Not long after you and I got married nearly three years ago, I introduced the monthly theme concept created by the Unitarian organization Soul Matters.
This theme-based program spans all facets of congregational life…worship, religious exploration (Sunday school), and small groups.
The idea is that, during the course of a month, the entire church is focused on same topic, with separate packets geared toward the same area of focus.
The Soul Matters folks have been at it for years now, and in all the months and themes that have passed, there are two that arise, for me, as being among the most important.
One has been used in a couple of different iterations and is typically used in November. Any guesses what the theme would be? (Hint…think about the major holiday in November). Gratitude, yes!
The other is the theme that, in its inaugural run, began at midnight last night. As we turn the corner into March, this month’s new theme is Paying Attention.
Yes, gratitude and paying attention are, in my perception, spiritual cornerstones.
If I had to choose one over the other, I’d go with Paying Attention, because you can’t have gratitude without being attentive.
You can’t engage with love without paying attention. You can’t continue the work of Jesus without paying attention. You can’t be meaningfully in relation to anyone – yourself, God, or others – if you’re not paying attention.
This morning we’re going to hear a story about this through the asking of a simple question.
It’s about a man who became ill, and after the illness had stripped him of his identity-creating roles, he asked what he was/who he was without those defining identities.
Let’s watch and listen. The first person you’ll see is a person whose post it is. The second, and relevant, person is James Van Der Beek.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14Yo2GGsCY3/
That, dear ones, is the story of someone who was paying close attention.
It’s a reminder that it’s never too late for spiritual clarity.
Sometimes what turns out to be clarity at first looks like irony.
James calls himself a skinny weak guy, and yet he became more solid than probably ever through the asking and answering of his question.
We hear this messaging in various spiritual writings… the weak become strong, the strong become weak.
It was in our reading, as Jesus said to let go of one’s life in order to save it.
I ran across something this weekend, from none other than a fourth-grade art show, that also underscored this.
On a burlap canvas, thread was sewn in to create this piece of art…I was exiting my world and entering the world.
This item from a child’s art show, like our reading, also reflects irony; certainly when applied to a dying person.
How can you be entering the world if you’re exiting it?
It becomes less ironically clever and riddle-like when you recognize the truth in it, as James did.
Isn’t it interesting how recognition of these kinds of truths often become far more accessible with the rubber starts to hit the road.
It’s because, in those situations, the non-sustaining distractions fall away.
Then, you’re left only with yourself, your circumstances, and whoever you experience “God” to be.
When all the other stuff falls away, as it was for James, these catch phrases about weak and strong, and exiting and entering worlds, and saving your life or losing it…all that starts looking notably less paradoxical and whimsical.
It’s because there’s a transition that’s occurring, from looking primarily through an earthly lens, to a more sacred one.
The sacred lens has an R trademark on it. An uppercase R.
The R stands for Reality.
One uses this lens when coming face to face with what’s truly real. Or, as James said, when he came nose to nose with death.
When I first heard his words – the gentle yet raw, simple yet profound truth of his words, I immediately thought, “Why do we wait so long?”
Why do life-altering circumstances so often have to befall us before we allow our lives to be altered by what’s actually Real –
that which may have at first sounded like navel-gazing lofty religious stuff – turns out to be one of the very few things that sustains us?
Why does our existence frequently have to be on the line before we come to understand [or if we do, to make room for] the DNA of our existence?
Let me be clear…this is in no way a criticism of James Van Der Beek. He appears to have been a good guy who valued meaningful things in life.
And it took tremendous openness of spirit to ask his question, and then to receive and embrace it in its fullness.
My commentary isn’t about this man who so purely and generously shared the intimacies of his experience.
My attention, as I’m paying attention to his wisdom, is on us.
Each of us lead our lives, most of them busy lives, our days filled with activity – family, friends, sometimes jobs, recreation, health pursuits, etc…
All of these things color and fill our days. Andt that’s OK, it’s in our nature.
There is, however, a bottom line that is imperative.
The presence and prioritization of all of these activities and pursuits [yes, even relationships] often ease us away from that bottom line, this thing that’s underneath all the rest of it…
…this Reality about our worthiness of, and embodiment of Divinity.
Now, my friends, I know that this might sound rather mundane, anticlimactic, same ole same ole.
But I guarantee you it wasn’t to this dying man whose story we’ve heard today. It was transformative for him whose rubber was hitting his life’s road.
Transformative makes me think of where we are in Lent right now.
Did you know that this, the second Sunday in Lent, is the Sunday of the Transfiguration, when story has it that Jesus went up a mountain with three of his friends and revealed his divine nature to them.
Speaking of bottom lines, this is one of the bottom lines of Lent – revelation of divine identity. But maybe not as we often hear it.
I can imagine Jesus saying on that mountaintop, “Can you now see, divine love is here, in me. And in you. I’m here to help you come to know this before my life ends.”
Similarly, when James, stripped of a sense of identity as his life was ending, asked “Who am I?” the same message about God’s love came.
I wonder if, along with his gratitude, he had any regret for not asking this and being answered earlier in his life. Because clearly it was a gamechanger for him.
For him. A dying man. But here’s a question for us. For you, presumably not actively in the process of dying, is it as relevant?
Are we paying enough attention to realize that the same message James received is whispering to each of us, every moment of every day in a myriad of ways, while we’re busy tending to other things?
This reminds me of another story involving clarity about love in the face of death.
My friend Diana was, like most of us, tending to many of life’s things when a policeman arrived at her door to inform her that her 22 year-old daughter had been killed in an auto accident.
She and her husband Pat were devastated.
I remember shortly afterward Pat saying, “Make sure you hug your kids and tell them you love them.”
Pay attention, tend to love.
Tending to and paying attention are two sides of one coin, and it calls to mind a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer entitled the tending – One Garden.
I’m no longer surprised
when strange, exotic
blooms appear in my mind,
knowing now how seeds
arrive on the wind from everywhere.
Now, I am less likely to label
something weed simply because
I didn’t plant it myself.
At the same time, I want
to be discerning, knowing
whatever I choose to grow might
appear soon in the soil of you,
so I am cautious when sowing
bulbs of anger, saplings of judgment,
thorns of certainty.
I want us all to plant great beds
of unanswerable questions
and tend the mystery together.
How else might it change
what these hands do when I
trust every choice matters?
She wants to be discerning, because what she sows – what each of us sows, what I sow – might land in your soil. And just might take root.
This, my friends, brings us to question 2.
Question 1 is the ‘when’ question… are we’re going to wait until something life-threatening happens to recognize and consciously live in the Divinity we hold.
Question 2 builds on that. It’s the ‘what’ question.
Based on what we allow in our consciousness, what, then, are we sharing?
Each of us is always putting something out there. My seeds, like seeding dandelions, are floating over to your soil all the time.
We’re called to pay close attention to what we’re putting out, because our words, actions, even our vibe lands in somebody else’s soil too.
I know…these 2 imperatives can be a seemingly tall order. But really, the simplest thing you’ll ever do. [There’s that ‘real’ word again.]
It’s simple because you’re turning into what’s already there, always has been. It doesn’t have to be gained or achieved.
It – the Divine love you have and are – just is.
The tall order just became shorter. Recognize it – live it. Embrace what’s been there the whole time – share it.
As debilitation and the possibility of death took hold, James Van Der Beek asked God, What Am I? Who I am? The walls were closing in.
The walls aren’t necessarily closing in on us, but the question is just as relevant.
And so, I’ll ask you the What question… What seeds are you sowing for yours and others’ soil?
Who are you? What do you choose to define your identity? Someone who allows the basis of your existence to be background haze? Or someone who brings your inherent Divine fertilizing seeds to the center life’s garden?
As the poet said, every choice matters. What you choose matters. When you choose it…that matters too.
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