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Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn-Foerster

A Will to Wonder
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
June 17, 2007

There is a Navajo ceremonial song that celebrates the sounds made in the natural world, the particular voices that beautify the earth and add a dimension of wonder to it.

Voice above, Voice of thunder,
Speak from the dark of clouds,
Voice below, Grasshopper voice,
Speak from the green of plants,
So may the earth be beautiful.

In 1890, an eloquent spokesperson for the Blackfoot Confederacy lay dying. His name was Crowfoot. His last words were: What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow, which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

In the minds of people who listen to the earth with their heart's ears, there are voices that speak more than we would expect from the names we give them. The voice of thunder is more than the rain cloud's roar. To those who listen, it is the voice of all voices from above. The voice of the grasshopper is more than the tiny cricketing of insects. It is the voice of all voices from below. The thunder and the grasshopper speak from the clouds of the sky and from the grass of the land. For those, who listen with their heart's ear, this is so. And, in the minds of people who see the earth with their heart's eyes, the wholeness of existence (the fullness of life itself) is present in the smallest and most transitory of things: in the pinpoint light of the firefly, in the cooling air of warm breath, in the shadow that finally is washed away by light. In the minds of people who listen and see, not only with their senses but also with their spirits, the earth and the living things upon it are filled with meaning and value beyond that meaning and value which can be obviously seen or heard.

Today, I want to talk about expressing that for which, finally, there are no words. I want to speak about the unspeakable. This is not as difficult as we usually think it is. We do this sort of thing when we use metaphor, when we speak of "food for thought", or of "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." We do it when we speak of thunder and grasshoppers, buffalo breath and shadows and mean more than these things. The Forum even had a program on metaphor recently.

Actually, I have more than metaphor in mind. I have in mind our capacity to see meaning and value intrinsically and not just as a product of logic and proofs. I believe it is this capacity that not only enables us to deal with the world creatively but also makes us religious, or, at least, plays a large role in our being religious. When we keep it alive and working within us we are in touch with our own greater capabilities. A great Jewish theologian of the twentieth century, Abraham Joshua Heschel (to whom, along with my affinity for Native American naturalism, I am greatly indebted for the way I see things religiously), has said, "The grand premise of religion is that (human beings are) able to surpass (themselves)," that is, we are able to "lift our eyes and see" beyond the horizon of the mind, that we are able to see not just what is there but also that which "what is there" suggests, what it represents, what it points to that is real beyond itself. It inspires poetry and stimulates our science. The corollary of that, of course, is that religion without this grand premise has no object above serving us the way we already are, which means that a thin surface of our being can deal only with the thin outward surface of whatever we encounter.

Of course, the thin surface of what we already are is considerable and it is worth celebrating. We have senses that thrill to the sight of stars and comets and to the warmth of the sunrise. We have minds that quicken to the simple and the complex, the obvious and the problematic - to the simple arithmetic of adding apples and oranges (and knows the difference between them and, also, to the indeterminate modes of behavior arising from the differentials of human relations. We have wills and desires that move us purposively in the world and give us hope. We have powers and virtues that lend our humanity a deserved pride and veneration. We have minds that can identify what is actual and provable in natural terms and that create words to describe what is ascertained.

However, we too often forget that the mind is more than the words it invents. We too easily plod from fact to fact, from the known to the known. Although there are notable exceptions (the true poets and scientists among us), we, usually, let our power to surpass ourselves lie undeveloped. Either that, or we affect a weary disinterest. I am reminded of a man who said to his wife, "Ignorance is bliss." Having a bent to "nail things down," she replied rather sharply, "What, exactly, does that mean?" His reply was," I don't know and I don't care." Whether through addiction to facts or through disillusionment, we, too easily, assume that there is nothing to life unless we can see it or touch it.

In so assuming, we may not identify an emptiness within ourselves, but we do know lack. We know something is not right or fulfilling. It is, in Heschel's telling phrase, as if a shudder stalks us through our nights. For, is there a house in any city without at least one heart wailing in the midst of joy, terrified by achievement, dismayed at enslavement to needs, diminished at the inability to trust what one most cherishes? We may have no good reason to feel a shadow over our souls. Indeed, we may see no reason at all, so pleasurable and enjoyable may be our times with friends and our work and leisure. Yet, oftentimes, we feel diminished; we feel that meaning and value have evaporated before we have glimpsed them.

The key to why this happens lies in how completely we approach existence in this world. There are three basic ways. The world can be approached in aspects of power, of beauty, of grandeur - these are the terms that Heschel uses and I have found no better words myself. That is, we may exploit it, or enjoy it, or accept it in awe. People, usually, have emphasized only one aspect over the others. As a remarkably astute rabbi, Heschel could see all this clearly. One might say the Romans saw the world basically in its power, the Greeks in its beauty, the Hebrews in its sublimity.

As a civilization, we are Romans. Power is what interests us most. We seek to use the world. For most people, nowadays, the world is there to be controlled according to their whims and desires. However, to our credit as a civilization, beauty also interests many of us. For many, the refined expression of the artist, the sculptor, the musician, the poet is the very breath of life. Order, harmony, elegance of thought (as over against strict utility of thought) -- these are excellences that inspire. That the general populace is not much interested in such things and too often adopts an "I don't know and I don't care" attitude that makes us uncomfortably aware that art and creativity reach their peak more in the few than in the many. It seems that to approach the world primarily in its aspect of beauty is to be in a small minority.

But, where our modern mind most fails us is in its insensitivity to the world's grandeur. Grandeur is more than power and beauty and it is different from them. Grandeur is where the world itself points beyond itself. The world is power and it is beauty. In these, it presents itself in precision and in clarity and satisfies our needs and our senses. But, in its grandeur, it arouses us to wonder; it provokes awe. It reminds us of mystery - mystery not resolved at the end of equations, or by observation, or by definition, or by replicability. Grandeur is "known" when we are awe-struck with wonder at the sublimity of it all! It leaves equations and factual proofs intact but also opens our being to the experience of being itself. It reminds us of the mystery in thunder and grasshoppers, in breath and shadows - in the loving touch of a child, as well as in the magnificence of a volcanic eruption.

The sense of grandeur is largely missing in our modern world. We seldom really feel the wonder of simply being. We seldom see the world as sublime. We certainly spend little time in educating ourselves for grandeur, in teaching ourselves to perceive grandeur, and in celebrating it in our lives. When we do experience it, it pretty much has to sneak up on us through the guise of power, as in the awe-inspiring tidal wave or the exploding space vehicle; or as beauty, as in music and art that whisper deepened knowledge in our ears and reveal subtle images to our eyes. In this regard, perhaps the most quietly compelling lines in our language on the presence of wonder that opens us to grandeur are some by William Wordsworth. You may remember them from high school. In "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey", Wordsworth wrote:

"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."

Such feelings of wonder as these look past dogmatic finality to grasp a vision of the grandeur of the world: to see with wondrous amazement that we live surrounded by marvels, that, indeed, we ourselves are marvels.

But, as I said, as our civilization has advanced, our sense of wonder at the grandeur of existence itself has declined. After all, we have been taught to pursue reason as the kind of hard rationality that, in the words of John Dewey (in his book, A Common Faith, 1934) ".precludes religious faith in any distinctive sense . and allows only for a belief that is unimpeachable rational inference from what we absolutely know." But, as Dewey goes on to point out, this is not just rationalism; it is extreme rationalism. It is the failure of reason to understand itself -- its failure to realize that reason is itself a mystery, to realize that our science and logic are themselves mysteries trying to demystify other mysteries themselves.

Through such extreme use of reasoning, we have attained a gargantuan mound of information. We have many facts and theories in which we can place our belief with confidence. What we lack is not belief, but wonder. Not that there are not those among us who stand with awe before life and the world. Were there not, there would be little use of my talking about it this morning. But, in our collective life, the ability to wonder has diminished almost to be swallowed up in the three-second images of television commercials and avant garde television shows. We need to regain it. We need to come again to that sense of the "miracles that are daily with us," for there are no grounds for music, love, and worship if we do not quicken to the immediate presence of the sublime and the marvelous in our lives.

For this to be truly and fully present for us, we must know the world not only in its power, knowledge, and utility, not only in its beauty, but also in its grandeur. We must think about it, yes; pleasure in it, of course; but also we must wonder. We must also be able to see that whatever we look upon or feel or hear or taste is mute testimony to its own meaning and value and to the meaning and value of the great "more" that stands behind and beyond and within it. We must experience the wonder. Only then will our lives move from being merely tasks and enjoyable feelings into being existential (or, if you prefer spiritual) adventures.

There is some indication that we may be collectively moving in that direction as a civilization. Certainly, space exploration has restored a sense of the vastness and the intractability of natural processes. We have a picture of the earth from the moon that gives us a new and wondrous perspective on human existence. We have the Hubble Space Telescope that opens up vast reaches of the universe of which, hitherto, we were unaware. We have the electron microscope that takes us in vast distances in the opposite direction. The picture of the earth, this "blue boat of earth" as seen from beyond ourselves, has given us a profound sense of relatedness and wholeness. The Hubble Telescope and the electron microscope confirm that our mortality is our main constraint in traveling through the amazing infinity stretching away from us in all directions. Moreover, there is developing a new ecological reverence for nature making itself felt as we become aware how interlinked all things are!

Terrorist airplanes crashing into skyscrapers in Manhattan, armored tanks leveling peoples' homes in Palestine, and suicide bombers who, in reality, can go anywhere remind us of how vulnerable we are to power, and how irrelevant are beautiful thoughts of love to fanatical true believers on both sides of conflict. And yet, any of us can stand under the black sky, punctuated with flickering starlight. Metaphorically, our souls can be lifted to poetic heights by the sight of a full and radiant moon or the small and gentle grin of a baby. We can tremble on the rim of the Grand Canyon or be lost in reverie on the shores of the Atlantic or on the banks of a mighty river. Any of us, at unexpected times, has access to the presence of the mysterious, the awe inspiring, and the sublime in life. At such times we can see beyond the power and the beauty of life and live in its wonder. When this happens, our lives are not just meaningful; they exude meaning; they are caught up in the reality of being itself. The power and the beauty of simply "being" flow through our very fibers and we are wonderfully at home in the world.

I began with Indian poetry and song. Let me end the same way. There is another Navajo song that speaks to this capacity of wonder that we so sorely need to regain. It is from their Night Chant ceremony. It expresses what I mean by saying more than words can say. It is ordinarily taken to refer to beauty, but in our context, it is fitting to replace the word "beauty" with the word originally said in Navajo:

In wonder I walk,
With wonder before me, I walk,
With wonder behind me, I walk,
With wonder above me, I walk,
With wonder around me, I walk,
With wonder within me, I walk.
It is finished in wonder.
It is finished in wonder.
It is finished in wonder.
It is finished in wonder.