Nov 15, 2009
When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed;
this must take place, but the end is still to come.
For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;
there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.
This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
- Mark 13:7-8
I bring greetings to you from Dayspring where it is late autumn; a few yellow leaves still cling to the willow trees down by the lake; a few orange-brown ones to the tops of the oaks in the distant woods. It is the end of the growing season, a time of winding down, of going into the ground.
This last week my wife, Cheryl, has been putting the garden to bed for the winter and stacking firewood in the rack on the porch, as I have been away at a 5-day retreat in Tennessee -- a Soulcraft Intensive, a program of the Animas Valley Institute (AVI). Soulcraft is the work and title of a book by Bill Plotkin, the founder of AVI. Perhaps the book's full title will give you some idea where I've been -- Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche. Bill Plotkin's life work has been to guide people into natural wilderness and into the wilds of their own soul.
Before I left I had sketched out a sermon for today, but as happens when immersed in the deep waters of retreat and soul, the sermon has been stirred up a bit (as I have been) by this experience. And so, after a few words to put this in context, I'm going to share some of my story of that experience, as I struggle to live in the terror and troubles of all that is ending and being born in our times. I would like to begin by laying beside our Gospel lesson a poem that I heard Dee Dee Risher read at a Peace Gathering in Philadelphia back in January where I was co-leading a workshop on the querie -- How can we find justice for all God's Creation?"
Dee Dee introduced this poem by saying, "Our time is uniquely shaped by September 11th . This poem was written to my daughter -- she was born on Sept. 13, 2001, and my labor began on September 11."
SING GRATITUDE, ONLY SING
by DeeDee Risher
You came among us in dark times
feeling fire from the sky
spreading terror like smoke.
What a moment to swim ashore
a startled refugee with large clear eyes
stranded on the homeland of my breast
assured of nothing.
Come to remind us that trust is all we live on
to call us to open our arms to the gifts around us
hands that embrace, a table spread,
a window holding a slit of pearl moon.
Life is a candle burning brightly for an unnamed time
seize it, though nothing is promised;
be ready to travel lightly to unknown places
and survive only on the welcome of strangers.
This is how we come in
naked and adrift on churning waters.
And now, only such dangerous, risky trust
can weave us whole again.
"You came among us in dark times." This sounds downright apocalyptic, like the end times we associate with today's Gospel reading. When times are dark, we naturally jump at any chance to escape -- escape to some place of eternal bliss, or at least to some place where things don't look so bad and there is hope. Dee Dee's poem suggests that by living with the dark (instead of quickly escaping) we may receive a blessing - may be made "whole again." In that darkness we are "assured of nothing;" "nothing is promised," we travel to "unknown places," and all we live on is "dangerous risky trust." This is a journey of transformation, and I would like to explore it with you this morning.
I don't know about you, but I often have been put off a bit by the end-time apocalyptic Gospel readings we always have at this time of the church year. My discomfort lies more with some of the interpretations of these passages, I think, than their essence. I've never been drawn to reflecting on the end of the world, but find more that appeals to me in reflecting on the ending of a world, and a world is always ending, be it personal, social, or planetary. In the larger cosmological picture, apocalypse is a permanent condition of the universe. It happens over and over again.
Where do you see a world ending now? In your life? In the life of the Church of the Saviour? In the corporate-industrial-political empire we often speak of? In the planet, in global climate change (which a Bangladeshi climate scientist recently said was too soft a phrase, preferring "catastrophic climate destabilization"). Do you see a world ending in the end of cheep oil, in the meltdown of the global economy, in "wars and rumors of wars?"
How does this world ending leave you feeling? Are you afraid, angry, despondent, sad? Do you wonder what the world will be like that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren? Do you know how they are feeling? I rode to Tennessee with a 27 year old woman from Delaware (we may have been the youngest and oldest among the 31 participants in the retreat), and I now know more deeply the anger and fear in some of the younger folk among us, the longing for real change, for transformation.
I am tempted, as I think many of us are when trouble is brewing, to move as quickly as possible to fix things up. We may not be able to fix the planet, but we can do a few things that might help. You know -- the list of 50 things we can do to save the planet! And dwelling on the bad news, the grief, the despair, the anger, the fear, won't get us anywhere, we feel sure. What we need to do is to bring these dark emotions into the light -- to look on the bright side -- to get hold of a positive vision for the future -- to write a happy chapter to conclude our analysis of what is so wrong in the world.
We do like happy endings. In the documentary, What a way to go: Life at the end of Empire, TS Bennett speaks about the happy chapter, saying ,
I have read many books about the world situation and I have noticed a curious thing -- the happy chapter. After an entire book of dire prognostications comes the chapter at the end that says that if only we do this and that, we'll find a solution; that while there's much to cause us concern, there is much about which we can be hopeful. I don't like happy chapters. They've lulled me back to sleep. They suggest that somebody, somewhere somehow is handling it. I can just go on with my life and, hey, we've got 30 years or so, right? That's a lot of time. I'm sorry folks, but I think time's up. I have no happy chapter to offer you, no list of quick and painless fixes, no plan that will keep the train rolling forever on this track. I see no way for that to happen. If there's going to be a happy chapter we shall have to write it together with the rest of the community of life on the pages of the living world.
These impulses to fix things come from a good place in us, and do have, I'm sure, a place in the grand scheme of things. On the spiritual level they are part of a spirituality of ascent, of fixing things and of positive thinking. We move the dark things quickly into the light and hold them there. In extreme form it looks forward to a day when we will be miraculously transported up, out of this world, and into paradise. Our Gospel reading for today is sometimes interpreted in exactly this way. This approach may, however, lead us to deny the reality around us in the world, to hold in our negative feelings. and to miss an opportunity for what could be truly transformative for us.
What to do! It is this disillusionment with ascent-only spirituality that has led me to explore the spiritual path of descent. It has always been there in some corner of our faith tradition. It is a path that Richard Rohr at the Center for Contemplation and Action in New Mexico has been talking about for years, a journey that Elizabeth O'Connor encouraged us to take, one that depth psychologists know well, and that was part of every ancient culture. In the context of today's Gospel lesson we might term this path of descent, "Hanging out with the birth pangs."
In some ways the relationship between the authentic journey of ascent, a journey to hope, to positive vision, to expectancy, and the journey of descent is captured by the image of a great tree. Its roots sink deep into the solid earth below, probe all the dark spaces in search of life-giving substance, and because it does that it can reach far up into the sky casting its many branches toward the light.
There is a poem by Rilke, that speaks to me about this journey down into the underworld.
How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing -- each stone, blossom, child -- is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely, and confused. So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God's heart; they have never left him. This is what things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. "If we surrendered to earth's intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees."
I think almost a hundred years ago when he wrote this, Rilke knew something we hardly know. Perhaps we can still learn. How much, I wonder, has our avoidance of spirituality of descent has led to our broken relationship with the earth beneath us -- the natural world -- God's creation -- and led us to an exploitative relationship with the earth and its peoples? How much, I wonder, can our walking the path of descent restore that broken relationship and allow something new to rise up and be born in us.
Today I see these end-time scriptures inviting us to take a long look at the Temple, the "world," that we see coming apart, and to stay with that process -- to hang out with the birth pangs -- feeling the grief, the anger, the fear, and the despair, opening ourselves to the mystery of transformation, looking for beginnings of new life, in the midst of the coming apart. This is the what the path of descent and the work of encounter with soul is all about.
I want to illustrate what I'm talking about by sharing a small pat of the story of my recent Soulcraft Program. I share it not as any kind of model to be followed, but a tiny glimpse into a way I am beginning to explore becoming part of what is being born in this ending of one world and birthing of another. I arrive at the Gray Bear Retreat Center around noon, settle in, and after some time wandering on the land to find a spot that will be my sacred spot, the program begins with an opening ceremony. Each of us has been asked to bring some object that has been important to us in our spiritual journey. I bring a wooden box I have made containing things from the wilderness landscape along the shore of Lake Superior that remind me of that place that has been so formative in my spiritual life these past 20 years -- balsam fir needles, gravel from the beach at Agawa Bay, a couple of black spruce cones. I assume it will make up part of an altar at the front of the large gathering room. I am wrong.
We gather in a circle outside around a hole that has recently been dug in the earth, and in a respectful, ceremonial way we are invited to place the object we have brought in the hole, with the assurance that we can get it back at the end of the retreat, if we want. The gift that we place in the hole is something to be let go of for transformation, transformation being death that gives rise to new life. This would happen, of course, in a very real, biologic way were we to permanently leave our gift in the ground. The trees around us, the wind, the people in the circle are all witnesses to this gift-giving. We are told that there are no guaranteed results of this ceremony. The outcome is unknown, a mystery. But without this letting go there is no way for the new to be born. After each person places their gift in the hole we say, "Ho." I am thinking of taking a tiny spruce cone from my box and putting it in the hole. Others go before me. Someone puts a doll figure in the hole. Another puts a Tibetan stone carving, 300 years old, in the hole. My turn comes. I put the whole box in the hole.
Later I reflect that Jesus asked those who followed him to leave everything behind to enter the realm of God. I also think of my earlier wander to the edge of the 400 acre retreat property to where I could see the recent clear-cut on the adjacent property. I think of the remaining broken trees at the edge of the clear-cut witnessing the ceremony we did, this group of people giving their treasure back to the earth, and on behalf of those trees and the suffering of the planet that they represent, I am overcome with gratitude that some humans are giving something back for all that has been taken from the earth.
The next morning after some instruction and preparation we are sent out to take a "Wild animal within wander," returning to our sacred spots. By intention we are being asked to push our limits and get our egos out of the way, to open to mystery. I am trying to get to my spot along the creek, but there are others too close by, roaring, crying out. I glimpse someone without a shirt on. I crawl up the slope on the other side of the creek looking for a more secluded sacred spot. I tarry there awhile in the clear-cut, but am still drawn to the creek, so I fight my way through the slash at the edge of the clear-cut, making a wide circle down the creek valley along the high ground, and returning to the creek which is now 50 feet or more below me down a steep slope. I do not want to fall or twist an ankle and then have to blow my emergency whistle, and so I slowly and carefully move from tree to tree, slipping and sliding here and there, down the steep slope. I reach the creek, running clear and cold over gravel and a small spit of sand. I take my shoes off and put my feet in the creek on the sand. I look around. The creek channel bends back and forth in the valley with vertical rock faces going up 10, 20 feet and I can only see a few yards up the creek to a tiny waterfall, and 20 yards down the creek to a high, curving rock face.
Sunlight is glancing off the little waterfall. Moss on the rock wall across from me is dripping moisture into the creek. I cross the creek, sit on a rock ledge, my feet, my hands splashing in the water. Is this body prayer? Is this baptism? I am definitely pushing my limits, I am swimming in mystery. Later I reflect about the difficulties of this wander -- making my way through the slash at the edge of the clear-cut, through the wounds of the earth really, negotiating the difficult and risky descent down the steep slope to the creek. And at the end of this difficult and risky journey, I find a gift, a treasure; I am touched by divine mystery.
From time to time in this five day retreat I am working with a dream that I had brought to the retreat from my time of preparation for it. In the dream I have returned to a house I left long ago, now inhabited by a family with a twelve year old boy and his younger sister. They have made a room just for me. Though I have just met these children, I feel an immediate and almost ancient connection with them.
It is near the end of the retreat and on our last night together we have what is called, "soul theater." A brief chance for each of us to share with the whole group what has been, or is, happening in our encounter with soul, through a poem we have written, a song, a dance, an enactment. I choose an enactment, in my case based on my dream, though not originally part of the dream. I ask people from my small group to play the parts of the twelve year old boy and younger girl. I give them the lines they are to repeat over and over -- for the boy, "Daddy, come play with me," and for the girl, "Daddy, we're going home."
Our time arrives. I really have no idea what will happen. For sure, I am pushing my limits. I call the players up to the stage. I ask the audience to imagine we are walking in a dark forest on a warm late fall afternoon. We begin to wander back and forth across the stage, and the children begin to voice their lines. I hear the words for the first time from the "little girl" in a soft pleading southern drawl, "Daddy, we're going home" and it is all I can do to respond through my tears, "Yes, yes, we are going home."
Daddy we are going home. I had no idea those words said to me would have so much power. At one level its all about my own inner wounded child. But I'm not sure that's the whole of it. Maybe there is a voice out there somewhere that is the voice of our children, in this time when the Temple is falling apart, calling to us, saying, "Daddy, we're going home." I think of the Biblical image from Isaiah of the peaceable kingdom and the line that says, "and a little child shall lead them." I think of Jesus who said that we must become as little children if we are to enter the kingdom -- the realm -- of God. I think that on this journey of descent through our wounds, our fears, our grief, our anger, our despair, this difficult and risky journey, I have found a gift, or it has found me. Hanging out with the birth pangs, I discover that something is being born, and I am opening to its possibilities.
Daddy we are going home. Home, not to some extraterrestrial paradise, but home to the earth from which we were brought forth, home to the dust of which we are made. In the image of the One who created us, we are going home. As the "Temple" crumbles around us, to use Dee Dee Risher's words, we "open our arms to the gifts around us."
I am only a beginner on this path of descent, this choice to hang in there with the birth pangs, and I wonder about many things. In these dark times of planetary crisis, if we choose not to try to escape, but instead hang in there with the unknowing, the vulnerability, the mystery, how will we be transformed? What gifts will we find? In this time when a world is ending, what will, with great difficulty, be born? And what does this painful new birth have to do with have to do with mending our broken relationship with the earth? What does the earth have to do with our transformation?
In closing, let us listen to Dee Dee's poem one more time.
SING GRATITUDE, ONLY SING
You came among us in dark times
feeling fire from the sky
spreading terror like smoke.
What a moment to swim ashore
a startled refugee with large clear eyes
stranded on the homeland of my breast
assured of nothing.
Come to remind us that trust is all we live on
to call us to open our arms to the gifts around us
hands that embrace,
a table spread,
a window holding a slit of pearl moon.
Life is a candle burning brightly for an unnamed time
seize it, though nothing is promised;
be ready to travel lightly to unknown places
and survive only on the welcome of strangers.
This is how we come in
naked and adrift on churning waters.
And now, only such dangerous, risky trust
can weave us whole again.
Jim Hall,
11/15/2009, Eighth Day Church
The Rilke poem is from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Anita
Barrows and Joanna Macy. Dee Dee Risher read her poem at the Peace Gathering
(www.peacegathering2009.org - after Ched Meyers' talk); it may be unpublished.
The web address for Animas Valley Institute is www.animas.org.