Shedding The Shroud

The 2003 Easter Sermon given at the UU Church of the Restoration by James Walters

I was asked to preach this sermon several months ago at a time, of course, when our minister of the past 6-7 years, Bonnie-Jeanne Casey, announced her decision and timetable for leaving us. As it happens I was, at that time, beginning to lead the adult BYOT – Building Your Own Theology – program. As such I was steeped in some reading and reflecting.

First of all, I was reflecting on some very provocative – I think – data from the UUA about our beliefs and practices – data gleaned from over 8000 North American Unitarian Universalists, and organized into two reports: one named the “1997 UU Needs and Aspirations Survey”; the other titled, “Our Faith Communities Today.”

Did you know that 96% of the surveyed congregations report that they have either none or “only a few” lifelong Unitarian Universalists as members? 96%!

Obviously, to many, Unitarian Universalism’s importance is as a temporary refuge – a layover – on a longer journey. But why do so many move on? What were they seeking and not finding?

Well, when asked whether anything was missing in their UU experience, over 76% said “yes?” and only two factors account for over 60% of that yearning (and each are about evenly divided: 30 – 30).

• Diversity – including diversity of experience
• Intensity of joy and spirituality.

Like the flipside of a coin, when asked whether they ever considered leaving Unitarian Universalism, almost 60% said “yes” and why:

• Because we lack spirituality and joy (29%)
• We’re too arrogant and cerebral (19%)

I find this very disquieting, don’t you? Clearly for many – perhaps some of us here today – Unitarian Universalism is not doing enough to nourish our spirits and hearts. Can’t we be something more than a “refuge from”? Can’t we be more a “sanctuary for”? Of course we must continue to celebrate and cultivate “free thought,” but clearly we must do more to celebrate and cultivate “freed hearts,” – not just freed minds, but freed spirits!

In this context it’s interesting to consider Joseph Campbell’s observation that “the problem and function for religion in this age is to awaken the heart ...(but he goes on) ‘one of the functions of religion is to protect us against the religious experience. That is because formal religions are formulated, but by its nature such an experience is one that only you – the individual – can have “

In his excellent little book, “The God We Never Knew,” Marcus Borg makes a similar point, but even more strongly when he says:

“Modern Protestant churches (and let’s admit the UU’ism is Protestant in its forms) have abandoned many of the traditional mediators of the sacred; the use of sacramental time, space, images, journey and liturgy are underdeveloped and poorly understood…. Begun as a protest against medieval Catholicism…. Protestantism has been most open to the Enlightenment…. [and] Practices that did not make sense within an Enlightenment worldview were abandoned as superstitious…. The result is that the spoken word has come to dominate most Protestant worship ….Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one’s mind.”

As a former Catholic – and probably the more so, being a former cleric – I know exactly what Campbell and Borg are talking about. Catholicism is one of the great mystery religions. Even today, its stripped-down rituals can still pack an emotional whollop, especially during Holy Week and Easter. And I do miss it.

I certainly don’t miss Catholicism’s dogmatism that shrouded my mind. And I am deeply, deeply grateful to Unitarian Universalism for. But as I stand here today, I must admit that only occasionally helping me rip that shroud away have I felt myself spiritually uplifted by our typical “hymn sandwich” style of shared worship.

Reflecting on this fact took me back to that last Easter sermon I preached [almost a decade ago]. For those [few] who were here and remember it, its climactic focus was on the theme of compassion. But in that sermon I affirmatively acknowledged my atheism. But an atheism within which I was still struggling to shed the bonds of what I thought were superstitious longings. If you’ll allow me to quote myself directly: “A settled mind doesn’t mean a settled heart, for:

• when the mind rejects god, as I do, where does the heart find meaning?
• when the mind rejects dogma, as I do, where does the heart find belonging?
• when the mind rejects prayer, as I do, where does the heart find hope and courage?

“Disbelief, you see, can be simply that – disbelief. Running from one thing doesn’t necessarily imply running to something else. Or as Robert Frost put it, ‘an escapist isn’t a pursuitist’.” Close quotes.

Those pangs I referred to a moment ago I felt sure would slowly fade. But, truth be told, they didn’t fade. That sense that there must be something more lingered

And yet, a decade later here I stand, still. But very much not still, in that other sense, because spiritually I am in a very different place than before. To drive the point more concretely, listen to the opening line of my credo then: “I believe in the universe of the rational and in the transforming power of one person’s love for another.”

Compare it with my opening line today: “I am a constituent of Spirit, life-breath of the living and life-giving Cosmos, immersed in its limitless intelligence, power, abundance and love.”

The story of that change is the story of my ten year religious journey in and through UU; a story of my shrouds being shed – being pulled off all of my eyes: the rational eye of my mind, the fleshy eye of my heart, and the spirit eye of my soul.

It began innocently enough about 8 years ago. I had enrolled in a workshop on the organizational uses of Chinese 5-Element Energetics. Do you know how it is, that when you make a small change in trajectory, you can end up somewhere far from where you would have? Well, looking back, I see that workshop that way.

Not very long after that I had a vision – not a dream, but a most wonderful vision:

I found myself standing inside a temple. Its marble floor gleamed and reverberated with the sound of my footsteps. The center of the temple floor was illuminated by a shaft of light slicing down through a window high in the dome that arched above me, like the dome of the Pantheon. At the base of the dome there was a mezzanine with a marble railing. Reaching down from the mezzanine to the floor were a series of alcoves that ringed the temple’s floor. The alcoves were shaded in darkness, but sparkles of light in one did catch my eye. When I stepped up to that alcove, I could see that it held within it the entire universe: countless suns, planets, whole galaxies spinning. I could reach in and hold a hundred galaxies in my cupped hands.

My reverie was interrupted by the sound of someone calling me from behind. I turned and, looking up, I could see a robed figure standing on the mezzanine – robed something like a monk, but something also like a magician. I walked to the center of the temple floor and in an instant the robed figure stood, towering over me. I couldn’t see the face, darkly shaded by the large hood. He asked me only one question, “What do you seek?” “I want to know,” I answered. With that, he reached into the folds of his robe and held out three boxes – puzzle boxes. The first was made of the most beautiful inlaid woods. The second, of burnished precious metals. The third, of stunning precious gems. I took them into my hands. In the next instant the apparition was gone.

When our then-minister, Harris Riordan, and I discussed this vision, I stressed my frustration that the boxes were locked. She concentrated not on the fact that they were locked, but rather that they could be opened!

It was more than a year later that I experienced by second eye-opening. For reasons lost to my memory, I found myself asking myself this question: “Where is the cosmos?” I answered myself by pointing upward. In that instant I experienced the real truth. I felt the pulse of invisible lines of force running within me and passing through me, connecting me, literally, to all things – to the stars and the planets above, to the ground and the animals and flowers, their molecules to mine, to you and to everyone everywhere. And all pulsed with life!

I knew – and not just from reason, but felt in experience – the truth of that one of our principles that affirms the interconnectedness of all. In ways that I would never have reasoned, all is connected because all is one and all is alive!

And I slowly came to realize that is the truth of the first box!

The mystery of the second box lay hidden to me until October 16th of 2001. Worn out with worries at work and exhausted by the trauma of 9/11 and days of worry for our daughter in DC, other family and friends in NYC and, of course, the death of my friend Matty Ryan, I fled to the refuge of one of the retreat houses run by my old religious order. I needed silence and solace. I got that all right, and perhaps the most momentous experience of my spiritual life.

While in meditation that day, I was transported to a realm of spirit – a place of vastness and beautiful crystalline light – a realm of spiritual beings, welcoming and wise. I’ve been able to journey back several times since then to the spirit realm and to different places in it, meeting different spiritual beings.

I know from these direct experiences the truth of the second box: that our reality has layers of life and wisdom and caring beyond reason; that we are immersed in limitless intelligence, power, abundance and love. I have learned directly the deep truth stated in our purposes and principles, namely our affirmation of the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”

Direct experiences. That’s the crucial difference between my level of belief and spirituality ten years ago compared to today. A decade ago I thought that I had a trustworthy compass for my faith journey, namely discernment through the eye of ny rational mind. But back then I hadn’t yet shed my shrouds. Events had only just begun to lead me to understand that to see with only one eye -- be that any one: mind, heart, or soul – leaves you like the house with only one window that Rumi, the medieval Sufi mystic-poet, mourns, saying:

“That house into which the rays of the divine sun cannot reach is dark and destitute. It is bleak and cramped, its doors remain closed. It is like a tomb. Come! Arise from your tomb!”

This, my friends, is a message of the Easter story. This is a truth behind the story of Christ’s shedded shrouds and of that stone rolled away from the tomb.

I tell you that back then I was entombed in a well-defined and well-defended rationalism; that my eyes of heart and spirit were shrouded. But the wrappings, for reasons beyond my knowing, are coming off. I am being led to understand that it was arrogant to label as irrational things that may be beyond rational: things like the hawks that seem to soar above me whenever I need a recharge to my courage and optimism; things like loving and being loved. Who can really explain these things? You can only experience and be grateful.

And so what does this say to all of us, but especially to those 76% of UU’s who feel something missing and those UU’s who think, or have thought, of leaving because UU’ism is too cerebral and/or spiritually wanting? I reach 3 conclusions.

First, I believe that you can not find spiritual fulfillment and satisfy your yearning in UU’ism. But nor can you do that anywhere else. Because the fullness of truth -- call it fulfillment, or union, or all-ness – lies beyond UU’ism or any other system of faith or spirituality or religious thought. Beyond lies the meadow, as Rumi says, where the paths meet. Where the mystics meet. And they don’t write tracts of dogma. They write love poems.

But, second, through any of these paths, including UU’ism, one can find fulfillment. In fact I think that UU’ism might even be more conducive than others because it does so encourage and support one to shed the shroud of dogma from the mind’s eye. But in doing so, all of us –individually and collectively – must be mindful of Borg’s admonition:
“The spiritual journey … is about the hatching of the heart – the opening of the self to the reality of Spirit (which is all around us).”

And Campbell’s when he says that “we are not to become too attached to the mere phenomenal aspects of the world, but rather to see directly to its core.... (For) when one is ready to see the eternal flashing, as it were, through the latticework of time, one can directly experience mystery.”

And so, the caution and the challenge to all of us is to beware. Beware lest in shedding the one shroud of theological/ecclesiastical dogma, we do nothing to unbind our eyes of heart and soul. Doing that would be like re-shrouding ourselves by a closed-minded rationalism. Institutionally, we must ask ourselves whether here at Restoration we do enough in our worship services and other options for religious development to expose ourselves to wonder and awe and mystery.

Now, I don’t seek to stir discontent among the contented. Be thankful for your grace. But to the discontented, and by those statistics we are many, I say we must honor that discontent. Yes, there may be opportunities not fully exploited to make our congregational experience more spiritual and less cerebral. But ultimately the journey is yours – and mine – alone. Keep faith with yourself. But remember that merely doing more of the same things you’ve been doing probably won’t produce a different result. You might have to dare something different. And what are some of the things you can do to nourish your yearning spirit?

My third conclusion is that, once again, our UU purposes and principles show us the way, advising us to honor and draw upon the wisdom of the world’s religious traditions. Those traditions across time and cultures have developed time-tested disciplines for becoming more intentional about “hatching the heart” and experiencing Spirit.

Of all of them, two are overwhelmingly potent. The first is – dare I say it – prayer and meditation. Believing in the interconnectedness of all – real interconnectedness, not metaphorical – changes how one can see prayer. That interconnectedness means that prayer is not a communication with a distant being who doesn’t even exist. Rather, see Spirit as something of which we are constituents and whose force, as Dylan Thomas put it, “through the green fuse drives the flower and drives my red blood.” Prayer thus becomes a means of connecting with ourselves at the deepest level – the level at which our separateness disappears, the level where we can draw from, and contribute to, the limitless reservoir of inspiration, wisdom, courage, trust, and healing.

Prayer is the enjoying of the “You within me”, and its cumulative effect is that one’s sense of time, life, self and boundaries begins to change. Practicing prayer and meditation changes the practitioner.

The second disciplined path leading to the opening of one’s heart to Spirit -- separate from prayer, yet inevitably reached in prayer and meditation – is compassion. Practicing compassion is not just a discipline of spiritual transformation, but an end in itself. It is the central ethical principle of the gospel accounts of the Passion and Easter, of course. Indeed it is the central motif of the entire Jesus story. It is the core value of all the world’s religious traditions. Compassion means seeing the plight and suffering of others with your eyes of heart and soul and being moved. It ultimately results in using your mind’s eye to take action.

Sometimes situations come along in our lives that give birth to compassion. Remember from my last Easter sermon the story of the Hawaiian police officer on the Pali cliff road who leaped over the guard rail to grab a would-be suicide. But you can be more deliberate, and much less dramatic, about nurturing your compassion. It can even be birthed by really being present to the evening news. Over the weeks of war-footage, compassion is what you almost certainly would feel if you let yourself – or forced yourself -- to see beyond the whiz-bang of our techno-killing.

Whatever helps us open our hearts to the reality of the sacred is what we should be doing more of. If music moves you, listen more, or better yet make some. If poetry moves you, read more, or better yet write some. If nature moves you, go smell some flowers, or better yet plant some. If good works moves you, give more of your time to volunteering or social activism. Spirituality is about that process: the opening of the heart to Spirit in which you are already immersed, in which you already participate whether you realize it or not. And the fruit of this process is compassion. The presence or absence of compassion is the central test for discerning whether something is “of Spirit.” And as the primary gift of Spirit, compassion is the primary sign of one’s spiritual growth.

And isn’t that the very image with which John ends chapter 20, the Easter story, when Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.” Be clear in this passage about where the forgiving happens – in the hearts of the disciples! If you surrender your impulse of anger, judgment, penalty, they are forgiven.

Thus are all your shrouds shed: the mind’s eye freed of the shrouds of dogmatic theology and dogmatic rationalism; the eye of the soul unshrouded by the practice of prayer and/or meditation; the eye of the heart unshrouded by the practice of compassion. This is the path of spiritual discipline that allows one to enter deeply into UU’ism and, yet, go through and beyond, to the simplicity beyond the complexity, to one’s own direct experience of Spirit in which we are immersed, of which we are a part, through which we are One.

Let me close my remarks today by giving you a chance to revel in the ecstasy and afterward quietly reflect for a moment on more wisdom of Rumi:

You and I have spoken all these words.
But for the way we have to go, words are no preparation.
There’s no getting ready, other than grace.
My faults stay hidden: one might call that a preparation.

I have one small drop of knowing in my soul.
Let it dissolve in your ocean.

There are so many threats to it.
Inside us, there’s a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water.
A crow sits in the blackened limbs
And talks about what’s gone.

Then your generosity returns:
Spring, moisture, intelligence,
The smell of hyacinth and cypress.

Joseph is back!
And if you don’t feel in yourself the freshness of Joseph,
Be Jacob!

Weep, then smile.
Don’t pretend to know something you haven’t experienced.
There’s a necessary dying,
And then Jesus is breathing again.

Very little grows on jagged ground.
Be ground. Be crumbled,
So wildflowers will come up where you are.

Try something different.

Surrender.

[reflection moment]

I do still wonder what’s in that third box.

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