"When everything else has gone from my brain," writes Annie Dillard in the preface to her memoir, An American Childhood; "When everything else has gone from my brain," what will be left, I believe is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way or that." Dillard is talking about Pittsburgh, a hometown she and I share, and in her memories of topology, Dillard especially recalls the three wide rivers that "divide and cool the mountains." The Allegheny brawling in from the North; the Monongahela flowing in shallow and slow from the South; and then the two, merging into the great, westward-wending Ohio."

 It surprises me not one bit that Dillard would choose to begin her memoir with a tribute to Pittsburgh's three rivers, because, like she, those rivers symbolize for me a deep sense of place, and a personal Source from which flows my own beginnings as well as some of my first major changes and challenges ...childhood, adolescence, first love, college, my parent's divorce, and the tragic loss of loved ones. I never once stepped foot in any of those polluted but majestic three rivers, yet they run through me with a force of gravity and love and joy and sorrow.  I am from Pittsburgh, and I've known rivers.

 As karma or dumb luck would have it, I now reside in a town where two rivers (the Assabet and the Sudbury) merge into the Concord. It is a gentler place than Pittsburgh, though not yet as deeply embedded into my heart or soul as my girlhood "home." Even so, these three New England rivers, unpolluted and pastoral, run under and through my life now, carrying their own burgeoning memories and potent forces. I live in Concord, and I still know rivers.

  Ken [Sawyer] reminded us earlier in the second reading how the writer Norman Maclean "wades into the swift silver of the Big Blackfoot River, casting for memories with the same reverence that he reserves for trout." And how Norman begins to hear the long story of his life cascading past gentle banks, through dark eddies and roaring rapids, and then finally concluding that, "eventually all things merge into One, and a River runs through it." Norman Maclean has known rivers.

  To be sure, each of us has known rivers of one sort or another. The Hudson, the Pinette, the Danube, the Mississippi, the Charles, the Saco, the Sudbury, Kimi's north branch of the Awsawba, the Rum, and the McKenzie. We each wade thigh-deep into the swift silver of memories, and we've each known changes and challenges. Some are sudden and abrupt, others planned, some welcome, and others truly dreaded. There have been changes that have carried us around river bends to uncharted tributaries, and on currents that have mostly floated us safely along, but that, at times, have swamped the very craft we had trusted to be buoyant and sturdy.

 A sage once remarked that "you can never step into the same river twice," meaning that life, like a river, is ever-changing and forever flowing downstream from its Source. Let us pause silently and consider for a moment: since Water Communion last September up through Flower Communion a few weeks hence, what have been the changes for each of us this year?

 From my vantage point here in the pulpit, I am looking out from the riverbank at a congregation of people navigating the currents of change and stepping into a new river each and every day: marriage and divorce, good health and illness, birth and death, employment shifts, newcomers whom we welcomed here last week and those moving off to college, to retirement communities, to nursing homes, to Maine and beyond. There are those grappling with the challenges of adolescence and old age, those getting their drivers licenses and those giving them up. And, I too, am poised for change, preparing to paddle off on the next fork of my own journey, sadly away from you here in Wayland, yet excitedly towards new, unexplored tributaries.

 Yes, here at First Parish, we are a community that has known its share of rivers and together we face, and will continue to face, the changes and challenges that inevitably run through us and under us on this great river called Life. In my view, we are not meant to go it alone on the river as an assemblage of single scullers. The church is, if nothing else, a place where we pledge to paddle together through the flats, the dark eddies, and the sudden white water. We take turns as navigator and guide, reading currents, tackling hazards, portaging in pairs and quartets and scores from riverbank to riverbank. We are not meant to go it alone on the river.

 The truth is some of us are better at change than others, more comfortable with the unpredictable ways of the river. There are those amongst us who might even embrace change and look forward to it with relish. And that's okay. In the past, I would have strenuously resisted facing my imminent leave-taking from here. But, after several decades of dark eddies and swift currents, triumphs and reversals, entries and exits,  I've made an important discovery, and this is it...just like a river, the only true constant in our lives is change. I believe this is what Norman Maclean is getting at when he writes, "eventually all things merge into One and a river runs through it." The One is the Eternal, the Tao; and the river is constant change running through our lives.

 I'm reminded here of the words of the great Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore, who writes, "The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances its rhythmic measures ... Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm? To be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy? All things rush on, they stop not, they look not behind, no power can hold them back; they rush on."

 Underneath all the apparent surface differences in our lives rushes on this steady-as-she-goes, utterly dependable state of being called change. We can count on it. Yet, it is helpful, even reassuring, to recognize that although things can change for the better or change for the worse, change, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. It's how we face and endure change that determines whether it becomes a crisis or an opportunity.

 All of us have probably experienced a time when we've been swamped, or even immobilized, by some unexpected or devastating or terrifying change in our lives. The shock of abrupt changes can often do that to us, although we usually recover (more quickly, no doubt, with the care and comfort of our community).

 Some folks stubbornly deny change, clinging to the side of their boats even after they've flipped over or run aground. Others simply don't (or won't) see it coming ; this brings to mind the scene from countless buddy movies in which the hapless heroes finding themselves adrift on some unfamiliar river. As a rumbling sound grows louder in the background, one turns the other and asks, "Do you hear that?" And you know what comes next...the camera zooms out to show them approaching a waterfall the size of Niagara! Yes, change can feel like that at times, although this is probably not the best strategy for dealing with it.

 For some of us, floating peacefully on our backs through change is the preferred course..face to the sky, letting go, letting things be, remaining immersed in the moment. With this in mind, Mary Oliver writes these words in her poem, In Blackwater Woods,

"Every year, everything
I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,
whose meaning none of us will ever know. "

"To live in this world," Oliver continues,
you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal,
to hold it against your bones
knowing your own life depends on it;
and when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."

 Still others prefer to launch themselves full throttle into the headwaters of change, take control (or at least, the illusion of control) and put the ash to 'er like mad to stay the course. Picture management guru Stephen Covey in a neon orange life vest! I see value in this approach as well, but its hard, too, and its not for everyone either.

 In a recent sermon, Scott Alexander, one of our ministers in Bethesda, Maryland, suggests that the key to surviving life's river of constant changes, regardless of one's technique, is mostly a matter of "resilience." This begins, Alexander tells us [with his typical directness], when we first make room for the notion that bad things can and do happen to good people, that life events can, indeed, be cruel and unfair. "I take it as a matter of faith," he writes, "that when life sends us reeling [and it will], all of us are free to make certain choices that can help us avoid falling into those permanently brittle places of the mind, body, and heart that trap us in those rigid, angry places of isolation, fear, and despair." Alexander continues by saying that, "If we are saved by degrees in our living -- and I believe we are -- then it matters one whole lot whether we strive to bring (by our spiritual attitudes and emotional choices) the greatest possible measure of resilience, [grace, vitality, and flexibility] into our lives."

 He points out that researchers have found, not surprisingly, that elderly Americans who are "adapters" do best physically, emotionally and socially as they age. Yet, one need not, in fact, should not, wait until AARP comes calling to learn how to be an adapter. Alexander explains that "adapters don't deny what has happened to them, they make room in their psyches for the new realities that have swept into their lives and also make the changes (in behavior and outlook) necessary to proceed with living with as much meaning and engagement as possible."

 I agree with Alexander that much of our capacity for resilience is, "in the end, a matter of attitude and a matter of faith..a decision to affirm (even after the boat capsizes) what of value, joy and holiness still remains with us;" what blessings still bless us even as we struggle through the ebb and flow of darkness into light and back again. To stick together on the river, affirming , in the words in poet David Whyte, that "the great receiving depth, untamed by what we need, needs only what will flow its way."

 In all, I believe that the challenges we face carry a simple and ultimately empowering message: this is your life, this is your river -- what will you do with it? I think the key is to "take it" with as much resilience, grace, and honesty as we can muster....the Class Five rapids, dark eddies, constant changes, and all -- and to explore it in full: illness, divorce, loss, boredom, joy, success, uncertainty, amazement, fear, loneliness, and wonder. To live, grateful not just for the moments in the sun, but also with a willingness to "stand still, with an injured and opened heart, letting the River run freely though us."

 It is with this sense of gratitude that I set off on the next leg of my river journey; a profound gratitude for your trust in allowing me to paddle beside you here at First Parish. And as I depart, it is also with a deep recognition that we've known rivers of change in our time together this year, and that our souls have grown ever-deeper like these rivers in facing and grappling with some of life's endless challenges.

 As I adapt to the reality that my ministry amongst you is coming to a close, I acknowledge, and even accept, that we'll never step into this particular river of experience or relationship again. But, if one thing is certain, it is that the river flows on, and that there will likely be a time when we meet again, at another fork, further downstream.

  So let the river run. The banks of my heart are wide open with thanks.

 Amen.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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