Coming Alive
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 7, 2018
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
“I see dead people.” Many of us in this room are old enough to perhaps recall this as one of the most memorable movies lines of 1999. The movie, “The Sixth Sense” tells the story of a young boy who sees ghosts others don’t see and a therapist who tries to help him. One of the questions the therapist asks the boy is, “What do you think the dead people are trying to tell you?”
The question brings to mind an experience I had several years ago while Christmas shopping.
I was at the mall along with every other person in a hundred mile radius of the place. All around me people shoved and grabbed, rushed and scowled. The cashiers and sales people seemed unable or no longer willing to conceal their worn down and defeated spirits as the waves customers continued to crash upon the shores of checkout counters. While overhead looped for the 100th time a formerly beloved, now unbearable, song utterly incongruent with what was happening on the ground. I was tired, my mind was racing, and I still had more shopping to do, but I paused for moment. And as I looked around at the vast sea of people rushing around, bumping into each other, and grabbing things off shelves and racks, I thought, “What am I doing here? Observing the scene a little longer, I began to wonder, “What are we doing here?”
It’s a question not unlike the one Mary Oliver poses in her poem, “The Summer Day.” “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
When I shared my experience at the mall and the questions it raised with my late spiritual director, he asked me, “What do you think that was about?” “What do you think all those people were trying to tell you?” Hesitantly, I offered a response, “Wake up?”
My spiritual director was fond of noting, “Most people are sleepwalking through life.” It’s an apt metaphor for what I observed at the mall that day. Clinically, sleepwalking is a disorder. Spiritually, sleepwalking is an indication something is out of balance. Recall for moment Rumi’s words from our call to worship, “Come out here where the roses have opened. Let soul and world meet.” Rumi might say sleepwalking is a spiritual condition in which soul and world are segregated. Soul being as columnist Phyllis Theroux’s once described Thomas Moore’s portrayal of soul in his book, Care of the Soul, “A kind of force that grazes where it will, always striving to connect us more firmly to life.” I think it is fair to say, then, when we sleepwalk through life, we ignore, dismiss or deny the call or voice of soul.
So why does this matter?
Well, turning to the poet, Mary Oliver responds, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”
And yet hers a rare voice, calling us to awaken…to live…to be alive in the world for the world while we are here. In this she echoes the words of the late theologian Howard Thurman who urged, “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
More common are lullabys like these from former president Barack Obama, “[A] lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career. But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.”
Or this one from Senator Marco Rubio, “Welders make more money than philosophers…We need more welders and less philosophers.”
Both men later apologized and clarified their comments. My point here is not promote one career path over another or dismiss the very real, practical concerns which factor into the decisions people make not just about careers but all sort of decisions. Rather, it is to invite reflection on how we view and live or don’t live our, “one wild and precious life.”
A modern parable I came across a few years ago invites the same…
An investment banker was at the pier of a coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, “only a little while. The banker then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The banker then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend time with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.” The banker scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to a city, perhaps Los Angeles and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the banker replied, “15, maybe 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the fisherman.
The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”, asked the fisherman.
The banker said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”
The story is often discussed as a lesson about living more with less. And certainly one can take that from it. When I read or hear it, however, I think about the fisherman as someone in whom world and soul meet and indeed enjoy each other’s company. The fisherman knows what “makes him come alive” and his life is focused accordingly. For the banker, world and soul are estranged. He would have the fisherman fill his life with distractions that would widen the gulf between the fisherman and what makes him come alive.
Sending the fisherman sleepwalking for 15, maybe 20 years…maybe even forever.
The fisherman represents someone who has come alive, who is not sleepwalking through life. Looking and living in the world today it seems as true as ever that, “what the world needs is people who have come alive.” And spiritual development and growth…for all of us, children, youth and adults, is an essential part of coming alive. That spiritual growth is part of the affirmation we recite together each week…that our children light candles of joy for church…and that this year’s Food for Faith program on Aging as Spiritual Practice is filled to capacity…tells me I am not alone this assertion.
William Ellery Channing wrote, “The Great End in Religious Instruction” as something for adults to keep in mind when taking on the responsibility of providing religious education to children and youth. It was adapted for today’s service to be offered as a dialogue between adults and our young people.
In a sense Channing’s words are an anti-lullaby. Encouraging not sleepy assent to distraction, but embrace of our highest mission… coming alive.
A mission for which Channing’s words offer not a precise map, which is impossible, but a set of general principles which any of us can apply to our own highest mission…to come alive.
First among these is to follow our own script, not that of another, even another we admire greatly. A well known story from the Jewish tradition tells of a beloved rabbi fretting over facing God after he dies. His puzzled students, noting how well he has lived like Moses, ask him why he is now afraid. The rabbi responds, “In the coming world, God will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ God will ask, ‘Why were you not you?’”
Next, pay attention. Be curious. Remain ever open to the experience of awe and wonder. For generations people took for granted the assertion the sun revolved around the earth until a curious and attentive Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus came along and challenged what we thought we knew about the universe and our place in it.
Channing also cautions against conformity, particularly of the warring tribal variety. Such is the way of the absolutists, segregationists, apologists and true believers. Just look at the state of our politics today. It is a seductive, deep slumber to which no person nor political, religious and social group is immune and in fact, without a rich interior life, is utterly defenseless against.
This, as Channing notes, means rejecting moralism and cultivating conscience from which an authentic moral understanding may emerge. There is a Buddhist story of two monks. As they were traveling they encountered a woman standing at a river’s edge. The woman, concerned about the current, asked if the monks would help her cross. One of the monks hesitated, but the other lifted her into his shoulders and carried her across and put her down on the opposite bank. The woman thanked him and departed. As the monks continued on their way, the one who had hesitated was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out, “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!” “Brother, replied the other monk, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her.”
Religious and secular attachment to moralism reinforces harmful personal and social views of race, gender, sexual minorities, sex, wealth, poverty, war and patriotism and so on.
Religious moralism would not permit me to be both openly gay and a minister. It took the awakened conscience and authentic moral understanding encouraged and cultivated in the hearts and minds of children, women and men, as well as my own, to make this moment possible.
Whether I’m shopping, reading or watching the news, attending a conference or family event, and at times metaphorically looking in the mirror, I see, if not dead people, then sleepwalking people. Who no longer wonder or have been told not to ask, “Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the back bear? Who made the grasshopper?” I see people who can recite prayers but who do not know how to pay attention. People who sincerely want to serve the world but cannot be “idle and blessed” or “stroll through the fields.” People who will die, and too soon having stopped or never imagined what to do with their “one wild and precious life.”
It is for these people, who not only out there, but in here, who are all of us at one time or another and at different points in our lives…it is for all of us, indeed, for the world, that we gather, to encourage and support one another in coming alive. For more than anything, “What the world needs is people who have come alive.” Let us then commit ourselves to coming alive. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 7, 2018
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
“I see dead people.” Many of us in this room are old enough to perhaps recall this as one of the most memorable movies lines of 1999. The movie, “The Sixth Sense” tells the story of a young boy who sees ghosts others don’t see and a therapist who tries to help him. One of the questions the therapist asks the boy is, “What do you think the dead people are trying to tell you?”
The question brings to mind an experience I had several years ago while Christmas shopping.
I was at the mall along with every other person in a hundred mile radius of the place. All around me people shoved and grabbed, rushed and scowled. The cashiers and sales people seemed unable or no longer willing to conceal their worn down and defeated spirits as the waves customers continued to crash upon the shores of checkout counters. While overhead looped for the 100th time a formerly beloved, now unbearable, song utterly incongruent with what was happening on the ground. I was tired, my mind was racing, and I still had more shopping to do, but I paused for moment. And as I looked around at the vast sea of people rushing around, bumping into each other, and grabbing things off shelves and racks, I thought, “What am I doing here? Observing the scene a little longer, I began to wonder, “What are we doing here?”
It’s a question not unlike the one Mary Oliver poses in her poem, “The Summer Day.” “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
When I shared my experience at the mall and the questions it raised with my late spiritual director, he asked me, “What do you think that was about?” “What do you think all those people were trying to tell you?” Hesitantly, I offered a response, “Wake up?”
My spiritual director was fond of noting, “Most people are sleepwalking through life.” It’s an apt metaphor for what I observed at the mall that day. Clinically, sleepwalking is a disorder. Spiritually, sleepwalking is an indication something is out of balance. Recall for moment Rumi’s words from our call to worship, “Come out here where the roses have opened. Let soul and world meet.” Rumi might say sleepwalking is a spiritual condition in which soul and world are segregated. Soul being as columnist Phyllis Theroux’s once described Thomas Moore’s portrayal of soul in his book, Care of the Soul, “A kind of force that grazes where it will, always striving to connect us more firmly to life.” I think it is fair to say, then, when we sleepwalk through life, we ignore, dismiss or deny the call or voice of soul.
So why does this matter?
Well, turning to the poet, Mary Oliver responds, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”
And yet hers a rare voice, calling us to awaken…to live…to be alive in the world for the world while we are here. In this she echoes the words of the late theologian Howard Thurman who urged, “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
More common are lullabys like these from former president Barack Obama, “[A] lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career. But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.”
Or this one from Senator Marco Rubio, “Welders make more money than philosophers…We need more welders and less philosophers.”
Both men later apologized and clarified their comments. My point here is not promote one career path over another or dismiss the very real, practical concerns which factor into the decisions people make not just about careers but all sort of decisions. Rather, it is to invite reflection on how we view and live or don’t live our, “one wild and precious life.”
A modern parable I came across a few years ago invites the same…
An investment banker was at the pier of a coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, “only a little while. The banker then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The banker then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend time with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.” The banker scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to a city, perhaps Los Angeles and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the banker replied, “15, maybe 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the fisherman.
The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”, asked the fisherman.
The banker said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”
The story is often discussed as a lesson about living more with less. And certainly one can take that from it. When I read or hear it, however, I think about the fisherman as someone in whom world and soul meet and indeed enjoy each other’s company. The fisherman knows what “makes him come alive” and his life is focused accordingly. For the banker, world and soul are estranged. He would have the fisherman fill his life with distractions that would widen the gulf between the fisherman and what makes him come alive.
Sending the fisherman sleepwalking for 15, maybe 20 years…maybe even forever.
The fisherman represents someone who has come alive, who is not sleepwalking through life. Looking and living in the world today it seems as true as ever that, “what the world needs is people who have come alive.” And spiritual development and growth…for all of us, children, youth and adults, is an essential part of coming alive. That spiritual growth is part of the affirmation we recite together each week…that our children light candles of joy for church…and that this year’s Food for Faith program on Aging as Spiritual Practice is filled to capacity…tells me I am not alone this assertion.
William Ellery Channing wrote, “The Great End in Religious Instruction” as something for adults to keep in mind when taking on the responsibility of providing religious education to children and youth. It was adapted for today’s service to be offered as a dialogue between adults and our young people.
In a sense Channing’s words are an anti-lullaby. Encouraging not sleepy assent to distraction, but embrace of our highest mission… coming alive.
A mission for which Channing’s words offer not a precise map, which is impossible, but a set of general principles which any of us can apply to our own highest mission…to come alive.
First among these is to follow our own script, not that of another, even another we admire greatly. A well known story from the Jewish tradition tells of a beloved rabbi fretting over facing God after he dies. His puzzled students, noting how well he has lived like Moses, ask him why he is now afraid. The rabbi responds, “In the coming world, God will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ God will ask, ‘Why were you not you?’”
Next, pay attention. Be curious. Remain ever open to the experience of awe and wonder. For generations people took for granted the assertion the sun revolved around the earth until a curious and attentive Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus came along and challenged what we thought we knew about the universe and our place in it.
Channing also cautions against conformity, particularly of the warring tribal variety. Such is the way of the absolutists, segregationists, apologists and true believers. Just look at the state of our politics today. It is a seductive, deep slumber to which no person nor political, religious and social group is immune and in fact, without a rich interior life, is utterly defenseless against.
This, as Channing notes, means rejecting moralism and cultivating conscience from which an authentic moral understanding may emerge. There is a Buddhist story of two monks. As they were traveling they encountered a woman standing at a river’s edge. The woman, concerned about the current, asked if the monks would help her cross. One of the monks hesitated, but the other lifted her into his shoulders and carried her across and put her down on the opposite bank. The woman thanked him and departed. As the monks continued on their way, the one who had hesitated was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out, “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!” “Brother, replied the other monk, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her.”
Religious and secular attachment to moralism reinforces harmful personal and social views of race, gender, sexual minorities, sex, wealth, poverty, war and patriotism and so on.
Religious moralism would not permit me to be both openly gay and a minister. It took the awakened conscience and authentic moral understanding encouraged and cultivated in the hearts and minds of children, women and men, as well as my own, to make this moment possible.
Whether I’m shopping, reading or watching the news, attending a conference or family event, and at times metaphorically looking in the mirror, I see, if not dead people, then sleepwalking people. Who no longer wonder or have been told not to ask, “Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the back bear? Who made the grasshopper?” I see people who can recite prayers but who do not know how to pay attention. People who sincerely want to serve the world but cannot be “idle and blessed” or “stroll through the fields.” People who will die, and too soon having stopped or never imagined what to do with their “one wild and precious life.”
It is for these people, who not only out there, but in here, who are all of us at one time or another and at different points in our lives…it is for all of us, indeed, for the world, that we gather, to encourage and support one another in coming alive. For more than anything, “What the world needs is people who have come alive.” Let us then commit ourselves to coming alive. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
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