Landscapes of the Soul
A sermon by
The Rev. Brad
Mitchell
Unitarian
Universalist Society of Bangor, Maine
June
24, 2007
“Each of us inevitable; each of us limitless
– each of us with his or her right upon the earth; each of us allowed the
eternal purports of the earth; each of us here as divinely as any is
here.”
Walt Whitman
There is a popular religious song which
includes these words:
“And
He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I’m not alone..”
The
“He” in the song refers to a Cosmic Parent which is invisible, but ever
present, in the felt assurance of the person of faith. Our reactions to this
image, to this expressed spiritual feeling, will be different and, perhaps,
widely divergent. Some of us will totally reject the imagery as being too
particularistic, too male, too supernatural, too anthropomorphic, and perhaps
too self-absorbed. Others of us may embrace the words as having deep meaning in
personal experience, may have found in the particular expression of the song a
way of describing inner experience, a kind of map of the state of the psyche at
this particular moment in time. Some
will say: “If that is faith, I will have none of it.” Others will say, “I wish
I could have that faith.” Still others will say, “I know that feeling.”
Why? Why is it that we have such different
maps of spiritual consciousness? Why is
it that politics and religion are so difficult to share? And why do people seem
to come at them from such different perspectives?
One answer to these queries by some
faith traditions is that the reason for such differences lies in the doctrine
of sin. Sin is the concept that there
is an authoritative truth, but that by our human nature, we are separated from
it. Therefore, as Saint Paul said, we see only “through a glass darkly.”
Another response comes from the process
schools of scientific and philosophic thought. According to this analysis,
human consciousness is constantly unfolding like the petals of the lotus
flower, and that the truth is not outside the flower, but inherent in it. Truth
is its unfolding. Therefore,
we are not at all separated from the truth, but part of its expression. If we go with this understanding, we could
say that all responses to the text of the spiritual song, as expressions of
emerging human consciousness, are true, true, that is, to the consciousness
that is expressing it. Perhaps, therefore, we are richer in truth to be part of
a congregation which expresses a variety of spiritual understandings. We have
here the image of a garden of lotus flowers, floating on the waters of the
common life, unfolding with varied hues and fragrances, each in its own time
and in its own way.
Years ago, I was part of an experiment
in creating a language of faith for our time. This daring undertaking was the
work of the Ecumenical Institute out of Chicago, and it sought to bring people
of varying faiths together for social justice work in the inner city. In the
process of helping us to work together on common goals of justice and equity,
it sought to help us achieve a spiritual life together, and to do this, we
sought spiritual metaphors that could transcend the traditional language of
faith communities.
This is where the metaphors which I
call the language of the soul springs from, and you might see how it takes on a
quality of metaphor that many U. Us would be comfortable with. The language of
the soul consists of four journeys into spirit. The first is through the Land of
Mystery, the second through the River of Consciousness, the third over the
Mountain of Care and the last on the Sea of Tranquility.
Come with me, then, if you will as we enter the Land of Mystery.
There comes a time for many of us when the old religious “truths” just do not
ring true anymore. Try as we might, we can no longer see ourselves as part of
an absolute religious outlook. The notion that there is a revealed Truth with a
capital T that reigns supreme over all life experience just doesn’t work for us.
Our frame of reference collapses under the weight of our quest for meaning and
suddenly the universal experience is not hierarchical anymore. For us, there is
no more of “God’s in His heaven; all’s right with the world.” One day we awaken
to a sinking feeling that our head and our heart are not in synch anymore, that
what tradition teaches us and what can be confirmed by our life experience no
longer feels consistent. Not only that, but we discover that we need to
reconcile the head and the heart. We simply cannot leave them at odds and feel
at peace with ourselves and with the world. We become seekers, not simply
followers, and what once seemed very consistent about the hierarchical universe
governed by a supreme Being with eternal codes of religious and moral conduct
no longer seems consistent. Now, since the old religion no longer has meaning
for us, we enter the Land of Mystery where everything is open to question and
where we no longer know how we fit in to the overall scheme of things. The Land
of Mystery can be very unsettling, because all at once, traditional answers no
longer fit our life experience and now there is no longer a “one answer fits
all” kind of sense about life. Some may call this Land of Mystery a sense of
relativism. The old truth has passed and we are caught in a land with many
questions and few eternal answers.
Now, some may call the Land of Mystery the
loss of faith. I prefer to call it the unfolding of faith, because, in most
cases, it leads us somewhere. It takes us on a journey. If we willingly pursue
the journey and let it lead us on, we become new people from the inside out. We
journey on what I will call the River of
Consciousness.
On the voyage along the River of
Consciousness we become aware of one important thing, that we have the power to
invent our own meanings. Consciousness
flows from inner authority. I think of the story of Adam in the Book of
Genesis. Adam had the authority to name the various and newly created animals,
plants and minerals. So do we all, all of us Eves and Adams. We name our
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual realities, and we give our own
meanings to those names. I am struck with a child’s early development. She
trustingly learns the names for all kinds of things in the first two years of
life. Haltingly, but with increasing dexterity, she uses the language. And,
then, about two years of age, she starts applying the word “no” to everything.
“No” now becomes an exploration of inner authority. “You say to do this, but I
am me, and I say, “no.” Very early on we begin to travel the River of
Consciousness.
But in matters of faith, the River of
Consciousness first makes us aware of our inner resources. Each of us has the tools of thinking,
feeling and symbol-making. We have what it takes to invent new meanings; the
will to journey on depends upon our readiness to accept the power, strength and
courage of our own convictions. First, we must often confront the demons of
guilt, regret and loss that keep us attached to that which need to be left
behind. Then we must have the trust that our inner-direction will see us
through to a new place. Oh, the River of Consciousness is full of rocky shoals
and white water, and the journey is not always easy.
I must have been ten years old. We were
visiting cousins far away from home in a town in which I had never been before.
We cousins decided to take a bike ride together through street and countryside
that, while being familiar to my cousins, was all strange to me. I was bringing
up the rear of this pedaling cortege when, all at once, my tires drifted into
the soft sand of the road shoulder. For a moment, I skidded and wobbled, and
then I went down with the bike. I must have hit my head and lost consciousness,
for when I came to, my cousins were no where in sight. They must have peddled
on ahead, not looking back to see that I was no longer with them. I lay by the
side of the quiet road for a long moment, realizing with growing panic that I
was totally alone with no inner or exterior map of my route or from where I had
come. I was lost. I had to force back the panic, the sense of loss, the sense
of doom. Then, I had to come to the realization that, if I were going to find
my way home, I would have to do so with my own resources.
That is what it is to be journeying on the
River of Consciousness. But what I learned, and what is there to be learned, is
that our resources are many. We have instincts upon which we can come to rely.
We have intuitions. We have reason. We have strong emotions that let us know
how we are doing, and we have others that we meet along the way with whom we
can share the journey.
And a subtle shift takes place in us. In our
movement out of the Land of Mystery, in our shift away from external authority,
we encounter inner autonomy, the ability to identify inner powers as resources
and guides for our continuing journey through life. In the Unitarian Universalist tradition we call that freedom. At
ten years of age, on an unfamiliar road in a strange locale, I found that I
could cry and ease my tension; I found that I could brave the strangeness of
inquiring of strangers; I found that I could heed my inner sense of direction,
and I found that I could ask, and receive, aid and comfort along the way. Those
are powerful, personal powers to discover at any age.
The River of Consciousness means, then, that
we have to grow comfortable with relativism. There are few certainties in the
River except, perhaps, for change and movement. If we have to have things
nailed down for us, if we have to have dictums and dogmas to fall back on or to
rest in, then we can’t stay in the River long. We will have to invent new
authority figures outside ourselves. That may give us some comfort, but I
believe that it robs us of something more precious, the ability to name our
experience with authority and with creativity.
It is on the River of Consciousness that
Unitarians and Universalists and other people seek their own expressions of
spirituality. Some find it while dialoguing with Nature. Some find it in quiet
meditation. Some find it in writing, in art, in music. Some find it in prayer.
Some find it in caring for themselves, or for another, or in caring for the
world. However we find it, we know when it is right for us. We know from the
inside out, and we know that we could bet our life on it.
There is yet a third landscape on our
journey of faith. When you live in a relative world, you become aware of its
pain. You cannot rationalize the pain and say that it is God’s will, for you
experience it as senseless pain or innocent suffering. In this landscape of the
soul you are moved by the suffering of people, and you find yourself stymied as
to your response. You are at once acutely moved by suffering, yet wanting to
remain at arm’s length from it. I will call this landscape the Mountain of Care. Ascending the Mountain of Care, you feel the
weight of the journey. This is what the Buddha discovered when he looked beyond
the gates of the palace of his childhood and saw the suffering of the world. He
could no longer retreat back inside the palace gates in blissful ignorance. The
Mountain of Care introduces you to the pain and suffering and tragedy that is
integral to the human experience, and you find that, try as you might, you
cannot hide from it. You must shoulder it by some means or other. You must take
it upon your shoulders in your own way.
On the Mountain of Care our spiritual
resources are tested. It is said that when the man Jesus was led to the spot of
execution, his disciples deserted him. They ran to the four winds. They
couldn’t look tragedy in the face. They couldn’t bear the suffering. Well, I
don’t know about you, but that’s me all over. I want to run from all the
suffering. And every time the phone rings and somebody on the other end says,
“My mother just died.” Or, “I have just been diagnosed with AIDS!” I want to
run from the pain of it all, for the pain of the world reminds me of my own
pain.
The Mountain of Care, however, teaches us
compassion, and it is the only way we learn it. It is wanting to run from our
pain and wrestling with our fear that we learn to be with suffering in a
compassionate way. And it is ascending the Mountain of Care that deepens our
faith and our lives, that beckons us from living on the surface of experience
to living inside and deep, deep down in the authenticity of relationships. I
believe that our greatest philosophers and spiritual teachers are not the ivory
tower folks but those who have cared for an aging parent, or a spouse with
Alzheimer’s, or who have suffered through the death of a child, those who have
known a loved one killed in war, those who have lived with a disability, those
who have survived the many holocausts that ravage life. Journeying up the
Mountain of Care, and bringing consciousness to that journey deepens us. When
you find someone who has traveled through this landscape and who still
sings: “And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His
own,” then you can believe them, for they mean something deeper, something
different, something more compassionate than before the journey began.
All
of this has been to say that the journey of faith leads on, ever on. It doesn’t
stick us in one landscape, but several. It doesn’t leave us with one answer,
but gives us a sense of our inner resources. It doesn’t save us from uncertainty,
but teaches us about the creativity of risk and adventure. It doesn’t cure us,
but it can make us whole people.
Having wandered through the Land of Mystery,
knowing the loss of familiar meanings, questioning the authenticity of
inherited faith, having journeyed along the River of Consciousness, becoming
aware that we can invent our own meanings or adopt the meanings of others that
fit our soul space, having climbed the Mountain of Care, weighed down and
deepened by the suffering of the world, we all at once find ourselves floating
on the vast Sea of Tranquility. Here we have found our integrity. Our insides
and our outsides are at peace. We can believe again and act on our faith with
integrity. We can know our own worth even as we know our own shortcomings and
accept it all. We can affirm the worth and dignity of others. We can take
actions to heal a suffering world, and we know, perhaps for the first time,
that every thought we think, every action borne out of conscience, every
feeling of compassion or gratitude expressed is significant and weaves its firm
strand in the web of universal being. For a time we float on the Sea of
Tranquility or as Wendell Berry expresses it:
“I come into the presence of still water,
And
I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting
with their light.
For
a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.”