Call To Worship
We gather today out of the routines of our week:
To give thanks for another day,
To give thanks for all those in our lives
who have brought us warmth and love,
To give thanks for the gift of life.
We know we are on our pilgrimage here but a brief moment in time.
Let us open ourselves - here, now -
to the process of becoming more whole:
Of living more fully,
Of giving and forgiving more freely,
Of understanding more completely the meaning Of our lives here on this Earth.-Tim Haley
Search For Meaning - Scott James
What a particularly interesting challenge, and honor, to give a personal search for meaning at a service on searching for personal meaning.
I suppose it is somewhat unambitious to say that I haven't found a personal meaning yet, but am still searching, however True that may be, for myself, and I imagine, a couple others out there. Who am I? What am I meant to be? Tough questions. When I attempt to tackle them them, I quickly fall into: "well someone tell me the meaning of Life first and then I'll figure out how I fit into that."
Of course, in a metaphysical discussion, I will likely opt for safety inside of an agnostic container. On my better days this would hopefully mean "I don't know" rather than simply "I don't want to know", to borrow a phrase. And I do think that my fundamental state is that of uncertainty: uncertainty of the accuracy of past memories, uncertainty of the reality of present experience and uncertainty of the future consequences of my actions.
But after cautiously taking some of these intellectual security layers away, I also have a metaphysical belief, a real belief, a completely unfounded belief, an unproven framework into which I arrange the universe in spite of myself. And I'll share that secret with you now: At the core of my being, hiding beneath every thing I have ever learned, is the belief that God is a video game. To be more precise, I believe God is an infinite cascade of video games but I'll get into that in a moment.
I suppose it might seem disappointing that despite all the pontifications of Jesus and profound deconstructionism of the Buddha, that mere silicon would create the deepest impression. But that is, for better or worse, the case. Despite the better intentions of my Sunday School teachers, Space Invaders arrived the firstest with the mostest.
When I saw those magical creatures taking form, completing entire life
cycles within seconds, suffering, dying, and eventually, in sheer electronic jubilation, overtaking my virtual being, and my quarter, I was imprinted. I was imprinted with the powerful, mixed message that I was both -- God: capable of creating life and death, and that I was mortal: despite my incredible power, I too would eventually die.
Just as the creatures on the phosphorus screen live their fate, subject to transistors and programs they don't know about, playing with Beings they can't see, so too do I live my life according to genes I was born with, crafted by a Nature I cannot comprehend, in a World not of my creation.
And perhaps a creature of unimaginable complexity, call it God, call it Nature, lives beyond my viewable dimension, and plays with me and curses me and kicks the whole universe when I do things God doesn't expect, when I steal, if you will, God's quarter.
And why should it end there?
Who is the player of God's Game? Who puts the quarter in the machine that turns on God that turns on Me that plays Space Invaders?
And why should it end there? ...for we are entering a era where humanity will be no longer be content to be observers of Life, but will demand participation as engineers of it: physically, biologically, and spiritually. As this era unfolds, we will become more powerful, more deadly, more creative, and more Godlike than we ever might have thought possible.
We will become the creators of video games which create video games which, of course, create more video games still, each game a God, each game a creation of God, forever and ever. Amen!
And so who do I think I am, what am I meant to be? I believe that I am meant to be what every living being is meant to be: a God, both infinite and finite, both creator and created, a tragicomic character in Game of terrible Beauty, serving either willingly or unwillingly the unknown and unknowable force of Evolution.
Meditation
Some thoughts on the theme of the morning:
Joseph Campbell said:
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The Sufi poet, Rumi, said:
You sit here for days saying
This is strange business.
You’re the strange business.
You have the energy of the sun in you,
but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine.
You’re some weird kind of gold
that wants to stay melted in the furnace
so you won’t have to become coins.
Ursula Le Guin said:
Her work; I really think her work
is finding what her real work is
and doing it: her work...her own work...
her being human...her being in the world.Florida Scott-Maxwell said:
You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.
Sermon:
Most of us don’t listen to what our lives are saying – we hear only what we are telling our lives to do.
Which means we have been absorbing all the words and thoughts and directives of others and have been cramming them into our heads, trying to understanding the world, and ourselves in it.
Well, that’s good to do, I guess. How else do we learn? How else to learn, indeed! There is another way.
We experience and perceive so much more than just what is taught to us by others. It would serve us well to try to catch a glimpse of who we are. And, the best way to do that is by seeing what we love best through the spontaneous actions of our living.
I remember, back in the seventies, I trained to be a leader for a UU curriculum called, "Employing Your Total Self." That curriculum was designed not to help plug you into a specific job, but to help you listen for your voice of vocation; your "calling."
A calling is a strong impulse inside ourselves that moves us toward a blending of who we really are with what we choose to do. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner writes when he defines vocation as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need." It is significant and worth remembering that Buechner’s definition of vocation begins not in what the world needs, but in the nature of the human self.
Part of the "Employing Your Total Self" curriculum was the assignment to write a "Life/Work Autobiographical Narrative." Participants were asked to spend the time writing their own life stories – including the facts of family, schooling, jobs, religious affiliation, significant relationships - and also their personal observations and feelings about all of those things. Anything and everything could be included. The leader then took the narratives home and communed with them. Some were quite long and detailed.
With a yellow highlighter, the leader looked for, and marked, those statements that revealed patterns. Likes, dislikes, directions, characteristics, repeating subjects..... After this, the leader worked with each narrative-writer to talk about the leader’s observations, and the writer’s own experience and insights. And the participants in the class also got the chance to provide feedback on each other’s narratives.
Training to lead that course turned out to be a watershed moment for me. Through the Life/Work Narrative that I wrote, and the obvious connecting patterns made by those yellow highlights all over the pages, I suddenly saw what my life was showing me.
The man who was doing the training for us was a minister - and one, now deceased, who I liked and admired very much. He said to me, "Joan - look at all those leadership abilities and creative talents you have and have found pleasure in throughout your life; and look at the pattern of all that church work you’re involved in, and find exciting and important. Look at that love and excitement you have for the art of worship. Why don’t you combine your best skills and love of church and worship in working as a "Para-Professional Worship Consultant?"
Well, I was enough of a feminist at that point to see what he was talking about better than he did. That experience caused me, for the first time, to think seriously about the professional ministry as a viable direction for my life.
The Life/Work Narrative reminds me, also, about Eulogies I’ve written for Memorial Services. I sit with members of the deceased person’s family and ask for biographical information. ......graduated with this degree and that degree, had this kind of job and that that job, lived here, moved there, and then settled there, marriage or committed partnership, children, and so on..... And I also ask about those things best loved by the person, the hobbies and special skills, characteristics, attributes, and little stories they can remember about the person. I then put what I’ve been told into a Eulogy. Often I have family tell me they’re surprised at how well I capture the real person.
It’s very common to have friends, relatives, acquaintances, and colleagues tell me, after the service, that by hearing the person’s fuller life story, a real essence of the person was conveyed. In a sense it was, "Oh! This is who she was!" or "I didn’t realize the whole picture." or "I didn’t know about all those things. I feel like I now know the person better – isn’t it ironic...now that he’s gone?"
And, from time to time, people comment that it would be nice to hold these services - perhaps, pre-memorial services - before we die so we can get to understand what we’ve been about better. We could better understand each other as well. Our personal stories are always remarkable – similar, yes, but oh so different and unique. The particular essence of each individual is always there, waiting to be discovered in all its clarity and purpose through his or her life.
The problem is for many of us that we are not living our own life.
Within a poem by William Stafford, is this line: "Ask me whether what I have done is my life."
Here is more of the poem:
Some time when the river is ice ... ask me whether
what I have done is my life. ...
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.For some of you - the poet’s words will be precise, piercing, and disquieting. They can remind you of moments when it is clear that the life you are living is not the same as the life that wants to live in you. Your true life may be hidden like the river beneath the ice.
It is indeed possible to live a life other than your own.
Faced with this fragmentation and ambiguity, we pull back and ask: "What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?"
There is an old Quaker saying which is "Let Your Life Speak."
In a lovely little book by Parker J. Palmer, the author talks about his understanding of those words as they affected him at different stages of his life.
When young, he said, "I found those words ["Let your life speak"] encouraging, and I thought I understood what they meant..." [To me, at that time, they meant:] "Let the highest truths and values guide you. Live up to those demanding standards in everything you do."
"Because I had heroes at the time who seemed to be doing exactly that, this exhortation had incarnate meaning for me – it meant living a life like that of Martin Luther King, Jr., or Rosa Parks or Mahatma Gandhi or Dorothy Day, - a life of high purpose.
"So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find," Palmer continues, "and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self – as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a ‘noble’ way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.
"Today," he goes on, "some thirty years later, ‘Let your life speak’ means something else to me, a meaning -- faithful to both the ambiguity of those words and to the complexity of my own experience:"... and he concludes with these powerful words: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."
Conjuring up the highest values you can imagine and then trying to conform your life to them - like sticking colorful postage stamps onto a plain envelope - is what we have been taught. But it is also probably a simplistic brand of concocted moralism that wants to reduce the ethical life to making a list, checking it twice, and then trying very hard to be not naughty but nice.
Vocation, which comes from the Latin, meaning "voice" (like "calling"), is not willfulness; it comes from listening. Palmer writes, "I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about – quite apart from what I would like it to be about – or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions."
Parker Palmer found that before he could tell his life what he wanted to do with it, he must listen to his life telling him who he is. We, too, must listen for the truths and values at the heart of our own identity, not the standards by which we MUST live – but the standards by which each one of us cannot help but live if we are living our own lives.
We need time to sense, as in the poem I read, that running beneath the surface of the experience we call our life, there is a deeper, truer life to be acknowledged, and we must listen to the guidance from within.
One person I spoke to last week told me of not liking high school very much. She married. Later on, while working for a university, as a perk she was told she could take up to a certain amount of credits in courses of her choosing. She looked through the class catalogue, liked the description of a psychology class, and so, enrolled. Well, the subject turned out to ignite her mind and heart. All of a sudden, she knew what she wanted, and who she was. She went into the study of psychology seriously, was an excellent student and is, today, a competent and caring counselor.
Running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
The odd thing about this trying to find out who we are is that the messages are all around us, usually. There are clues. The words we speak sometimes reveal the counsel we are trying to give ourselves. But are we really paying attention?
Our lives also speak through our actions and reactions, our intuitions and instincts, our feelings and bodily states of being – and, perhaps more profoundly than our words. But are we really paying attention?
We are like plants that lean toward our light. We are drawn towards certain experiences and repelled by others. We need to learn to read our own responses and experience. It is a text we are writing unconsciously every day we spend on earth, and from it we will receive the guidance we need to live more authentic lives.
And, mark this as well: If we are to let our lives speak things we want to hear, then we must also let it speak things we don’t want to hear and wouldn’t tell anyone else! Our lives have many strengths and virtues.....and they also have liabilities and limits. The quest for wholeness implicitly requires that we also embrace what we dislike about ourselves. Mistakes and wrong turns also have within them important clues to our own calling. It is the unblinking look at oneself, with honesty, that leads to integrity and the authentic self.
Our lives are experiments with truth. The negative results are just as important as the successes. Don’t be afraid to look at them. Love them for the valuable teaching they contain.
A question worth exploring is just HOW we are going to listen to our lives. If it’s the human soul we would address, we have to be careful about how we gather information. The soul is not awfully responsive to subpoenas or cross-examination. At best it will stand in the dock only long enough to plead the fifth amendment.
Sometimes, the soul speaks the truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions. It is a tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient part of ourselves, but often exceedingly shy. At these times, we walk softly toward the soul, empty and vulnerable, and sit quietly for as long as it takes. The message will come in the silence.
But, there are other times when the soul is screaming at us. It is wild and demanding, full of the injustice of our neglect. At these times, we must get away - rip ourselves loose of distractions - and wait to receive its icy wash of revelation. The message will come midst the upheaving storm.
There must be a place prepared and a time set apart to pay attention and to wait upon the message. Some people call it pilgrimage. Some call it meditation. Some call it therapy. Some call it retreat and solitude. Some call it journalling. Some call it mindfulness. Sometimes it is all or any combination of the above.
It does take some work. It takes observation, reflection, and action.
The authentic self is a gift to be received not a goal to be achieved; it is an acceptance of the treasure of true self that each of us already possesses; it comes from a voice within calling us to be the person we were born to be.
It is a strange gift, this birthright gift of self. Accepting it turns out to be more difficult than the attempt to become someone else. Since it’s so difficult to be ourselves, we can simply ignoring the gift, or hide it, or run away from it, or squander it.
There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else, and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self:
Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’"
Every journey, honestly taken, moves us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.; a move toward deeper congruence between our inner and outer life.
As May Sarton reminds us, the pilgrimage toward true self will take "time, many years and places. The world needs people with the patience and passion to make that pilgrimage, not only for their own sake but also as a social and political act. The world still waits for the truth that will set us free - my truth, your truth, our truth. Cultivating that truth, I believe is the authentic vocation of every human being.
Let Your Life Speak!
Benediction - "Some Wishes For You" by C.S.
I wish for you a troubled heart at times
As woes of world and friend come close beside
And keep you sleepless.
I wish for you the thrill of knowing
Who you are,
Where you stand,
And why.
Especially why.
Not prosperity, but dreams I wish for you;
Not riches but a sense of your own worth I wish
For you.
Not even long life, however proud we’d be to have it so.
But life that is crammed with living,
Hour by hour.
And love I wish for you;
May you give it frequently.
I wish for you solitude in the midst of company,
And a mind full of company within your quiet times.
Full todays I wish for you, and full tomorrows.-Amen, Shalom, and Blessed Be!
