Reverend Thomas Disrud

First Unitarian Church
Portland, Oregon

November 2, 1997

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How Is It With Your Soul?
-- by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what itoves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

It was my first year of seminary and I was having a difficult time of it. I had moved all the way from Duluth, Minnesota to Berkeley, California. Now, I wasn't regretting the move. A strong sense of call led me there, to go to seminary, to pursue the ministry. It was not clear at the time exactly what that would look like, but it was clear that this was the path I was supposed to be on.

Well, as it often happens during that first year of seminary, some of one's key issues start to present themselves. Weather they are issues with your parents, issues of authority, issues of control, they seem to naturally come to the surface about this time. I remember during this first year thinking it would be a simple process. The issues would be identified, they would be solved, and I would be a great minister. Three easy steps.

So I have been in seminary a few months and I find that lots of things are coming up. Generally I remember the feeling that there was a great deal about myself that needed fixing. This didn't feel like it was going to be a tune-up as much as a process of rebuilding the engine.

So I make an appointment with one of my professors. He is a wise man, a good listener. I start talking to him about all that's going on, how I'm feeling overwhelmed by all of it. What I wanted from him, of course, was to fix it, or at least tell me a few easy steps to accomplish the task.

At the time I was taking a pastoral care class, and we were learning how to identify problems, get to the cause, and define a solution. Just like going to the doctor, getting a prescription, getting better.

As I kept talking, I expected my professor to jump in and tell me what to do. But all he did was listen. Finally I paused. After a couple moments he looked at me. He didn't say, "This is what you need to do." He said, "Well, how is all this with you soul?"

How was all this with my soul. Hmm. That slowed me down a little. My soul.

I looked at him for a moment. This was a bigger picture than I was thinking about.

But the question opened things up for me. It helped me get out of my box and all my issues. It was a reminder of something bigger than myself. It was a reminder that I was more than the sum of my issues. It was the beginning of an understanding that I needed to be less worried about fixing parts of myself and more concerned about working with the whole of my self. This seemed like a much bigger task that I came in imagining, but it also felt like a much better course. It felt much more like I was on a path toward wholeness.

That was an important lesson on the significance of honoring, tending to and caring for the soul.

This is a sermon about soul, its loss, and its recovery. First a little history.

Today is All Souls Day, a time to pray for all those souls that didn't go directly to heaven or to hell, but went to purgatory, a place of limbo, waiting for your fate to be decided. A catholic prayer for this day asks intercession for "those whose faith is known to you alone." This was the day for those who had a long, messy, departure. I've always had this sense of people being in a lineup somewhere, coming before a judge. You're in, you're out, you're in, you're out.

All Souls Day contrasts to All Saints Day, which was yesterday, which celebrates and all those who have gone before. Like Halloween and the Day of the Dead, it is a time for communion with the ghosts of the departed. It is much more celebratory than All Souls Day.

Today, the focus of All Souls isn't so much on the souls of the departed, as much as it is on the souls of us, the living.

As a minister, I've come to see that the work I do, and the work we all do as a church community, is soul work. My talk with my professor was an primer. In all we do, we are greater than the sum of our parts. In all we do, we are called to look at our whole selves, and to see ourselves as part of something larger.

This is important these days. We live in a time when it can feel like we are in some kind of purgatory, trying to sort things out, trying to find our way as individuals and as a people. It feels like we are in limbo. We know something has been lost, and that we are trying to recover it. We don't quite know how.

This feeling of limbo is present. We don't quite know what will happen to us. In yesterday's comics section, the Non Sequitur strip shows a man and his lawyer standing before God at the gates of heaven. The lawyer says, "Look contrite, let me do all the talking, and this is as good a time as any to tell you my legal fees have tripled."

Do you ever wonder if that is really what its going to be like?

The idea of purgatory has always fascinated me. The sense of going to a place to work things out, not knowing how it will all be in the end, somehow resonates with our popular culture.

This sense of purgatory speaks to a malaise in our time. We have more technology at our disposal. It seems that every few months the speed of the latest computer doubles the previous model. Day by day we hear about advances in science and medicine.

And yet we can get lost in all the progress. We might have more time, but we have even more images to bombard our senses during that time. It seems that in the scramble to keep up, our sense of self in the midst of it all can get lost. What does all this mean, and will it really make my life better, or will it just speed it up even more?

This may be why soul is a popular theme these days. Just go to the bookstore and see all the titles devoted to this theme. I always get nervous when something gets too popular. I worry that our culture will do something to mess it all up.

But the popularity of soul books may get to a deeper longing. At the end of the 20th century, we are full of facts and material goods we have, but it is an empty feeling, kind of like the day after Halloween when you have eaten a bunch of candy and feel full, and kind of sick, and not at all satisfied.

Some signs of our times:

A Generation X'er doesn't vote because she feels alienated from the political system. Her vote doesn't count anyway, and all our politicians are dishonest anyway, so why should she waste her time?

A man's company has been bought by another company and he's about to lose his job. His sense of his own value has come to be almost identical to the place he has in the company, and now he doesn't have that anymore. What does he do? Does he follow the company to another state where he really doesn't want to live, uprooting his family in the process?

A little girl is afraid to go to school because she saw a person shot a few days ago and fears the same thing could happen to her or her family.

A retired couple has lived in the Great Northwest their whole lives. They love the outdoors, the hiking, getting to know the land. They see the quality of life declining, and efforts to help the environment seem too little, too late. They wonder what it will be like for their grandchildren.

A teacher comes to see the debilitating effects of racism on the students in her class-for both the white students and the students of color. Now, as they grow up, they lose parts of themselves. She feels helpless to do much about it, the problem seems so big.

We have our own stories. In each of these cases, we all lose something. We are cut off from our essential humanness. Parts of our souls are lost. We are left in some sort of in-between place trying to sort it out. In our fear, we become isolated from one another. It is better to retreat into the safety of our own worlds and close ourselves off from the things happening around us.

The work of restoring soul is the work of finding ourselves in the midst of all this and reclaiming that which has been lost. It starts when we are able to see ourselves as whole being, more than the job we have or the ism we are oppressed by.

We are asked to step back from it all and discern our call in life. It is in this process that we start to find lost soul parts.

What happens in asking the questions is that we start to take some ownership of the process. The issues go from being things that are out there, away from our control, to issues that we grapple with, out of a place of wholeness.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls it creating "the hand-made life," one that is more intentional, one where we make decisions about our lives. About the things we will have and about the things we will choose not to have.

The writer Thomas Moore describes an attitude that he traces back to catholic religious orders. He calls it contemptus mundi, contempt for the world. By this he does not mean a hatred or rejection of ordinary life, but a resistance to dominant values, to current tastes. From this comes a life that we have chosen, not one that has been handed to us. As Unitarian Universalists I think we are especially inclined to question, and this is a gift we are called to use.

Much of this is a process of intentionality. If I buy something, what is it that I'm buying and why? When I do this work, what meaning does it have for me? What is it I really want out of my life? What is the path I'm being asked to walk?

For Moore, the restoration of soul happens in simple acts of baking bread or visiting a friend who is sick. It is connecting with the simple pleasures of life, and discerning in these are the things that feed our souls. It is soaring with the music of Brahms and feeling the depth of despair when a person we love dies.

It is not about only doing things that make us feel good. It is about making choices in life that help us to connect to our essential humanness. When we able to move in the world from this place of groundedness, we are able to claim our power, and also to see things from a clearer perspective. We connect with others not only on the head level, but on the heart level as well.

And we start to get out of the box of thinking only about our own problems and we start to reach out to others. We get to a place where we are ready to put ourselves forward. We are ready to be in the world, to live and to grow. To be in relationship with the things around us. As we learn to reach out, we are able to challenge those things that cut us off from life.

We take a step toward wholeness. We are open to learn from those around us. And as we reach out, we are able to challenge those things that cut us off from life, from being fully human.

I've learned something about this from one of my neighbors.

His name is Mr. Sinner. Yes, Mr. Sinner. When I moved into the neighborhood, I heard about the man across the street who kept a close eye on the neighborhood. When someone would come by the house, he would not hesitate to ask them who they were and what they were doing there.

So one day I'm looking at the house and I meet Mr. Sinner. He is 85 and a little hard of hearing. He is a man of few words.

I go over and introduce myself, he asked me what I do. I tell him I'm a minister. He looks at me, says "You're a minister?" That's right, I say. He looks me straight in the eye and says, "So, do you know you've got a couple of Sinners living across the street?"

He had been waiting to ask me that ever since he found out a minister was moving in.

It seems that Mr. Sinner has been living in the house since he was 10 years old. He knows the neighborhood probably better than just about anybody else. He has seen it change over the years.

A couple months ago, I learned that Mr. Sinner has inoperable cancer. He only has a few months to live. The news has not slowed him down, but everyday I've been seeing how he continues to go. Rain or shine, he walks around the neighborhood. He checks out what is going on and looks to see what, if anything has changed on block.

When I have someone come by to work on my house, he often checks them out. He may be dying, but he is going to keep on walking as long as he can.

It would be easy to feel sorry for him. I don't find myself doing that. He has taught me something about the soul doing what it needs to do. For him right now that is doing what is familiar to him, and living the life he wants to live.

Day by day the walking gets harder, but I expect as the days go by and the rain gets more and more frequent, I'll still see him out there. Walking block by block, keeping track of what is happening.

That is his calling. He tends his corner of the world and I expect in the process tending to his soul. In knowing him I have a new appreciation for the place I live and for the gifts he brings. I have a new appreciation of what it means to be a neighbor.

And I have the sense he is ready for whatever happens next. He is planted in fertile soil, and he is sorting it all out. In the meanwhile, he'll keep tending the block and doing the work he's going to do.

It may be that we are in a continual state of purgatory in our lives, one where we are constantly sorting things out, discerning our place in the family of things. When we are able to listen to our souls, we are able to be in this place with greater clarity, knowing who we are and where we want to go.

Last Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of getting to know some of the newest members of our church. It was the last session of our New Membership Class, when people came together for a meal and then signed the membership book to formally come into the church.

We went around the circle, each saying what we brought to the church and what we hoped to receive.

People spoke of bringing their enthusiasm, their gifts, their commitment. Like most new members, they will continue to seek out the role in the church that fits them and their souls. What their words reminded me about is the importance of being ready. Of putting ourselves forward, being ready for the call to unfold. They were doing just that, and I was moved by their example.

In them and in their joining, I see hope and the future of the church and our larger community. With them, and with all of us, it seems that anything is possible when we are able to listen to and hear the music of our soul.

May this be our guide. Amen.

Let us pray: Spirit of life, on this day of all souls, we ask for your presence in our lives. May those who have gone before us, the saints and the sinners, guide us on our journey during these difficult times. May we lead lives grounded in the spirit. May we lead lives that allow our souls to be full. May we find wholeness, and may we help all those around us and those who will follow us to find their place in the family of things. We pray this in the name of all we hold sacred. Amen. Benediction: On this day, and every day, may your soul sing, and may your music be heard by all those in your midst. Go in love. Go in peace.

Benediction:

On this day, and every day, may your soul sing, and may your music be heard by all those around you. Go in love and go in peace.

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Copyright © 2000, Reverend Tom Disrud. All rights reserved.