Something Larger Than Ourselves
Several hundred years ago, way back in the third century, there lived a band of monks known as the desert fathers who went out into the desert in hopes of finding God. These desert fathers wrote down many stories of their travels and of their experiences - and the stories they left for us often resemble Zen koans - riddles of a sort that take a bit of thought and exploration in order to find their deeper meaning. I'd like to share one of those stories with you this morning.
One day Abbot Lot went to see his teacher, Abbot Joseph - and Abbot Lot said, "Abbot Joseph, the best that I am able, I keep my little fast, my little rule, my little devotions. To the best that I am able, I keep my meditation and my prayer, I try to cleanse my heart of earthly desires, but Abbot Joseph - it is not enough. I still haven't found what I seek."
Now Abbot Joseph listened closely to his student, and when Abbot Lot was done speaking Abbot Joseph got up out of his chair, and he reached his arms and his hands up into the air until he stretched out each of his ten fingers - and out of the tips of each of his fingers shot pure flame - ten burning candles there in the middle of the desert - and Abbot Joseph said to Abbot Lot - "Why not be completely changed into fire?"
Why not be completely changed into fire.
Why not be completely changed into fire, the teacher Abbot Joseph says, there with his hands outstretched in the air - why not be completely changed into fire. What on earth could he mean?
This summer, in a ten part series of sermons we have gone on a journey of faith. Together, we have explored many aspects of spiritual living. We've heard and shared about the importance of living awake and aware, of living with gratitude, of knowing and trusting that we are not alone on the journey. We've talked about the importance of hope, the place of conflict and tension, the role of joy in the spiritual life, just to name a few. And as our sermon series on spiritual living comes to a close, we turn our attention today to the final aspect on my personal top ten list, one aspect of spiritual living which - in my opinion - if it is left out leaves us feeling much like Abbot Lot - standing there in the desert lost and disappointed and confused about why we still have not found what we seek.
This final aspect of spiritual living involves committing ourselves to something larger than our own individual experiences, larger than our own individual egos or needs or desires, even. This final aspect of spiritual living asks that we give ourselves over to something larger than ourselves - and by this I don't mean a higher power or a God, though that can indeed be an important aspect of spiritual living for many of us - what I do mean, rather, by a commitment to something larger than ourselves is the commitment we can offer to a cause, to a purpose, to a reason for being that ignites the flame of our heart and of our hands and pushes us to choose, as Rebecca Parker implores us, to bless the world.
Choose to bless the world, she tells us. Our gifts, whatever we discover them to be, can be used to bless or curse the world. Choose to bless the world.
This commitment to something larger than ourselves - this commitment to the larger world of which we are a part, to our community, to others nearby and far away who face daily suffering and fear - when we commit to them - when we commit to this time and to this place and to our own particular calling as agents of transformation in the world - it is then, I believe, that our spiritual life begins to be truly whole, it is then, I believe, that we may find what we seek.
The author and scholar, Karen Armstrong, has spent the last 30 years studying the world's religions, and after all of her study she has drawn the following conclusion. "The one and only test of a valid religious idea," she writes, the one and only test of a valid "doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice" is "that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology."[1] The only litmus test of a valid religious idea, Armstrong tell us, is whether or not it leads directly to practical compassion - the only valid test of a religious idea is whether or not it leads to acts of loving kindness here and now in this world in which we live. Does our spiritual life, do our religious ideas, does our time in quiet prayer or meditation or even in church today move us to acts of practical compassion? If not, Armstrong argues, and I agree, then it is no valid religion at all.
One of the strongest critiques of liberal religion over the past 20 years has been that we often neglect the problem of evil - that we do not deal adequately with the problem of suffering and injustice in the world. Now some say that this is because, for the most part, liberal religion is a creation of the world's elite - the well-educated, the economically and socially advantaged, that part of society who can choose to live far away up on the hill some distance from the depths of poverty and violence and injustice that the majority of our world face each day. I believe that this is one part of the problem we find ourselves in, yes, as believers in a liberal religious faith, but I do not believe that it is the only contributing factor.
I believe, rather, that our churches and our faith are wrestling as well with a tendency that has been with us and with all religious people for time immemorial - all the way back to our desert fathers. I believe that the church and our faith and that we as individuals are struggling with the tendency that often exists in spiritual living to shift back and forth, as the Rev. Patrick O'Neil says, "between full-blown retreat from the world on the one hand," searching for sanctuary and refuge from the world - "and full-blown engagement and confrontation with the world on the other hand."[2]
One of the best examples of this kind of back and forth swing in spiritual living comes from our very own Unitarian hero and idealist, Henry David Thoreau. As many of you know, in 1845 Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin on Walden Pond that he built himself. There on Walden Pond, Thoreau entered into a two-year intentional retreat from the world - keeping a daily journal, spending hours and days in quiet contemplation, and rambling, as he called it, for hours at a time walking alone out there in the woods.
Thoreau's account of his time there in the woods, far from the confrontations and the realities of society - became many years later a book that many of us hold dear. Walden. And in this book, Thoreau tells us about his decision on the fourth of July in 1845 to retreat into the sanctuary of the natural world. "I went to the woods," he tells us, "because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Thoreau went into the woods to learn how to live deliberately. He went into the woods to learn from nature and from time alone with his own mind and body and soul the essential facts of life. Thoreau went into the woods - and in doing so he offered so many of us an example to live by, he offered an explanation of the value of just such an oasis - teaching us the importance of time for solitude and reflection - teaching us the importance of time and space to come face to face with the essential facts of life, to integrate our experiences with our knowledge of the world and our past and ever-evolving beliefs.
This time for retreat, for personal reflection, for sanctuary in a broken and bruised world - it is essential, I believe, for a spiritual life. But the other lesson that Thoreau teaches us from his experiences and from his writing, the often neglected and forgotten lesson that he lived into for the rest of his life, is just as important for us. When Thoreau decided to come out from Walden two years later in 1847, when he decided to rejoin society with all of its challenges and evident needs for transformation - he came out, he left the woods, he writes, "for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spend any more time for that one."
He had several more lives to live, he wrote - and live them he did. It took Thoreau seven years to get back to editing and refining and publishing the journal entries that eventually became the book, Walden. And in the meantime, Thoreau was a busy man. Drawn out of the woods and squarely into community, Thoreau became known most widely for his essay, Civil Disobedience. He turned his life to the cause of abolition, his hands to the work of the Underground Railroad, and his time to fighting unjust taxes.
For our religious icon and hero, Henry David Thoreau, withdrawal from the world, retreat into solitude and nature as a part of his spiritual life, it never was an end unto itself. It never was enough. Rather, that retreat from the world, those periods of quiet solitude and reflection nurtured Thoreau's prophetic idealism, they fired his moral conscience and offered the firm foundation which allowed him to speak the truth, to stand for his principles, to name and proclaim the evil that surely existed there in his own community and in his own time.
In his move back and forth between retreat from the world and full-blown engagement in it - Henry David Thoreau offers us an example of spiritual living worth aspiring to. He offers us a powerful example of a way of spiritual living that fueled not only his own fire, but that has been tried and tested by some of the most effective and inspiring agents of transformation this world has ever seen.
Both Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. - two of the worlds most effective advocates for human rights and social change - turned to Thoreau's writings and to his experiences for inspiration. And quite frankly - if Thoreau's example of spiritual living, of social action and involvement - if it was good enough to inspire them, then I trust that it will be good enough for me.
Martin Luther King, Jr. reported that he kept a dog-eared copy of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience in his car, and it is known that he memorized long passages from it to pass his time in jail. "I read Thoreau's words," he said, "to center my spirit and to re-find my purpose, and then my courage is restored and my vision is again made clear." After a time of reflection, of inspiration, of connection with a long line of religious visionaries committed to building the beloved community here on earth, Dr. King found that his spirit was centered, that his purpose was found again, that his courage was restored, and that his vision made clear.
Their time in solitude, their time in reflection - it was a critical element in the ability of these great agents of transformation to live with courage and conviction - and so, I believe, it is with us as well. We need the time for a retreat from the world, but we need, just as much if not more so, to fully engage with the world, to fully engage with the community, with the fire that emerges in our bellies as a holy disturbance, a benevolent rage, a revolutionary love that surely shoots out from our fingertips and into the work of our hands as we choose, as Rebecca Parker, invites us, to bless the world.
Buddhist nun and author, Pema Chodron, writes in her book, Comfortable with Uncertainty, that the spiritual journey is often thought of as a trip to the top of a mountain, where worldly attachments and pain and other people are left behind as we, individually, attain enlightenment. But the spiritual journey of the Buddhist bodhisatva - she tells us, the spiritual journey of a warrior training in the art of unconditional compassion - for the Buddhist bodhisattva the spiritual journey goes down the mountain, not up. Rather than transcending the suffering of the world and those around us, we must, she tells us, move step by step towards it, towards the doubt and fear and suffering, moving down the mountain to live amidst the people of the world rather than separating ourselves from them.
The choice to bless the world, our modern day Unitarian Universalist prophet Rebecca Parker tells us, the choice to bless the world can take us into solitude - searching for the sources of power and grace, for native wisdom, healing and liberation. But more, she tells us, the choice to bless the world will draw us into community - into the endeavor shared, the heritage passed on, the companionship of struggle and the comfort of human friendship.
If we wish to find what it is we seek, I believe, if we wish to fill that hollow that gapes at the center of so many of our lives, if we wish to reach out our hands and recognize that we are one part of this broad and beautiful and bruised and broken world - then we will have to come down off of the mountain - I believe, away from our city on the hill or our cabin on Walden Pond - we will have to learn how to go back and forth from solitude to community as we engage in the work and the joy of our spiritual lives. It is then, I believe, as we follow the example of so many who have gone before us, it is then, I believe, that we will find what we seek. It is then, I believe, that we will be living spiritual lives that allow us to do the work of transformation - not only for ourselves, but for this world as well.
May it be so, and Amen.
September 3, 2006
- Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness. (Alfred A. Knopf: New York; 2004), 293.
- Rev. Dr. Patrick O'Neill, "Out From Walden". 2005 Sermon of the Living Tradition delivered at the General Assembly of the UUA. www.uua.org/ga/ga05/2124_sermon.html