The Goat in the Tree and Other Miracles

4 May 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

-Emily Dickinson

Presenting a sermon about miracles to Unitarian Universalists could be a rather risky proposition. I decided it would depend on whether an acceptable definition of “miracle” could be found. So, I’ve done my homework. I looked in my Dictionary of Theological Terms and found “miracle” defined as “an event caused by a special divine action that does not follow the normal laws of nature.” Oops. That definitely won’t work. The Oxford dictionary has a supernatural definition followed by the more acceptable one, “remarkable occurrence.” That’s more like it.

Then there’s that course you can take. Really! It’s aptly titled, A Course in Miracles, and has everything you ever wanted to know about miracles. This book has been widely read since the late seventies, and is the inspiration and source for the Principles of Attitudinal Healing. The entire text, containing three volumes, claims to have been channeled over a seven-year period to a self-described atheistic professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University. It is a “spiritual psychology” that emphasizes “application rather than theory, and experience rather than theology,” and claims “a universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary.” (Manual for Teachers P. 77)

The course subscribes to the belief that our relationships are the path to inner peace or, another way of saying the “kingdom of God.” The “universal experience” is that everybody on the planet has relationships, whether we want them or not. Our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our co-workers, and our friends and neighbors, and even the strangers we meet in elevators, on the street, in passing cars. Everyone. Especially those people who push all of your buttons. These people, the Course says, are your saviors. Because they have something to teach you.

I discovered Unitarian Universalism completely by accident several years ago when I was arranging a workshop on A Course in Miracles. After much searching (since I was living in the bible belt and since it was “channeled,” A Course in Miracles was considered blasphemy and was blackballed by most churches there), I finally found a study group, which met twice a week at the Clemson UU Fellowship. Most of the group members belonged to the church, and I soon realized I had found my spiritual home among them, which I have since looked upon as a “miracle” of sorts in itself.

My father, who began studying the text before it was actually published, introduced me to A Course in Miracles and after many years of dismissing it, I began to explore it with the help of Marianne Williamson’s book, A Return to Love. Williamson converts the somewhat formal language of the Course to appealing down-to-earth and often humorous allegories. I was desperate for anything at this point, since I realized Christian Science couldn’t be my religion, I had wandered from church to church disillusioned and spiritually homeless. The Course served as the “bridge” or as in the Buddhist story, the “raft” that carried me to the shores of Unitarian Universalism. Where I am constantly challenged, enriched, and presently somewhat employed.

A Course in Miracles says, “Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.” [1] There are fifty principles of miracles listed in the first chapter. The first principle of miracles, ” “Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle” is best explained in the context of my friend, Cheryl, who came a couple of weeks ago to help me facilitate a workshop on Death and Dying.

Cheryl is one of those special people to whom every day is a gift, and she sees miracles everywhere she goes because she extends pure unadulterated love to everyone that comes in contact with her. Cheryl made me realize that I had forgotten how to have fun! We laughed so much that our sides ached.

This sermon title was inspired when Cheryl and I, took off for an adventure in the Texas hill country. With map in hand, we headed out to find the “Willow City Loop” to see the wildflowers.

We stopped on the way to buy a disposable camera and SNACKS. Fritos and Trail Mix with m &m’s and away we went munching and chatting and laughing all the way. The weather was perfect and the wildflowers were even more beautiful than we could have imagined, and we took turns posing dramatically in the middle of sunlit fields of bluebonnets for souvenir photographs.

We took the cut off towards Fredericksburg and enjoyed the beautiful fields and farms, when suddenly, as we passed a lovely country home with a slew of goats in the yard near the house, and we noticed a goat straddled in the fork of a tree! I saw it first, and said, “Oh my goodness”, and as I drove past, Cheryl saw it, too. We were both stunned! A goat in a tree?!

“Darn! We should have stopped for a picture! No one will ever believe us.” I said, so we turned around and went back.

Well, by then the goats had headed toward the back of the property by then, and we had missed our chance.

“Well, shoot.” I said, “Let that be a lesson. We blew it. We should have seized the moment. Carpe diem, and all that.”

“But, it’s perfect, don’t you see?” Cheryl explained to me with that big glowing smile of hers. “We were given the gift of that insight because we missed the picture.”

“Oh, alright.” I said, “Maybe it was a gift. Hmm, there’s gotta be a sermon in this somewhere.”

It reminded me of Albert Einstein, who said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle, and the other is as though everything is a miracle.” He makes it sound like we have a choice? Well, that reminds me of A Course in Miracles, which says, “Choose again.” If we are willing to see things differently, then maybe anything can become a miracle. All that’s required is the willingness, a shift in perception, a different way of looking at it.

C. S. Lewis said, “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

When we got to Fredericksburg, we decided to have a late lunch and explore the shops. We wandered into a music store that had a unique clothing boutique in the back. Those frilly romantic clothes that look great on Cheryl, but would make me look like Big Bird in drag. The owner of the store was a perky attractive young woman, who looked fabulous in the clothes she was selling, greeted us with a saccharin southern drawl,

“Are you two having fun today?”

“We sure are!” I answered because Cheryl was way too busy shopping, “Why, we even saw a goat in a tree!”

“Well, you must have been driving in my neighborhood.” The young woman said, “The goats are always in the trees around my house.”

“What?” I protested, “Cheryl, did you hear what she said? That woman just reduced our “miracle” to an everyday common occurrence! Apparently, goats in trees are ho hum in Fredericksburg!”

Still curious about goats in trees, and not quite believing that woman, when I got home, I looked on the Internet and typed in “tree-climbing goats,” and guess what? GOATS CLIMB TREES.

Apparently, in Morocco, the goats like the fruit of the argon tree and they get up as high as 20 feet in the trees to reach the fruit. The goats of Morocco are quite a tourist attraction. Someone ought to tell the folks in Fredericksburg that they’re missing the boat. I used to own goats, trees, too, and I can tell you I never saw a goat in a tree before. Who knew? Not only that, I even found a music group with the name, Goats in Trees. I kid you not.

So, that’s it! It’s really that simple. Miracles happen all around us and we choose to see them as miracles or as just common ho hum occurrences. Have you ever noticed that whatever your focus is that all of a sudden you see it everywhere? For example, when I was pregnant it seemed as if the whole world was pregnant. Everywhere I looked there were pregnant women! And now I mostly just see women fanning themselves like mad, saying, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” Our perception is colored by what is in our minds. We create the world we live in.

As Emily Dickinson said, “the soul must stand ajar to allow the ecstatic experience.” Ajar. What does she mean exactly? Well, I looked it up. It means, “slightly open.” So I take that to mean to leave a little space in your day, in your mind, and don’t walk around so focused that you become blind to possibility, or at least the willingness to be surprised, or caught off guard by life’s miracles.

When I was living in Alaska, my oldest son, whose degree is in Biological Sciences, was always nagging me to go on a hike with him. He was the perfect guide, and I finally agreed to get out and see the Alaska wilderness, so I used the excuse to buy new hiking boots. So off we went and there I was bouncing through the woods like a kid with new PF flyers, when he said to me,

“Ma, you’re killing me. Slow down!”

I was so surprised because I thought he meant that he couldn’t keep up with me, his old mother, but then he said,

“Mom, slow down, you are missing everything!”

“What? What am I missing?” I grumbled.

“There.” He said, pointing first to broken twigs and leaves, the clues, and then hidden underneath the leaves, I saw the perfect tracks of a moose. And then he pointed out a spectacular rare flower blooming in solitary brilliance with rays of the sun beaming down on it.

The Buddha once said, “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”

Early one morning, when the tide was out, he took me to the beach where we walked on rocks into Resurrection Bay and he pointed out thousands of starfish clinging to the rocks under the water. I had never seen living starfish, and I never would have seen them either, because I seem to go bouncing through life with my head up and my eyes straight ahead. I was astounded at the brilliant and varied colors! Reds, blues, purples and yellows. It was truly remarkable. And it was a “miracle” I would have missed, had my son not been the one to yank my “soul ajar”. Just one of the millions of miracles of nature that most of us never see.

There are so many stories to share about the “common” sorts of miracles that I could go on forever, but I would like to share another kind of miracle. The miracle of forgiveness, that can happen in an instant when we are willing to see things differently, to prop our souls slightly ajar. A simple shift in perception can make all the difference, but it requires the willingness.

So, I’ll share one last story. This story comes from Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies. [2] She has a wonderful earthy way of story telling that is refreshingly honest, funny, and moving. I loved this story so much that I wanted to share it with you. This is Ann’s story of learning how to forgive.

Ann was working hard on trying to forgive, and following the advice of C. S. Lewis, she decided that “instead of trying to forgive her entire family or ALL of her old boyfriends at once, she would begin with someone she barely knew and hadn’t hated for very long.” The enemy, or “enemy lite,” was the parent of one of the children in her son, Sam’s class at school. Ann knew this woman was a single mom, like herself, and probably lonely. But, “she had mean eyes.”

Admittedly, Ann was having trouble adjusting after Sam started school and she wasn’t terribly organized. “There was so much to remember; schedules, homework, and she wasn’t able to help out in the class like the other mothers who were always cooking holiday theme-park treats for the class and drove the kids on field trips and read all the papers the school sent home. Which Ann felt was rather “show-offy.”

The “enemy” was the mom of Sam’s best friend and “this woman took it upon herself to “help” Ann and often looked at her like she was a dazed alien space traveler.” And somehow, Sam was behind in reading. The enemy’s child was reading “proficiently,” an “early reader.” Sam was definitely classified as a “late reader.” “The enemy decided to take a special interest in Sam’s reading, and the next thing you know she began slipping early first grade reading books to Ann, with a patronizing smile.”

Much to the humiliation of Sam, his mother always seemed to forget that on Wednesdays, school let out an hour early, and he would be stuck waiting with his teacher until she showed up, an hour late.

“Somehow the enemy found out and showed up at Ann’s door to pick up Sam for a field trip wearing a down jacket and latex bicycle shorts. The enemy, who wears latex bicycle shorts nearly every day, because she can, weighs about eighty pounds. Because she has gone to the gym every single day since her divorce and doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her body.” Ann considered an “act of aggression against all the other mothers who forgot to work out after their kids were born.” “And one more thing, and this was the clincher, “This woman still had a Ronald Reagan bumper sticker on her white Volvo seven years after he left office.”

The day of the field trip, she said sweetly, “I just want you to know, Annie, that if you have any other questions about how the classroom works, I’d really love to be there for you.” Ann writes that, “she smiled back at her, all the while thinking thoughts so awful that if spoken out loud they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”

So Ann prayed for a miracle, because “Sam loved that woman’s son, and because Sam is such a sweet kid, it made Ann want to be a “better person.” “The kind of person who doesn’t hate someone just because she wears bicycle shorts.” So, she wrote the “enemy’s” name on a piece of paper and put it in a box that she uses as “God’s box,” and then prayed, “HELP!”

Not long after that, the “enemy” asked Ann if she could have a copy of the book she had written about being a mother, called Operating Instructions. It’s a book filled with “black humor and is quite slanted”, so Ann tried to stall but the enemy insisted. So “filled with a low-grade sense of doom”, she gave in and handed over an autographed copy.”

Days later, she ran into the enemy at the grocery store and when she saw Ann she said, “I read your book.” Then she winked and said, “Maybe it’s a good thing Sam doesn’t read.”

That was it. THAT was the last straw. After going home and venting her anger on the phone with anyone who would listen, Ann got out her note to God and said, “Look, hon. I think we need bigger guns.”

Well, Ann had the willingness, after all, SHE WAS PRAYING. But the situation wasn’t getting better. One day, when Sam had spent the night with his friend, Ann reluctantly went to pick him up, hoping she wouldn’t get stuck having to stay for tea.

The enemy’s house always seems to not only be neat and clean, and “filled with that show-offy kind of stuff that says “I-have-more-money-than you,” plus “you’re-out-of-shape stuff,” but the place had the smell of something baking, something wonderfully “sweet and yeasty.” God, it was enough to make you crazy! Ann observed that obviously the woman has a serious “baking problem.”

The “enemy” smiled that disgustingly sweet smile as she poured a cup of tea for Ann. Trying to get Sam and escape as fast as she could, Ann searched for Sam’s shoes, while making excuses about not having time for tea. The shoes were by the door next to his friend’s sneakers and as she reached for Sam’s shoes she peeked inside her rival’s son’s sneakers, just to see how “her kid lined up in shoe size.”

“It was then that she got it!” The miracle she had been praying for. “The veil dropped. She was able to see that she was the one that was as mad as a hatter. SHE was the one with the problem, worrying whether Sam was OK. She was the one feeling insecure that she was out of shape.” Ann finally realized, in that moment, that “she had been trying to get this poor woman to carry all of this because she was too hurt to carry it herself.” She had been projecting all of her “stuff” onto the “enemy”.

“The “enemy” who had been pouring her tea, taking care of her son, and had even forgiven Ann for writing a book that trashed all of her political beliefs.”

The enemy wasn’t an evil person at all! She was just a woman who was trying to get through life with some style and grace, a fellow traveler in life who was reaching out and offering what she could to help. She was Ann’s “savior” because she gave Ann the opportunity to get in touch with parts of herself that needed to be healed; her own self-doubt and insecurity. Had Ann not been willing, had she not left her soul ever so slightly ajar through her prayers and desire to learn forgiveness, she might have gone on forever “hating the enemy.” There was such a relief to be rid of all that resentment, Ann “felt so happy that she literally got drunk on that cup of tea in the woman’s living room.” The sweet elixir of forgiveness.

There is a saying that “an echo in the woods always returns your call.” [3] The truth is that most of the messages we think life is sending us are the echoes of our inner voices, our inner angels or demons, returning to haunt us or to bless us. It’s up to us to decide the tone of the call that we shout into the woods. It’s our choice whether or not to even shout at all. We must be willing to leave our souls ajar, our hearts and minds open, and our voices infused with harmonic tonalities of love.

Because, it is we who choose the “echo” that ultimately will determine the quality and the quantity of “miracles” in our lives.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Glen Ellen, CA. Foundation for Inner Peace. 1992. P. 3.

[2] Lamott, Ann. Traveling Mercies. New York. Anchor Books. 1999. P 128-137.

[3] Ibid. P. 137.