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Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault

THE VIRTUES OF COMMUNITY/THE VIRTUES OF SOLITUDE (PART ONE)
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
April 10, 2005

OPENING READING: "The Casualties" (selections)

The Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office has asked all UU congregations to devote a part of their Sunday service to both reflect and take action on the continued violence in the Darfur region of Sudan.

As many as 300,000 people have been killed in this campaign of ethnic cleansing by government-supported Arab militias since the conflict began in February 2003. An estimated 1,000 people continue to die each day.

The UU United Nations Office asks that a small portion of the worship service be devoted to reflection on Darfur during the chalice lighting or meditation.

Second, we are asked to have a table set up after the service where we can sign letters to be sent to our U.S. Senators in support of the Darfur Accountability Act of 2005, which is currently waiting a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

We shall do both things. Before I light the chalice I shall read a poem called "The Casualties" which, sadly, is applicable to all victims of conflict - those who create war and those who are wounded or die because of war.

After the service, please stop by our Social Concerns Committee table to sign letters that will be sent to the U. S. Senate.

Let us spend a moment in meditation.

The casualties are not only those who are dead;
They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are wounded,
Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who have lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night;
The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven,
Nowhere as absolute as the grave.
The casualties are not only those who started
A fire and now cannot put it out. Thousands
Are burning that had no say in the matter.
The casualties are not only those who escaping
The shattered shell become prisoners in
A fortress of falling walls.

The casualties are many, and a good number well
Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck.

We fall,
All casualties of the war,
Because we cannot hear each other speak,
Because eyes have ceased to see the face from the crowd.

J. P. Clark-Bekederemo

MEDITATION READING: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

William Butler Yeats

SERMON: "The Virtues of Community/The Virtues of Solitude"

How like the poet Yeats's desire is ours - on occasion, if not more than occasionally - to dislodge ourself from the complexities of community. To be free from commitment and expectation. To find a nice little cabin somewhere far away from the strife of shared human discourse.

Ah, solitude! Its lovely virtues!

Oddly enough, history reveals that it might even be a lucrative profession.

Consider the following advertisement in an English newspaper in 1810:

A young man, who wishes to retire from the world and live as a(n) hermit in some convenient spot in England, is willing to engage with any nobleman or gentleman who may be desirous of having one.

Now, this idea - referred to as the profession of "ornamental hermit" came into fashion in England around the 1740's when one Miss Cynthia Aldburgham, recalls as a child that visitors used to tour the grounds of her house and be shown a hermit who sat in a cave fondling a skull.

I guess there are harder ways of making a living!

And where do we sign up?

At any rate, as William Wordsworth pens it:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in 'Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away.

But solitude is not all about "location, location, location" - about finding a peaceful "place." It is about "simply being" - or "being simple," that is to say, to peacefully exist with our inner self.

Rosalie Cutting says as much in our poem "Inner Peace":

My soul at times, in this silent cell
Contrives to furnish me with beauty.

I sit and listen.
My soul and I have no need of trinkets.

I sit still and serene
In the glow that the unthinking call darkness.

I am overwhelmed by the light
That shines only for me.

Truly there are virtues in such solitude and we shall explore more of them, being aware that there are also virtues in community, this latter discussion to occur two weeks from today.

Irresistible, however, is this opening gambit about societal virtues, or, if you prefer "solitarian" vices. Consider that acerbic wit, Dorothy Parker. This short story writer, theatre critic and light versifier once:

had a small, dingy cubbyhole of an office in the Metropolitan Opera House building in New York. As no one ever came to see her, she became depressed and lonely. So, when the sign writer came to paint her name on the office door, she got him to write instead the word

GENTLEMEN

(Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, General Editor)

Truly, considering the extremes of human behavior, there are some people who need constant connection with their human neighbors. There are others, who prefer much solitude and would have the sign writer paint something like

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

as a warning to stay away.

Most of us fluctuate.

Still, today we are here in various stages of reclusion to explore the solitary virtues.

But here is an oxymoron if we are to believe the thrust of modern psychology - for how, say many professional therapists, can good things come for the individual who prefers to be alone? Only in relationship to others can the individual be whole, these counselors say. And we hear it time and again from other societal commentators - including ministers.

It's as if there is something decidedly wrong about wanting to be alone!

But consider history - and would that more people would - including our political leaders! Consider the fact that in earlier times there wasn't this emphasis on a relational need. People were just too preoccupied - with surviving - to care about "interpersonal dynamics." There's something to say about living primitively. No therapy bills, for one thing!

But given today's frenetic pace and scattered, multi-tasking lifestyles, we moderns of the industrialized, mechanistic, materialistic world are quite anxious about connecting with others. The theme of human personality in all its subtle dimensions pervades our literature and conversations.

And yet, say some, solitude has its virtues.

The Unitarian Universalist write, May Sarton, has a wonderful book called Journal of a Solitude in which she tells us of the FIRST VIRTUE OF SOLITUDE we want to consider this morning:

PURSUIT OF TRUTH

Sarton tells us:

.one of its values.is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression. A few moments of desultory conversation with dear Arnold Miner, when he comes to take the trash, may calm an inner storm. But the storm, painful as it is, might have had some truth in it.

May Sarton is certainly someone who believes in this virtue of pursuing the truth deep within, even if it hurts.

A friend of mine who is very much on the pathway to self-discovery, once gave me a little book as a gift. And I do mean little. In fact I have copied the entire book and will now read it to you. Here goes:

You've bought this book responding to the quest within yourself to experience
           your self.
Read it.
Follow the instructions.
Text:
Knowledge studies others.
Wisdom is self-known -
Lao Tzu.
Instructions:
Burn this book.

What my friend and May Sarton know is that truth is within each of us, and that we need to be alone at times to discover what we already know, but of what might not be ostensibly aware.

I suggest that it is simply the biblical reminder that there is "a still, small voice" in all of us, awaiting release.

The SECOND VIRTUE OF SOLITUDE under discussion is its

BALM OF HEALING.

Consider the differences between cultures when it comes to bereavement customs. Many cultures allow a period of mourning during which the bereaved are not expected to go about normal, everyday tasks. Orthodox Jews, for instance, are expected to remain at home, apart from daily visits to the synagogue, while others care for them. In rural Greece, bereaved women mourn for a period of five years.

Compare this with places in the United States that have drive-by mortuaries, where the decedent is on display in the window so that the mourner doesn't even have to get out of the car. Instant grief! So much for a solitary reflection - not with the guy in the car behind you who is honking his horn because he wants to have his turn at the "viewing."

Nor is it customary these days in a mental institution for patients to be left alone. Even if the person is no physical harm to him/herself or others, the patient's cure emphasizes "group participation, 'milieu therapy,' and every other means which can be devised of keeping the mentally ill constantly occupied and in contact with one another as well as with doctors and nurses.

This is a far cry from the idea that one who is emotionally/mentally disturbed enters a place of comfort, of retreat, of asylum from the pressures of the world. Of historic note is that fact that "The Retreat" is the name of a famous mental hospital in Britain that was founded in 1792 with the idea that it really would be a retreat.

Then there are those "retreats" that we UUs have - swarms of us - all talking heads, although we might throw in a 20-minute worship service that includes 30 seconds of silence.

Now, what was it that Rosalie Cutting said about "Inner Peace"?

I am overwhelmed by the light
that shines only for me.

And we UUs might add the tag line:

for all of 30 seconds.

I admit that I am personally one of the biggest sinners in this regard.

The THIRD VIRTUE OF SOLITUDE is one that we might think of as

AWARENESS OF SPIRITUAL CONNECTION.

In his The Varieties of Religious Experiences William James speaks of the individual's communion with nature:

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness.

Only in solitude was the Buddha able to achieve enlightenment under the Bo tree. For three years St. Catherine of Sienna lived a secluded life, an existence of great mystical awareness. During the month of Ramadan each year, Mohammed would withdraw himself from the world to his cave. And Jesus spent those forty days and forty nights of temptation in the wilderness.

It is the experience of mystical awareness that can come about for the great religious leaders - and for us to a degree if we but allow ourselves the experience,

It is the experience of Admiral Byrd at the Antarctic during the winter of 1934 when he tells us:

Took my daily walk...I paused to listen to the silence.The day was dying, the night being born - but with great peace. Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence - a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres.It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of (humanity's) oneness with the universe.

The FOURTH VIRTUE OF SOLITUDE is the:

HIGH FLIGHT OF IMAGINATION.

Here such solitude might even be enforced - where the person has no choice if she or he is to survive.

In his book Solitude, a Return to the Self, Anthony Storrs describes the lives of a number of known writers whose childhood existences were brutal by the standards of human decency. Each one turned inward, and as adults required great periods of solitude to create their masterpieces.

Here are some descriptions of these lives, followed by the name of the person whose life is being described. See if you can guess who s/he might be.

Although visiting governesses came to teach her German and French, most of (her) hours were spent without human companionship.She.made friends with rabbits and hedgehogs, mice and minnows, as a prisoner in solitary confinement will befriend a mouse.

This person was Beatrix Potter - a Unitarian.

Our next person describes his life like this:

.Other boys would not play with me. I was therefore alone, and had to form my plays within myself.Thus it came to pass that I was always going about with some castle in the air firmly built within my mind.

This is the novelist Anthony Trollope.

Our last person is described with these words:

He was a rather ugly, shortsighted, affectionate little boy, and he was bewildered and hurt by (his mother's) unaccountable rejection of him. (As an adult) he loved to be with children because they liked him and showed it.

No, this is not the transcript from the Michael Jackson's trial, but is a description of the life of Edward Lear, the creator of Peter Pan.

Thus, the solitary, imaginary world served as a source of solace for many, allowing them to survive the cruel hands dealt them in childhood.

And the FIFTH VIRTUE OF SOLITUDE is:

FULLNESS OF BEING.

From the perspective of Jungian psychology, the individual is seeking to combine the disparate elements of her or his existence - the conscious and the unconscious. The person is seeking to discover the whole self. This can most readily be accomplished in periods of aloneness.

Writers often speak with reverence and awe of that mysterious voice deep within them that speaks through them on occasion, giving them and their readers a glimpse into profound worlds of being.

William Makepeace Thackery recorded:

I have been surprised at the observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult Power was moving the pen. The personage does or says something, and I ask, how the dickens did he come to think of that?

And George Eliot - who was married in a Unitarian ceremony - considered that in:

Her best writing, there was a 'not herself' that took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting.

Nietzsche, too, said of his Thus Spoke Zarathustra in referring to his "inspiration":

One is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces.

(The three previous quotes were taken from Stors's book, pp. 198-199)

For these writers, their other, deeper self, has spoken through them, allowing them to integrate their own thoughts and feelings more fully. What more ecstatic realization does one require in life? Whether or not one chooses to call this a holy act; a communion with God? But turning inward, by spending time in solitude, life's meaning is discovered. Meaning created from awareness that one is not totally in control of life, but is part of the whole pattern, the web of interdependency.

It is, as Jung phrases it in his description of achieving peace of mind:

If you sum up what people tell you abut their experiences, you can formulate it this way: They came to themselves, they could accept themselves, they were able to become reconciled to themselves, and thus were reconciled to adverse circumstances and events. This is almost like what used to be expressed by saying: He has made his peace with God, he has scarified his own will, he has submitted himself to the will of God. (Storr, p. 195)

Truly, the VIRTUES OF SOLITUDE are many, and we have explored five of them:

1. PURSUIT OF TRUTH
2. BALM OF HEALING
3. AWARENESS OF SPIRITUAL CONNECTION
4. HIGH FLIGHT OF IMAGINATION
5. FULLNESS OF BEING

These virtues ultimately lead us in a return to the self - to knowing who we
might really be.

CLOSING READING: "I am only one."

I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the do something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale