The Tao of Action
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
8/31/03

 

The summer before I entered high school, I was recruited to run for the cross country team.  I had been a distance runner on my junior high track team for the previous two springs, and had achieved a small amount of success…usually in the form of an occasional third place finish in the mile.  The high school coach sent me a training guide in the mail, explaining that if I were to be ready for the fall cross country season, I would need to begin a daily running routine.  On the schedule he sent, I saw that every other day or so, the assigned distance grew: 5 miles on Wednesday, 6 miles on Friday, 8 miles on Monday….  I had never attempted these distances, especially not all in the same week!  Even as the weekly mileage totals of 40 to 50 and up made me wince, his words of encouragement at the top of the letter were inspiring to me. My brother Jeff, a recent graduate of the high school, and a three-year veteran of both the track and cross country teams, also encouraged me to give it a go.  I didn’t want to let anyone down, so I accepted the challenge.   Jeff, who was keeping up with his running routine, invited me to run with him.  I was pleased to have someone with me who thought I could do it.  Plus, let’s face it, I knew I wouldn’t want to give up when running with my older brother.

 

It was a mild evening in June when Jeff and I began stretching in preparation of our first run together.  The air was still with possibility and expectation.  I had that feeling of freedom that comes from embarking on a new path.  Mark Stringer—cross country runner.  It would be a new identity for me, a change in lifestyle, a new commitment to…well, running…running like I had never run before…running as a regular feature of my everyday life.

 

There was a problem, though.  A problem that I didn’t want to admit…not to my cross country coach, not to my brother, and not to myself.  For a cross country runner, this problem was more significant than almost any other.

 

I didn’t like to run.  In fact, I pretty much hated to run.

 

Sure I ran track for two seasons, but not because I enjoyed it.  I kept doing it because the coach told me I should.  I kept doing it because I didn’t like to be a quitter.  I kept doing it because I had friends on the team I didn’t want to let down. 

 

Now you may be thinking that my disdain for running should have kept me from considering training for the cross country team.  And, perhaps you are right.  But sometimes the last question we ask ourselves before acting in our lives is “Why am I doing this?” 

 

As Jeff and I ran out of our gravel driveway and began our journey together, two pairs of skinny Stringer legs running in tandem, we had an easy banter going.  Small talk, that got smaller the longer we ran.  Winding through the streets of Springfield Township and Lakemore, Ohio, I kept pace with my brother.  To this day, I don’t know for sure how I did it.  I do know that pride must provide a powerful supply of adrenaline, because I had no business running as far as I ran that day. I remember turning a corner to realize that we were just up the street from the high school, many miles from home.  My heart sank when Jeff said that we were only at the halfway point. Just then, the wind started to pick up and a cold rain began to fall.  At first the water was a welcome relief, but before long the steady shower soaked my clothes, adding what seemed like several pounds to the body I was, stride by stride, dragging toward home.

 

I don’t recall how far we had run before we finally sloshed back up the driveway.  But by my estimation, it had been at least five miles too far.  I was relieved when Jeff decided he would do another mile, leaving me to recuperate in private.  As I stumbled around the block, trying to restore my body to a regular breathing pattern, my hands swapping between positions above my head and on my hips, as if I were practicing some new aerobics technique, I alternated between feeling pride that I had finished the run and disgust that I had actually put myself through it.

 

Despite what you may be thinking right now, this is not a story of determination, of how I struggled to train for the team, of how I persisted even when I wanted to quit, and then went on to letter in cross country.   No, I didn’t continue training and never ran on the cross country team. (In fact, I didn’t intentionally run again for several years.)

 

This is also not a story of how I wish I had followed through and kept running, a wistful look back at an opportunity missed, a challenge not met.  No, I have never regretted quitting. After all, I never really wanted to run!

 

I offer this story to you this morning as just one example of the trials we have to go through sometimes to remind ourselves to listen to our lives, to pay attention to our motives, and to the reasons we choose to do the things we do. 

 

Haven’t we all experienced moments like these?  Moments when we have found ourselves going through the motions of activities and commitments that have had nothing to do with our true interests…nothing to do with our true gifts? 

 

Of course, there are times when we must carry on during difficult circumstances.  We are well aware that no matter how in tune we are to our desires, we may have to put them aside in order to survive or to support those we love. We may have to endure frustrating jobs that don’t even begin to touch upon what really matters to us.  We may have to engage with people we might rather avoid—difficult bosses, troublesome co-workers, (even) cantankerous neighbors.  We may have to put aside our individual goals as we are called upon to care for our families and loved ones—our growing children, or our aging parents, or our ailing partners and friends.  And due to our own battles with illness or loss, we may have to adjust to new realities as we grieve the passing away of our “assumptive world,” the way we always thought or hoped life would be.   Inevitably, it seems, the circumstances of our lives will require that we participate in obstacle courses or marathons of effort or attention for which we are not adequately trained, nor interested in running.

 

At the service here two weeks ago, I asked people in attendance to write down an answer to the following question:  “What is the biggest problem in your life right now?”  While the replies were predictably wide-ranging, involving concerns for health, finances, and family members, the most common response had to do with a desire for balance or spiritual connection in the midst of stress or over-committed lives…a request for less responsibility and more peace.  I, of course, understand these concerns and have thought a lot about them myself because I face them, too.  In fact, I think they are embedded in our culture and, for most of us, are unavoidable.

 

Every day we are faced with messages that tell us that if we are not doing and making, or running the race we have been encouraged to run whether we want to our not, we are falling short of our potential…we are not fully inhabiting our lives.  These messages persist even as we know that Americans as a whole are now working more hours than ever before and that stress has become an epidemic.

 

On the flip side, perhaps in response to the harried lives so many of us lead, we have been seeing an increase in attraction to Eastern philosophy and religious practice such as meditation and yoga, and new age books and seminars which promise spiritual respite through emphasis on the inward search over the outward act.  But these influences in our lives, while offering reminders that contemplation is an important component of our journeys and is therefore not to be discarded or overlooked, may also lead us to believe that the energies of an active life are to be avoided.  After all, if we don’t have time for our hour’s worth of meditation each day, we certainly don’t have time for any more activity.

 

In short, there is a battle going on within many of us to determine the appropriate balance between action and contemplation: how much we must engage with the world and be changed by it versus how much we should give attention to and honor our own inner spirit.

 

In his book, The Active Life, Parker Palmer explores this “tug-of-war” between action and contemplation and contends that they are not in conflict, but “two poles of a great paradox”… two poles that can inform each other and therefore our lives.  In working with these two poles in his own life and examining how others find balance between the two, he has observed three stages at which we may find ourselves as we move through the action/contemplation paradox.  I share these stages with you to help you reflect upon how you might be facing the paradox.

 

The first stage is separation.  This is the way of viewing life that says we must choose between action and contemplation.  In this stage, one chooses to be either an actor in the world or completely withdrawn.  Because our culture honors accomplishment and material achievement, most of us end up choosing a life of activity…and that activity can quickly become frantic.  We don’t think through our action because we don’t have time to think it through. There is no alternative to activity so we don’t even consider contemplation. Eventually this go, go, go approach to life exhausts us and leaves us feeling disconnected from others and from ourselves.

 

As we feel the exhaustion, we may save ourselves from terminal burnout by moving into the second stage of alternation, which Palmer labels the “vacation approach to life.” Done-in by our activity, we take vacations to renew our energy.  Then we work ourselves to exhaustion until we are ready for another respite, after which we return to wear ourselves down once more.  Many of us exist in this stage…myself included.  Perhaps you are like me, you keep yourselves so busy during your days of activity that when vacation time comes, you almost don’t know what to do with yourself.  The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t allow for action to coexist with contemplation…to interact in ways that would inform both poles of the paradox.  Our active life is seen as harried, violent, and unalterable, while our contemplative life is escapist, peaceful, and voluntary. We experience both, but never at the same time.  Therefore, we cannot help but feel fragmented.

 

Palmer’s third stage is integration, the breakthrough into paradox, the understanding that action and contemplation are so intertwined that they can be found at the heart of one another, much like the Chinese symbol of yin and yang.  Whenever we inhabit this stage, we have come to accept that action is more than a means to a predetermined end; it can be a contemplative path to discover inner truth.  In other words, engaging with the world—reaching out to others through work, creativity and caring—can be a means to connect with ourselves that is at least equal to any act of contemplation. Likewise, contemplation can be inherently active, leading us to engage with the world in ways that not only reshape our inner selves but the world as well.

 

So if action and contemplation are standard features of our existence, indeed, “the warp and weft of human life, the interwoven threads that form the fabric of who we are and who we are becoming,” why does integration of the two seem so elusive for so many of us?  Why do so many of us feel out of sorts and out of control?  Why do we struggle to find balance and wholeness in our lives when it is often right there for the taking?

 

On the active side, Palmer points to the difference between what he calls instrumental and expressive actions.  He contends that we are too easily seduced by instrumental action, action that is obsessed with success and abhors failure, whether we learn from it or not.  This kind of action values success over learning, thereby leading us to miss opportunities for understanding and keeping us from taking the risks that could open us to new possibilities.  These risks are at the heart of the expressive style of action, action that is open to outcomes beyond the imagined scope, action that is truer to the nature of the participants and their reality. One needs only examine the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the quagmire in which we now find ourselves, to understand how instrumental action…action obsessed with particular outcomes and misplaced assumptions…can lead us astray.  On the other hand, expressive action, that which is not focused on a predetermined result, that which is humble and open to failure and the learning that comes with it, that which is, incidentally, at the heart of pure science (…and pure democracy), is more interested in discovering reality and is therefore more open to the mystery that is our shared existence.

 

On the other pole of the paradox, Palmer finds that contemplation is difficult for many of us because it leads us to see through the illusions in which we have much invested…sometimes even to ensure our survival.  One simple example of an illusion was my initial desire to train for the cross country team even though I despised running.  We all could admit to different illusions we’ve held about ourselves at one time or another, illusions about our desires, our motives, our assumed commitments. Illusions, of course, are not only within us, but all around us.  Illusions such as liberty and justice for all, no child left behind, and healthy forest initiatives...to name a few.  As Palmer says, “this is why the contemplative moment…is so hard to come by; there is a vast conspiracy against it.”

 

Even though these contemplative moments, these times when we are able to see through illusion and get a glimpse of reality, are difficult for us to summon on our own, there is good news.  They have a way of arriving uninvited. 

 

The times in our lives when we have learned the most, when suddenly we have been able to see an idea or reality with newfound clarity, were often the results of what Palmer calls unintentional contemplation.  One form of this unintentional contemplation occurs when we become disillusioned… when a person or institution we had relied upon fails us, or an idea in which we had invested our faith lets us down, or when we have to face up to the fact that we are not as prepared to handle something as we had thought.  We may believe we want to avoid these situations, because they are inevitably accompanied by pain and disappointment. However, being
dis-illusioned—having our illusions about others or ourselves removed—is ultimately positive, because it brings us one step closer to reality.  I like how Palmer puts it. He says, “Instead of commiserating and offering a shoulder to cry on when a friend says that he or she is disillusioned, we ought to congratulate, celebrate, and ask the friend how we can help the process go deeper still.”

 

Another form of unintentional contemplation comes about through dislocation, which occurs when circumstances force us to change our perspective to what may be the opposite position of what we had previously held to be true.  Dislocation occurs when life throws us a curve for which we are not prepared:  a sudden illness, unemployment, or when a love relationship falls apart. 

 

Finally, we experience contemplation as the result of unbidden solitude, those times when we find ourselves excluded from our community, when we are suddenly alone and without support.

 

These times when contemplation arrives uninvited are opportunities for us to really learn something about ourselves and the world.  In these moments, we can break through our illusions and begin to grasp the true Tao of action, the action that is not obsessed with frenzied doing and re-action, but the action known in Taoist teaching as wu-wei, or right action, the action that is intertwined with our inner voice, the action that is in touch with reality: expressive, open, and contemplative.

 

This is the action that has the power to change the world for the better, because it is the action that is not sidetracked by hubris, illusions of grandeur, or stubborn refusal to see the reality of another’s existence.  This is the action that calls us not to do battle with our life, but to find joy in the adventure, no matter what it brings.  This is the action, therefore, which takes us closer to the rapture of being alive.

 

I close with an excerpt of a story by a Taoist sage from the 3^rd century BC named Chuang Tzu.  I find this to be a story about balance, about finding a spiritual center and staying active at the same time.  It is about interacting with life while not trying to control it.  It is about being at peace with one’s action and contemplation and seeing them as integrated components of one reality. 

 

The story features a butcher who has used the same cleaver for nineteen years.  He says, “It has cut up a thousand oxen.  Its edge is as keen now as if newly sharpened.”  When the butcher’s master asks him how he could have used it for so long without dulling his blade, the butcher tells him:

 

“There are spaces in the joints;

The blade is thin and keen:

When this thinness

Finds that space

There is all the room you need!

It goes like a breeze!

Hence I have this cleaver nineteen years

As if newly sharpened!”

 

“True, there are sometimes

Tough joints.  I feel them coming.

I slow down, I watch closely

Hold back, barely move the blade,

And whump! The part falls away

Landing like a clod of earth.”

 

“Then I withdraw the blade,

I stand still

And let the joy of the work

Sink in.

I clean the blade

And put it away.”

 

…[The master said],

“This is it! My cook has shown me

How I ought to live

My own life!”

 

Indeed.  May we all discover in the mix of action and contemplation that is our lives, the patience to find the spaces in the joints and the joy of the work that follows.

 

 

Bibliography

Parker J. Palmer, The Active Life, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990)

 

Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, (New York: New Directions, 1965)