The boy who drew cats

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
June 7, 2015

Rev. Meg continues her fairy tale sermon series with a classic Japanese story, “The Boy Who Drew Cats.” How can we know what will make a difference? How do we know which efforts are large and which are small? How are the things which bring you joy used for the good of the whole?

Call to Worship
by Howard Thurman

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Reading
A Letter to Agnes DeMille from Martha Graham

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
of the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.

Sermon

In the story of the boy who drew cats, he was pushed out of conventional places because of his difference, his passion. “You don’t fit here at the farm,” his family said. “Let’s take you to study with the monks.” It didn’t work out with the monks either. He didn’t want to study religion. He wanted to draw cats. He drew them in the margins of the scrolls from which they were supposed to be reading. He drew them in the dust while they were chanting. Eventually he had to leave, because he just didn’t fit there. The last piece of advice the monk gave him was to avoid large places, stick to small ones.

Maybe you have had the experience of being different from the people around you, of not fitting in. Some families, churches, towns, countries, have ways of pushing away the people who don’t fit. Somehow the enforcers of the system, from the church ladies who give you the stink eye when you don’t dress properly to kids who beat up other kids who seem weird to them to government death squads, all along the spectrum of enforcement, you can almost always tell when you don’t fit in a place, when everyone would be a lot more comfortable if you left. I hope none of you has ever felt that, but it’s a vain hope. Most of you have felt it ,at one time or another. It’s often a mistake to toss out the different ones, though. When everyone is too much the same, new ideas don’t happen and the society stagnates. Assumptions remain unchallenged. The potato famine happened because people were planting one type of potato, and it was susceptible to the blight that killed nearly the whole crop. It’s smarter to plan lots of different kinds of grain, potatoes, apples, etc. so if some get a disease, you don’t lose them all. Nature is nature, and humans aren’t the exception. In small native tribes the grandmothers keep track of who is related to whom, to keep people who are too closely related from marrying. First born kids are more likely to achieve highly in our culture. Out of the first 23 astronauts, 21 were first born. Second borns are more creative, with less horror of making mistakes. If you look at the biographies of great inventors, you’ll find most of them were second, third, seventh children. A culture needs the creative people. Austin’s creative class is what makes it so attractive, yet all of the musicians who give Austin its soul are no longer able to afford to live here, according to a new survey. Cherishing diversity is smart, but it’s hard for a culture that’s based on power and money.

The boy in our story is small, and he has an all-consuming passion. Most of us know someone who had a passion for playing the guitar, or for writing, or the piano or for dancing or painting, and they are drawn to doing it whether it’s a good time or not, whether people approve of the activity or not, whether they get paid well for it or not. Some of us are lucky enough to have a passion for something we can make a living doing, something people enjoy and approve of. That’s lovely. Most of us, even if it’s not all-consuming, have something we do that makes us come alive. Theologian Howard Thurman said, as you heard in our Call to Worship: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

The boy is too ashamed that his difference, his passion, as gotten him tossed out of the second place, and he doesn’t want to go home. He takes to the road, and wanders closer and closer to the epicenter of the Goblin Rat King’s domain.

The Goblin Rat King is a destructive force, haunting the countryside, wreaking havoc and destruction, taking whatever it wants, spreading terror. We have forces like this in our world. He is an inner reality and an outer one. Most of us have a big fear inside, a Goblin Rat King, a big fear, or a terrible memory, a bad decision we made in the past, that keeps us trembling and limited. There are terrible Rat Kings out in the world. Sometimes it’s us, trying to spread our system of government or make things good for the shareholders of our corporations. Sometimes it’s a terror group, calling themselves a religious purge or freedom fighters. Almost everyone who spreads terror thinks they are doing it for the good of the whole. Make society safe for the “nice” people, making life hard for the “bad” people.

Often, though, the “nice” people are the rich people and the bad people are the poor folks, queer folks, mouthy folks always yapping about their rights, acting like they should have access to education, to health care, to food and clean water.

We try to separate the “nice” from the “bad” parts of ourselves as well, and we can be brutal in our inner enforcements. Our whole culture is based on overpowering, overcoming, controlling through will, through might, through force. We want to change the world, and we make great efforts. I even hear people changing Theodore Parker’s great saying about the arc of the universe bending toward justice. They say “we’ll bend that arc of the universe!”

In the Eastern tradition which is the context for this story, one good way of doing is by not-doing. The Tao Te Ching says when you’re grilling a fish and you poke it too much, you ruin it. When you rule a country and you interfere too much, try to control too much, you mess things up. Maybe you can just do what you do, be who you are, and the cats you drew will take care of the big bad obstacle while you’re asleep, curled up into a small space. You don’t have to arrive on the scene like the Avengers (not that there’s anything wrong with the Avengers) and clean up the place with might, speed and power. Maybe you can do a lot of good with your art, with your passion, with just doing what you do and not trying to force anyone to do anything. Maybe outer and inner demons can be conquered by our doing what it is our passion to do: gardening, writing, helping, offering hospitality, cooking, building, conversation.

Recent events here at our church have me thinking hard. The church has been asked to step into the ancient tradition of offering sanctuary to a refugee. In this ancient tradition, no place but a church has the privilege of being a sanctuary. Tradition holds that soldiers will not come into a house of worship and drag someone out. Our government adheres to that tradition, so far. The woman to whom we have offered sanctuary was pushed out of her home country because of her passion for helping other LGBT folks. She has had a hard time finding a welcoming sanctuary because she identifies as “queer,” and her partner identifies as “trans.” I The UU church and our partners at St. Andrews Presbyterian are the two churches standing up for her. A person with a passion will find her way, like a seed haunted by the sun, finding its way past rocks and grit to break through to the surface. (- St. Exupery) A church with a passion for art and justice will find its way.

I’ve been thinking a lot about shelter since we volunteered to give sanctuary to our new friend, the LGBT activist seeking sanctuary from Guatemala. I hear the Stones song in my head, and I wonder what it means “War, children, it’s just a shot away.” The Civil War started with one shot, from a Citadel cadet at Ft. Sumter. World War One started with a shot, an anarchist, armed by a government official, got lucky and ended up close enough to Archduke Ferdinand’s carriage to shoot him and his beloved wife.

When things are unstable, out of balance, it only takes a small thing to tip everything over into chaos. Might it make sense, then, for enough small things to tip in back into balance? Love, children, it’s just a kiss away. The bards Mick Jagger and Keith Richards seem to think that a small thing can make a big difference.

The boy in our story had the experience of his art conquering the big mean rat hurting the whole countryside. He lived in that temple the rest of his days, becoming a great artist. May our passion, our difference, be the way Nature comes through us, uniquely, in order to heal itself. May we be open to letting our demons be conquered through art rather than by power.

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