It’s not the kind of surprise I like. And it is a much more common occurrence than I would hope. That surprise of learning that someone in the church has been struggling with an illness or some other troubling life situation but they haven’t let anyone in the church know. And, when I call or visit and inquire, when I say “I wish we had known,” the answer comes, “I just didn’t want to bother anyone.”

When I hear that it makes me feel so sad. Because since when is it a bother to a church community to know when we might be needed, when we might be of use to one another?

We here at Emerson have been talking recently about the purpose of our church. For me one bottom line purpose for this church has got to be that we will be there for one another in times of trouble and change and sorrow. We are called to be present to one another, to walk with one another through the good times and bad. No one in this church community should have to navigate rough stretches alone. To me that is an essential part of what it means to be a religious community. That’s part of why I first joined a Unitarian Universalist church—because there, in that first church, I felt strongly “these are my people and they will be my people and they will be there for me in my times of need.” And I am sure that part of the depth of my conviction about this role of the church comes from the fact that, at that time, I myself was hurting and I needed people to be present to me, to care about me. But even were it not for my personal experience, I would still believe that a caring presence one to another is an essential part of the vision of Beloved Community to which we aspire. Yes, we would minister to the hurts of the world, but how can we minister to the world if we cannot first minister to one another? And so it does make me feel sad to think there are folks in our congregation out there who are hurting or in trouble and alone—and we could be present to them if we only knew.

I would suspect that everyone of us here, if asked, would say, of course, the church should be there for people in need. But there is a world of difference in affirming that presence for other people and in asking for that presence for ourselves. Why is it so hard for us to ask for help?

Oh, I know there are a whole host of reasons, some of them idiosyncratic, based on our own personal history and personality. But when I search my soul and when I reflect on people I’ve known, I think a big part of the reason is that to need someone else means depending upon someone else. And dependence is not something that is generally seen as desirable in our culture. To describe an adult as dependent is not a compliment. To describe someone as independent, on the other hand, is usually a term of praise. Dependency denotes helplessness, weakness and vulnerability, even lesser class status. Think about how the word dependency is used today. Dependency is used as a synonym for addiction, for example. Or when we say someone has dependency issues, we generally mean they have some pretty serious psychological work to do. As one of my colleagues puts it, no one ever says—“that person has independency issues.” The picture of the successful adult in our culture is someone who is self-sufficient and self-responsible, hard working and effective, in control. And we go to great lengths to assure ourselves and others that we are all those things—and to say we need someone, that we are dependent on others, is to admit a chink in the armor of all that self-reinforcing facade. But think how large the “self-help” sections of bookstores have become. We all like to pretend that we don’t need help—but if that’s really the case, what’s up with Barnes and Noble?

And of course other things get mixed up in this reluctance to ask for help. Things like the misguided illusion that if we just keep acting like we are in control somehow that will keep our neediness and the chaos at bay. And things like pride, some of it justifiable, but some, if we are honest with ourselves, based in a self serving superiority—it’s perfectly okay for others to ask for help, but I can’t stoop to that. And privacy, not wanting other people to know our business—and sure, we all want and need our privacy, want and need to preserve our boundaries. But I wonder if, in our pursuit of privacy, we haven’t sacrificed something sustaining. Time was when houses were built with big front porches so that people walking by could sit a spell and trade stories, lend a listening ear, swap advice and heartache. Now we have patios and decks in our backyards behind privacy screens. And even though trouble is no less a stranger to a McMansion than to a shotgun house, you’d never know from the exterior—until the day the moving van appears.

Other things, too, get mixed in, things like fear. Fear of rejection, perhaps—the fear that if I risk being vulnerable, if I put it out there than I am in need of others, that no one will care, no one will respond - and then where would that leave me. Or the fear that if I risk all that, show my neediness, others will not only not respond but also judge me as weak and inferior, even deserving of scorn.

And maybe—if we look deep enough—we might even acknowledge that some of our hesitancy at asking for help stems from a feeling that we are not worthy of help. Could it be that we have so internalized the message that to need others is an indication of weakness that we too believe that to admit need is to be somehow deficient?

And we Unitarian Universalists—as much as we like to cite our seventh principle which refers to the interdependent web, we, no less than others, subscribe to this ethos of self-sufficiency. Maybe even more so than some. After all, Emerson is one of our patron saints. Emerson, whose most famous essay is “Self-Reliance.” In the popular understanding that essay is construed to mean “take care of your own needs and don't depend on others outside yourself”, fiercely guard your independence. Emerson did mean to preserve one’s independency of thought, to guard against submissiveness to any authority that would stifle creativity and growth of spirit. But did Emerson really mean that people do not need one another?

On January 24, 1842, when Emerson was 39 years old, his five year old son, Waldo, came down with scarlatina. Three days later, at 8:15 in the evening of January 27, Waldo was dead. And what was Emerson’s first impulse upon receiving this staggering blow; what was the first thing this man who had written so eloquently and persuasively of self reliance, did? He turned for support to others. The very night Waldo died, Emerson wrote four letters to friends and family and he wrote six or seven more letters the next day. He wrote his brother William, his wife Lidian’s sister and brother, and Abel Adams, an old friend and financial advisor. He wrote to his aunt Mary; to friends Elizabeth Hoar, Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller and Caroline Sturgis. In the nineteenth century equivalent of the telephone call, Emerson poured his emotions out to his friends, stuttering in helpless repetition. “My boy, My boy is gone. Farewell, farewell. . . . I cannot in a lifetime incur such another loss. Shall I ever dare to love anything again?”

Margaret Fuller came to visit for an extended period a few months later. When she arrived, the household was still dark with mourning. That first night, she and Emerson walked out beside the river in the moonlight and Emerson related what his days had been like since Waldo’s death. The next day, Lidian and Margaret wept together as Lidian spoke of her lost child. Both Emersons had been collecting anecdotes about Waldo in a notebook and these they now shared with Margaret. During that long visit Emerson and Margaret took many walks together. Sometimes they spoke of Waldo and sometimes they simply walked in silence, but there is ample evidence that Emerson found Margaret’s presence to be a comfort and solace. Margaret and Lidian, who was more consumed with her grief than her husband, walked less often, but even so, Lidian found in Margaret a welcome ear. In their grief the Emersons were not reticent to express their feelings, to acknowledge their need of others. Why would it be different for us?

I want you to spend just a moment in silence. In that silence try to imagine if there is a soul in this room who has not been etched by grief or trouble or fear. If not the death of a child, surely the death of another loved one. And if not death, then some other loss, either achingly present or in the background like a muffled drumbeat in their life. Who here has not felt hurt, betrayal, loneliness, fear or sorrow? Who here has not had to integrate the tough things about life into their own living? (Silence)

We think that to admit our need of others somehow diminishes us. But the opposite is the case. Accepting dependency is a sign of maturity. “All our lives we are in need and others are in need of us.” To know the truth of that, to embrace it, is not to be weak or superior. It is to recognize and affirm true interdependence. Because, you see, who we are, who we truly are, way down deep where it matters most, are creatures who want to be of use to one another. And creatures who know that when one is hurting, all are hurting. To know the truth of our need of one another is to recognize that to be able to help others is a gift and to allow oneself to be helped is no less a gift. In giving help and in receiving help we see the common identity of spirit all human beings share. As Ram Dass puts it, when we help someone else, we’re not so much helping because it’s “me” needing to tend to “you”. We’re helping because it’s all “us”. If one of “us” needs help, if one of our arms gets caught in a door, naturally we would use the other arm to set it free. To give help and to receive help simply is the true way of things.

Rabbi Harold Kushner is best known as the author of the book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, a book which has been a source of encouragement for many, many folks going through a difficult time. Kushner wrote the book as a result of his own suffering. His son, Aaron, died in his teens from progeria, or rapid aging. One of the things Kushner has written about is an experience he had while sitting on the beach one summer day. He was watching two children play, a boy and a girl. They were building an elaborate sand castle very near the waters edge. The sand castle had towers and moats and drawbridges, even internal passages. They had worked so hard and long at this project. And just when they had nearly finished, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. Kushner says he expected them to burst into tears, devastated at what had happened. But, instead, they grabbed each other by the hand, and they ran up the shore away from the water. They were laughing and running and holding hands and then they just plopped down and started building another sand castle.

Kushner says that taught him an important lesson. He says he realized that all the things in our lives, all the complicated structures that we spend so much time and energy creating are built on sand. Only our relationships to other people endure. Sooner or later all the intricate things we try to build, all the ways in which we try to insulate ourselves from the vicissitudes of life, sooner or later a wave is going to come and knock them down. And Kushner says that when that happens, only the person who has someone's hand to hold will be able to go on.

All our lives we are in need and others are in need of us. The wave will come for us all, large or small, in some form or other. When that happens, let us not hesitate to reach out a hand, whether it is a hand reaching for help, or a hand offered in solace and comfort. It is the same hand, either way.