“Forward and back and everywhere in between”

Genesis 2: 4b-15

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Manhattan 

May 31, 2026

There are moments in each of our lives, I suppose, where we hear a familiar text in a new way. Perhaps a song we’ve heard a hundred times - only we suddenly realize we’d heard a lyric wrong before, and we laugh at our silliness when we realize it. Or a poem that we heard as a child - but at a different stage in our life, we understand it in a new way. Or an old, old story that we thought we knew inside and out - only to discover there are details we’ve never quite noticed before. 

I had a moment like this in the sanctuary of a big, beautiful church in downtown Denver. I was there for the Festival of Homiletics, which is just a fancy name for one of the nerdiest gatherings you’ve ever seen. Hundreds of preachers from all over the country, together for a week to do nothing but listen to good preaching, and hear lectures about good preaching, and maybe sing some hymns during the breaks. 

The text for the day was the one we just heard from the second chapter of Genesis. The second of two creation myths in the Hebrew Bible. This isn’t the one where God creates the earth in seven days - this is the other story. The one focuses on how humans entered the story, first with an earth creature who was all alone - then the Creator saw improvements could be made, and provided animals to keep it company. But the earth creature still seemed to be missing something - a partner to journey through life. And so the Creator put the earth creature into a deep sleep and opened up its belly, drawing forth one of its ribs. The rib was used to make another earth creature, a companion for the first. 

Sitting in that Denver church, I heard something in this ancient story I’d never heard before: the first earth creature gave birth to the second when the Creator made an incision in its abdomen and pulled forth a new life from its belly. To my ears, as a parent who had given birth in a surgical suite under a knife, this sounded like a birth I knew intimately. It sounded very much like a c-section. How had I never noticed this before? 

There it was, plain as day: the creator put the first earth creature into a deep sleep, just like the anesthesiologist had come to my rescue after 30+ hours of labor, offering medicine that would enable my body to withstand a surgical birth. Then the creator made some kind of incision and pulled forth a rib that was fashioned into another human - just like that incredible surgeon came to our aid when my baby’s life was in danger, waking to a phone call in the middle of the night and rushing to the hospital, to expertly make an incision in my abdomen and pull forth my sweet child. 

I saw myself in this foundational story in a way I never had before. I thought, “Hey, this sounds just like a c-section! I know what that’s like!” Once again, I was filled with gratitude for the generations of scientists and midwives and doctors who had studied and pushed the boundaries of human knowledge in ways that make childbirth safer for parents and children. It felt really beautiful to see a modern medical marvel overlaid on an ancient creation myth in that way, like time had the ability to fold in on itself, bringing all things together. 

If you’ve ever been present at a birth or a death, you may be familiar with this sense of time folding in on itself. Strange things happen to time in these moments of human transition. Hours become minutes, seconds become days. There’s an otherworldly sense to these sacred moments when life begins and ends. It’s as if we get pulled outside the regular timeline and into something beyond our understanding. 

Even in births less traumatic than the one I experienced, there is often a sense that death is near. And when a person is nearing death, you can also sense a feeling of birth hovering around the deathbed. A sense that they are being born anew into something we can scarcely understand. The two bookends of life are intertwined. They are, of course, the only two things every living creature has in common - a beginning and end, birth and death. 

In both death and birth, we speak of “transition.” At the deathbed, you sometimes hear, “he’s making the transition now, the end is near.” And when someone is giving birth, there is a phase called “transition” when contractions come fast and furious. In transition emotions and exhaustion can feel overwhelming as the body makes final preparations to bring a new life into the world. 

These times of transition - in birth and death - are often not smooth and linear. There are ups and downs, fits and starts, pauses in progression, and frustration that we can’t control the pace. 

For all our advances in medicine, there are still parts of birth and death that can feel chaotic, mysterious, and very much outside of our control. And this is true not only for physical births and deaths, but for transitions of all kinds: it turns out that when families, communities, societies make huge changes it can also feel chaotic, mysterious, and very much outside our control. Living through a period when so many foundational things seem to be ending - or at least changing beyond recognition - can feel deeply unsettling. Birthing new ways of being, creating new systems, and holding on for dear life in periods of rapid change is incredibly difficult labor. 

My sense is, whenever we humans go through a period of rapid and immense change, we can feel like we’re the only people who have ever lived through a transition like this. And while it’s true that there has never been a moment in history precisely like the one we’re in now, there have always been times of rapid change. Periods of rapid unraveling and breathtaking progress..

Of course, like birth and death, those times of unraveling and progress are often linked together in a confusing, awe-inspiring jumble. 

Take, for example, the period of immense technological change in 19th century Europe. With advances in technology, came huge transitions in how and where people lived and worked. People moved from farms to growing cities to work in factories, where machines changed the rhythms of daily labor. Railroads, steam power, and mass production transformed travel and trade, while rapid urban growth created both new opportunities and horrific living and working conditions. Progress and disintegration - birth and death - all wrapped up together. 

In her book about medical advances in the 19th century, historian Lindsey Fitzharris describes these transitions through the lens of one man’s life and work. [1] Joseph Lister, a British medical doctor and surgical pioneer, was born to a Quaker family in a quiet village outside of London in 1827. He is best remembered as one of the pioneers of germ theory and antisepsis: figuring out how infection takes hold and spreads, and, more importantly, how to create more sterile environments that keep infection away. 

Before the mid-1800s, surgery was a horrific ordeal. I’ll spare you the graphic details, but just know that there was no anesthesia. In the 1840s, doctors in the U.S. began experimenting with ether as a surgical tool. By 1847, news had traveled across the Atlantic and the esteemed surgeon Robert Liston agreed to try this newfangled anesthesia in his next surgery. Crowds gathered to observe the surgery that day in London and the young Joseph Lister was among them, watching a  new era be born. 

You might think that the advent of anesthesia was a huge medical advancement. It was. But, like we said earlier, progress is rarely linear and birth and death are often co-mingled. With anesthesia, the number of surgeries in urban areas like London skyrocketed. Surgeons were able to try new and complex procedures they never would have attempted without it. The entire practice of surgery became a totally new thing. 

But along with these leaps forward came significant setbacks. Because surgeons in the 19th century mostly had no idea about things we take for granted like bacteria and basic sanitation, an increase in the number of surgeries being performed meant an increase in the number of people dying from post-surgery infections. Despite the advance of anesthesia (or because of it, really), surgery became significantly MORE dangerous for several decades. 

Fortunately, right as this was happening, scientists and doctors all over Europe were testing theories that would eventually lead to breakthroughs in how we understand infectious disease. It wasn’t just Joseph Lister, of course. Robert Koch with his petri dishes in Berlin, Ignaz Semmelweis in the maternity wards of Vienna, John Snow with his “ghost map” of cholera in London, and Agostino Bassi with his silkworms in Lombardy - they were all asking questions that would eventually transform our daily lives. 

Eventually, Joseph Lister figured out that he could keep infection at bay after a surgery by creating a more sterile environment. His ideas didn’t immediately take the world by storm. There were many naysayers who questioned his theories, mostly because believing them would mean all their own discoveries no longer made sense. 

But Lister persevered, carefully revising his techniques and teaching young medical students his ways. Eventually, his disciples saw with their own eyes that Lister’s antiseptic methods saved lives. In turn, they took his ideas wherever they went, showing other surgeons and spreading antiseptic advances far and wide. It took decades, but by the end of the 19th century, surgeons were washing their hands, sterilizing their tools, and treating wounds with antiseptics that kept infection at bay. 

Amidst all the death, a new world was born. 

Nothing about this was simple or linear. The cost was great - both in terms of human life lost as discoveries were made and in relationships that were fractured as scientists argued with each other about these rapid paradigm shifts. But on the other side of all the pain was a world that would have been unrecognizable to the people sitting in that operating theater in London in 1847. 

A world where minor (and major) maladies were healed in clean surgical environments and further advances were made as the art of surgery expanded further and further. I am the beneficiary of this great transition, as are many of you. Without these surgical pioneers, I would have never been able to give birth to my son through a safe surgical process. Heart surgery, brain surgery, gastric bypass, appendectomies, colon resection, lung transplants, gall bladder removal, dental surgery - the list goes on and on and on. 

This summer as we explore the theme of changes together, we pause and remember that huge transitions are rarely neat and tidy. It’s forward and back and onward and sideways and loop-de-loops and everything in between as we humans labor through periods of decay and moments of welcoming new birth. 

How can we, as people living through a period of great change, pay attention to the births and rebirths taking place every day in the world around us? They’re happening in our homes, our schools, our communities, our nation, our world. They may arrive in a quiet whisper or a chaotic whirlwind. We may welcome these changes or be dragged kicking and screaming alongside. Regardless, birth still arrives. Today and every day. 

May we have the wisdom to move with intention through our shared transitions - seeking the wisdom of the Spirit of Love who guides us in all things -  forward and back and everywhere in between. 

NOTES:

[1] Book: The Butchering Art by Lindsay Fitzharris.