“Left Foot, Right Foot, Left Foot, Breathe”
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister
The Community Church of NY Unitarian Universalist
Readings
(1) Rev. Deborah Pope-Lance, Unitarian Universalist Minister, counselor, therapist and
congregational consultant:
Not being a woman of few words, I have enjoyed the succinct
expressions of Down Maine. Last week I was awestruck by a crimson maple,
and I had to pull my car over to the side of the road. I couldn’t speak; I could
only stare. Then I remembered: One Down East neighbor comes to visit
another and finds him staring out across the back hills. (Lazy? Not well?
Peculiar?)
“What you doing, Harold?” (Fair question.)
“Noticing,” comes the reply. (All glory of autumn be witness.)
A brilliant autumn tree [bragging a little] is just being itself when it turns
color – a crimson maple, a burnt-orange oak, or a yellow birch.
Noticing that tree, [all that,] … is simply appreciating it for being what it
is, just doing what a tree does.
Can you imagine what marvels we might witness if we appreciated
people in the same way. Just Noticing people, Noticing people just being
themselves (brilliantly). People just doing what people do (thinking, feeling,
laughing crying, singing, sighing, fearing, loving working, playing and
noticing.) Simple appreciation.
Thanks trees!
Thanks People.
speechless, at the side of the road.
Leaves me awestruck, almost
(2) A 2nd parable comes from Anne Lamott’s volume Plan B - Further Thoughts on Faith:
I woke up full of hate and fear the day before a recent peace march
in San Francisco. This was disappointing, as I’d hoped to wake up feeling
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somewhere between the sad elegance of Virginia Woolf, and Wavy Gravy.
Instead, I was angry that our country’s leaders had bullied and bought
their way into preemptive war. Hitting first has always been the mark of
evil. I don’t think one great religious or spiritual thinker has ever said
otherwise. Everyone, from almost every tradition, agrees on five things.
Rule 1: We are all family. Rule 2: You reap exactly what you sow, that is,
you cannot grow tulips from zucchini seeds. Rule 3: Try to breathe every
few minutes or so. Rule 4: It helps beyond words to plant bulbs in the
dark of winter. Rule 5: It is immoral to hit first. (313-4)
On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless,
and I would eat myself to death. These are desert days. Better to go out
by our own hands than to endure slow death by scolding at the hands of
the Bush administration. However, after a second cup of coffee, I realized
that I couldn’t kill myself that morning – not because it was my birthday but
because I’d promised to get arrested the next day. I had been arrested
three weeks earlier with an ecumenical bunch of religious peaceniks,
people who still believe in Dr. King and Gandhi. Also, my back was out….
(3)
While I was thinking about all this, my Jesuit friend Father Tom
called. He is one of my closest friends, a few years older than I, a scruffy
aging Birkenstock type, like me, who gives lectures and leads retreats on
spirituality. Usually he calls to report on the latest rumors on my mental
deterioration, drunkenness, or promiscuity. But this time he called to wish
me Happy Birthday.
“How are we going to get through this craziness?” I asked. There
was silence for a moment.
“Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe,” he said. (5)
“Left Foot, Right Foot, Left Foot, Breathe”
Rev. Bruce Southworth
Sometimes, some things are “easier said, than done.” Especially with this
spiritual business of “Noticing” – highlighted in our first reading from my colleague Rev.
Deborah Pope-Lance.
Growing up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains fall colors arrived with trees
such as sugar maple, scarlet oak, sweetgum, red maple, and the hickories, plus birch
and beech in fair abundance, not too hard to notice. Similarly, in the Roanoke Valley, in
southwest Virginia, adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway, the foliage was splendiferous.
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While peaking upstate now, for city-slickers at sea level… colors are a little later
and less abundant: up to 60% on parts of Long Island, with color changes “still minimal”
in New York City”; “leaves will be just 20-25 percent changed by the weekend, with
shades of yellow, gold and red continuing to emerge.” (I Love NY) All this according to
NY state foliage reports.
My neighborhood park is mostly leftover green, with tops of only some trees
turning yellow. I am waiting…. with the reminder that “noticing” many such things is
situational, like most of life.
This morning I turn to words attributed to one of Christianity’s early bishops,
Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a person fully human and fully alive…”, or more precisely
a “living human” – expanded over the centuries inviting questions about how we
exercise a life of full humanity, and full aliveness.
A subset then, one of them, this morning is, “How do we get through all the
craziness of our days?” “Stayin’ alive” in disco terms.
After all, at one time or another, we are a bit overwhelmed, or afraid, or grieving,
hurting, or under siege, or distracted, if not just a bit weary. That is a part of most lives,
at moments, if not seasons, just as we are profoundly blessed simply to be here in the
first place.
Once upon a time, there was newspaper comic strip called, “Pogo” by Walt Kelly
in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and early 70s. In one of my favorite panels, we see two
characters, Churchy and Porky, in a boat in the Okefenokee Swamp. Churchy has a
newspaper in his hands, and the headline reads, "SUN TO BURN OUT IN 30 BILLION
YEARS, ENDING ALL LIFE ON EARTH." Next we see Churchy with tears, and he says,
"Woe is me.... I'm too young to die!" The final panel of the cartoon shows Porkypine –
too dismissive, but to the point – with his response: "Aw, SHUT UP.... You're lucky to
be here in the first place!"
A blessing beyond measure…to be here, now…. No matter when the sun dies or
we die….
Every week, every day, we see and learn about a host of challenges, our own,
and those of others. Few of us will face that of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
in her Congressional hearing and testimony this past Thursday. Whether you are
supporting her in her bid for the Presidency, I hope it has become clear that the
Republican majority in the House has sought maliciously to discredit her in its so-called
Benghazi hearings. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made that abundantly clear
in his honest comments a couple of weeks ago, taking credit for Republicans and these
hearings for some of the changes in polling results as Ms. Clinton and Senator Bernie
Sanders seek to lead the Democratic field.
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She was interrogated for over eight hours, with little if any new information
obtained (after so many other reviews of the events in Benghazi). She was generally
patient, sometimes answering with lengthy detail, and occasionally objecting to
members of Congress when they denigrated some prominent public servants like
Ambassador Thomas Pickering.
She was even cordial and appropriately apologetic again about the whole email
issue. Again, whether you appreciate her politics or candidacy, she showed a
centeredness, a balance… figuratively: left foot, right foot, left foot… apparently
breathing “every few minutes or so” … even amid interruptions and moments of partisan
rudeness and attack.
Breathing… step by step – moving ahead… at least enduring the nonsense.
This morning, I also want to give a shout-out to the United Nations, which we
celebrate this afternoon, and then again next Sunday morning… a shout-out because
the UN is one of those mediating and healing structures that combats much of the
craziness of the world – illness, poverty, inequality, human rights abuses, climate
change, international conflicts, and on and on.
A source of help for helping us all – all persons to become fully human and fully
alive. Theologically, politically, it is an incarnation of Creative Interdependence, flawed
but transformational still.
One of the early leaders was Ralph Bunche who joined the United Nations after a
career as a professor at Howard University and government service with the State
Department where he became the first black to be director of a division. His specialty
was Africa, colonialism and international law. He, with Eleanor Roosevelt, is considered
one the driving forces in the creation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights,
In 1946, he had joined the United Nations as the first Director of the Trusteeship
Council. Then he was handed responsibilities for the UN Commission on Palestine,
where ultimately he helped to mediate the armistice between Israel and Egypt, Jordan,
Lebanon, and Syria. The borders settled upon then held until the 1967 Six Day War.
For his patient work, his creativity, his tenacity, and his success, he was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. He turned down an appointment in the State
Department, primarily because he refused to live in segregated Washington, D. C., and
he became an Under-Secretary General at the United Nations until shortly before his
death in 1971, at age 68.
On the international level, certain values anchored Ralph Bunche. He affirmed,
"Hearts are the strongest when they beat in response to noble ideals."
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"I... believe in the essential goodness of my fellow man, which leads me to
believe that no problem of human relations is ever insoluble." That, despite being
denied membership in the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills because of his race,
nearly 10 years after a Broadway ticker tape parade in his honor.
Amidst the challenges, we need one another and can find ways to collaborate
and even trust one another….
Balance… being centered…. Left foot, right foot, left foot… breathe.…
That spiritual discipline, that faith in “the still small voice”… the sacred Creativity
always within us helps amid craziness….
Craziness such as grief and death.
I think of these as described by Dave Eggers in his memoir, A Heartbreaking
Story of Staggering Genius. He reports how, beginning at age 21, he raised his younger
brother, then age 8, after their parents had died within a month of each other.
His journey, path, is chilling. Family violence, an alcoholic father, abusive. A
mother who hit her children – hit him – even harder than their father did. Yet he speaks
of his love, for his parents. His vow to protect, nurture, love, and raise his younger
brother with a passion for life.
He writes with almost maniacal passion and zest, lust for adventure, anything but
routine. Amidst his loss, the meaning of Life presents itself:
He begins again in love, a whirlwind campaign to do his best for his brother, to be
present, to care, to protect, to teach, to love… to be fully human and fully alive….
He and his brother play Frisbee. Dave Eggers writes, “the Frisbee, because I
have thrown it perfectly, floats up, floats slowly, and he [his brother] reaches it with time
to spare, overtakes it, stops, turns and catches it between his legs.
“Oh, we are good. He’s only eight but together we are spectacular.
We play by the shore, and we run barefoot, padding and scratching into
the cold wet sand. We take four steps for each throw, and when we throw
the world stops and gasps. We throw so far, and with such accuracy, and
with such ridiculous beauty. We are perfection, harmony, young and
lithe…. We throw the Frisbee farther than anyone has ever seen a Frisbee
go.... We look like professionals, like we’ve been playing together for
years…. women stop and stare. Senior citizens sit and shake their heads,
gasping. Religious people fall to their knees. No one has ever seen
anything quite like it.” (pp. 67-69)
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A spiral of Creativity, but also a spiral of love, protection, yearning, caring, and
later Dave Eggers reports on his journey, in his Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius, how angry he was that his parents had arranged for their bodies to go to a
medical school. He grieved at how they gave their bodies … away. Yet, he concludes,
“as… uncouth as it is, we have to give it all away, our bodies, our secrets, our money,
everything we know: All must be given away, given away every day, because to be
human means:
1. To be good
2. To save nothing” (p. 45, in Appendix, Mistakes We Knew…)
And near the end of his memoir of pain, survival, love and joy, he reveals his
sense of vocation, his calling, that all he wants to do is something “beautiful, and loving
and glorious.” “Yes,” he says, “beautiful and loving and glorious.” (p. 399)
Along the path unknown, which awaits each of us, Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit and
one of Tolkien’s heroes, sings a song whose words go like this:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then?
I cannot say.
For each of us, as pilgrims, there is staggering spiral of the ordinary … and … of
new adventures, mystery, a staggering gift of Creativity, each of us on a journey, a
journey of the spirit, of the mind and of the heart, a journey into this world with the hope
that we shall make the world a bit better and make ourselves more human along the
way….
Reflecting the glory of Life, of Creativity, of sacred possibility….
And without doubt, we are invited to (and we truly can) act with courage, sanity
and honor.
A traditional prayer that has power for so many when stopping to breathe is the
one attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr: the Serenity Prayer well known to those in 12-step
programs. “God grant me,” (or for non-theists) May I find “the serenity to accept the
things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.”
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This is deeply powerful stuff, healing for many. The same wisdom is found in the
prayer life of many religions around the world.
Our prayers do not change God, Nature, History, or the stars above. However,
prayer and spiritual disciplines that tap our creative centers do seem to change us.
As I have thought about this matter… “Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe”, so
much comes to mind: Conflict, death, courage, rest and motion, centering and action….
It speaks of the outward journey in the world with all its wounds and graciousness
and the inward journey, also with wounds and joys.
I think of words by Philip Booth, a poem he titles, “First Lesson,” that I used to
summon up almost annually at homecoming after the summer. When my daughter was
young, I would watch her – so similar to this poem – watch her lie back, face up, legs
and arms outstretched, and float in a pool or ocean, and standing beside her, give
support. Booth puts it this way:
Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A deadman's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
Pray, as you wish or not, lie back, notice, give yourself to others… breathe…no
longer distracted, or on autopilot, or too afraid, or confused, or numbed, or attached to
trivial things.
Regarding the “Noticing” part, it may take time. Lisel Mueller suggests growth
sometimes takes time. Insight does not necessarily arise in one singular epiphany…
although it might. This poem is titled "Monet Refuses the Operation,” and in it, the
Impressionist painter Claude Monet, who did develop cataracts, is depicted as arguing
with an ophthalmologist.
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
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around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I call the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of the three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other…
"It has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels...."
Science has it place, and the doctor wants to help him, but the artist, the painter,
has grown and changed and sees the unexpected in the ordinary and wants to reveal it
to us, and tries and tries....
Claude Monet was good at "Noticing."
Basic Reminders
The basic lessons – spiritual basics – amid all the craziness and wonder?
Be mindful. Keep Noticing…
Be here, now… with appreciative awareness….
Be kind…. The Dalai Lama from Tibetan Buddhist
tradition has said, “Be kind whenever possible.” And then he
adds, “It is always possible.”
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Show compassion….
Give yourself to something larger than yourself…
“Left foot, right foot, left foot” – keep moving – “breathe.”
***
The choice is ours: we can die before we live.
We can live in expectation of some future day when you will be braver, when you
will be stronger, when you will be smarter, when you will be more forgiving, or more
free, or more lovable. Put it off; you can wait. And die before you live.
And we can drive past beauty, and keep on talking without seeing. And you'll
never be speechless and feel the sad sweetness - or the sweet sadness of your own
living and dying.
What do you expect? Is the world a safe place?
Of course not. It is dangerous and debilitating and heart- rending.
But it is a good place. Here we are the eyes and ears of the universe alive! This
place is something more:
- a place where the way of Life is growth and change, play and service, love and
forgiveness;
- a place where many dreams can come true,
- where experiments lead to discoveries,
- where courage appears each morning when we rise from our sleep,
- where autumn leaves in their death throes beguile us with beauty,
- where we may live now, this day.
This is the day that is given to us, so let us be glad for it. And grateful…. Give
thanks… give thanks… give thanks….
And?
“Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe.”
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