Upcoming Sunday Worship Services
"Spiritual Poverty"
A few years ago I received a human interest story via email - they fly around to everyone, so you may have got it too, in which a man remembered a relationship he'd had with a telephone operator which went something like this:
"When he was little, his father had owned one of the first telephones in our neighborhood, the kind with the polished old case fastened to the wall. One day he discovered that inside this wonderful device lived an amazing person named Information Please.
His first personal experience with Information Please came one day while his mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing himself at a tool bench in the basement, he whacked his finger with a hammer. The pain was awful, but there didn't seem to be any reason to cry because there was no one home to give him sympathy. He walked around the house sucking his throbbing finger, until he noticed the telephone. He ran for a stool and grabbed the phone. Information Please, he said into the receiver.
"I hurt my finger" he wailed to the woman who answered.
"Is your mother home?" Came the question. "Nobody's home but me!" He cried. "Are you bleeding?" No, but it hurts! "Can you open the icebox?" She asked. "Chip off a little piece of ice and hold it on your finger."
After that he called Information Please for everything. He asked for help with his geography and math, and she told him the chipmunk he caught in the park would eat fruits and nuts. When his canary died Information Please said all the usual things a grown-up says to soothe a child. When he was nine years old he moved from the Pacific Northwest to New York, and one of the worst things about the move was that he lost his connection to Information Please. When he grew into his teens the memories of these conversations never left him. He'd often remember the sense of security he'd had back then. He realized how kind and patient she had been to have spent her time on a little boy.
A few years later he flew from New York back out west to go to college. He exited the plane at a stopover in Tacoma in order to call his sister who lived there, and then, without thinking about it he called his hometown operator and said, "Information Please." Miraculously he again heard the small, clear voice he knew so well- and the minute he said "Please, can you tell me how to spell fix?" She immediately recognized, if not his voice - the relationship he presented. Both of them took the opportunity in this conversation to say how much these calls had meant to them.
Was there ever someone special in your life who listened to you? Some people, you may have observed, not only listen, but attend to others in a profound way that signals that you are important to them. If you've experienced this kind of relationship then you know that being truly listened to - just the listening alone with nothing else, can be a significant and important act.
The relationship I just mentioned to you was unique - something about their lives caused them to hook, and it felt right and they were good for each other. But some special people are able to offer a remarkable quality of listening to all the people in their lives, not just a random person or relative here or there, but even to those they do not know well. Theologian William Stringfellow once said: "Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance, or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking or are debating about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable. Listening is a primitive act of love."
As one who is deeply interested in the art of listening, I've thought a lot about what Stringfellow said. I want to be a better listener - I have wanted to get back to that primitive, raw love Stringfellow talks about- if so then perhaps my listening can become the healing act that I want it to be. Again, is there anyone in your life who has listened to you with complete intensity, in a manner supremely sensitive to your hopes and enthusiasms and which delights in your delights, and most importantly, that suffers when you hurt? If so, you know we can be listened into better health and well-being. Perhaps you had a mother or a father or a lover who was present to you in this way. Or at least for precious, memorable moments here and there. Perhaps you have been able to be the caring listener for someone you love. I think Stringfellow refers to this kind of listening as primitive because it usually results from a gut reaction -personal interest, maternal or paternal love or romantic love. Usually it isn't from some source that is impersonal like Information Please from our story this morning.
But pursued as a spiritual discipline, listening can be much more than a primitive act of love. Consciously developed as a conscious skill, the kind of listening that heals can be brought into virtually every encounter. This, I have come to believe, was the spiritual discipline of Catholic writer Henri Nouwen. (A very tough discipline at that.) Nouwen was interested in something deeper than the listening itself. The listening is a side effect of cultivating a certain quality of spirit which he refers to as poverty and it is Nouwen's poverty that I want to focus on today. One of the most powerful listeners I have ever encountered was the Reverend Elizabeth Tarbox, and it was she who gave me my first book by Nouwen The Wounded Healer which I quote to you here. Elizabeth was, think, a kindred spirit to Nouwen and one who healed others exceptionally well through listening - she was an example, I think, of one with poverty of spirit in the sense that Nouwen uses the word..
I quote Nouwen: "Poverty is the quality of the heart which makes us relate to life, not as property to be defended but as a gift to be shared. Poverty is the inner understanding that the hours, days, weeks and years do not belong to us but are the gentle reminders of our call to give, not only love and work, but life itself, to those who follow us and will take our place. He or she who cares is invited to be poor, to strip himself or herself from the illusions of ownership and to create some room for the person looking for a place to rest."
The poverty of spirit that Nouwen talks about results in something he calls hospitality, or the ability to pay attention to the guest. Hospitality is another word for the kind of listening that I have been trying to describe.
Let's take a side trip for a minute. Listen to this story that might clarify what is meant by Nouwen's poverty.
One day the Zen master had a visit from a foreign scholar of Eastern religions who came to inquire about Zen. Instead of listening to the master, however, the visitor kept talking on and on about his own ideas and all that he knew.
After awhile of this talking, the master served tea. He poured the tea into the visitor's cup until it was full, and then he kept on pouring. The tea poured over the side of the cup, filled the saucer, and then spilled over onto the man's pants and the floor.
Finally the visitor couldn't restrain himself. "Don't you see that it is full?" He said. "You can't get any more in!"
"Just so," replied the master, stopping at last. "And like this cup, you are filled with your own ideas. How can you expect me to give you Zen when there is no room in your cup?"
Not too long ago I arranged an appointment with a spiritual director. I met her on the grounds of a retreat center during a 30 day retreat which she was facilitating for a number of young priests from Cambodia and Laos. Before we began she shared with me her enthusiasm for these fine men and how moved she was by the great suffering and cruelty they had experienced in their young lives. She described the very dramatic outlines of some of their stories which left her, rightfully, breathless, and then, finally, she slowed down and shifted gears with a smile, ready to begin with me. I was embarrassed. Her cup was full - what could I possibly have to contribute to her world?
Henri Nouwen teaches us that spiritual poverty is the willingness to bring an empty cup - not only to the masters in our lives, but to everyone we encounter. I realized in that moment that I had shown up in need of an empty cup and I had not been offered one. For another person to be open and talk freely requires a withdrawal of the counselor, Nouwen says. Nouwen teaches us that by withdrawing into ourselves, not out of self-pity but out of humility, we create space for another to become themselves and to come to us on their own terms. The result is true hospitality, the creation of a healing space where the guest can find his own soul.
Poverty might seem to be an odd word for this quality of spirit, but think of it this way: Some clergy take a vow of material poverty - they choose not to hold on to material wealth which might side-track them from their mission of service to God. The kind of poverty that Nouwen suggests here asks us not only to let go of our own needs, worries and tensions so that we may attend to our guest. To become an empty cup we must let go of our social riches - our desire to converse about those things which may specifically interest us or have the potential to impress others, - he asks us to learn to recognize our own needs for sympathy, friendship, popularity and let them go. We do it in order to make room for the guest.
Most of us do empty out like this for occasional moments in the course of our everyday lives. When someone is bursting with news, or when we haven't seen a friend for awhile and want to catch up, or for children when they are excited, or for teachers - we put ourselves aside completely for awhile, for limited amounts of time. And sometimes it's hard.
Now let's go back to what Nouwen says. His message is radical in much the same way that Jesus' is. I repeat - Poverty, Nouwen says, is the inner understanding that the hours do not belong to us but are the reminders of our call to give, not only love and work, but life itself." Poverty consists of giving our lives over to God moment by moment by learning to listen with God's loving and attentive, accepting and healing ears. We don't have to work in soup kitchens, join the peace corps or adopt a foster child overseas to do become a healing presence in the world. We can meet this challenge anywhere if we become an empty cup, if we confront everyone who enters our lives with a loving presumption and the same quality of listening that we would give a dear old friend: that would include neighbors, grocery check-out people, wrong numbers, chatty relatives (the ones you may want to shut down toward), the strange person at the library that seems kind of lonely and has spoken to you and you've held yourself to polite.
Nouwen says we have no right to be closed to one another. It is right to give ourselves away because we don't belong to ourselves in the first place. We belong, he would say, to God, and it is our duty to serve God. (or goodness, perhaps if you would like a this translated into Unitarian Universalist lexicon.) I imagine there are those of you who might be offended or disagree with this ideal - who might think it goes too far. Similar charges have been lodged against other radical idealists. Again, the principle is that everyone is a guest sent by God and therefore deserves only the very best hospitality we have to offer. Everyone we encounter, even accidently by phone, has a right to our love - not because they have earned it, but because God or goodness, deep committed goodness, requires it. The latter part of The Wounded Healer includes a direct challenge to the reader to let go of the illusion of self- ownership in favor service to God moment by moment through attentive, loving listening. This is the quality we experience in saints and sages. and perhaps that is why we move toward them as though pulled by a magnetic force.
Stringfellow had referred to listening as an act of primitive love. As you can probably guess, Nouwen is referring to something different, to a spiritual practice that requires great self-sacrifice, personal discipline and concentration - an ideal which can stymie even highly evolved practitioners. The Wounded Healer is a book written for clergy and yet is germane for anyone who seeks to grow in spirit.
To my knowledge Henri Nouwen wrote no single work dedicated to this concept, but all of his books center to some degree around this process of letting go of the self to make room for the guest. I have brought in four of his books this morning. He is a priest, so they are Christian by orientation, and they are all short and easy to read. If you would like to borrow one after church please take one off the pulpit and just mention to me that you have it.