On Sunday, Nov. 28 the first Sunday of Advent, I was given such an opportunity. A few years ago, when our pastor the Rev. Milton Dudley took a well-earned sabbatical, a number of people from the congregation led services, a series of events well organized by the late Ruth Pelmus. It was then that I, in collaboration with Dan Plumley, was first asked to take on a service, which included selecting the meditation, responsive readings, hymns, unison prayer, scripture and blessing, and writing and delivering the sermon. I have stepped in a couple times since.

Where I start is by looking up on the Lectionary Page the Liturgical Calendar and the Lesson for the date and Sunday to be covered; usually there are two or three options to consider, this time from Isaiah, Romans and Matthew. I chose Matthew 24: 37-44.

Printing deadlines being what they are, I had to have my recommendations for the service bulletin, including the title of the meditation (aka sermon), lined up a couple weeks ahead of time. After reading the lesson where Jesus likens being prepared for the coming of his birth to those in the time of Noah, meaning that they needed to be awake and watchful for the exact moment would be unknown and only those who were ready would be saved.

I titled my meditation “Choices,” had Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” printed on the cover, tucked the reading into the back of my mind to mull over, and didn’t start writing the sermon until the day before. I like to draw inspiration from current events, personal experiences and to refer back to the reading or other readings that I can use to help illustrate the lesson.

The context I used was the growing threat to our survival as a species we humans have unleashed by our incredible disruption of the balance of nature in particular over the last 100 to 150 years, with the last 50 being especially off the charts. As an example, according to many leading biologists one-fifth of all life forms will go extinct in the next 30 or so years, an extinction rate greater than that caused by the giant asteroid that slammed into our planet eons ago killing off the dinosaurs. That, of course, assumes we continue our present course and understanding that not everyone buys into that prediction.

I then asked what does it require for us to be truly awake to our own actions to truly live in the present.

I drew on three stories. The first was when upon meeting a new dentist who told me that he had conducted a survey of his patients and asked me to guess what was their number one priority. I tried no pain, no waiting, lower fees, evening appointments, decent reading material and whatever else I could think of without guessing the answer. He said he learned that what his customers wanted was his attention. They wanted their time with him, no matter the length, to be uninterrupted. They wanted his time, attention and focus. He said they wanted to be treated as people and not as a tooth to be filled or extracted. He said that he subsequently learned that paying attention was not easy, that he had to pay attention to paying attention. He had to delegate authority and empower others on his staff to make decisions. He said actually, it was more like paying attention, to paying attention so he could give his patients his full attention.

The second illustrated that small acts, leveraged by the scale and interconnectedness of new technologies, can have profound consequences. The example I used was the decision by the captain of the Exxon Valdez to open a bottle a liquor and take a drink, leaving the ship, then cruising outside the shipping lane, in the hands of the third mate, which resulted in more than 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled within six hours, 8,100 miles of coastline impacted, 11,000 people, 1,400 ships and 85 aircraft involved in the clean-up, and more than 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters and 300 harbor seals known to have died. Today high levels of toxic residue still remain and some wildlife, notably the harbor seals, harlequin ducks, Pacific herring and pigeon guillemot, has shown no clear improvement since the disaster.

The third illustrated that half the time we do not truly fully observe what is in fact taking place. In their new book The Invisible Gorilla, psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris explained how our brains trick us into thinking that we see more than we actually do. The book recounts an experiment they designed to test human perception. Participants are asked to watch two teams, one in back shirts and the other in white shirts, pass a ball back and forth between them. The participants are asked to count how many times the ball is passed back and forth between the two teams. Mid-way through the video, a gorilla walks through the middle of the game, stops, pounds its chest, and then exits.

After the video ends, the participants were asked if they saw a gorilla. More than half said they did not see a gorilla, and didn’t believe that one actually walked through the video. Sometimes it takes several screenings, even when they are told to look for a gorilla, before they see it.

Bottom line, being fully present is hard work; we miss half of what’s going

on; and, small decisions can have major consequences. These observations I

had to then attempt to relate back to the Lesson and the message of the

first Sunday of Advent. One thing I learned through taking on this challenge

is that our pastors, priests and rabbis deserve our attention as they try to

help us chart these troubled waters of our own making.