Let Me Count The Ways
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
February 18, 2018
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Whenever I fly I try to sit next to the window. And its not just because with my long legs it is hard from someone to climb over me mid-flight when they get up to use the restroom. No, I like to spend some of the flight gazing out the window, be it day or night, through the clouds at the earth below.
Life looks different at 35,000 feet.
For one thing, there are no lines as on a map dividing one nation from another; the only discernible boundaries are bodies of water and mountain ranges which don’t necessarily conform in contour or purpose with human drawn boundaries. A realization that often gets me thinking of the folly of our species. Indeed the noble dignity with which life seems imbued from high above is often much harder to observe on the ground. And not just in war torn countries or repressive societies, but even in our own seemingly ordinary lives. With days, months, even years spent bouncing around from one thing to the next until one day we wake up and wonder what the heck we’re doing. What is this life I’m living…or more importantly, whose life am I living?
This is the question at the heart of one of my favorite poems, “Ask Me” by William Stafford which begins, “Some time when the river is ice, ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”
As Stafford’s words suggest and religions throughout time have taught, including Unitarian Universalism, there is the life we live and there is a life that is ours to live and they’re not necessarily the same life. Our Unitarian ancestor Henry David Thoreau spoke of this in terms of life and not life. In his classic Walden, Thoreau states among the reasons he went to live in the woods was, “I did not wish to live what was not life.”
Stafford and Thoreau are not talking about figuring out what one wants to do, but living from an awareness of who one is which itself is different still from who one subjectively feels called to be. Indeed, we might understand the life that Stafford asks if he’s done or that Thoreau contrasts with not life as that which is variously described in different religious traditions as Atman, Buddha-nature, Christ- consciousness, Tao, Wholeness and so forth.
As such this is not something we arrive at by taking career aptitude tests or listing and weighing likes and dislikes or pros and cons. It is something we connect to through practice, spiritual practice.
Most of us are familiar with one or more types of spiritual practice, like prayer, meditation, yoga, fasting, contemplation to name just a few. But what is a spiritual practice really? Is it talking to or asking things of God? Could be, but what if you don’t believe in God? It is a way to relax or reduce anxiety? Sure, but how is that alone a spiritual practice? Is it something that makes you look special to certain people? I suppose, but would you do it even if no one else cared that you did it?
What if spiritual practice was something else…like a way of focusing our attention, which is really a way of expressing love, toward who we are?
Given this understanding, our question can shift from what is spiritual practice to the question made famous by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do I love thee?” To which we, like Browning, can respond, “Let me count the ways.”
The sheer variety of spiritual practices through which we can offer our attention…or express our love, is reflective of the depth and breadth of that in which “we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
Consider the variety of experience we heard this morning in reflections on spiritual practice from Sarah, Nadine and Hailey:
Sarah who talked about walking her dog, being nice to new people at school and participation in Youth Group, a practice she summarized as being kind and compassionate with nature, animals, and humans.
Nadine who described her practice as including walking, meditation, yoga, drawing and Youth Group.
And Hailey whose practice includes talking to her chickens…Yes, Chickens!, as Hailey said.…How wonderful. As well as climbing trees and being in nature.
At the Practicing Spiritual Practices workshop I facilitated this fall and winter here, participants were invited to engage in different spiritual practices for a month at a time over three month. The first two months were devoted to more or less traditional practices, prayer and meditation, reading and reflection. During the final month, participants were invited to develop their own practice.
Ellen described her practice this way, “To counter feelings of hopelessness I came up with a practice allowing me physical movement outdoors and prayer. As I set out, I ask that I might see "miracle(s)." More often than not, I am delighted and awestruck by what appears: a young osprey flying buddy style with turkey vultures, a budded tree branch, a ray of sun. These things help me feel less isolated and closed and more open and connected to a bigger whole. When it's too cold and/or icy to walk, I set the oven timer to 10 minutes and sit in my kitchen and look out the window. I say the same prayer: to see, to be aware and to appreciate. And I always say "Thank you!"
And Penny shared,
“I signed up for the workshop because I was looking for a spiritual practice that would help me cope with the fear and powerlessness I have been feeling in the current political climate. I developed a meditation that takes place in my barn with my horses where I feel safe and calm and in control. I followed the format of the loving kindness meditation where I start with myself and then look outward in concentric circles. I first tell myself that I am in control and I will work to keep myself and my horses safe. Then I say that I will work with my husband to keep my family safe. Then I will work with my community to keep it safe and so on. I end with saying I will work with the good and kind people of the world to keep the world safe. This practice does pull me away from the fear and help me realize that there are things I can do to counteract the hatred and division and that there are many people like me who are feeling the same and are working every day to make things better.”
Another participant utilized a practice of intense physical exercise to release excess energy in preparation for the stillness of meditation.
In each reflection we hear concerns which arise from life lived on the ground so to speak…stress, sadness, judgement, isolation, hopelessness, fear, powerlessness, anxiety. And in each practice we hear ways in which the practitioner experiences or grows in awareness of a life which extends below the surface and is rooted in the ground of our being. Experiences or awareness of trust, non-judgment, stillness, awe, connectedness, authority, creativity.
In the plane 35,000 feet up, the world looks different than it does on the ground. And so it is with spiritual practices. Which, temporarily lifts us from life on the surface where our vision and experience is limited by human made boundaries and barriers. Spiritual practice offers us necessary perspective, a God’s eye view, if you like, that reminds us life there is a life, our life, which is much greater than what is discernible on the surface close up. The Life which Thoreau contrasts with not life and Stafford points to in his poem “Ask Me.”
As the reflections Sarah, Nadine, Hailey, Ellen and Penny shared attest, touching, connecting to that life through spiritual practice, “receiving fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, and moments of insight, however brief (Sarah York) impacts life on the ground. At the very least it helps ensure, over time, that we not mistake the part or experience of life immediately before us for the whole..for the depth and breadth of life that is ours to live… giving us hope.
At the other far end of the spectrum lies what, for lack of better word, is enlightenment…which takes a lot of air miles!
Nonetheless, wherever we might land on the spectrum of impact from spiritual practice…let us do it still, be it prayer, meditation, exercise, helping or keeping others safe, asking to see miracles, talking to chickens or something else. For in so doing, having loved who we are, we may rest assured when our life has reached its end, we have indeed lived. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
February 18, 2018
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Whenever I fly I try to sit next to the window. And its not just because with my long legs it is hard from someone to climb over me mid-flight when they get up to use the restroom. No, I like to spend some of the flight gazing out the window, be it day or night, through the clouds at the earth below.
Life looks different at 35,000 feet.
For one thing, there are no lines as on a map dividing one nation from another; the only discernible boundaries are bodies of water and mountain ranges which don’t necessarily conform in contour or purpose with human drawn boundaries. A realization that often gets me thinking of the folly of our species. Indeed the noble dignity with which life seems imbued from high above is often much harder to observe on the ground. And not just in war torn countries or repressive societies, but even in our own seemingly ordinary lives. With days, months, even years spent bouncing around from one thing to the next until one day we wake up and wonder what the heck we’re doing. What is this life I’m living…or more importantly, whose life am I living?
This is the question at the heart of one of my favorite poems, “Ask Me” by William Stafford which begins, “Some time when the river is ice, ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”
As Stafford’s words suggest and religions throughout time have taught, including Unitarian Universalism, there is the life we live and there is a life that is ours to live and they’re not necessarily the same life. Our Unitarian ancestor Henry David Thoreau spoke of this in terms of life and not life. In his classic Walden, Thoreau states among the reasons he went to live in the woods was, “I did not wish to live what was not life.”
Stafford and Thoreau are not talking about figuring out what one wants to do, but living from an awareness of who one is which itself is different still from who one subjectively feels called to be. Indeed, we might understand the life that Stafford asks if he’s done or that Thoreau contrasts with not life as that which is variously described in different religious traditions as Atman, Buddha-nature, Christ- consciousness, Tao, Wholeness and so forth.
As such this is not something we arrive at by taking career aptitude tests or listing and weighing likes and dislikes or pros and cons. It is something we connect to through practice, spiritual practice.
Most of us are familiar with one or more types of spiritual practice, like prayer, meditation, yoga, fasting, contemplation to name just a few. But what is a spiritual practice really? Is it talking to or asking things of God? Could be, but what if you don’t believe in God? It is a way to relax or reduce anxiety? Sure, but how is that alone a spiritual practice? Is it something that makes you look special to certain people? I suppose, but would you do it even if no one else cared that you did it?
What if spiritual practice was something else…like a way of focusing our attention, which is really a way of expressing love, toward who we are?
Given this understanding, our question can shift from what is spiritual practice to the question made famous by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do I love thee?” To which we, like Browning, can respond, “Let me count the ways.”
The sheer variety of spiritual practices through which we can offer our attention…or express our love, is reflective of the depth and breadth of that in which “we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
Consider the variety of experience we heard this morning in reflections on spiritual practice from Sarah, Nadine and Hailey:
Sarah who talked about walking her dog, being nice to new people at school and participation in Youth Group, a practice she summarized as being kind and compassionate with nature, animals, and humans.
Nadine who described her practice as including walking, meditation, yoga, drawing and Youth Group.
And Hailey whose practice includes talking to her chickens…Yes, Chickens!, as Hailey said.…How wonderful. As well as climbing trees and being in nature.
At the Practicing Spiritual Practices workshop I facilitated this fall and winter here, participants were invited to engage in different spiritual practices for a month at a time over three month. The first two months were devoted to more or less traditional practices, prayer and meditation, reading and reflection. During the final month, participants were invited to develop their own practice.
Ellen described her practice this way, “To counter feelings of hopelessness I came up with a practice allowing me physical movement outdoors and prayer. As I set out, I ask that I might see "miracle(s)." More often than not, I am delighted and awestruck by what appears: a young osprey flying buddy style with turkey vultures, a budded tree branch, a ray of sun. These things help me feel less isolated and closed and more open and connected to a bigger whole. When it's too cold and/or icy to walk, I set the oven timer to 10 minutes and sit in my kitchen and look out the window. I say the same prayer: to see, to be aware and to appreciate. And I always say "Thank you!"
And Penny shared,
“I signed up for the workshop because I was looking for a spiritual practice that would help me cope with the fear and powerlessness I have been feeling in the current political climate. I developed a meditation that takes place in my barn with my horses where I feel safe and calm and in control. I followed the format of the loving kindness meditation where I start with myself and then look outward in concentric circles. I first tell myself that I am in control and I will work to keep myself and my horses safe. Then I say that I will work with my husband to keep my family safe. Then I will work with my community to keep it safe and so on. I end with saying I will work with the good and kind people of the world to keep the world safe. This practice does pull me away from the fear and help me realize that there are things I can do to counteract the hatred and division and that there are many people like me who are feeling the same and are working every day to make things better.”
Another participant utilized a practice of intense physical exercise to release excess energy in preparation for the stillness of meditation.
In each reflection we hear concerns which arise from life lived on the ground so to speak…stress, sadness, judgement, isolation, hopelessness, fear, powerlessness, anxiety. And in each practice we hear ways in which the practitioner experiences or grows in awareness of a life which extends below the surface and is rooted in the ground of our being. Experiences or awareness of trust, non-judgment, stillness, awe, connectedness, authority, creativity.
In the plane 35,000 feet up, the world looks different than it does on the ground. And so it is with spiritual practices. Which, temporarily lifts us from life on the surface where our vision and experience is limited by human made boundaries and barriers. Spiritual practice offers us necessary perspective, a God’s eye view, if you like, that reminds us life there is a life, our life, which is much greater than what is discernible on the surface close up. The Life which Thoreau contrasts with not life and Stafford points to in his poem “Ask Me.”
As the reflections Sarah, Nadine, Hailey, Ellen and Penny shared attest, touching, connecting to that life through spiritual practice, “receiving fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, and moments of insight, however brief (Sarah York) impacts life on the ground. At the very least it helps ensure, over time, that we not mistake the part or experience of life immediately before us for the whole..for the depth and breadth of life that is ours to live… giving us hope.
At the other far end of the spectrum lies what, for lack of better word, is enlightenment…which takes a lot of air miles!
Nonetheless, wherever we might land on the spectrum of impact from spiritual practice…let us do it still, be it prayer, meditation, exercise, helping or keeping others safe, asking to see miracles, talking to chickens or something else. For in so doing, having loved who we are, we may rest assured when our life has reached its end, we have indeed lived. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
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