WHY DO THE MOST RADICAL THING YOU CAN DO? Unitarian Universalist Church of St Petersburg July 17, 2016 Rev. Jack Donovan

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1 WHY DO THE MOST RADICAL THING YOU CAN DO? Unitarian Universalist Church of St Petersburg July 17, 2016 Rev. Jack Donovan READINGS A Third Thing You Must Do from Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney The Earth is Sacred attributed to Chief Seattle Facing West from California s Shores by Walt Whitman And So the Being of Beings adapted from Genesis 1 & 2 The Little Things from Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn Deep Peace and Beauty from Gaelic Runes and Navajo Prayers SERMON One hundred-fifty years ago, a little before the Civil War, the great American poet and humanist Walt Whitman stood at the Pacific s edge and to the rush and wash of the waves he asked a question that has become America s question: Facing home again, to the land of maternity, long having wandered, where is what I started for so long ago, and why is it not yet found? Fifty years ago, another great American poet, and naturalist, Gary Snyder, stood on the same coast looking east at the land and answered, The most radical thing you can do is stay home. What were the poets talking about? One hundred-fifty miles up the coast from here, there s a little island town called Cedar Key. Crossing the mile of salt marshes to Cedar Key, my imagination goes to the first people, whose high middens of oyster shells still testify to their centuries of presence. What did they learn, that they were able to last so long? But that Cedar Key people is gone now, along with the cedar forests that named their place, long since turned into pencils and turpentine and freighted to Jacksonville and shipped hither and yon. Fifty miles or so inland from Cedar Key, about half way to Jacksonville, is Gainesville, where I used to live. One day in Gainesville, our neighbors were gardening and they dug up a sharply chiseled stone which they learned from the University of Florida Natural History Museum was a 9000 year old spear head. Turns out that our neighborhood, with its streams and sinkhole pools, had been a watering place for people and animals during a severe age of drought nine and ten thousand years ago. The hunters waited by the 1

2 waters for dinner to come by for a drink. History has shown that predators do that plan and wait for the thirsty or unsuspecting. Ten or so miles north of Gainesville on the Santa Fe River is an outdoor sports shop. In its display case, it has lots of fossils from the area. Most provocative for me are the claws and teeth of giant sloths and the bones and tusks of mammoths. Yes, sir, said the woodsman-salesman. Right here in north central Flor-EE-da. Lots of em great place for em. Food for the first peoples. Gradually killed em all off to extinction. My imagination went to a child 9000 years ago looking along the edge of the forest and out onto the prairie. Daddy, says the child. Where are the giant sloths? Where are the great mammoths? Out there somewhere, child. Out there somewhere. But they weren t anymore. The nomadic first peoples hadn t learned ecosystems. But the prehistoric child s questioning is an innate human impulse to gossip, to ask about the details of life, to opine whether the emperor has nice clothes or no clothes, to report which herbs heal and which kill, to identify who understands and who does not. The gossip s questions are the philosopher s questions: What makes a difference, and is it good or bad for peace and prosperity, for a beautiful life? How engaged are we in the child s questions and the philosopher s? In the Ocala National Forest, you can take a glass bottom boat out of Silver Springs the world s largest fresh water spring and float down the Silver River, dodging alligators and canoes, while a retired university professor talks about the Original People who had lived there. Imagine, said the professor as we peered into the forests and down to the river bottom. From what we can tell from the archeological remains and bits of conquistador missionary records, these people lived here for 5000 years in uninterrupted peace and prosperity. What we could learn from them. Yes. If you live in one place for a thousand years, you start to understand a lot about living there together, in accord with what the UU covenant calls the rhythms of nature and the sacred circle of life. But they are gone, those people, with the giant sloth, with the great mammoth, with the wisdom their own ancestors had not learned in time for the mammoths and the sloths. Gone beneath guns, germs, and steel. Time and technology, marching on. 2

3 In the nineteen seventies, among others, poet Gary Snyder, born in 1930, saw the dustbowl settled but the hoboes spread, the military hobnob with industry over struggling peoples, the poisoned springs become the silent spring, peak oil predicted but too late. Nomadism had become the American norm; staying home was radical and it was just not done. But the poet knew that radical does not mean extreme. It means rooted, deeply in place, attentive, tending and keeping in harmony, living at the core of being, prospering in healthy balance with all in this Eden. And if it does mean extreme, let it be in Martin Luther King s meaning, an extremist for love. Psychologist and mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, The little things? The little moments? They aren t little. I think he is warning that too often we miss the grandness of life because we anxiously mindlessly take the present moment for granted, without deeply noticing its wonders. Perhaps, he adds, the most spiritual thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness. That s radical. Sounds a bit like the old prophet Micah of Judea act justly, devote yourself to kindness, walk humbly with your holy source. What if young Micah of Dallas, Texas Micah Johnson - had received that training rather than military training? He would have found a way to help advance peace and prosperity across racial lines rather than give the powerful an excuse to exercise still greater oppression. Aren t these the eyes of wholeness of which Jon Kabat-Zinn speaks -- to see the sanctity in every being and to see how to help move that sanctity to an expression of the full beauty of life? Isn t that integrity the wholeness of the human spirit? Social scientists have recently identified a behavior called nesting as the key factor in our species becoming social and cooperative, becoming able to assess intention and causality, becoming capable of planning for the future and of caring for others. For many primates, life is mainly nomadic: home is where the food is, not where the nest is. But human primates found a different strategy and it became innate in us. Find a good location; build a home, a nest, a community. Caregivers then raise our children in the safety of home and village, while provenders bring back our food from the hunt or the farm maybe with a bouquet of flowers, a necklace of shells, a pouch of chocolates. 3

4 Humans evolved by being radical, by being rooted by staying home, in the land of maternity, in the garden tending and keeping rather than taking and wasting soil and soul. Yes, we wander when we have to, for food, for safety, occasionally for adventure, sometimes wisely to learn what the other side of the mountain can teach about peace and prosperity. Yes, mobility has its place but nomadism is mainly for the desperate who cannot find a home. Life is fulfilled when we are Miss Rumphius with matured understanding, helping the world bloom where we are planted. In home and village, life is being shaped. On earth, life is being shaped. In the heart and heat of St Petersburg, life is being shaped, every day. Those present for the conversation do the shaping, for good or ill, to the degree they understand and boldly seek the common good. So poet and mystic and scientist tell us, the most radical thing is to connect with a place and its people and all its beings, with all your mind and heart and soul and strength. In that undepletable depth of being resides true blessing, the eternal power of being, the ultimate source in such tiny emergent form that our only sense of it, if we pay attention, is the feeling of awe. Let me finish with the local case, with national and international ramifications. In every home and village and neighborhood, the transcending questions are as they have ever been. Will the means to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be secured for all? More precisely for St. Petersburg today, the prophet s questions are: - Will basic human rights be secured for African Americans? Well, it - Will fair opportunity be secured for the children born poor? Well, it - Will the land and water be protected for our posterity? Well, it I would guess we all sense, dully or sharply, that the ideals and functioning of the American democratic system are being eroded by the power of 4

5 extreme wealth and immature selfishness, that the responses to the prophet s questions are being controlled by the few and the wrong. How can we turn the troubled energy of the times to the common good? We must show up. Whether it is at the Pride Festival (that we did so well), the Martin Luther King and Black Lives Matter marches, May Day and Labor Day events, (at least for me) Planned Parenthood advocacy, or Friday evening meals for the homeless in our own church plaza, we must show up. That is 90 percent of success. This coming Thursday is an example. The St Petersburg City Council will begin considering an ordinance to protect popular elections from being bought by huge investments of money from the Super PACs of the very wealthy. All our other popular hopes depend on this success. We can take part for ourselves locally and for our country as a whole, seeing with eyes of wholeness and acting with integrity and kindness. In the end, I think it is a question of devotion. What do I love enough to make a beautiful difference? My self? My children? My grandchildren? My country? My species? My planet? The final words of the Unitarian Universalist covenant point me to this: I must choose to devote my life to one place, to make it home and delve into its realities deeply enough that I do not trash it, to understand its sacred interdependent realities and how and why to live in harmony with all, here and everywhere. I must choose to be devotedly rooted enough to be nourished, to be fruitful, to hold together my land and people, and to make my world more beautiful. To this our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor. 5