“PARTING WISDOM”

“PARTING WISDOM”

A sermon by the Rev. Roger Bertschausen

Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

2600 E. Philip Ln.

P.O. Box 1791

Appleton, WI 54912-1791

(920) 731-0849

Website: www.fvuuf.org

Delivered at the First Universalist Unitarian Church of Wausau, WI, on

November 14, 2004

Reading: from “Live Life to the Fullest: Enjoy Every Sandwich” by Charles Zanor

I did not know who Warren Zevon was until last year, when his impending death from lung cancer made him news…

Zevon’s illness provoked a seemingly heartfelt show of support from others in the entertainment business. David Letterman featured him for an entire show, and at one point asked him if his illness had given him any wisdom. Zevon’s response: “Enjoy every sandwich.”

To characterize this message as inspirational is probably over the top, but grant me this much—it stands in refreshing contrast to the stories of other victims of life-threatening illnesses that are intended to be inspirational but end up sounding superhuman. The protagonists in these tales meet any challenge, climb any mountain and draw their last breath with optimism and grace.

I admire the take-charge attitude and energy of such people, but I have nothing in common with them and they bear little resemblance to anyone I know. Zevon, however, I can relate to.

In February of 2002 I was diagnosed with lymphoma. Since that time I have become increasingly aware that the world-beater stories are simply part of a larger conspiracy to get everyone in the country to live life to the fullest—travel more, learn to play the tuba, teach our grandchildren about the fall of the Roman Empire, build our own lathes and turn that cherry tree in the front yard into salad bowls for the whole neighborhood.

Each of these ventures is fine when considered by itself (except maybe for the salad-bowl thing), but I am suspicious of the cultural imperative that whether we are sick or well, more is better. I have no quarrel with those who, faced with a catastrophic health event, want to put more pins in their maps, but there are some of us who simply find renewed meaning in our already existing worlds.

Since my chemotherapy treatment, I have experienced small “Zen” rushes—an arresting sense of tranquility coupled with the heightened awareness that what I am doing at that moment is exactly what I want to be doing—whether I’m sitting in a restaurant with a newspaper, reading a book in bed, cooking a meal or watching a movie with my wife. I had these moments before my diagnosis, but not as often or as easily…

Maybe this is just a case of the moment-by-moment living some say is the natural sequel of any protracted battle for health. Maybe I need a new philosophy of life. Or maybe it’s something else altogether. I may never find out, but in the meantime, I’ll have a Reuben on rye. Hold the dressing.[1]

**********

For some of us, death comes like a bolt out of nowhere and takes us away: a car accident or a previously undetected aneurysm or a massive heart attack. Others of us have the part-gift, part-curse of a life-threatening illness or a terminal diagnosis; we have time to prepare for our death.

At a pretty early age we all learn intellectually that we will die one day, but it’s awfully easy to live and act as if we don’t really believe this is the deal. A life-threatening illness or a terminal diagnosis has a way of cutting through this denial. Those who let the denial depart have a lot to teach the rest of us. Gazing at their own death, they can wrestle honestly with the meaning of death, and what death tells us about the meaning of life. I try to pay attention to these teachers. Today’s sermon focuses on the different kernels of wisdom offered by three such teachers who have died in the past few years: the performing artists George Harrison, Johnny Cash, and Warren Zevon.

It is easy and tempting in our culture to romanticize and sentimentalize and make super-human the end of life—the movie “Brian’s Song” comes to mind, or the person who decides to travel the world after receiving a terminal diagnosis. What strikes me about the three artists I’m focusing on today is that each one responded to his own imminent death not in a superhuman way or by doing something extraordinary. Like the guy in the Newsweek piece coping with potentially fatal lymphoma, Harrison, Cash and Zevon each basically continued to do what he had done in the past—each of their endings is seamlessly connected to the rest of their life. Part of how each responded was to keep making music—and this music is an extraordinary gift to the rest of us. Each of their last works radiates honesty, vulnerability, humor and wisdom. And none of them sugarcoats death or tries to hide the pain.

The first of three artists I’ll consider is George Harrison: ex-Beatle, solo artist, movie producer, and gardener extraordinaire. Not too many years ago Harrison survived a harrowing murder attempt that shattered the quiet life he had built himself. Then he got a diagnosis of terminal cancer. His response was to keep gardening and to keep close to home with his family. He also went back to the recording studio. He didn’t finish his last album—his illness forced him to stop working on it in September 2001. After his death two months later, the album was lovingly finished by his son Dhani and his colleague in The Traveling Wilbury’s: Jeff Lynne.

The album, called Brainwashed, is classic George. It’s full of slide guitar, humor, and Eastern-inspired spiritual musings. It also contains powerful critiques of Western culture gone awry amidst our never-ending orgy of materialism. In the middle of the album’s liner notes is a wonderful picture of George sitting among lotus flowers, and this quote from his beloved Bhagavad Gita: “There never was a time when you or I did not exist. Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be.” Facing his own imminent death, Harrison had moments at least of feeling that his death would not, could not change the basic fact that he is inextricably united with God and with all that is. He—like all of us, he believed—has always been and always will be. Death would simply make his union with the divine more obvious.

My favorite song on the album is “Pisces Fish.” He starts the song with images of ordinary life: rowers gliding on the river, Canada geese crapping along the river shore, the back wheel of his bike beginning to quiver because the chain is wrapped around the crank, old ladies training dogs. For Harrison, knowledge of his impending death made him appreciate the everyday things in life even more. He didn’t need to jet around the world to find the meaning of life and death; he didn’t need to go seek the wisest guru in India; he just needed to pay attention to the rowers on the river and the Canada geese and his bike chain. And in those very concrete things, he saw God. And he knew he was part of God. He found the living waters that are God, right there all around him, and even within him. “I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul.”

“Pisces Fish” by George Harrison

Rowers gliding on the river

Canadian geese crap along the bank

Back wheel of my bike begins to quiver

The chain is wrapped around the crank

Old ladies, who must be doggie training

Walking, throwing balls, chasing all the sheep

While the farmer stands around, and he's complaining

His mad cows are being put to sleep

And I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

Smoke signals from the brewery

Like someone in there found the latest Pope

In a vat of beer that keeps pumping out with fury

While the churchbell ringer's tangled in his rope

There's a temple on an island

I think of all the Gods and what they feel

You can only find them in the deepest silence

I got to get off of this big wheel

And I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

And I'll be swimming until I can find those waters

That one unbounded ocean of bliss

That's flowing through your parents, sons and daughters

But still an easy thing for us to miss

Blades go skimming through the water

I hear the coxon shouting his instructions about

With this crew oh it could be a tall order

Have we time to sort all of these things out?

Some times my life it seems like fiction

Some of the days it's really quite serene

I'm a living proof of all life's contradictions

One half's going where the other half's just been

And I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul[2]

I don’t know that Johnny Cash had an officially terminal diagnosis when he recorded American IV: The Man Comes Around, but death was certainly in the air. The album was released in November 2002. Six months later his wife June Carter Cash died; Johnny died four months after that. Both Johnny and June were in seriously declining health when Johnny recorded the songs for The Man Comes Around; the end was surely in sight. Johnny was close to wheelchair-bound. He was losing his eyesight, and his voice was not what it once was. His body ravaged by disease, he was clearly in the process of a slow and painful death. The only surprise was that June beat him to the exit door.

Given the circumstances, not surprisingly every song on the album has something to do with death. Unlike the last works of Harrison and Zevon, this album contains almost no original songs. But in continuing the endeavor he started in 1994 with the American series, Cash makes others’ songs completely his own. All of the recordings in the series are stripped down, simple, unadorned, recorded right in Cash’s living room. Cash’s encounter with imminent death—his own and June’s—courses through each song. They are Johnny Cash’s songs through and through.

All the songs sound bone-weary, raw and frail. In each, Cash looks the pain of aging, illness, and the death of self and loved ones squarely in the face—without flinching and without sugar-coating the painful truth. This approach is not surprising since this is how Johnny Cash faced everything, including his own well-documented and numerous vices and struggles.

There also courses through the album a sense of peace and acceptance for all that is in life. For Cash, the good and the bad in life were always finely woven together. He had a deep understanding and acceptance of both the good and the bad. As one commentator puts it, it’s clear in the album that Cash’s spirit was “scarred, busted, threadbare, but fearless, peaceable, witty, and wise.”[3]

Cash—addictions and sins not withstanding—was a deeply Christian man. Central to his Christian faith was the way of the cross. Open the album’s liner notes and you’ll see Cash’s withered hand with a ring prominently on one finger. On the ring is a crucifix. Cash understood Jesus’ pain on the cross. He understood the utter and complete desolation Jesus felt when he cried out in pain, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Cash had been there plenty of times. And many of the crosses he found himself on were of his own making.

You can especially hear Cash gazing at the accumulated pain of his life right in the face in the song “Hurt.” This song was written by Trent Reznor of the techno-punk band Nine Inch Nails. Cash loved the song because he said it was the best anti-drug song ever written.[4] It’s also a song for anyone who has ever been hurt in life—either both self-inflicted and not.

“Hurt” by Trent Reznor

I hurt myself today

To see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

The only thing that's real

The needle tears a hole

The old familiar sting

Try to kill it all away

But I remember everything

[Chorus:]

What have I become

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns

Upon my liar's chair

Full of broken thoughts

I cannot repair

Beneath the stains of time

The feelings disappear

You are someone else

I am still right here

[Chorus:]

What have I become

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

If I could start again

A million miles away

I would keep myself

I would find a way[5]

Unlike Mel Gibson, for Cash the way of the cross isn’t just about pain and desolation. Cash believed in justice and redemption, too. These things are part of the Christian story, too. He spent a lot of his life working to correct injustice, such as that perpetrated so heinously by European-Americans against Native Americans. And though he never shied away from giving voice to his doubts about God, a part of him also believed in redemption. For Cash, faith and doubt go together, just as good and bad are bound together. Strikingly, he ends this last album produced while he was alive with the song “We’ll Meet Again.”

“We’ll Meet Again” by Ross Parker and Hugh Charles

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,

but I know we'll meet again some sunny day!

Keep smiling through, just like you always do,

'till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

So, will you please say hello to the folks that I know?

Tell them I won't be long!

They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go,

I was singin' this song:

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,

but I know we'll meet again some sunny day!

So, will you please say hello to the folks that I know?

Tell them I won't be long!

They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go . . .

I was singin' this song:

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,

but I know we'll meet again some sunny day!

We'll meet again, we'll meet again . . .

Warren Zevon was diagnosed with a rare and deadly lung cancer in August 2002. In his mid-50’s, you could say his impending death was “premature.” His doctors gave him three months to live. He decided to spend those precious few months with family and friends, and he decided to write as many songs as he could. Music for him was the best way to say goodbye. The three months turned out to be ten months—long enough for him to create what might have been the finest album of his career, The Wind. And long enough to see the arrival of twin grandsons. The album was released two weeks before his death. It is an intimate album, full of acceptance, whimsy, humor and insight. Inspiration, he said, finally came easily—though he added, “I’m not saying this is a good trade-off.”[6]

His impending death helped him truly and deeply appreciate the gifts of each day—like the sandwiches he had for lunch, as he said on Letterman. “I’d be an idiot if I wasn’t less than pleased about being doomed,” he said, “but I feel lucky or blessed to be around so long and I still love every day.”[7]

My favorite song on the album is the song he recorded last: “Keep Me in Your Heart.” By the time he recorded this song, he was too weak to get to the studio; so he recorded it right in his living room. My hearing that song on the day he died a year ago was the genesis of this sermon. The song begins with these lines: “Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath/Keep me in your heart for awhile.” You can hear his shortness of breath—the creeping failure of his cancer-ravaged lungs—as he sings these incredible parting words. The song speaks for itself; so with this song, we’ll let Warren have the last word.

“Keep Me In Your Heart” by Warren Zevon and Jorge Calder

Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath

Keep me in your heart for awhile

If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less

Keep me in your heart for awhile

When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun