The Power of Serendipity
Unexpected and sometimes mysterious connections often enable the best directions in our lives.
The word serendipity represents
one of my favorite concepts.
It actually enables me to get out of bed
on many mornings.
It's a source of my incurable optimism.
The word refers to events that develop
in a beneficial way
for no reason that we can see.
We don't know why serendipity happens,
but it happens for all of us
in unexpected times
and unexpected ways.
For years I have believed that serendipity
was a word coined by the hippies of my youth.
It turns out that it dates from the 18th Century.
It's derived from an attempt to transliterate
the Arabic form
of the Sanskrit name for Sri Lanka
the island south of India
formerly known as Ceylon.
I won't try to chase those developments,
even though I love etymology,
but I will say that the word
was first seen in literature
in a letter written in 1754.
There was a reference in the letter
to the Three Princes of Serendip (Sri Lanka).
The original serendipity
was the finding of a famous painting
in an unexpected place.
The word unexpected is a key to the meaning.
Another way of thinking about serendipity
is that it often involves
unintended consequences
with an unexpectedly positive result.
We don't know where serendipity comes from.
That's why it's serendipity!
It is an important part of our story,
yours and mine,
right here in the North Idaho UU congregation.
My presence here this morning,
and even my relationship with this congregation
as minister
are the results of serendipity -
or serendipities -
since there were more than one.
When I was a teenager,
like many young people,
I went through a period of questioning
many of the things I was taught,
including the teachings of my Lutheran faith.
During my time of exploration,
one of the places I visited was a UU church.
I was intrigued, to say the least.
By then I was already interested in ministry,
but my Texas German Lutheran Stepfather
could not and would not condone
any interest I might have had in the UU faith.
So I ended up as a Lutheran pastor,
and I spent my years of parish ministry in Texas.
Visiting my children at the University of Idaho
which they were attending
(interesting story there, too),
I fell in love with the Palouse.
With four mild seasons (most of the time)
I found great relief from the two seasons of Texas:
hot and hotter.
When it came time for me to retire,
the Paradise called the Palouse
was the place for me.
My spiritual serendipity
was discovering that
my favorite faith community there
was the UU Church of the Palouse
in Moscow, Idaho.
I felt right at home there,
and that church is the place where I met Beth.
(Talk about a serendipity!)
Meanwhile, my daughter, Karen,
was doing internship as a school psychologist
in Rathdrum, Idaho.
When her college work was completed,
she moved to Coeur D'Alene
and worked for the school district here.
Sorensen Elementary was one of the schools
assigned to her.
Her doctor was Jessie Lorion,
and as is easy to imagine,
they became friends
as well as doctor - patient.
At one point, they were discussing churches.
Karen mentioned
that her Dad was a retired Lutheran pastor
and a member of the UUCP
a Luthertarian, if you will.
Jessie was glad to hear that
and asked if Karen thought
I might be willing to come up
and speak here sometimes.
Karen thought I just might,
and she was right!
The rest of that serendipity
is our story together.
Over time, we have come to love one another
in ways that are continuing to unfold today.
There are a number of serendipities
that have brought us
to the point where we are today.
I want to mention just a few of them.
It may be the greatest serendipity
involving this congregation
for Beth and me during her illness and treatment
were many members who opened their homes,
providing us a place to stay
and wonderful meals
just when we needed that kind of care.
Michael Henry and Sue Greenberg
are involved with another serendipity.
Mike and I were friends online for a number of years
before we met in real life.
He was a great help to me with my online church.
On the day before Beth's chemotherapy began
he contacted me online,
and we talked about the fact that our homes
were only a few miles apart in real life.
He and Sue with their friendship
were a vital source of support to Beth and me
in the time of her treatment.
After her death Mike was more help to me
than I can begin to describe.
He came with me to the memorial service
offered by our NIUU congregation,
and he saw to it that I was not alone afterwards.
He got me to the worship service here the next day,
and he has been a true friend to me.
The serendipity of Mike in my life
came to me exactly when I needed him.
Those of you
who remember Beth's memorial service
with our congregation
will probably remember Paul Barber,
the Hospice Chaplain
who was a great support to me
by helping Sue Hansen-Barber
lead the service.
It was a wonderful serendipity last week
when I received
a video chat call from him via Facebook
last week
from his new home in Bolivia.
The most recent serendipity for us with the NIUU
brought you and me together
as minister and congregation.
The UUA General Assembly
came to Spokane in 2019.
Our congregation's leaders
gained a new understanding
of the meaning of the independence
of congregations in our UUA.
There are standards which the UUA provides
for ministers and congregations
as we develop our relationships.
At the same time, a small congregation like ours
can go rogue, calling a minister
who is not necessarily a life-long UU
or even a recent official convert.
That means that I can be your minister today,
and our relationship is not prevented
by any official rules that would keep us apart.
Serendipity has brought us together,
and there will be new experiences
of unexpected benefits among us
to enable us to serve our community
and each other.
Serendipity may help in other areas of our lives
including our best hope
in our struggles with climate change.
There have already been unexpected opportunities.
Sustainable energy today
is creating more jobs in electricity production
than traditional sources of energy
like fossil fuels.
Serendipity will bring us new opportunities,
and we may be brought to notice them
by the urgency of our need for them.
Many kinds of inventions have come to be
because of serendipity.
One of my favorites is Velcro.
When George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer,
was on a hiking trip through the woods,
he found burrs clinging to his pants
and also to his dog's fur.
He looked at the burrs under a microscope,
and he discovered that the burr's hooks
would cling to anything loop-shaped.
So a serendipity resulted in a new, useful product.
Again, unintended consequences
that bring about a positive result
are serendipities.
Some of those are highly beneficial,
much greater than convenience.
A kind of bacterium that eats petroleum
because of the exploration
of the deepest place in the ocean,
the Marianas Trench.
Soon, exactly when we need it most,
someone may find a microbe
that sequesters carbon in a stable form.
If so, we may be saved by serendipity once again.
There are many forms and occasions
of unexpected benefits
from seemingly unrelated sources.
We benefit from them more than we know.
This truth is one of my personal sources of hope.
As I said at the start of this sermon,
it gets me out of bed many mornings.
It's one of life's mysteries.
We can benefit from it every day,
but I doubt that we will ever fully understand
what causes serendipity.
Maybe it's the quarks!
Those are the subatomic particles
that bring about unexpected connections
in our daily lives.
So the quarks would be a good candidate
for causing serendipity, right?
In any case,
I'm grateful for serendipity,
and I'll be looking forward to good surprises
that will make all our lives better.
Amen
So mote it be
Blessed be
Unexpected and sometimes mysterious connections often enable the best directions in our lives.
The word serendipity represents
one of my favorite concepts.
It actually enables me to get out of bed
on many mornings.
It's a source of my incurable optimism.
The word refers to events that develop
in a beneficial way
for no reason that we can see.
We don't know why serendipity happens,
but it happens for all of us
in unexpected times
and unexpected ways.
For years I have believed that serendipity
was a word coined by the hippies of my youth.
It turns out that it dates from the 18th Century.
It's derived from an attempt to transliterate
the Arabic form
of the Sanskrit name for Sri Lanka
the island south of India
formerly known as Ceylon.
I won't try to chase those developments,
even though I love etymology,
but I will say that the word
was first seen in literature
in a letter written in 1754.
There was a reference in the letter
to the Three Princes of Serendip (Sri Lanka).
The original serendipity
was the finding of a famous painting
in an unexpected place.
The word unexpected is a key to the meaning.
Another way of thinking about serendipity
is that it often involves
unintended consequences
with an unexpectedly positive result.
We don't know where serendipity comes from.
That's why it's serendipity!
It is an important part of our story,
yours and mine,
right here in the North Idaho UU congregation.
My presence here this morning,
and even my relationship with this congregation
as minister
are the results of serendipity -
or serendipities -
since there were more than one.
When I was a teenager,
like many young people,
I went through a period of questioning
many of the things I was taught,
including the teachings of my Lutheran faith.
During my time of exploration,
one of the places I visited was a UU church.
I was intrigued, to say the least.
By then I was already interested in ministry,
but my Texas German Lutheran Stepfather
could not and would not condone
any interest I might have had in the UU faith.
So I ended up as a Lutheran pastor,
and I spent my years of parish ministry in Texas.
Visiting my children at the University of Idaho
which they were attending
(interesting story there, too),
I fell in love with the Palouse.
With four mild seasons (most of the time)
I found great relief from the two seasons of Texas:
hot and hotter.
When it came time for me to retire,
the Paradise called the Palouse
was the place for me.
My spiritual serendipity
was discovering that
my favorite faith community there
was the UU Church of the Palouse
in Moscow, Idaho.
I felt right at home there,
and that church is the place where I met Beth.
(Talk about a serendipity!)
Meanwhile, my daughter, Karen,
was doing internship as a school psychologist
in Rathdrum, Idaho.
When her college work was completed,
she moved to Coeur D'Alene
and worked for the school district here.
Sorensen Elementary was one of the schools
assigned to her.
Her doctor was Jessie Lorion,
and as is easy to imagine,
they became friends
as well as doctor - patient.
At one point, they were discussing churches.
Karen mentioned
that her Dad was a retired Lutheran pastor
and a member of the UUCP
a Luthertarian, if you will.
Jessie was glad to hear that
and asked if Karen thought
I might be willing to come up
and speak here sometimes.
Karen thought I just might,
and she was right!
The rest of that serendipity
is our story together.
Over time, we have come to love one another
in ways that are continuing to unfold today.
There are a number of serendipities
that have brought us
to the point where we are today.
I want to mention just a few of them.
It may be the greatest serendipity
involving this congregation
for Beth and me during her illness and treatment
were many members who opened their homes,
providing us a place to stay
and wonderful meals
just when we needed that kind of care.
Michael Henry and Sue Greenberg
are involved with another serendipity.
Mike and I were friends online for a number of years
before we met in real life.
He was a great help to me with my online church.
On the day before Beth's chemotherapy began
he contacted me online,
and we talked about the fact that our homes
were only a few miles apart in real life.
He and Sue with their friendship
were a vital source of support to Beth and me
in the time of her treatment.
After her death Mike was more help to me
than I can begin to describe.
He came with me to the memorial service
offered by our NIUU congregation,
and he saw to it that I was not alone afterwards.
He got me to the worship service here the next day,
and he has been a true friend to me.
The serendipity of Mike in my life
came to me exactly when I needed him.
Those of you
who remember Beth's memorial service
with our congregation
will probably remember Paul Barber,
the Hospice Chaplain
who was a great support to me
by helping Sue Hansen-Barber
lead the service.
It was a wonderful serendipity last week
when I received
a video chat call from him via Facebook
last week
from his new home in Bolivia.
The most recent serendipity for us with the NIUU
brought you and me together
as minister and congregation.
The UUA General Assembly
came to Spokane in 2019.
Our congregation's leaders
gained a new understanding
of the meaning of the independence
of congregations in our UUA.
There are standards which the UUA provides
for ministers and congregations
as we develop our relationships.
At the same time, a small congregation like ours
can go rogue, calling a minister
who is not necessarily a life-long UU
or even a recent official convert.
That means that I can be your minister today,
and our relationship is not prevented
by any official rules that would keep us apart.
Serendipity has brought us together,
and there will be new experiences
of unexpected benefits among us
to enable us to serve our community
and each other.
Serendipity may help in other areas of our lives
including our best hope
in our struggles with climate change.
There have already been unexpected opportunities.
Sustainable energy today
is creating more jobs in electricity production
than traditional sources of energy
like fossil fuels.
Serendipity will bring us new opportunities,
and we may be brought to notice them
by the urgency of our need for them.
Many kinds of inventions have come to be
because of serendipity.
One of my favorites is Velcro.
When George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer,
was on a hiking trip through the woods,
he found burrs clinging to his pants
and also to his dog's fur.
He looked at the burrs under a microscope,
and he discovered that the burr's hooks
would cling to anything loop-shaped.
So a serendipity resulted in a new, useful product.
Again, unintended consequences
that bring about a positive result
are serendipities.
Some of those are highly beneficial,
much greater than convenience.
A kind of bacterium that eats petroleum
because of the exploration
of the deepest place in the ocean,
the Marianas Trench.
Soon, exactly when we need it most,
someone may find a microbe
that sequesters carbon in a stable form.
If so, we may be saved by serendipity once again.
There are many forms and occasions
of unexpected benefits
from seemingly unrelated sources.
We benefit from them more than we know.
This truth is one of my personal sources of hope.
As I said at the start of this sermon,
it gets me out of bed many mornings.
It's one of life's mysteries.
We can benefit from it every day,
but I doubt that we will ever fully understand
what causes serendipity.
Maybe it's the quarks!
Those are the subatomic particles
that bring about unexpected connections
in our daily lives.
So the quarks would be a good candidate
for causing serendipity, right?
In any case,
I'm grateful for serendipity,
and I'll be looking forward to good surprises
that will make all our lives better.
Amen
So mote it be
Blessed be
posted by pastorfred at 4:43 PM
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