Healing the World-Part 2

Healing the Earth – Part 2    8-10-13

God, Creator of the Universe and of this planet earth we call “home”, teach us to treasure all that you have placed in our presence to enjoy, preserve, and protect.   Teach us to care and to care deeply.  Speak to us through your messengers—the trees and sky and people.  Amen

          Just the other day I was talking to a tree—our  tree, the big one in the center of the driveway, the one around which Kathy has so lovingly tended a garden and made the space even more beautiful.  Anyway, it was a lovely time of day, I was alone on the campus, it had already rained and cooled a little, and I was sitting outside on Annie’s bench.  The chimes were singing softly and the breeze was gently blowing the leaves so that the big tree looked like a moving, undulating, mass of green.  I was troubled that day—troubled because of all that I felt I had left undone and concerned about how to get enough hours in the day.  I suspect every one of you have felt the same way.  So rather than working myself up into a dither, I went outside to find some center and solid ground on which to stand.  I checked in with myself and with God and said, “This sermon on healing the earth—it feels hopeless, overwhelming; and, certainly there must be someone more studied in the whole ecology thing than I am”.  I tell you, I’m fairly certain I heard that tree say, “Oh, there are many people more learned than you are but you are the one here and now”.   The tree (and by now I was getting pretty comfortable listening to a talking tree) said, “Let me sing you a song.  It will tell you all that you need to know”.  And, so, the tree began to sing, first in a high treble as the upper leaves danced in the wind and then in a lower baritone as the roots began to shake the earth ever so slightly.  Then the whole tree began to sing together in a verdant mass of voices and instruments more beautiful than any music I had ever heard before. 

          I cannot tell you the words or if, indeed, there even were any words; but, I left her presence and returned to my desk to begin to do my research for this sermon full of the knowledge of what God wanted me to say today.   Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh (Tik * N'yat * Hawn) speaks of where we must start when he says, “Be aware of the contact between your feet and the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. We have caused a lot of damage to the Earth. Now it is time for us to take good care of her. We bring our peace and calm to the surface of the Earth and share the lesson of love. We walk in that spirit.” 
          We have talked these past few weeks of healing –healing ourselves, healing each other, and healing Mother Earth.  Those species among us who are sentient, living and breathing in this faithful environment have a separate and special responsibility to work for the survival of our Mother. And in that quest, I am reminded of apple seeds my own mother, or perhaps grandmother, let me plant in Dixie cups.  It was a grand experiment for as long as my interest could be maintained.  Once the seed had sprouted and shot through the dirt into the air, the day to day watering and care grew tedious and was easily forgotten.  We are often much the same in our commitment to our Mother Earth—we hear something, it affects us—but once the excitement is over, we return to our mostly irresponsible using up of irreplaceable natural resources. 

          Webs of people on the internet are dedicated to the healing of the planet, our planet, this place we live and breathe and have our being.  Their desire is to heal the world from the inside out.  But these actions merely touch the surface, though they are valid and valiant efforts.  All of these efforts, as well as all of ours, require that a seismic shift occurs in the Hearts and Minds of Humanity.  We are the only ones who can change and heal the earth.  Period. 

          Transcendentalist poet and author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said this about Nature, “Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.”  One cannot help then but to ask—“and what of us?”  Are we not made to emancipate Nature?”  Should there not be a sacred reciprocity between Humanity and the rest of the Creator’s Creation?  Popular spiritual author, Eckhart Tolle, speaks of this relationship in a way that speaks differently about that relationship.  He says, “You add a very important dimension to nature when you perceive it through the depth of your Being. Because, ultimately you are not separate from it, and as you perceive it, nature knows itself through you, its own beauty, its sacredness.”
          The congruence of Emerson’s and Tolle’s two brief statements is immediately apparent when we are able to see ourselves as one with the rest of God’s creation.  However, this requires some hefty paradigm shifting on our parts.  If creation and her natural processes were not created solely to sustain those parts of creation which claim great privilege, and, if we are truly one with God and God’s creation, then to abuse our Mother Earth is to abuse ourselves and every other expression of Humanity throughout the earth.  At that point, religion truly does not matter.  It does not matter to God why or how we come to a place of understanding this hallowed unity between Humankind and the rest of God’s works.  And, I am absolutely positive that the beautifully singing tree in the center or our campus does not care why you love her, only that you do.  The outcome of that love cannot help but be tender, loving, generous care towards her and all of the cosmos.

          It is spiritually awkward if not ethically unacceptable to come to a place of celebrating diversity among humankind while, simultaneously, destroying the diversity of the rest of creation.  We all know that there is an always-expanding demand for natural resources of all kinds.  Living spaces and perceived needs of humans in the over-developed world continue to take priority while toxins and poisons continue to accelerate the devastation of our water and soil.  Biodiversity—the diversity of plants, animals, and other species—is being destroyed worldwide even as we sit here this morning.  Can you fathom this frightening fact?  Half of the world’s forests and a quarter of the coral reefs are simply gone—lost to our children and grandchildren. Threats increase to the oceans exponentially each year.  And while we are no longer damaging the ozone layer as quickly as we once were, but there is still a large hole remaining.  “Global warming”—a concept as controversial as it is terrifying—suggests that the changes in the world’s climate are due to the proliferation of human-made, so-called “greenhouse gases”—gases that we could avoid producing if we undertook to make our methods of production of energy and other products managed by the level of damage to the planet instead of speed and convenience.   

          The world is easily perceived as a breathing, living being—constantly engaged in the production of all we believe we need to survive.  But it is not so easy for her to continue to provide for these needs as it was in the past.  We, in the developed world, believe that there will always be enough, or at least, enough for us.  We somehow manage to ignore the fact, or work to blame it on someone else, that there are those already doing without.  We have forgotten our inter-connectedness—between each of us and each other and to the world.  Although clearly designed to be caretakers of the world, we have, collectively, become simply takers from the world.  And, while we perceive that we have a choice, in reality we don’t.  Either we contribute to the healing of the world, or we contribute to her and, subsequently, our own destruction. 

          Our singing tree calls to us—come visit her. We know that we are here on this earth for a very short time—every day is a gift.  Our impermanence need not lead to waste and carelessness with our children’s futures.  When we choose to connect to the deep positive energy that exists wherever humankind remembers their sacred care-taking task and takes it seriously, we will join the ranks of those ready to make a change.  When we are present to this moment, we can feel joy and can listen to the silent revelation of hope generated from the center of our being and the center of the Earth.  As we rest we take guidance from the Divine Breath of Creation.  We breathe in God’s call to our hearts; we hold it there for just the time between our inhale and exhale.  And, that is enough—truly enough to change our hearts and minds.  When we exhale, we have been changed by God’s visitation of Sacred Grace in our hearts.  We breathe in God’s call to our hearts—and in the time it takes for our lungs to switch from inhaling to exhaling, we have been changed. 

There is an ancient Gaelic religious group known as the Druids.  Very little is known of their spiritual practices.  However, one thing seems certain—the Druids were spiritually in tune with the Creator and the Creation.  There is a lovely prayer associated with them.  Can you hear the background music from the trees when they prayed?  “Deep within the still center of my being, may I find peace.  Silently within the quiet of the Grove, may I share peace.  Gently and powerfully, within the greater circle of humankind, may I radiate peace.”  Amen and amen.

Healing the World-Part 1 8-4-13

Healing the World-Part 1  8-4-13

God, Creator of the world, Sustainer of all that it in it, and Lover of all that find their breath of life through you, gather us together this day.  Encourage us to listen with soft and open hearts.  May all that we say, and all that we ponder together, contribute to healing energy for the sake of the world.  Amen.

                If I began to sing, “we are the world; we are the children”, most of you would start swaying with the music and singing along.  It was 1985 and Harry Belfonte had an idea.  Following the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” by a UK supergroup of singers, Belefonte tasked Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie to write a song for a US-based supergroup.  If you haven’t looked at the video lately, look it up, it’s amazing how many of the singers I could not identify.  Let me remind you of the rest of the words to the chorus:  We are the world, we are the children; we are the ones who make a brighter day
so lets start giving.  There's a choice we're making; we're saving our own lives.  It’s true we'll make a better day—just you and me.”  If you were like me, you listened to that song A LOT!  For a while there, it played at least once an hour on virtually every radio station in the country.  The song went to Quadruple Platinum and sales from the song itself and marketed “We Are the World” merchandise raised over $63 million dollars for humanitarian aid to Africa and the US.  Now this song was not without its critics—primarily around the notion that the song did not raise questions about the nature and cause of poverty and that the lyrics sounded strangely familiar to language that we had used for decades—language  which had never resulted in any fundamental change.  And, this is where we pick up today.   By the way, I loved the song then and love it now; sometimes the very thought that people cared enough to come together is enough for a start.   As we grow spiritually, we also grow morally and ethically; and, we ask incrementally harder questions.

                Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor and community organizer, gives our thoughts structure by way of describing our stories that we bring to the energy, the diversynergy, if you will, of our common ground of faithfulness.  First, according to Ganz, “We all have a story of self…What’s utterly unique to us is our own journey of learning to be a full human being, a faithful person.  And those journeys are never easy.  They have their challenges, their obstacles,  their crises.  We learn to overcome them, and because of that we have lessons to teach.  In a sense, all of us walk around with a text from which to teach, the text of our own lives.”  So far, in our communal walk through the nature and process of healing we have mostly talked about the “text of our own lives.”  And only when this text includes our own experiences  of healing are we able to actively invite others into the same spiritual place that we are.  Perhaps, even more important—we have concluded that one must have experienced this healing before one is ready to stand against injustice, bigotry, and evil.  And, we have told that story many times in the power of the diversity and exchange of energy that we experience as a community of faith.  So, this is our story.

                Ganz writes, “The second story is the story of us.  That’s an answer to the question, Why are we called?  What experiences and values do we share as a community that call us to what we are called to? What is it about our experience of faith, public life, the pain of the world, and the hopefulness of the world?  It’s putting what we share into words. ..Faith traditions are grand stories of us.  They teach how to be an us.”  We, here at Open Circle, have talked often about where we have been and where we believe we are headed.  Your presence and enthusiasm in last week’s Holy Conversation were proof of your commitment to this community.  You, each one of you, from those who have attended for years to those of you who are here today for the first time are part of this great “US”.  But, as you would suppose, there is more.  There is, according to Ganz, the story of now.

                Ganz strikes a common chord for us when he says:  “Finally, there’s the story of now—the fierce urgency of now.  The story of now is realizing, after the sharing of values and aspirations, that the world out there is not as it ought to be.  Instead, it is as it is.  And that is a challenge to us.  We need to appreciate the challenge and the conflict between the values by which we wish the world lived and the values by which it actually does.  The difference between those two creates tension.  It forces upon us consideration of a choice.  What do we do about that? We are called to answer that question in a spirit of hope.”  Ganz says “we”—and we must resist the temptation to say “we who?”  Nevertheless, moving into this spirit of hope, facing this challenge is sometimes quite difficult.  We can begin to understand why it is difficult when we remember our passage from the New Testament this morning:   Jesus had been up on a mountain, a place he often went to re-power or revive his own connection to the sacred.  Having spent time in meditation or prayer, Jesus comes down and sees a large (the scripture says “huge”) crowd.  These were his disciples, followers, and other people who wanted to see and hear him.  The New Testament says:  “They came to hear him and to be healed from their diseases—even those suffering from what we today would call mental illness came and were healed.  And listen carefully to this:  "The whole crowd wanted to touch him, because power was going out from him and he was healing everyone.”  Notice that our scripture says “Power was going out from him”.  For Jesus, and, subsequently for us, this healing ministry required work—it required power—power that was restored in his own spiritual practices and meditation so that he could continue in the world.  Not content to only touch them physically, Jesus also wanted to touch or teach them spiritually.  Hear again the words of comfort from Jesus.  “Jesus raised his eyes to his disciples and said:  “Happy are you who are poor, because God’s kingdom is yours.  Happy are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied.  Happy are you who weep now, because you will laugh”.  For Jesus, words and actions were tied very closely together.  Notice that he healed them of their physical and mental illnesses before he tried to teach them about the nature of the world, or suggest that a new order was on the horizon for those who now are poor, hungry, weeping.  This then is true for us as well.  First, we show the world our love and then we talk.  It is almost as if our actions, just like the actions of Jesus, earn us the right to tell others what propels us to care for them.  Without those actions of love, our words of love and comfort ring hollow. 

                Philosopher and theologian Teilhard de Chardin speaks of a “day when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love.  And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire.”   Stop for a moment, and let that thought sink in.  When fire, the fire that captured heat and the ability to cook and stay warm revolutionized the way people lived.  Nothing was the same after fire was discovered and shared with the world.  You have to assume that word about the wonderful thing called fire spread far and wide, quick and fast.  Everyone wanted to know about this fire—this fire that would change their very lives every single day, for the rest of their lives. 

                I believe the same is true of the fire of which Teilhard de Chardin speaks. On that day when we harness the energies of Love in the name of God, news of this new “fire” will spread as fast as the first fire.  Diairmuid O Murchό, captures the significance of this new fire.  He says, “The time is right for a type of religious quantum leap—not into some vast unknown, but into the deep story, the well-spring of spiritual awakening which existed before, and will continue to flourish long after, every religion know to humankind will have faded into history.”  Are you ready to stretch who this community is, indeed, who you are in order to experience this quantum leap into the deep story?  Are you ready to feel your heart warm with the new fire—and to take the news of the new fire to others?  Are you ready to say “this is the day I will put aside all negative and unhealthy thoughts” and devote yourself to learning and loving your way through this quantum leap—a leap not unlike the leap that Jesus made when he turned the laws upside down and challenged the bedrock of society when he said we are all the same—all the children of God.  God calls us to leap; and, so we will, and, so, we do. In this community—this community of quantum leapers—we find discernment—in this community we find challenge—and in this community we find love.  Amen and amen.

Heal My Heart 7-28-13

God, we are all ears today.  Send your Holy Spirit to enlighten and encourage us to dare to reach and receive your divine healing.  Your sacred spirit calls us to come close and listen.   We are fully here in this place—alive and aware of your presence.  Amen

I am a person who has sought after healing from adolescence.  I knew, before I knew much else about God, that it was in God that I would finally find my yearning for wholeness realized.  As I have told you before, I tried it all—healing services, every book on healing known to humankind, it seems, tapes, CD’s, holistic doctors, everything I could find that promised healing.  And, all the time I knew it came from God—I just didn’t know how.  In my sixth decade of life, I have come to understand much about healing and the relationship between my body, the Body of Christ, and God, the creator.         

I have, most importantly, come to understand three things:

·        I have come to understand that the God who created me did so exactly to plan.  I do not have to change who I am to be whole.  And that is about far more than just sexuality.  It seems that I have spent my life apologizing to someone or another about something or another.  I am a well-practiced apologizer.  In fact, I have the art of apology down so well, that I hardly notice when I am apologizing again.  And, what do I know now?  I know that the fine art of apologizing is not one of the “Gifts” of the Spirit.  Are you an apologizer, too—perhaps for your past, your sexuality, or spirituality?  Perhaps you apologize for needing feedback and connection in this life.  Or perhaps you find yourself apologizing simply for being.  Now hear this—this is the good news through the grace of God—there is no need for you to apologize to the world for who are and what you need.  I believe that God wants us to save our “I’m sorries” for the occasional step on the toe, or angry word, or the bump in the grocery check-out line; or for the, hopefully rare, disagreements or misunderstandings.        

             Think about it.  Do you apologize or say “I’m sorry” a lot, you may be ready to stop and see if your apologies come from a tender heart determined to mend the everyday hurts of life or from a broken and fearful heart yearning for acceptance and relationship with others.  The first step to heart-healing comes in the complete embrace of ourselves exactly as we are in this moment.   God calls us to pause and think together, “God, you created me and love me.  I am beloved and loveable just as I am.” 

·                         Is there someone you need to forgive in order to heal your heart?  God understands how hard it is to forgive.  It must pain the Spirit of God and the Order of the Universe to forgive us over and over again, but Sacred Wholeness through Divine Love allows no room for resentment or offense.  This then is the message that we receive—being in the state of divine wholeness, where our hearts are healed, leaves no room for unforgiving thoughts, bitterness, or anger.  Do you have room in your heart for Sacred Wholeness or is your heart full of the record of all of life’s offenses which, stewing together like a giant boiling pot of toxins, crowd out the possibility of God’ healing work in your heart?   Forgiveness comes hard unless we allow God to soften our hearts and help us say, “I forgive and forgive and forgive—God, teach me to forgive as soon as I feel the anger or hurt start to build so that there is always room for your Sacred Wholeness in my heart.

·                                             The third thing that I’ve learned along the way is that I can’t heal my own heart.  Only God can pour Sacred Wholeness into the darkest parts of my heart—the deep recesses where hidden pain still lies waiting to steal my peace away.  And so, I have begun to allow God to show me those places—and that isn’t always pleasant.  But this I know, when I allow God to shine the Holy Light of compassion into those bruised and scarred places, I am clearing the way for more and more of the gift of Sacred Wholeness.  I used to begrudge this work—whether I did it alone or with another—but now I rejoice when I can clear the next room and allow God’s light to be permanently on.  Sherrie and I have been moving—ugh—and we both long for the day when everything is in place and the house is whole.  It is with this same longing that I approach the healing of my heart—bit by bit—even box by box—it all becomes whole.

               There is a poem by Esther Yff-Prins that is a beautiful telling of this process.  It is brief and I would like to read it to you—I invite you to close your eyes:

Open

Slowly, the descent begins,

Moving down,

Down into the

Corridors of my heart.

Tenderly, gently,

Consent unbars the door

Of a hidden chamber.

Now I touch the

Breath of my soul;

Taste the depth of

My longing;

Hear the echoing

Silence within.

Now I encounter

The welcome

Of the Divine,

Pulsating, poignant,

Irresistible.

Awed by the

Language of God

At the center of my being

I linger, embraced

In wordless benediction,

Sheltered in the Sacred.

               Hmmm, “Sheltered in the Sacred.”  What does that truly mean?  I believe that one pitfall we may fall into in this process of allowing God to heal our hearts is to imagine that a healed heart is a completely new and shiny heart.  While God makes all things new, God does not take away the learning and growing that our formerly broken and shattered hearts have given to us.  There is an interesting story; I don’t recall the source, about a village where a young person stated with great pride that they had the most beautiful, flawless, sparkling clean heart.  An older, wiser person challenged the younger.  Through the magic of ancient story-telling, the crowd looked at the older one’s heart.  It beat strong and smooth, but the group saw that it was full of scars, one scar after another.  There were holes in places and some places where pieces had been put back in the holes but didn’t quite fit right.  The older one looked at the younger one and said, “I would never trade my heart for yours. Every scar represents a person I’ve given my love -- I tear out a piece and give it to them. Sometimes they give me a piece of their broken heart, which I fit along jagged edges. When the person doesn’t return my love, a painful gouge is left. Those gouges stay open, reminding me that I love these people too. Perhaps someday they will return and fill that space.”  God heals our hearts and transforms our regrets into gratitude and our brokenness into joy. 

              

               This acknowledgement that we must allow God to heal our hearts is integral to becoming a church of radical inclusion.  We enter into Sacred Wholeness not just for our own pleasure, but also so that we can lead others through the same process.  As more and more people seek and find this church as an oasis of true welcome, healing, comfort, and community, we must be ready—ready to offer welcome and healing, comfort and community.  Jesus tells us, in the scripture we heard today, that what comes out of our mouths is the most important as it comes from the heart.  We do not want to be like the Pharisees who, having no authentic experience of God’s Sacred Wholeness, would, instead focus on rules and conditions—pushing the less acceptable to outside the circle of believers.  We seek to have what it takes to lead others to God’s reign of justice—justice for the world and justice for ourselves, but we cannot expect people who still yearn for Sacred Wholeness—that gift from God—to stand for justice and peace.  And in this standing for justice and peace, we make a difference in the world.  We stand as healed and whole people ready to invite others to that same circle of healing and wholeness so that they can stand for justice and peace as well.  And, as we draw the circle wider and wider, we must all begin to take an active role in the welcoming and telling.

               Our Native American Healing Prayer this morning keeps our focus right—the one who prays does so to be able to serve—and ends the prayer like this:  “Mother, heal my heart so that I can see the gifts of yours that can live through me”.  And, so, together we pray in that same spirit, Mother, Father, Creator God, Great Spirit of Healing and Health, make us whole in this moment, teach us to value our own wholeness always over anger and pain, and show us the way to welcome others to this great circle of Sacred Unity and Love.  And all God’s people said, amen and amen.