Joyful Living

By revjudegeiger

This sermon was preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Huntington on 5/21/17. It looks at the spirituality of joy.

 

We’re slowly realizing that my dog, Lola, is a truly effective life-coach for the Brewer-Geiger household. She’s our resident Zen Master Teacher, always in the moment. If she’s sick, or has to go in for a check-up, she stays happy as she enters the vet, excited for a treat. She’s probably terrified as the vet does the things vets always do, but she has this sort of “if I just stay still this will all be over soon, and then I’ll get a treat. Right, I will get a treat?” And then she’s all licky-face with the vet when it’s all done; excitedly saying good-bye to everyone on our way out.

The other day, on what was probably our first real warm gorgeous Spring day of the year, I was taking her for a 3 mile walk. This usually is a hobby of mine that gives me life; but on this random day the frets of the world were really taking hold. We’re all busy people, and I was at my busiest on this lovely day. But the ‘life-coach’ needed her walk. We’re out, and I’m running through all the things I did, all the things I needed to do, and all the pathways to getting them done as I was stressing at what couldn’t get accomplished. My heart wasn’t in the walk, and my head was surely a million miles away. A short while into it, Lola stops. She turns back and looks at me with her classic wide-faced dog-grin (I know they say dogs don’t actually smile, but mine sure knows how to scrunch her cheeks up to show a killer-grin.) She stops, and turns back, smiles and jumps up and down with a full-body “COME ON ALREADY! It’s gorgeous outside and we’re doing this thing!” It’s the spiritual mantra for joyful living – ‘come on already.’

We all need a dog life-coach some days to get our heads and our hearts back in the same place sometimes. What was I doing?  Tasks, and work, and plans, fears and concerns were all distracting me from the moment.  Those were my thoughts – a part of me.  And they were disconnecting me from life.  I was clearly living in the realm of “then” or “soon” or “what if.”  That world does not exist.  Only the present does.  These thoughts steal us away from the sacredness of life – from joyfully living. We excuse our sidetracked minds as merely being easily distracted. But when we turn our focus toward what we are doing, rather than what we could be doing or what we weren’t doing, we become aware of life – our life.

There are several Buddhist refrains that echo this.  Some of us may have already heard them, so I’ll quickly recap them. One is about a teacup and another is about washing dishes.  When one drinks a cup of tea, they should only be drinking a cup of tea.  They shouldn’t be dreading doing the dishes, or hoping to win the lottery.  If so, they’ve lost the most precious gift we have, simply being.  The only thing they turn out to actually be doing – is nothing.  They aren’t even drinking that cup of tea.  Now granted, some of us may not particularly enjoy washing our own dishes, and as someone who lived for years in small apartments, I am fully aware of a life without a dishwasher, but that’s life too.  If those breaths you spent while washing your forks and knives were taken away from you suddenly, they would be the most sacred thing you could hope for.  Yet we rarely pay them any heed.  All of our activities, joyful or tedious, are our activities; and mindful presence in them can create a joy through them.  Taking these practices to heart, we can gain a sense of accomplishment.

This month we are exploring what it means to be a people of embodiment. We began the month with a music service remembering the great protest movements in our country, and moved into last week reflecting on the original meaning of Mothers’ Day – an international women’s peace movement. Both looked at how we embody our highest values in our lives. As a people of embodiment, how do we live joy more fully into our lives? One of the stories I told last week talked about how our grudges can weigh us down, and stoop our shoulders. I want to talk a little more about that now.  Let’s all try that out in our seats for a moment. Maybe you’re already doing it, but if not go ahead and ruin your posture. Hunch down, even more…. How’s that feel?

Walking around as most of us do – slightly stooped, shoulders slightly curled forward and our breath fast and shallow, just feels bad.  More importantly, most of us are completely unaware of the connection. (ok you can stop hunching over now.)  I don’t know if you’ve had this sort of experience before; for myself, during the latter part of my years in computers, I began to suffer an odd numbing sensation in my arms.  The obvious guess was carpel tunnel; but that turned out not to be the case.  I was so extremely stressed out, that it crippled my breathing.  I simply was not getting enough oxygen into my body.  The final prescription by my medical doctor – was to start breathing.  (That was a rough prescription to turn into the pharmacist.  She had no idea what to do with that one.)  And then the miracle occurred.  I could feel my arms again.  If the meditative washing of the dishes isn’t an end in itself, which I believe it is, it’s also a good practice for our overall health.  I know it might seem trite, but I swear, after trying this out for a few weeks, you start to find joy and even wonder in all the little things.  In fact, the things that you previously enjoyed seem all the more sweet.

There’s something more to this practice than our health and awareness.  A central tenet of Buddhism is attention to our breath.  Buddhism recognizes a link between all of us when we touch this awareness.  The symbolism is expressed in what Buddhists call “the Bodhi Spot” or the place where the Buddha obtained Enlightenment.  He attained Enlightenment at the foot of a tree.  This spot, for us, is not a geographic place on earth.  That “place” is reached by all of us when we encounter the “moment – between the moments.”  When we put aside our thoughtful distractions and become fully present in whatever we are doing, we all enter that same space together.  It’s a joyful way of living into our 7^th Principle, “We are all part of this interdependent web of life.”

Often the lack of presence keeps most of us from ever entering the same world as all but a rare few people. We drive past thousands of people every day living in Long Island. For folks who commute on the LIRR to NYC, they’ll walk by even more folks.  We’ve all experienced this; whether in the crowded street or the bustling mall.  You remember a few faces an hour later, but for the most part, they weren’t ever there.  We were certainly moving along, as were they.  But we’re often more focused on our daydream world than the streetscape.  I even think it highly unlikely those few whose faces I can recall, would remember mine.  And they probably wouldn’t remember yours, either.  If we missed that many flowers in a garden, we would think we missed the point of the stroll.  It’s as if we aren’t even in the same space together, despite our bodies.  Too often, we’re not here.  It’s a loss; a tragedy that we’re not here.  It’s important to recognize this.  Living in this massively populated modern world, we may not be able to engage in deep relationship with each passer by, but we can attempt to experience their presence in our midst.  And it’s also important to identify when we carry this anonymity into relationships that we can foster.

Besides the Buddha’s tree, there’s another garden story that comes to mind.  It talks about how rarely we’re able to be ourselves around others.  How we focus more on what others may think, rather than just being ourselves.  I’ll confess – I’m not about to offer you the traditional interpretation of this tale, but I expect you’ll come to appreciate this reading of the text a bit more than the conventional view.  It’s the Garden of Eden story.

Genesis 3:1-7 is the classic biblical verse where the serpent convinces Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The crime scene culminates with the expulsion from the Garden.  God then barricades paradise with angelic Cherubim and fiery swords.  In a Christian context, it is often sited as the moment of original sin, although that interpretation doesn’t begin until after the Second Century C.E.  And Jewish commentary doesn’t traditionally read sin into this passage.  God warns Adam and Eve that if they touch or eat of this tree He will punish them with imminent death.  The original language implies a criminal “death penalty” sentence.  Ultimately, however, God does not execute the first couple as warned.  Rather they are sentenced to a life of suffering and eventual death in exile from the Garden.

That’s the fairly straightforward reading of the passage.  I’d like to suggest another way of looking at it that might be more helpful to us as Unitarian Universalists.  The moment humankind internalizes the duality of good and evil, as seen through the eating of the fruit, we became aware of our separation from things.  Nakedness in the garden is only a concern if you believe that the other things and people around you may bear a judgment about your nudity.  A sense of embarrassment or guilt would also raise these fears.  For the first time, Adam and Eve didn’t even want to see each other naked.  “I don’t want him to look at me.”  “I don’t want her to see me like this.”  Until this point, from the little we have to go on with this myth, Adam and Eve did not fear or think about things.  Presumably they only did things in response to the world around them.  Thoughts likely existed for the couple, but they were evidently not controlling influences on the first people.  In this idealized Eden, prior to the fruit-tree crime, humankind effectively lived in the moment, each moment.  Before the fruit from that middle tree, nakedness was just nakedness.  No positive or negative value was placed on it.  No shame, no fear, no embarrassment.  It simply was.

What does the exile from the Garden mean in non-mythological terms?  Does it simply signify the pain in child bearing or the sweat in manual labor the bible details for women and men?  Although myths do seek to explain the source of everyday things, they also reveal deeper truths that we too often dismiss beneath the fable.  Moving beyond nakedness, one could consider any emotion we experience in light of the Garden; for instance – fear.  All of us have experienced it at numerous times throughout our lives.  We’re afraid of the next meeting we have with our boss.  Or we’re scared of the results of some serious medical test.  We might just need a high grade on a big exam to pass a rough course.  Or it might be the truck careening into our vehicle.  When we’re separate from the Garden we think about our emotions.  Fear no longer remains simply fear; rather it grows into a sort of dread.

The constant cycling of our worried thoughts can paralyze us.  What will the medical results be?  How long will I live?  How much pain will I have to undergo to treat my illness?  Am I going to get into that good school next year?  All of these are genuine concerns about our future.  But generally, when we worry, none of them are in the present.  Usually, we worry about things that might happen.  We create a world that might be – and for the vast majority of us that world is quite unpleasant.  Despite popular sentiment, worry is not a useful means of intelligently planning for the future.  If the results turn out to be favorable, we’ll have lived through the experience once through our thoughts.  If they turn out to be negative, we will be putting ourselves through that dreadful space twice.  Living in our world of thoughts about the real world – that is our separation from the Garden.  That is our original sin.

In our world of duality, one state only exists in relation to another.  Knowledge of good comes with the expression of evil.  No longer is it just the world inside the garden, but now there is the world outside the garden as well.  Where there’s sin … there’s also grace.  But what does grace mean to us? …  It’s just being naked.  No shame, no guilt, no fear.  Worry is not graceful.  It’s also not fear.  Despite the cherubim and the flaming sword, that now bars entrance to Eden, we can return to the Garden in our life; although the metaphor aptly describes how tricky a proposition that is.   We need to separate worry from fear.  Fear is the emotion we experience.  Worry is what we add to it with our thoughts.

The next time your afraid, just be afraid.  This doesn’t mean you ignore the car in the road speeding toward you.  But it does mean you don’t consider the cars that missed you, or the other cars that might hit you later on.  You just get out of the way.

Most of us will eventually get out of the way; but we’ll do our best to consider all the rest along the road.  It’s more than just a lot of energy spent on realities that won’t come to be.  It comes back to not living in the life we do have.  Instead we’re sleepwalking through fantastical dreams that are both good and bad … but not real.

The self-awareness we gained in the Garden is a gift I deeply cherish.  I appreciate the understanding I have over that of any other animal.  I even tend to like all my emotions, whether they are full of love and joy, or weighed down by anger.  I remember a time when feeling anything was particularly difficult, maybe you remember a time like that too, or maybe you’re feeling numb today. It’s a very hard place to be.  Our full and fully present, presence of mind, is the spiritual goal. But just like the first “Fall”, that self-awareness can sometimes feel like more of a burden than a blessing. And yet – joy – can be found in between the moments of hardship and pain.

Adam and Eve grew in wisdom by eating that fruit.  They also forgot that everything was OK as it was.  After all, they had been running around naked for sometime doing quite well for themselves until then.  We can have it both ways though.  We don’t need to sacrifice our wisdom to return to the Garden.  In a way, we can even return to that state of innocence along with self-awareness. Our experiences are not lost to us with this return.  But we do have to let go of our dark dreamings.  The innocence we return to is not synonymous with ignorance or even lack of experience.  It’s the sort of grace that flows when we’re naked without shame. Sometimes, we can even choose joy, when we allow ourselves.