Sermon by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, October 20, 2002
A couple of years ago I ordered a whole lot of audio tapes from a Buddhist teaching center whose catalogue I had happened upon. When the tapes arrived there was a 'freebie' packed in among them, a mug that I suppose was thrown in by way of congratulating me for spending so much money. It's a plain white coffee mug except that on one side it has the large black words 'Wake Up!" scrawled on with an emphatic exclamation mark. When I blearily pour my very strong dose of coffee into it in the morning, the double entendre isn't lost on me: the mug is the literal vessel for the caffeine that wakes me up in the morning, and it's also the bearer of the spiritual message that is central to my life: the admonition to fully wake up!
It's that admonition I want to talk about this morning, and it's one you've heard from me before and will hear in one form or another all the days of my life, because I really do think it's the central task facing all of us in our spiritual lives -- so we have to find the way to hold it up for each other, over and over again. But I want to speak about it this morning with a somewhat different slant -- or maybe rather than 'slant' I should say with an 'urgent tilt', born of the troubling times through which we are now traveling together.
During the last month or so, I've participated in probably a dozen small group gatherings of this faith community in which some sort of personal check-in preceded whatever the business of the moment might have been. And in each of those check-in times a similar theme was echoed, over and over again. Behind the personal joys and sorrows that unfold through our days is a pervasive sense of dread, hovering like a storm cloud in the back of our minds and at the edges of our days. It's born of sorrow and fear as we hear of the terrible acts of wanton violence against people in Bali, in the Philippines, in Washington, DC. And it's born of the additional sorrow and fear we feel at the prospect of our nation launching a full-scale war against Iraq. Where are we headed together? What will be the outcome?
Once upon a time there was a young Buddhist acolyte who was troubled in his mind about the unceasing violence he saw in the world around him. It filled him with sorrow as he watched the small, individual unkindnesses one person could so thoughtlessly visit on another. He felt near despair when he saw how these were magnified a thousand times over in the ferocious violence between nations that caused so much suffering.
Having heard news of a wise and compassionate teacher who resided in a far land, the acolyte made the journey and finally trekked the final miles up a mountainside to sit at the feet of the master. There he asked, "Can you tell the future? Can you tell what will become of us?" And the master replied, "Certainly I can; it's easy. Today is just like yesterday. Tomorrow will be just like today. Unless, of course, there's a change of consciousness."
What does that mean? What sort of 'change of consciousness' might actually make so large a shift that tomorrow would not be exactly like today -- at least in the sense that so concerned the young monk? What sort of change might give us the breath of a chance of not repeating the same lethal mistakes that we've made for so long in every corner of the tired old earth? Or, to make it more immediate and personal for us: what is it that I might do or that you might do, in response to the dangers that confront our nation and our earth, that are different from the things we have already tried?
I remember many years ago when I took a very valuable course in counseling that was taught by a rabbi. He defined 'maturity' as "the ability to widen one's repertoire of responses so that one can greet the world with flexibility and playfulness". It's also not a bad definition of spiritual awakening, since the more awake we become in our lives the more clearly we can see a range of choice and response. And I think that awakening really is a sort of 'inner revolution' because it helps us to make within ourselves the sorts of shifts that we wish to see reflected in our communities and in the world. If the troubles we face require wisdom and compassion, as surely they do, then our most important daily task has to be to grow wiser and more compassionate ourselves.
I think there are a number of ways in which we can grow wiser and more compassionate, but all of them involve some form of contemplation. Without it, there is no way for us to study what unfolds in our lives and learn from it, no way for us to recognize how similar are our yearnings and our suffering, across all lines of division in this human family.
The contemplation doesn't have to be religious in nature: I am quite sure that there are saints in the secular world, people who never have a practice that looks religious and never cross the threshold of a faith community, and who nevertheless live their lives in wisdom and compassion. But despite my confidence that those people exist, I think that for most of us the key to growing wiser and more compassionate lies in a spiritual practice that we undertake as a discipline, and in a religious community that can ground us and keep us honest.
John Selby Spong is a recently-retired Episcopal Bishop who has made waves over the years through his radical re-interpretations of Christianity and his willingness to embrace the truths taught by other faiths. A few years ago he wrote, ["When the apostle Paul said we were to 'pray without ceasing',] perhaps what he meant was that we are to live as if everything we say and do is a prayer, calling others to life, to love and to being. I can only imagine…that when life is lived this way, an enormous amount of spiritual energy is loosed into the body politic of the whole society. I can imagine that this energy is an agent in bringing wholeness and even healing…when we express our love, concern and caring in thought, word and deed, then somehow that expression has the opportunity to make a difference."
Our nation appears to be heading inexorably into war right now. It is a war that many of us oppose -- within this congregation and throughout our country. But there are many others who are not sure: not sure whether they want to oppose this war, not sure whether or not Iraq represents an imminent threat, not sure whether this is the right time to raise a voice of dissent or whether instead our political leaders deserve all the support we can give them.
What shall we do? How will we each respond with integrity to stand where we feel called to stand, and yet not let our faith community be damaged by our various convictions? And I ask that question with grave awareness that during the Vietnam War many of our faith communities were in fact damaged. Some of them were so torn and conflicted that they literally split and in some cases never recovered. Others were damaged more quietly because their fear of explosive conflict made them shy away from any sort of social action, so that they became insular and in many ways irrelevant to the world around them.
But there is another path, and it involves this notion of an inner revolution, bringing a contemplative or prayerful mind to everything we choose to do. Mohandas Gandhi coined the Sanskrit word Satyagraha, meaning 'truth and firmness' or 'truth force'. For Gandhi this meant more than the refusal to use violent means. It meant the willingness to turn a rigorous eye on our own motives and to be honest with our failings; to work diligently with both allies and adversaries to discern common ground; and to practice nonviolence not only in actions but in every mode of communication.
I would like to see us rediscover the power of Satyagraha within our own faith community. We are gathered under the large tent of Unitarian Universalism in the belief that we are not only a diverse community of believers, but that we are deeply enriched by our diversity. That claim can be sorely tested under the passions and fears that are aroused in a time of war.
Are we really enriched by our differences? Do we really know how to practice the mandates of our faith, and listen with deep attention and respect to someone who stands on the opposite side from us on an issue like war, that can quite literally be said to be a matter of life and death? And we do know how to do it, what does that difficult and delicate walk together look like?
Our diversity under this roof is limited -- but it is genuine in our spectrum of religious beliefs and it is genuine politically. We are Republicans as well as Democrats; conservatives, liberals and radicals; deeply politically involved or living on the quiet margins. Some of us believe passionately that we should not go to war against Iraq; some of us believe with equal passion that war has become the only option. We are not all of one mind. So what should our walk together look like?
I want to suggest that it must begin for each of us not with our political convictions, but with the inner work of contemplation. This inner work is not a way to ignore or withdraw from the needs of the world, but is the surest way to bring our best selves to those needs. Whatever the form our contemplation might take, it will bring us into the heart of a silence that will change us. And it is these changed selves -- these centered, thoughtful, compassionate selves -- that we need to bring forward to the challenges of our times.
In 1950 the poet Clinton Scollard wrote the poem, A Call to Prayer:
"Let us put by some hour of every day
For holy things! …. Some little hour
Wherein to hold rapt converse with the soul,
From sordidness and self a sanctuary,
Swept by the winnowing of unseen wings,
And touched by the … Light Ineffable.
"Swept by the winnowing of unseen wings": you don't have to believe in celestial beings for that poetic phrase to resonate. I don't believe in angels -- but I do believe in the winnowing that arises from our contemplative practices. The word winnow shares a root with the word wind and arose from the ancient practice of tossing grain lightly in the air to let the wind sort out and blow away the chaff.
Our contemplative practices are a way of opening our hearts and minds for a sort of winnowing wind to enter. What's really going on in there? Where is that knot of anger lodged and how might it be untied and released? What is that glimmer of self-righteousness about, and how might it be relinquished? What is the little lift of joy that can start to rise up when we've let the silence go deep, that small movement of peacefulness despite all our dread of war? How will we bring it forth? How will we anchor our choices, our speech, our actions in that place of calm?
It isn't as swift and visible as the literal wind blowing away chaff, but I do believe that each time we settle ourselves to sit in meditation or prayer or contemplation we grow incrementally a little more still, a little more awake. Therefore -- even if only to the barest degree -- we widen the possibility that we will act from wisdom rather than ignorance, from compassion rather than anger or hatred.
For those of us who do feel called to work, as we can, for peace, what sort of work do we want that to be, after all? Last week I received an e-mail notice about a demonstration that was called for last Friday to protest the plans for war in Iraq. It began with a big headline, "Stop the War In Iraq!! Stop U.S. War Crimes!" -- with multiple exclamation marks. And you know, it just isn't where I want to stand right now. As I think all of you know, I feel called to do all I can to prevent this war from happening -- but I'm having trouble with the exclamation marks right now.
I want to stand with those who will study their own hearts deeply before they speak, and search out the ways to raise a voice in humility rather than self-righteousness. I want to stand with people who are comfortable with silence. Most of all, I want to stand with those who are willing to invite that winnowing wind of contemplation into their own minds and hearts. I want to explore the power of satyagraha and use it to challenge the ways of violence that arise not only out there in the world but between us in our communities, within us in our solitude.
I have said before that one of the things this religious community should be for us is a practice ground. This is the place where we need to practice what we say we believe: that we are kin to every living thing, bound to one another in profound intimacy; that every person has the right and obligation to move according to the dictates of conscience; that each of us who struggle to give voice to our hearts should be heard with respect; that our differences can be our greatest source of growth in wisdom if we're willing to learn from each other.
These are among the things we believe that shape the practice of our faith. And I want to urge us all to take with the deepest seriousness that notion of practice. We are not just living our lives; we are practicing our lives, trying as well as we know how to bring them nearer to true harmony. The things we believe about how we ought to be with one another do not always, or even often, come naturally to us. It is scary to realize how often our natural default setting seems instead to be self-righteousness, intolerance, impatience and anger. These things will never be excised from our hearts and minds: they do grow there quite naturally. But we get to choose whether or not to cultivate them -- or to instead bend our will and attention on the seedlings in there that we want to see flourish: our maturity, our embracing love, our sturdy wisdom.
The 13th century Persian poet Rumi wrote,
In every gathering, in any chance meeting on the street
there is a shine, an elegance rising up.
Today I recognized that that jewel-like beauty
is the presence, our loving confusion,
the glow in which watery clay gets brighter than fire…
The mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe
that when you push off from it with your foot,
a thousand new roads come clear, as you yourself do at dawn,
sailing through the light.
I want us to remember the 'jewel-like beauty' that can be there even within 'our loving confusion'. May we seek it out; may we bring it forth. AMEN.