Sermon: Flow, Part 1, by Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons

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Who here likes mosquitoes? Anybody? I don’t either. If there’s any mosquito within a mile, it’s going to find me and bite me. Most people don’t like them. But most people can’t do anything about them. In fact, in Florida and Puerto Rico, people really, really want to get rid of them right now because they’re carrying a dangerous disease and it’s hard to figure out what to do about it. But on a little island in Maine, called Cranberry Island, a hundred years ago, they got rid of their mosquitoes. Cranberry Island is called Cranberry Island because it has cranberries growing on it. Or at least, it used to. Cranberries grow in bogs. Cranberry bogs. A bog is a kind of a swamp and mosquitoes love to lay their eggs in swamps. So it used to be that Cranberry Island had lots of cranberries and lots of mosquitoes and people were very fed up (with the mosquito part). A reporter in 1928 wrote, “They have become so prolific that to venture from one’s house after dark was a sure means of returning covered with lumps.”

 

So one day, along came an ex-army major named Edwin M. Skinner who told them, “For $12,000 I will solve your mosquito problem.” The people said, “you’re hired!” So Major Skinner proceeded to empty all the water out of the cranberry bogs. Now unfortunately cranberry bogs don’t come with a built-in drain, like a bathtub, where you can just pull a lever and let all the water out. Major Skinner had to dig hundreds of ditches using a machine which they say, “cut through roots and turf with the precision of a razor blade swiping through a sheet of paper.” Once these ditches were dug deep enough, the water from the cranberry bogs would run out to the sea. The reporter wrote that he once watched “literally thousands of mosquito larvae being carried on a miniature torrent” out of the bogs and “to the broad sweep of the Atlantic Ocean.” And it worked. No more mosquitoes. No more cranberries, but no more mosquitoes.

 

Meanwhile the fishing industry was booming. Generations of lobstermen, crabbing, giant trawlers catching cod and millions of fish every year. People made a lot of money over the last hundred years catching and selling all those fish and lobsters.

 

My family and I, not knowing any of this history, rented a house for a week on Cranberry Island this summer. We took the ferry over, noticing all the buoys marking lobster traps on the way. We arrived at the dock and got into the car that the owners had left for us there with the key in it since the island was so small, even if someone wanted to steal a car, there would be nowhere to put it and nowhere to drive it. It was beautiful there. Woods, ocean, big sky, three beaches, one with no waves, one with small waves, and one with wild waves crashing on the rocks. There was only one road on the island, one little general store and one café, open a just few hours a day. Best of all, there was almost no cell reception on the island. This was a paradise. We went to bed that first night and it was a little chilly but we decided to open the windows. We expected that when we opened them, all the night sounds would pour in. But there was silence. Complete silence. No crickets. No cicadas. No seagulls. Silence. It was kind of strange. We looked out the window and after watching in the dark for a few minutes, we saw a firefly. A single, lone firefly and no others. Usually where there’s one, there’s a whole sparkling field of them. We didn’t think much about it. We went to sleep and slept deeply.

 

The next morning we went to the beach and my kids and I went off to look for tide pools. I had been telling them about all the amazing creatures we might find in the tide pools – starfish and sea anemones and crabs and iridescent seaweed. But we looked and looked in one tide pool after another and there was nothing. Occasionally some little snails called periwinkles, but no other life. And then we saw a seagull soaring overhead and we realized that it was the first one. The first seagull we had seen in hours. Normally there would be so many of them, making a racket and diving for fish and crabs. Then we started to hear stories about how hard it is to make a living as a lobsterman now. Not, actually, because there were too few lobsters, but because there were too many and the price was dropping. It was hardly worth it to go out in the boat and haul up the traps because you couldn’t sell them for much. Why the lobster baby boom? They think it’s because fishing ships have caught too many cod fish, which are the lobsters’ main predators. (I know that seems weird that a fish could eat a lobster, but the fish eat them when they’re very small, before they get too crunchy.)

 

It was still beautiful and we still loved being there, but I started to feel kind of sad too. The cycles of life were all messed up on this island. The beach was empty and the fields were empty. There was almost nothing alive there. There were still woods, but very few animals, very few bugs, and no ocean life that we could see. And of course no cranberries anywhere. And it all had to do with water. Mother Earth, in her wisdom, has created such a beautiful, delicate balance for all of nature, where everyone plays a part. A cranberry bog is like a cradle for a whole system of life, not only the cranberries and mosquitoes, but everything that lives in the bog and eats the mosquitoes and everything that eats whatever eats the mosquitoes and the plants and the mud and the fireflies. And the fish in the sea are not only good for us to eat, but they eat things too, and it’s their job to eat them, and if they can’t do their job because we’ve caught too many of them, everything gets out of whack. Pretty soon there’s just lobsters and not much else in the ocean and beaches. We find out that it really is all connected. Every fish matters, every drop of water matters. You can’t ever change just one thing – like get rid of mosquitoes – without changing everything.

 

[Hymn #21 For the Beauty of the Earth]

 

You can’t ever change just one thing without changing everything. And that goes for people too. I can’t do anything without it affecting you and you can’t do anything without it affecting me. Every action ripples out and flows just like water does all over the world. Just like in the story Meagan told, it’s all part of one big cycle. We may talk about the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and the cranberry bog and the glacier in Antarctica as if they’re separate things but it’s really all the same water. And each one of us, even though we might feel sometimes like our own separate pond, are actually made up of little drops from every place and time.

 

Think of all the millions of different things that have come together in making you – temporarily – who you are today. Think of all the people who have loved you and the people who have been mean to you. Think of your teachers – teachers in school and the people in your life who are wisdom teachers to you. Think of the food you eat from all different countries –the styles of food and the actual fruits and vegetables and animal products shipped from far away to New York City. The lives of those farmers in faraway lands have something to do with your life. Think of all the experiences you’ve had – the painful times, the joyful times, the boring times, the times when unfair things have happened to you and the times when you’ve been unfair – they’ve all shaped you. Think of the language that you speak– it has grown out of languages from all over the world flowing together and separating and changing for thousands of years and now coming out of your mouth in your own way every day. And think of those times when you’ve been able, maybe just for a moment, able to feel all of it at once –like you are dissolved in the ocean of the whole universe. Some people call that the feeling of God.

 

We each come here today, overflowing with all these people and all these places and all these moments. It’s amazing that all of it can fit into one self. But it’s true. We bring the whole world with us when we walk through this door. And when we come together like this, in community, our worlds mix. This bringing together of our separate worlds is, for Unitarian Universalists, something like a sacrament. We have a beautiful ritual we do here at First U every year to mark this coming together of our community: we make holy water. It’s water that sparkles with the energy of a little bit of each of us, a little bit of each of our stories.

 

We each have some water with us (if you don’t, you can easily get one from an usher.) Each of these little bottles of water already has the whole world in it, just like we have in us. We’re going to saturate this water with our blessing. And then we’re going to pour some of it into one of the two basins in our two side aisle chapels or into this beautiful baptismal font from 1853. The water that results, part salt-water, part fresh water, some chlorine, millions of microorganisms, molecules from New York and molecules from far away, atoms from the age of the dinosaurs… this water will reflect the diversity of all of us. Combined, it will be something new. And this water we will call holy.

 

What are we going to do with this holy water? Well, first we’re going to boil it. It won’t be any less holy, just a little more sanitary. And then we’ll use this water to bless people. We will use it in our baby dedication ceremonies here at First U, right from this baptismal font as it was intended. When we touch that water to a baby’s head, it will transmit the blessing from each of us in this room to the baby. And when one of our gathering is ill or dying, if they would like it, they can also be touched with this holy water and receive our blessing.

Through this holy water, each of us will be able to lovingly give a part of ourselves. We’ll be able to say, “Here. Here’s a little bit of me that can become a little bit of you. It can connect you more to your source. Because of course I am made of everyone and everything that came before me. Here’s a little bit of my love that I am sharing with you.”

 

And here’s the coolest part. Do you see that pitcher of water next to the flowers? That is our holy water from last year. We’re going to pour that into the mix as well. And at the end of this year, we’re going to save a little of today’s holy water to include in next year’s holy water, so each year will also include molecules from each of the past years. If we do this for the next hundred years, your water will still be there, however diluted, taking part in making the blessing. Babies born to people not born yet will receive your blessing. Elderly people in their final days on this earth will receive your blessing. You may even receive your own blessing someday.

 

So now I invite you: lift up your container of water – and if you’ve brought just one for your family, all of you touch it together – lift up your water and bless it. Fill it up with your best prayers and visions for our world, saturate it with your love and your you-ness and then, when you’re ready, stand up, walk it up to the front and let it go. Ushers are here to help you if you need it.