“With So Little To Be Sure Of”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
April 13, 2008
READINGS ANCIENT AND MODERN:
Our ancient reading this morning is from Chapter 6 of the Tao te Ching, “Experience,” as translated by Peter Merel:
Experience is a riverbed,
Its source hidden, forever flowing:
Its entrance, the root of the world,
The Way moves within it:
Draw upon it; it will not run dry.
Our second reading is from song writer, Charlie Daniels. It was written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd:
A brief candle; both ends burning
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
A friend to share the lonesome times
A handshake and a sip of wine
So say it loud and let it ring
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You're free at last.
SERMON:
A couple of months back, Stephen Bryant, who has sung so beautifully for us here this morning, invited members of the Men’s Group to come to William Paterson University, where he is on faculty. The invitation was to attend a performance he was giving of a collection of Stephen Sondheim pieces. A few of us were able to attend and, by the way, we were duly chaperoned by one of the gracious elder women of the congregation. And so, Kit and Julian Caplan, David Lewis and I were all thrilled to be there and relished in Steven’s wonderful performance.
At the point in the recital when he sang, “With so Little to Be Sure of,” I thought to myself while I listened – Wow! This could make a great theme for a sermon. I’m always on the lookout for good sermon themes. When the song ended, David Lewis poked me in the ribs and said, "Boy, that would make a great theme for sermon." Then after the show, we visited with Stephen backstage and he said, "Maybe some of the music from this recital would be good to use for a Sunday service." "Oh, I think so," I said. So, here we are, "With so Little to Be Sure of."
Crazy business this, this life we live in –
Can't complain about the time were given –
With so little to be sure of in this world,
Hold me.
Hold me.
Sounds a lot like a prayer to me. Not the kind of prayer where you surrender your creativity or responsibility, your individuality or even your sense of reality. It sounds more like the kind of prayer where you surrender your ego and your illusions of control, and you look at your life as precious, precarious, and so very unsure. And so in the prayer, you reach in hope of the experience of being held, the experience of being connected.
Crazy business this, this life we live in –
Can't complain about the time were given –
With so little to be sure of in this world,
Hold me.
Hold me.
The idea of romantic love is a fairly recent addition in the repertoire of human experience. It didn't even enter literature until sometime in the early Middle Ages. A gazillion years had already passed in the pre-history and history of humanity without any expression of romantic love.
Don't get me wrong; I'm a romantic to the very core. Love songs, as long as they're not overly drippy? I'm there. "With so Little to Be Sure of," is hardly an overly drippy love song. It recognizes that there is precious little to be sure of in our existence, short of the experience of now that we share, short of the experiences of now that we might have shared in the past and whatever experiences of now we might yet have to share in the time to come.
Not a drippy love song! This is a thesis on finding what is precious amid whatever else there is, amid whatever else there is unknown.
So if the idea of romantic love is relatively new on the human stage, what does it reflect in the human heart or soul that has been there from the beginning? I've always believed that romantic love, with its great longings for and experiences of euphoria, security, hope, faith, completion and a sense of oneness, I’ve always thought of it as a metaphor. Listen to this poem from the 13th century, Mystic Persian poet, Rumi:
“Intoxicated by Love”
Because of your love
I have lost my sobriety
I am intoxicated
by the madness of love
In this fog
I have become a stranger to myself
I'm so drunk
I've lost the way to my house
In the garden
I see only your face
From trees and blossoms
I inhale only your fragrance
Drunk with the ecstasy of love
I can no longer tell the difference
between drunkard and drink
Between Lover and Beloved
It sounds like Rumi is incredibly gaga over some human lover that has allowed him to lose or perhaps find himself in great joy for the loving. But none of the many, many Rumi love poems are about human love, as such. They are metaphors for his experience of the love of God, or of the Spirit of Love or Spirit of Life, or more specific to Rumi they are about his experience of loving and being loved by the great mystery of being in which he found himself.
None of this is to say that romantic love isn't real. It is to say though that, like most other religions, romantic love is a pathway to something yet much deeper and more in communion with the All-That-Is of being. Talk about so little to be sure of... this all becomes a rigorous theological exploration. It suggests that life itself is a rigorous theological exploration.
Many of you here have taken my Five Questions Class or the older version of it, Building Your Own Theology. In the second session of that course, we discuss the issue of epistemology – from the Greek root meaning "to know." And we address the question, "How do I know what I know?" The heart of this exploration is usually a process discerning the difference between knowing and believing.
Think for a moment, just now, of what those differences might be… between knowing and believing. There really is so little to be sure of. I'm not at all sure that we can know anything, beyond having a faith or believing in something, or beyond sharing in something that has considerable resonance among the beliefs of others. And I believe that this is true even among some very basic premises that we hold as knowable facts. So much of what we often think we know is really based in our perceptions of things, in our predispositions.
We live in an age of science and such talk is very heretical in such an age. The truth is, I believe, that science is far better equipped to help us determine what things are not, than it is to help us ultimately define what is. If it could help us to finally determine what is, the existing body of scientific knowledge would become a finite cannon of undisputable truth, and scientists would probably soon be without work. There would only be truth police. Interesting, isn't it, that theologians who purport to believe in the idea of sealed revelation, the view that God's intervention in the world began with the Garden of Eden and ended with Jesus’ ascension into heaven, it's interesting that even with such great certainty, those theologians do still have jobs. Maybe those theologians are less about promoting theological discovery and more about being truth police.
What do we know for sure? And what are we willing to believe? The thing about believing is that we don't get to choose what we believe. It either occurs to us as true or it does not. Yes? I often think that this statement is true, but sometimes I have to wonder.
There's an old story about the Buddha that I've used here before and that speaks to me now. The Buddha is surrounded by a group of students and one asks, "Tell us, Master, is there really a heaven?" And the Buddha answers, "There is a road that leads from the village to the town. There wasn't always such a road. Before there was a road there was a path from the village to the town. And there wasn't always a path that went from the village to the town. Before there was a path, there was the thought that surely there must be a way to get from the village to the town.
Sometimes, even our beliefs in things can actually result in making what we believe in more certain. I think that's how faith can help to move mountains. And I think that's what's going on in the song, “With so Little to Be Sure of,” between Hapgood and Fay in Stephen Sondheim's, Anyone Can Whistle. With so little to be sure of, they are building their faith in one another and in themselves, and in their relationship together.
I believe that we need to be about the business of building faith in ourselves and in one another. I believe that we need to be about the business of building faith in our world and in the incredible mystery that holds us in it. By building faith in this way, I think that we become more sure, more faithful to ourselves and to each other. I think that we help to create a more faithful world. And in the process our lives and the meaning of our lives becomes more clear, more sure. And we and the world are all the better off for it.
With so little to be sure of, I don't begin to presume that I could ever name that which you might be sure of. There are some things that I have grown in my sureness of, though. And I share them with you in the hope that they might assist you to be better in touch with yours.
This past week the Montclair Clergy Association met for our annual retreat. The Program Committee asked each of us to, “Bring a text that helps to demonstrate how God calls you, motivates you, transforms you, challenges you, whispers to you, is a silent partner…" For those of you who might struggle with God language, you might simply interpret this request in the same way that I did. I was being asked to bring a text that helps me to understand and appreciate how I am called, by that which is larger than myself, to be in the world.
Besides being a romantic, I am also a Unitarian Universalist to the core, and so one text would never suffice. I chose a combination of four texts that together provide a sense of that call for me. Many of you have heard me use each of these on a number of occasions. But it was the first time I had thought of them all together. I introduced them to the group as Ortman's Cannon.
1. Walt Whitman from “Leaves of Grass:”
Who ever you are!
You are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and the moon hang in the sky;
For none more than you are the present or the past,
For none more than you is immortality.
Do I know that this is true? How can I possibly know it? And yet how can I doubt its truth? It tells me that I'm precious. And more, it tells me that you are precious and that no one ever born is or was less precious than we. If I have any choice in choosing how to spend the energy that is my life, I want to spend it making these words of Walt Whitman's become the truth.
2. Micah 6:8:
He has told you… what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Do I know that this is true? I do know that if I work for justice, that if I strive to be kind, and that if I walk humbly in this world, my life will have more meaning, at least to me, than it would if I denied justice, promoted bitterness, and chose to spend my time puffing up my ego. And I do hope that a byproduct of my efforts might be to leave the world more just and kind, more humble than proud.
3. Cultivate harmony from the Tao te Ching by Lao Tsu, Chapter 54:
Cultivate harmony within yourself, and harmony becomes real;
Cultivate harmony within your family, and harmony becomes fertile;
Cultivate harmony within your community, and harmony becomes abundant;
Cultivate harmony within your culture, and harmony becomes enduring;
Cultivate harmony within the world, and harmony becomes everywhere.
Do I know that this is true? I only know that it makes great sense. I only know that I need harmony within my life, and I look around and I see that harmony is needed everywhere. And I know that if there is to be harmony, there must be those who cultivate it. And so I believe that my life is well spent in the attempt to be one who cultivates harmony. I hardly have the ego or the fantasy or grandiosity to think that my actions are always set in this direction. I only know – I'm only sure – that this direction calls for my faithfulness.
4. Book of Matthew, Chapter 25:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.'
Do I know that this is true? Do I believe in kings and lords? I surely do not. But I do believe that when those of us who have been so richly blessed are able to share of ourselves and our riches with those who have less, we all have much more. I am not only willing to believe, but I have to believe that we and the world are better off when we all have much more. More of what we might ask? More food and clothing? More exposure to sickness and prison? I don't think so, or at least I don't think it is only so.
Again, we're talking in metaphor. And the metaphor underlying each of these texts is one that is rooted in love. With so little to be sure of, I have to believe that even if there is nothing else of value in our lives, our lives still have infinite value when we have extended them, expended them, expanded them in the experience of love. Our lives have infinite value when we have invested them in the thought, the care and the welfare of those around us, those we don't even know, and in our planet.
What might your cannon be? What texts or ideas or beliefs call you to be in life, and what do they call you to do with your life? What do you believe? It takes time to know what we believe. And we can't know – not deeply – we can't know, if we are always on the run – always on-the-fly. With so little to be sure of, we really need to dedicate some amount of time every day. We need to devote some amount of time for contemplation, reflection, prayer or meditation, so that we might be better in touch with those few precious things that we might be sure of. With so little to be sure of, we'd do well to have the time to nurture what we have.
So, maybe our prayer could be:
Crazy business this, this life we live in –
Can't complain about the time were given –
With so little to be sure of in this world,
Hold me.
Hold me. (Sondheim)
And maybe there are answers to our prayers just waiting for us:
Experience is a riverbed,
Its source hidden, forever flowing:
Its entrance, the root of the world,
The Way moves within it:
Draw upon it; it will not run dry. (Tao te Ching)
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You're free at last. (Charlie Daniels)
|
