Chalice Lighting
May we become, as Ram Dass has written, “hollow reeds for the healing music of life.”
Call to Worship
We gather in reverence before the wonder of life—
The wonder of this moment
The wonder of being together, so close yet so apart—
Each hidden in our own secret chamber,
Each listening, each trying to speak—
Yet none fully understanding, none fully understood.
We gather in reverence before all the intangible things—
That eyes see not, nor ears can detect—
That hands can never touch,
that space cannot hold,
and time cannot measure.-Sophia Lyon Fahs
Words for a Time of Silent Meditation
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by ityself?-Tao Te Ching
Reading from “Zero: Reflections About Nothing” by Sarah Voss
Nothing is not a topic to be lightly dismissed. Just exactly what is nothing? Do you have to be of a certain age, or certain breed, to do nothing? What are some of the benefits of doing nothing? Who does nothing best? How can you tell when it’s time to do it? Are there spiritual implications? …
Nothing means no thing, the absence of thing. It differs substantially from some-thing, any-thing, every-thing. Yet, paradoxically, … Nothing is the parent of something, anything, everything. …
Buddha … thoroughly understood the importance of nothing – doing nothing is how you get enlightenment.
Surely we, too, should be able to appreciate the value of nothing, or at least of doing it. We do. We just don’t practice it enough. We have work to do. We have jobs to handle, letters to write, kids to tend, cars to fix, bills to pay, floors to sweep, gifts to buy. The list goes on and on. Furthermore, we sometimes seem to have a built-in distrust of people who do nothing—particularly kids who do nothing. … Once my oldest daughter came home from college for a visit and announced that she was going to do nothing. This is every parent’s nightmare—kids come home and do nothing forever. It’s scary.
My daughter Sonna did nothing so well that vacation that I decided to do it, too. I filled the bath tub to the top with warm sudsy water and climbed in, firmly intending to laze away in endless bliss. Only I found I couldn’t do it. In my head, I wrote a poem. Nothing gave birth to something! I still have the poem. It’s called, “Reflections on Doing Nothing”:
Nothing tops doing nothing.
But if you’re the addictive
sort—compulsive,
perfectionist, workaholic,
Type A, over achieving, over
dedicated, over zealous, doing
nothing is climbing Mt. Everest
with crippled feet
or flying an airplane
without any fuel
or stopping the rain
the day you planned
a garden party. Doing nothing
takes willpower and more
imagination than a three-hooved
hog hobbling into church.
Doing nothing requires a steel cold
glare when someone stalks
into the room where you are
doing nothing, smiles meaningfully,
and asks what are you doing?
And if that someone carries
an armload of groceries
or a sweeper or a rake
or an expectant expression,
doing nothing needs a weapon
more devastating than hot nuclear
fusion—needs the truth. Keep your
cold glare, if you wish, but
insist firmly, flatly, that you
are doing nothing and that you
are working hard at doing nothing
because, if you’re not
careful, you will wind up
doing something and then
you will never
ever get nothing done.I dedicated this poem to my daughter, who, bless her, fully appreciated it and took its meaning to heart.
Nothing is important and its important to do nothing because nothingness nurtures the creative and the sacred in life. Everything comes from nothing. You are not yet convinced? Perhaps you think that doing nothing is really a very foolish idea. If so, you may be more correct than you realize.
For exampled, we find a very graphic depiction of the foolishness of doing nothing in the tradition of the Tarot, a tradition whose origins are attributed ro the ancient Egyptians and/or to the Jewish Cabala. Among the Tarot cards we find the figure known as the Fool. A typical Fool is “a court jester with caps and bells and motley” or “a dreamer about to step over the precipice of the world.” Liam Miller says of the Fool that “his countenance is full of intelligence and expectant dream.” … He is…’the initial nothing’ who must make his way to ‘the terminal all,’ the twenty-first key, called The Universe.”
In a Tarot deck, all cards are numbered, but the number on the Fool’s card is zero. The Fool has become the Joker of our modern-day playing cards. Like the Joker, the Fool along remains outside the pack, for he is the “Zero of the pack,” the card which represents nothing. Paradoxically, however, this Zero card is also said to exert great power, for the Fool represents the “one who is the spirit in search of experience.” Out of the Fool’s nothingness is born his experience of the universe—is born, in other words, everything.
Out of Zero, all.
Sermon:
“Getting Into the Void:
A Rambling Reflection on NOTHING at all!”This Big Questions Series has gotten hold of my mind! I feel like the very young Joan I once was, taking a walk one day with my Father, holding his hand and pointing out all sorts of things which I needed to understand. I remember asking, “why?” over and over again, as he told me, in simple terms, about the natural world around us. I also remember a distinct feeling of joy as the world opened up through my Father’s words. I think I’ve never lost that sense of curiosity and excitement about the mysterious and fascinating world we wondrously inhabit.
Last Thursday many of us sat at table with family and/or friends, or even alone, and pondered that great annual “Thanksgiving question”: “What am I thankful for?” Out of the many responses usually chalked up, some answered, “I’m thankful for the gift of life.”
In that answer, we understand the feeling that life is precious, but imbedded in it are at least two more questions.
First, being thankful for a gift implies a giver. Is there a giver?
Second, if life is not given, where did it come from? Out of nothing?
We are told by cosmologists about the “Big Bang,” when the universe began, and there’s always someone who asks, “But…what was there before the Big Bang?” How can there be something out of nothing?
Would it be possible to even be able to think about Nothing?
Abe and I traveled down to Raleigh, North Carolina to be with our family for the Thanksgiving holiday. That’s where my daughter, Eve, lives with husband, Bob, and their daughter, Samantha. My other daughter, Martha, with her husband, Craig, and their two sons, Matthew and Benjamin, flew in from Massachusetts.
On Thursday, when the grown-ups were involved in food preparation and the kids and dogs were underfoot with toys and each other, I broached the question of “nothing.” I told them my sermon for Sunday would be about “zero,” “nothing,” “zilch,” “nada,” “nothing,” and asked them for their thoughts on the subject.
My family, especially when together, is anything but reserved. Many responses flew through the roast-turkey-smelling air! Scientist Craig offered, “You can only approach zero; the closer you get, strange things happen! There is no absolute zero.”
Eve offered another thought -- that people can feel like they don’t exist; they become nothing, they “disappear” rather than asserting themselves. Martha, the psychologist added that in eating disorders, the goal is to become nothing. She added a tidbit of information: “Do you know that the store, Abercrombie & Fitch, has recently introduced a size “double zero” in women’s clothing?” We all groaned at the thought.
Someone said, “Zero makes us anxious. It represents all we don’t understand.” Another added, “We need to feel in control of things.” Bob threw in the observation that when teens are asked what they’re doing, they usually answer, ‘Nothing!’ which we KNOW isn’t true!”
Finally, seven year old Matthew piped in, “You can’t think about nothing.” “Why is that Matthew?” “Nothing is a word, so you’re thinking about something.” Hmmmm!
Martha helpfully asked, “Well, Mom, what do you want the congregation to take away from your sermon?”
The answer came from all corners, including from me: “Nothing!”
I watched Martha creating an apple-crumb pie. She piled the crust high with apple slices – VERY high, a veritable Mount Everest of filling. Then as she was attempted to balance the crumb coating on top, I said, as only parents can, “Isn’t that too full of apples, Marthie?” To which she answered simply, and enthusiastically, “YES!”
Thanksgiving is a time for fullness. Christmas, too. Time for much traveling, much shopping, much cooking, much decorating, much eating and partying, much visiting, much giving and receiving, much preparation, much running around.
The only antidote to the essential much-ness of this time of year would have to be Nothing –Emptiness – Silence – Zero!!
So, welcome to “Zero!”
What is zero but a hollow circle.
Why a circle? There would be no way of seeing nothing unless it be delineated somehow. I mean, nothing is nothing, right? So you draw a circle around nothing, and you point and say, “Inside the circle is nothing.”
“Nothing” is thereby captured. Zero becomes a reality, out of a concept of nothing. Except, it’s never, ever been easy to understand.
The other hollow circle, the letter “O,” is often mistaken for the number, zero.
I give my phone number to a person on the phone, and I say, “It’s 703-578-0800.” The person repeats it slowly, probably entering it into a computer as she speaks: “seven-zero-three, five-seven-eight, zero-eight-zero-zero….correct?”
Whatever!!
A fellow named John D. Barrow, who is a research professor of mathematical sciences in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, recently wrote, The Book of Nothing.
He starts off with Chapter Nought, “Nothingology,” and a quote from Al Jolson, which is: “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
“Nothing,” he says, “is an awe-inspiring concept, highly esteemed by writers of a mystical or existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety … Nobody seems to know how to handle it and perplexingly diverse conceptions of it exist in different subjects. Just take a look at the entry for ’nothing’ in any good dictionary and you will find a host of perplexing synonyms: nil, none, naught, nulliform, nullity – there is a nothing for every occasion. There are noughts of all sorts to zero-in on, from zero points to zero hours, ciphers, to nulliverses. There are concepts that are vacuous, places that are evacuated, and voids of all shapes and sizes. On the more human side, there are nihilists, nihilianists, nihilarians, nihilagents, nothingarians, nullifideans, nullibists, nonentities, and nobodies. Every walk of life seems to have its own personification of nothing. …..
“The sheer number of synonyms for ‘nothing” is in itself evidence of the subtlety of the idea that the words try to capture. Greek, Judaeo-Christian, Indian and Oriental traditions all confronted the idea in different ways which produced different historical threads. … [T]he concept of nothingness that developed in each arena, merely to fill some sort of gap, then took on a life of its own and found itself describing a something that had great importance.”
If you look at zero, you see nothing; but look through it and you will see the world! For zero brings into focus the great, organic sprawl of mathematics, and mathematics, in turn, the complex nature of things.
Zero appeared and reappeared through time. Sumerians had it, but then it disappeared. The Greeks knew zero a bit, and then it disappeared. Zero was used in India. When it finally came to our Western world, it gave rise to fear and superstitions, but finally emerged this side of Newton with all the subtlety and complexity of our times. It was a difficult concept that sometimes opened up surprising possibilities. And, it was often taken as a metaphor or symbol.
Theologically speaking, the advent of zero opened up holes in the Christian concept of how things came to be. The ancient Christian tradition of creation out of nothing is simply that God made the Universe appear out of nothing at a moment in the finite past. Everything that constitutes the world – space, time, matter, laws of Nature – sprung into being all at once; everything was created by the hand of God. The tradition had as its primary objective, to make a statement about the relationship between God and the Universe; to assert that there was meaning and purpose to the world, and that was dependent upon God.
Moving gingerly from religion to science, we see new discoveries in the last century: There was quantum physics, explaining among other things, the structure of the atom, and that space is not empty. There are waves and forces and particles. There is expansion. There is the “black hole,” a cosmic cookie monster relentlessly devouring everything that strays too close. The vacuum has moved to center stage; its existence and universality turn out to underlie the workings of all the forces of Nature. There is, indeed, something in the void. That something could be God; but then again, maybe not! And, if not, what is it?
The question we’re dealing with – on many levels – is always, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Scientists in modern times read the book of Nature; while carrying on their quest at the edge of knowledge, where scientists always work. They position themselves at the boundary of something and nothing, and from that stance, believe what they can’t help but believe, -- that what is out there is unequivocal and, unlike scripture, independent of our interpretations.
In the book, The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, the author, Robert Kaplan, a Harvard math professor, pulls zero away from human projections. He writes:
No matter how few or many, how ill- or well-conceived, distinctions everywhere and anywhere have made for meaning. It is only when they rupture, leaving a background with nothing on it or figures against no ground, that negation floods in. Meaning needs a content set in a context, which needs in turn what holds the two apart. It is as if in these latest excursions we had mistaken the hollow within the ring for zero, or took zero to be the surrounding space that the ring shut out. But zero is neither – it is the ring itself: pure holding apart.
In other words – zero cannot be fully understood by the human mind – at least in this stage of our evolution. We can only approach zero. It always seems to be held apart from us. We don’t know what’s inside the “hollow circle,” of zero because the circle itself keeps us out. We cannot know Nothing in its absolute state.
But we keep trying – in a number of ways.
Some of us see gain in reducing ourselves to zero. We may submerge our ego and our pride, become humble, live for others; try to become ‘zero’ as a strategy for salvation. But, in doing so, we risk hubris. The subtext is “holier than thou!”
To illustrate, two rich men, the story goes, were outdoing each other in the Temple, protesting their insignificance.
“Oh, Lord!” said one, “I am less than the spider-web strung in the light of this sunbeam, compared to You!”
“But I am less even than the tiny spider that spun it!” declared the other.
Just then a poor man entered and was dazzled by the sight of the almost transparent glistening strands of the web. “Lord!” he cried out in rapture, “how glorious are Your works! Why, compared to You, I am less than the grains of dust that catch on this web!”
One of the rich men nudged the other and whispered: “So look who’s claiming he’s nothing!”
Still, there is something in Nothing that attracts us. Some of us approach Nirvana – the Bliss of Non-Being -- but it evades us. Some may stumble onto the stillness of things, or walk toward it on a path, such as Taoism or Yoga. While on these paths we work to calm the inner chattering “monkey” (the busy thoughts in our mind). We damp down the waves of fervor and despair to a steady state; one in which we can hear nature “naturing.”
But, prepare as we may for a mere moment’s experience of invisibility, if it comes at all, it is always unexpected. Ralph Waldo Emerson was crossing the Common one winter twilight when he described this happening to him:
Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
The puzzle of non-existence is what has been peeking impishly out at us all through our travels. … Looking around you may wonder at this or that thing in the world: at its origin, how it works, or why it should be as it is and not another way; and if this or that thing is good, bad, or a neutral random event.
You become philosophical. What if a moment’s unique experience takes hold in your mind and heart, and you wonder: why is there anything at all rather than nothing? Why should each one of us exist, against all the odds? Why should this frail universe have come to be?
Philosophy begins with wonder, Aristotle said. “Why is what is?”
Unhappily, no rational assault on this ice-wall of the mystery of things can succeed since all attempts to reason -- about the fittest surviving or chance collisions, the Will or the Would or the Should – happen within the mystery itself.
I took some of these closing thoughts from Robert Kaplan’s book:
So long ago in Greece, when Socrates was young and Parmenides old, the latter laid down a challenge we have sought ever since to pick up. All you can think, he said, is: “Being is.” You cannot think non-being, nothing, the void.
Parmenides wanted us to stop talking and listen. Like the background hum from the Big Bang, Being pervades. It fills, and is the world. …
[We should come to recognize] with joy the fullness of things. There are no gaps, there is no void, the small becomes smaller but never nothing. Just as the numbers are choked to bursting with numbers, the world they describe is so silted up with beings that it is a continuous whole, a garden whose every leaf is again a garden. …
Images lie neutrally there for your choosing in the Hindu notion of brahman, an omniscient vitality like salt dissolved in water, like the water on which our sparkling bubbles of self float and burst. The world as empty; the world as full: choose which version you like, said the master of Mahayana Buddhism. Opposites are an illusion of language.
We can’t just stitch together our ideas with things we believe to be true, such as cause and effect. No matter how fine the weave, “it trails off toward earlier causes, and ever-later effects, and our mind wants no sequence of dots to cover these gaps, but a unified whole: a picture encircled with a border. So we conjure up a framework we cannot see to satisfy our need for completion. This is the framework of Being, within which our understanding works, nesting our experiences and making sense of them.
The completion is illusory … [but we cannot do without it.] … It is a mirror made of language, meant to reflect the outside in, just as mathematics, spun out from zero, contains, and is contained, in its sum.
I write this in the midst of things, in the middle of time. The world extends away on every side, taking its coordinates from a quiet center … which listens and beholds ……….. Nothing that is not there and the Nothing that is.”
I wish you the Fool’s Card in the Tarot Deck this season, the one numbered zero, the one that remains outside the pack, representing nothing. The great power of zero, or nothing, is that it represents the “one who is the spirit in search of experience.” Nothing is filled with possibilities; it is the environment of creativity.
As my family helped me to clarify, in a kitchen filled with Thanksgiving, may you take from this sermon, Nothing, and be nourished by it!
Benediction
We receive fragments of holiness,
glimpses of eternity,
brief moments of insight.
Let us gather them up
for the precious gifts that they are,
and renewed by their grace,
moved boldly into the unknown.
-Sara York
