Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Davidson Loehr
August 25, 2002
Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.
OPENING:
We gather here because certain questions call us together. We seek a deeper and more enduring meaning for our lives. We ask what we owe to our friends, to our loved ones, to our children, and to our future, that the world might be a little better because we were here. We ask how to recognize good, how to confront evil, and how to become the kind of people we were meant to be. These questions, and more like them, arise within us and command us to pursue them. And so we gather here, in this church, and our business together is blessed by the yearnings that bring us together. That is why we say
CENTERING:
In the center of our service, from the center of our lives, let us bring it down to a whisper and make room for silence. We come here with our private thoughts, our personal joys, sorrows, hopes and fears. We come knowing that we have done things we ought not to have done, and have failed to do things we should have done. Take these quiet moments to light a candle of memory or hope to give visible form to your special feelings, or to sit quietly and just be here, now.
PRAYER:
When people pray, they direct their thoughts in so many different directions. Some send them to God, some to the better angels of our own nature, some just concentrate, knowing that focusing our thoughts may strengthen our life force.
Wherever you send the words, however you would personally express this need, let us pray.
Help us to focus our life force. Don’t let us become so scattered, so diffused by the many demands of life, that we lose the sense of who we are, and lose contact with our important relationships.
Help us to be more present with those we love. Help us be more fully present to those ideals and causes that call our names. And help us to be more present to ourselves, so that we may be more fully aware of who we are and who we are called to become.
So much attention and energy are required by the transient things of life, let us not lose sight of its more enduring and precious aspects. Let us not forget how important it is that we try to connect ourselves with the most life-giving parts of ourselves and our world.
Help us to be more fully present to ourselves and to those people and callings that need our love and attention. Help us to be more fully present: here, now, and always.
Amen.
SERMON: YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN
The sermon title came from one of my many favorite Buddhist stories. It’s a modern story, about a Buddhist who was trying to be present, as Buddhism teaches you should be, but was having trouble understanding just why you’re supposed to be present. He knew the teaching he needed might come from any place if only he was open to it, so he was trying to be open, whatever that meant. While he was in this open and aware mood, he heard what had to be the noise of several hundred people in a large rental hall he was passing, so he went in. It was a big Bingo game going on. And there, right there on the front wall of the Bingo hall, was the lesson he had been seeking. It was a huge sign that said, in large block letters, “YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN.” When the student is ready, the teacher appears; it can happen anywhere.
The story also says we must choose to be present, or it isn’t likely to happen at all. And it helps to look in places where we’re most likely to find some wisdom and healthy connections. After all, it isn’t likely to happen at Bingo games very often. We have to be in the right place.
I’ll stick with Buddhism a little longer, because it has something to say about this too. You may know that Buddhism teaches an eightfold path toward Enlightenment, the eight right ways to think, act, and so on. But many people don’t know that they also say that before you can even hope to begin these you must find the first “right” thing, which they call Right Association.
You have to hang out with the right kind of people: people who honor the aspects of life that are really sacred. People who provide a safe and constructive environment for talking about ultimate questions rather than the more superficial things we usually talk about. This is true for teen-agers, just as it is true for people of every other age.
So usually, Buddhists seeking wisdom wouldn’t look for Bingo games. They would look for the right kind of community; they’d look for Right Associations.
That’s what a church is. Perhaps more than any other institution in our society, a good church is a place to find the Right Association with others who honor valuable questions and necessary actions.
I spoke last week of Georgia, the sister of a colleague of mine. Georgia attends a conservative Baptist church in a tiny town north of Fort Worth. Her church pays to send their high school youth to Indian reservations in Montana and Idaho every summer to help clean, paint and repair houses. And the church pays to send the kids to Mexico, and helps them find assignments in countries all over the world where they can be of service to others, because they are taught that they can transform the world through service. That’s Right Association.
My younger brother, who had attended Unitarian churches for over a decade, left them to join fundamentalist churches while he was raising his children, because he found conservative churches that were more concerned about morality, ethics, families, and service to the world than the Unitarian churches were, and he wanted to find the Right Association for himself and his family. His daughter who completed Airborne training this June spent the rest of her summer at the church camp she’s attended since she was 12, as a cabin leader. Each week, the campers were given a different theme to talk about, write and act skits on, and tell stories about. The week my brother visited them, the theme was “Love is all we need,” and his daughter had written a one-act play that her cabin was putting on for the camp. When we talked about it, he said “Where, can you tell me, are the Unitarians doing anything for their kids that even approaches this two-month church camp?” We do little things, short-term things, but I don’t know of anything like that camp. We just aren’t present in that way or in that area.
I know many Unitarians like to believe that only stupid people would attend conservative churches, but it just isn’t so. It isn’t even close. My brother didn’t get any dumber when he joined a fundamentalist church – and he didn’t lose his Ph.D. It will be healthy for us to realize that one big reason that conservative churches are so much bigger is because they do so much more, they are present in the lives of their members and their communities in so many more ways than we are.
There are plenty of examples of good large churches in Austin that we could learn from. Tarrytown United Methodist Church is one. Yes, that’s the church of both the governor and the President. They are in a very upscale part of town, and have 2,000 members. They also spend more than 25% of their annual budget on social and civic projects outside the walls of their church. 25%! We have to be proud to have such churches in our community. We also want to aspire to become one of them, because our community needs us to be present in that way. It would serve life in Austin, and in the lives of our members and their children.
So being present isn’t just for individuals. It’s also for institutions, including churches. And trying to be a place for Right Associations is the most important mission we have here. The mission statement that guides me and our board here is simply “To make a positive difference in the lives of our members, our children, and our larger community.” That’s the mission of being a place of Right Associations. I don’t think there is another institution in our society that’s more worth investing money, time and energy in than a good church, if we’re trying to support places that honor the ultimate questions and compassionate values of life. Think about it this week.
Last week I talked about Georgia putting $100 a week in the collection plate at her church, which may represent 15% of her earnings. My brother, as a college professor, gave ten percent of his gross salary to his church. I am convinced that these people I know, and most of the people I don’t know, do it because they want to support places of Right Association, they want to be present there in every way they can. And they will tell you that they have already “won” there, many times. Investing money in a good church may be the most rewarding investment there is.
Now about this time, you have to know that a message like this sounds naively, almost insanely out of place in our society today. Every television ad tells us to buy things for ourselves, buy things for our spouses or children, buy bigger, newer, trickier and more expensive things. The message of virtually all our media advertising is salvation through accumulation. The one with the most toys wins. Saved By Stuff. And when our houses are full of the Stuff, we can – as George Carlin famously reminded us – go buy some Tupperware containers to hold the Stuff. We can even buy big plastic boxes that fill every square inch under our beds with Stuff. People can ask us “What is all that Stuff?” and we can answer “I don’t know, but I must have enough of it to be Saved!”
Our newspapers are still carrying stories of the corporations whose huge frauds robbed their workers and others of billions of dollars, because those in charge got greedy, thought they could get away with it, and thought that stealing money from others was the sort of thing that decent people do.
No, they didn’t put it that way, but it’s what they had to believe. You can’t imagine one of them saying “I know only greedy, scummy people do this, but I’m pretty proud!” Nor do they represent all, or even a majority, of corporate officials, most of whom have far more character and decency. But it isn’t hard to know where they could learn these greedy attitudes. The message of our society is about looking out for Number One. When Ivan Boesky told a class of Harvard students that greed was good, he was chanting the mantra of the religion of a perverted form of capitalism that has defined much of our world for the past twenty or more years.
Salvation by accumulation. Being saved by the things we own, saved by owning enough of the right things. It doesn’t really work: you’re more apt to find wisdom at a Bingo game. And these greedy excesses, for the record, don’t come from the liberal excesses of the 1960s. They come from the advertising and media excesses of the 1980s, 90s, and the early years of this twenty-first century. That’s the source of the messages of greed and self-absorption that are demeaning our lives and our society.
Against that background, it sounds odd to suggest that the most rewarding investment you can make may be in your church. But I’m convinced that it’s true.
I think of a saying attributed to Jesus: “What does it profit a man,” he asked, “if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?”
Now you have to understand that this “soul” thing is not a supernatural thing. It’s a way of talking about the core of us, what’s most important about and to us. The word for “soul” (Psyche) was developed by the Greeks over 2500 years ago as they looked for what was the most important facet of a human being. Was it intelligence, the breath of life, power, what? None of these things, they decided, but instead that deep collection of those ideals and values that are most life-giving, most compassionate, that most lead to a life worth living, and one that is a blessing to others as well. That’s our soul. That’s the “soul” Jesus was talking about too, though of course many lesser religious thinkers have made many lesser things of it.
What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world – if they accumulate all the things their house and garage can hold – if by doing so they lose their soul?
To nourish our souls, we must invest in them and in those relationships and institutions that serve them. And where are you more likely to find the kind of Right Associations that can fill your spiritual hungers and nourish your soul: on Wall Street, or in a good church?
I’m reminded of another Christian teaching that’s on point here, though it’s probably so esoteric most of you have never heard of it, and the rest of you may wonder why you’d want to bother with it. It’s the Christian concept of “Incarnational Theology.” All those syllables mean that true faith means living it: incarnating, embodying, the religious teachings you think are most sacred. For many theologians, that was what was so distinctive about Jesus: that he lived his beliefs. He was fully present, as good Buddhists are also fully present, and he “won” or embodied a kind of authenticity and wholeness that is still inspiring all these centuries later.
You must be present to win. I think of this every time I conduct another memorial service. Every time people get up to share stories and fond memories of the person who has died, they show that they know exactly what matters in life, that they know the difference between gaining the world and gaining your soul.
This may be hard to believe, it may even sound un-American, but I have never heard a eulogy listing all the accumulations the dead person had owned. Never. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that owning things was what made this person matter, or bragging about the dollar value of their Stuff. Never. What makes people matter – you can hear this at almost every memorial service – is that they were present. They were there when others needed them. They reached out, they cared, they were honest and authentic. I’ve also never heard a eulogy praising someone for being absent.
This is also a lesson you can learn from parents looking back on the years they raised their children. I’ve never heard one say they wished they’d spent less time with their kids. They’re more apt to wish they’d been more present more often. Most of us can remember the hit song Harry Chapin made of this twenty years ago, a song called “Cat’s in the cradle.” It’s the story of a father raising his son but never having time to spend with his son because of his job and other demands. Then at the end, the son has grown up with children of his own, but doesn’t have time to spend with his father, and the father reflects sadly that his son had turned out just like him. That’s a lament over not being present, over not having had the right associations, over not having invested in the things that pay dividends to our souls.
Religious lessons sometimes seem that they must come from monasteries, or at least from the lives of saints. But it isn’t so. They happen mostly in ordinary, everyday ways, not dramatic at all, just authentic. As many of you know, in a former life I used to be a professional photographer. I was a combat photographer in Vietnam 35 years ago, and owned a studio in Ann Arbor for several years. In 1976 I sold all my equipment and stopped taking pictures for almost 25 years because I discovered that I had never liked photography. You may ask how on earth someone can do something for nine years and never know they don’t like it. Well, it happens! And the laughter shows me I’m not the only one to whom it has happened.
For a quarter century I didn’t take pictures and never missed it. It didn’t feed my soul. Two and a half years ago, during a trip to Mexico, I suddenly discovered that I was “seeing” pictures again, for the first time in 25 years. I was astonished, took the pictures I saw with my little point-and-shoot camera, and found that they were good pictures, and looked like I thought they would. And I liked seeing and taking the pictures.
Returning to photography as a fairly serious hobby was one of the biggest surprises of my life. But I returned to it because now, for some reasons I don’t understand, it feeds my soul. It’s a gift to be able to see good pictures without much effort, and for the first time it’s a gift that feeds me. Now I’ve invested thousands of dollars in good photographic equipment because the hobby feeds me. That’s the key, I’m convinced: we must go where spiritual nourishment is, and must support the activities that feed us.
You must be present to win, and there can be terrible penalties for failing to do so. I’m absolutely convinced of that.
I have a story about this from Rachel Naomi Remen, the San Francisco physician whose writings I’ve used before here.
She attended the retirement dinner for a medical school faculty member while she was in medical school. He was internationally known for his contributions to medical science. She’s a good writer, so I’ll leave the story in her words:
“Later in the evening a group of medical students went to speak to him and offer him our congratulations and admiration. He was gracious. One of our number asked him if he had any words for us now at the beginning of our careers, anything he thought we should know. He hesitated. But then he told us that despite his professional success and recognition he felt he knew nothing more about life now than he had at the beginning. That he was no wiser. His face became withdrawn, even sad. “It has slipped through my fingers,” he said.
“None of us understood what he meant. Talking about it afterwards, I attributed it to modesty. Some of the others wondered if he had at last become senile. Now, almost thirty-five years later, my heart goes out to him.” (Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, pp.205-206)
You can’t say this great doctor was never “present” in life. He was present to his students, and influenced hundreds or thousands of their lives. He was a blessing to them, and a tribute to the medical profession, and that counts for something. In some ways, he was very present indeed, and won great admiration and honor.
But by his own admission, there was another realm of life where he had not been present, and had not won. “It has slipped through my fingers,” he said.
You know this plot is a very old story. It’s the story of Rip van Winkle. You remember the children’s story of the man who fell asleep for twenty years and had nothing to show for the time but a beard. Of course like all good stories, it is about life, not a bearded man. It’s a story of people who are there but not all there, who are there but not really present, and who have nothing to show for their time.
There were all kinds of things going on around Rip van Winkle during those twenty years that he didn’t see, for which he wasn’t present. Maybe he never got to see that sign in the Bingo hall that could have told him the secret he needed to learn about life.
Maybe he never joined a church, or found any other way to join the Right Associations he needed to nourish and save his soul. If there is a lesson for us in this – and the Buddhists would insist there must be – that lesson may be to say if you’re going to come to a good church, for goodness’ sake be here! Don’t go to sleep here! This is a place to awaken your spirit, nourish your soul and enlarge your life. Invest your money, your time, your energy and be here!
There is a lot to win here – for us, for our families and for our greater community. In at least this respect, church is like life, which is like Bingo: If we really are present, we really can win.
