Peace and Wild Sunday, April 26, 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist Readings (1) God and The Commonplace, the Rev. John Cyrus (1911-1981), who for many years graced the pulpit of the Unitarian Universalist church in Milwaukee: I am much at home in my own familiar place. But sometimes it suddenly seems to me that I am a wild man. Not an impostor, but wild. It does not seem to me that I am wild in what I actually do, in my behavior or in how I expect to go on behaving, but in what I ask and expect of others. I suspect that I want them to be wilder than I succeed in being. For isn t it subversive - and wild - to want people to unmake their minds and make them up again, to want them to be more human than they are, to propose to extend their awareness of the world and themselves, to ask them to make difficult decisions and judgments which they might quite successfully avoid, to want them to live more eagerly, more hopefully, more determinedly, than they do? (2) The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry 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 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. 1
Peace and Wild Rev. Bruce Southworth Springtime is a bit late and cold this year. For many weeks now, I have been eyeing the city trees, Callery Pears I believe, that line 35 th Street worrying about the ill effects of cold weather and brutal winter, awaiting the wild, flagrant outburst of white flowers that finally have arrived. They cheer me as much as reports of cherry blossoms a few weeks ago in Washington, D.C. and now at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. My spirituality includes a certain resonance with Nature s outpouring and transitions, and I was also reminded this week of deeper cosmic mysteries with a news story about the largest structure in the universe. It is a 1.8 billion light-year-wide cold spot, a supervoid with fewer galaxies and radiation sources than normal, and it is one more tantalizing mystery. Whether in our lives with one another, our social networks and civilizations, or deep space, I turn to some lines from the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere, destroyer and preserver. Shelley was dismissed from University College at Oxford in 1811 for his atheist views, yet to me his natural theology of God in Nature seems evident and quite modern, if not traditional, nor Christian. (Those lines appear in Ode to the West Wind, which concludes, The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind. ) Not all urbanites share my joy and awe and reverence before trees and galaxies, yet most all of us gather moments, memories, and sparkling mementoes of Life s aliveness its wildness as well as peace. I turn to this theme of peace and wild to complement last week s explorations of Taoism and to revisit the sacred Creativity within us and around us, as a faithful anchor in our transient, beautiful, and sometimesunsettled lives. At the outset, I also offer a different image, memory, anchor, both peaceful and a little wild. A man reports sitting down to lunch and seeing another diner with two gold watches on his wrist: one watch very small and exceptionally beautiful. 2
(The 2 nd man) was old and rumply with grey, matted hair that pointed like a weathervane toward oblivion. The first person reported. "If I asked about the watches, I would have to speak very loudly because he was hard of hearing, and we'd be embarrassed if forgetfulness had caused him to be wearing two watches." He played an unpredictable baritone horn in the town orchestra, and with his deafness, perhaps the larger one was a metronome. The four hands of the watches seemed to wave to each other, at times almost touching, and now praying. Perhaps there were days when they disagreed, were out of sync, and both needed to be set right. And if it were quiet enough, you could hear them ticking like faint heartbeats close together. Finally, curiosity got the better of the first man, and he reached across the table and touched the two watches. The man looked up smiling, and said, "I keep one to check-up on the other!" Then, he added in a warmer voice, "My partner, my wife, wore the little watch every day before she died." [Rev. Ernest Campbell offers this tale in his "Notebook," and it comes from John H. Valk, prison Chaplain, Elmira, N. Y.] Out of the desperately fleeting days of our lives, encounters bless, love emerges, and memories go with us as naturally as returning spring. And sharing them sometimes helps too. In another example of peace and wild, I return to our teacher in our faith, Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose Transcendentalism, natural theology, and affirmation of our inner beauty and possibilities provoke us still. Emerson was 27 years old when his first wife Ellen died in 1831 at age 20 of tuberculosis. He was prominent as Minister of the Second Church of Boston, a leading Unitarian congregation, but he had not yet embarked upon his career as a writer and lecturer that made him the 19 th century s most distinguished thinker and writer. Not for another seven years in 1838 would he give the Harvard Divinity School Address that liberated Unitarianism into the adventurous, bold faith we continually shape in our time. Emerson counseled that we are each one of us to have our own original relationship to the universe. Many of us first encountered Emerson through his essay on Self-Reliance; for me it was part of the tenth grade English textbook, and it was one I read again and again. The constant question of his heart was, Whence comes our 3
power? He answered: The integrity of our minds, over against a society that seeks conformity. He counseled that we cultivate our souls, by which he meant that we develop our character and live life at first hand. So, if you are Emerson, what do you do? Just maybe you resign from ministry, speak out against the Unitarian establishment and declare that each of us experiences the divine directly, at first hand, unmediated even by Jesus. Such freedom of belief was an act of liberation, and such wild thoughts were denounced by the conservative, reactionary wing even of liberal Unitarians. And he helped set us free with such wild insights. Peace and quiet would be nice, is nice, amid any hectic days, but Emerson suggests what we what I really need for the long haul is Peace and Wild. Peace and wildness. They go hand in hand. I have long had an inkling of this wisdom from the poet Wendell Berry who puts it so well in the reading, when he writes: I rest in the grace of the world the peace of wild things and am free. Following this thought, these experiences, drinking a little deeper, my soul recalls the poet s words: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere, destroyer and preserver. A wild spirit, within Life, that leads to new life. In our first reading, I again share observations of the Rev. John Cyrus, who for so many years graced the pulpit of the Unitarian Universalist church in Milwaukee: isn t it subversive and wild to want people to unmake their minds and make them up again to live more eagerly, more hopefully, more determinedly? These are the wild things our liberal faith offers as a path to peace a sense of wholeness. Peace and Wild Howard Thurman, spiritual giant and mentor to Dr. King, lived in the grace of harmony with this glorious, difficult, tragic, splendid creation with a peacefulness that fueled his power and vision for wild things things like justice. Thurman knew well the Wild Spirit, the sacred creative spirit in us and around us, a wild spirit that emerges so abundantly and oddly. Do you know how a hive of bees moves on to a new home? It is a fascinating thing, kind of wild as daughters of the Queen bee go out and seek the right place, the right tree, the right cavity in a wall perhaps. The scouts report back and do a dance, and 4
if they dance with a contagious enthusiasm, a few more scouts will follow them to check it out also. If in agreement, they too start dancing, rather frenzied dancing I understand. And there may well be competition perhaps some tango, some jitterbug, some hiphop. A few more go to check out a site, and then if they too like it, they join in the dancing. The favorite site gets more visitors, and gradually, the biggest crowd wins. Only then does the swarm take off, and in this democratic action, the Queen follows. (Kevin Kelly in D. Pope-Lance s essay Swarm Theology. ) Scientists call this feature of this social system emergence. It is a capacity to connect, interact, to relate. Emergence keeps life happening, generating [a] capacity to evolve, to create something new and distinct. For the scientist, emergence is how life happens and continues to happen. There is a buzzing, crackling energy in this universe, at least fifteen billion years old, and there is blazing Creativity upon this something we call Earth the last five billion years, an evolving, sensuous Creativity called biological life for some 700 million years; now, Life aware of itself, emergent, in us. Out of the stars we have come, star-stuff! Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, all those stellar elements. Now self-conscious, self-aware and sensing a connectedness. And do you know what a disaster is? Dis-aster aster from the Greek for star, like asteroids. Dis-aster to be separated from the stars, from the cosmos; Some might use the word God, though it is not necessary, to point to that which is Creative, and Trustworthy in leading to new Life. There are many names, and more often than not, this process, wild, creative, emergent, within you and all around us, more often than not, I speak of Spirit and Spirit of Life. As wild as it is, we can rest in it. And we always have a choice: to be open to it or not. Winnie-the-Pooh is one who instructs me from time to time. He is a children s storybook character with some wisdom, including patience. Hallo! said Piglet, what are you doing? Hunting, said Pooh. Hunting what? Tracking something, said Winne-the-Pooh very mysteriously. Tracking what? said Piglet, coming closer. That s just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What? What do you think you ll answer? I shall have to wait until I catch up with it, said Winnie-the-Pooh. 5
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, All life is an experiment. The more experiments the better. Wild Spirit in unlikely places. Emerson, who so deeply contributed to our faith, but also who so formidably shaped our country by his ideas, Emerson was as a child deemed by his parents among the least likely to succeed among his siblings. Several of his brothers were more academically gifted. Waldo, as he liked to be called, was class poet upon graduation from Harvard College, but only after six other classmates had turned down the opportunity. A middling student, his extracurricular reading was three times more extensive than that for classes. He had a vision for himself as a poet, a scholar, a person of ideas, and he read widely. He was deeply influenced by his eccentric aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, a wild lady of sorts. She was diminutive, standing but 4 3 tall. Her bed was in the shape of a coffin. She often wore a burial shroud. As eccentric as she was, she had a lively, engaging intellect. Self-educated, she was more learned than most of the Boston ministers. She was a writer, an independent thinker, and a controversialist. Her obituary declared that she was thought to have the power of saying more disagreeable things in half an hour than any person living. (Emerson: The Mind on Fire, R. D. Richardson) Mary Moody Emerson introduced her nephew to writings of European philosophers and Hindu thinkers. She encouraged him to think for himself and to treasure his own experience and not simply to rely upon what he read. She planted many of the seeds that were to give rise to his own vision of life. First a teacher, Emerson followed his father s footsteps into ministry, but it proved a poor match. As much as he enjoyed preaching and writing, Emerson was quite inept in pastoral calls. He was also having severe theological differences with liberal Unitarianism. At that time, it was still clearly Jesus-oriented and avowedly Christian, but Emerson saw the divine in each person and saw universal religious teachings in many faiths of the world, particularly Hinduism, which he had been studying. His views emerged in what became known as Transcendentalism, and the intellectual circle around him at his home in Concord, Massachusetts included the ebullient feminist Margaret Fuller, the experimental educator Bronson Alcott, and writers like Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Leaving the ministry, he embarked upon a career as a public lecturer and essayist, as well as sometimes editor, all fed by his journal keeping. 6
He wrote, A portion of the truth bright and sublime, lives in every moment in every mind. His radical, democratic faith was in full battle against Calvinism s view of human depravity. He affirmed a fundamental unity of all things, beneath the surface appearances, echoing Hindu thought of the Bhagavad-Gita. He came to affirm that our most appropriate response is that of astonishment and celebration of the cosmos, the beauty and order of creation. This faith was emerging not long after Ellen s death, and it deepened despite the death of his beloved son at age five, and untimely deaths of several brothers and close friends like Margaret Fuller. For all his individualism, he vociferously protested the final removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee to eastern Oklahoma in 1838. This was an unconventional position, to be sure, in those times, but one growing from his faith that we cannot isolate ourselves from others. We are intertwined and part of one another and all things. Also, in Emerson's day in the 1840s, "the average American uninquiringly tolerated slavery and the inhuman treatment of the slave," (Martin Marty, Context, 10/1/91) and Emerson in an abolitionist speech in 1844 offers a culinary comment: The sugar they raised was excellent. Nobody tasted blood in it. (Mind on Fire, p. 397) In his family, his children remember him running downhill with them at full speed, a wild, joyful father. His daughter reports that his speed was something glorious. He delighted in Nature. He loved to garden. He apparently failed abysmally at it; a committee from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society came to visit to see how he managed to get such poor fruit from such excellent stock. It was said that if he planted corn it would come up tulips. So much more could be said about Emerson, and I shall return to him another day. I do, however, want to add these words that bespeak his approach to life: First, one has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the House of Pain. Counterbalanced by: Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods. The peace of wild things. A call to lead authentic, and thus wild lives, and not for ourselves alone. To live with praise and astonishment. Heaven, spirit, god in us. wiser than despair and pain. A more contemporary witness is the writer, essayist Nancy Mairs. In her volume of essays, CARNAL ACTS, she writes about her life with a chronic disease this way: 7
To view your life as blessed does not require you to deny your pain. It simply demands a more complicated vision, one in which a condition or event is not either good or bad, but is, rather, both good and bad, not sequentially but simultaneously. In my experience, the more such ambivalences you can hold in your head, the better off you are, intellectually and emotionally. Categorical statements become meaningless. The saddest stories are shot through with humor. You come to tolerate people, ideas, and circumstances wholly at odds with your dreams and desires. (15) She goes on to say, I am still being the woman I thought I could never bear to be. And I am still afraid. She adds, We are all weaving some cosmic tapestry of which I ve been able to glimpse a few threads. Beauty and astonishment and peacefulness of one wiser than despair. She is a writer and a feminist and an activist in various social justice causes. The difficulties of her life, she believes, allow her a greater range of responses, and allow a deeper generosity of spirit. Most of us although not all live with fewer limitations. I think of the boy who lived with his family next to a lake. As a young child, his parents always told him not to go to the lake alone. One day they could not find him, and after searching everywhere, they walked up their driveway to find him standing next to the mailbox and holding a suitcase. The relieved parents ran up to him, hugged him, and asked what he was doing. He responded, I m running away. Why are you running away? they asked. He said, Because you will not let me go near the lake. Again they asked, But why are you standing here by the mailbox? His answer: Because you won t let me cross the road. It is hard to break all the chains that society places on us and that we place upon ourselves. Sometimes, you want to flee and just don t know how. Or you are torn up and don t know what to do. The House of Pain may make us forget how deeply Spirit, Life, Creativity infuses us and surrounds us. What is trustworthy and heals? Emerson in his grief not only visited his wife s tomb, but also looked into her coffin, and yet would say, Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods. 8
We yearn for peace and quiet, which is a blessing whenever it arrives. But more and more, I am seeing, feeling, accepting Life s way, God s way, Spirit s way as Peace and Wild. And, it really is ok for us, in exploring our lives, to be a little wild to walk by the lake and to cross the road. 9