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Sunday, June 3, 2001“Experiencing
the Secret of Joy” Rev.
Annie Holmes
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I
have come to realize that life is mostly about
translating. Many
of us have been through a living hell of one kind or
another. Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells us in her
book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” “The
task, is to pass through the land of the dead as a
living creature, for that is how consciousness is
made.” That
is the task for many people, to pass through the
living hell, the dark night of soul, whatever you
wish to call it; death, depression, disappointment,
violence, injustice, to pass through all of that as
a living creature, for that is how consciousness is
made. How those experiences are translated into our
lives often makes the difference between a full life
or an empty existence. This is a curious time. There seems to be so much talk of spirituality and yet I find so much of the talk and what has been written as trying to put a bandage on a gapping wound. Much of what is touted as New Age spirituality is like a sugar pill. It tastes sweet in the mouth for a minute or two, but does nothing to sustain the body; no protein, no iron, no vitamins, nothing much sustaining. So much of it seems pop psychology or gimmicks. Sound theological phrases like, the seeking for one’s inner self, the creative visualizations, the chants, are clouded over by the advertisements of expensive materials you are told you need to buy in order to find that sound theology; Tibetan bowls at $100 a pop, guaranteed to magically help you find your harmonic resonance, yoga mats for $200 or the newest book of someone yet again finding their true nature, only to have you read about it at $49.95, but relax they will be on Oprah pushing their book this month anyway. I find the wholesale selling of the spiritual like bargain crystals, without adequate training and explanation, the implication that one needs an expensive guru or the personal trainer and the hype is a lot of veneer that is often spread over the pain, the loss, the living hell, the really awful situations we have lived through in our lives, that a sugar pill will not cure. You simply cannot purchase peace. And I say enough! So, then what is spirituality all about? Are there other words one can use in its place, like peace, wholeness, happiness, serenity? How are these attained? Can they be attained? Remember, the task is to pass through the land of the dead as a living creature, for that is how consciousness is made. Spirituality, I believe is the fearless inventory of our lives through the lenses of glasses that we fashion and that are also fashioned for us. Example: I have a friend who came upon the murdered body of his sister as he went to visit her at her apartment. He has talked and written extensively about that experience and the pain and anguish, growth and new life for him that has come out of that experience. But mostly he has written about forgiveness. His spiritual journey has been to walk through that valley of death and come out a person who first had to forgive himself for not going to visit her sooner and saving her, and a person who has had to forgive her murderer, so my friend could live again in the land of the living be a part of his family and the world around him. That moment, of finding his murdered sister, has been a defining moment of his life, and he says, the beginning of his spiritual awakening. He, like most UUs, ministers included, have not taken spirituality or the finding of a spiritual discipline seriously. Rather, he talks about how in his past he would dabble in this, in that, not seriously taking on any instruction in anything long-lasting. In fact, for him spirituality was defining himself in a way that said what he would not do, or what others were doing that he was against. For example, if he said he was not a Christian than all the things that Christians did, he would not do. He was defined by what he was against. He was for nothing that he could see, at least before that fateful day. Now, he has a spiritual discipline in which he practices daily, because without it, he writes, he would have died, of a broken heart, a split personality, a trance-like response to life in the face of such brutality. Spirituality is the fearless inventory of our lives through the lenses of glasses that we fashion and that are also fashioned for us. Example: Rita only recently has remembered that she had been raped by her Grandfather as a little girl. What will pull Rita out of her Prozac fog in order that she will ever, in her life, be able to experience any joy? Is it presumptuous of me as a minister counseling her to say, try a spiritual discipline? Does that sound like spitting into the wind? Rita twists her hands around and around in a nervous gesture as she sits on the couch in my office. She can’t look at me. She tells me she never smiles anymore, she can’t remember the last time she laughed out loud, or felt excited about anything in her life. She loves her therapist, counseling is doing some good. She doesn’t want to die anymore. And her question to me is, now how should she live? I found that to be one of the most poignant questions ever asked me; indeed I ask with her, how now should she live? It was only because of my own brush with my own death that I could say to her, “Rita, there is a way to experience joy even after you have walked through hell, walked through the land of the dead, there is a way to come out of even that, as a living creature. It is not such a big secret, really, it is quite simple, find a spiritual discipline.” Funny, but when I said that, it was the first time she had looked at me in all the hours that we had spent together. “What?” she asked. The she started laughing at me, “What did you say?” she said, almost daring me to say my ridiculous statement again, so I took a deep breath and said again, “Find a spiritual discipline.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes further in her book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” “It is through the conjunction and pressure of dissimilar elements inhabiting the same psychic space that soulful energy, insight and knowing are made.” The conjunction, the combination, the union if you will, of dissimilar elements inhabiting the same space, that soulful energy, insight and knowing are made. Spirituality, joy, bliss whatever you call it is soulful energy, insight and knowing. So, Rita, and my friend have to in some way, combine the yin/yang of their lives, such devastating loss and brutality with their need for joy in order not to despair and kill themselves. Such is the place, the need, the utter requirement of a spiritual discipline. So, what exactly am I talking about here as a spiritual discipline? All of us want to be happy. We would like the fragments of our lives to somehow pull together to give us peace. We would like answers to our questions, solutions to life’s riddles and, as all of us, as we grow older, we want a little peace. We hold the power for wholeness, happiness and peace in our hands. We do need to though, spend sometime of every day cultivating those sacred muscles that allow us to experience joy. Will my friend or Rita ever be “normal” again? If being normal means not facing what has happened to them, or trying to deny they are in deep pain and anguish, then, no, they will never be normal again. Because try as they may, those experiences will remain THE defining experiences of their lives. And try as they may, they cannot sleep those experiences away, they cannot drink or drug abuse them away. But, if being normal means that they discover what millions of others have discovered, and that is as Pinkola Estes tells us, the practice of walking through the land of the dead as a living creature, and learning the art of combining the union of dissimilar elements, death/life, brutality/gentleness, rape/love, if they learn that art, then they too will feel normal and a part of the human race and be able to feel peace and joy. A spiritual discipline is as simple as 10-15 minutes a day set aside to do something to strengthen your spiritual muscles, or as complex as taking a week or two, to study with some master or spiritual director, or going on a vision quest. The everyday time could include a quiet, meditative walk, spiritual reading, meditation in silence, Yoga or Tai Chi, or fasting of some kind. I have to tell you Rita laughed out loud for the first time in years when I told her what I just told you. She was incredulous that something as simple as sitting in front of a candle could help her after years of therapy, thousands of dollars of medical bills, medications and shock treatments. She just laughed and laughed at what I suggested she try, until the tears ran down her eyes. I could hardly be offended, I had gotten her to laugh! When the giggles subsided, she wiped the tears from her eyes and asked me if I was serious. I told her I was terribly serious. She and I started very simply. Together we would spend 15 minutes just sitting. First I would read some passage from the Tao te Ching, or some such reading, and then we would spend the remainder of the time in silence gazing at a candle flame. For the first months Rita cried the whole time. Then I began to notice that she would only cry for a few minutes, then after a year, Rita stood up from one of our sessions and she yawned and stretched and hugged me with a smile on her face, “That was very nice,” she said. So, it began, so simple, so sweet, so small. Soon Rita’s smile would last through her ride home, then through the morning, then through a dinner with friends, and now Rita is leading meditation groups, smiling through it all. There is no secret to experiencing joy, you just can’t leave your life behind in the process. Your experiences of living hell, your aches and pains cannot be denied, they must become a part of your spiritual life if you are ever to experience joy. I have found a few sign posts on this journey we call life, to help us be more in touch with the deeper side of ourselves:
Finding joy or bliss, using a spiritual discipline is like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz realizing she had the power to go home all the time in the ruby slippers, she just had to be told. Most of spirituality, strength, ability to live in the present moment, the capacity to love and be loved is found in creating an atmosphere where revelations are nurtured so you can be open to accepting them. My friend and Rita did not deserve what life had handed to them. And yet both of them were powerless to change the course of events in their lives. And they both had to make a definite decision to live and not die. And I ask each of you today, the question that Rita asked me, so now, knowing what you know, having experienced what you have lived through, how are you to live? Beware of the human temptation to define yourselves by only what you will not do religiously. I will tell you honestly the negative religious stance will not sustain you through such events as happened to my friend or Rita. Neither will the buying or selling of a packaged spirituality. You may not have to handle anything that rough as the two people I’ve talked about this morning, but I know many of you have been through your own valley of the shadow of death. And you and I both know people who have suffered grievously in this life and have not come up out of the valley. For every Rita and my friend in the world there are a 1,000 who have not discovered the secret of experiencing joy. There are many spiritual disciplines one can incorporate into one’s life that will not take a guru at $100 a lesson, or even a self-help book. As I said before, it can be as simple as sitting before a candle for 10-15 minutes in silence each day. But for the sake of joy and peace in your life do something to strengthen your inner life. You can think of a discipline as being nutritionally aware, of eating well before you get sick and have to start a recovery program with a deficit. A financial consultant will tell you to save your money, a nutritionalist will tell you to eat your green leafy vegetables, a Doctor will tell you to exercise, and this minister is telling you, find a spiritual practice that fits your life style, your personality type and for the sake of your life here on this planet, just begin. The Tao te Ching in Chapter 8 tells us a way to practice a spiritual discipline everyday. It reads; “In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” So, our task then is to pass through the land of the dead as a living creature, for that is how consciousness is made. Joy is found in the tensions of the opposites. Joy is finding that you can indeed be happy with the way things are. But it is often not the joy that we think it should be. Rather, it may be the sweet, calm smile I saw on Rita’s face that last time I saw her. It may be what was in the last letter I read from my friend, where he said he is eating better everyday and a great joy for him is the rare, wonderful night where he sleeps all the way through, without waking up in a panic and a sweat. I try to never tell people I am “working” on my inner life. It is not work in the sense of the way we Westerns think of labor. What I try to say is that I am learning to let go. I am learning to smile. I am learning to open myself up to the good and bad of my everyday. I try never to use words like difficult, hard, complicated in my description of my spiritual side. I rather try to frame my life in terms of an opening flower, a cloud moving easily over the sky, or the steady, effortless way morning follows the night. As the years go by in my life, as the challenges, the sorrows, the burdens, the horrible atrocities that can be inflicted upon one human being by another, as they come into my life, I want to be a calm, yielding yet solid force that meets them all with courage and grace and humor. That is what a spiritual discipline has given me. Rita and my friend are in the space of soulful energy, insight and knowing. They have survived their dark night of the soul, and yet they have done more than survive, they are today, as I speak these words to you, experiencing a joy that they only imagined as being real, before their journeys to the valley of death. They will tell you, experiencing joy is not a secret, it’s a process. What a joy it is no big secret after all.
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