Sermon

April 2, 2006

Note: A reading is attached, which you may like to read first.

      Do you remember when and why you first came to a religious institution of your own free will? Do you remember the circumstances of your journey to that institution? I’ll relate to you my own journey in hopes that it will evoke yours.

       Mine began in my religion of origin—the Church of England—when I was a child. Every school had daily assembly with hymns, a prayer, and a short talk of a moral nature, with a quote from the Bible. I don’t recall any of the talks but I do recall the enjoyment of singing hymns and the resonance of the prayer. After leaving school, I joined a Church of England close to my home. Again, I don’t remember the sermons, just the music and sung prayers and responses, and the incense! Oh, yes, incense! The Church of England is like the Catholic Church except the priests are married (and also female now) and there’s no guilt! Or at least I didn’t internalize any.

       When I came to America at the age of 20-years, I began a spiritual exploration all mixed up with politics, war, peace, and female identity. The Vietnam War was going on and the peace movement that would eventually end it. Young women tried to give flowers to soldiers. There were “Love-ins” going on in Central Park and marijuana was cheap. For some reason, I never had a chance to try it—not even not inhaling it! (This is a reference to former President Bill Clinton’s claim that he didn’t inhale it in his youth.) The Hari Krishna folks were treating us to vegetarian feasts in the park and mesmerizing chants and dancing. People enamoured of the Scientology movement were trying to attract new recruits in the Port Authority bus station I passed through every morning and night in New York City, and “Jesus Freaks” as they were called then were recruiting on college campuses. There was every manner of New Age group imaginable. The women’s movement began in earnest and we discovered the Goddess. These were the roaring 1960s and 70s! And hey, Man, it was great! It was truly a cultural revolution and a spiritual awakening for many.

       I got married and explored more spirituality in India. But then I began a career, settled down, the children came, and the years flew by. When the children were 8 and 9 years old, I felt bereft of a spiritual life and also compelled to give the children some religious instruction but what should I instruct them in now; just what were my beliefs? Thus, I began a search for a church to fit the beliefs that I did not know! I just thought I’d know it when I found it!

       As many of you know, I found the Laguna Beach UU Fellowship in southern California. This UU community was a haven of artists, writers, poets, musicians, spiritual seekers and social justice advocates. Our communal spiritual journey began with watching together Bill Moyer’s interview with Joseph Campbell. It was called “The Power of Myth.” It so deeply affected us that some people said, “Does this have to end?” Some of us responded, “No, let’s get together.” We formed a group that explored different kinds of meditative practices and we shared whatever spiritual traditions we had discovered, some of them quite crazy. There was the entity called Ramtha who could manifest silvery threads to the “other world,” and there was Jesus up in a space ship beaming down messages! Our meditation group had 10 members. Two years later, we were still meeting at my home though a few of the group members had changed.

       What we had together was a brave and creative spiritual community. But all the time, I still attended the little UU Fellowship and later a larger church for I liked the groundedness of the UU tradition. I liked their embracing of reason and their acceptance of differences of belief, the liveliness of the community and their great potluck suppers, and the hymns even though the words were changed! And I liked the light-bulb jokes. This is one: How many Unitarians does it take to change a light-bulb? Answer: The Unitarians wish to issue the following statement, “We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light-bulb; however, if in your own journey you have found that light-bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light-bulb, and present it next month at our annual light-bulb Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light-bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.”

       I suspect that many of you have trodden at least some of the path I followed. However, have we grown spiritually? How do we know? How do we measure? There is no one answer. At least there is no definitive answer. But there is a basic question to ask yourself, or ourselves—plural, for we can grow communally as well. The basic question is, “Am I gaining insight into the nature of life and its issues?” How do you know you are gaining insight? Ah, well, it just creeps up on you, really. Can you seek it—gain insight intentionally? Oh, Yes. How? You engage little conundrums; you ponder statements that make you stop in your tracks; you gaze inwardly at your thoughts; you put aside time for being completely in the moment with no thought; you view all areas of your life as opportunities to gain insight: work, hobbies, play, family time, relationships of all kinds. And how is this different from personal growth? It isn’t. We are spiritual people playing at being ordinary selves.

       When we have difficult issues to deal with, how can we change them into opportunities to grow on? We engage the trinity of the universal concepts: truth, love, and oneness. The activating force is creativity. For example, we have an argument with our closest friend or our mate. A lot of hurt is created on both sides. We must have a sufficient time out and ask, “Where is the love in this?” (This gives us an opportunity to detach from the hurt and have Spirit help us bring understanding and insight to bear.) Another example: Nationally, we face the “problem” of 11 million illegal immigrants in our country. We must ask, “Where is the oneness in this and how might we act with fairness and love?” (We have an opportunity to detach from the fear that 11 million hidden are already here.) One final example: Our nation goes to war and we feel in our bones the injustice. We must turn every stone to uncover what was hidden so that the nation will come to value and uphold truth and model it to the world (as some of the world’s nations model it to us. (This gives us a chance to detach from anger towards the government and learn what we can put in place to prevent such deception in the future.) So the self, the community, and the nation all engage in what all the religions try to teach: truth, love, and oneness.

       In a nutshell, we are all on a journey to be in alignment with the intent of our own deep Spirit. We become more reflective of what really is in our own minds and hearts. All this insight-getting though takes practice. Everyday life can truly wear us out so we do need a practice to renew ourselves when the world gets too much.

       The first thing to do is to always, or almost always have a Sabbath. Coming to church is a good idea (at least to this church, of course ☺) for you will always have something to rest in and ponder. But there will be times when you need to have a Sabbath alone. The most obvious practice is meditation or prayerful meditation to still the mind and bring peace. For the moving-centered person there is walking, running, and swimming meditations, Tai Chi, yoga, and other activities that can help us still our minds. Sports can help if it’s not too competitive.

       Another practice for those of us who like to work with words is pondering short sayings of scripture or wisdom. My own favorite is a tiny book called Buddha’s Little Instruction Book by Jack Kornfield. Here are three examples from it:

• “The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” (p.11, Kornfield)
• “There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.” (p.52, Kornfield)
• “Stay centered, do not overstretch. Extend from your center, return to your center.” (p.69, Kornfield)

Next week, we’ll identify a few special sayings of Jesus.

       One website called www.spiritualityandpractice.com lists many other spiritual practices, such as: Attention, Beauty, Being Present, Compassion, Devotion, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Hospitality, Justice, Kindness, Listening, Love, Openness, Peace, Reverence, Unity, Vision, and so on.

       Notice that all of the practices mentioned here are done by you in your own space. We can go and find a labyrinth to walk, but we can also walk in our own garden or in the State Park and do a quiet noticing or just be. In the reading, Lama Surya Das advised us: “The land on which we stand is sacred, no matter where we stand.” And the Tao Te Ching says:

Without going out of my door
I can know all things on earth.

       We do not have to seek out Gurus to grow spiritually. But if we wish to progress more quickly, there’s no reason why we should not have a special teacher to share with us knowledge about the path he or she has already trodden.

       If we get stuck in the emotional morass of the human drama, we can always take a “time out” to detach and ask where in this is the love, the truth, or the oneness? And we can remind ourselves that we have great creative resources within us to help us. May Spirit help us to gain great insights to benefit us and share with others.

References

The following have informed and inspired this sermon:

Das, Lama Surya. Awakening to the Sacred, New York: Broadway Books, 1999.

Kornfield, Jack. Buddha’s Little Instruction Book, New York: Bantam Books, 1994.

The articles of Jose Stevens, Ph.D. in his monthly journals called “The Power Path,” web address: www.powerpathseminars.com. 

Reading from Awakening to the Sacred
by Lama Surya Das

“…a [spiritual] seeker is a spiritual traveler or wayfarer, a pilgrim who has embarked on a quest to find and experience the sacred. Seekers….can be found in every nation; they can be part of any religious group or denomination. The search for truth and love—something beyond and bigger than ourselves—is the common element.

Seekers want to understand and explore themselves as well as the universe with all its mysteries, both known and unknowable. In their hearts, seekers believe that the universe makes sense and their lives have meaning. They believe not only that truth exists, but that it can indeed be found, and experienced.

When I was young, and even more foolish than I am today, I believed that one had to travel far and wide in order to seek truth, divine reality, or whatever you call it. I believed that truth would most likely be found in the world’s so-called sacred places. Yet the fact is that truth is everywhere; it knows no religious, cultural, temporal, or ethnic bounds. Truth is the perfect circle. Its center is everywhere; its circumference stretches into infinite space. The land on which we stand is sacred, no matter where we stand.

       The Tao Te Ching says:

Without going out of my door
I can know all things on earth.
Without looking out of my window
I can know the ways of heaven.” (p.1-2)