Sermon: Paths to the Top

This is a sermon presented to the UU Congregation at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on Sept. 28, 2008.

Since the congregation is in an interim time, I offered to present (with the interim's approval) on the four varieties of spiritual practice that Peter Tufts Richardson developed. I invited them to add a small hand motion to the Joys and Concerns, 'from my heart out into the universe'; I mention this in the sermon.


It’s so good to be back in this space.
The last time I was here, my hands were sooty and my shirt was sweaty
as I helped my friend Mark Rosauer and several others of you
disembowel and dismantle the old pipe organ that was here.

In an odd way, that was a kind of spiritual experience.
I was glad to be included in the Tuesday morning spiritual practice group
They meet every week
to carry out various improvements to the church building.
The work is satisfying and
There is an easy camaraderie among those who do it
they come nearly every week to work together
compensated with donuts and cups of tea.

Let me assure you that there are many much larger churches
that would be hard pressed to put together even one work party
of a half dozen or more people for one project,
much less do it week after week.

For some of us, great emotional and even spiritual satisfaction
comes from that kind of consistent, devoted effort, week after week, year after year.
For others, spiritual experience comes in a flash,
some momentary event that truly reached down deep inside us,
and turned something, changed something .
Maybe it was a walk in great natural beauty,
or wonderful music, or reading profound poetry.

Whatever the source of such inspirational experiences,
I suspect most of us seek to repeat them,
to find what it is that opens us to them,
to find ways to deepen and better understand them;
and thus better understand the world we inhabit.

This is the essence of spiritual practice.
However we define spirit, the things we do,
be they working, hiking, singing, or meditating,
that carry us into place of inspiration are spiritual practices.

PRESENTATION OF THE MODEL
There's a well-known religious metaphor
that suggests we are each on a spiritual journey,
traveling up a great mountain.
There are numerous paths on that mountain,
paths that wind and cross, that lead mostly up,
but occasionally down and sometimes sideways.
Some paths are gentle and protected,
while others are exposed and treacherous.
But the point is that all these paths ultimately lead to the top,
to whatever it is that we consider ultimate in religious experience.

Most often we think of these distinct paths
as representing different beliefs,
the various theologies that co-exist in the religious landscape.
Here's the Catholic path, there's the Lutheran one,
over there a Buddhist path.
And how we bristle when a person or group
claims that their path is the 'one true path'
and all the others fail to reach the top!
For many of us, this brings up anger at such dogmatic exclusiveness.
For some, such dogmatism brings up sadness
as we recall our own, exclusivist religious upbringing,
and the effort it took us to shed those beliefs.

But there is another way to see these paths we follow to the top of the mountain.
Perhaps these journeys are more about practice than belief,
about what we do
rather than what we think or say.
But hard as it is to articulate our theological beliefs,
we often find it harder to find the words
to describe what spiritual practices touch us and inspire us.
We need a topographic map that points out these paths,
these Journeys, and gives them names.

SOURCE OF THE MODEL
How might we do this mapping?
How might we understand the varieties of spiritual experience?

Since we UUs tend to be rational scientific people,
it might make sense to organize and classify these experiences in some way.
Peter Tufts Richardson, a UU minister, does just this in his book,
Four Spiritualities: Expressions of Self, Expressions of Spirit.
He develops a model that suggests there are four broad types of spirituality,
although they are interrelated.
He suggests that our personality or worldview influences
which of these spiritual practices we will find most appealing.

Now Richardson does not pretend this is a new idea.
He melds an understanding of spiritual practices
from many of the great world religions
to frame his unifying model of four spiritual paths.

Richardson's model also combines these religious ideas
with two specific dimensions of Jungian psychology.
The first dimension is how we perceive the world.
Do we primarily perceive through our senses or through our intuition?
In other words, do we observe things with common sense,
or do we just know through hunches?
The second dimension is how we make decisions.
Do we make choices primarily by thinking things through
or by tapping into our feelings?
That is to say, do we lead with our head or our heart?
The two options in each of these two dimensions
generate the four spiritual Journeys
that we’ll examine shortly.

But before we do, let me note that these four quadrants
are closely related to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator ,
which many of you may be familiar with.
Myers Briggs is personality tool often used to study how people might work together.
We don’t have time to explore it more deeply today,
but I will mention it as we explore these spiritual types.
If you’re not familiar with Myers Briggs, I'd suggest a little internet research;
you can evaluate your 'type' on-line, and it can be quite revealing.

So, Richardson’s model outlines four pathways
through which we experience the realm of the spirit.
I'm going to spend a little time exploring each of the four Journeys,
and touching on how they relate to each other.
I think as we explore these pathways,
some of you may recognize yourselves
or maybe your friends or family.

THE FOUR PATHS
(Move to first location, equipped with a large book - open it to reading.)
The first path is called the Journey of Unity.
The Journey of Unity focuses on the great organizing principles of the universe.
What are the great questions, and what might the answers be?
The focus here tends to be an intellectual one,
with deep theological or philosophical explorations as part of the conversation.

People on this path perceive the world through their Intuition,
these are the folks who try to read between the lines, and consider future possibility.
They base their decision-making on Thinking;
that is on the head, depending on rationality, rather than the heart.
Followers of this particular path are a minority in the general population,
but they are significant in Unitarian Universalist communities.
Our worship experiences reflect this. We love discussion groups.
In most UU churches, the sermon is the center-point of the worship, with academic quality talks, carefully prepared, even down to the footnotes.
Does this sound familiar? (hands)

(Move to next location, a carafe, and pour a cup: “Regular or Decaf?”)
The second path is the Journey of Works.
The people in the Journey of Works are focused on getting things done.
This is where the Tuesday work crew that removed the organ comes in.
These are responsible people with a job to do.
People here are head oriented, reasoning things out,
and they see the world as it is now, through their senses.
They see what is missing, or what is not working, and move to fix it.

They prefer to have rules, they love tradition,
and they want people to follow the rules and respect the tradition.
Tradition and rules are important here,
but that doesn't mean that people on the journey of works are necessarily conservative.
In fact, I'd suspect that in our congregations,
many of the folks on the front lines of social justice work
would say they are on the Journey of Works.

(Move to the next location, equipped with a votive candle - light it.)
The third path is the Journey of Devotion.
This path is about ritual: lighting candles, reciting the words,
singing familiar hymns, joyful celebrations, these are all important.
Repetition, symbolism and stories are important,
especially stories about heroic people from our past.

This is one of the two heart-centered Journeys, and we see a subtle shift,
to the realm of emotional response in spirituality and worship.
Like the Journey of Works, those on this journey are focused on the here and now,
but the focus is on the ritual or the experience itself.
The Journey of Devotion is well represented in larger society,
but I think it is less represented in Unitarian Universalist communities.
I think our history in the radical side of the Protestant dissenting traditions
caused us to be leery of ritual for a long time.

(Move to the final location, equipped with a singing bowl - sound the bowl.)
The fourth path is the Journey of Harmony.
This is the realm of the mystics,
of those who have a sense that the world is not fully revealed to us,
but who get glimpses of the ultimate reality that they struggle to put into words.
Meditation and silence are key elements of spiritual practice for those on this path.
This particular path merges the Intuitive ways of knowing the world
with decision-making based on Feeling, on the heart.

In our Unitarian history, the Journey of Harmony
flowered most profusely in the Transcendentalist movement.
When you read the works of the Transcendentalists like Emerson or Parker,
you struggle to understand what they are saying,
because they struggled to find words for their newly felt experiences of the divine. Everything is connected, god inside us and all around us, knowing oneself,
these were all difficult concepts that to some degree have to be lived to be understood. And we live them through turning inward.

(Move to center of space)
So I want to ask you to choose:
which of these paths best fits your own personal spiritual nature?
If you feel comfortable doing so, I’d like to ask you to stand and remain standing,
as I call out these paths. (Hold up the objects as the types are named)
Let’s start with Journey of Unity, seeking the answers?
Journey of Works, getting things done?
How about Journey of Devotion, who love ritual?
Journey of Harmony, lovers of mystery?
Look around!

(Return to lectern)
If some of you struggled to choose just one path, that's good!
I think a well-developed spiritual life should draw practice from each of these paths.
I know that for me, the Journey of Harmony is most natural path.
I find daily meditation an easy practice.
But I try to engage the other paths, through reading, improv movement,
and working in stained glass.
Perhaps you might want to explore what spiritual practices might broaden your horizons.

COMMUNITY
Now that we understand a little more about our individual spiritual journeys,
how can we apply them to our communal worship life?
A congregation develops a spiritual “style” just as surely as individuals do.
Our worship may emphasize great preaching,
or maybe well executed drama or ritual,
or silence and meditative music.
But we should also ask, is there enough balance for everyone?

I recently read an article about a man who finally understood his discontent
with his long-time family church -- he was of one spiritual type
and the church was strongly opposite that type.
His longtime family ties kept him at that church,
but he understood that he needed to fill some of his spiritual needs in other ways.

Once a congregation understands its own worship style,
it can make changes in its style to better provide for people on the other paths.
Changes to the typical order of the Sunday morning worship,
or to the music program, might be called for.
Or, maybe separate worship groups, like meditation groups
or small group ministries, or discussion forums are needed.

We explored such a change briefly today,
by modifying the joys and sorrows slightly.
We added a simple body movement,
a small communal ritual.
How did that make you feel?
Even small experiments like that can reveal much.

REINTEGRATION
This little exercise we did today
– when you stood up as I named the four Journeys –
brings up deeper issues around identity and belonging.
I'm sure you were curious when your friends stood up!
By more or less artificially segmenting ourselves into these four categories,
we create new identities and labels for ourselves.
Such labeling can be helpful if it serves
to deepen our understanding of one another and ourselves.
Such identities are valuable if they urge us to greater wholeness and balance,
and if they instill a greater compassion for those who are different from us.
Ultimately, if we do that compassionate work,
we find we can put the labels aside,
and see that our identities are less important than realizing that
we are all on the same journey.

In that ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 12,
the human protagonist Arjuna questions the god Krishna
about achieving enlightenment and eternal life,
and asks, 'which way is swift and sure, love or knowledge?'.
Krishna answers in much detail, finally noting in chapter 13:

Some by the path of meditation,
and by the grace of the spirit,
see the spirit in themselves;

some by the path of the vision of truth,
and others by the path of work.

And yet there are others who do not know,
but hear from others and adore.

They also cross beyond death,
because of their devotion to words of the truth.

And we see that all of these spiritual journeys
lead to the same unknowable and mysterious end.
May we be cognizant of this truth
both in our individual spiritual lives
as we live together in this gathered community.

Picture from UU Congregation Eau Claire.

Sermon at a Glance

Another blog author turned me on to Wordle, a fun 'word cloud toy', and I thought it would be useful as a tool to 'grok' a whole sermon (or other text) at a sort of superficial semantic level.
Here's a recent sermon of mine.
Just for comparison, take a look at something a little more impressive, say, Theodore Parker's Transient and Permanent in Christianity, of 1841.
Surprising how much meaning leaks through!

Sermon: What Remains

This was my last sermon of my internship, and unlike the others, I was given free rein to pick the topic and theme. The initial theme was 'Impermanence'. This emerged. My worship associate, Craig Allen offered a words of welcome, referencing Heraclitus and Plutarch, that wonderfully set the stage for this sermon.

When I was a volunteer at the Denver Museum of Natural History, we often had opportunities to participate in other programs offered the museum. One of these was trip to a research dig on the prairie east of Denver. We traveled by bus out to a site, and visited various digs the team had going in gullies and washes in the area. At one site, Kirk Johnson, one of the research paleontologists at the museum, pointed out among several layers of soft rock the one thin layer that represented the KT boundary. This is the dividing line between the Cretacus and the Tertiary periods in geological history, between the time of dinosaurs and the time when dinosaurs no longer existed. The thin layer was the remains of a catastrophic meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and a significant number of other species on earth.

Touching this thin dark layer, putting my fingers on it, had as much significance as touching a martyr's relic in some European cathedral; actually for me, it had more significance. I could feel, at least at some level, a sadness for all the life forms that ceased to exist in that short time. I also felt a chill, for this thin layer, this boundary, represented the contingency, the randomness, the seeming senselessness of the universe. It symbolized the reality of constant transition and churn. It reminded me that all things, and all people will one day die.

When we are gone, what will be left behind? What is our legacy? The most obvious answer (and hope) for many people is their children.

And yet, we've seen examples where this can be taken too far. I recall one friend, a university professor, who regularly lamented about his grown son, whose career choice, working in a big box store, and lifestyle, living in a trailer park, didn't measure up to my friend's hopes. He lived in anguish over his lost hopes, and couldn't see the good. His son was not a abusing drugs, like the sons of other men I knew, or estranged and out of contact, like the child of another.
Consider of Kahlil Gilbran, which we heard earlier:

Your Children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself...
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,...
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For some these words suggest too much permission, but I see in them as a reminder that our task as parents and as a loving congregation is to equip our children for their future. We cannot control that future and we cannot live it for them.

Others seek legacy through their vocation, hoping to leave some permanent body of work.
I know I've been guilty of this sort of thinking. What programs, what creations would I leave behind in my job, in my ministry, even here at Unity Church? Again, there is a danger here, of letting our egos take control. We want our work to remain when we are gone. We lose focus of the larger mission or purpose that our work serves.

When I get too focused on the idea that my work must have some permanence, I think of an incident that happened in Denver over a decade ago. Some Tibetan Buddhist monks had come to create a large sand mandala at the art museum, and over many days they carefully poured out intricate patterns of colored sand in a complex geometric design. When they were nearly done, a man jumped up on their platform and began to destroy the monks work, screaming something about 'the work of the devil'. I remember being so angry at this destruction, and not understanding how the monks could be so calm about the whole thing. But they simply reminded everyone they were simply going to sweep off the whole thing in the end anyway. I still remember thinking: sure a sand mandala is about impermanence, but no one got a chance to preserve the completed work with a photograph!

In striving for legacy, we long to see both how we fit into history and how we will be remembered in the future. In this process we lose sight of what really matters -- the here and now. Anne Morrow Lindbergh speaks to this:

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.

So while Morrow Lindbergh was speaking of coupled relationships with this quote, and it remains a favorite wedding reading -- it was read at my own wedding -- it applies to larger relationships, congregations, cities, even nations. In particular, I hope we as a nation can get beyond false, fear-based security of owning, demanding and possessing to a real security of living in the here and now.

Let me turn to one of the strong theological threads that weaves through much of modern Unitarian Universalist thought. This is Process Theology, a small but important theological strand which was developed initially by Alfred North Whitehead in the early twentieth century.
The basic idea is this. Rather than the universe being filled with relatively fixed things, like atoms and particles, the universe is better seen as in flow, a process of events, a becoming. Everything, atoms and molecules, even we as individuals, are comprised of a series of these events happening one after another. As each new event happens, the event makes decisions based on every prior event that has happened. Every event. That's a lot of input data. So these events are immediate, they come in and go out of existence in an instant.

But the remains of the events, the history, what Whitehead calls 'past occasions', are preserved forever, and they constantly feed the future.In this world of process, everything is alive.

Process theology contains the possibility of God. Yes, you can substitute another word for this possibility if you want, but I think it's good practice to reclaim good religious words like God for our own use. Now this process God is not the almighty, all-knowing, perfect and unchanging God of traditional Christianity, but a transformative being that is, like us, a stream of events, undergoing change, and fully embedded in the universe, deeply connected with each of us.

This god invites us toward creativity, toward engagement and beauty in this world. We are free, event by event, to follow or to ignore this calling, this lure toward what is good and beautiful. And when we respond, we inform and increase the potential, the possibility for good that is God. This god, unlike the ancient father god, can suffer with us, and experience joy with us, because this god is so closely connected with us. We are drawn toward this process god, and in responding, co-create with god, a just world, one full of joy, full of beauty.

I'm sure you've noticed several references from Buddhist traditions in this worship service. We used a hymn that quotes the Buddha, and words that recall Thich Naht Hahn's idea of interbeing. I find that Buddhist theology and process theology generally travel together as amicable companions. True, one is ancient and one is modern, but they share some essential concepts - ideas of constant change, of interconnectedness. I want to be clear, these are two distinct ideas and traditions, but the similarities allow us to compare them and come to deeper understanding of each.

But I'll be honest - I bring in elements from Buddhism because process theology is not a practiced religion, it's a theology. It offers little in the way of ritual, or poetry, or song, or heroic stories. I think that perhaps the reason process thought is not more widespread is that it is so academic and intellectual, with little to offer for the heart. Perhaps it is too new to allow the poets time for reflection. This is sad to me, because these ideas are so awesome, so expansive and far-reaching, I get a tingle up my spine, I feel myself carried away contemplating them. Perhaps some of you might find the poetic words or the stories that might bring these vast ideas into the small but welcoming chambers of our hearts.

Here's an example of what I mean: There is a story in the Buddhist tradition in which the Buddha was preparing to lecture to his monks who were gathering and taking their seats. The Buddha noticed a lotus flower in a muddy pond, and plucked it up, root and all, and held it up for all to see. Many of his followers didn't even notice, they were settling in waiting for him to speak. Suddenly, his main disciple, Maha Kashyapa, smiled. The Buddha saw his smile, and acknowledged that he understood the message. The message was a truth that could not be communicated with words or with the intellect.

Similarly, in Kenneth Rexroth's poem, a version of another old Buddhist parable, the Buddha communicates not with words, but with leaves. In Rexroth's poem, the Buddha said,

"I have given you
A handful of truths. Besides
These there are many
Thousands of other truths, more
Than can ever be numbered."

Buddha reminds us that the truths he has to offer, and all the truths we know are only a small part of all the truths there are. In the world in process, perhaps it is not so much that the truth we know is only a part of all the truths, but also that all truth is expanding and evolving, as we work with the creative and transformative force in the universe in acts of loving creation.

Back at the Denver dig, I learned another important lesson about what remains. At another site a few hundred yards away from where we found the KT layer, graduate researchers had exposed a formation of gray shale that had once been mud at the bottom of a pond. Kirk picked up flat pieces of shale from a pile of rock, and casually split them with his rock hammer. Most split open to reveal large leaves of various unusual forms. Kirk would pick up a piece of rock, split it, and pass the specimen to one of us, before quickly picking up another, and splitting it.

We were soon surrounded by a wealth of these fossils, dozens of them. Kirk explained that the numbers of these fossils allowed statistical analysis describing the kind of trees in the forest and giving clues to the climate. Clearly this had been part of a temperate rain-forest. Kirk was excited about this project because it showed that life had returned maybe ten times more quickly after the meteor catastrophe than was previously thought.

These fossil leaves were part of some storm run-off sixty five million years ago, buried in the mud. They formed the basis of an ecology that allowed the rise of mammals, and ultimately humans. As they lay in the sun for the first time in millions of years, I realized their connection with us.

To me, the leaves in their layers of rock are a metaphor for the past events in process theology, laid down in some ancient period, yet somehow available to us as we move through this world of change.

So this is end. The end of my last sermon in this role as Hallman Ministerial Intern at Unity Church. In the fall I will assume a chaplaincy residency at United Hospital here in St. Paul. I will keep a respectful professional distance from Unity Church, so that the new Hallman Intern, Leon Dunkley, can most fully assume this role.

I am deeply grateful for my time with you. It has been a wonderful, challenging, creative and joyful time of learning and becoming into ministry for me. I hope my service here has both responded to that larger luring toward goodness and creativity, and been in service of you, in your own spiritual transformation and growth.

When I think of what remains, and what should remain, it is love. Perhaps the words of the song Everything Possible by UU minister Fred Small, the one sung last week by Kerri and Rob, are the best reminder. "the only measure of your words and deeds will be the love you leave behind when you're done."

Sermon as Story

I've been attending a wonderful storytelling class offered at Unity Church. Last week, Loren Niemi spent time with us on ghost stories and other stories of grief and loss. In the craft of telling, he was masterful in the use of long pauses between parts of the story. These I began to see as white space, which is the essence of good visual design of printed materials. This is just one lesson I learned from this series of gifted teachers and tellers.

Loren described how, in telling his stories, he longs to put his audience into a sort of trance in preparation. I said, perhaps a little flippantly, "that's called worship", and he agreed. While I hesitate to use the word 'trance', which has connotations of hypnotism or suspension of belief in our culture, the idea of being in an enhanced state of readiness, in a contemplative or meditative state does make sense to me. Good liturgy creates this enhanced state. This just puts more weight on the sermon to deliver an authentic and worthwhile message, one that begins to address people's needs for healing and wholeness. In this awareness, I am humbled by the possibility that the pulpit offers, and I become more respectful of those who listen to my words and engage in conversation with me.

Sermon: I Tripped and Fell

This sermon is part of a Lenten series called "Stations of the Breath", based on the Dylan Thomas poem, A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London. This was intended to explore our reluctance to admit failure, process the aftermath, and receive help. I give great credit to Mary, my worship associate for helping to identify and frame this issue, and for finding powerful and focusing readings.


Almost two decades ago, Liz and I were vacationing with my siblings and their partners, sailing and scuba diving in the British Virgin Islands. We decided to dive a shipwreck off one of the islands, and were assured by our local captain that he was familiar with the dive spots. Our captain wasn’t a diver, however, so he anchored the boat in a spot with fairly strong current, some distance away from the wreck. We began to descend, and found ourselves beginning to drift away from the wreck.

My siblings, all strong and experienced divers, were able to overcome the current and swim toward the wreck, but Liz and I couldn’t. As all good dive buddies should do, we communicated with hand signals, and we decided to surface.

Now we found ourselves in even stronger current, far from our boat, and drifting at an alarming rate toward the open sea. We finally waved down another boat that happened to be passing by, and after we convinced them that we weren’t waving just to say Hi, they gave us a lift, or rather a tow, back to our own boat. Only then was I able to track the panic that had been coursing through me; fortunately, Liz’s inexperience as a diver kept her from being too upset, either with the situation, with me, or with the captain of our boat.

This story is only one example of many personal experiences I can bring to mind of living through a close call, a failure, a disappointment. I am sure, that most of you could also recall such times too, without much effort. A time when we fell down, hard.

Sometimes our plans are foiled, as in our scuba experience. Sometimes, we get surprised by an unexpected turn of events, a job loss, a medical crisis, a betrayal. Sometimes we find the going much harder and slower than we expected. We think we are making good progress toward a destination when we begin to realize, if our eyes are open, that the destination is wrong for us. Sometimes we simply find ourselves adrift, and unable to swim against the current that is carrying us away.

I think the first step in dealing with a fall is admitting that we have fallen. This is sometimes harder for men than women. I’m sure that the underwater communications between myself and Liz that day went something like this: [dive hands signals] (ok?) (somethings wrong) (ok?) (follow me) (not ok) (go down) (not ok) (go up) (ok?) (ok).

I think back to when I was laid off from a job. I had ignored all the warning signs, the souring economy in high tech, previous layoffs at the company, the marginalization of my job role. Yet I was still surprised to be given the pink slip. I’ve spoken with other men – after all, I was with many of you men this weekend at the Unity Men’s Retreat – and know that this pattern common: we ignore the danger signs, denying even the possibility of a fall.

And the reality is that we take many falls in our lives. I think of traditional Catholic devotional, the Stations of the Cross, which forms a mini-pilgrimage reenacting Jesus condemnation and death. I think it is significant that in three of the fourteen stations involve non-Biblical references to Jesus tripping and falling. Those who practice use the Stations of the Cross are invited to contemplate their own failures and shortcomings. In this pilgrimage they confront their own falls, their own hurting and suffering.

Once we understand we are hurting – assuming we do get to that point – who do we turn to for help? How do we ask? Are we clear, or do we expect people to intuit our situation? Like the boaters who thought we were just waving to say hello, our potential helpers may simply not recognize our need for help.

But even when people can see that we need help, we sometimes refuse to accept it. We are wary of those bearing help, because all too often they show up with a mouthful of advice or, worse, a face frozen in judgment.

Sometimes we fear that if we ask for help, some form of reciprocation will be expected, and we don’t want to be held accountable for that. After all, in our society, help in many forms can be purchased, whether healthcare or therapy or even spiritual direction, so it might feel easier to pay a professional than to make a personal connection – the kind that might come if we accept an offer of help from someone in a caring community like this one.

There is a deeper reason we fail to seek or accept help. To admit we need help is to give up power, to give up our independence. I know this is true for me. Finding myself down and grappling with the question of whether to seek help or go it alone, has been a recurring struggle for me, returning at different points in my life. Yet when I do seek help, from friends, or from my minister, or from a professional, I’ve always felt a sense of joy and relief as we resolve the issue at hand. The landscape of despair, ashen grey, filled with vaguely recognizable contorted forms, gradually opens into green, moist fecundity of new possibility and new life.

But my reluctance to be vulnerable runs deep. Each time I find myself crossing again into the land of desolation, I tell myself, this time I can do it alone. There is pride involved in this. It’s hard for me to ask for help. People around me – my wife, friends, teachers – find themselves walled off by a cordial but stubborn self assurance. I’ve been told it is called, “Minnesota Nice” here, but I can tell you, it is practiced in many other states, and I learned it well, growing up in Houston, Texas

Poet John Tagliabue [in The Bare Arms of Trees] reminds us

I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear
And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these branches
And the cold space between.
I think of the vastness and courage between this step and that step
Of the yearning and fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire held apart.

And each time I try to go it alone, in lean coldness and fear, with terrible desire held apart, I learn again that I cannot. At best, my go it alone solution is a shadow of what might have been had others been involved. We all need the resources of the spirit, and those resources of the spirit are manifested in the help of other people. We need the courage to move from this step to that step, to meet, to accept, to surrender to the possibility of help.

If we can get past fear, if we can find the courage to ask for help, it can come in many forms. I want to speak of the most basic, and yet the most difficult, which is simple human presence.

When Quaker teacher and author Parker Palmer was in one of his times of depression, – we heard about another one last week, and notice how openly this very wise teacher instructs us about the many lessons he has learned from falling, – his friend Bill visited with him. Bill found the one body part of Palmer that still had feeling, his feet. Bill connected to Palmer by rubbing his feet, and observing Palmer’s response. Palmer notes [in Let Your Life Speak], “Bill rarely spoke a word. When he did, he never gave advice, but simply mirrored my condition. He would say, “I can sense your struggle today”, or, “It feels like you are getting stronger.” For Palmer, these words “reassured me that I could still be seen by someone – life-giving knowledge in the midst of an experience that makes one feel annihilated and invisible”.

Why the simple presence of another human being is so helpful is not fully understood by science. One possibility is the ‘simulation theory of empathy’. In this theory, when one observes someone else’s behavior, certain systems of neurons in the brain are activated. These may be the system of ‘mirror neurons’ that have been identified initially in monkeys; these same neurons are active either when a task is either performed or observed in others.

So empathy works something like this. Suppose you are present with someone. You observe them carefully, or listen to their story attentively. In the act of observing or listening to their experience, your mirror neurons fire, and you have some emotional sensation that is similar to their experience. The emotions roil up in you, and the person you are with observes them. Now their mirror neurons fire, responding to the fact that you have experienced vicariously their situation, and the loop is closed. In a spiritual sense, we are bound more tightly to their experience, and our connection with them enables them to hold on to the emotion, really experience it, until they are able to transform it.

Note that the connection is subtle and purely emotional. If instead, we give advice to our hurting friend, rather than just allowing the emotions, we move to the mode of rational thought, and the connection is broken. If we make judgments, even unconsciously, about their situation, these get translated into emotional expression that moves both people away from the experience, and the connection does not close.

But we can listen empathetically, as Jim Moore suggests [in To a Young Woman Whose Hurt Has Never Stopped],

But what did I hear as you spoke?
I heard your pale forehead.
I heard the trembling in your fingers.
I heard the silence of the birds
all around us, as if they knew
someone was speaking, who must be heard.

Can we learn how to do this kind of empathetic relating? I’m convinced it is more a matter of unlearning what we have been taught all too well. We need to be able to put aside all the judgment and technique and rationality. I have no science to back this up, but we can see it anytime we play with a baby or interact with a small child. Those who do not yet have anything to unlearn offer us a marvelous transparency into the empathetic connection.

In the context of the spiritual work we do in this community, our Pastoral Care Associates practice this sort of empathetic relating. They learn to empty out judgment and technique, and practice just being with the people they visit. I commend this to you as a beautiful and satisfying way to minister to people in this community.

Narsinha Mehta, a fifteenth century Hindu mystic, summarized this empathetic work:

They are the real lovers of God who feel others’ sorrow as their own.
When they perform selfless service, they are humble servants of the One.
Respecting all, despising none, they are pure in thought, word, and deed.

So to open to others requires certain courage. We first have to have the courage to admit that we have fallen, that we are finite and imperfect and not at all who we thought we were. Then we must have the courage to risk the response of others, which in itself may be imperfect and honestly not always helpful. But when we are able to receive help with gratitude, we are also giving: we are creating the possibility that more of us can be interconnected in a network of mutual support and caring.

Finally, with what spiritual companionship we have, we must have the courage to enter the wilderness, to travel step by step through the inky gloom, to allow the emotions connected with the fall – be they fear, despair, or grief – to make themselves known and receive our full attention, to begin a transformative process that leads to new life and possibility.

The danger is that instead of traveling through this wilderness, we too often try to skirt it or sneak around it. The temptation is to do what recovery counselor Charles Whitfield calls 'spiritual bypass'. Bypass occurs when we use religious belief or spiritual practice as a distraction or avoidance from facing the pain that has come because we have taken a fall.

Ram Dass tells the story of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Marpa, in his book, “How Can I Help?"

One day, Marpa's eldest son was killed. Off by himself, alone with his grief, Marpa wept. One of his students approached him and said, "I don't understand. You teach that all this is illusion, created by the clinging and desire and resistance. Yet here you are weeping. If all this is illusion, why do you grieve so deeply?"

Marpa replied "Yes, everything here is an illusion. And the death of a child is the greatest of these illusions."

Even after learning of the death of his son, Marpa concludes that even with his beliefs intact, grief still exists. It is necessary. In this knowledge he allows himself to grieve.

If we choose to travel through rather than over, to engage rather than avoid what psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan calls the 'dark emotions', we invite an emotional flow, a kind of alchemy that transforms these emotions into other spiritual strengths. Greenspan tells us, “I've found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair renews and deepens our faith.”

She goes on to say: “When we really get it that everyone alive experiences sorrow, fear, and despair, when we can tolerate these dark emotions in ourselves and others, [then] they transmute into gratitude for life. They remind us of the exquisite fragility of life and our need to protect it. And they open us to a meaning system in which empathy and compassion are elevated to their true importance for ourselves and the world” [Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair]

Back on the boat, all those years ago, shed of our dive gear, and with the sun on our faces and the sea breeze in our hair, Liz and I were acutely aware of the fragility of life. We had also learned yet another lesson about our imperfections. About our weakness and inexperience, about my family’s tendency toward independence over interdependence, Over time, and by talking with each other and telling the story to friends, we were able to tell the story in a new light. What started as a situation that engendered fear and embarrassment and narrowly missed tragedy transformed into an adventure, an experience remembered with at least some measure of joy and with a great deal of gratitude. My hope for us today is that we open ourselves to the possibilities that come when we are able to transform the experiences of our tumbles and falls into spiritual strength.

Photo by SteelCityHobbies

Slaughter of the Innocents - A Sermon

A tradition at Unity Church is to have one of the ministerial interns speak on the Sunday after Christmas on Matthew 2:13-23, "The Slaughter of the Innocents." I know this has been done for at least five years. This is my offering. Two readings in addition to Matthew were "After the Titanic" by Derek Mahon, and "Questionnaire" by Wendell Berry. Thanks to Sharon, my worship associate, for these readings, which guided the direction of this sermon.


Last week, I was talking with Kerri Meyer, our Director of Religious Education about teaching in the coming months, and we discussed Unitarian Universalist history, which is taught to the early grade levels. She told me that we no longer teach about some of the martyrs in our tradition, people like John Huss or Micheal Servetus, who were both burned at the stake. It’s not that the young children are terrified of such stories; rather, they’re overly fascinated. They are transfixed by the idea of martyrdom by burning, and they keep asking questions, and the class just stops.

We too are both fascinated by, and recoil from, such sensational stories, and today’s story, the Slaughter of the Innocents, is no exception. Different faith traditions struggle with how to deal with Biblical texts like this one, and respond in different ways. When they read today’s selection from Matthew in church, the Roman Catholics skip carefully over the two verses that describe the actual killing of the infant children. Most Lutheran and many other Protestant churches consider the whole story, but only once every three years. But this is Unity Church, where we boldly examine this story every year.

The book of Matthew is the only Biblical text that describes the Slaughter of the Innocents. Matthew tells the meat of the story in just two short verses: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, according to the time that he learned from the wise men.”

Like many Biblical stories, this one remains meaningful today because its message is ambiguous; it doesn’t offer easy answers or an obvious lesson. We can go in many directions trying to find meaning in this story.

One direction is to approach this story technically. We can use Biblical criticism to try to learn more about its historical accuracy, and why it is presented the way it is. Since Matthew is the only Biblical or extra-Biblical source to mention the Slaughter of the Innocents, most scholars doubt the historical accuracy of the story. But even if it is not actually true, we can read the story on a different level. To paraphrase Ruth MacKenzie, ‘this story is not fact, but it is also not fiction”. Let’s look deeper: Why is this story here and what purpose did it serve?

The book of Matthew was almost certainly not written by my namesake, that disciple of Jesus named Matthew. This book was written at least a half-century after Jesus’ death, assembled from at least two sources, and so wouldn’t be admissible as an eyewitness account. This book was written during a time when the early Christians were beginning to establish a separate identity from the Jews. The author of Matthew tried to establish that Jesus was the Messiah of Jewish prophecy, and therefore worthy of serious attention.

To show Jesus as fulfilling Hebrew prophecy, the author of Matthew uses a number of so-called “formula quotations”. These are the lines that say something like, “this was to fulfill what was spoken by Lord through the prophet”. Even in our reading today, there are three examples of such formula quotations in just ten short verses.

The Slaughter of the Innocents story allows Jesus to fulfill prophecy: to be born in Bethlehem, steal away and come out of Egypt, and land in Nazareth, where he grows up. All of these details fit various prophecies. So some Bible scholars look as the Slaughter of the Innocents as merely a plot device to move the larger story of Jesus along in a particular way. That’s kind of interesting, but also unsatisfying.


Another way to approach the story is to look for its theological message. The story compels us to consider the meaning of a God that acts in the world, who allows some innocent people to die and saves others. This is the question of ‘theodicy’, in the lingo, and it is a difficult question. How can an all-knowing, all-powerful, completely good God allow suffering and evil to exist?
During my training I worked as a chaplain in a hospital. Patients would occasionally ask me the question: “Why did God let this happen to me?” I could only respond to their questions with other questions that helped them to make sense of it all for themselves, for I did not have any answers.

Some found an answer in their faith. Surely their suffering is all part of God’s master plan, which will be revealed to them in the great by-and-by. For others, such a sense of God’s plan is not enough.

I recall a friend in seminary, a man with conservative politics and a Southern Baptist preacher’s understanding of the Bible. This man had transferred to our liberal seminary from the big fundamentalist seminary in town. When I asked him why he transferred, he told me the story of his son who died of cancer. He had asked friends at the conservative seminary why this happened, and the answer they told him was: “Romans”. I said, “Romans?” He said, “yes, Romans 8:28", ‘all things work together for good, to them that love God, that are called according to his purpose’. When he could not reconcile his son’s suffering and dying to some divine plan, he found his way to liberal Christianity.


A third way of approaching a story like the Slaughter of the Innocents is to expand the story. As religious liberals, we can do that! For example, let’s imagine what would happen if Jesus learned of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Maybe, he was asking his family about his birth, as we reenacted in our Children’s Candlelight Service last week, and someone let the story slip. Perhaps Jesus asked Joseph, “Why didn’t we return to Bethlehem?” and Joseph, caught off guard, said something like, “Well, son, that wouldn’t have been a good idea because you wouldn’t have any playmates.” Jesus next question would certainly begin with the word, “Why?” and Joseph would want to say, “Lets change the subject.” Imagine for a moment, what first encountering that bit of information would have been like.

Several writers have considered this possibility. Albert Camus, in ‘The Fall’ suggests that such knowledge might have led Jesus to self-destructive behavior, to acts that led to his crucifixion. That may be taking this too far, in my mind, but the question remains: How does one face the knowledge that they have survived and others did not?

This is often described as Survivor Guilt. This was first noticed in Holocaust survivors, but is encountered with war veterans and survivors of diseases like cancer or AIDS. Today Survivor Guilt is considered a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With Survivor Guilt, the gratitude for being alive is replaced by guilt over those who did not survive, whether or not one’s actions had any effect on their survival.

People respond to this in many ways. I think of my Dad, a World War II veteran, a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge and other European and Pacific actions. Like most veterans of World War II, he seldom talks about his experiences. Only rarely, at special times, has he felt comfortable sharing the more horrific aspects of his wartime experience. Veterans of more recent wars may have had greater access to treatment and come home to a civilian community that didn’t demand silence, but I understand their struggles are similar. They ask: Why am I here, while my buddy who was sitting next to me, is not? Gratitude and guilt coexist in a complex mixture.

Survivor Guilt becomes even more complicated when issues of moral culpability are involved. Our second reading today, After the Titanic, considered the life of J. Bruce Ismay, the director of the White Star line, the company that owned the Titanic. Ismay was on the boat for its maiden voyage, and as it was sinking, he saw a partially filled lifeboat and jumped in. So he got away rather than going down with the ship. He was blamed for the disaster and branded a coward by the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst. The poem portrays a man broken by guilt, going into deeper isolation, seeking the solace of sleep and chemicals. His guilt leads to an icy depression, from which emerges only this plea: “include me in your lamentations”.


There is a larger question here. Are we not all survivors, by virtue of still being alive? Do we not all carry some compassion, perhaps even guilt, for those who do not survive? This is the hard question. If we are not asking it at least occasionally, we are not awake.

Consider the environment. Consider the growing evidence of global warming. We all contribute to global warming by virtue of our production of carbon dioxide, that harmless gas that we exhale in every breath. We all produce too much CO2 in the normal everyday actions of heating our houses, driving our cars or riding the bus, or sitting here under these lights today. We contribute to a climate change that is resulting in increased flooding and death in some regions; to increased drought, famine and war in others; and to environmental degradation and possible mass extinctions. This suffering, these deaths are not easy to face. I know we can all think of many other examples in which our actions contribute, through indirect connections, to the suffering of others in the world. I won’t make you feel worse by listing them here.

We must confront the fact that the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part, our cherished seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, has a dark side. We cannot escape this. If there is evil, or suffering, however we define it, in the world, it is not confined cleanly to particular locales or particular individuals. We are all connected, in good and in evil. How we respond to this awareness is a measure of our lives.

How do we respond? Some react by attempting to artificially divide the world and its people into separate spheres. Those who respond this way often define their own acts as ‘good’, and define the various acts of others as ‘evil’. There are many ways to draw this line. One can simply define some higher principle, and ignore those suffering who somehow fall outside that principle. Many who support a libertarian form of the free market economy do this. Those who suffer because the economy marginalizes them are blamed for not somehow ‘getting it together’ as individuals. By blaming individuals, there is no need to confront the systemic complications of family violence, racial oppression, or environmental degradation those individuals face. In this way we build “strange and foolish … walls of separation that divide us”, to use A. Powell Davies’ words.

This compartmentalization and separation allows some of us avoid awakening to the reality of such suffering at all. We stay anesthetized, and go about our lives walled off from the reality of such suffering.

Some of us do open ourselves enough to acknowledge suffering, but we do so by maintaining a safe distance, by trying to stay at 10,000 feet high and avoiding the view on the ground. Wendell Berry brings us down to earth with this warning:

State briefly the ideas, ideals or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Others of us seek absolution by taking minor steps that appear to address the suffering, but actually keep us separate from those who suffer. This is too often the liberal response. Friends at another UU church tell me they are having a drawn out conflict over how the church shall decide to pass resolutions about social justice issues. I’m proud to see that Unity Church acts, not by issuing statements, but by actually doing the hard work of social justice through its many associations with organizations like Amicus, the Center for Victims of Torture, the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition for Affordable Housing, and others. Actions like passing resolutions allow us to feel good for a little while – and then we can go back to sleep.

So, how do we stay awake? How can we respond fully to this reality that we survive and others die? We must work to be both accepting and accountable. We must accept that our influence is limited, but at the same time it is all that we have. To be accountable, we must do what we can to make change and reduce suffering in the world.

How do we keep from becoming paralyzed by the horror and sadness of suffering in the world? We must remember that we are not alone in this. We can build caring connections with others. We can share the reality that we are all survivors, in one way or another. To the degree that we transform our guilt into compassionate action, we begin to awaken, to atone, and to become at-one with the possibilities of hope and redemption that exist in the world.

Finally, let us return to J. Bruce Ismay, the man who escaped the Titanic. His real story is more interesting and hopeful than this morning’s poem would have us believe. Scapegoated in America, removed from leadership of the White Star line, Ismay returned to England, where he served on the board of a shipping insurance company. This company paid out many large claims to families who lost people in the Titanic disaster. Thus, at nearly every company board meeting over the next twenty-five years, Ismay re-lived both the disaster and his role in it. Through his work, he confronted his accountability as a survivor.

Let us also hold ourselves accountable. Let us act in the world with a greater awareness of the suffering of others. Let us love one another a little more, knowing our imperfections. Let us love one another a little more, knowing that we are all interconnected in good and evil. In the midst of a complex world that we cannot fully comprehend, let us endeavor, however difficult it may be, to remain fully awake.

Joy in Integrity - A Sermon at Unity Church

This is the first sermon I presented at Unity Church, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 25. This is a traditional sermon date for interns. The topic reflects a larger sermon series on Global Integrity. Neely, my Worship Associate provided two wonderful readings, "The Chance to Love Everything", by Mary Oliver, and "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front", by Wendell Berry, which I used as my texts.

Sometimes on Friday mornings I’ll bring Ceili, my little dog, to the office here at Unity Church, so she can play with Abby, Duncan Baird’s poodle. The two dogs both drop down on their front haunches in that classic ‘let’s play’ stance, and then they tear off in a game of chase around the Center Room and up and down the halls. Now when dogs play chase, the fun is in the chase. They switch roles back and forth, chasing and being chased. The game is more important than winning. Dogs will even handicap themselves, slowing down when they are playing with an older or slower dog, so that the game remains fun.

For most of us humans, there is a deep, vicarious pleasure in watching dogs play. We tap into the simple joy of play, and remember the kind of undirected, purposeless activity that only children, and sometimes their grandparents, seem to be allowed to enjoy in our culture. This kind of play is non-competitive and spontaneous and creative, with rules made up and thrown out at will.

Play is more than mere fun. Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has found that play is essential to the development of children. He was able to show that many of the most violent criminals had early lives where parents kept them from any kind of play. This resulted in these people being unable as adults to connect meaningfully with other people, and they turn to violent behavior.

Play is essential not only to social development, but also appears to encourage cognitive development and even moral behavior. According to a recent article in Harvard Business Review, neurological research on mammals has “identified play as a primary human drive and the brain’s source of joy.”

I’d like to invite you, if you are willing, into a little time of exploration. The subject of this exploration is hands – your own hands. If you will, take a look at one of your hands. Stretch your fingers out, and notice the tendons running along the back of your hand. Turn over your hand and notice the muscles, especially as you begin to close that hand into a ball. Try opening it, and marvel at the beautiful pattern of folds and lines. Make a shape with your hand and fingers. Make any form. Your hand is so flexible. Make another shape. Don’t worry that it is the right shape. Make another shape. Rearrange things. Make another. Your hand has so much creativity in it. Make another shape. And another. Make shapes so fast that your mind cannot think ahead, cannot judge the shapes. Now make smooth and gentle shapes, slowing down. Soft and easy. Thank you.

This little exercise came from a program of improvisation and movement called Interplay. Interplay invites people to creatively explore movement and voice and story in a non-threatening way through small exercises like this one, that build up incrementally into larger creative forms.

I want you to notice for a moment what that little exploration felt like for you. What thoughts and feelings did you have? Whether you participated yourself or observed others, I’m sure some of these thoughts and feelings came up.

I’ll bet some of you may have thought: Am I going to look silly in front of friends or my family? This is awful risky!

Or you thought: can I trust this person, who has never spoken in this pulpit before today? Can I trust him to not ask me to do something embarrassing or stupid? After all, isn’t he from that flakey seminary in Berkeley?

Or you might have thought: I finally persuaded my out-of-town guests to join me at church, and this is happening? After you told them, don’t worry, this is Unity Church and we don’t do those weird things that some other Unitarian Universalist churches sometimes do?

So not only was this little exercise about play and creativity, it was about risk and trust.

Mary Oliver, who is in a way the de-facto Unitarian Universalist poet laureate, explores this risk taking in its full ambiguity. She describes her encounter with the creature outside the tent: “some shambling tonnage [with] red eyes and broad tongue” :
Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.

So, to play, to explore, to move into the space that creativity requires, is to take risks. We have to call up a certain kind of courage. Not necessarily the courage of life or death, of firemen entering a burning building, or even the moral courage of standing with your principles against an angry crowd, but a more subtle, but no less essential, courage. Creative play calls on the courage of being in touch with your body and your self in all its wholeness, and exploring its possibilities and limits.

This is the courage that The Interplay improvisation program required of me. If you had suggested to me that before I started Interplay, I’d be dancing and storytelling, solo, before an audience of maybe a hundred eyeballs all focused on me, I would have said you were dreaming. Yet, that is what I did a few months ago, before I left California to come out here. That experience was both terrifying and intensely joyful.

It was terrifying because I was sure that I would dance badly, and I probably did. I had so many preconceived notions about how this should be done. I should be more prepared for this improv segment. I should make my stories funnier. I should make this piece shorter, or longer. A whole cloud of ‘shoulds’ often murmers in my head as I step in front of a group. When I am able to transcend these ‘shoulds’, then there is the pure joy of spontaneous creative action.

Joy, when it comes in these spontaneous ways, is a sweet surprise. But when we seek joy as a goal we can too easily get focused on things that fulfill the desires and pleasures of our senses. We have a tendency to try to fill our need for joy with external material objects and sensations.

Many of the contemplative traditions express concern about sense attachments and selfish desires, and we would do well to pay attention. An old Zen Buddhist poem warns us, “selfish attachment forgets all limits; it always leads down evil roads.” Yet, we live in a culture where amplifying these desires through marketing messages is a central part of our approach to commerce, and is becoming a central part of the liturgy of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls our Civil Religion.

As Wendell Berry tells us ,
Want more
of everything ready-made….
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

I know this well, these drawers, these cards: I used to work in product marketing. But we all know this, too. Especially at this time of year, we as ordinary consumers feel we barely stand a chance against this onslaught. Our children need body armor against the targeted messaging they receive. If I’m to believe the paper, soon we’ll all be shopping at 2 in the morning on Black Friday.

And then what of the other side –

Vocation, work worth doing, whether raising a family or a job we love, can be a source of joy. But for many of us, the joy of vocation gets blurred over time. We learn to set aside the creative and experimental pleasure that arises from following a vocation we love in favor of the linear, critical-path oriented realm of the competitive workplace. We learn to compartmentalize aspects of our lives, at a minimum to separate work from leisure. We are expected to separate what we truly love from the daily grind that is our working life.

As Wendell Berry says, we learn to:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay.
When we get focused on these, as opposed to doing what we can to make our work, our vocation, truly meaningful, we risk being ready to ‘die for profit’.

This can lead to a feeling of ennui, a sense that what we are doing has no value. When this is identified as a morale problem in the workplace, the problem is sometimes oversimplified and the solution becomes not: “Lets make work meaningful,” but: “Let’s make work more fun.”

At the last place I worked before I entered seminary, we had a well-equipped game room full of classic arcade video games. Even though I found time for an occasional game of Space Invaders or Tempest, I remained bothered by this particular juxtaposition of work and play. This may have been because I am a baby boomer, and this is a new era, but I think there is something more profound here. The video games seemed to be a distraction from what was real, they did nothing to contribute to a sense of deeper satisfaction, something that should ideally have come from the work itself.

I believe it is important for us to be aware of the distinction between the ephemeral pleasures that come from satisfying the senses, and a deeper, more integrated joy that comes from action that is aligned with what is important to us: our values and our deep intention.

And Berry reminds us:
Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
When we do that, when we tap into that intuitive sense that would lead us if only we would let it, then we can be joyful even after considering all the facts.

Several years ago, when I lived in Colorado, a good friend of mine, Dave, had talked to me for some months of his work with Network Coffee House. This coffee house was a gathering place for the homeless in Denver, and Dave encouraged me to volunteer there. I finally took the bait, mostly because I had persuaded him to take a committee position in the church and I felt I owed him one. I must admit that there also was a certain amount of ego playing into this, a sense of yes, I can prove to him I am up to this.

I agreed to work with him on a Wednesday night when he opened the coffee house. My job was simple, just serve coffee, empty ashtrays, and monitor the list of people waiting for the shower stall. Mostly I talked and listened to the men and women who came in as darkness fell. I found myself filled with amazement by the stories of some of this community. Like Harry, a former seaman, who loved to recite details of great naval battles. Or John, who had dreams of get-rich-quick schemes and tried to convince me to partner with him. Then there was Peggy a former street person, who now works as a sort of Pentecostal street minister. She showed me her Bible that she believes is the literal word of God, except for the large sections crossed out because they don’t fit her personal feminist theology.

After we closed the coffee house, I said goodnight to Dave, went to my car, and sat there and wept. Certainly, I wept in pain, and in despair. This despair is familiar to us all: the enormity of the problem of homelessness, and how we just can’t seem to solve it. And now it was personal: I knew that many of these people I had just met would sleep under bridges by the Platte River that cold night.

In such situations, I always look for glimmers of hope. St. Francis of Assisi reminds us, “where there is despair, sow hope”. But in this case it was hard for me to find hope in the current political climate where living on the street is seen as a failure of individual will, where mental illness and addiction are viewed as character flaws and not diseases. At first, I could not find the hope in this.

But as I unwrapped the layers of despair, another emotion was enclosed, and this was Joy. I had done something, however minor, to begin to bridge the gap. So even though there was great pain for me, at the heart of the pain, I was able to find the joy of connections made, of acquaintances established, which continued over the coming months. Joy after all is Hope brought into the present. Joy emerges from compassion, it emerges from doing the right thing, it emerges from connections, it emerges when we act from our human integrity. So even though I went in for the ‘wrong’ reasons, it was joyful to discover the real reasons. The joy gave me hope when hope was hard to find.

So what brings us Joy? How do we know that we are feeling true joy and not merely some sense pleasure or ego boost or satisfaction of desire? We need to be mindful when we find ourselves experiencing an emotion that seem like joy. What is the source? Does it emerge from superficial things, sense pleasures, isolating diversions, or is its source deeper, heartfelt, an awareness that we are in integrity with who we really are? Is our joy emerging out of relationships, whether playful or serious, Is it arising from creative expression Or an encounter with beauty? Is it arising because we are courageously taking the small steps to be who we are called to be?

As voices from my Methodist past would say, “our hearts are strangely warmed”. I now understand this warmth. I know this is the strange and wonderful warmth of the Joy that emerges from seeking, little by little, an authentic life, and living bit by bit, a life of integrity.

May it be so, and Amen.