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.
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