First Parish Unitarian UniversalistGet Your Groove On, Go Play
Sermon given by Megan Lynes, Ministerial Intern
First Parish Canton – Unitarian Universalist
February 6, 2005
For some reason early last week I got a radio pop song stuck in my head and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get it out. This happens to me a lot. I’ll get a set of lyrics running over and over, and there’s pretty much nothing I can do. They just stick with me for days. It’s really annoying!
Now this is a slightly different problem from the one my Dad has. He’ll wake up in the morning, open the curtains and start blasting, “Oh what a beautiful morning!” Then he’ll meander into the kitchen where he spots a fruit bowl and out comes “oh grapefruits don’t grow on a vine…” Our family is used to this by now and it doesn’t phase us if he opens the fridge, and rummages around a bit, singing, “I don’t want a pickle!...” or if he sits down to pay some bills and we hear “So sue me, sue me. Shoot bullets through me…” If my Dad’s in a happy mood, we can often tell what he’s thinking by what song he’s singing. A lot of times it’s a fairly obvious loose association anyway. You pass by the shower and you can hear, “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair!” The lucky thing for us is that he has an amazing repertoire of music and he changes songs frequently.
In my case however, the same darn song will get stuck for days! And sometimes it’s not even a very good song! Or pretty soon it becomes a not very good one! At any rate, this week I had a radio pop song stuck in my head. It stayed there for so long that I finally decided the words were worth thinking about. It seems messages about how to live life come in all forms, so as it ran through my head again for the 100 th time, I gave up and titled my sermon in its honor. You might have heard of it before.
So much to do so much to see
So what’s wrong with taking the back streets
You’ll never know if you don’t go
You’ll never shine if you don’t glow
Hey now, you’re an All Star, get your game on, go play
Hey now, you’re a Rock Star, get the show on, get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold
(words by Smashmouth)
It took me a few days to realize I’d heard the words slightly wrong! It’s supposed to be, get your game on, go play. I don’t know where I got “Get Your Groove On” from. Maybe I mixed it up with that movie that came out a while ago called “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.” I guess the invented title isn’t bad though, and overall I’m pleased with the new reference. Getting your groove on is thrilling, and getting your groove back, well, that’s inspirational.
I think most of us have something we do, even if no one sees it, that we’d consider to be our own personal groove. Or maybe we had one once and lost sight of it along the way. It’s not gone though. Hey, if Stella can get her groove back, whoever Stella is, so can we all.
Besides, my friend Peggy messes up words to songs much worse than I do. Her brother once caught her singing the words to the song that was supposed to be “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you ain’t never gonna get me down, I get knocked down…” Only she thought it was “I got no towel, I can’t get dry again…”
But back to getting your groove on. What exactly does this mean? For my Dad, singing is definitely his groove. Singing loud and long makes him stand taller. It makes him happy inside, and therefore a joy to be around. He can give you a bit of himself through his music and make you want to sing along. Or you might find yourself getting goofy like he does, draping a dish towel on your head and singing, “match maker, match maker, make me a match!” The truth is that he doesn’t even sing on key half the time, but that doesn’t really matter. He’s being himself, doing what he loves, and his exuberance is catchy.
There’s a quote that I like a lot by Harold Whitman who said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Our parishioner, Elaine, told me about the feeling she had about coming alive in art school over fifty years ago. “I always enjoyed nature. When I got to school all of a sudden everyone around me could notice beautiful things in the same way I did, like the sunset. Everyone was interested in beauty and line and shape and color. I gained such pleasure from the world around me.” She also described being with Alan, her late husband, saying; “I used to love watching him paint. He’d let me watch over his shoulder and he’d put the paintbrush on the paper and then suddenly there was a tree, there was a blade of grass. It was fantastic. Seeing his art work made me appreciate how much skill he had to capture the way things were.” Perhaps painting was Alan’s groove. Perhaps Alan was Elaine’s groove.
In the Talmud it is written, “Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’” I have a feeling that Elaine was Alan’s groove as well.
When I asked my sister, who’s a dancer, what if feels like to be in the groove she also talked about experiencing beauty. “I can see the beauty of visual music everywhere. I see on person listening to music and bouncing up and down, someone else scratching their nose in a rhythmic way. I remember watching a little kid spinning on his head in the sand box. Children’s movement is so freeing. They don’t have to try at it. They make all these crazy sounds and it’s just pure joy.” She then added, “My most favorite way to experience dance isn’t actually in a dance class. It’s when I have music on and I’m on my way across the living room to the kitchen, and I just start moving. The dance is so alive then. Who ever said that you have to walk to the kitchen anyway? There are lots of ways I could get there.” I like that in my sister’s eyes, the journey is just as important as the destination. After all, this way of celebrating life is getting a groove on, not necessarily getting a move on.
After talking to my sister I started thinking about my own life and tried to come up with a time when I’d felt truly in the groove. I could think of lots of moments when I was happy or when I was doing what I wanted with my day, but there seemed to be something more transcendent to getting in the groove than just being happy. That was when I started to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. Part of my own journey initially was discovering how to think outside the box enough to find a groove in the first place. But once I’d found the rhythm of my own music, I began the challenge of listening for the words. And as you already have heard, sometimes I can get the words wrong. I’ll tell you a little bit about some life lessons I gained while experiencing my groove alongside a trusted friend.
As a teenager I worked on a farm not far from where I lived. Every Sunday for three years I’d wake up at 6:00 AM, and my Mom, generous soul that she is, would drive me on over. Then and now, I knew I as lucky. Not every teenaged girl gets to feel strong and powerful for doing what she loves. I wish she did.
Looking back, I can honestly say I learned as much on the farm as I did in middle school. I remember on one of my first weeks there, the head farmer, Earl, strode into the barn and called out “who wants to muck the cows?” His tone of voice somehow implied he didn’t expect an answer but I piped up, “Me! Me!” First his left eyebrow went up, then his right, and then he handed me a pitchfork. That was my first lesson; mucking is not the same as milking. We shoveled cow manure for three hours straight.
I did a lot of things on that farm that I never would have dreamed I’d be allowed to do. One fall an entire flock of sheep came down with something. They were miserable. It seemed they all had fevers and their eyes were gluey. Earl and I headed out to the field in the tractor, equipped with a huge bottle of penicillin and a pack of syringes. My job, I was told, was to catch a sheep. Earl’s job was to give it an injection of the medicine. Well, it turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded. The sheep, already not in the happiest of moods, were less than thrilled about being chased around the pen, and had even greater reservations about being wrestled to the ground and then stabbed with a needle. It’s not the kind of treatment I like when I’m sick, that’s for sure.
I figured this was a lesson in empathy, (lesson number two,) and so I started out with a gentle tactic. I approached the wary flock with what I hoped was a kind look on my face and attempted to talk them into not running away from me. All I could think of saying was, “don’t run away, this is for your own good!” Hey, at least I wasn’t saying, “Now this won’t hurt a bit!” ‘Cause any kid who’s ever been to the doctor knows that one’s a big old whopper. Well, the sheep weren’t into my sweet talk. Maybe they knew it was phony. The whole group of them fled to the other side of the pen and stared at me suspiciously. I tried moving more quickly so that I could get to one of them before they darted, but that just created a whirlpool effect. The pen was sort of roundish. You can see how it went. I chased them, they chased me, round and round, back and forth. It was a mess.
All this time Earl was standing off to the side, leaning on the tractor. He had a sort of a comical look on his face, an expression that read, “Who me? Nothing’s funny. This is a serious matter.” From Earl I learned that even when something felt too hard or too humiliating, there is always room for some humor. His eyes were twinkling, but not the condescending kind of twinkle. I think he just wanted to see what kind of a solution I’d test out first. He was also a man who was never, ever sarcastic, and I think that goes a long way these days. To Earl it was second nature. “Want a bit of help?” He asked. I could ask for help? “Sure,” I answered, embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. Lesson number three, if you need help, say so.
He showed me how to shrink the size of the enclosure so that the sheep couldn’t run anywhere and we set to work. I grabbed a hold of the sheep by its wooly back and together we flipped it onto its side. Then Earl held it down, I filled the syringe, and he administered the medication. Overall it was a good set up. The sheep didn’t seem too bothered, and pretty soon we’d done nearly 30 sheep. I was getting pretty good at this nurse job I thought. That is, until I accidentally stabbed Earl. He jumped. Higher than I though the prick might have warranted, but then again it wasn’t my arm, so I wouldn’t know. There was a pause. “I’m allergic to penicillin.” He said. Then added, “bad.” Straightening up and letting the sheep go he turned away from me and began heading towards the tractor. My heart pounding, I ran after him and jumped into the passenger seat. On the way back to the barn he put his had out and patted my shoulder. He was not a man of many words but in that short bumpy drive he told me how we can all get just a little too proud sometimes. He told me he shouldn’t have been doing that job if he’d known it meant he might get really hurt. And he told me it wasn’t my fault. That message sunk deep into my core like water permeating parched earth.
By the time we’d made it into the barn his face was red and his neck was swollen. Another farmer took one look at Earl, heard what had happened, and immediately raced off with him to the hospital. I remember how I felt standing there in the shade of the barn, thinking over what had happened. Amid the turmoil of the moment, even as his throat closed in on him, Earl had taken the time to tell me I was forgiven. He’d wanted to teach me a lesson from our interaction, but the one he chose wasn’t the lesson about how I could have done something better, and not been so careless or cocky. He didn’t tell me that perhaps I wasn’t fit for the sheep-catching job or that 14 was too young to be handling syringes. Earl’s message that blame is not the answer and that forgiveness and kindness make better teachers has stayed with me always.
I’m relieved to say Earl turned out ok, and we became even faster friends as a result of the little sheep incident. From then on, we were forever joking around and unlike my daily experience in middle school, Earl found a thousand ways to tease me without a hint of a put down. He just let me be myself and that meant an awful lot to me. Plus, looking back, I think he hind of liked it that he’d nearly been killed by a kid in braces.
To this day I carry with me the lessons I learned on the farm, when I was busy getting my groove on. In that place of joy and community, hard work and compassion, my heart was so open I could accept life lessons with grace and certainty. I don’t often get out to the fields anymore, but somehow beauty and teachable moments continue to drop in my lap. Sometimes I forget to listen to them. Sometimes I get the words to the message wrong. But still they come, and slowly I learn. Like Elaine I find joy in the shared activity of creating art. Like my sister I find reassurance in watching uninhibited children. And like my Dad I sing in the shower.
Where are the places in your life that you find inspiration, joy and passion? Do you dive into them enough or do they get pushed to the side? Maybe you have an old set of paints that could do with some use. Maybe, in the spirit of Rosa and Kayla’s performance, you could go out dancing with a friend, or if you were into Matt’s incredible music today you could attend a Friday night drumming circle here at First Parish. Or maybe your dream is too big to be named. Yet.
As the poet Goethe once said; “Whatever you can dream, imagine, or aspire towards, begin it. Boldness has beauty, power, and magic in it.” There are so many ways to get your groove on. And so few reasons to wait. The world needs people who have come alive. The world needs you.
In the words of the altered radio song, “You’ll never know if you don’t go, you’ll never shine if you don’t glow…”
You are already glowing. Now go ahead and really shine! Stella would be proud of you!
And hey, now you’re an All Star, get your groove on, go play.
May it be so.