DRAWING MORAL BELIEFS FROM EARTH-CENTERED TEACHINGS Is Their Way Her Way?

DRAWING MORAL BELIEFS FROM EARTH-CENTERED TEACHINGS Is Their Way Her Way? Sermon by Rev. Jack Donovan, November 20, 2016 Unitarian Universalist Church of St Petersburg READINGS (at end of sermon) Invocation: Earth Teach Me, from a Ute Native American Prayer Meditation Reading: I Think Continually of Those, by Stephen Spender Sermon Reading: It s Not a Deal from Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver Closing: You Are, from the Welsh Black Book of Camarthan SERMON Eckerd College recently hosted a public lecture on how to improve interfaith relations. In the question period, a student worried as to how she was living in a lovely but small Eckerd College bubble and wondered what to do about that. The speaker stumbled around quite a bit trying to tell her how to get out of it. The response that came to my mind was that everyone is in a worldview bubble of some kind and always will be. Even if you achieve cosmic consciousness, you are still in this cosmos. But what you can do is keep expanding your bubble of consciousness by borrowing material from other bubbles to be more inclusive and by giving up some material from your bubble to become more translucent. The good news is, your bubble can keep becoming more wonderful and more of a blessing. That, I believe, is one of our great potentials to be able to expand our bubble, our circle of blessing. To expand it, we explore the world s wisdom regarding What is life, How best shall we live, and Who says - that is, we mine for truer beliefs about Reality, Morality, and Authority. This morning we return a third and final time, for the time being, to Earth-Centered traditions. Our question is, What can we draw from them in order to expand our bubble of understanding about how best to live. That is, in the Ojibway term, what is the sacred way. How best to live of course depends on what life is and how it works. Your sense of Morality will depend on your sense of Reality. So, to begin consideration of Morality in Earth-Centered traditions, let s summarize their rich and variegated understanding of Reality: The world - that is, all Nature - is the Great Spirit. Everything in the world somehow evolves and lives in and from this Power Source. 1

So, everything is full of characteristic powers that are symbolic of the potentials deriving from the Great Spirit. These potentials can be understood through contemplation or questing into the symbolic forms. They can be fulfilled by living the sacred way the way of the Great Spirit. Since everything derives or evolves from the Great Spirit, there are no divisions or conflicts within a species or between species that necessitate destruction as the resolution to problems. Humans can learn the Sacred Way to fulfillment in the Great Spirit by revering and reflecting on the way of plants and animals and Nature s elements and systems. From the harmonious order of things - each thing investing itself in the whole - comes the blessings of the fulfilled potentials from the Great Spirit with everything sustained and sustaining in its place. You might hear that Belief Statement about Reality with complete intuitive agreement and generate many personal moral convictions. Or you might seek out teachings about how best to live in such a Reality. Or you might first compare each belief to other views, including your own direct experience, to see if it makes sense and helps you orient your life more beneficially. I believe we would all benefit from doing such a comparative assessment, if only in imaginative meditation, as this belief system itself recommends. As to this summary, remember that each Reality belief I ve described has been lifted out and condensed from a number of peoples and cultures vastly different from one another at least on the surface. If what you sense from my gleanings makes sense to you, there is then much original native material to learn from. I said these traditions vary greatly. But they are of a type which some call Earth-Centered, or Shamanistic, or Primal, or Indigenous. What makes them of a type, as I understand the anthropology and theology, are the following unique cluster of commonalities: - they all transmit their teachings, not by written scripture and dogma, but only through spoken stories, artistically rendered images, and long-practiced rituals; - they are all tribal or, you might say, communal, recognizing that their social, economic, and spiritual survival and identity come from being part of this people; - they all identify the persons and the tribe with the features and creatures of their homelands; and - they emphasize a deeply meditative relationship with the manifest 2

elements of time and space and matter as symbols of deeper spiritual realities, thereby making living an art form, or maybe more profoundly, the art form. In that context we find a variety of moral beliefs about how best to live. To start a list, in our reading from Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver illuminates several primal moral beliefs with a concept her story characters call Balance and which I d expand to call Appreciative Balance: Moral Belief #1: Maintain Appreciative Balance. Understand that we are guests to whom good fortune is provided and it is up to us to invest ourselves to prevent damage or depreciation to our guest home in Nature. Moral Belief #2: Learn the Sacred Way of Appreciative Balance. Come to understand the workings of the Great Spirit as the life source and life force common to all. Look deeply at the meaning of these workings. Learn how Nature s elements, seasons, rhythms, and cycles all work in harmony to promote life s blessings. Moral Belief #3: Invest yourself in Appreciative Balance. Some primal religious traditions required blood sacrifice to balance the sacrifice made by the Source of Life in sharing itself with all. In our day, what sacrifices might we consider to maintain appreciative balance? If time is life and time is money, perhaps time invested in the lives and well-being of others is our highest sacrifice, with manifold returns to us, the investors. (Not the least of the returns is that devoting time to people and creation in preference to money gives you more life time.) One never knows where one will get instruction in spiritual teachings. I was in the dentist chair a couple of weeks ago, a book entitled World Religions in my lap. The young dental tech inquired about the book and I replied I was currently studying Earth-Centered religions like Native American teachings. She promptly gave me an excited and thorough review of Brother Bear, the best movie, that made me cry all the way through, but it ends well. So at home I Amazoned that Academy Award nominated Disney animation. It did end well. Once upon a long time ago, an Inuit boy coming-of-age pridefully rejects the unmanly totem the old medicine woman assigns to him, the spiritual guide of the Bear of Love. By his rejection, both tradition and spiritual order are broken, as, in consequence, are lives and hearts. To restore life s order and truly come of age, the boy must become a compassionate brother bear through courageous acts of shamanic spirit questing. The obvious moral teaching is, Have compassion and appreciation for all living things. But the formative, and perhaps profounder, moral teaching is, Inherit by imagination and adoption the powerful spiritual qualities of our 3

kindred species, and so become more fully human in harmony with the Great Spirit. We heard a similar teaching and call in the Ute Nation s prayer with which we opened our service. The movie and the prayer lead to another belief about how best to live: Moral Belief #4: Learn and practice the virtues of Earth s family stillness, suffering, caring, courage, limitation, freedom, resignation, regeneration, selflessness, kindness. Pay attention, interpret, live truly. Related to the prayer and the movie is the photograph you ll find in the bulletin. It is a photo of a wolf-pack on the move. What does it teach? If we paid attention long enough, we would understand. First in line are the ill and elderly, these three, in front to set a pace they can manage, and perhaps to sacrifice themselves for the pack in case of ambush. Second, five from among the pack s strongest, serving as the front line of defense. In the middle, the bulk of the pack, not among the strongest, but central to the pack s surviving and thriving. Fourth, the five strongest, able to move most quickly to defense or assistance. Last, the alpha wolf, leading from behind, able to see how everyone is doing, able to give direction, encouragement, and help as needed. Moral Belief #5: Learn the Thriving Caring Strategies of Earth s family Observing the wolves and all species, nomadic tribes learned effective and efficient ways to ensure the safety of all their people, as could we all. Related to this is another major Earth-Centered spiritual teaching of which, I think, Stephen Spender s meditation this morning speaks wonderfully: Moral Belief #6: Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great. Remember, venerate, and learn from the ancestors who established our ways and can inspire and guide us still in spirit. This fire of life that feeds the flowering of the spirit is what can be passed to us from the formative ancestors. Perhaps they did not even feel great, those spirit questers and grail seekers. But for us, is it not true that the heroes we choose set the path we walk, sacred or not, corridors of light or not, fighting for life or not, vivid with honor or not. Here are the Earth-Centered peoples moral teachings so far: - Maintain appreciative balance. - Learn the sacred way of appreciative balance. - Invest yourself in appreciative balance. - Learn and practice the virtues of earth s family. - Learn the thriving caring strategies of earth s family. - Think continually of those who were truly great. 4

As we ve thought about the spiritual teachings of indigenous peoples, I have mentioned, but not emphasized, something that is essential to take to heart and keep in mind. That is, the mechanized consumer world s relation to this organic appreciative-balance world. The devastation has long been beyond the mechanized world s concern or understanding or attention. Typical for the whole period were Spanish invasions of Mexico that reduced the population from 25 million Mesoamericans to 750 thousand in a matter of a few years. Typical for our current period is the willingness of the mechanized world to override indigenous people s treaties, rights, and common sense to build tools of empire like the Dakota Access Pipeline for fracked fuels. So much lost; yet so much personhood and wisdom to be retrieved. As we learn, can we take it to heart? Let me tie things up to conclude. Over the three Sundays devoted to learning from Earth-Centered religious traditions, I ve worn three neckties that are among my four favorites. Today, I m wearing my butterfly tie. If we study the butterfly closely and symbolically, as Earth-Centered moral teachings recommend, we realize the importance of cooperation in order to be useful and to bear fruit. We learn about self-sacrifice and faith in the cocoon of Nature in order that we be transfigured in beauty and freedom and blessing. Thus reflecting, we learn the point of morality. Last week I wore my orca tie, with the magnificent whales leaping for joy in the glaciered waters of the north, accompanied by celebrating dolphin and turtles. What are they celebrating? My inner orca tells me: life-power; wildness; companionship; being here, alive. Thus reflecting, we learn the nature of Reality. And for the first Sunday we thought about Earth-Centered wisdom, I wore my Lascaux Cave paintings tie. Talk about being inside a bubble. Yet, on Earth today, there is hardly another work of art with such precision, such character, such power, such authority. Here we learn reverence. Here we learn responsibility. Here in retrospect we learn the vulnerability of even the most powerful of the great spirits. And in the middle of this, a human hand, imprinted by the artist 28,000 years ago by blowing paint over a hand placed on the great cave wall, pressing out the bubble itself. It speaks to the fourth of my favorite ties my Save the Children tie. The artist has left to our imaginations a message in this most intimate of images, the human hand. In it we see the character of authority. Primal Authority says to its descendants, us and all children, Here am I, sending you power and beauty and bounty, from my people to yours. Use it well. 5

READINGS INVOCATION Earth Teach Me from a Ute Native American Prayer Earth teach me stillness as the grases are stilled with light. Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory. Earth teach me caring as parents who secure their young. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground. Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky. Earth teach me resignation as the leafes which die in the fall. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in spring. Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain. WORDS FOR MEDITATION I Think Continually of Those by Stephen Spender I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire, Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song. And who hoarded from the Spring branches The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms. What is precious, is never to forget The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light Nor its grave evening demand for love. Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit. Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, See how these names are fêted by the waving grass And by the streamers of white cloud And whispers of wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire s centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour. 6

READING BEFORE SERMON It s Not a Deal from Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver So, I said to Lloyd, you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they ll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right. After a minute he said, No, it s not like that. It s not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to cause them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance. In balance. Really, it s like the spirits have made a deal with us. And what is the deal? I asked. We re on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we re saying: We know how nice you re being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You ve gone to a lot of trouble, and we ll try to be good guests. Like a note you d send somebody after you stayed in their house? Exactly like that. Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn t your favorite one. I laughed because I understood in balance. I would have called it keeping the peace, or maybe remembering your place, but I liked it. It s a good idea, I said. Especially since we re still here sleeping on God s couch. We re permanent houseguests. Yep, we are. Better remember how to put everything back how we found it. 7

CLOSING You Are from the Welsh Black Book of Camarthan You are the wind that breathes upon the sea, You are the wave on the ocean, You re the murmur of leaves rustling, You are the rays of the sun, You are the beam of the moon and stars, You are the power of trees growing, You are the bud breaking into blossom, You are the movement of the salmon swimming, You are the courage of the wild boar fighting, You are the speed of the stag running, You are the strength of the ox pulling the plough, You are the size of the mighty oak, You are the thoughts of all people, Who praise your beauty and your gracious power. Return to the people, then, pondering your gracious power and how best to use it. 8