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November 2005 Sermons
November 13, 2005 SermonNancy D. DeanNovember 13, 2005The Beginner’s MindOne of the major beginnings I face every week is how to begin the sermon. Do I go for something catchy? Or, perhaps a joke or funny story? Perhaps should I dive right into the heart of the matter? Or, do I go for surprise, shock and awe? So far I have never resorted to the shock and awe beginning, but I have that in reserve for when you are all so tired and sleepy I can’t get your attention otherwise. Today, I will start with a funny story. Here is what the comedian Jerry Seinfeld says this about beginning life as a parent: Once you survive growing up, the next step is to have your own kid. . . . It's a major point. I think you are at a certain level when everyone you know pretty much has caught on to you. You need to create a new person, someone who doesn't know anything about you. . . . You have a kid, the relationship is off to a great start. You give the kid food and toys, and immediately, they are very impressed with you. That is one understanding of the new beginning we call parenthood. Often, it is the only understanding of what it means to become a parent, but that is truly only just the beginning; and, what Seinfeld forgets to mention is that you never quit being a parent once you start. There is, of course, the additional point of what constitutes the beginning of life, for which I also have a story: A Catholic priest, a Baptist minister, a Jewish rabbi, and a Unitarian are discussing the question of when life begins. The Catholic priest states, "Life begins at the moment of conception when the sperm and the egg unite." The Baptist minister declares, "No, it begins when the fetus is viable, when if it should be born, it would be able to live." The rabbi insists, "Life does not begin until the very moment of birth." The Unitarian argues, "In my opinion, life begins when the children go off to college and the dog dies." Having children is just one such understanding of what makes for a beginning. There are many beginnings in one’s life; and what constitutes a new beginning is not always the same for all of us. Still, we do recognize most of the time when we are embarking on a transition that requires us to make a leap of faith into the relative unknown. Of course, for small children beginning is a way of life, everything lies ahead, fresh, new, so much to experience. A child lives in the beginner’s state of mind. As we age, though, we live out of it less and less. A beginning always has some element of the unknown; for, until we have begun whatever it is that is new, different, a change of any kind, we cannot know with certainty what to expect. Beginnings by their very nature imply both the possibility for success and/or the likelihood of failure. Further, we can never anticipate all the twists and turns, the acts of serendipity that will pop up to color and alter that beginning into the reality all such beginnings eventually become. Think of all the things you began; the big starts. All the first steps into the unknown, some exciting, some scary. Would you have done anything differently? Could you have done anything differently? Chances are most of us would not radically alter the course of the decisions we made, for generally there is no reason to assume had we made different decisions that we would be any better off; indeed, we might be worse off. That is the crux of life’s decision-making process. We just can never know with certainty how the course of events will unfold. There is no map of predestination that is unfolded for us, nor would we really want there to be. Such a knowing, just when we are about to begin, could be paralyzing in its essence. What if one of my children will die before I do, would I want to know that, to anticipate it? For myself, I say no, I would not want to know. Even knowing the good could be disabling, for much of the joy would be diluted. In life, most things from good stories, to a life of work, to relationships, all have their beginning, their middle, and their end. Certainly, not always neatly laid out, sometimes in fact they come to us suddenly. Some of our beginnings are thrust upon us, like greatness is said to be. Beginnings, though, are usually the better part, precisely for all the hope and faith that propels us forward. As Elizabeth Lesser noted in the reading, Children and early peoples share a purity in their search for the meaning of our existence. Indeed, in their original intent all spiritual traditions aimed to answer bare bones questions about birth and death. The “beginner’s mind,” as Zen master Shunryu Suzuki names it, is about this simplicity of questioning that children have; the open, unafraid, or as he terms it, the unaffected mind. This is the mind that does not worry about sounding dumb or foolish; the mind that is not worried about the quality of the question, but is purely seeking to know. I believe this is the quality of mind we Unitarians want to cultivate. And the best time to actively cultivate the beginner’s mind, in my opinion, is when we approach the middle years of life-at least as we understand the three score years and ten of the 90th Psalm. The middle years, be they from the early thirties to the late seventies-it depends of the person--are those years when we often begin to evaluate the decisions we made in the past and often find them wanting. The years when we decide what we will live with, or settle for, or keep struggling to achieve. Not accidentally, this is the period of the so-named “mid-life crisis.” This, too, is the age of cynicism, when we look at the people and places that constitute our lives, and find them wanting in many cases. It is a fairly predictable stage of maturing, and can bring us to a higher appreciation for our lives, but can also fill us with regret and longing for what might have been had we made other decisions. My personal belief is that this is the most dangerous stage of life, especially for those who have been “good,” those people who followed the rules laid out by their parents and the society, and kept close to the path as they defined it; the people who did not rebel in their teens, but made all the adults in their lives happy with their cooperative natures. These can be very satisfying children, but there is a reason why those teen years are typically characterized by youthful rebellion. It is a relatively safe time of testing, when you begin to learn that having your own way is not always the smartest way. We learn that we do have freedoms, but the exercise of them is easier thought about or said, than actually done. For those people who do little rebelling, as they age they often experience a deep sense of never having defied convention, and this is where the danger lies. All too often, as we head into the middle years, when we are questioning so much that we have done up to that point, there can be a deeply seated sense of having never really lived. Of having been so conventional that we have ultimately been bored with life, and now want to branch out, and do our testing precisely at the time when we have the most to lose, and the greatest number of people to hurt. Parents are far more resilient with their rebelling teens, than they are with their adult sons and daughters who have a mid-life crisis. So there is a happy median of a healthy rebellion that is desirable in our teens. They get it out of their systems, and usually go on to lead productive lives. Middle age rebellion is not pretty if it really is a result of years of stifling obedience to a cultural norm that one day we can come to feel is highly over-rated. Going out and buying a sports car, or getting a face lift, are minor aspects of the mid-life crisis; marriages destroyed, children hurt, careers ruined can be the major aspects. So, the middle years are in many ways can be the truly dangerous years for some people, while for others they may simply be a time for pale regrets, but generally appreciating life. That is the most desirable. The worst parts of beginnings, middles, or ends are usually the result of not being willing to engage the beginner’s mind, not being willing to ask ourselves, What if? What if I had married someone else? What if I did or did not have children? What if I accepted the proposal instead of going for my career? What if? Again, it is faith we operate on, and we can only assume that the quality of our decision-making skills is really a more pertinent question. After all, if I did not make one set of decisions very well, why should I assume another would have been any better? This is part of the great realm of mystery. I think it was Will Rogers who once said: I started with nothing and I still have most of it. The goal is, it seems to me, that we begin to value our lives so that we can live with our bad decisions, appreciate the good fortune that comes our way, and rejoice in our good decisions. All of those things are at work. The end of life, or a story, can be both the most satisfying, but also often filled with wanting more. If we are fortunate enough to live a long, healthy life, we may wish that it had not all passed by so quickly. I have certainly reached the stage in life where I no longer “wish my life away” as my parents used to call my wishing the summer would be over, or the winter, or the next week. Each day becomes more precious as we recognize that we have fewer and fewer before us. Naturally, we are usually assuming a long life, and just making that assumption of long life shows how much we operate on faith. I heard some philosopher say that just buying the large size of toothpaste shows how much faith we have in at least this existence if no other. Or, perhaps it just shows how much we long for life. There is even a joke that shows this: You know the old saying that today is the first day of the rest of your life? Death is just another way of saying, “Yesterday was the last day of the rest of your life.” This joke comes out of the beginner’s mind. The beginner’s mind is always willing to look at life, and even death, in fresh, new ways. It’s tackling our problems from different ways, or asking someone else to give us their viewpoints so that we can experience yet another way of thinking. As Elizabeth Lesser states: Children learn because they have no shame about being bare beginners. They ask, ‘Does the sky stop?’ and ‘What does God look like?’ When Jesus said, ‘Lest ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’ he was referring to this kind of guileless questioning. In their unaffected, optimistic curiosity little children are models for spiritual seekers. Beginner’s mind is not always right, can often be wrong, but it is from this stand-point, this place of openness to other ways of thinking, this moving out from the increasingly narrow ego-centrism of aging to experience the world, and all that may or may not be beyond the world, with the unabashed curiosity of a beginner who, like a small child, is willing to say, “I don’t know, but I wonder.” There is so much we do not know. Why am I here? What is the point or purpose of my life? How can I make my life count? Or, does any of it matter at all? One of the favorite questions I was asked once by a child was: “What does mustard and peanut butter taste like?” My answer: “I don’t know. Why don’t we try it and see?” You know, it doesn’t taste half bad. This to me is the essence of true spiritual questing and true spiritual growth. Not believing we have to have all the answers, but a simple wonder at all the possible answers that we might come up with when we ask. So be it November 20, 2005 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanNovember 20, 2005In Necessity and in Bounty We WaitThanksgiving is generally a popular holiday with most Americans. Primarily because it transcends our ethnic, racial, cultural, and especially our religious divisions. We all find that this is a good day to be thankful. Certainly, I would be remiss in not noting that for many of the Native American Tribal peoples of this country, Thanksgiving Day as handed down in our Pilgrim story, s not a day of general celebration. In fact, there will be ceremonies of mourning in many places on Nov. 24th. We should honor that reality, and acknowledge the sincere differences that reside side-by-side in our country. As Unitarian Universalists we acknowledge that the Puritan proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving, in 1676, was hardly adequate in light of the injustices perpetrated upon the New England tribal peoples shortly thereafter, and by the Europeans in general from that point until well into the 20th Century. But for the overwhelming majority of us, Thanksgiving Day is not about Puritans or Pilgrims or Red Indians; this is not why we are giving thanks. In point of fact, the thanksgiving celebration had all but died out in this country, in many places it never really took off, for most Europeans were much more deeply tied to the harvest festivals of their native lands, and it was the confluence of the old world onto the new world and the necessities of war that eventually led to the a day marked for thanksgiving. There had been a few isolated days of thanksgiving named earlier, Unitarian President John Adams named two such days, but it was not until the middle of the Civil War, following a series of editorials written by Sarah Hale, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, in November 1863, to be celebrated on the final Thursday that this holiday really began to take root. Now, of course, it is a great national day of feasting and thanksgiving. There was, then, a much deeper impulse because of the great travesty of a civil war that the need for a national day of thankfulness became a reality. Naturally, it took a while for it to catch on across the land, and marketing and publicity being what they are, tying this new national holiday to an historical event soon began to happen. A lot of romanticizing also began of the Pilgrims and Indians (as we then called the tribal peoples); textbooks, magazines, newspapers also soon found that the stereotypical pictures helped people claim this new holiday. Regardless of rightness or wrongness, though, most white Americans felt a connection in this through their immigrant heritage. Regardless of whether the Thanksgiving Day story is all about marketing and less about truth, what is true and does not particularly need marketing-or so one would hope-is the need to pause and be grateful for life’s bounty and blessings. Someone once said that it is easy to be grateful when you have little, for you will appreciate the little you have; it is with plenty, excess, great bounty that we can become complacent. We can assume this is our right, rather than our good fortune. Author R. H. Blythe wrote: There is no greater difference between [people] than between grateful and ungrateful people. This statement is undoubtedly true. People who look around and see that the world is filled with injustice, see that many people have far more than they ever could deserve, while many people have far less than they ever could deserve. The one thing that distinguishes the two often is this understanding of gratitude. As many of the world’s greatest thinkers have told us over the centuries, it is only by grace that any of us stands where we do, and that no one of us is independent of the kindness, the goodness of others. Even Warren Buffet, the great money man of this era, said: Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. This is really the depth of thankfulness or gratitude that we understand in our heart of hearts, that what we have did not come to us without other human (and even perhaps divine) agency. Those who tend toward ungratefulness, often see themselves as solely responsible for the good things in their lives. This is hubris with a capital H. Adam Smith, in 1776, wrote in his famous treatise on economics, The Wealth of Nations: [B]ounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does. This vanity is also what leads to a failure to be grateful for what one has, for where one is or has arisen in life, and a general sense of vain-gloriousness we recognize as a lack of gratitude. Regardless of who we are, what we have accomplished, how much we own or control, there is a need for appreciation, especially when we clearly see, which is the case for most of us here, that billions of people in the world are far less fortunate than we. We all need to be reminded occasionally, in the words of the old adage which is meant to do this reminding: There, but for the grace of God (or good luck, if you will), go I. The whole idea of thankfulness, of saying grace, especially on Thanksgiving Day, even if we never say it otherwise, is to voice what we hope is in our hearts. My children were taught to say grace at family meals. Unlike the table graces I grew up with, that were lengthy, and always said by the male head-of-household, I let my children say what they wanted. They were usually short, but they knew the one word, grace, wouldn’t cut it. The favorite was: For this food, and those who prepared it, may we be truly thankful. My son once said: For all this food, except brussel sprouts, may we be truly thankful. My concern was that they grow up with an understanding of gratitude, develop that attitude of gratitude preachers have long taught. I have generally believed that the reason the old Pilgrim Thanksgiving story struck such a cord with millions of Americans, was the clear understanding that at least one community of Puritans came to after the drought made the crops fail, and without the Wampanoag tribe’s help, they would have likely starved. So, we believed, I still believe, that there was real gratitude, a deeply held sense of Thanksgiving that brought the two disparate people together. The sadness we can share with the tribal peoples today is that the gratitude did not go very far beyond that meal. We, too, are challenged to be thankful beyond the big Thanksgiving Day meal we anticipate. To move toward a daily sense of thanksgiving would of course be the ideal; but, we can at least move toward increasing our deliberate acts of gratitude. Meister Eckhart, the 13th Century Christian mystic, wrote: If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is thank you, it will be enough. I only just recently learned that Abraham Lincoln did not actually write the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, though he is well noted for authoring most of his speeches; but the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation was actually written by the Secretary of State William Seward (notable for Seward’s Folly), though it is easy to see that Lincoln would have sympathized with what the brief documents states. Here is part of that 1863 Proclamation: In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence[sic], have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship . . .. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High . . .. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise We live in a state of expectation for so much our lives, many live with almost constant want, poverty, heart-sick because of all that they need; others live with bounty, with excess, with great good fortune. This was what Wendell Berry captured in his prayer about all the dualities of human life: [Truth] far off and here; whole and broken; [that] in necessity and bounty waits…. This Truth that waits, both in great need and in plenty, is part of our Thanksgiving acknowledgement, our clear-eyed view that this world, this country, this community has both these conditions existing side-by-side, and we would hope, pray, and work for great social equality. This is the Unitarian Universalist proclamation stated in our Seven Principles, that in necessity and bounty we both wait and we work, this is our way of both giving thanks and living thankfully. Remember the words of Meister Eckhart: If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is thank you, it will be enough. May your thanksgiving celebrations be filled with all the love and good food that we enjoy, but may we also remember to give thanks. To say: Thank you to all those who labor in the fields to grow our food; Thank You to all those labor in the marketplaces to bring the food to our neighborhood stores; Thank You to those who bring the sources of utility and power to warm us, and fuel the stoves and ovens; Thank You to all the men and women and children who will procure and prepare the meals for our great feast of Thanksgiving; Thank You to all the men and women who work to keep us safe both at home and abroad-who in necessity wait moment by moment; Thank You to all the generous spirits who share of their bounty that no one should be without a good meal on this of all days; Thank You for the great spirit of love and human-kindness connecting each of us as we in either our necessity or in our bounty wait for the future to unfold when we hope there will be greater peace and plenty for all. So be it.
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