Upcoming Sunday Worship Services
“Circling the Meditation Pillow”
This sermon this morning is the third and final in a series on beginning the year well. A blizzard actually knocked this sermon out of its line-up in the series, so much for beginning the year well! The first sermon looked at the spirituality of organizing, and how clearing some space in our lives both physically and spiritually can be beneficial. The second addressed the importance managing our (sacred) time well and of the spiritual costs of managing our time badly.
So today in this third and final chapter, we’ll consider some actual spiritual practices. But first you may need to be persuaded of their value. The idea of a “spiritual practice” may even strike some of you as a little alien – too touchy feely - something someone else does – you’re doing fine, thank you very much. But if this morning’s reading by Nevada Barr touched even a slight chord with you, maybe you’ll be willing to listen up, just for awhile.
In this morning’s reading, Barr said she was either born with or developed an empty space deep inside that seemed to function like a drain through which contentment, satisfaction and inner peace leaked away.
Can you identify with this idea? My experience suggests that most of us have experienced periods in our lives when it’s been hard to sustain our joy or zest for living, times when we feel hollow and less fulfilled then we should -- even when everything is running as smoothly as a new car off the lot.
I liked Barr’s reading because of the way she framed the issue – over time she said she realized that this “God-shaped hole” isn’t a spiritual leak that requires plugging – it’s more like a fuel tank that needs to be constantly refilled to power our lives. This is a useful insight, a better analogy. It implies that we need to feed our spiritual selves – and that’s accurate. And it begs the question, when you gas up, spiritually speaking, what’s your process and what kind of fuel are you using? If you don’t know, if there is no specific attention being paid, then your mood, your resilience, your understanding of the world, your faith in humanity are being left to no more than chance and the morning’s headlines. If we fuel ourselves with spiritual junk food, then, like Nevada Barr, we will limp along with fits and starts, sudden stops and a good deal of black smoke.
So the question is – what fuels your tank? Learning to manage the spiritual side of ourselves should be no different from developing good eating habits or learning good hygiene. You should pay attention. Your spiritual process helps keep you in communion with others and maintains awareness that you are part of something larger than yourself. It powers an internal gyroscope that helps keeps you centered when the storms come. It brings sustaining power in the form of energy, purpose and balance. It shouldn’t be left to chance.
There is no one right practice for everyone. There are many formulas, many spiritual tools, and whatever you choose may work for awhile and then need to be changed over time. What I intend to do in this sermon is to share a variety of voices of people who are being intentional about their spiritual lives and who have an awareness of what has worked for them.
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Writer Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies, says,
“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty, bent old tools-friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty- and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.”Because we are all different in our experience -- and there is no end to the challenges we face and no end to the needs we suffer -- there is no end to the kinds of support from which we might benefit. Spiritual sophistication comes with the very recognition that we are being challenged and with the acceptance that every challenge is an invitation to grow. Growth requires, of course, proper nutrition – good spiritual fuel. Running on empty isn’t a good idea.
First, I begin with a prejudice that I hope you share with me already. My own experience right here in this church convinces me that there is nothing more sustaining than having a spiritual community within which to function and grow. For most people it is important to gather on a regular basis with others who are involved in the spiritual quest and to know we aren’t alone. This is one of the best of our rusty old tools. Anne Lamott explains her reason for wanting her son to go to church this way:
“The main reason is that I want to give him what I found in the world, which is to say, a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people I know who have what I want – purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy – are people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people in community, who pray or practice their faith; they are Buddhists, Jews, Christians – people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights. They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle; they are part of something beautiful.”
For the Dali Lama spiritual community is not central. He recommends a life centered around compassion as one practice which, lived with discipline, will result in a happy life. Here is the Dali Lama:
This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy. The Dali Lama
It’s important to understand that the Dali Lama here is talking about practicing deep compassion. He is proposing living a life deliberately with compassion as its core, as inspiration and justification for every act. The theory behind such a practice of compassion is simple, but it goes without saying that living out such a life would require uncommon insight and disciplined love.
Compassion is not the only value which can be cultivated as spiritual practice. I imagine that many of you here that say grace before meals – if not every night, then at least on special occasions. For English writer G. K. Chesterton gratitude became a guiding spiritual principle. Chesterton says:
“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, and swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in ink.”
There has been empirical work done on gratitude which shows that those who feel it often experience greater levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. Additionally, those who are grateful experience less depression and stress are more likely to help others. [1]
In a previous sermon we talked about busyness as one of the major problems of our times. Catholic monk Thomas Merton recognized our busyness as a problem a long time ago and was emphatic about the damage it can do. He wrote:
"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence."
It is not uncommon for individuals to share with me their need to pull back from an overloaded schedule – The ability to evaluate your life and to modulate your activity to a healthy level is an important spiritual skill. My job as your minister is not to protect the church when this happens but to protect and encourage your spirit in its growth. Pulling back for a time does not make you a quitter – to the contrary, it gives you possible time and space in which to deepen. Writer Wayne Muller refers to this skill of pulling back as "thinning,"—making space for life. He talks about how we plant many seeds that have a way of growing, and to grow, they need space. When you respond to an inner need to thin the activities in your life you are making room for new growth.When we keep ourselves too active it becomes hard to know who we are or, maybe more specifically, who we want to be. It can be hard to communicate with our interior. We tend to take our self- knowledge for granted, but in truth, it is possible for our feelings to shift inside without our awareness. Sometimes we have to slow down in order to catch up with our own feelings, to learn who we currently are.
No sermon on spiritual practice would be complete without mention of meditation and prayer. Both have occasional sermons of their own here in this sanctuary so I will not go into depth here now.
Briefly, the Quaker Mary Smith has said that prayer is an exercise of the spirit as thought is of the mind. Prayer has been called the process by which ideals are enabled to become operative in our lives. It follows then, that participation in any activity that engages the spirit to help power our lives – such as - participation in church, developing a practice of compassion or a practice of gratitude, or intentionally slowing down, or thinning our schedules – the spiritual aspect of these engagements – is a form of prayer. If you live a self-consciously spiritual life – if you maintain an interior dialogue and seek spiritual growth – then you pray. And if you have not yet consciously addressed your spiritual side and challenged yourself to grow, then I urge you to begin. The benefits are real and lasting.Meditation is the final spiritual process which I’ll mention. I’ll let this story speak for itself – it is told by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who was babysitting at the time:
I was caring for a little girl named Thanh Thuy when three of her friends came over. The little group ran off to play on the hillside behind the house and returned an hour later because they were thirsty. I gave them each a full glass of homemade apple juice, serving Thuy last. Since her juice was from the bottom of the bottle, it had some pulp in it. When she noticed the particles, she pouted and refused to drink it. I noticed when they went back to their games on the hillside, Thuy had not drunk anything.
So half an hour later, when I was meditating in my room, I heard Thuy calling. She wanted something to drink. I reminded her of the juice still on the table. Turning to look at it, she saw that it looked clear and delicious. She took the glass with both hands and drank half of it right down. Then she asked, `Is this a different glass of juice, Uncle Monk?'
"`No,' I answered. `It's the same one as before. It sat quietly for a bit, and now it's clear and delicious.' Thuy studied the juice in the glass. `It really is good. Was it meditating like you, Uncle Monk?' I patted her head. `Let's just say that I imitate the apple juice when I sit; that is closer to the truth.'
Meditation is good fuel for the spiritual engine that powers our days. There are meditators among us here and a group which convenes every Thursday evening at 7:30. None of the practices that I have described here is exclusive of the others. What they have in common is that they are all resources, they are all available to you at any time and they are all free. The important thing is to act. You cannot become a good meditator by reading books on meditation. You have to meditate. To approve of compassion does not make you compassionate. To enjoy the concert does not make you grateful for it. A good foundation for any of these practices is to become knowledgeable and to deepen your self-evaluation skills, but the key is practice. Hold yourself to a standard. Spaulding Gray once said he had been circling his meditation pillow for years. I think he meant that he had been learning he had been reading up, he had been becoming more knowledgeable about religion, ethics or spiritual matters – but he had never actually been challenging himself to change. Circling just isn’t the same as doing. If you don’t have a spiritual practice, then this is a good time to begin. It’s not too late to begin the year well
[1] The Psychology of Gratitude, McCullough and Emmons January, 2004,