Please click the link to watch Rev. Cynthia’s video recording of this sermon.
Our theme this month is story, and today I am going to talk about the stories we tell ourselves about luck.
I had a great-grandfather who played the fiddle and entertained at events. He wrote a number of humorous poems in Pennsylvania Dutch. One is called “Die Unglicksbauerei,” the Bad Luck Farm.
In the poem, we are told that it is misfortune that has been planted on Bad Luck Farm. It doesn’t matter who the tenant farmer is, everything always goes wrong. A creek overflows, the house catches fire, the animals get diseases or are stolen. They even call in someone who can “brauch” for luck, a shaman. The dog bites him so he crawls up a tree, from which he falls and becomes injured. Nothing ever goes right on Bad Luck Farm.
I can understand why many stories about and rituals for luck would be associated with farms. There is so much on a farm that one cannot control: weather, disease, locusts. In 2020, on an Equipment Trader blog, there was an article titled “13 Farming Superstitions You Need to Know.” Number 1 was “Crops that grow above ground, such as beans, peas, or lettuce, should be planted in the light of a waxing moon (transitioning from a new moon to a full moon). Crops that grow underground, such as potatoes, beets, or carrots, should be sown in the dark of a waning moon (shifting from a full moon back to a new moon). Planting at the wrong time can curse your harvest.”
Number 7: “Farmers will be the first to tell you that it’s bad luck to bring a shovel, hoe, or any other excavating equipment into the house. Keep those tools outside, or you may risk digging your own home into a hole of bad luck.”
Number 10: “Acorns are potent symbols of fertility and long life. They can not only bring you good health but can also bless your crops if you carry one when planting or harvesting.”
And Number 13: “The number 13 is well-known as an unlucky number, so it’s no surprise that many ag workers try to avoid laboring out in the fields on the 13th day of the month. Others take it a step further and also pause work on the 31st day of each month, believing that day—the inverse of 13—to be even more unlucky,” (from 13 Farming Superstitions You Need to Know | Equipment Trader).
In my short video clip before today’s service, I noted that when my father built a stable on our land, he put hex signs on it. Some say the signs protect the animals in the barn. Others say they are just decorative.
Tomorrow, January 13, is my brother’s birthday. The year he was born, 1961, it was a Friday. According to my brother, Friday the 13ths are lucky days. The idea that they are unlucky is—of course—a result of a Christian story. Jesus and his twelve disciples, thus thirteen people, shared an evening meal on Maundy Thursday before he was betrayed and crucified. Since in Jewish tradition the day starts at sundown, it wasn’t Thursday but already Friday when they gathered and ate.
Farmers have many traditions for luck; so do athletes and sports fans. Do you have to wear a certain “lucky” item of clothing to watch a game?
According to Sports Superstitions, “Michael Jordan (a graduate of North Carolina) always wore his blue North Carolina shorts under his Bulls uniform for good luck.”
In baseball, “Spitting into your hand before picking up the bat is said to bring good luck.”
“It is bad luck if a dog walks across the diamond before the first pitch.”
In fishing, “Fish may not bite if a barefoot woman passes you on the way to the dock;” and “Spit on your bait before casting your rod to make fish bite.”
In hockey, “It is bad luck for hockey sticks to lie crossed.”
In tennis, “Walk around the outside of the court when switching sides for good luck.”
We may think our ideas about luck are just fun, but in an article on luck on the Wikipedia site, we are told, “People who believe in good luck are more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives, and have better moods. People who believe they are personally unlucky experience more anxiety, and (are) less likely to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.” Then, just in case you are a disbeliever, we are given citations to the studies from which those conclusions are drawn.
I began this service with these words from Walt Whitman: “Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune,” but it is not bad to be given a little boost.
Former basketball player Yao Ming says, “Fortune cookies are a good idea. If the message is positive, it can make your day a little better.” That doesn’t mean he trusted his luck to fortune cookies. On his Wikipedia page, we are told “Yao first tried out for the Shanghai Sharks’ junior team of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) when he was 13 years old and practiced ten hours a day for his acceptance.”
I agree with Ming, though, that traditions for luck can bring a little joy. In my Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, which I no longer follow (being vegan), one eats pork on New Year’s Day for good luck because a pig routs forward. In the tradition of the American South, one eats black-eyed peas, because they look like coins and will bring wealth. These are rituals that may make one feel like one is going into a new year that will bring positive things. If that is what one thinks, then perhaps one will also be more inclined to do things that will make it so.
Make your own luck. Be your own luck. What do you want? Is it something that you can do something to achieve? You want snow on Christmas day? You can’t make that happen, but maybe you want to spend Christmas day in New England or Wisconsin and not in Florida or Texas. You want to become a basketball star? That may or may not happen, but it definitely won’t if you don’t practice.
At the Board meeting this past week, I used these words from the Unitarian Church in Scarborough, England as our centering words (I changed “church” to “congregation” for us): “This is my (congregation). It is composed of people like me. We make it what it is. I want it to be a (congregation) that is a lamp to the path of Pilgrims, leading them to Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. It will be if I am. It will make generous gifts to many causes, if I am a generous giver. It will bring other people into its worship and community, if I bring them. It will be friendly, if I am… It will be a (congregation) of loyalty and love, of fearlessness and faith, if I who make it what it is am filled with these. Therefore, I shall dedicate myself to the task of being all these things I want my congregation to be.”
If you want something, don’t just wish for luck. Do what you can to make it so. That being said, also, be ready for when luck arrives. What is luck but an opportunity of which you are ready to take advantage?
My sister has a good eye for detail. If you would like some four-leaf clovers, just tell her how many, she will walk through a yard and pick the requested number for you. I could spend the day in the same yard and not find one. This is her talent, not mine.
In our childhood, one day on the way to school she saw some folded money out of the school bus window. She noticed it was still there on the way home. She begged and begged my mother to take her to get it. Finally, my mother relented and did. My sister came home $20 richer. How lucky. But she had taken advantage of her talent and an opportunity.
What talents do you have? What opportunities to use them might come to you if you keep yourself alert to noticing them? Remember, “People who believe in good luck are more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives, and have better moods. People who believe they are personally unlucky experience more anxiety, and (are) less likely to take advantage of unexpected opportunities,” (Luck – Wikipedia).
Do you remember our Time for All Ages story, When Things Aren’t Going Right, Go Left, by Marc Colagiovanni and Peter Reynolds? You could say that a day when nothing is going right is an unlucky day, but the story’s young protagonist knew how to handle such a day, and soon it wasn’t so bad.
I have an unlucky day story of my own. For a few years I was living with my daughter and grandsons, and moving with them as the Army moved my now ex-son-in-law. Of course, each time I moved with them I had to find a new job. When we lived in Virginia, I worked at the front desk of a doctors’ office, and also served the New Bern, North Carolina congregation part time. When we moved to Frederick, Maryland, I at first worked as a five-day-a -week substitute aide for special needs classes or students in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But I continued to look for something closer to home. I began working the front desk at a veterinary office in February 2020. That was good timing, as COVID would soon close in-person school.
The veterinary office stayed open, but I mostly talked to people on the phone as they sat in the parking lot. The practice had just one vet, so the front desk area was often very quiet, especially if the vet was doing surgery, and there were hours with no other animals coming in.
One day I was very, very bored. The vet kept both paper and electronic records. The paper records were on shelves behind the front desk with animal figurines across the top of the files. I decided I would dust the figurines. I got out the step stool and began at one end. About two or three figures into the row was a lucky cat on a base. When I picked it up, it was much heavier than I had expected. The base was weighted. I dropped it. It broke. I went to step down and survey the damage and missed the bottom step of the step stool. I fell and rolled into the edge of a cabinet under the front desk. The vet took me to a workers’ clinic to be checked, and I went home early. On Monday I had an early appointment before work for a recheck. It was only then that an X-ray was taken. I had broken ribs and a punctured lung. I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. That lucky cat was not so lucky for me.
But was it unlucky or just something that happened? I don’t think there was any malevolent spirit involved unless boredom can be so defined. We get hurt. We get cancer. We lose a job. Cursing our luck is not going to help us get through the situation.
To return to my great-grandfather, you could say he had some very bad luck. His mother died when he was seven. His father was an alcoholic who could not care for the children. My great-grandfather was sent to live with a distant relative whom he called the foster man, who worked him hard, beat him, often kept him out of school, and eventually turned him out of his house. But in my great-grandfather’s autobiography, this is what he wrote about one of the last of his few days wandering homeless after being turned out. He just happened to meet a family whom he knew and who knew him.
He writes, “It was about mid-afternoon when I heard the faint echoes of the woodman’s axe, and soon I came in view of a cozy log house in a little clearing. The man was cutting firewood, close by the house, which stood in from the road. I approached him leisurely and spoke, and when he looked up, he broke out upon me with: ‘Jerusalem, Harry, where do you come from? How de do! How de do! Then he called his wife saying: ‘Mom! Come out and see who’s here!’ And forthwith there was more shaking of hands, the children all sharing in it.
“Ah, he was one of the good, old-time Pennsylvania Germans and had been a resident of the countryside near my home village up to about a year and half previous. And the hearty welcome I received on that mountain, from these people not related to me, nor in any way obligated to me, made me feel like saying with Peter of old (who was at the time also on a mountain), ‘It is good for us to be here.’
“Well, the ax was laid away and my friend led the way to the home; and as soon as I was seated, his little tot of a girl climbed into my lap—she had been there before; and the larger children surrounded me. And I, of course, not having any candy by me, gave them the remaining half of my ginger snaps.
“Then I was asked when and where I had eaten, and I was a little slow in telling this, for I did not want them to go to any trouble on my account. But the jig was up; dinner must be prepared ahead of time, and I was even invited to remain overnight; this I would not do, but I was mighty glad for the invitation to dinner. And how we all enjoyed it! All the news and neighborhood gossip of the valley was gone over, and I proved to my own private satisfaction my ability to eat heartily and keep up a running conversation with six persons at one and the same time, four of the persons being children; whose many questions, however, at times came so fast that, for the moment, my tongue had to tuck a mouthful of food in a cheek, to await a more favorable opportunity for mastication.
“And when it came to pie, the good woman started in to make excuses, saying she had two pies of preserved elderberries and as they were beginning to get soft, we should make way with them lest they spoil. Laws-a.massy! No doubt the kind the gods had on Olympus! I ate a whole one by quarters, always allowing the good woman to do a little urging before I started in on a new quarter, not on my account, indeed, but only so I should not depart too radically from the rules in the etiquette book and appear rude.
“Well, my friend told me of a job ‘away out on the saw-mill,’ if his information were correct. This pleased me, as, if I could get it, I might even board in the home village.
“So I decided to lose no time in looking for it: but before I left my friend suggested that as he knew me to be very fond of milk, I accept a good cold drink of goat milk, as they had two fresh nannies. Now, I had thought the elderberry pie treat enough, but at the mention of sweet milk, I felt that it too could profitably be disposed of. And as I drank a pint or more of the nutritious white fluid out of a small stoneware crock, I felt thankful for the nannies that browse in the woods and extract so good a drink from wild vegetation.
“With what high courage I went on my way! And how superbly nourished I was. In short, I felt that I was physically prepared, if need be, for a run of the toughest luck. I walked fast, and a little before quitting time, I arrived at the saw-mill: and will you believe it, I got the job!” (from The Pennsylvania Dutchman, December 1, 1951).
One friendly encounter and my great grandfather could say that he was “physically prepared, if need be, for a run of the toughest luck.”
We can make our own luck, be our own luck, but we can also be someone else’s luck. The world can be a hard place. Do what you can to make it better for someone else.
I end with this quote from The Never-Ending Story: “Never give up and good luck will find you.”
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