This morning we are here to ask the question, “What do I believe about God?” This is the third in a six-part series on different beliefs about God. And it is an opportunity for you to clarify what you believe and why you believe it.
In this church there is no wrong answer to that question. This is a place where we can feel free to share our beliefs honestly and openly and to learn from others.
In the fall, we explored the beliefs of atheism and agnosticism. This morning we will delve into mysticism.
You may remember that in the informal poll we took, mysticism had more adherents than any other God belief. The most votes went to Natural Mysticism which is the belief that we may directly experience spiritual truths and a unity with the universe without a supernatural being. The next most votes went to Theistic Mysticism which is the belief that our purpose in life is to be at one with God, letting divinity shine through us in our deeds.
I must say that I was surprised at these results primarily because there is such a misunderstanding of mysticism in our culture. When many people think of the mystic they envision someone who withdraws from this world and becomes immersed in the supernatural.
For instance, in the middle ages monks walled themselves up into tiny cells where they stayed for months or even years so they could commune with God. This superficial style of mysticism is expressed well in a Hindu story as told by the theologian, Huston Smith:
"A guru had just brought home to a young aspirant the realization of himself as identical in essence with the power that supports the universe and which in theological thinking we personify as 'God.' The youth, profoundly moved, exalted in the notion of himself as at one with the Lord and Being of the Universe, walked away in a state of profound absorption; and when he had passed in that state through the village and out onto the road beyond it, he beheld, coming in his direction, a great elephant bearing . . . the driver, riding ... high on its neck, above its head. And the young candidate for sainthood, meditating on the proposition 'I am God; all things are God,' on perceiving that mighty elephant coming toward him, added the obvious corollary, 'The elephant also is God.'
"The animal, with its bells jingling to the majestic rhythm of its stately approach, was steadily coming on, and the [driver] above its head began shouting, 'Clear the way! Clear the way, you idiot! Clear the way!' The youth, in his rapture, was thinking still, 'I am God; that elephant is God.' And, hearing the shouts of the [driver] he added, 'Should God be afraid of God? Should God get out of the way of God?' The phenomenon came steadily on with the driver at its head still shouting at him, and the youth, in undistracted meditation, held both to his place on the road and to his transcendental insight, until the moment of truth arrived and the elephant, simply wrapping its great trunk around the lunatic, tossed him aside, off the road.
"Physically shocked, spiritually stunned, the youth landed all in a heap, ... and rising, ... he returned, disordered, to his guru, to require an explanation. 'You told me,' he said, ... 'that I was God.' 'Yes,' said the guru, 'you are God.' 'You told me that all things are God.' 'Yes,' said the guru again, 'all things are God.' 'That elephant, then, was God?' 'So it was. That elephant was God. But why didn't you listen to the voice of God, shouting from the elephant's head, to get out of the way?'”
As you can see, mysticism can be more complicated than we think. This myopic mysticism is still evident today. I remember talking with a young man who was involved in an Eastern cult about capital punishment. I told him of my opposition to it, and he responded by saying it doesn't matter if people get executed since we all melt back into the eternal oneness anyway. As you might imagine, I vehemently disagreed with him.
In all the world religions there is a strong tradition of authentic mysticism. Often mystics are treated as heretics since they, like our own faith community, refuse to abide by creeds and dogmas. Mystics are spiritual gadflies who point their fingers toward the moon, reminding us to look at the moon and not the finger.
My favorite description of what I consider the legitimate mystical experience is expressed by the Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in these words: "Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There's something else sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the universal spirit. Don't you feel that?"
I hope we all have that feeling of the universal spirit whether we call ourselves mystics or not. It's a blissful state. I felt it when I participated in the birth of our three sons, as well as the delivery -- by airplane -- of our adopted daughter. I felt it when I sat on top of a mountain in North Carolina all night watching shooting stars streak across a dark sky. I felt it when I held the hand of a church member as he breathed his last breath.
Those were mystical experiences in my life when I was filled with a sense of total presence, awe, and connection. It's not a matter of having a revelatory encounter with another world or eagerly awaiting another life. True mysticism is experiencing the depth and reality in this world and this life.
That sense of depth and heightened reality is the first characteristic of what I consider authentic mysticism. It’s experiencing life in its fullness, of being totally present, in the here and now, not living in the past, second guessing what we should have done, and not living in the future, anxious about what might happen. I'm not saying that we should never contemplate the past or prepare for the future, but rather that we need another way of being in our life as well, and that is to be fully present in the moment.
Erich Fromm wrote that learning to be is the most radical revolution a person can undergo. I would add that it's also the most mystical experience. Many of us have abundant goals for our future, but what could be a better goal than to simply learn how to be ourselves here and now, completely.
One of our greatest Unitarian mystics, Henry David Thoreau, reminds us how to live in the present with these words: "Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities, and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this."
To be awake is one of the great goals of the mystic. Gautama Buddha was called the awakened one because he was fully conscious to the divine in the present. He was able to look into the heart of reality itself, embracing the darkness along with the light. Our purpose as human beings is also to be awake to the miracles of life all around us.
There's a story about two Zen masters who meet one day. One of the masters wants to outdo the other, and so he says that he will perform a miracle that will show his superiority. He will transform an animal into a human being. Before he can perform his miracle, the other Zen master responds with these words: "Perhaps your fox can perform that trick, but that is not the manner of Zen. My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink."
That is what I call true mysticism, not an otherworldly yearning that negates this life, not false hopes filled with superstition and sensational miracles, but a deep spirituality that senses the miraculous in every moment.
William Blake, the English poet and mystic, wrote that "If the doors of perception were cleansed, humanity would see everything as it is, infinite." When we do cleanse those doors of perception, some of us may find God, others may find the endless depths of life, while others discover the Great Mystery.
This is the second characteristic of the mystic: the experience of participating in some indefinable and mysterious power that embraces all of life as one living being. In Taoism it reads: "The name that cannot be named is the eternal Tao."
The Lakota Sioux believe in a power so great and incomprehensible, that they call it "the Great Mystery." What better way to define the indefinable. The Great Mystery makes explicit that we have no idea what this reality is, but we do experience ourselves as tiny fragments of the universal spirit. In the words of Albert Schweitzer, "the highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery."
One of the most mystical books I've read is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, published in the 70s.
The book is about her daily wanderings along Tinker Creek which runs through the outskirts of Roanoke, Virginia where I first served a UU congregation. Dillard tells us that when we open our eyes wide, "(We) find grace tangled in a rapture with violence; (we) find an intricate landscape whose forms are fringed in death; (we) find mystery, newness, and a kind of exuberant, spendthrift energy."
I imagined after reading the book that Tinker Creek must be one of the most beautiful places in the world, another Walden Pond, secluded from civilization and surrounded by the glories of nature. When I made a pilgrimage to Tinker Creek, I was surprised to learn that Annie Dillard lived in a ranch house in the middle of the suburbs with this dinky little creek running right through the housing development. It was just like a million other little creeks, nothing special at all.
After some initial disappointment, I felt inspired that she was finding all this beauty and mystery not by withdrawing to some hidden Garden of Eden but by discovering it right under her nose, a treasure hidden in the mundane dreariness of life, revelation surrounding her in the 'burbs.
This is vital for the true mystic: not having to go to the mountaintop or the desert to sense the mysterious, to be filled with divine revelation, but uncovering the sacred right here where we stand, whether it's knee deep in a creek, eating bread at the breakfast table, or, of all the crazy places, sitting in church on a Sunday morning.
A third quality of mysticism is that it is a religion of love.
There's a creation story from the Jewish mystical tradition called the Kabala that is quite different from the Genesis story. It pictures a creation where there was God and nothing else. God desired to create something to relate to, but even the All- Powerful could not create a world out of nothingness. So the only thing God could use for the stuff of creation was God.
And so this divine Oneness fragmented itself, breaking into millions and millions of tiny pieces that rained down upon the earth. Each of these fragments became a living being: a plant, an animal, a human. And the purpose of each fragment of God now is to, by using our compassion and love, connect with one another and unite, knowing unconsciously that with each union God is re-created a little more. I believe that's the purpose of our lives: to sense our connection with one another so that we may re-create the sacred and divine in life.
The writer Jean Houston describes this mystical quest as the search for the Beloved. She tells us that, “In all the great spiritual ... traditions, the central theme, the guiding passion, is the deep yearning for the Beloved of the soul.”
What is this Beloved of the soul? Rumi, the Sufi mystical poet of the thirteenth century, put it into words. He writes:
My soul spills into yours and is blended.
Because my soul has absorbed your fragrance, I cherish it.
Every drop of blood I spill says to the earth:
I blend with my Beloved when I participate in love.
This may sound like a poem to a lover, but Rumi wrote his poems to the Beloved, to that which encompasses all life and all love. Rumi believed that this yearning for union with the Beloved lies at the heart of the spiritual journey, and that it transcends all of the multiple and marvelous varieties of human loving.
This yearning for more than we are comes from a great loneliness in us. We begin in unity, but at the moment of birth this original connection is lost. For the rest of our lives we feel a sense of separation and a strong striving for union.
A spirit within us drives us relentlessly on, always prodding us to pursue the quest for unity. Though we may believe ourselves to be utterly bewildered, deep within us, there is a compass that points steadily to the center of things.
Throughout our lives we long for the Beloved. We call it by many names: God, Truth, the Tao, Brahman, the Ground of All Being, Love, Nature. But the names matter little. What does matter is that we seek from the day we are born to the day we die a relationship with something beyond ourselves.
We can manage to find some completeness in the blessed, thirst- quenching love of another human being. But when we are in the arms of another, we cannot help but yearn to be in the arms of the Beloved itself. And when we are in the arms of the divine Beloved, we cannot help but reach out to others in compassion.
This bring us to the last quality of mysticism. The true mystic is a person who realizes that the most important step toward enlightenment is to be a moral individual, to be free of fear, exploitation, greed, and falsehood.
One way people have tried to achieve morality is by withdrawing from the temptations of life. But there are many other mystics, such as George Fox, William Blake, Mohandas Gandhi, who believed that to be mystical is to be fully aware of the sacred spark within each life. Once we are aware of that sanctity then we have no choice but to do everything possible to make peace and justice in the world.
If we really sense that we are a part of the interdependent web of all existence we don't withdraw from life, we embrace it. A mystical religion inspires a feeling of unity and oneness that motivates us to work for the greater causes of humanity and the Earth.
The belief in mysticism does not mean that we will be beamed up into nirvana and become instantaneously enlightened. It does not solve all of our problems. In fact, the Zen master says: "Now that you have achieved total perfect enlightenment, you may expect to be just as miserable as ever."
That’s all too true. When we become a true mystic, we accept our relationship not only with the Great Mystery, with the Beloved, but with all life. And we accept our responsibility to join in the struggle for human dignity and planetary peace.
These are the qualities of what I believe to be the authentic mystic: to be awake to the miracles of the moment, to be open to the Great mystery of life, to seek the Beloved in each other, and to live ethical and justice seeking lives. To be a true mystic is not simply to believe in these values but to live them out in the silence, the relationships, and the struggles of our lives.
Let us welcome the mystic into our congregation and mysticism into our hearts. May love be the ultimate enchantment for us, and may we feel a sense of peace and unity like swimming out from the shore into a deep cold water far out of our depth and then forgetting for a moment where we came from, where we are going, even our name . . . even our name.
Amen.
This I Believe Statement by Melodie Feather
During some of the most troubling days of my past, a UU minister gave me a book by Anthony de Mello entitled “The Song of the Bird.” In this book, Father de Mello defines mysticism as “The art of tasting and feeling in your heart the inner meaning of stories about the Divine to the point that they transform you.” It is with this book that my exploration of mysticism began. As I read it, I became more attuned to my senses, and my life began to take on new meaning.
My time spent with nature became more meaningful and inspiring. Aloneness brought comfort, and curiosity about UUism brought me to this church. I’ve spent most of my life in and around churches, and rare is the church where music, silence, and the spoken word can create a sense of wholeness within me, provide sustenance for the coming week, and humble my very being. During the last 14 years, it is here that I have developed a greater respect for religious diversity, opened my heart to loving one with a Jewish heritage, sung to comfort my soul, and devoted my time, talents, and financial resources to help build a better world.
We continue to stay actively involved in this vibrant community in spite of the distance we must travel to be a part of it. Within this dynamic community, I have had the pleasure of many mystical experiences: while participating in the worship services, RE chapel services, working with the Children’s Choir, and participating in the active and growing music programs, social outreach opportunities, community building events, Peace Camp, and while viewing the QUUest gallery (to name but a few).
But my mystical experiences don’t end here. Beyond the walls of this church, I have found a way to be close to friends who enthusiastically support the Right to Life cause. I also volunteer as a tutor in our elementary school, work in my sons’ classrooms at school, and help coach Little League. While I cannot entirely bring my faith to these environments, with mysticism, I can speak a language of love, respect, self-worth, and dignity. And from these experiences, I receive rewards beyond measure– a hug from the little girl who finally found the nerve to bat and run to first base, or a smile when the reading group finally finished a book, or an unprompted thank-you for a treat. These are my rewards, and this is how I feel and taste mysticism–and be at one with the community and the world.
I believe that mysticism transcends all forms of religion and speaks as a universal language. I believe that this is how we can help heal the world–one step at a time.
I am but one, but I am truly grateful to this church for providing this sacred place for renewal, celebration, and opportunity for mystical experiences. I invite you to feel and taste them with me as we create our own stories about the Divine and become transformed!
-Amen and shalom!
