The Pure In Heart

Matthew 5:1-12 and For Those Who Walked With Us by Jan Richardson

All Saints Day

What a gift that we are keepers of one another's stories that we get to help hold them, carry them, hear them, and tell them again and again. Stories are part of how we build our inner and outer worlds. The stories we tell about our history, about our present, about our hopes for the future. The stories we tell about our families, our culture, our collective memory. These stories not only capture what was, but also can help shape what shall be. 

Clarissa Pinkola Estés  taught in her book, Women Who Run with Wolves, that stories are medicine. And I have experienced that to be true. Especially when a change is needed and I've had to tell a new story about myself. Instead of saying I have always done or been, you say I am now a person who at a national level right now we are seeing that what can also be true is the stories we tell can be toxic, triggering, false, filled with lies and pain, repeating something that was never really true or was incomplete. or that circles us back to unhealed trauma. This can be true for individuals, organizations, communities, and countries. Within each of us, we carry stories upon stories. Stories that limit us and also ones that have the potential to liberate us, freeing us from things that are no longer true or we no longer want to be true. 

Does anyone else know anything about that? I know I do. Among my most cherished gifts of this profession is hearing your stories. The stories of your lives. What makes you tick? What almost took you out but didn't? What lights you up? What makes you feel alive? I truly feel privileged to hear these stories and I believe it is a gift that we offer one another. 

Anytime someone privileges us with sharing more of their story, as we heard from Jan Richardson, often the lives and stories of others live in the shadow of our awareness. Whether we like it or not, we live with multiple stories. Sometimes they can be a blessing and sometimes it can be hard and sometimes we can find we're not even living with our own story, but the stories of those who came before us. 

This is part of what these sayings from Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew offer to us. These nine little blessings. The word ashar the Greek word used here is really to find the right road to be made straight to go forward in a right way. The beatitudes are really a recipe for living a certain kind of life. And I think part of why this scripture is connected to All Saints Day is that the lives of our saints, their stories are often what help us live the kind of life we want to. And so today I will lift up pieces of the stories of some of the saints that we lost this year that they might gift us with guidance and hope for right living in this time. 

One of our saints, Harriott Quin, a minister in the United Church of Christ and longtime CUCC member, refused to conform to expectations. She knew even before it was in fashion for women that she could decide what kind of life she wanted. She chose to be okay with the discomfort that came with her refusal to fit the mold. She didn't feel the need to be warm or to contort herself to meet what others desired for the women of her time to be like. She didn't shift for the ease of others. She was convicted in her love of Jesus, the poor, the earth. She was among the few who joined me when I first arrived and we stood on the corner in Lafayette for the Colorado Poor People's campaign. 

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 

Another saint, Art Wainwright, made it all the way to 101. Starting at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1960 to work on things like the atomic clock, attended testing, and radar guns. Art loved to figure out how things worked. His job on the atomic clock project was to excite the atom. That was his quote. and to troubleshoot the unsolvable. He often would laugh when he recounted the story how the genius scientists gathered around and Art solved the problem with epoxy. I didn't know him as a young man, but I would guess he was brilliant and extremely socially awkward. Having spent decades with his face down in a lab, it wasn't until his later years that he looked up and noticed Helen. Suddenly, Art was pulled into the most important important science project of his life. Waiting at the airport for a birding trip to Hawaii with the Colorado Mountain Club is where they had their first encounter. Art immediately joined Helen's bird club. She was an accomplished musician and succeeded professionally to working at the bureau, not looking for or needing a man. When Art proposed to her, she responded immediately with, "I'll think about it.” A week later, he tried again and Helen said, "I'm still thinking." He tried a third time when Helen said, "Might as well." They had glorious adventures, hiking, birding all over the world. And I know for sure that of all the gadgets he messed with, the incredible things he built, the mechanisms he moved, I know for sure that what mattered most to him was love. In our final visits, that's all he ever wanted to talk about was how and when he would meet Helen. They were married when Art was 52 and Helen, 56. It's never too late for love. Toward the end, that's what he shared the most, a longing to be connected to her spirit. He had a while without her, and he really did grieve. I love knowing that love of all the things he gave time to mattered most to him. 

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. 

Another saint, Reverend Cal Kemper, a minister in the UCC. We lost three ministers this year. A longtime member of this church contained multitudes and was multitudes. His dad was 60 when he was born. A railroader, a job that now seems like a bridge to another time and another world. And Cal was kind of a bridge like that, too. I thought of him as the minister of memes. He regularly shared things that would make us laugh out aloud for real. Among my favorites was one he shared with Kermit the Frog making a phone call that read, "Hello, may I please speak with Jesus cuz these folks are going to make me break at least four of the ten commandments." He told me that being a pastor should come with combat pay. He made people feel seen and sometimes he would go on and on talking way too long at our meetings about his observations. But I always appreciated what he said and I'm glad we let him talk. He had a zest for life forcing us to laugh before anything almost as a spiritual practice. He would compel many of us to begin our day by spitting out our coffee as if to say to the world, "Let's laugh first before we get into it." One time he shared a meme of the meme of the character Samson in the Bible entering middle age and the words coming from heaven on a cloud said “your strength will still come from your hair but to keep you humble I've moved it all to your nose and your ears.” Cal was a bridge moving us from despair to hope, helping us usher to the other side with joy. His final memes were less hilarious and more irreverent and more to the heart of the matter. And one featuring the Kermit the Frog again he said the caption said, "I have no energy for hate. I either love you, wish you well, or hope you heal." His final one was, "Guard your peace fiercely, for it is sacred. Never let another's chaos shatter yours just because they are lost in a search of their own”. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Our Saint Reverend Kayrene Pearson, another minister in the United Church of Christ and longtime member here, was strong and mighty even with her slight stature and gentle voice. She paved the way bravely for numerous women, even like me. We went to the same seminary, Pacific School of Religion. And it wasn't until I was a part of her funeral earlier this year that I learned we are ordained on the exact same day, November 5th. But for her, 1961.  She followed her heart and changed many lives, helping to save this site and place from financial ruin, leading the church to enduring and beginning to thrive. Whenever I would tell her of all the good she did, but she didn't quite remember, she would say, and I'll never forget, "Oh, is that right?" Upon leaving a visit with her, she would always after our prayer, stop me before I left and bless me right back. She made everyone feel special. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 

I didn't get a chance yet to do Joe Runyan's funeral, but I know it will come. So, just a one line about him. He loved football and family and totally irreverent jokes, which he was happy to share with me. He was our longest living member and I look forward to doing a service for him soon. 

Our Saint Sue Buchanan, a most incredible and powerful woman, was an unstoppable force of fearlessness, determination, and faith in what is important. She pulled no punches, as the expression goes. She could do whatever the boys could do and made a way for every woman who came after her. She demanded she have a place where she could, where she should, and did that for others. By some accounts, part of why she went to law school was simply to prove that she could. She changed the conversation and the culture here in Boulder County and beyond, offering her passion, her gifts, her vision for 20 years with the Boulder Valley Women's Health, 18 of those as the executive director. Just in Boulder County alone, her efforts helped expand access to contraceptives, where the pilot she initiated resulted in more work that ended up causing a reduction–a 60% reduction in teen birth rates stationwide. and her program has now been extend extended across the state. At the 2017 Women's March, she challenged the marchers not to get sucked into the wrong conversation. And I love that someone recorded that, so I wrote it down. She invited the group instead to change the conversation and gave a long speech about the power to decide in every part of our lives and how that was sacred and we needed to protect it. She showed us that things we matter don't just happen. You have to decide to give to them to demand every day that is worth your time, your money, your heart. 

Beloved ones, what will we decide to do today? What story will we live and tell about our lives? Take risks for blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you. Rejoice and be glad. What a gift that we carry each other's stories as we walk one another home, finding the right road together. Filled with blessings, ashars that guide us, helping to keep our way straight. 

In this time in our country, when entire ways of thinking and being are being demonized, when entire groups of people are being dehumanized, when true stories about people and places are being hidden, what a gift that our task is holding each other's stories, lifting them up and living the best of them, that they might stay with us. Let us remember our saints keeping parts of their stories with us, guiding us and finding the right road.

Hear this final reminder from Cal. “I am not gone. I have simply changed my cosmic address.” Let these stories be some medicine for you. 

Beloved ones, even amid all of the shadows upon us, let us live in the path made by those who have gone before. Our saints that have illumined the way. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessings on you who see God, who see love, who are paying attention to life. May the stories of our saints help support our journey on the way. Whatever comes may be so. Amen.