by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given May 4, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come today

To give thanks,

To make confession,

And to vow once again

To serve the Holy,

With all our mind and heart and strength.

Come, let us worship together.

It seems that when the Lord wants our attention, we get a wake-up call—and it’s not always pleasant.  Take Saul of Tarsus, for example, who was persecuting the early Christians—the scripture says “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord . . . ”  He was on his way to Damascus, to see if he could round up some more Christians when he was suddenly struck down, was blinded, by a light from Heaven.  He fell to the earth and heard a voice saying, “Saul, why do you persecute me?”  Saul the solder was on his knees, asking, “What would you have me do?”  That’s the crucial question, of course:  “What would you have me do?”  Credit to Saul, he did get the message—he did ask the question.  The blind Saul was led into Damascus.  There he was converted—converted in the sense of changed, set in a new direction.  He became God’s chosen vessel, the scripture says, and the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw anew.  This man is known to us, of course, as Paul, who went on to found the Christian church. 

Stories like this are enough to make you careful about your prayers.  I mean, whenever I pray for wisdom or a peaceful heart or the ability to forgive, I’m a bit anxious.  I know that the most common way I’ve learned spiritual lessons is through failure and humiliation.  And you can throw illness in there, too—I’ve learned through illness.  So I’m careful in my prayers, trying even here to exercise a little control.  “Oh, God, make me humble—but I’d just as soon not look like a fool.” “Oh, God, give me a deeper sense of compassion—but I don’t want, if you don’t mind, I don’t want to experience any personal deprivation of any kind.”  I know that my God has ways of getting my attention, and I’m wary.  I’m protective of my self—that is, the self with a little s. 

Big Self and little self.  That’s where the spiritual tension lies.  The little self is the ego, and the Big Self is the underlying reality, the eternal—it is what is, it is being itself.  It is what some of us call God, but what may be called by many other names: Yahway, Atman, the Great Spirit, the Mystery at the heart of things.  All these names are names for that which we cannot define, cannot ever really know, but that which nevertheless calls us to ultimate allegiance.

In trying to understand these concepts, I like to think of the ocean, covered with waves.  These waves are of all shapes and kinds—there are deep waves and shallow, wild waves rolling high into the air and waves just warmly lapping the shore.  The ocean, then, represents ultimate reality, and the waves symbolize the various forms of life—people, animals, plants, stars.  Just like the ocean waves, these forms emerge for a while and then in time die out.  But the ocean water is unchanging.  Spiritual wholeness—some would use the word enlightenment—is being at one with this ultimate reality.  It is knowing that the fundamental nature of things is unchanging, and that we are a part of that unchanging reality.[1]  Not just knowing this in our heads, but knowing this in our flesh, and living out of that deep knowing, as we go through our ordinary days.

Now what about the ego—this thing that keeps us from the Mystery that calls us more fully into being?  We in the Western world have a problem, and it’s called scientism (not science, but scientism)—we believe, we are taught in school from the time we are small, that truth comes to us through our senses, and that truth (or at least whatever truth has any significance) can be measured empirically.  Well, that’s one kind of truth, and we would not want to discount it—it has given us vaccines and computers, just to mention a few things—but science is not the only kind, nor necessarily the most important kind, of truth.  As the great scholar of religion Huston Smith has written, “The language of science is not a natural language, . . . it is an artificial language that cannot accommodate the human spirit.” 

There was a time—all of time, in fact, before the Renaissance—when humanity looked to the Other World for meaning and for guidance in human affairs.  Then came a sea change.  There was a gradual but radical shift from the transcendent to the empirical, from myth to reason.  Humans were no longer “fallen”—they were evolving, advancing, and they were doing this through their own steam,[2] or so we thought.  We moved the human to the center of things and made God an aging, benevolent father to his clever children. 

Now this evolving of our culture was not altogether a bad thing.  We would not really want to be confined by superstition, struck down by pestilence.  The problem, spiritually speaking, though, is that we have replaced the Eternal with our own ego, which is a construct—it is constructed, meaning something that we each individually have created for ourselves.  We build an identity—which is of course a necessary process of maturation, nothing wrong with that—but then we come to believe that this identity, this persona, is real, in some absolute sense.  We begin to believe that the little self is the Big Self. 

And how do we know when we’re operating in the purview of the little self only?  Well, our words and our actions turn around and bite us.  A man shared the following story in his newspaper.  He wrote:  “One of my hobbies is giving stuffed animals to children, usually undertaken in my large apartment lobby.  I encountered a cheerful 2- or 3-year-old in a carriage recently and offered him a toy raccoon.  He said no.  Putting it back in my bag, I offered a bear with wings.  He still said no to that, and [to] a multicolored sort of dog.  His mother thanked me for my good intentions and [then said to me] ‘My son is not materialistic.’”  What is going on here?  “My son is not materialistic.”?  Well, the child is a two-year-old, and every two-year-old is totally narcissistic, totally materialistic, and should be.  No, the truth is that the mom would like to think that she is not materialistic, and so she projects that quality onto her child.  Seems ludicrous.  But we all do that.  We decide, sometime, somehow, that we are a certain kind of person—mostly positive, of course—and we cling to that image.  I’m not materialistic—I’m a ‘good person.’  And so is my baby.  And so is my husband.  And so is my dog. 

This inflated ego can descend upon ministers quite easily.  We can project ourselves as heroes—humble heroes, of course.  Even worse, we can become pious.  We can accept the projections of goodness that are sent our way by congregants.  When I do a retreat or a workshop, I never look at the evaluations.   You see, evaluations can hook my ego, in both directions.  Almost all of them will be good, and when I read those, if I let myself, I can begin to believe that I am that person of great wisdom and holiness, that person who has the power to transform lives.  And then there’ll always be the one or two people who hated something I did or didn’t do—people who want something that I can’t give to them—like a different mother. I can let my ego get caught there, as well.  Why couldn’t I have been a better leader?  Why couldn’t I have made everybody happy—the way mothers are supposed to.  So this is how I handle evaluations.  I ask Nancy Olson, our Adult Religious Education Director, to analyze the evaluations and to note any patterns that indicate we need to make changes.  But as for me—I work for God.  I do my best, I give my gifts, and I know that whatever happens that’s good is of God, not of me.  I may be the vessel, but I’m not the source.  I need to remember that.  It’s not about me. 

Let me be clear.  I’m not saying that the ego is bad, that we should try to annihilate it.  Young people, as they develop, have to formulate a sense of self, with the small s.  You can’t give something away if you don’t have it.  Besides which, the ego continues to be useful:  it tells us what we want for dinner and who is our friend and what book we want to read. The problem comes when we think that the body, that our sensory experience, that the constructs of personality that we received  from our parents, that these are ultimate reality.  “Why are you unhappy?” asks the ancient Chinese poet Wu Wei We.  And he answers his own question: “Why are you unhappy?  Because 98.98% of everything you do and all that you say is for yourself, and there isn’t one.”  The self that we establish ultimately will not survive the conversation that life becomes[3]—that self can’t, it is too small. We find: I’m not just a lawyer, or a mother or a change agent.  I’m bigger than that—or I’m part of something much bigger than that.  The persona will begin to crack.  We try to shore it up, we try to hold on to this discreet identity, but ultimately it will not hold.  We cling to self, and there isn’t one.

Well, then, what is the alternative?  We can wait until life brings trouble enough to force us to re-evaluate who we think we are.  Then we have to let go, because the image can no longer be sustained.  No, we may realize, I’m actually not a very nice person—I’m pretty self-centered.  Maybe that’s why the marriage didn’t work out.  But if I’m not a husband, then who am I?  Or, oh gee, I’ve been very successful in my career, won all kinds of awards, and now I’m dying, and so what?  Where are my kids?  Where are my friends?  Or, I had a beautiful body, and now I’m getting older, and men don’t look at me the way they used to.  My body is, well, it’s just a body.  What is real, and how can I go there?

But we don’t have to wait until life slaps us around.  We don’t have to wait until we’re struck blind on the road to Damascus.  We can make a decision to give up the small version of self we’ve been tending and defending for as long as we can remember.  In the Western tradition, we talk of “doing the will of God,” of relinquishment, of giving ourselves to something greater than ourselves.  In the Eastern tradition—and I find this way of thinking more difficult to grasp, but somehow more satisfying—in the Eastern tradition, we come to understand that we are one with what is, actually we are one manifestation of the Divine, one tiny wave in the ocean of existence.  We cultivate, then, humility and gratitude.

We can develop spiritually in two ways, I think.  One is through relationship.  Relationship—and I mean close relationship—pushes the edge, makes us come alive.  We cannot remain who we think we are, for relationship acts as a mirror; it is too honest to let us continue as we are.

And then the other path is spiritual discipline.  When people come to me for counseling, I often ask, “Do you have a spiritual discipline?”  Different people find various approaches work for them, according to their personality or temperament.  It could be sitting meditation.  Or contemplative prayer.  Or writing in a journal.  For many in this section of the country, it is being in the natural world.  But it is always mindful of a world beyond this world; it is always in relationship to the Holy.  You know it’s working when you begin to hear a voice that is not your own.  That voice is part of you, but not your own.  You become still, then, and listen.  And your perception begins to shift.  The scales fall from your eyes.  Poet David Whyte writes in his poem “Sweet Darkness”:  “Sometimes it takes darkness/ And the sweet confinement of your aloneness/ To learn that anything or anyone/ That does not bring you alive/ Is too small for you.”

In the ego-driven life, we take everything—our desires are voracious.  We can never be satisfied.  But with this kind of life, nothing is created and nothing is returned.  Oh, there may be movement, work, products—but little that truly comes from you, from your own beautiful, unique self.  On the other hand when we live in the heart of God, in the Divine Mystery, we become a new creation.  Think of the rhododendrons now in bloom, and these other lovely flowers you have brought in this morning.  These blooms take in the gifts of the earth—the rain, the sun, the soil, and then the blossoms unfold from the bud, and something new comes into the world.  And then, full-blown, the flower just stands in its own beauty.  It doesn’t care whether people gather round to exclaim, “This is the most beautiful flower of them all.”  It is the most beautiful flower it can be, and it exists for only one purpose—not for itself, but to adorn the garden.[4]  And so may you know that you exist in the heart of the Holy, always, and may you give the beauty you are to the world, freely, without fear.  So be it.  Amen. 

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we are frightened too much of the time, and when fears come, we hide from your presence.  We insist to ourselves and to others that we are better than we are.  We defend our image, thereby becoming smaller.  Let us grow into our largeness, let us not be afraid of our true power and beauty.  May we offer ourselves as vessels for your holiness to do its work of love.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Now go in thankfulness for the beauty of this day, and for the promise of spring.  Go in love and in peace.  Amen.

[1]Glen Kezwer, “There Is No Ego,” Parabola, Spring 2002, p. 42. 

[2]Richard Tarras, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View.  New York: Ballantine Books, 1991, p. 319.

[3]Concept drawn from poet David Whyte.

[4]It was Rudolf Steiner who wrote, “The rose adorns herself in order to adorn the garden.”  Individualism in Philosophy, Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989.  This concept is enlarged upon by Robert Sardello in Love and the Soul: Creating a Future for Earth, New York: HarperCollins, 1995, pp.23-4.

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Copyrights 2003, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.