If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

One of the things we Unitarians & Universalists cherish most is the uniqueness and individuality of each of us. We all bring different gifts, knowledge, understanding, and creativity. We more than acknowledge that we march to different drummers and different beats; we encourage each other to write and to play our own music and rhythm. So we have included some reflections here to illustrate the depth and range of our thought. Enjoy!

• Emerson & Wilbur
• Living a Wonder Full Life
• Mystical Humanism
• Living in the Moment

You may have noticed this insert recently in the News Journal. As we are approaching the new millennium, there seems to be an added interest and an upsurge of reflecting on meanings and purposes. What is this all about? What am I doing? Where do I fit in? There are sections in here on family, on values, ethics, outreach, religious diversity and spirituality.

We all periodically reach a point in our lives where we are forced to stop and to reconsider where we are going, and how we are getting there. And with our digital quartz chronometers and computers recycling to double ought in a few more weeks, we are all simultaneously prodded to consider what that means. So a new fascination.

But it's really not so new. It's just more news worthy. The questions and the quest have always been with us, roiling and boiling; sometimes just beneath the surface, until moments of stress, elation, or tragedy force them to break forth into our current consciousness and give us pause. It is the perennial philosophy, as Huxley calls it; the both ancient and current quest for an understanding of human nature and of the infinite and eternal. UU historian David Robinson calls this perennial pursuit a "… feeling of hunger for a deeper inner life and a more profound experience of the world that we share. We're haunted by the specter of our own superficiality, the uneasy feeling that life is sliding by and leaving no deep mark on us, that we're being cheated of some version of real experience that would add marrow to the dry bones of our daily routine. We've found ways of dealing with this hunger, but we've (also) found it has a curious persistence." (Quest, p.1)

Sort of like Chinese take-out I guess. We feed our souls, but we are not satisfied. There continues a hollow emptiness, calling to be appeased. I think we often feel like spectators in our own lives, watching ourselves at the feast of creation, but remaining somehow estranged, aloof, distanced, and unfulfilled. Searching and exploring, sampling and savoring.

And I sometimes think it is because we believe that when we find just the right formula, the perfect recipe for living, we will be instantaneously contented. In that moment of revelation all will be fulfilled; and we shall move somehow into a state of grace, be reunited with our lives, filled up with love, and made whole. But I don't think it works that way.

I profoundly agree with Robinson that our spirituality is a very deep hunger. Our mistake is that we think, unlike hunger, it can be fed once and for all, satisfied, satiated, and consigned to the past. What if, however, our spiritual hunger is completely normal? What if it serves, almost physiologically, as a reminder that we must stop and care for our spiritual being. Maybe it's good that it bothers us from time to time, and reminds us that we do not, and cannot ever, live by bread alone.

We need to find, then, not an ultimate truth or reality; but a way of being, of seeing the world, of living in the world, of celebrating the world, and of consuming the world in such a way that it continuously restores and replenishes our souls. My own spirit cries out, not for an end to my hunger, but for a response to my hunger; not for the obliteration of my hunger, but for something of enduring value which nourishes my soul, makes me more fully human, and brings me joy. That something is not, then, final, absolute, self-contained and complete. Not something which brings to an end my craving: a panacea; but something more substantial and ever-lasting, something which keeps me going, growing, living and which creates delight.

And for me that something is contained right here in our Unitarian tradition. It's called Transcendentalism. And it's essentially the world view reflected in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ralph has been with me a long time. I started reading Emerson in 1963 when I was 14. I bought my first copy of Emerson's collected works in paperback, and proceeded to underline and write all over it. Almost every paragraph sung to me and plucked a string that resonated with all that I knew to be true. It was like finding my way home through a fog. I remember repeating: "Yes." "Yes." In my mind, and startlingly aloud at times. And wondering why this guy was so obscure. There was so much here to feast upon.

I made my first pilgrimage to his home in Concord in1964; my most recent in 1994. It is a quiet place. Scores of tourists flock to Concord to see the rude bridge that arcs the flood where sounded the shot heard round the world, or to the old manse where both Hawthorne and Melville took up residence, or to Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott lived and wrote her treatise on life. But Emerson's house is quiet. You can go there and sit in the silence of his library and allow the years to slowly dissolve away.

The first time I went there I could sense an expanding world, it was almost like the air itself pulsated and flowed outward from the center of myself, carrying my consciousness with it. It was not an out of body experience, watching myself from a distance; but rather an inner mind experience, watching myself from within expanding to fill all space. It was something that started within me, and passed through walls and trees and barns to include them. A bright soft light that passed over, warmed and united. It was my first recognizable experience of Transcendentalism beyond words.

In the 1830's Emerson was anathematized by the AUA for his rebellion against the "stale theology of Christianity." Even the liberal church had begun to focus more on systematic explanations than on spiritual experience, and he wanted to "strive for (his own) original relation to the universe." Reason and rational had become so sanctified, that anything mystical, outside the purview of the senses was suspect. But Emerson through his correspondence with Carlisle in England became increasingly aware of a skepticism abroad in Europe.

In 1781 Immanuel Kant in his critique of pure reason, in attempting to establish a firm epistemology, and an empirical basis of knowledge had concluded that there were essentially two ways of knowing. The material, sensory, physical; and the intuitive, inspirational, inferential. And Kant argued that the two covered quite different realities. They complemented each other: one being most effective in explaining all we see and hear and touch; the other being more useful in comprehending feelings and ideas. He used the term "transcendent" to refer to these other experiences and insights which lie outside and above our experiential world.

Emerson built on that idea by exploring his own pre-rational awareness. Always remaining within the tradition of the enlightenment, not wanting to revert to supernaturalism and the appeal to Faith, he was none-the-less convinced that he could, and even should, encourage his realization of insight. And it was in his first great essay Nature (1836) that he expressed the idea that the woods make a better church than some building of wood and stone. That it is more likely that there, if anywhere, we will encounter the sacred. An early pagan understanding we obviously still subscribe to today.

If we want to experience the transcendent, we must transcend our limitations. To speak of gods and goddesses in the words and metaphors of symbolic language is to contain them within the finite world; a place they can never fit. So we must seek them elsewhere: in our consciousness, our intuition, our spiritual curiosity. That is what he tried to tell the graduating divinity students at Harvard in 1838, to speak from their personal experience rather than from scripture. He was never invited back. Emerson went on to write such essays as: the Transcendentalist, Self-Reliance, Spiritual Laws, Intellect, Race, Character, Emancipation, and dozens more. And for me his most important: The Oversoul.

That is, perhaps, an unfortunate choice of words. It sounds more like a shoe than a religious perception. But it also accentuates the difficulty in expressing a transcendent idea within the confines of language. The Oversoul is Emerson's translation of the Hindu "Brahman." Emerson traveled to India, and found there a spiritual culture more reflective of his own experience than Christianity. One core concept is that everything in the world is or has "atman," an essential beingness, a spirit of existence, a uniqueness. And that Brahman the infinite and eternal, all of creation, the source of the universe, is the summation of all "atman."

So Emerson coined the term "Oversoul:" that which contains all souls. And it is towards that goal that he focused his attention. And he realized that he would never find it if he limited his quest to reason and to rationale alone. His god was and is too big to be defined or confined by language. It is to be felt. "It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it." (p. 32) But how to get there?

I am paradoxically going to take a few minutes here to tell you about another book which has had a profound influence on my world view: Robert Kegan's The Evolving Self, a psychological theory of personality development. It is essentially a process of growing self-awareness, the creation of a sense of self and of a place/ relationship with "out there." It is his explanation of the struggle to reconcile the duality of existence: self and other. Aka: object relations.

6 stages of personality development: 0 to 5: Spiral loops around between immersion and autonomy. 0 at center; 1,3,5 on right; 2,4 on left

Pardon the choice of language: picture your own experience of evolving self; own or observations. My description of Kegan's model.

0: incorporative: everything is me, everything is self-reflective, total embeddedness, no separation between mother and child, child and blanky/teddy; challenge is to maintain immersion in spite of encroaching awareness of distance; hunger and discomfort are integral parts of the self, not sensations; fear and reassurance are states of being rather than emotions; curiosity=exploring and differentiating boundaries.

1:impulsive: growing awareness of physical boundaries, but everything still experienced only in relation to the "I", blanket is other, but "mine", invisible friend is other, but uniquely related to me, fantasy world which includes me, is mine, is built around me; family is there for me, is me, doesn't exist except as it exists in my experience (like out of sight, out of mind: things cease to exist when no longer sensed as present), boundaries are expanding, but remain subjectively inclusive.

2:imperial: initial socialization, growing awareness of other realities, "CHUM" with different points of reference, different world, experience intersection of those worlds as a new reality= growing awareness of autonomy and independence; NOT just immersed in the world, but functioning in the world, there are spaces between individuals and individual realities as well as between objects; expansion of object relations perception; beginning to take into account actions and consequences of separation of realities (wants and needs of others), and therefore increasing awareness of freedom of choice; arising assertiveness follows from encountering interactions with others; "I have my rights!"

3:interpersonal: growing realization of shared world experiences, incorporating into mutual relationship/group creating a "provisional identity"; clique, club, college, military, sorority/fraternity; organizations which expand while they include the expanding sense of identity; I am not only Greg as son in my embedded family asserting my independence, but I choose to be a member of the basketball team, to self-define myself and my values with that corporate body; it is one way I can comfortably accommodate individuality along with my need for inclusion; my interpersonal relations are primarily defined by my associative choices as I move back towards inclusion while paradoxically clinging to my independence.

4:but here again, the challenge to my own dissolving sense of self arises, and I must re-assert my autonomy, by rejecting, enlarging, re-assessing; entering institutional stage: scariest if we recall personal events; cut ourselves off, almost brutally sometimes; intimacy becomes a threat, need if not desire to manifest independence; reactionary to getting too close; remember some relationships in college, wonderful, but somehow something went wrong; too close, knee jerk, startle effect, clam clamping down and scuttling away; institutional because=focus is on re-discovered self within the group rather than as a part of the group, "I work at XYZ," rather than "I am a part/member of XYZ." I am defining the group as I see it in relation to me, rather than it defining me as I choose to be a part of it.

5:interindividual: revelation of idea of interdependence as opposed to dependence and independence, reconciliation of idea of self along with intimacy, authenticity accommodating socialization; mutuality where it is possible to maintain self, and not be threatened by self-defining other; autonomy remains in spite of incorporation; persona well enough defined and experienced to survive in the presence of equally as well defined and experienced persona; new levels of comfort, and self-actualizing encounters with a growingly secure sense of self as defined within a relation

Kegan: "Life Emergencies"; emerging self often inaugurated by crisis; persona emergent (Venus from the Sea, unfolding, expanding) amidst external forces, pressures = sensitive egos bruised and bumped; difficult journey

Not unidirectional: rotate up, retreat (by choice or necessity), non-judgmental, don't categorize, pigeon-hole: "Oh, you're at 3 (I'm at 4)." Ala Pisces, Aquarius, INTJ, conservative, liberal, libertarian, male, female; process is one of fluid evolution; often cannot recognize until after the fact, tendencies, directions, histories.

In retrospect, this model helps to add perspective; not that life is a constant struggle between immersion and independence, autonomy and co-dependence; but, they certainly are two significant forces which do set up a dialectic between which we resonate. It is conceivable that we are hovering in one place in our personal relations, another in our work place, another with friends, etc. And it seems clear that certain stages are more functional, fulfilling, complete; perhaps more desirable; but not necessarily attainable at this time, under these circumstances. It may be that we (for self-preservation) have to function at a less that complete awareness; and we may have to graciously accept that (for now). And I wonder just how consciously we can actually move ourselves along the spiral; or is it something which comes in its own good time?

But I also wonder if there is not another stage? A center stage which is truly more inclusive? If stage 5 is mature tolerance and acceptance of other realities; of acknowledging diversity, learning situational and contextual ethics, and accommodating different perspectives; I would be looking for something more. A place where tolerance turns into respect and acceptance into true celebration. That place would be, for me, neither left nor right, but all encompassing.

Consider that for a moment; reflect on your own journey. The evolution of your own self identity, the stresses and strains; the external and internal influences; your own actions and reactions; the times that resolution was possible, and the times it was impossible and/or painful? Consider your path, the smooth places and the rocky? Does this make some sense? Not as an absolute formula, but as a referential systems theory of complex psychological interactions?

I propose that our spiritual development follows a similar path.

Here, too, the dialectic may be between autonomy and immersion; the conflict between what is me and what is other, what is profane and what is sacred, what I know and what I feel, what I see and what I sense; and ultimately how we resolve these forces. There are parallel ways of knowing and experiencing the world. There is the sensory/rational and the spiritual/emotional, the intellectual and the intuitive. And here too, our challenge is to explore both realms, learn from both resources, and to cling to neither, get stuck in neither.

Imagine if you will an evolving spiritual sense of self and its relation with the world? What is me and what is other? What is my initial experience and response to all this? How do I define and place myself within this reality? How do I find or make a place for myself within this reality? How do I keep from loosing myself?

How do I maintain my sense of both my own uniqueness and of belonging to something greater? These are the questions which come to my mind in response to the challenges of each stage in this spiritual model.

For me it is kind of like the progression of our relationship with god. There have been all kinds of gods and goddesses over the millennium. Anthropologists and paleontologists suggest that most of the earliest were externalized forces or presences; spirits that resided in the mountains, streams, seasons, animals, crops, storms; they were generative, destructive, angry, beneficent, apathetic; they could be appeased, feared, obeyed, ignored, or worshipped. Whatever the particular local custom and response, humankind has a history of recognizing "the other" in the unseen world, and struggling to reconcile our relation with it.

And that is what "it" usually was: an "it." The earliest sacred other were impersonal: sun gods (Aton), fire gods (Ahur Mazda), animal headed representations of some powerful life force (Ra, Ganesh, Baal). And the relationship was impersonal, an "I-it" kind of distant encounter with the supernatural.

With time divinity took on a human face: Zeus, Hera, Krishna, Kali; and we could relate to the sacred for we shared a common form; a quantum leap in redefining our relationship; an "I-He/She" kind of connection which allowed us to be more included even if separated by eternity. And then we discovered the possibilities of the much applauded "I-Thou" bond.

There is a shared affinity between the sacred and the profane, a linkage in the evolution of language; we can speak to god, and she can speak to us. This time it's personal. The distance has been vastly compressed. There is a mutuality we share, and a rapport we can expect in the closeness of this communication. God is right here, a partner. We are closer than ever, the gulf which separates the two planes of existence is becoming less clear.

If that spiritual journey has taken us through the spiral of a growing awareness and realization of our place in the world, and of our relationship with the idea of god, then we are on the brink of reconciling our spiritual self and the other, the inside and the outside, individual identity and cosmic creation. For me that 6th stage, that place where the dialectic collapses, and true unity begins is the realm of the Transcendent.

So to get there, like any journey, we have to know that we are on a journey. We are moving through time and space and consciousness. The transcendent won't just come to us, the gift of revelation. We have to go to it. We have to evolve, to grow, to change, to struggle, to reconcile, to emerge. Out of our independence, out of our dependence, leaving behind both ego and other. That's not an easy journey.

So I would ask you to consider trying to apply this model. Ask yourself where you are on this spiral? Be not judgmental, but critical. What do you know? Where are you stuck? What are you clinging too, perhaps tenaciously? What is pushing you to move on?

For the next logical quantum leap is to the "I-I" relationship?

Imagine if you will, getting to the place where the things that separate you and I don't exist. I don't mean that the flesh dissolves and that we melt into each other. But that the illusions of the things that separate the us-ness of each of us no longer get in the way. Paradoxically, in spite of our uniqueness and including that uniqueness, we are really just the same thing. We are Brahman. We are the oversoul. Together, you and I: and those people out there, and those trees, and the birds, and the air, and the sunlight. We are all ultimately the same thing.

Which eventually (thank you for your patience) brings us to Wilber, and to the idea of the transpersonal. Ken Wilber is a contemporary, prolific writer with a fanatical new following. He claims to feel most connected to the Buddhist tradition, and spends hours every day meditating, working on his state of consciousness, and seeking the elevated state beyond ego. Critics say he has found "the direction we must take if global transformation is to become a reality." It's called the "transpersonal." And, as I understand it, it is essentially a three stage spiral of evolution.

We must first traverse the intrapersonal, our own sense of self. We must establish a sense of self-identity, who we are, what we know, what we stand for and believe. We can then encounter the interpersonal: exploring our outside connections, inter-relations. We can explore boundaries. Where do I end, and you begin? What is different? What is the same? And so what? The third stage is the transpersonal, where, again, the differences so carefully examined and constructed begin to blur. The transpersonal is not within any of us, or between any of us. It overarches and includes us in a larger reality. Our uniqueness does not disappear, it is incorporated. It is like the Hindu observation that not only does the drop of water become the ocean, but the ocean becomes the drop of water.

And Wilber also suggests that as individuals we often mirror the history of human spirituality. We move through an archaic age where we project supernatural powers on the world and it's influence upon us; to a magical age, where we can somehow sway those forces through special knowledge and ritual; to mythical, where we explain reality by story; to rational, where we examine intellectually; to spiritual, where we allow ourselves to enter directly into the experience.

Ken meet Ralph. Transpersonal or transcendental; what's in a name? I think we're talking about the same thing. 1830's or 1990's it is a recurrent them. It is the personal realization of place and connection. It is not doctrine or dogma, but experience. It is not theory, but practice. Choose whichever system you feel more comfortable with, the issue remains essentially the same.

We are on the brink of a new age. We are hungry for a more fulfilling and sustaining life. Where do we go to find sustenance? Is it out there, waiting for us? How shall we find it, or know it when we find it? Or is it already here inside each one of us, waiting to be realized? Is it something handed to us? Or is it something we must pains-takingly discover within ourselves? Can we truly ask ourselves where are we on this journey, and accept the answer? And can we ultimately allow ourselves to evolve spiritually into the transpersonal and transcendent?

[Top]

Well here we are at mid-summer. Summer, for me, is the season most full of magic and wonder. The very word conjures images of long hot afternoons, cool lemonade in the shade, hours of basketball, tennis, fishing, endless evenings on the porch talking as the sun goes down and the cicadas grow louder and louder; the smell of cut grass, rosebuds, salt spray and damp pine needles (in some states). The taste of fresh tomatoes, strawberries and too many zucchini. The smell of roses and honeysuckle. There always seems to be a timelessness about summer, stretching on and on. Unlike any other season of the year full of birthdays, holidays, schedules and obligations to mark the passage of time, summer seems to roll along almost endlessly as an ideal, a therapeutic momentary freedom from duty and responsibility. Even here, as we move to establish a year round schedule, there is an informality, a letting go, and a letting be, as we all take a welcome respite to re-gather our energy, our enthusiasm, and ourselves. Summer is the time to revive our souls, to breathe fresh air deep into our spirits, to purge ourselves of the staleness of our daily custom, to gather our strength, and to start anew. Summer, for me, is the season of rebirth. The closing of one year, and the inauguration of another grand adventure.

But ultimately, there is one great image which overshadows all others in my mind. Even though it stretches way back into my teenage years, it is so ingrained in me that it still rises right to the top when I consider the patterns and the recollections of my many endless summers. The summer reading list. It was always, like most things in life, both an evil and a blessing. It was an obligation, something I had to do, a chore. And I always dreaded the test coming in the fall. But I also welcomed the direction. I read more books that I never would have opened if left to my own devices, and uncovered more golden moments of insight and understanding for which I am eternally grateful.

And there are two books I remember more clearly than any others. During the lazy days of the summer of 1963 I read The Microbe Hunters, by Paul De Kruif, first published in 1926 (and recently republished in 1996), and the newly released Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (which is still being published today). Although The Hunters reads like a suspense story, it actually is a narrative history of microbiology. It follows the lives and achievements of those eccentric research scientists who reasoned that there must be some mysterious layer of life of which we were unaware. Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who developed the microscope and unlocked the chains of our superstition. Louie Pasteur who linked these first glimpses of primordial life with disease. Hooke and Oken who pieced together the puzzle of cellular structures and opened the door to cellular biology, physiology, and biochemistry. Amazing stuff. There is another whole world out there, and in here; invisible to the naked eye. There is a complexity to this life thousands of orders of magnitude greater than we ever dreamed possible.

We are not just homogenous entities which are born, the consequence of some master plan, the product of a celestial engineer. We are actually a composite colony of millions of tiny creatures. Our bodies are the consequence of millions of years of evolutionary process in which cells gave up certain functions in order to specialize in others; thereby creating a dependence and an interdependence which would allow for an ever increasing complexity. But we have evolved such a well integrated presentation that it is difficult to see ourselves as essentially a symbiotic community of mutually interactive pieces. It still gives me pause to consider the immensity of that journey; the wonder of the process which raised us up out of the soup; invisible specks, chance conglomerates of molecules stuck temporarily together; first self-organizing into fragile cells, and then into life itself. And I marvel at the progression which has even gone so far as to spark consciousness. Wow!

But more often than not we don't set aside the time each day to ponder the exquisite relationships between our skin and our intestines, between the linings of our lungs and the exhaust from the lawn-mower, the articulations of our vocal chords and the resonance of our inner ears. As Richard Dawkins, in Unweaving The Rainbow, puts it: "There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness, which dulls the senses and hides the (very) wonder of existence." (p. 6) We take ourselves very much for granted, and the world around us. This little colony of cells has been functioning so long outside my conscious intervention, that I have almost forgotten just how complex a machine it is, and what a wonder it is.

Dawkins goes on to explain in detail one small wonder: the chemical reaction of retinal, the photo-sensitive protein responsible for informing our brains about what's going on out there. Pages and pages of physics, organic chemistry and electric potentials. Dry stuff perhaps. I wouldn't add his book to any summer reading list. But he makes an interesting argument along the way: that knowing just how complicated all this stuff is makes it all that much more marvelous. One small slip, one optical rotation of a protein, one miscopy of a nucleotide, one random fluctuation in pH, and poof, the brain doesn't get any input. And there are so many other complex processes upon which we are totally dependent. The wonder really is in the details, and appreciating, consciously appreciating' just what a miracle we are.

It is a wonder that we exist at all. And as The Hunters opened my mind to a deeper appreciation of what lies all around me and within me, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, warned me that the given miracle of existence, may well be in jeopardy. We've known the dangers of creeping extinction for at least 30 years now. We have done some things: no more DDT (at least not here in the US, although we still make it and ship it overseas, as though it won't drift back into our own lives); unleaded gas, but more of it; protected species and breeding grounds. But the thing I remember most about her book was not the social values and the technological responsibilities, but my own rising awareness of the tenuous grip we, and all creatures great and small, have on life. There is a very fine line between being alive and not being alive, between existing and not existing, ever existing and never existing. The complexity and probability of organic systems aside, there is a wonder in just being at all. And an inherent mystery to the wonder of life as a quality. But we are so intimately immersed in it that we often overlook it.

Biologists can list the characteristics of living things. We use energy, metabolize resources, grow, reproduce, and respond to stimuli. But we have never been able to isolate that special quality, the essential ingredient, which differentiates living things from non-living things, the awesome breath of life itself. Weigh an organism before death, and after death; they weigh the same. Mix all the nutritional essentials of life together, but how to jump start it? How to introduce the spark that magically transforms and animates it? We can't, yet. We can meddle with mother nature, with chemical reactions and physiological processes. But we have not yet been able to breech the barrier of creation. We have not yet crossed that line; and I have some anxiety as we appear to be approaching it. But what an absolute wonder it is to contemplate the unequivocal and deliciously irrepressible miracle of existence! Of life! Its too bad we sometimes forget.

And I do think we forget. Otherwise, why would those fleeting moments of realization, of enlightenment, of joy and clarity and understanding which occasionally burst in upon us stay so clearly fixed in our minds? Two recent examples which have changed my life.

Several years ago, I spent a month at Ferry Beach in Maine. It is a Universalist camp/retreat center. I was there as a resident chaplain, an extra set of hands and eyes to help with the campers. One week was dedicated to natural history. A pair of dedicated biology teachers led us on interminable hikes along the sea shore, into the scrub barrens, and around the salt marshes to explore the many forms into which life has evolved: mollusks, and fish, and crustacea, and worms, and other slimy things and zillions of man-eating insects. We also went on a whale watch.

It was a beautiful bright sunny day. After several hours of steaming out to sea in our party boat, we came across a pod of hump-back whales. There must have been 5 or 6. They were frolicking and gamboling about a quarter mile off the port side. That meant they were about this big….. They would breach and blow, and slam their tails down on the surface of the water, and stand on their heads and wave their tales at us, and arch their backs and disappear from view to come soaring out of the deep to fall over on their sides and send waves crashing against the side of the boat. In other words they were quite evidently "playing." I can think of no other word for it. They were entertaining us, and obviously enjoying it. It was all very amusing. And our naturalists continued their commentary on meals and migrations and mating and more.

Suddenly, a great change came over everything. Nothing changed, yet everything changed. The whales continued their merry-making, the boat chugged along, the sun still shone, voices still laughed and shrieked. But I could feel the world turn beneath my feet. Curiously compelled to glance down into the water just 6 feet below me, I began to notice it changing from blue-green to charcoal gray; from random chop to glassy smooth. And the affected area seemed to progress along the side of the boat, slowly from stern to bow. It was unsettling, this tremendous transformation of the sea. It was spreading, ever longer, ever wider, reaching out and engulfing us. And then mysteriously, it came into focus. It took on shape and form and texture. Ahah! It was a humpback whale drifting along in tandem, perhaps come to investigate, to warn us off, to show off. I know not which.

But suddenly these creatures at play, about yea big …, were transformed. They outstripped our meager 80 foot boat. These energetic clowns, became the behemoths they truly are, at home in this vast sea as I can never be, fully adapted to a life I can never understand. And suddenly, like a flash of enlightenment I had a glimpse into another world, one of ocean depths, of lightness and darkness, of songs that travel for hundreds of miles. This quiet giant intruded into my consciousness in a way that defies words. It just arose out of nothingness, said something like: There is much more here than you can ever comprehend with your eyes alone; and slowly disappeared again. Leaving me with a deeper appreciation (pardon the pun) of the largeness of life and a lingering taste of wonder. I had a clearer image and a clearer comprehension of these creatures, and their place in the order of things, and consequently my own.

A second enlightenment occurred just 3 years ago. Some of you may have seen this photo in my office, and heard tell of the infamous church white-water expedition when it was revealed to all that I cannot walk on water. This is me, this is the guide, this is Mary & Whitney. We discovered too late that there was a slow leak in the left rear panel of the raft. So when we went over the falls, the raft acted more like a sling-shot than a boat. Now I acknowledge that I am a fairly hefty person, but onlookers tell me that I was shot a good 20 feet into the air before disappearing under the waves. I just hope it was graceful. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that part doesn't appear on film.

All I remember is being under water, seeing rocks rushing headlong at me, bouncing off; feeling the scrape of gravel on my back, then face, then side; seeing shiny bubbles boiling all around, but not knowing where the surface was; wondering how long I could hold my breath; remembering the orientation training as we put on our life jackets: keep your head up, and your feet pointed down river; yeah, which way is down river, and which way is up? And wondering, is this the way it goes? It just kind of sneaks up on you and one day it's all over. Not even enough time for my life to pass before my eyes. Just utter chaos and confusion. Things I should be doing, should have done, could have done. Things left undone and unsaid. Bump. Bounce. Scrape. But strangely, no fear. This isn't so bad. Why all the fuss. There's nothing to it. There's nothing to be done. Just letting go, and giving in.

Bang. Spin. Bump. Gag and gasp. Sunlight not water. Slowing, circling, voices. What's that? Doesn't matter. I'll just drift along here for a while, feet pointed upstream. What's the difference? Let them be. Something about a rope. Oh yes, that's right. Something about throwing and catching. I guess I may as well do that. Sure, I'll grab it. Tug, tug, splutter. "Are you all right?" Smiling. What a dumb question. Don't feel like clambering in there. Guide says they'll haul by the life jacket. Well go ahead and haul away. Umph, crash. Six faces in a circle around the blazing white heavens, interspersed with clouds of blue, the sun in my eyes. Now what happened to my sunglasses?

And then again: "Are you alright?" Let me consider that proposition for a moment. Am I alright? Mental inventory. Nothing seems broken. No real pain. I'm out of the water and breathing again. I guess I'm okay. I open my mouth to reassure them, and hear myself say: "I don't know." Now where did that come from? But it's true. My body is intact, but somehow everything has changed. I can't make sense of it yet. And I really don't know.

It's been three years now. People tell me I was uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the afternoon. Aside from some random efforts at civility, the one thing I clearly remember from the rest of the journey was a monarch butterfly which landed on the back of Mary's life jacket as we passed under the shadow of a willow. It seemed to look directly at me with a sad sort of resignation as though asking what I was going to do now? What was I to do with the great secret we now shared? And I was too tired to reply.

Winifred Gallagher, in Working On God, her spiritual autobiography and quest for the sacred (which I hope some of you have read from my suggested summer reading list) says: "There's this thing called spirit which when encountered, makes you feel like you've woken up after being asleep." (p. 42) And: "Seeing god in new places makes life richer." (p.195) Putting these two statements together, I guess I would like to say that the secret is that I have had the good fortune to awaken. And that in that awakening I have discovered a new reverence; a world deeper, richer, more glorious and wondrous than ever.

I do take this life, this awareness, and this consciousness for granted. But not for as long as I used to. For I still have the spine chilling recollection of that giant whale which swam into my life ever so briefly to impress upon me the majesty of life. I still have this picture to remind me of the precariousness and the impermanence of a life which can be so quickly overturned and swept away. I still carry with me a deep-seated appreciation and respect for the complexity and the vulnerability of life. And the more often I recall and remember these too brief moments of enlightenment, the more delicious life becomes.

I am not suggesting that we all need whales to swim into our lives' or that we should read certain books, or that we need risk falling out of a life raft in order to savor the opportunities and events of living a fuller life. But I do suggest that we need to allow ourselves to wonder, to see the world more deeply, more fully, more appreciatively. We may even have to seek out new experiences, new vistas, new insights, new wonders. And then to allow them to change us and the courses of our lives. We need to make a permanent place for these kinds of moments to stay with us, always. And to relish the understanding they bring.

So it becomes a deliberate choice, and a conscious act. It truly is a life full of wonder. If I will see it, with all my faculties: mind, body and soul. And our challenge is to keep it that way. To not allow it to become too familiar, too trivialized. But to keep it precious. To keep it new and glorious. To open our eyes, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits. To take the time, and to make the time, to see the wonder of existence in the sun, the moon, the stars, the face of a butterfly. To turn out into the unexpected scenic overlooks, to get out of the car, to bask in the fragrance of the unknown and to feel the wonder of being sweep over us. To live our lives as though on borrowed time, for indeed we are. And to remind ourselves:

To see the world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity in the palm of our hand
and eternity in an hour.
-Amen

[Top]

Mindfulness. Paying attention. The fine art of being awake.

I trust everyone here woke up this morning, some of us more quickly than others, some of us more cheerfully than others, some of us more reluctantly than others. But we all woke up. We were in some transient state of unconsciousness, where our body's autonomic systems took over. Our hearts still beat, our lungs still brought in fresh oxygen, our glands still monitored our enzymes and hormones; our minds were at rest, freed from the scurrying of daily living, unloading unfinished tasks, discharging pent up emotions, and venting all the incompleteness of our day in flashes of dreams which follow no normal story-line or classic plot development. Wondrous images of persons and places turned upside down, processed and set free. And then we woke up.

Hardly remembering that world. Making a tremendous quantum leap from one reality into another, one level of experience into another. Taking control of all those random thoughts and feelings, harnessing them and directing them along the path of our life journey. Now we are awake. Or are we?

There are countless stories and anecdotes in the Buddhist tradition which question that assumption. For one of the key elements of Buddhism is the quest for enlightenment, for awakening out of the habits and presumptions of the daily routine which numbs our minds and sedates our souls. We are as sleepers slumbering in the obscurity of a great mist, unaware, unawake, sleep walkers. There is another quantum leap which awaits us if we truly want to be awake. Just as there is a qualitative difference between dreaming and consciousness, SLAM!!!, there is a qualitative difference between consciousness and enlightenment. Wake up!

Gary Jackaway shared one of my favorite great Buddhist teachings in a service last year. Teacher: There goes one. There goes another one. And another one. Novice: What teacher? What was it? Teacher: Another moment when I could have been awake. But how often do we even consider our state of mind? How often do we step back and deliberately consider what we're doing and what we're thinking, or even that we are thinking. More often than not we have a battle plan, and damn the torpedoes, it is full speed ahead.

And there's the story of the ambitious monk who zealously pursued enlightenment through the strictest regimen and calculated discipline. He would sit in determined silence for hours sometimes days, often going without food or sleep. As time passed he grew thinner and more exhausted. The master of the temple grew concerned and asked: "Why are you rushing so, what is your hurry?" To which the monk replied: "I am seeking enlightenment, and there is no time to waste." Then the master asked: "And how do you know enlightenment is running on before you so that you have to rush so? Perhaps it is behind you, and all you have to do is sit down and wait for it to catch up with you?"

And I think that is often the case. We are so busy pursuing some distant goals, our lives as we think they should be, that we, in many ways, are actually running away from them. We are outstripping them, leaving them in our dust. We are so busy doing the things we think we ought be doing, or need to be doing, or from which we think we can most benefit, that many parts of our lives are dropping out, exhausted, unable to keep up, lost to us. We are in some kind of great race, with shimmering rewards beckoning to us from some undetermined future; so we set off, sure, determined, confident and resolute. Oblivious to the possibilities of the moments which we discard unseen, unheard, unsavored, unexperienced. There goes another one.

I know when I was a teen growing up under the thumb of dominating and impossible parents, (isn't it amazing how teenagers always seem to have impossible parents?) I couldn't wait to get out of the house and into college, to do what I wanted to do. In college I couldn't wait to get out of college and into work, so I could do what I wanted to do, and have some money to do it. Then I wanted to have an apartment, then to get married, then to have a house, then to get a better job, then to have kids, then to buy a bigger house, then to get just the right job, then for the kids to get older so I could enjoy them more, then for the kids to get out of the house so I could have some peace and quiet, then for them to get out of college so I could have some money to do what I want to do. There has always been some perfect time and place beckoning, just down the road and around the corner, some time when the problems will go away, when the sun will shine more brightly, and the rough places will be made smooth. And in great anticipation of that grand fulfilling moment, I have overlooked many of the smaller moments of my life.

And that is our challenge. To not chase after our lives so zealously that we actually run away from them, that we not pursue some goals so voraciously that we are oblivious to all else; but that we wake up, not just out of our evenings sleep, but also out of our day-dreaming habits, and into a new awakening. To live in the moment, this moment, surrounded by these people, in this place at this time, and at each moment as it comes. For this moment is eternity, the ever present now. And it is the only time in which all things are fulfilled.

To be fully present in the moment is to be mindful, awake and aware. It is not to prefer the grasshopper to the ant, in Aesop's famous fable; to prefer the indolence of summer to the industry of anticipation, to live only for the moment with no regard for the future. I think we sometimes miconstrue the teaching. Living in the moment is not necessarily living for the moment, for that also is to be oblivious to our reality. We can be fully in the moment in planning for the future, but being cognizent of the planning and the effort as the reality rather than leaping ahead to the consequences.

There is another Buddhist saying. Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. On one level there is no difference, and yet on another there is a great difference. Sometimes we chop wood and carry water and are unaware of it. Our minds drift off to other things, more enjoyable things, things we'd rather be doing, sometimes anything we'd rather be doing. Our thoughts are strewn about, like marbles spilled on a tile floor, they roll on and on in all kinds of directions, clattering and scattering, a will of their own, bouncing off things and crashing into each other, and heading off in random directions. But to be awake is to focus on the wood and the water. To actual chop the wood, and to carry the water. How difficult is that? Terribly difficult.

So our challenge is finding the discipline to constantly bring ourselves back into this moment. SLAM!!! To listen to the sermon rather than to look out the window, unless of course you are looking out the window with full enlightenment and intention, in which case its alright. But be aware, have you chosen that path, or are you just day dreaming? And that discipline is the point of silent meditation, to free ourselves of the randomness of our thoughts, the ebb and flow of images and distractions so that we can be more conscious of our own beingness, and of the intersection of all time only in this moment.

Several years ago I went to a Zen monastery in the Catskills to immerse myself in this discipline. [Top]

In February 1993 I faced one of the most difficult and demanding experiences of my life: I had to meet with the UUA Fellowship Committee. That's the group of 13(!) people in our denomination who get to decide whether or not ministers are approved for ordination. Its sort of like thumbs up, or thumbs down. We deliver a 20 minute sermon, and then get to answer all their questions, several of which we know in advance. One of the most difficult is: Describe to us your theology.

Like, how much time do we have? So one of the challenges, besides having a theology, is to be able to share it. Words become very important then; words that carry very personal meanings, and evoke a wide range of different responses from different life experiences. How to be clear, but concise? How to express the inexpressible to people who live in a similar, but slightly different world of meaning? How to start? What familiar categories to recruit to help navigate these uncharted waters? And yet how to not be boxed in by the label?

Humanism, of course. I believe in the inherent human possibility, in our use of reason, in our independence from the superstitious gods and goddesses of mythology. I believe that we have free will, that we are not puppets of a divine ruler, that we can be caring and compassionate persons by choice, and that the world is ours to create (or destroy). And yet, there is a great unseen, the transcendental world of Emerson and Thoreau which casts its shadows on our awareness from time to time, and intrudes upon our rationalism; an inexpressible, existential world of fullness and serenity, a world of beauty felt, wonder experienced, grace unimagined, reassurance washing over us.

Our reason and intellect are our primary resource, they open the way for us to understand and to interact with our world. And yet, and yet, … my heart and my soul tell me there is so much more: an experiential something beyond my understanding. Something indescribable in words which adds grandeur to my life, and depth to my appreciation. It is a great mystery to me. So I call myself a Mystical Humanist, honoring both my mind and my heart, the lessons of my reason and the yearnings of my soul. They act in concert to complement each other, like the ying and the yang of the Tao.

As I sit down to write this reflection, there is a short ritual I follow. I cut a rose from the garden (actually two) place them in a vase here in front of my keyboard. I select a quiet piece of music (Karajan's Adagio today). I light a stick of Tibetan "Blue Sky," and turn off the ringer on the phone. I invite the Muse to enter into this time, and perhaps to tarry a while. It's Friday; time to create. I have already selected the music (the hardest part), inserted the quotes into the Order of Service, surrounded myself with the books necessary for this week's topic, and allowed my mind to freely associate all week in anticipation of this moment. I have read, and researched, and rationalized. I am ready. But that is not enough.

I am like a computer which has all the words correctly spelled, has a comprehensive grammar program, has access to all knowledge on the internet. I have all the tools assembled, the raw materials and the resources. But there is something missing, a broader context and a deeper meaning, a unifying design. All the words and wisdom of the ages are but random thoughts waiting to be assembled. But to what purpose? I have all the pieces of the puzzle, but no box top to show me the big picture.

And my life is like that. I can think and examine and explore, but there is always a great mystery which lies just tantalizingly beyond my vision, just around the corner, fleeting and fleeing before my hurried pursuit. And the more doggedly I pursue it, the more elusive it becomes; like shadows in the dark, just barely perceptible, until we turn to stare, then dissolving into thin air. All the thinking, and reading, and studying in the world takes us only so far without the mysterious gift of insight which creeps in upon us unawares, suddenly bringing form to the formless, understanding to the inexplicable, and meaning to the inconceivable.

The classic example is, of course, Albert Einstein; arguably the greatest mind of all time. He "understood" the concept of relativity long before he could explain it, or even prove it mathematically. It was just a certain awareness; an "of course" which burst in upon him, made perfect sense, and explained everything in a flash. Reason, rational, study, research prepared the fertile ground, but it was a flight of fancy, a personal excursion into the unknown, which drew aside the curtain to reveal the reality of universal time and space. He was able to allow himself to be transported, to transcend the particularities of this dimension, and to encounter a world beyond our senses and experience; and then to bring that insight back with him for us all to see. The scientific process, for Einstein, was a religious experience, a mystical journey of inspiration as well as a rational voyage of discovery. It requires both reason and intuition. As he put it in The World As I See It (p. 792):

Science and religion, mystery and reason, together. Not at odds, not mutually exclusive; but cooperative, even additive, joining together to reveal new insights and to create a deeper awareness. And that makes perfect sense. Both are journeys into the unknown. Both are quests for clearer understanding. Both are the product of concerted human curiosity. Both are often misused and abused; sanctified, idealized, and elevated to ultimate authority. But together, they can function to round out our reality and to transform our consciousness.

In his best selling The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra writes (p. 11):

Cosmic energy or the lord of the dance? Literalism aside, what's the difference? One is written in scientific jargon, the other in poetry. Perhaps Capra is referring to this verse from the Svetasvatara Upanishad (p.237):

When there is no darkness, no day nor night,
No Being, No non-Being – Siva alone is;
This imperishable, this the light of existence:

From this issued all primeval wisdom.
Or to express it even more abstractly, devoid of the taint of patriarchy from the Isa Upanishad (p.185):

Unmoving – One – swifter than thought –
The gods could not seize hold of It as it sped before them: Standing, It overtakes all others as they run;
In It the wind incites activity.
It moves. It moves not.
It is far, yet It is near:
It is within this whole universe,
And yet It is without it.

Sounds rather like the big bang theory to me, black holes, the curvature of space, and worm holes; but far more expressive, and impressive; far more full of wonder and reverence and awe: qualities oft neglected by the intellect, yet so appealing to our emotions. I accept all that our human faculties tell me, the bits and pieces of scientific knowledge, the consequences of high technology; they are all pieces of the puzzle of my existence. But the poetry speaks of something more profound. It creates a fuller reality I can embrace. It stirs my soul; reassures my sense of self and of belonging.

Yes, maybe the difference between science and religion, between rationalism and spiritualism can be boiled down to just a matter of semantics; our choice of words, and our responses to those words. All the more reason to follow both paths; to open up a broader horizon. That is both our opportunity and our challenge. And perhaps to be fully human is to accept the limitations and the possibilities of both; to be both a humanist and a mystic, or a mystic and a humanist. For we learn and experience in many ways.

I've been reading recently about the human brain. And I am amazed that for all we know about it anatomically, chemically, neuro-physiologically, electrically, microscopically and structurally we still don't have a clear picture of how it serves to create consciousness; of how it enables us to internalize thought, to integrate all this sensory overload into something comprehensible.

Daniel Dennet, in his book Brainstorms, points out that explaining how stimuli from our world create electrical potentials which are transmitted to different centers of our brain and there create distinguishable patterns of familiarity, or create learning potentials, doesn't really accomplish much when we still envision a "homulculus" (a small person) sort of sitting there at some kind of control panel, reading all this data on a video screen, and throwing switches left and right. All we've done is miniaturize the subjective.

Antonio Damasio, in his book Descarte's Error, traces the search for the self, and the mapping of the brain. We know the left-right hypothesis; that we "think" with our cerebrum, feel emotions with our amygdala, and react with our cerebellum. But where is the fundamental "us" in all this?

Jenny Wade, in her Changes of Mind, uses what she calls a "holonomic approach." She revisits the developmental stages of human psychology as an unfolding stream of consciousness defined as the intersection of our internal experience with our external world, and the evolution of a memory with which we learn to recognize "ourselves," and thereby create a self-image which acts in the world. In other words, we are a figment of our imagination.

And even the anecdotal study by Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice. Somehow the "I" that I evolve is a reflection of my world experience, and the consequences of my integrating it into what she calls a "self-concept."

In all this I find one consistent difficulty. There is all the sensory, material, worldly reality which impinges upon me from outside and which effects me in measurable physical ways; stuff that can be pretty well calibrated and described. And then there is all the psychological, metaphysical, emotional stuff which is stirred up and which arises from somewhere within; stuff which is far more difficult to identify, to characterize, or to even to correlate. So there is a duality, a segregation of experiences into external and internal, objective and subjective, quantitative and qualitative, thoughts and feelings; and a fundamental dichotomy between the two. There are neurophysiology text books and psychology journals; and then there are handbooks for the soul and ancient scriptures.

And this discontinuity of perspective and human experience presents a problem. How do we integrate these sometimes divergent aspects of our selves and our lives? And how do we manage to somehow synthesize a real live "persona" out of both intellectual and spiritual brain wave activity? How can we be both/and? It's a problem, and a dilemma. Like the integration of the wave and particle theories of light, of quantum physics and relativity which appear to be mutually exclusive and/or irreconcilable; but are not.

So we more often choose one path or the other, one model or the other. It is certainly a matter of personal preference. Humanist or Mystic; Rational or Religious? But perhaps there is a middle ground. Perhaps our reason may tell us that to be fully human is to be able to accept the unknown as it is and to celebrate that life is a mystery, and to revel in that experiential unknowing.

Betty Edwards in writing about creative ways of knowing, says (p. 168):

Letting go of the nontranslatable, and focusing on the experience. Letting go of words and explanations, and welcoming the experience as it is, for what it is. Why not do both? Why not allow ourselves to be both a Humanist and a Mystic, or a Mystic and a Humanist as the moment dictates, and as the spirit moves? I know some things; I sense others. That is the wonder of being human.

[Top]