God's Fool

April 2, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we are gathered this morning in early spring to celebrate the mystery with those that are a part of this community.

The colors this spring are so vibrant – were they also that brilliant? Is this just one more spring or is this the only spring that ever will be? Can we appreciate the beauty of the verdant meadows if, in fact, we hold all previous meadows in mind, or look to meadows not yet blossomed? Is there something profane about neglecting the miracles of the falling rain and greening meadows?

May we see with the eyes of a child, and understand with the heart of one who knows that death is not something alien to us as human beings. May our prayer echo the mourning doves cooing, may it reflect the streaming morning rays upon the newly fallen dew, may our breath be a true exchange between what the green needs and what the green is feeding us.

May we be humbled by the magnificence of the moment. Following our breath we dwell in the midst of the most high, staying with the moment we participate in the holy, refusing to go back to the past – an impossibility any way – we likewise hold ourselves back from projecting our thoughts into a future that exists only in our worried anticipations.

Resting in the arms of the NOW, we breathe easily, fully and miracle of miracles anxiety vanishes in the face of this magnificence. This is a gift that we can give ourselves; this is a gift that we can accept from ourselves. No one else can do this for us. It is our birthright.

Praise be to this Mystery. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

It may seem foolish to begin writing a sermon before you know sort of what you want to say, but that is precisely how I am beginning this sermon. Hopefully, at the end of it, you will not all agree, “Yeah, he should have had something to say before he started writing – that would have been a good idea.” So, I’ve left myself open, but it occurs to me now that this is exactly what a fool would do, and I think it’s important for you to know that I am a fool. But I’m not just any old fool, I’m God’s Fool and proud of it. I’m not going to explain exactly what I think it means to be God’s fool at this point simply because I don’t know – but hopefully, as this sermon progresses I will know and so you will, perhaps we can make that discovery together.

Now I know that some of you out there will think that this is all highly organized and that this rambling about not knowing where I’m going, or how I’m going to get there is a sham – I’m acting, I’m pretending that I don’t know what I’m going to say or what my point is in saying it, but let me assure you – if, in fact, this can be seen as an assurance – I have no idea what I’m doing, but yes, I do have an inkling of why I’m doing it.

Let me explain. When I was in my writing frenzy – that is, when I wrote 30 screenplays in seven years – I had a motto that I lived and died by. I guess you could say that I still have that motto. I read it almost 20 years ago and when I read it I knew – this is my motto and I will live and die by it. I found the motto in a book entitled Das Energi by Paul Williams – not the singer songwriter, but the new age writer, Paul Williams.

Do I recommend the book, Das Energi, hey, I don’t remember anything about it save this one quote, which became and still is my motto. Are you ready? I carry my motto in my glasses case and it’s written with a typewriter – you remember the typewriter? It says, “You will receive your next assignment soon; and you will know it when you receive it. Wait quietly, and trust your source.” Do I need to repeat that? Did everybody get that? “You will receive your next assignment soon; and you will know it when you receive it. Wait quietly, and trust your source.”

Surely, you can understand the importance of such a motto for a writer of fiction. Oh, when you’re in the middle of the process and the characters have taken on a life of their own, and the story is unfolding so fast that you feel like you’re taking dictation, well, of course, the motto is forgotten for as Chang Tzu says, “When the shoe fits the foot is forgotten.” Who needs a motto for writing when one is immersed in writing, who needs encouragement when all one really needs is the energy to continue with what one is being handed.

And believe me when I tell you that there were periods – sometimes up to months – when I would be done with a project and no new project was insight. I remember I read once that a famous writer – really doesn’t matter who – was often asked what he was working on – he always replied – “I’m working on my next best seller!” He’d say this even though he was lying fallow as a harvested field and hadn’t the foggiest notion what was next on his agenda. When I read that I took it to mean that he was waiting quietly and trusting in his source.

Trust isn’t something that’s valued much any more. Top executives were asked what they valued in new employees 97% agreed that loyalty was number one while only 3% suggested that perhaps integrity was something important in a new employee. It’s often assumed that loyalty and trust go hand in hand, but when something like this comes from business employers it says to me that loyalty is 94% more important than Integrity and what or who are we trusting in when integrity has nothing to do with loyalty?

I trust in Providence. That’s a 19th Century Unitarian way of saying I trust in God. I don’t seem to be alone in this – it says something very similar right on your paper money. On the back of all your paper money it says, In God We Trust. The new ten dollar bill with its red tinged paper and flaming torch, its We The People with an empty oval on back and front that if you hold it to the light you’ll see a ghost image of Alexander Hamilton – with all that new fangled, post-modern stuff it still says, In God We Trust right on the bill. Now, I know that probably offends some of you that your money would express something that you yourself would not espouse and I can help you out there – in fact – the church can help you out.

After this sermon there will be a collection and I’m encouraging all you out there who do not trust in God to simply put that nasty, outdated slogan in the collection plate and thereby rid yourselves of the duplicity of consciousness. And you might as well throw the change in there, too, cause it says the same thing on all that pocket change – In God We Trust stamped on each one of those coins. Maybe that’s why some of you use checks, credit cards and debit accounts – you simply don’t want anybody thinking that you might trust in God.

We read in the great prophet Isaiah’s book this morning that there was a highway – a way – for fools to travel upon. And Isaiah reassured us that, that highway – that way – would be safe from danger. There is a story of a 19th Century traveler in France who once asked, “Are there any brigands – thieves – on the highways?” To which the Innkeeper answered, “Oh no, set your heart at rest on that point, why should these fellows stay on the highway when they rob much more effectively, and at their leisure, in the offices of the government?” At this point in our history as a nation the highways may be the safest place to be – after all it’s harder to hit a moving target!

I saw a fellow the other day that was walking north in south Austin. He had on a nice leather jacket, a felt hat – a fedora to be exact, his feet were shod in good hiking shoes and on his back was a pack filled with whatever he needed for his journey. And I thought, no matter what is wrong with the USA, it is still a country where a person can gather the belongings they think they might need and set out on the highway – to see America – to find what the soul and heartbeat of America looks and sounds like and if this is sounding too much like a Chevrolet commercial, then think back on that time in your life when you weren’t sure what to do next – God, I hope you’ve experienced a time like that. What did you do when you felt like that? Did you sit around and mope, or did you take to the road, get out of town, go somewhere you’ve never been before and simply let the rhythm of your own feet match the rhythm of your heart beat.

One day when I was living in Chimayo, New Mexico. If you haven’t been to Chimayo, it’s between Santa Fe and Taos. If you turn off the Taos highway in Espanola and travel toward Truchas you’ll see the cut off for Chimayo. They have a wonderful restaurant there and of course there is the Sanctuario de Chimayo.

The Sanctuario has a backroom off to the left of the altar and in that backroom there is a hole in the floor. The little room’s walls are covered with crutches and other articles of ill health, prosthetic devices and all sorts of implements that humans need when they are encumbered by sickness. You see, that hole in the floor is filled with holy dirt.

And even though thousands of visitors visit there every month the hole never is empty and the priests swear that they are not the ones filling the hole. But I’m not asking you to trust in the dirt of the Sanctuario de Chimayo I want to tell you a little story that happened to me when I lived there.

One day when my wife, Viv, was at work I decided to take a walk. We lived on the Romero compound. The entire compound was surrounded by a tall coyote fence. Joseph and Maria lived there in a ranch style home. Their son lived in a trailer and we, Viv and I, were forced to live in a one hundred year old adobe house with walls three feet thick and a charming porch and a pedestal bed that was built up from the floor. From our bedroom window you could see Los Alamos glowing in the night. I think it was the lights of Los Alamos that we were seeing, but maybe it was just glowing.

This particular day was partly cloudy and cool. I took a blanket, some water and some crackers. When I left the Romero compound Lupita, a smallish black and white shepherd-type dog, followed me. I tried several times to get her to turn around and go back, but she insisted, she wanted to go with me.

It took me almost an hour to get to the foothills behind the house, and then I decided to climb to the highest foothill I could see. These were typical New Mexican foothills with Juniper and Sagebrushes growing here and there. At one point I had to cross between two peaks of these foothills. There was a small land bridge that connected the two peaks and on either side of this narrow walkway there was a drop off of some hundred feet or so.

I was thinking about turning around and finding another way to this higher peak, when Lupita simply took off and raced across the land bridge like it was the easiest thing in the world. Well, I thought, that sure looks easy. So – I took off across the narrow strip of land with the precipice on both sides. Half way across here comes Lupita; tail wagging, happy that I should attempt to follow her, since she had been following me most of the morning. In her exuberance she was jumping up and down and bouncing off my legs. I tried to get her to stop, but my attempts at that were causing me to lose my balance, so I skirted by her and made a hasty crossing to the other side.

It occurred to me at the time that Lupita and I resembled the Fool and his dog in the Tarot deck. That card is also known as The Fool. There on the card is the little dog, mindless of the precipice that his master walks toward, wagging her tail and encouraging the fool onward. In the Mexican Tarot deck the fool, El Loco, is being bitten on the leg by his dog as he approaches the precipice.

When Lupita and I got to the top of the highest peak we sat down and shared my water. The wind had picked up and the clouds had gathered and turned rather dark. It began to drizzle. I covered myself with the blanket and Lupita ducked her head and joined me under my blanket. Together we watched as the thunderstorms roiled in over Northern New Mexico and as the storms progressed we watched several strikes of lightening that set off forest fires in the Kit Carson National Forest, which is, of course, in the Sangre de Cristos Mountains – the blood of Christ was on fire! Yes, I continued to play the fool with Lupita by my side and lightening striking all around us.

Within the writings of Marcia Eliade there is the notion of the mysterium tremendum. The mysterium tremendum expresses the idea that we can be – at one and the same time – attracted to and repulsed by the very same stimuli. This occurs often in nature. In fact, one of the examples that Eliade gives is a storm. We realize that the storm may kill us, but there is something in us which wishes to witness the storm in person, first hand. People who study tornadoes – storm chasers – know exactly what I’m talking about.

This is the same way, Eliade says, that we feel about God. We are both attracted to God and repulsed by God. The divine impulse then is to stay somewhere between the two extremes. When Moses sees the burning bush that is not consumed, he is in the midst of the mysterium tremendum.

I like being a fool because I feel that I am in good company. If you take a close look at the world’s religious sages you will find that the great majority of them were considered foolish and out of step with their culture and society. Many of these saints – not called saints at the time, but only after their deaths – many of these saints said things that greatly upset the status quo, their congregations and those in power. Some of the things that they said were so upsetting that the powers that be removed them from the living.

The Chinese sage Lao Tzu was hip to this and he told his disciples that the man who was worthy would be used up, and that they only way to live and be ignored by those who wished to use or abuse you was to be like the twisted trees that grew in the mountains.

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:

I have a big tree,

The kind they call a “stinktree.”

The trunk is so distorted,

So full of knots,

No one can get a straight plank

Out of it. The branches are so crooked

You cannot cut them up

In any way that makes sense.

There it stands beside the road.

No carpenter will even look at it.

Such is your teaching – Chuang Tzu

Big and useless.

Chuang Tzu replied:

Have you ever watched the wildcat

Crouching, watching his prey –

This way it leaps, and that way,

High and low, and at last

Lands in the trap.

But have you seen the yak?

Great as a thundercloud

He stands in his might.

Big? Sure,

But can he catch mice!”

So for your big tree. No use?

Then plant it in the wasteland

In emptiness.

Walk idly around it,

Rest under its shadow;

No axe or bill prepares its end.

No one will ever cut it down.

Useless? You should worry!

The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me.” This is significant enough for a Christian mystic to say, but it was often quoted by D.T. Suzuki in his attempts to get Westerners to understand the Buddhist idea of prajna. Prajna is translated as wisdom, but the prajna that Suzuki and Zen Buddhists are speaking about is the wisdom that we all have Buddha nature, or Buddha mind. In other words, if you wish to see the Buddha look into a mirror. For the eye wherein I see the Buddha is the same eye wherein the Buddha sees me.

Foolishness is something very sacred within many traditions. Those from our culture see the swirling dervishes of the Islamic tradition as slightly crazy and at the very least foolish. Yet, they maintain that by swirling in endless circles they reach a state in which they experience the divine. Besides, when was the last time you watched small children play? Sooner or later they will get to the point where they simply turn in circles until they fall down, or if they’re close to a hill they will climb it and roll down until they are convulsed with laughter. Are these children crazy? Are they fools? Or are they participating in their birthright as children – able to do that which seems ridiculous simply because it feels good.

No, I am not suggesting that a return to childhood would render us wise fools. That argument presented by Rousseau and the Romantics that civilization merely covers up the Eden of childhood with the layers of social sickness has been proven wrong by a generation of baby boomers. The Romantic argument that healing is merely uncovering that which society has placed upon us as children is also radically refuted in William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.

Yet at the same time, the rationalism of a Thomas Hobbes? exemplified in statements like “the life of mankind is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” although opposing the Romanticism of the Enlightenment still does not approach – as rational as it is – a complete refutation of Romanticism.

Real life lies somewhere between these two extremes – somewhere between no limits and total limitation. Children are not enlightened beings because they are pre-rational and the New Age philosophies that are rampant among baby boomers are filled with these pre-rational notions of a return to the earth, and a return to our original enlightened natures.

There is an experiment that is conducted with small children. A ball is placed between the child and an adult. One half of the ball is painted green and the other half is painted red. The child is shown both sides of the ball. The green side is placed so that the child can see it, while the red side is facing the adult. The child is then asked, “What color are you looking at?” The child answers correctly that she is looking at the green side. Then, the adult asks, “What side of the ball am I looking at?” All small children will answer that the adult is also looking at the green side – even when shown the ball again and asked the same question.

The problem is not one of perception but one of not being able to place herself in your shoes. Typically, children below the age of seven are not able to take the role of the other. They are narcissistic and egocentric. It is generally only after the age of seven that they can go from egocentric to sociocentric – from me to we.

This is a huge step for children because they are going from what is known as preconventional awareness to conventional awareness. Then, somewhere around adolescence the youth goes from conventional awareness to transconventional awareness, which means that they are no longer concerned with only the happiness of their family, tribe or country, but the happiness of the entire world – the Cosmos.

The Buddhist idea of the bodhisattva is a person who has attained enlightenment -they know that their happiness, their enlightenment is inextricably tied up with the happiness and enlightenment of all sentient beings. Hence, the first vow of the Bodhisattva;

Sentient Beings are numberless, I vow to free them.

Conclusion: So what kind of fool are you? I hope you’ve come with me on this journey into the fool’s paradise. It is not a journey back in time – we are not becoming children again. Every time I hear someone say they wish they were younger I can just about bet that they do not remember the difficulties of youth. I am fantastically enamored by the fact that I am about to turn 59 years of age. I have always believed since I was in my 20’s that I would reach my stride in my 60’s.

In conclusion I want to state something that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am God’s fool. And I need to quote scripture here – and yes, I’m talking about that pesky old Bible again. There have been so many famous paintings done on this scripture, this subject that perhaps you know one of them Henri Rousseau’s The Peaceful Kingdom.

The prophet Isaiah when talking of the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of the people of Israel speaks of a time that will be like no other time before or ever again. The verse I’m talking about is in the 11th Chapter of Isaiah the 6th verse;

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a child shall lead them.

(Isaiah 11:6 KJV)

Now, I may be God’s fool, but I’m not a literal fool. The Bible is written mostly in metaphor. When it speaks of the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down with the kid, it speaks symbolically of a time when people who prey upon others and people who are preyed upon will one day live next door to each other and actually get along. Those that destroy will live adjacent to those they would at one time have been destroyed, and they will get by famously with one another. Can you say, “A Palestinian State?”

Naturally, this sort of metaphor also applies to us, our divided selves, those parts of us that wish we would fail combating those parts of us that strive for success. In a peaceable kingdom, in a world inside ourselves that is ruled by those things high and holy, a reconciliation between opposing forces happens. If you’ve seen the Russell Crow movie, A Beautiful Mind, and you know the ending, that’s the sort of reconciliation I’m talking about. You reach that point in your inner self where the bickering between opposing forces ends and life is allowed to go on. As a recovering alcoholic of 27 years I know exactly what this feel like. The process of life is a balancing act between the negatives and the positives.

Finally all this means is that if you believe in this metaphor then you imagine a time when peace will rule the people of this world, when the disenfranchised will be brought back into the circle of community, a time when the poor will be clothed and the hungry fed, a time when life will one day take a turn that reveals that all are looking with the eyes of Buddha and all are seeing Buddha in return. And regardless of the mounting evidence to the contrary, I believe this with all my heart. And that, my friends, is what finally and utterly proves that I am, perhaps along with some of you, God’s Fool.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb!