Nutrients for the Soul ~ Remembering, Knowing & Believing

A sermon informed by the teachings of Pema Chodron, the hymn “Come, Come Whoever You Are” and the reading “The Call” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Last week, informed by the work of Pema Chodron, you were invited to accept yourself as you are, fully.  To leave behind ‘if only’s’ “if only I were smarter, thinner, had more money, thicker hair, longer eyelashes, a better job, more patience, more talent, whatever….’  Leave these behind and accept the simple fact that each of us is exactly who we are in this moment.  We have been shaped by our lives.  If we have lived through difficult and unfair times, those have shaped us in some manner.  If we have lived through glorious and fulfilling times, those have shaped us as well.  Each act of kindness has left a mark.  Each act of cruelty too.  We arrived with our own unique hard wiring and followed unique pathways.  We are a work in progress.  How long?  For exactly the number of years, days and minutes we existed as a piece of creation.  

Last week’s invitation was to accept our bodies and minds exactly as they are today, including getting rid of all the other voices and influences that stand so vocally in judgment.  Out with the advertisements calling us to be thinner, taller, blonder, shinier, more petite, more muscular, better dressed, better mated, better equipped, better accessorized, better anything!  Out with those voices!  Out too with those voices around us, letting us know in sometimes not too subtle ways exactly what we can do to fix ourselves.  ---- OUT with those voices too.  And then the hardest task – banishing our own judgmental voice.  Whether we harbor a self-loathing voice or a gentler yet critical voice that causes shame or simply wishing ‘if only …..’ friends, OUT with that voice too.

What remains is this one simple truth.  This is who we are.  The pieces people love about us. They’re here.  The pieces people don’t love about us, they’re here too.   The same piece of me that allows me to respond quickly to crisis is somehow tied to the piece that doesn’t like filing systems at all.  The piece of me that allows me to feel compassion and help a family journey through pain, it’s likely tied to the piece of me that at times is too tender.  And the piece of me that allows me to leap out of an airplane and will likely take me scuba-diving with sharks, I bet that is somehow wired to the piece of me that makes me a little dangerous with power tools and not unfamiliar with emergency rooms.  It is not our work today to fix a single piece of it or to wish it away.

 Pema Chodron called us to accept ourselves, as fully ourselves and instead of trying to fix any piece, to step into better relationship, loving relationship with those pieces we feel least fond of or perhaps even fear.  To step in with curiosity.  For me, that practice has turned into one of asking “Who am I in this moment? “  By asking honestly and with real curiosity, pieces of ourselves are revealed to ourselves, free of any other voice saying who we should be.  If I’m frustrated with being left on hold yet again trying to get an answer from my phone service, but ask myself “Who am I in this moment?”  my answer may well be “I’m the person who already spent 20 minutes getting shuffled around and getting more frustrated by the minute.”  Or what I’ve noticed having followed this practice for some time now, calmness arrives in the asking of the question alone and I reply “Ahhh.  I’m the person who values taking care of an error on her bill and who really understands that the people trying to help me didn’t create the error.”  This doesn’t always happen, but I’ve noticed it is more and more the case. 

This practice can result in change.   It’s through watching with curiosity ‘Who’ we are in our lives that we can best discern how we might wish to grow.  It doesn’t require a single outside voice or self help book------ which is different than saying you need not consult with your mate or family or employer before you act on important things or seek professional assistance when needed or ever read a self-help book.  This is different.  It’s about getting to that quiet place – even if you don’t meditate.  That place that is quiet because no other voice remains but your own.  That place where you can learn all you want about humanness because you are the expert on this one human being – this one wonderful human being – you!  Don’t go there with trash bags to clean up, go there with a chair, a cup of tea and a loving heart.  Go sit, sip and learn – about you.

A small piece from last week’s Pema Chodron reading  "Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore, it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we are doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we are doing." 

Now that we’ve been reconnected with the start of our soul cleanse from last week and introduced to newcomers to the cleanse, it’s time to add some nutrients.   Here we are with the noise cleared out --- out harsh toxins, out!  But the world of noise waits just beyond those doors.  It’s always there.  Like  ….. well pick any piece of commercialism you disdain – a jingle, an advertisement series, perhaps it’s sports, or politics, or whatever it is and just picture it waiting at the door.  Waiting to leap upon you and take over once more.  Like a large monster. We live in a world of beauty, true,  --- but also THAT.  THAT which shall consume us, if we let it.  THAT which waits eager to suck our souls dry.  To inhabit them, take up all the space and drive our lives.

So we need to make sure we have things in place to block THAT.  We need to make sure our souls have life affirming energies that reside there, not just visit or fight to get in.  So THAT won’t be able to get in.  When I teach my swim students to go underwater without holding their noses, I tell them it’s simple, just blow air out.  If air is coming out your nose, water cannot get in.  We want it to be the same with our souls. 

And, just as in the case with my swimmers, it takes practice.  And some days you forget and it hurts!  Actually, it burns!  No theological meaning intended!

But, challenge as it turns out…. Good for the soul!

I suggest we need only three things to keep our soul nourished, healthy and full.   From the reading Hazel offered us, Oriah tells us to listen to that voice you’ve heard all of your life.  Not from others or THAT but from within and from creation.  She writes

“Remember what you are and let this knowing  

take you home to the Beloved with every breath”

And so, our first nutrient for the soul ----------- Remembering

Oriah’s words again

“Hold tenderly who you are and let a deeper knowing  

colour the shape of your humanness.”  

Our second nutrient --- Knowing.  Knowing you are enough, just as you are.  And you are beautiful.

One final nutrient -  “Believing.”

Believing you have something of yourself to offer the world.

Oriah writes

 “Be one word in this great love poem we are writing together.”

          Essential nutrients for the soul --- Remembering you are part of creation and you belong here.  Knowing you are enough just as you are and you are beautiful.  And Believing, the world needs your unique self. 

This work of the soul goes on and on.  Do not be dissuaded when you find yourself astray.  Look around.  You’ll see me there!  Hold dear the teachings of Pema Chodron.  Refrain from chastising yourself for digressions or even moments of being far from  your best self.  Instead pay attention to you in that moment.  Look with curiosity at who you are right then and there.  Ask “Who am I in this moment?”

Remember Rumi – “Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving…”  Even if you have strayed, says he, come back, “come yet, again come.”  The less frequently sung words of his prose “Though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times.”

Just as we must tend our bodies differently, and at times, diligently as we move through life.  So, too our souls.  We’ll never be done with either.  What we need for food, as a babe in our mothers arms is different than what we need for food as we first start to learn to read and write and different than when we race down a field in our teens or deal with growth spurts or changing hormones and different than what we need for food if we are pregnant or nursing mothers ourselves and different than what we need for food as our lives slow or we face illness of limb or organ.  And different still from the food we will choose as we enter our final days of living. 

Our bodies need nourishment.  It is the same for our souls.  When we are born our souls need to feel love & are fed by caring connections teaching us that we belong.  They need to be welcomed into the world with soft hands and warm chests. As we grow our souls need the freedom to feed curiosity and to experience the world.  To take in all creation has to offer and experience it as home.  The mountains, the oceans, wildflowers and deer.  Leaping, singing, laughing and sobbing.   And then our souls need more --- they need to learn empathy, by us caring for others close to us and then deep accountability through caring for others outside of who we can see and touch.  Until we learn them as family too.  And then as we move through life encountering grief and loss and pain, our souls need for us to open and reopen pathways to our core and for us to have the courage to risk trusting our souls to the touch of others – lovers, family, friends, strangers.  And as with the Rumi poem, return and return again, even when we’ve been wounded and blocked those pathways.  Our souls wait, hoping for us to return to the task and open them once more.  Hoping that all THAT waiting at the door won’t invade.  Hoping we will remember, we will know and we will believe.  And return again to live the next moment fully alive and present to all creation – the good, the less good, the furthest from good, the beautiful, the miraculous, the ordinary.

May it be so ~

NO MORE ‘If only …….’s

(Each January at UUCM we have a ritual 'Burning of the Chaff' in which we name a piece of ourselves we want to leave behind as we enter the coming year.  This year we took a different approach, guided by the following which includes the teachings of Pema Chodron.)
       As part of my sabbatical time I stepped more deeply into the teachings of  Pema Chodron.  She’s long been a guiding force in my own spiritual journey and companions me still.  Last year, at this time, I explored her writings about awakening loving kindness within our own hearts.[1]   Her words altered me in ways that are still unfolding.  In her gentle manner she tossed out all I thought I knew about the pathway toward better self.  She said ‘Don’t look at what you need to improve.  Look at who you are. Come to terms with who you are.  Study who you are.  Get to know yourself and once done, by the way, learn to treat yourself with loving kindness.’  In doing so, she pretty much ruled out any thinking of ‘if I could only do this or that better, life would be good.’  Her examples included

·       If I could only have a nicer house, I’d be a better person. 

·       If it weren’t for the fact that my boss and I can’t get on, my job would be just great. 

·       If I could meditate, I would be a better person.

Instead of ‘if only’s’ she said “this is the body you have, the mind you have, this is you – right now, right here.  You have everything you need to be “fully human, fully awake, and fully alive” 

Interesting concept, isn’t it?  So, this body that needs five pillows and sometimes drugs to sleep partially through the night is what I have. Let go of the ‘if only’s and make friends with it.’  And this ‘me,’ that talks too much most days, let’s her heart get too grabbed by the world at times to the detriment of family and friends and let’s some traffic patterns and drivers choices rile her unnecessarily, well that me is what I have right now and I should let go of ‘if only’s and make friends with it.’ Hmmmm --- interesting!  Could it be that my New Year’s resolutions of, lose weight to make my knees happier, do my shoulder exercises and be more careful in the pool, do the Dr. Oz body 3-day spinach and kale body cleanse once each month, keep a tape of Thich Nhat Hanh’s breathing meditation in my car for those traffic moments, talk less and listen more and tend, tend, tend family and friends at least as much as I tend the world ……………….. could it be that I could just toss out that list and make friends with my body and mind?????  My winter is looking up!  EXCEPT, except, I read all of Pema Chodron’s writings. 

And so, Alas ~ and with appreciation ~ I share these words from Pema Chodron:  

“ One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, where you are, what you are.  This is why we talk so much about making friends with  ourselves, because, for some reason or another, we don’t feel that kind of satisfaction in a full and complete way.   Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.  Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis.  Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore, it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness.  We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we are doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we are doing.  The key is to wake-up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.”

NOW – a disclaimer.  THIS IS NOT to say ‘it’s okay to be nasty to people if you feel like it or kick small animals or gesture at people on the road, even if they don’t seem to understand what a yield sign means!  And I certainly am not saying I condone ‘worst self behavior’  in myself or anyone else.  Chodron’s words are actually a lot like UU theology.  Just as each of us is responsible for discerning what we believe is true about the divine and the mysteries of creation, so too, with our own soul work.  If we are to take these words to heart, we won’t be starting the year by getting rid of pieces of us we see as ‘bad.’  Rather, guided by the words of Chodrun and a religious tradition that calls us to accountability, we’ll get rid of all the noises in our world that tell us how life should be, how our bodies should be, how our minds should be, how our hearts should be, and we’ll commit to stepping into closer relationship with the areas we are least fond of, perhaps even those that frighten us most. We’ll choose one or more and name them.  Not to expel them from our perfectly imperfect selves, rather to say ‘It’s just you and me now, in the conversation.  I’ll let go of all other outside influences.   All other voices, gone.   I’ll commit to knowing you, this part of me, because you are me.  I’ll step in closer with curiosity, gentleness and love, because you are me.  Rather than hate you, I’ll seek to know you, with faith that in doing so, I will become a better person.  And because I will become a better person, I will help create a better world.

And so, readers, an invitation to reflection.  “What piece(s) of you might you have yearned to leave behind as you enter the new year, in hopes that ‘if only……… I would be a better person or life would be better.’  Might you instead commit to tossing out all other influences and voices and expectations and step into that piece of yourself,  with curiosity & loving kindness for your good and the good of all?

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[1] Awakening Loving Kindness by Pema Chodron