Spiritual Engineering
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 4, 2020
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
April 15, 2019, 6:20pm, an alarm sounds during mass at Paris’ iconic Notre Dame cathedral. Though initially assumed a false alarm, worshippers are evacuated as a precaution. By 7:10pm a plume of smoke is visible from afar. The social media posts begin. Soon the 850 year old building is aglow and an army of fire fighters struggle to control the raging fire. People around the globe watch in shock and horror; world leaders issue statements of support.
It won’t be until 9:30am the next morning, some fifteen hours from the time the first alarm sounded, that the fire is entirely extinguished. Although the structure still stands, two-thirds of the roof is gone, the towering spire having collapsed into the nave, leaving a gaping hole, and large parts of one transept have collapsed. Remarkably, no one died, although three people were seriously injured.
Just a few months earlier, I sat in the nave of Notre Dame de Paris. I was in Paris for New Years and arrived at the cathedral just after the start of Vespers. During the service I divided my time between trying to keep up with the Latin text and looking up and around, marveling at the soaring arches, delighting in the shadowy effect of the candlelight on the cavernous interior, and observing the darkening of the massive stained glass windows as the daylight outside transitioned to night.
To say it was magical would be a gross understatement. It was sublime. Following the service, my husband and I walked the perimeter of the exterior, pausing frequently in awe of the flying buttresses and other Gothic era innovations that made the creation of such massive churches with their towering walls of windows possible. Indeed, it appeared simultaneously delicate and strong, offering no suggestion of vulnerability.
I read afterwards that at one point during the fire, French Interior Minister Franck Reister, aware of the destruction unfolding in real time, commented, “Everything’s very fragile.” He may have been talking about the condition of the cathedral, but his comment speaks to a broader reality.
Notre Dame is not the oldest, nor the largest, most beautiful or even architecturally significant cathedral in the world and yet its potential ruin spurred fear, mourning and sympathy worldwide, and not just from the estimated 1.2 billion catholics scattered around the globe or religious people, but countless others who have never set foot inside a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple and may never do so. Notre Dame was constructed as a Catholic church, but it is, in many ways, an international symbol of a broader faith of sorts whose diverse adherents share one inseverable bond: the human condition.
In contemplating this well known symbol’s physical qualities: scale, solidity, aesthetics, purpose, we’re connected to our own spiritual hunger for something larger than ourselves, a sense of stability in an otherwise hurried or chaotic world, beauty, and meaning beyond the daily routines to which we have been consigned, fallen into or even willingly chosen. Contemplating the potential destruction or loss of the cathedral, we are confronted with the reality of our condition as human beings in a very personal way and feel more keenly the pangs, or depth, if you will, of our spiritual hunger.
Visiting Notre Dame or looking at pictures of it before and after the fire, we may admire the structural engineering that has held the building up for eight centuries and likely played a part, along with the efforts of firefighters, in preventing its total destruction during the fire in 2019. Still, we might be better served to take the opportunity to consider the condition of the spiritual engineering upholding us today.
By spiritual engineering I simply mean that which supports our spiritual life. Which, broadly speaking, encompasses our exploration and response to the human condition and our need/hunger for things like connection, stability, beauty, meaning, and so forth.
Like an ancient cathedral our spiritual lives require maintenance. The structures that support it can weaken and become unbalanced leaving us feeling stuck or dissatisfied no matter what we do. Our readings this morning offer some insight as to where we might show up, that is, where we might direct our attention and effort when we suspect support for our spiritual life needs some shoring up.
John Ormond’s witty poem, “The Cathedral Builders” focuses on the builders of community rather than the building which houses it. As the builders climb “sketchy ladders towards God”, Ormond touches on our need to know we are not alone and our collective urge and power to create meaning, describing it as defying gravity and deifying stone.
At the same time he reminds us of life lived on the ground with “suppers and small beer” and time spent with family and friends. But this is no dreamy utopian vision. It is grounded firmly in human experience where people lie, spit, sing, get or escape illness. People who, like us, experience days when we are at our best and when we leave a lot to be desired. Of lives alternately happy and unhappy.
At the end of the poem, though the cathedral is not yet finished and the builders decide to “leave the spire to others.”, Ormond invites us to revel knowingly in the achievement and ownership of their effort, “I bloody did that”, they say. An expression which speaks to an awareness that one’s engagement in community, in collective effort, in service to something larger than one’s self, nevertheless carries personal significance that feeds and satisfies our spiritual hunger.
Ormond’s poem is a call to community to those of us whose overindulgence in the promises and pitfalls of hyper-individualism leave us spiritually malnourished no matter how much effort we expend attempting to quell our hunger.
In the “Peace of Wild Things”, Wendell Berry offers a different call. A call for, “When despair for the world grows” in us and we, “wake in the night at the least sound in fear,” of what our lives and our children’s lives may be. It is a call to quiet, to inner stillness, to solitude.
Solitude, which is sometimes described as being alone without being lonely, is essential to spiritual life. It gives us a chance to step back, take both a wider and deeper view, and helps us reconnect to the grander rhythms of life and flow of time, beyond human activity and schedules and deadlines that we might “rest in the grace of the world”, and be free. (Or, as in our second hymn today) “Nada te turbe, nada te espante”, nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten.
How much solitude one may need varies from person to person. The pace and volume of modern life is not conducive to solitude and yet so often it is this pace and volume that increases our hunger or need for it. Berry’s poem is a call to solitude to those of us who find ourselves awakened by or trying to shut down, “despair for the world” despite, or more often, because we have tried every manner of distraction to no avail.
Like Ormond’s call to community, Berry’s call to solitude is intended to usher us toward a deeper exploration and appreciation of the fullness and mystery of life. But whereas Ormond’s call directs us outward to engage and develop a communal life, Berry’s draws us inward to engage and develop our interior lives. Yet, when it comes to spiritual engineering, the call to community and the call to solitude is not an either/or decision as is sometimes implied by the assertion one is spiritual but not religious.
We in fact need both community and solitude to support our spiritual lives. And we need them in balance. Indeed, just as the structural integrity of a great cathedral depends on the careful distribution of support, so too does the integrity of our spiritual engineering.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian famous for both his writings and active opposition to the Nazis (He was executed by the Nazis in 1945), wrote, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone… Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”
Reports indicate investigators believe the fire at Notre Dame de Paris was started by either a cigarette or a short circuit in the electrical system. That’s it; a tiny ember or spark, so small as to easily escape casual observance and yet so potentially destructive. Risks to our spiritual wellbeing are sometimes obvious, as is what we need to do in the short term in response. In the wake of national tragedies, for example, people flock to houses of worship, vigils and other gatherings just to be together. And we know the times in which we live demand spiritual strength and fortitude.
But what about the myriad tiny embers and sparks beyond the big, obvious events or that will follow the turn of our current page in history? Those everyday embers and sparks that will push against and test the integrity of our spiritual engineering?
How sound is your spiritual support against these?
Where might you need to show up in order to shore up that support?
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 4, 2020
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
April 15, 2019, 6:20pm, an alarm sounds during mass at Paris’ iconic Notre Dame cathedral. Though initially assumed a false alarm, worshippers are evacuated as a precaution. By 7:10pm a plume of smoke is visible from afar. The social media posts begin. Soon the 850 year old building is aglow and an army of fire fighters struggle to control the raging fire. People around the globe watch in shock and horror; world leaders issue statements of support.
It won’t be until 9:30am the next morning, some fifteen hours from the time the first alarm sounded, that the fire is entirely extinguished. Although the structure still stands, two-thirds of the roof is gone, the towering spire having collapsed into the nave, leaving a gaping hole, and large parts of one transept have collapsed. Remarkably, no one died, although three people were seriously injured.
Just a few months earlier, I sat in the nave of Notre Dame de Paris. I was in Paris for New Years and arrived at the cathedral just after the start of Vespers. During the service I divided my time between trying to keep up with the Latin text and looking up and around, marveling at the soaring arches, delighting in the shadowy effect of the candlelight on the cavernous interior, and observing the darkening of the massive stained glass windows as the daylight outside transitioned to night.
To say it was magical would be a gross understatement. It was sublime. Following the service, my husband and I walked the perimeter of the exterior, pausing frequently in awe of the flying buttresses and other Gothic era innovations that made the creation of such massive churches with their towering walls of windows possible. Indeed, it appeared simultaneously delicate and strong, offering no suggestion of vulnerability.
I read afterwards that at one point during the fire, French Interior Minister Franck Reister, aware of the destruction unfolding in real time, commented, “Everything’s very fragile.” He may have been talking about the condition of the cathedral, but his comment speaks to a broader reality.
Notre Dame is not the oldest, nor the largest, most beautiful or even architecturally significant cathedral in the world and yet its potential ruin spurred fear, mourning and sympathy worldwide, and not just from the estimated 1.2 billion catholics scattered around the globe or religious people, but countless others who have never set foot inside a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple and may never do so. Notre Dame was constructed as a Catholic church, but it is, in many ways, an international symbol of a broader faith of sorts whose diverse adherents share one inseverable bond: the human condition.
In contemplating this well known symbol’s physical qualities: scale, solidity, aesthetics, purpose, we’re connected to our own spiritual hunger for something larger than ourselves, a sense of stability in an otherwise hurried or chaotic world, beauty, and meaning beyond the daily routines to which we have been consigned, fallen into or even willingly chosen. Contemplating the potential destruction or loss of the cathedral, we are confronted with the reality of our condition as human beings in a very personal way and feel more keenly the pangs, or depth, if you will, of our spiritual hunger.
Visiting Notre Dame or looking at pictures of it before and after the fire, we may admire the structural engineering that has held the building up for eight centuries and likely played a part, along with the efforts of firefighters, in preventing its total destruction during the fire in 2019. Still, we might be better served to take the opportunity to consider the condition of the spiritual engineering upholding us today.
By spiritual engineering I simply mean that which supports our spiritual life. Which, broadly speaking, encompasses our exploration and response to the human condition and our need/hunger for things like connection, stability, beauty, meaning, and so forth.
Like an ancient cathedral our spiritual lives require maintenance. The structures that support it can weaken and become unbalanced leaving us feeling stuck or dissatisfied no matter what we do. Our readings this morning offer some insight as to where we might show up, that is, where we might direct our attention and effort when we suspect support for our spiritual life needs some shoring up.
John Ormond’s witty poem, “The Cathedral Builders” focuses on the builders of community rather than the building which houses it. As the builders climb “sketchy ladders towards God”, Ormond touches on our need to know we are not alone and our collective urge and power to create meaning, describing it as defying gravity and deifying stone.
At the same time he reminds us of life lived on the ground with “suppers and small beer” and time spent with family and friends. But this is no dreamy utopian vision. It is grounded firmly in human experience where people lie, spit, sing, get or escape illness. People who, like us, experience days when we are at our best and when we leave a lot to be desired. Of lives alternately happy and unhappy.
At the end of the poem, though the cathedral is not yet finished and the builders decide to “leave the spire to others.”, Ormond invites us to revel knowingly in the achievement and ownership of their effort, “I bloody did that”, they say. An expression which speaks to an awareness that one’s engagement in community, in collective effort, in service to something larger than one’s self, nevertheless carries personal significance that feeds and satisfies our spiritual hunger.
Ormond’s poem is a call to community to those of us whose overindulgence in the promises and pitfalls of hyper-individualism leave us spiritually malnourished no matter how much effort we expend attempting to quell our hunger.
In the “Peace of Wild Things”, Wendell Berry offers a different call. A call for, “When despair for the world grows” in us and we, “wake in the night at the least sound in fear,” of what our lives and our children’s lives may be. It is a call to quiet, to inner stillness, to solitude.
Solitude, which is sometimes described as being alone without being lonely, is essential to spiritual life. It gives us a chance to step back, take both a wider and deeper view, and helps us reconnect to the grander rhythms of life and flow of time, beyond human activity and schedules and deadlines that we might “rest in the grace of the world”, and be free. (Or, as in our second hymn today) “Nada te turbe, nada te espante”, nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten.
How much solitude one may need varies from person to person. The pace and volume of modern life is not conducive to solitude and yet so often it is this pace and volume that increases our hunger or need for it. Berry’s poem is a call to solitude to those of us who find ourselves awakened by or trying to shut down, “despair for the world” despite, or more often, because we have tried every manner of distraction to no avail.
Like Ormond’s call to community, Berry’s call to solitude is intended to usher us toward a deeper exploration and appreciation of the fullness and mystery of life. But whereas Ormond’s call directs us outward to engage and develop a communal life, Berry’s draws us inward to engage and develop our interior lives. Yet, when it comes to spiritual engineering, the call to community and the call to solitude is not an either/or decision as is sometimes implied by the assertion one is spiritual but not religious.
We in fact need both community and solitude to support our spiritual lives. And we need them in balance. Indeed, just as the structural integrity of a great cathedral depends on the careful distribution of support, so too does the integrity of our spiritual engineering.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian famous for both his writings and active opposition to the Nazis (He was executed by the Nazis in 1945), wrote, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone… Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”
Reports indicate investigators believe the fire at Notre Dame de Paris was started by either a cigarette or a short circuit in the electrical system. That’s it; a tiny ember or spark, so small as to easily escape casual observance and yet so potentially destructive. Risks to our spiritual wellbeing are sometimes obvious, as is what we need to do in the short term in response. In the wake of national tragedies, for example, people flock to houses of worship, vigils and other gatherings just to be together. And we know the times in which we live demand spiritual strength and fortitude.
But what about the myriad tiny embers and sparks beyond the big, obvious events or that will follow the turn of our current page in history? Those everyday embers and sparks that will push against and test the integrity of our spiritual engineering?
How sound is your spiritual support against these?
Where might you need to show up in order to shore up that support?
Amen and Blessed Be
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