March 11, 2007
Rev. Barbara McKusick Liscord
Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Milford, NH
UNEDITED
ORDINARY MYSTICS
Many of you
know I worked for 20 years in the corporate world. During that time, I had been looking for
enriching courses to enhance my work experience. I came upon a workshop sponsored by the local
University’s continuing education program for business and community leaders, entitled
“The Spiritual Dimension of Leadership.”
The Manager of my division agreed to send me to the course. He knew I was looking for ways to stay fresh
and interested in my work. The course
was led by Marsha Sinetar. You might
recognize her name as the author of the bestselling book, Do What you Love and the Money will Follow. She also wrote Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics and
“Developing a 21st Century
Mind. Her books affirm many of our
Unitarian Universalist principles and sources- encouraging a logical
intuitiveness, honoring our own personal experiences of transcendence and way
of whole seeing that understands connections between everything.
In the
workshop, Sinetar encouraged us to pay attention to mystical moments and offered
ways for us to recover and share with one another stories of mystical
experiences. Most of us worked in the
business world or as executive directors of non-profits- so she was encouraging
us to connect our spiritual lives with our work lives. I liked the way she pointed out that we
don’t have to drop our lives, our work, our families, our communities and cloister
ourselves in a monastery to explore and draw from the mystical dimension of
life.
It was then
that I began the habit of beginning my day with some spiritual reading and
meditation. Later as my children grew
older and didn’t need my undivided attention to get ready in the morning, I was
able to add yoga and writing. Yet, even
as a minister…there are enough demands on my time that I am drawn away from
these practices that sustain me and ultimately sustain my work. Although, I know it is not healthy for to me
to go too long without these regular practices, there does seem to be some
grace that flows through life offering up experiences that are whole-making and
transforming. Sometimes all it takes is
noticing.
In our
reading this morning, the poet Denise Levertov, invites us to see that as much
as our ability to reason has done for us… our total reliance on reason divides
us from from a dimension of life that we really cannot live without. Reason is
…toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads and around us
to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,
a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.
Not that God is unreasonable – but reason
in such excess was tyranny
and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell
reflecting our own faces. God
lives
on the other side of that mirror[1]
Rabbi Abraham
Heschel says that people who are open to mystical experience “want to taste the
whole wheat of spirit before it is ground by the millstone of reason. (They) would rather be overwhelmed by the inconceivable
than wield the definitions of the superficial.”[2] “Mystical intuition occurs at an outpost of
the mind, dangerously detached from the main substance of the intellect. Operating, as it were, in no-mind’s-land, its
place is hard to name, its communications with critical thinking often
difficult and uncertain, and the accounts of its discoveries not easy to
decode.”[3]
We’re
talking about those mystical, spiritual or religious experiences that bring a
shift in your being… and are awash in feelings of well-being, peace or
insight. This is often accompanied by
the feeling that you as separate entity ceases… you are a wonderful part of the
totality of the reality. Some express it as, I felt part of God and
new that God was in me. Emerson said “Within us is the soul of the
whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle
is equally related; the eternal One.”
“One” with a capital “O”.
You’ve
heard joke about this oneness… You know… the Buddhist goes to a hot dog stand
and says “Make me One with Everything.”
But that sense of oneness, wholeness is not confined to Buddhism. When
you start to listen to mystics from all religious traditions, the experiences
share so many of the same qualities that I’ve already described. These direct
experiences of the transcendent go beyond specific theological beliefs and
ideas. They may get expressed and
interpreted differently, but when I read and listen to descriptions of
religious experiences I start to feel that there is hope for unity in the
world. Positive interfaith dialogue is
possible when we share common experiences of mystery and wonder and
transformation. Underlying all the
purported evidence of our separation from each other… there is a unity… a
ground of being of which we are a part.
We don’t
need complex theological explanations to draw strength and hope and insight and
peace from our mystical, spiritual or religious experiences. For years now, I have found myself less interested in solving the
mystery… less interested in some definitive theological idea.[4] I’m happy to let the mystery be. I don’t feel
the need to assign rational, theological explanations to mystical experiences…
I have found it enough to notice that they are happening at all. And I am curious about finding a more open
way of greeting the world that will offer up these experiences—all the while
understanding the difference between being a seeker and a grasper.
While
periods of retreat for reflection, introspection and spiritual practices are
good, our mystical experiences can be embedded right in our ordinary lives.
Those experiences are not relegated to a realm separate from the work we engage
in to make a living or our passion to heal the world. Since I began this sermon with a story from
my corporate working life, I’ll share an experience that surprised me. I was working late one night- the only one
left in a network of cubicles. I was
negotiating and closing a real estate investment transaction. Things had heated
up as they do between human beings- particularly when millions of dollars are
involved. I rushed between my cubicle
and the fax machine as we sent contracts back and forth across the
country. (We weren’t e-mailing much in
those days.) On one of my trips to the
fax machine, a flower- I remember it quite clearly a yellow primrose with its’
bright green, lined leaves- caught my eye and then completely caught my
attention. I stopped in my tracks and
looked at it… probably not long…probably not longer than a minute. I felt a sense of peace and relaxation come
over me. It was if the flower reached
out and literally grabbed me. I resumed
my movement in the direction of the fax.
And as I did, an idea about how we might unloose the logjam of our
negotiations came to me. When I returned
to the conference call with the latest version of the contract in front of me. I had been changed on my way to the fax
machine. I listened carefully to what
the others were saying and offered my idea.
We were able to resolve the impasse.
Maybe it was the presence of that other living thing- the growing plant
rooted in soil- so different from the metal, plastic environment I was working
in. There may be a neuro-physiological
explanation… or a theological explanation- in other words … this was a gift of
a personal God who was trying to get my attention. But whatever it was, I’m grateful for the
grace it offered in the midst of high pressure that would have otherwise taken
a higher toll on my being.
I thought
it was great when Cathy Goldwater let me know that the Children’s choir had a
song to share with us this morning- All God’s Critters—because I’d been
thinking about the role of animals in the spiritual dimension of our
lives. Mystical connections through animals
have often been described to me- a relationship with a beloved dog may bring a
sense of peace, joy and even insight.
Personally, my experiences have related to animals living in the wild,
with whom I cross paths in the course of conducting the mundane activities of
my life- often at a crossroads. Or maybe
that’s just when I notice them.
During the
time I was working in the corporate world in Portland, Maine,
I was asked to consider a significant leadership role for two years of our
community’s United Way
campaigns. I had served on Boards of
Directors of excellent service organizations which received United Way funding… so I knew the good my
work would do. But I couldn’t figure out how I was going to take that role on-
on top of working, taking care of my two children and nurturing a
marriage. I had already started to
think about the path of parish ministry, but couldn’t see how the economics of
working less and the costs of seminary would work for my family. I had two days before I needed to report back
to the President of my company with my decision.
I was
driving to work early one morning, thinking about what I should do. I was in the middle of thought about making
the call declining the role. The rising sun
angled streams of light behind me. All
of a sudden a deer lit golden by the morning sun jumped out in front of the
car. I caught my breath in surprise and
slowed down to watch the deer bound into the woods. And within seconds, my thoughts turned
positive. “Wait a minute! I’ve been
wanting to follow a path with heart—converting my life energy toward the good
of others. This is my opportunity to do
just that—not in the way I had been thinking. But a way just the same.” And then in the next 10 minutes it took to
get to work, ideas tumbled forward. I
saw how I might rearrange my usual work responsibilities so I could take on
this new role.
In a sermon
by my colleague Sue Phillipps in Keene,
she tells the story from a man in her parish who her very early on in their
conversation that he is an atheist. He
had come to believe that there is no omnipotent God, no divine being that acts
in his life or in human history. But he
told her of an experience during a moment of intense vulnerability when an
overwhelming sense of Spirit came to him.
The encounter was totally unexpected, completely undeniable and it
changed him. Decades later the
experience is still very much with him… he accepted the experience for what it
was: an epiphany. And he continues to accept it despite the fact that it simply
doesn’t fit with what he knows and believes.
He lives with the mystery, knowing that doing so is a step toward
wholeness, toward Spirit.[5]
I love our
faith that invites you to bring your reason with you into our religious community…
don’t check your brain at the door, please.
And don’t check your passion for making the world a better place at the
door either—the work beyond these walls to save the planet, work for equality
in marriage and other civil rights, and for peace are all part of living our
faith. And as we do all this, let us
take time to share stories- not only of the doing of our lives- but also our
mystical experiences. Maybe in our small
groups and during check-ins at committee meetings, we can share those
experiences. It is so nice to have some
place to bring them. This is one of the
ways we can be spiritual companions to one another.
Since my
own experiences have brought me to a faith in an underlying holy reality that
grounds our being, I wonder if one of the ways we can drop our feelings of
separation and loneliness is to share those stories with one another.
We don’t
need to pass stories like these through the filters of our own reason. Let us hear each other’s stories on their own
terms- in whatever language our companions chose to tell them- grateful for the
gifts that they are: inexplicably mysterious and strengthening, hope-giving,
whole-making, creative and sometimes offering great flashes of insight.
Let’s let those moments pass, as Denise Levertov said,
through the slit where
the barrier doesn’t
quite touch the
ground, manages still
to squeeze in – as
filtered light,
splinters of fire, a
strain of music heard
then lost, then heard
again.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
When it breaks through
our intellect, it is genius; when it breaths through our will, it is virture;
when it flows through our affection, it is love.
So may it be.
Bibliography
Tara
Brach. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart f a Buddha.
New York:
Bantam, 2003.
William
James. The Varieties of Religious Experience:A Study in Human Nature, Being
the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. New
York: Penquin Putnam, Signet Classic, 2003.
Marsha
Sinetar. Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics:Lifestyles for Self-discovery; New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press,
1986. Developing a 21st Century Mind;Ballantine Books,
Reissue Edition, 1992.
Wayne
Teasdale. The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s
Religions. Novato,
California: New World
Library, 1999.
[1] Denise
Levertov, Contraband. Many thanks to my colleague, Rev. Sue
Phillips, for suggesting this poem and topic to me from her October 29, 2006
service at the Keene Unitarian Universalist Church.
[2] Abraham
Joshua Heschel, edited by Susannah Heschel, Moral
Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. New York: Farrar,
Strauss, 1966. Page 164. Noted by Rev. Sue Phillips in her Sermon Mystery of Mysteries, October 29, 2006, Keene, New
Hampshire
[4] Songs
come to mind: Iris Dement’s Let the Mystery Be; Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine.
[5] Rev. Sue
Phillips, Sermon Mystery of Mysteries, October
29, 2006, Keene, New Hampshire. Quotes and paraphrase.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
in Milford