Before I knew about correct and fool proof recipes for making jelly by the experts, I spent late summer weekends picking berries and grapes from the hilly underbrush up at our family cottage by a lake. I pulled on long pants and high socks, and a hat, and a bandana over a turtleneck or collar up long sleeve shirt, and took my metal buckets and my father’s hand, and went into the hills behind the house to pick grapes, blackberries, and raspberries.

It was a kind of homemade hazmat outfit intended to protect my skin from poison ivy, brambles and thorns that composed the thickets that berries and grapes loved to grow in. It was obvious to my child eyes that berries and brambles lived together. Picking cost me only scratches which I would survive . . . the rest was free.

I remember being in the thick of a thicket not far from the flattened land where the car was parked. One car... remember the days of one car in the family?

I leaned in to reach for some berries...and then as my eyes got better, practiced at seeing what was before me all along, I spotted clusters of big shining berries under the limb. I negotiated my way closer; the more I found, the more would be found. It was exhilarating.

Before I studied recipes, I watched my father, cursing as he thrashed his way to a bright cluster behind a thorn bush. I watched him cooking the fruit, and smelled the mysterious blue scents that filled the kitchen and floated out the windows as I lay on the hammock. I watched him measuring the sugar, cooking and then testing, testing the juice, holding the spoon on its side, to see if it the hot syrup was ready to jell. And then he got eager when he was ready to pour it into the jars.

I saw the transformation of wild clusters of globed fleshly fruits into sweet dark clear jelly, bright and pungent and wild in its smoothness.

Now eating fresh wild grapes was a pleasure all its own. Shocking and filled with delight. A sweet and sour thrill. I would pop a clear slippery celadon center of the grape out of its skin and into my mouth, locating the pits with my tongue and placing them up between my teeth and gums as I chewed and swallowed the flesh. Then I would take a breath and spit the pits out onto the lawn. How uncivilized. What fun!

Dad would press the grapes and their pits and skins through this long funnel shaped sock stained a faded indigo. He would scrape the outsides of the sock, taking off the purple ooze that was clinging there and he would boil up the blue juice with sugar with a blue stained wooden spoon. Grandma had boiled up the jars; they stood on the clean towels, steaming in the air. She had the knowledge, and the basement was testament to her work. Jars upon jars of peaches, blueberries, summer fruits from long ago that she had put up with her Finnish sisters, years before.

If I envy anyone it must be my grandmother . . .
I will always remember how she poured confusion out,
how she cooled and labeled all the wild sauces of the brimming year . . .
--Mary Oliver, Answers from New and Selected Poems

In the end my lived experiences had at least as much if not more power than the fear of hell fire and memorized recipes I was taught in my RE classes. On those weekends, I learned about nature, and such non-discriminating gifts of creation as tasty grapes, thorns, and thickets.

I learned my family’s values.
I learned about human nature... Dad would make a mess. He would need help. He would lose patience. He would be expectant, playful, serious, totally engaged.
I learned about family relations, my membership, my value in my family.
I learned about the transformation of feelings, from mad to glad, from careful to carefree.
I learned about my family’s traditions and the importance of elders,
I learned about human creativity in the world.
We do change the world.
I can change the world.
We can choose to change it for good.
I can choose.
We can make jelly and still leave places wild.
I can make jelly with my father.
I learned about patience, making a mess, cleaning it up.
I learned about what mattered in my family:
I mattered, nature mattered, tradition mattered.
And I thought I was just learning how to make jelly!

And what else? I learned about happiness - enjoying life. It seemed to me that grown ups I knew didn’t do that much. My father did not allow himself much happiness - enjoyment. But when he made grape jelly, he enjoyed himself.

Maybe that was a message about his life and the price of living through depression and war. Maybe it was the message of his religion. How he heard it. Maybe it was his being a first generation immigrant. Poverty and war are powerful religious educators.

Oh, he had moments when the playful part came out. When he made grape jelly, Dad transformed the indigos of his worry and loss into a sweetness we could enjoy and taste. How much happiness do you allow yourself? Is being happy OK now? I realized since September 11 that making grape jelly helps me face my fears--and enjoy life. And to think - I learned it back when I was a girl, making grape jelly with my father.

Making grape jelly is a way I have been pouring confusion out and filling some of this time with redemptive palpable healing joy. That tastes good!

Our families are our first religious educators. You teach your children so much about life.

In the RE Program we have your children only 44 hours a year. So, what are we teaching them? The better question to ask, that I ask as a religious educator, is what they are learning? That is how I find out what they have to teach us.

Last week I was with our Coming of Age class, our class of eighth graders. It is our UU equivalent of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah, or Christian Confirmation year. We teach a class on Human Sexuality and UU history and values. They travel to Boston with the minister. And we have a COA ceremony in May.

I asked them the question, "Where do we find our values?" I wanted to learn how we were doing. They answered - teachings and teachers, parents, friends, media, self, experience, and leaders past and present.

I asked them to name some UU values. The first ones were education, understanding, intellect, reason, conscience, honesty, peace, democracy, justice, freedom, and responsibility.

I learned that here at this congregation we value thinking and reasoning and conscience.

We cherish the democratic process. This is important. Here in this religion, we teach civic values, democratic values. That is more important than ever.

We are educating people who can participate in a pluralistic diverse democratic society. Ours may be the only real one in the world. There is no more important lesson a faith community can teach its people these days. Here, we educate our children to be engaged with the wider community.

People are afraid these days. As our children’s first religious educators what values do we teach when we feel fear? When we respond to perceived and real vulnerability? Because the media fans the flames of parental fears.

My 17-year-old son came in and said, "Don’t watch the TV. It is the same news and they just keep repeating it and it makes you crazy!" My 13-year-old is very tired of hearing from adults that the world is going to hell and that he has nothing good to look forward to.

If I were feeling optimistic I would say we are searching for a decent recipe for this new mix of risk and rights. How will our values survive? How well will our civil liberties be balanced with our fears. Life is still remarkably safe. We need perspective.

I looked back into our history when were insecure, anxious. I was talking with an older member, the chair of the board that built this building. He was telling me about Pearl Harbor. He was 16 years old growing up in California at the time.

He described the fear and the insecurity and the uncertainty of that time. He said that back then we were a nation still in depression, with no standing Army, and the Navy had been wiped out by the attack. Hitler was as far as Moscow. The world was a mess. And in three years we defeated both assaults. The price was high.

He also said that we were having blackouts at night, and the song people sang was, what made people happy - to sing a song of hope... "When the lights come on all over the world." That brought them comfort. And he added the lights did come back on. I felt better learning from his hard-earned wisdom.

You know what did not appear on the Coming of Agers list? I asked them what about enjoying life? What about happiness? Is enjoying life a religious value?

They hesitated. Then they said "yes," that it was an appropriate religious value, but said that most religious values you think of have to do with improving oneself, overcoming sin and selfishness, helping the world. Those "religious" values did not seem to equate with happiness, being able to enjoy life.

This is the good news. Happiness is a UU value.

In the Universalist’s Winchester Profession of Faith of 1803, the third part reads: "We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected...and that believers ought to be careful to maintain order, and practice good works, for these things are good and profitable to men."

I have been watching us these past weeks. How we are since September 11.

We are seeking opportunities for happiness amid the rubble, uncertainty, and grief.

Just like Universalist’s did almost two centuries ago.

We are coming together. Seeking comfort of community. At the music sing along we expected 60 and 150 of you came. Come to Fellowship dinner next week. We have been gathering and talking and a sharing like never before to enjoy our lives life with people who really know us, who we want to know better. We gather for "intimacy and ultimacy".

Mary Oliver wrote these lines in her poem Answers:

Of course the great lesson is loss...but I say this
That [life] is an invitation to happiness . . .

Yet, happiness cannot return to us on anyone else’s timetable. Each of us has our own timetable for grief . . . for the big losses. Some times transforming loss into something that not only nourishes our life but sweetens it takes years.

Jonathan and I went to pick up our 13-year-old from Audubon Camp in Vermont and we stayed at a bed and breakfast nearby. We arrived very late that night before, and were the only guests there. We agreed upon a time for breakfast and went to sleep. When we awoke, the owner was in her kitchen cooking. I looked all over the house.

So many things, memories, plaques, acknowledgements.

We sat down to breakfast and she put some jams on the table. Strawberry, rhubarb and raspberry. Homemade. I took a muffin and some fruit. Jonathan had oatmeal. She sat with us, and told us her story, her losses, triumphs, betrayals. She was retiring, selling the property... She had physical ailments. She had been in the Marines as a young woman. Her husband, her second, had died at the age of 91 in 1999.

She spoke of how her property was part of conservation land, and that people got lost on it so she had a logger cut down trees, to make a road, for rescue, and she let him keep those he cut. She named the road for him. Then he took an old cherry tree he had cut and made the most beautiful counter tabletop for her.

I complimented the raspberry jam. It tasted just like fresh berries. Only brighter. She said that her husband had picked the jam's berries in 1997. She had forgotten that he had frozen them. But they still made a wonderful preserve.

Just like those preserves, the raspberries, sometimes it takes years before we can remember someone with sweetness and not just sorrow.

What I am talking about is a kind of resurrection. We are creating life after death. That is what the resurrection story means to me. It is not a literal rising up out of the grave but a rising out of grief and sorrow that we all come to know in our lives. It is the truth story that love is stronger than death. When we are willing to bring sugar to the berries we can transform experience, grief, into food to nurture our lives.

It is not the only thing in life. Sugar would rot our teeth. But there is a place for sweetness in all our lives, and that is redemptive, palpable, and transformational.

It is like a resurrection. Love is stronger than death.

I felt lost in my grief so I went to the beach for a walk the other morning, really early. I stopped to show my pass, and the gate guard asked how was I, and I grumbled, "I’m just waking up."

He looked at me and said, "Well! It is a good day to wake up to."

I took my walk and passed the place where I used to see the twin towers in the distance...and kept walking. I watched the sun coming up on the water, breaking through the cloud cover, falling onto my face. I had to acknowledge this humbling truth.

"Who am I not to be glad for this sun and earth and morning. Who am I to see only my grief when before me rises this gift of the day. Yes, It is a good day to wake up."

So I am making grape jelly. I’d rather do something constructive and that smells good. Making grape jelly helps to appreciate the life that I have been given. I refuse to make jelly out of the grapes of wrath. I do not seek escape or intoxication.

What I am seeking in my life now is sweetness. I want to enjoy life, to feel happiness and holiness.

I invite you to name your recipes for happiness... Especially now and I have a suggestion. Think of making jelly as a Spiritual Practice. While it is may be less messy if someone else prepares it for you once you have tasted your truth, you can never really enjoy it second hand. You have to embrace pits and skins even because without them, the jelly would not have its exciting color and taste. You need some tools. You need some space. You need some time. You need to able to pay attention, be able to tolerate uncertainty, be patient.

You need to prepare for the thorns. They make the fruit all the more precious.

I wasn’t intending to make grape jelly this year. I just did. I did not go pick the grapes in the wild. I bought them in the grocery store wrapped in plastic. I do not have a sock to let the juices drip from. I used a sieve. I did not have canning jars or paraffin, but I put the jelly into a tupperware container and into the fridge.

Still, the scent of grape filled the house. They boys tasted the grape essence. They saw great blue mess in my kitchen. The blue wooden spoons. The pile of old skins and pits.

All it took was the grapes, the sugar, the fire, and my desire for happiness. It tastes delightful!

This year, I realized what I’ve known since my father shared the making of grape jelly with me. It takes love to really make grape jelly.

So, for my final ingredient, I offer you love. Love is a good way to begin to reconnect to what is most important in your life. To what is holy and redemptive.

The season is changing finally. We moved our clocks backwards last night. Today is a good day to wake up to.