by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning! 

We gather in this place this morning

To be held in this community of love;

We come here

To remember who we are;

We come here

To rest for a moment on the forming edge of our lives.

Come, let us worship together!

There are times when we just find ourselves in a funk—not just an ordinary funk, which lifts after three days or so, but a black hole of a funk, a kind of soul sickness that just won’t let go.  It doesn’t have to do with material things, generally—in fact, on the surface, everything might seem okay, and others—well, they just don’t understand why you should be so unhappy, so at odds with life and with the world, so at odds with yourself.  And neither do you, understand.  But you are.  These are times of soul-sickness, times when the soul needs to be restored to health. 

I know that some of you are thinking, “What do you mean by ‘the soul’?”  It has never shown up on my chest x-ray.  Is it in my heart?  Or in my brain?  Or maybe in my gut, as when we say, “Trust your gut.”  Well, people like Thomas Moore have written whole books about the soul and never really defined what it is.  But I’m going to give you my best shot this morning.  First, what the soul is not—the soul is not the rational, logical, linear thinking that we utilize to problem-solve in most of the arenas of our lives.  The soul has to do with imagination and humor and irony and reflection.  It is loose rather than constrained.  It is playful rather than dutiful.  It is serious but not dead serious.  It acknowledges the eternal and the mysterious, and it lives in the realm of poetry, where meanings multiply.  It does not attempt to define and categorize; it is what is most present and alive in you.  Now, does that clear it up for you? 

What brings on soul sickness?  Well, right off the bat, part of it, if you live in Oregon, has got to do with the weather.  Or at least for many of us, that’s true.  Each spring when the sun comes again—which it hasn’t done as yet this year—I suddenly start feeling lighter. 

But of course, weather aside, there are other reasons, significant reasons, for the soul to be unwell.

For one thing, you may be going through some kind of transition.  You may not even recognize it as a transition at first, just as a kind of gnawing at your spirit, just a kind of feeling that you are off-kilter, off-balance.  You may begin finding fault with everything—your spouse, your kids, your friends, your dentist, the mail carrier.  Nobody can do anything right anymore.  When you get up in the morning, you’re not quite sure what to put on—what clothes, what face—because you’re increasingly unsure of who you are.  You’re kind of like Linus, that classical character in “Peanuts,” when his blanket is in the dryer.  What you had to hold on to is no longer there.  That’s a scary place to be, moving from one place to another in your psyche.

Another reason for feeling without purpose in this world is our living in contradiction to our own values.  That would be an easy enough state to fall into, since the secular world invites us constantly to live in accordance with values that are not the highest and the best.  (Have you seen the film about Enron?  That documentary shows how many, many people can be pulled into activity contrary to their best values.)  We know what is right:  telling the truth is right, being faithful to our spouses, our partners, our friends; being honest in our business practices, and so forth and so on.  When we are living in contradiction to those values, we are bound to be restless of spirit.  We need to make congruent what we deeply believe and how we behave.  We need to find our way back home.

Yet another reason for despair is loss—when we experience a huge loss of some kind, we may also experience a huge hole in our carefully constructed universe.  “I am a highly competent engineer,” you may say to yourself, and you may take on this identity—but then for whatever reasons, we don’t need so many engineers, and you find yourself without a job.  Who am I, then, if I am not an engineer?  Who am I, if I am not the chief breadwinner for my family?  Or any breadwinner at all?   At such a time, we have to find a new basis for identity, one that goes deeper than career.

And in a similar way, people who have accidents or become ill and are physically changed—they have to create themselves anew.  Aging brings new challenges.  Or perhaps there is the loss of an important relationship—a partner walks in one day and announces that he or she has found someone else.  Who am I, if not married to John, a wife may ask.  Who am I, if the family, my source of strength and groundedness, is no longer intact?  One must find a deeper source, even than family.  Even than career and even than family.

And then there is the despair that comes with failure.  You may have worked, say, as a friend of mine did, on a research project for 20 years, and all of his work finally showed that his thesis was incorrect.  What he had hoped would change a whole field of inquiry and would give him a place of honor in the academy turned out to be—well, wrong—and he was then 50 instead of 30, as when he began.  What comes next?

Sometimes these feelings of meaninglessness come when we are being called to a new place—this is a time in which the soul is reaching for the next stage of development, perhaps even a new vocation—and of course we must go through loss, always, to grow.  The essence of the spiritual life is being given over, being surrendered, to the leadership of the Holy—always being willing to give up what we are for what we are becoming.

Whatever the reason for our angst, we are asked at this time to stop and pay attention to our soul—to reflect, to be present with whatever is, and see where it is leading us.  The question is not, “How can I be free of this pain?” which is of course the natural question we all want to ask, but rather it is time to ask the question—I like the way James Hillman poses it—“What does my angel want of me?”

But, but, but how do I answer this question?  What do I actually do, you say, when I’m in this state and can’t see how to move at all?  Well, to begin with, I suggest that you take the focus off the focus—remember that little phrase the next time you are trying to figure out your life—when you’re weighing facts, listing the advantages and disadvantages of this choice or that.  You’ve tried that—remember?  It doesn’t work—it doesn’t satisfy the soul’s hunger.  I’m going to mention five specific paths, or ways you might move, to nurture the soul—and through this expansion of the soul quite often your way will become known.  I’m sure you might think of other approaches, but here are five good ones to start with.

The first is to connect with beauty, in whatever form you find it.  This can be the natural beauty of the woods and mountains and rivers and lakes.  And then there is the beauty of art, whether it is music or dance or painting or film or whatever—beauty will call forth a sense of truth and pleasure from you, and that will be supportive to you as you seek a new way.

The second is memory and all its uses.  Tell your story.  Write it, as you remember it.  It will not be “true” in the factual sense, for no memory is ever objective.  But it will be your story, and its meaning will be your meaning.  Take care about the words you choose.  Edit out the unnecessary ones.  Describe the details.  Make it come alive.  Find the right figures of speech.  As one of my writer friends once said, if you find the right metaphor, you know, it can change your life.

Three: I would suggest that you spend some time with children.  We adults forget what it is to be innocent and hopeful.  We forget what it is to wish upon a star.  Children can reawaken those feelings of infinite possibility in us; they can crack through the crusty outside to the soft center we have been protecting. 

Four: You can choose to go on a pilgrimage.  When I get really stuck, this is my remedy of choice.  That, and writing, of course.  When I was in my early thirties and questioning just about everything, I decided to do a two-week Gestalt therapy experience with a therapist who was described as “well, he’s kinda crazy, but he’s good.”  He conducted his workshops on a farm near Kalamazoo, Michigan.  So I just got in my car and drove up there, from my home in Lexington, KY.  I arrived at night, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and couldn’t find the farm—I remember driving into a little town nearby called Allegan and parking in front of the bank and sleeping in my car until the sun came up, and I could find my way.  I came back from that experience changed in ways I can hardly describe.  Let me just say that I had never before danced, and I came back dancing.

Number five is so simple—reach out to someone else in need.  Let me tell you a story from Annie Lamott’s latest book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.  I think this story is best told in her own words.  She writes:

“On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death.  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.  Plus, there was no food in the house.  So I took a long, hot shower instead . . . .

“Everyone I know has been devastated by Bush’s presidency,” she writes.  “So much has been stolen from us by Bush . . . .  I wake up some mornings pinned to the bed by . . . sadness and frustration

“I’m worn out.  Some days I hardly know what to pray for.  Peace?  Well, whatever . . . .  I lay on the floor with my eyes closed for so long that my dog, Lily, came over and worriedly licked me back to life.  That cheered me up.  ‘What did you get me for my birthday?’ I asked <her>.  She started to chew on my head.  That helped.  I called Father Tom, my friend.  He is . . . a scruffy aging Birkenstock type who gives lectures and leads retreats on spirituality.  I asked him for some good news.

“He thought.  ‘Well,’ he said finally.  ‘My cactuses are blooming.  Last week they were ugly and reptilian, and now they are bursting with red and pink blossoms.  They don’t bloom every year, so you have to love them while they’re here.’

“‘I hate cactuses,’ I said.  ‘I want to know what to do.  Where we can even start.’

“‘We start by being kind to ourselves,’ Tom said.  ‘We breathe, we eat.  We remember that God is present wherever people suffer.  God’s here with us when we’re miserable, and God is there in Iraq.’

“‘How do we help?  How do we not lose our minds?’

“‘You take care of the suffering.’

“‘I can’t get to Iraq.’

“‘There are folks who are miserable here,’ <he said>.

“After we got off the phone, I ate a few birthday chocolates.  Then I asked God to help me be helpful.  It was the first time that day that I felt my prayers were sent, and then received, like e-mail.  I tried to co-operate with grace, which is to say, I did not turn on the TV.  . . . .  The problem with God—or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God—is that He or She rarely answers right away.  It can take days, weeks.  . . . .  I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type.  I drove to the super market to buy my birthday dinner.

“I flirted with everyone in the store, especially the old people, and I lightened up.  When the checker finished ringing up my items, she looked at my receipt and cried, ‘Hey!  You’ve won a ham!’  I felt blindsided by the news.  I had asked for help, not a ham. . . . .   I rarely eat it.  It makes you bloat.  ‘Wow,’ I said, <feigning enthusiasm>.

“A bagger was dispatched to the back of the store to fetch my ham.  I stood waiting anxiously.  I wanted to go home, so I could start caring for suffering people, or turn on CNN.  But for some reason, I waited.  If God was giving me a ham, I’d be crazy not to receive it.  Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

“I waited ten minutes for what I began to think of as ‘that fucking ham,’ and finally received the parcel, about the size of a cat.  I was so distracted as I left the store that I crashed my cart smack into a slow-moving car.  Turned out it was a rusty old wreck, and an old friend was at the wheel.  We got sober together a long time ago.  She opened her window.  ‘Hey,’ I said.  ‘How are you—it’s my birthday!’

“‘Happy Birthday,’ she said and started crying.  She looked drained and pinched.  ‘I don’t have money for gas, or food.  I’ve never asked for help from a friend since I got sober, but I’m asking you to help me.’

“‘I’ve got money,’ I said. 

“‘No, no, I just need gas,’ she said.  ‘I’ve never asked someone for a handout.’

“‘It’s not a handout,’ I told her.  ‘It’s my birthday present.’  I thrust money into her hand, everything I had.  Then I reached into my shopping cart and held out the ham.  ‘Hey!’ I said, ‘Do you and your kids like ham?’

“‘We love it,’ she said.  ‘We love it for every meal.’  She put it in the seat lovingly beside her, as if she were about to strap it in.  And she cried some more.

“Later, thinking about her, I remembered the seasonal showers in the desert, how potholes in the rocks fill up with rain.  When you look later, there are already frogs in the water, and brine shrimp reproducing, like commas doing the Macarena; and it seems, but only seems, that you went from parched to overflow in the blink of an eye.”

And so this morning, my dear ones, I want to leave you with this lovely thought—when you’re in the desert, know that it’s your time to be there, and it’s okay.  Something is happening inside you that might even be described as holy, if you can let it be.  Don’t thrash about—take care of yourself.  Call a friend.  Go for a hike in the gorge.  Listen to some soulful singer sing the blues.  Let a dog chew on your head.  Sign up to teach some of our darling children in Sunday school.  Ask the universe in general, “Help me to be helpful,” for we all want to be useful, and we all want to be connected, do we not?  And you know what?  You may be surprised.  You can go from parched to overflow in the blink of an eye.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we are asking for Life, life more abundantly than we yet have experienced it.  When we are in the valley of the shadows, may we be comforted with the understanding that we are there for a time, and that we need to be there, and that things will come round right, but maybe not on our schedule.  Help us to be willing to surrender who we are for what we yet can become.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

And now as you go from this place, ask yourselves all through the week, what nourishment does my soul need, and how shall it be fed?  Go in love, and go in peace.  Amen.