Following a Path With Spirit

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, January 22, 2006

Readings

from Albert Einstein

“From the age of six to fourteen I took violin lessons, but had no luck with my teachers, for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing. I really began to learn only after I had fallen in love with Mozart’s sonatas. The attempt to reproduce their singular grace compelled me to improve my technique. I believe, on the whole, that love is a better teacher than a sense of duty.”

from “Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke

We are all falling. There, this hand falls too,
Occurring to us all: just look around you.
Still there is one who holds us tenderly
As in his hands we fall, fall endlessly.

Like you, I come to this faith community seeking my best self.
Like you, I find my best self in what you reflect back to me…in what you see in me.

Standing here, I feel light reflected from your eyes, from your hearts, light bouncing back and forth between you, light shining powerfully, light of many colors blessing each of us with a clarifying vision of our true nature. I draw inspiration this morning from the work of Sharon Salzberg a teacher of Buddhist Meditation…from her book Faith; Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience.

Salzberg tells of a dream she had in which someone asked; “Why do we love people?” and the answer was given, “Because they recognize us.”

What I feel, what I see, what I hear, what I know to be true…is that what we fall into here, is the enduring light of love. A love that can be trusted, a love that provides refuge…A love that doesn’t stop our falling…but catches us time and time again. What we seek here, what we find here, is enduring love. What we experience here, is being recognized.

This is what brings us back again and again, into religious community. This is the source of the reflecting light of respect and affirmation…this love that knows no bounds. This is the vast awareness of the spiritual dimension…the horizon without limit.

I used to think that the ultimate call in my life was to change the world. I now understand that my path of spirit calls me to love the world. What are you called to in your life? To what do you dedicate yourself. Each one of us are on a path. Each one is us is seeking meaning and depth and wholeness.

The task before us is to follow a path with spirit. Individually and as community we move through life as on a journey. Making choices as we go along the road. We’re not here, at the UU Church of Rockville, because our grandparents were members here, we’re not here because it is in our neighborhood, we’re not here because we want to be upstanding citizens in our community, we’re not here because we are afraid not to be…

No, we’re here by choice.

And we’re here because we keep on falling…and we need to be held. Most of us don’t resonate with Rilke’s image of being held by God’s hand…but we all need some holding. And we all need to find and be reminded of our best self. We all need the reflection of loving eyes.

We all need a horizon without limit. A place to stand that is fully affirming.

This morning I ask you to think with me about your path in life. I ask you to consider the question of spirit or heart concerning your particular path. Is it a path with heart?

I ask you to think about what it is you trust in….what it is that you can depend on, what it is that holds you when you fall…what is enduring in your life?

I know these are hard, deep questions. You’d probably rather I’d just talk about myself. Or tell some interesting stories about someone…anyone… I almost did…originally this sermon was to be “My Path to Ministry”, because today was going to be the day of my formal installation as your minister. But things change.

Anyway, I hate to be the focus of attention. I hate for my life to be seen as emblematic of something….anything…

A real sermon should have all of us working, all of us thinking, all of us feeling.

So join me in this sermon today…join me in these hard questions.

That way we can all experience some spiritual growth, that way we can all travel a path toward liberation, that way we can all help one another. If I share my experience that will only take you so far. Each of us have to find the truth of our own experience.

In worship, a service has integrity only to the extent that we get as close as possible to the truth of the present moment.

Unitarians, and even Universalists, used to be on a path to truth…we set out together, in pairs, or in committee size groups, to seek the truth…that was most often a head trip. These days…we try instead, to seek the truth of the present moment… That journey, if we are open to it, will be a heart trip.

Heart trips involve less arguing, less statistical analysis than head trips, which you think might make them easier…but believe me, heart trips are quite difficult. What is the truth of the present moment?

Before we can arrive at the present moment, we encounter the past, with all its pain, loss, regret and failure. Before we fully arrive at the present moment, we encounter our fears concerning the future. All the what ifs…all the dire predictions, all the fear of not being good enough….all the certainty of terrible things happening.

As we live consumed with resentment and anxiety about the past and the future…we adapt, we deny, we avoid, we create and learn to wear masks. We wear masks that seem to work pretty well to hide our pain and our fear. “I’m fine, how are you?”

In order to arrive at the present moment, we must drop our masks.

All religious faiths, speak of the dying of the spirit…the death of self or ego, required for spiritual rebirth. If we truly drop our masks…our defenses, our old practices of hiding our true nature…then we will die to our old self…to our old path. As the quote from the native American sweat lodge says; “You will probably die during the ceremony. And today is a good day to die.”

To stay on a path with heart, it is necessary to go through, not around, your pain. To stay on a path with heart, it is necessary to go through, not around, your despair.

Here’s where teachers, mentors, gurus’, spiritual directors, ministers, can come in handy. They can stay with you as you move through the pain and the despair. They can remind you that none of us is alone when it comes to pain.

Remember the story of the woman whose child died, and she carried the child in her arms…seeking counsel and comfort from the spiritual leader in her community…she asks him to bring her child back to life.

And the teacher agrees to do so, if she can find one household in the community that has not lost a child. And so she goes door to door and of course, finds not a single family that has not lost a child. And so her grief continues, but her relationship to her grief changes, as she realizes the horizon of human experience of which she is now a part.

As we walk a path with spirit, we discover our true nature…we discover the connection we share with all life, we discover the vast Awareness, the life, of which we are a part.

Painful loss can be a way into a deeper awareness of self and others. Pain can burn away superficiality. But for this to be so, we must drop our masks. Throughout my life, I have learned again and again the purifying nature of human pain and despair, how it takes me to a deeper level.

During the years I served our congregation in Knoxville, TN, we had a tragic suicide. I was very close to the woman who took her life; she had been a leader in the church. She was only in her forties and she had teenage daughters and a husband. The night after she died we had a memorial vigil in the sanctuary…it was a night when I took off my mask of competent, calm, religious leadership…I called on a colleague to be present that night and serve as minister…that night I knew myself to be one of the grieving members of the congregation, a person in need of ministry.

The comfort and consolation I received that night from members of the congregation, strengthened and prepared me to be fully present with the husband and family in the coming weeks and months. If I had kept my mask of competence…I doubt I would have had the resources to serve the family well.

My awareness of myself was broadened that night. And the wide resources of that congregation affirmed as we opened to the truth of our experience. As I let others hold me as I fell.

In recent weeks, my father has begun chemotherapy and radiation treatment for his lung cancer. He and my mother, live in rural Wisconsin and drive an hour each way, every day for the treatments. So far, they are doing fine. But it has changed things in the family.

My father, amazingly, has taken off his mask of stoic pride, his mask of invulnerable father, his mask of anger at the world and at me…

For the first time ever, he answers the phone, he gets on the speaker phone, he says hello, and he answers questions about his treatment. The painful experience, the fearful anxiety about the cancer has stripped away the superficial concerns and brought him to a openness that is rare for him.

He has allowed his pain to take him to a deeper, yet more accessible place in himself.

He has said, “I love you” more times in the last few weeks than in decades.

How can you open more fully to the truth of your experience?
What masks can you discard or use as portals to your deeper self?

Can you recreate the pattern of your life, re-frame your story in such a way that takes in a new wholeness? Can you let go of your fears about the future…and enter the natural flow of now…and its myriad possibilities.

Our masks cut us off. Our masks become determiners of what happens. Our masks make it hard to breathe.

All spiritual leaders go through a purifying fire on their journeys of the heart… Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to a wider and wider image of himself and his role as his fear dropped away.

Ghandi, walked to the sea…leading people out of their ordinary pursuits, shedding the baggage of his past, living only in the moment.

The Buddha let go of all his riches, and traveled among the poor. And under the Bohdi tree, he fought the demons of fear and pride and grief.

We all have a larger nature than we can imagine. We are all people of spirit, people of great heart, people who carry a seed of the divine.

The most difficult time to shed our masks is when we feel helpless…and yet this is when we most need to come closer to the moment, this is when we most need to expand our world view.

To expand, we need to empty ourselves, to die to the old…There’s a Tibetan story about a powerful bandit who, after countless successful raids, realized the terrible suffering he had caused. Yearning for atonement he visited a spiritual teacher. “ I am a sinner,” he declared, “and I am in torment.” “What can I do?” The teacher asked the bandit…”what are you good at?”
“Nothing,” replied the bandit.
“Nothing” exclaimed the master, you must be good at something.

The bandit was quiet for a while, then said, “Actually, I am good at stealing” The teacher was pleased, “Good” he said, “that’s exactly the skill you need now. Go to a quiet place and rob all your perceptions, then steal all the stars and planets in the sky, and dissolve them in the belly of emptiness the all-encompassing space of the nature of mind.”

Buddhism teaches that life is change…ever shifting, uncontrollable…and that we must let go of fixed outcomes and trust that life moves toward healing and kindness and goodness.

I get concerned sometimes that even in our work for justice we are constrained in our approach, we wear the mask of freedom fighter, or justice maker, and we want to control outcomes…Buddhism teaches a concept called “skilled doubt”…we ask questions…questions that expand the possibilities. We let go of narrow objectives, either/or answers…we get as close as possible to the truth of the present moment…and open to the vastness beyond what we can imagine.

There was a Buddhist teacher who drew a black winged V shape on a large piece of white paper…and asked the students what they saw. To a person they said it was a bird…the teacher said no…it was the sky with a bird flying in it. Too often we see the bird, but miss the sky.

We set out on the path of spirit again and again…because we so often lose our way, or give up, or put the journey off …or feel too weak or alone or afraid…the ebb and flow of the journey is natural.

This morning I encourage you to follow your path to a liberation of spirit, whatever that might mean for you. I encourage you to explore your divine nature…to believe that you can transform your life and re-shape your pain into wisdom and love.

Ask the hard questions…remember to BREATHE…. Heal yourself with love, heal those close to you with love, heal the world with love. And know there is a community of people who recognize you.

Amen