It’s been many years since I saw the movie Superman. But I vaguely recall an episode near the end of the film where the caped crusader does what’s seemingly impossible. The evil genius Lex Luther has managed to create an earthquake that unzips the notorious San Andreas fault. Superman is fast enough to save almost all of the victims of the quake, but not quite quick enough to reach his sweetheart Lois Lane, who car has been swallowed up in one of the chasms. Too late, the man of steel finds Lois hovering at the brink of death. He has just one recourse. Flying around the world at the speed of light, he not only reverses the earth’s rotation but actually turns back the hands of time to give himself a second chance to get it right. And in the instant replay, he arrives just in the nick of time to save the dying Lois and live happily ever after. Only Hollywood or the makers of Marvel Comics could dream it up.

In the real world, of course, there are no reprieves. Time doesn’t flow backward to give us a another chance. Opportunities are missed that never come again. Accidents happen, and in a single heartbeat, everything we take for granted and consider dependable can change.

That’s what happened to Christopher Reeve, who became famous in his role as Superman when the movie debuted in twenty-five years ago, and who up until the time of his accident in 1995 seemed to have it all. A graduate of Juilliard, where he’d made friends with another young acting student named Robin Williams, Christopher had been drawn to the stage ever since he was nine years old, when he was cast in a Gilbert & Sullivan musical at a community theater in Princeton, New Jersey, where he grew up. Although he had lots of experience on Broadway, he thought he was too skinny to play the man from the planet Krypton, but of course he was a smash in the role, which not only led to the inevitable Superman II and Superman III but to other major film roles in The Bostonians and Deathtrap. Along the way, Christopher acquired a beautiful wife and three photogenic children, a mansion, a private yacht and personal airplane and a passion for sailing farther, flying higher and pushing himself harder than most other people do. He was an expert skier, a cyclist, a scuba diver, and also an outstanding equestrian, having picked up an enthusiasm for horse back riding when he played a cavalry captain in a made-for-TV movie of Anna Karenina back in the mid-eighties. Within a few years, he was regularly competing in the sport. It was on Memorial Day, nine years ago, that his horse simply put on the brakes as the two of them prepared to take the third fence on a cross-country jumping event in Culpepper, Virginia. Reeve doesn’t remember the actual fall. But witnesses saw the rider go over the horse’s back and land on his head, his hands still tangled in the bridle and unable to break the impact. Soon after he regained consciousness in the intensive care unit at the University of Virginia hospital, Reeve learned the bad news that he’d broken his neck, severing the spinal cord at the second cervical vertebrae, just where the neck attaches to the shoulders.

He was told that the damage was irreparable, that nervous tissue doesn’t regenerate, that he’d never regain movement or sensation in his arms or legs or torso or be able to breathe again without the help of a respirator. "The moment I understood the gravity of my situation," he recalls, "my immediate reaction was that such a life was unacceptable, even though I knew absolutely nothing about living as a vent-dependent quadriplegic. I realized that there was no cure for spinal cord injuries like mine and that I would forever be dependent on others for the basic necessities of daily existence. My role as a husband and the father of three children would be severely compromised, because paralysis had suddenly transformed me into a forty-two year old infant. I thought it would be selfish and unfair to remain alive."

It took a couple of weeks before Reeve’s medical condition could be sufficiently stabilized to undertake the extremely delicate procedure of reattaching his head to the rest of his body. The odds of surviving the operation were only about fifty-fifty. But first the patient had to decide whether he even wanted to give it a shot. His wife Dana was in the room. "I mouthed my first lucid words to her," Reeve remembers. "Maybe we should just let me go." She looked back at him through tears and told him, "I’m am only going to say this once: I will support whatever you want to do, because this is your life, and your decision. But I want you to know that I’ll be with you for the long haul, no matter what." Then she added the words that made all the difference, "You’re still you. And I love you."

That was the beginning of Christopher Reeve’s turnaround, and though he doesn’t say so, I think maybe that was also the beginning of the spiritual search that finally brought him to a rendezvous with Unitarian Universalism. Prior to his accident, he hadn’t been a particularly spiritual person. As a child, he’d attended a Presbyterian congregation in Princeton, where he’d sung in the choir as a teenager. He liked flirting with the cute sopranos there, but wasn’t crazy about hymns with titles like "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the more violent images of terrible swift swords. From the words, Reeve says, "it seemed to me that this God probably love us–His children–but uses scare tactics to keep us in line. If we are virtuous and righteous in His eyes, we are safe ... But if we transgress of simply fail to live up to His expectations we will be punished accordingly. That dynamic too closely resembled my relationship with my own father; why would I voluntarily choose to re-create it?" Traditional Christianity, he decided, was a little too patriarchal for him.

In his early twenties, he was briefly interested in Scientology. Drawn in by the offer of a "free personality test," he soon found himself investing several thousand dollars to have himself fully "audited," which consisted of being hooked up to a lie detector while being interviewed by a pretty girl who asked him all about his childhood and innermost secrets. But when the questioning turned to his past lives, Reeve became more and more skeptical, for try as he might, he couldn’t remember any previous incarnations. As an actor, however, he was able to improvise a convincing yarn about being a Greek warrior, all based on the familiar myth of Theseus. The interviewer was fooled completely, and that was the end of Reeve’s association with the Scientologists.

Ten years later, when his relationship with his first partner Gae was coming unglued, Reeve found himself searching once more. One day in the mail a brochure arrived for something called "Loving Relationships Training." Again, he found himself plunking down several thousand dollars with the promise of instant enlightenment. Guess what? He was pleased to be paired with a knock-out blonde in a hotel ballroom, talking about his favorite subject, which happened to be Christopher Reeve. But when the workshop leaders told him he’d need to experience a "re-birthing" twice a month, curled into fetal position in a hot tub, and that each session would cost $200 a pop, he became disenchanted once more. Nothing he tried seemed authentic.

His acting coach had urged him to become a devotee of Baba Muktananda. And during his Superman days, hundreds of fans had written explaining the Jor-El, superboy’s father, is God, while Kal-el, the son, is Jesus, sent to earth from outer space to save the human race. But that was simply nonsense, as far as Reeve was concerned. Superman was a fictional character. Reeve was flesh-and-blood, not some figure from a comic book or Greek myth. And as he lay in his hospital bed, unable to move, that became painfully apparent. All his life he’d been searching for something to believe in without finding it, and now he needed a faith more than ever.

"My identity and self-esteem had always been based in the physical world." Reeve says. "I cherished health, athletics, travel, adventure. At first I couldn’t imagine living without those things. In an instant, paralysis created an indescribable void. Family, friends, and well-wishers from around the world assured me that prayers and my faith in God would comfort me. I tried to pray but I didn’t feel any better, nor did I make any kind of connection with God. I wondered what was wrong with me."

He goes on, "Gradually I have come to believe that spirituality is found in the way we live our daily lives. It means spending time thinking about others. It’s not so hard to imagine that there is some kind of higher power. We don’t have to know what form it takes or exactly where it exists; just to honor it and try to live by it is enough. Because we are human we will often fail, but at least we know that we do not deserve to be punished. That knowledge makes us safe and willing to try again."

"As these thoughts unfolded in the process of learning to live my new life, I had no idea that I was becoming a Unitarian. In my late forties faith and organized religion unexpectedly converged. Dana, Will and I attend services regularly, bringing along whichever nurse happens to be on duty. Sue Citarella, a lifelong practicing Catholic, has come with us a number of times and finds the welcoming, nonjudgmental atmosphere to be very rewarding. In the words of our minister, ‘We see our church as a place where people can truly be themselves, where honest doubt is not taken for heresy, and where the beliefs of the past and the present become the inspiration for future growth and discovery."

I can understand why Christopher Reeve might feel at home in our congregations, because ours is a faith that offers strength in tough times. We recognize the power of what occurred when his wife looked him in the eyes and said, "You’re still you, and I love you." Despite your injury, regardless of your physical appearance, apart from your abilities or disabilities, you remain an individual worthy of care and respect; that’s what her words implied. And we Unitarians have a name for this. We call it the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Being reminded of his own unshakeable worth was a transforming experience for Reeve; it helped him understand that whatever his physical limitations, he still had talents and gifts to share. Much as he hated being dependent, he realized that others were also dependent on him, like his three-year-old son Will, who was playing on the floor one day shortly after the accident when he looked up and asked, "Mommy, Daddy can’t move his arms anymore." "That’s right," Dana said, "Daddy can’t move his arms." "And Daddy can’t run around anymore," the child continued. "That’s right, he can’t run around any more." "And Daddy can’t talk." "That’s right," the boy’s mother replied, "he can’t talk right now, but he will be able to someday. Then little Will screwed up his face in concentration and burst out happily, "But he can still smile." For everyone, it was a learning moment.

There are still plenty of days when Christopher Reeve doesn’t feel like smiling. Nine years after his fall, life remains a struggle. He’s sometimes depressed. But the feelings of nihilism and self-pity that initially threatened to overwhelm him dissipated long ago. "When a catastrophe happens it’s easy to feel so sorry for yourself that you can’t even see anybody around you," he writes. "But the way out is through your relationships. The way out of that misery or obsession is to focus more on what your little boy needs or what your teenagers need of what other people around you need." As vice-chair of the National Coalition on Disabilities, Reeve has raised millions of dollars to help victims of spinal cord injury, and he pushes hard to lift the restrictions on stem cell research that hold the promise of creating effective new therapies for people suffering from various forms of paralysis. He speaks as knowledgeably about the intricacies of somatic cell nuclear transfer as about the complexities of health care reform. And in his personal journey toward recovery, he continues to hurtle past barriers that many doctors thought were unbreakable. He breathes independently for extended periods, without the help of a respirator. He’s restored voluntary movement to his extremities, something physicians said couldn’t be done. He’s stood upright and tip-toed along the bottom of a pool of water and continues to believe he’ll walk again one day. Small steps for some of us, perhaps, but for him giant steps, which along with satisfactions of home life and feeling part of a spiritual community continue to give meaning to his life.

"When the first Superman movie came out, I was frequently asked, ‘What is a hero’? he recalls.

In his book Nothing Is Impossible, Reeve writes, "This is the evening of May 27, 2003, the eighth anniversary of the accident. That I call it ‘the accident,’ as opposed to ‘the tragedy’ or ‘the tragic mistake,’ is perhaps an indication that I still don’t blame myself or my horse or a conspiracy of the Fates for what happened. Given all the inexplicable acts of violence, injustice, and cruelty, mixed with the unexpected small miracles of kindness and happiness that we see in the world every day, I remain convinced that life is chaos, but that it within our power to establish order and meaning." I believe that, too. I don’t think everything happens for a purpose. I know that life isn’t always fair. But I still believe that the world holds out possibilities for creativity and enrichment that are open to every one of us. I believe that gratitude is in order, despite all the difficulties that come our way. I believe we’re all one family and need each other in times of grief and gladness. And I believe in the power of human ingenuity and people of goodwill to make a difference in the world. This is my credo as a Unitarian Universalist. It’s what superman and I have in common.