What Remains?

"During your life, everything you do and everyone you meet rubs off in some way. Some bit of everything you experience stays with everyone you’ve ever known, and nothing is lost. That’s what’s eternal: these little specks of experience in a great enormous river of life that has no end." -Harriet Doerr

The Rabbi of Minsk [from the morning’s Moment for All Ages] knew that he didn’t know it all. But it didn’t matter: "He was valued and loved, even so," we are told.

I find this story incredibly reassuring. For what it tells me is that it isn’t what we know that is most important. It isn’t our job, it isn’t how much money we have. It certainly isn’t what we believe. It’s who we are. It’s our character that really matters.

I don’t hear a lot of talk about character these days, especially in religious circles. I hear an awful lot of talk about belief, as if belief is all that really matters. It isn’t. Focusing on belief takes our attention away from what we need to be doing, and how we ought to be acting.

What’s really important is who you are. Martin Luther King, Jr., the great leader of the American Civil Rights movement which helped to bring African Americans into the mainstream of American life, referred to this as "the content of your character." In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered at the Great March on Washington, DC in 1963, King said that he hoped that one day his children would not be judged not by the color of their skins, but by the content of their characters. That phrase has always stuck with me. I think that we would wish that all our children might be judged by the content of their characters.

The ancient Israelites knew this truth, as well. The Book of Proverbs states that "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold."

I am reassured by this. We are loved for who we are. Just like in the story of the Rabbi of Minsk: it is our character that matters, not what we know or what we say. It is how we live our lives: how we treat other people, the good we do, the kindness we show, the forgiveness we offer, the compassion we embody.

None of us is perfect. None of us will get it right all the time. Of course! We are human. But in the end, we must decide which way we want the balance of our lives to tip. The world may be corrupt, but we can choose to do the right thing. We can choose love over hate, we can choose peace over conflict, we can choose good over evil. We can choose to do something with our lives that makes the world a better place in which to live.

Harrient Doerr reassures me when she writes that, "During your life, everything you do and everyone you meet rubs off in some way. Some bit of everything you experience stays with everyone you’ve ever known, and nothing is lost. That’s what’s eternal, these little specks of experience in a great enormous river of life that has no end."

Perhaps life is like a river, after all!

Unitarian Universalists have always been believers in the "immortality of influence." We can’t know for certain what happens after we die, but we do know that our influence lives on long after we are gone. I know this, because I know how those whom I have loved and lost continue to influence my life. I think of them always. Things they said, things they did, continue to have an impact on me. This is an immortality which is real. Who knows what influences have been passed down to us, not unlike through our genes, from people we didn’t even know?

"The joy that isn’t shared dies young," someone has wisely said. Have you passed any joy along, lately?

The writer of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon knew this truth:

The memorial of virtue is immortal,
because it is known with God and with people.
When it is present, we take example of it,
and when it is gone, we desire it.
It weareth a crown and triumph forever,
having gotten the victory,
striving for undefiled rewards.

But the prolific brood of the ungodly will be of no use,
And none of their illegitimate seedlings will strike a deep root
        or take firm hold.
For even if they put forth boughs for a while,
standing insecurely they will be shaken by the wind,
and by the violence of the winds they will be uprooted.
The branches will be broken off before they come to maturity,
and their fruit will be useless,
not ripe enough to eat, and good for nothing. . . .
But the righteous, though they die early, will be at rest.
For old age is not honored for length of time,
or measured by number of years;
but understanding is gray hair for anyone,
and a blameless life is ripe old age.

I think it is time for us to reclaim the notion of character and virtue, the notion of "a good name." I believe that these ideas have been co-opted in recent years by those who have a very narrow vision of what they mean. What you believe, whether politically or religiously, has been made to seem more important than what you do and how you act, and this is just plain wrong.

I was not surprised to learn that all of the values which were ranked highest during our visioning process were values having to do with character: honesty, kindness, compassion, creativity, empathy, integrity, and courage were at the top of the list. What does this tell us? It tells us that we value a good life, a well-lived life, above any particular set of beliefs. It is how you act, the things you do for others, and not what you claim to believe, that is most important.

If I could give you one thing, it would be a sense of your own preciousness, a sense, as we sang this morning, that you are somebody: somebody special, somebody who can make a difference, somebody who is loved and valued for who you are, for your own unique and irreplaceable self.

Unitarian Universalists have always affirmed the truth that actions speak more loudly than words and have tried to teach it. Not what you say, but what you do, is what is ultimately important. And it is the quality of your character which will outlast you, which you will be remembered for, for generations hence, and, who knows, perhaps unto eternity itself. This is an immortality which anyone can grasp, it is real, and it is within the reach of each one of us, and it reassures me.

There is a little prayer that I often use in memorial services, and with which I want to close this morning. I contains the kernal of truth about which I have attempted to speak this morning:

Whatever we have known and loved
is ours while life shall last.
Help us to see, O God,
that what we love becomes a part of us,
interfused with our lives,
blended with mind and memory,
joined to our souls.
Strengthen us in resolve
that the beauty we knew
in those who have passed from us
shall live on in ourselves
and be passed from one generation to another,
immortal both with God and humanity.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock