-- Rumi
Opening Words:
Let us gather for worship this morning, mindful of the words of our Unitarian forebear, Henry David Thoreau, who asks:
“Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life?
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”
Instead, may we learn to live deliberately,
To front only the essential facts of life.
May we learn what life has to teach,
And not, when we come to die,
Discover that we have not lived.
And as Thoreau implores,
May we live deeply, mindful that living is so dear.
In this spirit let us worship.
Meditation: by Sheri Hostetler a poem entitled “Instructions”
Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.
Reading: by the Catholic priest Thomas Ryan from The Sacred Art of Fasting (p. xi)
The person who fasts stands in a noble tradition. In the religious experience of humankind, fasting has always been a prelude and means of deeper spiritual life. … Fasting is a choice to abstain from food at certain times in order to put our attention on something more important to us than ourselves and our sensory appetites.
Our unlimited freedoms and resources have not brought us unlimited fulfillment. The time has come for the consumer society to generate its antithesis: the person who stands against the conditioned reflex, who is free not to consume, who chooses to fast because of the self-transcending meaning and values perceived.
Reading: by Cherie Lashway a poem entitled “Lenten Dissent”
There once was a logger, named Paddy O'Connell,
Who at lunch during Lent, found himself at McDonalds,
And had just settled down to his Big Mac and fries,
When along came his priest, much to both their surprise.
The priest said to Paddy, "Just what are you eating?
In this season of Lent, I sure hope you're not cheating."
Paddy said to the Father, "I'll tell you no lies.
I'm enjoying a Big Mac, along with some fries."
The priest said to Paddy, "I see no repentance.
Because of this sin, you will have to do penance.
"By Friday or sooner, I say that you should,
For our fireplace, deliver a cord of chopped wood."
Now our timberman, Paddy, an overworked man,
Did think to himself, "I don't think that I can."
But early on Friday, our priest, he heard shoveling,
And looked out the window at Paddy not groveling.
And saw with confusion, dismay and disgust,
That the wood bin was now almost filled with saw dust.
He called down below, barely hiding his ire:
"Hey Paddy, your penance was wood for the fire!"
To which Paddy said, rising up from his work,
While wiping his brow and concealing a smirk:
"I've brought you a cord, like you said that I should,
But if burger be meat, well then sawdust be wood!"
Reading: by the pastor and professor of preaching Kay Northcutt from a piece entitled “A holy, mundane essence” (Christian Century, 3/21/2012)
Living with a chronic illness is much like Henry David Thoreau's experiment on Walden Pond: life is pared down to essentials. The difference is that Thoreau chose the constitutive limits of Walden Pond as part of an experiment in "living essentially," while my confinement is unbidden.
The spiritual practice of Lent is nothing less than an invitation to live essentially, whether one is healthy or chronically ill. Lent, with its introspection and sparseness, aims at stripping life down to its holy, mundane essence so that bits of heaven on earth might be discovered: without and within. For those whose physical limitations constrict them to the footpath of home, Lent's discipline is a familiar one.
The freedom to choose --so central to Thoreau's experiment--is typically among the first liberties eliminated by chronic disease. My limitations began with difficulty swallowing and escalated into the slurring of words, fatigued neck flexors and breathlessness. My vocation as a… professor relied upon the strength to speak, but by noon each day I felt as if my muscles had been peeled from my bones: the effort to speak a word or to smile at a student felt Herculean. Little by little, the grid upon which I lived shrank to that of a postage stamp.
That was over two years ago, approximately the length of Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond. Unlike Thoreau, I cannot walk away from this way of life. My spiritual practice of living essentially will be that of a lifetime. Lent has come to stay, and living essentially has become my liturgy of hours….
Yet Thoreau's delight in the freedom of his experiment resonates fully with me. The greatest surprise of my enclosure has been the freedom within a constricted life. I am the author. It is mine to write. My task is as simple and complicated as merely choosing what has come to me unbidden and unchosen. My new vocation is that of loving extravagantly the shreds of life that are wondrously left to me.
Surely that is Lent's gift year after year when the imposition of ashes re-inscribes upon our souls the tender and hard work of fiercely loving what is essential.
What Will You Give Up?
A Sermon Delivered on March 22, 2015
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
This week Elaine, my wife, is driving to Washington, D.C. to see her mother. Two weeks ago her mother spent a few days in the hospital after a health scare. Feeling dizzy and weak, she had taken a fall. Luckily no bones were broken. She is back home now, trying to return to her familiar routines, now with the help of an aid who spends a few hours at her apartment every day. Elaine hopes to lend a hand and see what kind of support we can offer in the weeks and months ahead.
Her mother’s health has become a more serious concern, since she was diagnosed with a condition called myasthenia gravis two years ago. Myasthenia gravis, I learned, is a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease. It interferes with the process by which nerve impulses are transmitted to muscles. It produces antibodies that block neurotransmitters and receptors. This means our nerves can’t communicate with the muscles we are trying to move.
Since the last time we visited her in Washington, over Thanksgiving last year, Elaine’s mother and her husband have decided to sell their car, and give up driving. It was not an easy decision to make.
Many of us may have family members at this stage of life – or we ourselves may have faced similar situations – when, for the sake of safety or for the sake of our health – we have little choice but to give things up.
Giving up things we value isn’t easy. Giving up aspects of the life we cherish, giving up our freedoms, giving up our prized possessions, giving up our favorite foods because that’s what the doctor ordered, isn’t easy.
And yet, learning to give things up - whether by choice or by necessity – learning to give things up is an inescapable aspect of our lives.
* * *
We are now in the midst of Lent, the 40-day period in the Christian liturgical calendar, that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday, during which the faithful are encouraged to fast. (That’s forty days of fasting, not counting the six Sundays during Lent.)
For the past 32 days countless Christians have been turning their thoughts to prayer, penance and repentance, to almsgiving and atonement. The forty days of Lent are reminiscent of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and coming to terms with devilish temptations.
In the Christian tradition, fasting during Lent can mean different things. For some it means eating only one meal a day. For others it means abstaining from sweets or alcohol. And for others still, it means eating no meat.
* * *
Fasting is not unique to Christianity and the story of Jesus. The Bible says that Moses, Daniel, Elijah, and King David fasted. Moses fasted for forty days before he was handed God’s Ten Commandments on Mount Horeb. King David fasted every other day. A series of biblical saints including Ahab, Anna, Esther, Ezra, Hannah, John the Baptist, and the twelve disciples all fasted.
As Thomas Ryan points out,
“Fasting… has been practiced for centuries in connection with religious observance. The religions that practice fasting encompass the vast majority of people on the planet: Baha’is, Buddhists, Christians, Confucianists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Native North Americans, and Taoists. You might justifiably conclude that any spiritual practice embraced so universally has to have something going for it.” (p. ix)
And in this day and age, even many non-religious people have discovered that fasting is a good habit to cultivate, simply for the sake of the health benefits involved. Taking a day every once in a while to refrain from eating is a fine way to purify the body. Plenty of medical professional consider an occasional day of fasting an important part of our overall body-ecology. It’s right up there with daily exercise and a good night’s sleep.
From a purely secular perspective fasting is worthwhile. Think about it: normally our bodies are constantly working to digest the food we eat, to eliminate waste, fight diseases, replenish cells, and nourish the blood. Of all these biological processes digesting food is the most demanding, requiring the greatest amount of energy. When our bodies aren’t busy digesting food, we can direct more of our energies to other endeavors. A lot of people fast regularly, because doing so sharpens their senses, creates a sense of calm, helps them think more clearly and sleep more deeply.
* * *
From a purely practical, pragmatic perspective fasting makes sense. But from a religious perspective it makes even more sense. It is in opportunity to turn our attention to something larger and more important that ourselves, our own self-interests, our appetites, our own desires.
The scholar Aliza Bulow describes this from a Jewish perspective. Judaism, she says, has always sought to integrate the spiritual and the physical. They are intertwined. “We use the physical as a doorway through which we access the spiritual,” she says.
“This is one of the reasons that we clean the house, prepare delicious foods, and wear beautiful clothes for the Shabbat. … [These acts] all help create a sense of separation from the routine of the mundane and heighten our ability to connect to God. We manipulate the physical to gain access to the spiritual.”
“Hunger is a feeling of emptiness, of desire for sustenance. … Feeling hunger on a physical level helps us access the concept of desire and need on a spiritual level. …[It] helps us activate the longing we have to walk on a path that leads to a rectified world.” (Ryan, p. 26-27)
In Jewish thought, fasting has long been considered a path that brings believers closer to God by deepening their commitment to justice and mercy. Fasting is about much more than observing the letter of the law when it comes to dietary restrictions.
This point is made most memorably in the book of Isaiah, when the people of Israel complain to God, because their diligent fasting isn’t being rewarded. They ask God, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
And so God explains: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”
“Is not this the fast I choose: To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” The kind of fast God has in mind involves not merely refraining to eat, but sharing their bread with the hungry.
When we fast, our hunger should deepen our concern for the oppressed and the poor, who perpetually hunger. Our fast should deepen our sense of solidarity, and our commitment to serve others.
* * *
The religious practice of fasting doesn’t necessarily involve food. It is about resisting unchecked impulses, thoughtless consumption, and knee-jerk indulgences.
Thomas Ryan suggests a number of different ways we can fast that have little to do with how we fill our stomach.
We can fast with our eyes, when we choose to watch less TV, and instead reflect on our lives by keeping a journal, or perhaps educate ourselves about the causes of hunger in the world. We can fast with our ears, by listening to the radio and music less, and instead listen more to our inner heart and spirit, and listen more closely to the people around us. We can fast with our hands, by taking a break from our endless busyness, and take time to simply sit, rest and reflect. And then use our hands to share our goods with those who have less.
We can fast from anger, resentment, and bitterness, by getting to the bottom of these feelings. What is hidden underneath them? We can instead do the hard work of talking it through with the other, expressing ourselves clearly and respectfully, and working toward healing and forgiveness. We can fast from complaining. And instead, whenever we feel the urge to complain arise within us, choose to stop and look at the many ways we are blessed, and give thanks instead. We can fast from glossing over our losses too quickly. We can instead allow ourselves to feel the emptiness, the ache, the sadness. We can take the time to do the inner work of grieving.
* * *
Kay Northcutt, whose reflections on Lent are linked to her experience of chronic illness, was a presenter at a minister’s meeting I attended a few years back. When she isn’t leading preaching seminars for UU minsters, she serves a small congregation near Tulsa, Oklahoma, outside the bounds of mainstream society there. Her congregation is made up of recovering drug addicts, gay and lesbian folk, and homeless families.
I didn’t know it at the time, but have since learned that the condition with which Kay Northcutt is coping was diagnosed as myasthenia gravis. Rather than allowing her illness to incapacitate her, she approached it as an opportunity for deeper learning about life. As she explained in a brief bio, she has found that sickness can be “more instructive than a long trip to Europe.”
Despite the levity of her remark, her illness is certainly a serious challenge. It severely limits the amount of muscle strength she can muster on any given day. Now that the disease has been diagnosed, and is being properly treated, she is learning to cope. And she is striking up friendships with others who are afflicted with the same illness, many of whom have been coping with it for decades.
Kay Northcutt now spends a lot more of her time resting and in bed. But her appreciation for life has not diminished. Just the opposite. As she put it concisely, with a wide grin across her face: “I’m just so relieved to be alive.”
* * *
Like Thoreau at Walden Pond, Northcutt is learning the art of “living essentially.” Living with chronic illness in not something she chose. What she did choose was to see her fate as an invitation to focus more fully on the essentials of life – to strip life down to its holy, mundane essence so that bits of heaven might be discovered.
Unlike Thoreau, whose practice of fasting lasted just two years, Northcutt’s spiritual practice of paring down to the essentials will last a lifetime.
Like Thoreau - to her own surprise - she has found an exhilarating sense of freedom within a constricted life. She has chosen to take on a new calling: to love extravagantly the shreds of life that are wondrously left. She has chosen to take on the tender and hard work of fiercely loving what is essential.
* * *
If you were to give up something for Lent, what would it be? If you were to give up a habit, a pleasure, or a pre-occupation in order to turn your focus more fully on the essentials of your life – what would you give up?
This is not a question just for Lent. This is a question for life.
When we learn to freely give up the world, give up self, and finally give up God, we will find God everywhere – in rhododendrons and rocks and passers-by.
Our instructions are this: Examine all you have with a loving and critical eye, then throw away some more. Repeat. Repeat. Keep this and only this: what your heart beats loudly for, what feels heavy and full in your gut…
May we dare to give up all the ways we waste life
And instead learn to live deliberately.
May we be mindful of the essentials – deep love, real justice –
And with these one or two things, build a better world.
Amen.
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