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October
2002 Sermons
October 13, 2002 Sermon
Rev. Nancy D. Dean
October 13, 2002
I've Got Joy, Joy, Joy,
Joy Down in My Heart
As with so many things in the past thirteen months many of my experiences
have been colored by the events of September 11th. As I have shared with many of
you, that day I was in New York, about an hour up the river from Manhattan,
sitting down holding one of my twin granddaughters who were just seventy days
old, and feeling as we all were the inexpressible shock of these horrific acts
of violence upon our country and our citizens. Like most of you, I was riveted
to the television for much of the day; yet, in the midst of all this tragedy, I
experienced moments of pure joy. In fact, it was having this same little
granddaughter of mine give me a big smile and thinking how odd it was that I
could be, in that moment in time, feeling such happiness, such unadulterated
joy, and knowing that, at the same time, thousands were experiencing abject
terror, fear, and misery. I knew then that I had to offer you a sermon on this
strange facet of human emotions, that fear and joy reside in the same deep
places, that usually we will return to joy whenever and wherever it exists.
While we may feel a moment of guilt at what may seem our indecent moment of
pleasure, we will have that joy when it presents itself to us.
As one who came of age in the 1960s, with all the television of that time
permanently branded on my brain, it was not such a great leap, having written
"joy" in my future sermon topics, to write the verse I heard so often on the
most improbable of sitcom themes/plots, "The Beverly Hillbillies," when Granny
Clampett, born and bred in the hills, who had a down-home religious faith, would
go striding about her fantastic Beverly Hills kitchen--usually in a triumphant
mood--singing, "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart." Just thinking
about that silly TV program, that even sillier character, is enough to make
anyone smile.
Granny's religion was clearly what many call 'Holy Roller,' a generally
derogatory term for the lively religion of the evangelical Pentecostal Holiness
religion. To people of my up bringing, with a broad streak of Calvinism running
through them, this kind of joyful religion was unseemly. Yet, for this fairly
new religious denomination, founded in Los Angeles in the early 1920s, the whole
point of having been saved, of knowing Jesus, of being washed in the blood of
the lamb, was to be joyful.
There is certainly a good deal more to this denomination and its teachings
that are not so joyful, but when it comes to celebrating their faith in Jesus
Christ, Pentecostals believe in "making a joyful noise unto the Lord" as the
"Old Testament" teachings of the Hebrew scriptures reminds. Sing, dance, pray,
shout, all with joy, and the vitality that comes in feeling great joy. I like
that part--I wish all religions had such a joyful focus. Since that is all we
learn of Granny Clampett's religion, she clearly seemed to favor that bit, too.
The humorless aspect of religion so many of us grew up with has always struck
me as peculiar if God were to be understood as a god of love. Even Martin
Luther, the cranky priest and Reformation leader, said: "If you are not allowed
to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there."
For all kinds of reasons that go to the healthy heart of a healthy mind, it
seems to me that regardless of our religious persuasion, it is a good and worthy
goal to know this kind of joy.
Passages from the Hebrew Scripture are clear about joy as a way to be.
1 1 Samuel 18:6 [On the boy David's return having felled the giant
Goliath] that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing and
dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments
of music.
16 Esther 8:16-17 The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and
honour. 17And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the
king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a
feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews. .
. .
Alice Walker, the understood the power of joy, especially for oppressed
people, and she wrote in a piece titled "Possessing the Secret of Joy": "There
are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this
that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation."
Of course, it was also Alice Walker, who wrote in her award winning book,
The Color Purple; "I think it [irritates] God when people walk by the color
purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."
But, it is often hard to see a reason to be joyful, to put ourselves out to
find joy, to be deliberate about making room for joy in our lives. The world is
in a troubling place. War, poverty, more wars and "rumors of wars," pollution,
over-population, child- and elder- abuse and neglect, sniper(s) in suburban
Maryland, not 100 miles from where we are right now (for no apparent
reason--except, maybe the victims are perceived to have joy that the sniper does
not), floods, fires, earthquake, and famine. We have plenty of trouble; maybe
more troubles in this world than ever before. I heard a very intelligent,
level-headed person ask of another recently, "Can the world hold on, can it
survive, is this the beginning of the end?" Well, he is not, we are not in these
times, the first people in history to think that way.
Is it right, we wonder, for us to look for joy, for there to be joy when
there is so much pain in the world, and right here in our own back yards?
No one would suggest that we do not need to lament, to give up a plaintive
cry, as did this man of late middle-age, who looks around and sees chaos on all
sides. We need to cry, to plead with the known and unknown power(s) to change
the awful things we behold. We need to demand justice, when there is little or
none. We need to agonize over the shame of unnatural death as we see it in all
corners.
But, that is not all we need to do, if we are to go forward in hope,
and with belief in the possibilities of the future--for the future who are our
descendants.
Seeing future possibilities is not always about joy for its own sake; it can
be about joy in making good business decision. I wonder how many here today
remember when the "smiley face" first made a big splash back in the 1970s? It
was also the era of the "pet rock"! I remember liking the smiley face a lot when
it first appeared. I had a small daughter then, and she had smiley face pillows,
socks, and all sorts of bright yellow smiley face paraphernalia. "Have a nice
day," got tagged onto it, and that faze soon grew into a craze that swept the
country, eventually making us all sick of it. Yet, Smiley survives! (I see it
all over the internet.)
I did not know for years how the smiley face came into being, but it seems,
according to one writer, that the "smiley face craze, if not necessarily the
smiley face itself, was the work of two brothers in Philadelphia, Bernard and
Murray Spain, who were in the business of making would-be fad items. In
September of 1970 . . . they heard destiny calling. Casting about for some peace
symbol-like item with more general appeal, they recalled the smiley faces that
had been floating around for years in the advertising business." The rest must
have been a great joy from a business standpoint for the brothers Spain.
Regardless of how the smiley face came into our purview, there was something
that resided in this simple smiley face emblem that touched millions of people
at a deeper place than commerce, and that is why it still exists
albeit not so much in our faces. People need joy, they also occasionally need
reminded, we all need reminded, that we are meant to know joy, even as we are
also meant to know sorrow.
According to Robert Plutchik, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology,
Albert Einstein College of Medicine:
Several American psychologists . . . have
independently developed the theory that there are eight basic emotions.
These emotions--which can exist at various levels of intensity--are
anger, fear, joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, surprise, and interest
or curiosity. They combine to form all other emotions, just as certain
basic colors produce all others.
It is surely this basic need for joy that gives us, not only smiley face, but
the millions of humorous stories that have been around as long as we have a
recorded knowledge of human behavior. Here is one such funny story about joy:
It seems a Sunday School teacher was explaining to a
the children the significance of the color white and added that white
stands for joy. She said: 'That is why a bride wears white satin when
she is married. Her wedding day is the most joyous day in her life.'
One puzzled little child asked, 'Then, why does the
groom wear black?'
That is how humor works; we make fun, joy, laughter, even
when there is none obvious. If we look back over the last century, some of the
greatest comedians came out of the worst times for the world. The two world
wars, the Holocaust, the Vietnam conflict--these bred great humor.
Comedy, is the true back to the front of sadness. It was said
in Greek theater, that comedy comes out of tragedy. Belief was shown with the
theater symbols we see yet today, with the side-by-side happy and sad masks
Charlotte Kasl from whose work I took this morning's reading states that:
Joy has the power to open our hearts, remove fear,
instill hope, and foster healing. Joy leads us to wisdom because it
connects us to all we are--our mind, heart, power, and spirit. Joy
stimulates our immune system, increases our energy, and gives us mental
clarity.
You know that when you are angry and upset, clarity goes down the drain; it
is joy we need to see and know most clearly.
Joy is always around us, present in the most and least expected places. Even
in difficult times, it is still not only possible to feel joyful, but important
to feel the essence of joy. Joy is more than an attitude, it is truly one of the
deepest and most giving of emotions, a necessary state of mind that can be
developed and nurtured. Nurturing joy, though, is not the same thing as
actively, or urgently, pursuing happiness. If our goal is to find some absolute
vision of happiness, we are very likely to overlook the simple joys and
pleasures that are right in front of us.
Most people here know that I have small knowledge of baseball and none of
football. Yet, I found myself drawn into a program on National Public Radio that
my beloved likes to listen to on Saturday mornings at 7:00, called 'Only a
Game.' They had on a writer, Jane Leavy, who has just published a book,
entitled, Sandy Koufax, A Lefty's Legacy, about the great pitcher of the
1960's, Sandy Koufax, who walked away at the top of his career at age thirty to
pursue life away from professional baseball. In part, as she said in the
interview, because he was in so much pain with his left shoulder. He wanted to
leave the game, he said, while he could still button his own shirts and tie his
own shoes. He still is around today, and according Ms. Leavy the 'least needy'
person she's ever met, and that he never needed fame to know who he was/is.
What came to mind for me as I listened, was this is a man I would like to
know, that here is a man who understood even in his youth wherein joy lies. Joy
is something that has to come out of your own knowing, your own spiritual
center, and it cannot be bought, nor can it be garnered from fame.
Like Keats wrote in that famous line of poetry: " A thing of beauty is a
joy forever." This is the religious, the spiritual message of the
emotions, that joy lasts beyond the thing of beauty, be it a great fast-ball, a
beautiful sunset, or, in my case, a grandbaby's smile.
We know that our faith is here to help sustain us through the tough times when
we are alone, afraid, ashamed, depressed, worried, and insecure. Being here for
each other is important; we succor each other in times of grief and woe. But
what we might overlook is that our faith is here to help us find and hold on to
joy, for joy is often more elusive than pain.
My message to you this morning is that we all need to put our energies toward
feeling both our pain and our joy, and that even as the pain is made more
bearable by the sympathy and love of friends, so, too, is the joy magnified by
the sharing of it with these same caring friends, who will feel our joy as much
as they will feel our pain. This is a most wonderful gift.
When I remind myself during times that are tough for this congregation of
what it really means to be such a place with such people, well--I just sometimes
have to sing (and you might as well sing with me):
'I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, down in my heart, down in
my heart. I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, down in my heart to
stay.'
So be it.
October 20, 2002 Sermon
Rev. Nancy D. Dean
October 20, 2002
When I Grow Old
Ever notice how true it is that “time flies when you’re having fun”? What is
it about time that makes the worst of time drag by so slowly that it seems as if
all time before and all time to come with be in the quagmire of misery? Yet,
when we are filled with joy, are in love, are caught up in a work we value, are
with people who are pleasant and outgoing, then time seems to have no meaning,
no consequence, and hours can fly by as if an instance. A time-warp kind of
being, when time means less than the people we are with, or the experience we
are having. Most of us remember these times with great warmth, with a great
desire that they should be repeated.
The Rev. Fredric Buecher, Christian minister-theologian, writes about
“eternity” as related to this feeling of time we experience when we are in the
“zone”, or in love, or just “with it,” as what it would be like to know God, a
knowing that even the most rational non-theist Unitarians can relate to, thusly:
“If the it you’re with when you’re really ‘with it’ isn’t God, it’s enough like
him to be his brother./ We think of Eternal Life, if we think of it at all, as
what happens when life ends. We would do better to think of it as what happens
when life begins.”
This last year, following the birth of my twin granddaughters, I decided to
let my gray hair grow out, and quit the frustrating process of making believe I
didn’t have that much gray hair yet. I knew rationally that I was middle-aged,
but had resisted, what seemed to me, the sure statement of it, which is graying
hair. Well, we all have our vanities! We of the baby-boom first line are said to
me more than a little concerned about our aging; in fact, we seem ready to fight
it off at all costs--or so I read and hear. But, at some point, even the most
healthy, beautiful, and surgically assisted of us will have to accept--if we are
lucky--that we are getting older, and getting old.
My, also middle-aged, husband likes to fly airplanes, and has taught flying
for going on thirty years, and really gets a charge out of flying all types of
aircraft. A few years ago he was beside himself with joy when he first got to
fly a jet. But an older pilot of his acquaintance brought him back to earth
saying, “If speed is what you need, forget about jets, racing cars, and speed
boats. Nothing goes as fast as middle age!”
So, we are getting older, and getting old in the process. But, it is also
true that aging is becoming in many ways both easier and more complicated than
ever before, and not just because baby-boomers are resisting growing older. It
seems part of the problem lies in the time we were born, a very good time to be
born in terms of quality of life, opportunities, health care advances, and so
forth; and, in the fact of our large numbers. Never before in history have so
many young people of such varied backgrounds been so privileged as those born in
the ten to fifteen years following World War II, and now we have an onslaught of
health-conscious, well-educated, often spoiled men and women nearing the age of
retirement. How we age will mean a lot to our families, to the health care
industry, and to the future. But, how--the way--people age is in large measure
reflected in how they expect to be when they grow old.
Central to how we expect to be, the way we are and the way we will be, has to
do with the spiritual expression of who we are; the inward being that manifests
in the outward person.
My generation have tended to pride ourselves on our openness; variously
termed we have been called: the “do-your-own-thing crowd,” the “me generation,”
the “anti-establishment youth,” “hippies and yippies,” and the “make
-love-not-war” group-- all expressions that show our tendency to run counter to
our parent’s generation. Yet, those who ran far from their parents values are
far fewer in number than generally realized. What is truly different is how much
we have changed from our great-grandparents’ time of growing old prior to World
War II, prior to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, health insurance with
prescription plans, prior to retirement centers, prior to acceptance of a long
life exceeding seventy years. In many ways we live in a time of socialized
medicine and care for the aged, but it may be short-lived according to regular
reports of the General Accounting Office. This is a source of great upset among
those now elderly, and especially those of us approaching those years.
So we worry about growing older physically and mentally for fear that the
social contract will run out just when we need it, and in the process we often
forget we are growing older spiritually as well. All three are intertwined
inextricably.
Eugene Bianchi asks in Aging as a Spiritual Journey (1992): “How
can later maturity be a time for distinctive, in-depth, personal growth and
indispensable contributions to a more just and peaceful humankind?”
He goes on to state that our technological society “would have the
middle-aged, now at the height of their productive powers, compete and strive in
the manner of the young. On the other hand, the same social forces are all too
willing to encourage the elderly to separate themselves from the centers of
political and economic decision making.”
Bianchi, along with scores of others who now devote themselves to producing a
veritable plethora of books on aging, getting more out of life, staying young as
you age, and so on, pleads for aging and elderly people to be politically and
spiritually active to fend off the pasturing tendency of our culture. In large
measure, such calls have been heeded and any attempts at pasturing are already
being challenged in most quarters.
All these issues around aging are interesting as political debates for the
larger group, but how all this affects you and me who are aging and elderly is
spiritual as much or more than political.
How many people can even say: “When I grow old . . .” ? Most of us afraid to
say those four words. We are experts at dissembling regarding our own aging
reality. We will talk about what we will do when we retire, or get older, or
have freedom from middle-aged responsibilities. But it is rare to hear someone
say: “When I grow old . . . .”
That is probably the very reason that Jenny Joseph’s poem was dragged from
its 1960s obscurity (artists always foretell the future) to the forefront of the
mid-1980s. Suddenly, we baby-boomers got an inkling of the “mystery”, as Yeats
termed it, ahead. If we are to grow old, we began to say, we will do it our own
way. After all, that is how we think we are, we of the “do your own thing”
generation. Well, we may in part, but we may not so much as we would like to
think.
We have such conflicting ideas about growing old. Most people want to grow
old gracefully, or not at all, which is how we have ever increasing pressures on
medicine to come up with newer or better cures for disease, but also fight for
the right to die with dignity. The question must be asked: Is it really possible
to have it all?
My Grandma Dean used to say that when she could no longer take care of
herself, she would “turn her face to the wall.” That expression comes from the
Native American Indians, for those too elderly or infirm would refuse to hold up
the nomadic processes of picking up and moving from season to season, and would
literally, turn their faces to the wall and die. An apparent act of the will,
and one we can even see in our modern culture occasionally. She and my Grandpa
Dean both lived well into their nineties. No one, though, was really sure how
old my grandmother was, because she was very vain about her age, and used to
say: “A woman who will tell her age, will tell anything.” I learned later that
it was a quote from someone else, though I failed to note who, but it might have
been Sarah Adler.
Sarah Adler, a noted actress of her day, was never willing to admit to her
true age. One day a nosey journalist asked her, “Madam Adler, I don’t mean to
embarrass you, but would you mind telling me your true age?
Without hesitating for an instant, she relied, “Sixty-eight.”
The reporter objected, “But, Madam Adler, how can that be? I just asked your
son Jack his age, and he told me he is sixty.”
Still undaunted, Sarah replied, “Well, his lives his life and I live mine.”
We who become elderly in this day and age want to grow old without losing our
mental or physical faculties. Studies on aging are getting a great deal of
funding, which is always a sign of what the present culture values most. We want
to figure out, soon, how to live a long life without being physically or
mentally deficient. Unfortunately, many of us will not realize that hope.
Part of what troubles us has to do with the separation that modern society
brings to the family. When I was a small child, my great-grandmother Davis lived
with her daughter, my Grandma Dean. My great-grandfather on my mother’s side
lived with his son’s family, this was my mother’s father. That was the common
pattern. How many of our parents do or will live with us? Few, in fact, and
further more, they don’t want to either! But, as a consequence we are less
familiar with the common signs of aging, the common outcomes of aging, of seeing
what it really looks like to grow old. And, we don’t want to either.
My personal belief is that the one real change about aging has to do with
being physical. Many, maybe even most, people used to view aging as a time to go
slower, to earn the rocking chair. Having been far more active in their youth
and adult years than we are today, they saw one of old age’s singular pleasures
as one of less forced physical output.
We, on the other hand, recognize by virtue of all these scientific studies,
that being physical, getting plenty of exercise, is at least one key to a
healthy old age. We do know more about the aging process than ever before, but
have a much harder time doing what it takes to eat and move in healthy ways. Yet
another of our modern paradoxes.
One approach is in how we deal with the construction of our bodies via
surgery: plastic and orthopedic. I had a major back operation this summer to
replace a worn out disk, which if not replaced would have given me, in my aging
process a lot of pain. I am very grateful that I can once again move without
pain, and as a result the weight I put on when my exercise was restricted is
slowly coming off. Many people also opt for cosmetic surgery to lift, tighten,
reduce or enhance the various body parts that signal aging. We certainly can do
a great deal to soften the blow of aging.
Comedy writer Bill Jones says new TV shows are basically old shows reworked
slightly. “For example, Bob Vila will soon be in a show about middle-aged folds
having plastic surgery. It’s called, ‘This Old Spouse’”.
However, it takes more than being wise in how to eat and move in healthy ways
to grow old well. Most importantly we have to think in healthy ways--this is the
mental or spiritual component of how you and I will and are growing old.
I know a young man--in age anyway, of twenty-eight, but he is older than most
of my friends and acquaintances who are seventy or eighty and more. He is
unmotivated to do anything but work, eat, sleep, and he would not work if he had
a choice. I doubt he has much pleasure in life, and based on his rather cranky
behavior with friends and family, I doubt he ever will. He could be clinically
depressed, or he could just be one of those people who seem to find life a great
trial.
One of the unfortunate outcomes of much of fundamental Christianity is the
unhappy stance of those who view this world as simply a “veil of tears”; an
earthly place of pain and misery only to be escaped by death and rebirth to a
greater glory in Heaven. This kind of thinking does not make for a happy life,
and not being able to find joy in life is not going to make for a happy old age.
It is no secret that we have members in this congregation who have reached
the years that officially qualify them as old. I do not believe I have ever seen
a chart that says with exactness when we are old and when we are young, but
generally, I believe most of us agree that from birth through the thirties, we
are young; from forty through the sixties we are middle-aged, and from seventy
onward we are old. Yet, we are not all the same either in our youth, our
middle-age, or our old age. There are many positives and negatives about each
time of life. What I most appreciate about having reached the middle of my
middle-age is the growing confidence and lack of self-consciousness that is a
joy of this time in life. While most of us envy youth its physical virtues and
forward thinking, few of us would want to go back to being eighteen or twenty.
But we also fear old age, so we can get stuck, not able to go back, and digging
in our heals to avoid going forward, even when we know that old age has its
virtues, too. It is a contradictory place for the soul.
The best we can do is to ask that most frightening of questions: What will
happen to me when I grow old? You can begin by saying: “When I grow old . . . .”
Here is how I chose to answer that question for myself right now: When I grow
old, I plan to spend as much time doing all the things I love to do right now.
When I grow old, I do expect my children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren to ask me about the “olden days.” When I grow old, I intend
to keep working at something that challenges my mind, my body, my spirit so that
I have just as many wonderful days on this earth, in this journey that is my
life as I possibly can.
What are you going to do when you grow old?
So be it.
October 27, 2002 Sermon
Rev. Nancy D. Dean
October 27, 2002
Awaking the Wisdom Within
How many of you would believe me (let me rephrase that)--how many of you do
believe me (no-no-let me rephrase that yet again)--how many of you can believe
me--Or, Could you believe me? This is pretty tricky, this trying to figure out
what will work. If I were not so concerned, so worried about how to begin, I
would just let it all pour out. But, I have confounded myself trying to find
just the right way to begin. There is something inside me that tells me that
there is a perfect way to begin this sermon--I just cannot quite figure out what
it is. Well, I suppose the best thing I can do--that which arises as perhaps not
the perfect way, but best thing I can do is what I have told many students to do
in my life, and just "spit it out."
Here goes: Each one of you each one of you (and me too) is a rich deposit of
great wealth in the form of wisdom; that is, a great repository of knowledge,
learning, understanding, and you have made or can make not only a wonderful and
important life for yourself, but for every one who becomes your disciple.
And--you all have disciples, whether or not you know them. You are each a
prophet, a seer or a sage; pearls of great price is what you are, whether you
know it or not.
How can I know that? I know it because you are here, and I am your disciple,
and many if not all of your neighbors here are your disciples. This creation of
humanity, this creation we call our lives, this humanity of ours, is really a
marvelous, dare I say, miraculous.
So why is it that we do not see how really wonderful our lives are and can
be, and go around feeling all too much of time like we are just algae at the
edge of a pond, when we are in fact the pond itself.
This is what distinguishes the wise from the foolish, this ability to look
within and see the greatness of our own selves/souls/spirits. And part of what
is great within us, is our ability to see what is weak; weak mentally, weak
physically, and weak morally or spiritually.
Here is the paradox of our self-knowing: That we believe or imagine that
there is some ideal life for us--most people believe that; but, the self-same
people also believe that it is beyond their capabilities to achieve it. There
are those scholars of the mind ( in psychiatry and psychology) who say we do
achieve the ideal we have for ourselves, and the problem or issue is that we do
not have higher ideals.
My belief is that generally, we each do believe there is some ideal life for
us, some life that we are probably even working toward. But what is there to do
if we are not feeling that we are doing all we would like, or could do with our
lives, to find or achieve that ideal life? What, then, is the key? Is the key to
finding, gaining our ideal life found in motivation, behavioral modification,
perhaps a gift from beyond, or is it something else? I cannot say for sure about
anyone but myself, but I know that you do know or can know how to do it for your
self.
I am telepathic, as much as anybody, and I hear voices saying: "Yeah! Yeah!
Preacher-woman, if that's all true, where's my mansion, my Porsche, my lottery
winnings, my vault of cash in the Switzerland?"
My response is first to say: The truth is, that all we need comes from our
inner wisdom--nothing ever happened without it, and nothing ever will; and,
second, I offer you a grook (gruk). Telepathy is kicking in again: What's
a grook, you ask? According to my sources:
Grooks or gruks are the product of Piet Hein, a Danish scientist turned poet.
(In the realm of science Piet Hein is famous for inventing the square ellipse,
which , if applied to table tops, turns out to be the most efficient way to seat
the most people.)
A Grook is a short aphoristic (or wisdom) poem accompanied by an appropriate
drawing, revealing in a minimum of words and with a minimum of lines some basic
truth about the human condition.
Grooks were created originally during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. They
began as a sort of underground language just out of reach of the Germans'
understanding. They have since become one of the most widely read forms of
composition in the Scandinavian and English languages.
Here is Hein's most famous grook:
THE ROAD TO WISDOM
The road to wisdom? - Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
Indeed, the key to our success in finding our ideal way to live,
our perfect life, is through our wisdom, and to awake the wisdom within is the
goal of all learning, all knowledge, all positive efforts, even when they fail
as many of our efforts surely will. But, as the great philosophers from the
ancient Greeks, Romans, sages of India, and China, all have taught for thousands
of years, we are mostly people who live on the edges of our own wisdom, not
delving into the great depths within. This truth gave rise to the erroneous
statement that we use only 10% of our brains, when in fact neurologists, brain
scientists, tell us we use every centimeter of our brains; but we definitely
only use about 10% of our wisdom.
George Carlin is called a comedian, but he is source of great
wisdom, as are most artists, in their varied ways. He wrote in "Something to
Ponder...The Paradox of our Time" (some lines extricated):
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller
buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We
spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger
houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more
degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts,
but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much,
smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get
too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom,
watch TV too much, and pray too [little] seldom. We have multiplied our
possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom and
hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've
added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon
and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things,
but not better things.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice. We write
more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to
rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to
produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the
times of fast foods and slow digestion, tall men, and short character; steep
profits, and shallow relationships.
[M]ore leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but
less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier
houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers,
throwaway morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do
everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in
the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can
bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share
this insight [via computer], or to just hit delete.
A powerful statement, not all with which we will agree, still it contains a
great deal of truth. In one way or another, we all feel the challenge of our
lives resides in how we sort the meaning from what seems ever more meaningless.
To do that requires our wisdom, the exercise of our wisdom, the muscle of
knowing what really counts when so much seems to count far too much.
Here is one case in point I can offer from my own experiences. When I was a
child, schooling was said to be the answer to all our problems, so parents and
children valued school, valued the institution, the teachers, the material.
Unlike most of the members of my mainly agricultural family, I went to college,
became a teacher, and started with First Grade. Believing in the ongoing virtues
of education, I got further certifications to teach gifted children, a master's
degree, moved to higher grades, got yet another degree, and kept adding up
credit hours, and moved from public school to college teaching, put years into a
doctorate, then into another terminal degree in religion for my ministry. Yet,
or perhaps because of, all the schooling I have had, I realize how fatally
flawed our understanding of education truly is. Schooling is not the same as
education, and education does not require schooling, meaning to go to a place
designated The School, for the most part. We have developed a system that
focuses on a product, and that is the actual language used to identify children
in some states' education legislation: the child is a product, produces certain
cued responses to certain test questions. And so it goes.
But the love of knowing, the joy of finding out, the thrill of
discovery--where is that in the product? We can test our youngsters every
single year; parents can drag their babes through the hours of homework that
makes play a thing of the past in many middle-class neighborhoods, young people
can go college, get degrees, but still be dull, unproductive, sad, and
disillusioned if they have no inner resources, no desire to reach out from their
rote memorization exercises to look at the world in new and different ways. Even
after fifty years of testing, billions of dollars put into education and
standardized testing, teachers and students worn to the bone with
ever-increasing piles of paperwork-- after all that, the reading level of the
average citizen is still only about the seventh grade level.
Where is the wisdom in our approach to education? Where is the wisdom in our
approach to children? Where is the wisdom in our approach to life?
Our approach to education is replicated in most other aspects of modern
American life. Business functions very little differently than ever it has,
despite an encyclopedic knowledge of business practices; and, still, Who
Moved My Cheese, a book of such obvious simplicity as to make one shudder,
is the best seller for up and coming business people. And you can bet the bank,
that when people tire of this magic book, realize its lack of power, another one
will rise up to take its place. Business looks outward, when it ought to look
inward for true wisdom.
The stock market has not changed enough to notice since the 17th Century, and
there are hours of analyze happening every hour of every day of the week on
worldwide media. And, still, greed and risk, in disproportionate numbers still
cause the market's rise and fall, even though every investment counselor will
tell us not to invest that which we cannot afford to lose, and invest in only
safe, solid, boring mutual funds, and stocks that will ride out these absolutely
guaranteed drops in the market that always are just waiting to happen. Where is
the wisdom?
Our personal relationships are equally fragile, and subject to our emotional
gains and losses. Wisdom may dictate one course of action, but we follow another
for some other perceived gain, which is not to say that all relationship
failures are failures of wisdom--in fact, they may be the result of one person
delving into wisdom, while the other runs from it. This is often the pattern for
us parents with our teenagers. Who is delving into their wisdom is not always a
given; it may be the child and not the parent. A perfect example of this was a
bright freshman, handily flunking the English Comp 101 class I was teaching, who
broke down in tears in my office, telling me that he really wanted to study art,
but his father refused to pay for his education unless he got an accounting
degree. Where is the wisdom?
Please do not misunderstand, I value schooling highly as my history is
witness, but it seems to me that our education system has gone down a road that
gets narrower, instead of opening up to wider vistas.
The greatest strain upon our diving into our wells of wisdom comes from the
problem of indecision: What do I do? Am I doing the right thing? What if I do
something else? Rather than take a risk on something that we have not
experienced ourselves, even if our own experiences are not all that good, we
will fall back on the familiar. This may account for this father's issues.
Here is another of Piet Hein's grooks that can be a help:
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.
The Rev. Fredric Buechner wrote that grace is in the moment between the
thought and the act. This statement has had a profound effect me, for the human
knowing, the wisdom in this simple arrangement of words is so powerfully clear.
Grace is that which we get, not through our actions--Jesus, the Buddha,
Rumi, all the great spiritual teachers have seen this. Grace, whether seen as a
gift from God, or a gift of dipping into one's own well of inner wisdom, is that
which saves us. And the more we can let go of trying to make things happen, and
allow that which most naturally wants to happen (if we are wrongly motivated
morally), the more grace happens.
Here is where wisdom matters. For wisdom is all the real--the true--that
lies in your own self, and that can be brought forth so that what you most need
and want, which is truly a part of you will come forth and rise up to meet your
challenges. I would not ever suggest that learning this process is easy, for I
know from my own life that it is not. The process is there in children, that is
before we start locking them into automated responses. Then, as we leave our
childhood faith in our abilities, we begin to mistrust ourselves, and assume
what we need is in the hands of others, or some how formulaic like a test
question. Thankfully, if we are fortunate to live long lives, most of us given
enough time, will gradually develop that child's self-trust again in our old
age.
There is really good research that shows that virtually all children are
naturally curious, love to learn, love to try new things, love to experience new
people, places, things, ideas; until, that is, they begin to be tested in
school. Where is the wisdom? No one learns without failure. If you are not
failing, you are not learning. We as a society are removing the safe places to
fail---that used to be what school was for, and in the process, we have removed
the safe places to learn.
Rigidity freezes our wisdom within us, and we become convinced it is no
longer there. A foolish place to be, it seems to me, as this story suggests:
A professor was one day walking along a very narrow street when he came face
to face with a rival professor. The street was too narrow for two people to
pass. The rival, pulling himself up to his full height, said haughtily, "I never
make way for fools!"
Smiling, the professor stepped aside and said, "I always do."
We ought to be in the business all through our lives of waking up the wisdom,
shaking the creativity, prodding the predictably, trying again and again and
again whatever most challenges us. Stepping aside when what we see and hear
seems to go against what we feel in our hearts. That heart is a metaphor for our
wisdom, our inner knowing that we steadily thaw as we shine the light of day
upon it more and more regularly.
When we are operating with the power of our wisdom we begin to "make all
things new," as the New Testament teaches. Then school-work-relationships become
not a series of mazes to find our way through wondering where the rat-trap
cheddar is, but places of learning, exploring, discovery, joy, and fulfillment.
All that we usually say we want in life.
How do you wake up that wisdom that is sleeping within? First--You listen.
You listen to those you respect, to the wind in the trees, to music, to
everything that moves you, and you listen to your own heart. You give yourself
quiet time so your can hear what your heart, your wisdom, has to say. Turn off
the external noise sometimes; do nothing; be a child for fifteen minutes a day,
lost in what may seem like meaningless humming while playing, or picking
daisies, or driving an imaginary truck around in a pile of dirt. Give your
brain, your heart, your spirit a time to be free; then the wisdom will wake, may
even startle you with its awakening. But once we do feel the grace of those
moments, those moments that rest between our thoughts and our actions, we will
keep going back for more. Wisdom is precious stuff.
One last grook to help us in the process:
A WORD TO THE WISE
Let the world pass in its time-ridden race;
never get caught in its snare.
Remember, the only acceptable case
for being in any particular place
is having no business there.
So be it.
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