Cocooned

October 29, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, today we bring with us thoughts of those who have come before us. In dealing with the dead the first thing that’s obvious is they sure are a lot easier to get along with than the living.

The living have a tendency to protest when you say something negative about them, while the dead seem just fine with whatever is said. Perhaps the dead are grateful for the release from taking things personally? Perhaps, it’s time to start living our lives with the same sort of abandon that’s enjoyed by those who have passed on?

There are many ways in which we honor the dead in this society but forgetting about their shadow sides isn’t one of them. We must remember that those who have gone before us are no nobler than we are, nor are they less human for simply being dead. We can learn some lessons from the dead.

One, we could start taking things a bit less personally ourselves, we could even imagine that we are already dead and see how that feels, if it changes the way we live, if it lessens our burdens, if it allows us a certain freedom that we wouldn’t have when we thought we were going to live forever.

Lastly, we hope that those who brought memorabilia and pictures of their dearly departed ones for the Day of the Dead Altar will be comforted by their act. Simply putting my mom and dad’s picture up there on that altar made a difference for me and moved me strangely.

I also put a picture of Hawthorne my best dog friend up there. I wear his dog tag around my neck even today. The sound of it makes me think of him bouncing up beside me, his toothy grin and the way he twisted his body when he had a strong wag on.

We need to remember those sentient beings that have gone before, that have offered us comfort, that have offered us pain, that were there for us to the best of their abilities, but then we must turn back out to life, to living, to love because that’s what’s demanded of us by life itself.

We must return the compliment of life by living fully in the moment, giving regardless of what’s returned, stepping out when the moment presents itself, never fearing, or at least not letting fear stop us, always ready to go that extra mile, and own all that comes our way.

We give thanks this morning that death is there for us, that we carry our own deaths with us, and we would hope that death will be the good companion, the friend that never lies, the friend that never leaves, the lover who will embrace us even and most especially when we appear unembraceable.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

Readings:

Luke 24:1-5 (NIV)

First Lesson

Phillip Booth

Lie back, daughter,

let your head be tipped back in the cup of my hand.

Gently, and I will hold you.

Spread your arms wide,

lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls.

A dead-man’s float is face down.

You will dive and swim soon enough where this tidewater

ebbs to the sea.

Daughter, believe me, when you tire on the long thrash to your island,

lie up, and survive.

As you float now,

where I held you and let go,

remember when fear cramps your heart what I told you:

lie gently back and wide to the light-year stars,

lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Cru-ci fy – from the Latin crux, crucis for cross + figere, to fix

SERMON: Cocooned

This will be a short sermon. Aren’t those comforting words? Perhaps in today’s society those six words may be the most comforting words you can hear in church. This will be a short sermon. Today we are to talk about different kinds of deaths, and maybe even a little resurrection. Perhaps you think speaking of a little resurrection is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Perhaps you’re right. What we want to do is inquire about death and resurrection, and to do that, we first have to ask questions.

What are questions? A question is perhaps one of the only ways to open ourselves up. To ask questions is to reach out – to seek – to explore our environment.

I’m thinking now of Dr. Loehr’s invocation in which he says, “Questions more profound than answers!” Why is it, questions can be more profound than answers? It has something to do with the fact that our questioning is the edge of our life – the fingers of our growth, if you will – reaching out into the world and into ourselves. What would existence be like without questions?

Once a man entered a cave in Roquefort, France and discovered a rotten cheese that someone had obviously forgotten. There were green veins of spoilage running throughout the cheese. Anyone in his right mind – and who was not French – would have covered that cave entrance with a stone and left it there. But this man by asking a simple question, “I wonder what those green, moldy lines taste like?” – this man resurrected what was thought to be spoiled. Without this man Roquefort Cheese would never have been discovered.

Who and what are we? These questions have baffled philosophers and theologians from the start. To ask these questions assumes that we were at one time, or can be in the future, or are right now something – some thing – an object among other objects.

As a practicing Buddhist I do not believe in a permanent self. In other words, there is no – thing in me that can purport to be anything substantial. I am, in essence, without substance and some of you have known that for some time.

The minute we have an answer for who we are, we have, in all probability, died. The only answer to whom or what we are is a eulogy. In the moment of death the sentence, which is each of us, can finally have a period.

Short of a eulogy we are incomplete, in process, always flowing. Hence the importance of the moment, the only place that we existentially belong. This flowing into each moment is for me a form of enlightenment, a form of resurrection. When I am reborn into each moment my eyes see what there is to see, my ears hear what there is to be heard.

On the 2nd of November, El Dia de los Muertos is celebrated in Mexico and Latin America. On this auspicious day we will dedicate the oak memorial sculpture in the foyer. The memorial tokens to be placed on the oak tree will be butterflies.

How’s your insectology – I know that’s not a word – but who here remember the stages that lead to the butterfly? The butterfly larva is called a caterpillar and it becomes a pupa and resides within the cocoon where it undergoes metamorphosis and emerges a butterfly. The reason Sterling Heraty chose this image is its use in the Mayan culture as a symbol for resurrection.

Scientifically, metamorphosis is considered complete when there is no suggestion of the adult in the larva stage. In other words, no caterpillar would consider itself a future butterfly.

We human beings, we Homo sapiens, undergo a metamorphosis similar to the butterfly and the frog. For in the womb we are swimmers, not walkers on land, our lungs are dormant for we receive all our nourishment and our oxygen through the umbilical cord compliments of our host animal generally referred to as mama. One of the clues of complete metamorphosis is the habitat change between the larval and adult stages of life. Tadpoles live in water, frogs live on the land, caterpillars crawl the earth, butterflies flutter above it dining on the nectar of flowers.

In the passage from Luke the women go to the tomb with spices and ointment to complete the burial preparation of Jesus’ body. They discover the stone has been rolled back and instead of Jesus inside there are two men dressed in shiny white garments. What these men say is in the form of a question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

A wise man once said, “To become free we must see all of our past as a mere preface to this present moment.” (Repeat this line)

All our degrees, our PhD’s, our honors, our medals, our six figure salaries, our pedigrees all the way back to the Mayflower, our DNA, our IRA’s, our adventures and misadventures, all are MERE preface to this present moment.

There are cocoons that we must break through in order to become adults. The cocoon of the family defines you in the order in which you arrived and the manner in which you reacted to and acted in the world. This cocoon of childhood is a tough nut to crack, but leaving mama, letting daddy go, dropping the hands of brothers and sisters and venturing forth into the world is the way out from the familial cocoon. It isn’t fun, it can cause problems within families of origin, and many times when we venture back into those families of origin we literally have to fight not being placed back into our childhood cocoon. How many of us have made trips home as adults and lying in that bed that we grew up in we sense something stagnant and death-like about the tombs, I mean, rooms of our youth? Ask yourself this; Does a butterfly ever hang out with caterpillars?

Where do we belong? We create other homes, don’t we? The place where our kids are cocooned, the place that eventually they must break from if they are to be free – we create these homes. When they leave will we, then, be dusting their cocoons hoping for that weekend in which we will be pretending that the family is back together again?

Our lives are not the glittering trail left behind us any more than the glistening trail of the snail is the snail itself. Our lives are not what has past, but rather what lies ahead – complete and total possibility. This is true when we’re ten years old. This is true when we’re ninety.

Another cocoon awaits us, and that is the cocoon of the community of agreement. This cocoon is cultural, societal, national. For those who break free here there awaits a reality of our own choosing, a reality stemming from within, a reality which evolves – a reality we choose, by freely intending it.

Freedom finally is not something we can sell to other countries, or import to other cultures. Freedom is like our dead, it haunts us, provokes us, causes us to dream dreams – dreams that reach far into the future, dreams that have us gazing with great awareness until our last breath.

So on this Dia de los muertos Sunday – this day that we have erected an altar to the dead and placed our pictures and memorabilia there I would ask that we remember the words of the glowing strangers in Jesus’ tomb, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Remember we’re not being rebuked for looking – we’re only asked to consider why we look there.

In complete metamorphosis the word imago refers to an insect in its final adult, sexually mature and usually winged state. The imago of the caterpillar is the butterfly; the imago of the tadpole is the frog. The imago of human beings is the imago dei – the image of God. We are the image of God; we have projected this image into the heavens. The source of that projection is something within us. This knowledge leads us to none other than our winged state, free; free from the prejudice of others, free from our own limitations, free to dream, free to think, free to be whatever we imagine we might be – free, great God Almighty, free at last.