OVERVIEW
Memorial Day gives us the opportunity to honor people who gave their lives for our country. What are you giving your life for? What deeper meaning is calling to you? Join us this Sunday as we remember those we have lost, explore the gifts they brought us and recommit to the meaning which is seeking to express through us.
TRANSCRIPTION
So good morning, Cityside. You might ask why I’m moving, because I’m also the livestream camera operator today because Dom is out of town. I’m half Dom and Greg’s other half Dom. And so Reverend Amiee doesn’t know how to do all the fancy stuff. So our livestream friends, I just wanna say I was afraid to touch the camera after I got it started. So that’s why we don’t have a Zoom shot or a second camera. But we send our love to Dom who actually was coaching us, um, remotely, which was awesome. And, um, everybody liked my shirt. Okay, so we’re gonna give a shout out to, um, Reverend Linda and like Krista Krista, I can’t even speak right now. Are, um, setting us up at the L G B T Q, um, wellness Fair that’s in Logan Square today. Cityside has a booth. So these are our new t-shirts.
They’re gonna go on sale next Sunday, if anybody wants one. Um, June is all about inclusion, and I hope everyone will go say hi at our booth. We’re hoping to meet some new people who will come to Cityside. So with that, I’m gonna dive into my talk. I just actually wanna say one more thing. I just wanna thank everyone who helped this morning get set up. You know, at one point people were like, we have more people than we need. I’m like, we just have to make everything work today, <laugh>, we’re missing a big cog in our wheel, so thank you everyone who came early. I know it’s a holiday weekend, so it, it doesn’t go overlooked, right? Because a lot of people don’t wanna volunteer or do anything on a holiday weekend. So anyway, okay, let’s talk Memorial Day and life. What do you think?
Okay, so Sergeant first class, I’ll win. Kre Cash was born in Sanford, Florida in 1970, and he was raised in Oviedo, Florida as the youngest of 10 children. And when he graduated from high school in 1986, he enrolled to enlisted in the military and he served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in 2006 in Iraq, his platoon was attacked and one of their, um, jeeps was blown up and there were six people trapped inside. So when this happened, he was nearby, um, but he only had slight injuries, but he was covered in gasoline. But he went in to pull these six people out and he got second and third degree burns. And he decided though, that he should be the last person as the leader to get airlifted out. So he got airlifted outlast, and, um, eventually he and several other people died from their burns.
And he was awarded in 2021, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was the first black recipient from the Iraq and Afghani Wars. And so he represents to me what we, what we celebrate and remember on Memorial Day, the people who have given their lives in 12 different wars we’ve been in. I didn’t realize there were that many, and a lot of, um, skirmishes, also <laugh>. Um, but we honor soldiers, sailors, airmen, and women and marines who did not return home today. And this holiday actually started, it wasn’t actually a holiday to start, it was a few months after the Civil War. Some of the people, especially people who were freed slaves, decided that they were gonna come together and honor people who had, um, died giving their lives for their freedom. And they decorated their graves. So it was originally called Decoration Day, but now they call it Memorial Day.
And now it’s a holiday. But we wanna, we wanna honor everyone who lost their life. And you know, now we’re so politically correct, like if you Google it, it says, don’t honor people who served. But I think that, didn’t I today, like there’s a different day for that, but I, I just feel like I wanna honor everyone who served in our country because I think about what that must be like. I had a hard time preparing for this talk, which is like, what do you have writers cramp? I’m like, no, I keep reading these stories and they make me sad, and then I get choked up and then I can’t figure out what I’m doing because it’s so touching the bravery that people showed. It’s so touching. And, you know, I also struggle a little bit because not everyone chose to serve for some people they were forced to serve.
Um, but what I’ve, what I’ve noticed about the people that I know who have served is that they, it really did mean something to them. I remember going to the World War II Memorial with my Uncle Bill, who has since passed away, but he was in the military and just how much that meant to him. And at that time, this was many years ago, there were still a lot of people who had served who were still alive. And they would go to the memorial and they’d see this memorial and they got choked up, and they would talk about the stories of what it meant to them to serve with other people to serve a higher cause. And I also, I actually got to meet Norman Schwartz cough once, believe it or not, I was helping a friend film something, and, uh, Norman was being interviewed.
And so I was like lugging stuff around for the camera crew. Maybe that was the, you know, precursor to today. Ha ha <laugh> not so much. But Norman Schwartzkoff went and shook every single person’s hand who was mar marching in the parade that day, who had served in the military. And at that time, there were still people alive from World War I. And you could see how palpable it was to them that they had served something greater than themselves. So we honor them today. And Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address said, it’s rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honor dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion that we w we hear highly resolved that these deads shall not have died in vain.
So we remember those people today, and we give thanks for them because even like I struggle with how I feel about war, I’m just gonna be honest, I struggle with it. But I also know that like we live in this human consciousness of scarcity and an eye for an eye in the bigger world, right? And so we know that these things happen, but we honor them. And you know, our focus today, Linda and I, were supposed to be doing this talk together. So I’m half Amy, half Linda today, I’m half a lot of things. Maybe what does it make me a third, a third, a third. I don’t even know what I am. Anyway. Um, but we wanna remember those we lost today and we wanna do this from a personal place. I don’t know if any, did anyone lose someone in, in the, any of the wars that we’ve been in? Do you wanna speak their name out loud for us?
Too many of them? Two. Two Esteban. Okay. Wow. Hmm. And an auntie. Hmm hmm. Thank you. Wow. And your dad survived. That’s beautiful. It is a different generation. And yet I remember it with my parents, right? Because in World War II, everyone was involved, right? You know, even if you were at home, you were helping with something. And it definitely created a certain consciousness. So we’re gonna remember those we’ve also lost in our life today and explore the gifts that they brought to us and then recommit to the meaning that is seeking to express through us.
So when we lose someone, and a lot of people in our community have lost people recently, right? Several people in this room have lost people recently. And one way we recover from loss of a loved one is to find meaning in their life, right? To find meaning in their life and what they meant to us. You know, Linda lost her mom, I think it’s been a couple months ago now, and her mom’s name was Jean. And Jean was so good at connecting with people. She was so interested in them when she was with them, she was very fully present with them. She always asked a lot of questions and she remembered details of what mattered to the people who she loved. And when she got older, she couldn’t go visit people anymore. So she jokingly said she had a phone ministry because she would call people on the phone and check with them. And she was so good at connecting that everyone thought that they were her favorite and that they were the most important person in her life. Now, that’s a gift, right? And what we can take away from, from her life is that, uh, she offered the inspiration of being present and connected with the people who loved her and that she loved. And we can all give ourselves fully so that when we sit with people, they feel that from us.
And I lost my sister about a month ago as, um, as most of you probably know, and my sister had a, a particular affinity for people who needed help. You know, the people who were lonely or the underdog, she always would, they would, these people would find her. And she worked a lot with an organization called Pads in the Western suburbs as a volunteer. She would work in the middle of the night and go to work in the morning. And she hadn’t slept. I don’t really know how she managed to do that, but there was one time she had promised her old sofa to a gentleman that she knew through pads. She had gotten a new one. So she said, you know, I don’t, I don’t need, um, this old one anymore. You can come get it. And so he came to her home and it was in the basement and they couldn’t get it up from the basement.
It kept getting stuck. You know how that happens when you’re trying to move things and you don’t know what you’re doing? Anybody else ever done that? And so she literally gave him her brand new couch and everyone in her family was like, what is wrong with you? <laugh>? But you know what she said? She’s like, he needed it more than I did. And that’s how my sister was. She would give the shirt off her back to anybody. So she was very generous and, and that she was very kind. And she also remembered people kinda like Linda’s mom, you know, all my cousins were writing me on Facebook and otherwise, and they were like, my, your sister sent me a card every single year on my birthday. I’m like, I knew she did that with us. I, I had no idea how many people she did that with. But you know, that means something to people. It seems like a small thing, but just remembering people.
So when we’re recovering from our grief, from our losses in life, um, Elizabeth Kubler Ross is someone who comes to mind. You know, she’s famous for the five stages of grief. And if anyone doesn’t know what they are, it’s denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those are the five. And there was a gentleman that worked with her named David Kessler and his own son died unexpectedly. And after his son died, David went to Elizabeth’s family and said, you know, I’d really like to add to her work I’d like to add to her work. And he said, what I’d like to add is a stage called finding meaning in the life of the loved one. And finding meaning is a critical part of moving through the loss and moving through the grief. And, you know, it’s true also if we have grief about other things. It doesn’t have to be that someone died.
It might be like a relationship that we loved or a hope that we had for our life that didn’t quite work out the way we wanted to. Or, you know, it might be the loss of a job. I mean, this is true in any loss in our life that we have to move through it, but the only way out of it is through it, right? And so often we just wanna slap a bandaid on and say, I’m okay. I’m good. Right? Don’t make me look at it. And I know for me, with my loved ones, I can’t remember if I said this the last time I spoke. Did I share my sister also had a, an Alzheimer’s diagnosis? Did I share that? I think I did. And so I feel like for her, there was a blessing in her passing too, cuz she missed that whole terrible part of things.
But when I think about her and that I’m sad that she’s not here, the other thing I know about her is that she would want me to be happy. Like, she was so happy when I met Rich. She was just, and, and I think that’s true for all our loved ones. So when I think about grief, I’m like, we wanna live there as long as we need to, but we don’t wanna plant the flag of our life there and not move forward from there. We gotta, you know, give ourselves time, but then we move forward from where we are. But we know the loved one would want us to be happy if they were sitting here. And I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, with the people you’ve lost in your life, but sometimes I almost feel like I get a pop-in from them where I like almost feel like I have their energy, I can feel their energy when I think about them.
And you know, it’s always a positive poppin, right? It’s like, it’s like something about that essence of the person, right? You know, I I, when after my sister passed, I was looking at photos of her and times in her life when she was happier. And it’s like, that’s what I get in the pop and I get the happy essence, right? And so we give ourselves, but we, we wanna keep moving. And when I think of meaning, I also think of Victor Frankl, man Search For Meaning. If you haven’t read it, everyone should read this book. And I’ve, I’ve told his story before. He had a chance to leave before things really got bad with the Nazis. But he said, you know, he was already doing his important logo therapy work, I think, or at least an early version of it. And he said, you know, I can’t leave, I can’t leave my mom and dad.
And Victor was in four different concentration camps. His mom, his dad and his wife all passed. And, and um, he said what he noticed with the, the people that were there is that people went through three phases. They went through shock, they went through apathy. And then he called it depersonalization. I would call it dissociation, where like, you’re not really there, right? But what he noticed was that the people who managed to survive and thrive had deep inner meaning they had a deep inner life, and that they fed that deep inner life and found meaning in their suffering. And Victor himself would imagine his wife. And he would imagine that he was talking to her and he would see her vividly. And he said he felt that she was present with him through this all, even though he didn’t know if his family was alive or dead till later, he didn’t know.
And what he said is, ultimately man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather must recognize that it is they who are asked in a word. Each person is questioned by life and can only answer to life by answering for their own life. And to life. One can only respond by being responsible. And when he talked about responsibility, he said, able to choose your response, your response able, you’re able to choose your response. And he talks about three paths to meaning in logo therapy. He talks about creating a work or accomplishing something, experience something fully or loving someone is the second one. And the third one is the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. So we always have a choice to go find meaning. You know, so often, I, one of the books I listened to recently on tape, the guy was telling the story about a man whose wife, and he must have had like four kids.
His, um, his wife and two of his children were, were killed in a car accident. And he said he realized that day that the most important thing for him was to raise these two other children, right? That they became his mission, they became his meaning. So there’s a tragedy on the one side, but on the other side, he created a new commitment to say. And, and you know, you hear stories about this all the time. I think Mothers Against Drunk Driving was created by a mom who lost her son. I think it was a son. So we wanna look for where we can create meaning. And I wanna invite you and, and you have a little piece of paper under your chair, hopefully online. You got some paper from John’s coaching. And I want you to just think about a loved one you have lost. Think about someone you’ve lost, and think about what that person dedicated their life to and what meaning have you found in their, their they’re having lived their life and have been being part of your life. You know, what’s the gift that you take from this in your own life? Just take a minute, write it down. Maybe Greg will give us a little underscore for a sec.
So in your heart, maybe close your eyes for a second. I just want you to take a moment to honor and appreciate that gift that that person gave to you. Just thank them. And I just invite you to open your eyes and we’re gonna take a minute, like a quick minute. And I wanna invite you to share with the person next to you what that gift was that you got from the person. If you feel comfortable and if you’re online, type it in the chat. Share with your friends online, what was the gift that you got? And you should be going to the second person if you haven’t already done it, okay? You could probably talk all morning, but that might get boring for our friends online. So I just wanna invite everyone back. You can share more after service if you want,
Because now we’re gonna talk about how do we take that gift and intentionally choose to create meaning in our life. From that point, Joseph Campbell said, A hero is someone who is given his life to something greater than himself. Mark Twain, and this is for Rich, who’s probably watching online, said, the two most important days of your life are the day you were born. And the day you find out why Howard Thurman said, don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And Rob, read to us from Wayne Mueller from one of my favorite books. How Then Shall I Live? All We Are is a result of what we have loved. We what we love draws us forward and shapes our destiny. Our love teaches us what to look for, where to aim, where to walk with our every action word, relationship and commitment. We slowly and inevitably become what we love. So what we love gives our life, meaning Wayne Mueller reminds us whatever you’re giving your time and attention to day after day, this is the kind of person you will eventually become. So is what you’re giving your attention to, what really matters to you.
And so I wanna invite you to turn within again and you still have your little room on your paper hopefully. And I just want you to spend a few moments in reflection with me. So you might wanna close your eyes. Just ask yourself to what are you devoting yourself? Just take an honest look at your life, where you’re spending your time to, what are you devoting yourself and how do you want people to remember you? What meaning will people give to your life when you are gone, what are you devoting yourself to? And what do you want to be devoting yourself to? What do you really value? And are you willing to commit yourself to this? To really be devoted? What would that look like for you if you really devoted your life to that thing? And so just to get everyone’s voice in the room, I just want you to speak couple words of affirmation out loud with me. I’m devoting myself to, and then fill in the blank, devoting myself to going deeper. I’m devoting myself to being more loving. So we remember what has come before we find meaning, and then we devote ourself.
Roomy said, when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in. You a joy with every breath. I plant the seeds of devotion. I am the farmer of the heart. So we take these beautiful words into prayer and we dedicate. I dedicate this prayer to those we have loved and those we have lost to those who gave their lives and service to our country. We know that they continue in spirit and we are always connected to them. And we say thank you to them, thank you, thank you for what you have been to us. We raise their lives up for the gifts that they have offered to us. And we carry those gifts with us. We use these gifts to find meaning in our own lives, to magnify that love that we carry within us, that very truth of our own being. And we offer our attention. We offer our devotion, we offer our love in service of the deeper meaning we experience within. We allow ourselves to know the joy of experiencing that deeper meaning, that connection. We stay the course of love, we stay the course of devotion, and we allow Spirit to lead us. We know spirit is with us in each and every step
As we move through the changes of our lives, the gifts we have been given. By all that we love all our loved ones. We carry them forward with the meaning of our lives. We express deeper devotion to this meaning and that we know that as we say yes to this spirit says yes in return and leads us and guides us forward. I just know for all of us that we allow this deeper expression of love, which we are to lead us and to guide us. And I just give great thanks for this. And with so much gratitude, I simply say, and so it is.