Experience of the Holy

by Posted in Audio available, Chris Jimmerson, Guest Speakers

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Chris Jimmerson

February 20, 2011

You may listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Sermon

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously asked, “Why should not we enjoy an original relation with the universe?”

Last year, when we were in the process of discerning that wonderful mission statement, along with our values and ends, our facilitators had us participate in an exercise they called the “Experience of the Holy”. They put us in pairs and asked that each of us in the pair tell the other of a time when we had experienced the holy.

Here is how they described such experiences and encouraged us to recall them:

“I invite you to reflect on an experience of the Holy in your life — A time when you felt connected to something larger than yourself, a time when you felt your heart and mind expand.”

As a member of your Board of Trustees, I was fortunate not only to get to participate in this exercise myself but to be asked to observe as other pairs described to one another their experiences of the holy.

I remember that the irony in a bunch of non-theistic humanists sitting in a church talking about holy experiences was not lost on me.

On the other hand, I do not remember anyone saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I have never had such an experience.”

But mostly, I remember how powerful and moving it was.

The individual stories of what prompted peoples’ experience of the holy varied widely. Some people spoke of it happening right here in the church, when the actions of our community evoked something transformative within them.

Some of the women spoke of giving birth. Other people spoke of quiet times surrounded by the beauty of nature. Some spoke of being moved into the experience through listening to music, viewing a wonderful piece of art, watching an exhilarating moment of live theatre. Still others told of experiencing the holy during the simple or the seemingly mundane – just catching the beauty of patterns of sunlight streaming through the kitchen blinds. One war veteran told of holding a dying buddy in their arms, of being the last person who would hold and comfort their friend.

The stories were beautiful and evoked a wide range of events from the solitary to occurrences of being a part of something terrific in a large group. The descriptions of the experience of the holy though, were remarkably alike, and people expressed that they were struggling to convey their experience because normal, everyday words and emotions were inadequate.

This is how some of your fellow church members struggled to describe their experience of the holy:

“I was enveloped by mystery, awe and wonder.”

Another person said, “I felt suddenly at peace with myself and with everything – connected to something larger.”

Another said, “It was hyper-realistic, being truly present and in the present, receptive to greater wisdom than can be known in words.”

Someone else put it as “timeless, transcendent, a sense of unity and compassion with and for, well, everything.”

We described these experiences as deeply meaningful, profoundly moving and powerfully motivating, sometimes life altering.

Reverend Dr. William F. Schulz, the most recent self-described humanist to serve as President of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations called this the “apprehension of the holy” and spoke of the holy being “embodied in the abundance of a scarred creation.” One of our church’s values, “Transcendence – To connect with the wonder and awe of the unity of life”, is another way of trying to describe this.

Humanistic psychology’s founder, Abraham Maslow, described essentially the same type of experiences as what he called “peak experiences”, and he believed that they were instances wherein people become maximally what he referred to as “self-actualized”. More recently, researchers have examined similar phenomenon, such as “quantum experiences”, a sort of peak experience that the person evaluates as profound in a life changing way, and “flow” experiences, a sense of timelessness and ultimate fit in the universe.

You probably remember that Maslow was the creator of the pyramid or hierarchy of human needs. In Maslow’s hierarchy, as our basic needs, such as food, water and shelter get met, we move up through successions of higher level needs. Finally, if each of the preceding levels of needs have all been met, human development results in our fulfilling our highest need, self-actualization. He described self-actualized people as, creative, fulfilled, fully alive, connected with something larger, dedicated to justice, compassionate, playful – well, basically what most Unitarian Universalists want to be when we grow up.

Maslow described these characteristics as “Being-values” and found that they were parts of the knowledge people reported carrying forward from within their peak experiences. He found descriptions of such experiences across all cultures and within all of the world’s major religions.

Maslow thought that peak experiences were random occurrences of self-actualization that arise when uncontrollable life events happen to push us into a moment of such self-actualization. In fact, he said, “In general, we are ‘Surprised by Joy’. Peaks come unexpectedly…. you can’t count on them. And hunting them is like hunting happiness. It’s best not done directly. It comes as a by-product, an epiphenomenon, for instance, of doing a fine job at a worthy task you can identify with”. Thus, he did not think we could induce our own experience of the holy; although, he did seem to think that self-actualized people might be more likely to have peak moments.

Recent research has found that Maslow was only partially right – that there may be a neurobiological mechanism behind peak experiences that can be activated not only by random life events of being “surprised by joy” but also though meditation and other forms of what I will call spiritual ritual and practice. Using a brain scanning technique called Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography or SPECT, researchers examined brain activity in a group of experienced meditators. What they found is that while meditating, particularly at the point of reaching a deep meditative state, wherein the meditators reported experiencing a sense of universal connectedness, a peak experience, there was decreased activity in the areas of the brain normally associated with a sense of ones own body image and with the sense of the time and space one inhabits.

Could this explain the experience of the holy? Could this elucidation of a potential biological mechanism behind our peak experiences mean that such experiences are really just delusions?

Further research examined long-term meditators and found that their brain patterns, even in a non-meditative state, were different from the patterns in people who do not meditate. The researchers also found that the brain patterns during meditation were different from those induced by dream states, as well as different from those associated with delusions, including delusions with religious themes. In fact, they reported that, unlike people who experience a delusion, people who have these peak experiences articulate them as hyperlucid and MORE real than their normal state.

This has led some to question a purely reductionist interpretation of the SPECT research as failing to explain the whole of the experience – to find yet more awe and mystery in the fact the we appear to be biologically equipped with the capacity to experience the holy.

The SPECT researchers themselves, taking perhaps a more postmodern viewpoint, stated “…spiritual or mystical states of reality recalled in the baseline state as more certainly representing an objective condition than what is represented in the sensorium of the baseline state must be considered real”. Whew! In other words, intellectual investigation alone cannot reveal the experience itself. Knowing the potential mechanism may not fully explain — or explain away — the phenomenon — or epiphenomenon, as Maslow put it.

Beyond this, there is also evidence that peak experiences can be beneficial. Studies have found that meditation and other spiritual rituals can reduce anxiety and stress, even blood pressure, not only in the moment, but also over the longer-term. Even more fascinating, research has shown that peak experiences can lead to what some psychologists have termed “quantum change” – a sudden shift in one’s values from things like achievement, fitting in, attractiveness, career, wealth and power to values such as peace, humility, spirituality, forgiveness, growth, creativity and generosity.

It appears Maslow’s theory about “Being Values” and self-actualization may have been correct. Perhaps, we should lock our political and economic leaders in a retreat center and tell them “we will not let you out until you have experienced the holy!”

More and more, I have come to believe that we do enjoy Emerson’s “original relation with the universe”. I have had too many of these experiences to answer otherwise and believe that they can have profound implications for how we live our lives – how we are ABLE to live our lives.

I’ve known the movement toward wholeness and self-actualization, the shift in values, that can occur in these experiences, but this knowing comes from within the experience of the holy itself and is a knowledge that like other people, I have trouble expressing in normal, everyday language. I’m struggling to express it now.

Maybe I can come closest though, by sharing one of these peak moments that, for me, led to a beneficial change in life direction, even though it occurred during a time that was contained a sense of sadness over an anticipated loss. Maybe, it is the sharing of these experiences, no matter how difficult it is to find an adequate vocabulary for describing them that allows us to bring forward those “Being-values” that Maslow talked about.

My parents divorced when my brother and sister and I were very young, so my maternal grandparents became more like a second set of parents to us. They helped raise us while my mother worked often long hours. They were our role models and always instilled in us a sense of worth, value and respect for ourselves and for others. I owe much of the adult I became to them.

Later, they welcomed my partner, Wayne, into our family with great love and genuine warmth. In fact, my grandmother always called us “her boys”, even long after a time where either of us could claim any resemblance to the term. However, we had never discussed the … exact nature … of our relationship with my grandparents. My Grandfather was a deacon in the First Baptist Church of Groves, Texas, after all. Still, to their great credit, they treated us both with genuine love, even if it was never openly discussed.

After my grandfather died, my grandmother only lived two more years. Wayne and I were visiting her in the hospital for what we all knew would likely be the last time – she had congestive heart failure and had decided against any more medical intervention after having been in and out of the hospital too many times, after deciding to let go with grace and dignity.

As we said our goodbyes and prepared to leave, she took us both by the hand and said, “Take care of each other.”

Then she locked her eyes with mine.

It was only a moment, maybe even less. Just an instant.

In that instant, we knew as much love as it is possible for human beings to comprehend — more love than the mere humans in the room could contain. The love rushed forth, sweeping us into a different state of experience, spreading us out into an ever expanding way of being, permeating us with all that is holy.

In that instant, we experienced existing in connection with, being one with, not just each other, but with all that has ever been and ever will be. In that instant, we experienced existing in all times and all places at once and yet outside of linear time and in no material space at all.

For an instant, we knew all that we would ever need to know.

I still carry something of that knowledge with me now, but in fragments, in smaller pieces of understanding, because the knowing that occurs during these experiences is a knowing that is outside our usual language of thinking and emotions. That is why it is so hard to express our experiences of the holy to others.

Perhaps, it is a level of understanding that occurs in a more fundamental, yet more encompassing language; a knowing that exists in a language we can only rarely fully access – a language that we have sometimes called, “God”.

Still, I believe those smaller pieces of understanding we are able to retain are important, because they are the burning embers that have the potential to spark further peak experiences and quantum change — what we call in our church’s values, “transformation — to pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world”.

I wonder, since research has shown that these peak experiences can lead to a shift in our values, if it is possible that the reverse is also true. I wonder if, combined with spiritual practice, living those values can help us experience the holy more and more, further reinforcing and deepening those same values? I wonder if living lives of transcendence, compassion and courage, if gathering in community to nourish souls, transform lives and do justice wouldn’t be the ultimate experience of the holy?

I say we find out! Let’s conduct our own experiment by bringing our best translation of that “language of mystery and awe”, our values and mission, into a growing, vital, thriving reality.

I invite us to actualize the Holy in our lives — to actively seek connection with something larger than ourselves, to continuously expand our hearts and minds.

I invite us to embrace our original relation with the universe.

Benediction

In “Our Humanist Legacy”, Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz wrote: “What is of supreme importance is that I live my life in a posture of gratitude-that I recognize my existence and, indeed, Being itself, as an unaccountable blessing, a gift of grace. Sometimes, it is helpful to call the source or fact of that grace God and sometimes not. But what is always helpful and absolutely necessary is to look kindly on the world, to be bold in pursuit of its repair, and to be comfortable in the embrace of its splendor. I know no better term for what I seek than an encounter with the Holy.”

May we each go forth and encounter the holy in our world, be open to its presence in our lives — however we may know it.

Amen.

Beyond Categorical Thinking

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rev. Keith Kron

UUA Director of  Ministerial Transition

January 23, 2011

You can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button at the bottom of the page.

Reading

“Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two and one.

And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t.

You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today.

And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are – underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid and that’s the part of you that’s still ten.

Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mother’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five.

And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like you’re three, and that’s okay.

That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say “Eleven” when they ask you.

And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Reading

“The Possum” by Cynthia Rylant

from The Van Gogh Cafe

Kansas is not what one would call picturesque. It is flat. So flat it could make some people a little crazy, people who need a hill now and then to keep their balance. But in Kansas at least things get noticed. The flatness makes everything count and not one thing slips by. That is why, if a possum was going to choose to hang upside down somewhere, Kansas would be a good choice. People would notice. And if the possum chose to hang outside the window of the Van Gogh Cafe in Flowers… well then, everyone would start talking about magic. And that would be good for the possum, too.

The Van Gogh Cafe is owned by a young man named Marc and his daughter, Clara. Clara is one reason for all of the magic in the cafe. She is ten and believes anything might happen.

Marc and Clara open up the cafe at six every morning except Sundays, when they sleep until ten. Clara takes breakfast orders for MarcÑwho is the cookÑfor half an hour on school mornings, then she goes to their apartment across the street to get ready for school. Clara likes taking orders because everyone is sleepy and sweet and all they want in the world is a cup of coffee, please. Clara thinks morning is the kindest time of day.

Most of the people who come to the Van Gogh Cafe are Flowers people and know each other: “Hi Ray.” “Hello, Roy.” But sometimes someone is new, for Flowers sits near I-70, which people take when they are escaping from an old life in the East to a new life in the West or the other way around. Clara has met many people between six and six-thirty on their way to something new.

But she has not met a possum until today. Today is Saturday and she’s working a couple extra hours for her father, and it is eight o’clock in the morning when suddenly a possum is hanging upside down in the tree outside the cafe window. Right on Main Street. A minute ago it wasn’t there and now it is.

Clara sees it first: Look, there’s a possum. Coffee cups go down, heads turn, and outside a little gray possum enjoys being noticed. It scratches its nose and blinks its eyes and stares back at all the faces.

No one sitting down can say hello to a possum. So everyone in the cafe gets up and stands in front of the window. Now, this is the magic of the Van Gogh Cafe: not one person says, “Amazing! A possum upside down on Main Street!” No, everyone is not all that surprised. They, like Clara, have come to believe anything might happen, because they have been having breakfast at the Van Gogh Cafe all their lives.

What they do say is, “Hi.” Many of them wave. Ray asks Roy what possums eat. And, with their usual curiosity about every new person in Flowers, they all say, “Wonder where he’s from?”

Well, it’s hard to know a possum’s story before he does something magical, but after he does, there’s story and more to tell.

One of the first stories is that the possum starts coming back to the Van Gogh Cafe every day. Eight in the morning, he’s up in the tree.

But that’s a small story.

The possum begins to attract people, and this is the bigger story because he attracts people who haven’t been getting along. Best friends who had a fight the day before: today they’re standing on the sidewalk next to the possum. The possum is hanging upside down and blinking, and the two friends are talking, and suddenly they’ve got their arms around each other and are coming into the cafe for some pie.

A young husband and wife: the day before they’re yelling in the front yard, the next day they’re kissing beside the possum.

Two neighbors: the day before they’re arguing about loud music, the next day the possum is watching them shake hands.

The story becomes even bigger when people start bringing food out of the Van Gogh Cafe, food for the possum. Half an English muffin here, two pieces of oven-fried potatoes there, a cup of milk. They can’t help themselves; they want to give it some food. The possum isn’t hungry. But a stray dog from the other end of town is, and he starts stopping by for breakfast. So does a thin cat and two baby kittens. And a shy small mouse. Several sparrows. Even a deer.

And this goes on for a while until the biggest story happens. A story that will enter quietly into the walls of the cafe and become part of its magic.

For a man whose wife has died drives through Flowers, Kansas, one morning on his way to something new. He is sad. He really isn’t sure where he’s going.

But passing the Van Gogh Cafe, he sees the possum. He sees the possum and he sees all the hungry animals standing beneath it, eating the scraps of muffins and potatoes. And the man sees something else there, too, something no one has seen until now. And because of what he sees, he turns his car around and drives back where he belongs, back to his farm, which he turns into a home for stray animals, animals who come to him and take away his loneliness.

Since that day the possum at the Van Gogh Cafe has disappeared. One minute it was there, the next minute it wasn’t.

But the customers still bring food out of the cafe every morning, leaving scraps beneath the tree in case anyone hungry happens by. There is always a new stray dog, a new thin cat, sparrows.

Clara is not surprised the possum has gone away. Things are always changing at the Van Gogh Cafe, and something new is sure to happen soon. Perhaps when the silent movie star arrives…

Sermon

The Van Gogh Cafe

Not surprisingly I was unpacking children’s books at the time.

My principal, Jay Jordan, walked into my classroom and closed the door. He surveyed my room and shook his head, definitely a Keith Kron fourth grade classroom–a few books here (well, more than a few books), a few chairs there, two bulletin boards scattered all over the floor, my desk already swamped with papers. And school would not start for two days yet.

We looked at each other, and I knew I was at the OK Corral. I wasn’t sure what I was about to be shot for, but I knew something was up.

Perhaps you have seen the face and fidgeting of a nine-year-old child who lied to you twenty minutes before about having to go to the rest room and now really needed to go. My principal looked somewhat less composed than that.

He asked me if I had gotten his message from the day before about wanting to talk to him about something. I told him I had. Silence. More fidgeting. I began to have an inkling about what this conversation was going to be about.

“I am glad we’re on your turf,” Jay said. He looked at me for a minute. I nodded. Silence. Jay took a breath.

“You know Tristan Burke is no longer on your class list.” I nodded again.

“His mother made me take him out of your class.” Jay looked down and then back up. I nodded again. Tristan’s mother was president of the PTA that year. I only vaguely knew who Tristan was–and the only thing I knew about him was that he was the most effeminate boy I had encountered in five years of teaching.

“His mother made me take him out of your class because she says she knows you’re a homosexual. I don’t know how she knows it, but she knows it.” Jay looked at me. I looked at him and could see the wheels spinning in his head. I would wonder later if he could see the wheels spinning in mine.

Fortunately, and sadly, I had prepared for this moment. I had no doubts it would come at some point. Years of thinking about it had almost kept me from going into teaching, but the call to teach had won out.

I knew to say nothing. I knew to wait to be asked, then I would answer yes, and only then. I raised my eyebrows back at him. More silence. Part of me was hoping he would ask, that I would be given an opportunity to tell him, that I could finally tell my story.

He didn’t ask. He broke the silence. “This is ridiculous. You’re not the type to harm children.”

We looked at each other. I nodded quietly, realizing the support I was getting. It was a bittersweet moment for both of us. Jay finally mumbled, “I shouldn’t have pulled him out of your class.”

“She would have made your year horrible. Mine, too, for that matter.” I paused. “It’s okay.”

Jay nodded quietly back at me.

“We did reading groups today. Tristan will be in my class for reading. It’s an hour each day.” My voice trailed off.

Jay was firmer now. “You’ll get my backing. She’ll just have to deal with it. There’s another parent concerned too. I’ll deal with him too. We won’t talk about this again.” Jay surveyed my room.

“Now get this room cleaned up. I don’t know how you are going to be ready to teach in two days.” He spun on his heels and turned toward the door. He opened it and turned to me.

“I’m glad we did this on your turf,” he repeated.

He looked at me one last time, tried to smile, and left, closing the door behind him.

For the next four years, I never heard any of those complaints again. Tristan and I got along famously. I invited his mother into my reading class to help out when she could. She did, and we laughed a lot together. From me she learned the fine art of teasing children–and probably a few other things.

It occurs to me to tell you why I am here–why I do the work now as Director of the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns for our Unitarian Universalist Association–and not teaching fourth grade anymore.

I left because I was afraid.

It is more than being found out and fired because I was a known homosexual, though that’s certainly part of it. The longer I stuck around the greater the odds were that my private life would become public knowledge.

My parents, who have not used the words “gay” or “homosexual” in the twenty plus years I have been out to them, are a part of this story too. My dad was a principal in the same school system as I, and my mother taught first grade in Lexington as well. I never had the opportunity to think of fighting this battle alone, and my folks had given a lifetime of modeling to know how to overprotect people. Any public battle I chose there would have included them.

I lived four lives in Lexington, Kentucky. I lived a work life where I loved the work of teaching elementary school. I lived a family life where I had dinner with my folks once a week, visited my grandmother a lot, and overspent on my young relatives at Christmas. I lived a gay life where I hung out with friends, led a support group, and played volleyball. I lived a religious life where I sat on every committee in my home UU congregation and moved on to district and denominational work beyond that.

I even managed to begin to see some overlapping. Certainly my work life and family life overlapped some. And as I came out in church, my gay life and my religious life began to merge. I worked very hard at making my church a welcoming place for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. I worked very hard at bringing gays, lesbians, and bisexuals into my church. And it happened.

It happened in part because I started telling stories in church. I was able to tell the story about having a crush on Mr. Gardner, my high school drama teacher, and then telling him about it. I was able to tell the story of being in very Southern Baptist church as a teenager and having my “Anita Bryant” type Sunday school teacher ask me if I agreed with her that homosexuals were sick people.

I was able to tell the story of coming out to my parents and having my father ask me if I was going to molest children while my mother cried. I was able to tell the story of meeting a Unitarian Universalist minister in a gay bar and that’s how I became a Unitarian Universalist.

I was becoming aware that not only could I be eleven and ten and nine and eight and seven and six and five and four and three and two and one, but I could talk about them as well. You see, my real fear was not that someone like my principal would ask me if I was gay, would ask me my story. My real fear is that I would never get to tell it.

This is what the radical right wants–to control our society so that only certain approved stories can be told.

I was afraid I would never get to have a life. I was afraid I would always have four of them.

My fear was not that my private life would become public knowledge. My fear was either that it never would, or it would happen only on someone else’s terms.

When I hear people say they want to make sure they have a private life and a public life, I wonder, “Do they really want two lives?” Categories for human beings are really a bad idea.

I think I learned that during my conversation with my principal.

As an aside, I do understand that people are talking about control and choice when they make the point about having a private life. I’m all for that. I just believe human beings do better when they only have one life to juggle. It’s more than enough to do.

So it was after this conversation with my principal when I began to know the need to make a change. I looked around me and became sadly aware of the number of people leading more than one life at a time.

My teaching colleague who had been married to a man with a sexual addiction for children.

My father who tried to pretend he never had a father and never talked, or talks, about him.

My friend Steve who quit playing the piano because he became a librarian.

My friend Saundra who told no one about her live-in boyfriend, Dick.

All of these people and so many more who never got to be eleven. It was hardest for me to see in the children I taught. Children who came to school and then went home and cooked and cleaned for younger brothers and sisters. Children who knew they could not fail. Children who went home to wars. And by the time they were nine years old they knew to keep these lives quiet.

Religious Educator Maria Harris talks about implicit education–what is taught without saying it. I knew I was implicitly teaching these children to have more than one life. There had to be a better way.

I looked at how I might make it a better way. I learned of cities that had nondiscrimination policies for teachers. I did not trust that those were real.

I looked at the amount of work I had to do. And I thought about the fact that I often spent more time documenting what I taught and how I taught it and who was there to hear it, than I did actually getting to teach.

So I decided to look elsewhere. The person I saw doing the most teaching was my minister and the other ministers I knew. And they didn’t have to fill out report cards either.

I remembered Jesus was a teacher in many ways. Rabbis consider themselves as teachers. I watched the UU ministers I knew and I watched the way they taught the people around them–by telling stories, often their stories.

At the same time I was leading homophobia workshops in UU congregations–not how to have more of it, mind you, but how to have less. I learned quickly three things about teaching adults.

1) They don’t necessarily have longer attention spans than children. They just do a better job of faking. Usually engaging people on an emotional level increases their attentiveness.

2) Adult learning is as much about unlearning as it is about learning.

3) The product isn’t nearly as important as the process.

So how do you teach people to be less homophobic? You are explicitly teaching them about homophobia. You are implicitly teaching them about vulnerability.

That’s where the possum shows up. That’s where the magic happens. As people let themselves become more vulnerable, they become stronger and less homophobic. I did this through telling stories–sometimes my stories. And I was blessed with the stories of others.

I saw the possibility for having one life.

A friend of mine from seminary and I were talking one day and she said you could learn a fair amount about a person by asking them these four questions:

1) When did you stop singing?

2) When did you stop dancing?

3) When did you stop playing?

4) When did you stop telling your story?

For the record, I stopped singing in third grade in music class when Mrs. Rice told me I couldn’t sing–though I still hum to myself when I think no one is looking.

I still go dancing.

I still play.

And as I told my friend, “It’s more a matter of when I started telling my story than when I stopped.”

I stopped telling my story at fourteen. It would be ten years later that I started telling some of my stories again. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve not had to figure out what story I could tell where.

Like the story of the possum, one story leads to another. And when we hear our story in another’s story, well, that’s the magic. That’s when we encounter mystery.

What are your stories? Have you stopped telling them? Do you only tell them in certain places, in certain lives? How well do you know the stories of those around you? The stories in this room–your stories–are magical. I hope you are not afraid to tell them. They are your life and they let you be fully eleven or whatever age you are.

A final story from the Van Gogh Cafe’ and then I will close.

It is winter at the cafe’.

Marc is in the back cooking, though the restaurant is empty. Clara is putting napkins into the napkin holder when a man walks in. He is tall and slender and moves like water. He is strikingly handsome and a fabulous dresser. Black cloak, black cashmere scarf, black wool gloves, black cane.

His white hair sets it off perfectly. He must be 90. Clara takes his order.

“Tea, plain. Boiled egg, please. Thank you.”

Clara thinks there is something romantic about him.

After his food is served, Marc comes out looking for his watch. He looks around and sees the man. Marc stops what he is doing and stares. He is staring because he knows who this elegant man in the cafe’ is.

He is a star.

Clara doesn’t know, of course. She has watched the old movies with her father, but, except for Chaplin, doesn’t know their names. Only their movements.

And it is perhaps the way the elegant man has moved through the cafe’ that reminds her of something she has seen before. Reminds everyone. But none can quite place the memory.

The breakfast hours pass and people go their way, to work, to the mall at the edge of town, back home.

But the elegant man stays on. He has hardly touched his egg. His teacup is still half full. The door of the Van Gogh Cafe’ opens and closes, opens and closes, and he stays on looking out the window.

Marc cannot help himself. When there is no one left in the cafe’ except the silent star, Marc walks over to his table. Clara, curious, shyly follows.

Marc offers his hand and the man gracefully takes it. They shake.

“I know you work,” Mark says softly. “I love it. I love all your films.”

Clara’s eyes are wide. She has not known until know that a star is in her cafe’. The old man blushes and smiles.

“Thank you,” he says.

There is an awkward moment, then graciously, he offers Marc and Clara the two empty chairs at his table. Happily, they sit.

Marc and the silent star talk about the old films as Clara listens. There is an innocence in her father’s face she has not seen before. He is like a boy. The silent star seems pleased, quietly thrilled, to talk of his work with someone who who understands so well–to finally tell his story. He laughs and sighs and even trembles slightly, reliving it all.

There is a moment or two when each is quiet, catching a breath.

“Why, sir, are you at the Van Gogh Cafe’?” Marc gently asks. Clara waits.

The old man seems glad someone has asked. He reaches into his coat and pulls forth an old photograph. He hands it first to Clara, then to Marc.

It is of a beautiful young man in a waistcoat and top hat, standing before an old theater. Marc looks carefully at the building in the picture.

“Is this…?”

“Yes,” replies the silent star.

The building is the Van Gogh Cafe. In 1923. When it was a theater.

“He and I did some shows here together, the summer we met.” The silent star smiles and puts the photograph back inside his coat.

“Today I am waiting for him,” he says.

Clara’s heart is pounding. She feels that she herself is in a movie. Every gesture the man makes, each word he speaks is so beautiful to her. She knows the cafe remembers this man. She can feel it drawing in to him, reaching for this man who has been a part of its first magic, on the stage of the old theater.

Oddly, not one person has walked into the cafe to break this spell.

Marc offers the star a fresh cup of tea and a piece of apple pie, which is gratefully accepted. Then Marc and Clara leave the old man to his waiting.

The lunch hours come and go. Then the dinner hours. The silent star waits. Occasionally Clara or Marc offer him something, but he politely declines. And they find themselves watching the window, watching the door, for a beautiful young man in a top hat and waistcoat

Finally, it is time to close and still the old man is waiting. He seems very tired now. But unworried. He asks Marc if he might sit by the window a little longer

“Of course,” says Marc, though he offers his guest room to the man, offers to take him home for the evening and return him to the table by the window the next day.

But the man is certain his friend is coming very soon.

“Very soon,” he says.

So Marc takes Clara home and returns to the cafe a few hours later, to check on the old man.

At first Marc thinks the man is asleep. Then Marc realizes that he has died. In the old man’s hand, Marc finds a newspaper clipping, cracked and yellow. The clipping shows the face of the beautiful young man in top hat and waistcoat. It reports that he has drowned, in 1926.

And in the old man’s other hand is the same photograph that Marc and Clara were shown. But now the photograph is changed. The beautiful young man is gone, and there is only a soft empty light where he was standing.

Marc and Clara keep the photograph and the newspaper clipping inside a small box near the cash register, and on Christmas Eve when everything is quiet, they look at these again. They each think how perfect that the silent star has died where he found his true love. That he came to the Van Gogh Cafe and waited for his friend to take him home.

Whatever forces are against you, whatever pain and suffering is yours, whatever joy you have, whatever your story is, my wish for you is that you share your story whenever and wherever you choose–whether you are 11 or 90 or somewhere in between.

Sing. Dance. Play. Tell your stories. Listen to the stories of others. Live your one life. Feel. Feel its magic.

2011 Sermon Index

by Posted in Indexes

2011 Index 

Sermon Topic Author Date
Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-24-11
How to disagree passionately and peacefully Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-18-11
Wisdom Tree  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-11-11
A Juicy Slice of Unitarian History  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 12-04-11
A simple running stitch  Nell Newton 11-27-11
The devil and Martha Stewart Rev. Meg Barnhouse 11-20-11
Digging a good, deep well Rev. Meg Barnhouse 11-13-11
There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Rev. Meg Barnhouse 11-06-11
Honoring the Ancestors  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-30-11
Growing out – Maturing as an Expanding Embrace Rev. Mark Skrabacz 10-23-11
Be a stream, not a swamp  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-16-11
We are gay and straight together Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-09-11
Repentance, Forgiveness, Reconciliation Rev. Meg Barnhouse 10-02-11
Flying fish make me smile  Barbara Stoddard 09-25-11
All the gossip from Concord  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-18-11
Where are the strong? Who are the trusted? Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-11-11
Water Communion Rev. Meg Barnhouse 09-04-11
A Spiritual Stretch  Rev. Meg Barnhouse 08-28-11
Keeping an Eye on the Demolition Twins Rev. Meg Barnhouse 08-21-11
Henry David Thoreau and the Simple Life Luther Elmore 08-14-11
Sometimes you just need a good exorcism Marisol Caballero 08-07-11
So let it be written  Eric Hepburn 07-31-11
Love and Fear Gary Bennett 07-24-11
Are First UU’s Inside Traders Michael LeBurkien 07-17-11
The Virtues of Leadership  Rev. Mark Skrabacz 07-10-11
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of What? Brian Ferguson 07-03-11
The importance of ritual Stephanie Canada Gills & Sandra Ries 06-26-11
Beginnings and Endings Nell Newton, Chris Jimmerson, Eric Hepburn, Brendan Sterne, Susan Thomson, Rev. Ed Brock 06-19-11
The greatest final remarks at closure of interim ministry ever spoken Rev. Ed Brock 06-12-11
The greatest farewell speech in history Rev. Ed Brock 06-05-11
Intergenerational service and flower communion Rev. Lena Breen & Rev. Ed Brock 05-29-11
Liberty, Healing, Good News Rev. Meg Barnhouse 05-22-11
Where I come from is like this Rev. Meg Barnhouse 05-15-11
The value of persons Rev. Ed Brock 05-08-11
Is there a UU faith? Rev. Ed Brock 05-01-11
The symbol of resurrection Rev. Ed Brock 04-24-11
Our Journey with Food part 2 Rev. Ed Brock 04-17-11
Running on Empty Rev. Kathleen Ellis 04-10-11
Is UU Evangelism Worthy? Rev. Ed Brock 04-03-11
The Moral Dimension of the Immigration Issue Rev. Ed Brock 03-27-11
Our Journey with Food Rev. Ed Brock 03-20-11
When we pray Nell Newton 03-13-11
The State Budget Crisis and Education: A Moral Perspective Rev. Ed Brock, Donna Howard, Bee Morehead 03-06-11
Change and Paradox Rev. Ed Brock 02-27-11
Experience of the Holy Chris Jimmerson 02-20-11
Standing on the side of Love Gen. Virgil A Richard (ret), Paul Scott 02-13-11
Radical Hospitality Rev. Ed Brock 02-06-11
The Art of Discernment Rev. Ed Brock 01-30-11
Beyond Categorical Thinking Rev. Keith Kron 01-23-11
The Art of Renewal Rev. Ed Brock 01-16-11
The Art of Letting Go Rev. Ed Brock 01-09-11
Apologies for 2011 – Viva la Resolution Rabbi Michael LeBurkien 01-02-11

 

A Unitarian Universalist View of Prayer

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Nell Newton, Sermons

Nell Newton

November 28, 2010

Do you pray? Really?

Is there “something” you do – almost automatically – in certain situations?

I mean, outside of the times, when midway through our service we are invited to “join in an attitude of prayer” and someone reads something worthy of pondering. Do you really pray? Or do you just adopt an attitude?

If you do pray, would you admit it to anyone else — to the person sitting next to you in these pews? Would you tell me?

Our practice has no fixed liturgy of prayer. We have no cannon, no formal recitation of holy words to use in times of turmoil to calm our hearts, or focus our thoughts. If you walk into any Unitarian or Universalist church in North America, you will not hear the same words spoken in the same way at the same part of a service. We have no shared doxology for giving thanks or acknowledging blessings. We have freed ourselves from any requirements that would dictate how and when, or even IF we should pray. And, for the most part we seem to be getting along okay.

In fact, some of us are probably pretty glad to be done with certain prayers. (Our father who art in heaven… hmmmm…, lift up his countenance… uh hunh… , and it is in dying that we…. hmmmm….) It well might have been in the middle of a standard prayer that you stumbled, and were caught up short when you realized I Cannot Say That And Mean It.

So what DO we say?

Maybe we don’t. Maybe prayer isn’t a part of your life. Maybe, you are a pragmatic person like my Aunt Ruth. Ruth lives outside a small town in southern Michigan. While her family is not particularly religious, plenty of her neighbors attend the many Christian churches. One day, while fixing supper for her family, Ruth collapsed on the kitchen floor in an epileptic seizure. It was a one-time thing, it never happened again. But it meant countless trips to medical specialists, and the inconvenience of losing her drivers license for a whole year. After the initial scare, she heard from too many members of the community “Oh Ruth, we’re praying for you.” It wore on her patience. She told me “I don’t want their damn prayers – I want someone to help me pick up my kids from school and take me grocery shopping!” Like I said, she is a pragmatic woman.

At its worst, “We’re praying for you” carries a whiff of condescension. As if the speaker can plainly see from your sorry condition, that your own prayers have been insufficient, so they’ll lend you some of theirs.

Perhaps that is why UU’s tend to shy away from that particular exchange.

From the get-go, that type of prayer is beseeching and calling upon a god for intervention or intercession. Could you lend me a hand down here? In its most immature, prayer is wishing – wishing for a puppy, a sparkly pony, a good grade on the test. Up one level comes the bargaining – “I’ll give up cussing and taking your name in vain if only you’ll…” And many of the wordiest of prayers amount to flattery: “Oh all powerful and merciful god…” The speaker is but a humble servant buttering up a vain and capricious deity. I’ve had some bosses like that, and, for me, such a character is not a god worth serving.

So we’ve grown up and we’re past the wheedling and pleading prayers. We’re not waiting for god to bring about changes we’re not ready to make for ourselves. We know better than to bargain with the universe. If we are going to make a personal connection to a greater power, it better be one we respect. And for several of us, god simply does not fit into a deity-box. And that’s where it gets a little complicated… To what address should we send such messages?

And what do we say – almost reflexively, after the first gasp of sadness follows bad news? What do we say when someone has had a loss – a death – and there is nothing one can do. And yet there is the wish to affirm for that person’s well-being and the longing to offer healing. These are the times when prayer would be a traditional response. What do we say when our heart is pained with sympathy? Do you have prayers to offer? Would you consider them of any value to offer?

I’ll stop asking you questions and quickly tell you straight up. I do pray. And it is a physical and quiet practice with almost no words – only names. Each day I pray specifically for a family I know. Earlier this year Jim died from a brain tumor. He left behind his wife and teenage sons who now must reconstruct their lives without him. Each day I still my body, clear my head, and think of each one of them completely, and open my heart to hold them all. Do they know about this? No. Should they? No. Do my prayers have any effect upon them? Honestly, that’s not the point. But this action keeps them present in my life, and makes it easier for me to pick up the phone, invite them over to dinner, offer to pick the kids up from music lessons, and be of some real use.

Frankly, the efficacy of prayer has yet to be proven definitively. There have been assorted studies that mostly show the placebo effect is alive and well. Many have tried to measure change in patient outcome following intercessionary prayer, and when the double-blind data is reviewed, prayer does not seem to improve the sick people who are prayed for.

But like so many studies, I wonder if the researchers were measuring the right part of the process. Perhaps, rather than measure the outcome of the people prayed for, perhaps we should measure the outcome of the people who are praying for someone else. Or we might examine the outcome of the family members who know their loved one received prayers.

Reverend Ed Brock told me how upon the death of his wife’s mother their family received many kindnesses from friends. The most unusual was a special gift made by two nuns they know professionally. They sent a card that said, in effect, we have made a gift to a convent in upstate New York and for a year the sisters in this convent will give payers for your family.

There was nothing in the note suggesting a wish for conversion, or that the prayers would produce any specific outcome. But to Ed and Alphise it seemed like and felt like an act of love. The idea that out there, amid the crazy frenzy of society, a group of people somewhere were simply mentioning her name daily — that idea was powerful. It wasn’t the potential supernatural dimension, but the caring dimension that touched them.

There is the other type of common prayer – the act of giving thanks. As Meister Eckhart explained “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.”

My favorite instruction came from my Korean martial arts master who was raised in a Buddhist temple. In his broken English, he scolded us: “Before you eat the pig, thank the pig! Because, if they could, the pig’s family would sue you!!”

As UU’s we’re a bit more comfortable here. Giving thanks doesn’t presume that we’re flawed, or helpless, just appreciative and observant. And we can be munificent in our thanks to the animal, the farmer, the cook!

In stopping to give thanks, we allow ourselves a moment to experience beauty and bounty more fully. Who wouldn’t want to spend time in this type of prayer? But do we – other than for formal occasions? Do you offer thanks over the morning’s oatmeal or the leftovers eaten at your desk? Have your kids ever seen you pause at breakfast on Tuesday and say “thank you” before the fork touches the food? What would that be like? Are you really up for three-squares of thankfulness every day?

Years ago, I worked as the Kitchen Manager and cook at a Quaker residential house on Beacon Hill in Boston. It was the Quaker custom of that community to have a good solid minute of silence before we ate our evening meal. There was nothing structured and no one led us with instructions or guidance through that silence. As the cook, it was generally the first time I had sat down in 6 hours and the first few times, if god spoke to me it was through bone-deep fatigue and if I gave thanks it was for the chair under my butt. But in time, I found myself placing a final blessing upon the food. It had passed through my hands, and was about to be received by people (who were grateful that they had not had to cook), and who would use the energy it gave them to study medicine, choreograph new dances, arrange flowers, build houses, and change their world. Eventually I found whole afternoons of chopping onions, crimping pie crusts, washing pots became an extended action of prayer. Living in an intentional community can do that sort of thing to an impressionable young person.

However, these days, I’m like most folks, hurrying to fix dinner, with NPR telling me about the horrible state of the world. I snap off the radio and fling the food at my tired and surly family who generally do not bother to thank me, the pig, the farmer, or anyone else. It is not ideal, but at least we have a place to work up from…

Just as many UUs have started to reclaim the language of god-talk, some of us are starting to reclaim prayer on our own terms. Perhaps there was a baby in that bathwater. But to rescue it we’ll have to do more than simply deconstruct or demythologize the practice. In short, to understand it, we’ll have to do it.

One splendid Unitarian Universalist woman I know set out to develop her own ritual of prayer and tied it to her every day. She turned some of her daily actions into sacred rituals. Each morning, first thing, she scoops up a handful of birdseed and steps out onto her patio. She scatters the seed in a small mandala marking the four directions and recites a scrap of a Navajo prayer “There is beauty before me, there is beauty behind me.” She fills in her circle with peanuts for the blue jays, and pauses just long enough to feel connected with nature. Then, every evening, after the dishes are done, and the dog is walked, she stops and simply gives thanks for her guardians who have helped her that day. She calls for blessings on her children and grandchildren. She calls for blessings upon her animal companions and asks that the presence of love be with people she knows who are having troubles in their lives. This is simply what she does.

I came to prayer sideways – through meditation. They aren’t the same thing, but they improve one another. In meditation, a person looks inward to consider their actions and find where they might be wanting. Once the internal landscape has been surveyed, then the individual is ready to connect to the outer in prayer. Many time I found that I might dive down into meditation only to rise up in prayer — prayers of resolve and prayers of remembrance — prayers of thanks and prayers of acceptance. Sometimes a deity is referenced, and sometimes not. And that last detail, so far, has not proven injurious to my health, or limited the usefulness of the practice.

When I pray, I am not asking for anything, I am not expecting any change in the world, only a change in myself. If I surrender anything, I offer up my ego and selfishness, and invite Grace to enter and fill that space. And afterwards, I take my changed self forward, with that small spark of the divine inside me, burning just a bit brighter.

So, how do you pray? How might you take old words and blow new breath into them? Have you created a ritual and observed any changes within you? When faced with a crisis, would you have the humility and trust to open up and allow a caring person to pray with you, to help fan your divine spark so that it might burn a little brighter as you go forward to face what you must?

Now, I have an assignment for us here. You see, this topic is too big for one sermon and I need your help.

Honestly, I suspect that many of you do pray, in your own fashion, and for your own purposes. Being the humble and private people you are, I’ll predict yours are humble, private, prayers. But, if you could, please tell me about them. Tell me how you might have retained or reclaimed prayer. Where it fits in your day, and what you say when life rises up and threatens to overwhelm you. Tell me about it. And in another couple of months, I’d like to be back up here, and I’d like to share some of your stories about prayer.

Until then, if prayer isn’t in your life, be a diligent UU and at least question why. And then question “why” again. For those who would consider “why not?” may I invite you to bring along your god, your breath, and your willingness to be changed.

Blessed Be

© Nell Newton 11/28/2010