Re: Just saw the episode "Ballad For Wind Instruments & Canoe"...
Codfanglers,
Here you are! I am a Quaker ... not a "preacher" just a member of our Meeting. This is the only time I have attempted spoken ministry ....
“Ballad for Wind Instruments and Canoe”
Some of you have no doubt been wondering about the title of my message today, “Ballad for Wind Instruments and Canoe.” I know one person who hasn’t been wondering—Ruth knows and I’m sure she groaned when she saw the title, because this is the title of an episode of my favorite television program, a British sitcom called “Last of the Summer Wine.” I’m quite the fan of this program, and poor Ruth has had to sit through an awful lot of it. Last of the Summer Wine is mainly the story of three men who are retired and on their own. As far as friends go, they have each other and that’s about it for the most part. They spend their days wandering the Yorkshire countryside, much as they did when they were kids—having adventures, getting into trouble, staring up at the clouds and taking naps.
In this particular episode, “Ballad for Wind Instruments and Canoe,” the three gents are sitting by a river, teasing one another and talking about life. As they talk, an empty canoe floats past. Not long after, a paddle floats by. And, just a few minutes later, as you might expect, a man floats up, paddling gently to keep himself afloat. “Pardon me,” he asks, “Have you seen a canoe?”
It turns out the man in the water has fallen out of the canoe in an attempt to make his name –Arnpepper--famous by getting it in the Guinness Book of World Records. Arnpepper has tried several things already, and all of his efforts to get into that book and find fame have failed just as miserably as the canoe trip. In the end, the three old gents buy the canoe and set off on their own canoe trip, but Arnpepper swears he will keep trying until he succeeds in finding fame.
As I was watching this episode recently, a question kept nagging me: What made this man—Arnpepper—keep bouncing back and trying new ways to reach his goal? The answer to that question is simple. The answer is hope.
We may not agree with the subject of Arnpepper’s hope—to gain fame—but one thing I think we can all agree on: Hope is powerful.
Now, as Christians, naturally, when we talk about hope we are mainly thinking in terms of Christ. As Paul writes in Second Thessalonians 2:16-17: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” And in Romans 15
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
Paul says God “gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace.” And he tells us that “by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
To me, what Paul is telling us breaks down to this: hope is a gift from God. God hard-wires hope into our very being. In fact, Paul finds hope to be so important that he puts it on par with love and faith. In Corinthians chapter 13, Paul says most spiritual gifts are temporary, but there are three gifts which will last for ever and will not vanish: faith, hope, and love. Hope will not vanish.
This verse reminds me of a quote from a movie called the Shawshank Redemption. Most of the film takes place in a prison. This film is full of references to redemption, grace, love and hope. It involves Andy—sent to prison for a crime he did not commit, the killing of his wife—and a man who becomes his best friend, Red. Andy resigns himself to his fate because he feels guilty for his wife’s death, but at the same time holds onto hope. His friend Red, who never expects to see the outside of the prison, tells Andy that hope is a dangerous thing. Over a 20 year period, Andy slowly digs a hole through the wall of his cell, a hole hidden by a poster. He escapes and goes to live on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in Mexico, and sends a letter back to Red, still in prison. In his letter, he reminds Red, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” At the same time, he gives Red some directions to follow should he ever get out of prison—a box he needs to find and dig up. Eventually, Red is paroled. He hates being out of prison—he is afraid, and unable to adapt. The only thing that keeps him going—that gives him hope—is the letter he had from Andy, asking Red to dig up the box. So he does. In the box is cash and directions to Andy’s location in Mexico. “I could use a man who knows how to get things,” he tells Red. Andy’s act of friendship helps Red continue to find hope. In a way it saves his life.
In a lecture at Ireland Yearly Meeting in 2000, Janet Scott of Britain Yearly Meeting addressed hope with this question: “Is God hopeful?”
Her answer is a resounding “yes.” To quote from that message: “I think that hope is bound up with the nature of God as a creator. When, in the words of Genesis, the Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep, and the Word of God commanded light and there was light, there must already have been a knowledge and a purpose that encompassed all that creation was to become and will continue to become; all of life and death, of suffering and joy, of sin and redemption.”
God has hard-wired hope into us—it is as important a part of our human-ness as our abilities to make tools, walk upright, think and communicate. That’s because by giving us this gift of hope God has given us a sort of super-power. Hope is the power that opens the door to change, to success, to freedom. It is our bullet-proof shield, allowing disappointment and failure to bounce off.
Think of all the stories from the lives of those in this Meeting, and of figures through out history, where people have gone through enormous challenges, fought great odds, made it through tough stretches. Recall the trials and tribulations of Friends who have suffered because of their faith. All of these stories have something in common: there was always that spark of hope—that faint light at the end of the tunnel.
In a way I stand before you today as a result of hope. I’ve told the story to several of you about how my grandfather was a coal miner in the hills of southern Kentucky. He and my grandmother, dad and uncle lived in Stearns, a company town. They had little in the way of material things. My grandmother used to tell of how grandpa would go into the mine before daylight, and return after dark, sometimes going the entire day without seeing the sun.
Due to the lack of other jobs and opportunities, the same fate likely awaited my dad and uncle. But there was a hope. People were coming north and getting jobs in factories. So my dad set off for Muncie. I can only imagine how tough it must have been to leave home, to travel to a new and strange place, away from your family and friends and the places you’ve always known. But I think that what kept people like my dad going forward was hope—hope for a better life, better jobs, a family and children who could live without facing the specter of crushing poverty, of living in a company town, shopping at a company store.
My Dad and my mom also gave me hope in a special way. They adopted me when I was just a day or two old, giving me a chance at a life outside an orphanage. My mom passed away back in the late 70s, but my dad was fortunate enough to meet my stepmother, who a couple of years ago also adopted me and officially became my mom. Adopting a stubborn, sometimes cynical, always goofy 40-year-old ... now THAT, my friends, is being hopeful. And their gifts of hope have, in turn, made my tend to be a pretty hopeful person, although I do tend to worry a lot about things. But, like I tell my wife, worrying a lot gives me a lot of opportunities to find hope!
So, in other words, I suppose in a way you can blame my dad–and my mom–for my being up here this morning.
Now, going back to Janet Scott’s lecture to Ireland Yearly Meeting on the subject of hope, I agree with her postulation that “hope is the very foundation of creation”, of the world around us and it’s constant evolution, because “only a hopeful God would take the risk of making something so separate and complex; only a hopeful God would have the patience and endurance to allow creation to become.” When I think about those words, it becomes apparent to me that this gift of hope is one we must share with others. For even though I believe we all have within us the ability to hope, there are times when it is awfully hard to find. My favorite author, a Kentucky farmer named Wendell Berry, writes in an essay called “Citizenship Papers” that “Hope, of course, is always accompanied by the fear of hopelessness, which is a legitimate fear.”
So how do we fight hopelessness? I believe that there is no such thing as “hopelessness.” I believe that hope is always there, always with us. What we lose is our ability to see it, to grasp it, to feel it, to trust. So how do we get it back? How do we lift the veil from before our eyes and see the hope again?
Listen to music. Call a friend. Read something—read the Bible. Most importantly, pray and meditate. And we must our exercise hope, keep our vision of it strong enough that we don’t lose sight of it. Yes, I’m suggesting we take our hope to the metaphysical gymnasium and give it workout—build up our hope muscles. And how do we do that? We share it. By sharing our hope, we strengthen it. This Meeting provides many wonderful examples of building up and honing our hope muscles through sharing and giving hope.
We do it through our ongoing food drive. We do it through our Discretionary Care fund. Today is Discretionary Care Sunday—and the money you place in the basket that someone will be holding out on the landing will be used to help people with rent and utilities. We do it through our support of missions. We do it through cards and letters to sick or depressed friends. We do it by living out our Christian witness. We do it by sharing the Love of God. We do it through our musical and artistic gifts. We do it through our culinary and sewing gifts. We do it by offering a shoulder to cry on. We do it in a thousand ways, large and small, every day. I personally gain a great deal of hope knowing that there are people in this world as caring and good as Lois XXXXXXX. I gain hope from seeing the wonderfully loving and questioning natures of the children of our Meeting. I gain hope when I talk with Annie XXXXX, or Luke XXXXXX, or Aaron XXXXXXX, and many others-- yes, even Seth back there--and see what wonderful people they are growing up to be.
So continue to spread hope. If you have the gift of music, visit someone who is homebound or in a nursing home and play for them. If you have the gift of art, draw a picture and give it to someone going through a tough time. If you have the gift of financial understanding, help someone learn how to budget. If you have the gift of empathy, hug someone. Even if you feel as though you’ve failed, remember the lesson of that character Arnpepper, who never lost hope of achieving his goals, even as he floated down that river, a wet and abject failure.
Earlier I talked a bit about the movie, the Shawshank Redemption, and how one man—Andy, an innocent man—escaped. I left off at the point of the story where Andy had escaped, and provided a piece of hope to his still-incarcerated friend, Red. That piece of hope was an invitation and the means to go to live on the Pacific coast of Mexico and work with Andy. To leave all of his troubled past behind, and start fresh with his friend. The final lines of the Shawshank Redemption are beautifully spoken by Red as he decides to take Andy’s offer. Here is what he says:
“I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”
I would like to close today by sharing a few of my hopes as our Meeting is at that exciting place--what I feel like is the start of a journey whose conclusion is uncertain but surely something wonderful.
I hope for clean rivers and streams in which to fly-fish.
I hope for clean air and clean drinking water.
I hope we can leave the earth a better, cleaner, healthier place for our children and grandchildren.
I hope we can leave the earth a more peaceable place.
I hope we can bring New Castle and Henry County out of the economic and drug problems that are destroying the ability of young people to hope.
I hope that we can find a way to stamp out hunger and extreme poverty—especially among children.
I hope that every child would have the same opportunities, whether they live in New Castle, New York or New Delhi.
I hope for a future where differences of opinion, theology, class and race are seen not as chasms, but bridges.
I hope more people can have the opportunity to feel God’s love and warmth as it is radiated by this Meeting.
I hope you will join me in praying that our meeting will continue spreading hope and Christ’s light in the world for another 125 years and beyond.
I hope that none of us ever again loses sight of our hope.
I hope.
in "Forked Lightening" and Blamires expression is priceless and replies,"You know,come election time,he's entitled to vote" 
