Winds Be Still
When our search for truth and meaning passes through a difficult place, the world around us and under us and within us can provide touchstones of encouragement … Lately, when I stop to reflect on the natural world, I am inspired to be still, to listen, and to know that I am not alone.
This sermon was delivered on February 27, 2011.
We had a death in the family early this week. My partner’s grandmother was 96 years old. We celebrated a life that was full of family, a career in social work, culture, politics, and the generous sharing of food. She was a force to be reckoned with. We’ll miss her.
The funeral began with readings from Psalms. The rabbi reminded us that we are “like grass which shoots up; though in the morning it flourishes and shoots up, by evening it droops and withers” (Psalm 90), point being to “know how few are our days, that our minds may learn wisdom.” Soon after that, we were invited to recite together the 23rd Psalm, the one where God “maketh me to lie down in green pastures” and “leadeth me beside still waters.” Outside, the weather was anything but green and still. In my mind’s eye, I pictured peace. I imagined the gathered community resting as blades of grass in a meadow, bending gently, part of the family of things from season to season, from generation to generation.
It was not that different, in some ways, from a Unitarian Universalist memorial service. One of the readings that often gets used is by Arnold Crompton. As the voice of the departed, he instructs:
Do not linger too long with your solemnities,
go eat and drink and talk,
and when you can…..
follow a woodland trail
climb a high mountain
sleep beneath the stars
swim in a cold river
chew the thoughts of some book which challenges your soul
use your hands some bright day
to make a thing of beauty or
to lift someone’s heavy load.
(“Instructions” by Arnold Crompton, excerpt)
Touching base with the natural world has been a source of comfort to humans for a very long time. Green plants and patient stones remind us that we are at once brief and persistent, precious as individuals and yet part of something larger than ourselves. These are things we need to know when we grieve, when we despair, when we fear the unknown.
Perhaps you are facing such a time in your life. Maybe you are holding in your heart a thought for a friend or a neighbor. Many people I speak with are preoccupied with political transformations abroad and at home. Now seems like a good time to muster our natural resources for coping. Each one of us faces our own set of concerns. As a church, I think we need a moment to find our center, to breathe in the bracing air tinged with a hint of spring, to breathe out air that joins the rising breeze.
When our search for truth and meaning passes through a difficult place, the world around us and under us and within us can provide touchstones of encouragement. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote (in his essay, “Nature”), “In the presence of nature a wild delight runs through the man (sic), in spite of real sorrows. Nature says,—he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me.” Emerson was writing from his own time and worldview, a link in a long chain of seekers who take comfort in our earthly home. Let us forge new links as we deepen awareness of ourselves and our ecosystem.
Environmental science and spirituality are disciplines that move with the times and the tides, even as we draw from ancient wisdom. Lately, when I stop to reflect on the natural world, I am inspired to be still, to listen, and to know that I am not alone.
Be Still
A feeling of stillness is one of the forms of comfort I get from nature. During the time I lived in San Francisco, there was a week when I felt like all of my career hopes were crashing down around my ears. I had a part-time job, but it seemed impossible to find my feet there. I was worried about my faith communities. Most of all, I was overwhelmed with classes. I got dizzy trying to distinguish one kind of Hebrew language vowel marker from another. Looking back on that time, I think that my feelings had more to do with existential questions of who I was and whose I was rather than specific stressors. I needed perspective before I could figure that out.
I lived near Golden Gate Park, so I picked up my books and hopped over to the Japanese Tea Garden. I imagined studying in the pavilion under the shade of a Ginko tree while I gazed at the fish in the koi pond. The tea pavilion was there, as were the Buddhist sculptures and the carefully arranged rocks. The trees were all there. The fish were missing, along with the water in the pond. It was as if an alien fish abduction had occurred. Apparently, it was time for the annual pond scrubbing. The koi were swimming happily somewhere else, in an undisclosed location, until the pond was cleaned and re-sealed to prevent leakage.
The absence was upsetting and informative. I realized that I longed for the presence of beings who thrived under the pressure of water. I went to the aquarium, where waves and currents in a different habitat reminded me to look for ebbs and flows in my own life. Reaching up to the sky along with the kelp in the tank, I could remember that I have my own anchor points, my own sources of light, and that everything in between was meant to be in motion.
Last time I was here, DK reminded us of a principle of particle physics, that scientists can predict either the location or the speed of a sub-atomic particle, but not both. I had been moving so fast that I had no sense of the direction my life was going. I had no confidence in my loyalties, nor a clear idea of that to which I was accountable. Being drawn to the natural world made me rest beside still waters.
The value of stillness is the ability to re-orient. Animals, vegetables, and minerals may capture our attention long enough that we can take note of where we are. What am I feeling right now? What’s right in front of me? Being present, even just for the space of a few breaths, helps us to know which way is up.
This is not to say that the present moment is necessarily the fulfillment of hope. Sometimes stillness means discovering that reality does not match expectations. Even so, I think there is wisdom in putting aside for a bit what “ought” to be, and to find companionship with what is.
I see the faces of warm, loving people. I hear the hum of this building, our spiritual home. Outside, I see trees firmly planted, and I see the sunlight wash over the playground. I feel joy and hope. Breathing in, I give thanks for this moment. Breathing out, I am grateful for the ability to give back.
Listen
The second thing that paying attention to the natural world does is that it helps me to listen. Tuning in to sources of comfort and encouragement might take some adjustment.
In this morning’s Time for All Ages story (Grandad’s Prayers of the Earth by Douglas Wood), we heard the perspective that “Each living thing gives its life to the beauty of all life, and that gift is its prayer.” Grandad says, “Like the trees and the winds and waters, we pray because we are here—not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Because it is when we change ourselves … that the world is changed.” The characters in the book find peace in a pantheist vision of the forest, a sense of the divine within breezes and birds and water.
If listening for the prayers of the earth doesn’t make sense to you, perhaps listening for evidence of the persistence of life will do. When I began preparing this sermon, there was still snow on the ground. I was startled to hear birds outside, scouting the bushes next to the house for the season to come. I heard squirrels rustling under brown leaves, determined to make use of last year’s bounty for a few more weeks until a time of abundance returns. The surprising stubbornness of living things gives me hope.
When I was about eight, we moved to a new house with a larger back yard. The yard was, shall we say, undeveloped. The weeds were higher than my head. Dad had a decorative saber that was just sharp enough to hack them down. He planted a garden with lettuce and cabbage, and even a row of corn. In the next couple of years, it became evident that generations of rabbits were more determined than he was to lay claim to the yard and its abundance. That cabbage never stood a chance.
Growing plants indoors was new territory. My family didn’t seem to have the knack for it. At some point, a sansevieria appeared on the windowsill in the kitchen. I don’t know which of my parents brought us across the threshold to being a house with plants. Then a jade plant appeared. They both did surprisingly well. The two of them were like the advance team. By the time I was in high school, there was a little colony of green, leathery plants. I imagined that the presence of each one improved the environment for the others. I moved away for a few years. When I visited, I saw that the plants had their own corner of the dining room. Now Dad makes a seasonal ritual of bringing the plants outside in the late spring and bringing them inside in the fall.
When I listen to the plants for a minute, of course I don’t literally hear anything. “Listening” to those houseplants through seedtime and harvest, I am reminded that growth can happen where it seems impossible. Life is more persistent than I sometimes realize.
One of the things that modern science teaches us about the natural world is that there are processes in motion around us and within us that are beyond our immediate ability to perceive. The atoms in our bodies are busily bonding and releasing around the clock. We talked two weeks ago about the movements of the galaxies, stars we can only see with high-powered space telescopes. The universe, from the molecules of air around us to the giants of the night sky, is part mystery and part invitation to discovery. Listening beyond the obvious may offer reasons to hope.
You Are Not Alone
Grain for grain, sun and rain, find my way in nature’s chain, tune my body and my brain to the music of the land. (“The Garden Song” by Dave Mallet)
A third lesson of the natural world is that we are not alone. We are part of nature’s chain, not something separate from it. In fact, we’re even more connected than we might have imagined. Scientist and educator Scott Sampson writes:
At what point did your last breath of air, sip of water, or bite of food cease to be part of the outside world and become you? Precisely when did your exhalations and wastes cease being you? Our skin is as much permeable membrane as barrier, so much so that, like a whirlpool, it is difficult to discern where “you” end and the remainder of the world begins … It turns out that “you” are not one life form—that is, one self—but many. Your mouth alone contains more than 700 distinct kinds of bacteria. Your skin and eyelashes are equally laden with microbes and your gut houses a similar bevy of bacterial sidekicks … In other words, at any given moment, your body is about 90% nonhuman … To make things more interesting still, microbiological research demonstrates that we are utterly dependent on this ever-changing bacterial parade for all kinds of “services,” from keeping intruders at bay to converting food into useable nutrients.
We are not isolated beings. This is one place where the Transcendentalists got it wrong. They were spiritually moved by the natural world, yet they assumed themselves to be observers with dominion over the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson (in his essay, “Nature”) defined nature as “all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME.” He wrote, “Nature in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man (sic); space, the air, the river, the leaf.”
Of course we know they are changed. Humans have an impact on the ecosystem. In the nineteenth-century view, there was a clear and permanent barrier between the human and the non-human world. The legacy of the Transcendentalists in literature and love for planet is valuable, yet I worry that we have not fully examined what it means to believe in our separateness. I think that the responsible spiritual search asks us to re-examine our worldview every so often.
When we understand that our “selves” can mean our family selves and our communal selves and our selves of this watershed, that implies a different response to challenge. Each one of us is a multitude, and each one of us is a part of something larger than the individual. That has implications for our ethic of care. Even in situations where there is nothing we can do to alleviate pain or grief, offering our companionship can make those times more bearable for each other.
Thinking of my place, our place, in the family of things helps me to feel less alone when I am in despair. Human beings share a significant percentage of our DNA with other mammals. If the cabbage-eating rabbits can win their battle, so can I.
Reflecting on the animals, vegetables, and minerals that I see and hear in my environment, I am thankful for the interdependent web of which we are a part. I am thankful for the people who show up here with open minds, loving hearts, and helping hands. I am thankful for those who protect and defend the natural resources of this watershed. I am thankful for every relationship that reminds me of the persistence of life.
Conclusion
The spirituality and science of our earthly home offer touchstones of comfort in times of challenge. Let water and stone invite us into stillness. Let us listen to the prayers of green plants. May we know that we are not alone, but embraced in a web of relationship with the planet, including with each other.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
