Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | November 10, 2024

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Sometimes I like to visit the well, so to speak. To revisit the familiar and discover in it something new. Ecclesiastes for example, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” A time to keep, and a time to throw away. We keep all manner of things; we throw away all manner of things. Household items, relationships, attitudes, even regrets, recognizing them and the role they play in our lives; hanging onto them or letting them go.

My dad died thirteen years ago. He was 89 years old when he passed. Around the time he was dying, my brother Jim asked him if he had any regrets. One thing he said was, “I wish I would have loved my children more.” If we live long enough, we might collect some regrets. Regret over what we did or didn’t do; maybe we wonder how life would have turned out differently.

I knew he had other regrets. When I was growing up, I asked him what he did in the war. The war being WW2. He got angry; not at me for asking the question, rather the question tapped into his long-standing anger. He said when the war started, he tried to enlist in the army. He failed the physical due to an irregular heartbeat. He was disappointed. After that, the draft board called him up on five different occasions and each time he failed the physical. He figured they were using him to meet their quotas. He said he got mad and yelled at them to either let him in or leave him alone. He said the worst part was people around town asking him, “How come a big fella like you isn’t in the service?”

A few years ago for a Christmas gift, my son Nick and daughter-in-law Kim signed me up to a program called, “Storyworth.” The gift involved responding to a different question every week for a year. At the end of the year, my “stories” would be printed in a book. Everyone in the family got a copy. I answered all these questions with honesty. Today I want to share with you my response to the question, “What is something you regret NOT doing when you had the chance?”

When I was younger, I thought of how my parents went through life and I decided I wanted to make different choices. There was not a particular decision point; rather, I had this notion along the way about examining the risks of the choices that were in front of me, and how making choices would affect the course of my life. But you can’t always predict the outcome with 100% accuracy.

When I was born, the family lived in Walla Walla Washington. My dad worked for a dairy that was owned by a fellow named “Mr. Center.” Mr. Center took over a dairy in Portland and wanted my dad to come work for him there. So, we moved and that’s how I grew up in Portland.

Mr. Center was an entrepreneur. He owned other businesses in addition to the dairy. In the mid 1960’s, he immigrated to Australia where he started another dairy specializing in ice cream. He invited my dad to come work for him there. That would have meant moving the family to Australia. My dad traveled there to have a look and, in the end, decided it was too big of a risk.  

I was 12 years old at the time and had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I saw it as a great adventure. On the other hand, staying in Portland was also good. Not long after, when Mr. Center had moved all his business concerns to Melbourne, he offered my dad his house in the west hills of Portland. The west hills were a more high-end neighborhood than the one we lived in. All he had to do was take over the mortgage payments and it would be his. They would have needed to sell the house on 18th and take on an extra $100 in mortgage payments. I guess that was a lot of money in those days and my folks decided it was too much to risk.

This planted the seed of me being aware of opportunities and weighing the costs of decisions and maybe being willing to take a risk. The worst that can happen is that one fails. But failure is also a leaning opportunity. Some of the choices I made were with the sense of weighing future regret, as in possible failure verses possible regret for not trying.

In my first marriage, there was occasional tension around choices. Joining the Presbyterian Church for example. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not going to be a Baptist minister. It was not in my spiritual DNA. The dean of Bethel Seminary pointed me to the Presbyterians because he recognized that. But getting my wife to leave her conservative Baptist roots was an ongoing challenge. Eventually she did, but for that entire marriage, I never knew when I would get the side-eye for having a beer.

In 1983, the Air Force Reserve was trying to recruit me to sign on. The offer would involve one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. They would start me out as an officer, 2nd Lieutenant with commensurate pay. I really wanted to do it, but my wife at the time was adamantly opposed. She grew up with a dad in active service and she didn’t want anything to do with the military life. We had some heated discussions about it, and in the end, I gave in. I was disappointed.

I took that “regret” and put it to good use. I joined the volunteer fire department in Clarion. Then in 1985, the opportunity for further education presented itself, and I decided to go for it. But again, there was resistance on the home front. More heated discussions. It became apparent to me that this was a pattern.

Around that time, after the Air Force situation, I had a dream that was more like a vision. I think that dreams are sometimes our sub-conscious mind’s way of showing us truth that we can’t quite grasp, or maybe that we don’t want to think about in our waking moments. There have been a few of these over the years and they are always very vivid. In this dream, I was 52 years old. I was living my life within safe parameters. My life was dull and uneventful. In the dream I had a sickening thought, “I’m 52 years old and I haven’t done anything with my life.” It was one of those dreams that you wake from and are glad it was only a dream. I did not want to fulfill that prophecy.

So, I said that regardless of any resistance, I was going to enroll in the Doctor of Ministry program. There was a continual argument about, “When is it going to be my turn?” Every time, I said that where there is a will there is a way. Reaching goals and objectives in life rarely happens by accident. One must want them to happen and work toward making them happen. There were several times when I tried to suggest ways to arrange our lives so as to rise to the occasion of reaching goals or dreams. But it never happened.

Forward to the 21st century, a different wife and life presented new challenges. Move to Scotland? Why not? If it didn’t work out, we would do something different. Not the end of the world. There comes a point in life where because one has built a foundation upon which risks can be taken, that even if failure results, the foundation remains in place.

When I was 57 years old, I was thinking about some of the things I had wanted to do in life but didn’t. I was heavily involved in a presbytery project for which the only outcome was an incredible waste of time. I thought, never again; I want to do something just for me that has nothing to do with church work. But what? Or, what if? Who says a guy my age can’t learn karate? I did some research and landed on Hokushin Martial Arts. I asked the chief instructor what I needed to do, and he said, “Come to class and join in.” That’s where that started.

By then, I knew the formula. Show up and do the work; one more step, one step at a time. I saw the vast difference between my beginning skills and those of the black belts and wondered how I would ever cover that distance. But it was one class at a time. I went to two and often three classes a week. If there was ever a time when I thought, “I’m doing good, I can skip class this one time,” then that’s when I made a point of going. By the time I was into the brown belts, there were occasions when I would teach a class of beginner students when the Sensei was unable to be there.

One of my favorite songs is a children’s song popular in Scotland. The kids would sing it in school assemblies and sometimes we would sing it in church as a hymn. It’s called “One More Step.”

“One more step along the world I go; one more step along the world I go
From the old things to the new, keep me traveling along with you.

‘Round the corners of the world I turn; more and more about the world I learn.
And the new things that I see, you’ll be looking at along with me.

As I travel through the bad and good, keep me traveling the way I should.
Where I see no way to go, you’ll be telling me the way, I know.

Give me courage when the world is rough. Keep me loving though the world is tough. 

Leap and sing in all I do; keep me traveling along with you.

You are older than the world can be. You are younger than the life in me.
Ever old and ever new, keep me traveling along with you.

And it’s from the old I travel to the new. Keep me traveling along with you.”

And so it is, when you had the chance, a time to keep and a time to throw away; to throw away regrets over what was not done.

Amen.