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To Walk in Beauty
Good morning. I’d like to welcome you to the second in a three-part series in walking with the mystics. Last week we established that mysticism is the belief that God, or spiritual truths can be known through individual insight or experience rather than by reasoning or study. Put another way – a mystic is someone with “immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality, or God. There are dedicated mystics to be found in virtually every religion, as, for example, the Catholic desert fathers or the Forest monks, but the salient point from last week is that we all are capable of mystical experiences, and we have moments in our lives where we experience an infusion of meaning that goes beyond words. We’re all somewhere on a continuum, some of us fed more by mystical insight than others, but all of us are capable of experiencing an occasional mystical moment.
Last week we also noted that belief in the Almighty is not a prerequisite for gaining access to mystical wisdom. The great scientist Albert Einstein considered himself a mystic – and although he didn’t believe in a personal God he considered himself to be very religious due to the awe and wonder which was inspired in him by the beauty and mystery of the world.
This is relevant to us because, as we acknowledge, Unitarian Universalism draws from many sources; among the sources listed in our Principles and Purposes is, “Direct experience of that transforming mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” This describes the mystic experience. Our specific focus last week was on Taoism and how Taoist practice attempts to put oneself into a “receptive mode,” to enter into harmony with the flow of fundamental forces that constitute the ultimate nature of the universe. In their vocabulary, they attempt to “become one with the Tao.”
Today our exploration of mysticism will take us in another direction. Another source recognized in our Principles and Purposes is “the spiritual teachings of earth centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” This morning I would like to focus on the mysticism that is inherent in earth-centered Native American spirituality, and make a case that it is relevant to contemporary life.
But first, a brief (even tiny!) review of what our western religious tradition says about the earth. The most often quoted Biblical passage nowadays might be Genesis 1:28 which reads:
And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (ASV)
The implication of this passage in the eyes of many is that the earth is here for our use and the humans are the center of divine activity, with the earth and nature serving as no more really than a backdrop for that activity. The Bible, overall, pays very little attention to the earth and its needs. In the past few decades there’s been sort of a cottage industry of Biblical scholars pouring through biblical translations looking for an implied commandment to care for the earth.
Respect for the earth was simply not a central value for the Europeans who first established on this continent. Historian Frederick Turner writes:
"To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich variety of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory."
I think of that great line spoken by Katherine Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen: “Nature, Mr Allnot is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
Not so for the American Indian. The Native American was an animist, to whom every animal, plant, and object in nature contained a spirit. Native Americans viewed themselves as children of the Great Spirit. Big Thunder, a late 19th century Algonquin said, “The Great Spirit is our Father, but the earth is our mother. She nourishes us; that which we put into the ground she returns to us.”
I should say that many followers of Native American spirituality, do not regard their spiritual beliefs and practices as a "religion." in the way that westerners do. Their beliefs and practices form an integral and seamless part of their very being. Although Native Americans do not use the category, their spiritualized view of the world is mystical because it is an immediate apprehension of the world as divine. They do not have a “Bible;” the animated universe is conveyed in a large and varied body of stories, myths and legends.
Native American writer Jenny Leading Cloud says:
"We Indians think of the earth and the whole universe as a never-ending circle, and in this circle man is just another animal. The buffalo and the coyote are our brothers; the birds, our cousins. Even the tiniest ant, even a louse, even the smallest flower you can find--they are all relatives. We end our prayers with the words mitakuye oyasin-- "all my relations"-- and that includes everything that grows, crawls, runs, creeps, hops, and flies on this continent. White people see man as nature's master and conqueror, but Indians, who are close to nature, know better.”
The danger of not apprehending the world as divine was forcefully laid out by Russell Means, Oglala/Lakota leader who delivered a now famous speech in 1980 at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering. Here’s a segment:
In terms
of the despiritualization of the universe… it becomes virtuous to destroy the
planet. Terms like progress and development are used as cover words... For
example, a real-estate speculator may refer to "developing" a parcel of ground
by opening a gravel quarry; development here means total, permanent destruction,
with the earth itself removed… Ultimately, the whole universe is open--in the
European view--to this sort of insanity
Means is concerned for the earth and believes with his whole heart that understanding the world as spiritualized, living, is the way to save it. – his point is that Native Americans are not the only individuals who can cultivate a mystical relationship with the world. The west must take up this understanding or be destroyed.
That mystic from Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau, once wrote in his journal that the perception of beauty is a moral test. George Washington Carver said, I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. Emily Dickenson, Exultation is the going / of an inland soul to the sea /Past houses – past headlands– /Into deep Eternity. Annie Dillard, “I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.” [p. 33].
American naturalist and explorer, John Muir, who was instrumental in founding our national forest system was a mystic. Writer Larry Gates says, “It puzzled Muir that many of his fellow humans did not appreciate God's grandeur as it manifested itself in the wilderness. His companion on his first summer in the Sierra, a shepherd named Billy --called Yosemite Valley "a lot of rocks -- a hole in the ground." Muir witnessed other tourists who seemed unimpressed by the majesty of Yosemite: he saw fishermen baiting their hooks "in the holiest of temples ignoring God himself as he preaches sublime water and stone sermons." Muir didn’t understand this. Listen to his words:
“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, and tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.”
There are mystics among us. In addition to the Native American population, Carver, Dickenson, Dillard and John Muir are a few of the magnificent mystic American writers – but there are many.
Russell Means laid out the harm that despiritualization of the universe has already led to, and he warned of the serious consequences for North America if nothing changes. Listen to him:
“The traditional Lakota way … is the way that knows that humans do not have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony.
A lopsided emphasis on humans by humans - the European's arrogance of acting as though they were beyond the nature of all related things - can only result in a total disharmony and a readjustment which cuts arrogant humans down to size, gives them a taste of that reality beyond their grasp or control and restores the harmony.
…A wolf never forgets his or her place in the natural order… Europeans almost always do. We pray our thanks to the deer, our relations, for allowing us their flesh to eat; Europeans simply take the flesh for granted and consider the deer inferior….
Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated… that's a prophecy of my people... American Indians have been trying to explain this to Europeans for centuries. But… Europeans have proven themselves unable to hear. The natural order will win out, and the offenders will die out, the way deer die when they offend the harmony by over-populating a given region.
Many Native Americans express full confidence in this world view. One Native American woman said, "If you take the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible IS the wind."
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Clearly, we are not going to witness the mass conversion of the dominant peoples, to Native American spirituality any time soon. We are not all mystics and we’re not going to be. But we should be aware that teachings that come to us from out of the earth-centered traditions have enormous value, and we can value the mystics and familiarize ourselves with literature by mystic writers, whether that be the Tao Te Ching, Thoreau, Emerson, Annie Dillard, or the full body of Native American myths and legends that talk about an animated world.
I am proud of the congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association for including the seventh principle which speaks to the unity of all things: (“We covenant to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”) This vote came in 1984 only four years after Russell Means speech.
And then, in 1995, after much thoughtful denomination-wide discussion and by vote of the whole denomination, we added “spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions” to the list of the sources from which we draw, placing it alongside Judeo-Christian teachings and humanist teachings as important source of wisdom from which we are encouraged to learn..
We cannot all be mystics, but we are encouraged to read the mystics and to become familiar with and to respect the wisdom of earth-centered traditions. We can also consciously practice what Lily Tomlin’s character Trudy once called her “awe-robics.” Yesterday morning Larry and I took a walk around the block – if you drove it you’d probably think it was nothing special. But we saw a good sized black snake thinking about crossing the road – we persuaded it to move back toward the woods and two praying mantises – and we also found a baby snapping turtle, dusty and covered in dirt, looking like it had just hatched but hadn’t found its way to the river for its first swim. It was our privilege to place it in the stream of life.
Take a walk, try to see – pay attention – look, listen – the world is waiting for you…