A feeling for the holy

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
July 1, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Throughout human history there have been moments, places, and events which have seemed holy. What does that mean? How do we mark those times and places in our own lives?

Call to Worship
Rumi

I looked in temples, churches, and mosques but I found the devine within my heart.

Reading
Walt Whitman

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same.
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle.
The fishes that swim–the rocks–the motion of the waves–the ships with men in them.
What stranger miracles are there?

Sermon

When I was fifteen I used to go to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Walking through an enormous room that contained the ancient pillars of a Hindu temple, I heard, not with my ears, but with some other sense, a low vibrating note that stopped me in my tracks. It went through me. The next room was a Zen tea garden. I fell in love that day with the simplicity, the colors, the paper walls, the bamboo and falling water, the single teapot on a low table. As soon as I got home I cleared all the tchotchkes, and made a minimalist space in which my spirit felt right. I’d walked through those rooms before, but that was the day they came to me as holy places. Was the holy spark in them or in me? Does it matter? Later it was a spring down in the woods beside the Presbyterian church my then-husband served. I would slip away, down the hill past the fellowship building into the woods, and at the bottom of the hall was the spring. It felt holy to me, water just bubbling up out of the ground, and it felt like truth and refreshment to my spirit. When things speak to us and help us on our way, those are holy moments.

I lived in Jerusalem for half a year, and the city is home to holy sites for three of the world’s religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. In Bethlehem you’ll see the cave where the baby Jesus was born. In Jerusalem you can visit the site of the last supper, the crucifixion, walk the Via Dolorosa. It’s not that people just remembered for three hundred years and passed down the knowledge, it’s that the Emperor Constantine’s mother walked around the city and had feelings about where things happened. She discovered the hidden fragments of three crosses, the two on which two thieves were executed and the one on which Jesus died. She wasn’t sure which was the true cross until a miracle revealed the truth to her. Now, you can tell by this story that I am dubious about all of this.

I think an individual can feel a spring, a tree, a view, a canyon, river or lake is sacred to them, and I think a people can feel as a people that a place is sacred to their people. I don’t know how that happens, because I don’t belong to a people that is an entity like that. One well meaning lady deciding for an entire religion where the holiness is? No.

Carl Jung borrowed the Polynesian word “mana” to talk about the great impersonal power that imbues certain objects, images or archetypes with the ability to connect people with the holy, either outside them or within them …. Power, effectiveness, prestige, understood to be supernatural. It came to the psychological world by way of anthropologists reporting from Pacific Islander cultures.

In the Jewish scriptures, people would stack stones to mark a place. Lots of peoples do that. A pile of stones marks a place to remember. Some people get a tattoo to mark a time that feels set apart, blessed, full of power. The birth of a child, the memory of a dream, a realization or a vow.

We can mark the every day sacred moments in our families by lighting a family chalice before meals, or at the end of the day as we tell each other what we’re grateful for and what we wish we’d done better. We mark the growth of children on the doorposts, we plant a tree for a birth or a death, we give a gift when we visit a friend, we send money when we are grateful or when we are determined to make a difference. All of these are ways to mark holy moments.

Is everything holy, as Peter Mayer’s song says? I love that idea, but I can’t be a dolphins and sunsets spiritual person. If nature is holy, then there are mosquitos, roaches, cancer, preons, and flesh-eating bacteria. Are those things holy? Is the divine in those things? Hinduism says god is the creator and destroyer. Are some things evil? This is an interesting question, but I don’t have the patience to spend any time on it. We are in times that try our souls. Many among us are grieving, upset, horrified at the separation of children from parents who have either done nothing illegal in asking for asylum, or who have committed a misdemeanor by crossing the border not at an entry point. We have been made to look at the behavior of people in our country going back to the beginning, slaughtering Native men, women and children, selling children away from their parents who were enslaved, forcing Native kids away from their families into schools where they were not allowed to speak their language, be with their parents or learn their culture.

We want to say “this is not us, ” but it has been. Those of you who are sorrowing, your sorrow is holy. The Divine is moving in it. You who are outraged, your rage is holy. The Divine is moving in it. Your brokenness is holy. Those of you who say “Don’t mourn, organize,” your determination is holy. The Divine is moving in it.

How do we learn to see the sacredness of our tears, our shouts, our planning and coordinating? Something becomes holy by the investment of heart and treasure, memory and experience. When we bring our hearts to a spring, to a hiking path, a rock, a view, a river, a church, we are recognizing the power in that place that comes from the love of people for that place, the openness of their hearts as they being them there. We can make our dinner table sacred by lighting our family chalice and taking a moment to be grateful to the earth, the farmworkers, the truckers and grocers whose job it is to bring us this experience of eating together. We could make our homes holy by keeping a bowl of water by the front door so we can dip our fingers into it in gratitude as we come in, or we can light a candle as we close our eyes for a moment in gratitude. I would love for you to tell me about what you do in your family to mark the moments where Divine wind blows through, where connection takes place, where relationships are strengthened, where grace is given. You are surrounded by miracles, as Whitman says, surrounded by as many holy things as you can see the holy in.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 18 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.