Turning Corners
Spiritual practices are valuable tools in our search for meaning. Many spiritual practices are capable of adapting with us, serving different needs as we grow and change.
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One of my earliest memories of church is sitting next to my Dad, doodling together on the Order of Service (which we called a bulletin back then). Dad’s drawings were and are a hobby. Drawing together helped keep the three of us kids occupied during the eternal twenty minutes before the children’s sermon and Sunday school. Sometimes our doodles were based on words in the bulletin, or based on puns. For instance, we might work together on a pig pen, an animal that could draw with its nose.
Later on, when my middle brother and I had some independence on a summer afternoon, we liked to watch drawing shows on public television. We learned about happy trees and contour lines. Making art became a process of discovery and skill. We created fantastic landscapes on big sheets of paper as a form of play.
There came a time when I stopped drawing when other people could see. My middle brother went on to become an artist and an art teacher, while I chose other things to do. I didn’t want to make art if I weren’t good at it.
I have turned a corner with respect to art. Now I doodle with wild abandon. I make spirals and Greek keys and curlicues that swoop to become capital letter L’s. If I’m listening to a lecture or trying to come up with an idea on a blank legal pad, doodles are meditative. I might even draw where other people can see, on a flip chart for a presentation or on a paper lunch bag. I’m not about to become a professional artist or crafter, and that’s OK. Drawing is mostly about the process, the enjoyment of it, and a little bit about the product, creating something I would like to see.
Sometimes I regret that phase of holding myself back. I missed out on what making art might evoke for me, and I missed out on the feeling of accomplishment that comes from practicing something until I become less bad at it. Mostly, I’m sorry I let anxiety get in the way. On the other hand, I used that time for other things, like music. Both can be spiritual practices. Creating and thinking about art and music can help us reflect or find meaning.
Any spiritual practice is going to work differently for a person in different seasons of life. There is a time for contemplation, and a time for action. There is a time for being, and a time for doing. Spiritual practices that can adapt to the season include engaging with art, meditating, praying, and studying sacred text.
Returning to Art
A spiritual practice can help us cope with the joys and sorrows of life, help us find our center, keep us focused on our ethical ideals, or connect us with people who bring out our best selves. The function of a spiritual practice will depend partly on the practice and partly on the practitioner’s need at the time.
When I was a young child, I needed the companionship of my parents, and I needed a way to cope with the slow march of the minutes. When I got a little older, I needed tools for imagining a better world. Drawing met all of those needs at different times. Maintaining a practice is partly a matter of keeping those needs in balance as they change. At some point, I needed more practice with being rather than doing. Art as a practice was flexible enough for a new set of needs, but I didn’t catch on to that until later.
Comic artist and teacher Lynda Barry spoke about this in an interview last month. She said:
What makes us start drawing and what makes us stop? And what happens to drawing when we think we don’t draw anymore—because most people say, Oh my drawing’s so terrible, I really can’t draw. But then if you’re sitting in a meeting and you have a paper in front of you, you probably have something that you draw, this doodling thing that everybody does. I like to ask people, Why do you think you do that? Why do we draw in that situation?
What that thing does is help you endure time. It’s almost microscopic, but without it, time feels like a cheese grater, and in doodling, it’s a little more bearable. If you start to think about the arts as a way of transforming time or transforming your experience, then it gets interesting, instead of being “this is a nice picture” or “this is a picture that sucks.”
Transforming time and experience is as good a definition of spiritual practice as I have heard. I occasionally introduce art-making into workshops or worship services, and I can only hope that time is transformed every so often.
Viewing art can also be a spiritual practice. I learned this in my early twenties when I went to work in the education department of a museum. My previous jobs had been on the administrative side of high tech and theater, but my visual art experience was minimal. This was also around the same time when I became a UU, so perhaps I was especially open to change.
My boss, the Curator for Education, was very interested in helping visitors spend time engaging with the art. She wanted to encourage them to immerse themselves without losing a sense of wonder. If you have ever been bored by a museum visit or an art history lecture, you’ll understand what we were trying to avoid. Using a method called Visual Thinking Strategies (Abigail Housen and Philip Yenawine), we were taught to invite visitors, including young children, to ask themselves, “What’s going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What else can we find?”
Young children were pretty good at this. With the guidance of a docent, they were able to simply observe, to treat the picture like a scavenger hunt. Being present in the moment was their gift. The practice of looking at art and discussing their observations led them to the spiritual discipline of community.
For people with a good art history education, asking questions and sharing observations is harder than it sounds. One of my colleagues talked about wanting to rush to look at the curator’s notes or the label next to the painting. She had been trained to guess things like the name of the artist or the medium and to focus on the right answer. Approaching artwork with a fresh look was a little easier for me because of my ignorance of the subject. By asking questions, a visit to the museum can be a spiritual practice that adapts to the seasons of our lives. Whether we need beauty for the heart, depth for the mind, a community of discovery, or an anchor in the present moment, spiritual practices around art can follow us around every turning point.
Returning to Prayer
Another spiritual resource that can work differently in different seasons is the practice of prayer. Prayer is not a word that everyone speaks easily. Some of us are more comfortable with meditation. The two are slightly different, but related. UU author Mary Wellemeyer (Admire the Moon: Meditations) has a poem about meditation and prayer.
“Asphalta”
There are forces inside us—
or are they on the outside?
Forces that work all the time
to connect us
My friend says parking spaces
are ruled by the goddess Asphalta.
She prays to Asphalta as she drives into the city
and always there is a space to leave her car.
Not me.
I enter the zone that athletes know.
Relaxed, alert, I am one with the traffic,
unless I’m not.
Sometimes there’s a space.
Always, there’s a dance
of heavy metal bodies,
ending only sometimes
with paying a lot
for that place to park.
Hooking up with that force,
the one I find inside,
the one she finds outside,
makes all the difference.
In the poem, two contemplative practices serve slightly different purposes in similar situations. Entering “the zone” is a form of meditation, a way of cultivating awareness or listening to the environment. Praying to Asphalta is a conversation with the universe, giving and receiving hopes and thanks, acknowledgement that there are greater powers than we can entirely comprehend at work. According to Wellemeyer’s description, both practices require listening and humility. Listening and humility are two skills that come and go throughout life. It’s hard to pay attention, to put ourselves in a position to receive wisdom and opportunity without taking credit for creating them from scratch. It’s hard to admit that the universe is not entirely subject to our command, or even to common sense.
I took a break from my daily spiritual practice for awhile when the babies arrived. I had random times of meditation and prayer, about as predictably as sleep and personal grooming, which is to say not very. That’s OK, there are a lot of things that we did temporarily to focus on this great transition. Now that I’m getting back into prayer in fits and starts, I am able to notice what I was missing.
I missed the practice of holding people in lovingkindness. When I pray, I don’t feel like I can make people regain health or remove their grief. I hope that prayer somehow reaches people to help them know that they are loved. I think that prayer helps me focus my intentions, to catch on more quickly when there is something I can do, or at least to be mindful of speaking with compassion. Prayer is a way of listening to love, to opportunity, to the voice of conscience.
Turning the corner back to a path of prayer, I notice that I had been closed off for awhile. I missed the sense of connection that comes from listening. Taking a break let me be inwardly focused when I needed that. Now I have to figure out a new posture of balance.
Another thing I missed was the reminder that the universe is bigger than me. The babies depend on us for survival. I got used to a constant inner narrative of things I needed to provide or fix RIGHT NOW. The thing is, sometimes I can’t fix things. Sometimes I am powerless. That is a difficult thing to admit. Worrying about things I can’t do prevents me from appreciating the blessings I have and giving attention to the things I can do. My powers are not the hinge upon which the world turns. I missed the perspective that prayer gives me, helping me locate my concerns in the context of the interdependent web.
Connection and perspective are some of the things I’m glad to welcome into my life right now. That being said, meditation and prayer can mean different things at different times in our lives. At our house, we have a couple of books of prayers from around the world for children and families. Many of these reflect needs such as comfort, gratitude, and a sense of wonder. There are contemplative spiritual practices available for many seasons if we let our prayers move and grow as we do. As Mary Wellemeyer puts it, there are “forces at work all the time to connect us.” Sometimes strength arises from within. Sometimes insight comes from beyond. Inside and outside, comfort and challenge, prayer is a window from either side, depending on the season.
Returning to Sacred Text
A third kind of spiritual resource is sacred text. The books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures, The Tao Te Ching, and the Bhagavad Gita are some examples. Ancient words of memory, blessing, and guidance can be used as tools of hope or history. These words can say different things to us at different times in our lives.
On the other hand, the misappropriation of sacred text, especially the Bible, has been so toxic, I can understand why some people would want to abandon that study entirely. Many UU’s have deep reservations about studying the Bible. They may remember hurtful arguments about gender roles or racism where chapter and verse got thrown around. Taking a break from that topic is understandable. I hope each one of us is afforded the ability to return in the fullness of time.
For me, sacred text contains too much history and culture to ignore. Although there are attitudes from centuries past that are best left in the past, there are also treasures in sacred text. Whatever beauty and wisdom there is to be found belongs as much to us as to those with whom we disagree.
And let’s not forget the points upon which we agree with our Jewish and Christian neighbors. We find inspiration for feeding the hungry and comforting those who mourn in the words of the Bible. I am hopeful about the possibility for reclamation.
Take, for instance, this morning’s opening hymn, “Love Will Guide Us” (words by Sally Rogers, #131 in Singing the Living Tradition). I think of this song as a descendant of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:
“I may speak in tongues of humans or of angels, but if I have no love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy and the knowledge of every hidden truth; I may have faith enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.” (Revised English Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:1-2)
Compare that to the hymn:
If you cannot sing like angels
If you cannot speak before thousands
You can give from deep within you
You can change the world with your love
I believe that most of us can get behind the sentiments of the hymn. By tracing it back to Christian scriptures, I feel a sense of connection with the roots of Unitarian Universalism. I feel hope about finding common ground between Christians and UUs standing on the side of love.
I have not always felt like the Bible had anything beneficial to say. I had to get to a point where I could hold multiple perspectives at once. Sacred text has been and continues to be used for harm AND it meant something profound to its audience when it was created AND I can find something meaningful in the text for my life today. Those three lines of thought can go in different directions, coming to opposite conclusions, without invalidating any one of them.
In his book, Understanding the Bible: An introduction for skeptics, seekers, and religious liberals, UU minister John Buehrens writes about the different ways he experienced sacred text in different seasons of his life.
When I was a child, I understood the Bible quite simply, as a child might. When I began to do critical thinking, I was given to simple challenges or rejections of the Bible, often without much deep understanding of what it was really trying to say when it most disturbed me. When I began to uncover some of its enduring but nonliteral wisdom, its ethical/spiritual wisdom, I felt an urge to share some of what I had begun to find on my journey.
(Understanding the Bible by John Buehrens, p. 11) We’ll be using Buehrens’ book in our “Understanding the Bible” discussion group, beginning in two weeks.
Whether you are turning a corner to meet Hebrew and Christian scriptures for the first time, or you’ve come to a place where you’re ready to encounter them again after a long absence, or you are circling around for a deeper interpretation, I hope that this season affords you an opportunity to consider sacred text.
Conclusion
For every season of life, there are ways of finding meaning and exploring our relationship with the universe. These are spiritual practices. Each corner we turn along the path requires an adjustment. Whether we need attention to the present moment, the assurance of love, developing an ability to listen, or the capacity to hold multiple perspectives, spiritual practices can adapt to accompany us through each season.
Creating and appreciating beauty offers gifts of transforming time and experience. Prayer helps us to express gratitude and love, opening up space for listening. Sacred text can inspire us with wisdom or teach us through counter-example.
So many factors affect the balance of our spiritual path. We spin in our orbits, always adjusting the weight of process and product, speaking and listening, absorbing and creating. Let us hold all of these things lightly, forming an open circle with the dance of the seasons of life.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
