One Without the Other Isn't Enough

There is a poem by Oriah, a poet, author, and mystic who grew up in northern Ontario, Canada. The first stanza of “The Invitation,”

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

What an invitation to relationship! It goes straight to the heart of the meaning of “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations,” our third Unitarian Universalist Principle.

Yet, in contemplation, the poem is more personal and demands more from one another than “mere acceptance.” It seems to require compassion and a willingness to travel with another in their search for spiritual growth.

This is what brings us to church. Our need to be with others on this journey we call Life.

Oriah does not shriek from the complexities and demands of relationship.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.   

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

If you can dance with the wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you …

Yes, she makes it clear there are joys and sorrows which we must share if we are to travel together.

But she does not forget what we must do on our communal journey:

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

Once we commit to being together, there is more to our communal, religious life than the spiritual journey. There is the call of those who are in need of food, water, medical attention, clothing, and compassion.

When service is our prayer, it is empty if we are not seeking, as Jung would say, a deeper, more meaningful existence than the superficiality of our culture.

Nor would spiritual growth alone be enough, for without both, something is missing.

For pondering – see you in church, Rev. Lil

You can find Oriah’s complete poem at http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com

The Busy Mind and Deep Peace

Sometimes, ever so often, we might take time from our busy lives to sit down a moment and think. At those times, our busy mind may put forth an entirely mundane question such as, "Now what did I need at the drug store?" or it may present us with something deep and reflective, "Am I a happy person?"

These two questions are examples of the depth and breadth of our busy mind. We all know, though, that our busy mind cannot answer those questions. It only wants us to "stay busy."

Psychologists and mystics know more about the busy mind than I do. All I know is that while my mind helps me understand reality, it also offers a never-ending perspective of "What could have been" and "What could be." It rarely lives with me in the present moment.

Psychologists and mystics would agree, that is if they were in the same room, that our busy mind may indeed keep us sane and cognitively aware of that which keeps us alive, but our busy mind also keeps us from deep peace.

Deep peace is a psychological and a spiritual dimension that is possible through meditation, contemplation, or prayer. A lot of people, a lot, do these things and find that their lives are better for doing them. The Buddhists call this sitting.

But there are also many of us, many, who can't find time, for whatever reasons, to sit. Perhaps it is not a priority, or our personalities are not suited, or we just don't relate to sitting.

There is hope though, for us to find that deep peace.

We can find ourselves deep peace when we are involved in something as routine as vacuuming, ironing, or washing the dishes. We don't have to sit and "empty our minds," or "fill our minds" to get to a place of deep peace. Somewhere in the repetitive actions of mundane tasks it is there.

We may not even be aware of getting to that place, or how we did it, but we find ourselves there quite easily. So easily, that our busy minds don't even know it, and thankfully, don't interfere very much, if at all.

And when we finish our task, we find our lives are better.

All of this has scientific merit. Several researchers have shown that the effects seen in the brain are the same, whether a person is sitting or performing mundane tasks that bring about a sort of meditative state.

We don't have to dedicate hours to sitting, unless we want to or need to. We can get lost in the routine of our mundane lives and find deep peace--if we but allow ourselves to go there.

Our busy mind doesn't like us to be in the present with our deep peace, but heck, there are lots of things we don't like about our busy mind. Turnabout is fair play!