decision for me, in her story, was that she decided to divorce her husband. And of all the decisions that Helen made, it's the one with the most unusual context. She loved her husband, yet it was too dangerous to stay married to him. It was a heart-breaking story when I first heard it, and it's a heart-breaking story as I tell it this morning in her memory. But, I think you'll agree that it's not the usual story folks associate with divorce.

But I have been wondering, when it comes to making important decisions, whether there ever can be a "usual" story. Are any of the significant decisions we make simple? They can be decisive, quickly made, like Helen's was, but are they simple? Are they easy? Clear? Is there any story in our life that is not woven into other stories, any decision of the head that is not tied to memories or longings of the heart?

Most decisions are not life-shaking, of course. Decisions are an every day occurrence in most lives, except those who are under complete duress in a hospital. I decide what to eat for breakfast. I decide what to wear each day. I decide what liquid I'll use to wash my medicines and vitamins down. I decide which e-mails I need to handle first, which last, which tomorrow, and which never. I decide which meetings to go to, what kind of answers to offer questions that come my way…factual or emotional. I decide what to eat for supper, which friends to call on the phone, what movie to see, and whether or not it's time to go to the dentist. Every day is filled with a hundred decisions.

Not all decisions are equal, of course. The decision to eat Raisin Bran instead of oatmeal is not comparable to the decision I made to leave my church in California and answer your call to come here five years ago. My decision to wear a teal shirt instead of a white one on some random Wednesday is not comparable to the decision I made to risk living my life honestly, instead of playing the shaming and humiliating game of "don't ask, don't tell." And even the decision Helen Kovach made to become a teacher in Detroit is not comparable to that intense moment when she tossed her wedding band clanging onto the cobblestones of a Buda Pest lane. Not all decisions are equal…in their emotional weight, in their life-bending significance, in the domino-effect of their consequences. This morning, I am talking of the weightier decisions.

At the annual June meeting of the congregation, which follows this service, several decisions will be made. Some of which will be more complex than others to make. Some will prove to have significant outcomes that may affect things many years down the line; others will prove to be surprisingly easy to make, or will touch things for a year or two only.

But, every decision of any consequence we make, in a meeting at church or out in the world will affect not just the world outside us, but our own understanding of ourselves. I am quite convinced that every significant decision I make is a spiritual opportunity…that is, it poses spiritual questions that are important for me to answer. Some of these spiritual questions are:

Do I experience my life more from my heart or from my head?

Which values are the ones which really shape my life?

Is there any greater power or vision which

stakes a claim on me? How do I know?

What does this decision say about who or what I think is really in charge around here?

What does this decision announce to the world as to who I am?

I would like to suggest that meditating on such spiritual questions during regular times of quiet in between decisions might actually help us make those decisions. Such careful and thoughtful meditation can exercise our spirit in the ways of centered wisdom, so that when a crisis hits and a decision must be made quickly, we might be able to do so, and successfully, even without sufficient information in the press of time.

In the Western Scriptures, King Solomon is the symbol of such centered wisdom. Many biblical books claim him as their author. And even if these claims are false, they nonetheless do reveal the honor and esteem in which he was held by his people.

And, as the classic story you heard this morning reveals, honorable wisdom often comes to decisions with a riskiness and boldness of spirit… "Bring me a swordsman!" In fact, I'd like to suggest that every decision of consequence involves a bit of risk, and some remarkably honest self-understanding.

Self-understanding? Yes! I think all decisions of worth begin with speaking the truth of one's self, no matter how difficult that may be.

I remember a decision I had to make once. Maybe some of you have had to make such a decision. It was a shared decision I had to make with eleven other jurors in a courtroom.

The man before us had been charged with "driving under the influence." As the evidence piled up on the witness stand, it became clearer and clearer to each of us in the jury box that the sworn evidence was completely convincing of a guilty verdict. Once all of the sworn testimony was finished, the judge at her bench leaned over toward us, peered over her glasses, and read us the California law for jurors looking at such a case. "You must offer a vote to convict if the sworn evidence on the witness stand proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the law has been broken. Base your decision not on what the lawyers have said, but on the hard factual evidence."

"Well," I thought, "this will be an easy decision."

Well, I was wrong. All of a sudden it was a split jury. Some thought the man was guilty, some thought the man was innocent, even though they agreed the evidence was pretty convincing. We sat in that claustrophobic jury room for a full day, debating our decision, trying to budge each other off the dime with torturous logic.

Finally, after seven hours of frustration, one woman spoke up.

"I wonder. Are we debating the evidence of this man's life, or our own? After all, I have driven my car while drunk a few times in my life. Have any of you ever done that?"

Everyone looked at each other, then one by one, we all nodded "yes."

"I think we may be thinking deep down inside that if we say that this man is guilty, then we are saying we are guilty too. Only, we twelve were just lucky enough to have escaped being caught, whereas this man was unlucky."

This woman's honest and confessional insight changed the direction of our conversation. And within a half-hour, we had decided that the evidence we heard on the stand was about the defendant, not about us. And thus, with such clarity, we came to a unanimous decision, and we turned in our guilty verdict and went home. But I assure you, we each had plenty to think about for the next few months.

I think of how often Helen Kovach must have spoken of the possibility of arrest with her husband. I think of how clear her values must have been already when she threw that ring in the street. I think of how clarity on both who one is and the values involved, make even impossible decisions possible. And this is exactly why I lift decision making up as a spiritual issue, one worthy of our meditation in those quieter times, mostly free of difficult decisions.

I have one final observation about making decisions. It stems from Eva Tihanyi's marvelous poem.

"Easy for the mouth to travel where it doesn't have to live."

A brilliant line, I think. One worthy of memorization for later use. For in making decisions, in coming to significant choices in my life, that line will surely come in handy. "Easy for my mouth to travel where it doesn't have to live." For I have to acknowledge that though I have to make decisions, so does every one else.

And sometimes, our decisions will conflict, will get into each other's way. But the line from this poem gives me pause. Asks me to step back a few steps. Asks me to use caution. For it is easy for my mouth to make pronouncements on the decisions of others that are different from my own, when I have no idea about the lives they live, the personal hells they bear, the brokenness they conceal, the brokenheartedness they carry with them daily.

This poem, I think, is a proper summons to the principal value that I am convinced should best inform my every significant decision, namely, compassion, both for self and others.

I only know a part of Helen's story. Stories of a few significant decisions she had to make. But such a thing is true for each of us. Each of us will never know the full story of anyone else's life. We're something like those blind mice in the famous story of the elephant; all of our information is, and can only be, partial. Yet we have to make decisions anyway.

Nevertheless, I assert that each of us can make it our practice to learn more about each other's stories, as well as offering greater self-revelation. Our finite nature as human beings is a given. Can't change that. But our capacity to grow and deepen is also a given, unless we refuse the gift. May we see, in each experience that comes our way this week, an opportunity to receive both our limits and our capacity to transcend those limits as great gifts for which we are thankful. For as R. K. Rowling reminded us at the beginning of the service, any gift we have been given cannot be any where near as important as how we decide to use it.

Prayer (theme and variations by Nobel-Laureate Salvatore Quasimodo) [back to top]

Now, finally, it's high June again,
and the trees are bursting with a green
even brighter than the grass
which rests the heart.

And everything about me suggests
the miracle of the whole of creation…
that I too am not very different
from the water that makes up tumbling clouds,
or the puddle that reflects them.

That I too am not very different
from the moss that splits the bark,
the green that is here now,
but was not there yesterday.

And for my ability to rejoice
in the brief wonder of my life, thanks!

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Last update: 07/15/2003