by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given May 20, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come together this day

To give thanks,

To make confession,

To become ever more fully

the persons we were meant to become.

Come now and let us worship together!

The title of my sermon this morning, “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” is taken, of course, from one of Paul Gauguin’s most famous paintings. 

Now Gauguin, it must be said, was not a happy camper.  A life-long sufferer of depression, he vowed that he would commit suicide following the completion of this painting—something he had previously attempted—though he did not do so.  He said of the painting, “I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better.”

The questions that Gauguin poses are, of course, the questions that plague all of us, and the questions that have plagued philosophers and theologians for all of time.  The answers came more easily before the Industrial Revolution, perhaps—before our God was questioned so closely.  This was the rise of the machine age—the time when people left the land and moved to the cities, into the factories, to make things, to work for other people, to punch time clocks set by companies rather than moving to the rhythms of nature.

Gauguin himself was chaffing under the changes that came with the Industrial Revolution—he longed for an unspoiled natural environment, where he could live the life of an artist.  Leaving his wife and five children, he went first to Paris, to several other tropical locations, and then finally to Tahiti, where his most important work was done.  He died at the age of 54, of syphilis, his body weakened by alcoholism.  His wonderful paintings—and those haunting questions—remain. 

Yes, we—like this gifted, this troubled man—we look for meaning.  With our old gods dead, and little at hand that seems noble or trustworthy, we in contemporary America long for meaning as perhaps no people ever have. 

Forrest Church, long-time minister of All Souls Church in New York City, tells in his book Lifecraft of his early search for meaning.  He had kind of a double-whammy, in that Forrest was the son of the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, a man greatly honored in the annals of American political life.  He had a lot to live up to.

In order to answer the great questions of life, Forrest decided to study theology—not to become a minister, mind you—but to study theology.  During his internship at Stanford, he said he followed a strict ascetic regimen. He went to bed at one, woke up at five, and spent each morning drinking Lapsang suchong tea and reading Greek philosophy.  For a time he look off his glasses when walking around campus, to prevent his lusting after gorgeous half-dressed women.  Since he’s almost blind, he says, he soon lapsed and returned to lust.  He cut off all his hair, grew a foot-long beard, lost thirty pounds, and finally collapsed.  Positive that he had consumption, or some other romantic 19^th century disease, he went to the university health service.  His doctor was not impressed.  She told him that he had been acting like an idiot, and that there was nothing wrong with him that a little more sleep and a little less tea wouldn’t cure.  She told him that she never wanted to see him again.  That was the day, he says, when he abandoned his quest for perfection.[1]

But as Forrest matured, he continued to think deeply about the questions Gauguin posed.  Forrest’s definition of religion is simple: he says, “Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”  Knowing that we are going to die.[2]

Forrest learned about this early on, though the experience of his father.  Frank Church almost died of cancer at the age of 25, when Forrest was only 3 months old.  He was told that the only hope he had was to undergo a radical and experimental course of radiation—and if it killed his cancer, it most likely would take years off of his life.  He went for it—life, I mean, full tilt.  At the age of 32, he became the youngest Senator.  But the doctors were right.  Frank Church died at fifty-nine.  At his funeral, Forrest said, “Because my father was not afraid to die, he was not afraid to live.  He did not spend his life, as so many of us do, little by little until he was gone.  He gave it away to others.  He invested it in things that would ennoble and outlast him.”[3] 

Our lives come from non-being and return to non-being.  Our living is framed by our dying.  We all know we are going to die—on one level—but knowing this existentially is a whole other thing.  It is when we know this in our gut, when we internalize this knowing, that it can transform our living. 

Wayne Muller, a minister and therapist who works closely with dying people, recounts the following experience.  He was speaking with a man named Paul, about a week before Paul’s death. He found Paul sitting up, propped against a mound of pillows, silent, in the rays of the morning sun.  “I feel ready to go,” Paul said finally.  “But sometimes,” he reflected, “I just wish I had more time.”  His voice carried so much sadness, mingled with acceptance.  Some of our dreams come true; some do not. 

“I’ve done so much work to prepare for this moment,” he said.  “I’ve . . . practiced meditation with some wonderful teachers, and I have been loved by many beautiful people.  I’m not unhappy with my life.  I’m not afraid.  I know it is time.”  He hesitated, and then spoke again.  “But I also wish I could stay here,” he said.  “I wish I had ten more years free of this illness.”

“What would you do with those years if you had them?  What would your life look like?” Muller asked.

Paul paused, and then he spoke: “I would be kind,” Paul said.  “I would live my life with kindness.”

Muller says that when he visits with people who have received a diagnosis of terminal illness, they are suddenly shocked into mindfulness.  What have I done?  What is my life about?  What do I love?  What do I place at the center of my life?  With so little time left, there is none to waste.  He says that suddenly childhood trauma seems less compelling; money seems useful for daily needs, but greed seems silly; unproductive relationships are let go, and intricate career moves seem wasteful, even comical.  For those close to death, they instantly become aware that their remaining time is precious and their choices are pregnant with meaning.

Knowing we will die, how shall we live?[4]

So living with the felt knowledge of our mortality gives us a powerful context for answering questions of meaning.  But of course hardly anyone does this, the exceptions being those who have had a close call with death and people like Buddhist monks who mediate upon their own deaths, to bring intentionality to their living. 

In fact, what most of us do is to push our fears underground, into the unconscious.  As Jungian James Hollis said in a recent workshop I attended, “Most of our behavior is about anxiety control.”[5]  And what are our chief sources of anxiety control?  Distraction, says Hollis.  “Popular culture is a vast form of distraction.”[6]  Other sources are routine and addiction, he says.  What all these forms of anxiety control have in common is, of course, that they allow us to escape our feelings. 

Our challenge—emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually—is to do nothing about our suffering—that is, to experience our suffering, Hollis says.  This is what meditation is about: being with our internal experience, and knowing that we are all right, that we don’t have to escape.  And so we are brought more fully into our lives, in the present.

Some of you have come here today wanting to hear the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?”  You don’t really think I know, do you? 

I can tell you, though, a few wrong and disappointing roads to avoid.  One is the road to personal perfection or purity—you know, getting rid of everything that is wrong with us, all of our flaws of character.  What this is about is narcissism, not goodness.  Besides, who would want to be with anyone who was so absolutely good?  An excess of virtue is a total drag, really.  When I contemplate my virtues, in fact, I realize that my so-called virtues have probably caused more hurt than my vices.  In this workshop with James Hollis, he asked us to list our four most prominent virtues.  Well, the first one at the top of my list was honesty.  Then he said, “Consider some point when these virtues were problematic or harmful to yourself or to others.”  Whoa!  How many people have I clobbered with my so-called “honesty”?  Just don’t ever ask me how I like your new dress unless you really want to know.

Another fruitless path is the cognitive approach—thinking, reading, and listening to wise people talk.  Not that there’s anything wrong with reading—some of the nicest people I know still read—but the cognitive will take you only so far.  You will not find the meaning of your life through thinking, through logic.  We have to get to the point when we give up all that, and as Forrest Church says, we “fail gracefully.” 

When we have given up our distractions, when we are sitting with our suffering, when we have no place else to go except ourselves, then we are ready to begin to know.  We come at last to the Mystery (with a capital M), and we are there with our naked longing.  With our anger at injustice.  With our sadness at our own failures and our losses.  With all desire stripped away except the yearning: “Make me an instrument of your peace.  Make me a conduit of your love.”  Then the answer comes.  Your answer will not be the same as mine or anyone else’s—because you are unique in this universe, unique and precious.

The answer will come from within, the dwelling place of the Holy, and the answer is always, ever the same.  The answer is always, “Yes.”  Because you are in the heart of love when you ask, the answer is always yes.  Yes, you are good.  Yes, take the risk.  Yes, be thankful.  Yes, choose life.  Yes, I am with you always, says this God of Mercy, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.

Are you waiting for clarity?  Forget it!  There will be none.  There will always be something that eludes you.  And it doesn’t matter.  Viktor Frankl in his profound classic Man’s Search for Meaning speaks of his time in a concentration camp, and what he learned from that experience.   He writes:  “We had to learn . . . that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.  We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.  Our answer must not be in talk . . . but in right action and in right conduct.  . . . .  ”[7]

Let me illustrate, with a story.  Juan Garcia was raised in a poor, gang-infested neighborhood of Santa Barbara, and quickly deduced that his odds of living a long and healthy life were nil.  By the time he was thirteen he had witnessed gang killings, knife fights, drug-related deaths.

Every summer there is a fiesta in Santa Barbara—an occasion for parades and parties and also a time for roving gangs of young men to vent their frustrations upon one another.  One evening during his thirteenth summer, Juan found himself in the middle of two gangs trolling for action during fiesta.  He smelled the familiar odor of violence, and he tried his best to remain inconspicuous.  

Suddenly it began to erupt—young men on both sides drawing weapons, everyone scrambling for position.  It was then that Juan noticed his little brother David nearby, unaware of the danger.  Juan turned and raced back to where his brother was standing.  As he ran, one gang member took him to be an opponent and shot in that direction.  Juan jumped into the air in front of his little brother just in time to catch the bullet in his own body.  The gang members scattered, leaving Juan bleeding.  His brother was unhurt. 

His minister came to visit Juan in the hospital, where he was healing from his wound—he refused to be labeled a “hero.”  For Juan, dying was not a problem—life was the problem.  Dying was part of the deal in his neighborhood.  “Dying’s nothin’, man,” Juan told his minister.  “Everybody’s dyin’ around here all the time.  You just gotta do what’s right.  I couldn’t let my brother get hurt, man.  There wasn’t no choice about it.”[8]

Listen to the boy’s words:  “Everybody’s dying all the time.  You just gotta do what’s right.”  That’s all of us.  That’s Everyman.  The meaning of life is what the time—the moment, the day, is calling you to do, to be.  Right action, in the context of time.  It’s that simple. 

A friend just told me that her breast cancer has returned—she is going to have a second mastectomy.  I remember her words when she discovered the cancer the first time.  “What choice do I have?  I will have the most radical procedure.  I have two young children.”  What is the meaning of her life?  “I have two young children.”

We take our meaning from what we love.  And we take courage from the same source, because when you know what you love, a kind of light falls upon it, and you know with astounding clarity the way you should go.  Where we get in trouble—now hear me—where we get in trouble is when we cast our love upon something that is unworthy, something that is not large enough to receive it.  What are you giving yourself to—what person or what endeavor—that is not worthy of your love?

I can’t begin to tell you how bored I am with the arguments between the believers and the non-believers, the Christians and the humanists, the people who use the word God and the people who cringe at every expression of faith and call it “superstition.”

I don’t care whether you call yourself a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, an atheist or an agnostic.  I don’t care whether you kneel to pray or use prayer beads or wouldn’t be caught dead using the word prayer.  

This is what I want to know:

--I want to know if you have a generous heart.

--I want to know if you rejoice in the good fortune of your neighbor.

--I want to know if you are kind to the weak as well as to the strong.

--I want to know if you have forgiven your parents.

--I want to know if you ever weep when you read the newspaper.

--I want to know if you visit the sick and the dying.

--I want to know if you’re passionate in your living.

--I want to know if you walk with increasing care and gentleness on this good earth.

--I want to know if you live with a sense of awe and thanksgiving.

--I want to know if you can laugh from deep inside yourself.

For you see, the answer is not where, or when, or how.  The answer is not our particular metaphor for meaning—choose one that fits, it doesn’t matter.  The answer is, what is being asked of me, right now?  What meaning of the heart is pulling me to what action?  We don’t need to judge others, to find ourselves superior.  We just need to allow our own particular beauty and goodness to unfold, all the time staying in touch with that Center that will be our sure and steady guide. 

Where do we come from?  What are we?  Where are we going?  We don’t know.  We can only know what Love asks of us, and be content to answer, yes, oh yes, yes.

So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we ask for nothing less than fullness of life.  We admit that we too often waste these precious hours and days in distraction from what is real.  Remind us what is of value, tell us what love demands of us, give us the courage to answer.  We would be alive while we live, that we might savor the full measure of our days upon this earth.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

As you go through this day, and every day, ask the single question, “What does love demand of me, right now?”  Go in love and go in peace.  Amen.