By Rev. Rebecca Bryan

We were in the process of blending our families after remarriage, four children and two adults. Always one for the importance of rituals and wanting to find a way to commemorate the transition, I had lugged us all down to the local “ClayPen,” a paint–your–own–pottery studio in West Hartford, Connecticut. Once there, we created a masterpiece together. It was a large platter with each of our handprints on it and our names painted underneath, each hand from the smallest to the largest having been dipped in paint.  We were all feeling pretty good, even the children had forgiven my cajoling to get everyone to do this. We were laughing as we walked up the steps to our home, when the unthinkable happened. The platter slipped out of one of our hands onto the ground, shattering into many pieces.  

After a moment of shock, my beloved partner turned smiling and said, “Don’t worry. It’s okay, we’ll just make a montage.” Thirty minutes later we were assembled at the kitchen counter, hands deep in mortar, creating art from the broken pieces.  

What might have been trash turned into treasure.  

We have similar choices every day including how we experience an event, what we see when we walk down the street or the beach, and the purpose we assign to everything. We are indeed active participants in the creation of our world.  

Allow me to share a creation story with you. It’s a takeoff from the Biblical story. Don’t let the word God or familiar theme dissuade you, listen.  

In the beginning, God created the earth, 

 and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. 

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was human. Mud as human alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as human sat up, looked around, and spoke. Human blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely. 

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God. 

“Certainly,” said human. 

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. 

And He went away. 

― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle 

Creating purpose – it‘s a big and tremendous responsibility – and opportunity. 

Before I go further, I need to say that humans are not predisposed to do what I am describing. Neuroscientists now document that we have what is called a negativity bias.  I first learned of this in Rick Hanson’s book Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.  The negativity bias, or negative effect, is the concept that humans are wired to focus on the negative. Negative experiences, thus, leave a more lasting impression on us than positive experiences. If you google this concept, you will find articles in Psychology Today, medical journals and Forbes magazine.  

Rick Hanson highlights, however, not simply our negativity bias. He also writes about neuroplasticity and the fact that we can change these habits, even predispositions, if you will, in our brain.  

Most people are not born as “treasure hunters”; we are born to be defensive, protective and alert to danger. We are wired to survive; spirituality asks us to also learn to thrive. We can practice and create neuropathways that see beauty, remember the pleasantries of life, and assign positive purpose to our experiences. It is both a spiritual practice and a learned habit.  

“Every time you take in the good, you build a little bit of neural structure. Doing this a few times a day – for months and even years – will gradually change your brain, and how you feel and act, in far-reaching ways,”1 writes Hanson.  

Max and Laurie [whose art was presented and described during the church service] offer us two wonderful examples of how we can make art from what others have discarded or labeled trash, by which I mean something that has no value. Their stories are a reminder and an inspiration to pause, look again, and consider more closely the purpose of what we see. Are we able to see the “treasure trunk,” as we heard it described in Shel Silverstein’s “Hector the Collector” poem, or are we part of the mass of “silly sightless people…” who “came and looked…and called it junk”? 

Art is beautiful and important in all of its forms: visual, musical, and dance. It has the power not only to transform our perception of objects, but also to change our inner landscape, mental and emotional. Margaret Fuller, one of the Unitarian female transcendentalists, wrote of this potential for music to transform depression into hope in a letter to Beethoven sixteen years after his death.  

My only friend, 

How shall I thank thee for once more breaking the chains of my sorrowful slumber? My heart beats. I live again…2 

Fuller’s transcendentalism and views were so influential during the early and mid-19th Century that one critic had this to say, “No person has appeared among us whose conversation and morals have done more to corrupt the minds and hearts of our Boston community. For religion she substitutes art; for the Divinity…she would give us merely the Beautiful”3 

The practice of finding meaning, beauty, and new purpose in trash extends into other realms.  

For starters, how can we ignore Earth? Recycling, repurposing, finding new and different uses for items are no longer nice things to do; they are necessities if we are to respond to climate change. Students in schools in Newbury and Lynn, for which we lit our Candles of Peace this morning, are doing this using plastic bottles filled with plastic bags as the building blocks for building a shed.  

Our Climate Action Group has brought to the Board a policy that would hold us accountable to environmentally sustainable practices as a church community.  

The 7th principle of Unitarian Universalism holds us in covenant to respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We must do our part if we are to be responsible, hopeful co-creators of this world.   

We live in the center of incredible beauty here. Within miles or feet of where we sit are the ocean, tidal river, beaches, marsh, fields, and forest. How can we do anything other than engage in Climate Justice? 

The marsh is beautifully described by Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing, in the quote on the cover of the order of service: “Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace…”4  

Though she writes of a different marsh, that is our marsh too, The Great Marsh. That marsh is teeming with life that can only be sustained there in its unique ecosystem. Think too of the iconic Pink House, the epitome of what some call trash and others know is treasure. 

Our children are starting their own process of repurposing, finding and creating beauty in space that some see as otherwise. They have been meeting in the upper level of Parish Hall and are now imagining what they can do to make it their space, and they will, turning into a treasure all of their own. Don’t worry; this will not stop us from imaging and creating the wholeness of that space, using environmentally sustainable building practices.  

And of course, there is life. Though we are often victims of circumstances, we can still thrive with the right support, community, and healing. Every one of us has events, circumstances, and conditions which are not pretty at first sight. I am in no way suggesting we deny the pain or stop fighting oppression or abuse. I am saying that there is hope. Transformation is possible. Beautiful things can come out of the worst of circumstances. It’s not guaranteed; however, it is possible. As the lotus flower grows in mud, we too can emerge in all of our beautifulness despite, and even because of, the trash that has been a part of our lives. Spiritual teachers have long taught that our emotional and spiritual wounds are our pathways to our true selves, enlightenment, and freedom. They are pathways that require fortitude, fellow travelers, patience, and love. A lot of love. The most spiritual people I know, know pain.  They don’t understand it; they have lived it and found a way through.  

That mosaic I told you about at the start of my sermon, well, it has followed us throughout the years, now happily situated in the shaded bed by the backside of our home. It has been beautiful creating our family, and that was not the last time we’ve had to make art out of broken pieces, find the treasure in what could just as easily been experienced as trash.  

I invite you as you leave the sanctuary this morning to stop at one our four tables – at the front and rear of sanctuary and in the vestibule – and choose your treasure from among the trash. What piece of trash do you see as treasure? Take it home and enjoy every minute of it. Use it, relish it, allow it to remind you of the power of repurposing, of turning trash into treasure.  

May we all make treasures rather than see trash, therefore, turning our very lives into art, each as unique and beautiful as the next. 

Amen and blessed be.