St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

March 1, 2009

Quite possibly Lawrence Ferlinghetti would have been surprised to hear one of his poems offered up in church, in Sunday morning worship, offered as a great introduction to Lent. He was about as anti-establishment as they come, and who knows what he believed, but I tell you, his poem "The World Is a Beautiful Place" catches the essence of this season:

The world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don't mind happiness

not always being

so very much fun

if you don't mind a touch of hell

now and then

just when everything is fine

because even in heaven

they don't sing

all the time

The world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don't mind some people dying

all the time

or maybe only starving

some of the time

which isn't half bad

if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don't much mind

a few dead minds

in the higher places

or a bomb or two

now and then

in your upturned faces

or such other improprieties

as our Name Brand society

is prey to

with its men of distinction

and its men of extinction

and its priests

and other patrolmen

and its various segregations

and congressional investigations

and other constipations

that our fool flesh

is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all

for a lot of such things as

making the fun scene

and making the love scene

and making the sad scene

and singing low songs and having inspirations

and walking around

looking at everything

and smelling flowers

and goosing statues

and even thinking

and kissing people and

making babies and wearing pants

and waving hats and

dancing

and going swimming in rivers

on picnics

in the middle of the summer

and just generally

'living it up'

Yes

but then right in the middle of it

comes the smiling

mortician

I told you it was a Lenten poem. It gets you very time, though, doesn't it… "the smiling face of the mortician." Oh thanks a lot, Ferlinghetti.

But strangely enough the poem actually fit with my Ash Wednesday mood. I couldn't shake some of the feelings that were sparked by the worship of that evening; it wasn't so much the words, or the somber mood, or all the candles, though they all contributed, but rather that moment when the sign of the cross was made on my forehead … made with ashes, accompanied by words:: "From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return." Not the kind of words you hop out of bed humming to yourself the next morning; but still, they stick with you. That smiling mortician's face again.

A couple of images floated around those words. A conversation with my mother… my folks have recently moved to a Seniors' Centre for Independent Living. I asked my Mum, "So what's it like?" And she answered, "Oh it's great actually; we like it here. But it's a bit strange to be surrounded by old people. And every month somebody seems to die; a lot of memorial services. But within no time, somebody else who has moved into their apartment. You can't help thinking about your own turn." From dust we have come and to dust we shall return.

Then there has been this whole week of having my two grandchildren and their Mum, staying with us, in the apartment. It's been grand; and tiring, and full of joy. To see these little people, just beginning, and to look at my own folks, at the other end, and me in between, and my daughter another thirty years down the road. It feels so good, and sometimes so sad… you can swim as hard as you can against the river of time… you always end up being swept downstream. It's a given. We are creatures of time; so little time. Mortal flesh, and to dust we shall return.

Enough, already… I can hear you say. Echoes of the French maxim writer, Rochefoucauld: "Humans cannot look at the sun or at death for any length of time, without going blind." But we have ways of distracting ourselves, avoiding; living with illusions, and often, outright denial. Just add a little more make up, if you must; I hear there's a new hair salon for men that's just opened up on Davie Street… for fifty bucks I can make my grey disappear. No wonder the movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," won its Oscar for Make-up.

Ah… you wondered when I would get the film, this being the Oscar Sermon Series and all. Well, yes… "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"… exquisite make-up and computer effects help lead us into a poignant meditation on time… on dust to dust and the smiling face of the mortician.

As the film opens we are presented with the story of a blind clockmaker who had been commissioned to make a grand clock for the opening of the new train station in New Orleans. Meticulously he did his work… until he received news that his only son had been killed in the trench warfare in the muddy fields of France. His heart was broken. As he continued with his work, he began to make adjustments, so that on the day the clock was proudly unveiled… well, the crowd began to cheer, until they realized that the hands of the clock were running backwards.. second, minute, and hour hand… all going counter-clockwise. And suddenly the screen is full of scene reversal, time running backwards, as dead soldiers leap backwards into life, then onto the ships that take them home, back into the arms of their mothers and fathers. No one can say they didn't know where the movie was going to take them.

The movie's central conceit, as many of you know, is that the hero of the film, Benjamin Button, is born with body of an old man, and over the course of the film, he ages in reverse; that is to say, he gets younger each year, eventually dying as a newborn infant… strangely enough, in the arms of his lover, the woman to whom he had been married. It is fine piece of magic realism… indeed, the makeup and the computers make Benjamin very real, and we understand why he never feels as if he fits in. The rest of us, we're all moving in the same direction, getting older year by year; and because it's happening to all of us, well, we can almost pretend that it isn't happening. But not so with Benjamin… moving in the opposite direction accelerates all the bitter and sweet changes that time brings. As someone on the outside, he becomes a commentator on life… a naïf, a wise innocent; who draws us into a new wondering about ourselves.

We watch Benjamin moving through classic moments of our human lives, albeit with reversed age. His mother dies in giving birth to Benjamin, and, upon discovering his son's terrible strangeness… an infant with the body of an ancient man… his father abandons him. But then it comes… one of the film's great "nevertheless" moments… Queenie, the matron of a Seniors' Home, adopts Benjamin... "My word… I have never seen such an ugly baby, but he is still a child of God. This baby is a miracle." Acceptance; a place to call home; safety; love. We watch Benjamin grow, year by year younger; first time walking away from home; first job, on the Tugboat Chelsea with Capt. Mike; first sex, in a fun-loving, garish bordello; first time getting drunk; the death of a friend… his mother saying, "We have to lose the people we love; how else can we know much you'll miss them." Adventure on the sea, or on a motorbike; first kiss with a woman he loved; war… and many men dying. This could be almost anyone's life; yours, for instance; but now strangely heart-catching because age and experiences don't mesh; we start to see the events differently.

The central plot tension revolves around Benjamin's love affair with Daisy. They first meet when Daisy is a young girl visiting her grandmother at the Seniors' Centre, and Benjamin is an old man, living in his adoptive home. Throughout the years we watch these two dance out their attraction, with many missed opportunities… but then comes that magical moment when their aging coincides; the years are close enough and kind enough, and they are wildly in love. Rockets go off, sailboats circle around tropical islands; the empty apartment is filled with a bed and paint brushes. But eventually it ends; as it had to.… because the flow of the river of time is inexorable. These two lovers are going in different directions; Benjamin getting ever younger, Daisy growing always older.

When they have a daughter, Benjamin eventually chooses to leave, to give Daisy space to find a husband who will grow older with her, who will be able to be a father to this new child. Perhaps one of the most poignant scenes comes when Benjamin comes back… looking like Brad Pitt in most glorious perfection… even better than had looked in that moment when he burst onto the screen as the young hustler in "Thelma and Louise." They look at each other; and it is Daisy who speaks, "Why did you come back?" As the question hangs in the air, we know the answer; we know that there really isn't an answer. They make love one last time; Daisy's body is an old body. Nevertheless; despite the mortician's smile .. "There are some days you never forget," says Benjamin. Swimming against the river of time.

Who knows what life will bring? The film circles around a repeated mantra: "You never know what's coming for you." It comes, whether you want it or not; often out of left field. One incident connects to another, all random choices, happenstance, a thousand "might-have-gone-this-way, might-have-gone-that-way" moments… a car slams into a young woman, her leg is crushed.. and, well, the story takes a different turn; that's how life happens. Life is precarious; you know that. Anyone of us might get hit by a car just minutes after we leave this very building. It happens. You never know what's coming for you.

And yet, within that Ash Wednesday reality, there is affirmation. Of what an amazing and beautiful world it is; yes, bittersweet, but still very sweet. And God saw everything that God had made, and behold it was very good. We often forget that early Hebrew theology included no concept of an afterlife; that came later, after their time in Babylon, fifth century before the Common Era. Before that, this life is what you get; and blessings are here… land, children, good food, wine. We forget how deeply the Bible blesses life, here on earth; despite the hardships, the wrong turns, the suffering; despite the shortness. We are invited to savour this life, and to be filled with gratitude. I think Benjamin Button discovered this… there is wonderful scene when Benjamin is being introduced to the wonder of caviar; it's late at night, two, three am; down in the empty, soft-lit hotel dining room; he takes his first bite. "Savour it, " says his lover Elizabeth, "don't eat it all at once, otherwise there's nothing left to enjoy." And she invites him to swish it down with a swig of cold vodka. I don't even like caviar, but I was salivating… Life is good.

It's what we've been given… this time; this body. And the film invites us to wonder what we're doing with our "one wild and precious life" (Mary Oliver's phrase). The film is filled with one-liners that slide around in that uneasy space between sentimental and profound. Benjamin in voiceover, as if speaking to the daughter he would never know… "I hope you live a life you're proud of; if not, I hope you have the strength to change." Daisy after her accident… "I promise I will never lose myself in self-pity again." A sixty-eight year old woman who swam the English Channel… "I wanted to do something with my life…. I guess anything is possible."

A friend sent me a fine email the other day; it included some words from the writer May Sarton that haunt me:

How does one find one's identity? My answer would be through work and through love; and both imply giving rather than getting. Each requires discipline, self-mastery and a kind of selflessness; and they are lifetime challenges."

Work and love; giving more than getting; selflessness… sounds a lot like gospel. A way of living life; this life; in these times. "There is a season for everything, a time for everything matter under heaven." A time to be born and a time to die… you know how this goes: a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to keep silence… and a time to speak….

A time to be born, a time to die… "When it comes to the end, you have to let go." That's part of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; letting go, dying. Now the preacher is always tempted at this point to bring in God, wanting everything to feel better… but this film doesn't allow that to happen. God floats at the edges; or rather, right in the midst of things, in our everyday living; in our work and in our love. Too often we want to take a shortcut, and go straight to heaven -- Christianity is sometimes guilty of denying the incarnation, this wild faith that God is to be experienced in the flesh. Instead faith slides into hoping for rescue, or the sweet bye-and-bye. Well you don't get that in this movie.

So, no easy answers. No avoiding God's calling to us to enter into our times, all the changes, all of them. This life… but let me play with an idea… what if our death marked the moment when we offered our lives to God… all the moments, each one having shaped what we have become, what we have done and been with the times we have engaged. There will be missed opportunities, and those taken, the good and the bad. What we return makes a difference, small, almost imperceptible shift in the universe, in God's life. Process theologians offers a different image for whatever it is that comes next; they say that we are held in the memory of God. When I first heard this, I thought it was a bit… well, thin; I'd rather have something a little more concrete, thank you very much. Held in the memory of God… but maybe that's not so bad; maybe that's just another way of saying that whatever it is we have done with our lives, shaped by our work and our love… well it's now held within God.

Enough speculation. Let me finish with another poem; bookends, I guess. May Sarton again, this time speaking of her 60th year… perhaps the poem speaks to me because this is the year I too am facing such a turning point. She calls it "Gestalt at 60":

I am not ready to die

But I am learning to trust death

As I have trusted life.

I am moving

Toward a new freedom

Born of detachment,

And a sweeter grace -

Learning to let go.

I am not ready to die

But as I approach sixty

I turn my face toward the wea

I shall go where tides replace time,

Where myl world will open to a far horizon

Over the floating, never-still flux and change.

I shall go with the changes,

I shall look out over golden grasses

And blue water….

There are no farewells.

Praise God for His mercies

For His austere demands

For his light

And for his darkness.
Praise God. Mercies and demands; light and darkness.

What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with…. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.
Ecclesiastes 3:15ff.