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© Victoria Shepherd Rao
Sloan McLain
09 January 2005
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
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AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:
Sloan McLain
I know that my connection to the divine, resting in the source of all that is loving, peaceful, and mindful, is what ultimately makes life worth living. Having a daily practice that connects me to the source of my spirit – be it meditating, praying, or practicing yoga – wakes me up to life’s purpose.
So, if having a daily practice is so important to me, I have to question: Why don’t I prioritize those spiritual rituals that open my heart and give me insight into the purpose of life and my place in it?
Several years ago, when I lived in San Francisco, I tasted life with a daily practice. I did yoga every morning and meditated with prayer each evening. My life was troubled at times, but through my practice, I had the peace of mind to ride with ease the ups and downs. My practice gave me faith in the cycles of life and death and opened my heart to live mindfully. I experienced the fruits of a faithful practice, and so naturally I assumed I’d keep it up.
But in the past few years, days and weeks go by, and I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten to meditate, my yoga mat’s been sitting still, and praying hasn’t crossed my mind. Why is that? Why don’t I take more time for my spiritual practice when I’ve experienced what it can manifest, when it means so much to me? How is it that my practice falls to the bottom of my to-do lists again and again?
I have an alter in my living room where my Buddha sits on my grandmother’s Bible, my yoga mat perched nearby; and another alter in the bedroom where a box of daily intentions is surrounded by pictures, statues, rocks and writings that have helped me grow into the person I am today.
The “stuff” to assist my practice is ready and waiting, my heart wants to connect to the God I believe in, but still, my practice is inconsistent. If I’m willing and ready, what’s stopping me? Does this happen to you, too?
The reality is I’m solo-parenting my 3-year-old son while working full-time as a first-year AISD teacher to kids in poverty on top of attending school at night and on the weekends. I barely have time to eat, so where’s the time to meditate, pray, or do yoga for an hour a day? But how can I afford not to have time for what I believe is the single most important reason for my existence: to connect with the God I believe in?
I wanted to share this with you because I suspect many of you have this same struggle: you want to feed your spirit but it’s hard to find the time, and maybe it feels better to know you’re not alone. I also hope that by confessing all this to you, I’ll motivate myself to practice, even if its just 10 minutes a day. As I said earlier, I know that my connection to the divine is what ultimately gives my life purpose. If that’s my truth, and I know my spiritual practice opens this connection, I have to center myself and make time.
PRAYER:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
By Marianne Williamson, From: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles
SERMON: On Spiritual Practices
There was once a beggar who sat on a box by the roadside, waiting for alms from the passersby. Year after year he sat there on his box until one day, a wise man came by. The beggar asked for some coins and the wise man looked at the beggar carefully for a long minute. Finally, the wise man asked the beggar what was inside the box. The beggar had never considered what the box he had been sitting on for so long might contain. Curious, he got up and had a look. Much to his amazement he found the rough box contained a treasure trove of gold.
I think spiritual practice is a lot like the wise man coming along and urging the old beggar to look inside. It is a way to seek out what we have always possessed.
Now, spiritual practice is nothing new to any of us.
Does anyone here pray?
Who here was taught to pray as a child?
Who has taught their children to pray in turn?
Does anyone here have an alter at home?
Who has some embarrassment with these questions?
Traditional spiritual practice is not something many of us try to make time for, though I am sure there are many here who have experimented with a few forms like yoga, chanting, or walking the labyrinth.
How many of us have learned a couple of different ways to meditate?
And how many of us actually do meditate? Any daily meditators?
As Sloan has said, it takes time to enter into a spiritual practice. And perhaps more problematical than finding the time for a daily discipline, it takes some faith. Faith that there is a connection between us and whatever is ultimate, that there is something to be gained by time spent in repose. You need to believe in the treasure hidden in the box.
But I want to propose that we do undertake spiritual practices and even incorporate them into our daily lives though maybe without fully realizing it.
Before I go any further I want to clarify what I mean by spiritual here. It is one of those nebulous words, almost automatically gets your guard up. The difference between walking down the street and seeing a sign posted, “dog found” and feeling sure you know the situation described, and seeing another sign posted saying, “God found” and having to wonder who found what.
Not to get too theological about it, when I use the word spirit, I want you to think about a horse, in the way it seems designed to run, or a child, in the way it is given to play. The quality each of these express in their being is the quality I am talking about when I say spiritual. It is a cluster of characteristics: vital energy, flowing single-minded focus, which is not forced but free in following whatever attracts, and avoiding whatever unnerves or frightens. It is the quality of being alert and alive.
So when I refer to spiritual practice I mean any practice which inspires and arouses in us this quality of vitality and sensitivity.
You can probably think of someone you know, or have known in your life who expressed this kind of natural vitality, who demonstrates exuberance, who laughs at every chance, who cries without shame, who is caring, unafraid, available to help out, never too distracted to listen. I hope you have known someone like this, someone who can give witness to the invisible forces which connect them, and all of us, to life, and to the enterprise of living it fully.
Now different people will be drawn to different practices according to their beliefs and culture, and the presence of people such as I have just described. Sometimes we need to feel our way into life-giving practices. Sometimes it can be very surprising just how sacred everyday tasks can be. For me, dog-walking was like that. It takes time every day. You have to just stop whatever you are doing and out you go. The first great gift is the break, the punctuation you have just experienced in your day. It is a kind of spaciousness from which you can gain a new perspective. Outside, you immediately reconnect with the way things are in the neighborhood: the feel of the air; the quality of the daylight; the colors of the trees. You walk, you think, you reflect, you watch the dog, delight in the dog play, in the pleasure he experiences in a good sniffing around, you greet the passersby, sometimes you talk and strangers become acquaintances. And all of this is beside the real spiritual treasure of having a dog companion who provides you constantly with a simple demonstration of unconditional love. Oh, the true spirit of a dog on his daily walk – natural, flowing, fun-loving, aimless, eager to share any pleasure. To me its like spiritual treasure on the end of a leash, dragging me along.
Yet we have to make a distinction between the connection to life or God which is both the beginning and end of all spiritual practice and the practice itself.
There was a man who was reputed to be a Zen master. He never had teachings to offer people. His practice was only to carry this large sack on his back from village to village. When he arrived at a place he would put the sack down and open it up and hand sweets out to all the children. Then he would close the sack and lift it back up onto his back and leave. Whenever anyone asked him for a teaching he would just laugh and continue on his way.
One day another Zen master decided to see if this wandering man was indeed a real master. He asked him, “What is Zen?” and the man stopped and put down his load and looked at him, saying nothing. Finally the Zen master asked, “What is the philosophy of Zen?” This time the man looked at him and then picked up his sack again and walked away. He was found to be a master after all for one who has a practice and who can let go of it as easily he can pick it up again is truly free with or without it.
When we were in India, there was an annual day-long ritual that took place in the city of Trivandrum that was for women only. The priests were the only men who attended the day. Basically, every year, each woman, homemakers all, comes out of the house to make sweets as an offering to the Goddess. Each and every woman, and we are talking tens of thousands of them, constructs her own fire and stove, brings her own pots and spoons and in the blazing sun of the midday, makes her treats. The priest come around and accept and bless the offerings on behalf of the deity and the women, after a hot day of cooking and socializing, collect their goodies to give to friends and family as prasad, or “blessed offering.”
The first year I witnessed this event as it was conducted around the temple close to where we lived. We drove by and I saw all the small fires and terra cotta stoves side by side by side. The simultaneous order and chaos of the process was deeply impressive. The second year we were there, the gathering place was around another temple and I only read and saw photographs of the happening in the newspaper. Our housekeeper had arranged to take the day off work to participate and she brought some of the sweets she had made for us the day after. I remember how incredible it seemed to me that these ladies would carry all these bags of supplies, fire wood, stove, pots and the ingredients for their sweets, and cook on open fires in the blazing sun, with humidity high and crowds on all sides. But it was a day apart from all the others, and a special day just for the ladies. When they could break away from the everyday routines of their homelives and do something different. They could chat with friends and feel good that they had made their offering. They believed their faithfulness to the Goddess would be reciprocated by the Goddess’s faithfulness to them and their prayers.
With the heat and the crowds, this spiritual practice would be sheer agony for me, as far from the solitude of a dog walk as is imaginable. But it taught me to give up evaluating the ritual practices of other people on the basis of my own spiritual inclinations.
Of course that is not to say that the practices others devise to suit their own spiritual inclinations cannot work for me or you. If there is an appeal in what someone does, why not try it out? Non-conformist religious liberals tend not to look to conventional forms of spiritual practice but we should not be blind to the ways and means of our coreligionists. I look around at First (UU) Church (of Austin) and I see folks engaged in spiritually sustaining activities of all kinds. There are the hallmarks of the Protestant tradition such as the gathering together for worship each week, listening to poetic words and music, singing and engaging with the sermon or public forum, eating together, working together, seeking together to make manifest a collective vision of spirited service. There are also alternate forms of spiritual practice being undertaken here and in the other UU congregations in the city. At First Church there is yoga, Chi Gong, folkdancing and Kundalini yoga. At Wildflower Church there is a covenant group dedicated to experimentation in spiritual practices. At Live Oak, there is a weekly silent meditation gathering.
And individually, we can witness the spiritual practices of our fellow congregation members: folks who make their bumper stickers a form of ministry; folks who ride bikes because they can and feel they ought; others who drive with nowhere to go just so they can rethink and reframe ideas (that would be Davidson); people who take listening to others as a calling to go deeper into the human condition and because they believe in the power to heal (that would be the Listening Ministry folks at First); and people who write cards to show they care. There are so many varieties of spiritual practices going on, and time is made for them all, somehow.
I had a minister in California who understood recycling to be a spiritual practice. For her, it was a sacred time and a personal discipline. It expressed her valuing of intentional living and responsible consuming. I think recycling is a spiritual practice for a lot of people for the same reasons though I don’t think too many yet understand it as such. Yet consider the amount of time you spend clearing out the paper clutter that appears daily on your desk or table. If you undertake the same chore as a positive act of redirecting resources instead of just collecting the trash, don’t you feel the transformation from time wasted to time well spent?
If we can give ourselves the freedom to feel out what does and does not feed our spirit, our inner connection to this life we all share, then we can give ourselves credit for all that we do already in the course of our daily lives to keep ourselves reminded of that which is vital and real.
Let us become ever more aware of these non-traditional forms of spiritual practice and hold them close. It is true that to adopt many traditional forms of spiritual practice means to devote ourselves and our time to the path of spiritual growth. It is also true that time is limited and we will be constrained to meet the requirements of a demanding spiritual discipline, maybe even driven to justify a pursuit with such intangible rewards as peace of mind or faith in our life’s purpose. However, we are here together now for a reason, and it is the same reason which propels others to cloister themselves in monasteries, or contort their bodies at yoga retreats all over the world where they are able to devote all their time to spiritual practice. Either way, it is about the human inclination to recognize the mysteries which connect all living creatures and to find some way, according to doctrine or not, to express that beautiful mystery authentically in the way we live and the way we love.
Finally, I want to thank Sloan for the courage she has shown in making the affirmation which began our treatment of this topic of spiritual practice and the time we make for it. She said, “I know that my connection to the.source of all that is loving, peaceful, and mindful, is what ultimately makes life worth living the single most important reason for my existence.” It is this faith, this inner knowledge of connection, however gained, which has the power to transform, heal, and provide us with insights to the purposes of our lives and the power to understand what is real and what is illusory. Like the treasure hidden under the beggar’s seat, such faith is waiting to be uncovered in every heart, to enrich every life with the quality of true spirit.
