It was back in June that I was writing Annotations for the summer issue of The Window, and I said, “How amazing it is to be ending the 'regular' congregational year already!” And in my introductory paragraph about this September 1st service I wrote, “and I already know that the same astonishment likely will accompany the beginning of the new [year].” Well, I was right, about that and also more generally about how the same things keep happening, over and over again, in ever-more rapid succession! So let’s look at an aspect of our lives which we probably don’t often explore--the aspect of routine and repetition--and let’s consider the possibility that in fact things are never exactly the same and always have the potential to surprise us.

I’m particularly conscious of this topic today, as I begin my FIFTH year of ministry with this congregation! Yes, it was four years ago on August 5th, 1998, that Dorothy Harder and Lee Horton and Kathy Young and others helped me to move into my home on Market Street, and shortly afterwards that I attended my first Board Meeting, and then gave my first talk as Waterloo’s Minister. The time has gone by almost like a flash--no, more like very rapid spins of a wheel, perhaps, as the Septembers rolled around--and that’s despite the fact that each of the years has been filled with unique events and developments which make this in some ways a different congregation than the one I came to.

In the first September service of 1999, I said, "My special joy, among many joys today, is being here as your returning minister. This is no longer a new place; you have helped to make it my home, and I thank you." It feels even more clearly my home today--not simply because of three more routine years in it, but because of all the unique things, non-repetitious things that have happened in it. In the equivalent service in 2000, I said, “This is the beginning of my third year with you; you have helped to make it a joyful place to return to, and I thank you.” And last year I noted that “The past year was my first year of full-time ministry with you,” as well as mentioning what an extraordinary year it had been for me, with my surprise wedding! Each time, I had reason to be appreciative of both the repetitions and the surprises, and to be grateful to all of you for creating this community of traditions and innovations, this mixture of “first time ever!” and “all over again!

That mixture is different for each one of us. Small children are doing so much for the very first time that their lives are perpetual adventure, though even for them there’s the daily repetition of eating and sleeping and other routines. As we get older there tends to be more sameness, and changes perhaps become not only less frequent but less welcome, or at least more challenging. I just came back from my annual visit to my mother in England. Mum is 87, in excellent health and leads a very pleasant life, but it’s bounded by routine to what I find a somewhat extreme extent--although perhaps I’ll change my mind about that over the coming years!

Mum sets herself times at which to start the daily crossword puzzle, to take a bath, to go to the shops, to have the glass of lager that she allows herself each day, and a different time for the apple and the chocolate bar. Three times a week at exactly the same time she plays bridge with friends, and on Wednesday mornings there’s a coffee hour to attend. My sister phones her every Sunday evening, and on Monday it starts all over again. If anything interrupts the daily or weekly schedule, it’s disconcerting and a little hard to cope with. (I have a feeling that includes my yearly visit, though she puts a very good face on it!)

Is this amount of structure good or bad? Well, it’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it? It works fine for my mother-keeps her happy and healthy. It might be deadly for someone else--and it wouldn’t have worked for her at other stages of her life. The important thing seems to be to find what works for each of us where we are now, and not to assume that we’ll always have the same delight in either spontaneity or structure. I’m taking some tips from my mother’s way, attempting to pull my rather scattered “non”-routines into a bit more order--even to the point of writing down a weekly and daily schedule. I’ve been doing it for a whole week now, and I’m sure the Committee on Ministry is going to be interested to hear about how long it lasts and whether it improves my time management! (Stay tuned .......) But I hope I won’t lose the ability or desire to ditch the routine on occasion--to spend some spectacular Fall days outside when the schedule says I should be writing a reflection, or to take three hours rather than two for some task which seems to require it. I hope even if I manage to establish helpful routines they’ll never become more important than responding to the moment. I wish that for all of us--that we always stay responsive to what happens, rather than engaging in what religious language calls "vain repetition."

I hope, too that our thinking and feeling can also avoid that vain repetition of generalizations and stereotypes which sees people and events as clones of each other and leads to a sense of helplessness--as in, “He’s exactly like his Dad,” or “We’ll never solve the Irish problems” (or the Mid-East or whatever ..... ). I had some interesting correspondence with a few ministerial colleagues recently. We’d been discussing the three new appointments to the Canadian Unitarian Council staff and the interesting fact that they’re all women and all in something like the same age group. All of us had expressed our delight in the calibre of those appointed; then some of us had wished aloud (or rather on e-mail) that there could have been more gender, race, age and other diversity among them. One colleague, arguing against any element of “affirmative action” in the selection process, cautioned us not to hastily assume that similar age, gender and skin colour means similar skills or experiences of life. As some of you know, I’m rather in favour of affirmative action to redress imbalances, but I do agree that it’s dangerous to assume we know all about people when we know some of their more visible characteristics. Three white, middle-aged women are not three examples of the same thing all over again; they’re each one of a kind!

Let me tell you a story. I was at a meeting of Interfaith Grand River this week (we were planning our September 11th Peace Walk, which you can read about in The Window) and one of the participants was late because he’d been involved in pastoral care to a woman in deep distress. Months ago this woman, a grandmother, had lost her daughter and two grandchildren in a terrible fire. Slowly she had come out of her acute grief towards being able to function almost normally again, but this week an inquest into the fire was finally held, and her pastor said that as all the details were reported, “It was as if it was happening all over again.” Perhaps you’ve had experiences like that, although I hope not so horrible--experiences of re-living something, of going through it all over again. But it’s never exactly the same, is it? The very fact that it’s “again” makes it different from the first time, as well as the fact that we were changed by that first experience. We have the opportunity to go through it differently the next time, at least in the way we consciously respond. That grandmother’s sad listening to the inquest on the deaths of her family was acutely painful, but it was almost certainly part of the healing process for her. When you and I review and relive the things that have happened to us, we make sense of them in new ways. As someone once said to a friend, “Your story gets better every time you tell it!

Sometimes we even wish we could live something over again, when it’s been wonderful--just remembering with our mind isn’t enough; we want it to happen all over again. It never can, in quite the same way--except perhaps in our dreams and fantasies, and I certainly don’t want to diminish the power of dreams. I’m reminded of a short Sci-Fi story I read years ago which made a huge impression on me and which I’ve not been able to find again because I’ve lost the book and I don’t know the author. (Perhaps one of you will know it.) It was called “The Store of the World” and it was set, not very originally, on a post-catastrophic planet, where the few survivors had no families left and very few possessions. There was, however, one store in a remote location which sold not objects but experiences from the past. The central character journeyed a long way to arrive at this store and presented all his remaining money with his request to relive a particular day. His order is fulfilled. The day he has chosen is described in detail--but there’s absolutely nothing extraordinary about it except its ordinariness. The man experiences again 24 hours with his family--some chores and errands, some time relaxing, some arguments and misunderstanding, some singing, a few tears and frustrations and some laughter, routine meals and trivial encounters. Nothing special. At the end, when the customer’s experience is over, and he’s getting ready for the long trip back to a starkly miserable existence, the storekeeper asks if he is satisfied. “Yes!” he says through tears. “It was wonderful value.”

Is it possible that those ordinary days, the routines and cycles of our living, say more about who we are and what our lives mean, than the special events and dramatic moments? Are the times we think of as insignificant really the most significant ones, I wonder? Are they the signs and evidence of what our life is really about? You may or may not be familiar with the philosophy of existentialism and its teaching that “existence precedes essence”--the idea that only as we carry out our existence in the world--only as we live our lives--do we bring about some kind of personal essence, a self or a soul if you prefer. For most of us, our existence is very largely routine and repetitious--I suspect that even for people leading the most glamorous or adventurous or supposedly important of lives, routine makes up much of each day. Waking up, going to the bathroom, brushing our teeth, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, going places we need to go, taking care of business, coming home, reading the paper or watching television, going to bed, sleeping--these and suchlike necessary things involve far more time, for even the most prominent people in our culture, than such special happenings as holidays, birth, marriage, death, divorce, accidents and acute illness.

From this perspective, which is rather different from the traditional view of being born with a soul or essence, it’s how we “spend our time”, the currency of our repetitious daily lives, that makes us who we are. William Barrett, the author of a wonderful book on existentialism, refers to one of the major philosophers of our time, Jean Paul-Sartre, as saying that:

The essence of [a person]..... lies .... in the radical liberty of [their] existence by which [one] chooses [oneself and so makes [oneself] what [one] is. .... [One is one’s] life, ...... which means that ..... nothing more nor less than the totality of acts that make up that life.

A slightly earlier philosopher, Martin Heidegger, writes about the centrality of “being there”--living the life into which we’re thrown, however repetitious or routine, with as much awareness as possible, and accepting that “being there” defines who we are. Heidegger uses the German word “dasein,” literally “being there” instead of “person” or “human being.” Think of your most ordinary days, the typical ones in which nothing extraordinary happens, when you are not called on to be heroic and when your mood, needs, and senses of pain and pleasure are on a relatively even keel--for you! Consider that it may be days like these, rather than the ones on which you have to respond to unusual and extreme events, which show who you really are. Are you happy with that showing, with the choices you make about how to live, with being there? If not, fortunately, there’s the possibility of change--because we’re not talking here about desperate situations or dire emergencies, but of choices we make all the time about the pattern of our days. Connie Chandler-Ward has put this into a poem, called Body Song, describing a woman in hospital:

But the nurturing and creating of our bodies and souls takes place in a context of change, however simple our lives. No day is completely routine or repetitious. This first Sunday service is not exactly the same as last year’s; the congregation isn’t the same; you and I are not the same; we’ve grown and changed and experienced, and can never go back. On top of that, there’s the wonderfully mysterious factor called randomness, or luck, or even grace--the aspect of life for which we’re not responsible at all, which throws the totally unexpected into the everyday, making for marvel or misery quite unpredictably. Perhaps you know the two-act play by Samuel Beckett called Waiting for Godot. It’s not exactly an action-packed drama; in fact it’s been characterized by one critic as the play in which “nothing happens: twice!”--once in each of the two acts. As the title suggests, it’s mainly about waiting--for someone, God maybe, who never shows up, or isn’t recognized, or for some event which never happens. And yet, as the characters live out a day of small talk and “passing the time,” something is happening. It took me a while to notice this when I was studying the play years ago, but this is what Beckett’s stage directions say:

Act One -- A country road. A [bare] tree. Evening;
Act Two -- Next day. ...... The tree has 4 or 5 leaves.

Whatever your life is like – repetitious or varied, adventurous or routine – whether you’re a wild and crazy explorer or more like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, utterly discombobulated unless you always have the exact same brand and style of underwear--may three things be true for you:

May your days show who you are;
may you be happy with what they show;
and may you make room for the unexpected, for growth, for change, for grace.
So may it be, as it has been and as it will be, all over again. So may it be.