Dear friends,
I invite you into a time of musing, of reflecting, of imagination, of listening to the inner voice, bringing the questions of your own life into conversation with the thoughts I have prepared today. I pray that the spirit of guidance may move here among us, and that each of us as individuals will find more light for our path, however it comes to us.
And I pray that our life as a community, our connections with one another, and our connections with the world around us, may be enlivened.
As I was introducing the "prayer to the sacred directions," I mentioned that I had been to a conference over the Labor Day weekend that made a deep impression on me.
The experience has formed a background for me as I enter into this new church year, and some of the things I experienced or learned or remembered because of being there, I believe may be helpful for us here, both as a community and as individuals. First, I'll tell you a little more about it.
The four-day weekend ended with that very powerful, prayerful ceremony of the medicine pipe, or peace pipe, lead by Philip Lane, an elder of the Yankton Sioux and Chickasaw tribes. The ceremony seemed to seal the work of the gathering, which had begun four days earlier.
The occasion that brought over 200 folks together was the founding of an interreligious, interspiritual organization—a kind of mystical think tank, a house of wisdom. Seven Pillars House of Wisdom is, indeed, the name of this new enterprise.
Seven Pillars is not a physical place. It will exist in the occasions of gathering together, wherever those gatherings are held. It will take shape in the convening of spiritual seekers and leaders, peacemakers and teachers, artists, activists, healers, and scientists, who, from whatever tradition they come, hold in their hearts a confidence in the ultimate unity of life and of humanity, and who seek to discern and to live out the universal ideals shared by all the world's great spiritual teachings.
The intention of this inaugural event was to, in a sense, midwife this enterprise into being through a process of deep listening and dialogue.
The chairperson of the gathering was Deepa Patel, a beautiful East Indian woman and a Sufi. On the very first evening, she spoke of the importance of the words "I DON'T KNOW." Sometimes, an orientation of "I DON"T KNOW" is the right starting place for listening anew for something that may be coming into being, some thing, or some awareness, that has never existed before.
Now the words, "I don't know," always and only and in every situation, would not be wisdom. Wisdom somehow holds in the same embrace the clarity and authority of knowing with the softness and humility of not knowing, and part of wisdom is recognizing which of these two is called for in a given moment.
As this gathering of 200 souls birthed a collective soul called Seven Pillars House of Wisdom, we practiced both—sometimes speaking from what we know, and listening from we do not know, sometimes posing questions from what we do not know, and listening in silence to the knowing that is deeper than words.
Another thing that Deepa Patel asked us to bear in mind as we began is that the work of creation tends to be messy. Especially when you're bringing together a diversity of perspectives in collaboration. It will be messy, and it will be frustrating sometimes, and it's a process of learning. There were definitely some sessions that did not go very well, sessions that were confusing, when we felt quite acutely the risk and discomfort of moving into unfamiliar or unknown territory.
But throughout the entire process of the four days, I think we all experienced a sense of adventure, the effervescence of discovery. We met one another, and the work, with purpose and with delight.
I bring this story to you because the experience helped me to remember that a sense of adventure makes the journey into every unknown territory more bearable, more rewarding.
Imagine some undertaking that you have chosen in your life—a job or career, a relationship, parenting, a personal goal that you are striving toward, your involvement with this church. Bring into your mind now some endeavor that you have taken on. Now, in your imagination, add to it the ingredient of adventure. What happens to your energy and thoughts and feelings as you do that?
Seeing our endeavors as adventures can bring greater joy to our efforts, even when they confront us with obstacles and difficulties.
Some of us are stumbling through a process we would never have chosen willingly, a painful journey that has been thrust upon us by life, a time of extreme uncertainty. Even in these passages, if we can allow for the adventure of not knowing we may find greater patience to endure, greater openness to the help and the grace and the growth that sometimes enter unexpectedly.
Maybe, like me, you are someone who tends to take things very seriously. A spirit of adventure can remind us to lighten up when we get too heavy, too grim, too anxious.
Perhaps you are someone who presses your nose so hard to the grindstone that you lose perspective, that you forget to pay attention to what, and who, is there around you. You stop hearing the song of life or recognizing its gifts of surprise. Then a sense of adventure might open up your vision, your ears, your heart.
A sense of adventure can help us return to humility, help us laugh at ourselves when we get into thinking we know it all or should know it all, or when we believe that having answers or getting answers is what it's all about. Asking good questions can be far more energizing and illuminating.
Or if we like to be in control, letting go and letting others experiment and learn may introduce creativity into a situation that control could never have allowed. We have invited a space to open for surprise, serendipity, innocence, and magic.
Edwin Friedman, a psychologist who worked with family and organizational systems, wrote about "the ultimate unimportance of mistakes when the quest is driven by adventure rather than certainty." In other words, we shouldn't worry so much about making mistakes, because they're so rich with learning.
To live fully into a situation is to make peace with not knowing what will happen, and to embrace it as an adventure that calls for curiosity and courage.
As I anticipated seeing you today, I surveyed in my imagination the various challenges and pressures that have accompanied us through these doors this morning. I imagined your faces, the faces of your families, partners, and growing children. I imagined the environments you work in. I thought of your seeking, honest hearts and minds. I thought of the fragility of bodies, the hardship of illness and death, the tenuous gift of health.
I thought of the tensions roiling in our society and country, especially as the presidential election rapidly approaches: the intensely high stakes, and the dreadful incivility that often arises when conflicting parties feel threatened.
We are all experiencing great stressors, some ultimately positive, and some terribly painful and difficult. I do not want to be blithe about life being an adventure.
And yet I know how easily I lose perspective, how my own body clamps down, and my vision narrows, and my attitudes harden when fear is driving me rather than adventurousness. And I know how a shift in orientation can soften my hard edges and liberate my energy, spirit, breath, courage, and love.
I believe that is why we come here, into this sacred space, into this community of friendship and faith: We all need help shifting our orientation away from the things that make us hard and brittle, toward the things that make us supple and inventive.
This church year, we have the wonderful gift of three talented new staff members, all of whom can bring us the unique perspective of someone who sees this community with new eyes. This means a lot of new learning, and not only for them! If we can embrace a spirit of adventure, letting them lead us and teach us, it can bring a lot of creative experimentation and growth for all of us.
The poet Annie Dillard writes that "When people come to into church, they should not [only] be handed an order of service with a smile. They should be given hard hats and life preservers; because church should be a dangerous place, a zone of risk, a place of new birth and new life, where we confront ourselves with not only who we truly are, but also who we are being called to become."
There is an even larger backdrop to all this—behind our personal lives, behind our life as a church community, and our lives as citizens of this country, there is the backdrop of rapid global change. At the largest scale, these are times of unprecedented challenge and danger: so many human beings, our numbers and capacity for destruction increasing exponentially, so little wisdom and awareness, so much fear and violence and grasping, such imbalances of power and powerlessness.
Environmental and social catastrophe is virtually inevitable. Mass extinctions are already unfolding, and so many of our human brothers and sisters struggle to survive situations of such acute disruption or decay that we can hardly bear to imagine it, here in our safe, bucolic West Roxbury.
And yet, friends, we also live in exciting times. Seen in the light of love, in the spirit of faith, in the spirit of adventure, we are privileged to be alive in this time when humanity is undergoing one of the most extraordinary paradigm shifts, one of the most pivotal awakenings, that we have ever passed through.
For the first time in human evolution, the common citizens of this planet increasingly experience ourselves as interconnected, as one humanity—beyond tribe. Gradually, increasingly, we comprehend that we are an interdependent body, linked not only with other human beings but with the whole net of life on this planet.
We should not underestimate the hopeful significance of this emerging understanding, and here we are, right in the midst of this dawning. We can be, and are called to be, active agents of that transformation.
But to be agents of change in such a hurting and anxious world would require of us a tremendous sense of adventure! We would have to be willing to set out from familiar ground, not knowing what will happen, accepting that we cannot control outcomes, to risk exploration, risk new and deeper relationship, risk being wrong, risking making mistakes, risking being vulnerable, risk placing our love on the line, risk discovering something entirely new—something that might change everything.
I'd like to share with you some words of Pir Zia Inayat Khan. Pir Zia is the leader of the Sufi Order International, and the one who first imagined Seven Pillars:
Few of us recall the homeland we inhabited before birth. And how many of us can foresee the lay of the land into which death will lead us? Behind and to the fore, the horizon is a dusky curtain veiling an unfathomable mystery. Origin and destination are rumors. What is certain is the ground spread out ahead.
A footstep has faith. It trusts the carpet of earth below. A footstep has hope. It moves instinctively toward the object of its yearning, answering a call from out beyond.
It is tempting to shrink from the quest, to refuse to go on. A comfortable [oasis] might seem to offer all one could wish—and so it might, for a time. But time and change never stand still. When the camel bells ring, the caravan must move on. With a twinkle in his eye, the camel driver warns, "To set up house in the road is folly."
Our own lives, our circles of relationship, and certainly this church community can be relatively safe laboratories for such risk. This church can be a place where we can test out that spirit of curiosity and quest, were we can laugh, and sometimes cry, and forgive and love one another through the mistakes.
I hope you will join me in the spirit of adventure, as we set out upon the path of a new year together.
May it be so.