Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault
For Those Who Find Song in Responsibility
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
January 22, 2006
OPENING READING: “It is eternity now…”
It is eternity now,
I am in the midst of it.It is about me, in the sunshine;
I am in it, as the butterfly in the
light-laden air.Nothing has to come,
It is now.Now is eternity,
Now is the immortal life.Richard Jeffries
MEDITATIVE READING: “Now is the time to live…”
Now is the time to live; now is the time,
As nature may disclose, to savor life:
To know her streams, her woodland hills to climb,
To read her cliffs, engraved with ancient lore,
To share her moods, the carefree and sublime,
And thrill with beauty from her ancient store.Now is the time, in wonder to explore
From whisp’ring tree and softly answ’ring dove
To storied shells beside the storm-swept shore,
From starflower to the galaxies above;
Then shall peace flood the restless heart once more
As autumn beauty fills the woods we love.Now is the time to live, to look, to see,
To taste that life is good, to share its zest
And know its patience in the dormant tree,
The budding earth, the motion that is rest;
Creation in each moment flowing free
Nor dread the sunset in the dark’ning west.Robert Weston
SERMON: “For Those Who Find Song In Responsibility”
Joy! Passion! Delight! Wonder! Excitement! Enthusiasm! Ecstasy! Indeed some people have these qualities – or at least seem to have them - no matter their lot in life. Others do not. Have you ever wondered why?
In his current novel, The Piano Tuner, Daniel Mason speaks of such positive people as “those who find song in responsibility.” What a beautiful metaphor!
Song! These are the individuals who are like the Disney characters in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” who can sing and whistle and hum the tune “Whistle While You Work!” while they are taking care of their responsibilities, even when things are most dire - in the dwarfs’ case, cleaning their house.
Just whistle while you work (whistle)
Put on that grin and start right in
to whistle loud and long;
Just hum a merry tune (hum)
Just do your best and take a rest
and sing your self a song(Music: Frank Churchill; Lyrics: Larry Morey; featured in Disney's "Snow White")
Then there are those who are singing their song in a different way while taking care of responsibilities; a way that might make you think they are just putting off their tasks at hand.
Consider the story concerning Henry Ford. The great inventor once asked an efficiency expert to evaluate his company. The expert did so, and reported back quite favorably to Mr. Ford, although he did have one complaint.
“It’s that man down the corridor,” the expert complained. “Every time I go by his office he’s just sitting there with his feet on his desk. He’s wasting your money.”
“That man,” replied Ford, “once had an idea that saved us millions of dollars. At the time, I believe his feet were planted right where they are now.” (The Little Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, editor, p. 213)
In other words, when it comes to our metaphor concerning “those who find song in responsibility” we must include both the internal song as well as the external one – both are aspects of being lost in rapturous delight at the task one is about; the Seven Dwarfs and the Man With Feet On His Desk are all singing their particular tune.
Truly, this idea, if it were applied universally, would make a more creative and thereby happier human race. If only we could infuse everyone with this sense of high purpose and these flights of sheer delight – even while we are taking care of the necessities of life!
Just imagine what a world this would be!
But why is this not happening? It is because as a society we are people with a variety of needs, hopes, dreams, desires, and expectations that we seem forever trying to satisfy. We are eternally busy; we lead lives of distraction where stimuli are constantly bombarding us, where responsibilities are forever overwhelming us (instead of making us sing about them), where schedules are incessantly demanding our adherence. We are blocked from doing, feeling, and thinking what we might want.
But, in truth, we are the ones causing this logjam of the human spirit, this blockage of the happiness potential within us - but we can learn how to change our perspective and thereby the situation.
We can thereby accomplish our responsibilities with more joy.
How to do this?
We need to learn to practice what Eastern philosophy refers to as “effortless effort.” This is a state of being fully present to what we are doing; having conscious intention and joy at the moment we are doing it and at the same time, a sense of forgetfulness that we are, in fact, expending effort!
Some philosophies call this “flow.” And, yes, it is a conundrum. But rather than perceiving it as a paradox, let us see it as an opportunity. For we really can work from our various levels of perception or consciousness at the same time.
It is the classic image of someone who is an expert driver based upon years of experience. Such a person can more or less pay attention while driving (even a stick shift) but be lost in her/his thoughts about anything else but driving - in addition (sometimes) to talking to a fellow passenger, listening to the radio, smoking, drinking a cup of coffee, and/or using a cell phone. I do not urge anyone to do this multi-tasking, but I think you get my general idea about our being able to work with different levels of awareness.
Flow is a state of optimal experience – a peak, a transcendence. Instead of being buffeted by whatever forces there are in life, we are in control of our fate, of our actions – or at least we believe we are. These are rare opportunities when we are so exhilarated that we go beyond the ability to express them.
As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (p.19):
If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one’s shoulders. Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. It is no longer necessary to struggle for goals that always seem to recede into the future, to end each boring day with the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, something good will happen. Instead of forever straining for the tantalizing prize dangled just out of reach, one begins to harvest the genuine rewards of living.”
This is “control of consciousness” which can allow us to determine the quality of our lives. This is the same quest of Aristotle who sought the “virtuous activity of the soul”; of Ignatius of Loyola who created his methodology called the “Spiritual Exercises”; of Freud whose concept of the “ego” represented the genuine need of the self; of the yogi disciplines in India; the Taoist approach to life created in China; the Zen varietes of Buddhism which seek to liberate consciousness from the effects of outside forces.
And yet, this “questless quest” after this “effortless effort” will come when it comes – but usually after some preparation. When it does come – and it so often comes to those who are the creative denizens on this planet – it might rightly be called “enlightenment.” Or, again, “flow.”
Consider the following story about one of the Buddha’s pupils:
Anand was Buddha’s most devoted disciple. Years after Buddha’s death a Great Council of the Enlightened was planned and one of the disciples went to tell Anand about it.
Now at that time Anand was still not enlightened himself though he had worked at it strenuously for years. So he was not entitled to attend the council.
On the evening of the council meeting he was still not enlightened so he determined to practice vigorously all night and not stop till he had attained his goal. But all he succeeded in doing was making himself exhausted. He had not made the slightest progress in spite of all his efforts.
So toward dawn he decided to give up and get some rest. In that state in which he had lost all greed, even for enlightenment, he rested his head on the pillow. And he suddenly became enlightened!
There is an addendum to this story:
Said the river to the seeker, “Does one really have to fret about enlightenment? No matter which way I turn, I’m homeward bound.” (The Heart of the Enlightened, Anthony de Mello, S.J., p. 190)
This rather reminds me of what Martin Luther, the great church reformer, was referring to when he urged: Faith, not works! In other words, achieving this heightened state of awareness might very well depend on just being not doing. (Although in a sense as long as we are alive, we are always doing something, even by being.)
Adding to this concept of just being rather than doing, think of what the Buddha said:
If you wish to know the Divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.
Again, this is a state of heightened awareness – by simply being, rather than doing.
Being this way, then, links us with nature, itself.
Mary Oliver’s words say as much when she tells us:
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
The modern marvels – i.e. you and I – usually lose sight of this, given the complex and demanding world we have helped to create. It is a world of many “have-to’s” – often at the expense of “want-to’s” – that is, we do not have or create opportunities in our life that will allow us to flow; to resonate with the immediate experience around us and the feelings within us.
We have our responsibilities, indeed, but we do not find “song” in them. Ours is often a discordant sound, instead of lovely music. Our passion and energy is used up. This really is the dis-ease of today’s world!
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi states it starkly with:
Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness…And yet on this most important issue very little has changed…We do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did, and as for learning how to attain that blessed condition, one could argue that we have made no progress at all. (Ibid, p.1)
And yet, Csikszentmihalyi says that occasionally:
…we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. (Ibid, p.3.)
Would that we could find this – or at least a kernel of it – in whatever we do, whatever our responsibilities.
Those who do so more than others are really, in Jungian psychological terms, “individuated.” They have achieved their inner potential. They are “congruent” – where the inner “self” meshes with the outer “self.” Harmony, rather than discord results.
Such people are infectious – and we all have known a few like that. They are never bored with life, never nervous; they are instead, involved with what is going on around them, and quite exhilarated.
A term to describe them is the “autotelic self” which literally means “a self that has self-contained goals.” This means that one’s goals are generated by one’s self – not by others. The person is really doing and being what s/he wants to do and be.
And it all “flows” – a seamless connection of the various dimensions of one’s being.
That is not to deny that sometimes-hard work – mental and/or physical have prepared a person to be in such an exalted state of being.
I think of how effortless those in the arts often appear to be: the dancers making it look so easy for the rest of us; the painters whose works convince us that even we can accomplish such beauty; the ones who literally sing their songs as if they just suddenly discovered they had such beautiful voices.
Truly, without passion for life, for even one thing in life; without an ultimate concern, something that calls us beyond our everyday selves, providing us with deep and satisfying meaning - without such song in our lives, life is not as sweet as it could be.
Yes, in a state of such ecstasy, when one seems to flow naturally within one’s activity, when there is not a hint of something static or mechanical, where what is revealed is nature, itself – human nature within the larger context of all of nature.
In Taoist philosophy, in fact, the word for “flow” is “xing” (pronounced “shing”) and is considered a fundamental in life. It calls us to be dynamic – for we are existence, too.
The opposite is occurring today, however, with humanity not connected with nature. If only we humans could realize the Taoist perspective:
The sun traverses the sky, the rivers flow on, the seasons come and go as steadily as the revolving of a wheel. Everything is part of the great and eternally moving Tao. (Everyday Tao, Deng Ming-Dao, p.79)
Indeed, we need to exist in the here and now; to realize that the moment is precious; that even if it appears to be quite ordinary, the minute is extraordinary for the fact that it – and you and I – exist in the first place!
Consider the following story from antiquity:
King Pyrrhus of Epirus was approached by this friend Cyneas and asked, “If you conquer Rome, what will you do next, sir?
Pyrrhus replied, “Sicily is next door and will be easy to take.
“And what shall we do after Sicily is taken?”
“Then we will move over to Africa and sack Carthage.”
“And after Carthage, sir?”
“The turn of Greece will come.”
“And what, may I ask, will the fruit of all these conquests be?”
“Then,” said Pyrrhus, “we can sit down and enjoy ourselves.”
“Can we not,” said Cyneas, “enjoy ourselves now?”
Well, it seems to me that this lack of flow, of enjoying the moment at hand, is not just a modern malady!
And as much as you might want to apply this story of antiquity to the stories of those today who seek to conquer other countries or whatever else they might want to conquer, we also must realize the story is a warning to all of us whatever our circumstance happens to be, to appreciate each moment we have, each of the now moments.
My wish for you, my friends, is that each one of you – if you have not already done so – will discover at least one very special way of making yourself happy; of being the natural self you were meant to be; of discovering your “flow,” your particular “song in responsibility.”
CLOSING WORDS: “Seek not afar for beauty…”
Seek not afar for beauty;
Lo, it glows in dew-wet grasses all about your feet,
In birds, in sunshine, childish faces sweet,
In stars and mountain summits topped with snows.Go not abroad for happiness;
Behold, it is a flower blooming at your doorMinot Judson Savage