Becoming
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 24, 2017
by The Reverend Craig M. Nowak
Have you ever done something stupid… with a an utter lack of awareness of what you were doing or what impact it might have? You, know those kinds of things where in retrospect you sit there an wonder, “Where was my head?” or “What was I thinking?” Perhaps you were walking looking at the screen on your phone and got stuck in a rotating door (I’ve seen it happen) or spent an hour grocery shopping only to discover at the check out that you left your wallet at home (I’ve done that). And surely we’ve all said or done things that have impacted our lives or the lives of others in ways we hadn’t imagined, sometimes easily forgiven, sometimes not.
The stupid, thoughtless, hurried things we say and do, when seemingly harmless, are easily forgiven and forgotten, excused as a byproduct of a busy life and busy world where each of us has limited “bandwith.”
But sometimes the stupid, thoughtless or hurried things we say and do are more serious with potential consequences that make them harder to forgive or forget, like the US senate’s current attempt to pass a massive healthcare bill with, as even its advocates admit, little understanding of the bill’s immediate or long term impact on the lives of millions. The actions of the senate, whether the bill ultimately passes or not, are an example of a moral failing, the extreme byproduct of busy lives and a busy world.
The Dalai Lama has called busyness a form of laziness. How can that be? How can one be busy and lazy at the same time? One answer can be found in our first reading this morning, words attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A person will worship something…” Worship here does not mean praise or ritual directed toward a deity, but rather as the focusing of our attention and energy toward something. And not fleetingly so, but with steady, fervent devotion, and to such a degree that it will in time, according to Emerson, “determine our lives, and character.” Emerson, thus reminds us of a less familiar understanding and effect of worship, “to shape worth”. More plainly, what we worship shapes us. Which is what makes Emerson’s words both insightful and something of a warning…reminding us, “It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
Now, there are innumerable sermons around bemoaning the worship of money, power, youth, body image, the individual, culture, science, the “wrong” religion or god(s), etc. Each making their case by pointing to the state of the world. Yet as I reflected on what I experience and see most often at atop the human pantheon of idols so many rail against I kept returning to appearances. In one way or another it seems we so often worship appearances.
On one level we kind of know this. There was a wonderful sitcom, produced in the 1990’s from the UK that aired in the US on public television called “Keeping Up Appearances.” The show revolved around the social climbing ambitions of middle-class housewife, Hyacinth Bucket (which she insisted people pronounce, “Bouquet”). Hyacinth attempts to create the appearance of an upper class pedigree and lifestyle, which included hosting candlelight suppers, afternoon tea, and lots of name dropping of both people and possessions. Frequent mention was made of her “Royal Doulton” china (which she mispronounces as Royal “Doolton” ).
Though a comedy with exaggerated scenarios and perhaps not intended to spark theological reflection on the human condition, it illustrates quite well the all consuming nature of worship given to appearances.
We care a lot about what we and our lives look like to the rest of the world. And that’s okay and even necessary as we move through the various stages of physical and cognitive development. An image or sense of self is necessary to function in the world. But, as the late Irish philosopher and theologian, John O’Donahue noted, “we [do] live in a culture which is very addicted to the image.” And indeed because we spend a lot of time and energy constructing and maintaining our image, we can grow to become very attached to it. The more we attach, the more solid it seems to become. In time we may identify with it so completely that we are compelled to defend it, physically, mentally and spiritually at all costs.
This is the busyness of which the Dalai Lama refers, the time and energy we spend enslaved to a tyrannical god created as our own image that demands we keep up appearances to maintain, protect and defend it. And this is why the world’s spiritual and religious teachers and traditions speak of the necessity of detachment or having to die in order to live, none of which has anything to do with physical death or an afterlife, but with egoic death in this life, here and now, that we might live more fully, freed of the bonds of our limiting self-image.
These bonds don’t break easily. It requires effort or attention. Emerson reminds us, though we may “think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts”…”it will out.”
And such is the moment to strike. In the BBC series “Keeping UP Appearances” I mentioned earlier, Hyacinth’s class conscious strivings were always foiled in one way or another every episode, as if to remind her this illusion is not who you are. And that’s okay.
We all have these moments in our own lives when something comes along that reminds us our self-image, the appearance we’ve spent so much time and energy tending to is not as solid as we think. These can be tough moments: receiving a rejection letter from a school, or a lower grade than expected. Getting into a fender-bender or an OUI (Operating under the influence) conviction. Having a spouse or friend walk away from years of marriage or friendship. Each chipping away or even shattering our deeply held, even if outwardly subtle or denied, image or appearance of superiority, perfection and control. And all these with which we have so closely identified and clung to begin to crumble.
“One of the huge confusions in our times”, John O’ Donahue noted, “is to mistake glamour for beauty.” I hear in O’ Donahue’s observation a distinction of depth… between superficiality and authenticity. A difference illustrated in the following story from the Jewish tradition:
Once, the Hassidic rabbi Zusya came to his followers with tears in his eyes.
They asked him:
"Zusya, what's the matter?
And he told them about a vision; "I learned the question that the angels will one day ask me about my life."
The followers were puzzled. "Zusya, you are pious. You are scholarly and humble. You have helped so many of us. What question about your life could be so terrifying that you would be frightened to answer it?"
Zusya replied; "I have learned that the angels will not ask me, 'Why weren't you a Moses, leading your people out of slavery?' and that the angels will not ask me, 'Why weren't you a Joshua, leading your people into the promised land?"'
No, Zusya sighed; "They will say to me, 'Zusya, why weren't you Zusya?'"
As the story illustrates, we are not called to appear or to become anyone or anything other than ourselves. Our authentic selves. As May Sarton gives voice to in her poem, “Now I become myself.”
Not surprisingly, we may greet this realization with a sense of relief. But then we must ask, what are the implications of this understanding? Do we drop everything and go off to worship ourselves?
Well, no. This is not about worshiping ourselves. Rather, it concerns discerning and becoming, by shifting our attention and energy from the superficial to the authentic within. And as Sarton reminds us, it takes time. “Many years and places.” Experiences of being “dissolved and shaken” after wearing, “other people’s faces.”
Concerning this shift, the 13th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, as summarized by John O Donahue, observed, "Many people come to me asking how I can pray... how I should think... what I should do... and the whole time, they neglect the most important question... which is how should I be?”
This is a question we can’t even begin to address when we fill our lives with things to do, worry or think about every minute of the day, generating so much busyness that we can’t (or won’t) attend to the most essential call of human life: to swim in that river flowing in and through us, and became ourselves.
And there’s no magic formula for this. You have to commit yourself to it. How? How might we attend to this call and help our children do the same? Being here on Sunday mornings is a start. Participating in adult RE, the one I offer of the one the Women’s Alliance is offering can also help shift your attention. As can participating in the religious education of our children…here and at home. Anything and any moment, even if brief but consistent, that loosens the beauty within that holds and sustains you rise above the glamour outside you that evaporates each time you grasp it, will help. This is so important to our becoming. As John O Donahue noted, ”…there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times.” We need to clear and maintain a path inward…that is why we have a time of silence in our service…and there are other ways too.
John O’ Donahue encourages us to practice asking ourselves or be aware of,
“the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation, in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew? That you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plane. A conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards.”
Further he suggest we ask ourselves, “Who are you reading?””Where are you stretching your own boundaries? and “Are you repetitive in that?”
In the end what he’s really asking is, “How are you tending to your spiritual life?” There is a tendency among even church goers to place attention to one’s spiritual life low on one’s list of priorities. And yet, I can’t read the news, observe the antics of too many of our political leaders, witness white supremacists wielding torches, or hear the stories of lives consumed by the opioid crisis with out being reminded of Emerson’s words, “A person, (religious or not) will worship something” and “What we worship we are becoming.”
If you follow the HUUMP Day reflections we send out each Wednesday, you may recall a recent quote by Anthony De Mello, who said, “These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.”
With their insights, Emerson and De Mello caution us. Our spiritual life, which includes worship, is always running, but without our attention, it can run amok, skidding across its own superficiality.
May Sarton’s poem offers us testimony. That with attention and commitment, our spiritual life can lead us to, in the words of the hymn we’ll soon sign (1028 “Fire of Commitment) “from the light of days remembered, the stories of our living, and dreams of youthful vision”, to a place where our hunger meets our passion, a place we become ourselves, authentically. And where “our future can begin.” May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 24, 2017
by The Reverend Craig M. Nowak
Have you ever done something stupid… with a an utter lack of awareness of what you were doing or what impact it might have? You, know those kinds of things where in retrospect you sit there an wonder, “Where was my head?” or “What was I thinking?” Perhaps you were walking looking at the screen on your phone and got stuck in a rotating door (I’ve seen it happen) or spent an hour grocery shopping only to discover at the check out that you left your wallet at home (I’ve done that). And surely we’ve all said or done things that have impacted our lives or the lives of others in ways we hadn’t imagined, sometimes easily forgiven, sometimes not.
The stupid, thoughtless, hurried things we say and do, when seemingly harmless, are easily forgiven and forgotten, excused as a byproduct of a busy life and busy world where each of us has limited “bandwith.”
But sometimes the stupid, thoughtless or hurried things we say and do are more serious with potential consequences that make them harder to forgive or forget, like the US senate’s current attempt to pass a massive healthcare bill with, as even its advocates admit, little understanding of the bill’s immediate or long term impact on the lives of millions. The actions of the senate, whether the bill ultimately passes or not, are an example of a moral failing, the extreme byproduct of busy lives and a busy world.
The Dalai Lama has called busyness a form of laziness. How can that be? How can one be busy and lazy at the same time? One answer can be found in our first reading this morning, words attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A person will worship something…” Worship here does not mean praise or ritual directed toward a deity, but rather as the focusing of our attention and energy toward something. And not fleetingly so, but with steady, fervent devotion, and to such a degree that it will in time, according to Emerson, “determine our lives, and character.” Emerson, thus reminds us of a less familiar understanding and effect of worship, “to shape worth”. More plainly, what we worship shapes us. Which is what makes Emerson’s words both insightful and something of a warning…reminding us, “It behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
Now, there are innumerable sermons around bemoaning the worship of money, power, youth, body image, the individual, culture, science, the “wrong” religion or god(s), etc. Each making their case by pointing to the state of the world. Yet as I reflected on what I experience and see most often at atop the human pantheon of idols so many rail against I kept returning to appearances. In one way or another it seems we so often worship appearances.
On one level we kind of know this. There was a wonderful sitcom, produced in the 1990’s from the UK that aired in the US on public television called “Keeping Up Appearances.” The show revolved around the social climbing ambitions of middle-class housewife, Hyacinth Bucket (which she insisted people pronounce, “Bouquet”). Hyacinth attempts to create the appearance of an upper class pedigree and lifestyle, which included hosting candlelight suppers, afternoon tea, and lots of name dropping of both people and possessions. Frequent mention was made of her “Royal Doulton” china (which she mispronounces as Royal “Doolton” ).
Though a comedy with exaggerated scenarios and perhaps not intended to spark theological reflection on the human condition, it illustrates quite well the all consuming nature of worship given to appearances.
We care a lot about what we and our lives look like to the rest of the world. And that’s okay and even necessary as we move through the various stages of physical and cognitive development. An image or sense of self is necessary to function in the world. But, as the late Irish philosopher and theologian, John O’Donahue noted, “we [do] live in a culture which is very addicted to the image.” And indeed because we spend a lot of time and energy constructing and maintaining our image, we can grow to become very attached to it. The more we attach, the more solid it seems to become. In time we may identify with it so completely that we are compelled to defend it, physically, mentally and spiritually at all costs.
This is the busyness of which the Dalai Lama refers, the time and energy we spend enslaved to a tyrannical god created as our own image that demands we keep up appearances to maintain, protect and defend it. And this is why the world’s spiritual and religious teachers and traditions speak of the necessity of detachment or having to die in order to live, none of which has anything to do with physical death or an afterlife, but with egoic death in this life, here and now, that we might live more fully, freed of the bonds of our limiting self-image.
These bonds don’t break easily. It requires effort or attention. Emerson reminds us, though we may “think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts”…”it will out.”
And such is the moment to strike. In the BBC series “Keeping UP Appearances” I mentioned earlier, Hyacinth’s class conscious strivings were always foiled in one way or another every episode, as if to remind her this illusion is not who you are. And that’s okay.
We all have these moments in our own lives when something comes along that reminds us our self-image, the appearance we’ve spent so much time and energy tending to is not as solid as we think. These can be tough moments: receiving a rejection letter from a school, or a lower grade than expected. Getting into a fender-bender or an OUI (Operating under the influence) conviction. Having a spouse or friend walk away from years of marriage or friendship. Each chipping away or even shattering our deeply held, even if outwardly subtle or denied, image or appearance of superiority, perfection and control. And all these with which we have so closely identified and clung to begin to crumble.
“One of the huge confusions in our times”, John O’ Donahue noted, “is to mistake glamour for beauty.” I hear in O’ Donahue’s observation a distinction of depth… between superficiality and authenticity. A difference illustrated in the following story from the Jewish tradition:
Once, the Hassidic rabbi Zusya came to his followers with tears in his eyes.
They asked him:
"Zusya, what's the matter?
And he told them about a vision; "I learned the question that the angels will one day ask me about my life."
The followers were puzzled. "Zusya, you are pious. You are scholarly and humble. You have helped so many of us. What question about your life could be so terrifying that you would be frightened to answer it?"
Zusya replied; "I have learned that the angels will not ask me, 'Why weren't you a Moses, leading your people out of slavery?' and that the angels will not ask me, 'Why weren't you a Joshua, leading your people into the promised land?"'
No, Zusya sighed; "They will say to me, 'Zusya, why weren't you Zusya?'"
As the story illustrates, we are not called to appear or to become anyone or anything other than ourselves. Our authentic selves. As May Sarton gives voice to in her poem, “Now I become myself.”
Not surprisingly, we may greet this realization with a sense of relief. But then we must ask, what are the implications of this understanding? Do we drop everything and go off to worship ourselves?
Well, no. This is not about worshiping ourselves. Rather, it concerns discerning and becoming, by shifting our attention and energy from the superficial to the authentic within. And as Sarton reminds us, it takes time. “Many years and places.” Experiences of being “dissolved and shaken” after wearing, “other people’s faces.”
Concerning this shift, the 13th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, as summarized by John O Donahue, observed, "Many people come to me asking how I can pray... how I should think... what I should do... and the whole time, they neglect the most important question... which is how should I be?”
This is a question we can’t even begin to address when we fill our lives with things to do, worry or think about every minute of the day, generating so much busyness that we can’t (or won’t) attend to the most essential call of human life: to swim in that river flowing in and through us, and became ourselves.
And there’s no magic formula for this. You have to commit yourself to it. How? How might we attend to this call and help our children do the same? Being here on Sunday mornings is a start. Participating in adult RE, the one I offer of the one the Women’s Alliance is offering can also help shift your attention. As can participating in the religious education of our children…here and at home. Anything and any moment, even if brief but consistent, that loosens the beauty within that holds and sustains you rise above the glamour outside you that evaporates each time you grasp it, will help. This is so important to our becoming. As John O Donahue noted, ”…there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times.” We need to clear and maintain a path inward…that is why we have a time of silence in our service…and there are other ways too.
John O’ Donahue encourages us to practice asking ourselves or be aware of,
“the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation, in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew? That you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plane. A conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards.”
Further he suggest we ask ourselves, “Who are you reading?””Where are you stretching your own boundaries? and “Are you repetitive in that?”
In the end what he’s really asking is, “How are you tending to your spiritual life?” There is a tendency among even church goers to place attention to one’s spiritual life low on one’s list of priorities. And yet, I can’t read the news, observe the antics of too many of our political leaders, witness white supremacists wielding torches, or hear the stories of lives consumed by the opioid crisis with out being reminded of Emerson’s words, “A person, (religious or not) will worship something” and “What we worship we are becoming.”
If you follow the HUUMP Day reflections we send out each Wednesday, you may recall a recent quote by Anthony De Mello, who said, “These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.”
With their insights, Emerson and De Mello caution us. Our spiritual life, which includes worship, is always running, but without our attention, it can run amok, skidding across its own superficiality.
May Sarton’s poem offers us testimony. That with attention and commitment, our spiritual life can lead us to, in the words of the hymn we’ll soon sign (1028 “Fire of Commitment) “from the light of days remembered, the stories of our living, and dreams of youthful vision”, to a place where our hunger meets our passion, a place we become ourselves, authentically. And where “our future can begin.” May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be