In the course of the summer I received this e-mail from a parishioner, who shall remain nameless. One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the evil that was going on. God decided to send an angel to check it out. So God called one of heaven's best angels and sent her to Earth for a time. When she returned she told God, yes it is really not very good on Earth, 95% of the people were bad and only 5% were good. A second angel was dispatched and came back with a similar report: indeed the Earth was in decline - 95% bad and only 5% good. God said that this was not good and decided to E-mail the 5% that were good to encourage them. Do you know what the E-mail said? (Pause) You didn't get one either?
Would that God or the equivalent would e-mail us encouragement for the living of this life. There are those who claim to receive such e-mails regularly - sadly, I am not among them. If you are, please let me know.
One of the most intriguing of religious questions for navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of human existence is that posed by E. B. White when he was asked about the myriad of choices available to Americans: "It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenges. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
It also makes it hard to plan a life. We plan our finances, our vacations, our work day, our shopping lists, our retirement. What about planning our spiritual life? Beyond coming to church each Sunday - a fine plan - probably most of us don't consciously plan what we are going to do religiously with the rest of our life - or am I mistaken?
In Wislawa Szymborska's "Little Bit about the Soul," we learn "nobody has one all the time or forever." The soul - that poetic metaphor for what is our religious essence - makes only periodic appearances. It is not particularly manifest in our "tiresome tasks" and participates only very occasionally in our conversations. "We can count on it when we're not sure of anything and curious about everything," and "just as we need it, it can also use us for something." Soul is a word much bandied about, but perhaps too little exercised among us. Perhaps we are like the poor soul whose morning prayer was "Whatever." And whose evening prayer was "Oh well." I hope your religious life is not this casual. I try to take my soul seriously. My whole professional life has been built around what I regard as the ultimate religious issue - the meaning question: what are we supposed to do here and why? It was a question early planted in my soul. E. B. White's words are simply one iteration of it: how do we plan the day - how do we plan a life? To enjoy the world or to improve it.
This summer quite unexpectedly I received a note from a former theological school professor with a clipping of an item in a September, 1958, issue of the St. Lawrence Plaindealer of Canton, New York, which was headlined: "Saints Scale Mount Marcy." It went on "'The Sinai Saints' took an overnight hike up Mount Marcy, New York's highest mountain, last Wednesday and Thursday. The new name became the unofficial title of the Outing Club of the Theological School of St. Lawrence University. Fourteen were in the party which camped out in ten-degree weather at the Marcy Dam base camp." Included in this mailing was a stunning picture of five intrepid hikers, the two on the right holding up a Yin-Yang flag in triumph. Who was that kid on the right with a St. Lawrence football jacket, no hat, red hair and a brush cut? He looked more than vaguely familiar.
My professor friend, the only faculty member to join us, went on to congratulate me on my long ministry and updated me on his family. He concluded, "And so the world turns, but spins is more like it." It was good to hear from him - he was an inspiring teacher and one of the best preachers I ever heard. I was awash in nostalgia for that autumn climb.
It was a memorable moment, one of the most enjoyable days I can recall - the planets were aligned, the vibes just right, everything was as it ought to be. It was the eve of my entry into seminary fresh from the college football field - and the library. That experience helped fashion our small seminary group into a community. I have never forgotten the view of the Green Mountains of Vermont or the White Mountains of New Hampshire that rewarded our trek to the summit. The moose which thoughtfully came down to drink at a lake near our trail is etched in memory. I had experienced the seductiveness of the world at first hand, my desire to enjoy the world was fully present. Life was good.
Another seminary experience, however, prompted me to ponder my responsibility to improve the world. St. Lawrence University in the late 1950's and early 1960's was a lily-white campus tucked into the overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon North Country of New York State. Some Unitarian Universalist students had been trying - in vain - to persuade the university to broaden its horizons and actively seek out minority students. All of them were about to graduate and they thought that I - and a few others - might take up the cause. After all, we were seminarians and should be interested in social justice. Now, the campus is emphatically multi-cultural - no thanks to me.
Alas, I did little to promote that issue - settling instead for my first civil rights demonstration in nearby Watertown where the Woolworth Company's national board of directors was meeting to take up - among other things - the black student sit-ins in the South. Another professor led us there as a field trip in a social ethics class. It was a very modest effort to improve the world, but my failure to do more for racial justice at that time still gnaws at me. To enjoy the world or to improve the world. It does make it hard to plan the day - or a life.
Or, take a more homely example of enjoying or improving the world. A few years ago I was shingling our cottage in the Finger Lakes. While I began the project in the summer, I had to keep working in the fall to finish by winter. I would take my day off to go there only to be faced with a serious dilemma. Generally I encountered beautiful weather --and I thought to myself. The breeze is up; I'll take a sail. Then I thought; if I do the roof won't be finished before snow flies. What to do. Then I began thinking - what is it I really want to do? It happened that what I really wanted to do was to climb on that roof and nail down shingles. No one was around; it was mild; the sun was shining through the autumnal leaves; the geese were making a great racket as they prepared to head south. What might have been drudgery became pleasure. Unlike much of my work, here I could see what I had accomplished. I, who work in the intangible world of the human spirit, was doing something quite tangible. I finished the roof, thereby improving at least one small part of the world - and I enjoyed it - the best of all possible worlds.
E. B. White's evocative words prompted me to write a meditation - whether intended to help people enjoy or improve the world I don't know.
I rise in the morning torn between the desire
To save the world or to savor it,
To serve life or to enjoy it;
To savor the sweet taste of my own joy
Or to share the bitter cup of my neighbor;
To celebrate life with exuberant step
Or to struggle for the life of the heavy laden.
What am I to do when the guilt at my bounty
Clouds the sky of my vision;
When the glow which lights my every day
Illumines the hurting world around me?
To savor the world or save it?
God of justice, if such there be,
Take from me the burden of my question.
Let me praise my plenitude without limit;
Let me cast from my eyes all troubled folk!
No, you will not let me be. You will not stop my ears
To the cries of the hurt and the hungry;
You will not close my eyes to the sight of the afflicted.
What is that you say?
To save, one must serve?
To savor, one must save?
The one will not stand without the other?
Forgive me, in my preoccupation with myself,
In my concern for my own life
I had forgotten.
Forgive me, God of joy and justice,
Forgive me, and make me whole.
You will detect in these words a generous portion of the Puritan conscience. You know the Puritan is one who is desperately worried that someone, sometime, somewhere, is having a good time. The Puritan - even the Unitarian Universalist Puritan - has a hard time with guilt. We feel guilty about wasting time; we feel guilty if we cannot help those around us; we feel guilty that we are not doing more to improve the world. We really worry that we are not in the 5% of good people to whom God sends an encouraging e-mail. We worry that e-mail is real. And we often tell people about our feelings - consciously or unconsciously trying to make them feel guilty.
But the world is so seductive; there is so much fascinating stuff to do; so many things of interest; so many intriguing places to travel. It's such an experiential extravaganza, such a beautiful bouquet of temptations; such a fascinating feast for the mind and body; and If we could afford the time and money, we could spend a lifetime just enjoying existence - and not really be doing anything wrong. Or could we?
There is a Zen parable that speaks to the issue of self-absorption: "A nun who was searching for enlightenment made a statue of Buddha and covered it with gold leaf. Wherever she went she carried this golden Buddha with her. Years passed and, still carrying her Buddha, the nun came to live in a small temple in a country where there were many Buddhas, each one with its own particular shrine. The nun wished to burn incense before her golden Buddha. Not liking the idea of the perfume straying to the others, she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend only to her statue. This smudged the nose of the golden Buddha, making it especially ugly." . As the Rev. William Sloan Coffin said, "There is no smaller package in the world than someone who is all wrapped up in himself" (or herself).
On the other hand, it is possible to be so wrapped up in thinking we are improving the world, we don't really take time to enjoy it. There is an old saying that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who could have enjoyed life, could have taken advantage of all that it offers, but didn't.
Last summer was a case in point. Ensconced as I was on the shore of Seneca Lake, what did I do most of the summer? I sat in front of my computer screen writing - working on three manuscripts I have the temerity to feel might improve the world. There were the finishing touches of an adult religious education curriculum, Building Your Own Theology; there was rewriting a book on the church and social justice, The Prophetic Imperative; there was, finally, a book on economic justice, How Much Do We Deserve? I like to think that if the candidates were to take this work seriously we would have a far different and far more exciting political campaign. It was a productive summer, but I sailed only once! What a bummer! But it was my decision to do as I did - prisoner as I am of the Puritan conscience.
I have vowed never to spend another summer like that. It was emotionally draining, intellectually limiting, and spiritually stagnant. It was an unbalanced existence. In fact the very way I didn't spent the summer suggests a metaphor of balance between enjoying and improving the world.
I am an amateur sailor. I love to be out in my little sailboat with nothing but the wind and the water to propel and sustain me. I'm not especially adept at sailing technique, but I do know that there is a certain propitious angle of the sail against the wind that gives the greatest thrust. And I do know that when you are really sailing in a little boat like mine, you are just a split second from dumping.
It is an unparalleled thrill to be sailing on edge - your sail at just the right angle, hiking out as far as your body can stretch with your boat heeling at a precarious angle. For me, at least, this is risky. A little extra puff of wind or a subtle change of direction, a slight error of judgment or a pause to adjust your sunglasses, a minor miscalculation and I am enjoying the refreshing waters of Seneca Lake along with my now horizontal sail.
Perhaps that is a good metaphor for resolving the E. B. White dilemma. There are those who serve the world unto exhaustion and experience burnout - they frequently capsize. There are others who so indulge themselves they become spiritually stagnant - they sit there in irons and bake in the sun.
I'm not really sure that conflict can be resolved by simply going down the middle - investing half our time and energy in enjoying the world and half in improving it. Each of us has to find that creative balance, learn to sail out there on the edge with all its risks of going overboard one way or the other.
E. B. White worried about planning the day; I worry about planning a life. Too many of us don't do either. Or we make little plans, ignore the soul, let life define us rather than the other way around, plod habitually through our days, and wonder that we find life spiritually sterile. As John Lennon of Beatles fame put it, "Life is what happens to us while we're making other plans."
Unfortunately, we get only one opportunity, one turn around the track, one short voyage. People who are spiritually alive understand the big plan that is life, wonder what they will make of this wonder while it is theirs, take seriously the dilemma of savoring and saving the world - and are out there sailing on the edge. Life, I conclude, is that unsatisfactory balancing act of trying to savor and save the world. Unless we experience the tension - and are torn from time to time between enjoying the world and improving the world - we are not really living the religious life - AND - we won't be getting any E-mails from God to encourage us on our way. Amen.
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