OUT OF THE DARKNESS

A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford

6 January 2002

Text

When we understood it might be cancer,/I lay down beside you in the night,/my palm resting in the groove of your chest,/the rachis of a leaf. There was no question of/making love: deep inside my body that/small hard lump. In the half-light/of my half-life, my hand in the beautiful/sharp cleft of your chest, the valley of the/shadow of death,/there was only the present moment, and as you/slept in the quiet, I watched you as one watches/a newborn child, aware each moment of the/miracle, the line that has been crossed/out of darkness.

Sharon Olds


Today I want to address those moments that occur in our lives which open doors of possibility. I want to explore the shape of those moments. And I want to speak a little of what those moments open us to, what is the nature of that possibility. I also want to speak just a bit of how we can best prepare ourselves for those moments. Maybe in all this I can present a picture of what life may look like within such a field of cultivation, and why we should want to engage these mysterious experiences. Let’s see.

Heinrich Zimmer wrote somewhere that "The best things can’t be told; the second best are misunderstood." And there is the problem. I want to talk about the best things, but must settle for the second best. Truly, the best thing I can’t really speak of. It’s just too big. So, we, I must begin with words, very much things of that second place, things that only follow out of that best.

But here is my offering. Friday morning I was standing upstairs at Jackie and Charlie Colby’s home in their bedroom, watching two men from the Commonwealth Cremation Service gently slip Charlie’s mortal remains into a plastic bag, zip it closed, tightly cinch belts over his chest and legs, and begin that last journey. I felt my throat contract and tears well up.

I have one distinct memory floating in my mind of that moment. There was a bedside table up against the door. So, I reached down and moved some objects on the table just a little away from the door before they carried Charlie through. And I watched. I watched. During all this I felt so many things. I’d been feeling so many things since the previous day, much of it in that house. Especially, I felt all those connections and memories of this last year and a half I was fortunate enough to visit this place, and to get to know this man and that woman who lived there.

The second best is the words, so easily misconstrued, so easily misspoken. Here words really do fail. But that can be good. Because at such a moment when we realize the failure of our words: at that time, when all else is exhausted, only the reality remains. And, also, we need to share ourselves, to point to that which is, even if it is only pointing. So, some of the words that hint at this moment are power and majesty, glory, beauty, the deep, silence.

Certainly at that moment standing near that door I found myself awash with memories. I stood in a similar spot when my mother was carried from her room in our house in Arizona. And at that moment at the Colby’s my body knew this connection, deeply, truly. In fact I’ve stood near similar places over the years. I’ve been near this place many times.

In that moment where the memories rose, I recalled so much. And then something happened. Everything fell away. It all fell away. I was just witnessing. I was simply witnessing. And at that moment, out of that witnessing, I had a new feeling. That feeling was of intimacy with Charlie, with those two men doing their necessary work with grace and respect, and also beyond them; with the door way, that table, and the objects on it.

I felt the intimacy of memories that rose and fell of their own accord. I felt intimacy with Jackie downstairs, and the sky above, and the dirt so far down below. I felt our human condition, and the range of the world itself. Intimate. The silence was speaking. Not in my words, but ever more powerfully.

Unfortunately this description I share here today is from that second place. It is not my raw experience at the time. And to my regret these words just don’t convey enough. Today I can only speak from the second place. Still, I must. So, what I can say, from that best place, what spills out of me at this time; is how some sense of the holy and the right filled me as I watched Charlie go.

It contained all those echoes of all those memories, and sensations. And it was something more, vastly more. I found myself moving from the second best, from that land of words I usually so happily occupy, to that best place. In this moment I was, I believe, experiencing what we call in our culture, an epiphany.

Today is the sixth of January, the twelfth day following Christmas, which in the Christian calendar is the celebration of the Feast of the Magi, who according to legend have only now made their way to the manger. Today commemorates their witnessing of the miracle child. And so this day is called epiphany, meaning to "show forth."

In our common language this word epiphany speaks to those mysterious moments when we notice. It is about those great "ah has!" of our lives; where in some wondrous flash of insight, we finally get it. This "getting it" can be a small thing, although it can be pretty big as well; but always it speaks to the greatest of things. Such as that moment of which Edna St Vincent Millay sings. "I saw and heard, and knew at last/The How and Why of all things, past,/And present, and forevermore."

Well, I felt something of that as Charlie was carried down the stairs. My friend was gone. And there was yet so much to do. Fortunately, and not always so, Jackie was surrounded by family. Of course even so, there are rough times yet to come for her.

However, she is enveloped not only by her family, but also by us. And in that moment I felt that truth for its reality. And I felt something of the beauty of what our lives can be because of that. Here among us, here in our own hearts, yours and mine; the big, the best, has a place.

It was a small noticing, a small epiphany. Life and death squeezing up together, so close I could taste it. And in this moment people doing the right thing. Intimacy. From that moment I thought about all those choices in life; Charlie’s, Jackie’s, and of course, mine. And perhaps, yours?

We make decisions. We open this door; we close that one. We take this job, we move to that town. We marry that person, or we don’t. Each of these choices takes us on a journey, but it is a journey with much the same end: that journey down those stairs and into that hearse. What counts is how we get to that same destination.

Like I said, a small epiphany. Also one experienced, and forgotten before. This is a second chance experience. These experiences of ours can be small, like this noticing of the everyday ordinary. Often, usually, after say forty or fifty they are almost certainly the opening of doors we’ve peeked through before. Small, ordinary: but so important.

They also can be large. So, for instance one of the great epiphanies described in our modern times is how Robert Openheimer when witnessing the first test of an atomic bomb involuntarily began chanting that terrible passage from the Bhagavad Gita. "If the radiance of a thousand suns/Were to burst at once into the sky,/That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One…/I am become Death,/The shatterer of Worlds."

In the Gita the warrior prince Arjuna has repeatedly asked his charioteer whom he has come to realize is God, to unveil himself. In the horrific presence of ultimate reality we find that bursting of a thousand suns, and we find the true meaning of the Mighty One, where death and birth collapse into each other, and meaning is lost in the raw presence of the shatterer of worlds. Now in the spiritual literature this is what usually gets the press. It’s dramatic. It’s talking about the big in very obvious terms.

But mostly in our real lives there are the small things, the slight epiphanies, the little awakenings. These are the constant invitations. And this is the point. Those more common, those more ubiquitous experiences are of themselves very important. I hope we don’t lose sight of this.

For instance when we are just a little lucky we see a child playing, actually see that child playing. Then out of that moment, when it takes on its holy element; every hope and dream and fear for that child and, of course, for our selves, cascades in our hearts and minds. And from that, the miracle occurs. There the epiphany is a showing forth, and in that second we understand the preciousness of existence.

Or, that terrible, but still so common and ordinary blessing: we witness a death. These moments of children, of mortality, of reality: they are precious beyond price. These are experiences as common as common. But, also they are our hope and our possibility in this life. These epiphanies we can experience are the promise we do not have to repeat our history forever. They are the promise we can change.

So today, let’s reflect just a little on how we can see through those small holes in time and space that are our ordinary epiphanies, and break through the hardness of our certainties, out into a different world. Let’s ask what can that world be? What is that best, really? And how do we encounter it?

Well, first on that how. Truthfully, it just happens. We’re hard programmed to experience the real. I believe we are born to know. This all, I’m quite certain has to do with the shape of our brains, it has something to do with evolutionary biology, it has something to do with the universe itself presenting itself to itself.

The important thing for us is only our willingness. We will be given these experiences, these epiphanies. They happen like an apple falls to the ground when the time is right. But, it helps if we’re just a little prepared to notice when these things happen. So there are our spiritual practices, those things we human beings have figured out we can do that throw us in the path of events, possibility a little better prepared to catch that apple rather than to have it hit us in the head and knock us silly.

We talk long walks in high places. We dance. We sing. We gather in small groups to speak and more importantly, to listen. We sit still and notice. We follow many strange and winding paths, all to allow us to open our hearts just a little, to open our eyes, just a little. But in that opening, to allow our selves to be ready for those small and great accidents that allow our knowing of the best.

Before I go much farther, there is another perspective that must be acknowledged. In fact, often we don’t want this. Not really, and on the surface at least, quite reasonably. The best, the real is big; it shatters worlds. And frequently we would just as soon keep it simple: worry a little about the job, whether the kids are going to get into that top rated school, whether we’ll get that vacation or that car; you know, just stuff.

But in fact this isn’t the best. Nor, deep in our hearts, is it enough on its face. Reality creeps, and lurks, and awaits not only in every shadow of our lives, but potentially in every encounter we have. We are hard programmed to know. It is what our hearts call us to experience. And the events will happen. Our choice is only our willingness and readiness to feel it full.

Thomas Carlyle tells us "In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing." If we don’t cultivate our eye, we will see very little. But if we open ourselves, the possibilities are endless. If we allow our hearts to be open, truthfully, luckily, fortunately, and sometimes even when we don’t: we can be blessed with a vision of that best.

How goes that line in Yates’ Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven: "While on the shop and street I gazed/My body of a sudden blazed;/And twenty minutes more or less/It seemed, so great my happiness/That I was blessed and could bless."

Blessed. Here we come to today’s reading, our text for reflection. Sharon Olds, poet and visionary sings. "When we understood it might be cancer,/I lay down beside you in the night,/my palm resting in the groove of your chest,/the rachis of a leaf.

"There was no question of/making love: deep inside my body that/small hard lump. In the half-light/of my half-life, my hand in the beautiful/sharp cleft of your chest, the valley of the/shadow of death,/there was only the present moment, and as you/slept in the quiet, I watched you as one watches/a newborn child, aware each moment of the/miracle, the line that has been crossed/out of darkness." Here is a showing forth. Here is the blessing of the ordinary present moment. It is for you, it is for me. It is a singing forth from the best. May we take this opportunity, and notice.

Amen.