“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading” by Reverend Tom Capo

Reading

The is from American essayist, poet, philosopher, transcendentalist, and Unitarian Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.

From the beginning of Walden:

"i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did i wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms ..."

From the conclusion of Walden:

"i learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Sermon

Each of us has chosen various directions in our lives.  Each direction chosen has a consequence, and if followed long enough a destination—or does it?  I often reflect on what Unitarian minister, essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “It’s the not the Destination, It's the journey.” 

            Think for a moment about the journey that Emerson’s friend Henry David Thoreau took.  He went off into the woods to live deliberately, to learn what he could from the experience.  He ended up living a simplified life, developing a simple moral code, leaving behind what he determined to be less important things, ideas, philosophies; and he found himself grounded in his dreams, dreams that he felt could, if he was determined, build on.  Did he realize this is where he would end up when he walked out into the woods?  I am not sure, but he embraced the journey without expectation, open to what he would learn along the way, writing and reflecting on many of his experiences in his journal. 

So often on our journey through life, most if not all of us, myself included, pick a destination with the same deliberateness Thoreau picked a journey. That is, he chose a journey; we chose a destination. I chose to become a psychotherapist and then a minister.  Putting in time, energy, resources, to achieve those ends.  I was focused on achieving an end, not on lingering in the journey.  It wasn’t until I really embraced Unitarian Universalism that I understood what it meant to embrace a journey rather than an end. 

One of our Principles is to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.  I always felt a call to a life-long spiritual journey and my call to ministry was part of it.  I wanted to journey like Thoreau, “deliberately… to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”  So how did my spiritual journey begin.

           As a teen, I understood the world to be complex with so many competing ideas, directions, priorities pulling at me.  How could I make decisions with so many choices? What university should I attend, what career should I choose, should I remain with the religion that I was born into or not.  I was accepted into 7 different universities, changed my major 8 times, left and returned to Catholicism a few times, then was unchurched until I found Unitarian Universalism.  After hearing the story of the fox and the crane, I have to say that in the past I often felt more like the fox caught in the trap—with racing thoughts, about too many possible outcomes that kept me from decision making.  I would become mired in evaluating my plethora of ideas, priorities, and data as I tried to judge them all before deciding on a direction.  And sometimes, I found myself paralyzed by the extent of information I was compiling, the array of choices I was considering, and the range of choices and information that I knew was out there if I just kept expanding my research.  This pattern repeated many times in my early adulthood.  Perhaps some of you can relate.        

            It was some time after our second child arrived that I started to drill down into my study of Buddhist thought.  I found Buddha’s parables and Buddhist writings compelling.  Ideas like the four Noble Truths—suffering exists in the world, the cause of suffering is attachment, there is a path out of suffering, that is the eightfold path, right speech, right action, etc.  The idea of offering loving-kindness to myself and others and daily meditation also appealed to me.  And I even found a parable that helped me with my emotional and behavioral paralyzation.

            Buddha told the story of a man who was shot by an arrow, and when the physician came to treat his wounds, the man refused treatment until he knew the background of the person who shot him, where the arrow was made, who helped that person, etc.  I realized that I would never have all the information or advice I wanted to make any decision.  Yet decisions still needed to be made.  So I began to use the information I had, information and advice that was available to me.  I still did some research, but I released the need for infinite options. I needed to work with the options that were most pertinent to my situation.  And I realized that more options and more information doesn’t always mean better choices.

            For many years, I leaned into Buddha and Buddhism for support and direction. However, one day I came across this old Zen koan attributed to Zen Master Linji, “If you find Buddha on the road, kill him.”  Meaning that “The most important things that each [person] must learn, no one can teach [them]. Once [they] accept this disappointment, [they] will be able to stop depending on the therapist, the guru [or whoever and realize this person is] just another struggling human being.”  In other words “No meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddahood of each of us has already been obtained. We only need to recognize it.” (If you meet Buddha on the Road kill him, by Shelton Kopp)

            Now I wasn’t totally willing to embrace the idea that no meaning that comes from outside myself is real and I am still not, but I did come to understand that any book that has been written, or teacher, mentor, nurturer, forebear or parent cannot teach me everything I need in order to find spiritual direction and to live authentically in this world.  This includes the great spiritual teachers Buddha, Mahammad, Jesus, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Confucius or any other.  And that includes the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada or any other.  Notice I said spiritual direction, not spiritual destination.  It is a journey I am embracing, not a destination.

            As I continued on this journey, I came across Unitarian Universalist Reverend Forest Church’s writings.  And his description of a search for meaning and truth both within and outside ourselves really grounded me and helped me understand a way to see what’s around me in my journey. Listen to his metaphor of the Cathedral of the World.  “In the Cathedral of the World there are windows beyond number, some long forgotten, covered with many patinas of dust, others revered by millions, the most sacred of shrines. Each in its own way is beautiful. Some are abstract, others representational; some dark and meditative, others bright and dazzling. Each tells a story about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death. The windows of the Cathedral are where the light shines through.

As with all extended metaphors…, this one is imperfect. The Light of God (or Truth or Being Itself, call it what you will) shines not only upon us, but out from within us as well. Together with the windows, we are part of the Cathedral, not apart from it. Together we comprise an interdependent web of being. The Cathedral is constructed out of star stuff, and so are we. We are that part (that known part) of the creation that contemplates itself, part of the poem that we ponder. Because the Cathedral is so vast, our life so short and our vision so dim, we are able to contemplate only a tiny part of the Cathedral, explore a few apses, reflect upon the play of light and darkness through a few of its myriad windows… as we ponder and act on the insight from our ruminations, we may discover insights that will invest our days with meaning and our lives with purpose.” (UU World, Forrest Church | 11/2/2009 | Winter 2009)

            What I have found true for myself is that there is a balance between this looking within and without for wisdom, truth, direction.  It is certainly easier to look outside ourselves. The religious ideas and beliefs of all the world’s religions have already been vetted, considered and embraced or discarded by others.  And some of these ideas and beliefs do have value; I have certainly found value in many of them in my life.  By vetting what is of value from various religious and spiritual ideas and through introspection, I have found a direction that works for me.  A journey that has meaning and purpose.

            And then came the Coronavirus.  And the world stopped.  And I asked myself, “What now?”  In the introduction to this month’s Soul Matters small group packet, and I read this: “When encountering thresholds, we often talk as if our work is that of successfully “passing through” them. We speak of ‘making healthy transitions.’ We seek out advice and support as we decide which thresholds to lean into and which to resist. The goal, it would seem, is figuring out how to travel forward in the right way.

But what if the true invitation of a threshold is not to successfully move from here to there, but instead to just sit and pause? What if we saw thresholds as resting places rather than as those moving walkways that transport us through airports? What if thresholds help us “become” by asking us to just “be” for a while?  No moving. Just noticing and naming. Less traveling and more listening.… the Rev. Sara LaWall, gets at this when she writes, ‘a [threshold is] a space to imagine a new way, and new self. Not moving or pushing but sitting and cultivating… [the goal] is to allow you[self] space and time to reflect on your past, present, and future.  To imagine a new beginning…”

            Could this quarantine time be a time to imagine a new beginning?  Could now be a resting space to help me “become”, to carefully evaluate what is within me so I can discover a new belief, or ideas, or a new direction that is most authentic to me now and as I begin to consider my post quarantine future?  Or instead, is now presenting me with an opportunity to discover heretofore unknown parts of the essential me? Not ideas, beliefs, or direction, but instead, some elusive quality that is most basic to who I am?  That inner light that illuminates decisions I make and actions I take?  What new thing is being born in me?  What foundation am I putting in to support myself?  Who will I choose to be in a Coronavirus world?  How will I choose to be?

            You know, I was reading about Wongi people in Australia.  They do walkabouts once a year to regain their balance, restore their sanity, to learn what they need to know.  Often on these walkabouts they sit, perhaps under a tree, for long periods, not because they are lazy or tired, but because they are “taking time to listen to their body and to read what the plants, animals, wind, smells, and sound [are] telling them.”  (Parabola, Winter 2011-2012, Diane Wolkstein) In other words they take time to measure their own internal and external temperature and that of the world.  Perhaps now is the time during our own walkabout through life when we are called upon to sit, to listen, to regain balance, to learn or relearn what we need to know about ourselves.  And from what we learn, to begin imagining what we want our lives to be and naming what that is.  “And that imagining and naming may be more powerful than we usually assume. From the outside, it may seem that nothing has changed in our lives, and yet once that imaging takes shape in our minds and hearts, nothing is ever the same. The idea, the dream, the recognition suddenly takes on gravity. And that gravity creates an inevitability that transforms us…” (Soul Matters, May 2020)  May the light from within transform your understanding of yourself and illuminate new and deeper truths as you pause on the threshold and imagine your new beginning.

“On the Threshold” Reverend Tom Capo

Reading

The Parable of the Trapeze by Stress-Management and Mindful Lifestyle Educator Judy Banks (January 23, 2016)

Sometimes, I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments, I’m hurtling across space between the trapeze bars.      

Mostly, I spend my time hanging on for dear life to the trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I’m in control. I know most of the right questions, and even some of the right answers. But once in a while, as I’m merrily, or not so merrily, swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see?

I see another trapeze bar looking at me. It’s empty.

And I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts, I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens, I hope—no, I pray—that I won’t have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moments in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab the new bar. Each time I do this I am filled with terror. It doesn’t matter that in all my previous hurtles I have always made it.

Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless basin between the bars. But I do it anyway. I must. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call faith. No guarantees, no net, no insurance, but we do it anyway because hanging on to that old bar is no longer an option. And so, for what seems to be an eternity but actually lasts a microsecond. I soar across the dark void called “the past is over; the future is not yet here.” It’s called a transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and the bars are the illusions we dream up to not notice the void. Yes, with all the fear that can accompany transitions, they are still the most vibrant, growth-filled, passionate moments in our lives. And so transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to “hang out” in the transition zone — between the trapeze bars — allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens.

It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn to fly.

Sermon

            Martha and I once took a trip to Bangkok, Thailand.  I was studying Thai Buddhism at the time and so we asked our guide to show us as many temples as she could while we were there. This picture is from our trip to one of those Thai Buddhist temples, Wat Arun Temple of Dawn.  What do you notice first?  Well of course the giant fearsome statues.  These are call Dvarapalas  (pronunciation: [dʋaːɽɐpaːlɐ]).  They are the gate guardians.  Beautiful and weaponized with giant bats. What was most fascinating to me was when we walked through the entrance that there was a lip, a board across the threshold that we had to step over.  When we asked about it, the guide told us that the board was to keep the demons out.  Demons are unable to step over blockages, they need a smooth path.  The raised doorsill was a crucial detail and we would find them at each Thai Buddhis temple we entered.  

            This little board across the threshold of this temple made me wonder “what are some other effects of this slight impedance?” Certainly it caused people who entered this holy place to do so with more awareness:  Each person has to watch their step before entering.  Does this pause result in internal questions like: Why am I entering this sacred space?  What do I bring to this sacred site? How am I feeling and what am I thinking about as I enter?  Is there more to crossing a threshold than simply putting one foot in front of the other?

            Thresholds offer us opportunities.  They are liminal spaces between one place and another, or one state of being and another.  Religions of all kinds, cultures of all times and places, have ways to mark the moments when we are on a threshold between one state of being and another. Sufis, for instance, consider thresholds holy, and experience them as spaces between the seen and unseen worlds.  Some Sufi, such as the Mevlevi order, practice whirling to reach a connection between themselves and Allah.  “They wear a black cloak symbolizing death and the grave, which they remove before whirling. On their heads they wear a tall, brown hat known as a sikke, which symbolizes the tombstone and the death of the ego. Once their cloaks are removed, their long white robes and white jackets become visible. Both are symbols of resurrection.” (Wikipedia). 

            Religions and cultures mark transitions with threshold rituals for birth, adulthood, marriage, and death—the Catholic baptism, the Amish Rumspringa—during which adolescents take a break from the community before committing to the community as an adult, Pagan handfasting—gently binding the hands of the bride and groom together as a vow to love, honor and respect their partner, and the Buddhist ritual of pouring water over one hand of the deceased in a bathing ceremony, then placing the body in a casket and surrounding it with wreaths, candles and sticks of incense. 

            I experienced an unexpected and intentionally created threshold in a Unitarian Universalist church.  I had joined First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Worth, and was, as were we all, part of the building of a new sanctuary.  I remember Martha and I varnishing the bookcases in the library.  Anyway, as the process of building was happening, I noticed that a specific area was created between the greeting space and the sanctuary.  A short hallway with double doors on either end.  What had to be explained to me was that this was the transition or threshold space.  That people were expected to quiet down as they entered this shadowed space to prepare for entrance into the sacred space for worship.  And this was a congregation of mostly atheists and agnostics.  UU Miami also has a transition space similar to what I just described.  What purpose does it serve?

            Most of us experience thresholds in our daily life in times of suffering, joy, and mystery.  Some Unitarian Universalist congregations offer a specific ritual for honoring those times, a Joys and Concerns ritual which reverently acknowledges the joys and concerns of those present in the service to the congregation.  I have often wondered about the value of this ritual, given the unpredictable nature of it, with politics, petitions, and announcements often getting mixed into what’s means to be a sacred ritual.  But here’s the things I ask, what is the purpose of this ritual?  Over time I have come to understand that it provides an opportunity for intimacy, connection, community support.  And if we don’t have this ritual, how do we acknowledge and honor and strengthen these community connections?  Recently in our community, I let the Joys and Concerns ritual go, because few, if any, people were utilizing it.  But now in the time of Covid 19, I am asking the question how do we connect with one another with authentic sorrows and celebratory joys, something I feel is needed in a faith community.  Bringing our joys, concerns, or even our times when we experience mystery to our community is an opportunity to cross through a threshold, acknowledging and moving beyond a sorrow or acknowledging and celebrating an event, with people we love, trust, and can be vulnerable with.

            What is it about times of suffering, joy, and mystery that creates thresholds in our lives?  Think about this question for a moment.  Each of us have had these experiences.  I think of these experiences as a time when something in us is cracked open, a part that was pretty solid and stable, a part we counted on.  I really like the metaphor of the trapeze that Judy Bank’s uses.  When we have an experience of suffering, joy, or mystery, the rope on our trapeze swing becomes frayed and it is time to swing to another swing.  This is not always an easy thing to do.  Take it from someone who climbed a telephone pole and then with sweaty palms, trembling hands, and shaking knees jumped off the pole to try to grab a trapeze swing.  In my case, my hands were too sweaty to grab the swing and I lost my grip.  Fortunately, I had safety ropes on and a belay team below holding the ropes.  Many of us might wonder if we jump from the swing we are grasping, will we reach and be able to hang onto the next swing? Will there be a belay team and safety harness to catch us if we fall?

            I will tell you that when I did this jump, the instructor told us to think of the thing we were most afraid of, then jump.  I thought about my fear of speaking with authority in front of a large group of people, and that fear became both metaphorical and real.  When I jumped, I realized that whatever my fear was, I could face it.  Nothing could be more fear-inducing than what I was doing at that moment.  I found that crossing the fearful threshold of jumping off the telephone pole kept me from letting fear get a grip on my life and my actions and that teaching is something I tap into to this day.  It is so easy to let fear creep into our lives and allow it to begin to restrict our decisions and actions. Sometime I will have to tell you about rappelling down the side of the football stadium at Texas Christian University, another threshold experience.

            With suffering, we can very much feel like we are hanging onto that trapeze swing, but what about joy and mystery?  Let me take mystery first.  I would guess that many of us, if not all of us, have had a powerful, emotional, inexplicable experience.  I can think of a few off the top of my head from the inexplicable feelings of connection with something larger than myself at a 5 AM worship service while serving as an altar boy in a Catholic Church to the one night at Texas Christian University when I met all the people who would be important to me during my years in college and met my future wife.  Perhaps you, too, have had an experience of synchronicity—when meaningful events in one's life occur that are so timely it feels as though some hand of fate or destiny is involved.  Or perhaps you had a sense of awareness of or connection to something larger than yourself, god, goddess, divine, spirit, a mystical experience. Or maybe you had an intuitive experience—an awareness about a situation beyond rational logic, or a sense of overwhelming peace and well-being or any number of singular experiences.  In those moments, what happens to your sense of what you know about the world, about yourself?  Well the trapeze rope is frayed then also.  It is unlikely that holding onto that trapeze will sustain you and the next swing may seem very far away from the one you are holding onto, but still, you have to swing to the next trapeze. 

            Even joy can result in a frayed rope.  Think for a moment about the joy you experience when you graduate from High School, college, graduate school, or when you get a promotion at work, or when you find a faith community of people that really resonates with your soul.  In these moments, the trapeze you were holding onto of being a student or holding a certain position at work or not being connected to a faith community no longer works for you.  You have to leap to the next swing and that can be daunting.  When I went to the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association with the expectation of getting fellowshipped by the committee, I expected to get a score of 1 out of 5 and seamlessly begin my career as a minister.   When I got a 2, my joy was deflated.  Yes, all I had to do was go to a workshop and write a paper on institutional racism and then I would be fellowshipped, but my expectation was not fulfilled, I felt defeated. It took some rational and grounded friends to help me find my joy again and help me jump to the next swing of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister.   

            As I have been thinking about thresholds, I have come to believe that being mindful about daily small thresholds can strengthen our emotional and spiritual flexibility.  When it comes to crossing a looming big threshold, I am talking about when quarantine is lifted, we will be more prepared.  I realized this emotionally the other day when I went to see my doctor for a routine blood test.  The freeway near my home was all torn up and the directional signs were no longer there. It’s been 6 weeks since I’ve accessed the freeway by my house, and I discovered that I had to remember which entrance was the one I needed to reach my doctor, experiencing a moment of doubt and fear, experiencing one of the thresholds associated with the lifting of restrictions we’re beginning to face. And think about how it will be when you return and cross the threshold to this sanctuary for the first time.  Joy, fear, doubt, maybe all these feelings at the same time. 

            So perhaps a little time to practice crossing thresholds would be helpful for all of us.   Here are some ways you can make crossing thresholds into a spiritual practice.

    Pick a day, and count the physical thresholds you cross during that day. Notice how many times you have to move from one type of place to another. You might write about the experience of crossing the thresholds in your home. And then write about crossing thresholds as you step out of your home.  How are your feelings about the 2 different, or are your feelings different at all?

    Another practice you might try is consciously step over a threshold. Start with the same foot each time you cross that particular threshold. This simple practice will bring your attention to where and who you are in the present. It will bring mindfulness into crossing thresholds. 

    Here’s one more.  Pause at a threshold. And when you do, honor that threshold, you might bow or say a short prayer. Use the pause to focus on your intention for a few moments. This spiritual practice brings a sense of reverence and the holy to the experience.  It can also help you ground yourself for the crossing of future thresholds.

(Spiritual Practice Feature by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.com)

            My friends even though things change all of the time, we usually don’t notice until a particular point.  Water in a pan must reach 212 degrees Fahrenheit--at sea level--before it will boil. The air temperature must drop below 32 degrees Fahrenheit before rain will turn to snow.  This is also true for our lives when we experience mystery, suffering, joy, or in our case coronavirus; there is point when we must pass over the threshold and become something new.  At that point the trapeze we are currently swinging on, our way of living in the world or perceiving the world, will no longer work for us. We might see a desert in front of us with no way to cross, or a lot of empty space with nothing to hold onto, but there is always another swing for us if we just leap for and grab onto it.  And your safety harness, your belay team?  That’s us.  Your UU Miami family is here to help catch you if you fall, to help get you back up so that you can try again, and grab that new swing that’s ready and waiting for you.