© Jim Checkley
February 4, 2001
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
If spirituality could be put into a pill and sold over the counter, then in this country at least, billions would be sold annually. The ratio of spiritual fulfillment to material wealth appears to be at an all time low-although the number of books, seminars, and discussions about both subjects is at an all time high. In the Golden Age of Materialism I want to suggest that there is an inherent conflict between the traditional rendition of the American Dream and finding meaning and spiritual fulfillment in life. And I do not refer to the conflict between serving God and mammon. The conflict I wish to discuss is far more insidious, manifests in many areas of our culture, and goes to the heart of who we are. But it is, I believe, reconcilable; hence, the basis of Sunday’s service.
Today would have been my Father’s eighty-sixth birthday. He died in 1981 at the age of 66 and never saw any of his grandchildren. I owe my intellectual curiosity to my Father and it is in that spirit of curiosity about ourselves and the world we live in, that I present this service today.
When I was growing up in the 60s, my family was very poor. Things got worse when I was nine years old and my Father had a massive heart attack. He never was able to work a real job again in his life. I, on the other hand, had gotten my very first job just a few months before he had his heart attack. In the summer of 1964 I got a job handing out flyers for a butcher shop on Main Street in Clifton, New Jersey. I have no idea what I was paid for this job in the conventional sense, because the butcher used to weigh the flyers on his meat scale and then paid me by the pound. Except for one semester of law school, I have had some kind of a job ever since.
In many ways I was oblivious when I was really young about being poor. It wasn’t until I and my brothers and sisters became teenagers and started seeing the world and going to friends’ houses for overnights and the like that we realized how little we had. I had really never liked having old everything when I was very young, but by the time I was 16 or 17 years old, I was becoming quite embarrassed about it. Being poor, feeling poor, as I approached adulthood was a major defining element in my life.
Today I am a partner with one of the forty largest law firm’s in the country. I have had the opportunity to work on some of the most challenging and interesting cases in Texas over the last 18 years. One might almost be tempted to say that, from an economic point of view at least, I have lived the American Dream.
I was thinking about this and the coincidence that I was asked to speak on my Father’s birthday, and I realized that I wanted to talk about something that has bothered me in recent years about the American Dream. I wanted to talk about how it can be that despite the fact that we live in the richest nation on Earth, a nation that consumes 50% of the world’s resources for only 4.3% of the world’s population, a nation that has more gadgets, cars, TVs, movies, airplanes, designer clothes, choices of music, cable stations, and professional sports teams than anywhere else on the planet, how can it be we are so well off and yet so many of us seem to be so unhappy?
The array of stuff that is available to us is staggering and although we still have poverty and too many of us remain poor, that array of stuff is available to a really huge proportion of the population. For while millions of people made fortunes during the greed era of the 1980s and more recently, in the amazing economy of the 1990s, even more millions have joined the ranks of the great American Middle Class and achieved a kind of safety and security few people in centuries past have ever known.
And yet, despite all this, huge numbers of people (successful people) say they are unhappy, or at least unfulfilled. My favorite anecdotal example is something I read in Time Magazine last year. In a story about the search for meaning among our material possessions, a doctor was quoted as saying that more of his and his associates patients were complaining of depression, loss of interest, lethargy, loss of energy, and the like than ever before. He said that the existential crisis had hit epidemic proportions and if you could just put spirituality into a pill you could sell billions of them.
There appears to be a paradox here. If people have more stuff than ever before, if their needs and wants are being met in greater proportion than ever before, why aren’t more of us happy? I like paradoxes. Whenever there is a paradox, there almost certainly is an opportunity for learning. And this one happens to be near and dear to my heart. I certainly have no delusions of solving it today, but I do want to at least talk about it. And to talk about it, I want to start right in the middle of things.
For a long time in our country, the American Dream was viewed as a rags to riches kind of thing. It was epitomized by the cliched notion that any one could grow up to be president. But over the last forty or fifty years, in my lifetime at least, something has happened either to us or to the Dream. I’m not sure, but I think that as we have become more of a meritocracy where increasingly more people have had access to the fruits of our incredible economy and the opportunities that go with it, the American Dream began to take on a new dimension. On some level, I think the American Dream was transformed into the notion of creating safety and comfort for ourselves and our families within this complex and dizzyingly fast paced society we have created. In this sense, I want to say that the American Dream became the great Middle Class Dream.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I was in college, I noticed that very few of my friends ever talked about their dreams. What they talked about was having majors in areas where there were jobs. I specifically recall talking with many of my friends in chemistry and physics and discussing how our majors hard science offered the prospect of many excellent jobs. And I also remember overhearing many conversations where people questioned the sanity of students who were studying in majors where the job market was poor. So it seemed very much to me that most of my generation, at least, of college students primarily wanted a good and secure job, a place to live that they could call their own, a good school system for the kids, and finally, being part of a community or neighborhood of equals who respected and obeyed the same rules and had similar beliefs to their own.
Most of us got all that and more. And we believed that in gaining the safety and security of the great American economic bounty, we had satisfied our needs, our desires, and our dreams. But it turns out we hadn’t. There was something we didn’t count on about dwelling in what I will call the great American middle in honor of our Middle Class Dreams.
Living in the middle, in relative safety, turns out to be like making a popcorn string. Each day is like a kernel of popcorn, each different from the last, but each exactly the same, and we put each kernel on a string, and when we die, we have a very long string of barely distinguishable days. Oh, every once in a while there is a string of seven to fourteen kernels that have a different color, perhaps, those days when we went on vacation, but even those days are hardly distinguished.
And yet, we Americans truly have a love for the middle. It is part of our folklore. By the time we are five, we all have heard of Goldilocks, who is excited when she finds porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold, but is just right. It is part of our deepest held beliefs about the nature of truth. If I had a quarter for every time I heard somebody say that truth is somewhere in the middle, I would be rich. Just yesterday there were two articles in the newspaper in which the author of each suggested that the truth lay somewhere in the middle. Finally, when I think of this issue, I think of a herd of zebra. If you are a zebra out on the plains of the Serengeti, then you should get as close to the middle of the herd as possible because it is less likely any lions will get you. In many ways, we are no different from the zebra: our thirst for the middle is driven by the same concerns, only translated into human culture.
And now we’ve gone well beyond safety in our quest for the middle. So many of us are to the point where we want and can have Pema Chodron’s Perfect Room that was the basis of today’s meditation. And don’t get me wrong: I think that is great, I really do. But there is a danger. Living in the great American middle there is a danger that we will become complacent, will get soft, and we will end up being lukewarm, like Goldilocks’ porridge. Within our Perfect Room we become ever more distant from life, and not just figuratively, but literally. I wonder how many people feel connected to the world because they watch CNN or CNBC or CSPAN or some other ‘C’ network? But it is a false connection.
We are bombarded every day with news of catastrophes all over the world and we just keep on eating our dinner. Does anybody else think it is weird that our network news programs wherein we are treated to images of war and violence in our schools, where we hear about youth killed by drunk drivers, and catastrophes of all kinds, coincides with dinner time and bedtime? I can’t figure out which of the two is worse, to tell you the truth, but I do know this. If the connection were real, then we would get upset and be unable to eat our dinner or go to sleep when we were told that many thousands of Indians died in a major earthquake. The truth is that living in the safety of the middle, living in our Perfect Room, we begin to lose compassion as we lose touch. We also begin to lose our sense of being, our sense of meaning, and finally we end up losing our sense of spirit and self.
I tend to see our love of the middle as quite Darwinian. Evolution is about survival. Evolution tells us that mostly we should choose safety. But what works for our bodies does not necessarily work for our souls. This is the great paradox of life and my take on the conflict between the contemporary vision of the American Dream and having a spiritually meaningful life. Evolution and middle class dreams are about the survival, and more than that, of the body. But in order to have a spiritually meaningful life, we need to talk about the survival, and more than that, of the soul.
Oh I know, we are Unitarians and we are scientific, and science seems to be telling us we probably don’t have souls. Well, let me tell you something: I don’t care. I am going to talk about them anyway. In fact, I am going to suggest that we would do well to reconsider the rejection of the notion of the separation of mind, body, and soul. Because, while it may not be true as a scientific reality, I think we need to treat ourselves as having minds, bodies, and souls in order to have a better shot of having complete lives, because each of those three aspects of ourselves have different needs.
Without at least thinking of ourselves as having souls, whether we actually do or not, we are more likely to ignore the real spiritual needs we have as humans and concentrate more on the needs of the body or the mind. And along these lines, how could we have ever thought that the human spirit would be happy with life in the middle, with being safe and secure but ultimately lukewarm? It isn’t. The human spirit needs challenges, it needs dreams, it needs faith, the kind of faith necessary to leave the safety of the middle and go to the edge and take some chances for something we value and believe in, something besides our own safety or having porridge that tastes just right, or having digital cable TV. To this extent, the life of the soul, of the spirit, is different from the life of the body and sometimes is even in conflict with it. The truth is, a spirit out on the edge is a mutant as far as the body is concerned.
I recently found something neat about this in the Bible. The Book of Revelation, Chapter 3, verses 15-16 states:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
This is so great: John, the author of Revelation, tells us that being lukewarm is the ultimate sin. God would rather that we be hot or cold. But we love being lukewarm. We are drawn to the middle and its safety and security like a moth to the flame. And I would suggest to you that as safe as the middle is for our bodies, the middle can be just as deadly a place for our souls.
Here then is the heart of the conflict I have been talking about: the only place to feel truly alive is close to the edge, but it is also the place where we are the most likely to be hurt. So if we want to be alive, if we want to grow, if we want to explore life and all its possibilities, then we have to be brave enough, and motivated enough, to give up the comfort and safety of the middle and venture to the edge.
I have a friend who lives in Minneapolis. He is in his early fifties and has practiced law since his mid-twenties. Ever since I met him ten years ago, he has been on a mid-life quest for meaning and answers for the second half of life. We were talking one day about how he had gotten a puppy and how the puppy changed his life. Now for a single man who is a partner in a major law firm, getting a 6-week-old puppy is really going out to the edge and is a case of leading with the heart rather than the intellect. And for two months, he left the office every day and went home for lunch. This is a man who skipped lunch most of the time because of the pressures of work. And because he had to walk his dog twice a day, he says that he noticed the arrival of spring for the first time in 15 years. Imagine that.
He and I talked a little bit more about living a life that made us feel alive, one that had some zip to it. And in the course of that discussion, he made a profound observation. He told me that in walking his dog and noticing the arrival of spring, he observed that growth occurs at the edges, not in the middle. The middle may be green, may be solid and set, but it is not where the action is. That happens on the edge.
This was a wonderful observation. And I liked it even more because for years I have been defending stuff like comic books, science fiction, and fantasy because I believe that those genres, as far out as they often are, nevertheless provide wonderful opportunities for understanding ourselves and the world simply because they, unlike mainstream literature, constantly grapple with issues on the edge.
So many people end up struggling to fight the symptoms of living in the middle, but they do not realize that the problem is the very real conflict between the safety of the middle we all desire and the wants and needs of our souls, which would much rather go playing around at the edge. So we have the strange phenomena of people living in the middle but jumping out of airplanes to feel alive; they jump off bridges with elastic tied around their ankles to feel alive; they listen to Madison Avenue and buy cars that can give them a certain thrill so they can feel alive. All this and I suggest that the real problem is the fundamental approach to life: becoming lukewarm living the middle class American Dream.
Our spirits long for space, not the claustrophobia of the middle of the herd. How can our hearts and souls be free living in the Perfect Room Pema Chodron talks about? It is actually a trap, albeit a nice one. And the irony is that the longer we stay trapped in our perfect porridge world, the more resentful we become of the real world. What I mean is, how are we ever going to develop real compassion for anybody when it means leaving the sterility of our Perfect Room, of getting messy in the world, of enduring odors, sights, sounds, and risks that our Darwinian survival instinct tells us to avoid like the plague? We are explorers and adventurers we humans. And if we sit all comfy with our perfect porridge in our Perfect Room with no windows and a big screen TV that gives us the impression of being connected to the world’we will die inside. We will. And many of us already have.
Don’t misunderstand me. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable, safe, fed, happy, and secure. These are in fact good things. I want them for my family and myself. Nor am I suggesting that we have to indulge in dangerous or self-destructive behavior. My suggestion is simply that we become aware that what is good for our bodies is not necessarily good for our souls and that the safety of the middle we so yearn for can be death to our spirit. As stated in the poem I read earlier, the soul is a quiet animal and we need to pay attention to it and its needs or we will simply drift apart and lose contact until it is too late. And in order to help myself do this (I am really bad at practicing what I preach sometimes) I have developed a rule for making choices in my life.
But before I talk about that rule, I want to say that choosing to be alive, truly alive, is not an easy choice to make. Choosing to go to the edge, to be alive, means paying more attention; it means taking risks, but risks that are both reasonable and meaningful; it means investing energy and emotions into something important to you and having the faith in it and yourself to go and do it; it means developing your senses and your awareness like you never have before; and it means sometimes having to go too far in order to understand how far you can go, and frankly, paying the consequences.
If it is hard to do, then how do we do it? All I can tell you is that the best way I have found is this: in everything you do, everything, lead with your heart. That is, follow your passion first, and then use your intellect, reason, and logic to insure that wherever your heart and passion may lead, you will be at least three steps from the edge and not three steps over the edge. The goal is to be close enough to see it, but not so close that we are in constant danger of going over. So it is necessary for us to use our intellect to monitor and channel our hearts or else we may end up like Wylie Coyote, suspended in space several steps beyond the edge, certain to fall as soon as we recognize that nothing is holding us up. If you remember nothing else from this talk, I hope you will remember this simple rule.
You see, the intellect can always give shape to what the heart wants. That is, the intellect is a tool that operates upon whatever situation is brought to it. It is objective, indiscriminate, and cares only for the cold hard facts. But that does not apply to the heart and soul. Passion is often very picky and mysterious in where it will cast its desire and energy. It is for this reason that the finely made balance sheet of pros and cons thought out by the intellect will not by itself insure that the heart will agree to follow. Hearts are like that. They have minds of their own, you know. And they are stubborn. Show the intellect that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and it will believe you. Show the heart that this is the most logical path to take, and it still may rebel. We go against our hearts at our own peril.
In 1978 I was faced with a life choice. I could have gone to law school or I could have earned my Master’s in Radio, TV, and Film. My mind, reason and logic, said go to law school. My heart said RTF. In part because of a youth spent in poverty, in part because I felt that success at law school would more easily translate into my own Perfect Room, I chose law school. This was one of the most pivotal decisions I ever made in my life and frankly, was the inspiration for this service. And while I will not say that I made a mistake, for I have been successful and who knows what may have happened otherwise, I will tell you that my heart has never forgiven me.
But the good new is that it is not too late. It is never too late to leave the middle and move to the edge. It is never too late to recognize that sometimes moderation in all things is not necessarily a good thing. Let me put it this way: Does it feel right to love with moderation, to dream with moderation, or to dance with moderation? I hope not. But that is what happens if we allow ourselves to lose touch and become lukewarm. That’s why God is ready to spew lukewarm people from his mouth. I say: Love with passion, dream with abandon, and dance until you drop.
I will conclude by saying this: leading with your heart and living three steps from the edge is the difference between being Jean Luc Picard or James T. Kirk, and being a couch potato. Jean Luc and Jim Kirk actively embrace life and go often to the edge, following their hearts, sometimes at great risk, while the couch potato passively hides out in his Perfect Room and pretends to be engaged with life through his television. It’s more dangerous to be at the edge, and it isn’t always very comfortable either, but in the end it is much more meaningful. We don’t need to choose between our bodies and our souls. We can satisfy both. But we need to recognize that they have different (sometimes conflicting) needs and then set about to honor them all. Living three steps from the edge does that.
I know my Father would not want me to do it any other way.
