Podcast: Download (Duration: 10:29 — 9.6MB)

Subscribe: More

I’ve known the song Spirit of Life by heart for longer than I can remember.

Spirit of life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea.
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close, wings set me free.
Spirit of life, come to me, come to me.

Carolyn McDade, who wrote the song, tells the story of where it came from. I had heard through the grapevine that McDade wasn’t happy with the way that we often sing it, that it isn’t about celebration, it isn’t about triumph. If you listen to the words, you can hear that: it’s a request, a need, a longing. And when she was asked to tell the story, here’s what she said.

She was coming home from a meeting about Central America—this in the early 80s, when the US government was supplying arms to oppressive regimes, when people, including nuns and priests and activists were being massacred. She was coming home from a meeting, as she had done so many times as a life-long activist. The reporter Kimberly French records it:

What McDade remembers most clearly was the feeling she had. “When I got to Pat’s house, I told her, ‘I feel like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years. Just open wide the door, and I’ll be dust.’ I was tired, not with my community but with the world. She just sat with me, and I loved her for sitting with me.”

McDade then drove to her own home in Newtonville. “I walked through my house in the dark, found my piano, and that was my prayer:

May I not drop out. It was not written, but prayed. I knew more than anything that I wanted to continue in faith with the movement.”

Spirit of life, come unto me.

It’s a prayer, a longing. It comes out of that place of feeling like a piece of dried cardboard, of feeling tired, empty, spent. That we cannot carry the load by ourselves for one more minute.

We yearn. We yearn for renewal because sometimes we feel like a piece of dried cardboard. We need renewal: a renewal of faith, a renewal of hope, a renewal of joy. I’ll tell you that lately I’ve been right there—dried cardboard, ready to be blown away.

Sometimes the candle is burning low. Sometimes it goes out. Parts of my life are good, and parts are really hard. There are parts of this work of ministry, this calling, that I deeply love, and there are parts that feel like slogging through a swamp. Like Carolyn McDade, sometimes I come home from the meeting on this or that, and feel like What was the point of that? The world’s problems seem so huge, and I’m just one person, and a tired one at that.

I’m yearning for renewal, and I’m feeling like dried cardboard. We’ve all had those dried cardboard moments, haven’t we? Stretched too thin, with no more tears to fall, because we’ve used them all up? Frustrated by the injustice of the world and despairing about how to fix it?

Yearning. And we reach for a language of that yearning, that longing for renewal. And, because we are Unitarian Universalists, because we know that language points to the mystery but isn’t the mystery itself, because we are suspicious of creeds and easy answers, this is complicated.

We want to be healed by some ancient ministry of stars, but language is tricky. For a long time we just avoided the subject all together. We didn’t talk about it; or, we spoke about it in psychological terms and not spiritual ones. We spoke about justice, but less about how to cultivate the spiritual resources necessary to stay at the work over the long haul, when things didn’t go according to plan. Sometimes we even dismissed this yearning as juvenile, something we had grown out of.

But that began to change a while ago. Partly, it was women like Carolyn McDade and others, who gathered to offer each other healing and comfort and solidarity, who expressed their yearning for the spirit of life, lived in community with one another. They kept their language open-ended, and focused on the heart. Others among us resurrected the old Universalist story of a God of love and mercy for all people everywhere, who loves us without needing us to be perfect.

As the culture has become more secular, the folks who come now to church don’t come for psychology—there are plenty of therapists to choose from, after all—they come for something deeper, something, dare we say, religious. Spiritual at least.

Some 15 years ago Rev. Bill Sinkford, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said we needed a “language of reverence.” He talked about his own long night in the hospital with his son, and how he reached for that language of yearning, and prayed—with open-ended language, but prayer to God—without apology. He was, by the very act of speaking of the yearning in his heart, renewed.

And he encouraged us, whatever our understanding of the holy, the sacred, the ultimate, to cultivate a language of reverence—a sense of mystery, humility, wonder and hope in how we spoke about and experienced our lives. A language of poetry.

There was a huge controversy at the time; folks thought he was saying we all had to say God, but that’s not what he meant. And when things settled down, it began to happen. Naturalistic atheists spoke about the sense of wonder and awe and community they felt when they stood upon the shore, under the stars.

The theists among us spoke of the love of God, how they prayed and yearned and felt that presence in their heart. Unitarian Universalists who were following the paths of Buddhism, Paganism, Islam and other wisdom ways of being in the world began to speak about their own languages of reverence: their yearnings for wholeness and healing and hope, their feeling of being dried cardboard, sometimes, and needing the spirit of life—however understood—to come unto them.

I’ve been feeling like dried cardboard, but I know that renewal will come. In time; you can’t force it. I know some of the things I need to do to set the stage. Reaching out to friends is one of them. Singing, that’s essential. I need to take Sabbaths. It’s really important to have that quiet, Sabbath time, because in the midst of a complicated life, when time is running down and urging us on, we need to put away our phones and lie on the hammock, and let Sabbath time renew us. We need to get out into nature and let water, sky and earth renew us for the journey, And I need to pray. To express my yearning, in the language of poetry and metaphor.

In time, renewal of the spirit, renewal of faith, will come. It was this kind of thing that we Unitarian Universalists began to talk about as part of the conversation about the language of reverence: our yearning, and our experiences of renewal.

We yearn, we seek, we long to be connected and renewed and inspired—and it’s right here. The holy isn’t gone from the world, it’s everywhere. Miracles happen every moment, if we open our hearts and minds—our friends, music, Sabbath time, nature, poetry—these things are each a sacrament, a sign of the holy in the world. In the beloved words of UU musician Peter Mayer, “Everything is holy now.”

I know there are moments that don’t feel like that, and suffering, pain and injustice are real. But even in these hard places there is holiness, there is compassion and solidarity and mercy and truth.

I may feel like a dried-up piece of cardboard right now, but these practices of holiness, of sacrament, have carried me through the journey before, and I know they will again. It’s the journey Bill Sinkford made from his son’s hospital room to the pulpit. It’s the journey Carolyn McDade made from the meeting about Central America to the piano. It’s the journey I’ve seen so many people make in their own lives, from a place of trouble and sorrow to a place of hope, solace and peace.

Each spring we celebrate renewal, as life comes back, but there really isn’t any seasonal limit on renewal. Open yourself to be renewed. Open your heart to all that is holy everywhere, every-now. Open yourself to life and love, even in your sorrow and grief, your fear and pain, for this too shall pass, and life is a gift, not a project. The Holy is here, is now, however you see it and feel it and name it— right here—so trust it will come.

And when it does, rejoice and be glad, and share your good news in this world which needs more than ever to be renewed as well.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson

Senior Minister at Unitarian Universalist Church, Rockford, Illinois

The Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson was called as the senior minister of the Unitarian Church in 2008. Prior to coming to Rockford, he served for five years at High Plains Church, UU, in Colorado Springs, CO. He graduated from Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago in 2003, and from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington in 1999. He completed his Doctor of Ministry from Iliff School of Theology in Denver in 2010. He is the author of "Newborn Bards: A Theology of Preaching for Unitarian Universalists."  He is also the co-chair of the Unitarian Universalist Association's Presidential Search Committee.  

Matthew is a third-generation Unitarian Universalist. He grew up in the Seattle, WA area, where he enjoyed church, the woods, and daydreaming. He has a eight-year-old daughter, Rosalie, and a five-year-old son, Leo.

When he's not at church, Matthew spends time running along the Rock River, playing with the kids, reading, rooting for the Packers, and enjoying local beer.

Matthew is focused on the good news of Unitarian Universalism. "This is a religion," he says, "which can save lives and the world. People seek a spiritual path that integrates their whole selves, that inspires awe, that celebrates beauty, and grounds justice. We can offer a vision of the good life, and the tools to make it real." Matthew is passionate about welcoming newcomers to church, building strong communities, the preaching life, and working in accountable and effective ways for justice among all creation.

Latest posts by Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson (see all)

• A Renewal of Faith - April 1, 2020
• Not as Alone as You Think You Are - January 1, 2016