Podcast: Play in new window | Download
© Victoria Shepherd Rao
26 September 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.
Desiderata
by Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
PRAYER:
“A Prayer” by Max Ehrmann, 1906
Let me do my work each day; and if the darkened hours of despair overcome me, may I not forget the strength that comforted me in the desolation of other times.
May I still remember the bright hours that found me walking over the silent hills of my childhood, or dreaming on the margin of a quiet river, when a light glowed within me, and I promised my early God to have courage amid the tempests of the changing years.
Spare me from bitterness and from the sharp passions of unguarded moments. May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit. Though the world knows me not, may my thoughts and actions be such as shall keep me friendly with myself.
Lift up my eyes from the earth, and let me not forget the uses of the stars. Forbid that I should judge others lest I condemn myself. Let me not follow the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path.
Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am; and keep ever burning before my vagrant steps the kindly light of hope.
And though age and infirmity overtake me, and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thankful for life, and for time’s olden memories that are good and sweet; and may the evening’s twilight find me gentle still.
SERMON: Desiderating Peace
Good morning. I am sure that many of you are familiar with the long prose-poem entitled, Desiderata, which was read for us earlier. It became very popular in the 1960s and has remained beloved since then. It has been translated into at least thirty-two languages. It has even won a Grammy award. Maybe hearing it again has taken you back in time, and reminded you of some memories or stories attached to this poem. In 1965 it gained national exposure when it was found with its title but with no named poet or author on the bedside table of Adlai Stevenson, right beside him when he died. As if it was the last thing he had read before he died. You may remember this story first hand. If that is the case I hope that you will share your recollections with me after the service. Because Desiderata has been an important poem for me, a teacher I took to heart. I guess I am counting on it having been an important piece for you too and worth remembering. Or, I am hoping that it might be, if you have not encountered it before.
Who here remembers this piece from the sixties? Who remembers exactly where you had it tacked up on the wall? And is there anyone here for whom this is an unfamiliar text?
Desiderata came into my life around the late sixties. I was just a kid, still under ten, when my mother brought a nice parchment paper print of it home from the one mod flower-power type boutique in town. And that was in Oakville, in the Province of Ontatio, Canada. Today I want to spend some time revisiting it because I think of it as a sort of wisdom text for religious liberals, especially Unitarian Universalists.
Desiderata is a Latin word meaning things to be desired. Desiderata the poem is about ways of life which the author has found desirable in searching for and finding a state of inner peace. He starts out by saying go placidly. Placid means peace. Go peacefully amid the noise and haste. In other words, don’t shy away from the bustle of your life but take with you a sense of inner peace. What we might call peace of mind: a sense of well-being, maybe a feeling of relaxation or of faith, or at least a freedom from existential angst-type worries. Inner peace is a common experience but it can is also be elusive sometimes, especially amid the noise and haste. So, while the first injunction seems simple, it is actually a tall order.
In fact, it is a religious pursuit. Silence and stillness can be vital, life-giving. But finding the solitude from which to experience silence and stillness requires determination. Many religious traditions have developed practices to cultivate these paths of silence and stillness to the divine, or to enlightenment – think of the quiet hush of a cathedral, or think of a temple full of Buddhist monks sitting in meditation, or think of the vows of silence, of monasteries which through the ages have sheltered seekers from the noisy demands of life outside cloistered space. Many religious liberals have found their own ways of seeking after this stillness in life, think of Henry David Thoreau living so simply by Walden Pond.
But where do we find silence, stillness and solitude in our busy, over-scheduled lives? Now some folks go hiking and spend time in nature regularly, and some individuals actually adopt a meditative practice, and learn over time to sit still, or chant prayers, training themselves to dwell for short whiles some place apart from the activity of their day to day lives, and most especially the activity going on in their minds. These too are pretty tall orders requiring discipline and determination and the support of others.
The question remains for many though, how can we find enough solitude for the nurture of inner peace? Where are the chapels in our lives, where we can go and rest and discover if not remember what peace there may be in silence.
I think there is a place we can easily go, and I bet most of us have done it. Excused ourselves from the company we were in, and claimed the right of our solitude, even if just for a few minutes. We head for the restroom. There is a place which is safe and private. Where we can cry the tears and dry the tears, where we can lock the door and show the anger, give voice to the fear, take our time to collect our selves. Come to terms with the situation on our own terms. It is not always a crisis which takes us there. But isn’t it always our deep seated sense of the restorative power of solitude? Just give me a minute, I will be okay. Alone here I will dwell with myself and be strengthened. If this is what goes on there I don’t think it’s too crazy to consider the restroom a kind of humble chapel.
Restrooms are not the only such chapels, parks are great, long empty hallways, or the solitary domains inside our cars. Gardens are good for gardeners who find solitude in the planting, weeding, watering. In fact, with enough presence of mind, almost anywhere can become a place where peace of mind can be found. It is the whole Zen-type of approach to things. I will chop these carrots and rest in the calm paying-of-my-attention to this task of chopping these carrots – the practice of mindfulness.
Now I was raised without any reference to God or a Creator who was in any way responsible for life or for the ways of the world around me, but Desiderata was like a prayer for me in my atheistic childhood. I read this poem most everyday, most every time I went into the family restroom where it was tacked up on the medicine cabinet door for years. I knew it by heart but I still read it aloud to myself because I loved to hear it. It told me that I was a child of this universe, no less than the trees and the stars, and that I had a right to be here. And I think I really needed to hear such powerful affirmations about who or what I was. I still do. And I think you probably do too. You are a child of the universe. It’s sort of a universalized version of Jesus Loves You. Well, these poetic and grand existential affirmations touched my little girl’s heart. They gave me encouragement and placement beyond the security of my parents’ love and our family home. And they still have the broadening effect on my outlook and sense of belonging in this world. And part of the reason that this piece was able to inform me to the degree it did was because I encountered it in the sacred privacy of a restroom, where a person’s solitude was unquestionably honored. Where I felt free enough to read with feeling, and free enough to feel that vulnerable need for a God. Because whether or not we believe in a God, can there be any doubt about this vulnerable need we humans all share for a sense of meaning and connectedness?
Desiderata takes a broad view of life and a “how to” approach to addressing such needs. It offers all sorts of commonsense advice about cultivating ways of living which nurture inner peace. Things like being on good terms with people. Things like not comparing ourselves with others. Things like taking our time to say honestly what is on our minds and then saying it quietly and clearly. These are hard-won skills but good habits for the cultivation of our inner peace. When we make up our minds to speak our truth quietly and clearly, we are choosing peace for ourselves and others. When we listen to others to hear their truth, we are choosing peace for them. When we are gentle with ourselves and each other, we are choosing peace.
But what if we are not in the habit of always seeking resolution and good terms with others? What if we are sometimes just too darned tired? And what if we do have well-entrenched habits of comparing ourselves with others?
The poet recommends a path of personal integrity as a reliable basis for building self-esteem and better habits. He says: do not feign affection; be yourself; accept the changes which come with aging, – “gracefully surrendering the things of youth”; nurture strength of spirit to shield you in times of misfortune. It is about knowing yourself. It is about being able to trust yourself one day at a time, gradually building the strength of your character so that whatever sudden misfortune happens, you can hope of keeping “peace with your soul.”
Who wrote Desiderata? The poem has an interesting history as an anonymous text. It has had a life of its own, you could say, with a romantic story dating it back to 1692 and its discovery in Old St Paul’s Church, Baltimore. Actually, it was widely disseminated out of that church, included originally, with a small collection of worship materials one of the Episcopal priests had put together for the congregants. Somehow the year of the church’s founding, which was 1692, got printed at the top of the sheet with the poem Desiderata.
Now I grew up with this old St Paul’s Church origin story, I even believed the piece had been found engraved on a tombstone. Nothing like words being cut into rock to make them seem important. Those exotic words like “vexatious” and “aridity” convinced me into believing what I wanted to believe anyway: that here was a wise and distant voice that had something to say to me which transcended time and space and spoke eternal and universal truths about the best ways to live. And at least that much is true.
But the real story about the poem is that it was written in 1927 by a man named Max Ehrmann. Max Ehrmann was born in 1872, in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was a first generation American, the fifth and youngest son of a couple who emigrated from Bavaria, Germany.
It seems Max Ehrmann was a writer at heart. He called himself an “idealist, philosopher, and word technician.” He edited the school newspaper when he studied at De Pauw University and he wrote for The Boston Herald and various national periodicals when he studied law and philosophy at Harvard. He published his first book at age 26. He titled it Farrago, which means “a confused mixture”. A humble, bold, young man.
Max Ehrmann returned to his hometown after he graduated from college feeling the whole world was there in miniature. He worked as an attorney for a couple of years and then as a credit manager for his brothers’ clothing manufacturing company. He worked all day and took up his pen at night. All four of Max’s older brothers were successful businessmen and they supported him when at age forty, Max quit his day job and took up his writing career full time. Max Ehrmann’s literary career produced twenty books and pamphlets and many essays and poems which were published separately in newspapers and magazines. He never achieved fame or fortune but he did succeed in his aim with the writing of Desiderata. An entry of his diary of 1927 reveals he had hopes of leaving – a humble gift – a bit of chaste prose that “caught up some noble moods”.’ And he did. He left a gift that people all over the world have valued.
Yet I must say I was somewhat deflated to learn that this wisdom text which I have loved so well was not actually such an ancient voice reaching out from a mystical past. So I was robbed of this romantic illusion of my childhood as I was doing the research for this sermon, but I gained something too. I gained a soul mate. A real live man whom I can name. A man who followed his own advice and chose a humble career, for which he had an unfeigned interest, where he could speak his own truth. He was evidently a character who liked and needed to retreat into cemeteries and other lovely lonely places around his hometown to seek out and keep the peace within his soul. I am also fond of cemeteries as places of rest, especially sacred ground. What lovely lonely places touch your center? Where do you go to retreat from the noise and haste? What restores your soul to a sense of peace and connection? These are questions worth taking time to answer for yourself, and my purpose this morning is to invite you into such a reflective process. Tell each other about your inclinations when it comes to seeking peace. We need to learn more about peace, to talk about it and understand the dimensions of its realness.
We cannot always go placidly yet I believe it is always a desirable way to go. And when or if we fail to go placidly, as people of faith, let us continue nonetheless to long for that inner peace, remembering it and returning to it. To desiderate means to long for something of the divine. And I want to encourage you all in desiderating inner peace. I believe the advice Max Ehrmann offers in Desiderata is sound advice for cultivating integrity and sensitivity, the prerequisites of inner peace. It is not too complicated or sophisticated but it points out clearly the ways we can move forward individually, and together here in community, and outside this circle in the wider community, ways which could nurture a culture of peace.
Speak your truth and listen to others. Be yourself and be gentle with yourself. These are fundamental to peace. They may be simple to list but they are not easy to live. O, children of the universe, it is a noble calling to a humble chapel.
