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Living the Questions

Date

Most of us measure progress as moving from one resolution to the next. We find an answer and have a sense of moving forward. But what about all those questions that will never have an answer? What about the injustice that lingers with no righteousness in sight? Today we will consider what it means to live with radical acceptance. Service led by Rev. Susan Maginn.

 

"Living The Questions"

Rev. Susan Maginn

Wy'east UU Congregation

August 23.2009

 

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here

with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,

sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:

the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned

and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.

Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.

Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,

and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches

turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave

and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

DAISIES

It is possible, I suppose that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means. I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

perfectly content not knowing. Song being born

of quest he knows this: he must turn silent

were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display

the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't

mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;

for example -- I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch --

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

Let it be known that I have little to no direct experience in formal scientific method. Other than coach Hopper's 10th grade biology and I would hardly call that formal training.

However, that will not stop me from venturing to hypothesize the following grand claim. Good science and good religion have the same foundation and that foundation is: good questions.

 

Now I'll acknowledge that our religious tradition is particularly drawn toward the asking of questions - perhaps more so than other religious traditions. After all, we are bound by covenant, a way of being together and so the answers that any one of us finds about religious truth is not what connects us. Rather, we are connected by how we are together, by our commitment to walk together in the ways of love, as best as we know them now.

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopalian priest who has published The Luminous Web on the connection between science and religion, she has a definition of faith that is a good one for us: "Faith is radical openness to truth. Regardless of what it may turn out to be. "

That is my favorite definition of faith going, for sure. Faith is radical openness to truth. Regardless of what it may turn out to be....

 

She talks about how if the similarity between science and religion are the questions asked, then the main difference between science and religion seems to be about how answers are found. Both rely on reason and experience to create theories or theologies. However, in science, truths are sought and observed, theories are confirmed or disputed.

While in religion, there is the surprise factor. Some might call it: the woo woo factor. Truth comes through revelation and through insight. There is the receiving of knowledge from the spirit and source of life.

Well, I know I am often surprised by the truths I learn and how I learn them and when I learn them. Truth usually arrives when I least expect it - when I am walking my dog or when I am doing dishes after dark after everyone else has gone to sleep. And as I am walking through my day, I am always surprised that the delivery person of truth does not look like whatever I expect a truth delivery person to like. You just never know...

Unlike science, the truth that is revealed in religious life is rarely about what we can observe, but rather it is about how we observe it, how we perceive what we observe. It is about that unseen force bringing us into deeper relationship with what we observe, and also bringing us into deeper relationship with the quiet of our soul and with that force that is beyond us yet luring us along.

 

I want to acknowledge what a luxury it is to ask questions about life's meaning. There are other kinds of questions I could be asking. I could have it be in question where my next meal is coming from or question whether my family is safe. If I am so concerned with questions of survival, then I probably won't have the luxury of asking questions about my life's meaning.

I also want to acknowledge that questions are not always that great, even the luxurious ones.

Anyone who has parented a three year old knows about living the questions. Kids love the luxurious questions. They will ask you 'why' over and over.

The comedian Louis CK has a great sketch called 'Why?' And it is all about this ability that kids have to ask questions. His daughter asks:

Why can't we go outside?

Because it is raining, he says. (obviously not from Pacific NW) Why?

Because there is water falling out of the sky. Why?

Because it was in a cloud. Why?

Well, clouds form when water has evaporated into the sky. Why?

I don't know. I don't know any more things. Those are all the things I know. Why?

Because I didn't pay attention in science class. Why?

Because I was going through a tough time at home. Why?

Because my parents were all messed up doing the best they could, but it was a mess. Why?

I'll stop here and spare you how this evolves.

 

But basically if you are so silly as to think that you should honor your child's curiosity and answer all their questions, then I promise that you will find yourself seeking answers about things you know nothing about until all the world is a deconstructed wreck and you don't know who you are anymore. It might sound something like this:

Because some things are and some things are not. Why?

Because things that are not can't be. Why?

Because then nothing wouldn't be. You can't have nothing isn't and everything is. Why?

Because then we would have everything - ants dancing with top hats - we don't have room for all that!

 

Perhaps all these 'Whys' are our children's first search for truth. Perhaps they are venturing out of Symborska's island of Utopia with all its certainty because it is an uninhabitable place. Even at aged three, they are sensing that humans cannot exist on answers alone and that we would rather go into the unfathomable depths than to live in such a place. Or maybe they are just little scientists themselves experimenting with what exactly will push their parents to the edge of sanity.

 

Remember the Mary Oliver poem? She said it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain, what the sun lights up willingly. "To take what is given." This is an acceptance that can be an amazing teacher, to accept what is before us whatever it is: the daisy and the weed, the new job and the pink slip, the health that is so good you take it for granted and the illness, the autumn, the rain, the spring, the daisy.

How do we get to a place of being able to truly accept something into our lives as repulsive as a job loss or an illness or some unanswered injustice?

I'm not sure, but I know I have met many people who have been faced with the worst that life has to give. Some cling to a façade of acceptance, perhaps out of fear, as if the façade of acceptance will be a guard against the rising tide of grief, fearing that if they start to cry they might not stop.

But I've also met people who found acceptance almost immediately, and not as a façade but almost as a practice it seemed. Some had experience with past tragedies, so maybe that is it. Maybe since they had been through some dark valleys in the past, they knew they could get through it.

Or maybe these are people who probably started accepting daisies a long time ago, so that when the really big stuff comes toward them, they don't have to learn what acceptance feels like. They already know, because they started small. They have been taking what is given and seeing what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly. They started with daisies a long time ago. So they don't have to start from scratch, but they do have to learn how to open their hearts wider than they ever have.

 

Even though questions can be luxurious and also a cornerstone of our religious lives as Unitarian Universalists, I think most of us yearn for answers more than we yearn for questions. Saying, 'You know, thanks for the luxury but I just want to know where the next island of certainty is so that I can hold onto it for dear life!' Right?

This reminds me of a story from when I was in my late 20s. I was acting in New York and wondering if this was what I really wanted to be doing. I was making a living filming commercials. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the vagaries of acting life you need to know that this is something I had worked hard to be able to do - really hard. I spent years training in a conservatory, years waiting tables (badly, but still...) and now, by some standards, I had made it. I was signed with one of, if not the top commercial agency in the country. I had accomplished what few actors in NY get to accomplish. But it wasn't sitting well. I trained for many years to be an artist and now I was just being one of the many faces that helped make more money for corporate America. Heck, I didn't even own a TV to watch the commercials I made.

 

While I was going through this time of discernment, I got involved in a fund raising effort to support women who owned and operated micro-businesses in Africa. This was not connected with a job and had nothing to do with acting. While I was in the middle of this project, I was really stuck and not sure how to raise a significant amount of money for these women.

One day I was really feeling the stress of this project and I was talking with a savvy business friend of mine. And in that moment, as I was furrowing my frustrated brow, it hit me: Hey, these are problems worth having! It is worth struggling to figure out how to get a whole mess of money to these mothers in Africa. These are the kinds of questions I want to loose sleep over!

I realized that it wasn't a matter of just asking questions. Oh my, I was asking plenty of questions - Should I stop acting once and for all? Should I leave my agent? Should I? Should I? Me, me, me? What I needed to learn was how to ask good questions, Rather than being self absorbed and just wondering about the state of my career and my place in the world, I needed to take on something bigger than myself to realize just how big the questions can get and how big my spirit can get in the face of those questions.

So if there is a moral to this story it is: if your questions are too small, then ask bigger questions and, like the farmer, in the process of taking on something big you might have a new appreciation for what is there already and a new strength to take on more than you imagined, joyfully plunging into the unfathomable depths.

And if your questions are too big for you, if you have heard the news about the unexpected diagnosis or the job loss, if the question is so big you don't know how to hold it much less answer it, then it might be time to start small.

It might be time to return to the daisies and find a radical openness to the truth, regardless of what it may turn out to be.
 

 

 

A prayer from George Kimmich Beach:

(Let this be my prayer)

Let me be patient with all these feelings that drive me hither and yon.

May I be at peace, more patient with myself.

Let me live within the questions that promise no answers, but only signal the mystery that gave them birth.

Let me turn from pettiness of heart, willing to see and accept that the world does not revolve around me.

Let the grief, the pain, and the nameless trouble that overcomes me also open me to feel what others have felt.

Giver of being and freedom, unbind my compassion for all beings about me, and again set free the child of grace within me.

 

Benediction by Kendyl Gibbons:

There is, finally, only one thing required of us;

that is, to take life whole, the bright and dark together;

to live the life that is given us with courage and humor and truth.

We have such a little moment, out of the vastness of time, for all our

wondering and loving.

Therefore, let there be no half-hearted-ness;

rather, let the soul be ardent -

in its pain, in its yearning, in its praise.

Then shall peace enfold our days, and glory shall not fade from our lives.