March 2009

Let’s Go Ride the Rides

BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP

Last weekend at Spartanburg’s Spring Fling, I was paying attention to 90-degree heat and shoving crowds, standing in line at the bumper-car ride with my two boys. One of them kept changing his mind about whether he wanted to ride. What he really wanted to do was toss rubber chickens into a pot, five tries for two dollars. My brain was a rubber chicken. I had just dragged the children all over the fair looking for the writers with whom I was supposed to sign books and the folks from my church with whom I was supposed to sell beer. I couldn’t find either group, and the whole time I was looking for those people, both boys were pulling on me asking, “Can we ride the rides now?” Sigh. So I said, “Let’s go ride the rides.” Here we were in line, and into my head came this thought: “I am in hell.”

When I saw my older son dive into a car and start manhandling the wheel, waiting for the ride to start, I moved into the shade with his brother to watch. There my brain cooled off enough to remember to enjoy my life, to be there for the beauty and grace in that situation. I saw my son’s mouth open wide with joy, its inside stained red by tiger’s-blood-flavored shaved ice. He was in a state of bliss, being slammed from behind and from all sides by other bumper-car drivers. He threw back his head and laughed, putting the pedal to the metal in reverse, snapping his head forward as he took aim, and slammed into another car, looking sideways at the other driver, grinning, not quite able to believe this was actually allowed. Jubilee. Bubbles of joy changed my breathing. I was having fun. Here was beauty, and here was grace, and here I was in the middle of it.
—from “Trying to be There” by Meg Barnhouse

So Meg is at Spartanburg’s big carnival, and it’s hot, and she has promises to keep, her kids are pestering her for the chance to toss rubber chickens and get over to the bumper cars, and to her everlasting credit, what does she say? She says—in a moment of prize-winning good parenting—she says, “Let’s go ride the rides.”

And here’s what she does not say: She does not say, “The lines are too long, the place is a mad house, there’s too much going on at once, and I’m way too hot and tired.” She does not actually say, “Truly and certainly I am burning in hell.” What Meg does say is, “Let’s go ride the rides.”

Ever been to a place where it’s hot and muggy outside, and there are a lot of eager people gathered in various areas? Ever been to a place where there are too many things going on at once and the lines can be long and you can get hot and tired and there are moments when the whole thing can feel like a madhouse? A place, maybe, where however fun it had seemed like it would be when you thought up the idea of going, there later came moments when you wondered what in the world you were thinking? Ft. Lauderdale? In June?

And then, and then, you snap out of it and you cool off your brain enough to rejigger your attitude and your attention, and something healthy and spiritual and calm kicks in and at last you say to yourself, “Let’s go ride the rides!” The dimness of your soul passes, and you are up and running toward the beauty, toward the joy.

When, earlier in the service, we heard Charles Albert Tindley’s anthem “The Storm is Passing Over,” we heard the music of a man famous for singing about overcoming obstacles. Born a slave, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew, and he earned two Doctor of Divinity degrees. He truly understood what it meant when a storm passes over and the morning light appears.

Well, what does it mean that the storm has passed over? Maybe it means that you suffered immeasurably at the hands of oppression and now, for whatever reason, you are feeling freer. Maybe you’ve been a long time finding yourself, but your voice is getting loud enough to hear. Or maybe it’s just that lately you’ve been paying attention to the parts of life that make you miserable or make you dull of spirit, and that’s not really working for you—and then, feeling hot and crabby at the Spartanburg Spring Fling gets trumped by the person you find inside who finally says with zest and excitement, “Let’s go ride those rides!”

Unitarian Universalists ride the rides. We believe that everybody is invited, and not only invited, but free to choose among the death defying scary rides, the tame little whirling tea cup rides, the classic merry-go-round, the rides in the dark, the sentimental rides that have scenery and cheerful songs, or, yes, the bumper cars. We have a theology that requires us to decide for ourselves what kind of a person we want to be, what kind of ride we want to take given the constraints on our lives, and once that’s all decided, we are required to help the rest of the folks climb into their seats. Only when we’ve done that does our religion, our unfettered religion, encourage us to find the beauty and the joy.

Unitarian Universalism encourages us to ride the rides with heartfelt joy at the beauty of it all—not every religion pushes that. We can sing if we want to as we go round and round, or shriek with delight. Ooh and ahh at the view from the top, take delight in our companions, or enjoy the weightlessness or up-side-downedness of whatever ride we signed up for. But whether your ride is bumpy or smooth, daring or comforting, the joy of the experience is yours for the taking.

But wait. Life’s no amusement park. We all know that. We bring joy and beauty into our focus in the context of pain and confusion writ small and writ large. Disaster, grief, deep disappointment, betrayal, divine discontent and the hungry heart, injustice—in our own lives and across the globe. And yet, and yet, as the Navaho chants reminded us in the introit, the potential for beauty always exists before us, behind us, above us, below us. The perfect three-pointer exacted by the correct basketball team, the hurricane blowing out to sea just in time, kindness in the face of crisis when the waters rise high, the grand and glorious symphony. Things of beauty, occasions of joy, everywhere you look. They calm us down, slow the gallop, remind us of the peace we’re breathing in and the love we’re breathing out.

We all get to have “spots of time.” Not the fleeting happy moments that flow through our lives, but rather the far deeper, poignant spiritual moments that continue to resonate with meaning many years later. These are, to my mind, the religious moments, that offer us renovation, nourishment, and the healthy repair, even when experienced watching the bumper cars at the Spartanburg Spring Fling.

We each get to have the beauty and the joy. We turn our attention and there it is. Presto, we find ourselves in a spiritual moment; abracadabra, we are transformed.