First Parish Unitarian UniversalistHow to Start the Day
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
October 27, 2002
Did you hum your shadow home this morning? Your shadow, the part of you that you held down (or in) all day yesterday, was free to go out and explore your world last night, and only your hum, your signature song, could guide it home this morning [in reference to the Reading earlier from the teachings of the Hoopa Indians in NW California, see Changing Light, J. Ruth Gendler, Ed., p. 84].
So, did you remember to hum? Did you hum your shadow home this morning?
Dreams are not really the topic of my sermon this morning, but I do wonder about the Hoopa Indians' belief that our shadow goes out during the night to explore the world that we do not allow it to explore by day. Is it what the Hoopa call our "shadow" that dreams the dreams that wake us in the middle of the night or leave their impression, however vague, upon us as we awake? I'm fascinated by dreams, my own and others' dreams as well, and I'm also intrigued by their potential contribution to our self-understanding.
I remember being amazed the few times when my children were young and awoke with a dream fresh in their mind and told it to me. What a window into their inner beings. Yet, it's not a window that another person, even a parent, can see into with any clarity. Fascinating, none the less.
Just this past week, speaking of dreams, I was awake in the middle of the night, as I am wont to be in recent years. It seemed that I surfaced to a shallow kind of sleep just as my husband was really getting into a dream. He spoke aloud in his sleep, to my great annoyance, since I was trying my hardest to get back to sleep. But, it was also to my great fascination, to hear what he might say! It was something sort of non-sensical, as sleep-talking often is, about a "finance committee" that was a "committee of the whole" but it only had two people on it and one was a "no-show." ?!?
"You know you were talking in your sleep last night," I said in the morning, in a tone of voice that was both a complaint and a come-on, knowing that he too is fascinated by dreams, but also feels badly when I imply he is responsible for my being awake in the middle of the night.
"I was? What did I say?" I told him. "Are you sure that was what I said and not that you dreamed I said it? You're the one with the finance committee; at work, we don't have one. Are you sure you weren't dreaming?"
I had been sure that I was awake, and First Parish has an active, hands-on Finance Committee, but when your shadow is off exploring the world in the middle of the night, how can you be sure of anything?!
The Library of Congress' Poet Laureate last year was Billy Collins. His poem "The Night House" could easily have been inspired by the Hoopa belief about where our shadows go at night. It's a bit lengthy, but I want to share it with you anyway.
Every day the body works in the fields of the world
Mending a stone wall
Or swinging a sickle through the tall grass-
The grass of civics, the grass of money-
And every night the body curls around itself
And listens for the soft bells of sleep.
But the heart is restless and rises
From the body in the middle of the night,
Leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
With its thick, pictureless walls
To sit by herself at the kitchen table
And heat some milk in a pan.
And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
And goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
And opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
And roams from room to room in the dark,
Darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.
And the soul is up on the roof
In her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
Singing a song about the wildness of the sea
Until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
The way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,
Resuming their daily colloquy,
Talking to each other or themselves
Even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body-the house of voices-
Sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
To stare into the distance,
To listen to all its names being called
Before bending again to its labor.
So, next time you awake in the middle of the night and your self is nowhere to be found, look around the house. Your heart is at the kitchen table drinking warm milk, your mind is in the living room reading a book, your conscience is roaming and darting around to avoid any glimpse of itself, and your soul is up on the rooftop singing a song in her nightgown!
Then, at dawn, according to Collins, your self will return to your body like a flock of birds settles back into a tree. But, according to the Hoopa Indians, that settling back in won't just happen by itself; it won't happen until you sing them all home, until you hum home your shadow.
I think the Hoopa Indians know how important it is to have rhythms and routines and rituals. They give us space and time in which to collect all the parts of ourselves back together, to become whole again, to be present in the moment, to pay attention.
For example, many of you have spoken of your appreciation for the Silent Preparation for Worship that begins each of our services here at First Parish. Different people use the Silence in different ways-among them to call upon the sacred or evoke the presence of God, to remember gratitude, or to let go of annoyances and tensions from the week just past. It's a Sunday morning rhythm or ritual that allows us to collect all the parts of ourselves back together, a chance to hum our shadows home if earlier we had forgotten.
Another example was given to me by one of the newcomers in the Introduction to Unitarian Universalism class this month, a mother who wants her children to grow up knowing to be grateful and so has created a daily routine of saying prayers, "not the Our Father kind" she explained, "but prayers I made up myself, and each person in the family says what they are thankful for that day."
Yet, it is a constant challenge (I speak here for myself) to maintain meaningful rhythms, routines and rituals in daily life. I am forever re-committing myself to such patterns or exploring a new one. For those of you who have been sustained by the same rhythm or ritual for years and years, that's wonderful, and for those who wish that were true, we have a Meditation Class here that you could join tomorrow night at seven.
But, for those who feel it to be a struggle, as I sometimes do, perhaps what suits us better, or is at least for us a better place to begin, is to practice paying attention in the ordinary moments rather than trying to set aside blocks of time out of the ordinary.
A story from the oral tradition, contemporary American.
Once two friends were walking down the sidewalk of a busy city street during rush hour. There was all sorts of noise in the city; car horns honking, feel shuffling, people talking! And amid all this noise, one of the friends turned to the other and said, "I hear a cricket."
"No way," her friend responded. "How could you possibly hear a cricket with all of this noise? You must be imagining it. Besides, I've never seen a cricket in the city."
"No, really, I do hear a cricket. I'll show you." She stopped for a moment, then led her friend across the street to a big cement planter with a tree in it. Pushing back some leaves she found a little brown cricket.
"That's amazing!" said her friend. "You must have super-human hearing. What's your secret?"
"No, my hearing is just the same as yours. There's no secret," the first woman replied. "Watch, I'll show you." She reached into her pocket, pulled out some loose change, and threw it on the sidewalk. Amid all the noise of the city, everyone within thirty feet turned his or her head to see where the sound of the money was coming from.
"See," she said. "It's all a matter of what you are listening for." (Doorways to the Soul, Elisa Davy Pearmain, Ed., p. 14).
It's all a matter of what we are listening for, what we are paying attention to. It's a matter of finding meaning, or making meaning, in the ordinary times in our lives. Like when we are walking down the street. Or waking up. Or beginning a meal. Or going to sleep.
Any of these things we do anyway in our everyday lives, can be done with a mindfulness that gives them meaning.
Some time ago, for example, I took up the practice of bringing in the daily newspaper in a more mindful way. It only takes a minute. I step out on the porch, where the paper usually has landed, bend down to pick it up, stand erect again and, then, instead of turning around to go back inside, I look around, maybe breathe deeply. I notice the colors of the sky, the temperature and any movement of the air, any sounds especially birds or smells especially of the earth. In that moment, a quiet gratitude might come over me. What a wonderful way to start the day. How simple. Just a moment of paying attention.
In her poem "Morning," Mary Oliver pays attention to the ordinary things around her.
Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.
What do you remember about your waking moments earlier today? Were you able to savor them or did something crowd right in and steal those first hazy moments from you: the alarm clock, the day's duties, or others' needs?
Just this past week, at the Adult Religious Education session on pacifism, called "Is War the Only Way to Peace?" someone observed that the hectic pace of contemporary life makes it difficult to pay sustained and careful attention to current events, as is required of citizens in a democracy.
One of my sisters sounded the same note in her birthday letter to me. I asked her if I could share it with you because I think it expresses so well the stressed out place many of us find ourselves in.
"I continue to struggle with dis-ease in my work which spills over easily into my life. There is too much to do in too little time, making the quality of much of what is done less than it needs to be. When one looks ahead to the next few days, the next few weeks, the next months, the next year and always, always it feels like what must get done cannot fit in to the time there is to do it, it leads to a weariness, a defeatism, a sense of futility before one even gets going that day. I always get going anyhow, but always with that sense of dis-ease about me, or if not, then through a certain schizophrenia that keeps it out of mind for a well-focused moment of work or play or, rarely, being, really being, with oneself or with another or others."
Then she listed "the bare minimum" of what she has to get done between that morning, which was Friday, and Monday evening's class (she teaches at a state university), and it left me quite concerned for her, realizing that the days between were the weekend, and all the tasks were work-related. When would she have time to do her laundry, or take her four year old son, my wonderful nephew, on a walk, or have a beer with her husband?
Then she went on to write, "Meanwhile, I barely read the paper and the.leaders of this country want to go to war. Sometimes I think the rat race of our work lives is a ploy to make sure thoughtful people don't focus on what's important."
For our own mental and spiritual health, how will we wrest from the crazy rat race of our lives moments, every day, to be present to ourselves and the natural world around us? long enough to come upon a feeling of gratitude however small?
Will we, upon waking, hum home our shadows? In the morning, note the cat's curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture that put milk in her bowl? While walking, hear the crickets? While driving, notice the sky? At supper time, give thanks for the food and those who made it? At bedtime, to let go of the day's hurts, remember its pleasures, and be thankful?
And, for the health of our nation and even the world, how will we, those of us who can (which may not include full-time working parents of young children). those of us who can, how will we wrest even more moments from all we have to do and want to do, because somebody ought to be paying attention to what's really important?
Amen.