Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault
Theology of the Moment
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
October 9, 2005
OPENING READING:
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo TolstoyWe must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.
H. G. Wells
MEDITATION READING: Pieces of Eight
Most of us think ourselves as standing wearily and helplessly at the center of a circle bristling with tasks, burdens, problems, annoyance, and responsibilities which are rushing in upon us. At every moment we have a dozen different things to do, a dozen problems to solve, a dozen strains to endure. We see ourselves as overdriven, overburdened, overtired. This is a common mental picture and it is totally false. No one of us, however crowded his life, has such an existence. What is the true picture of your life? Imagine that there is an hourglass on your desk. Connecting the bowl at the top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand can pass through it at a time. That is the true picture of your life, even on a super busy day, The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time. That is the only way they can come. The day may bring many tasks, many problems, strains, but invariably they come in single file. You want to gain emotional poise? Remember the hourglass, the grains of sand dropping one by one.
James Gordon Gilkey
SERMON: "Theology of the Moment"
"Knock, knock!" "Who's there?" Hey, maybe the answer is "yourself." The self deep within yourself. The one awaiting release. The one that receives messages moment by moment from the universe that you refuse to answer. You are too busy, you say, to receive them, preferring to indulge yourself in past remorse or nostalgic longing; or in future planning or anxious scheming. You disregard the meaning of the here and the now - and the possibility of connection, insight, and contentment that these moments hold forth to you as a gift.
Walt Whitman, a member of the Unitarian Universalist extended family, spoke of receiving such messages, which he referred to as "letters from God." I shall call them aspects of "Theology of the Moment" - meaning that they are instances in human awareness when we might receive "a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused" to borrow a line from the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth.
Said Whitman:
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then.
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name.
This universal impulse to be moved to a more profound awareness of what it means to be human; to be transported from our everyday perspective to another level of awareness; to be allowed access through our usual "doors of perception" (Aldous Huxley's term) into a new state of consciousness is there waiting to be recognized by our deeper self.
"Knock, knock!" "Who's there?" (You ask, refusing to open the door to your own deeper self).
Consider this story about another English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who attempted so valiantly to open that door.
One day, after watching a friend swim with ease, Shelley asked him why he, himself, could not swim, to which the friend offered to teach him.
Shelley stripped off his clothes and leaped in - plunging straight to the bottom of the pool, where he lay motionless. (The friend) jumped into the water and managed to haul the poet out. Shelley was not at all flustered by the narrowness of his escape.
"I always find the bottom of the well and they say truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell. It is an easy way to get rid of the body."
Only a few months later Shelley was drowned while sailing. (The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, General Editor, p. 503)
We can only hope that when he actually did drown, the great writer found truth. Still, the near drowning experience was a metaphor indicating the search for Shelley's deeper self. It was a profound moment, one revelatory of the man's mortality and prefiguring his actual death.
Each of us has our own breakthrough a-ha! moments - that we might not be fully conscious of, but that have the potential to guide us into a more fully realized existence. The fact is that we are not always open to experiencing them and thereby learning from them. And in this reality, lies part of the tragic dimension of being human: that we do not reach our potential.
To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom. Ralph Waldo Emerson said this, urging us to be more intentional in the task of improving our existence.
The Secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, nor to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. Shakyamuni Buddha said this.
Since pure awareness of nowness is the real Buddha. simply relaxing in this uncontrived, open, and natural state, we obtain the blessing of aimless self-liberation of whatever arises. Dudjom Rinpoche said this.
And the incomparable cynic and oft' times wise man, H. L. Mencken, put it this way: We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
This is good advice from various sources, illustrating the universal dimension of a chief failing of being human: the failed task to appreciate each present moment and those special moments of deeper awareness. Our tragedy is that we fail the task of gaining a richer life by dwelling within the emotional poverty of the past or imagining the pipe dreams of an unknown future.
And all the while, life goes on without us; we are not fully present; our eyes shift elsewhere when we are talking to someone face-to-face; our attention is diverted from our present efforts. In a phrase, "the parade has passed us by."
We have been "multi-taskers" of the moment who miss the sheer ecstasy of being alive here and now, of discovering the simple but elegant joy of each breath, each moment.
We have lived "lives of quiet desperation."
Historically, however, our Unitarian Universalist movement has consistently spoken of our human potential to reach beyond such a deadened perspective on life; to live each moment as a gift that calls us to a more profound sense of who we are and can grow to be.
And the Unitarian Universalist perspective wants us to see this as a myriad of possibilities: as a people of action, doing good in the world; as a people of heart who comfort and support others; as a people of mind who push the boundaries of prescribed thought into new dimensions of understanding.
All this by living the moment, instead of dreading it, or ignoring it; and in living it, resonating with that which moves us beyond words, perhaps to tears - to a place of goodness and light.
Which, for me, is a theology - "Theology of the Moment."
For, as a hopeful agnostic pragmatist (with leanings toward poetic mysticism), I am one who eschews overly systematic theology of the traditional Christian-or-otherwise-varieties. In other words, I do not know about any deity's existence or plan; and in saying this, I dare not presume to speak of "divine truth" or "divine intent." I dare not utter profundities about the "Alpha" and the "Omega" - the "Beginning" and the "End" of time.
But I know - kinda' - about the present moment. That is so because I am alive in the present moment - this moment. And I want to appreciate it more - and to share the moment with you and others.
For, in a way, that is the only thing I can be sure of: the right now.
The advantages to living like this (and none of us does this every well) is that a lot more can be accomplished, because we do not squander our energy or time on what can never be rectified (the past); or on what might never occur (the future).
Sogyal Rinpoche put it this way:
The cells of our body are dying, the neurons in our brain are decaying, even the expressions on our face are always changing, depending on our mood. What we call our basic character is only a "mindstream," nothing more. Today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. Where did that good feeling go?
What could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions? Do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? The mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: it comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past.
Still, we cannot escape our past or our future. The point is, that they should not control us. To use them - constructively - to learn from the past (indeed to have an historical basis) and to plan for the future (in a reasonable manner by using what we know now) can enrich our existences of the moment.
Let us look at some of the ways in which living in the present moment can bring us this sense of deeper awareness, this "Theology of the Moment."
In her book The Art of the Moment: Simple Ways to Get the Most from Life, Veronique Vienne lists some ways in which we can gain this appreciation. They include these suggestions:
Don't wait for a second chance to get it right.
Fold your napkin carefully at the end of a great gourmet meal.
Have serious conversations with seven-year-olds.
Forget to mention that you were right in the first place.
Reframe family pictures.
Always have a kind word for people with old dogs.
Look at the world as if you were a cat.
Welcome unexpected interruptions: They are often the prologue to happy
accidents.
Think in the shower.
Find a little more time to be with friends.
Make the most of everything, one moment at a time.
These are opportunities that are predicated on human intention: that is, we set up a plan to improve our momentary awareness and hopefully, gained insight. They are specific tasks that we might undertake.
I would include an addendum to Ms. Vienne's list. Indeed, "look at the world as if you were a cat" if you want to, but you also might do this from the perspective of a person you do not particularly like. It seems that some psychological pundits believe that what we do not like about someone else, is what we really do not like about our self.
The point is that these and other such moments of insight that are intentionally undertaken can be invaluable in knowing where our particular "Shellyesque" "bottom of the well" - i.e. "truth" - might exist.
There are other such truth-givers that happen to us in less organized ways; in fact, in quite unintentional ways. Sometimes we might set them up to happen - e.g. by being in a certain place at a certain time with a certain person - but then, sometimes, they just happen. Call it "synchronicity" or "fate" or "coincidence" - or none of the above. But to deny that these astounding moments of perception, these theologies of the moment, occur in human experience seems to me to be rather un-poetic - to say the least!
Reflect for a moment on your own life - when you had something occur that snapped you out of your ordinary moment - and gave you incredible insight, or inspiration, or knowledge, or satisfaction; that changed your life for an instant - or for all time.
For example: why was that person there when you needed him/her? Why did you know the very moment you met this individual that this would be your mate, your friend, your heart throb, your comrade in arms? Conversely, why was that person there when you did not want her/him to be there? Why did you know the very moment you met this individual that this would be your bane of existence, your nemesis, your enemy, your personal spawn of Satan?
And what was it that brought everything together for you in one break-through moment of awareness? What was that feeling you had that made you tingle upon discovering the truth of a long-sought personal riddle? What was it that caused you to feel one with the universe - that moment of pure ecstasy telling you that all was right with the world? What was that great elation that swept you out of your pedestrian perspective of the world when you performed an act of kindness toward another living creature?
These are examples of "Theology of the Moment" that go beyond a defined, entrenched theology articulated from this scholar or that; that speak of our openness toward being more than we think or feel we are; that state the tenuousness and mystery of human existence; that urges us to wonder and rejoice, to ask "why" and to seek answers to the very imponderable reality that we are alive in the first place!
Have you not had moments like this?
They need not be explained; they need not to be categorized; they need not be uttered.
But they are there - and we can create more of them, if we but answer the knock-knock on the door and let our undiscovered self in, moment by extraordinary moment.
Heed the words of Shakyamuni Buddha:
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
And hear, too, this story of "enlightenment" as told by Joan Chittister (from There Is a Season):
"Where shall I look for Enlightenment?" the disciple asked.
"Here," the elder said.
"When will it happen?" the disciple asked.
"It is happening right now," the elder answered.
"Then why don't I experience it?" the disciple persisted.
"Because you do not look," the elder said.
"But what should I look for?" the disciple continued.
"Nothing. Just look," the elder said.
"But at what?" the disciple asked again.
"At anything your eyes alight upon," the elder answered.
"But must I look in a special kind of way?" the disciple went on.
"No. The ordinary way will do," the elder said.
"But don't I always look the ordinary way?" the disciple said.
"No, you don't" the elder said.
"But why ever not?" the disciple asked.
"Because to look you must be here. You're mostly somewhere else," the elder
said.
And so, dear friends, may we, too, find enlightenment in such a way.
CLOSING WORDS:
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
VoltaireHow wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank (Diary of a Young Girl)