The Gladness of This Rhythm
Several years ago, as Christmas and New Years approached, I found myself unknowingly slipping into a bit of a slump - perhaps this has happened to some of you, too. The holidays were coming fast upon us - first with Hanukkah, then with the solstice and Christmas - and finally topped off with New Years Eve and Day. All around me people were putting up lights, sending greetings of good cheer, and preparing their homes - preparing their hearts and their minds for the promise of a new beginning.
But not me. None of these are my holidays - I thought. And with a bit of the oppositional adolescent I can still find in myself I set out to observe the holiday season in my own particular way. I purposely refrained from hanging decorations in my apartment, from singing along to Christmas carols, from wearing the expected holiday red. I decided against sending Christmas cards - the waste of a tree - against buying gifts - who among us really needed anything anyway - and avoided recognizing the beginning of a new year - it's just a made up date anyway.
Friends held holiday parties and planned meaningful ways to welcome in the new year full of good intentions and warm thoughts. I refused invitations and offers for coffee and stayed cranky - looking out on everyone around me with a barely concealed disdain. What a bunch of phonies, I thought. How can we celebrate these historically inaccurate holidays with any theological integrity? Why doesn't anyone just tell the truth, I thought to myself - that peace and goodwill have not come, that we are trying vainly to light a candle in the darkness of our dim reality, that no matter what resolutions we make most of us live with an unresolved longing to do and to be more but we just aren't willing to put the day to day effort into the less dramatic baby steps - into all of the practice and failures that real change requires of us.
Much to your surprise, I'm sure, even though I tried mightily to keep these thoughts to myself, my sparkling holiday attitude leaked out onto everyone around me and it didn't take long for folks to start avoiding me, and for a dear colleague to call me into his office for a chat.
Once the door closed behind me I launched into a detailed tirade complete with historical details and theological reasoning - I ranted and raved while my friend sat back and listened - and then out it came. "Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm?" he asked quietly. Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm?
Words from the Hindu poet and devoted friend of Ghandi - a one-line quote from the poet Tagore - and I was brought up short. I'd heard the line before, of course, as a part of the Nobel Prize winning author's book of poems, but I had never heard it quite like this before. Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm - to be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy? A gentle reproach softened my heart and brought me back into the family of things that is my shared human and world community rocked by the darkness of these long winter nights.
That winter, and other times since, I found myself caught up in a singular kind of time - clock time - or chronos - as the Greeks would say - calendar time, something that is measured in minutes and seconds and dates - something that lends itself to accuracy and intellect. But there is another kind of time too, and in Greek this other kind of time is called, kairos. Kairos, as the theologian Paul Tillich, explains, is "not the quantitative time of the watch, but is the qualitative time of the occasion: the "right" time... There are things in which the right time, the kairos, has not yet come...We all have in our lives moments in which we feel that now is the right time for something: now I am mature enough for this, now everything around me is prepared for this, now I can make the decision, etc: this is kairos."[1]
As the new year turns into existence, believe, chronos, that measured clock and calendar time - converges with kairos - time bursting with possibility - and the gladness of this rhythm calls us to step back and to take stock - to take a clear and kind look at who and where we are in our lives, that we might step forward into the calendar year ahead with minds and hearts open to all of the possibilities that lie before us.
The gladness of this rhythm calls us, naturally, to look both forward and behind like the Roman God, Janus. And if we are honest with ourselves and as a community - we will see where we have fallen short this past year. We will see places where we have held back when our voice might have made a difference, we will see how at times we have kept ourselves separate and isolated from one another through fear, greed, and anger, we will see the many ways that we have broken promises to ourselves and to others - and as my friend Rob Eller-Isaacs has written - we will then hopefully move forward - forgiving ourselves and each other; beginning again in love.
If we are honest with ourselves and as a community - we will avoid the trap that guilt lays out in front of us - that snare that captures the best of us as we fall into old patterns of belaboring the damage we've done to ourselves and others - feeling the old familiar emotions over and over again, berating ourselves and feeling bad for mistakes made.
And I want to be clear, that this kind of looking back is not what I am encouraging today. What I am encouraging us to try today and tomorrow, is the kind of taking stock that requires a clear eye and a kind heart, the kind of taking stock that asks us to look back openly and honestly, to apologize when necessary, to challenge ourselves to imagine a new way, and to start again with fresh resolve.
This kind of taking stock asks us to sidestep the illusion of guilt and suffering as penance and focuses our attention instead on the future - it focuses our attention on the learnings we have gained - on the possibilities ahead, on the people we can be today thanks to the experiences of the past.
But more likely than not, as the old year closes and the new year begins, we as people and as a larger society will shy away from this kind of balanced self-examination. And we will shy away not because we are shallow people, not because we are bad people, we will shy away, I believe, because we have never been taught and we as a culture have never embraced the practice of regular, balanced self-examination. In a nation that began its year with the revelation of torture at Abu Graib - that continued with no real apology and no commitment to stop its atrocious behavior and do better next time - in a nation that will end this year with a war raging that it began, with its highest leader refusing to admit his errors and change course regardless of the reports and recommendations of some of the most studied and impartial individuals in the land - in a nation that would support the execution of anyone at any time - purposely forgetting that we lead by our actions, that we lead by how we treat the worst offenders - in this nation, it is easy to see over and over again within the span of just one year how our leaders have taught us exactly how not to reflect on our actions, how not to pause in times of distress, how not to choose the higher ground when our instincts cry out for revenge.
In a nation such as this, just how do we learn a new way?
The poet and author, Rebecca Parker, whom we heard from earlier this morning explains her approach this way, "I have come to understand," she writes, "that if I am to recover from violence, live in love, and contribute to healing and transformation, I need to engage in spiritual practices that preserve knowledge beyond what the dominant culture tells me about who I am."[2]
Preserving the knowledge of who she is beyond what the dominant culture tells her - recognizing and protecting and even kindling the flame within, the spark of divinity that lies within each and every one of us - that is what spiritual practices help us to do. In a culture that encourages us to move only between the poles of immobilizing, shaming guilt and outright denial of our errors - in a culture that encourages us to see violence as the answer to all of our problems, in a culture that tells us we need more, we deserve more than everyone else - in the midst of this culture that turns us away from the principles we hold most dear, we find that we must make a new way if we are to live into the people and the community of love and justice that we are called to be.
The transcendentalists of our Unitarian heritage called it shaking off sleep in a world determined to lull us into conformity. Henry David Thoreau spoke of his daily rituals of walking and writing and sitting in silence as ways to live in infinite expectation of the dawn. All of the transcendentalists agreed - and many of us would as well - that the true purpose of life is growth - spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth - a kind of change that is possible for each and every person, a kind of change that would inevitably result in the creation of communities of love and justice right here, right now, on this earth.
This call for growth, for the regular practice of self-examination through spiritual practice is not a new concept by any means. We know that for time immemorial religions of all kinds have encouraged the practice of regular self-examination, and we know that any religion worth its salt asks us not only to engage in practices that make us feel good, but more importantly they ask us to engage in practices that help us to hear the voice of the holy in our own lives, that help us to make the hard choices that allow us more and more to align our actions with our deepest values and thereby change ourselves and our world.
Author and scholar of world religions, Huston Smith once wrote, "The heart of religion is not altered states, but altered traits of character."[3] The heart of religion is not altered states, but altered traits of character. I could not agree more. And I would venture to guess that most of us would agree that trying to change certain traits of our character is not always a feel-good experience - that changing ourselves and our world for the better takes persistence, attention, practice, the willingness to make mistakes, to be criticized, and the strength to start over again each and every day. And in a culture that demands that we conform to its violence and greed it is hard, often to hear the voice of our heart.
This kind of strength and persistence that developing these altered traits of character requires can be hard to hold on to in the face of opposition - and its nurturance takes both time and energy. In my own life I have found that I need not only a daily spiritual practice of prayer and meditation, of gratitude and service, but that I also need a yearly practice of looking back and looking ahead if I am to celebrate the victories large and small - and if I am to stay on track aiming steadily toward the goal of a spiritual life, striving evermore to align my actions with my most deeply held beliefs.
These practices take time, of course - but I am heartened by the words of Quaker author and teacher, Parker Palmer, who asks, "Am I busy? Of course I am. Am I too busy to live my own life? Only if I value it so little that I am willing to surrender it to the enemy."[4]
So how do we do it? How do we begin a spiritual practice? How do we hear the voice of the holy, the beating of our own heart reminding us of whom we really are, the clear thread of intuition that can and will guide us if only we can find and follow it?
We remember, first and foremost - as the poet Rumi wrote - that there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground. What is most important in this spiritual community is not that you adopt my approach or anyone else's approach to spiritual practice - but rather that you give some thought to the question and adopt your own way - finding something that fits your personality and beliefs - that together, as a community of individuals we might continue wiping the soot from the lamp of divinity that resides within each one of us - that together we might build something greater than the sum of our individual parts and bring about real change here and now in this world.
So I share with you this morning one suggestion about how to begin a spiritual practice with this turning of the year.
We begin, I believe, by stopping. We begin by taking a moment or an hour today or tomorrow to simply sit still, to look back and take stock of all that has been and all that lies ahead. We might ask ourselves some simple questions to help us review our year - what big events, what big moments have come our way - what small successes have we experienced? What habits have we changed? What relationships have shifted? Where have we fallen short, held back, or lashed out? What harm have we done this year - and is there a way to learn from it, to mend it in ourselves and in others? What new adventures lie ahead this year? What preparations do I need to make? What do I feel ready for that was too much not long ago? What have I learned that I will carry forward into this new year? What questions might I need to ask myself at this turning of the year?
Whatever questions we ask, let us begin by stopping.
At this time in the season - with Christmas and Hanukkah past - with New Years Eve upon us today - I invite us to lean in to the gladness of this rhythm - to do as generations have done before us each and every year - "to rest for a moment on the forming edge of our lives - as my colleague Kathleen Mc Tigue wrote - to resist the headlong tumble into the next moment until we claim for ourselves awareness and gratitude," setting aside this morning and these days as a time to let the wheels stop rolling, to listen for an instant in the stillness, as Rebecca Parker wrote, for the chiming of celestial spheres as we remember who we are and why we are here - even as the world rushes on pulling us in over and over again to be lost and tossed and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy.
May we take up this charge with gladness, becoming evermore the people and the community of love and justice we so long to be. May it be so, and Amen.
December 31, 2006
- Paul Tillich, The History of Christian Thought, Lecture 2, "The Readiness of the World to Receive Christianity," paragraph 2. Available at: http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2310&C=2308
- Scott Alexander, ed. Everyday Spiritual Practice: Simple Pathways for Enriching Your Life. Skinner House Books, 1992; p.192.
- "Letters from the Heart," a conversation between Huston Smith and Elizabeth Lesser in Spirituality and Health, Spring 2001, p.4 of the article.
- Parker Palmer. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. Jossey Bass Books, San Francisco; p. 72.