"I was working on my Bachelor of Science degree in nursing at the University of North Carolina when I met Brad in the spring of 1957. I was singing the lead in a musical that a fraternity brother of his had written and he was the stage manager. The first time I saw him he was sitting on the stage smoking a pipe and wearing an ascot. I thought, 'Wow!' A week later he walked me to the dorm and that's how our romance began." (Carol Hall)
"It was in the summer of '59," Robert Fulghum wrote in The Reader's Digest, "that I had a job at a resort inn in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. I was the night clerk at the Lodge, just out of college and free with my opinions.
"One week, the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day: two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut and stale rolls. To compound the insult with injury, the cost of the meals was deducted from our paychecks. I was outraged."
Fulghum ranted and raved to the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman, a thin, sorrowful-looking German Jew who had survived Auschwitz. And finally Sigmund Wollman responded: "Listen, Fulghum, you know what's wrong with you? It's not the wieners and kraut; it's not the boss and it's not the chef and it's not the job.
"You think you know everything, but you don't know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire--then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconvenience from the real problems, you will live longer and will not annoy people like me so much. Good night."
Fulghum never forgot Sigmund Wollman, who "simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind. For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I'm ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks, 'Fulghum, problem or inconvenience?' I think of this as the Sigmund Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference."
One of the advantages of getting older is that we learn from the Sigmund Wollmans in our life how to test reality and keep our balance. I've found that it has been awfully easy for me to get caught up in life's little inconveniences, allowing them to become what they are not--real problems.
Last week, one of you shared with me your Sigmund Wollman reality test. "I was driving down Highway 111 with a scowl on my face, full of life's cares and concerns. Nothing was going right, it was close to tax time and I was about ready to blow up when the traffic light turned red and I got stuck behind a long line of cars. As I sat there fuming, I looked over to the right and there on the corner I saw a woman waiting to cross the street with three children, each of whom was severely handicapped. Suddenly, all of life's little inconveniences melted away in the presence of a real problem."
I've had many such experiences and I suspect you have, too. I am convinced that we are put on this earth by God to celebrate living with Him and with each other. As one wise woman said to me at a diner table this week, "God didn't put us here to be dreary, unhappy people. God has a sense of humor," she said, "and expects us to enjoy our lives as best we can. It's all we've got!"
The little vignette about life in the early church, which we read from Acts this morning, makes this abundantly clear:
"When they (the Disciples) had prayed together, the place in which they were gathered was shaking and they were all filled with The Holy Spirit...they were one in heart and soul and had all things in common and great grace was upon them."
Clearly this was a joy-filled community of people who didn't let life's little inconveniences get in the way of living a full and spirit-filled life together.
Often it takes a crisis or two for us to test reality, as Sigmund Wollman put it so well. Crises are those terrible yet wondrous events of life which help us to distinguish between a lump in our oatmeal or a lump in our breast, life's little inconveniences and real-life problems.
Last Sunday one of our families shared with me such an experience. They were driving with their two children to Disneyland and just as they were turning their van off the main freeway, a drunken driver slammed into them at over sixty miles an hour. Great grace was upon them, for though their car was totalled, and spectators had written them off, all four walked out of that demolished van unscathed, not a scratch on anyone. I have no doubt that somehow or other (Angels of Grace?), God was with this family--and they have no doubt that their lives are different now. They know the difference between a petty inconvenience like traffic and real problems such as injury and death.
Life on this earth is so short, so very complicated. We have only a few shots at real happiness and joy, but it's hard to let go of our fears and petty concerns and become what God created us to be. So I bid you, occasionally remember the Sigmund Wollman Test of Reality: Is what I'm going through right now a petty inconvenience or a real problem? And remember that God's creation is a good and happy place and God wants us to enjoy it fully. "Be fruitful," God said to Adam and Eve. "Enjoy. It's all yours." Take a chance on life and live it fully--don't let petty inconveniences hold you back. And remember the early church's model of living in joyous Christian community, allowing yourself the opportunity to experience God's Holy Spirit when you gather to worship and pray. Who knows, you might even feel this place shake a bit as you let go and experience Great Grace and God's Holy Spirit as we become one in heart and soul.
And now a closing story about Great Grace from the Japanese film, Ikiiru (meaning to live). It describes the life of an old man who has sat behind the counter of a store for thirty years--worrying, protecting his life, allowing all the petty inconveniences of life to keep him from living fully. And then quite suddenly, he experiences his liberating crisis. He finds out that he has cancer and will die within six months. It's the first real problem he has ever faced in his life.
Everything is changed. Now he tries his best to live fully, to seek the enjoyment he has missed all his life--but he has no experience and his efforts don't amount to much. Finally he decides to do something with his life. Against great obstacles, he decides to make a lovely park in a dirty slum of Tokyo.
Now his fear of living and his petty inconveniences begin to melt away. He knows he is going to die, but he has something of value to do.
The old man works and works and works. There is no stopping him now because he is not afraid of life or anyone or anything. He no longer has anything to lose and so, in six short months, he gains everything. When the park is finished, the old man experiences Great Grace. He dies singing a joyous song while swinging on a child's swing in the park he has created.
What a wonderful parable about how it can be in life--swinging and singing, singing and swinging. Amen.
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