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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
March 27, 2011
READING
From A Guide to Walking Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a
Buddhist monk.
Walking meditation is practicing meditation while walking. It can
bring you joy and peace while you practice it. Take short steps in
complete relaxation; go slowly with a smile on your lips, with your
heart open to an experience of peace. You can feel truly at ease
with yourself. Your steps can be those of the healthiest, most
secure person on earth. All sorrows and worries can drop away while
you are walking. To have peace of mind, to attain self-liberation,
learn to walk in this way. It is not difficult. You can do it.
Anyone can do it who has some degree of mindfulness and a true
intention to be happy.
In our daily lives, we usually feel pressured to move ahead. We have
to hurry. We seldom ask ourselves where it is that we must hurry to.
When you practice walking meditation, you go for a stroll. You have
no purpose or direction in space or time. The purpose of walking
meditation is walking meditation itself. Going is important, not
arriving. Walking meditation is not a means to an end; it is an end.
Each step is life; each step is peace and joy. That is why we don't
have to hurry. That is why we slow down. We seem to move forward,
but we don't go anywhere; we are not drawn by a goal. Thus we smile
while we are walking.
If I had the Buddha's eyes and could see through everything, I could
discern the marks of worry and sorrow you leave in your footprints
after you pass, like the scientist who can detect tiny living beings
in a drop of pond water with a microscope. Walk so that your
footprints bear only the marks of peaceful joy and complete freedom.
To do this, you have to learn to let go—let go of your sorrows, let
go of your worries.
That is the secret of walking meditation.
SERMON
The phone was ringing. It was dark outside, Saturday morning. A
confused glance revealed a “4” at the beginning of the numbers on
the digital clock. This was some years back, but already I had been
jarred out of early morning sleep by calls bringing news of tragedy
in the lives of congregation members. When the phone rings in the
middle of the night, I had learned, the best to hope for is a wrong
number. The second best is an obscene call.
This was neither. The voice on the other end was an occasional
member of the congregation. A college professor, respected and loved
by her students, if also considered a little eccentric. “Bruce,” she
said in urgent voice. “Look outside: the northern sky. The aurora
borealis is gorgeous.”
“Oh,” I said, “thank you for telling me. I'm glad you called.”
I really said that, and I meant it. In retrospect it sounds stupid,
but at that moment a call about the northern lights was the best
alternative I could imagine.
I stepped outside, stood on the porch, looked up to the sky, but I
couldn't find any old aurora borealis. I saw the initial brightening
that promised the dawn—that was it. I came back into the house, made
a pot of coffee. My day had begun.
Being a minister can be hazardous to your spiritual health.
Congregation members might not realize this, but it’s a well known
phenomenon among those of us in this profession: amidst our duties
and responsibilities and just plain old busyness, we lose track of
that call of the infinite that brought us to ministry in the first
place. We can't see the aurora borealis for the trees.
But it’s not just ministry: ordinary life is hazardous for our
spiritual health. Each of us faces days when we just pull ourselves
through, hassled by a thousand things, cut off from any vital
center. Each sometimes feels drained, the joy of being an abstract
concept. The experience of deep peace that Thich Nhat Hanh described
in the opening reading seems unreachable.
Spirituality is part of everyday life. As the psychologist, Abraham
Maslow, put it, AThe great lesson from the true mystics is that the
sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily
life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard.”
This morning I would like to encourage us to pause, think through
moments of an ordinary day, and consider how what gives us life can
be present in the same everyday activities that sometimes wear us
down.
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We’ll start with waking up. At our house, waking up is a fairly
brutal operation, even when I don’t get calls demanding that I go
outside and look at the sky. On a normal morning, our first alarm
goes off at 5:40 a.m. The next one goes off at 5:45 a.m. This is
when we need to get up for Amy to be at work by 8:30 or a little
before.
In between the two alarms, I lie in bed as fragments of dreams
linger. There is quiet at that time of day. The road sounds that are
so present during daylight hours are not as insistent as they will
later become. But there might be a few chirps from birds who are on
a schedule similar to mine. I’ve noticed in the last few weeks that
the birdsongs have changed in anticipation of spring and warmer
weather. It may still be cold outside, but the birds don’t sound
like they do in the depths of winter.
I remember when I was growing up, maybe in high school or junior
high, my father woke me up each morning, and then I turned on the
radio by my bed. This would be at ten minutes before seven, and
there was a brief little program—after the farm news and before the
national news. The show was introduced by cheery announcer who
blurted out, “Top of the morning to you!” There would be a song or
two—and a few commercials—before the World News Roundup at 7:00.
During those ten minutes, my awareness floated between consciousness
and dreams, accompanied by those songs and the patter of the
announcer. It felt like the longest ten minutes of a day—in a good
way. I didn’t have to get up yet. The World News Round and its
non-nonsense tone was still in the future. I drifted into the new
morning.
The five minutes between alarms at our house today reminds me of
that, a time between the worlds of wakefulness and sleep. Sometimes
words come to me that are in our hymnal, a kind of morning prayer.
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action
The splendor of beauty...
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Washing your hands. Thich Nhat Hanh has written, AIf you look
deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all
generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment.
Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of
these people.
Aside from our faces, hands are the most expressive parts of our
bodies. They show our personality, our character, our history, our
being. With our hands we work, create, we heal, we comfort, we
express care and love. With our hands we pass something of ourselves
to another. We receive what others have to offer us. We are joined
into a web of connections.
Pay attention to your hands. While washing in the morning. While
talking. While sharing work and play. While touching and being
touched—pay attention to your hands and to those of others. In each
person's hands is something sacred.
.
Eating breakfast. My breakfast is the same every morning, has been
for decades. Two pieces of toast with jelly, plus a little peanut
butter smeared on the side, and coffee. I alternate types of toast
and varieties of jelly and recently as a concession to age, I’ve
switched to decaf, but the basic concept hasn’t changed.
Nutritionists tell us that breakfast is the most important meal of
the day, but I don't think my breakfast has anything to do with
nutrition.
The clue to this is that even if I have something scheduled for the
morning that involves another breakfast, I still have my two pieces
of toast with coffee before I leave the house. So I don't think
we're talking physical nourishment here; we’re talking about giving
structure to the day. You know, those things we do each day to build
a frame into which we fit our lives. Too little frame, and the day
has no shape: too much frame and we're trapped in this structure of
our own making. But the right amount gives form and meaning.
My toast defines the start of a day whose journey will continue
until I reach my evening ritual: into bed with a book or a crossword
puzzle until I slip back into the netherworld of sleep and dreams.
Then I know that the day can be defined as complete. What gives your
day structure? How do you start a morning?
Doing your chores. Chores seem mostly a burden: all those things we
have to do to keep our lives in order. And yet, isn't it nice when
we can check one of those chores off the list? There is a sense of
accomplishment, completion, that this one little part of my life—it
may only be the laundry or the washing the dishes—but this is now in
order, for awhile.
According to the book of Genesis, God gave Adam and Eve the
responsibility of naming all the animals in the new creation. To
give each an identity, to give us a way of relating to them, to put
them in order.
We do similar things through our chores. We bring order into the
world. There is something holy about naming and organizing and
finding places for the pieces of our lives. There is something holy
about putting things and experiences into relationship with each
other and with ourselves. And so celebrate your chores: the form and
pattern and clarity they bring to your days.
Digging the weeds. Digging the garden, pulling the weeds, who could
ask for more? Well, that's true. But the garden we'll leave for
another time—like next week when we celebrate our flower communion.
Right now, I'm more concerned with weeds. Weeds have a spiritual
lesson to teach, a lesson of humility and the limits to what we can
plan and do amidst the abundance of the force of life.
Chores you can get done—not forever, but at least for now. Weeds,
however, are never done. Even if we can't see them, they're out
there, waiting for an opportunity. Especially during this time of
year: they’re underground plotting a grand return. Even if we manage
to pull out all the weeds we see, even if we poison them into
oblivion—still, a few will make it and in these survivors is enough
power to throw our plans into disarray.
Weeds teach the lesson that we never have things all tidied up. The
abundance of life is such that just when we think everything is
tamed and in its proper place, a dandelion pops up—uninvited—to
crash the party. If we happen to look the other way, the force of
life quickly reshapes our environment into something other than what
we have intended.
Weeds are part of life. That realization helps me relax. It keeps in
check my tendency for over-planning. Life is never going to be as
neat and tidy as I imagine it could be. There are always going to be
weeds. Might as well accept that and get on with it.
Taking care of the car. This is from an essay by Andy Rooney.
My old station wagon is being fixed now and I hope everything comes
out OK. It's good to have a car you don't worry about denting. The
wagon was always the one that got let out in the rain and snow. If
there was a dirty job to be done, I did it in the wagon. I saved my
good car because I wanted the good car to last. I've had three good
cars since I bought the wagon. The wagon, mistreatment and all, has
outlasted the cars I pampered.
When I get it back, the first thing I'm going to do is give it a
nice full tank of high-octane gas, some clean fresh oil and a warm
bath. I want the wagon to know that it's loved.
Taking care of things and pets and people—it’s how we show love.
Taking care and showing love—even for an old station wagon—is a way
of expressing and deepening our spirituality. For this is a
beautiful world with wonderful people and things we depend upon.
They deserve our attention and our care.
Visiting a friend. I notice in our joys and sorrows that often we
mark visits with friends as times of joy. Friends in other parts of
the country and the world. Friends nearby that we don't see enough
of. And also those friends who are close by and reliably part of our
lives.
Here's a definition of friendship: a friend helps you discover who
you are simply by being who he or she is. You don't need plans or
goals for the relationship; you can simply be with each other.
Such moments of “just being” with another person happens in bits and
pieces all the time. But when it occurs reliably with a particular
person, then you've got something special. So maybe we each can make
this resolution: be a friend for someone. Be who you are with
another person—let that other person be who he or she is. There is
no greater gift to offer.
Wandering around. Wandering around is not about goals and
objectives, it's not about intentional activity, it's not about
getting things done. It's about meandering and seeing what turns up.
It’s a form of walking meditation.
In England there's an activity called rambling. Rambling is going
for a walk with a friend or with a group. This is an unfocussed kind
of walk with no particular goal in mind other than to enjoy the
walk. There are ramblers clubs that ramble together each Sunday
morning—it can take the place of church in that more secular
society. You sort of follow a map, but that's not the point. The
point is to go where the spirit leads and take plenty of time doing
it. Then you finish up at the pub.
In a book called, On Becoming Lost by a naturalist named Cathy
Johnson, the author notes, There is an art to wandering. If I have a
destination, a plan—an objective—I’ve lost the ability to find
serendipity. I've become too focused, too single-minded. I am on a
quest, not a ramble. I search for the Holy Grail of particularity
and miss the chalice freely offered, filled and overflowing.
Wandering around is hard for me. I feel guilty if I don’t have a
goal, someplace to point toward where I need to be going. Goals are
fine; we need them too. But sometimes we can let go of our
intentionality and become open to the surprises and blessings that
are abundantly scattered throughout this life.
Notice the change in the light. Light is different at different
times of the day. The light of dawn. The light of mid-morning. The
light of noon. The late of late afternoon. Evening light and the
light that fades when nighttime overcomes day.
Light is also different in different places. Light in the north is
clear and sharp. Light in the south is softer, more diffuse. Desert
light is different from forest light which is different from the
light we see on an ocean beach. Sunny day light is different from
cloudy day light which is different from snowy day or rainy day
light.
Light is different in different seasons. Spring light evokes the
mists of creation. Summer light is bolder, stronger, heavier. Pause
sometimes to notice the light—and the feelings it evokes in you and
the memories. It's another way to forge connection with this
mysterious and wonderful world that has given us life and offers us
the opportunity to laugh and hope and love and play and look at the
stars.
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Spirituality has to do with relationship. Relationship with other
people. Relationship with the depths of oneself. Relationship with
the world around us. Relationship with the force that gives us life.
We may experience that relationship in times when extraordinary
things happen—but we may find it too in the ordinary. In the
everyday events of our lives: Waking up, washing our hands, eating
breakfast, doing your chores, digging the weeds, taking care of the
car, visiting friends, wandering around, mindful walking, watching
for the changes in the light—and all kinds of other everyday
activities. The sacred is in the ordinary.
My hope is that you pause a moment now and then to notice the gifts
scattered throughout your days, even the ordinary days. For there is
renewal and beauty and reassurance and hope and peace—the oneness of
the force of existence expressed through the myriad of forms in the
life we share on this earth.
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