I have to admit, it's a little daunting to be giving my First Sermon on this Fourth of July weekend. Like so many of the major holidays, this one comes freighted with a wide array of associations-here's one: watermelon. I've never been that big a fan of watermelon-all those seeds. And in Texas, where I come from, there is only one way to get rid of them, and I am just a terrible spitter. You remember those childhood contests about who can project them the farthest? That's not a pretty memory for me.
But of course, the associations are more complicated than that. Our expectations around all these major holidays are just so darned high: this is our time off, so we have to have a good time, everyone has to get along, no one must fuss, no one must feel tired, or sick, or sad. And instead, we often find ourselves snarled in heavy traffic, the kids or we are screaming, the fireworks snuffed out by low cloud cover, of the literal or the figurative kind. And on top of that, almost every major holiday comes with some complex and sticky set of issues about why and what we're celebrating. If Christmas and Easter bring up questions about faith, then the Fourth of July surely poses some puzzlers about independence versus interdependence, patriotism and a good kind of pride versus their kissing cousins of nationalism and jingoism. And all these associations and questions can numb us to the present occasion; they can take the celebrating right out of the celebration.
So I'm not going to talk about the Fourth. I'm going to talk about the Fifth of July, and the Sixth, and the Seventh, and a different kind of celebration, a kind of celebration that we really can have every day. A celebration we can have even on the "morning after," when we climb back up to the top of the hill, the very scene of last night's sparkling revels, and find there, as our opening words suggested, nothing but "dead sticks" on the ground. Here we are, in broad daylight, facing once again our daily round of chores and challenges, carrying our burdens of disappointments and losses. How do we celebrate now?
If this were a musical, this would be the point where I would burst into song. Because this is the Big Transition; this is the heightened moment when the feelings swell until they just have to burst forth in melody. And that's exactly what I want to talk about: those unexpected, mostly unbidden moments, often those little moments, when in the very midst of the "dead sticks," Life-with-a-capital-L bursts in on us anyway, and we feel some hint of joy, or gratitude, or just plain wakefulness. Noticing those moments, showing up for those moments-that's what I call a different kind of celebration, a kind of celebration that is available to us every day. I did a very UU thing in preparing this sermon; I looked up the Latin root for celebrate and found that it actually means "to frequent." So this kind of celebration is like a place we can visit often. But how?
"She who drives the loudmouths from the hall ... clears it for a different celebration," Rilke says, "where the one guest is you." OK, you can call that guest what you like-Life, or Spirit, or The Moment, or God-but we first have to make a space for it. By the way, I have nothing against loudmouths-often I am one myself-but if what we mean by "loudmouths" is that anxious noisy chatter that consumes so much of our consciousness and that gets in the way of our direct experience of what's happening now, then I say, Yes! Let's clear the loudmouths out!
One way to do this is by having a practice-something we do every day, maybe frequently throughout the day, to create an opening, to remind ourselves to wake up, to show up, to notice. "Wake now, my senses, and hear the earth call"-maybe your practice is a song, maybe it's some form of meditation, or prayer, or maybe it's just remembering to listen to others and to look around us
My dad and I had a big fight on the phone last week. I was kind of hoping we'd grown past this, but, well my father disagreed with a decision I'd made, and we both got pretty emotional. What we really meant to say was "I'm worried about you" and "I'm scared too," but of course it went more like this: "All your life you've made these decisions (dot dot dot)"-with a list of terrible consequences-and from me, "Well, you've never "-with a list of terrible omissions. So I spent a sleepless night afterward; the loudmouths were out in full force, making me toss and turn with doubt and anger and self-recrimination. Early the next morning I decided to go for a walk, just to get away from my own nagging and isolating inner voices and to get out among all those people going off to work, or opening up their shops, or walking their dogs. As I was passing the library on 79th Street, I stepped into the middle of someone else's story: a guy was walking a pair of those small fluffy white Chinese dogs, and he was in the midst of scolding one of them-"What did I just tell you?" he was saying, sounding rather parental. "What did I just tell you?" he insisted, as though the dog would answer him. And the dog was looking worried, confused, guilty [show] I had to smile. Then I got to the park, and the birds were singing and the trees were in full lush leaf, and together they began to work their usual-their frequent magic, and a little space started to open up, in here. Finally, as I turned toward home, I encountered another dog drama: a large, curly-haired mutt was lunging on his leash at a much smaller cocker spaniel. "No, no, it's all right, Fido (or whatever his name was)"-the owner was obviously trying to reassure him-"that's not Chelsea, that's a different dog." And then, amazingly, she turned to me, half-exasperated, half-laughing, and just offered me the whole story, about a cocker spaniel in their building who is very territorial and who always gives her dog grief, even from way down the block, so now her dog gets all huffy and defensive whenever he sees any cocker spaniel
Later that afternoon I called my dad found out he didn't even realize we'd had a fight. And then, half-laughing, half-exasperated, I talked it out with him, and we really listened to each other, and we made a promise that the next time we were under so much stress and felt the tensions start to rise, we would stop, and step back, and take a breath-or two-before we blurted anything out.
There actually is a point to all these shaggy-dog stories. The Sufi poet Rumi says it best: "Every object and being in the universe is / a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin." For Rumi, the Tigris is the great metaphor for Life, or Spirit, or God. "Every object and being in the universe is a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty " The dog dramas brought me out of my isolation and back into connection with the "interdependent web of all existence." A story from a stranger, offered as a gift, made me feel once again that I belonged to the larger human family. Sometimes all it takes for this kind of celebration is to look outward and receive what the world, what the moment, has to offer.
On the other hand, many practices help us to turn inward in order to do just the same thing. I have a friend, his name is J P, who has found a way to personalize the practice of prayer. J P works for a very high-powered financial services firm as an "organization development consultant," which on the people level boils down to asking employees to grow and change in their professional lives. He's been at the job a little over a year, and it's been going great, he's been getting all kinds of recognition, but still this spring he began to feel that something was missing. Here he was, supposed to be a kind of "conduit for change," a channel through which others could come to self-realization and growth, but he wasn't doing the real work on himself. How could he ask others to change if he wasn't taking the time to weave together those disparate threads of his own life, if he wasn't paying attention to the wholeness of his own body, mind, and spirit? So he started doing this, and like so many practices, it's deceptively simple: Every morning when he first gets up, as he showers and shaves and gets dressed, he checks in very consciously: what is this day about? what are the tasks he's facing? most important, how does he feel, what's going on with him in body, mind, and spirit? And then he sits down and writes a prayer-this part takes only about two minutes. Then-and he says this is important-he says the prayer aloud. "May 18. Let the universe and God guide me through a day of work. To be productive, clear-minded, intentional. To be strong, to be passionate. I have this one day, God. Just today." Prayer is deeply personal, and I don't want you to be distracted by needing to translate too much. But here's one that I think we can all relate to: "June 16: Patience. Amen." The point is he's paying attention. He's clearing some space and inviting Life in, so that he can go out and share his particular gifts through the day.
Life-with-a-capital-L is right here, as close as a breath, if we will just turn to it. "The breath is the bridge connecting life and consciousness," Thich Nhat Hanh says. I like this image: the breath as a kind of drawbridge that we can lower by breathing mindfully, and over this bridge, here comes Life, here comes Spirit, to fill us up, and over this same bridge, we can travel out, toward others, toward action in the world. Breathing in, we are in-spirited, and we come wide awake to what is, whether we're washing the dishes or walking down the street. Breathing out, we express the love and wonder that this miracle of Life inspires. Such a simple, such a frequent act, breathing-why aren't we mindful of it all the time? Well, because sometimes it hurts to breathe. Sometimes, when we turn our attention to this moment, it is full of so much mental or physical pain that we would rather look away than look straight at it, open up to it. For me, it's most often loneliness that makes it hard to breathe. Or fear, fear of not knowing, of not "getting it right." What do we do then?
Last year I edited a book called The Spirited Walker, by Carolyn Scott Kortge. It's a typical book for the nineties: it shows you how you can deepen your spiritual life and gain aerobic fitness at the same time. But she also tells this story. Every evening, on the outskirts of Phoenix, a woman would go for a walk along the dry channel of a desert stream. She'd take in a deep deep breath, and let out a sigh. In and out-breathe and sigh, breathe and sigh over and over until the sighs became moans, and then roars, and then sobs. Her husband had committed suicide, and she was breathing out her grief and anger. Every evening for a year she balanced the panic attacks and fearful new responsibilities of the day with these long healing walks. Now, how in the world can we call this a celebration? I think it is-a different kind of celebration. Her daily practice cleared some space, it lowered the bridge; it not only let Life in but it kept Life close. She "frequented" her own painful path, she showed up, she hung in; and now, six years later, she uses her walking time to say thank you.
We don't have to go up on the highest mountain with Black Elk to see the sacred hoop of the world and to recognize that all of it is holy. We can make a space for this right here, right now, on July Fifth. "Every object and being in the universe is a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty " and then Rumi goes on: "Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin. You knock at the door of reality, shake your thought-wings, loosen your shoulders, and open."
So, what practice will you use today to shake your thought-wings? Why don't we start by just taking a breath, lowering the drawbridge, and inviting Life, inviting the Spirit, to fill us. Look around you, right here, in this space: do you see? Your neighbors are overflowing with beauty and wisdom, and you too are making the earth more shining. Now that's something to celebrate.
Alleluia! Amen. Let's sing! Copyright AllSouls 1998.