Young Ishmael, a teenage boy in the now forgotten town of Geben, was walking past Rabbi Jacob's house when Rabbi Jacob beckoned to him to come over to his doorstep. When Ishmael arrived at his doorstep, the Rabbi asked him if he was going to the other side of town. Ishmael said he was. The Rabbi then asked him if he would kindly take a box to his mother who lived there. Ishmael was a little annoyed because it was out of his way but didn't want to say no to the Rabbi so he accepted the box along with the Rabbi's praise and thanks.

Wonderful smells came out of the box as Ishmael carried it down the street. The smells stimulated Ishmael's hunger and curiosity. About half the way across town he stopped, sat down on a bench and decided to look and see what was inside the box. Inside the box was a large delicious chocolate frosted cake with coconut and candied orange slices on top. The temptation was quite strong to just have a little taste. The cake was square so Ishmael cut a thin slice out of the middle of the cake and pushed the two ends together, smoothing the icing so it looked like nothing had been removed. The cake tasted even more delicious than it had looked. Ishmael put the top back on and continued to the Rabbi's mother's house. When he arrived he handed her the box having first checked himself carefully for icing on his nose or incriminating crumbs on his shirt. The Rabbi's mother thanked him very much and offered him a slice of the Rabbi's wife's cake. Embarrassed, Ishmael said "No thanks" and walked away.

The next day Ishmael was passing the Rabbi's house again and again the Rabbi motioned for him to come over to his doorstep. He again had a box for his mother and Ishmael agreed to carry it across town. This time, instead of smelling, the box was heavy and sounded like it contained many small pieces of metal. Once again Ishmael's curiosity got the better of him and he opened the box. This time he discovered it was full of coins in all sizes and shapes. The sight of all that money stimulated Ishmael's greed. When he thought no one was looking, he filled his pocket with some of the coins which didn't seem to affect how much appeared to be in the box. "The old woman probably can't even count this high," Ishmael rationalized to himself as he took a detour to his house and hit the coins under his mattress.

When he arrived at the Rabbi's mother's house, he greeted her and handed her the box. She opened it and was overjoyed to see the contents. Rabbi Jacob was in the habit of putting aside what he had not spent at the end of the day and saving it for his mother. The Rabbi's mother offered to pay Ishmael for carrying such a valuable box to her but he felt guilty about his theft and declined the payment.

Ishmael decided it was time to stop walking past Rabbi Jacob's house because it was getting him into trouble so he went around the Rabbi's house by a different route. But who should he run into on the street but, you guessed it, Rabbi Jacob. Rabbi Jacob greeted him warmly and asked him if he would take one last thing to his mother. Ishmael nervously said he would but this time the Rabbi was holding no boxes. Rabbi Jacob smiled and said, "No, I don't want you to take a box this time, rather I want you to take a message to my mother. Listen carefully, here it is: `The generous person's pockets are always full, while the thief's pockets are always empty.'"

Ishmael pondered the message as he walked across town wondering what it meant and why the Rabbi would send him across town with it. It didn't make sense. If you gave away what you had...your pockets would be empty and if you stole things...your pockets would be full. When he was about half way across town it dawned on him that perhaps the Rabbi suspected he had stolen the money and eaten the cake and this was a trick to reveal him. If he showed up at the Rabbi's mother's house with empty pockets, and gave her the message she would know he was a thief. Ishmael decided to take a detour to his house to get the coins he had hidden under his mattress and any others he could find so his pockets would look full.

Well the beggars saw Ishmael walking down the street with his pockets bulging with coins and one by one they stopped him to ask for alms. Normally Ishmael didn't give much to beggars but today he wanted to appear generous to all who saw him so he gave generously to each one. And to Ishmael's surprise, it felt really good to give to these beggars in a generous spirit rather than his usual miserly spirit. So to each one he gave more than the last.

Finally, Ishmael arrived at the Rabbi's mother's house. When she came to the door, Ishmael proudly reported to her Rabbi Jacob's message, `The generous person's pockets are always full while the thief's pockets are always empty.' He reached down to pat his pockets with confidence only to discover they were now empty. In horror, Ishmael dropped to his knees confessing his theft and begging for mercy. Suddenly he felt a tap on the shoulder and turned to see behind him Rabbi Jacob, also on his knees.

The Rabbi winked at him and patted him saying, "For a thief you have learned a great deal about generosity today by passing on my message!"

Teaching stories like this one about Rabbi Jacob and Ishmael pass on great truths about living from generation to generation. As Khalil Gibran spoke about children, these stories may come through us but they are not ours to keep or possess. They have a life of their own and only ask us to pass them on.

But stories are hardly the only thing we pass on during our lives. Jokes and rumors have a way of passing themselves along too. Who can resist retelling a great joke to a friend?

In our youth we are the receivers of much care, attention and wisdom from our parents which we later then pass on to our own children, friends and relations. In the course of our lives, much is given to us to be carried on to others. Our society offers us public education not only to prepare us for work and independence but also to be good citizens who will participate in supporting and passing on our public life. Many workers and professionals labor not only for their paycheck but also for the good of their fellow workers and their profession. Few if any of us take the income we receive and bury it in the backyard but rather pass it on to others by spending or putting it in the bank. And if we accumulate wealth during our lifetimes, we are careful to determine to whom that wealth will pass after we die. It is as if we are part of an endless bucket brigade where as soon as we get something, we must start preparing to pass it on.

Irresistible as the process of passing it on might be, there are clearly things we should try not to pass along. This story about a farmer and his two sons illustrates the point.

Rounding up cows and getting them into the milking barn can sometimes be a problem. If their udders are sore or they want to remain in the pasture, cows can be quite troublesome. And when a cow resists verbal commands, cajoling and a few slaps on the hind quarters, sometimes more stimulating measures are required to get her moving again.

One fine afternoon, a farmer sent his eldest son, named Robert, out to fetch the cows into the barn to be milked. A short time after Robert had left, the farmer noticed his son had left the cattle prod behind. Knowing he might need it to accomplish his job, he handed it to his younger son Charlie and told him to pass it on to Robert in case he needed it.

Charlie ran out to the pasture and sure enough, Robert was having trouble getting a big Guernsey to leave a bale of hay behind. "Hey, peewee, hand me the prod," said Robert not looking at his brother and reaching backward with one hand while pushing his other shoulder into the backside of the cow.

Now as you might expect, Charlie and Robert had a little bit of sibling rivalry and Charlie did not like to be called `peewee.' So he flipped on the switch and handed his brother the business end of the cattle prod.

The shock went right through his brother's hand and body and into the cow which bolted for the barn as Robert fell into a puddle of mud and other unmentionables. Before Robert could catch his brother and loosen a few of his baby teeth, Charlie made it back home and hid behind his father.

"What's going on here?" asked the farmer.

"Charlie handed me the hot end of a live cattle prod!" steamed Robert dripping on the floor trying to grab Charlie.

"Not so fast," said the father holding Robert back, "Charlie, what do you have to say for yourself."

Charlie smirked and said, "Well, father, I followed your instructions to the letter! You told me to" pass it ON" so I did and Robert sure "needed it" after he called me peewee!"

While there is plenty of good we can pass on, there is also a great deal which we need not pass on. All of us, I suspect, have at least one or two bad habits we'd rather not pass on to our children or those who look up to us. If we are sick, we don't want to be passing on our cold or the flu. When a secret is told to us, tempting as it can be to pass it on, we keep our mouths shut. When gossip comes our way it takes strong resolve to stop it in its tracks rather than indulge the pleasure of passing a juicy bit on. And most important of all, our commitment to truth seeking calls us to confront and resist passing on vicious and degrading lies.

Deciding what to pass on and what to silence requires discernment that only comes with experience and the development of wisdom. Often it isn't clear whether or not what is heard should be repeated, what is witnessed, retold and what is envisioned should be expressed. Sometimes we need to think carefully about whether the baton which was handed us should be passed on to the next person.

And sometimes we resist passing on the very message which is being called forth from us into language. Much as Jonah resisted the call of Yahweh to "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come before me (1:2)" so many of us stifle and run from the thoughts and feelings which arise unbidden in our breast seeking expression and action.

While being true to the calling to account by the Spirit of Life is a great challenge for us all, it is especially vexing for those of us in the ministry because we have dedicated our lives to listening and following that inner voice. Which reminds me of a story.

There was once a good and faithful priestess who each day before the sun rose conducted an elaborate ritual to greet the sun and thank it for rising. Her people believed that only if this ritual was conducted correctly would the sun continue to rise, the rains come and the order of the universe preserved. The priestess played a very important social role and she did it perfectly every morning to the delight of her people, just as all the other priestesses before her had done for as long as anyone could remember.

Well, as fate would have it, one morning she awoke with the feeling that something was terribly wrong with the 24^th verse of the 10^th song she sang each morning. She consulted with the elders, who then consulted the oldest sacred texts and to their amazement they realized that the priestess had inadvertently switched around several of the words. She was horrified at making the mistake so she fervently prayed for forgiveness and changed the words back to the original form in her morning ritual.

But this time, the sun didn't rise.

The priestess immediately blamed herself and took out a dagger ready to thrust it into her breast to sacrifice herself for her people and the preservation of the universe. But before she was able to draw any blood, she saw a glint of light from the blade. In the disturbance of her sleep, she had lost her sense of timing and had finished the ritual too early. As the first light broke over the horizon, it dawned on her that the order of the words really didn't matter and the sun would come up anyway because of its love of all creation and its eagerness to shine upon us.

This is why we no longer must ritually invite the sun to rise but those who continue to express gratitude for life each morning invite an inner illumination to dawn which will dispel the darkness of divine ignorance and teach us about Love.

Sometimes the most important messages to be passed on are the ones which arise spontaneously within. These messages rarely come in a clear, concise form, indexed and footnoted. More often they come in the form of an uncomfortable feeling or an unfocused excitement which must be encouraged to reveal itself. More often than not, listening to that message requires us to move in directions where we do not know the ends which we seek.

Whether we fully realize it or not, our life passes through us and we are changed by it. Like Ishmael, we are changed by the circumstances of our life. Temptation, unguarded against, can easily change us into a thief and practicing generosity can just as easily nurture our saintly qualities. Once Jonah was chosen, his life changed course. He couldn't run or hide from the commission of the Lord to go to Nineveh. And sometimes as life passes through us it leaves us a challenging message. The priestess doesn't fully comprehend the message until she is preparing to die for her people.

Thus no historical scripture is complete. Because revelation is not sealed and continues in our hearts, we must pass on the wisdom, in Channing's words, of "Not [imposing] religion upon [our children] in the form of arbitrary rules, but [rather] to awaken [their] conscience, [their] moral discernment." This is the great openness of Unitarian Universalism. One of the greatest gifts we give our children is the cultivation of their own minds, to know and to touch their own inward springs and to witness and to participate in the Greatness of Being expressed through their own lives.

The natural response to receiving the full abundance of what life offers us is the arising of a deep sense of gratitude, a warm compassion and a heartfelt desire to share the gift of life with others. This congregation is a laboratory of the Spirit to discover and pass on both loving community full of gratitude and compassion as well as free inquiry and independent moral discernment. The fruits of this endeavor are joy and peace.

May all who hear these words receive the joy and peace found in the moment when we awaken to our interdependent nature;

to the truth that we are love, lover and beloved wrapped into one whole;

to our intimate connection with what transcends the self,

to our amazing capacity for world transformation

and pass it on!