Awakening from What by Reverend Tom Capo preached on April 3 2022

 

Story

There are a number of illuminating stories, fables, and myths in the world.  This is but one:

A Crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher, he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. And then he did it again. And he did that a few more times, and then, just for good measure, he dropped in a few more pebbles.  At last, at last, he saw the water had risen closer to him, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his own life.

"Awakening from What"

                It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day of life.  Some weeks I call my sons or my mother to catch up and they ask me what has been going on, and I can’t think of anything, “Nothing much, the usual, you know church stuff.”  Maybe many of you may have had the same experiences, especially during COVID and even now as we slowly emerge from the pandemic.  But you know what, in these weeks when I think that there’s not much new going on, I wonder about what Henry David Thoreau once said, “It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.”  Look back over your past week.  What did it look like?  Now look again.  What do you see?  Every experience offers us the opportunity to look past the mundane and routine and offers us the opportunity to see new insight, wisdom, perhaps even experience enlightenment and transformation.

                I want to tell you about an artist you may not be familiar with.  Her name is Leonora Carrington.  “She was born in 1917 in Lancashire, England, to an industrialist father and Irish mother.  She was raised on fantastical tales told to her by her Irish nanny…[She] would be expelled from two convent schools before enrolling in art school in Florence…[She] settled in Mexico where she married [a photographer]…and had two sons.  [She] spent the rest of her life in Mexico City, moving in a circle of like-minded artists.”  Carrington stated that: "I painted for myself...I never believed anyone would exhibit or buy my work." She painted, created some sculptures, and wrote some novels and a children’s book.  This doesn’t sound like a shockingly unusual life. 

                Let me read for you short story from her children’s book The Milk of Dreams.  “Jeremy was the son of a Lawyer.  He liked making little holes in the sofa.  They looked like little mouths.  Jeremy put food into the little holes in the sofa.  He gave them bread and butter, bacon, spinach, and meat sandwiches.  The holes became more and more like mouths.  They grew teeth to chew the food.  One day Jeremy forgot to give the little holes their dinner.  One of them got cross and bit the Lawyer when he sat down to read the newspaper. ‘You’d better look out,’ said the Lawyer, and he had all the little mouths sewn up so they could only say ‘Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.’  Jeremy made a very small hole under the sofa and pushed up vitamins.  The sofa got very thin, but its legs grew.  Nobody can sit on it any more.  Only the madman with wings.  It can’t be cleaned, it’s too tall.”               

                Manny Mareno writes in the online Pagan news service, “The Wild Hunt”:  “Long before the current interest in occultism and mysticism as a countervalent to patriarchy, Surrealist painter and author Leonora Carrington had been using witch imagery and occultism to dismantle power and chauvinism.” (Sept 12, 2021)  Carrington often said, “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse.”  In her 1944 memoir Down Below, Carrington wrote about being declared “incurably insane” but finding a doctor who could help her put on and take off “the mask which [would] be my shield against the hostility of Conformism.”

                Carrington, despite her mundane life, living in one city for much of her life, being married with children, was able to saw the world differently from many, probably most, people around her.  And to her surprise, her works resonated with people.  Because of her non-conformism, she had been forcibly institutionalized a couple of time very early in her life.  There are risks for expressing unconventional ideas and for her, there were unpleasant consequences.  She explored, talked about, and painted about occultism and mysticism as a countervalent to patriarchy, way before it became trendy or safer to do so. 

                So what does all this have to do with searching for enlightenment, insight, being open to awakening?  Have you had an idea or perspective that didn’t conform to those of your peers, co-workers, family?  Did you express it?  And perhaps continue to express it?  Were there consequences?   Sometimes people who find their ideas too outside the mainstram, contervalent to the dominant culture, suppress those insights, and don’t let others know about them, until they push their ideas or perspectives so far down within them, that for all intents and purposes that those perspectives no longer impact their lives or the culture around them, except maybe as an afterthought. 

                I have come to believe some things.  First, I am more likely to live a healthy and authentic life if I express my ideas, perspective, truths and beliefs no matter how out-of-step or unconventional they may be.  Each time I honor one of my insights, it is like putting a pebble in a jar, like the crow did in the story.  Knowing that eventually, I can more easily reach that life giving, liquid essence of who I really am and drink fully of the truest expression of myself, quenching my thirst for understanding who I am.  And I’ve found that part of this process can only happen in the company of others.  Different people, authentic people, sharing themselves with me, for as they share, new parts of me are exposed, more pebbles dropped in the jar, that is me. 

                Not all the pieces of me that are exposed are aspects that I want to live out loud in my life, but with self-knowledge, I can, with intentionality, choose what I expose to the world.  I can consider who I want to be and how I want to help the world be a better place for all.  And I can realize how my presence impacts those around me.  

                I don’t know how many of you know the story of the Buddha.  That he started out as an isolated rich kid—a prince--then went out into the world.  He saw an old person, a sick person, a corpse, and finally, someone attempting to follow a spiritual path. And, having been so protected within the walls of the palace, he was shocked by the suffering he saw.  He left the palace behind him and tried to find a spiritual path to deal with suffering.  He did not sit down beneath the bodhi tree on the first day.  He met spiritual teachers.  He explored different spiritual practices.  He almost starved himself to death by avoiding all physical comforts and pleasures, as he saw other holy men do.  He learned much about himself during this part of his life, but did not find the wisdom about suffering that he was searching for. 

                Each of us is on a spiritual and ethical/moral journey.  We can journey reactively, dealing with what comes up in front of us.  Not much reflection, or intention, just dealing with whatever comes our way, without searching for personal insights, not putting pebbles in the jar of who we are.  Or we can journey toward wholeness, toward authenticity, and seek insights about how we can intentionally impact the world around us from the inside out. 

                When we see our experiences, not just look at them, but see them, holding them in our conscious without attachment or denial, reflecting on them, we open ourselves to Bodhi tree moments of insight, eventually.  They’re unpredictable, but they are there.  They tend to steal upon us when we’re not looking for them, so we have to be open and ready for them.  Do the work of living life with awareness, in communion with and sharing your lives, ideas, beliefs, truths, meanings with other people. Make times for reflection and meditation, and embrace the opportunity when those pebbles pop in.  Take those opportunities to drink deeply from your spiritual jar of self-understanding and wholeness.  Share your insights with others, if you want to. 

                I leave with this reflection, an awakening that American playwright, performer, feminist, and activist Eve Ensler experienced – (From In The Body of the World) when she was in a hospital bed fighting cancer:

“What I hadn’t anticipated was the tree.  I was too weak to think or write or call or even watch a movie. All I could do was stare at the tree, which was the only thing in my view. At first it annoyed me, and I thought I would go mad from boredom. But after the first days and many hours, I began to see the tree… On Tuesday, I meditated on bark; on Friday, the green leaves shimmering in late afternoon light.

For hours I lost myself, my body - my being dissolving into tree...

[All of this was new] I was raised in America. All value lies in the future, in the dream, in production. There is no present tense. There is no value in what is, only in what might be made or exploited from what already exists. Of course the same was true for me. I had no inherent value. Without work or effort, without making myself into something significant, without proving my worth, I had no right or reason to be here. Life itself was inconsequential unless it led to something. Unless the tree would be wood, would be house, would be table, what value was there to tree? So to actually lie in my hospital bed and see tree, enter the tree, to find the green life inherent in tree, this was the awakening. Each morning I opened my eyes. I could not wait to focus on tree. I would let the tree take me. Each day it was different, based on the light or wind or rain. The tree was a tonic and a cure, a guru and a teaching.  There was the tree. My tree. Not that I owned it. I had no desire for that. But it had come to be my friend, my point of connection and meditation, my new reason to live. I was not writing or producing or on the phone or making anything happen…I was not contributing much more than my appreciation of tree, my love of green, my commitment to trunk and bark, my celebration of branch, my insane delight over the gentle white May blossoms that were beginning to flower everywhere.”

                I invite you to be open to what happens within you by letting life, creation, people show you a truth, a meaning, offering you pebbles, so that you may grow in awareness of who you are, drinking in who you are, and sharing yourself with the world.  Resist the hostility of conformism and embrace the risk of speaking your unconventional ideas into life.  You are not awakening from but awakening to a fuller, richer, more authentic life.

“Wisdom that Cries, Laughs, and Bows before Children” preached by Reverend Tom Capo on 3/8/2020

Story

“Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” by Portia Nelson. Portia Nelson was an American popular singer, songwriter, actress, and author.

Chapter I

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I fall in.

I am lost … I am helpless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes me forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in the same place

but, it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in … it’s a habit.

my eyes are open

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

Sermon

Spiritual teacher, author, and psychologist Ram Dass wrote about the process of spiritual growth, enlightenment, and gaining wisdom. He said: “I realized that people arrive at spiritual understanding through a much wider spectrum of experience than I ever anticipated.  Part of the process of awakening is recognizing that the realities we thought were absolute are only relative.  All you have to do is shift from one reality to another once, and your attachment to what you thought was real [or important] starts to collapse.  Once the seed of awakening sprouts in you, there’s no choice—there’s [really] no turning back.  Actually, we all know that reality is relative, we have known it since childhood: ‘row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.  Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’  Life is a dream.”

            When Aaron, my eldest son, was born, I learned very powerfully, what Ram is talking about.  My reality shifted and my attachment to what I thought was real and important started to collapse, replaced with a seed of awakening—and after that there was no turning back--how I saw myself and how I chose to act in the world changed.  A new inner filter, not an obstruction, but a new way of considering the world and my place in it snapped into place.  I began to see myself through the eyes of my son.  What I thought, who I was and wanted to be, how my behavior would impact him and his life.  I had always tried to be aware of how my behavior impacts others, but when my son was born, the practice took on more meaning, more depth. 

            Questions arose within my unsolicited, like “How would my son be affected if I used my aggression or male power to get what I want?”  How would my son be affected if I didn’t treat my wife with respect and worth?”  “How would my son be affected by my not doing the chores that needed to be done around the house?”  “How would my son be affected by my absence from his life or my not being engaged with him in his activities?”

            I recalled asking some of these same questions of myself when Martha and I were married.  This does not mean I am perfect in considering all my actions through this inner filter of how my personal choices affect others. I think I had already developed some bad habits while living with Martha in a commune before we were married.  I mean except for her we were all guys and we were not as good as we could be in cleaning up the kitchen.  Usually her tolerance for kitchen messes was much lower than ours, and we kind of all knew that if we waited long enough, she’d lose her patience and just get it done.  And there was also a noisy roach problem in the kitchen which didn’t help much either.  

It seems to me that these powerful life changes offered me the opportunity to look deeper within and to consider my actions through the filter of new insight. Births, Marriages, Deaths, moves, especially to different parts of the country or away from family, friends or support systems offer us new ways of looking at our lives.  When a major life change happens we often ask ourselves questions about how to live our lives, or how we might have to live our lives differently.

Many times these life changes, these opportunities, bring powerful emotional reactions—grief in particular.  I remember thinking about what I would not be able to do after I got married and after I had children.  My life would become more restricted; my choices would be limited. What if I wanted to just get in my car by myself on a beautiful weekend and drive to see the largest ball of string in the world; I couldn’t go without considering how it would impact my wife or my son.  I just could not do whatever I wanted after making such a commitment. 

        This is not to say that I am sad about the commitments I made.  I have been enriched by them.   Almost every year that Martha and I has been married our relationship has become more wonderful and grown deeper than the year before.  Well except for the two years from hell, otherwise known as Seminary, we hit some real roadblocks on how to be in a relationship, nurture our relationship, and raise two children.  As Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”  Learning from life changes can take time and effort and well new insight in order to move forward and go deeper within oneself and between oneself and others. 

I make it sound like life changes are like stepping into a hole in the street over and over again. I resonated with Nelson’s “Autobiography in Five Chapters” not because she stepped in the hole again and again, although goodness knows I’ve don’t plenty of that, but because she kept moving, kept learning, and gaining new insight, even if it was seemingly incremental insight, not all insights arrive as “eureka” moments.  Sometimes insights sneak up on you after repeating the same mistake in different ways over and over and over again.  And my friends, life will offer you opportunities to repeat your mistakes over and over again until insight happens.

Take parenting for instance.  I remember how my sons when they were around 3 and 4 would not obey me when I tried to correct them.  This came to a head when we were grocery shopping and they refused to stay by my side in the store. I felt I had no control over their behavior. Now, they weren’t damaging anything in the store or bothering anyone in the store, other than me.  People on the outside of our family dynamic probably saw two moderately well-behaved children without a parent by their side. This is so embarrassing to tell you.  I was the one who looked out of control.  I tried telling them what to do, yelling at them, threatening them with no deserts or early bedtime, and probably a hundred other bad parenting choices to get them to obey me.  It wasn’t until I ignored them, did my grocery shopping, and prepared to leave that they suddenly began to follow my directives.  After this situation, we had a long talk about their behavior and mine in that situation.  And you know what, they showed empathy and understanding and so did I.  After that situation, we had fewer, not none, situations where I felt their behavior was out of my control.  We all became a little wiser after that experience. 

        Zen Buddhist Haemin Sunim (in “The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down”) wrote: “If I had to summarize the entirety of an enlightened person’s life in a few words, it would be complete acceptance of what is.  As we accept what is, our minds are relaxed and composed while the world changes rapidly around us.”  This is how I would summarize how I finally managed to negotiate, or get through, so many of life’s many delightfully enriching opportunities for growth, insight, and wisdom, acceptance of what is.  Acceptance is really a spiritual discipline. 

When my father was in hospice, during the final days before his death, my family and I were all grieving, each in our own way.  It was hard facing the fact that he was going to die.  I mean we really knew it would happen eventually.  I had flown down to be by his side because the doctors had told us his death would be soon and I wanted to be there.  Now, my father had been near death a few times and recovered, but this time was different.  He had stopped eating or drinking anything days before and was now unconscious lying in a bed in a rehabilitation center when I arrived.  One of us, my mother, my brothers, our wives, someone was always by his side.  Sometimes we read or watched TV.  Some of us talked to him. While there are a number of studies that have reported that after regaining consciousness some patients said they heard and understood various conversations that took place while they were unconscious.  These studies have conflicting results, but I have come to believe people who are unconscious can hear us or perhaps feel our presence when we talk to them.  So we, each member of my family, took turns talking to my father.  This went on for about a week with no change in his condition.  While my grief was acute, I also realized my brothers were having difficulty letting him go, and I wondered if my father was experiencing that and trying to hold on.  Whether that was quantifiable or not, it is what was on my heart.  I also was beginning to feel pressure, mostly from myself, to get back to the church I was serving in Iowa.  I called the airline and made a reservation to return.  Before I left, I spent some time alone with my father.  I told him I loved him and that the family would be okay when he left.  I said my goodbye to him and told him I was leaving to go back to Iowa.  I squeezed his hand, kissed him on the forehead and left.  Martha and I headed to the airport.  When we were checking our bags in, we received a call.  My father just died.  I have often wondered if my acceptance of his death and telling him we would be okay and saying goodbye had had any impact on his letting go.  It is a piece of wisdom, true for me, that I hold in my heart and have passed on to others who are in the same situation.  It is a piece of pastoral care and wisdom that calls forth tears in me, whomever I offer it to, whenever I offer it.

Insight or inner intelligence, born of a divine spark and/or from experience, understanding, and acceptance, needs an open heart and perhaps access to the soul itself.  Wisdom is the outward manifestation of an inward insight.  Insight is a filter that I pass my thoughts through before acting, encompassing my mind, heart, and my soul.  I can’t say I always use this filter because life is busy and complicated and my attention is often fractured across way too many things that are going on, but I do make every effect to do so consciously and intentionally.

Gaining insight and acting with wisdom sets us upon a pathless path,where the journey leads us to the deepest truth within us.  Each experience, each insight shreds a layer of our mind or ego like taking layers off an onion until we come closer and closer to our essence (from Ram Dass), or some of us might say closer and closer to that divine spark within us all.  As we get closer, we are more likely to practice reflecting on our decisions and actions through this essence or divine spark.

            What are the filters that you pass your thoughts through before you act?  Are they grounded in experience, understanding, acceptance, your essence, or a divine spark?  What about big decisions, particularly after large life changes or difficult life experiences?  How conscious or intentional is that process of using your inner vision?  Do you rely on your inner essence or connection to a divine spark as a component of understanding life, the universe, and everything?  Is your wisdom something you could share with others here? Would you?  Does your wisdom bring tears, laughter?  Does it bow before children?