Nothing Gold Can Stay
November 7, 1999
Denise Long
North Raleigh United Church

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

Romans 8:35-39

Those words Marie just read from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes pull at us with their poetry. I know that I feel a sense of comfort as I listen to the familiar recitation of opposites…to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven… a time to be born and a time to die… a time to plant and a time to uproot… a time for mourning and a time for dancing… a time to seek and a time to lose… a time to keep and a time to throw away…

The pairing of polarities strangely delights our minds just as the autumn sight of fiery gold and red trees against a bleak gray sky charms our senses. We are attracted to contrasts. The poet William Blake may help explain this curious affinity when he writes:

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, all are necessary to Human existence. (From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

Chinese spirituality implicitly recognizes this truth in the symbol of yin--yang, a sign for the divided, and yet complementary universe. The dolphin shaped parts are intertwined, forming a whole circle… the yin standing for earth, female, darkness and autumn, and the yang representing heaven, male, brightness, and spring.

But though we all feel a tug in our hearts toward the tension inherent in opposites, we don't often savor them. The "correct thing", in western religious circles, often the "pious" thing to do, is to emphasize only ONE of the actions or elements in the contrasting pairs which life brings us. We decide to emphasize what we call the "positive"… the sweetness rather than the sour, the light over the dark, yang instead of yin, faith rather than doubt, health instead of pain.

But in doing so, I believe we miss something important. The bittersweet beauty of autumn reminds us that the glorious colors of fall are the result of the passing of time and the approaching chill of winter. Indeed, it is only because autumn is BETWEEN the living green of summer and winter's deathly black and white, that autumn exists at all.

Perhaps our sin is in the clinging, the clinging to spring and summer so tightly that we miss the fall. If we only grasp onto the seasons of our lives where we dance, and if we do not allow ourselves to experience the times of mourning, or if we hold onto the gathering and never move on to the letting go, we are cheapening life in all its fullness. Life is lived in time, and time moves on… change is unavoidable.

Perhaps Robert Frost said it best:

Nature's first green is gold;

Her hardest hue to hold-

Her first leaf is a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf-

So Eden sank to grief-

So dawn goes down to day-

Nothing gold can stay.

Why is this so hard for us to accept? Why do we believe that all stories should end with "they lived happily ever after" when we know that life is not really like that? We can SAY that we understand…. We can SAY that we know that all honeymoons must come to an end, that the ideal must meet the real, that the dewy hopes and dreams of dawn often evaporate in the harsh light of day.. but somehow, in spite of everything, we want to hold on to the gold and never let it go.

Letting go… like the leaves of fall, perhaps this is something we need to do in the seasons of our lives that bring us moments of autumn and winter. The early Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and John of the Cross found deep spiritual meaning in their experiences of emptiness, where letting go of all things that occupy the mind allowed them to reach that places in their souls where rebirth could happen… where creation could occur again, ex nihilo, out of nothing.

They called this side of spiritual experience the Via Negativa, the "negative way", and claimed it as a necessary part of religious life. Throughout Christian history the Via Positiva, "the positive way", was always considered the most important as it emphasized the more active disciplines of service, worship, and prayer. But the Via Negativa, though often neglected, became an important source of spiritual growth for those who were brave enough to look into the darkness.

Modern writers have recognized this truth as well. They too acknowledge the bittersweet, and claim the dark as well as the light. The poet Rilke writes, " I have faith in nights". Matthew Fox describes it this way:

The dark night of our souls is a special occasion for divine birth and opportunity, provided we let the darkness be darkness and the nothingness be nothingness, at least for a while. Without nothingness there will be no creation or recreation. (Original Blessing.)

Letting go… letting the darkness be darkness… letting the gold slip away… learning to "have faith in nights"… this is hard for us, we who have been taught by centuries of western civilization that one must go after what one seeks and do it with a vengeance. We are told to grab on and hold on, pursue and never stop, use all our mental and technological powers to capture what we desire.

The Biblical writers like the authors of the book of Job and Ecclesiastes are utterly honest about the futility of tactics like these which we use to fill the gnawing void in our souls. We crave to know the meaning of life.. in the words of Job, we spend our lives looking for the place "where wisdom is found", but we go about it in entirely the wrong way. Hear this poetic passage from Job 28:

Silver has its mines, and gold a place for refining.

Iron is extracted from the earth, the smelted rocks yield copper.

Humankind makes an end of blackness

when they pierce to the uttermost depths of the black and lightless rock.

Mines the lamp-folk dig in places where there is no foothold,

They hang suspended far from the rest of humanity…

Man attacks earth's flinty sides, upturning mountains by their roots,

Driving tunnels through the rocks, on the watch for anything precious.

He explores the sources of rivers, and brings to daylight secrets that were hidden.

But tell me, where does wisdom come from? Where is understanding to be found?

The road to it is still unknown to humankind, not to be found in the land of the living.

The author of Job waxes eloquent in his description of how we with all our technological expertise can overturn mountains and explore the sources of rivers, yet not succeed in finding out the meaning of our lives. His words ring as true today as two thousand years ago. And, we secretly admire Job for speaking his mind so candidly, for crying out against what seems to him the absence of God and asking the painful and perennial question of "Why?"

The writer of Ecclesiastes also gives voice to an awful honesty. Indeed, before the passage we heard read earlier, the author speaks out about his profound sense of emptiness. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! For all his toil under the sun, what does a man gain by it?" The New English Bible translation of this verse is "Emptiness, emptiness, all is empty." It troubles us to hear such words in scripture. The Bible is supposed to reassure, not disturb.

Yet the speaker in Ecclesiastes never claims that God is dead, just as Job never believes that God's absence will be permanent. Both are living with opposites and both are letting go… letting go of convention and religious pretense… letting go of the desire to coat over the painful aspects of life with false piety. They acknowledge the darkness. They allow themselves, in Matthew Fox's words, to let nothing be nothing. They don't try to come up with answers. They are helping us see that Mystery, by its very nature, is never "solvable", and that to be truly human is to confront those eternal tensions in life, and not ignore them.

The writer in Ecclesiastes says in verse 11 of Chapter 3 that "God has given humankind a sense of time past and future, but no comprehension of God's work from beginning to end." What an amazing declaration! We are indeed creatures who have a sense of time, and yet, we can't see the whole picture…. We can never get a "God's-eye" view of things. We're stuck with bits and pieces, unsatisfying parts, unresolved and troubling questions… Mystery.

So, what should we do? Perhaps we should accept the inscrutable nature of life just as it is. William Blake puts it this way, "I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love."

We too, can ponder and wonder and ask "why" and yet, …live and love. We can affirm God, even though we do not comprehend God or what appear to be God's actions. When Job had lost possessions, health, and family, he could not comprehend the "why". Yet, he could still affirm that God was present. He says, "Though God slay me, yet will I trust him."

One of the most memorable Good Friday worship services I have ever experienced was in Oberlin, when one of my friends, Mary Hammond, a Baptist pastor in town was giving the sermon. It was Good Friday, the church was draped in black, the mood one of sadness as we remembered the death of the One who symbolized life. Mary had recently been diagnosed with cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She was undergoing chemotherapy and her prognosis was unknown. She preached passionately about the importance of not skipping too quickly to Easter… of walking awhile in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and yes, finding God there. I remember her white face as she fiercely quoted those words from Job: "Though God slay me, yet will I trust him." Mary was living with contrasts… she was in the middle of a bittersweet autumn, and like William Blake, she could ponder, ask "why", and yet … live and love.

It is possible in the yin-yang mixture which is life to come to grips with a faith which allows for tragedy as well as comedy, a faith large enough for a God who is strangely hidden, as well as revealed. A pastor who lost his twenty year old daughter in a car crash printed the following verse on his church bulletin the Sunday after the accident. It was written by a Holocaust victim.

I believe in the sun, even when it does not shine.

I believe in love, even when it is not shown;

I believe in God, even when he does not speak.

These words are an affirmation that our Creator God is author of all things, even of nothingness, and that our falls into nothingness must be trusted, just as the seed must fall into the dark ground of autumn to await the spring. This affirmation of trust in spite of an awareness of emptiness, pain, and death… this ringing "and yet", and yet…. is echoed in the words of Paul in Romans, Chapter 8:

Then what can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or hardship? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, peril, or the sword? … and yet, in spite of all, overwhelming victory is ours through him who loved us. For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life.. in th eworld as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths.. nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus…"

And so, as I look at my own life, the bittersweet beauty of autumn reminds me of many things… the passage of time, of joys and regrets, of not knowing the answer to all the questions of "why"…

I think of working daily trying to bring some peace to the lives of women who have been broken by violence, of constantly being confronted by pain, and yet still being able to live and love and affirm the goodness of life. I think of how my idealism about the world, or the justice system has slipped away like gold, and how I struggle on a daily basis to accept that relationships and institutions are imperfect things. I have found that I have grown older, sadder, hopefully wiser, but also more in love with life. I find that the joyful moments in life's journey become more sweet because I see them more clearly against the foil of tragedy.

In this age of enlightenment, I also want to embrace the dark. Like T. S. Eliot, I am learning to say to my soul, "Be still, and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God."

I will accept that I am a being attracted to contrasts, drawn to Mystery like a moth. And this mystery, which is life is not always pain-free, and never resolvable. But, I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, … not pain, or death, or unanswered questions. And so I will say with William Blake, "I ponder and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love."

AMEN.