What do we need a Messiah for? What does it mean to be Christian? How is being Christian different from being alive? Can we be alive without being Christian? Why would we be baptized or pray in Jesus’ name? These are the questions that beg to be answered as we think about our future here. We gather in this sanctuary, in this building, that houses a congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA), as Christian a denomination as it gets. What does that mean for us?
It doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean. Thelma Foster says, “Each generation must find its own way to God.” K. Misenheimer says, “God doesn’t have grandchildren.” You can’t take one generation’s (or one person’s) meaning and apply it to another generation (or to another person). We find our own meaning. What something means is what it means to us at a particular time and place in our lives. This means we are always remaking meaning. We are always saying again what something means at this time and place of our lives. Meaning changes over time.
We cannot think about God the way they thought about God 2,000 years ago. We cannot think about God the way Abraham thought about God. We cannot think about God the way Moses thought about God. We cannot think about God, get ready for this one, the way Jesus thought about God. Can’t do it. The world is a different world. God is a different God.
Now, that’s an idea that will flat take some sitting with. We have the idea that the world is one thing and God is another. God is, as it was told to us, “a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his (sic) being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” (The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 4). God can’t be different. Well, think about it. God used to be strongly in favor of animal sacrifice. God is no longer in favor of animal sacrifice. God used to be in favor of slavery. God is no longer in favor of slavery. God used to be quite in favor of warfare and genocide. God is no longer in favor of warfare and genocide. Need I say more? God changes as the world changes. It only takes thinking about this to see that it is so.
Of course, recognizing that it is so changes everything, and has significant implications for us all. For example, The Presbyterian Church is proud of its Reformed Theology. Presbyterians stand tall and puff out their chests and say, “Our theology is Reformed Theology.” But, we haven’t reformed our theology in nearly 500 years, and that was with Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion—and there were no fresh ideas about God there. The Westminster Confession of Faith was written about 360 years ago, but there were no fresh ideas of God formulated then. We haven’t recognized a fresh idea about God since Jesus.
How reformed can your theology be if you never actually reform it? And, when the world changes as radically as it has in the last 2,000 years, and you insist on thinking about God the way they thought about God 2,000 years ago, how can you think that anyone else will think that the way you think about God is the way to think about God? And, if they say you are “irrelevant,” how can you be surprised, or offended?
All of which is to say that it is well past time for the church to reform its theology and change it’s thinking about God. Here come a couple of suggestions for doing that: The word “Christian” means “Little Christ.” To call ourselves “Christians” is to recognize that Jesus had the idea first, and that we are all cut from the same cloth. We have the same spirit within us that Jesus had within him. If Jesus could say, “The Father and I are one,” we can, too. But, what does it mean to say, “The Father and I are one”? It means that what we might call “God’s will,” or “God’s way,” and what we might call “the life that is our life to live” are the same thing. “God’s will” is “my real life.” When we find and live the life that is ours to live, we and God “are one.”
This is also called being true to our best self—to the self that might be characterized by those wonderful old values, “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, goodness, faithfulness, and self-discipline”—within the context and circumstances of our lives. To live like this is to take up our cross every day, and follow Jesus, who also lived like this.
To say that we are Christian, then, is to say that we have taken up a particular path to being awake, aware, and alive. It is the path of recognizing and bringing forth the best that we are capable of and employing that in the service of what is truly important, of what truly needs to be done, no matter what. How is that different from what other religions espouse? I don’t have to know or care. I believe that is what Jesus did. I believe that is what we are called to do in order to be fully alive. And, I believe it is quite legitimate to do that “in Jesus’ name,” because he sat the standard, showed the way.
To call Jesus “the Mediator,” is to understand his mediation as being between us and true life, abundant life, the life that is ours to live. Life lived in the service of what it takes to sustain life on a physical, biological, level is necessary, but if that’s all there is to it, it is “a waste of life.” Life that is true life, that is found at “the wellspring of living water,” is lived in the service of what enables us to be most fully, completely, joyfully, wholly, alive. Jesus, as Mediator, stands between us and the life that is ours to live, and invites us to follow him into the fullness of life, of our own life, of that which brings us most fully to life. Jesus offers us the gift of life. The catch is that the gift comes at the expense of life. Death and Resurrection, you know. New birth. “We once were lost, but now are found, were blind, but now we see.” We pay a price to live like that, and we pay a price to not live like that.
Baptism remains a beautiful metaphor, or sacrament, of this transition from life that is death to life that is life. The waters of baptism are the waters of birth. It is a new birth into a new life that we experience as we begin the journey of living the life that is ours to live. The table remains as another central metaphor, or sacrament, of our life together, in all of the ways we have talked about before. And, it’s all about seeing and hearing and understanding. Eyes that see, you know, ears that hear, and a heart that understands.
What we see when we see, what we hear when we hear, what we understand when we understand is what is truly important, what truly needs to be done, what we must do in order to be who we are, in order to bring forth the best we are capable of within the context and circumstances of our life. Wherever life is most fully lived, most fully experienced—wherever life is most raw, most real, most imminent and undeniable—wherever we are most alive, most awake to, aware of, immersed in, the moment of our living, there is God. God is most real when we are most alive. If you want to know God, go where the life is. If you want to find God, find life.
There is a numinous quality about life when we are most alive. These are the “thin places” Parker Palmer speaks of, where we sense, and feel as though we can almost see through to, the “other side.” There is no rule governing where these places are to be found.
Ray Martin says that his sense of the numinous, of the ineffable, of the wonder and grandeur that which cannot be spoken is as real for him in his grandfather’s corn crib, with the sunlight coming through the cracks in the wall to light the floor and highlight the dust particles floating in the air, as it is in Chartres Cathedral. “Thin places” can be any place, but they are not every place, and we have to be alert to them, available to them, or we are likely to pass through them unseeing and unknowing, unaware of the mystery that is within our reach, yet exceeds our grasp. In the times and places when and where we are most alive in this world, we sense the presence of another world, and life takes on a spiritual dimension it did not have a few minutes before, a few feet away.
The physical world is the world we can see, and count, and weigh, and measure. It is a world of quantities. The spiritual world is the world where qualities like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, goodness, gentleness, grace, mercy, and beauty predominate. When we encounter the spiritual world, we experience a wonderful, peaceful, okay-ness which seems to flow from, and lead to, a profound sense of oneness with all things. A unity of being and being-with is perceived as the foundation of reality. When we experience the wonder of life, it is not just “my” life, but OUR LIFE, it is Life Is One, that we experience.
And then, the vision fades or disappears in an instant, and we find ourselves back in this world of space and time. But the memory lingers, and we strive to make sense of things, to explain it to ourselves and others. And, we may come up with “God.” And the further removed from the experience we are, as we talk about it, the more words begin to substitute for the experience, and the more “lost in abstraction” we become, until we find ourselves saying words about words, and arguing about words, and fighting about words, about whose words are the right words, and the unifying experience of oneness of being and being-with becomes a source of hostility and division, hatred and war.
God is a word we use for what we don’t know, for more than we can say. We experience the numinous, the ephemeral, and say, “God.” And, believe we have said something. And, act as though we have said something. We would be better served if, instead of “God,” we said, “Wow!”
Once we say, “God,” we add insult to injury by saying what “God” is, and isn’t. We conjure up a theology—we actually talk about “the nature of God.” We create doctrines and creeds and catechisms. We no sooner say, “God,” than we find ourselves awash in a sea of abstractions. And we go to war over whose abstractions are the True Abstractions, over whose way of thinking about God is The Way To Think About God. All because, in the beginning, we said, “God,” instead of “Wow!”
And so, we might make a rule about words: No words! Just seeing, just knowing, just being. No talking! Guidance into God might be as simple as: Present yourself to a scene, a place of beauty and wonder, and empty yourself of all thoughts, desires, concepts, ideas, beliefs, and opinions. Open yourself to the wonder of being, to the beauty of the moment, and silently wait to see what opens itself to you.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Sunday, March 02, 2008
03/02/08, Sermon
You all know by now that the first Grail question is, “What ails thee?” What’s the problem? What’s the trouble? Being clear about the problem is the path to life. And, that leads me to posit that The Problem these days, The Problem with us all is emptiness. There is no joy. There is no life. There is no gladness at being alive. There is only the frantic search for something worth having. There is no compelling vision. Nothing we have to have or else. We cast about asking, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know,” comes the reply. “What do you want to do?”
We live in The Wasteland. It is empty. And we are empty. Joseph Campbell says the wasteland is the place where everyone is doing what they are supposed to do, and no one knows what truly needs to be done. In the Wasteland, we take our cue for living from someone else. Advertisers tell us what to want. We follow their directions and do what is supposed to make us happy. But, we don’t know what really matters. Our lack of attachment to what has true value results in empty, superficial, lives. We have no life. We have no heart. We are empty as it gets.
What do we do about the emptiness? How do we fill it? The rule is simple, and without exception: When empty, become empty! You think that’s nonsense, don’t you? Double talk? The dumbest thing you ever heard? That’s truth for you. We walk right past it, shaking our heads, and don’t give it a second glance, a second thought. We know what we need, what we are looking for, and that isn’t it. And, so, the rule: When empty, become empty!
Become empty of your ideas of what it will take to be filled! Become empty of your ideas of the truth! Become empty of your images, your notions, of what you are looking for! Become empty! We receive what is valuable, we do not generate it! We prepare ourselves for its arrival by emptying ourselves of expectation and desire.
How do we empty ourselves of what isn’t working, of what it isn’t about, in order to fill ourselves with what it takes? What does it take? “Thy will, not mine be done!” How do we become empty of emptiness that we might be filled with a will not our own? With a meaning, and a purpose, and a direction not our own? What is our part in this process? Standing aside? Stepping back? Acquiescing to a way that is not our way? Which way would that be? How would we know it when we see it? Of all the voices clamoring for our attention, how do we identify the voice that knows? How do we disappear ourselves, get ourselves out of the way, so that we might wait, and watch, for that which knows? While, in the meantime, doing what it takes to pay the bills and keep the home fires burning?
This is not too different from the experience of the traumatic impact of life. Then, there are two levels, the level that makes no sense, where all the normal rules governing life in the world are suspended, and we don’t know who, or where, or when we are for a time. But, we still go through the motions, and show up for work, and mow the lawn, and shop for groceries, and do what it takes to live on one level while we have no life at all on another level, and everything is discontinuous and scattered and out of harmony and we are disconnected with everything that was life for us before.
Emptying ourselves of all that is empty, and waiting, is a lot like that. We still go through the motions of life, but we can’t call that living. We call that waiting. Waiting to see, and hear, and understand. Waiting to know what we know, what something knows. Waiting to see what is truly important, to hear what must be done, and to understand how to bring forth from within the gift that is essential for the life of the world.
Ah, but, how do we empty ourselves of everything? There you are. That’s the work. Emptying ourselves of the desire to be empty. Emptying ourselves of the need to know how to empty ourselves. Emptying ourselves of wondering if we are empty yet. In order to empty ourselves, we have to be empty.
Become empty! Let the questions go! Let the answers you think you have to have go! Stop thinking, struggling, searching, seeking! Let the panic go! Let the fear go! Let the anguish go! Become empty! You have heard it said, “Let go and let God,” but I say unto you, “Let God go, too!” We have to empty ourselves of everything and hold onto nothing. We have to learn to live with nothing at the center.
But, it is a special kind of nothing. It is different from “not anything.” It is the kind of nothing that is the origin of everything. This does not make it something. It is quite nothing. Quite empty. And, it is filled with potential. It sounds strange, because until you know what I’m talking about, you can’t begin to understand what I’m saying. It all comes clear, however, once you empty yourself of everything. Once empty, we are then open to everything. All the possibilities that we once excluded because they didn’t fit in with what else was there become possible.
We wait for a door to open, for a light to come on, for the way to become apparent, for the next step to be revealed, for the dawning of awareness that leads to life. In the emptiness of our lives, we empty ourselves of all that is empty—we stop looking to be fulfilled by any of the things that cannot satisfy—and we wait. Watching for the way to open, for the White Rabbit to call our appear and flash across our field of vision.
How long will it take? Longer than you hope it will, but not as long as you are afraid it might. We cannot hurry the arrival of the Grail Vision, the appearance of the White Rabbit. We have to wait, trusting that the way will open to those who are open to the way. And, while we wait, we have to do the next thing. We have to do the thing that needs to be done here and now. We have to function in the world while we wait for the vision from the other world.
So, we go to work, or find a job, do the laundry, take the dog to the vet, the kids to school, feed the birds, take care of business… We do the things that sustain life while we wait for the things that bring us to life. That fill us with life and provide us with purpose, and meaning, and direction.
Who knows what those things will be? Not us. But someone, something, knows, and it will be revealed to us over time. Perhaps not as a preview of things to come, but as a realization of what has always been. Maybe we know what has meaning and purpose and direction by remembering what has always had meaning and purpose and direction. Or what once did. Maybe we find our way back to where we are going. And, maybe not. Maybe it’s a new thing that invites us to life. Who knows? So, we wait, and watch. Taking care of business while we look for life.
We live in The Wasteland. It is empty. And we are empty. Joseph Campbell says the wasteland is the place where everyone is doing what they are supposed to do, and no one knows what truly needs to be done. In the Wasteland, we take our cue for living from someone else. Advertisers tell us what to want. We follow their directions and do what is supposed to make us happy. But, we don’t know what really matters. Our lack of attachment to what has true value results in empty, superficial, lives. We have no life. We have no heart. We are empty as it gets.
What do we do about the emptiness? How do we fill it? The rule is simple, and without exception: When empty, become empty! You think that’s nonsense, don’t you? Double talk? The dumbest thing you ever heard? That’s truth for you. We walk right past it, shaking our heads, and don’t give it a second glance, a second thought. We know what we need, what we are looking for, and that isn’t it. And, so, the rule: When empty, become empty!
Become empty of your ideas of what it will take to be filled! Become empty of your ideas of the truth! Become empty of your images, your notions, of what you are looking for! Become empty! We receive what is valuable, we do not generate it! We prepare ourselves for its arrival by emptying ourselves of expectation and desire.
How do we empty ourselves of what isn’t working, of what it isn’t about, in order to fill ourselves with what it takes? What does it take? “Thy will, not mine be done!” How do we become empty of emptiness that we might be filled with a will not our own? With a meaning, and a purpose, and a direction not our own? What is our part in this process? Standing aside? Stepping back? Acquiescing to a way that is not our way? Which way would that be? How would we know it when we see it? Of all the voices clamoring for our attention, how do we identify the voice that knows? How do we disappear ourselves, get ourselves out of the way, so that we might wait, and watch, for that which knows? While, in the meantime, doing what it takes to pay the bills and keep the home fires burning?
This is not too different from the experience of the traumatic impact of life. Then, there are two levels, the level that makes no sense, where all the normal rules governing life in the world are suspended, and we don’t know who, or where, or when we are for a time. But, we still go through the motions, and show up for work, and mow the lawn, and shop for groceries, and do what it takes to live on one level while we have no life at all on another level, and everything is discontinuous and scattered and out of harmony and we are disconnected with everything that was life for us before.
Emptying ourselves of all that is empty, and waiting, is a lot like that. We still go through the motions of life, but we can’t call that living. We call that waiting. Waiting to see, and hear, and understand. Waiting to know what we know, what something knows. Waiting to see what is truly important, to hear what must be done, and to understand how to bring forth from within the gift that is essential for the life of the world.
Ah, but, how do we empty ourselves of everything? There you are. That’s the work. Emptying ourselves of the desire to be empty. Emptying ourselves of the need to know how to empty ourselves. Emptying ourselves of wondering if we are empty yet. In order to empty ourselves, we have to be empty.
Become empty! Let the questions go! Let the answers you think you have to have go! Stop thinking, struggling, searching, seeking! Let the panic go! Let the fear go! Let the anguish go! Become empty! You have heard it said, “Let go and let God,” but I say unto you, “Let God go, too!” We have to empty ourselves of everything and hold onto nothing. We have to learn to live with nothing at the center.
But, it is a special kind of nothing. It is different from “not anything.” It is the kind of nothing that is the origin of everything. This does not make it something. It is quite nothing. Quite empty. And, it is filled with potential. It sounds strange, because until you know what I’m talking about, you can’t begin to understand what I’m saying. It all comes clear, however, once you empty yourself of everything. Once empty, we are then open to everything. All the possibilities that we once excluded because they didn’t fit in with what else was there become possible.
We wait for a door to open, for a light to come on, for the way to become apparent, for the next step to be revealed, for the dawning of awareness that leads to life. In the emptiness of our lives, we empty ourselves of all that is empty—we stop looking to be fulfilled by any of the things that cannot satisfy—and we wait. Watching for the way to open, for the White Rabbit to call our appear and flash across our field of vision.
How long will it take? Longer than you hope it will, but not as long as you are afraid it might. We cannot hurry the arrival of the Grail Vision, the appearance of the White Rabbit. We have to wait, trusting that the way will open to those who are open to the way. And, while we wait, we have to do the next thing. We have to do the thing that needs to be done here and now. We have to function in the world while we wait for the vision from the other world.
So, we go to work, or find a job, do the laundry, take the dog to the vet, the kids to school, feed the birds, take care of business… We do the things that sustain life while we wait for the things that bring us to life. That fill us with life and provide us with purpose, and meaning, and direction.
Who knows what those things will be? Not us. But someone, something, knows, and it will be revealed to us over time. Perhaps not as a preview of things to come, but as a realization of what has always been. Maybe we know what has meaning and purpose and direction by remembering what has always had meaning and purpose and direction. Or what once did. Maybe we find our way back to where we are going. And, maybe not. Maybe it’s a new thing that invites us to life. Who knows? So, we wait, and watch. Taking care of business while we look for life.
Monday, February 25, 2008
02/24/08, Sermon
There is the life that is ours to live, and there is the life we want to live, and there is the life that we have to live—the life that is forced on us by the context and circumstances of our life. We have to work within this matrix to live the life that we actually live. All of our stories are lived out in this framework. Here is one that is like every one:
Wallace Boggs wanted to fly. He wanted to fly more than anything in all the world. But there was one slight problem with his being able to realize his dream. Wallace Boggs was a 217‑pound pig. Now, you might think it is ridiculous for a 217‑pound pig to want to fly, and, perhaps, it is. But Wallace Boggs didn’t think so. And he thought about it a lot. In fact, that’s all he ever thought about.
He would lie on his bristly back in the mud and watch the Red Birds and the Robins flitting about, diving and soaring, and he would think about how wonderful it would be to dive and soar along with them. “One day I’m going to fly like that,” he would say. His brothers and sisters would pause in their rooting and grunting long enough to snicker and snort. “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” they would say. “Pigs can’t fly, Wallace,” they would say. “Isn’t he a riot?”, they would say. And they would laugh among themselves as they turned back to their rooting and grunting. Their laughter hurt, of course, but it didn’t change Wallace’s mind in the matter. In fact, it made him more determined than ever.
“Just wait,” he would think to himself. “Just wait. I’ll show them all! They’ll stop their laughing when I sail over their heads and climb up, up, up, into the clouds and do circles in the sky!” And he would smile as he imagined the surprise on their faces when they saw him swooping in loops and zooming by.
One day, as Wallace lay wondering how the birds did it, he watched a Sparrow perched on an over‑turned water trough in the barnyard. The bird pushed off the trough, spread its wings, and glided through the air. “That’s it!”, squealed Wallace, scrambling to this feet. “Why didn’t I notice it before? All you have to do is jump off something into the air!” With that, Wallace ran to the upside‑down water trough and climbed up. “Watch me, everybody!”, he shouted. “I’m about to fly!” And, as all the animals in the barnyard looked up from what they were doing, Wallace sprang into the air and landed with a loud “Splat!” into the mud.
The barnyard erupted in laughter. The animals rolled and hooted and gasped for breath. So did Wallace, gasp for breath, that is. He was ashamed and shocked at his failure, but he didn’t lose heart, or give up. Again he climbed onto the trough; again he leaped into the air; again he “splat landed” into the mud; and again the animals roared with laughter. Wallace spent the rest of the day climbing and jumping and splatting. The other animals soon tired of the show and went back to their own affairs. But Wallace kept at it—with no success at all. That evening he wobbled on weary legs back to his wallow and collapsed in an exhausted heap.
The next morning he was at it again. Only this time he climbed up onto the wooden rail fence that encircled the barnyard. “It’s only a matter of getting high enough for the air to catch me,” he reasoned. And he jumped out for the air to catch him. The mud caught him instead.
Back up on the fence he went. Back into the air he went. Back into the mud he went. The cycle was repeated all day long. And the animals began to look at one another with concern etched on their faces. This wasn’t funny any longer. The next day it was even worse.
“Hey! Wallace is on the tractor shed!” Louise Wiggins, one of the chickens, called out to the other animals. They all flocked, herded, and packed to the shed. “Wallace, what are you doing up there?”, one of his brothers asked. “Wallace, please come down,” on of his sisters begged. “Wallace, get back here on the ground this instant,” his mother demanded. “Leave me alone!”, Wallace shouted. “And get ready for the show of the century! I am about to FLY!” With that, Wallace launched himself from the roof of the tractor shed (as gracefully as a pig can manage such things) and landed with a loud THUD in the middle of the mud.
“Uuuuuhhhhh!”, said Wallace. “Are you all right?”, shouted the animals, gathering around him. “Are you hurt, Wallace?” “Yes, I’m all right,” said Wallace struggling to his feet. “And, no, I’m not hurt. It’s just a matter of getting high enough, that’s all.” “You get any higher, boy, and you’ll be flying with the angels,” said his father. “Now you cut this foolishness out and get back to the wallow where you belong.”
“Not me,” said Wallace, “I’m going to fly.” “Be reasonable, Wallace,” said his brothers and sisters. “Pigs don’t fly. Pigs can’t fly. Pigs just aren’t built for flying.” But Wallace would not be reasonable. “I’m going to fly,” he said.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Mildred Pinkins, a jersey cow. “Why don’t we sneak you aboard Farmer Morgan’s crop duster? That way you could fly just like a bird.” “That’s not flying,” said Wallace. “That’s riding in an airplane. Anyone can ride in an airplane. I am going to fly!” “Don’t be pig‑headed,” said his mother. “PIGS DON’T FLY!” “I’m going to be the first,” said Wallace. “You’re going to kill yourself, or one of us,” said the animals. “What would happen if you landed on us? How would we survive that?” “I won’t land on you,” said Wallace, “but I am going to fly.”
“We can’t let you keep this up any longer, Wallace,” said his father. “This has gone far enough. It has to stop.” With that, all the animals crowded around Wallace, forcing him toward the barn. “Hey, what are you doing?”, said Wallace. “Leave me alone! Stop pushing!” “We are only doing what we think is best for you, Wallace,” said his mother. “We have your best interest at heart. We wouldn’t do this if it weren’t for your own good.” And they pushed, and shoved, and pulled, and poked until they had locked Wallace securely behind the heavy doors of the barn. “Let me out of here!”, squealed Wallace. “Not until you get that flying foolishness out of your system!” said his oldest brother. And they kept Wallace locked in the barn for a long time. When they decided that he had been there long enough for the flying fever to have passed, they called out through the doors: “Wallace, we’ll let you out if you promise not to try to fly ever again.”
“Okay,” said Wallace. “I promise.” The animals looked at each other with relief in their eyes and opened the doors to the barn. No sooner had they removed the latch than Wallace bolted past them, sending several chickens, two goats, and a new colt sprawling. “I promise not to try to fly until I get to the Jumping Tree!” yelled Wallace as he ran through the animals.
“Wallace! Come back here!” his parents called. But Wallace wasn’t going back. Wallace was going to the Jumping Tree as fast as he could go. His time in the barn had been spent examining his theory of flying, and Wallace had made a few adjustments in his technique. “Legs out, chin up, stomach in... If I do that and jump from a great enough height, I’m bound to fly,” he reasoned. Now, he was running toward the highest thing on the farm.
The Jumping Tree was a big willow that leaned out over the farm pond. Farmer Morgan’s children spent their summer afternoons climbing up into the tree and jumping from it into the water. Now Wallace was going to use it to jump into the air. And he did. He climbed as high up into the tree as a pig could go and jumped into the air. And landed in the water. The splash knocked turtles off logs, and fish onto the bank, and the air right out of Wallace. He floated sputtering and gasping to the top of the water, and clamored out of the pond just as the first group of animals arrived from the barnyard.
“There he is!”, they shouted. “Get him! Get him! Don’t let him get away!” But Wallace had caught his breath and had one more destination in mind. He headed for Indian Ridge. Indian Ridge was the highest piece of ground in five counties. It overlooked the farm and the surrounding countryside. At one place on the ridge there was a cliff which dropped straight down for five hundred feet. “Surely, that will be high enough,” thought Wallace.
“Oh, he’s going to the Ridge!”, shouted his mother when she saw Wallace leaving the pond. “Stop him! Somebody stop him!” But there was no stopping Wallace. He had a head start and a mission, and he out ran all of them to the place where he would fly, or else. He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the jagged rocks below. “Well, this is it,” he said. “Now it’s either fly or die—and if I can’t fly, I’d just as soon be dead.”
“No! Wallace, No!”, shouted the animals as they climbed up the path toward him. “Don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!” But Wallace backed up for a running start and took a deep breath. Buster Grimes, Farmer Morgan’s golden lab, and the fastest animal on the farm, huffed up and placed himself between Wallace and the edge of the cliff. “Let’s talk about this, Wallace,” he wheezed. “Get out of my way or go with me,” said Wallace, digging in for a running start.
“Sounds to me like you ought to do what he says,” said a voice from behind Wallace. “What’s that?”, said Buster. “I think you ought to get out of the way and let him get it over with,” came the answer. “Who are you?”, said Buster. Wallace turned to see who was behind him and stared into the face of the most beautiful sow he had ever seen.
“I’m Denise Riggins,” she said. “I’ve been hearing about a pig who thought he could fly, and, since I’ve never seen anyone that stupid, I decided I would come over and have a look. You don’t look stupid,” she said to Wallace, “in fact, you’re kind of cute.” “I’m not stupid!”, said Wallace. “And I’m going to fly.”
“That’s stupid,” said Denise. “Pigs don’t fly. Pigs wallow in the mud, and take long naps in the sun. They eat corn‑on‑the‑cob, and root in the dirt. But they don’t fly. However, I’m sure you’ve heard all this before, so maybe you should just jump and get it out of your system.” Wallace didn’t know what to say. He was suddenly very confused. He wanted to fly, but he also felt like he was falling in love, and thought that being with Denise just might be better than flying.
“Birds fly,” he stammered. “When birds fly it’s beautiful.” “You’re right,” said Denise. “Birds are beautiful when they are doing what birds are built to do. And pigs are beautiful when they are doing what pigs are built to do. But pigs are stupid when they try to do what they have no business doing at all.” “But I wanted to be a special pig,” said Wallace. “I wanted to do what no other pig had ever done.”
“Well,” said Denise, “you can do that without making a fool of yourself just by being who you are. After all, honey, there’s only one of you in the whole world.” And she winked at Wallace. “But I wanted to fly,” he said.
“Sorry, Sweetie,” she said. “You can’t fly. And if you try to fly, you’ll never do any of the things you can do, and you’ll miss out on more than you can imagine.” “Like what?”, said Wallace. “If you jump off that ledge, Handsome, you’ll never know,” said Denise, walking past him on her way down the Ridge.
Wallace Boggs wanted to fly. He wanted to fly more than anything in all the world. But there was one slight problem with his being able to realize his dream. Wallace Boggs was a 217‑pound pig. Now, you might think it is ridiculous for a 217‑pound pig to want to fly, and, perhaps, it is. But Wallace Boggs didn’t think so. And he thought about it a lot. In fact, that’s all he ever thought about.
He would lie on his bristly back in the mud and watch the Red Birds and the Robins flitting about, diving and soaring, and he would think about how wonderful it would be to dive and soar along with them. “One day I’m going to fly like that,” he would say. His brothers and sisters would pause in their rooting and grunting long enough to snicker and snort. “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” they would say. “Pigs can’t fly, Wallace,” they would say. “Isn’t he a riot?”, they would say. And they would laugh among themselves as they turned back to their rooting and grunting. Their laughter hurt, of course, but it didn’t change Wallace’s mind in the matter. In fact, it made him more determined than ever.
“Just wait,” he would think to himself. “Just wait. I’ll show them all! They’ll stop their laughing when I sail over their heads and climb up, up, up, into the clouds and do circles in the sky!” And he would smile as he imagined the surprise on their faces when they saw him swooping in loops and zooming by.
One day, as Wallace lay wondering how the birds did it, he watched a Sparrow perched on an over‑turned water trough in the barnyard. The bird pushed off the trough, spread its wings, and glided through the air. “That’s it!”, squealed Wallace, scrambling to this feet. “Why didn’t I notice it before? All you have to do is jump off something into the air!” With that, Wallace ran to the upside‑down water trough and climbed up. “Watch me, everybody!”, he shouted. “I’m about to fly!” And, as all the animals in the barnyard looked up from what they were doing, Wallace sprang into the air and landed with a loud “Splat!” into the mud.
The barnyard erupted in laughter. The animals rolled and hooted and gasped for breath. So did Wallace, gasp for breath, that is. He was ashamed and shocked at his failure, but he didn’t lose heart, or give up. Again he climbed onto the trough; again he leaped into the air; again he “splat landed” into the mud; and again the animals roared with laughter. Wallace spent the rest of the day climbing and jumping and splatting. The other animals soon tired of the show and went back to their own affairs. But Wallace kept at it—with no success at all. That evening he wobbled on weary legs back to his wallow and collapsed in an exhausted heap.
The next morning he was at it again. Only this time he climbed up onto the wooden rail fence that encircled the barnyard. “It’s only a matter of getting high enough for the air to catch me,” he reasoned. And he jumped out for the air to catch him. The mud caught him instead.
Back up on the fence he went. Back into the air he went. Back into the mud he went. The cycle was repeated all day long. And the animals began to look at one another with concern etched on their faces. This wasn’t funny any longer. The next day it was even worse.
“Hey! Wallace is on the tractor shed!” Louise Wiggins, one of the chickens, called out to the other animals. They all flocked, herded, and packed to the shed. “Wallace, what are you doing up there?”, one of his brothers asked. “Wallace, please come down,” on of his sisters begged. “Wallace, get back here on the ground this instant,” his mother demanded. “Leave me alone!”, Wallace shouted. “And get ready for the show of the century! I am about to FLY!” With that, Wallace launched himself from the roof of the tractor shed (as gracefully as a pig can manage such things) and landed with a loud THUD in the middle of the mud.
“Uuuuuhhhhh!”, said Wallace. “Are you all right?”, shouted the animals, gathering around him. “Are you hurt, Wallace?” “Yes, I’m all right,” said Wallace struggling to his feet. “And, no, I’m not hurt. It’s just a matter of getting high enough, that’s all.” “You get any higher, boy, and you’ll be flying with the angels,” said his father. “Now you cut this foolishness out and get back to the wallow where you belong.”
“Not me,” said Wallace, “I’m going to fly.” “Be reasonable, Wallace,” said his brothers and sisters. “Pigs don’t fly. Pigs can’t fly. Pigs just aren’t built for flying.” But Wallace would not be reasonable. “I’m going to fly,” he said.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Mildred Pinkins, a jersey cow. “Why don’t we sneak you aboard Farmer Morgan’s crop duster? That way you could fly just like a bird.” “That’s not flying,” said Wallace. “That’s riding in an airplane. Anyone can ride in an airplane. I am going to fly!” “Don’t be pig‑headed,” said his mother. “PIGS DON’T FLY!” “I’m going to be the first,” said Wallace. “You’re going to kill yourself, or one of us,” said the animals. “What would happen if you landed on us? How would we survive that?” “I won’t land on you,” said Wallace, “but I am going to fly.”
“We can’t let you keep this up any longer, Wallace,” said his father. “This has gone far enough. It has to stop.” With that, all the animals crowded around Wallace, forcing him toward the barn. “Hey, what are you doing?”, said Wallace. “Leave me alone! Stop pushing!” “We are only doing what we think is best for you, Wallace,” said his mother. “We have your best interest at heart. We wouldn’t do this if it weren’t for your own good.” And they pushed, and shoved, and pulled, and poked until they had locked Wallace securely behind the heavy doors of the barn. “Let me out of here!”, squealed Wallace. “Not until you get that flying foolishness out of your system!” said his oldest brother. And they kept Wallace locked in the barn for a long time. When they decided that he had been there long enough for the flying fever to have passed, they called out through the doors: “Wallace, we’ll let you out if you promise not to try to fly ever again.”
“Okay,” said Wallace. “I promise.” The animals looked at each other with relief in their eyes and opened the doors to the barn. No sooner had they removed the latch than Wallace bolted past them, sending several chickens, two goats, and a new colt sprawling. “I promise not to try to fly until I get to the Jumping Tree!” yelled Wallace as he ran through the animals.
“Wallace! Come back here!” his parents called. But Wallace wasn’t going back. Wallace was going to the Jumping Tree as fast as he could go. His time in the barn had been spent examining his theory of flying, and Wallace had made a few adjustments in his technique. “Legs out, chin up, stomach in... If I do that and jump from a great enough height, I’m bound to fly,” he reasoned. Now, he was running toward the highest thing on the farm.
The Jumping Tree was a big willow that leaned out over the farm pond. Farmer Morgan’s children spent their summer afternoons climbing up into the tree and jumping from it into the water. Now Wallace was going to use it to jump into the air. And he did. He climbed as high up into the tree as a pig could go and jumped into the air. And landed in the water. The splash knocked turtles off logs, and fish onto the bank, and the air right out of Wallace. He floated sputtering and gasping to the top of the water, and clamored out of the pond just as the first group of animals arrived from the barnyard.
“There he is!”, they shouted. “Get him! Get him! Don’t let him get away!” But Wallace had caught his breath and had one more destination in mind. He headed for Indian Ridge. Indian Ridge was the highest piece of ground in five counties. It overlooked the farm and the surrounding countryside. At one place on the ridge there was a cliff which dropped straight down for five hundred feet. “Surely, that will be high enough,” thought Wallace.
“Oh, he’s going to the Ridge!”, shouted his mother when she saw Wallace leaving the pond. “Stop him! Somebody stop him!” But there was no stopping Wallace. He had a head start and a mission, and he out ran all of them to the place where he would fly, or else. He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the jagged rocks below. “Well, this is it,” he said. “Now it’s either fly or die—and if I can’t fly, I’d just as soon be dead.”
“No! Wallace, No!”, shouted the animals as they climbed up the path toward him. “Don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!” But Wallace backed up for a running start and took a deep breath. Buster Grimes, Farmer Morgan’s golden lab, and the fastest animal on the farm, huffed up and placed himself between Wallace and the edge of the cliff. “Let’s talk about this, Wallace,” he wheezed. “Get out of my way or go with me,” said Wallace, digging in for a running start.
“Sounds to me like you ought to do what he says,” said a voice from behind Wallace. “What’s that?”, said Buster. “I think you ought to get out of the way and let him get it over with,” came the answer. “Who are you?”, said Buster. Wallace turned to see who was behind him and stared into the face of the most beautiful sow he had ever seen.
“I’m Denise Riggins,” she said. “I’ve been hearing about a pig who thought he could fly, and, since I’ve never seen anyone that stupid, I decided I would come over and have a look. You don’t look stupid,” she said to Wallace, “in fact, you’re kind of cute.” “I’m not stupid!”, said Wallace. “And I’m going to fly.”
“That’s stupid,” said Denise. “Pigs don’t fly. Pigs wallow in the mud, and take long naps in the sun. They eat corn‑on‑the‑cob, and root in the dirt. But they don’t fly. However, I’m sure you’ve heard all this before, so maybe you should just jump and get it out of your system.” Wallace didn’t know what to say. He was suddenly very confused. He wanted to fly, but he also felt like he was falling in love, and thought that being with Denise just might be better than flying.
“Birds fly,” he stammered. “When birds fly it’s beautiful.” “You’re right,” said Denise. “Birds are beautiful when they are doing what birds are built to do. And pigs are beautiful when they are doing what pigs are built to do. But pigs are stupid when they try to do what they have no business doing at all.” “But I wanted to be a special pig,” said Wallace. “I wanted to do what no other pig had ever done.”
“Well,” said Denise, “you can do that without making a fool of yourself just by being who you are. After all, honey, there’s only one of you in the whole world.” And she winked at Wallace. “But I wanted to fly,” he said.
“Sorry, Sweetie,” she said. “You can’t fly. And if you try to fly, you’ll never do any of the things you can do, and you’ll miss out on more than you can imagine.” “Like what?”, said Wallace. “If you jump off that ledge, Handsome, you’ll never know,” said Denise, walking past him on her way down the Ridge.
Monday, February 18, 2008
02/17/08, Sermon
You are you. I am me. You are who you are. I am who I am. The problem is that you don’t want to be who you are, and I don’t want to be who I am. We want to be thinner, and taller (or shorter), and richer, and better looking. We want different parents and different points of origin. I’m, frankly, tired of wishing I had different parents, so I put myself up for adoption last week. My plan is to keep doing that until I find the parents that are right for me.
We don’t want to be who we are, where we are, what we are, how we are, why we are. We want to be someone else instead. Teachers want to be singers, singers want to be movie stars, movie stars want to authors, authors want to be lecturers, lecturers want to be gurus, gurus want to run pubs… There is no end to it. No one wants to be who they are. But, here’s the deal. You ARE who you are! I AM who I am. Trying to be who we are not is the essence of sin, using the old terminology.
Sin is exactly not wanting this, but wanting that instead, until we get it. Then that becomes this, and we no longer want it, but want something else instead. The spiritual path, journey, trek, task, and all the spiritual practices and disciplines are about the return to the self that we are. The search for the Holy Grail is about the search for the life that is our life to live. “What I do is me,” says Gerard Manly Hopkins, “for that I came.” Bingo. That’s what needs to be done.
But, it is not easy. There is a reason things are the way they are, you know. There is a reason for everything, you know. And, the reason is that it’s easier that way. We have to give up our dreams for ourselves to be the self that we are. We have such beautiful dreams, it’s hard to let them go. And so, one of the themes of the spiritual path, journey, trek, task is Death and Resurrection.
All of the old Biblical themes fit right into the search for the self, the search for the life that is our life to live. Bondage and Freedom. Sin and Salvation. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Guilt and Redemption. Repentance and Deliverance. On the spiritual level, the truth is always true. And, there is always hell to pay.
Hell comes about when we try to have “all this and heaven, too.” Trying to have it all is hell, and choosing to not have it all is hell, and we have to pass through hell to get to heaven. The angel with the flaming sword stands guarding the gate to Paradise. All the heroes and knights encounter monsters and demons and great tests of spirit. Dying is easy, living is hard. We don’t just wake up one day and say, “Starting to day, I am going to be who I am.”
I know this is not what you want to hear. I’m sorry to be the one who tells you, but, I’ve looked around. Made inquiries. Done the research. There is no one else. Everyone else is in the Joel Osteen camp. Joel Osteen is every mother’s ideal child. Joel Osteen is who you become by listening to your mother. He is what happens to you if you follow her advice, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” But, the truth is it is not a light trip to the light.
Now, I fully understand that I’m not supposed to say things like that to you. I’m supposed to tell you good news. You feel bad enough everywhere else in your life. You come here to be uplifted, relieved, revived. You come here to lay your burden down. This is supposed to be the place where you hear about the bright sides and the silver linings.
The church of our experience has existed to make us feel better about our life, our lot. Heaven has been held out to us as the place where it will be made up to us. Where sorrow and sighing will flee away and tears will be no more. Where the great reversal of fortune will take place, and the have-not’s will have for eternity all the things, and more, that they didn’t have for the thirty, or sixty, or ninety years that they lived upon the earth. “So, children, don’t even think about the misery of these days,” we were counseled. “Just concentrate on the glory that will be yours when the role is called up yonder, and your name is on the list.”
Religion’s place in our lives is to enable us to feel better, if not good, about the way things are. “Feeling good was easy, Lord, when Bobbie sang the blues, feeling good was good enough for me, good enough for me and Bobbie Magee.” Feeling good is not always easy, but it seems to be always what we seek. We want to feel good about our lives, about life, and living, and being alive. And, there is much, it seems, to feel bad about. “We get by with a little help from our friends.” Our friends, of course, are amphetamines and hallucinogens and Jack Daniels, and Bobbie Magee. We need help because it’s hard, but we need the right kind of help from the right kind of friends.
It’s hard because we stand squarely in the middle between life as it is, on the one hand, and life as we wish it were, on the other. We cannot get out of that middle no matter what we try. Here is the way it is. Here is the way we wish it were instead. There you are. That’s it, for the rest of your life. We cannot expect to feel good about life being what it is and not what we wish it were. And, we have to make our peace with that.
The task of life is coming to terms with the terms and conditions of life. The great work is putting ourselves into accord with the way things are. The spiritual task is to live, really LIVE, on the boundary between denial and despair. Seeing, knowing, understanding exactly how things are, and living as those who are fully, joyfully alive anyway, nevertheless, even so. The word for that kind of life is hope.
Hope is not optimistic, remember. Hope sees things as they are, peers straight into the red eyes of the monster called Reality, and smiles. Hope is not afraid of how it is. Hope doesn’t care what its chances are. Hope just does what is to be done, what needs to be done, what is there to do. Hope enables us to be who we are—to be true to ourselves—within the terms, and conditions, and context of our lives.
Being who we are is all there is. Living the life that is ours to live within the terms, and conditions, and context of life as it is, is it. You are you. You are who you are. What keeps you from being who you are? What keeps you from doing what is yours to do? You want to know where joy is to be found? Be who you are. Do what is yours to do. This is the essence of spirituality and life, abundant life, joyful life. But, we cannot be who we are and live any way at all. When we are being who we are, we are living in ways that are aligned with, in synch with, the integrity of our being, of our lives, of the life that is ours to live. “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” Yet, fooling ourselves is what we do best. There you are. The crux of the matter.
Who is running the show? Who is directing the action? Who is determining what we do with our lives? Who decides what constitutes the life that is our life to live? Who says who we are? We can want what we have no business having. How do we know whether we have any business having what we want? We have a mind of our own. How do we identify, surrender to, and serve the mind that is our true mind, the mind that knows who we truly are? How do we get to the place of living out of the spontaneity, out of the authenticity, of our being? Of being aligned with who we are and why we came? How do we find our way to ourselves?
The search for ourselves, for the integrity of our lives, is the search for the Holy Grail, the spiritual journey, the spiritual path, the spiritual task. We get there by asking, and answering, the Grail questions. The first Grail question is “What is the problem? What’s the matter? What’s the trouble? What ails you?” Or, to put it another way, What do you have that you don’t want? And, What do you want that you don’t have? That’s it. Get to the bottom of that and you have it made.
The problem is solved by getting what we want or by changing what we want. But, we don’t what to change what we want. We want what we want. That’s the problem. We are the problem. “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.” We want to find the Holy Grail, and we stand in our own way, and won’t give way. Stubborn to a fault. Life on our terms or not at all! Something has to give. There is no making it easy. There is no talking you into what must be done. Either you can take it, or you can’t (the pain of surrender, that is). Either you have what it takes, or you don’t. Asking the first Grail question takes you to the heart of the matter. The problem is you. What are you going to do?
In Christian terminology, this is the point of conversion, of submission to the will of God. It is the point of handing ourselves over, of surrendering our ideas of how things ought to be, and accepting God’s will, using the old terminology, for our lives. “Thy will, not mine, be done.” The problem, of course, is, who is to say? Who is to say whether this is “God’s will” or our will that is being done? Is it our life we are living or our ideas for our life? We do, of course, we say, and that tilts the table dramatically in our favor. So, in the showdown with ourselves, we have the clear advantage. Even if we have the best of intentions, and really, truly, mean to embrace and submit to the life that is ours to live, never mind what we wish it were, fooling ourselves is what we do best. We can tell ourselves we are giving up what we want in order to live aligned with the life that is our life to live, without anything changing about the way we think about our lives or live them.
We must not push too quickly past this point of confrontation with ourselves over who is in charge and whose wants and wishes and desires are governing our choices and determining our actions. In Christian terminology, this is the place of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. It is exactly about who is making the calls about the way life is to be lived. In the Gospels, Jesus’ opponent is Satan. Today, we can understand the Great Satan to be ourselves, our wants and wishes about how our life is to be run. And, that Satan Self is never far away. We do not distance ourselves from that self, but carry out the conversation about who is in charge and who decides how life is to be lived all the way to the grave. It has to be the right kind of conversation, carried out in the company of the right kind of people, or we wind up kidding ourselves and telling ourselves exactly what we want to hear. The search for our authentic self is a search for authentic selves who can help us along the way.
We don’t want to be who we are, where we are, what we are, how we are, why we are. We want to be someone else instead. Teachers want to be singers, singers want to be movie stars, movie stars want to authors, authors want to be lecturers, lecturers want to be gurus, gurus want to run pubs… There is no end to it. No one wants to be who they are. But, here’s the deal. You ARE who you are! I AM who I am. Trying to be who we are not is the essence of sin, using the old terminology.
Sin is exactly not wanting this, but wanting that instead, until we get it. Then that becomes this, and we no longer want it, but want something else instead. The spiritual path, journey, trek, task, and all the spiritual practices and disciplines are about the return to the self that we are. The search for the Holy Grail is about the search for the life that is our life to live. “What I do is me,” says Gerard Manly Hopkins, “for that I came.” Bingo. That’s what needs to be done.
But, it is not easy. There is a reason things are the way they are, you know. There is a reason for everything, you know. And, the reason is that it’s easier that way. We have to give up our dreams for ourselves to be the self that we are. We have such beautiful dreams, it’s hard to let them go. And so, one of the themes of the spiritual path, journey, trek, task is Death and Resurrection.
All of the old Biblical themes fit right into the search for the self, the search for the life that is our life to live. Bondage and Freedom. Sin and Salvation. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Guilt and Redemption. Repentance and Deliverance. On the spiritual level, the truth is always true. And, there is always hell to pay.
Hell comes about when we try to have “all this and heaven, too.” Trying to have it all is hell, and choosing to not have it all is hell, and we have to pass through hell to get to heaven. The angel with the flaming sword stands guarding the gate to Paradise. All the heroes and knights encounter monsters and demons and great tests of spirit. Dying is easy, living is hard. We don’t just wake up one day and say, “Starting to day, I am going to be who I am.”
I know this is not what you want to hear. I’m sorry to be the one who tells you, but, I’ve looked around. Made inquiries. Done the research. There is no one else. Everyone else is in the Joel Osteen camp. Joel Osteen is every mother’s ideal child. Joel Osteen is who you become by listening to your mother. He is what happens to you if you follow her advice, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” But, the truth is it is not a light trip to the light.
Now, I fully understand that I’m not supposed to say things like that to you. I’m supposed to tell you good news. You feel bad enough everywhere else in your life. You come here to be uplifted, relieved, revived. You come here to lay your burden down. This is supposed to be the place where you hear about the bright sides and the silver linings.
The church of our experience has existed to make us feel better about our life, our lot. Heaven has been held out to us as the place where it will be made up to us. Where sorrow and sighing will flee away and tears will be no more. Where the great reversal of fortune will take place, and the have-not’s will have for eternity all the things, and more, that they didn’t have for the thirty, or sixty, or ninety years that they lived upon the earth. “So, children, don’t even think about the misery of these days,” we were counseled. “Just concentrate on the glory that will be yours when the role is called up yonder, and your name is on the list.”
Religion’s place in our lives is to enable us to feel better, if not good, about the way things are. “Feeling good was easy, Lord, when Bobbie sang the blues, feeling good was good enough for me, good enough for me and Bobbie Magee.” Feeling good is not always easy, but it seems to be always what we seek. We want to feel good about our lives, about life, and living, and being alive. And, there is much, it seems, to feel bad about. “We get by with a little help from our friends.” Our friends, of course, are amphetamines and hallucinogens and Jack Daniels, and Bobbie Magee. We need help because it’s hard, but we need the right kind of help from the right kind of friends.
It’s hard because we stand squarely in the middle between life as it is, on the one hand, and life as we wish it were, on the other. We cannot get out of that middle no matter what we try. Here is the way it is. Here is the way we wish it were instead. There you are. That’s it, for the rest of your life. We cannot expect to feel good about life being what it is and not what we wish it were. And, we have to make our peace with that.
The task of life is coming to terms with the terms and conditions of life. The great work is putting ourselves into accord with the way things are. The spiritual task is to live, really LIVE, on the boundary between denial and despair. Seeing, knowing, understanding exactly how things are, and living as those who are fully, joyfully alive anyway, nevertheless, even so. The word for that kind of life is hope.
Hope is not optimistic, remember. Hope sees things as they are, peers straight into the red eyes of the monster called Reality, and smiles. Hope is not afraid of how it is. Hope doesn’t care what its chances are. Hope just does what is to be done, what needs to be done, what is there to do. Hope enables us to be who we are—to be true to ourselves—within the terms, and conditions, and context of our lives.
Being who we are is all there is. Living the life that is ours to live within the terms, and conditions, and context of life as it is, is it. You are you. You are who you are. What keeps you from being who you are? What keeps you from doing what is yours to do? You want to know where joy is to be found? Be who you are. Do what is yours to do. This is the essence of spirituality and life, abundant life, joyful life. But, we cannot be who we are and live any way at all. When we are being who we are, we are living in ways that are aligned with, in synch with, the integrity of our being, of our lives, of the life that is ours to live. “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” Yet, fooling ourselves is what we do best. There you are. The crux of the matter.
Who is running the show? Who is directing the action? Who is determining what we do with our lives? Who decides what constitutes the life that is our life to live? Who says who we are? We can want what we have no business having. How do we know whether we have any business having what we want? We have a mind of our own. How do we identify, surrender to, and serve the mind that is our true mind, the mind that knows who we truly are? How do we get to the place of living out of the spontaneity, out of the authenticity, of our being? Of being aligned with who we are and why we came? How do we find our way to ourselves?
The search for ourselves, for the integrity of our lives, is the search for the Holy Grail, the spiritual journey, the spiritual path, the spiritual task. We get there by asking, and answering, the Grail questions. The first Grail question is “What is the problem? What’s the matter? What’s the trouble? What ails you?” Or, to put it another way, What do you have that you don’t want? And, What do you want that you don’t have? That’s it. Get to the bottom of that and you have it made.
The problem is solved by getting what we want or by changing what we want. But, we don’t what to change what we want. We want what we want. That’s the problem. We are the problem. “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.” We want to find the Holy Grail, and we stand in our own way, and won’t give way. Stubborn to a fault. Life on our terms or not at all! Something has to give. There is no making it easy. There is no talking you into what must be done. Either you can take it, or you can’t (the pain of surrender, that is). Either you have what it takes, or you don’t. Asking the first Grail question takes you to the heart of the matter. The problem is you. What are you going to do?
In Christian terminology, this is the point of conversion, of submission to the will of God. It is the point of handing ourselves over, of surrendering our ideas of how things ought to be, and accepting God’s will, using the old terminology, for our lives. “Thy will, not mine, be done.” The problem, of course, is, who is to say? Who is to say whether this is “God’s will” or our will that is being done? Is it our life we are living or our ideas for our life? We do, of course, we say, and that tilts the table dramatically in our favor. So, in the showdown with ourselves, we have the clear advantage. Even if we have the best of intentions, and really, truly, mean to embrace and submit to the life that is ours to live, never mind what we wish it were, fooling ourselves is what we do best. We can tell ourselves we are giving up what we want in order to live aligned with the life that is our life to live, without anything changing about the way we think about our lives or live them.
We must not push too quickly past this point of confrontation with ourselves over who is in charge and whose wants and wishes and desires are governing our choices and determining our actions. In Christian terminology, this is the place of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. It is exactly about who is making the calls about the way life is to be lived. In the Gospels, Jesus’ opponent is Satan. Today, we can understand the Great Satan to be ourselves, our wants and wishes about how our life is to be run. And, that Satan Self is never far away. We do not distance ourselves from that self, but carry out the conversation about who is in charge and who decides how life is to be lived all the way to the grave. It has to be the right kind of conversation, carried out in the company of the right kind of people, or we wind up kidding ourselves and telling ourselves exactly what we want to hear. The search for our authentic self is a search for authentic selves who can help us along the way.
Monday, February 11, 2008
02/10/08, Sermon
There is the way things are. And, there is the way we wish things were, the way we want things to be. And, there is the way things truly need to be. We stand in the middle of all of that and, ideally, work the mixture toward what is truly important. There in the middle, this is what is important: Don’t give me your explanations! Don’t give me your theories! Don’t give me your intellectualizations! Give me your experience! Don’t tell me why (that is, what you think)! Tell me what! What is happening? What is the emotional/spiritual impact of what is happening? What do you want to happen instead? What do you think needs to happen? Talk to me about the gap between what is happening and what you want to happen and what needs to happen. Talk to me about the awfulness, the agony—the agonae—of living in that gap. Talk to me about the pain—and bear it!
Bearing that pain the way the pain should be borne is the key to managing life in the middle of the mixture. And, it is quite the art. Bearing legitimate pain appropriately is the foundation of the spiritual path, journey, task. The trick is to bear it honestly, truthfully. Not stoically, not heroically, not with a “stiff upper lip,” “just dealing with it,” “just getting throw it,” “just toughing it out”—and not nursing it, wallowing in it, allowing it to become the focal point of life, the core around which everything revolves and coalesces. Grieving what must be grieved, mourning what must be mourned, suffering what must be suffered, without perpetuating endlessly the suffering, is the art of bearing legitimate pain in appropriate ways. And that is the price of knowing what the next step needs to be.
Facing squarely the anguish of life in the middle of the mixture, in the midst of the mess, introduces us to the reality of the Mind/Body connection. Mind is knowing, awareness, on the most fundamental level. Brain is knowing intellectually, and it is also thinking about what we know on all levels. Brain is consciousness, conscious awareness. Brain is a receptor of mind, but brain is not mind. Mind is the whole thing, at least the whole living thing. Mind is from the beginning, at least from the beginning of life. Every living thing participates in mind, in cognition, in knowing. Every living thing knows, on some level, what is good for it, and what is not. We are aware, as a species, long before we are conscious of being aware. Life is mind. Mind is life. Everything that is alive, that participates in life, participates in mind, and is mind. Yet, mind only knows without knowing that it knows, or what, or how. Mind knows what it knows thanks to body.
Isn’t that interesting? That body is the pathway to mind? That knowing is visceral and physical before it is mental? WE are the Unknown Knower, or, at least, we house the rascal. And, it’s up to us to communicate with her, him, it. One of the tasks of knowing is knowing what we know. We know more than we know we know. And so, we have to listen. Eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands are open to a world beyond the obvious. Meditation is a method of making ourselves present with what is present with us. We “clear a space” and wait. We “seek the center” and wait. No forcing. No pushing. No pressing. Just waiting. And listening to our body.
What’s our body saying? How is it trying to get our attention? If our physical symptoms could speak, what would they say? Listen to them. Ask what they have to say, and listen! Our body is the pathway to mind, so we have to hear what our body is saying. To do that we have to practice listening on a regular basis. If you are ever going to listen to anybody, listen to your own body.
Listening to your body is the way to what needs to be done now. The only thing to know is what needs to be done now. What is the next step? What now? Now, what? But, this is a hard sell. We don’t think we can live like this. We think we have to think our way to knowing. We think we have to have a plan, the plan. We have to know what we want to happen and the steps required to make it happen. But, there is no, “If you do this, and then you do that, then that will happen.” There is only, “What needs to be done here and now? What is the next step?” There is no knowing where it will lead or what will be the result. There is only, “Now what? Now, what is the next step?”
It’s from the bottom up and inside out that the right things happen, not from the top down and outside in. We have to be aware of the organic nature of what needs to happen. We cannot anticipate that with years of careful planning, and impose it by decree upon the world. Forget the “if then therefore” scenarios, the contingency plans, the goals, and the strategy, and the tactics for achieving the goals. Simply listen to the situation. The answer will arise from the situation. The situation will show you what needs to happen. We dance with our lives.
What needs to happen in a situation will lie dormant until the conditions are right for its happening. It will wait until what is necessary to assist its happening appears, and then, the miracle. We are but assistants in the unfolding of our lives, here to help what needs to happen into being. Our calling is helping what needs to be helped with the help we have to offer. What needs to be done? What needs to happen? What needs to be different? How do we know: Watch, Look, Listen!
Of course, we get into situations all the time in which nothing can be done. When we miss doing what needs to be done, the karmatic law kicks in, and things spin in a chaotic, one might say, Faulkneresque, tangle of madness and pathos. But even there, redemption is possible, salvation is at hand. Far from stability, order is found, by listening for what needs to happen in the madness and pathos of existence. Nothing could be done in the madness and pathos of prisoner of war camps, yet, Victor Frankl is a witness to the power of sharing bread and blankets with those whose need is greater than our own.
What needs to happen here and now? Now, what? This question is always the primary question. We just do the next thing, the thing that needs to be done now, and see where it takes us. But, our idea of what needs to be done now will be influenced by ten thousand things, many of which have to do with our tastes, and interests, and values, and desires. Alcoholics are sure that the next thing is another beer. We can also experience a significant amount of conflict in the matter, thinking that dessert needs to be done next, and that weight gain doesn’t need to be done next. We are guided to the thing that needs to be done now by our notion of how things need to be, but that is influenced strongly by how we want things to be. We can want what we want with such vigor and passion that it can seem surely to be the next thing. Yet, the thing that truly needs doing can also trump our best interest and deepest desires, and lead us down paths we would never consider taking. There is no strategy for knowing what to do or having it made. So, how do we know what the next thing truly is?
After the fact. Sorry. Fooling ourselves is what we do best, you know. Shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best, you know. Talking ourselves into doing what we always wanted to do is what we do best, you know. So, whether what we think is truly the next thing is, actually, truly the next thing only becomes apparent with time. I should have bought the camera. I shouldn’t have bought the Toyota.
But, we can know that we may be wrong about what we know. The cultural bias is to live with our best interest at heart. Trading up requires us to think about where we are better off, and what we are giving up in exchange for what we are getting, and what is to our advantage. But, what do we truly need to live the life that is ours to live? This is not a question that we are ever invited to ask. What do we want? That’s the question that drives the economy. Abundance can be as detrimental as destitution. Whom does the grail serve? Those who serve the grail! What does it mean to serve the grail? What must we do to serve the grail? What is the grail that must be served? What is the life that must be lived? We have to be quiet and listen to have a chance at answering these questions.
The attitude of mind that leads to the life that is ours to live is reflected in a new understanding of the Communion Table. Think of the life that is your life to live as the call of God, or God’s will for your life. We can’t do just anything and be in synch, be aligned, with the integrity of our life. We cannot live any old way and live th4 life that is ours to live. You are you! You are who you are! What does that mean, really? How does that translate into the decisions and actions that constitute your life? How does who you are interfere with your plans, and wishes, and dreams, and desires for yourself? How do we break faith with ourselves? In what ways do we transgress—fail to honor—the “law of God,” we might say, engraved in our hearts and souls?
In order to “repent,” I’m using the old terminology, and “be saved”—salvation actually means restoration, when we are saved, we are restored to ends worthy of us, to who we actually are!—in order to “repent” and “be saved,” we have to align ourselves with the integrity of our lives, and live the life that is ours to live. And that is where “the table of the Lord,” using the old terminology, comes into play.
What is “the word of the Lord,” using the old terminology (an updated phrase might be “the realization of who we are and what we are to be about”), that is always interfering with the life we have in mind? We have our sights set on what, exactly? What is it that we don’t do, that we leave undone, that we hold in contempt and throw in the burning barrel, in deference to the life we dream of living? What is the wish for ourselves that directs our living away from what is truly important? What is the desire that depletes our life? It is what we have in mind for ourselves that we have to “repent of,” that is, “turn away from,” in order to embrace the life that is ours to live.
We have to empty ourselves of our ideas of how things ought to be in order to be open to how things truly need to be. We have to start with nothing. If we cannot come empty to the table, we cannot be fed. The work of the spiritual journey is emptying ourselves of all that will not satisfy so that we might be fulfilled and made whole. So, the table represents, symbolizes, the fulfillment, the wholeness, that is available to us as we empty ourselves of our ideas of what our life ought to be, and are receptive and open to the life that is ours to live. Keep in mind that this might have nothing whatsoever to do with what we do for a living. How we earn our money has no necessary connection with the life that is ours to live, with what we must do to be alive, and whole, and well.
There is another way the table metaphor comes to life. What are the barriers to satisfaction? Anything is possible with everything on the table. What are you willing to put on the table? What are you unwilling to put on the table? What are the assumptions that you consider sacrosanct? The expectations you regard as holy and beyond examination? Put them on the table. What is your sense of how things ought to be? What is your sense of how things are? How close the “Is” and the “Ought To Be”? How much difference is there between the way you see things and the way things are? Put it all on the table. And step back, ready to receive the life the table has to offer. Your life. The life that is your life to live. Received in full “at the table of the Lord”—at the table with your name on it. At the table of your life.
Bearing that pain the way the pain should be borne is the key to managing life in the middle of the mixture. And, it is quite the art. Bearing legitimate pain appropriately is the foundation of the spiritual path, journey, task. The trick is to bear it honestly, truthfully. Not stoically, not heroically, not with a “stiff upper lip,” “just dealing with it,” “just getting throw it,” “just toughing it out”—and not nursing it, wallowing in it, allowing it to become the focal point of life, the core around which everything revolves and coalesces. Grieving what must be grieved, mourning what must be mourned, suffering what must be suffered, without perpetuating endlessly the suffering, is the art of bearing legitimate pain in appropriate ways. And that is the price of knowing what the next step needs to be.
Facing squarely the anguish of life in the middle of the mixture, in the midst of the mess, introduces us to the reality of the Mind/Body connection. Mind is knowing, awareness, on the most fundamental level. Brain is knowing intellectually, and it is also thinking about what we know on all levels. Brain is consciousness, conscious awareness. Brain is a receptor of mind, but brain is not mind. Mind is the whole thing, at least the whole living thing. Mind is from the beginning, at least from the beginning of life. Every living thing participates in mind, in cognition, in knowing. Every living thing knows, on some level, what is good for it, and what is not. We are aware, as a species, long before we are conscious of being aware. Life is mind. Mind is life. Everything that is alive, that participates in life, participates in mind, and is mind. Yet, mind only knows without knowing that it knows, or what, or how. Mind knows what it knows thanks to body.
Isn’t that interesting? That body is the pathway to mind? That knowing is visceral and physical before it is mental? WE are the Unknown Knower, or, at least, we house the rascal. And, it’s up to us to communicate with her, him, it. One of the tasks of knowing is knowing what we know. We know more than we know we know. And so, we have to listen. Eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that understands are open to a world beyond the obvious. Meditation is a method of making ourselves present with what is present with us. We “clear a space” and wait. We “seek the center” and wait. No forcing. No pushing. No pressing. Just waiting. And listening to our body.
What’s our body saying? How is it trying to get our attention? If our physical symptoms could speak, what would they say? Listen to them. Ask what they have to say, and listen! Our body is the pathway to mind, so we have to hear what our body is saying. To do that we have to practice listening on a regular basis. If you are ever going to listen to anybody, listen to your own body.
Listening to your body is the way to what needs to be done now. The only thing to know is what needs to be done now. What is the next step? What now? Now, what? But, this is a hard sell. We don’t think we can live like this. We think we have to think our way to knowing. We think we have to have a plan, the plan. We have to know what we want to happen and the steps required to make it happen. But, there is no, “If you do this, and then you do that, then that will happen.” There is only, “What needs to be done here and now? What is the next step?” There is no knowing where it will lead or what will be the result. There is only, “Now what? Now, what is the next step?”
It’s from the bottom up and inside out that the right things happen, not from the top down and outside in. We have to be aware of the organic nature of what needs to happen. We cannot anticipate that with years of careful planning, and impose it by decree upon the world. Forget the “if then therefore” scenarios, the contingency plans, the goals, and the strategy, and the tactics for achieving the goals. Simply listen to the situation. The answer will arise from the situation. The situation will show you what needs to happen. We dance with our lives.
What needs to happen in a situation will lie dormant until the conditions are right for its happening. It will wait until what is necessary to assist its happening appears, and then, the miracle. We are but assistants in the unfolding of our lives, here to help what needs to happen into being. Our calling is helping what needs to be helped with the help we have to offer. What needs to be done? What needs to happen? What needs to be different? How do we know: Watch, Look, Listen!
Of course, we get into situations all the time in which nothing can be done. When we miss doing what needs to be done, the karmatic law kicks in, and things spin in a chaotic, one might say, Faulkneresque, tangle of madness and pathos. But even there, redemption is possible, salvation is at hand. Far from stability, order is found, by listening for what needs to happen in the madness and pathos of existence. Nothing could be done in the madness and pathos of prisoner of war camps, yet, Victor Frankl is a witness to the power of sharing bread and blankets with those whose need is greater than our own.
What needs to happen here and now? Now, what? This question is always the primary question. We just do the next thing, the thing that needs to be done now, and see where it takes us. But, our idea of what needs to be done now will be influenced by ten thousand things, many of which have to do with our tastes, and interests, and values, and desires. Alcoholics are sure that the next thing is another beer. We can also experience a significant amount of conflict in the matter, thinking that dessert needs to be done next, and that weight gain doesn’t need to be done next. We are guided to the thing that needs to be done now by our notion of how things need to be, but that is influenced strongly by how we want things to be. We can want what we want with such vigor and passion that it can seem surely to be the next thing. Yet, the thing that truly needs doing can also trump our best interest and deepest desires, and lead us down paths we would never consider taking. There is no strategy for knowing what to do or having it made. So, how do we know what the next thing truly is?
After the fact. Sorry. Fooling ourselves is what we do best, you know. Shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best, you know. Talking ourselves into doing what we always wanted to do is what we do best, you know. So, whether what we think is truly the next thing is, actually, truly the next thing only becomes apparent with time. I should have bought the camera. I shouldn’t have bought the Toyota.
But, we can know that we may be wrong about what we know. The cultural bias is to live with our best interest at heart. Trading up requires us to think about where we are better off, and what we are giving up in exchange for what we are getting, and what is to our advantage. But, what do we truly need to live the life that is ours to live? This is not a question that we are ever invited to ask. What do we want? That’s the question that drives the economy. Abundance can be as detrimental as destitution. Whom does the grail serve? Those who serve the grail! What does it mean to serve the grail? What must we do to serve the grail? What is the grail that must be served? What is the life that must be lived? We have to be quiet and listen to have a chance at answering these questions.
The attitude of mind that leads to the life that is ours to live is reflected in a new understanding of the Communion Table. Think of the life that is your life to live as the call of God, or God’s will for your life. We can’t do just anything and be in synch, be aligned, with the integrity of our life. We cannot live any old way and live th4 life that is ours to live. You are you! You are who you are! What does that mean, really? How does that translate into the decisions and actions that constitute your life? How does who you are interfere with your plans, and wishes, and dreams, and desires for yourself? How do we break faith with ourselves? In what ways do we transgress—fail to honor—the “law of God,” we might say, engraved in our hearts and souls?
In order to “repent,” I’m using the old terminology, and “be saved”—salvation actually means restoration, when we are saved, we are restored to ends worthy of us, to who we actually are!—in order to “repent” and “be saved,” we have to align ourselves with the integrity of our lives, and live the life that is ours to live. And that is where “the table of the Lord,” using the old terminology, comes into play.
What is “the word of the Lord,” using the old terminology (an updated phrase might be “the realization of who we are and what we are to be about”), that is always interfering with the life we have in mind? We have our sights set on what, exactly? What is it that we don’t do, that we leave undone, that we hold in contempt and throw in the burning barrel, in deference to the life we dream of living? What is the wish for ourselves that directs our living away from what is truly important? What is the desire that depletes our life? It is what we have in mind for ourselves that we have to “repent of,” that is, “turn away from,” in order to embrace the life that is ours to live.
We have to empty ourselves of our ideas of how things ought to be in order to be open to how things truly need to be. We have to start with nothing. If we cannot come empty to the table, we cannot be fed. The work of the spiritual journey is emptying ourselves of all that will not satisfy so that we might be fulfilled and made whole. So, the table represents, symbolizes, the fulfillment, the wholeness, that is available to us as we empty ourselves of our ideas of what our life ought to be, and are receptive and open to the life that is ours to live. Keep in mind that this might have nothing whatsoever to do with what we do for a living. How we earn our money has no necessary connection with the life that is ours to live, with what we must do to be alive, and whole, and well.
There is another way the table metaphor comes to life. What are the barriers to satisfaction? Anything is possible with everything on the table. What are you willing to put on the table? What are you unwilling to put on the table? What are the assumptions that you consider sacrosanct? The expectations you regard as holy and beyond examination? Put them on the table. What is your sense of how things ought to be? What is your sense of how things are? How close the “Is” and the “Ought To Be”? How much difference is there between the way you see things and the way things are? Put it all on the table. And step back, ready to receive the life the table has to offer. Your life. The life that is your life to live. Received in full “at the table of the Lord”—at the table with your name on it. At the table of your life.
Monday, February 04, 2008
02/03/08, Sermon
There are transitions and reconfigurations without end. We never get it right for long. You’d think we might understand that by now, and be used to it. But, not. We yearn for long, really endless, stretches of peace without disruption. We don’t want to get out of our routine. We like things like we like them, and don’t want anything changing, and what we really need is help with the transitions.
“Here’s what’s happening. Here’s what I wish were happening instead. Here’s what I’m doing about it. Here’s how it’s working. Here’s how I’m having to change in response. And, here’s how I feel about it all.” This is called processing the impact of transitions, which is really processing the impact of life. We need people who can help us with this process, who can serve as reliable witnesses without offering short-cuts, or solutions, and without dismissing our anguish or discounting our ordeal.
Of course, we wouldn’t need them if we didn’t want things to be different than they are. If we didn’t have to have what we like, what we want, what we desire, we would have no problems with transitions and reconfigurations. We would have no problem with life. Ah, but, take away our likes, and wants, and desires, and we would be without direction or motivation and have no way of organizing our lives! Our lives are based upon, and build around, what we like, want and desire. We know of no other way to live. Getting our way is our way through the world. And so, we have to process the impact of our transitions and reconfigurations. To do that we need reliable witnesses. We need the right kind of company. That’s why these people can’t be your best friends. Your best friends are not the right kind of company.
I’m going to flash back to three or four weeks ago. I said then that this place cannot be your life—that you have to have a life of your own, a life that is a source of life for you apart from this place. This place has to be an aid, an assist, a help for you in living your life, but it cannot be your life. If you don’t have a life, this place will not—cannot—be good for you.
The work of soul, the spiritual journey, the spiritual quest is never anything more than finding and living your life, the life that is yours to live, the life that brings you to life, and infuses you with life, and makes you alive, The search for the Holy Grail is the search for life, your life. No one can give you that, can give you your life, the life that is yours to live. That is yours to work out for yourself. That is the hero’s journey, which isn’t complete until you return to the homeland and restore life to the people, basically by telling them they have to work it out for themselves.
Jesus came, remember, that we might have life and have it abundantly. We have been conditioned to think that he was talking about saving us by dying in our place on the cross and then getting us to heaven when we die. We think that heaven is the place of abundant life. Eternal life, we call it. We are so sure that’s how it is—because that’s how we have been told that it is for so long by so many people—that we don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to consider other possibilities. And, our lives are organized around what we want and don’t want.
We have to be at a crisis point in our lives before we can recognize that what we want isn’t the most important thing. Until then, we think that someone is crazy if they say what we want isn’t the most important thing. So, we have to hit the wall, either by not getting what we want, or by getting what we want. Either way, we wake up to the fact that what we want is not the most important thing. What we want has nothing to do with what needs to happen.
In the aftermath of being slammed, we can go right on doing what is important, as though nothing happened, because nothing happened. A tree falls into the stream and the stream flows right on, as though nothing happened, because nothing happened.
When we are aligned with the integrity of our own life, when we are living the life that is ours to live, nothing can take that from us. Then we are simply doing what needs to be done, the way we are capable of doing it, in the moment of our living, with the materials available then and there, out of the spontaneity of life living life, of life living us, and what needs to happen, happens. There, it isn’t a matter of wanting or not wanting, but of simply perceiving what truly needs to happen, and doing it—of knowing what is truly important, and doing it—in response to the situation that arises in the moment of our living.
Ah, but! Who can live like that for long? We can’t read the book to our child in the moment that needs to happen because we have to go to work to earn the money to buy the book for our child. We have to postpone our attention to what is truly important in deference to what is also truly important. What needs to be done has to be set aside in light of what also, what else, needs to be done. Our life, the life that is ours to live, has to be lived within the context and circumstances of life in the world. We cannot simply “eat when hungry, rest when tired.” We have to plan ahead so that there is something to eat when we are hungry, some place to rest when we are tired.
Life for us is more complicated than life for a stream. We are not a stream. When a tree falls on our house, or on our car, or on the road in front of our car, we have to stop what we are doing and take care of the tree. And, yet, we need the freedom to respond spontaneously to the moment of our living out of our sense of what needs to happen here and now, never mind the implications for then and there. We live on the boundary between the yin of spontaneity and the yang of responsibility, between the must and the ought.
When to do what? We make the call! We decide! We work it out! We live like a stream when that is appropriate, and we live like logical adults when that is appropriate, and we strive to live in the center of what is appropriate without striving, trying, making an effort, or even thinking about it.
The life that is ours to live unfolds and blooms precisely in the midst of the life that is being lived. We find the grail, not by looking for it, but by being ready when it appears. We spot the white rabbit, not by hunting for it with guns and hounds, but by being alert to it dancing on the outskirts of our peripheral vision. That’s why this place cannot be our life. This place is not our life. It isn’t even my life, and I make my living being here.
Our life is in addition to our duties and obligations and responsibilities. The stuff that we have to do isn’t what we really HAVE to do. What is that? We probably don’t know. We don’t think about it. And, when we do, we think the wrong things about it.
When we think about what we have to do, we think in terms of achievement, and accomplishment, and success. We think in terms of “making a difference,” whatever that means, and having something to show for our time and effort. What we HAVE to do has nothing to do with any of this. I HAVE to walk through scenes looking for photographs. Even if I didn’t have a camera, I would have to walk through scenes, looking for photographs. Someone else HAS to listen to music. Someone else HAS to work crossword puzzles. Nothing comes of any of it. Nothing, remember, is at the heart of life. We can’t live until we can live for nothing.
That’s why these people can’t be your best friends. These people have to be your sounding board. They are here to help you process your life, your experience with life, without protecting you from the struggle of coming to terms with the terms. Look at it this way: We hang out with people who do not challenge us in the least, and with whom we have “a lot in common.” They think like we do, believe like we do, have about as much money as we do, vote like we do, and spend their time doing things we like to do. When we get a divorce, all of our best friends are divorced. When we get drunk, our best friends are getting drunk with us. And, they are incapable of hearing us talk about things they don’t want to hear or cannot understand. They are our best friends. How healthy is that?
And, not to belabor the point, but, when we fall in love, we fall in love with our “soul mate.” We fall in love with someone who sees the world like we do, and we are as one, until we wake up one day wondering how we could have been so wrong. The point is that we look for oneness, for identification, for belonging, for merger. But what we need are people who can keep us on track, who can help us find the life that is ours to live and live it no matter how difficult and trying that may be. And, it will be difficult and trying. And best friends, and true loves, aren’t much help in the work of holding our feet to the fire and doing what needs to be done.
We have to process our lives and the impact living has on us, on our spirit, psyche, soul, self. We have to articulate the experience of life. We have to say what the problem is, specify what ails us, walk around it, examine it, explore it, experience it in order to transform it, integrate it, assimilate it and be whole, and well, and alive. We have to live consciously, with awareness, if we are to be alive in the life we are living.
“Here’s what’s happening. Here’s what I wish were happening instead. Here’s what I’m doing about it. Here’s how it’s working. Here’s how I’m having to change in response. And, here’s how I feel about it all.” This is called processing the impact of transitions, which is really processing the impact of life. We need people who can help us with this process, who can serve as reliable witnesses without offering short-cuts, or solutions, and without dismissing our anguish or discounting our ordeal.
Of course, we wouldn’t need them if we didn’t want things to be different than they are. If we didn’t have to have what we like, what we want, what we desire, we would have no problems with transitions and reconfigurations. We would have no problem with life. Ah, but, take away our likes, and wants, and desires, and we would be without direction or motivation and have no way of organizing our lives! Our lives are based upon, and build around, what we like, want and desire. We know of no other way to live. Getting our way is our way through the world. And so, we have to process the impact of our transitions and reconfigurations. To do that we need reliable witnesses. We need the right kind of company. That’s why these people can’t be your best friends. Your best friends are not the right kind of company.
I’m going to flash back to three or four weeks ago. I said then that this place cannot be your life—that you have to have a life of your own, a life that is a source of life for you apart from this place. This place has to be an aid, an assist, a help for you in living your life, but it cannot be your life. If you don’t have a life, this place will not—cannot—be good for you.
The work of soul, the spiritual journey, the spiritual quest is never anything more than finding and living your life, the life that is yours to live, the life that brings you to life, and infuses you with life, and makes you alive, The search for the Holy Grail is the search for life, your life. No one can give you that, can give you your life, the life that is yours to live. That is yours to work out for yourself. That is the hero’s journey, which isn’t complete until you return to the homeland and restore life to the people, basically by telling them they have to work it out for themselves.
Jesus came, remember, that we might have life and have it abundantly. We have been conditioned to think that he was talking about saving us by dying in our place on the cross and then getting us to heaven when we die. We think that heaven is the place of abundant life. Eternal life, we call it. We are so sure that’s how it is—because that’s how we have been told that it is for so long by so many people—that we don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to consider other possibilities. And, our lives are organized around what we want and don’t want.
We have to be at a crisis point in our lives before we can recognize that what we want isn’t the most important thing. Until then, we think that someone is crazy if they say what we want isn’t the most important thing. So, we have to hit the wall, either by not getting what we want, or by getting what we want. Either way, we wake up to the fact that what we want is not the most important thing. What we want has nothing to do with what needs to happen.
In the aftermath of being slammed, we can go right on doing what is important, as though nothing happened, because nothing happened. A tree falls into the stream and the stream flows right on, as though nothing happened, because nothing happened.
When we are aligned with the integrity of our own life, when we are living the life that is ours to live, nothing can take that from us. Then we are simply doing what needs to be done, the way we are capable of doing it, in the moment of our living, with the materials available then and there, out of the spontaneity of life living life, of life living us, and what needs to happen, happens. There, it isn’t a matter of wanting or not wanting, but of simply perceiving what truly needs to happen, and doing it—of knowing what is truly important, and doing it—in response to the situation that arises in the moment of our living.
Ah, but! Who can live like that for long? We can’t read the book to our child in the moment that needs to happen because we have to go to work to earn the money to buy the book for our child. We have to postpone our attention to what is truly important in deference to what is also truly important. What needs to be done has to be set aside in light of what also, what else, needs to be done. Our life, the life that is ours to live, has to be lived within the context and circumstances of life in the world. We cannot simply “eat when hungry, rest when tired.” We have to plan ahead so that there is something to eat when we are hungry, some place to rest when we are tired.
Life for us is more complicated than life for a stream. We are not a stream. When a tree falls on our house, or on our car, or on the road in front of our car, we have to stop what we are doing and take care of the tree. And, yet, we need the freedom to respond spontaneously to the moment of our living out of our sense of what needs to happen here and now, never mind the implications for then and there. We live on the boundary between the yin of spontaneity and the yang of responsibility, between the must and the ought.
When to do what? We make the call! We decide! We work it out! We live like a stream when that is appropriate, and we live like logical adults when that is appropriate, and we strive to live in the center of what is appropriate without striving, trying, making an effort, or even thinking about it.
The life that is ours to live unfolds and blooms precisely in the midst of the life that is being lived. We find the grail, not by looking for it, but by being ready when it appears. We spot the white rabbit, not by hunting for it with guns and hounds, but by being alert to it dancing on the outskirts of our peripheral vision. That’s why this place cannot be our life. This place is not our life. It isn’t even my life, and I make my living being here.
Our life is in addition to our duties and obligations and responsibilities. The stuff that we have to do isn’t what we really HAVE to do. What is that? We probably don’t know. We don’t think about it. And, when we do, we think the wrong things about it.
When we think about what we have to do, we think in terms of achievement, and accomplishment, and success. We think in terms of “making a difference,” whatever that means, and having something to show for our time and effort. What we HAVE to do has nothing to do with any of this. I HAVE to walk through scenes looking for photographs. Even if I didn’t have a camera, I would have to walk through scenes, looking for photographs. Someone else HAS to listen to music. Someone else HAS to work crossword puzzles. Nothing comes of any of it. Nothing, remember, is at the heart of life. We can’t live until we can live for nothing.
That’s why these people can’t be your best friends. These people have to be your sounding board. They are here to help you process your life, your experience with life, without protecting you from the struggle of coming to terms with the terms. Look at it this way: We hang out with people who do not challenge us in the least, and with whom we have “a lot in common.” They think like we do, believe like we do, have about as much money as we do, vote like we do, and spend their time doing things we like to do. When we get a divorce, all of our best friends are divorced. When we get drunk, our best friends are getting drunk with us. And, they are incapable of hearing us talk about things they don’t want to hear or cannot understand. They are our best friends. How healthy is that?
And, not to belabor the point, but, when we fall in love, we fall in love with our “soul mate.” We fall in love with someone who sees the world like we do, and we are as one, until we wake up one day wondering how we could have been so wrong. The point is that we look for oneness, for identification, for belonging, for merger. But what we need are people who can keep us on track, who can help us find the life that is ours to live and live it no matter how difficult and trying that may be. And, it will be difficult and trying. And best friends, and true loves, aren’t much help in the work of holding our feet to the fire and doing what needs to be done.
We have to process our lives and the impact living has on us, on our spirit, psyche, soul, self. We have to articulate the experience of life. We have to say what the problem is, specify what ails us, walk around it, examine it, explore it, experience it in order to transform it, integrate it, assimilate it and be whole, and well, and alive. We have to live consciously, with awareness, if we are to be alive in the life we are living.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
01/27/08, Sermon
We want to be alive on our terms, yet, we do not dictate the terms. Coming to terms with the terms is the primary task of life in the world. The great spiritual work is putting our self, our spirit, our psyche, into accord with the realities that limit and determine our existence.
The world is not the way we would like for it to be. The world is not the way we would draw it up. No one thinks things are just fine as they are. “Life isn’t fair.” How many of us would design a world in which “life isn’t fair”? The Old Testament is replete with descriptions of the dream world, the land of promise. It’s a land flowing with milk and honey. It’s a place where the lion lies down with the lamb, and the bear eats straw like the ox. It’s a place where spears are beaten into pruning hooks, and swords are melted into plow-shares. It’s a place where people live out their lives to a ripe old age in peace, and justice prevails. Where they build homes and live in them, plant vineyards and enjoy their produce. But, this place is not that place. And, we have to square ourselves up to that ever-present fact.
This place is not the place we want it to be. How can we live here, hating it? How can we sing the Lord‘s song in THIS land? How can we live here, longing for what we cannot have? The task that is before us in every generation, every age, is that of taking up the work of spiritual practice to put us into accord with the unacceptable realities. And, this work is the point of demarcation between good religion and bad.
Bad religion tells us that if we just do this in this way, that will happen and we will like it—that if we make God happy, God will put the unacceptable realities into accord with us, with our wishes, dreams and desires. Bad religion tells us that we can have what we want and live happily protected in an invisible shield God, or the Universe, places around us as a favor to us for living the right way. God will set us high on a rock, you know, and we will be immune to all of the pitfalls, and disasters, and disappointments that befall the heathens and non-believers.
What we have to believe and how we have to act is different with each bad religion, but each bad religion promises prosperity and wealth and happiness (That land flowing with milk and honey, you know), if we identify ourselves with its precepts, and become true believers and faithful doers. It may be the Law of Attraction, or the Ten Commandments, or the Prayer of Jabez, or the atoning death and resurrection of God’s Only Son Jesus Christ Our Lord, but if we believe, if we really believe, and live lives commensurate with our beliefs, the heavens will open and the goodies will be delivered to our door. Give to the god and the god will give to us. Getting what we want is just a matter of knowing the right hoops to jump through. The story is different with good religion.
Good religion knows it isn’t about getting what we want. This, too, is part of the Biblical record. Moses doesn’t get to the Promised Land. The Suffering Servant hands himself over to those who ridicule him and pull out his beard—yet, upon him is the chastisement that is ours to bear, and his are our healing, one might say awakening, wounds. The prophets are beaten and stoned, and Jesus, in his blamelessness and purity, is condemned and crucified, and tells us that if we would be his disciples we have to give up everything, take up our cross, and follow him. Good things do not necessarily accrue to those who are good and do good. And good things cannot be our goal. We aren’t in it for what we get out of it.
We are here to do what is ours to do, to live the life that is ours to live, to align ourselves with the integrity of our own lives, to do what truly needs to be done. We cannot do that with an eye out for what is in it for us. We cannot do that thinking of our advantage, and advancing our interest, and caring about what we receive for our efforts. The great spiritual work is to live as those who have nothing to lose with everything on the line.
It is not about getting what we want, it is about not wanting. It is about not letting what we have or don’t have get in the way of living the lives that are ours to live, of doing what is ours to do, of doing what needs to be done in the moment of our living, regardless of the implications for us, our interest, our lives. But, wait a minute.
Who are we kidding? Self-preservation is the Law of the Jungle. Taking care of Number One is what got us where we are today. We can’t just lay aside millions of years of evolutionary tradition and pretend that someone else’s interest is more important than our own. We ARE in this for what we can get out of it! Why else would we put up with what we put up with? And here we find the spiritual turning point of our lives, of existence. This is exactly the crux of the matter. What will we care about?
Everything hinges on our caring about living the life that is ours to live. “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” “Thy will, not mine, be done.” We have to understand “the one who sent me,” and “his work,” and “Thy will,” to be the life that is ours to live—the integrity of our own life—which exists beyond the life we have in mind for ourselves, the life we want, and desire, and dream of. If we sacrifice, or hand over, or ignore, that life—the life that is truly our life to live—for the sake of the glass beads and silver mirrors the world offers to us in the name of life, we will enter the Wasteland and die the death of the living dead.
But, if we remain true to ourselves, our calling, and sacrifice everything, hand over everything, and take up the cross of living the life with our name on it, no matter what, we will enter the Land of Promise, and know the joy of the good and faithful servants, which is exactly the joy of having done what is theirs to do. In this comes to pass Jesus’ words that those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives in the service of their calling will find them. In being true to ourselves we have to lay self interest aside, for the sake of being true to ourselves and doing what is ours to do in the moment of our living.
Who do you know who lives like that? Who puts self-interest aside in the service of the needs of the moment? The right kind of parents do it with their children, at least until their children are out and on their own. Employees sometimes do it for the sake of their business. We stumble across examples from time to time, of people who lay aside self-interest in the service of the needs of the moment. Firefighters enter burning buildings to save lives. Soldiers risk their lives to help their comrades. It happens, here and there, in spurts and splashes. But it is not a way of life. It is an exception, not the rule.
The rule is that we are ruled by our interests. And, that is also the rub. We set our interests aside occasionally, but then, we pick them back up. “When it is my turn? What’s in this for me? What am I getting out of all this? Why am I doing this? What’s the payoff? When do we start having fun?” The questions underscore the fact that our motivation for living is what we get out of being alive. We don’t do anything for nothing very long.
Yet, nothing is the heart of the matter. We have to have nothing to lose with everything on the line. If we are going to believe in anything, we need to believe in nothing—not as the absence of everything, but as the eternal and infinite power to create and transform, heal, restore, redeem and make whole. Nothing is the origin of all that is. How can we believe in anything if we don’t believe in nothing?
What do we have to gain? Nothing! What do we have to lose? Nothing! What are we good for? Nothing! What are we getting out of it? Nothing! Upon what does the quality of our lives depend? Nothing! This is the realization of Jesus during his temptations in the wilderness, and it is the realization of the Buddha under the Bo Tree.
We are here, with this life to live, as only we can live it, and everything rides on our doing it for nothing. We are here in this moment, with what needs to happen here and now, and everything rides on our doing what needs to be done the way it needs to be done as only we can perceive it and do it. We aren’t here to do what someone else says needs doing, what society, or the culture, or our parents, or the church says needs doing. We are here to do what we perceive to truly need doing in the moment of our living, to respond to the need that we see arising out of the situation in which we find ourselves. What needs to happen now? What is the next step here? Our task is to answer those questions for ourselves out of the integrity of our own being, and to do it for nothing, as an expression of who we are in the world—“Thy will, not mine, be done!”—not caring whether we receive anything from the world for being who we are and doing what is ours to do.
The world is not the way we would like for it to be. The world is not the way we would draw it up. No one thinks things are just fine as they are. “Life isn’t fair.” How many of us would design a world in which “life isn’t fair”? The Old Testament is replete with descriptions of the dream world, the land of promise. It’s a land flowing with milk and honey. It’s a place where the lion lies down with the lamb, and the bear eats straw like the ox. It’s a place where spears are beaten into pruning hooks, and swords are melted into plow-shares. It’s a place where people live out their lives to a ripe old age in peace, and justice prevails. Where they build homes and live in them, plant vineyards and enjoy their produce. But, this place is not that place. And, we have to square ourselves up to that ever-present fact.
This place is not the place we want it to be. How can we live here, hating it? How can we sing the Lord‘s song in THIS land? How can we live here, longing for what we cannot have? The task that is before us in every generation, every age, is that of taking up the work of spiritual practice to put us into accord with the unacceptable realities. And, this work is the point of demarcation between good religion and bad.
Bad religion tells us that if we just do this in this way, that will happen and we will like it—that if we make God happy, God will put the unacceptable realities into accord with us, with our wishes, dreams and desires. Bad religion tells us that we can have what we want and live happily protected in an invisible shield God, or the Universe, places around us as a favor to us for living the right way. God will set us high on a rock, you know, and we will be immune to all of the pitfalls, and disasters, and disappointments that befall the heathens and non-believers.
What we have to believe and how we have to act is different with each bad religion, but each bad religion promises prosperity and wealth and happiness (That land flowing with milk and honey, you know), if we identify ourselves with its precepts, and become true believers and faithful doers. It may be the Law of Attraction, or the Ten Commandments, or the Prayer of Jabez, or the atoning death and resurrection of God’s Only Son Jesus Christ Our Lord, but if we believe, if we really believe, and live lives commensurate with our beliefs, the heavens will open and the goodies will be delivered to our door. Give to the god and the god will give to us. Getting what we want is just a matter of knowing the right hoops to jump through. The story is different with good religion.
Good religion knows it isn’t about getting what we want. This, too, is part of the Biblical record. Moses doesn’t get to the Promised Land. The Suffering Servant hands himself over to those who ridicule him and pull out his beard—yet, upon him is the chastisement that is ours to bear, and his are our healing, one might say awakening, wounds. The prophets are beaten and stoned, and Jesus, in his blamelessness and purity, is condemned and crucified, and tells us that if we would be his disciples we have to give up everything, take up our cross, and follow him. Good things do not necessarily accrue to those who are good and do good. And good things cannot be our goal. We aren’t in it for what we get out of it.
We are here to do what is ours to do, to live the life that is ours to live, to align ourselves with the integrity of our own lives, to do what truly needs to be done. We cannot do that with an eye out for what is in it for us. We cannot do that thinking of our advantage, and advancing our interest, and caring about what we receive for our efforts. The great spiritual work is to live as those who have nothing to lose with everything on the line.
It is not about getting what we want, it is about not wanting. It is about not letting what we have or don’t have get in the way of living the lives that are ours to live, of doing what is ours to do, of doing what needs to be done in the moment of our living, regardless of the implications for us, our interest, our lives. But, wait a minute.
Who are we kidding? Self-preservation is the Law of the Jungle. Taking care of Number One is what got us where we are today. We can’t just lay aside millions of years of evolutionary tradition and pretend that someone else’s interest is more important than our own. We ARE in this for what we can get out of it! Why else would we put up with what we put up with? And here we find the spiritual turning point of our lives, of existence. This is exactly the crux of the matter. What will we care about?
Everything hinges on our caring about living the life that is ours to live. “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” “Thy will, not mine, be done.” We have to understand “the one who sent me,” and “his work,” and “Thy will,” to be the life that is ours to live—the integrity of our own life—which exists beyond the life we have in mind for ourselves, the life we want, and desire, and dream of. If we sacrifice, or hand over, or ignore, that life—the life that is truly our life to live—for the sake of the glass beads and silver mirrors the world offers to us in the name of life, we will enter the Wasteland and die the death of the living dead.
But, if we remain true to ourselves, our calling, and sacrifice everything, hand over everything, and take up the cross of living the life with our name on it, no matter what, we will enter the Land of Promise, and know the joy of the good and faithful servants, which is exactly the joy of having done what is theirs to do. In this comes to pass Jesus’ words that those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives in the service of their calling will find them. In being true to ourselves we have to lay self interest aside, for the sake of being true to ourselves and doing what is ours to do in the moment of our living.
Who do you know who lives like that? Who puts self-interest aside in the service of the needs of the moment? The right kind of parents do it with their children, at least until their children are out and on their own. Employees sometimes do it for the sake of their business. We stumble across examples from time to time, of people who lay aside self-interest in the service of the needs of the moment. Firefighters enter burning buildings to save lives. Soldiers risk their lives to help their comrades. It happens, here and there, in spurts and splashes. But it is not a way of life. It is an exception, not the rule.
The rule is that we are ruled by our interests. And, that is also the rub. We set our interests aside occasionally, but then, we pick them back up. “When it is my turn? What’s in this for me? What am I getting out of all this? Why am I doing this? What’s the payoff? When do we start having fun?” The questions underscore the fact that our motivation for living is what we get out of being alive. We don’t do anything for nothing very long.
Yet, nothing is the heart of the matter. We have to have nothing to lose with everything on the line. If we are going to believe in anything, we need to believe in nothing—not as the absence of everything, but as the eternal and infinite power to create and transform, heal, restore, redeem and make whole. Nothing is the origin of all that is. How can we believe in anything if we don’t believe in nothing?
What do we have to gain? Nothing! What do we have to lose? Nothing! What are we good for? Nothing! What are we getting out of it? Nothing! Upon what does the quality of our lives depend? Nothing! This is the realization of Jesus during his temptations in the wilderness, and it is the realization of the Buddha under the Bo Tree.
We are here, with this life to live, as only we can live it, and everything rides on our doing it for nothing. We are here in this moment, with what needs to happen here and now, and everything rides on our doing what needs to be done the way it needs to be done as only we can perceive it and do it. We aren’t here to do what someone else says needs doing, what society, or the culture, or our parents, or the church says needs doing. We are here to do what we perceive to truly need doing in the moment of our living, to respond to the need that we see arising out of the situation in which we find ourselves. What needs to happen now? What is the next step here? Our task is to answer those questions for ourselves out of the integrity of our own being, and to do it for nothing, as an expression of who we are in the world—“Thy will, not mine, be done!”—not caring whether we receive anything from the world for being who we are and doing what is ours to do.
Monday, January 21, 2008
01/20/08, Sermon
The Messiah is a White Rabbit. The Messiah always comes as a White Rabbit. We miss the arrival by looking for the wrong thing, by discounting, dismissing, the Rabbit Hole and waiting, instead, for the heavens to be torn apart and the angelic chorus to announce the obvious. The Way is not obvious. We never know what is going to lead to life, or where life is to be found. What we think we know about the truth keeps us from knowing the truth.
Our place is not to wait for deliverance, for rescue, for salvation by the Messiah (the Prince of Peace, mind you) leading the armed legions of God into a cataclysmic battle with the forces of Satan for control of the earth. Our place is to simply watch for the White Rabbit, hoping to catch a glimpse out of the corner of our eye. To wait for the chance encounter, the misstep, the blunder that will transform our lives and open us to the life that is our life to live.
We have to entertain our urges, inclinations, nudges and notions, invite them in, sit with them for a while to see if there might be something to them. When I drive by scenes at 35 or 60 miles an hour, sometimes something catches my eye, an arrangement of fences and hillsides and flowers, perhaps, or a barn and a cow, and I have to turn around and drive back to check it out. Most of my “check outs” result in “No,” and I resume my journey, but there have been a number of “yes’s” that are among my favorite photos. “All that glimmers is not gold,” goes the old saying, but gold does glimmer, and we have to look closely to know whether the glimmering thing is, or isn’t, what we seek.
So, we have to look into the things we think might be the thing for us. We have to try them on, go with them for a walk around the block, make a test run, take a chance, find out. We have to find out. Discover for ourselves what is “Yes,” and what is “No.” No one else can tell us that. We can’t tell by thinking about it. We have to take a bite to know.
We pile all our urges, inclinations, nudges and notions on the table, and wait for one or two to emerge from the pile. The one or two with the most life about them, the most power to attract. The one or two that won’t go away, that keep coming back, popping up, saying, “Come, follow me.” And, we go follow them. But, it isn’t that easy. It isn’t just a matter of running after the latest thing we have to have, or do, joining this circus, throwing away this spouse for that one, embracing sweat lodges and vision quests until we find the life that we have in mind for ourselves, the one that is just perfect, the one we are sure is out there somewhere. This is the thing about White Rabbits, we can’t be looking for them. They have to surprise us, and step unbeckoned into our lives.
And, in following them, we have to balance, integrate, the needs of inner and outer. We have to feed our bodies and feed our souls. We have to do what we love and pay the bills. This is what makes it so hard, and it is not the only thing. There are two rules. Rule number one is Don’t Do What You Are Told! This means don’t follow orders. Don’t obey rules. Don’t allow society, our your parents, or the church, to lay out the black foot prints which you step carefully into and call that being alive. Say “No!” to all those would direct, and orchestrate, and choreograph your life, and take the risks involved with finding your own way, listening to your own heart, following your own path, living your own life, and doing what you know you must do out of the spontaneity of your being aligned with the integrity of your life in the moment of your living. This is the first rule. And, the first rule is complicated by the fact that we LIVE in this society! And we have to live on society’s terms. And do what we are told. See, told you it was going to be hard.
The second rule is this: Don’t be imprudent! Don’t be stupid! This means, don’t think you can get by with doing whatever you feel like doing. Don’t think you can ignore the feelings and interests of others. Don’t think other people are here to serve you, and dote on you, and fluff your pillows and bring you peeled grapes in silver bowls. This is your LIFE we are talking about. You cannot play fast and loose with your LIFE! It MATTERS what you do, and how, and when, and where, and with whom you do it. Brittney Spears and all the little starlit divas are wonderful examples of how not to live your life, of how to waste your life, of how to throw life away.
There are two points of entry to the Wasteland, to the land of the living dead. One is by following orders and doing what you are told, and never having a single though of your own, and never following an urge, or an impulse, or a notion, and never looking up when the White Rabbit comes your way, and never lifting your eyes from the service of what you are supposed to do to catch a glimpse of what truly must be done, and you miss it, what is yours to do, what is life itself for you, what is your life.
The other point of entry to the Wasteland is always doing what you feel like doing, when you feel like doing it, for as long as you feel like doing it, and then doing the next thing you feel like doing, and never doing anything past the point of fun, never following any path into the drudgery and boredom of the same old same old, always looking for the glitz and glamour and pizzazz of the latest fad, the newest gimmick, the hottest and best place to be, and never feeling anything you don’t want to feel or being anywhere you don’t want to be.
At this point of entry, we go running off in all directions at once: “Oh, there’s a pretty thing, no, there’s one, no, there it is over there!” We are always better off somewhere else. Where are we going to be, is the question. We would always have more fun doing something else. What are we going to do, is the question. We don’t want to make any choices that will limit our choices. We want an endless list of infinite possibilities, with no limits, no boundaries, no consequences, no conditions, and certainly no responsibilities and duties.
Yet, we must not wait for validation, for confirmation, for someone to tell us what to do. We have to act on the compelling notion, against all odds. Step into the unknown, follow the White Rabbit, with no idea of where you are going, or what you are doing, or caring what your chances are. Don’t do what you are told, and, don’t act imprudently. That’s the split that will heal your soul, restore your life, and align you with the integrity of your being. What does it take to pay the bills? Do it! What does it take to follow the White Rabbit? Do it! Live in the dichotomy that brings you to life—that brings life to life!
Living the right kind of life has nothing to do with obeying the Ten Commandments and walking the straight and narrow as the straight and narrow is generally conceived. We have always thought of the Straight and Narrow in terms of moral rectitude, purity of thought and deed, goodness of motive and action, keeping the commandments and the codes of conduct that everyone knows to be right, being always a shinning example and a Straight Arrow. It’s time to re-think the concept.
The Straight and Narrow exists as the path on the boundary between yin and yang, between excess and destitution, between submission to authority and whimsical imprudence, where a misstep can be the end of us, or our golden beginning. The Straight and Narrow is the fine balance, the thin line, between the opposites, the contraries, which have to be honored and held in “creative tension” with each other. We have to pay the bills AND we have to do what brings us alive. Doing what pays the bills doesn’t often do that, so we have to find room in our lives for that which does. We have to do what we want to do even when we don’t want to do it. We have to be hard or soft as the situation requires. We have to be clear and unequivocal about the importance of the right kind of ambivalence. The list goes on.
Life is found, and lived, between the hands: On the one hand, this. On the other hand, that. And, we have to decide anew in each moment what to do here and now, with no manual to follow and no policies to protect us. What does life require? We wait for the answer to arise within the situation that requires an answer. We make a decision, and in deciding, we walk the straight and narrow line between opposites, between contraries, and take our chances.
The Straight and Narrow has nothing to do with moral goodness. It has to do entirely with living on the boundary between yin and yang—with walking the ever so thin line between blind obedience and reckless imprudence. Living the life that is ours to live requires us to know what needs to be done and do it. How do we know? We know out of our own authority, out of our own spontaneity of being in the moment of our living. No one can tell us and we can’t just do what we feel like doing—we can’t just run from what needs to be done because we don’t want to do it, or because we aspire to greater and more worthy things. We cannot live obediently or imprudently. That is the anguish of the Straight and Narrow.
And, what if we are wrong about what needs doing, as we often will be? Well, then we do what needs doing in that moment. Get it? If so, you’ve got it. That’s absolutely all there is to it. You are the wizard, the Buddha, the Christ. Go live the life that is yours to live by doing what needs to be done in the moment of your living, out of your own authority, out of your own spontaneity of being which arises from the context and circumstances of the moment of your living. Are we going to say yes or no to the life that is our life to live? Are we going to say yes or no to the adventure that has our name on it? When it doesn’t seem like much of an adventure? When it just asks us to do the ordinary things of life? With nothing in it about shinning armor, or magic rings, or evil wizards out to destroy the world? Are we going to follow the White Rabbit, or not?
Sometimes, the thing that needs to be done now makes no sense now. Sometimes, the thing that needs to be done now is to practice throwing rocks with our sling, with no thought of Goliath in mind. Practice, preparation, is playing with stones and tiny targets, just because that’s what needs to be done, though no one would think so. This makes knowing what needs to be done a matter of great discernment. It takes a wise eye to see what needs to be done, and a courageous heart to do it, particularly when no one else might agree about the importance of the thing and doing it. And, it brings into bold relief the burden of the Way of Life (which is the way of living the life that is our life to live).
The Ordeal is whatever stands between us and the life that is ours to live, whatever we have to go through to live the life that is ours to live. It could be dragons and trolls and Darth Vader and Flesh Eaters. It could be people laughing at us for slinging stones at tiny targets. And it could be our own ideas of the life we want to live. There is one exit from the Wasteland, from the land of the living dead, to the Land of Promise, the land of milk and honey, the land of the life that is truly our life to live. At the threshold between death and life we have to hand over the life we have in mind. And step into the utterly unknown.
Our place is not to wait for deliverance, for rescue, for salvation by the Messiah (the Prince of Peace, mind you) leading the armed legions of God into a cataclysmic battle with the forces of Satan for control of the earth. Our place is to simply watch for the White Rabbit, hoping to catch a glimpse out of the corner of our eye. To wait for the chance encounter, the misstep, the blunder that will transform our lives and open us to the life that is our life to live.
We have to entertain our urges, inclinations, nudges and notions, invite them in, sit with them for a while to see if there might be something to them. When I drive by scenes at 35 or 60 miles an hour, sometimes something catches my eye, an arrangement of fences and hillsides and flowers, perhaps, or a barn and a cow, and I have to turn around and drive back to check it out. Most of my “check outs” result in “No,” and I resume my journey, but there have been a number of “yes’s” that are among my favorite photos. “All that glimmers is not gold,” goes the old saying, but gold does glimmer, and we have to look closely to know whether the glimmering thing is, or isn’t, what we seek.
So, we have to look into the things we think might be the thing for us. We have to try them on, go with them for a walk around the block, make a test run, take a chance, find out. We have to find out. Discover for ourselves what is “Yes,” and what is “No.” No one else can tell us that. We can’t tell by thinking about it. We have to take a bite to know.
We pile all our urges, inclinations, nudges and notions on the table, and wait for one or two to emerge from the pile. The one or two with the most life about them, the most power to attract. The one or two that won’t go away, that keep coming back, popping up, saying, “Come, follow me.” And, we go follow them. But, it isn’t that easy. It isn’t just a matter of running after the latest thing we have to have, or do, joining this circus, throwing away this spouse for that one, embracing sweat lodges and vision quests until we find the life that we have in mind for ourselves, the one that is just perfect, the one we are sure is out there somewhere. This is the thing about White Rabbits, we can’t be looking for them. They have to surprise us, and step unbeckoned into our lives.
And, in following them, we have to balance, integrate, the needs of inner and outer. We have to feed our bodies and feed our souls. We have to do what we love and pay the bills. This is what makes it so hard, and it is not the only thing. There are two rules. Rule number one is Don’t Do What You Are Told! This means don’t follow orders. Don’t obey rules. Don’t allow society, our your parents, or the church, to lay out the black foot prints which you step carefully into and call that being alive. Say “No!” to all those would direct, and orchestrate, and choreograph your life, and take the risks involved with finding your own way, listening to your own heart, following your own path, living your own life, and doing what you know you must do out of the spontaneity of your being aligned with the integrity of your life in the moment of your living. This is the first rule. And, the first rule is complicated by the fact that we LIVE in this society! And we have to live on society’s terms. And do what we are told. See, told you it was going to be hard.
The second rule is this: Don’t be imprudent! Don’t be stupid! This means, don’t think you can get by with doing whatever you feel like doing. Don’t think you can ignore the feelings and interests of others. Don’t think other people are here to serve you, and dote on you, and fluff your pillows and bring you peeled grapes in silver bowls. This is your LIFE we are talking about. You cannot play fast and loose with your LIFE! It MATTERS what you do, and how, and when, and where, and with whom you do it. Brittney Spears and all the little starlit divas are wonderful examples of how not to live your life, of how to waste your life, of how to throw life away.
There are two points of entry to the Wasteland, to the land of the living dead. One is by following orders and doing what you are told, and never having a single though of your own, and never following an urge, or an impulse, or a notion, and never looking up when the White Rabbit comes your way, and never lifting your eyes from the service of what you are supposed to do to catch a glimpse of what truly must be done, and you miss it, what is yours to do, what is life itself for you, what is your life.
The other point of entry to the Wasteland is always doing what you feel like doing, when you feel like doing it, for as long as you feel like doing it, and then doing the next thing you feel like doing, and never doing anything past the point of fun, never following any path into the drudgery and boredom of the same old same old, always looking for the glitz and glamour and pizzazz of the latest fad, the newest gimmick, the hottest and best place to be, and never feeling anything you don’t want to feel or being anywhere you don’t want to be.
At this point of entry, we go running off in all directions at once: “Oh, there’s a pretty thing, no, there’s one, no, there it is over there!” We are always better off somewhere else. Where are we going to be, is the question. We would always have more fun doing something else. What are we going to do, is the question. We don’t want to make any choices that will limit our choices. We want an endless list of infinite possibilities, with no limits, no boundaries, no consequences, no conditions, and certainly no responsibilities and duties.
Yet, we must not wait for validation, for confirmation, for someone to tell us what to do. We have to act on the compelling notion, against all odds. Step into the unknown, follow the White Rabbit, with no idea of where you are going, or what you are doing, or caring what your chances are. Don’t do what you are told, and, don’t act imprudently. That’s the split that will heal your soul, restore your life, and align you with the integrity of your being. What does it take to pay the bills? Do it! What does it take to follow the White Rabbit? Do it! Live in the dichotomy that brings you to life—that brings life to life!
Living the right kind of life has nothing to do with obeying the Ten Commandments and walking the straight and narrow as the straight and narrow is generally conceived. We have always thought of the Straight and Narrow in terms of moral rectitude, purity of thought and deed, goodness of motive and action, keeping the commandments and the codes of conduct that everyone knows to be right, being always a shinning example and a Straight Arrow. It’s time to re-think the concept.
The Straight and Narrow exists as the path on the boundary between yin and yang, between excess and destitution, between submission to authority and whimsical imprudence, where a misstep can be the end of us, or our golden beginning. The Straight and Narrow is the fine balance, the thin line, between the opposites, the contraries, which have to be honored and held in “creative tension” with each other. We have to pay the bills AND we have to do what brings us alive. Doing what pays the bills doesn’t often do that, so we have to find room in our lives for that which does. We have to do what we want to do even when we don’t want to do it. We have to be hard or soft as the situation requires. We have to be clear and unequivocal about the importance of the right kind of ambivalence. The list goes on.
Life is found, and lived, between the hands: On the one hand, this. On the other hand, that. And, we have to decide anew in each moment what to do here and now, with no manual to follow and no policies to protect us. What does life require? We wait for the answer to arise within the situation that requires an answer. We make a decision, and in deciding, we walk the straight and narrow line between opposites, between contraries, and take our chances.
The Straight and Narrow has nothing to do with moral goodness. It has to do entirely with living on the boundary between yin and yang—with walking the ever so thin line between blind obedience and reckless imprudence. Living the life that is ours to live requires us to know what needs to be done and do it. How do we know? We know out of our own authority, out of our own spontaneity of being in the moment of our living. No one can tell us and we can’t just do what we feel like doing—we can’t just run from what needs to be done because we don’t want to do it, or because we aspire to greater and more worthy things. We cannot live obediently or imprudently. That is the anguish of the Straight and Narrow.
And, what if we are wrong about what needs doing, as we often will be? Well, then we do what needs doing in that moment. Get it? If so, you’ve got it. That’s absolutely all there is to it. You are the wizard, the Buddha, the Christ. Go live the life that is yours to live by doing what needs to be done in the moment of your living, out of your own authority, out of your own spontaneity of being which arises from the context and circumstances of the moment of your living. Are we going to say yes or no to the life that is our life to live? Are we going to say yes or no to the adventure that has our name on it? When it doesn’t seem like much of an adventure? When it just asks us to do the ordinary things of life? With nothing in it about shinning armor, or magic rings, or evil wizards out to destroy the world? Are we going to follow the White Rabbit, or not?
Sometimes, the thing that needs to be done now makes no sense now. Sometimes, the thing that needs to be done now is to practice throwing rocks with our sling, with no thought of Goliath in mind. Practice, preparation, is playing with stones and tiny targets, just because that’s what needs to be done, though no one would think so. This makes knowing what needs to be done a matter of great discernment. It takes a wise eye to see what needs to be done, and a courageous heart to do it, particularly when no one else might agree about the importance of the thing and doing it. And, it brings into bold relief the burden of the Way of Life (which is the way of living the life that is our life to live).
The Ordeal is whatever stands between us and the life that is ours to live, whatever we have to go through to live the life that is ours to live. It could be dragons and trolls and Darth Vader and Flesh Eaters. It could be people laughing at us for slinging stones at tiny targets. And it could be our own ideas of the life we want to live. There is one exit from the Wasteland, from the land of the living dead, to the Land of Promise, the land of milk and honey, the land of the life that is truly our life to live. At the threshold between death and life we have to hand over the life we have in mind. And step into the utterly unknown.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
01/13/08, Sermon
Articulate the agony! Consciously, willingly, submit to the ordeal! Bear the pain! That’s the path to life, and living, and being alive! It’s certainly the path to wisdom: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” -- Aeschylus
We cannot be alive without embracing the fullness of life. We have to open ourselves to the whole thing, feeling what can be felt, touching what can be touched, seeing what can be seen, hearing what can be heard, tasting what can be tasted, so that we might know what can be known—so that we might live the life that is ours to live!
In doing this, we have to re-think thinking. Thinking about our agony is not experiencing our agony. It is distancing ourselves from in and a way that renders us almost immune to it. I say almost because what isn’t experiences is buried, goes underground, where it rots and ferments and stinks like death itself, and is death and we die because we would avoid the pain of being alive, which is also like dying. We die one way or the other. In living we die, in dying, we live.
What kind of death will we die is the question. Will we summons the courage to face our life head on? Will we look our life in the eye? Will we articulate the agony? Consciously, willingly, submit to the ordeal? Bear the pain? Or, will we look away, run away, hide out, deny, deny, deny? Will we dismiss the pain because it is so much less than other people have to deal with? Will we numb ourselves with steady doses of cultural Novocain and repeat hypnotically, “There is a reason for everything,” “God doesn’t give us more than we can bear,” “Something good comes from something bad,” “Don’t question things we can’t understand”? Will we change the subject and not say what we have lost? Because we are afraid that if we start feeling the agony, experiencing the pain, WE will be lost?
There is nothing like the traumatic encounter with pain, grief, loss and sorrow to blur the line between sanity and insanity. In the sane world there is a process and a routine and a structure for everything. You stop on red and go on green. And there are rules governing everything, keeping it all in place. Our daily life in the sane world is scripted to at “T” and runs right along on schedule: “Good morning. How are you?” “Just fine. How are you?” “Have a good day.” “You, too.” We all know what to say, and when, and how to say it.
Then comes the slammer. The sane world is shattered by that which obeys no rules. The tsunami, the hurricane, the wildfire, the drought, the war, the heart attack, the car wreck, the fall… And life is destroyed for all who survive. And insanity—that is, disturbance, disorientation, upheaval, instability, confusion, and the inability to trust ourselves to our own future, to our own life—reins. Nothing makes sense. The traumatic encounter exposes the shallow banter of the sane world as completely insane. Where is sanity to be found then? Where do we go to be grounded, balanced, stabilized and safe then?
We do not know. We get by by denying that we know what we know, by wishing that “we didn’t know now what we didn’t know then” (Bob Seger). By pretending we don’t know what we know. By looking away. Running away. Hiding out. Denying, denying, denying. Hoping that they will keep making whiskey, and anti-depressants, and our favorite distractions and diversions. What are we afraid of? Not being able to function? We are already not functioning. Ah, but, maybe no one notices. We at least get out of bed and drag ourselves through the day in order to pay the bills. We do that much. And, we are afraid we won’t do any of it if we admit how little sense it makes working to sustain a life that is as shaky, and vulnerable, and unstable, and insubstantial, and insane as life actually is.
When the foundation crumbles, what grounds us? Around what do we coalesce when the traumatic shockwaves destroy our world? What is the heart of our life? What forms the core of our existence? In what do we trust? What is the content of our faith? What enables us to pick ourselves up and go on in the spirit, with the attitude, manner and style, of those who go on with purpose, and hope, and joy, and life? What do we believe in, know to be true, that enables us to live a life we would be proud to live in the aftermath of the complete loss of everything?
Each of us must find our own answers for these questions. Sorry to tell you that, but there is no one answer fits all in the back of the book. What picks you up and gets you going may not cause me to stir. What you tell yourself to bring yourself to life might not rouse me at all. Which is to say that you may think what I am about to say is the stupidest thing that has ever been said in the entire history of things being said.
And, before I say that, I’ll say this: We do not share the same perspective. We do not see things in the same way. We have different points of view. There are ten thousand different Christianities, and always have been. How many sects, and varieties, and versions of all the religions are there? Past counting. And, for all the creeds, and doctrines, and catechisms, there is not one that bridges the gap between us and our lives, between the life we want to live and the life that is forced on us by our culture our circumstances. The creeds can only put us to sleep, and we are always waking up to the emptiness of this creed or that one, and having to find a new creed, a new place to go to church, in order to shut ourselves off from the encroaching truth of the life we are afraid to live, calling us out of the camp, so to speak, out of religion, into the rawness of the first-hand experience of God.
Life requires more than creeds can offer. God exists within us all as the unrecognized potentiality of our lives (just as all monsters and demons that threaten us are our own fears and limitations). Life would deliver us into the hands of God, and God is always calling us beyond ourselves into ourselves, into the life that is waiting for us. Life would hand us over to God. God would hand us over to life. And, we don’t want anything to do with that God. We have to create religion to protect us from that God. We always have to relinquish the God of our religion in order to get to God, to the God who is calling us to wake up and embrace the life that is ours to live (which has nothing in common with the life we want to live, the life we want to be our life). We have to forsake our God—the tame, placid, predictable, civilized God of our ancestors, you might say—in order to place ourselves in the service of God—the God of the wilderness and wild, crazy, notions, who is the real God of our ancestors, and all people.
No one can speak for that God. That God speaks for that God. Do not take anyone’s word for what that God is saying. Do not let anyone tell you what to do in the service of that God, or how you should think about that God, or what you should believe about that God. That God exists as the rawness of your own experience with the truth of your life. And you cannot articulate the meaning of that encounter. You can only talk in poetry and metaphor, and make pictures, and write songs, that hint of the truth.
This means that you have to receive all that I say as you might receive a lump of clay, and mold it with your own understanding, shape it according to your own experience, taking what you need, what you can use, and leaving the rest, the part that you think is the stupidest thing you have ever heard. Don’t worry about that part. That part is not for you. No one can tell you what you are not ready to hear, what you don’t want to hear, what you are not interested in hearing. You can only hear the parts that can be helpful to you at this particular point in your life. Leave the rest for someone else.
That brings us back to the question about solid core of our lives, the grounding center, the heart, the anchoring reality, to that which holds when all else is crumbling and disintegrating and is no more. Here’s what holds for me: YOU. You are the ground of my life, of my being. What do we have but each other? When all else is taken from us, what are we left with but each other? In the prisoner of war camps, Victor Frankl reports that those who survived the experience of the complete loss of everything were those who cared for, and were cared for by, their comrades, their neighbor.
Here’s what I think: There is me and my life, and there is you and your life. I exist, in part, to help you with your life. And, you exist, in part, to help me with my life. In bearing my pain and making a good effort with the issues of the day, I help you with your life, with the life that is yours to live. In bearing your pain and making a good effort with the issues of the day, you help me with my life, with the life that is mine to live.
We help each other live the life that is ours to live right here, right now, in these circumstances, in these conditions, whatever they are. I am with you in your experience of life. You are with me in my experience of life. We cannot close ourselves off from one another. We cannot isolate ourselves, insulate ourselves from the pain of life by having nothing to do with life or with each other. True life, abundant life, real life IS each other. We cannot live cut-off, disconnected, alone.
But, not just any company is life-giving, life-enhancing, life-bearing. It takes the right kind of company for that to happen. Some company is death itself, and we are better off alone than in the presence of some people. So, when I say YOU are what grounds me, I have to issue an immediate disclaimer. The right kind of relationship with you is what grounds me. We have to work to be sources of the right kind of relationship for each other, and all others.
Two things flow from this. The first is, this place cannot be your life. You have to have a life apart from this place. The church cannot be the center and source of your life. The church can only help you with your life, help you live the life that is yours to live, but that life is not this place. This place and these people cannot be a substitute for finding and living your life (We’ll talk about that next week and why finding and living your life is so difficult).
The second thing is that these people cannot be your best friends. These people are not chums and buddies and pals. Right relationship is not chummy. Right relationship requires a certain working distance, close but not enmeshed, distant enough to know what needs to be said, and say it. AA members don’t play golf with one another, and go to movies with one another, and hang out with one another. They know that two can go astray as easily as one, and that if we are going to be a counter-weight to the other’s craziness, we have to have at least a see-saw’s length of board between us. It’s tricky, finding the right amount of distance, not too close, not too far away, but that’s the art of right relationship, and the key to being the source of the kind of helping presence that heals and makes well, restores, sustains, and enables us to live the life that is ours to live.
We cannot be alive without embracing the fullness of life. We have to open ourselves to the whole thing, feeling what can be felt, touching what can be touched, seeing what can be seen, hearing what can be heard, tasting what can be tasted, so that we might know what can be known—so that we might live the life that is ours to live!
In doing this, we have to re-think thinking. Thinking about our agony is not experiencing our agony. It is distancing ourselves from in and a way that renders us almost immune to it. I say almost because what isn’t experiences is buried, goes underground, where it rots and ferments and stinks like death itself, and is death and we die because we would avoid the pain of being alive, which is also like dying. We die one way or the other. In living we die, in dying, we live.
What kind of death will we die is the question. Will we summons the courage to face our life head on? Will we look our life in the eye? Will we articulate the agony? Consciously, willingly, submit to the ordeal? Bear the pain? Or, will we look away, run away, hide out, deny, deny, deny? Will we dismiss the pain because it is so much less than other people have to deal with? Will we numb ourselves with steady doses of cultural Novocain and repeat hypnotically, “There is a reason for everything,” “God doesn’t give us more than we can bear,” “Something good comes from something bad,” “Don’t question things we can’t understand”? Will we change the subject and not say what we have lost? Because we are afraid that if we start feeling the agony, experiencing the pain, WE will be lost?
There is nothing like the traumatic encounter with pain, grief, loss and sorrow to blur the line between sanity and insanity. In the sane world there is a process and a routine and a structure for everything. You stop on red and go on green. And there are rules governing everything, keeping it all in place. Our daily life in the sane world is scripted to at “T” and runs right along on schedule: “Good morning. How are you?” “Just fine. How are you?” “Have a good day.” “You, too.” We all know what to say, and when, and how to say it.
Then comes the slammer. The sane world is shattered by that which obeys no rules. The tsunami, the hurricane, the wildfire, the drought, the war, the heart attack, the car wreck, the fall… And life is destroyed for all who survive. And insanity—that is, disturbance, disorientation, upheaval, instability, confusion, and the inability to trust ourselves to our own future, to our own life—reins. Nothing makes sense. The traumatic encounter exposes the shallow banter of the sane world as completely insane. Where is sanity to be found then? Where do we go to be grounded, balanced, stabilized and safe then?
We do not know. We get by by denying that we know what we know, by wishing that “we didn’t know now what we didn’t know then” (Bob Seger). By pretending we don’t know what we know. By looking away. Running away. Hiding out. Denying, denying, denying. Hoping that they will keep making whiskey, and anti-depressants, and our favorite distractions and diversions. What are we afraid of? Not being able to function? We are already not functioning. Ah, but, maybe no one notices. We at least get out of bed and drag ourselves through the day in order to pay the bills. We do that much. And, we are afraid we won’t do any of it if we admit how little sense it makes working to sustain a life that is as shaky, and vulnerable, and unstable, and insubstantial, and insane as life actually is.
When the foundation crumbles, what grounds us? Around what do we coalesce when the traumatic shockwaves destroy our world? What is the heart of our life? What forms the core of our existence? In what do we trust? What is the content of our faith? What enables us to pick ourselves up and go on in the spirit, with the attitude, manner and style, of those who go on with purpose, and hope, and joy, and life? What do we believe in, know to be true, that enables us to live a life we would be proud to live in the aftermath of the complete loss of everything?
Each of us must find our own answers for these questions. Sorry to tell you that, but there is no one answer fits all in the back of the book. What picks you up and gets you going may not cause me to stir. What you tell yourself to bring yourself to life might not rouse me at all. Which is to say that you may think what I am about to say is the stupidest thing that has ever been said in the entire history of things being said.
And, before I say that, I’ll say this: We do not share the same perspective. We do not see things in the same way. We have different points of view. There are ten thousand different Christianities, and always have been. How many sects, and varieties, and versions of all the religions are there? Past counting. And, for all the creeds, and doctrines, and catechisms, there is not one that bridges the gap between us and our lives, between the life we want to live and the life that is forced on us by our culture our circumstances. The creeds can only put us to sleep, and we are always waking up to the emptiness of this creed or that one, and having to find a new creed, a new place to go to church, in order to shut ourselves off from the encroaching truth of the life we are afraid to live, calling us out of the camp, so to speak, out of religion, into the rawness of the first-hand experience of God.
Life requires more than creeds can offer. God exists within us all as the unrecognized potentiality of our lives (just as all monsters and demons that threaten us are our own fears and limitations). Life would deliver us into the hands of God, and God is always calling us beyond ourselves into ourselves, into the life that is waiting for us. Life would hand us over to God. God would hand us over to life. And, we don’t want anything to do with that God. We have to create religion to protect us from that God. We always have to relinquish the God of our religion in order to get to God, to the God who is calling us to wake up and embrace the life that is ours to live (which has nothing in common with the life we want to live, the life we want to be our life). We have to forsake our God—the tame, placid, predictable, civilized God of our ancestors, you might say—in order to place ourselves in the service of God—the God of the wilderness and wild, crazy, notions, who is the real God of our ancestors, and all people.
No one can speak for that God. That God speaks for that God. Do not take anyone’s word for what that God is saying. Do not let anyone tell you what to do in the service of that God, or how you should think about that God, or what you should believe about that God. That God exists as the rawness of your own experience with the truth of your life. And you cannot articulate the meaning of that encounter. You can only talk in poetry and metaphor, and make pictures, and write songs, that hint of the truth.
This means that you have to receive all that I say as you might receive a lump of clay, and mold it with your own understanding, shape it according to your own experience, taking what you need, what you can use, and leaving the rest, the part that you think is the stupidest thing you have ever heard. Don’t worry about that part. That part is not for you. No one can tell you what you are not ready to hear, what you don’t want to hear, what you are not interested in hearing. You can only hear the parts that can be helpful to you at this particular point in your life. Leave the rest for someone else.
That brings us back to the question about solid core of our lives, the grounding center, the heart, the anchoring reality, to that which holds when all else is crumbling and disintegrating and is no more. Here’s what holds for me: YOU. You are the ground of my life, of my being. What do we have but each other? When all else is taken from us, what are we left with but each other? In the prisoner of war camps, Victor Frankl reports that those who survived the experience of the complete loss of everything were those who cared for, and were cared for by, their comrades, their neighbor.
Here’s what I think: There is me and my life, and there is you and your life. I exist, in part, to help you with your life. And, you exist, in part, to help me with my life. In bearing my pain and making a good effort with the issues of the day, I help you with your life, with the life that is yours to live. In bearing your pain and making a good effort with the issues of the day, you help me with my life, with the life that is mine to live.
We help each other live the life that is ours to live right here, right now, in these circumstances, in these conditions, whatever they are. I am with you in your experience of life. You are with me in my experience of life. We cannot close ourselves off from one another. We cannot isolate ourselves, insulate ourselves from the pain of life by having nothing to do with life or with each other. True life, abundant life, real life IS each other. We cannot live cut-off, disconnected, alone.
But, not just any company is life-giving, life-enhancing, life-bearing. It takes the right kind of company for that to happen. Some company is death itself, and we are better off alone than in the presence of some people. So, when I say YOU are what grounds me, I have to issue an immediate disclaimer. The right kind of relationship with you is what grounds me. We have to work to be sources of the right kind of relationship for each other, and all others.
Two things flow from this. The first is, this place cannot be your life. You have to have a life apart from this place. The church cannot be the center and source of your life. The church can only help you with your life, help you live the life that is yours to live, but that life is not this place. This place and these people cannot be a substitute for finding and living your life (We’ll talk about that next week and why finding and living your life is so difficult).
The second thing is that these people cannot be your best friends. These people are not chums and buddies and pals. Right relationship is not chummy. Right relationship requires a certain working distance, close but not enmeshed, distant enough to know what needs to be said, and say it. AA members don’t play golf with one another, and go to movies with one another, and hang out with one another. They know that two can go astray as easily as one, and that if we are going to be a counter-weight to the other’s craziness, we have to have at least a see-saw’s length of board between us. It’s tricky, finding the right amount of distance, not too close, not too far away, but that’s the art of right relationship, and the key to being the source of the kind of helping presence that heals and makes well, restores, sustains, and enables us to live the life that is ours to live.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
01/06/08, Sermon
Joseph Campbell says, “Everybody believes in God in a different way, so how many different Gods are there?” Our idea of God is, clearly, not God. Who is to say who God is, and isn’t? Jesus’ idea of God contrasted significantly with the official Jewish standard of his day—and with the official Christian standard of later days (Does anyone think that the church in all its denominational glory is what Jesus had in mind? What do you think Jesus had in mind? What happened, do you think, to his vision?). How do we go about deciding which idea of God will be our idea of God? What makes us think that we are right? Is it important to be right? How do we know?
Here’s what I think: Everything rides on what we think, so we had better think carefully about our thinking. For instance, what does thinking have to do with knowing? I think we can know God in ways that have nothing to do with thinking—in ways that cannot be thought out, reasoned out, explained. Sheldon Kopp puts it nicely: “Some things can be experienced, but not understood. And, some things can be understood, but not explained.” There you are. God is one of those “things.”
We know more than we can say. To paraphrase the Tao te Ching, “Those who know, know they can’t say, and those who think they can say, don’t know.” And, still in the Tao, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” God cannot be said. Even the word “God” confuses the issue. The word “God” comes to us loaded with connotations, and implications, and associations—baggage. We cannot hear the word apart from the conditioning of previous encounters. We do not come to it as blank slates ready and receptive for revelation.
This is not to say that we should avoid the word. To do so leaves its power intact and imbues it with the same kind of aura, in a negative sense, that it has for the blindly religious, in a positive sense. The solution is to use the word with awareness. To look the word in the eye, and know exactly what it “means” to us, and empty it of its negative power by demanding its blessing.
This is an interesting strategy, you’ll have to admit. But, it’s the way to do it. We free ourselves of the curse by demanding the blessing. What is the blessing of the curse? What is the boon hidden away in the gloom, in the anguish, in the agony of the spiritual wasteland where we have languished all these years, under the curse of the church of our experience, waiting for the savior? The boon is the realization that the savior’s blood courses thorough YOUR veins! YOU are the one for whom you wait! The Christ looks back at YOU every time you glance into a mirror! YOU are the Anointed One of God, come to release the Word from its shackles to dogma and doctrine, so that it might roam with abandon through the world, opening eyes that are blind, raising the dead, restoring lost souls, and ushering all people from the Wasteland into the Land of Promise, which is only a perspective shift away, and which is the land of their own awakening, realization, recognition and awareness, the land of their own Right Seeing (and Right Hearing, Right Doing, Right Being). YOU are the blessing you seek, and the way of the awakening, of the salvation, of the world.
And, how do you perform your duty? What is the mechanism by which the blessing is realized in the world, and in your own life? Eyes that see, don’t you know. Ears that hear. A heart that understands. And, what do the eyes see when they see? What do the ears hear when they hear? What does the heart understand when it understands? Just this: The Way of Life that opens before you in each moment—what needs to happen here and now, and how it needs to happen. That’s all. It is never more difficult than this.
Yet, this is not something anyone can tell you. The answer is not in the back of some book. This is something you know on your own, out of the spontaneity of your own being in the moment of your living. This is not something society can help you with. Society can tell you what you should do, but what you must do, what you have to do, what is yours to do, what needs YOU to do it, here and now, in the present moment of your life, only you can know that.
When it comes down to living aligned with the life that is yours to live, so that you and your life are one, and you are your life, and your life is you—when it comes down to your realizing, and exhibiting, and incarnating the integrity of your life, only you can find that way, the way to do that. And, how do you do it? By NOT doing what you are told! By NOT living life the way it is being lived all around you! By deviating from the norm, and looking for the things that catch your eye, and seeing what those things have to teach you.
What are the things that catch your eye? Pay attention. Notice them. They flash by you and are gone. You won’t see them if you don’t remember to look, to watch. You have to be ready for them. They are singing your song. You have to be listening. And, you have to be ready to give them a second thought. When something stops you, stop. Look. Listen.
Where are the places you don’t go in the course of a week, or a month, just because it never occurs to you to go there? What are the things you don’t do, just because it never occurs to you to do them? Of those places and things, What seems to have an attraction for you, no matter how slight? Check them out. See where that leads.
Set aside some time each day just to be quiet, time when you are not driving, not reading, not listening to music or watching TV. You can be walking if you are not exercising. Exercising puts a spin on walking that trumps its meditative, listening, capacity. When we are exercising, we are thinking about maintaining a certain pace, and completing our route in a certain time, so we can go on to something else. Exercising does not count for walking! When we walk, we just walk (And, when we sit, we just sit). That’s the difference. We aren’t doing anything when we just walk, just sit. How long has it been since you did nothing? Work it into every day! It’s important to not do anything each day, to develop the practice of being quiet and doing nothing.
Nothing has the power to connect us with our lives. Nothing provides us with an inner and outer quietness that is crucial for catching glimpses of what catches our eye and leads us along the curious and round-about route straight to the center of ourselves, to the heart of our own lives. This is something primitive societies have always taken advantage of. In those societies, there was plenty of quiet time for being present with, and open to, the workings of the imagination. Even today, primitive tribes, like the Aborigines in Australia, experience an ongoing interchange with beings of the Dream World, which is a source of guidance and grounding in the living of their lives.
This is not the case in modern society. All of our energy goes into dancing as fast as we can, into dealing with the upheaval and turmoil of daily existence. We live too fast to notice how we are living, or why. And, we are spiritually barren because of it. Our lives do not nurture our spirits, do not nourish our souls, do not flow from our hearts, do not even allow us the time to know that we have spirits, and souls, and hearts. We have to take our lives back from our life.
This is the work of the Grail search in the modern world. It is the work of finding our life, of being alive, in the life that we live. It is the work of finding our way to the life that enables us to be alive in the truest, deepest, sense of the word, that connects us with the integrity of our own life. We do that work by doing nothing, regularly, reliably, one might say, religiously.
Nothing is the origin of life. We move from death to life, from the inert to the vital, by way of consciousness, but it is a special kind of consciousness. It is a kind of not-thinking knowing that athletes talk of as “being in the flow” of the game. It is a state of being that sees what needs to happen and does it without thinking, spontaneously, out of our participation in the moment of our living. We get to the place of being able to live that way by emptying ourselves of our normal motives and interests.
In order to step into our lives, we have to step back from life. We have to step back from family, and friends, and peers, and our social group. What are the things we can’t think? The taboo thoughts? What are the things we cannot say, cannot talk about? The taboo subjects? What are the things we cannot see? The taboo perspectives? The things we cannot do? The taboo acts? If we cannot think them, or say them, or see them, or do them, how do we know what they are? We have to step back a bit from the controlling relationships in order to get a sense of what we aren’t allowed to think, say, see, and do.
And, one of the rules is that we can’t step back. “Don’t leave me! Don’t change! If you love me, you won’t change!” This is powerful stuff. If we grow up in this kind of environment, and many of us do, we will never grow up. So, it takes some kind of traumatic event, a war, perhaps, or sometimes, college, to expel us from the womb-beyond-the-womb, and enable us, force us, to begin the search for our own lives, to begin to think for ourselves. Even then, it is a slow process, because we have to find the way on our own. There is no one to lead us, to show us how to think for ourselves. We come from a place where no one thinks for herself, for himself. Where everyone thinks what they are supposed to think. Where everyone does what they are told. So, it’s a miracle that anyone ever wakes up.
We wake up by asking the impertinent questions. By making the blasphemous statements. By talking and acting like heretics and iconoclasts. If we can do that without cynicism and bitterness—if we can do that with joy, delight, and an easy sense of humor, laughing at ourselves as much as at the structures of death and blindness from which we come—we can play a redemptive role within those structures. By seeing, we open eyes that are blind. By being alive, and aligning ourselves with the integrity of our own lives, we bring the dead to life. May it be so!
Here’s what I think: Everything rides on what we think, so we had better think carefully about our thinking. For instance, what does thinking have to do with knowing? I think we can know God in ways that have nothing to do with thinking—in ways that cannot be thought out, reasoned out, explained. Sheldon Kopp puts it nicely: “Some things can be experienced, but not understood. And, some things can be understood, but not explained.” There you are. God is one of those “things.”
We know more than we can say. To paraphrase the Tao te Ching, “Those who know, know they can’t say, and those who think they can say, don’t know.” And, still in the Tao, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” God cannot be said. Even the word “God” confuses the issue. The word “God” comes to us loaded with connotations, and implications, and associations—baggage. We cannot hear the word apart from the conditioning of previous encounters. We do not come to it as blank slates ready and receptive for revelation.
This is not to say that we should avoid the word. To do so leaves its power intact and imbues it with the same kind of aura, in a negative sense, that it has for the blindly religious, in a positive sense. The solution is to use the word with awareness. To look the word in the eye, and know exactly what it “means” to us, and empty it of its negative power by demanding its blessing.
This is an interesting strategy, you’ll have to admit. But, it’s the way to do it. We free ourselves of the curse by demanding the blessing. What is the blessing of the curse? What is the boon hidden away in the gloom, in the anguish, in the agony of the spiritual wasteland where we have languished all these years, under the curse of the church of our experience, waiting for the savior? The boon is the realization that the savior’s blood courses thorough YOUR veins! YOU are the one for whom you wait! The Christ looks back at YOU every time you glance into a mirror! YOU are the Anointed One of God, come to release the Word from its shackles to dogma and doctrine, so that it might roam with abandon through the world, opening eyes that are blind, raising the dead, restoring lost souls, and ushering all people from the Wasteland into the Land of Promise, which is only a perspective shift away, and which is the land of their own awakening, realization, recognition and awareness, the land of their own Right Seeing (and Right Hearing, Right Doing, Right Being). YOU are the blessing you seek, and the way of the awakening, of the salvation, of the world.
And, how do you perform your duty? What is the mechanism by which the blessing is realized in the world, and in your own life? Eyes that see, don’t you know. Ears that hear. A heart that understands. And, what do the eyes see when they see? What do the ears hear when they hear? What does the heart understand when it understands? Just this: The Way of Life that opens before you in each moment—what needs to happen here and now, and how it needs to happen. That’s all. It is never more difficult than this.
Yet, this is not something anyone can tell you. The answer is not in the back of some book. This is something you know on your own, out of the spontaneity of your own being in the moment of your living. This is not something society can help you with. Society can tell you what you should do, but what you must do, what you have to do, what is yours to do, what needs YOU to do it, here and now, in the present moment of your life, only you can know that.
When it comes down to living aligned with the life that is yours to live, so that you and your life are one, and you are your life, and your life is you—when it comes down to your realizing, and exhibiting, and incarnating the integrity of your life, only you can find that way, the way to do that. And, how do you do it? By NOT doing what you are told! By NOT living life the way it is being lived all around you! By deviating from the norm, and looking for the things that catch your eye, and seeing what those things have to teach you.
What are the things that catch your eye? Pay attention. Notice them. They flash by you and are gone. You won’t see them if you don’t remember to look, to watch. You have to be ready for them. They are singing your song. You have to be listening. And, you have to be ready to give them a second thought. When something stops you, stop. Look. Listen.
Where are the places you don’t go in the course of a week, or a month, just because it never occurs to you to go there? What are the things you don’t do, just because it never occurs to you to do them? Of those places and things, What seems to have an attraction for you, no matter how slight? Check them out. See where that leads.
Set aside some time each day just to be quiet, time when you are not driving, not reading, not listening to music or watching TV. You can be walking if you are not exercising. Exercising puts a spin on walking that trumps its meditative, listening, capacity. When we are exercising, we are thinking about maintaining a certain pace, and completing our route in a certain time, so we can go on to something else. Exercising does not count for walking! When we walk, we just walk (And, when we sit, we just sit). That’s the difference. We aren’t doing anything when we just walk, just sit. How long has it been since you did nothing? Work it into every day! It’s important to not do anything each day, to develop the practice of being quiet and doing nothing.
Nothing has the power to connect us with our lives. Nothing provides us with an inner and outer quietness that is crucial for catching glimpses of what catches our eye and leads us along the curious and round-about route straight to the center of ourselves, to the heart of our own lives. This is something primitive societies have always taken advantage of. In those societies, there was plenty of quiet time for being present with, and open to, the workings of the imagination. Even today, primitive tribes, like the Aborigines in Australia, experience an ongoing interchange with beings of the Dream World, which is a source of guidance and grounding in the living of their lives.
This is not the case in modern society. All of our energy goes into dancing as fast as we can, into dealing with the upheaval and turmoil of daily existence. We live too fast to notice how we are living, or why. And, we are spiritually barren because of it. Our lives do not nurture our spirits, do not nourish our souls, do not flow from our hearts, do not even allow us the time to know that we have spirits, and souls, and hearts. We have to take our lives back from our life.
This is the work of the Grail search in the modern world. It is the work of finding our life, of being alive, in the life that we live. It is the work of finding our way to the life that enables us to be alive in the truest, deepest, sense of the word, that connects us with the integrity of our own life. We do that work by doing nothing, regularly, reliably, one might say, religiously.
Nothing is the origin of life. We move from death to life, from the inert to the vital, by way of consciousness, but it is a special kind of consciousness. It is a kind of not-thinking knowing that athletes talk of as “being in the flow” of the game. It is a state of being that sees what needs to happen and does it without thinking, spontaneously, out of our participation in the moment of our living. We get to the place of being able to live that way by emptying ourselves of our normal motives and interests.
In order to step into our lives, we have to step back from life. We have to step back from family, and friends, and peers, and our social group. What are the things we can’t think? The taboo thoughts? What are the things we cannot say, cannot talk about? The taboo subjects? What are the things we cannot see? The taboo perspectives? The things we cannot do? The taboo acts? If we cannot think them, or say them, or see them, or do them, how do we know what they are? We have to step back a bit from the controlling relationships in order to get a sense of what we aren’t allowed to think, say, see, and do.
And, one of the rules is that we can’t step back. “Don’t leave me! Don’t change! If you love me, you won’t change!” This is powerful stuff. If we grow up in this kind of environment, and many of us do, we will never grow up. So, it takes some kind of traumatic event, a war, perhaps, or sometimes, college, to expel us from the womb-beyond-the-womb, and enable us, force us, to begin the search for our own lives, to begin to think for ourselves. Even then, it is a slow process, because we have to find the way on our own. There is no one to lead us, to show us how to think for ourselves. We come from a place where no one thinks for herself, for himself. Where everyone thinks what they are supposed to think. Where everyone does what they are told. So, it’s a miracle that anyone ever wakes up.
We wake up by asking the impertinent questions. By making the blasphemous statements. By talking and acting like heretics and iconoclasts. If we can do that without cynicism and bitterness—if we can do that with joy, delight, and an easy sense of humor, laughing at ourselves as much as at the structures of death and blindness from which we come—we can play a redemptive role within those structures. By seeing, we open eyes that are blind. By being alive, and aligning ourselves with the integrity of our own lives, we bring the dead to life. May it be so!
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