Do You Really Believe? 3-23-14

God, grant us the grace to know what you are saying to us today.  Grant us the courage to align our outer lives with our inner beliefs.  Amen

            Parker Palmer wrote a wonderful book called The Hidden Wholeness: the Journey toward an Undivided Life.  I read it probably 4 years ago; and, still its wisdom calls to me.  It altered the way I think about my own spirituality and the need to have my inner and outer lives in congruence.  As I have journeyed over the last four years, I am much more aware of when my inner spiritual life is at odds with what I am actually doing in the world.  And my heart is called back to wholeness.  Palmer writes “The divided life may be endemic, but wholeness is always a choice.  Once I have seen my dividedness, do I continue to live a contradiction—or do I try to bring my inner and outer worlds back into harmony?  Being whole is a self-evident good, so the answer would seem to be clear.  And yet, as we all know, it is not.”  

            All three of our readings today are calling us to this same wholeness.  Palmer writes that there is a “familiar pattern of evasion” of wholeness that many of us use when first we come to believe that our inner and outer lives are indeed divided against themselves.           First, though, we must wonder aloud about how we come to this knowledge that we are not living in the fullness of the wholeness that is possible.  Paul gives us an easy test:  “…if the way you live isn’t consistent with what you believe, then it’s wrong.”  As usual, I would opt for a kinder, gentler approach both with myself and with you.  I would and do ask myself and you three brief questions.

·        When you have the chance to be quiet, is your spirit at rest?  I find that when I am not living an ‘undivided life’ that I cannot really find a place where I am at rest.  Incidents keep jumping into my thoughts that point me to exactly where I am out of wholeness.  Everything, and I mean everything that I regard as failures in my life are examples of when my inner and outer lives have been out of whack.  Think about it for a minute.  Those so-called failures or disappointments can point us directly to where we are in ‘the journey toward an undivided life’.   Instead of seeing them as failures, I can rejoice that the evidence has been given to me and I can choose to live in ways that are consistent with what I believe about myself and the world.

·        Second, how judgmental are you?  It is my experience that the more we find fault with others, the more those others are mirroring what we are unhappy with in ourselves.  So, I would suggest that the next time those judgmental feelings start creeping in that you and I immediately look at the gift the other person has given to us by pointing out to us ways our lives are divided.

·        Finally, how much time do we spend alone with God?  When I wish to avoid the answer to a question, I find it quite effective to never go where I know the answer will be.  So, when I find myself avoiding time alone with God, I ask myself what it is that I do not want to know.  And, then, if I am brave, I go to where the answer lies.

Let’s say, just so the sermon has someplace to go, that God has shown you or me an area of our lives where our outer lives are inconsistent with our spiritual beliefs.  Palmer’s ‘familiar pattern of evasion’ helps us look at our usual response.  “First”, writes Palmer, “comes denial:  surely what I have seen about myself cannot be true!”  We know that the disciples of Jesus experienced this over and over again.  In fact, their denial often frustrated Jesus.  Their “say it isn’t so” often got in the way of their grasp of what Jesus was teaching them. 

In our passage today, Jesus is explaining why he used metaphors in his teaching and that the hour has come for plain speech.  The disciples basically say, “Well, it’s about time!”  They tell Jesus that they do understand what he is saying and that they believe he is from Abba God.  Jesus, who knows their hearts better than they know themselves, asks, “Do you really believe?”  He then tells them—gives them a hint of what not to do if they really believe—he tells them that they will scatter and he will face his worst test alone from human company.  So, when I feel a ‘not me, I would never do such a thing’ a little too loudly in my head, it is best if I stop, listen again and see if there isn’t more than a little truth in what I have just heard from God or others. 

Rev. Elder Nancy speaks to this far more eloquently than I have.  When it comes to aligning our spirits with God’s spirit, she says, “We are resigned to isolation and hurt; we are skeptical, tired in our spirits, and full of unfulfilled ideas and yearnings. But just scratch the surface, and we are open to liberation, miracles, healing -- and to eating, drinking, and connecting with the Holy One.”  And so I ask, are you open today to have your surface scratched?  Along with worship, isn’t that what ‘church’ is all about—a place where we can come to have our surfaces opened to reveal that precious place where we can connect with the Holy One?

Secondly, according to Palmer, “comes equivocation:  the inner voice speaks softly, and truth is a subtle, slippery thing, so how can I be sure of what my soul is saying?”  In my own spiritual life, I find that the Spirit of the Sacred will not give up.  It’s not a catch as catch can kind of relationship.  Paul tells us to cultivate our own relationship with God.  It is through this cultivation of quiet time and inner connection with the Sacred that is within us that we will come to trust.  Then we will recognize this equivocation for what it is—an excuse, pure and simple, to make it easier somehow to walk away from this undivided life to which we are called.

Then Palmer tells us, “next comes fear:  if I let that inner voice dictate the shape of my life, what price might I have to pay in a world that sometimes punishes authenticity?”  Many of you know that I do Facebook as another way of connecting with all of you and my friends from afar.  One of you asked a question on Facebook this week that, although I have thought about it before, this time I thought about it in the context of this sermon.  The question was something like this, “How often when someone asks you how you are, do they really want to know?”  Good question—stopped me in my tracks at least for a moment.  And the comments were mostly that no one believes that anyone does really want to know.  In such a simple way as this, authenticity is punished in our world.  People want to believe that everything is ok, with you and with them.  And, so, if all of a sudden, we start telling people how we really are, what life and God is like for us, people may well start crossing over to the other side of the proverbial street when they see us coming. 

Authenticity is punished in other, more serious ways as well.  Think of the whistleblower in a corrupt company.  That punishment used to be so swift and so punitive that laws were passed to protect the so-called “whistle-blower”.  What about the role of the whistle-blower in the faith community.  Do we make it safe for people to live their own authenticity when that authenticity lies crosswise from something the faith community may have done or is doing?

Rev. Elder Nancy speaks to this as well when she writes of Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well.  She notes, “Jesus' transgressive behavior in making a social and spiritual connection with this woman frightens and bewilders the disciples. He takes them to places and encounters they might avoid otherwise. Where is Jesus taking you -- taking us -- that might scandalize others?....”

Palmer has two more patterns:  cowardice and avarice.  By cowardice, Palmer is referring to our desire to stay with what we know rather than brave the world of the unknown.  The way of our current road is well-traveled and familiar.  If we vow to allow God to change our outer life to match our inner life, we may find ourselves on some unfamiliar roads.  Do we have the courage to see where those unfamiliar roads lead?  I believe we do.  By avarice, Parker is referring to those situations where we are rewarded in some way for living less than authentically.  That reward may be seen as significant enough in order for us to “stifle our soul”.  That’s a hard one for those of us who ‘live large’ in a world that calls for us to simplify so that others might have enough to survive. 

And, so, here we have it—are we ready to live undivided lives?  Are we ready to be an undivided faith community—where all that we say we believe is evident in what we do?  I believe that we are.  Not all faith communities and not all people choose the unknown road, but I believe that we will.  It is up to you and you and you and me.  We can do this together.  May it be so for all of us and for Open Circle.  Amen and amen.  

The Opposite of Down Is..... 3-9-14

 Holy God, it’s Lent again and we’re not quite sure how to approach it.  We know that we want to grow more in inner spirit and in showing your love to the world.  Help us stay grounded in you and centered in your heart.  Amen

 

                Welcome to Lent!  Not the desert, deprivation, giving up something you love Lent, but the “how can I best embody the love of God Lent?”  Not that that necessarily means we won’t give something up, like our beliefs that we cannot change the world, or even our lethargy about spending time with God, or anything else that gets in the way of showing God’s light in the world.  This Lent we will be looking at some simple questions to which we may believe we already know the answer.  I’ll be suggesting some different answers that might change the way we live our lives in the world.

                This week we look at the exchange between Peter and Jesus just before Jesus is taken off to be tried.  Jesus is trying to prepare the disciples for what is ahead.  Peter cannot let go of the physical presence of Jesus and promises to lay DOWN his life if Jesus will just take him with him.  Obviously, Peter did not know or understand what was ahead for this man he so much wanted to follow.  Jesus’ response, while some would say is unkind, unfortunately turned out to be true.  Peter’s betrayal which is really no more than many, if not most of us have done along the way, simply shows us that Peter, and we, do not know the meaning of laying our lives down in the manner to which Jesus calls us. 

                So, what is the opposite of down?  In the spiritual life, I believe that the opposite of down is IN.  Take a look at what Rev. Elder Darlene Gardner says about Adam and eating of the apple.  Eating the apple gave him insight inside.  Suddenly, he knew that he, in Rev. Elder Darlene’s words, “would be accountable to God for the impact that his actions would have on others”.  That’s inner work, my friends, and I would suggest that the spiritual practice of Lent, or returning, is all about the inner work of becoming accountable to God and to the world for all our actions.  So, we do not lay our lives down; we open them to receive the inner work of the spirit.

                All three of our readings give us guidance in the inner work that we will undertake during this Lenten period.  Paul tells us, “But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way!”  Rev. Elder Darlene writes, “His (and our) eyes were opened to the truth that our attitudes and actions are almost always the sole cause of human pain, suffering, oppression, and exclusion. We have to accept responsibility for this; we have to care. We can no longer close our eyes to what we can now see. We can no longer close our hearts to one another nor deny that the so-called ‘other’ is really just the other part of ‘we’."  And, finally Jesus says, “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” 

                These three passages perfectly lay out the nature of the inner work that we must undertake if we are to grow in spiritual understanding this Lenten period.  First, we learn to and delight in listening to God.  This gives us freedom to hear directly from the source.  And the result?—wholeness in every part of our lives.  How do we learn to listen directly to the source?  We stop talking—talking to others, talking to ourselves, and especially, talking to God.  We give God a chance to talk to us.  Now while I would not pretend to limit the ability of God’s nature to grant us epiphanies, or “aha” moments at any time, even in the midst of a crowd of people, I know for myself that I am more able to hear God when I minimize the distractions so prevalent in my life and in my head.  This eliminating of distractions is a deliberate act.  This is a drawing away from the busyness and business of the day or night and welcoming God’s spirit into our inner beings. 

                If you’ve been reading my blog, “Sanctuary of Leaves”, you know that I have been struggling some with my ability to listen.  Two mantras were given to me and I’m finding them quite useful.  The first mantra places every aspect of my life, outer and inner, in perspective.  “What is, is.”  This implies that I am lovingly accepting where I am in everything at this point.  Struggling to change some aspect of myself or becoming embroiled in some conflict with others, doesn’t matter—when I open my heart to the message of the Divine, what is at that moment is.  I can stop my struggle, set aside my distracting emotions, and just listen.

                The second mantra given to me was “I let it all go”.  Oh, no, you might be thinking.  There she goes about letting it all go.  Been there, done that, and it—whatever the “it” is—just comes flying back into my face before I can say “amen”.  Notice, I didn’t say that this was easy and it’s only a beginning.  But, it might, just might, be worth giving it a try.  When I use these as mantras before meditation, I say to myself “what is, is” on the inhale of breath and “I let it all go” on the exhale.  Focusing on my breath makes it easier to focus on the mantras as well.  Then, I am ready to listen.  It’s hard some days.  One day, I never moved past the mantras, never did get to the place where I felt I could listen, so I just kept repeating the mantras, knowing that God was doing inner work on me in spite of myself. 

                Rev. Elder Darlene tells us that once we have obtained inner knowledge from God, just as Adam did in the eating of that darn apple, we have a responsibility to practice our own spirituality and all of our lives in ways that do not hurt others.  This inner knowledge brings an accompanying accountability.  This welcoming and healing of others that lives in our own inner selves after we receive God’s insight, means that straightway we will be living a life of love.  Jesus expands this relationship between inner truth and outer actions even more.  Living this life of love is the only way that people will know that we are following the teachings of the Spirit of God through Jesus.  We cannot tell people that we love them, we must show them.  God does this first, we are not only told that we are loved, we are given this beautiful land in which to walk, an amazingly complex body in which to embody our insight, and continual communication from God to hold our spirits securely in the Sacred.

                So the opposite of down is not up, it is in.  During this Lenten time, if we can go inside more often than we usually do, we will be rewarded with hearing God.  And, if we are open, we can listen and make our own what God is saying.  Try it with me this week.  Find a quiet place or a place where no one can disturb you.  Shut the ever-present phone off.  Get into whatever position is comfortable for you.  Start with some breathing using the mantras if they appeal to you.  Inhale, “What is, is”.  Exhale, “I let it all go”.  Do this until you begin to feel some space being made in your heart and spirit to listen to God.  When you are ready, continue focusing on your breath and allow your heart to listen.  If your thoughts take you someplace else, come back to breathing with the mantras and focus. 

                You may wonder at the inclusion of such an exercise in a sermon.  I am becoming more and more convinced that many of us are hungry for practices that will bring us closer to God.  Meditation is one such practice.  Lent is a perfect time to introduce some new practices into your spiritual life.  This week we talked about meditation.  Next week we will encounter another spiritual practice that may or may not appeal to you.  Take what feels like it fits and leave the other here. 

Because we are not all the same and a practice that feels comfortable to some may not to you.  So, in addition to having new experiences, we are also practicing inclusivity as we become more comfortable with all kinds of spiritual practices.  This Lent, let us come together as a community and go “inside” to find the truth God has entrusted to our hearts.  In the spirit of openness and unity, we pray together, May it be so.  Amen and amen.

 

 

The Practice of Hospitality-Part 2 (Outer) 3-2-14

Spirit of Hope, lead us to question deeply and often if we are all you lead us to be.  Use us to welcome the most un-welcome and teach us to open our hearts and arms to save the world.  Amen

            For those of us who live and have always lived in privilege, choosing to understand what it is to be the outsider can be difficult indeed.  Every once in a while the Universe, with her unending sense of humor, teaches me in ways I didn’t expect.  On Friday, I went to Mt. Dora to a Native American Pow-Wow.  I used to travel to the top of Hunter Mountain in the Catskills of New York every couple of years to attend huge pow-wows and spend a full day shopping for sterling silver jewelry.  I was interested to see how this pow-wow differed from the ones I was used to in New York.  I went on Friday afternoon to hear a specific musician and was surprised to see it very sparsely attended.  What that meant is that most of the folks who were there were Native American and I was very, very, well, not.  I felt particularly out of place--different.  Now it helped that many, though not all, of the Native Americans were in some form of native dress or at least aspects of native dress.  I was impressed by the sense of welcome I felt.  Every performer made certain to translate their chants and to explain to those of us who did not share their traditions exactly what they were doing and to explain the beliefs behind the various chants and dances. 

 I wandered through the vendors (and, yes, some habits die hard and I allowed myself to purchase a memento of the afternoon).  As the show kicked into gear, I sat on a bleacher in the beautiful Florida sun under a cloudless sky and began to meditate to the sounds of a wonderful Cherokee flute player.  But, God wouldn’t let me rest on the issue of welcoming and hospitality and so I reflected about what it meant to feel so “different” from the majority of those walking around; yet, so welcome.  And, not surprisingly, I got to thinking about today’s sermon and what I really wanted to say.  I found myself asking if there was really anything new to say.  Though I didn’t count them, I figure this is at least the sixth sermon on hospitality that I have preached in the 4 years since Open Circle first became this circle.  And, yet, I continue to be asked about hospitality and inclusivity and what it means to us as a church.

            Just recently, during the Capital Campaign, I learned that there seems to be a measure of misunderstanding and concern about what is meant when we call ourselves a “radically inclusive faith community”.  What are we missing as a congregation?  What am I missing as your pastor?  And, I realize that, for the most part, those of you who are hearing this sermon are not the folks who seem to be concerned.  But, nevertheless, I think we need to take a second or third or tenth look at this thing called hospitality.  And, perhaps, these thoughts can be shared with those who are missing today.  Briefly, back to my meditative thoughts at the pow-wow—after a while, the singer I most wanted to hear, Joanne Shenandoah, took the stage.  She began talking about Mother Earth and the spirituality that we all share and that we all must share if we are going to save our Mother (Earth, that is).  She sang in words of the Iroquois Nation that I could not understand, but it did not matter.  The feelings of both despair and hope were captured in her voice.  Suddenly, I did not feel different at all.  She had helped me to remember that we all share the same mother.  Funny, she, a member of one of the many oppressed peoples, sought to help me remember our sameness.  With a radical inclusivity born of her understanding that we are all the same, she called me into her sacred circle of hope and passion.

            What is it, then, that keeps us from focusing in on the feeling of being human when we think about welcome, hospitality and inclusivity?  At its truest sense, being radically inclusive means nothing more than being truly human together as we are all human.  At one point, on Friday, when I was listening to one of the many Native American or First Nation musical groups sing, drum and chant, they announced that the next song was a “Trail of Tears” song.  The announcer asked us all to stand in memory of those people who were forced by the US Government to walk from the East Coast, including Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina to Oklahoma.  The announcer brought forward two facts that I must have forgotten along the way:  one—the reason why the Native Americans left their lands.  From our place of privilege we might ask, “Why didn’t they just refuse to move? Or just give up and die?”   Native Americans think in terms of seven generations from themselves.  They knew and understood well that, if they did not take the long walk to Oklahoma, that the US Government would wipe out their nations completely.  They did it for the seventh generation—so that, seven generations from then, there would be at least a small contingent of people to pass on the traditions and cultures of those Tribes.  We stood in honor of those brave souls; and, while I did not understand the words of the chant, I could not have missed the feelings if I had tried.  The pain, suffering, and loss came through without mistake.  It was not possible to stand in that hot, Florida sun, and not see, at least for a few seconds, the long winding trail of a people displaced from their land.  Secondly, I must have forgotten that history records that those who led the Native Americans did not follow a Western path to Oklahoma even though Oklahoma is clearly west of the East Coast.  They twisted and turned mostly so that many more of the people would die but also because the White Americans believed that it would be harder for the Native Americans to stay connected to their cultures if they took a circuitous route. 

            I do not, nor do they, remind you of these stories to inflict guilt.  I remind you of them so that you might remember.  For it is in the remembering that we become human.  Jesus cared about very few specific beliefs.  He cared most of all about love and justice and knowing who we are.  He cared about the pain of the Native Americans and he cared about the White European Americans of privilege because he knew that they were alienated from their true nature as children of God.  This is some of what makes Jesus a true “radical” in every sense of the word.  He taught us to care about oppressed and oppressor, healed and healer, listener and speaker.  In our scripture today, John the Baptizer is curious about Jesus.  He sends his disciples to find out if Jesus is “the one”, the messiah, the one they had been waiting for.  Jesus is cryptic in his answer.  He says, “This is what I am doing.  The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the displaced of the earth have God’s salvation hospitality extended to them”.  And then he says, “If this is what you are waiting for, then you are in luck.”  Now, with the benefit of history, we know that this is not what the Jewish people were waiting for.  They were waiting for a king; they got a man who knew that the true nature of love and justice is as radical as it gets.  They were waiting for a military conqueror; they got someone who did not call us to “Charge!”; he called us to “Remember!”—to remember that we are children of all there is—of the one God. 

            This is how we remember our humanity.  This is how we remember what we share, not what sets us apart.  And, once we remember, we cannot help but embrace this radical inclusivity.  To be radically inclusive is merely, and I mean merely, to remember that we are all the same—that any barriers we set up come from us and not from the unity of love we call “God”.   To be radical is to remember.  It is, oh, so easy to forget.  We are schooled in forgetting; we practice it diligently anytime we see the differences of class, race, and culture as more important than the similarities of humanity.   I think back on the words of Joanne Shenandoah on Friday afternoon.  She said something like this, “If we are to survive”—and she meant all of us, not just Native Americans—“we must act and think and be as one people committed to saving our planet, to loving justice, and to acting for peace”.    May we, in this circle, remember.  And in remembering, may we act; and in our acting, may we remember again.  Amen and amen.