Spark of Life
Delivered by Roger W. Comstock, Acting District Executive, Northeast
District at the First Universalist Church of Dexter
October 7, 2001
This sermon is about how my own religious odyssey sustains me at times
like this. I hope some of the thoughts which are helpful to me will
serve you as well.
To me, a theology must address the nature of both god and the universe.
I have always been fascinated by this topic, and have spent much mental
energy on trying to understand it. My base for this search has been
science. Early on, I read what the astronomers told us about the ever
expanding universe and how the stars and galaxies were formed. I used
to lie in bed at night wondering what was beyond the universe (that
is, trying to understand the nature of infinity.) I imagined the universe
surrounded by a huge brick wall - but then, what was beyond that?
By the time I entered high school, I had rejected the notion of god
as the kindly old man with the long white beard who looked out for you
and me. I remember getting in trouble with some of my classmates for
publicly declaring that I thought god is made in the image of man, rather
than man in god's image. This, I said, is our way of coping with the
unknown and the unknowable.
After high school, I stopped going to church, but I didn't stop thinking
about these topics. I was spooked by the dark sanctuaries rising to
invisible roofs in the churches I knew, but I continued to work on these
questions on my own. I was an agnostic, but I believed that there must
be some power or order to the universe.
I began to see nature as a source of knowledge and strength. What
I could observe in nature became a yardstick by which I could live my
life. One evening, for example, a lady with whom I was taking home hospitality
asked me why her daughter should be suffering from an incurable disease.
She did not think she or her daughter deserved that fate and wondered
why they had been singled out. I asked her to consider a forest. In
any forest, there are healthy trees, and ones which are bent or twisted
or have broken branches. Even worse, there are some which have been
weighed down by other trees which have fallen. They still live, but
they grow horizontally rather than vertically. It's just chance, I said.
Some trees make it and some don't. She seemed comforted by that thought.
I continued to read about advances in astronomy and cosmology. I was
brought up to believe that the scientific method is the way to truth.
"A hypothesis is not truth until it can be proven by experiment
in a laboratory and then reproduced and confirmed by independent observers."
Then, came my first epiphany. I attended a Sufi workshop and danced
to the rhythmic music of the Sufi drums. The dancing went on for a long
time. Suddenly, I looked up, threw my hands in the air and felt the
warm, loving light of the universe course through my body. Subsequently,
I fell to the floor and cried for a long time. I lost 20 pounds soon
after that. They stayed off for a long time, and I felt more centered,
more calm. I began to wonder whether there were other ways of "knowing"
the truth than the reproducible experiment. A second peak experience
with the same warm, comforting light convinced me to change my job and
spend the rest of my life working for the church. That was in 1981.
I began to study the eastern religions - with their ideas about the
balance and the rhythm and the paradox of all life, and their notions
of the soul and it's journey through many lives, of the earth as a place
of testing for the soul - providing opportunities for the soul to grow
to reach toward the perfection of god.
Then came particle physics and quantum mechanics. Two books which
had a great impact on me were the Tao of Physics by Fritof Capra
and The Dancing Wu-li Masters by Gary Zukav. Both interpreted
the latest scientific developments in the light of the teachings of
the eastern religions. There are remarkable parallels. Science and religion
seemed to be coming together. I joined the Institute of Noetic Sciences
- devoted to exploring these other "ways of knowing."
This brings me to the late 1980's. It is easy to recap these changing
observations about the nature of god in a few minutes, but it was not
easy getting there. This work has taken me a whole lifetime.
In 1988, I was the Dean of the Leadership school held at The Mountain
in North Carolina. One of the assignments I took on for the staff was
as facilitator of one of the Credo groups. Each night, the group would
meet to discuss a spiritual topic; similar to the way our small group
ministry groups work here in the Northeast District. The topic one night
was something like: "What are your ideas about god?" We got
into a heated debate. Three of us, all men, held to the position that
the universe is a vast, violent, chaotic and uncaring place, and that
we humans are as a speck of dust in such a large space. The three of
us did not believe in a god who looked out for us personally, and responded
to our prayers. "We are simply small cogs in a huge machine,"
we said. We went on at great length about this dreary theme. Finally,
the women in the group called us to account - we were so intense we
were dominating the conversation. That calmed us down. As the facilitator,
I was embarrassed - I was supposed to be making sure everyone had his
or her turn, but I had gotten hooked by the intensity of the discussion.
Later that night, after the groups were over, a few of us on the leadership
school staff were comparing notes. I reported our Credo group's conversation,
and found out that ginger had had a similar experience in her group.
They, too, talked about a vast uncaring universe. Rev. Alice Blair Wesley,
the person leading the heritage and values part of the school was there
for that conversation. Alice was also leading early morning services
each morning.
That next morning, Alice offered a service dealing with the spark
of life. Although it had great impact on me, the only piece of that
service I remember was a story about a tree - a blue spruce tree - which
grew from the seeds in a pine cone to be a beautiful, tall tree. What
was it in that pine cone which enabled a tree to emerge? I remember
that story, because I grew up with a blue spruce in our front yard;
a tree which had been planted by my dad some 15 years before I was born
and which had grown to maybe 40 feet high. As Alice talked, I pictured
our tree. In 1944, a hurricane came through new jersey, were we lived,
and threatened it. The tree was waving back and forth so violently that
dad thought it might be uprooted. So, we - he and I - went out in the
storm to try to save it. We tied a strong rope around its trunk, as
high as we could reach, and then tied the other end to another more
stable tree. Next morning, we awoke to find the spruce broken off right
where we had tied the rope. Alice could not have known about that piece
of my history - but obviously, her story about that tree made a lasting
impression.
I thought about Alice's service all that day. Late in the day, I suddenly
realized that I carried within me two theologies; two notions about
the nature of the universe, both of which I believed, but which basically
contradicted each other. The one notion that we humans are insignificant
in the vast scope of an uncaring universe, and the other that there
is the spark of life throughout the universe which is indefatigable;
which can't be denied. That was an 'a-ha!' moment for me. After that,
my belief in the inhumanity of the universe began to lose its hold on
me and my more hopeful belief in the power of life - the spark of life
- grew. I'm convinced that Alice created that service just for ginger
and me in the few hours between our late night session rehashing the
credo groups and that early morning service. In my case, it was a turning
point.
My theology has moved on from that point. This past sixteen years
working for the church has been especially rich in uncovering a more
complex and grounded belief set. I began to get into dreamwork, and
found that there is indeed great wisdom "out there" in the
universe which comes to us through dreams and other focussed experiences.
I continued to wonder about whether the scientific method is the only
basis for ascertaining truth. After all, I thought, how can we who are
creatures of the universe, with starstuff in our veins, ever be truly
independent observers of the universe which made us?
Some things I "knew" by then had come to me in mystical
ways - such as the call to work for the church in 1981. In 1992, I had
another epiphany - this one lasted five days and six nights and offered
many new insights. Chief among them were a new theology, an understanding
that abuse is a disease which has been among us in the western world
for many centuries passed down from generation to generation in each
family, and a reconciliation with my dad, who had died many years earlier.
Now, I believe there is a common consciousness - a store of knowledge
which can guide both our actions and our growth - available to us all
when we choose to pay attention. I believe there is a soul which returns
to some other realm after our physical life is over. I believe in reincarnation
- the chance to try again to learn the lessons our souls need to learn.
But, all this is for another time. Today, I want to focus on the step
in my journey which happened during those two days at the 1988 Leadership
School when I began to move from "the universe doesn't care"
to a reverence for the spark of life.
How does the reverence for life help with the current crisis precipitated
by the Trade Center attack? For one thing it gives me hope. It allows
me to look past - not to ignore, but to look past - the dark, evil side
of existence to find the small, tender shoots of life and to nurture
them. There are many to be found in the news these days - and in our
common experience:
- The almost universal candlelight vigils which sprang up all over
the land last Friday as the result of an Internet message.
- The refusal of one such group to sing "The Battle Hymn of the
Republic."
- The many, many messages to the Bush administration urging patience
and prudence in the search to bring the perpetrators to justice.
- The news that many folks are reconsidering their lives in the wake
of this disaster - recognizing imbalances which may have been there
for years (like holding down a job which is unsatisfying) and choosing
to change.
- The NPR feature describing the remarkable (to them) rise in the
public attitude which says "no more war." "Bring the
perpetrators to justice, but don't do damage to innocent people in
the process" - and President Bush's acknowledgment of that attitude
in his report to the congress that Thursday night in September.
- The cry to look at what our responsibility might be in this crisis.
What is it about the way America operates that has brought the terrorists
to the point of wreaking such terrible damage? This, too is the subject
for another sermon, but surely we are not innocent in all of this
- and there seems to be a somewhat greater willingness among us to
look at what our role might be.
All of these are hopeful signs, and there are many more. We have only
to keep on doing what we have been doing to encourage positive change.
Another way that my theology has helped me is through my trust in
nature. Tuesday, September 11th was a lost day for me. I spent much
of the morning in front of the tube, seeing the continual replays of
the twin towers collapsing in on themselves, and trying to understand.
I couldn't wrap my mind around it. In the afternoon, I went to a meeting
in Augusta which had not been canceled and we went through the paces.
They asked me to check in, and I had nothing to say - all the daily
events in my life seemed too trivial to report, and I could not find
the words to express my reaction to the attacks on our freedom and our
nationhood.
On the way back home from that meeting, coming down I-95, I came to
the long hill which descends from Freeport to the marsh created by the
Cousins River. I've always loved that marsh. It's a perfect reminder
of the beauty Maine has to offer. That day, though, what I noticed was
that the tide was in - and that was one of the most healing things I
can remember experiencing - ever. The unthinkable had happened, and
yet the tides rolled on unperturbed. They seemed to say that the world
would go on no matter what horrors we humans choose to visit on each
other. It might take a long time, but eventually, we will cycle around
to the place we have been.
Wendell Berry says:
"When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night,
at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives
may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty
on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives
with the forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
I hope you will be able to find renewal in the miracle of life; that
spark which will not go away - and that you are able to find peace in
the lessons of nature. Go in peace.
