Life is Not a Garden: The Sermon on the Anthem
Sermon preached by Reverend Carolyn Patierno
May 14, 2006

Life is Not a Garden, by Elizabeth Alexander
(Chorus) Life is not a garden, sunny and bright,
Life is not an endless twinkle star night,
Life is not a mountain towering high,
With its spire climbing higher ‘til it meets the sky.
Life is not a gentle flowing stream,
And no matter what the song says: Life is not a dream.

For in the world that I know, there are bitter winds that blow,
And the mountains are blocking the way I need to go.
There are storms, there is rain, there is trouble, there is pain.
There’s no doubt about it: some days I could do without it.

Chorus

For in the world where I live, there is so much to forgive,
And so many take more than they intend to give.
The unknown turns to fear, growing stronger year by year;
Then one day it’s hatred. It can get so complicated.

Life is not a garden, an Eden to behold,
But that doesn’t mean that everything is hard and barren and cold.
At any time or place a tiny miracle can bloom,
In a crowded city or lonely room.
Find a place in the stillness of your heart,
A wilderness where something green can start to make a home.
Keep it safe and keep it warm,
Keep it sheltered from each passing storm.
Let its young and tender form remind you:
There is beauty, there is splendor yet unseen, deep within, still asleep,
Slender and rare, but always there.

For as our journeys unfold, there are many hands to hold,
And the people who love us are worth their weight in gold.
Though many tears grow from pain, some flow with joy we can’t explain –
A garden it’s not, but it’s the only world we got.

Life is not a garden, row after row,
But nobody can tell me that my seeds won’t grow,
I plant them in my home, and I plant them in the street,
I plant them in the heart of every stranger I meet.

Life is not a garden, sunny and bright,
Life is not an endless twinkle star night,
Life is not a mountain towering high,
With its spire climbing higher ‘til it meets the sky.
Life is not a gentle flowing stream.

But even though it is a mighty far cry
From the garden and the mountain and the starry sky,
I' m gonna keep working to make this world that dream

Kit and I work closely to enrich this congregation's worship life with music. I share my sermon topics with him first in August through December and then again in January taking us through the end of June. What we have today is a reversal in that instead of the sermon driving the anthem selection the anthem selection is driving the sermon.

I was delighted that Kit chose Elizabeth Alexander’s Life is Not a Garden as the anthem for this service. Initially, I was intrigued by the lyrics – the title is an attention grabber, after all. And then I attended choir rehearsal and had the joy of actually singing the piece. The music has stayed in my mind all through the week. I have found myself involuntarily singing it since Tuesday night through this morning.

Then I became intrigued that this piece had been written in partnership with the Community of Peace Academy Chorus, a charter school in St. Paul. I wondered about the creative process. (And without knowing anything about the Community of Peace Academy, I found myself wishing there was a Community of Peace Academy in New London!) And so I called the composer, Elizabeth Alexander, who generously shared this wonderful story with me.

The racial demographics of this school are largely white, black, and Asian, namely, Hmong. Elizabeth had been commissioned to compose this piece with members of the chorus. She’d been commissioned to compose in this manner several times previously so the process was one with which she was familiar and comfortable. She spoke with the students “Big Questions” – as we call them in our own Coming of Age program – questions having to do with justice, war and peace, family, community, forgiveness. After the conversations took place, Elizabeth went off on her own and put together a composition that she thought captured the spirit of the discussion. Wrong.

Elizabeth recalled the students’ response to her first draft:

‘It’s not bad or anything,’ a skinny young man was saying, trying to be tactful. ‘But it’s just not what I would sing about, personally.’

Another student was more direct. ‘The people in my life always be fighting, disrespecting, you know, judging you. But this song is like ‘be happy ‘cause everything’s fine’ And that’s not real life.’

Said Elizabeth,

Okay, I gave this my best shot, and it looks like I got it wrong. You’re going to have to help me out here.

(The piece had to be composed and then learned, ready for performance in three weeks’ time.)

‘I don’t know,’ sighed one girl. ‘But life is not a garden, sunny and bright.’

And the process took a very different turn and therefore, so did the piece. It begins with an honest albeit pessimistic worldview. In fact, Elizabeth intended the piece to be much shorter than it is but she felt that finally, it needed to wend its way toward hope. In order to do so, the piece demanded greater length. This anthem is about the struggle from despair to hope. Back in October, I preached a sermon on hope – specifically on the manner in which our struggle and suffering bring us to a more deeply meaningful sense of hope. I’d like to remind you of the reading from that service. It’s from Joan Chittister’s book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on inside. It is about becoming open to the God of newness. ... Surrendering to the demands of the moment, holding on when holding on seems pointless, brings us to that point of personal transformation which is the juncture of maturity and sagacity. Then, whatever the circumstances, however hard the task, the struggles of life may indeed shunt us from mountaintop to mountaintop but they will not destroy us.
Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn’t an ounce of proof in tonight’s black sky that it can possibly come.

Truth and hope are two themes that have demanded a good deal of attention this year, aren’t they?

The youth with whom Elizabeth worked aren’t unique in having a bleak outlook, seemingly without much hope but rather an alarming amount of cynicism for such young people. I wonder if you read the article in The Day about the senior art exhibit at the Lyme Academy of Art? A good number of pieces featured in the show were described in the article. I was struck by the nature of these pieces. Desperate. Violent. Perverse. Cynical. Hopeless.

This trend worries me. Doesn’t it worry you? This is what worries me - it leads to apathy, an apathetic hopelessness because young people don’t feel as though they have any power to change anything.

Our responsibility is to raise up children and youth who are capable of wending their own way toward hope. If they embrace hope despite their struggles, they will find a reason to create a healthy future for themselves. If they have hope for their future, they are less likely to engage in behaviors that put them at risk of losing or damaging the chance for a bright and healthy future.

How can we counter the cynical messages with which our children and youth are bombarded? As a congregation how can we support All Souls children and youth? Beyond our walls, how can we help do the same for New London’s children and youth? How can each of you support the children and youth in your own communities?

Last week you saw in your orders of service an announcement about Hope Week, an idea given wings by one of our souls, Chris Clouet. The week of activities is now just concluding but hopefully, opened the door to city-wide commitment to engaging our youth … offering opportunities for fun and play … and listening. More than anything, the youth in our midst want to talk and be heard.

Today’s anthem, Life is Not a Garden, illuminates a particular worldview and a particular truth. If the composer plowed through the process rather than bother to stop midstream to listen more carefully and then reconsider, regroup, RE-DO the whole piece in order to capture her collaborators’ truth, we would not have enjoyed the musical achievement and beauty therein. A significant part of its beauty is that it rings true. And it rings true because an adult took the time to listen and honor what she heard.

The truth is, nobody’s life is a garden, sunny and bright or an Eden to behold … but that doesn’t mean that everything is hard and barren and cold. At any time or place a tiny miracle can bloom. Find a place in the stillness of your heart, a wilderness where something green can start to make a home.

And in truth, we all wend our way toward hope only after quite a few verses of bleak melody until eventually the crescendo that leads us to a more hope-filled finale. Elizabeth Alexander’s story reminds us how important listening is in the creative process – listening to others and listening to the artist within. The composition itself reminds us of the importance of music - the remarkable and beautiful way music has of bringing us along for a ride. Said Elizabeth Alexander, “As I watched these insightful singers learn this piece together, I was reminded again that if life is going to go veering off in unforeseeable directions, it .is best to have companions on the journey.”

To which I say, Amen.

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