To Live Like a River Flows ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 22, 2026
People often wonder how a minister creates a sermon. Frankly, the minister often wonders this herself. But people tend to be curious about the process: how we find our ideas, what we use for resources, and so on. And a theory, a narrative, persists in some circles that in fact ministers don’t actually prepare, but we stand in front of our people at the appointed time, and the Holy Spirit descends upon us and the sermon emerges. This narrative is surprisingly pervasive. I once told a new acquaintance what I do, and she replied, “Oh, so you only have to work for an hour a week, right?”
What I find interesting is that at some point in the sermon creation process, something does show up. We might call it a Muse, or the Spirit. Here’s how it often works for me: when I’m trying to sort through the many threads that must be woven together to create the fabric of a sermon, the Muse often swings by with words from a hymn, suddenly firmly planted in my mind. Now, this does not always work perfectly. Sometimes the Muse might be in a hurry, and only leaves me with a part of the tune, leaving me to walk around humming until I can remember which hymn she (the Muse) is pointing me to. But I have learned to pay attention to these odd little moments, these snippets of words and music.
There is so much I want to say to you this morning. There are so many threads. But the Muse appeared yesterday, and the words I heard were these:
“A life is made of many things: bright stars, bleak years, and broken rings.” (Singing the Living Tradition, #344, A Promise Through the Ages Rings)
Interestingly, these words appeared for me just after I watched some video clips of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died this past Tuesday at the age of 84. Jesse Jackson’s life was made of many things. A young man active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ordained a Baptist minister at 25. Present with Martin Luther King when he was assassinated. Founder of the Rainbow Coalition. Presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988. International envoy and negotiator who was instrumental in the release of political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. A peace advocate who spoke out against the Iraq war, who advocated for the peace process in Northern Ireland and tried to build bridges in Venezuela. An important man who once appeared on Sesame Street, teaching a call and response to children that went: “I am. Somebody.” “I may be poor. But I am. Somebody.”
Jesse Jackson’s life is inextricably woven through the history of the last half century of the United States, so much so that it is impossible to do his work justice in this small amount of time. He had successes and failures. He made friends and enemies. In the end, it can be said that he devoted roughly 60 years of his life to one overarching goal: justice. “Keep hope alive!” he told us.
“A life is made of many things: bright stars, bleak years, and broken rings. Can it be true, that through all things, there always, always something sings?”
We all live many lives, and in the course of our lifetimes, our circumstances change almost continually, and as a result, so do we. As our author put it in our reading this morning:
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change…” (Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower, p.3)
Our circumstances change. But how much do we change? How much are we willing to change?
I was a young wife once, then a mother, and a homeowner, juggling work and children, becoming, to my surprise, religious. Over the years, I could see how I was evolving. I was married to someone who often pointed out shortcomings, and ways I could grow. In fact, he often bought me self-help books. On the one hand, sometimes I could see that he was right. On the other hand, I began asking myself as the years went on: how much can or should a person change? Am I good enough like this? The woman who resisted changing would sometimes hand back a self-help book, saying, “I really prefer books that have a plot.”
As we talk about resilience this month, this question came to me again, after so many years. Where do we find ourselves most resilient: in the evolving, in letting life carry us along and molding us, or in standing firm – saying ‘here and no farther?’
John O’Donohue, the late Irish priest and poet, once wrote,
“I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.”
Over and over, in reading about resilience, I saw references to water. This feels surprising – after all, shouldn’t resilience feel more like standing strong and resolute? But in fact, we gain strength when we embrace change. Think about the amount of energy required to resist change, to fight it, essentially to stand in a river refusing to be carried by the current. “Let the current carry you,” the poets and authors all seem to say.
The Muse visited me with a line from another song: James Taylor and Carly Simon singing “Ride with the tide and go with the flow.” (Mockingbird, 1974.)
Water metaphors are everywhere when people consider resilience: tides ebbing and rising, streams coursing downhill, moving around rocks and tree trunks, merging into rivers, the peaceful image of floating. ‘Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.’
Water flows at will, and goes where it wants. It overflows its banks, it floods streets. It has great power, but is that power what makes water resilient? No, rather, it’s the movement, the ability to shift and to flow.
But what of humans? How much do we dare flow, or spill over our own banks before we end up feeling, not resilient, but rather uncentered, and unsure of who and where we are? How do we choose when to stand still, and when to allow ourselves to be carried along?
This is perhaps one of the great questions for everyone, throughout our lives. And it is also the question for countries, and institutions, for governments. I am reminded of the words of James Baldwin that we heard last week: “for nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed…”
We think back to our childhoods, to our early adulthood. Could you have seen yourself as you are right now, here in this moment? I was a hockey mom, a suburban PTO president, whose identity was solidly fixed as a married woman. But ‘the only lasting truth is change.’
Our government once permitted enslavement of human beings. We grapple with the consequences of that, we try to deny the shame of that, but we have not stood still. The fight for justice takes new forms, it has broadened to include many other people who were once ignored. Now, in 2026 we try to come to terms with rules for cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. Where should we stand still?
Churches, religious communities, also can never stand still. Where would be the right place to stop? A few years ago one of our late elders, a birthright member, shared with me that her friends were often surprised to hear that this was her church. And she said, “I don’t really know what to say to them about what we are.” I felt sad, thinking about her journey, from being explicitly Christian Universalist in the 1940’s to today: pluralist, not holding any one religious tradition at the center. It must have been confusing for her. And yet, this was always her church. Like almost all UU congregations, we have flowed with the current, and have not stopped. And of course the question must be asked, “what makes us who we are, if we have changed so much?” What has held? What will continue to hold? Churches must change over time, in order to meet their people where they are. I’ve told you before that it was once controversial whether to use musical instruments in worship. Should we use scripture every Sunday? In recent years debate often centered around whether to continue reciting the Christian Lord’s Prayer. When I first came, recording services was strictly forbidden. And of course, now we’re considering the question of ownership.
What holds us?
As I pondered these questions this week, I came upon a blog post from a woman named Sue Heatherington, a Welsh writer and consultant. She asked the question, “How do we hold onto something that matters?” and then offered this definition of Resilience:
“Resilience isn’t trying to hold on to all you have been and somehow get through. It is the flow of water that responds to its environment and even changes its form, yet never changes its fundamental nature.” (https://sueheatherington.com/the-resilience-of-wild-hope-and-water/)
Tides that spill onto roadways change their form for a time, but the essence, the nature of the ocean, remains the same.
A man undertakes many roles throughout his long life, but never wavers from his fundamental quest for justice for everyone.
A stream might be impeded, might be still in one place or rushing over rocks in another, but its nature remains the same; it is water, moving downhill.
A woman starts to hear her own voice through all the commotion of other peoples’ expectations and makes a sudden career change. “Finally,” said her friends.
A country is founded on the principle that all are created equal. Despite regularly overflowing its banks, or experiencing drought when the waters of justice dry up again and again, that foundational principle still remains, waiting for us to grow into it, holding our center.
A church evolves in its language, its practices, its rituals. It can move from one building to another. It can shut down during a pandemic, and move online. But the church maintains its fundamental theology: belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all, a belief that Love holds us all, that no one is left behind. It holds its belief in beloved community when everything changes around it.
My friends, as we move through our lives, our work is to listen always for that still, small voice that reveals our essence. When we can hear that voice, we can learn how to be carried along through life like a river flows, and how to hold on when the time is right. May we remember that that is the resilience we seek: to respond to change, to move with change, but to never change what is fundamental to us.
I will close with the full verse of the hymn – if you want to look it up it’s A Promise Through the Ages Rings, #344, and the second verse says:
“A life is made of many things: bright stars, bleak years, and broken rings.
Can it be true that through all things, there always something, something sings?
The universal song of life.”
May you hear the song. May it carry you along, like a river flows.
Amen.
