Filed under: Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation, Comparative Religion, Comparative Religion, Family Ministry, Inspiration, Prayer, Spirituality, Theology | Tags: Advent, Buddhist meditation, California International Marathon sermon, everyday spirituality, Mandela, Mother Goddess, Nasruddin, solstice, spirituality, Sufi, UU Buddhist, UU Christian, UU Christmas, UU pagan, waiting
NOTE: Many folks did not hear this sermon because the California International Marathon made it very hard to get to church. It closes Fair Oaks Boulevard from Folsom, CA, to the Capitol. Traffic near the church slows down as race fans try to find parking to walk over to Fair Oaks and as the police make drivers detour at both of our nearby intersections. The first hymn was my conciliatory nod to the Marathon, but it remains an annual frustration!
UU Society of Sacramento
Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2013
Shared Offering benefits St. John’s Shelter Program for Women & Children
Hymns: #348 “Guide My Feet (While I Run this Race),” #100 “I’ve Got Peace Like a River,” #352, “Find a Stillness,” #91, “Mother of All.”
Sermon
“Do you know what message I am going to preach to you today?” This is what the great Islamic Mullah said as he looked out on the people gathered for Friday prayers. Nasruddin, the Mullah, appears in many Sufi stories as a wise trickster and sort of a goofball. He asked the crowd this question, and they shook their heads—no. He said: “Well, why would I waste my time speaking to people who don’t know my message? Go home!” They did, but they invited the great Nasrudin to come back the following Friday.
“Do you know the message I am going to tell you today?” he asked. Yes, yes! We do! they smiled. “Go home!” he shouted. “Why would I take the time to repeat what you already know?”
This troubled the congregation. They really wanted to hear from this wise Mullah! So they made a plan. The next jumah, the Friday prayers, they had him back. He asked, “Do you know what I am going to say to you?” And half of them shook their heads no, and the other half nodded and said yes! “Finally,” Nasrudin said. “Now, those of you who know what I am going to say, turn to those who don’t know what I am going to say, and tell them.” And he left.
This is a story about one kind of expectation—an assumption of the way things are. It’s when you are counting on something—and in this story, you don’t get it. Something else happens from what you expect.
On Monday I was at a Catholic retreat center in with a group of UU clergy colleagues. In the dining hall we found these little plastic containers of coffee creamer. On the cover it reads: “Non-Dairy Creamer.” Under that it says, “Contains Milk.”
This wording led to speculation on our part. Can you get milk without a dairy? We laughed it off, and someone found a carton of 2% milk and a box of soymilk. We were amused by this experience of having our expectations upended. We didn’t get what we were counting on.
That’s one kind of expectation. The other kind of expectation is the experience of waiting. The Reverend Dr. Christina Hutchins is a professor at Pacific School of Religion. A year ago she gave a sermon on Advent, the season of waiting for Christmas. She said that the experience of waiting is a complete and authentic spiritual experience on its own. It is not merely the delay of an event, not the denied gratification of an authentic experience. Expectation is a complete experience on its own. Like all spiritual experiences, it’s worth paying attention to it. This is the spirituality of expectation—finding wisdom in the waiting, seeking to gain from the journey along the way.
Right now we are waiting for Solstice and Christmas and New Year’s Eve and Kwanzaa and so on. Growing up in a mainstream Protestant household, Christmas was what I waited for. But in truth, I just wanted to get it over with! This Thursday morning I will be one of the speakers at the UUSS Alliance’s holiday lunch program. Alliance chairperson Vivian Counts invited four of us to tell of a holiday memory from our lives. I’m glad there are three others talking, because I can’t think of any inspiring Christmas memory from the years before I was a minister.
As a child I dreaded the loneliness I felt when school was out for those two weeks. Television was the distracting technology of those days, and the TV often was on, but it did not satisfy. I craved the many shiny packages under the tree, but after tearing into them on Christmas Day, the emptiness inside me felt even sharper. The alcohol abuse and animosity among my relatives made me feel as if I was walking on eggshells. For me, Christmas was to be gotten through. My family went to church many Sunday mornings, but somehow it never occurred to the family to go to church on Christmas Eve, nor to attend any community concerts or special programs in our town. Had we done such activities together, it might have given us a little spiritual nourishment. Perhaps by this Thursday’s Alliance meeting I’ll remember some suitable holiday memories to tell. If not, I could ask the gathering, “Do you know what I am going to say to you today?” Then they can tell one another.
Among the human family, with the broad variety of conditions and situations in which we find ourselves, we human beings have all sorts of waiting to do. We have many ways to experience waiting, ways to think about our waiting, and make use of the time.
People in prison are people who are waiting—waiting for their sentence to end, waiting for a friendly visit or a letter, waiting for the next meal. For some, the wait is a long time. Yet in that time of waiting, some prisoners are lucky to find a way to grow. Some have access in prison to theater arts and poetry, or to study for a GED or a college degree or to learn, simply, to read and write. It’s my impression that prisons are some of the places where people are most likely to begin an intensive spiritual search or to deepen one. Great spiritual classics have been written in jail– by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Apostle Paul for example.
I’ve read and heard many ex-inmates testifying that a spiritual practice is what saved them. In prison many people experience conversion to Islam, or accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, join a 12-Step group, or begin Buddhist meditation. The online congregation known as the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship supports a prison ministry by mail, and some UU congregations have their own ministries to nearby prisons. In a book about Buddhism behind bars, one convicted felon writes that mindfulness meditation has been a tool for him in prison, and a blessing. His waiting for the end of his sentence is the occasion of his practice in mindful awareness. Sometimes, he says, they throw him in solitary confinement, a common management practice in prisons today. Solitary sounds frightening and lonely to me. Yet this man says that he tries to think of it as an opportunity for a deeper practice of mindfulness. This blows my mind! Those in confinement have no choice—only the choice between awareness of the moments at hand and suffering in agony about the long wait for confinement’s end.
Nelson Mandela spent 26 years in prison under the white Apartheid government of South Africa. What a long, uncertain wait! His passing last week at age 95 makes me want to learn about that experience, as well as other details of his life in the freedom struggle in South Africa. I want to know what sustained him. He could never be sure if he would live his entire life in prison, be released, or be executed. Did Mandela know his people had not forgotten him? Did he know that activists around the world were demanding his release? He practiced the spirituality of waiting.
A friend has told me a story about Mandela’s time in confinement. After some years, he was transferred to the Robben Island prison, infamous for its harshness. He found himself doing hard labor, with other political prisoners. Their task: breaking rocks in a quarry, pointless. Robben Island also held other inmates, those convicted of murder, armed robbery, sexual assault. Many were members of criminal gangs with reputations for terrorizing other inmates. They tried to push the political prisoners around, take their food, or disrupt any political conversations. By this harassment, they were trying to provoke the activists to reacting.
Members of these gangs labored in the quarry, but in separate groups from the political activists. One day they began singing a song, taking a popular tune and changing the words to mock the political prisoners. They were again trying to provoke them into a reaction. And they got one.
The political prisoners decided to fight back–by singing. In response they chose a rousing, familiar song. Typically it was not a political song, but in this context, they charged it with political accusations. The two groups competed by singing, back and forth. For several days, these opponents confronted one another–in song. Nelson Mandela later claimed that his men had much better voices, with wonderful harmony. He and his group would often get lost in their music-making. They would forget all about the gang members, who had taunted and threatened them. Soon the gang members became quiet. They only listened, as the political prisoners made music. The singing brought peace.
When the prison guards figured out what was happening, they demanded that the music cease. They didn’t even allow whistling. In the stillness that followed, it was clear to Mandela that fears had melted away. By pushing back, creatively, the political prisoners converted hostile opponents into people with a shared plight, a shared condition of confinement and waiting. By choosing creative action, Mandela’s colleagues sang away their passive despair and their fear. They brought meaning into their time of waiting by choosing to be creative.
When I think about the waiting of people in such painful situations, it’s embarrassing to say I want to get the month of December over with! It puts into clear perspective my feelings of dread of the loss of daylight, my irritation with holiday commercialism, my frustration with traffic, like the slow traffic on this Marathon Sunday here in our neighborhood. I say to myself: So what! How lucky I am only to have to wait for traffic to move! The Buddhist priest Thich Nhat Hanh writes that waiting in traffic at a red stop light is a chance to practice being mindful. Red light, notice the moment. Notice our experience of sitting in the car or waiting at the cross walk. Red light, notice the moment. Blessed be the red light, great companion of our waiting!
What are you waiting for? Most of us are waiting for something… a job, a pension or Social Security, a baby to be born or an adoption agency to call with good news. We wait for an upcoming trip, happiness, our next birthday, this semester’s grade report. We wait for a diagnosis or lab results from a clinic, for moving day, for Christmas Eve. Most of us are waiting for something, most of the time. Meanwhile, we have days and moments in which to live and move and have our being, we have a journey called what’s going on right now.
Personally I am waiting for January 26, the day of the congregational vote here at UUSS, on my candidacy to be the called senior minister. I’m now in month number six of my seven-month job interview with you. It’s a long wait. Part of me would like it to be over. But you and I have seven months of life to live and ministry to do before then, while we wait.
So I am doing my best to enjoy the journey, enjoy the moments of ministry that pass before that big day. After all, if I were walking on a sidewalk under a tall building and moving men were maneuvering a grand piano out of a window and it slipped out of their control, and it fell on me, my waiting would end right then. This example, this wise warning, is handed down to us in the sacred scripture of the Warner Brothers cartoons, with which I grew up.
Given the uncertainty of anything we are waiting for, why not choose to pay attention? Give some attention to the complete, authentic experience of waiting? Explore the journey of our experience of each day.
Sooner or later, what we are waiting for does not arrive, or we do not arrive at that point. The piano falls. The traffic light turns red and does not change back to green. In matters of life both great and small, we will end… before we reach the end. To do authentic waiting is a challenge–and a paradox. It means we need to invite patience, be gentle, and practice curiosity. Yet given that we cannot count on reaching every goal, every end, it seems we should not wait on some things.
We should not wait to live with courage. Should not wait to speak the truth and speak with kindness. Not wait to live as our conscience and heart are asking us to live. We should not wait to be grateful. Not wait to be generous. Not wait to take care of our health and our spirits.
We can stretch ourselves, open our hearts, and practice a bit more courage as we wait. By the way we live in the time of waiting, we can prepare ourselves better for whatever we might be waiting for.
We are waiting for Solstice, when the night is longest, and the days begin to have more light once again. Meanwhile we have a new day to welcome, every day. We have sundown by 5 PM and sunrise by 7 AM, and a day full of whatever it brings, with the touch and flavor of waiting as an authentic part of the experience.
The experience of expectation is an authentic and complete spiritual experience by itself. Waiting for the green light, for the holiday, for the solstice night, is not the delay of the prize or its absence; it holds a prize all its own. With awareness, we can move toward wholeness in the moment. On every day of our journey, we can pause to notice what is already here, and give thanks. And give thanks. So may it be.
Filed under: Eating Mindfully and Sustainable Agriculture, Family Ministry, Inspiration, Prayer, Reflections, Sermon Archives and Excerpts, Spirituality, Trends in Religion | Tags: Advent, Christmas, dark of winter, healing darkness, sad, solstice, spiritual practice, spirituality and darkness, UU holidays, UU prayer
Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento
Music: Hymns: #226 “People, Look East,” #118 “This Little Light of mine,” #1008 “When Our Heart Is in a Holy Place.” Solo: “The Dark” by Mary Grigolia, sung a capella by Rev. Lucy.
Litany of Darkness and Light (see at end)
Sermon
I sat looking out the kitchen window well before 7 in the morning, just last week. I felt the chilly air seeping in, and a mug of warm tea in my cold hands. I was ready to watch the morning light emerge, was waiting for the sunlight to change the look of everything. But I felt sadness. The tea had caffeine—how long would it take to change my mood, if it could? This mood was not of deep grief, and not a heavy burden of depression on my shoulders, yet it was a decidedly not-fun feeling of sadness. I said my morning prayer anyway.
I gave thanks for the gift of life and the new day, for a night’s rest in a warm, safe place. I lifted up the names of parishioners who need good wishes or prayers, brought their faces to mind, plus those of colleagues, friends, and relatives. I stated my intentions for living the day with gratitude, generosity, curiosity and kindness. The light was now making the street visible, and showing the colors of the cars parked on it.
Then it occurred to me: that pre-dawn darkness was just the right place for my sadness. The shadows could receive it. The shadows could let the sadness move, in its own gentle way. Had it been 7 AM in June or July, the sun would have claimed the whole scene by now. It would be urging me into the many tasks of the day: Get going, look alive! But the morning darkness of December seems to say, “Take it easy and slowly–I am taking it easy and slowly, after all. Let it be. Feel what you feel in this moment. You will notice how it changes.”
Soon it was bright and clear, and my day was on its way. And it went fast. The night came in the middle of the day—5 o’clock. Wait! I’m not finished with my day yet!
For years I have resisted and resented the early evening. I’ve dreaded the shrinking hours of daylight, starting in early November, when we set our clocks back an hour.
But as this December Solstice approaches, I try to appreciate what can happen in the dark. I would like to mention a few of the gifts of the time of darkness, but first I want to say: it’s not a gift for everyone, no matter what a preacher or a poet might say.
Like many people, a friend of mine has a clinical, biological reaction in the winter darkness, called Seasonal Affective Disorder. It does not help that she lives at a latitude even farther north than we do, and it’s cold there, for a long time. You know what they would call the chilly weather we’ve had this past week? Springtime (without the mud).
She sits under a special kind of lamp every day, to give her body and spirit some extra rays of light. In retirement she has the time to travel, so she spends a few weeks in the winter visiting friends in warm, sunny places. When she can save up enough money and find a cheap deal, she takes a trip to a warm country. Not speaking Vietnamese, she made her way around villages in Vietnam by pointing and smiling. In the sunshine of Egypt a few years ago, she heard people speak with hope right after the overthrow of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. She enjoyed the January summer of Argentina, taking in the spray of Iguazu falls, the marvel of a glacier, and some penguins in their stiff cuteness. Rather than cursing the dark and cold, she follows the sun. Of course, this is not an option for most people, and she gives thanks for the privilege to do so.
It’s important to note that seasons of darkness and cold can be very hard on the spirit, hard on the emotional health of many people around us. It may not only bring up grief or painful memories of past experiences, it may bring depression that weighs on our minds and even on our physical bodies. This can happen to people young or old, in any occupation or stage of life. When other ways of dealing with the shadow side of this dark time don’t seem to help us, it may be worth seeing if anti-depressant medicines, psychotherapy, or a 12-Step recovery group can make a difference for us. Whether as individuals or as families, we can look for professional resources and community support as we pursue emotional healing, personal growth, and the ability to accept the gift of life with joy.
Personal growth can happen in the dark times and places. Seeds will sprout in the cool dark of the earth, and begin their journey toward the light. As a tree stretches toward the sun, it also grows downward, inward, into the dark earth. We can be like the trees. As Henry David Thoreau said, “In winter we lead a more inward life.”
Another friend of mine lives not so far north, so the weather’s not as cold and the nights not as long. Yet the winter darkness does mean a change of her pattern of living, toward a more inward life. She spends more time under the covers, reading a book propped on the pillow next to her. In the living room she brings out candles and a string of holiday lights. They remind her of our inner light, of an eternal spark. Believing that winter is the best time for exercise, she puts on layers and goes out for a brisk walk. The leaves crunch underfoot, the air chills the skin of the face, the nose runs.
In winter, she says, we need exercise to stimulate our endorphins. Of course, we can be tempted to medicate our mood by drinking more alcohol and eating more, especially sweets and other carbohydrates. But the boost we might feel by consuming alcohol and sweets can have a down side. It can make us feel worse—edgy–after the boost wears off. This December I am taking some of her advice. Of course, I may never stop my holiday consumption of cookies, cake, fudge and anything else any of you might wish to make for me. But I’m eating more almonds and pecans and not forgetting my veggies. And I am having less alcohol, and drinking less often. I’m not crazy about green tea, but I’ve been drinking so much of it lately that soon I may turn the color of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
One Unitarian Universalist family I know has created their own Solstice tradition. With candles and cloths they make an altar of their table. They bake a light brown, round ginger cake—dense and only an inch thick. They serve it on a large round plate with a rim glazed with dark blue like the sky, and specked with stars. They pass the cake around, each one cutting a piece for the next person, who indicates by nods and silent gestures how large of a piece to cut.
As the cake is served, what is revealed underneath it in the center of the plate is a round red sun. The sun returns! For Solstice dinner, they eat only foods with round shapes, evoking the sun. They read prayers to the divine light and sing chants to the source of returning warmth. The parents hide little suns around the house and the kids go searching for them. By finding a likeness of sun, they are bringing the sun back, helping it return. This family does not rely on the dominant culture to tell them what they need to do or to buy for making spirits bright—they create their own traditions. Any of us can be creative. We can join with nature and with other people to create our own light, and share the light, now in the dark of winter.
For many people, winter is a time for making soup and other warm foods, and eating more of the fresh foods that our season brings out. In California we have so many winter crops. Those in cold climates now can benefit from quick transport of fresh foods, but in the old days they kept food in the root cellar, and dried meat and beans from the summer crop.
Back home in Indiana, my mother’s fridge held many frozen foods for our winter meals, and this was fine. But around the corner from our house, my uncle and aunt had shelves of clear glass jars with green beans, tomatoes, corn and other produce they had canned in the summer. My uncle Roger had been a cook on a ship in the Navy during the Second World War. As a boy I helped him in the kitchen, including his major undertaking of putting up all that food, with Mason jars boiling in big pots of water and other steps for cleanliness and safety. That was a summer activity, but the memory of it warms me in the winter.
Now I can see that we were storing sunshine in shiny glass jars.
The poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “In a dark time the eye begins to see.”
The darkness can help us to see the truth… that we are not in control of everything. We can be so busy in our lives, have so many expectations. So many technologies at our fingertips and conveniences in our daily experience can lull us into thinking that there is an online menu tab for peace of mind or an iPad application for wisdom, courage, and grace.
The world does not revolve around any of us, including me; nor does earth rotate at my command. Its creation is a miracle and a blessing. The operation of the heavens is a wonder. And it all goes on without my permission or involvement. It will go on without me. The darkness comes and goes—my cursing it or my blessing it affects only the condition of my own spirit. The season’s advice to me: you need not be in control, and in fact you are not in control. Let the darkness hold the future. Let go!
We can be intentional about living in the darker season. This is why candles appeal to us: the darker it gets around them, the more they show their beauty. Looking at a candle flame, or a string of lights on the tree or around the window, we can think about the meaning of light, and the bringers of light—like our nearby star, the human mind and heart, the source of love and light eternal, the creative spark, the divine fire of courage and compassion.
Solstice rituals use fire and food and song—to bless the darkness with beauty, while praising the cycles of the seasons of the earth. People hang lights at Christmas to praise the source of life, celebrate the story of the star of Bethlehem, and remember that sun and warmth will return.
On Christmas Eve at UUSS, our sanctuary fills with members and their friends, and with guests we see only once a year. In the weeks leading up to it, folks ask me the time: seven o’clock, same as always. They ask me if we will light candles and sing “Silent Night,” at the end. Of course! We will make a circle around the walls of the sanctuary, and exchange the light with one another, and then enjoy the darkness, filled with song and silence, and with faces illuminated by the flames.
Folks never ask: will we sing the carols and hear a homily, will we have some instrumental music, prayer and silence and an offering? All those things are like the setup to the “Silent Night” candle light finale! Yet without those elements, the finale would be weak.
Without the darkness, our candles would be weak. Likewise, without the embrace of the darkness, we might not have the reminder to plan ahead, create meaning in the season, and reach out for fellowship and support. The darkness holds an invitation to let go of all that we cannot control, and accept with serenity all that we can’t change.
At my kitchen window, in my early morning watch for the light, the dark of winter seems to say: “Take it easy, and go slowly–I am taking it easy, and going slowly, after all. Let it be. Feel what you feel in this moment. You will notice how it changes.”
The dark of winter is a time to consider the sources of light we can count on, and give thanks for them. It’s the season for tasting the warmth of nourishing food, made by human hands from the gifts of the earth for our sustenance and our joy. It’s a season for creativity, planning ahead, self-care and care for others. It’s a time for digging deep and for reaching out toward others with compassion, openness, and kindness.
It’s a time for patience and letting go of control, for releasing the past and opening to the mystery of the future. May we all be so blessed.
In the days to come, may you welcome the gifts of light and warmth you can bring into the darkness. May the days and nights ahead bless us with light, learning, warmth, patience and peace. Blessed be.
Litany of Darkness and Light
Part A (Before silent meditation/prayer)
Voice 1: We wait in the darkness expectantly, longingly, anxiously, thoughtfully.
Voice 2: In the darkness of the womb, we have all been nurtured and protected.
All Voices: May we feel comfort in the darkness.
It is only in the darkness that we can see the splendor of the universe– blankets of stars, the solitary glowing of distant planets.
In the darkness of the night sky we feel beyond time – in the presence of the past, and with the promise of the future.
May we feel hope in the darkness.
In the solitude of the darkness we may remember those who need our love and support in special ways–
the sick, the unemployed, the bereaved, the persecuted, the homeless, those who are demoralized or discouraged, those whose fear has turned to cynicism, those whose vulnerability has become bitterness.
Sometimes in the darkness we remember those who are near to our hearts – colleagues, partners, parents, children, neighbors, friends, congregation members. We pray for their safety and happiness. We offer our support.
May we know healing in the darkness.
Part B (After musical interlude following sermon)
In the quiet darkness of the night, we may hear that still, small voice within.
In the blessed darkness we may be transformed, changed by what we face in the dark.
May we feel the challenge of the darkness.
In the darkness of sleep, we are soothed and restored, healed and renewed.
In the darkness of sleep dreams rise up, calling us to possibilities, calling us to know our connection to the world.
May we feel joy in the darkness.
Sometimes in the solitude of darkness our fears and concerns, our hopes and our visions rise to the surface. We come face to face with ourselves. We find the road that lies ahead of us.
Sometimes in the darkness we wonder about the important things, the deep things, and inexpressible things. We watch for glimmers of hope and glimpses of grace.
May we feel renewed in the darkness. May we be guided by the light of our hearts. Reflecting the divine love that shines at the heart of life, let us reach out to this troubled world with compassion.
–New Century Hymnal, adapted
Filed under: Children and Youth, Comparative Religion, Comparative Religion, Eating Mindfully and Sustainable Agriculture, Family Ministry, Graduate Theological school/PSR, Inspiration, International, Rituals, Prayers, Elements of Worship Services | Tags: Advent, culture shock, family life, good guests, hospitality, isolation, minister's column, reaching out
The Family Minister’s Message:
Culture Shock and the Gift of Presence
A woman in my religious history class in Berkeley is from a hilly state in the far northeast corner of India. Her tribal people look more Burmese than Indian. They speak no Hindi, only English and the tribal tongue of their region.
Her state is nearly all Christian. Welsh and Scots missionaries took the Gospel there in the 1800s, and it took root. Her husband, a Presbyterian minister, is here to get a Ph.D. in Biblical studies. He has to learn Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin and German. Their girls are 7 and 11. One attends Malcolm X School, and enjoys music, art and all subjects. The other attends middle school, plays soccer a lot, and reads a ton of books. In one year, the girls have gained an American accent!
Mom said the kids have adjusted well, but it’s been harder for the parents. They are used to having many relatives and friends drop in all the time back home. Here, they are isolated. People are too busy. We Americans always need to schedule ahead.
On hearing that I stay overnight in Berkeley on Mondays, she asked me to come home with them sometime. To be nice, I said yes. But I’ve been busy and have stayed with my usual hosts. Then she asked me to come on the next week, and I decided it was time to go.
They live at Presbyterian Mission Homes, a very plain set of cottages and apartments for international student families at the Graduate Theological Union. I saw this family’s vegetable garden, and the dad and I talked about life in Northeast India and our studies.
At dinner, dad said grace, giving thanks for the fellowship, asking for a blessing on me, my ministry and my congregation.
We had a simple and big meal: freshly cooked veggies, flavorful meat, and white rice. Mom kept offering more rice. The girls were polite and friendly but not rambunctious.
They didn’t mind giving up their room for me, as they were excited to sleep on a mattress in their parents’ room. After supper, dad studied Deuteronomy; the girls played on the computer and bathed. Mom held them, sang to them, chatted with them, put them to bed.
Afterward, she made Nescafe for us. We three grad students read quietly into the night. It was sweet and cozy… to study together in a small, plain cottage. It was a gift of quiet companionship. I faded, and turned in first.
We had breakfast, the girls met the school bus, and dad and I walked a half hour to campus. Mom would come to school later. I thanked them. They thanked me.
They expect me to come back. Showing hospitality to me gave them a break in their isolation, and a chance to express their culture and values. To show up as their guest was a gift for me–but also for them.
I’m glad I decided to alter my usual pattern.
This December, may we find ways to alter some usual patterns.
May we reach out and welcome in.
May we give the simple gift of our presence, and invite that gift from others.
Blessings,
Filed under: Children and Youth, Sermon Archives and Excerpts, Travels | Tags: Advent, change, depth, healing, Jesus, loss, Mary, naughty and nice, Santa, solstice, unmet expectations
Not What She Was Expecting!
Fourth Sunday in Advent, December 19, 2010
Hymns: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”; “Deck the Hall”; “Prayer to Holy Wisdom” [tune: Once in Royal David’s City]; special music: “Coventry Carol”; “Away in a Manger.”
Who’s Been Naughty and Nice: An Exchange of Appreciation
Last Saturday I finished my meeting in Boston and checked my flight status to come home. Flight cancelled! Rerouted for Sunday morning, and I would get to Sacramento after church. Why had I booked a flight that went through Minneapolis!?! The best that airline could get me for Saturday was a flight into San Francisco, about 100 miles away from my car, Sacramento’s airport parking lot.
So I bought a one-way ticket on Southwest airlines, which gave me a long layover in Denver. Walking from gate to gate, I saw Santa Claus. “Come get your picture taken with Santa,” I heard a marketing person call out…to me! I steered clear of the scene and watched, thinking it was for kids. “You’re next,” they said. I stood next to Santa’s big chair, shook his white-gloved hand and grinned for the camera. The payoff included a $20 airline discount, and an emailed copy of the picture. But first they walked me through some new photo manipulation software and asked me to take a survey about it. They showed me how you can take the smile from one picture of yourself and put it on another one if your smile and the rest of you are not all captured at once in a way that meets your expectations. The survey asked: “How likely are you to use this Microsoft version of [whatever]?” I said, “Not likely.” Not likely even to remember its name. Sorry to disappoint them.
It was a slow night for Santa, so before I left, I gave Santa Claus a minister’s report. You know: the naughty and nice list. I started with nice people in the church, so Santa would think I am nice. I named the greeters and ushers, the musicians, the Book Store volunteers, the cooks, the babies in the nursery, the Sunday School teachers. Who else do you think I included? Name some out loud. [Elicit names of people for a time.] Yes, I mentioned all those and more. Raise your hand if you did something good this past year, just one nice thing. Okay, on the count of three, call our your names all at the same time. 1-2-3 Go! Yes, I told Santa all your names. I had so many people to praise from this church. Now he was ready to hear the NAUGHTY list! Unfortunately, my flight was announced, and I had to leave. And that was that.
Sermon: Not What She Was Expecting!
Here’s a story about the legendary Muslim preacher, teacher and trickster Nasreddin, a Sufi who lived in the Middle Ages. He is claimed by the peoples of three countries: Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. One day Mullah Nasreddin was invited to deliver a sermon. When he got into the pulpit, he asked, “Do you know what I am going to say?” The audience replied “No.” He announced, “I have no desire to speak to people who don’t even know what I will be talking about!” He left.
The people felt embarrassed and called him back again the next day. This time, when he asked “Do you know what I am going to say?”, [GUESS WHAT the people said?] They replied “Yes.” So Nasreddin said, “Well, since you already know what I am going to say, I won’t waste any more of your time!” He left.
Now folks were really perplexed. They decided to try one more time and invited the Mullah to speak the following week. Once again he asked: “Do you know what I am going to say?” Now, however, the people were prepared. Half of them answered “Yes” while the other half replied “No.” So Nasreddin said “Let the half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the half who don’t,” and he left.
This is a story about expectations. Nasreddin wanted to know what they expected of him. AND he didn’t want to fulfill their expectations.
Almost nobody has been a stranger to having our expectations disappointed. Most have known frustration, rejection, failure, lack of follow-through, and the heartbreak of loss. With the passage of time, we may learn that we had incorrect assumptions or that there was a failure of communication about what we expected of others or what others expected of us. And with time, we get some healing. In big ways and small, we have experienced the shock of unmet expectations.
This month, these days, are times of waiting and expectation. People who study the weather, and those who celebrate earth-based spiritual traditions, mark this Tuesday as the Winter Solstice. I’ve been waiting…for the days to start getting longer! It will take some time to have enough extra daylight to notice it, but I get a new burst of hope at the Solstice. In the calendar of the Christian tradition, today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, a season of waiting, reflection, hope and expectation. The waiting-time of Advent ends on Christmas, and Advent songs look forward to that: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “People look east; Love the guest is on the way.”
The Virgin Mary’s waiting time ended on Christmas too. She was waiting and expectant. Literally, she was expecting. The end of her waiting time—that is, the birth of Jesus— is what gave Christmas to the world in the first place.
Imagine her situation: She is of the lowest possible rank and condition in ancient Palestine: a teenage girl from a poor family at a time when children, females and poor people have no rights. She is a Jew living under the military occupation of the Roman Empire. Fortunately, she is engaged to a man who is a carpenter—good skills to have. Before the marriage, though, she learns that she is pregnant. The Angel Gabriel gives her the news, and explains that the baby will be the child not of Joseph, but of Almighty God. Furthermore, she learns that he will be a teacher, a prophet, a leader for his people and for the world.
Whatever a poor Jewish girl living under military rule could think her life might look like, surely this fate is not what she was expecting. Nor is her fiance expecting this news. Given the strict culture there, Joseph could shame her in public for being pregnant, but he plans only to send her away quietly, because he’s a nice guy.
Angel Gabriel comes to the rescue: “Don’t worry, Joseph, this baby will be the child of the Holy Spirit. If you parent him, care for him, raise him, you will be doing a great service to your people and the whole wide world.”
Mary says yes, and Joseph says yes, to an unexpected role, yes to a future whose challenges are not yet clear. When the baby comes due, they are out of town and on the road: again, not what they expected. The only place they can find to stay is a stable in Bethlehem, so Mary gives birth with the help of a few local women and some cows, goats, donkeys and other livestock. I’m not sure what help the animals provide, but they are what she’s got. Surely not what she expected.
Unfortunately, word gets out that Jesus is a special child, a Jewish messiah, a king-to-be. The Romans’ local ruler, Herod, is not happy about the competition, so he sends soldiers out to take the lives of all young male children. Angel Gabriel does not protect these innocents, but he does help Joseph, Mary and the baby flee to Egypt. As ordinary peasants in ancient Palestine, this adventure is not what they expected.
Other than all this drama, the Bible gives no details about the day-to-day struggles and stress that Mary might go through while caring for a baby–or the stress of any parent of any new child.
Two thousand years after Mary, a different woman found herself in the unexpected position of expecting. In a book she entitled Operating Instructions, California author Anne Lamott writes about her experience as the recovering-alcoholic single mother of an infant. It’s a funny book, and those who have cared for infants surely would nod their heads at wacky depictions of the new parent’s range of emotions. Lamott expresses her sense of inadequacy, of being overwhelmed and exhausted. The colicky baby doesn’t sleep, but cries for three and four hours at a time. His feedings, gas pains, poop, and pee rule her days and nights. To one like me who’s not had a child, Lamott’s record of the baby’s first year is downright frightening!
Yet Anne Lamott is blessed by the help, care and attention of a circle of loyal friends, relatives, and the people from her church. They’re all devoted to the child and to her. In the ancient story of Mary, lots of people gather around. Shepherds come to look and worship, leaving their own flocks untended. Sorcerers, kings, astrologers—the ones known as the wise men—come from far away, guided by a star, and on bended knee they display the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In the Bible, these gifts are literary symbols of the future life of this child, necessary to the story. But for a new parent of a new baby, they are of no help at all. No diapers, not a bag or two of groceries, not a covered dish for supper. No crib or stroller or a mobile to hang above the baby bed, and no baby bed either. Some cash would be nice too.
Lamott had not expected to get pregnant, but when she found out that she was going to be a single parent, she said “Yes,” not knowing what to expect. Amid all the struggles, she was moved by the help from so many people and surprised by how much devotion she could feel toward another human being. She writes about being filled with love, joy and faith just from looking at the baby as he sleept. It was, she writes, “the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He was like moonlight.”
Lamott wrote the book to make sense of her experiences of the baby’s first year. She’s been a much-loved writer of novels and books about spirituality and her quirky and liberal form of Christian faith. Last week she was inducted into our state’s Hall of Fame at the California Museum. As a recovering alcoholic, her successful and blessed life is a world away from anything she could have expected 20 or 30 years ago. If she wants to feel good about how things have turned out, however, she should not compare herself to the Virgin Mary, who’s a saint, a real saint. For hundreds of years, icons and statues have held Mary in high esteem. She’s a woman to worship, the female face of God. She’s a mother-figure to ask for help, whatever gender, age, or stage of life a person is in. She is known ‘round the world as the face of compassion for her baby, and for her son as a grown-up radical rabbi, and for the sufferings of the whole human family. Not a role that she expected.
The stories of these two women tell me this: We cannot be sure how our lives will evolve and change, cannot know what events, upsets, blessings or surprises lie in our future, or even in the next day. We don’t know how we would rise to meet those challenges and experiences until they happen. We can’t know how life will change, or what will emerge from our heart when it does. Yet we can be sure that there is more beneath our surface than we are able to name and see right now. There is more courage, wisdom and peace in us than we imagine. That, for me, is a source of hope.
But practical questions remain for us in moments of pain over the unmet expectations in our lives. In the face of failure or loss, how do we move forward? When we fall flat on our backsides after the rug is yanked from under us, how do we begin? Or, how can we trust the future when we’re holding on so hard to our expectations that our breathing is tight and shallow? When our sense of possibility is weighted down, when we have no good idea coming to mind, how do we respond?
Two things that help me… are sitting still and going for a walk. Of course, these are opposite activities, but they both help me.
In sitting still, I return to the breath, and notice the presence of my body and how it feels. This helps me begin to find the spirit that sustains me, and feel the ground that holds me up. I can let myself experience my feelings of disappointment, but I need not run from them. I breathe, maybe I cry, maybe pray.
Each of us can show kindness to our own feelings, just as we can show kindness toward another’s feelings without taking them on as an all-day burden. Of course, sitting still with uncertainty, pain or anxiety can be hard, but we can start small, with brief times and then go longer. It makes a difference.
Going for a walk helps me too. It gives me time to reflect, to think through the nature of my expectations and the reason for my pain. It gives me space to think of new possibilities. As the seasons come and go, when walking regularly I notice that the structure of a neighborhood or the look of a local park stays the same over the year. Yet there are subtle changes every month, every week, every day. The scenes around me show that life changes, but the basic structure of life continues. So it is with us: our life changes, but our basic human identity continues. These are my examples, of course, not my prescriptions.
Some folks go hiking as a solitary activity: I don’t go alone; I worry I’ll get lost. Some go biking or swimming. After such exertion they come away with a new outlook on the day, a fresh look at life. Some seek out the help of a counselor, mentor, friend, spiritual director, or life coach. Some find reassurance in books of wisdom or advice, some in art, music, and various crafts.
One of my colleagues in a recent sermon recommended this: Watch your own life as if were a movie or a play. Step up to the balcony and watch it from a distance. Watch it unfold like a story. Consider a wider, deeper, longer perspective on life.
In the story I told of Nasreddin, the Sufi preacher flouted the expectations of his congregation: “The half who know what I am going to say, tell it to the half who don’t!” Is this just wacky, or is there wisdom in it? Perhaps Nasreddin wants them to turn to one another, and speak together. Maybe he wants them to learn how to practice dialogue, and value it. He wants them to listen to one another, and bear witness to one another. Maybe he’s had enough of everybody sitting at his feet, waiting on his every word, and he wants them to look inside for the wisdom they can call upon. He wants them to look to one another for the wisdom that they can share as a community.
The reason I think we are all here in this place, at worship services and other programs here, is that we seek help and support from a community. We bear witness to our lives here, and others are witnesses to our lives, and the changes in life.
We make ourselves available for fellowship and friendship with others.
Of course, among our disappointments, among the unmet expectations of life are unwelcome afflictions: pain and sickness, injuries, and loss of the mental or physical abilities we used to rely on every day. In one another’s company we bear witness to these changes as well. As expectations fall by the wayside, and new chapters open in our lives, we bear witness to the spirit that endures in each one of us.
Whether we get an unexpected sorrow, a pleasant surprise, or an intriguing hint of something newly emerging in our lives, we can be there for one another. People here pretty much look like the same kind of individuals from week to week–and we are the same. Yet we are changing too.
Those who come to know us will notice our changes and our growth. They can help us discern the newness emerging from our lives, from our spirits. If we pay attention, we can watch ourselves, and one another, as we grow in spirit.
As new chapters open in our lives, we watch and wait, and we bear witness to the spirit that endures in each one of us.
As we watch and wait, may the spirit grow in us and among us. So may it be. Blessed be. Amen.
Filed under: Family Ministry, Rituals, Prayers, Elements of Worship Services, Sermons and a Whole Lot More | Tags: Advent, breathing, Christmas, holidays, meditation, pain, silence, spiritual practice
Hymns For the Beauty of the Earth, I’ve Got Peace Like a River, Give Yourself to Love.
Conversation with Children
Today I’m inviting you to join me in an experiment in what is called mindfulness mediation. (“Oh, no,” a girl shudders; “Does that involve sitting still?”)
As a matter of fact it does involve sitting still. We’re going to sit together for half a minute or so, in silence, and just see what it feels like. We’ll sit here and just pay attention to our breathing. You might see or hear squirming or squealing or chattering around us, but that’s okay. Just notice it and let it happen. Notice what it feels like to be sitting on the floor, to be breathing. You may have thoughts go through your mind; they will come and go, come and go. Just let them. You adults in the chairs are invited just to notice what’s going on with you, too. Let’s see what it feels like. I will ring this chime to start our meditation time and to end it.
(30 seconds pass.) What did you notice? Let’s start on the right side here and go around the circle to see if any of you wants to say something. “I noticed I was hungry.” “I noticed I felt weird.” “I noticed it was boring.” “I noticed I felt peace.” “I noticed I was thirsty.”
All these experiences are some of the most common things that people say after they meditate. It’s interesting what we notice when we pay attention. I want to let you know that you can do this experiment with yourself any place and at anytime you want to. Thank you for your attention and participation, and I look forward to seeing you after the service.
Reading Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House
A poem by Billy Collins
Sermon
As my first Christmas with this congregation approaches, I have a confession to make. For most of my life I have had an ambivalent relationship to Christmas. It’s not so much a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. No, depending on circumstances, I either like it or loathe it. I won’t go into the whole sad story of my materialistic childhood or the let down of my college Christmas homecomings. I know many people and families who have borne much heavier holiday-season hardships. I was blessed in many ways, and I am today. Even so, I can identify with Dr. Seuss’s Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and I’m sure the Grinch came from a dysfunctional family.
I know there are others like me who have Grinches lurking in the shadows of the soul, or maybe just nagging little gremlins, supplying their unique and personal reasons for holiday ambivalence. For some, it’s being part of a non-Christian spiritual practice or faith in the midst of society’s dominant religion. For others it’s the frustration of trying to find the peaceful message of Jesus’ holy birth amid the idolatry of commercialism. And many of us are burdened by the high expectations that we put on one another and ourselves at this time. We may feel as if we are on a holiday treadmill: so many things to prepare for, pay for, do, attend, host, drive to, buy, wrap, write, send, give, reciprocate for, eat, drink, and remember not to forget, all in a few weeks’ time. Oh, and of course there is the expectation look happy while you’re at it! We pack so many expectations into building toward the climactic day of December 25th. This can set us up for a letdown.
As a young adult I took a second look at the Christian tradition, which I had left behind in college, and I found some freedom in it. My adult-level introduction to the Christian liturgical tradition was through the Episcopal Church. Thanks to its lesbian and gay outreach and its campus ministry in my university town, I began friendships with active lay persons there as well as clergy. Though my friends occupied the liberal wing of the Episcopal Church regarding social concerns, when it came to the calendar of the church year they were traditionalists. For them, Christmas did not begin on the day after Thanksgiving, but nearly a month later, at a Christmas Eve church service. Some still wait until the day of Christmas Eve for the hanging of the greens and trimming of the tree. The season is called Christmastide, and it goes from December 25 until January 6. Hence the 12 days of Christmas, made famous in the song about the gifts of three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. January 6 is the beginning of the season of Epiphany, and the day that marks the visit of the Wise Men bearing gifts from the East. It’s also the day to take down the greens and dismantle the Christmas tree.
In the traditional calendar, the season that leads up to Christmas is Advent. The Advent season begins today and it covers the four Sundays before Christmas. For centuries, Advent has been a time of reflection, a time of waiting and spiritual preparation. Many churches that observe Advent hold off singing Christmas carols until Christmas Eve—instead, they sing hymns about waiting for the arrival of hope, love, joy and peace on earth. Traditional Christians see that arrival in the birth of Jesus, and they celebrate it on Christmas. Of course, some of us Unitarian Universalists don’t observe any Christian holidays. Even so, our tradition affirms the possibility that the gifts of hope, love, joy and peace can arrive in any season of the year, at any moment. And we affirm that these gifts can come to any person’s life. Our religious tradition affirms that everyone is worthy of these gifts— hope, love, joy and peace —and everyone has a role to play in giving them to the world and to one another.
We all want peace on earth and joy in our hearts. We want a world based on love and blessed with hope. But Advent says: Not so fast. Whoever you are, in whatever faith tradition you might be–or in none at all– bringing forth such gifts will require patience. We must learn to wait awhile.
Simone Weil, the 20th century French philosopher and social activist, writes: “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” The first time I read that, I said, “Oh, great! Patience!”
It’s true, though. The practice of waiting and watching is found in many spiritual traditions. The emotional pain of waiting comes from the idea that where we are going is the only place to be, from the certainty that what we are waiting for is just what we need. We say: Let’s tear open the wrapping and get to the good stuff. Advent says: Look inside first. Unwrap your own attitudes and habits of mind.
Our own forbear Ralph Waldo Emerson splashes cold water on our face. You may feel a lift in your hearts, he says, from political changes, economic improvements, recovery from sickness, the “return of an absent friend, or some other external event.” This “raises your spirits,” Emerson says, “and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
Henri Nouwen makes the observation that much of our waiting is really an attempt at controlling the future, trying to direct the future. This is understandable, he says, for we live in “a world preoccupied with control.”
Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who taught and ministered in the fields of mental health and developmental disabilities in the U. S. and Canada until his death in 1996. His writings on the spiritual life are popular in many denominations. In an essay about the spirituality of Advent, Nowen writes: “Waiting is not a very popular attitude…. Most people consider waiting a waste of time,” and for many of us “waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go…. People do not like such a place, [and] they want to get out of it by doing something.” The modern-day holiday season suits this urge just right. Seldom are we without something to do.
In October I attended a five-day silent retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California. It was a silent retreat, except for a brief time for questions before lunch and a sermon-like talk after dinner each night, known as a Dharma talk. We had a couple of 45-minute group interviews with a teacher, but most of the time all 84 of us observed silence, practicing mindfulness throughout a daily schedule that alternated between sitting meditation and walking meditation, with silent meals together and a 45-minute job to break up the day, if not the silence we kept.
The practice of meditation is to notice your experience every moment, accept it, and then experience the next moment. The practice is to notice feelings and sensations, impulses and fleeting thoughts, but only to notice them, not to judge them, repress them, or hold on to them.
The teaching is that our feelings and thoughts arise and pass away, arise and pass away, moment by moment. The practice is to notice, to be present. The primary anchor to the present moment is our breathing in and breathing out. When the attention wanders or the mind gets hooked in reactions or in planning, kindly bring your attention back to the present, by watching the breath or noticing the sensations of the body.
It is simple, but it’s easier said than done. That’s why, on retreat, we practice over several days. Seeing your own habits of mind is humbling. Coming face to face to face with your own reactions, attitudes and knee-jerk judgments can be embarrassing.
One of our teachers suggested that we think of the practice of mindfulness as being companions to ourselves. Imagine, she said, that you are visiting a friend who is sick in bed. You give that person company for a long stretch of time, just being quiet. Whatever your friend is experiencing, you are present. It may take some effort, but you think the effort is worth it, and so is your friend. We can show the same kindness and patience to ourselves. We can be present with our own experience. As we would with a loved one, we might say, “I’m here for you.” We can be a companion to our feelings, even if we feel that we’d rather run out of the room.
In the words of Nouwen, the friend who cares is the friend who can wait with us, “who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, … who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness.” We can learn to be a compassionate friend to ourselves, to watch and wait with ourselves.
Nouwen says that the activity of waiting “is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.” The key to waiting is the faith that where we are now, where we are in any moment, is worth our attention. “The secret,” he says, “is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun.” The moment we are waiting for is already here. It is this moment.
Here in the northern hemisphere, starting in December many people struggle with the growing time of darkness and the shorter days. For some, the challenge can be clinical depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder, called SAD for short. I have a friend in the Upper Midwest who has this. She lessens her wintertime pain with special bright-light lamps, medication, and travel to places with a sunny climate, but so far it cannot be avoided altogether. While I don’t usually get heavily depressed as December comes and daylight hours dissipate, I do resent it. I curse the shorter days. I get up early to have as much daylight as possible and I work near windows as much as I can. Even so, by late January I get squirrelly and cranky, with bouts of anxiety and loneliness.
A popular quotation says you can curse the darkness or you can dare to light a candle against it. This is really a metaphor about eliminating ignorance and injustice, but it’s how I feel sometimes about real darkness.
A teacher of mindfulness might say: you can curse the darkness, or light a candle, or you can watch the darkness, every moment you’re in it, rather than fleeing it. You can watch it, and notice yourself as you experience it. Every day and every night are made of moments, and things change, moment by moment. Even the quality of the darkness changes. Last night I was driving to church at 5:00 PM, and I happened to notice the degrees of darkness and light that were in the sky. I saw the color the sky gave off at that moment, and how it was changing. I hope that, in the coming weeks and months, when I go outside at night, when I start to wish the night away, I can pause to see it and feel it, and know it as a companion.
American poet Wendell Berry writes this about exploring the dark:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Nouwen says that impatient people “are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go there. The moment is empty.” I think that there are almost no totally “impatient people,” nor are there purely patient ones. We all can experience impatient feelings, and we can let them drive us. Yet, in the face of impatient feelings, we also can practice patience. In spite of the temptation toward another moment instead of the present one, we can “dare to stay where [we] are.” Nouwen says, “Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting . . . is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, the way we might nurture a child.”
Most spiritual traditions teach that waiting and watching, learning and growing are done with the support and help of a community. Furthermore, each one of us plays a role in providing the gifts that a community offers. We do this just by showing up.
When we gather in a spiritual community, we create a space for each other to wait. A Buddhist community is called a Sangha; that’s what a group of people become when we join together on retreat or just for an evening meditation—a Sangha. My retreat leaders have said that Buddhism sees the Sangha just as important as the teachings themselves, and just as important as the Buddha, who set an example for the way to understanding and freedom. During our five-day retreat, my 83 fellow meditators and I spoke only a few times, mostly at the beginning and the end of it. Yet by showing up side-by-side for our meditation sessions, we supported one another in our practice of noticing and watching.
Most of my meditating and praying take place when I am alone. Yet I could not do it alone if I did not have the knowledge that others are also engaging in this practice, or if I did not have opportunities to be with others, to watch and wait together. This applies to the Unitarian Universalist communities to which I have belonged. I have my own values and hopes, my questions and answers, my aspirations, and my commitments. But it is crucial that I join with others to explore, deepen and express these matters of ultimate concern.
Even though we could do so alone, by ourselves, we explore and speak our values together because the companionship can encourage us and give power to our affirmation. Nouwen says that a spiritual community “is the place where we keep the flame alive among us and take it seriously, so that it can grow and become stronger in us.” We affirm the spirit in one another. We celebrate “what has already begun in [our lives].” We affirm what is already there as we watch its fulfillment, day by day, year after year.
In Morning Watch, her book of meditations, prayers and poems, my colleague the Reverend Barbara Pescan puts it this way: “When I am with you, my friends, I know better who it is in me that sings.”
The late composer John Cage caused one of the great musical controversies of the 20th century when he wrote a work in three movements entitled 4’ 33” [Four minutes and thirty-three seconds.] During the performance, not a note of music is heard. Those who defend this work, or at least appreciate its intent, note that its performance includes the sounds that the audience hears in the absence of music. Hence each performance requires active attention, and each one is unique. Even as much of Cage’s audience hated the work, even as they rejected it, they were made part of its creation! In a sense, this is what happens here: We each play a part in creating the experience of the service or other church activity that brings us together.
When we gather in a religious community, we affirm the importance of taking some time to consider the questions that matter. John Cage writes: “We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.”
Our highest business, I believe, is also to reach out and lend a listening ear, to ask for the same in return, to speak from the heart with one another. Our highest business is to offer an assuring presence, the kind of attentive gaze that says, “I’m here for you.”
We’re here for you. We’re here for one another, with patience, kindness and compassion. We’re here to receive the gifts of hope, love, joy and peace, and to share them with the world. So may it be. Amen.
[Note: please do not circulate on the internet; make printed copies only]
Filed under: Family Ministry, Sermons and a Whole Lot More | Tags: Advent, Buddhism, Christmas, meditation, waiting
November 30, 2008
UU Society of Sacramento, CA
Advent: Waiting for the Gifts of the Spirit
Hymns For the Beauty of the Earth, I’ve Got Peace Like a River, Give Yourself to Love.
Conversation with Children
Today I’m inviting you to join me in an experiment in what is called mindfulness mediation. (“Oh, no,” a girl shudders; “Does that involve sitting still?”)
As a matter of fact it does involve sitting still. We’re going to sit together for half a minute or so, in silence, and just see what it feels like. We’ll sit here and just pay attention to our breathing. You might see or hear squirming or squealing or chattering around us, but that’s okay. Just notice it and let it happen. Notice what it feels like to be sitting on the floor, to be breathing. You may have thoughts go through your mind; they will come and go, come and go. Just let them. You adults in the chairs are invited just to notice what’s going on with you, too. Let’s see what it feels like. I will ring this chime to start our meditation time and to end it.
(30 seconds pass.) What did you notice? Let’s start on the right side here and go around the circle to see if any of you wants to say something. “I noticed I was hungry.” “I noticed I felt weird.” “I noticed it was boring.” “I noticed I felt peace.” “I noticed I was thirsty.”
All these experiences are some of the most common things that people say after they meditate. It’s interesting what we notice when we pay attention. I want to let you know that you can do this experiment with yourself any place and at anytime you want to. Thank you for your attention and participation, and I look forward to seeing you after the service.
Reading Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House
A poem by Billy Collins
Sermon
As my first Christmas with this congregation approaches, I have a confession to make. For most of my life I have had an ambivalent relationship to Christmas. It’s not so much a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. No, depending on circumstances, I either like it or loathe it. I won’t go into the whole sad story of my materialistic childhood or the let down of my college Christmas homecomings. I know many people and families who have borne much heavier holiday-season hardships. I was blessed in many ways, and I am today. Even so, I can identify with Dr. Seuss’s Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and I’m sure the Grinch came from a dysfunctional family.
I know there are others like me who have Grinches lurking in the shadows of the soul, or maybe just nagging little gremlins, supplying their unique and personal reasons for holiday ambivalence. For some, it’s being part of a non-Christian spiritual practice or faith in the midst of society’s dominant religion. For others it’s the frustration of trying to find the peaceful message of Jesus’ holy birth amid the idolatry of commercialism. And many of us are burdened by the high expectations that we put on one another and ourselves at this time. We may feel as if we are on a holiday treadmill: so many things to prepare for, pay for, do, attend, host, drive to, buy, wrap, write, send, give, reciprocate for, eat, drink, and remember not to forget, all in a few weeks’ time. Oh, and of course there is the expectation look happy while you’re at it! We pack so many expectations into building toward the climactic day of December 25th. This can set us up for a letdown.
As a young adult I took a second look at the Christian tradition, which I had left behind in college, and I found some freedom in it. My adult-level introduction to the Christian liturgical tradition was through the Episcopal Church. Thanks to its lesbian and gay outreach and its campus ministry in my university town, I began friendships with active lay persons there as well as clergy. Though my friends occupied the liberal wing of the Episcopal Church regarding social concerns, when it came to the calendar of the church year they were traditionalists. For them, Christmas did not begin on the day after Thanksgiving, but nearly a month later, at a Christmas Eve church service. Some still wait until the day of Christmas Eve for the hanging of the greens and trimming of the tree. The season is called Christmastide, and it goes from December 25 until January 6. Hence the 12 days of Christmas, made famous in the song about the gifts of three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. January 6 is the beginning of the season of Epiphany, and the day that marks the visit of the Wise Men bearing gifts from the East. It’s also the day to take down the greens and dismantle the Christmas tree.
In the traditional calendar, the season that leads up to Christmas is Advent. The Advent season begins today and it covers the four Sundays before Christmas. For centuries, Advent has been a time of reflection, a time of waiting and spiritual preparation. Many churches that observe Advent hold off singing Christmas carols until Christmas Eve—instead, they sing hymns about waiting for the arrival of hope, love, joy and peace on earth. Traditional Christians see that arrival in the birth of Jesus, and they celebrate it on Christmas. Of course, some of us Unitarian Universalists don’t observe any Christian holidays. Even so, our tradition affirms the possibility that the gifts of hope, love, joy and peace can arrive in any season of the year, at any moment. And we affirm that these gifts can come to any person’s life. Our religious tradition affirms that everyone is worthy of these gifts— hope, love, joy and peace —and everyone has a role to play in giving them to the world and to one another.
We all want peace on earth and joy in our hearts. We want a world based on love and blessed with hope. But Advent says: Not so fast. Whoever you are, in whatever faith tradition you might be–or in none at all– bringing forth such gifts will require patience. We must learn to wait awhile.
Simone Weil, the 20th century French philosopher and social activist, writes: “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” The first time I read that, I said, “Oh, great! Patience!”
It’s true, though. The practice of waiting and watching is found in many spiritual traditions. The emotional pain of waiting comes from the idea that where we are going is the only place to be, from the certainty that what we are waiting for is just what we need. We say: Let’s tear open the wrapping and get to the good stuff. Advent says: Look inside first. Unwrap your own attitudes and habits of mind.
Our own forbear Ralph Waldo Emerson splashes cold water on our face. You may feel a lift in your hearts, he says, from political changes, economic improvements, recovery from sickness, the “return of an absent friend, or some other external event.” This “raises your spirits,” Emerson says, “and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
Henri Nouwen makes the observation that much of our waiting is really an attempt at controlling the future, trying to direct the future. This is understandable, he says, for we live in “a world preoccupied with control.”
Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest who taught and ministered in the fields of mental health and developmental disabilities in the U. S. and Canada until his death in 1996. His writings on the spiritual life are popular in many denominations. In an essay about the spirituality of Advent, Nowen writes: “Waiting is not a very popular attitude…. Most people consider waiting a waste of time,” and for many of us “waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go…. People do not like such a place, [and] they want to get out of it by doing something.” The modern-day holiday season suits this urge just right. Seldom are we without something to do.
In October I attended a five-day silent retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California. It was a silent retreat, except for a brief time for questions before lunch and a sermon-like talk after dinner each night, known as a Dharma talk. We had a couple of 45-minute group interviews with a teacher, but most of the time all 84 of us observed silence, practicing mindfulness throughout a daily schedule that alternated between sitting meditation and walking meditation, with silent meals together and a 45-minute job to break up the day, if not the silence we kept.
The practice of meditation is to notice your experience every moment, accept it, and then experience the next moment. The practice is to notice feelings and sensations, impulses and fleeting thoughts, but only to notice them, not to judge them, repress them, or hold on to them.
The teaching is that our feelings and thoughts arise and pass away, arise and pass away, moment by moment. The practice is to notice, to be present. The primary anchor to the present moment is our breathing in and breathing out. When the attention wanders or the mind gets hooked in reactions or in planning, kindly bring your attention back to the present, by watching the breath or noticing the sensations of the body.
It is simple, but it’s easier said than done. That’s why, on retreat, we practice over several days. Seeing your own habits of mind is humbling. Coming face to face to face with your own reactions, attitudes and knee-jerk judgments can be embarrassing.
One of our teachers suggested that we think of the practice of mindfulness as being companions to ourselves. Imagine, she said, that you are visiting a friend who is sick in bed. You give that person company for a long stretch of time, just being quiet. Whatever your friend is experiencing, you are present. It may take some effort, but you think the effort is worth it, and so is your friend. We can show the same kindness and patience to ourselves. We can be present with our own experience. As we would with a loved one, we might say, “I’m here for you.” We can be a companion to our feelings, even if we feel that we’d rather run out of the room.
In the words of Nouwen, the friend who cares is the friend who can wait with us, “who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, … who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness.” We can learn to be a compassionate friend to ourselves, to watch and wait with ourselves.
Nouwen says that the activity of waiting “is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.” The key to waiting is the faith that where we are now, where we are in any moment, is worth our attention. “The secret,” he says, “is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun.” The moment we are waiting for is already here. It is this moment.
Here in the northern hemisphere, starting in December many people struggle with the growing time of darkness and the shorter days. For some, the challenge can be clinical depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder, called SAD for short. I have a friend in the Upper Midwest who has this. She lessens her wintertime pain with special bright-light lamps, medication, and travel to places with a sunny climate, but so far it cannot be avoided altogether. While I don’t usually get heavily depressed as December comes and daylight hours dissipate, I do resent it. I curse the shorter days. I get up early to have as much daylight as possible and I work near windows as much as I can. Even so, by late January I get squirrelly and cranky, with bouts of anxiety and loneliness.
A popular quotation says you can curse the darkness or you can dare to light a candle against it. This is really a metaphor about eliminating ignorance and injustice, but it’s how I feel sometimes about real darkness.
A teacher of mindfulness might say: you can curse the darkness, or light a candle, or you can watch the darkness, every moment you’re in it, rather than fleeing it. You can watch it, and notice yourself as you experience it. Every day and every night are made of moments, and things change, moment by moment. Even the quality of the darkness changes. Last night I was driving to church at 5:00 PM, and I happened to notice the degrees of darkness and light that were in the sky. I saw the color the sky gave off at that moment, and how it was changing. I hope that, in the coming weeks and months, when I go outside at night, when I start to wish the night away, I can pause to see it and feel it, and know it as a companion.
American poet Wendell Berry writes this about exploring the dark:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Nouwen says that impatient people “are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go there. The moment is empty.” I think that there are almost no totally “impatient people,” nor are there purely patient ones. We all can experience impatient feelings, and we can let them drive us. Yet, in the face of impatient feelings, we also can practice patience. In spite of the temptation toward another moment instead of the present one, we can “dare to stay where [we] are.” Nouwen says, “Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting . . . is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, the way we might nurture a child.”
Most spiritual traditions teach that waiting and watching, learning and growing are done with the support and help of a community. Furthermore, each one of us plays a role in providing the gifts that a community offers. We do this just by showing up.
When we gather in a spiritual community, we create a space for each other to wait. A Buddhist community is called a Sangha; that’s what a group of people become when we join together on retreat or just for an evening meditation—a Sangha. My retreat leaders have said that Buddhism sees the Sangha just as important as the teachings themselves, and just as important as the Buddha, who set an example for the way to understanding and freedom. During our five-day retreat, my 83 fellow meditators and I spoke only a few times, mostly at the beginning and the end of it. Yet by showing up side-by-side for our meditation sessions, we supported one another in our practice of noticing and watching.
Most of my meditating and praying take place when I am alone. Yet I could not do it alone if I did not have the knowledge that others are also engaging in this practice, or if I did not have opportunities to be with others, to watch and wait together. This applies to the Unitarian Universalist communities to which I have belonged. I have my own values and hopes, my questions and answers, my aspirations, and my commitments. But it is crucial that I join with others to explore, deepen and express these matters of ultimate concern.
Even though we could do so alone, by ourselves, we explore and speak our values together because the companionship can encourage us and give power to our affirmation. Nouwen says that a spiritual community “is the place where we keep the flame alive among us and take it seriously, so that it can grow and become stronger in us.” We affirm the spirit in one another. We celebrate “what has already begun in [our lives].” We affirm what is already there as we watch its fulfillment, day by day, year after year.
In Morning Watch, her book of meditations, prayers and poems, my colleague the Reverend Barbara Pescan puts it this way: “When I am with you, my friends, I know better who it is in me that sings.”
The late composer John Cage caused one of the great musical controversies of the 20th century when he wrote a work in three movements entitled 4’ 33” [Four minutes and thirty-three seconds.] During the performance, not a note of music is heard. Those who defend this work, or at least appreciate its intent, note that its performance includes the sounds that the audience hears in the absence of music. Hence each performance requires active attention, and each one is unique. Even as much of Cage’s audience hated the work, even as they rejected it, they were made part of its creation! In a sense, this is what happens here: We each play a part in creating the experience of the service or other church activity that brings us together.
When we gather in a religious community, we affirm the importance of taking some time to consider the questions that matter. John Cage writes: “We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.”
Our highest business, I believe, is also to reach out and lend a listening ear, to ask for the same in return, to speak from the heart with one another. Our highest business is to offer an assuring presence, the kind of attentive gaze that says, “I’m here for you.” We’re here for you. We’re here for one another, with patience, kindness and compassion. We’re here to receive the gifts of hope, love, joy and peace, and to share them with the world. So may it be. Amen.
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