ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

A sermon by James Ishmael Ford

5 May 2002

The Text
To live in the realm of (the interdependent web) means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance we die, but at the same time, we also develop ourselves, we grow. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of (the web), losing its balance against a background of perfect balance. So if you see things without realizing the background of (the web), everything seems to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live, and how we extend our life.
Shunryu Suzuki

So, what is an authentic life? What gives us nourishment? What informs our actions? What can heal our hearts and our minds, and the heart and knowing of this world? These are, I suggest, the questions of our faith, and of our possibility. These are the whispers of our dreams. And where they lead, I believe, is the fulfillment of our heritage.

Our lives are so confused, things seem so complicated. Things are out of balance, off kilter. No doubt about it. Just the sadness that makes it into the newspapers and on our television news would seem too much. The tragedy of the Middle East, chaos within the Roman Catholic Church, the elections in France, the pandemic of AIDS across Africa and southern Asia, that genocide in Tibet, pervasive fears of terrorism, and constant hints of new wars. And the tragedy is that this is just a beginning of the litany of hurt and sadness. Just thinking of all those "isms," ageism, sexism, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, the list is far too long. But it surrounds and sometimes veils us. Off balance.

It is also true right here, right here in the western suburbs of Boston. That hateful letter at the end of a bitter debate on whether to override the limit on our property taxes speaks to poisons in our community. We experience our own sadnesses, and just because they’re domestic, doesn’t mean they’re any less hard than those grander issues of the world. Loss of work, fear of the loss of work, fragile relationships, sometimes relationships that just are not making it, constant fears for our children. Off balance, indeed.

And we need to remember something else. At the very same time we see the sadness, we find how we have much to be thankful for. Here the picture can be confusing. We really have much to be thankful for. In this dizzying reality, there is also much good. In many ways these are the most amazing times. Our community here at FUSN is thriving. People are finding, not all, but many of us, satisfying work, are engaging our families with care and attention, and are growing deep as individuals, definitely are living fulfilling and satisfactory lives. Unbalanced, unevenly distributed, but joy is also a part of our lives.

Last night we had a wonderful fund-raiser for both the UU Urban ministry and the Steve Glidden Foundation. Today we’ve welcomed new members into our Society. Today our children are marching for hunger, as in a few minutes, will a number of our adults. We’re recruiting for the good work of our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. (And don’t forget to fill out the form and send it in promptly.) With reckless abandon we are responding to these rough times. There should also be no doubt of that.

Here, in our few minutes together, I would like to reflect a little on what this means, living in these worst of times and these best of times; for us as individuals, and for this planet on which we live. Today I want to talk about hope birthing here in the world that is. I want to talk about possibility. I want to talk about our dreams, and how they can take wing and soar into the realm of the possible--into manifestation.

We begin, as we must; with the real world. Ours is not a faith of denial. We try hard to never turn away. So we need to begin with an honest acknowledgment of what is, of the life of unbalance. It involves human suffering all mixed up with human joy. It is unsettling; it is a path of unbalance. So, how do we find our harmony, our sense of equilibrium, our way to an authentic balance?

Well, this is how we do that. Once we see how things are, then we need to find a healthy way to engage. I suggest the most artful way of engagement seems to be to hold with open hands. I speak of this constantly, because it is so important. This is how our spiritual lives can manifest as a healing gesture.

Things are in such flux, in such motion, we cannot hold tightly onto anything. Clinging in this world of flux is like grasping water. And that’s the greatest unbalance, the most inharmonious thing we can do. But, let’s clarify what I mean. This not clinging, this open handed approach to life doesn’t mean not holding, not loving, not caring.

We cannot cling, because everything is in motion. The lack of balance is the lack of anything standing alone or unchanging. Nothing will remain the same. We all are in flux, being created anew with every breath, with every encounter. So, to cling to our joy in any moment will in the next be clinging to a corpse, something already gone. And just as true, to cling to our sorrow, any sorrow, will at some point be clinging to a ghost, a dream of the past, a memory. This is how the universe is constructed, and that includes you and me. Everything changes, everything passes.

And it is here that we come to today’s text. These few words from Shunryu Suzuki speak to what we find just below the boiling sea of our joy and our sorrow. Our actions in the foreground, are the play of life and death. Here we make choices, good, bad and indifferent. Here as we emerge out of that background, we are of necessity off balance.

The world is in flux; change is all around us. Joy dissolves into sadness. Sadness births joy. And out of this Suzuki Roshi, my first spiritual teacher, tells us "Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance."

Then he makes that rather difficult, startling, and inviting assertion. "The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony." Now in the original of that reading, Suzuki uses a different term for the background than I quoted. He says a technical term, Buddha nature. I suggest within our western liberal religious tradition, we’ve come up with an analogous term, an exactly analogous term: the interdependent Web of existence, of which we are a part.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe I know what that harmony is. It is the web of relationship. It is the deep knowing you and I can come to with our bodies and minds: that we truly are woven out of each other, and our reality includes that more which we all are. So we lose our balance, we birth and we die, we love and we lose. But it all plays out against the background of harmony and intimacy, which we notice only as we let go.
Of course, as my old teacher says, "If you see things without realizing the background of (the interdependent web), everything seems to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live, and how we extend our life."

We let it flow. We experience our sadness and do not deny it. We experience our joys and we do not deny them. And we experience our connections, in playing with a child, in joining the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, in giving time and presence to the things that need our time and presence. The suffering not turned away from, and not clung to, reveals it all.

Is that clear? Probably not. Well, Jud Leonard, one of my newer teachers tells me, tells all of us the way through. He teaches us to "Love fiercely, and let go. At the same time; in the same gesture." Here is the magic of the way. Love fiercely. Here I think is another term that is exactly analogous with the web: Love. The biggest love, the love that knows our connections. Know you are part of it all. Know, and love. With passion. With heart. And let go. Keep letting go. This way is dynamic, is in constant motion, is a dance, is a magical gesture. Keep opening your hands and love fiercely: all in the same magical gesture.

This is the way of the web. This is the way of love. And so, as another of my teachers, Carter Heyward, a professor over at the Episcopal Divinity School tells us, "love, like truth and beauty, is concrete." Here she speaks to our path, one of living in the world." She underscores to us how "Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being ‘drawn toward.’ Love is active, effect, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies."

She shows how love "creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth." This love, this background of intimacy, of knowing the web, of holding with open hands is our way. And it tells us how we come together into a place like this, by ourselves or with a family, young and old, gay and straight, whatever our color, whatever our intellectual endowment, whatever our physical capacities. We come together, not just into this room, but into all our living, learning constantly the magic of love, of interconnection, of the web. This is our way.

"Loving," Carter tells us. "involves commitment." We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called ‘love.’" Rather, we choose. We let go and open our hearts and minds, we let go and discover our background. We let go, into the unbalance of things.

This is loving actively. And this "love is a choice—not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile." Here we throw our own unbalance into the harmony of the web. Here we begin to really love.

"Love is a conversion to humanity-— willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh."
Perhaps it turns out our lives are not so complicated, after all. As we discover the unbalance against the background of interconnection, of our interweaving, as we discover our rising and falling within the strands of the web as our own intimate truth--we find that way through. Instead of being lost in denial or fantasy; our seeing ourselves as we are, and then opening our hands and our hearts to the deep and sometimes hurtful knowing of connection, of love—this is all we need.

Then we experience the mystery of this community, of our own sweet First Unitarian Society; the possibility of our lives lived from deeply reflecting, and heartfully acting. Then as Jud tells us we will "Love fiercely, and let go. At the same time; in the same gesture." And at that moment, I really am sure; we will find the necessary healing for ourselves, and for our world. It is the work of this Society. It is the work of our living faith. It is your work, and mine.

And it is a glory before God and the world.

Amen.