May 31, 2015, Pentecost
I want to tell you about a book I'm about to read. I would have told you about a book I was actually reading except that I accidentally sent it to my granddaughter on my Prime account. The book is called The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. I can almost hear the sound of 8th Day folks thinking, "ewww, snails" or "oh no, it's commitment Sunday and Pentecost!" But first listen to this blurb from the book reviewer:
"Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the inspiring and intimate story of her year-long encounter with a Neohelix albolabris—a common forest snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches as the snail takes up residence on her nightstand. Intrigued by its molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making ability, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence."
I love this kind of thinking -- an odd fresh way of looking at things you think you already know all about.
What I take from this blurb is a sense of reverence. I think reverence has much to offer -- reverence for my own small self, reverence for every existing bit, and awe that anything exists at all. Awe for the complex way our bodies are made to receive energy and to construct a world of matter through our senses. Awe that every creature we perceive as sentient exists with us in an astonishing matrix. That we are related to everything in the universe. That's one kind of reverence -- it's a little abstract.
But I'm thinking of a more everyday reverence and how it relates to community. You all have been together for a long time, some of you for thirty or forty years. You have accomplished amazing things together. One of your mission groups has just renewed the Potter's House so that it's beautiful and welcoming and true to the CofS heritage. There is a group that is passionate about racial justice and reconciliation. You know how to play together and how to work together and you are deeply involved in one another's lives.
And when a group has been together for a long time a certain ennui can develop, like an old marriage. You go to members meeting and you already know what a person is going to say when they stand up to talk or you have a project in mind and you already know who is going to object and who is going to support you. That kind of thing. You still love the people whom you know so well but you avoid getting into circumstances that you know will lead to encounters you don't want. You might avoid those particular people too.
This is from a letter Richard Rohr of The Center for Action and Contemplation received: "How are we supposed to see one another as Christs? There is so much contrary evidence. Do we just pretend?"
What do you think? Is there a way to go even deeper into love and commitment for the ones you've chosen to walk with through the rest of your lives? It's easy to do that with the lovable ones, the ones who carry leadership qualities (unless you're jealous!), the ones who love you best. But what about those who bore you, who challenge everything you say, who just irritate you by their conversation? Can we find a way to revere them? To see the face of God in them?
Maybe Elisabeth Bailey's method could apply here. Starting with a snail, a creature most of us would rather have nothing to do with, especially with what the reviewer calls hydraulic locomotion -- meaning its gooey slime trail -- as she minutely observes it she finds awe and respect. Could we do that with the people we live with? Not stalking them or anything like that, but seeing with our hearts. Richard Rohr speaks of this kind of noticing as an exercise in keeping your heart and mind spaces open long enough for the mind to see other hidden material. He goes further to describe this process: it withholds from labeling things or categorizing them too quickly, so it can come to see them in themselves, apart from the words or concepts that become their substitutes. Humans tend to think that because they agree or disagree with the idea of a thing, they have realistically encountered the thing itself.
Just as I think I know what a snail is because I have an idea of a snail from having seen many. But I close my mind and heart when I think snail.
That is not to say 8th Day folks aren't already seeing with your hearts. I'm just talking about paying close attention to what is very near, wanting to see into what is hidden, to respect and reverence those qualities. Again, Rohr says, this kind of seeing requires a lot of practice, but the rewards are superb, and, I believe, necessary for both joy and truth in this world.
I'd like to mention just a few examples of this kind of seeing and paying attention.
The first an excerpt from the NY times editorial page this week. The column was written by T.M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford University.
Many years ago I met a man who as a teenager had been irritated that the comfortable, middle-class Jews he met in his Northern California synagogue did not take God seriously. He'd see them in the temple on High Holy Days -- the only time many of them came to services, he thought -- and be appalled at the flirting and the gossip. He would look around at the congregation and thin: Who are these people? But he also felt like one of them -- ignorant of the Torah, naive about his faith.
So he went to Jerusalem. There, he met God. At least, one night he had an experience so remarkable, so terrifying, so powerful, and so grand that, years later, when he told me about it, he made me turn off my tape recorder and swore me to secrecy about the details. The morning after his encounter, he made his way to a rabbi. The older man listened carefully and told him that while his experience was important, he should keep it private for now, and focus on his study, (which is just what a good spiritual director would say to a Christian who has had a unitive experience.)
And do you remember Merton's experience on the street corner in Louisville? He wrote this:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers….There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Probably most of us think we're a long way from that but the Transcendent is still there, still breaks in unexpectedly bringing awe and a desire to love everyone and everything. Really, that's what Pentecost is all about -- the followers of Jesus were given an extraordinary and temporary ability to tell everyone there that they were loved by that Transcendence. And the reaction of those who were unwilling to see, was to laugh and accuse those who were caught up in the fire of love, of being drunk. It's easy to dismiss things from the spiritual realm. It makes us uncomfortable, out of control, a little eerie.
Once, a long time ago, Jed Johnson, who was married to Sydney, came on retreat with his church. It was something he was doing as a matter of course but sometime during that weekend, the risen Christ came to Jed in his room at the Inn. I have never heard the details except it was something like what happened to the man who went to Jerusalem -- so remarkable, so terrifying, so powerful, and so grand -- that Jed was completely shaken by the experience. He wouldn't come on retreat again for years, but the whole intention of his life changed.
When we go on retreat we're risking an encounter like that. When we sit in silence the risk is there, too.
I have read about a rabbi who kissed his wife good-by every morning when he went to work as if it were the last time, because God might break out that day and he would be consumed.
But meanwhile, tomorrow is a Monday morning and the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We're not Thomas Merton. We can only begin here. What I do is practice a little bit of silent meditation, maybe 20 minutes a day -- and so far I haven't seen anything like the shining of the people around me, but I have a sense that if I would increase that practice, which I'm trying to do, things might clear up a little bit. For now, sitting still and observing the activity in my mind is very enlightening. The first thing I realize is that almost every single thought I have is about me,. Sometimes I have felt embarrassed before God at the constant me, me, me thoughts, as if my conscious thought life were a slush pit.
It 's very hard for people who are activists to settle down to silence. Especially when I was working, it felt as if my mind was a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts and emotions, and my body wasn't very still either. In spite of that, I know it's worthwhile to take on the discipline of sitting quietly every day.
The key is not to be critical of the quality of the experience, but to watch for the outcome of silence in your daily life. Do you have more energy for loving others, are you stronger in your desire to give? Are you able to be more patient in listening to people who talk a lot? Things like that.
My experience is that now and then a genuine rest, a profound insight will be given. Sometimes there are tiny moments that you remember the rest of your life. I remember a time when Bud and I were with my family at our place in New Mexico. I was sitting out in the woods, not very quiet, but a little breeze passed by me, and in that second I knew the Holy Spirit, or an angel had passed by. I can't tell you how I knew, but I'll never forget that moment. It made me think of Elijah's moment in the cave, when the earthquake and the great fire had passed by and he heard the sound of a gentle silence.
Even if we never know the grandeur and terror of a direct encounter with the Divine, our commitment to each other can be deepened and freshened by sitting in silence, enduring our emptiness and anxiety and boredom, learning patience as we sit. Jesus has assured us that the kingdom is within and that resting in him is the way to our deep interior where he has always been, and that is the source of reverence, awe and the fire of our love for one another.