Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church--Unitarian Universalist

“Your Scent of Lilacs”

Rev. David Takahashi Morris

February 10, 2008 

The older man has been awake all night. After midnight his adult son had called from across the country, spilling out a lifetime’s worth of false accusations and hateful half-truths in a long diatribe.  This has been a regular occurrence in the parents’ lives since mental illness drove their son away from home, and the call ended as it always did:  He demanded money, and swore that if it didn’t come immediately he would end his life. 

The father knows he should not give in, and he knows he will not refuse, just as his son knows it. The next morning he rises quietly so as not to awaken his wife, and drives to the bank.  He says: 

“My bank teller's name was Theresa.  I seem to remember that she wore glasses.  I was beyond having any certain opinions on her appearance, however, this girl and her beauty or lack of it.  Perhaps she belonged to somebody, in the amorous way of things.  Perhaps she gave off an odor of lilac. What was that to me?  What, may I ask, was the odor of sachet of lilac from a bank teller to me that morning?  We were in separate galaxies.  We were lit by separate lights, and we cast separate shadows.  I was managing a catastrophe, and she was working as a clerk in a bank. . . I handed the passbook and the withdrawal slip to her, and she checked my balance and quickly typed up the check on the machine.  Thank you, I said.  She must've smiled, such people do all the time, after all, but I must confess that it made no impression on me.  I returned to my Ford car and drove home.” 

“I was managing a catastrophe, and she was working as a clerk in a bank.”  When I have shared this vignette from Charles Baxter's wonderful novel Feast of Love, I've told it as I thought I remembered it: as he walks out the door, he realizes suddenly that he knows nothing of her life, that her scent of lilacs might be a sign of some huge event he can’t even imagine. But rereading it last week I discovered that I had remembered it wrong; I imposed my own wish onto the novel.  He walks away.  He doesn’t see her smile. 

How does he know, how can he know what catastrophes she might be managing this morning?   Perhaps he gives off an odor of toothpaste and a manly bar of soap.  What is that to her?  What, she might ask, is the scent of Lava soap from a bank customer to her that morning?  Perhaps she is thinking of her 10-year-old alone at home, no day care available on a Saturday, not quite sure if he's old enough to be in the house on his own.  Perhaps his soap reminded her of the father who’s coming to live with her family next month because his health is failing.  What does one customer’s mechanical “thank you” mean to her? 

“We were in separate galaxies,” he says. “We were lit by separate lights, and we cast separate shadows.”   

Think how many anonymous, impersonal transactions we each take part in every day. The customer who passes through the store where we work; the student handing in an essay or math paper, the grocery store cashier who asks if we want paper or plastic.  Do we see each others’ faces, even?  Would we recognize each other if we passed each other on the Downtown Mall?  It’s not just the passing exchanges, either; think of lawyers and doctors and accountants, who seemingly share intimate details of peoples’ lives—how often do they know the whole story that connects with the checkbook discrepancy, the inheritance check we’re using to buy the house, the scrape and bruise we’ve come in to have treated?  How often does a client or patient know, or even wonder what kind of life this professional person goes home to? 

It’s only partly that we’re preoccupied with our own dramas—“I was managing a catastrophe, and she was working as a clerk in a bank.”  There’s something deeper going on here.  All too often, we don't see each other as human beings at all.  We encounter other people as roles, as jobs, as functions in our life.  We realize we’ve run out of medicine in the middle of the night, and there’s “the pharmacist” at the 24-hour CVS measuring pills and liquids into bottle after bottle.  What is his family life to us?  We’re waiting to take someone’s order at the coffee bar, and “the customer” at the head of a long line is taking longer than Christmas to make up her mind.  What is the fact that she can’t concentrate because she’s just lost her job to us?   

It would be too simple to blame all this on a culture of sales that reduces most human contact in our day-to-day living to an efficient exchange of goods and services.  The sense that we are lit by separate lights, casting separate shadows can appear anywhere in our lives.  It happens in our families, when we forget to genuinely hear and see each other because we’re so focused on whatever we think we need to happen right this minute.  It happens in our communities, when we don’t see that the position of our opponent in some dispute is a reflection of their real life experience and their best understanding, not just a failure to listen to our obviously better arguments.  It happens in the world, when we permit ourselves to feel more grief and outrage over the deaths and wounds that warfare inflicts on “our” young women and men—“soldiers”—than we feel over the deaths and wounds inflicted on enemy “gunmen”—or on “their” civilians, both adults and children. 

After all, some inner voice tells us (and some public voices as well), they’re living in a separate galaxy.  That notion permits us to forget or ignore our common humanity. 

Last week, we shared the Hebrew Scripture story of Job, the good person who suffers for no good reason.  Job’s “comforters,” the friends who come to visit him, are good examples of this.  They’re not really interested in his experience; they never offer to help, or express a word of sympathy.  They just want to know what he’s done to deserve this.  Their reaction is not unusual.  A modern variant is the person who hears of another’s heart attack and says, “Maybe now he’ll slow down,” or “She just wouldn’t quit smoking,” or “I’ve been telling him and telling him to lose a little weight.”  It’s a way to put distance between another’s suffering and ourselves, to avoid feeling their pain, and to reassure ourselves that nothing like that will happen to us. 

When we think of ourselves as separate, we contribute to the isolation that is the malady of the modern world.  At its mildest, this disease of disconnection makes us lonely and frustrated with each other.  At its worst, it allows us to risk the destruction of the planet because we somehow think it won’t actually affect us. As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, we must awaken from the illusion of our separateness.  The salvation of our human spirits, and ultimately the salvation of humanity, depends on our learning that we all live in one galaxy; we are all lit by the same light, and we cast our shadows on each other. 

 
It would be a lovely extravert’s fantasy to say the solution to isolation is to learn the whole story of every person we come into contact with.  Clearly that isn't possible.  We might pass through our days asking every person we interact with to tell us how they’re doing:  How are you; how are you; how are you today; but there isn’t time in the world or room in the human consciousness to actually hear or hold it all.  We might in all sincerity ask the next person we do business with—say the one who sells us lunch at Bodo’s—how life is treating her.  But she won’t tell us.  Even if there was time, why should she think we’re serious?  

So if we can’t literally feel the depths and heights of each others’ lives, if we can’t really know what it is to be an orphan or widow or bereaved parent because of war, if we can’t actually experience another’s life, how can we bridge the distance between us? 

First, we can keep in mind moment-to-moment that the person standing in front of us is a real human being, not a function: salesclerk, cashier, lawyer.  City councilor.  Spouse.  In the workaday world, we can pay more attention to the quality rather than the content of the interchange.  When I leave the accountant’s office with my tax forms, will she just be relieved to get me out of there?  Will she have had a few moments to know herself as a person doing something that matters to me?  Will her energy for life after work have been fed or drained by our interaction? 

Beyond this practical level, we can learn to practice the spiritual discipline of compassion.  At our best, this is what we do here.  We lift up the power of being present to the whole vast range of life going on around us every moment.  We acknowledge that “we are not isolated beings,” as a reading in our hymnal says, “but connected, in mystery and in miracle, to the universe, to this community, and to each other.”  This can be one of the places where we learn what it means to hold others in compassion. 

This is the spiritual reason for our sharing of joys and sorrows:  To help us learn how to be present to the life of another human being, to allow their experience and their feelings to be real in our own hearts and minds, even when we can’t do anything about them.  We can’t carry someone's burden for them.  We can't solve anyone's problems for them.  Though we may be agents of transformation in someone’s life, we can’t control, or even know most of the time which of our actions or interactions might be the catalyst for change.  All we can do is to be there, genuinely be there, to share the reality of other’s lives and allow it to be real within us.   

As we gain skill in compassion for those around us, we will grow in compassion for others whose apparent connection to us is more remote. And once the deep connection of our common humanity is felt, it will urge us to work for justice, for freedom and for peace.  Whatever its immediate outcome, the work will nourish us, not wear us out, because we will be working not just to solve problems but to express our unity with those who suffer. 

The practice of compassion can change my relationship with my own catastrophes and concerns as well.  In those moments when I am most aware of the vast complex of life around me, when I truly recognize my own small place in the all-encompassing whole of Life, in those moments I am most at peace with my victories and my defeats, and my fears are most at rest.  In those moments I recognize that my trouble or triumph is just one thread in the vast interwoven story of humanity, and I can let go a little of my rigidity about where I think this particular thread should lead. 

What is your scent of lilacs to me? A hint.  A suggestion, a bell-tone ringing to call my attention to the unknown depths and heights of your experience. There are lights and shadows in your life of which I know nothing.  And yet where our lives touch, a connection can be formed, a small or large intertwining of our stories which can change us both—and as we change, the world around us changes with us. 

Let us awake to one another.  May we catch each other’s scent, and hear each other's whispers of rapture and desolation.  May we look at one another with eyes that acknowledge the whole humanity of which we can only catch a glimpse.  "When we see our stories in each other's eyes, then our heart is in a holy place.”  May it be our home.