Still Waters

August 24, 2003--Hampton Falls, NH

"No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see."

--Taoist Proverb

But, of course, I knew that the trip was about much more than that. Even if we had accomplished nothing on the building project--which I am happy to say was not the case--I suspected that the true meaning of our visit in Transylvania would be in the intangibles: new life experiences, new worlds discovered, new friends made.

These intangibles are, of necessity, impossible to predict. That is part of the reason we travel: to experience something new and different, to put ourselves in the way of new situations and ideas and people, to see things we have perhaps never seen before, and perhaps never expected to see. I was making my third trip to Transylvania, having spent almost a month in our Partner Church village the year before; another of us was also visiting for the third time, yet another for a second, and six for the first, among them our organist this morning, Barbara Owen. I desperately hoped that their experiences in Transylvania would match my own, and that they would fall in love as I had fallen in love, and that the trip would not prove to be a disappointment.

I needn't have worried. Not only did we accomplish more than expected (at least by our work coordinator, Max Russell!), but also we made memories and friends for a lifetime. We experienced village life first-hand, attended worship together, worked together, sang together, and celebrated together. We picnicked in the Transylvanian hills, danced in a sidewalk cafe in the medieval city of Segesvar, we ate and drank and opened our hearts to one another. Barbara even got their organ to play! It hardly mattered that we don't speak the same language, or that we live half a world apart.

This, after all, is the real purpose of international partnership: to take us outside of our own culture, both religious and national; to introduce us to new people and experiences and landscapes; and, if we are lucky, to enable us to see ourselves in new ways.

In the post- September 11 world, I believe that this kind of experience is more crucial than ever before. It is more important than ever that we overcome our ethno-and-religious-centrism and our provincialism and find out what the rest of the world is saying, thinking, and worrying about. Many people in the world, including our Partner Church friends, are mostly worried about getting through another day.

Sadly, however, many people are choosing to travel less, or to travel only at home; to live by their fears, and not by their hopes. How can we expect to understand the world if we are only willing to listen to our own voices?

After returning from Romania to Budapest, Hungary, I embarked on a daylong train journey which took me through the Alps via Vienna and Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria, past beautiful Lake Constance in Switzerland, through Zurich and Basel and finally to my destination of Freiburg, Germany. The scenery was spectacular-- overwhelming, actually, because the Alps are what the Romantics liked to call "sublime"--but along the way I met interesting people. Three young women from Germany returning from a holiday in Budapest with a part-Hungarian friend: they were impressed by my feeble attempts to speak German, but gratefully spoke excellent English. They correctly informed me that Freiburg was a beautiful and "happening" place. A thoughtful young man from Israel, studying to be a filmmaker in New York City, traveling to Austria to confront the past in a place he had once said he would never go to visit. He gave me a first hand impression of the current situation in Israel. He also offered to carry my suitcase, and wished that I was staying in Vienna so that we could visit the city together. A young Bulgarian musician who had studied at Tanglewood and helped me find an unreserved seat on the train.

I was totally on my own, challenged by myself and by my lack of adequate language skills. If only I had known in high school what I know today! There were a few moments of stress, as when I had to make scheduled changes with limited time and knowledge, but I finally made it safely to my destination. It was a relief to find my German friend Helmut waiting for me in the Freiburg train station, but even if he had failed to show I know that I would have been alright, existentially speaking.

Part of me wishes that I had been able to do this kind of traveling when I was younger, stronger, and less timid than I am today. And maybe single. But it is better late than never, and I am already planning my next trip abroad. I can't wait!

Perhaps one of the highlights of my visit to Germany, besides sitting in the beer garden high above the city of Freiburg and its fantastic cathedral which thankfully survived the allied bombing in W.W.II, was an excursion to the Southern French city of Colmar, and a visit to the magnificent "Issenheim Altarpiece" paintings of Mathias Grunewald. The suffering and the dying were once brought before this profound depiction of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection to be comforted in their own sufferings. By all accounts, it had served its purpose well, and one can only wonder at and be humbled by the human misery these wonderful paintings have witnessed.

I had much opportunity on this trip to contemplate the tragic history of Europe, but also the glorious triumph of the human spirit.

I visited lovely, deserted castle ruins, drove in the famous and scenic Black Forest, ate Black Forest Cake twice, and paid a visit to Albert Schweitzer's house high in fresh mountain air in Konigsburg. I began to see myself more clearly, and to see myself more clearly as a citizen of the world, not just of one country, and as a member of the whole human race.

The Taoists say that "No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see." Perhaps this is the reason why the Psalmist was so happy to be led "beside the still waters." Our lives are too busy, filled with mundane detritus: bills to be paid, lawns to be mowed, laundry to be done, problems to be resolved, maybe even sheep to be herded. "The world is too much with us, late and soon," as Wordsworth so aptly said.

It is only when we can get away to a place where we can be quiet within ourselves, and reflect, that we can see ourselves as we truly are.

It won't all be good, of course. Sometimes our flaws and foibles become more apparent in new situations, in the presence of still waters. We may recognize how hardened our lives have become, how set our ways, how "uptight" and afraid of new experiences we are, how humorless we have allowed ourselves to be. Only by stepping outside of our usual routines and surroundings and relationships do we become aware just how thin our existences may have become. When we are forced by circumstance to stand on our own two feet, to recall who we are in the attempt to communicate it to someone we have just met, only then do we begin to get back in touch with our own truest, deepest selves.

This is also the truest meaning and purpose of the religious life, and it explains the universality and popularity of pilgrimage as a religious ritual. All over the world, and in every religious tradition, people engage in the rite pilgrimage as a way of getting outside of themselves and of discovering the sacred. Whether it is a trip to the Holy Land of Unitarianism in Transylvania, or to a great Cathedral, to the head waters of the River Ganges or to the sacred city of Jerusalem, or simply to some natural place that feeds our souls and calms our spirits, we all need to make the journey out of ourselves, which paradoxically may lead us to the journey into ourselves. "I have traveled widely in Concord," Thoreau said, or something similar, and we know that it is true, because he left the record of his journey behind.

No one can see his reflection in running water. No one can see herself when rushing madly from one project or commitment to the next. No matter what our occupations or preoccupations or our situations in life, we all need the opportunity to rest beside the still waters. We need the chance to catch our reflection in order to see who we are, and in turn to change who we are or at least become open to being changed. It is only in still water that we can begin to see. And more than ever before, we need to begin to see clearly.

The world cries out for us to wake up and to expand our vision of life's possibilities. Perhaps our fate demands it.

It is always a pleasure to spend an hour in this lovely building and spot. It is good to be together. May this time refresh and re-inspirit you, and may the quiet of this place help you to begin to see more clearly what it is that you need to do. May you begin to see yourselves clear. And may we all begin to see how much we are alike, and how much we need one another. This is my end-of -summer wish for all of you. So may it be.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock