Listening to the Whispers- Emily Tietz

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November 19, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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PRAYER

Mary Oliver wrote:

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

To love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

And, when the time comes to let it go,

To let it go.

We pray for the wisdom, the courage, and the heart for all three.

Amen.

SERMON

As I sat in my living room to write this sermon, I found myself looking out the window at a canopy of trees. The chilly wind was blowing through the leaves and I could see some leaves already changing colors.

I smiled.

I love this time of year.

The air seems to be energized with promise.

Soon the leaves will flutter down and blow around our feet. Tree limbs will be bare and the soft sunlight of winter will stream through them. It’s a time energized with promise because it’s when nature intentionally lets go of things it needs to let go of. It seems to snuggle into the earth to rest. And then when the time is right, it will wake up, stretch its limbs, and flood with new life.

The new life couldn’t come, though, if the trees weren’t willing to let go of the leaves they need to let go of. And it wouldn’t come if nature didn’t then find time to rest from the labor of producing and sustaining leaves.

Plant life recognizes this need.

Humans know of this need too, though we don’t always recognize it.

Maya Angelou writes:

Carefully

the leaves of autumn

sprinkle down the tinny

sound of little dyings

And skies sated

of ruddy sunsets

of roseate dawns

Roil ceaselessly in

cobweb greys and turn

to black

for comfort.

Only lovers

see the fall

a signal end to endings

a gruffish gesture alerting

those who will not be alarmed

that we begin to stop

in order simply

to begin

again.

So many great mythologies have stories about the need to let something end before a new beginning can come.

The Christian story is the one told at Easter time. There is a death and then a resurrection. The resurrection could not happen without the death. New life cannot come unless or until something dies.

Trees and shrubs make an annual habit of willingly letting their leaves die and letting them go. Or they simply die to the ground or beg to be pruned back. They seem to trust a promise that new, vibrant life will come in time.

Plant life does its “Spring Cleaning” in the fall.

I did some this summer.

I didn’t set out to do it. I was planning a landscape design for our backyard and wanted some inspiration for the design’s structure. I recalled some things that I’d heard about feng shui and the art of placing things such that they feel good and have meaning. I thought that sounded nice, so I picked up a book in hopes of sparking some creative ideas. I ended up getting all kinds of ideas – only a few related to the landscape design which, months later, is still in process.

Something that stood out to me was the suggestion to take a good look at your stuff and clear out the clutter.

There are a number of things that qualify as clutter:

Stuff that is unused, unloved, unnecessary or just plain messy; like stacks of junk mail or old magazines.

Stuff that just gets you down, consciously or unconsciously; like disheartening books or unfinished projects that you know you’ll never get to so they make you feel a guilty sense of obligation every time you see them.

Then there is the stuff that depletes you; like photos of people who disapprove of you, objects from past relationships, gifts you’ve kept only out of a sense of obligation.

And, of course, there’s the stuff that was relevant at one time in your life, but just isn’t any more so it takes up space and keeps you rooted in the past.

My husband and I thought, “You know, it’s really time to do this.” We decided to take on the whole house – every cabinet, every closet, every drawer, every shelf, every room.

Now, this is really not as straight-forward a task as one might think. There is a reason why every object stuffed in its place is stuffed there. And in order to decide whether to keep something or clear it out, you have to look at why you’ve got it in the first place! The answer is almost always an emotional one. Fortunately, the book warned us about this?

There’s the stuff we keep because we love it, we use it, it makes us feel good, or it has an enriching memory attached to it.

Then there’s the all the other stuff.

The stuff we keep out of fear that we, or someone else, will need it someday; or aunt so-and-so would just die if we didn’t keep it; or it’s associated with a past memory or identity that doesn’t serve us anymore but we just can’t let go.

So, with all this in mind, we rolled up our sleeves and began one room or cabinet at a time.

Over the course of two months we took carloads of stuff to Goodwill or Half Price Books, sold stuff on Craig’s List, or simply threw it away. Finally what was left was stuff that we love and use and know why we’ve kept it. The house seems to be breathing a sigh, “Thank you.”

It seems a simple task, but what happened was absolutely profound and could not be predicted. Each bit-of-stuff asked me to examine what I hold onto inside my heart or mind that enhances life and what I hold onto that really drags life down; what associations, what thought patterns, what values, what identities serve me well, and which ones keep healthy growth at bay. It was a gift; one that I’ll be mulling over for a long time.

Now for the rest of this sermon, I need to own up to the fact that I’m going to try to persuade you of something. I’m going to try to persuade you that it’s good, even essential, for human beings to regularly let go of things in order to let new life in. And I’m going to try to persuade you that we know that already. See what you think. It’s up to you.

The plant world lets go so gracefully with an innate trust that after a time of rest, vital life will come.

Humans, though, we have trouble with that. We tend to hang on to so much stuff both literally and figuratively. It eventually weighs us down or stagnates; and still we hang onto it out of fear or habit or pride or unconsciousness. It makes it darn near impossible for fresh life to find a place to root inside of us and grow.

What would happen if we followed the plant-world’s lead and regularly took inventory to let go of the things that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know we need to let go of? What would life be like if we trusted it to know what we need and return to us fresh new vitality? I’m really not talking about physical objects here – that’s just a means of finding out what’s deeper. I’m talking about our minds and our hearts and our souls.

I think that human nature and the culture we live in make that hard to do.

Our culture values productivity – or at least busyness. We call it the “American Work Ethic,” and there’s a lot of pressure to live up to it. But it takes a seriously intentional slowing down to be able to take an internal inventory.

Notice the messages we get just from television commercials. I remember a commercial from a couple of years ago with a business woman on a subway. She looks tired but satisfied. The time is printed on the screen – 10:30 pm. The voice-over says something like, “Always make sure that your investment banker is familiar with the last train out.” Then the name of the company appears on the screen and the narrator boasts about how much their employees work for you.

Any time that I saw that commercial, I found myself thinking: If their investment bankers are regularly working from dawn to beyond dusk, what’s happening to the rest of their life?

It’s easy to think that we need to keep moving so fast that we don’t have time to pause to figure out what to let go of. So we keep accumulating. We accumulate stress, fears, guilt, resentments, stubborn pride, grief, judgments.

Of course, we accumulate joy and laughter and enrichment and delight as well.

But think about a body of water that has no outlet. Fresh water may have entered the pool, but with no outlet, even that water stagnates and becomes toxic. In the Ancient Near East, people called flowing water, “living water.” I suppose that would make non-flowing water, “lifeless.” I like that image. When we allow our spirits to flow, we are full of life. When we don’t everything deadens a bit.

So we accumulate objects, people, achievements, identities, habits, thought patterns, emotions, and if we don’t consciously sort these things out sometimes and let some go, they take over our lives and we become frustrated without knowing why.

I’m reminded of a story about two Buddhist monks who were on a journey. They came to a river which they had to cross. A woman was there who also needed to cross the river. The elder of the monks picked her up with her consent, carried her across, set her down on the other side and they went their own ways. At the end of the day’s journey, the younger monk was seething. “Why did you carry that woman across the river?!” he demanded. “You know we’re not supposed to touch a woman!” The other monk just smiled, “I left her back at the river. Why are you still carrying her?”

Perhaps the most dangerous things we accumulate are voices. Yes, voices; the ones that tell us:

You’re not good enough to _____(You fill in the blank)

If you were really a good person you would…

– Behave a certain way

– Be involved in certain activities

– Achieve certain accomplishments

– Make a certain amount of money

– Be interested in certain things

The list goes on

You are only acceptable if _____?

Your life is only worthwhile if_____?

You can only be loved if_____?

When we’re not conscious of those voices, we’re driven each day to satiate them. And they’re insatiable. We’re driven to constantly attempt to live someone else’s idea for our life instead of living our own.

I think these voices are the most dangerous things we accumulate because they keep us from the absolutely holy task of living our lives, our lives, authentically.

I think the most important kind of clutter clearing we can do is to quiet enough to become conscious of these voices, figure out who they really belong to (a parent, a teacher, our culture?) and then learn how to release them.

These are not the voices of our higher selves. New life cannot come without letting them go. They kill us one cell at a time.

You’ll notice that the title of this sermon is, “Listening to the whispers.” It’s part of a quote that says, “We need to listen to the whispers of our higher selves so that we don’t have to hear the screams.” We can each imagine what forms the screams can take.

I think that our higher selves know that it is essential to follow the lead of the autumn trees. They whisper,

Let go.

Let go of the voices, the fears.

Let go so you can rest from what incessantly drives you to live a life

that is not your own.

Let go to make way for fresh life to fill you.

I love this time of year.

The air seems to be energized with promise.

Happy autumn.