R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 19, 2017
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!” Lately, I’ve been barraged with reminders that things don’t last…my oven broke….I turned 48…I was carded at a restaurant (reminding me eyesight doesn’t last)…trees again stand leafless…and the calendar tells me Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday. How did that happen?
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed, “Change alone is unchanging.” And though we may concede this observation is true enough, by and large, we don’t like it.
But as Mary Oliver reminds us we’re not tasked to like it, we’re tasked to love it. And not, as she writes, “by the century or the year, but by the hours.” Notice that in emphasizing the here and now, Oliver is telling us love is not something we think ourselves into or decide to do once all the facts or consequences, which are the benefits of time or history, are in or known.
Oliver’s words bring to mind a saying by the 13th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, which points in a similar direction, “If the only prayer you say your whole life is ‘thank you’ that will suffice.” By prayer Eckhart is talking about a way of relating to life rather than kneeling bedside with hands clasped reciting a wish list. Indeed Eckhart’s message is echoed in the contemporary mantra calling us to adopt an attitude of gratitude.
We all know however, that saying is much easier to parrot than practice. Its pretty hard to will yourself into a sustainable attitude of gratitude. Fortunately, there are alternatives including one the spiritual teacher and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr calls, “the change that changes everything.”
All this change asks of us is a little R-E-S-P E-C-T. (I would have sung it but I didn’t want to risk drawing the ire of Aretha Franklin).
As Rohr notes, an often overlooked meaning of the word respect is to look at something twice…to ”re-speculate.” Basically, respect is an alternative, or in this case, an additional way of seeing, and to be clear, for our young ones here and those of us who wear glasses, like myself, or have other visual impairments, seeing refers to knowing and relating to the world.
And an alternative or additional way of knowing or relating to the world is, after all, what religion and spirituality, at their best, encourage us toward. But why?
Well, consider that when we first look at anything, we see the way we always see things. Call it our habitual way of seeing. This way of seeing generates, almost instantly, a narrative of distinction in our minds in which we are constantly making judgements and stating preferences. “I like this…I don’t like that…I want this…I don’t want that…This is ugly…That is beautiful…how will this help me? how will it harm me? We do this with people too…she’s Asian…He’s white…He’s bisexual…She’s straight…She’s American…He’s not and so forth.
And that’s where most people, most of the time stop… with that first look. Which means they rarely, if ever, look, let alone see, beyond the distinctions that arise in their minds.
We tend to stick with our habits so long as they keep delivering us some perceived benefit, which in this case is usually the appearance of stability, order or control. I say appearance because these are ultimately an illusion, as Heraclitus observed. Now Rohr is quick to point out our habitual way of seeing is not wrong or bad per se, but simply limiting. And it is incomplete or inadequate if we are to realize the depth and fullness of this precious life we’ve been given.
It is interesting to me that we live in a culture where we make fun of people who have smart phones but only use them to make and receive calls and yet we’re perfectly content to similarly limit our lives.
And that’s where respect comes in. As a practice, respect concerns expanding the usage of our capacity as human beings for spiritual growth and depth. Something clearly in keeping with our covenant as Unitarian Universalists to attend to our own spiritual growth and encourage others to do the same.
So what does the practice of respect look like?
In one of his lectures, Rohr tells of sending people gathered for a retreat out into the dessert of New Mexico. Where he then asked them to choose a particular object…a leaf, twig, or lizard…and grant it respect. Namely, to give it second look. He even encouraged them to talk to whatever it was they chose to grant respect to. And to let it talk to them. It is not as far fetched as it might sound, particularly to those of us who talk to our pets or plants. Of course a twig, leaf, lizard or our pets and plants, for that matter, aren’t going to speak to us in words. Yet once the labels, judgements and self-interest of the first look have fallen away, we begin, in a sense, to “lose ourselves”… opening us to notice, feel or observe things in the second look that we just couldn’t “hear” or see at first.
Just the other day a friend took me to a vegan restaurant where I found myself engaged in a lot of first look commentary in my mind about our skinny, perky, earthy-crunchy waitress with a nose ring - See how the first look works? It wasn’t long before I decided she was kind of annoying even though she was as nice as could be. (Although it could have been that she was trying to convince me the avocado pudding tasted just like chocolate) Noticing this going on in my head, I decided to look again, to grant respect and you know, by the time the check came my thoughts were much more focused our shared humanity and an appreciation for her presence rather than what I liked or didn’t like about her.
The practice of respect, according to Rohr has brought people to tears. For by engaging in it they have, he notes, “let go of radical egocentricity…and discovered the mutuality of being.” Which is a complicated way of saying what Mary Oliver says in her poem Snow Geese when she writes, “What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them…as through a veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.”
What we’re really getting at here is an awareness of the abundant, radical availability of grace in our lives. In her book “Grounded”, Diana Butler Bass writes, “We live and move and have our being in great web of belonging whose connective tissue is grace.” The practice of respect helps us recognize this, teaching us to to love what is lovely but will not last and by the hours, not by the century or the year .
Rohr notes that when we grant respect to one thing or person that respect universalizes. Thus, over time, by regularly granting respect to things and people in our own lives we begin a process of reorientation, where we live increasingly from that heretofore elusive attitude of gratitude. Or as Meister Eckhart might say our lives become our prayer of thanksgiving.
The late Unitarian Universalist minister Peter Fleck observed, “The pilgrims were not thankful because they survived the winter. They survived the winter because they were thankful.” A profound and practical observation for our daily lives and in particular as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday where for various reasons time spent traveling or with family can sometimes feel like a game of survival.
Indeed, imagine how different our world would be, if for more people, their only prayer was a life lived from a place of gratitude. The good news is we don’t have to imagine it for ourselves. We can start right now, learning “to love what is lovely and will not last” moment to moment by seeing what we see, “as through a veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.” And all it takes is a little respect.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 19, 2017
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!” Lately, I’ve been barraged with reminders that things don’t last…my oven broke….I turned 48…I was carded at a restaurant (reminding me eyesight doesn’t last)…trees again stand leafless…and the calendar tells me Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday. How did that happen?
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed, “Change alone is unchanging.” And though we may concede this observation is true enough, by and large, we don’t like it.
But as Mary Oliver reminds us we’re not tasked to like it, we’re tasked to love it. And not, as she writes, “by the century or the year, but by the hours.” Notice that in emphasizing the here and now, Oliver is telling us love is not something we think ourselves into or decide to do once all the facts or consequences, which are the benefits of time or history, are in or known.
Oliver’s words bring to mind a saying by the 13th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, which points in a similar direction, “If the only prayer you say your whole life is ‘thank you’ that will suffice.” By prayer Eckhart is talking about a way of relating to life rather than kneeling bedside with hands clasped reciting a wish list. Indeed Eckhart’s message is echoed in the contemporary mantra calling us to adopt an attitude of gratitude.
We all know however, that saying is much easier to parrot than practice. Its pretty hard to will yourself into a sustainable attitude of gratitude. Fortunately, there are alternatives including one the spiritual teacher and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr calls, “the change that changes everything.”
All this change asks of us is a little R-E-S-P E-C-T. (I would have sung it but I didn’t want to risk drawing the ire of Aretha Franklin).
As Rohr notes, an often overlooked meaning of the word respect is to look at something twice…to ”re-speculate.” Basically, respect is an alternative, or in this case, an additional way of seeing, and to be clear, for our young ones here and those of us who wear glasses, like myself, or have other visual impairments, seeing refers to knowing and relating to the world.
And an alternative or additional way of knowing or relating to the world is, after all, what religion and spirituality, at their best, encourage us toward. But why?
Well, consider that when we first look at anything, we see the way we always see things. Call it our habitual way of seeing. This way of seeing generates, almost instantly, a narrative of distinction in our minds in which we are constantly making judgements and stating preferences. “I like this…I don’t like that…I want this…I don’t want that…This is ugly…That is beautiful…how will this help me? how will it harm me? We do this with people too…she’s Asian…He’s white…He’s bisexual…She’s straight…She’s American…He’s not and so forth.
And that’s where most people, most of the time stop… with that first look. Which means they rarely, if ever, look, let alone see, beyond the distinctions that arise in their minds.
We tend to stick with our habits so long as they keep delivering us some perceived benefit, which in this case is usually the appearance of stability, order or control. I say appearance because these are ultimately an illusion, as Heraclitus observed. Now Rohr is quick to point out our habitual way of seeing is not wrong or bad per se, but simply limiting. And it is incomplete or inadequate if we are to realize the depth and fullness of this precious life we’ve been given.
It is interesting to me that we live in a culture where we make fun of people who have smart phones but only use them to make and receive calls and yet we’re perfectly content to similarly limit our lives.
And that’s where respect comes in. As a practice, respect concerns expanding the usage of our capacity as human beings for spiritual growth and depth. Something clearly in keeping with our covenant as Unitarian Universalists to attend to our own spiritual growth and encourage others to do the same.
So what does the practice of respect look like?
In one of his lectures, Rohr tells of sending people gathered for a retreat out into the dessert of New Mexico. Where he then asked them to choose a particular object…a leaf, twig, or lizard…and grant it respect. Namely, to give it second look. He even encouraged them to talk to whatever it was they chose to grant respect to. And to let it talk to them. It is not as far fetched as it might sound, particularly to those of us who talk to our pets or plants. Of course a twig, leaf, lizard or our pets and plants, for that matter, aren’t going to speak to us in words. Yet once the labels, judgements and self-interest of the first look have fallen away, we begin, in a sense, to “lose ourselves”… opening us to notice, feel or observe things in the second look that we just couldn’t “hear” or see at first.
Just the other day a friend took me to a vegan restaurant where I found myself engaged in a lot of first look commentary in my mind about our skinny, perky, earthy-crunchy waitress with a nose ring - See how the first look works? It wasn’t long before I decided she was kind of annoying even though she was as nice as could be. (Although it could have been that she was trying to convince me the avocado pudding tasted just like chocolate) Noticing this going on in my head, I decided to look again, to grant respect and you know, by the time the check came my thoughts were much more focused our shared humanity and an appreciation for her presence rather than what I liked or didn’t like about her.
The practice of respect, according to Rohr has brought people to tears. For by engaging in it they have, he notes, “let go of radical egocentricity…and discovered the mutuality of being.” Which is a complicated way of saying what Mary Oliver says in her poem Snow Geese when she writes, “What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them…as through a veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.”
What we’re really getting at here is an awareness of the abundant, radical availability of grace in our lives. In her book “Grounded”, Diana Butler Bass writes, “We live and move and have our being in great web of belonging whose connective tissue is grace.” The practice of respect helps us recognize this, teaching us to to love what is lovely but will not last and by the hours, not by the century or the year .
Rohr notes that when we grant respect to one thing or person that respect universalizes. Thus, over time, by regularly granting respect to things and people in our own lives we begin a process of reorientation, where we live increasingly from that heretofore elusive attitude of gratitude. Or as Meister Eckhart might say our lives become our prayer of thanksgiving.
The late Unitarian Universalist minister Peter Fleck observed, “The pilgrims were not thankful because they survived the winter. They survived the winter because they were thankful.” A profound and practical observation for our daily lives and in particular as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday where for various reasons time spent traveling or with family can sometimes feel like a game of survival.
Indeed, imagine how different our world would be, if for more people, their only prayer was a life lived from a place of gratitude. The good news is we don’t have to imagine it for ourselves. We can start right now, learning “to love what is lovely and will not last” moment to moment by seeing what we see, “as through a veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.” And all it takes is a little respect.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen and Blessed Be
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