HomeGood Morning!
Today is February 29th. It’s an odd date, and I want to talk about it a little bit.
February 29th happens only once every four years, in fact, slightly less often than that because it gets dropped in certain years.
On its regular cycle, February 29th falls on a Sunday on average only once every 28 years. So had I missed preaching today, I would not have had another chance to preach on February 29th until I was 82 years old. My intent is to be retired by then, though that plan may be changed by Alan Greenspan.
This is a leap year, meaning it has that extra day, so I suppose this is leap day.
It’s an odd day, odd because of what it is.
Because it is an odd day, historically it has been treated as different. Traditionally in England this is Sadie Hawkins Day, a day when gender roles are challenged and reversed. On this day a woman could ask a man to marry her. He could refuse, but doing so carried a penalty of the payment of one pound. And laughing at her or mocking her carried a jail sentence.
Nature challenges sex roles as well. I used to raise tropical fish, and one of the fascinating things I learned as a fish hobbyist was that sex roles are not necessarily immutable. For example, there is the guppy. Guppies are prolific procreators. If one decides to control the guppy population by separating male and female guppies into different tanks, that effort fails because the largest and most aggressive of the females will transform into a male.
Thinking of guppies caused me to think about goldfish. (This is an aside from today’s sermon, but an important one.) The other night my wife and I went out to dinner with my mother. We went to a Chinese restaurant that has large fish tanks, a minimum of 100 gallons each. In these tanks they have a variety of fish, including goldfish, very large goldfish. Some of them are close to a foot long, and some, the pudgy type with drooping tails, have heads that are a good three or four inches across.
Now there is a fascinating thing about goldfish—they grow to fit the size of the tank they are in. That is to say, if you place a goldfish in a five gallon tank, it will grow to fit the five gallon tank and then it will stop growing. So if you want a large goldfish, you have to provide a large tank for it. Now, you don’t have to do that right away; but as the fish grows, you need to transfer it to a larger tank. If you place a goldfish in a five gallon tank and say that you will purchase a ten gallon tank when the goldfish outgrows the space provided, you will never ever buy a ten gallon tank, because the goldfish will never outgrow the five gallon tank.
Those who study congregations tell us that congregations are like goldfish; they never outgrow the space provided for them.
We are currently at 172 members. I told the Board this past autumn that I believed that we would reach 200 members either this year or next year; I now believe it will be next year. And I believe we will reach 250 in five years.
Why? Why am I so confident we will grow?
First, look around you. This room is full of the most astonishing people. If you walked into this room, wouldn’t you want to be part of this group?
Second, we have a strong, caring, nurturing community. People are attracted to that.
Third, we are going through changes in this congregation, some natural and some planned, that also will bring in new members.
Among the natural changes is the growth of programs for people to participate in. Because so much is going on it is now becoming difficult to find open days to schedule events. That is what happens as a congregation grows.
The planned changes are changes in the way we have structured the congregation, our reworking of the committee structure and the Council. These changes will support the growth that is to come.
I said that those who study congregations tell us that congregations are like goldfish, they grow to fit the size of the “tank” provided for them. But really, they grow to 80% of the space provided. If we are 80% full in the parking lot or in the seating in this room, we are overfull and growth will stop. That will happen because people will feel crowded, they will feel that there is no space for them.
We have 125 chairs in this room. Eighty percent of that is 100. During the first part of the second service, counting both adults and children, we are there. So we are at the limit of this space.
Why should we grow? I was asked that at a meeting the other day, and I was able to look at the person who asked and say, “You came here after I began my ministry to this congregation; we should grow so that we can attract more people like you who have brought us the wonderful gifts that you have brought to this congregation; gifts that we did not even know we were missing because you were not here”. We ought to grow because each person who joins us will bring marvelous gifts to this community; we ought to grow because it is our mission to help bring our gifts to others.
Assume that I am wrong in my calculations, that not only will we not pass 200 this year, but will not do so next year. Still, I know we will do it the following year.
How will we make room for 200 people? For 250? How will we maintain the sense of intimacy and of community that we have now as we grow?
I would remind you that in 1990 our fellow congregation in Westport, Connecticut had 350 members. They were concerned that growth would destroy the sense of intimacy and community they felt. They now are at nearly 700 members, and still feel a deep sense of connection to the congregation. We will find ways to do it.
But let me return to February 29.
Each year is about 365 and one-quarter days long. Were we to leave the quarter of a day in place, it would play havoc with the coming year. So we shave a sliver off of each year, hold on to it, and, when we have enough, we cobble them together as a day. That is to say, today is made up of a little bit of four different years. The first six hours of this morning were a piece of the year 2001and right now we are in the year 2002.
An interesting concept: we take little bits of the past, store them up and make something new in the present. Now sometimes when you do that the result is Mary Shelley’s nightmare of Frankenstein. Bu in this case, we have made this glorious day, but the principle applies to life, does it not?
We do the same thing with money. Save a little piece of your weekly earnings and with it you can create a vacation for yourself, an education for your children, a retirement for you or a new life for someone trapped in poverty or illness.
The message of money is that wee can also take little bits from the future. That is what we do when we take out a mortgage or a student loan. We take something from the future to make something important and valuable for today.
A mortgage, in fact, usually requires some percentage of a down payment; that is, of savings. So we take a little bit of the past in the form of savings, combine it with a bit of the future to build a present.
And we do the same with ourselves. Our lives are stored up and held onto in the form of memories, the ones we have and the ones that others have of us.
If we have lost a loved one, bits and pieces of memory, stored up over time—even over years, can bring love and laughter and a person’s presence into today.
If we have lost our own sense of purpose or value, bits and pieces of memory, memories that remind us of what we have been, of what we have meant to others, of who we really are, can be present with us here and now.
But no tiny mote of that is enough. Perhaps not; but take enough little bits brought together from here and there and there, cobbled together as a single thing, THAT is enough to make something beautiful.
Whatever of good we have done, some of it is stored up someplace. That is a claim that human beings have made throughout history. They have made it in their religious proclamations. The good is stored up; it’s saved. The precious aspects of anything we have done in the past are held in some cosmic, karmic cave of treasures.
And part of that stored up wealth is within us.
One thing that means to me is that no matter what I have done in life, no matter what actions or behaviors that I judge now to be wrong, some piece of me from BEFORE those actions still exists; I can bring that forward into today.
Have you done something for which you feel shame or guilt? Do you feel like a failure in life? Do you feel like a failure as a human being? Bring from out of your storehouse the good that is there, the success, the achievement that is there. Use it to make of yourself something beautiful now.
Going forward, what is it we wish to “store up” from today to save for the future?
What do we want to give others for their future?
What do we want to leave to those who will come after us that they may use in building something for themselves, something we may never see but will be part of despite that fact?
And if there is a life after death, what do we wish to store up for that future?
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