A Reminiscence of Cliches

1979 (but filed under 1982)
Lakeland

I am not sure [whether] I have coined an original collective noun in such a title. There is something about the collective noun which increases my delight with language:

an exultation of larks
a covey of quail
a pride of lions
a flight of eagles
a herd of cattle
a fleet of ships

A “reminiscence of cliches” has occurred to me during past few months when I have reflected from time to time that 1979 is the 50th anniversary of my graduation from high school.

When I was a high school student, one of the weekly routine events was the Monday morning assembly. All students of the upper three classes would walk wearily into the auditorium for 55 minutes of unsurprise. I use “unsurprise” because almost always the assembly program consisted of the vice-principal introducing a local or visiting clergyman who would consume most of the period exhorting us. Sometimes, but not always, the speech would be preceded by a musical selection rendered (I use the word advisedly) by our less-than-superior high school orchestra. I said we would wearily walk because we could count on those preachers to tell us to be good and have purpose. The striking and authentic differences of religious belief were usually smoothed over with a few superficial sentences. Then the speaker, with resonant voice and dramatic gestures, would tell us a story which, almost always, the previous week’s speaker had told. Sometimes we hadn’t heard the same story for two weeks. Politely, but painfully, we would listen to the morals and manners of the stone-masons and the cathedral, the boys and the hermit, and the sailors and the Amazon.

In order that you may share something of the ennui we felt so many years ago, let me regale you with three of these tales (although I have another reason than just to decorate our service with old chestnuts).

During the Middle Ages, when many European communities devoted centuries of labor to building the great Gothic cathedrals, a clerk approached three stone-masons separately, asking each the same question, “What are you doing here?”

The first stone mason answered, “I work from dawn to dusk so that I may buy bread to keep alive, and wine to help me forget how miserable life is.”

The second responded, “I work to provide my wife and children food to eat and a hut to live in.”

The third stone mason asserted, “I am building a cathedral.”

Then the speaker would elaborate considerably, each supplying different trimmings on the theme that life can be good, better, or best. It is good to be alone, even if one’s goals are but food and drink. It is better to think of others – one’s family and its needs. It is best when one not only has these values, but also a great cause for which to work – a cathedral to be built, a purpose beyond self and family.

That story was re-treaded, again, and again, and again.

In a mountain cave that overlooked a village on a plain lived an aged hermit, who was reputed to be the wisest of men. The villagers believed that the hermit could always give the right answer to any question.

A group of boys, knowing the reputation of the hermit, determined to ask a question to which the hermit would not be able to give the right answer. So they conspired among themselves: “We will catch a tiny bird. One of us will hold it cupped in his hands and concealed from view. Then we will ask the hermit, “tell us, wise man, whether what is in his hands is alive or dead?” The boys figured that if the hermit said “it is dead,” the boy would open his hands and the bird would fly away. If the hermit answered, “it is alive,” quickly the hands would squeeze, crushing the life from the bird, thus showing the hermit that his answer was wrong, that there was not life, but death.

So they caught a little bird and climbed the mountain. When the hermit greeted them, they pointed to the little boy with the bird concealed in his cupped hands and chorused, “Tell us, o seer, is it living or dead?” The wise hermit looked at their clever smiles and anticipatory glee; then after a long pause said to the boy who held the bird, “the answer is in your hands.”

Not only was this a well-worn story, trotted out in assemblies and young people’s meetings, but also years later when I arrived at theological school and went to chapel for preaching class, the student preaching concluded with the story of the boys, the bird, and the hermit.

And, God help me, I have used the story, although I make a tentative promise never to do so again.

Then there is that chestnut about the Amazon River, the mouth of which is so vast that it cannot be distinguished from the ocean.

A group of sailors whose ship had gone down in a storm had for many days been drifting in a life boat. Because drinking water had long since been consumed, the weakened survivors would soon die from thirst.

Then a vessel was sighted. Shirts were waived on the end of oars; they were seen and the vessel changed course to reach the lifeboat.

As soon as they were in earshot, the thirsty sailors shouted “help, help, we die from thirst!” And the captain shouted, “put down your buckets where you are.” They did and were wonderfully surprised to find the water fresh and sweet, for this was not the salt ocean, but the Amazon River. They had no need to suffer if they had just put down their buckets where they were.

This story was usually the prelude to the advice that we students did not need to travel thousands of miles to find new worlds to conquer, but could find rewards and satisfactions right where we were in our city, our school, our street.

I have other reminiscences of cliches – aged chestnuts which have a mellow patina - “The drunken tourist in the monastery,” or “the carpenter who fooled his boss.” But enough is enough. Too many chestnuts create digestion problems.

The illustration, captivating or corny, to make moral or theological points, is as old as the first preacher and predictably present in every sermon. Without illustration, poem, parable, anecdote, few speakers would have the resources to chew away at a topic for more than 10 minutes and keep their audience at all.

I’ll illustrate my point about illustrations with an illustration. One of the stories that circulates about the reputation of NYC (“Fun City”) is that a newcomer was advised that if he should happen to be in trouble he should yell “fire,” not “help.” A call for help could be ignored, but people flock to a fire in Fun City. Sometimes sermons too are better when making points by [misdirection].

Now this is not a short course in homiletics. If it were, you could say, “You need it, preacher – we don’t.”

But looking back, my “reminiscence of cliches,” stories stale and hackneyed, I became aware that these were all I recalled about those speeches. The stories remained; the abstract contents forgotten.

These old chestnuts had something in common which has, for me, increased in meaning through all these years. Cathedral builders and shipwrecked sailors, boys and hermit, were stories or parables centered in the human condition. Work, bread, survival, meaning, and responsibility – what can I believe about life? Why must I pursue clues to the meaning of existence? Because I am human, what must I do?

I have a clipping in my Halloween file. Answering the doorbell, the owner was greeted “trick or treat” by a little girl, beautifully costumed, but unmasked. As the child opened her paper sack to stow away the treat, her mask was seen in the bag. “Why don’t you wear it?” In a tiny voice, hardly bigger than she and with a trace of whimper, the tot confided, “I’m scared of it.”

Is that a parable of the human condition? We’re frightened by the masks we wear.

To me, there has always been zest in Unitarian Universalist religion – in the exhilaration which comes when one discards old belief patterns which usually were resented as well as disbelieved. But one of the burdens of a religion of search is that when as one learns more about the human condition, one becomes aware of its fantastic inconsistencies. Is it not amazing, if not appalling, that two types of large expenditures cause little controversy – the billions spent to make more efficient and deadlier weapons and the millions for medical research? Is there not a huge inconsistency? Is it because we are too much like the first two stone masons? Is it because we fail to put down our buckets where we are? Is it because we fail to be aware that the power of life and death is in our hands?

I don’t know how boring I have been with this reminiscence of cliches. But worn cliches or fresh creation, both the look backward and the forward vision provide past evidence and future prediction that none of us fully lives unless, frequently enough, he/she confronts honestly the nature of self, “Who am I?” and the nature of obligation within the human enterprise, “What must I do?” Cliches become stale, but without such identity and engagement, life itself will be stale and worn rather than fresh, energetic, and laced with hope.

Addendum

[Editor’s note: the following was to be inserted immediately prior to last paragraph, but it does seem to be a distinct line of thought]

Long ago, I clipped a poem by Victor Howe (Christian Science Monitor), “Lesson in Aerodynamics”:

“Wedging their way by wing, they are compelled
To learn the element they navigate,
To study air until they know it cold,
To gauge its power to the feather-weight.

“The air that both resists and sustains,
Gives discipline, demands economy,
Ensures they sign the sky with elegance
Form follows function as the wild geese fly.”

I believe the form of one’s religion may follow the way one functions in this human condition which is ours, and which we share, as time, relentless measure of our living, ticks its eventually conclusive rhythm.

Recognizing that every age is an age of transition, I believe the years approaching will register even more sweeping changes, changes not far ahead.

I was struck with a sense of identity when re-reading the words of Marius in Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES: “To be between religions, one which you have not yet abandoned, and another which you have not yet adopted, is insupportable, and twilight is pleasant only to bat-like souls.”

Similarly, we may feel unrest, uncertainty, anxiety, and consequently, an over-eagerness to settle for comfort rather than continue the search for an adequate religion of one’s own. But if there is one certainty I cherish, it is that the search for an adequate personal religion is more necessary than ever, for we need confidence in principles to behave with courage and wisdom in this difficult 1979 and perhaps a more perilous 1980. Think of the insight of the poet (“Lesson in Aerodynamics”) who recognized that air both resists and sustains. So our human condition with its fears and hopes, its joy and grief, its mystery and assurances – all these are the resistances and sustenances for the transition of religious belief or ethical action from that which was and is, to that which should be. It is the human condition which resists and sustains.