(Aside: I ended up digressing a little from the story- so if you haven’t read The Little Prince, do so immediately- it’s adorable and insightful, and I have not highlighted that nearly enough, but this is my first time behind the pulpit (perhaps my last) so read the story and forget everything that I am going to say- we’ll all be happier)

It being youth Sunday, I thought it appropriate to begin my sermon around a children’s book. One of the most profound works of the past century, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Le Petit Prince tells the tale of a little boy in search for meaning in this universe, in search for a friend, and in search for forgiveness. If time (and y’all’s patience) permitted, I would read you this book in its entirety, substituting the time allotted for my thoughts with those of Mr. Saint-Exupery. The basic premise of the story is as follows: the narrator, a pilot, has had a breakdown in the sahara desert. He has only enough water for eight days, and he doesn’t know how to fix his plane. Then, out of nowhere, the little prince appears with his magnificent laugh and a request for a drawing of a sheep. He evades answering questions, but the pilot manages to find out his backstory. He comes from asteroid B 612 and he has traveled across the solar system trying to redeem himself for abandoning his rose, who has only four thorns to protect her from the evils of the world. In his journey, the little prince meets several ridiculous adult figures, but in my favorite scene he encounters a clueless geographer. He asks the little prince about his home planet, and he explains that it is about the size of a house, there are three volcanoes, one extinct (but you never know), and a rose whom he loves. The geographer snaps that he doesn’t need to know about the rose, "Because flowers are ephemeral." After asking several times (the little prince, like most small children, always asks questions) what ephemeral means, the boy comes to the conclusion that "ephemeral" things are more important than the unmoving, eternal features in atlases. As Emily Dickinson quipped, "The fact that it will never come again/ Is what makes life so sweet." So often we focus on leaving our everlasting mark on this world, or on earning eternal life in heaven, or even making plans for next week that we become oblivious to the world around us. I remember one example in particular that both saddened and terrified me. It was fall, those two weeks around mid-October where the leaves change and the hills look like God played Jackson Pollock, albeit with a more subdued palette. My English teacher, a woman in her mid-thirties (I think), told us how she, a former forestry major, had failed to notice that fall had arrived until its colors had begun to fade. She commiserated, "When you get older, you get so caught up in bills, and work, and responsibility that you don’t even notice the seasons changing. It’s a shame, but it’s life." I think the class laughed a little, but those words quite possibly comprise the most heart-breaking statement to ever reach my ears. Men pride themselves on their seriousness and on their maturity. Apparently maturity is a synonym for oblivion. We become so fascinated with our own creations that we ignore God’s; and the moment we cease to be in awe, to question constantly, we cease also to live. We see it in the movies all the time; the workaholic family-man neglects his home life for his career, and misses the important things so that everyone will respect him and think him a serious man. As the little prince says of the "homme serieux", "That is not a man- that is a mushroom!"

A child’s favorite word is probably "why". The perpetual refrain can be exasperating as a parent (I suppose- not really speaking from experience here), but even more frustrating than that repetition is the absence of that word from the mouths of grown-ups. Humans desire solidarity, undoubtedly- civilization has eradicated nomadic lifestyles; religion conveniently provides a concise explanation for all the unsettling mysteries of this world; we vote for the consistently errant candidate rather than the "flip-flopper"- because then we know what to expect. But what we want is hardly what is good for us- my momma taught me that lesson oh so many times. We label God as our "fortress", or our "pillar" and sometimes he becomes a monolith in our minds. Forgive me for the irreverence, but the more I think about it, the more I disagree with the parable about the houses built on rock and sand. The first stays strong and unmoving in the storm, the second washes away. I think God, our faith, ideally falls somewhere in between- a houseboat, for instance. As humans, we grow and change, and our theology should ride out the waves with us, not stand on the shore watching as we struggle to fight the undertow. We accept what we learn in Sunday school as being correct without asking "why?". We accept what our friends and our family and famous people tell us as the "gospel truth", but is the gospel even true? It really is a personal preference, isn’t it? I acknowledge that I’m unorthodox, but I’m pretty convinced that heresy strengthens faith by undermining it. Truth, if it exists at all, exists within ourselves, and while we may "believe" or "remember" what we’ve heard, what we KNOW, without ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER exists in abstract thought and cannot be called "solid as a rock" because it is constantly changing form. We hate contradiction- it doesn’t make sense- we say, "surely one of two arguments is wrong- logic doesn’t permit them to both be right!" but linear thinking limits the choice of paths to take. By allowing ourselves to ask, to undermine, and to break and mend ourselves and our faith, we become resilient. We can live in the desert and never go in the ocean, or we can learn to swim.

So this is the part where I’m supposed to drive it home and tell y’all how to apply everything which I’ve said to your lives. Honestly, I don’t really want you to believe anything that I tell you- in fact nothing would make me happier than if you were to rip it all to shreds. Influences and teachers are a big help in the struggles of this life, but we can never truly see with someone else’s eyes. I do, however implore you, as Presbyterians, to step outside the comfort zone of logic and intellectualism and examine your faith with your heart. We’ve all felt those moments, however fleeting, where we KNOW that God is with us. What we do with the rest of our time doesn’t matter, whether in fact our faith is stagnant or mercurial. We pray for peace on earth, for the end of all wars and all hate, but peace lies within all of us.

Sometimes, like the little prince, we have to travel across the universe and perhaps leave our bodies behind in the Saharan sands to find our way back to our rose, because we are responsible for that which we love. Maybe we teach others, maybe we learn from them, but above all we love them, and we laugh with them, and we shine with them among the stars.