Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: William Carlos Williams

  • Easter Joy

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Sermon

    Traditionally, Easter tells the story of the literal resurrection of Jesus, in which he rises from the dead after being executed. The traditional Easter story is ultimately a story of how an impossible situation can be transformed into a hopeful and joyful situation. And I don’t know about you, but given the news these days, I could use some hope and joy.

    Now, we Unitarian Universalists happen to have a wide variety of theological viewpoints, and many of us interpret the Easter story in non-traditional ways. So this year, rather than offering just one interpretation of Easter, I’d like to give you four different takes on the basic message of Easter. We’re going to hear four poems by Unitarian Universalist poets, expressing beliefs ranging from liberal Christian, to very liberal post-Christian, to Neo-Pagan, to humanist. Most of these poems link Easter with the hope and joy and transformation of the spring season. Admittedly, if we were in the southern hemisphere where Easter comes in autumn, equating Easter with spring doesn’t work so well. But here we are in the northern hemisphere, so we can make a link between the Easter season, and the hope and joy and transformation of the spring season.

    With that introduction, let’s listen as our worship associate, Mary T., reads the first poem:

    “Dandelions” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

    Welcome children of the Spring,
    In your garbs of green and gold,
    Lifting up your sun-crowned heads
    On the verdant plain and wold.

    As a bright and joyous troop
    From the breast of earth ye came
    Fair and lovely are your cheeks,
    With sun-kisses all aflame.

    In the dusty streets and lanes,
    Where the lowly children play,
    There as gentle friends ye smile,
    Making brighter life’s highway

    Dewdrops and the morning sun,
    Weave your garments fair and bright,
    And we welcome you to-day
    As the children of the light.

    Children of the earth and sun.
    We are slow to understand
    All the richness of the gifts
    Flowing from our Father’s hand.

    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who lived from 1825 to 1911, represents typical Unitarian Christianity of the late nineteenth century. Although this poem doesn’t specifically mention Easter, it still feels like a Unitarian interpretation of Easter to me. Late-nineteenth century Unitarians were mostly interested in what Jesus did during his lifetime, and they thought a lot about how to live out his teachings in the present day. As a result, they didn’t spend much too time worrying about whether the Easter story of resurrection was literally true or whether it was a metaphor. Instead, they concerned themselves with trying to follow Jesus’s example — helping the poor, loving their neighbors, and so on.

    I see this pragmatic Unitarian attitude in Frances Harper’s poem about dandelions. Instead of writing a poem about the showy flowers that well-to-do people from in their gardens, she turns her attention to the lowly dandelion. Dandelions grow everywhere, even in “the dusty streets and lanes, / Where lowly children play.” So it is that God brings the joy of springtime — the joy that we associate with Easter — to everyone on earth, whether rich or poor. As an African American, Frances Harper was fully aware that Black people in late nineteenth century America often didn’t have equal access to many things; yet God brings beauty and joy to all human beings equally, regardless of race. Even though this poem doesn’t specifically mention Easter, it tells us something important about Easter — that God wants everyone to have equal access to the joy of Easter. Frances Harper would tell us that if we find some people don’t have equal access to Easter joy, well then, that’s a problem caused by humans, not by God — which means it’s a problem that we humans can solve.

    Now let’s hear another poem, “i thank You God for most this amazing day” by E. E. Cummings (poem is not included here due to copyright restrictions, but a legal audio version of the poem may be heard on the Poetry Foundation website)….

    E. E. Cummings, who wrote this poem, was the son of a Unitarian minister. As an adult he had no formal religious affiliation, yet even so this poem sounds very Unitarian to me. It’s what you might call a post-Christian poem — the poem uses some standard Christian images, yet those images are interpreted in a very free manner. Cummings writes “i who have died am alive again today,” which sounds like the standard story of Easter (except that story is not usually told in the first person). Then Cummings takes this in a decidedly non-standard direction by saying: “this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth / day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay / great happening illimitably earth.” This is not orthodox Christian theology.

    The final stanza of the poem, while clearly unorthodox, does carry an echo of some of Jesus’s words. In the synoptic gospels (that is, the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the Christian scriptures), Jesus often tells his followers to pay attention. For example, Jesus says: “After all, there is nothing hidden except to be brought to light, nor anything secreted away that won’t be exposed. If anyone here has two good ears, use them!” (Mark 4:22-23, Jesus Seminar translation). We hear lots of talk about the importance of mindfulness these days, but this is not a modern phenomenon. For thousands of years, prophets and sages have been telling us to wake up and pay attention. E. E. Cummings is echoing not only Jesus, but other prophets and sages, when he tells us, “now the ears of my ears awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened”. And what is Cummings urging us to pay attention to? — he is telling us to pay attention to wonder, and beauty — in short, he is telling us to wake up to joy. Or as Jesus put it, “Anyone here with two ears had better listen!” (Matt. 13:9, Jesus Seminar translation)

    Now let’s hear another poem, this one by a Neo-Pagan Unitarian Universalist — “Seed for Spring Equinox / March 21” by Annie Finch. The poet says: “For the full effect, speak the poem aloud 3 times.”

    Annie Finch is a Neo-Pagan; the Neo-Pagan religions reach back in Western culture to the ancient earth-centered religions that existed before Christianity took over. Like many Neo-pagans, Annie Finch recognizes eight main holy days in the year: the two equinoxes, the two solstices, and the four days that lie halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. Like many Neo-pagans, Annie Finch traces the roots of the Christian holiday of Easter back to an older pagan holiday called Ostara, which was connected with the spring equinox. The poem we just heard is an Ostara poem, and it’s also a spring equinox poem.

    Finch also believes in the power of the spoken word. Poetry is not just something your high school English teacher made you read. Poetry contains a kind of magical power, the power of incantatory words spoken or chanted aloud. This may seem an alien concept to many of us today; but all human cultures have recognized the power of the spoken word. Our politicians still rely on the spoken word to sway the electorate. Religions rely on the spoken word through chanting scriptures, repeating mantras, saying prayers aloud, or even hearing sermons. People who are deaf might cast some doubt on whether the power of the spoken word is universal. In response, some religious traditions would reply: it’s the vibrational energy that’s important, or the communal aspect of speaking something aloud to a group of people, not the actual perceived sound.

    Whatever you might believe, or disbelieve, about the mystical powers of poetry, this poem by Annie Finch is — to my way of thinking — a poem about hope, and ultimately a poem about joy. The poem is spoken from the point of view of a seed that has been planted and is beginning to sprout — therein lies the hope, for as any gardener can tell you, the act of planting a seed is an expression of hope for the future. And then there’s the moment when the seed’s “head and shoulders past the open crust / dried by spring wind” and the new plant emerges into the spring sunshine — this is a moment of joy. By speaking the poem aloud, we enter into that mindset of transformation, and perhaps that may help us to transform ourselves — a hopeful thought.

    Now let’s hear one final poem, from the 1923 book “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams:

    By the road to the contagious hospital
    under the surge of the blue
    mottled clouds driven from the
    northeast — a cold wind. Beyond, the
    waste of broad, muddy fields
    brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

    patches of standing water
    the scattering of tall trees

    All along the road the reddish
    purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
    stuff of bushes and small trees
    with dead, brown leaves under them
    leafless vines —

    Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
    dazed spring approaches —

    They enter the new world naked,
    cold, uncertain of all
    save that they enter. All about them
    the cold, familiar wind —

    Now the grass, tomorrow
    the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
    One by one objects are defined —
    It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

    But now the stark dignity of
    entrance — Still, the profound change
    has come upon them: rooted, they
    grip down and begin to awaken

    This poem by William Carlos Williams contains no mention of Easter or Ostara, no mention of Jesus or God. Nevertheless, it seems to me it poem tells much the same story as the other poems we have heard. There is a sense of hope for the future, the hope that comes every spring as the world emerges from winter cold and darkness. There is a sense of joy, the joy of new life, of new beginnings — we might even say, the joy that comes with the sense of resurrection of the natural world from the dead time of winter. Above all, there is a sense of the importance of paying attention. Pay attention to “the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf”, for in that tiny, easily-overlooked detail we can find a revelation of what is to come.

    Williams was a physician, and as is true of many physicians he had a scientific outlook. His poetry reflects that scientific outlook in the careful attention to small details, and the ability to connect those small details to a larger whole. Our culture likes to pretend that science and religion are opposed to one another, but a poem like this shows that science and religion can find unity in a sense of wonder — unity in the joy that can come from paying close and careful attention to the world around us.

    As a Unitarian Universalist, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about deep theological questions like the existence of God, the existence of the historical Jesus, the relative truth values of the world’s religions, and so on. These will always be attractive questions, questions which have been worthy of the attention of some of the greatest minds through human history. As I get older, I find myself less interested in questions that (quite apparently) won’t be answered in my lifetime. So I have no longer have much interest in trying to settle, once and for all, all the debates and questions about the story of Easter. Instead, I find myself increasingly adopting the attitude that I sense in the William Carlos Williams poem. I spent yesterday taking a class on the graminoids, a group of plants that include grasses, rushes, and sedges. Talk about paying close attention! — we spent much of the class looking at the seeds of plants through a dissecting microscope. And talk about hope for the future! — we examined the fine structures that have evolved to allow the seeds a maximum chance of creating new life. This seemed a worthy and appropriate way for a Unitarian Universalist like me to spend Easter weekend. So you can see, science and religion are not so far apart as some would have us believe.

    So there you have it — four very different poems about hope and joy and transformation. Believe whatever you wish about God and Jesus and Easter; we Unitarian Universalists have no required beliefs. Believe what you want, but pay close attention to the world. And if you’re willing to pay close attention to the world, no matter who you are — no matter how much money you have, or what race or ethnicity you are, or whom you love, or what your gender might be — your attention will be rewarded with amazement and transformation and hope and joy; for the wonder and beauty of the world remains universally open to all.

  • Springtime Poetry

    Sermon and moment for all ages copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. I did not have time to correct typos and other errors in the text.

    Opening words

    The opening words were the poem “Spring and All [By the toad to the contagious hospital]” by William Carlos Williams.

    Readings

    The first reading was “Winter Poem” by Nikki Giovanni.

    The second reading was “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón.

    The final reading was “Thank You” by Ross Gay.

    Sermon: “Springtime poetry”

    There’s an old Christian spiritual practice called “lectio divina.” That Latin phrase, which I’m probably mispronouncing, means “divine reading.” Supposedly, lectio divina dates back to the early sixth century when the monk Benedict, founder of the Christian Benedictine monastic order, instructed the monks under him to use it as a spiritual practice. It worked something like this: A monk would read one passage from the Bible to himself slowly, over and over again, trying to hear the voice of God in that passage. Then the monk would meditate on the passage as it related to his own life, waiting for an image or a feeling or a perception about God to arise in his mind. The third step in lectio divina would be for the monk to talk back to God about what had arisen for him, maybe even hearing some feedback back from God. In the final step, the monk is supposed to contemplate what he has felt and heard, and feel peaceful and contented, with new energy for living his monastic life. At least, that’s how I understand it. Some of you may use lectio divina as a spiritual practice yourselves, and if so please tell me about my errors after the service.

    I first became aware of lectio divina in the nineties and the aughts. At that time there was a movement called the “emergent church” among both mainline Protestants and evangelical Christians. The emergent church folks saw that churches were losing the younger generation — Generation X, in those days — because the typical American church service had become too formulaic, too intellectual and lacking in spiritual depth. The emergent church movement had some real successes in attracting young people to return to churches, and some Unitarian Universalists started paying attention. (I myself started using some of the emergent church techniques when I led worship.) Lectio divina was one of the spiritual practices that gained currency among us, as both a personal and communal spiritual practice. And we Unitarian Universalists applied the lectio divina technique, not just to the Bible, but to poetry.

    While I’ve never used the specific technique of lectio divina myself, I have found that reading a good poem can be a spiritual practice. To use a metaphor from electronics, I’ve found that a really good poem can rewire your brain. Back in the aughts, when I was experimenting with emergent church techniques, I was at the New Bedford Unitarian church. There were three or four published poets in that small congregation, one of whom was Everett Hoagland, the award-winning poet who came here last September to read his poetry. Not only was Everett an exceptionally good poet himself, he mentored other poets and organized events where they could read their poetry aloud. I discovered that listening to poetry being read aloud to a group of people made the poetry especially powerful for me. It did something to me. Just as listening to live music is more powerful than listening to music on your earbuds, I find that listening to live poetry is more powerful than reading it to myself.

    With that overly long preface, I’d like to read some poems about springtime, and say a few words about each poem. To begin, I’ll remind you of the poem by William Carlos Williams which started our service this morning, “Spring and All [By the toad to the contagious hospital]” by William Carlos Williams. [During the sermon, I quoted the first 8 lines of this poem.]

    A couple of facts about William Carlos Williams that are not well known, but may be of interest to us: he was Latino, and he was a Unitarian Universalist. Both those things place him a bit outside the mainstream of U.S. culture. Perhaps that gave him a broader insight into human nature. He was also a physician, and was the chief of pediatrics at Passaic General Hospital in New Jersey. This last fact helps us understand why he began a poem about spring with the phrase, “By the road to the contagious hospital….” In popular culture, spring is a season that all about pretty flowers and unicorns and rainbows. William Carlos Williams understands that the real-life season spring is much messier than the pop culture version. As he says in this poem: “…They enter the new world naked, / cold, uncertain of all / save that they enter. All about them
    the cold, familiar wind — …”

    No unicorns and rainbows here. Cold and warmth, winter and spring, joy and sorrow are mixed together in human experience.

    The first reading, “Winter Poem” by Nikki Giovanni, also mixes seemingly discreet things together. Nikki Giovanni is another person who doesn’t quite fit the stereotype of a “typical” American poet: she’s been called the Poet of the Black Revolution, she writes children’s books, she’s a feminist, she likes hip hop, and she’s proud of her down-home Appalachian roots.

    “Winter Poem” by Nikki Giovanni

    While this is in fact a springtime poem about flowers, it’s a little bit weird. The “I” of the poem, whoever it is that’s narrating the poem, starts out as a human, then becomes a snowflake, then becomes a spring rain, then becomes a flower. Winter turns into spring without sharp boundaries, and there don’t seem to be sharp boundaries between humans, snow, rain, and flowers either. It’s all an interconnected web. Or maybe more precisely, it could be an interconnected web, if we let it. Back in 2019, Nikki Giovanni told this story about growing up in Appalachia:

    “…if you had a flat tire in the old days when people had flat tires, the best place to be was in Appalachia…it’s always going to be a woman [saying], ‘Pa! Somebody’s car broke down!’ And he would say, ‘Be right there!’ and they would come down and help you. They’d help fix the tire. And you’d be sitting on the porch with the woman while Pa did that. And of course you didn’t have any money and they didn’t either. So, you’d be saying thank you. But it was a safe place.”

    And it was a safe place whether you were White or Black. In Nikki Giovanni’s opinion, the people in American politics who are fostering hate and divisiveness tend to be people driving expensive cars who can hire other people to fix their flat tires, and they’re using poor people for their own ends. According to the poet Asha French, “Nikki Giovanni’s deep sight sidesteps easy stereotypes to get to the heart of the matter: economic justice for all Americans.” (1) Or as we Unitarian Universalists might put it, the heart of the matter is that we are all interconnected in the web of existence.

    Ada Limón, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote another atypical springtime poem, which she has titled “Instructions on Not Giving Up.”

    While Ada Limón grew up in Sonoma, California, and still lives there part of every year, to me this sounds more like a New England poem. When she says that the new green leaves that come out in springtime are “Patient, plodding, a green skin / growing over whatever winter did to us, a return / to the strange idea of continuous living despite / the mess of us, the hurt, the empty” — that sounds more like winter and spring in New England than in Sonoma, California. However, having spent 13 years living just south of Sonoma, California, it is true that northern California winters can can be hard in their own way. Northern California has had an especially hard winter this year: storms with hurricane force winds, intense rainstorms, flooding, landslides. A hard winter can take it out of you. All the difficult parts of life can take it out of you. Life is messy, it hurts us, it can make us feel empty. Yet like the trees in springtime, we too can put out new life. We can take all of life — the meanness of hurts and emptiness, and also the sublime glory of springtime.

    And so it is that we conclude with final springtime poem by Ross Gay titled “Thank You.”

    Parts of this poem remind me of another poem, one written twenty-five hundred years ago. When Ross Gay says, “All will one day turn to dust” I can hear echoes of the ancient poet who wrote the book Ecclesiastes: “dust returns to the earth as it was.” Yet the poet of Ecclesiastes ends by repeating the opening lines of their poem — “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” — while Ross Gay ends his poem quite differently: “Say only thank you. Thank you.”

    I sometimes feel that most religion today does not give thanks often enough. The first thing the conservative Christians tell us is that we are sinners. The first thing that Unitarian Universalists and other religious progressives tell us is that the world is full of injustice that needs to be corrected, which isn’t so very different from saying that we are all sinners. And what does Ross Gay do? He tells us to say thank you. This to me is something that’s missing from too much of today’s religion. Watch your breath steam out from your mouth on a cold spring morning, walk through your still-dormant garden, and say thank you. We need to give thanks more often.

    It would be easy to dismiss Ross Gay as hopelessly idealistic. After all, he’s just another privileged college professor. Yet he’s also a Black man living in the United States, who said in a 2021 interview that he’s always aware of racial justice when he writes poetry. (2) Or as he put it in an NPR interview: “Joy is the evidence of our reaching across to one another in the midst of — or as a way even of — caring for one another’s sorrows.” (3) Ross Gay sees joy and sorrow as being connected. He also believes that joy does not happen in isolation; joy only happens through your connection to others. You can’t have joy unless you’re connected to other people, and to the whole universe; joy arises because we pare part of the interconnected web of all existence.

    And this is why we say thank you. Yes, we know that we’re all going to die sooner or later, and there’s a great deal of sorrow in that knowledge. Yes, we know that there is much that is horribly wrong with this world, and there’s a great deal of sorrow in that knowledge. But when we reach out to others in the midst of our many sorrows, when we care for one another in the midst of sorrow, joy can arise.

    I began by telling you how reading poetry can be a sort of spiritual practice. To reuse that overused electronics metaphor, a good poem can rewire your brain. And I don’t mean that it changes the way you think so much as I mean a good poem can change the way you are in the world. Poetry can change your very being.

    Lately, I’ve been finding that I need to have my being changed. Between COVID and climate change and race relations and Gaza and presidential politics — all this on top of the individual sorrows and griefs that we all face in our personal lives — the past few years have been difficult for me, and I think for most of us. There’s a lot of sorrow floating around in the world.

    In these times, it is all too easy to say, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” — and stop there. But I hope these poems about springtime prompt you to go beyond the vanity of vanities. With William Carlos Williams, may we see that even outside the contagious hospital, new life is emerging with spring. With Nikki Giovanni, may we understand that we are connected with snow and rain and flowers, and with all of humanity as well. With Ada Limón, may we realize that like the trees in springtime, we too can put out new life. And with Ross Gay, may we remember to say thank you. Over and over again, may we remember to say thank you.

    Notes

    (1) Asha French, “Deeper Than Double: Nikki Giovanniand her Appalachian Elders,” Pluck: Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture (University of Kentucky, June, 2020) https://pluckjournal.uky.edu/welcome/2020/06/03/deeper-than-double-nikki-giovanni-and-her-appalachian-elders/

    (2) “Poet Ross Gay explores a joy informed by deep sorrow,” interview with Leah Rumack, 11 Jan. 2021, Broadview magazine website, https://broadview.org/ross-gay-interview/

    (3) “How Ross Gay Finds Joy In The Smallest of ‘Delights’,” interview with Christina Cala, 19 August 2021, transcript of NPR “CodeSwitch” radio program, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/08/19/1029287927/how-ross-gay-finds-joy-in-the-smallest-of-delights