For several years Antoine de Saint Exupery flew a mail plane in the early days of flying when airplanes did not have today's sophisticated equipment. Saint Exupery tells of one experience flying the route from Southern France across the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa. Night fell with the pilot and his radio operator, Neri, above the Sahara, and the radio messages sent from the ports in the desert concerning their position were clearly inaccurate. They suddenly found themselves far off course and low on fuel."We had no means of angular orientation, were already deafened, and were bit by bit growing blind. The moon like a pallid ember began to go out in the banks of fog. Overhead the sky was filling with clouds, and we flew thenceforth between cloud and fog in a world voided of all substance and all light. The ports that signaled us had given up trying to tell us where we were. 'No bearings, no bearings,' was all their message, for our voice reached them from everywhere and nowhere. With sinking hearts Neri and I leaned out, he on his side and I on mine, to see if anything, anything at all, was distinguishable in this void. Already our tired eyes were seeing things-errant signs, delusive flashes, phantoms."
The fliers' emotions suddenly went from despair to hope and joy as a point of light appeared on their port bow. Assuming it was the light of an airport, Saint Exupery began to bank the plane in the direction of the light only to see it twinkle and go out. They saw other lights, but with each their hopes rose only to be dashed as the light proved to be that of another star.
"And with that we knew ourselves to be lost in interplanetary space among a thousand inaccessible planets, we who sought only the one veritable planet, our own, that planet on which alone we should find our familiar countryside, the houses of our friends, our treasures."
What a fitting and poignant metaphor of our situation in the midst of a crisis! We experience a feeling of being lost, groping in the dark, looking for a light to show us the way, and finding none, or perhaps like Saint Exupery, finding first one then another, none of which saves. But the story continues.
Flying blind and often in dense fog, not knowing where he was but knowing he could not make his destination, Saint Exupery now began to set his course so he would not have to come down at sea. Then suddenly the airport at Cisneros, their destination, made contact with them. They now knew the direction they needed to follow although they did not think they had enough fuel to get to Cisneros.
"But the airports one by one had been waking each other up. Into our dialogue broke the voices of Agadir, Casablanca, Dakar. The radio stations at each of these towns had warned the airports and the ports had flashed the news to our comrades. Bit by bit they were gathering round us as round a sick-bed.... And suddenly into this conclave burst Toulouse, the headquarters of the Line three thousand miles away, worried along with the rest. Toulouse broke in with- out a word of greeting, simply to say sharply, 'Your reserve tanks bigger than standard. You have two hours fuel left. Proceed to Cisneros.'"
The late British philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."[1] Although I do not think I am on the verge of falling apart psychologically, I do regard my work as significant. In fact, probably all of us believe we are doing critical things. Does that mean we are all in danger of falling apart? And is that bad?
Our human predicament is a little like a lost cat ad in England which read: "Lost cat - old, mangy, one-eyed, limped, neutered, crippled. Answers to the name "Lucky."[2]
That combination of falling-apartness and being lucky is just where we are - much of the time. On the one hand, in our wiser moments we know we are lucky to be alive. On the other, there are times for each of us when "things fall apart" - death, divorce, illness or chronic pain, the vicissitudes of aging, moving, losing a job, and times when our "ordinary" depressions become extraordinary, and there is nowhere to hide. As guru Ram Dass eloquently puts it: "The spiritual journey is falling on your face and starting over."[3]
This sense of reality - the tendency of things human to fall apart - is one of the great insights of Buddhism: the first of the Four Noble Truths is that life is suffering - or differently put - messiness is inherent in the structure of human existence. To be human is to suffer.
Look at it this way: we all experience a kind of spiritual centrifugal force in which things tend to fly apart. At the same time we try to create a centripetal power to bind them together - which is the basic definition of religion. As W. B. Yeats put it years ago, "Things fall apart, the centre can not hold."[4] But we are stubborn enough that we try to make it hold.
This tendency toward the centrifugal is documented graphically by writer Annie Dillard. "It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools .... The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead.... One step on the rake and it's mind under matter once again. You wake up with a piece of tree in your skull."[5]
The American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, whose book provided the title for this sermon, said philosophically, "To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest."[6] She goes on. "To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic .... the ground just keeps moving under us.... when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong.... Suffering is part of life."[7]
This is hard for Unitarian Universalists to fathom. As an activist and optimistic faith, we tend to be achievers, if not over-achievers. While most of us deny the validity of other-worldly salvation, in fact we seek salvation here and now by works - by solving problems.
When told that some problems are insoluble; that things just tend to fall apart in human life, we move into a state of deep denial. Our minds just will not allow us to believe that built into the very structure of human existence is a tendency for things to go wrong. After all, we get sick, we hurt, we lose loved ones, we fail, finally we die. We know it, but have yet to really accept it spiritually.
When we are honest with ourselves we know that this pattern of falling apart is little short of a cosmic crisis. That does not mean that our problems - little or large - are of cosmic dimensions. It is just that when we hurt or suffer or despair, that becomes a problem of cosmic importance to us - it dwarfs everything else. For the Greeks a cosmic crisis meant the shattering of an ordered world. In our obsession with order, life's inherent messiness becomes an incredible difficulty. What do we do when things fall apart for us? First of all, we try to explain it - we ask not only how did it happen, but more importantly, why did it happen? And like Job's so-called friends - really they were tormenters - there are many who have answers for us.
Nancy Mairs, who has multiple-sclerosis and navigates via wheelchair, responded to those who tried to explain things to her, "We see disability as a social construction .... I do not consider suffering an aberration, or an outrage to be eliminated at any cost .... It strikes me as intrinsic to the human condition. I don't like it. I'm not asked to like it. I must simply endure in order to learn from it. Those who leap forward to offer me aid in ending it, though they may do so out of the greatest compassion, seek to deny me the fullness of experience I believe I am meant to have."[8] Some people will say, 'God never gives us more than we can handle' - which I think is utter (expletive deleted). Because if God's doing the giving, then God routinely gives us much more than we can possibly handle - MS is one such thing. But I couldn't believe in a God who would do such a thing anyway. I don't know how people can practice a religious faith if they think of God doing such things."[9]
Such a view would reduce God to a cosmic puppeteer capriciously manipulating the strings of human existence while we dangle helplessly beneath, praising God's omnipotence and omniscience. While I try to respect the religious views of others, I become outraged when I hear about God's will in the death of children, or young parents, or thousands of the innocent poor in Central America. With Albert Camus I believe in the "benign indifference of the universe."[10] Life is basically good, but Ultimate Reality does not play favorites - things just fall apart capriciously, randomly, without reason. As the Bible says, the rain falls on the just and on the unjust.
Or we may hear a heart-felt word of consolation that suffering makes us stronger. But does it? It is often said we ought to make lemonade from the lemons of life. But can we? As one who attempts to comfort the afflicted, I am continually amazed at the courage shown by those in pain - whether that pain be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. I wonder how much fortitude we can expect from those who suffer.
I have also seen suffering that weighs down the sufferer until there is simply no spiritual sustenance or strength left - and the wisest course of action is to give in to the insurmountable and the inevitable. We are spiritually cleansed at times by inconsolable suffering and grief.
In Buddhist thought it is wise at times to simply give oneself over to annihilation that one may find the indestructible within. We are, after all, finite creatures. There are limits to what we can take. For us to expect courage in the face of calamity may be inspiring, but at times it is simply unrealistic. Most of us don't really know how we will face severe suffering, utter meaninglessness, the process of dying - we haven't been there yet. When things fall apart, we plunge into the land of ambiguity and know not what we will find or how we will act.
Pema Chodron said that "When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow."[11] Some people are like that.
Or we are told that there is light at the end of the tunnel of darkness and despair. Time heals all wounds. In my judgment this is but another superficial response to those whose worlds collapse around them. Of course, one hopes this is true. With the wonders of medical science, with the rise of anti-depressive drugs, with our new counseling insights, with 12-step programs, we have reason to be hopeful. Time may well be our ally. "The broken heart still beats."[12]
However, there is nothing inevitable or inexorable about the healing power of time. Again, experience tells me that for most of us when things fall apart, we pick up the pieces and go on, only to have them fall apart again.
The genius of human nature is that we keep picking up the pieces and putting them together again. But we know that the alcoholic is a "recovering alcoholic," that some illnesses are chronic, that often the afflicted must simply learn to live in pain - must learn to adapt themselves to the messiness of their condition.
By this time it occurs to me that my sober assessment of the human condition quite matches the grayness of our November skies. As Pema Chodron said, "We don't have to tense up as if our whole life were being spent in the dentist's chair."[13] A little humor will help us keep all this in perspective. Here's a favorite, though old, "Doonesbury" strip that aptly sums up my feeling.
Chaplain Scott to student Sal: "Sal, have you considered the church as a way of coming to terms with some of your problems?"
Sal: "No way, dude! The God thing doesn't make it for me, Okay? Look at what religion's given us - inquisitions, persecutions, 'holy' wars, and now terrorism! I just can't get into some macho God with his own private sense of justice that permits him to slaughter the evil and innocent alike!"
Chaplain Scott: "You make him sound like Dirty Harry."
Sal: "I just think he should lighten up, y'know?"[14]
What, then, should we do when things fall apart? Happily we are not alone in this predicament. It is good to be able not only to reach within for strength, but also to know when to reach out for the help that can only come from others. How hard it can be for those of us who are fiercely independent - like myself. How difficult to ask for help. But what a mark of courage to be able to do so when we need to!
This need for others came crystal clear to me in a fascinating article, "Death by Design," on the biology of our bodies, which has a parallel in our lives." The passage that caught my eye was this: "...death is so central to a cell's life plan that the suicide machinery stands always at the ready: In many cases, a cell's survival depends on constant, reassuring signals from its surroundings that its continued existence is meaningful and valued."[15] Applied to our lives, those spiritual signals may come from on high, but more than likely they come from a caring community to which we give ourselves and our needs.
What do we do when things fall apart? There is a sense in which healing can and does happen even though life is in disarray. Like Annie Dillard's hoe that hits us on the head - we not only see stars, but we also develop a certain clarity about our misfortune or stupidity. Whether our lives are shattered by forces quite beyond our control or whether we bear some responsibility for our situation, pain can precipitate healing. It cuts through any superficiality that may mark our lives and takes us deep down into the heart of us. We learn things about ourselves we never knew were there - for good or ill.
Unitarian Universalist poet Pesha Gertler writes about "The Healing Time."
"Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
Holy."[16]
Gertler's poem reminds me of the words of the late A. Powell Davies, one of our great Unitarian Universalist ministers: "I have only one life - one chance to grow a soul."[17]
That text is dramatically illustrated in the life and death of Morrie Schwartz, a Brandeis University Professor with ALS - Lou Gehrig's Disease - as described by one of his students, Mitch Albom in Tuesday's with Morrie. Morrie, when he learned of his terminal disease, was stunned by the "normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?"[18]
"'Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?'.... He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying. Instead he would make death his final project.... 'Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.' Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.[19].... He was intent on proving that the word 'dying' was not synonymous with 'useless.'"[20]
A close friend died and Morrie went to the funeral: "What a waste," he exclaimed. "All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it."[21] And so Morrie orchestrated his own "living funeral" and invited his friends. He and his friends laughed and cried through it all. One woman summed it up in a Haiku verse: "My dear and loving cousin.... Your ageless heart as you move through time, layer on layer, tender sequoia."[22] Morrie kept his sense of humor through the process of dying. He wanted to be cremated - and said, "Make sure they don't overcook me."[23]
What do we do when things fall apart? Author Antoine de St. Exupery's description of his nearly fatal plane ride provides our metaphor. Living a life is amazingly like flying blind with no means of navigation. There are times when we seem to have no bearings. Our hearts sink and we become depressed, delusional. We, too, are "lost in interplanetary space" seeking to find "our familiar countryside, the houses of our friends, our treasures." Then, a testimony to the human, helping spirit - a voice out of the night from Toulouse, "Your reserve tanks bigger than standard. You have two hours fuel left. Proceed to Cisneros."[24]
Who knows if our reserve tanks are bigger than standard. And so when things fall apart, as they are wont to do, may we have faith in ourselves, faith in the healing, faith in our neighbors, and faith in life even when our lives are in disarray. Proceed, then, to Cisneros.
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