First Parish Unitarian UniversalistTo What End?
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
February 22, 2004
Reading
Jon Kabat-Zinn tells a story in his book Wherever You Go, There You Are. It’s called “Cat Food Lessons.”
He hates finding dried-on cat food dishes in the kitchen sink along with the family’s dishes. Now, I’ll be the first to say this is one thing I hate too, along with the small of canned cat food, and so I only buy dry cat food. But, in their house, they serve their cats wet cat food from a can.
“I’m not sure why this pushes my buttons so strongly,” he says. “Perhaps it comes from not having had a pet when I was growing up. Or maybe I think it’s a public health threat (you know, viruses and the like). When I choose to clean the cats’ bowls, I first clean the whole sink of our dishes, then I wash theirs. Anyway, I don’t like it when I find dirty cat dishes in the sink, and I react right away when I do.
First I get angry. Then the anger gets more personal and I find myself directing it at whoever I think is the culprit, which is usually my wife…I feel hurt because she doesn’t respect my feelings. I tell her on countless occasions that I don’t like it, that it disgusts me. I’ve asked her as politely as I know how not to do it, but she often does it anyway. She feels I’m being silly and compulsive, and when she’s pressed for time, she just leaves the caked cat dishes soaking in the sink.
My discovery of cat food in the sink can quickly escalate to a heated dispute, mostly because I am feeling angry and hurt and above all justified in “my” anger, “my” hurt, because I know “I” am right. Cat food shouldn’t be in the sink! But when it is, [my reaction] can get rather strong.
Recently, I’ve noticed that I am not getting so bent out of shape about this. I didn’t specifically try to change how I’m dealing with it. I still feel the same about the cat food, but somehow, I’m seeing the whole thing differently too, with greater awareness and with much more of a sense of humor. For one, when it happens now—and it still does with annoying frequency—I find that I am aware of my reaction the moment it happens and I look at it. “This is it,” I remind myself
I observe the anger as it starts rising in me. It turns out that it is preceded by a mild feeling of revulsion. Then I notice the stirring of a feeling of betrayal which is not so mild. Someone in my family didn’t respect my request, and I am taking it very personally. After all, my feelings count in the family, don’t they?
I have taken to experimenting with my reactions at the kitchen sink by watching them very closely without acting on them. I can report that the initial feeling of revulsion is not all that bad, and if I stay with it, breathe with it, and permit myself to just feel it, it actually goes away within a second or two. I have also noticed that it is the sense of betrayal, of being thwarted in my wishes, that make me mad much more than the cat food itself. So, I discover, it’s not really the cat food by itself that is the source of my anger. It’s that I’m not feeling listened to and respected. Very different from the cat food. Aha!
Then I remember that my wife and kids see this whole thing very differently. They think I am making a big deal out of nothing, and that while they will try to respect my wishes when it feels reasonable to them, at other times it doesn’t and they just do it anyway, maybe even without thinking about me at all.
So, I’ve stopped taking it personally. When I really don’t want cat food in the sink, I roll up my sleeves and I clean the dishes in that moment. Otherwise, I just leave them there and go away. We no longer have fights about it. In fact, I find myself smiling now when I do come across the offending objects in the sink. After all, they have taught me a lot.” (p. 243-245).
Sermon
This sermon is the second in a series about the Covenant of this congregation, which we recite each Sunday morning. For the first, called “Doctrine, Sacrament, Prayer” on December 14 th, I sketched the context for this series at some length, which I won’t do again today, except to say that it is part of a resolve expressed by the First Parish leadership last June to clarify the congregation’s “shared identity” as part of preparing ourselves for big-time membership growth. Another part of this quest for our “shared identity” is the adult religious education class “Articulating Your UU Faith” that has met for two of its six sessions already, with nearly twenty people participating.
The Covenant is a good place to begin the quest for a shared identity precisely because we recite it every week. Many of you and many of the children know it by heart. As the phrase suggests, when we know something by heart we are more likely to take it to heart.
It becomes part of us, doesn’t it? It also “becomes us.” It “becomes us” not in external appearance, as a color or outfit may be becoming, but it “becomes us” on the inside. It improves our inner nature. It helps us love ourselves; it makes us better people. If there is anything that provides this Unitarian Universalist congregation with a shared identity, it is our Covenant.
We like to say ours is a “covenantal” religion, as opposed to a creedal religion. This means we don’t have a test of belief that one must pass in order to join. Instead, we have agreements into which we knowingly enter and periodically revisit. Covenants.
The most familiar of them to us is the one that begins, “Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament and service is its prayer.” Doctrine, sacrament, prayer… as I said in the first sermon, our Covenant begins with these three very traditional religious words but uses them in very unorthodox ways.
The first phrase is easy, because it is so simple: Love is our doctrine, our dogma. It’s what we teach, and try to live by. Love is our only dogma, it implies.
“The quest for truth is its sacrament,” we say. If sacrament is a rite believed to be a means of grace and if grace is divine love and protection (however we define divine), then our Covenant expresses a theologically radical notion. It says that our individual and collective searches for truth and meaning in life are the means by which we receive grace and know the divine, the means by which we grow our souls and become more whole, more holy. It’s not by baptism, or communion, priest or rabbi or imam, altar or bema or prayer rug, that we become whole.
The third phrase, “and service is our prayer,” makes it clear that ours is a religion of the here and now, and that we pray by serving, by doing the work of love and justice in the world. This doesn’t mean that we can’t also pray prayers, but it says that, to us, prayer without action, faith without works, is not anywhere near enough. Service is our prayer.
In the second sermon in the series, on January 25 th, called “Love, Truth, Service,” we explored the meaning of the word “truth” as in “the quest for truth is its sacrament.” We discovered that the word “truth” is etymologically related to the word “tree” coming from Indo-European roots having to do with firmness. Therefore, truth may be thought of as something firm; so too can certain bonds between people, like trust, another derivative of the same root.
Truth, then, is firm, like a tree??? I don’t think so… We all have likely experienced an evolution in our own beliefs and our own understandings of what is true. Humankind certainly has. Just think of the belief that God created the world in six days and then rested. Because human observations of the natural world gradually proved otherwise, what was known to be true changed. So, today we honor the Biblical story as a creation myth, but regard the theory of evolution to be closer to the truth. Truth does not stand still and solid like a tree, does it?
Aldous Huxley wrote in regard to the Origin of Species, “It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.” As Unitarian Universalists, we can avoid that customary fate. That’s because, as our Covenant reminds us, we are blessed not by the truth itself by the search for truth, and because it, and our ability to know it, are ever evolving. The search engages us fully in life.
If we are ever seeking the truth, we will entertain the possibility of new truths that feel, at first, as heresies. If we continue to seek the truth, ever open to new truths, we will never be saddled with superstitions, which by their very nature are static and unchanging.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.” For him, apathy of the mind would be abhorrent. For him, it is not a choice between truth and doubt, but between being fully engaged in life or not.
Emerson also knew something important about that how we communicate our truths. He wrote, “Truth has already ceased to be itself if polemically said.” If a person declares his or her truth in a hostile way, it will not be heard as the truth.
So, what is constant, then, is not the content of the truth, but the way it feels: solid, like a tree, requiring no hostility to be conveyed. Like a tree, you can climb up and it will support you, in its branches you can find shelter, and underneath it you may find nourishment in the form of nuts and fruits. But when it feels confining, or we feel apathetic, our sacramental search for truth would have us question the old truths, thus finding new ones.
Our Covenant provides a context for our search for truth, that sacramental search for truth that makes us feel alive because it engages us so fully. The context provided by our Covenant is our doctrine—which is love—and our prayer, which is service. Thus, it becomes clear that what is true, what is right and good, is true if it is guided by love and serves the needs of others. And, so, I concluded that second sermon with these words, “as we endeavor to know what is right and good to do—let us ever be guided by love and by service to the common good of all.”
For today, the third in the series, we move into the second section of the Covenant, where we as a congregation get more specific about what life together as a religious community looks like when our sacrament, our blessing, is a search for truth that is guided by a doctrine of love and a prayer of service.
Here’s the deal. We say we will “dwell together in peace with respect and understanding, seek knowledge in freedom, to serve our fellows and humankind…” and then we propose our goal: “the end that all souls shall grow together into harmony.”
To what end? Harmony. Who? All souls. Not just our own. Not just each other’s. All souls.
How do we get there? By dwelling together in peace with respect and understanding, by seeking knowledge in freedom, by serving humankind. Those are the specifics. How’s our harmony doing?
A few weeks ago, the guest preacher talked about what sounded like the opposite of harmony: the necessity of “letting sparks fly” in congregational life. She said she wasn’t promoting factionalism. She said, and I quote, “The older we are, as individuals or as communities of faith, the more we can reflect upon times when dissonance rises and divisiveness hovers… Lines are drawn in the sand, but it’s only sand. Lines are drawn to be drawn over. Barriers are erected to be crossed. Sparks fly that we might kindle a singular flame, illumining differences that we are called to affirm and celebrate.”
I agree. Human relationships seem to benefit from a few sparks now and then. Why should congregations be any different?
I remember that when our children were young, if we’d been getting lax with their bedtime, we’d find ourselves taking stock of some negative behaviors and realize that our children were needing us to set firmer limits, to be clear about our expectations and enforce them. So, some sparks flew, but the ensuing weeks were much happier—the last minutes of playtime were calmer, they didn’t get up after they’d been tucked in, and, for doing what was right by them, what they needed instead of what they wanted, the parents were rewarded with some harmony, some peace and quiet, before we went to bed.
When parents recognize their children’s true needs and also what is reasonable to expect of them, given their age and abilities, and are clear about and enforce limits and expectations, they are treating their children with respect and understanding. Good things, like harmony, follow.
Similarly, adults in marital or other long-term relationships often benefit from letting the sparks fly. Relatively happy long-time partners will from time to time engage in some serious stirring up the embers (long-time partners do know exactly what to say!). Sparks fly, and release some tension at least, or bring the couple to a deeper level of understanding or higher level of cooperation, even better.
Sometimes, flying sparks can even re-kindle the glow between two people that had, though neither quite noticed, gone cold. It’s usually safe to let sparks fly when there’s still some basic trust in a relationship even if it isn’t mutually satisfying anymore. Sparks, if honest, may be just what’s needed! But, if a relationship has gone seriously dormant, it is important to get help, because flying sparks will not likely relight dead coals and could instead start a deadly fire.
In Jon Kabat-Zinn’s story called “Cat Food Lessons,” we heard about sparks flying at his house, the not very helpful kind of flying sparks. You remember from the reading this morning that he hates finding dried-on cat food dishes in the kitchen sink along with the family’s dishes.
Having communicated his feelings many times to his wife, when it happens again he feels--and expresses--righteous anger. But, those sparks don’t seem to do anything for their relationship, do they? No re-kindling a warm flame between them! Those sparks don’t stop the thing he hates, cat dishes in the kitchen sink, either!
You would think Kabat-Zinn would know better. He is someone who has had a meditation practice since he was twenty and he must have been, I’d guess, about fifty when he wrote Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. I’ve shared his work with you before, and you may also know him from Bill Moyers’ PBS program Healing and the Mind or from the Stress Reduction Clinic at U-Mass Medical Center in Worcester serving mainly low-income and minority residents.
Anyhow, with thirty years of mindfulness meditation practice to help him, Kabat-Zinn ought to be able to, and does, come to terms with his cat dish problem. Do you remember how?
He begins to mind his own reaction. Any of us could do that, when we feel ourselves getting angry and wanting to let sparks fly in a way that we suspect will have no beneficial result. We could mind our own reaction. At home, in family gatherings, at work, with friends, and even here at First Parish. We could mind our own reaction.
With mindfulness, he observes his initial feeling of revulsion toward that cat dish as being “not all that bad,” and discovers that “if I stay with it, breathe with it, and permit myself to just feel it, it actually goes away within a second or two. I have also noticed that it is the sense of betrayal, of being thwarted in my wishes, that make me mad much more than the cat food itself. So, I discover, it’s not really the cat food by itself that is the source of my anger. It’s that I’m not feeling listened to and respected. Very different from the cat food. Aha!”
Notice, he did not judge himself for having these feelings. He merely noted them. Then, he observed that his wife and kids—who changed their behavior some but not all of the time out of respect for his wishes—are not even thinking about him, not at all, when they leave the cat dishes in the sink. It’s not about him!
“So,” he says matter-of-factly, “I’ve stopped taking it personally. When I really don’t want cat food in the sink, I roll up my sleeves and I clean the dishes in that moment. Otherwise, I just leave them there and go away. We no longer have fights about it. In fact, I find myself smiling now when I do come across the offending objects in the sink. After all, they have taught me a lot.” (p. 243-245).
Wouldn’t we all like to smile at ourselves when offensive things are said or done to us, because we’ve learned not take them personally? Wouldn’t we all like to be able to mind our reactions to such things and be able to discern, for sure, without a doubt, when it will help to let a few sparks fly and when it will hinder? Wouldn’t we all like to grow together into harmony, in ourselves, with our loved ones, and in this our religious community, our spiritual home?
Harmony can only begin within us. Then it moves outward, toward those with whom we interact, and beyond them into the community and world beyond, like ripples in the water. Harmony within begins with minding our own reactions, withholding our angry words and deeds, and then choosing, intentionally choosing, to let sparks fly, or not.
Our path begins with mindfulness. Along the way, it is our intention, it is our Covenant, to dwell together in peace with respect and understanding, seeking knowledge in freedom, while serving others and the common good. To path’s end, that all souls shall grow together into harmony.
May it be so. Amen.