This sermon was delivered at the North Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Lacombe, LA, on January 22, 2017.
Late December would be the optimum time for this sermon. Here, only a month past the Winter Solstice, we are already noticing the lengthening days. We’re gardening, and working and playing outside in the sunshine. We are, for the most part, sighted beings. We can apprehend information at a great distance, using our eyes and tools to assist them. We can see very tiny things with the help of sophisticated visual aids. We light the darkness, trying to do away with shadows entirely, so insistent are we that everything be visible at all times. And our reluctance, if not outright terror, of facing the darkness plays out beyond the physical world. We harm ourselves and all of creation by failing to recognize the intrinsic value of darkness. As children, many of us were afraid of the dark. In the dark, the familiar disappeared or was transformed into something foreign and threatening. If we were lucky, our parents accompanied us into the dark, perhaps sitting quietly in a chair by the bed, or even better, taking us out into the wild darkness of the countryside, a farm or a campground – an unlit campground. As we experienced our parents’ comfort with the dark, our own grew. Or our parents responded to our fear of the dark by leaving the door open with the hallway light on, or providing a nightlight of our very own, without which we would not close our eyes, and this did nothing to ameliorate our fear of the dark. When I started my research on this topic, I thought I was entering fairly new territory, at least pertaining to bringing a number of concepts of darkness together. Along the way, though, I found several books on the topic, including a book of essays edited by Paul Bogard and titled Let There Be Night, in which James Bremner talks about how he was “mightily afraid of the dark as a child.” Bremner lived in a small village in western Scotland where there were no wild animals or known criminals. But there were also no streetlights or porch lights, which meant that once night fell, the darkness was absolute. Every evening, it fell to him to take the family’s empty milk bottles down to the bottom of the driveway so the milkman could swap them out next morning. He experienced a deep level of fear every evening. The driveway was only about a hundred yards long, but from the house it disappeared into complete blackness almost at once. James walked slowly into the darkness, laden with the glass milk bottles, only to place them carefully and dash back to the perceived safety of the house. Throughout childhood, the darkness terrified him. Every single night it took all the courage he had. But while his fear of the dark may have been baseless, the bravery it drew out of him stayed with him for the rest of his life. “Courage,” he writes now, “which is no more than the management of fear, must be practiced. For this, children need a widespread, easily obtained, cheap, renewable source of something scary but not actually dangerous. Darkness,” he says, fits that bill.” Before we delve further into the spiritual aspects of darkness, though, let’s take a quick look at physical darkness and how its lack affects our world’s health. Barbara Brown Taylor, once an Episcopal priest, now the author of Learning to Walk in the Dark, tells a story of a beached sea turtle who had come ashore to lay her eggs. Programmed by nature to seek the horizon when she was finished in order to find her way back to the sea, she was confused by the lighted horizon of the nearby mainland and went the wrong way. This turtle was lucky. Compassionate people came upon her, contacted authorities, and got her back to the water while she was still able to respond. But how many turtles are affected like this, and what will happen to sea turtle populations when the mothers die on the shore? And what about the babies, “wired to scramble toward the ocean while seabirds and ghost crabs pick off the stragglers, but … subject to the same confusion as their mother. What hope did the turtles have, with their navigational system made obsolete by humans?” Birds are also affected by the brilliance of our towns and cities, interfering with their navigation as they migrate. Certain types of birds are more affected than others, but it is a pervasive problem. Other nocturnal and crepuscular animal populations are affected, as well, and people (a diurnal species) are starting to become more aware of the effects of computer light on our ability to sleep well. Some are swearing off their digital devices and even televisions after a certain hour of the evening and returning to practices that prepare them for sleep. But, once again quoting Taylor, “Every time we turn on a light after dark, receptors in our eyes and skin send messages to our adrenal, pituitary, and pineal glands to stop what they are doing and get ready for the new day.” Since night is the time when our bodies repair themselves, confusing the messages means that we don’t get the level of repair we need. “The effects of chronic sleep deprivation include elevated blood pressure and blood glucose levels, depression of the immune system, increased risk of ulcers and heart disease, memory loss, and heightened appetite. Every nuclear accident in the world has happened on the night shift. So did the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, driver fatigue is responsible for 100,000 accidents and 1,500 deaths every year. One study found that medical interns working through the night were twice as likely to misread hospital test results, increasing the possibility of making poor decisions for their patients. The divorce rate of night workers is 10 percent higher than the national average. The risk of breast cancer rises 50-70 percent for women who work night shifts.” It seems like such a small thing, doesn’t it? Lighting the darkness? How can this have such devastating effects on our lives and our world? We 21st Century people have trouble viewing ourselves as animals, but we still are. We are creatures of nature, and Nature will have her way. Overlighting our darkness is just another way we try to control Nature. We think that, the more light we have in our yards, along our streets, and into every shadowy alley, the safer we will be. Yet preliminary studies show that there is actually an increase in crime in areas where lighting is increased. Perhaps people feel safer because of increased lighting and leave their homes to go into ill-advised areas. Perhaps more people are able to see crimes being committed. Whatever the reason, an increase in light does not equal a decrease in crime. Given the statistics on our own health and the planet’s, perhaps it’s time to consider why we have done this in the first place, and what we can do about it. The Christian paradigm presents duality: good and evil, light and dark. And light is nearly always equated with good, dark with evil. This is where it begins. The Bible is full of passages that reflect this: Matthew: 4:16: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned. Light, good. Dark equates to death, and death is bad. Matthew: 5:16: Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Light, good. Glorify the Father by showing your good works with light. John: 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. We don’t want darkness to win! John: 8:12 Again Jesus spoke to them saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Don’t walk in darkness! There are many of these passages throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, and as much as those of us who no longer ascribe to a strict Christian mythos might argue, our Western culture is largely based on these ideas. Surprisingly, though, the Bible also ascribes holiness to darkness. God speaks out of a cloud, converses with people in the night, and sends angels to speak messages both of hope and wonder and of warning in the darkness. Taylor suggests that the concept of God is necessarily obscured. It is beyond our complete comprehension. She relates that a monk named Gregory of Nyssa speaks of Moses as follows: “Moses’s vision began with light,” he wrote. “Afterwards God spoke to him in a cloud. But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.” Taylor continues: “If we decide to keep going beyond the point where our eyes or minds are any help to us, we may finally arrive at the pinnacle of the spiritual journey toward God, which exists in complete and dazzling darkness.” So we live in a culture that worships the light. That doesn’t even sound weird, does it? It’s what we’re supposed to do: worship the light, go toward the light, reach enlightenment. But these concepts do us a disservice when they prevent us from relishing the darkness, learning its lessons, and resting peacefully in the world in which we find ourselves, a world – perhaps even a God – made up of light and darkness and everything in between. Think back on the blindness exercise we did earlier. Could you imagine yourself trying to make your way around an area you could not see at all? For those few minutes, did you sense fear? Anxiety? And was there a sense of relief when you could finally remove your blindfold and see again? So let’s go back for a moment. You can put your blindfold back on, if you like, or just close your eyes. But even with eyes closed, become aware of how much light comes in. Listen to the sound of my voice. Do you hear anything in it that you didn’t hear before? Is it harder or easier to understand what I’m saying? Let your other senses open up. Feel the chair and the floor supporting you. Do you feel the energy of the people around you, especially those closest to you? Are you aware of any sounds that you weren’t before? I’m going to give you a few moments to take it all in. … Here we are. Back again. You may open your eyes or remove your blindfolds, or you may keep them closed, if you like. If we ignore and prevent the dark around us, what more are we doing with the darkness within us? And isn’t this, perhaps, where all fear of darkness originates? Back to our dualistic perception of the world: where there is darkness there is not light. Where there is light there is not darkness. That is the perception of someone who sees the world in black and white. We know, consciously, that there are many shades of grey between the white and the black, and between the light of day and the dark of night. So are there, too, shades and gradations within our perceptions of ourselves. And when we begin to perceive God as embodying (so to speak) all of what we discern as good and evil, light and dark, our own dark becomes more livable. What is in the dark? We don’t know. We can’t see. And so we must open ourselves up to mystery, to living with questions, not answers. Preceding the words of our Responsive Reading, in Kathleen Dean Moore’s essay, she says, Mystery opens the human spirit to what is beyond it. Encountering that mystery gives a person a sort of “night vision” of the imagination. Night vision, the ability to see in the dark, is strengthened by darkness, and quickly destroyed by light. And isn’t this true of imagination as well, nourished by mystery and diminished by the glare of certainty and human pride? But there’s more. Darkness feeds a sense of wonder, a young person’s great gift—astonishment at a world alive with marvels. The world is half the time in darkness; this is a fact of the great spinning Earth. When we protect children from darkness, when we dim or destroy it with artificial light, we shut them off from fully half the human experience of what is wonderful. When we limit children to those worlds they can see, we risk closing them to worlds they can only hear or smell or feel against their skin. This is an offense against exhilaration and joy. Blessed is the person who holds a childhood memory of that first night sleeping in the backyard –the heavy dew, the smell of mown grass, headlights sweeping the hedges, crickets suddenly still. When I was in high school, I used to sneak out at night. Outwardly, it seemed this was just to meet up with friends, and party; but when I was moving from shadow to shadow on foot, hiding behind bushes when I saw a car coming (there was a curfew for school-age people), and simply being awake at a secret time when most people were sleeping, I experienced the exhilaration Moore is talking about. It’s not quite as exciting now, since I’m too old for a curfew, but I still float on a different level when I walk late at night. I feel the breath of the air inside me, and I sense all the molecules of everything in the world dancing through me. Things are too hard-edged during the day to indulge in this kind of fancy. In snowy places, the night air and starlight twinkle on the drifts and fields. Here, the fog and mist move. This wouldn’t be a proper sermon if I didn’t offer some thoughts on what to do about our lack of darkness. In the physical world, we need to advocate for the darkness by shielding our outdoor lights so that they are directed specifically, not spilling outward in all directions, creating domed glow and artificial horizons. This can be done at our own homes with our porch lights and back yard lights. But we can also advocate for it within our communities. Streetlights and parking lot lights can be shielded so that they only shine downward. Imagine what a difference it would make to night-migrating birds if, in flying over a city, there were only pinpoints of light and perhaps a glow on the ground, rather than a huge radiating dome of light, looking for all the world like daytime. And we can take the time to experience true physical darkness. I looked up the darkest places in Mississippi and Louisiana, and there is a site, and a chart. You can find this information at cleardarksky.com. According to the charts, there are only about 4 places between the two states that are really free from artificial light. We might have more luck out west, on the top of a mountain. I don’t know, but I’m going to try to find out. Even when I camped on the side of a mountain in Northeastern California last summer, there was a glow of light from the nearby small town, and from Sacramento further away. But I could see the Milky Way. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that in Los Angeles. In experiencing a night without artificial light, we are bound to discover that the night isn’t completely dark. Even starlight casts shadows. And the moon, in its larger phases, is downright illuminating, but still in a mysterious way, a way that the sun can’t ever match. As we open ourselves up to physical darkness, I hope we will also open ourselves to spiritual darkness. This doesn’t mean “bad” stuff. Even the “dark night of the soul” has deep benefit for the spirit. And here’s the ultimate takeaway for us and the world. If we can accept darkness—no, more than accept it—welcome it, celebrate it, and be exhilarated by it, perhaps we as a species can grow away from demonizing people who are dark. Every culture does it, even communities within smaller cultures. Those who are darker are less. Those who are darker are more dangerous, threatening, and frightening. Black cats. Black people. Black shadows. Fear. Darkness. Dispel the beliefs. Embrace the darkness. See it in its place as part of all that is. Blessed be.
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I could live someplace the size of a hotel room, I believe. I don't need a lot of space. Tiny houses appeal to me. Purging my home in preparation for selling it taught me a lot about what I need, as well as what I tend to keep without thinking about it.
But I do believe that both Remy (my dog) and I need a home. This home doesn't necessarily have to be stationary. It could be a camper or a small motorhome. But as we continue on our travels, I sense more and more the need for a familiar place to "come home to," a place where I know the place of things, a place where there is some small semblance of predictability. Remy has done well with all the travel, the hotel rooms, Airbnb, and homes where we've been welcomed. It takes him about a day to become territorial in a new spot. But he's tired. He sacks out before I do at the end of the day. I think the lack of routine and sense of place wears on him. Watching him, I've realized that it wears on me a bit, too. I still don't know what place we'll end up with, but at least I now recognize the need for one. In Michigan, we have tornadoes and snowstorms, enough to make us aware of the power of Mother Nature. But as I am traveling through many ecosystems and climates, from marsh to Mississippi River, to dry grasslands, to steam vents and geysers, to intimidating mountain bluffs and cliffs, I see how precariously we individual humans cling to the planet. At any moment, the Earth might issue forth something from which we cannot protect ourselves, and many of our separate physical forms may die.
Yet, are we not all one, and one with all that we experience? If the mountain's rocks fall to the valley below, the mountain does not mourn, and unless the rocks fall onto something we deem "good", nor do we. When the Old Man in the Mountain rock formation fell in New Hampshire, people were saddened, but the mountain didn't care. Nature accepts what is. Nature is energy expressed in many forms. We are one of those forms. We are constantly ebbing and flowing along with the energies around us. We are precarious only if we see ourselves as separate and clinging. If we hum with the universal frequency, nothing changes at the demise of the body. Here's to learning the tune. My body reflects a sense of mourning. At an energetic level, I ache. My muscles are not sore, nor my joints; but I sense a drag on my energy. I feel as though I’m missing something – perhaps a sense of purpose. I have abandoned my conviction that I can ride across the country. I know now that, even if I am capable at a physical level, I have not planned well enough to accomplish it on this journey. Even rethinking the plan to, “I can ride every day at least part of the day’s journey,” hasn’t made it happen.
As I sit here at the computer in a hotel room in Medora, ND, I am apprehensive about whatever part of the route I try to ride today. How far can I actually get given the weight of the cart and the increasingly hilly terrain? Would I be better off to simply follow I-94 and cover less challenging ground more quickly, or do I take the quieter and prettier side roads and not make as many miles? Our plan this morning was to drive to Wibaux, MT, and have me ride from there as far as I can. The route on my Adventure Cycling maps has me on I-94 a fair amount of that ride. Jennifer at Dakota Cycling said that the expressway is not terribly busy on that stretch, but she recommended a much more beautiful (and longer, and probably more challenging) ride south and then west. We have south winds today. If I go that way, am I setting myself up for “failure”? There is another route, given to me by “Map my Run,” that goes northwest out of Wibaux and curves back down into Glendive. The wind would better support that. All this self-discussion brings me to only one conclusion: I am losing faith in my ability to do this. Yesterday, I had thought I would ride around Theodore Roosevelt Park with Remy. I’m glad I didn’t for two reasons: I got to see more of the scenic beauty in the car than I would have if I’d been concentrating on biking through; and once I drove it, I knew I wouldn’t have made it more than a couple of miles of continuously steep ascents and descents. Imagining doing this without backup, I wonder if I’d have even made it halfway through Minnesota by now. A couple of things come to mind: would I feel better because I was actually challenging myself every day to ride as far as I can, and then stopping to experience the people and the place? Or would I feel defeated because I’m unable to ride 60 miles per day, and the journey would take all summer or longer? I guess I need to come to some understanding with myself about how things have changed and what my intention is now. I have already done something quite surprising for middle-aged people in our culture. I have sold my house and left my home on an adventure. The other component, the one of physical challenge, is still becoming. Sometimes I think of offering Tayler a quicker trip to Seattle – putting her on a train or plane or bus and sending her there – then driving to beautiful places and biking around them: state and national parks, small towns, etc. Of course, I wouldn’t have anyone to rescue me if I got far out away from where I’d parked my car. But it sounds more open than what we’ve been doing. I have enjoyed so many things about the journey, so far. Mostly, they’ve been the unexpected interactions with people along the way – not the desk clerks at the hotels, but the other customers at a coffee shop or grocery store. When I ride alone and then get picked up and drive to a hotel, I miss these opportunities. When I eat in a restaurant with Tayler (whose company I enjoy, don’t get me wrong), I don’t end up talking to other customers or to the server or host(ess) as much as I would if I were alone. Weather is warming, and we have some camping possibilities on the horizon. I hope that will also give me a chance to meet more people. I saw some bikes parked outside the restaurant where we ate last night. Perhaps more people are getting out onto the biking routes, and I will meet them as we travel. This morning, though, I just don’t know. I feel a strong sense of mourning in my body and my soul. This, too, shall pass. The intention was to ride -- to experience the upper mid and Western states from the seat of the bicycle, to meet people along the way, to take life as it comes and solve problems, and to come to Seattle a changed person with a better idea of what I want to do next.
The reality (so far) is that, by establishing a fallback, in the form of a young friend driving my car, and by being unprepared for a number of elements, I am seeing more of the country by car than by bike ... and I am disappointed. Philosophically, I can recognize that I am still in a position to take life as it comes: what have come have been a lot of windy and cold weather, a falling apart dog basket, and a dwindling (although not horribly yet) bank account, as well as a driver who can't wait to get out of North Dakota. So, the choices to drive have made sense. Nevertheless, my body and my spirit want to ride. Last night, as I was falling asleep, I tried to imagine where I would be if I didn't have the backup driver. Maybe still in Wisconsin. Surely no further than midway through Minnesota. Yesterday, had the winds been as daunting where I was I would have stayed put. I would have visited the town nearby and talked to people. I would have walked with Remy, and walked and walked. Perhaps we would have done some more cart training. This morning, here in Jamestown, ND, the sky is blue. The temperature is just above 30, and right now the winds are 7 mph out of the west. When Remy and I walked around the neighborhood, I could feel my spirit leaping to ride, and my thoughts reminding it that the route starts miles away (we had to leave the route last night to find a hotel) and that it is only 30 degrees. I came back to the room and looked at the weather forecast, and the wind will rise again today to 25 mph. We will drive. But part of today's preparations will involve being ready to depart much earlier in the day tomorrow -- lower wind predictions, anyway, and maybe by getting on the road at 7:00 instead of sitting in the room on the computer I can ride some miles before the wind gets impossible to battle. Montana awaits, and the "on-the-road-training" I had hoped I would have gotten by now has been little. To be ready for the mountains when I get there, I'm going to have to be riding every day and working on my attitude, as well as my physical strength. Disappointment is. Change is. I am. Here. Now. Let's see what happens today. (For more detailed accounts of the daily adventures of the journey, visit bicyclinglife.blogspot.com ) On May 1, Remy and I, accompanied as far as Muskegon by friend, Sloth, embarked on a bicycle journey across the country. (For more details on that, specifically, read bicyclinglife.blogspot.com ) May 1 was the end of a period of being settled and sedentary, and the beginning of a time of openness to being a part of everything in the world around me, and of expanding that world.
The first few days -- okay, probably the first week -- I was struggling: against the wind, figuring out where to go, wondering whether I had the strength to pursue this to the end, punishing myself for not riding every inch of the stretches from one night's stay to another. Looking back now, 10 days into the journey, I realize that I was having trouble letting go of "home," the subject of my previous post. I had spent the last few days before departure, hastily trying to void my house of its contents before the new owners took possession. I failed to recognize my need for a bit of reverence for the space and the time (almost 15 years) that I'd spent there, and gave the new owners permission to have a few people over while I was still trying to pack and go. My dog, Remy, sensed my anxiety and reacted poorly to the people in "his" house. I left a lot of stuff. Perhaps I had planned poorly. Perhaps I just couldn't, emotionally or physically, do it alone. I had never done this before. I didn't leave gracefully. In fact, the whole departure, from late night trips to my friend Annie's with yet another box to store to stopping by the house (and seeing the frustrated and angry buyers) on the way out of town to get the flag for the back of the bike, was kind of a mess. All was worked out in the end, but I believe I carried that feeling of being at loose ends with me into the beginning of the journey. Now that I've been on the road for 10 days, the feeling of adventure is starting to return. I am no longer committed to riding every inch. If putting the bike on the back of the car on a rainy day to cover our requisite 60 miles for the day is necessary, that's just another aspect of the adventure. Now that I've come to peace with that realization, I think I'm ready for other learning to take place. My flag says "Sacred Space." I haven't started handing out business cards yet, but I believe I'll carry some close at hand, so when people ask me about what I'm doing I can spread the word of creating the sacred for ourselves in our lives. I have been blogging regularly about the bicycle trip; but this page is for the spiritual revelations that may occur. Hope to be writing a lot more here. When Remy and I are out for a walk, at some point I always say to him, “Let’s go home.” He knows exactly where that is and heads that way, usually without hesitation. But lately, when I say that, I think of our plans to bicycle cross country and where home will be for us then. And then I think of my children and their places of residence and whether they are “home” there, and I wonder where home is for them now, especially now that their dad is gone. Do I represent home? And if I move from the house where I’ve lived for 14 years, will I still represent home?
A young friend of mine recently lost the second of his parents. He relocated to another city where family resides, in hopes of reestablishing a sense of home. It hasn’t been long, but so far it’s not working. He is very young to have a sense of home within himself, so without both parents he was unable to take that sense of home with him. And unfamiliar expectations and setting are not helping him to establish that sense that he longs for. I know that, abstractly, we want to believe that we all belong here on planet Earth, and in each other’s hearts. But I think that’s too abstract to elicit the emotional comfort that we associate with the word “home.” Perhaps, as we continue to grow as a species, we will eventually be able to feel at home anywhere in the certainty that we are one and belong together everywhere. But for now, that’s a bit elusive. For Remy, home is with me. Even if we are riding across Montana at some point this spring, he will belong with me – and I with him – but if I were to say at that point, “Let’s go home,” he would be confused. And if I sell my house before I begin my travels, where will I return home to? Grand Rapids? Perhaps it will always be home, even if I buy a house in some other community and live there for 20 years. I was born in Grand Rapids and have lived in West Michigan most of my life. But Abby is in Ithaca, NY, and I am considering relocating there. I’m sure it will feel like home, once I have put some of myself into the community: working, volunteering, making music, performing weddings and memorials. So is that it, then? Home is a place where we leave an imprint of ourselves through our interactions and our deeds? And perhaps the more widespread our imprint, the more “at home” we feel throughout the globe. A much younger friend, in telling me of her 2015 adventures, mentioned feeling as though she had found a “heart home” when she visited Hawaii. I know that feeling. I feel that way about the Seattle area, Ann Arbor, and the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Even though I have never resided in any of these places, when I go there I feel a swelling of belonging inside, and when I’m away an impetus to return, to feel that fullness again. I have always felt at home in West Michigan. I know the ways of the people, the expectations of the culture, and how I fit or don’t fit into those expectations. But lately I have felt as though something is pushing me to change, to move. I feel less at home here. The understanding from the past no longer connects me to this place. It no longer draws me toward a feeling of comfort. I need to let go of the external sense of home, and seek a more permanent home inside myself. And to do that, I must let go of the geographical home I have had for so long and step out into the unknown. For everyone’s sake, including mine, I will try to plan away much of the unknown; but this is more obvious when leaving the geographical comfort zone: every day, every minute is unknown, even though we prefer to think that it is not. We prefer to believe that we can anticipate certain occurrences and responses, etc. But we never know. On May 1, I will embark on an adventure. A friend recently told my daughter that, “Your mom is crazy!” and my daughter knew immediately that she was referring to this adventure. That may be the general consensus. It doesn’t matter. I am doing something that most 60-year-old women in our country and culture would never consider. That doesn’t matter, either. If I even begin to entertain the notion of not doing this, I feel more frightened than I do as I plan to undertake it. I will sell my house, my home, before I go – partly to have money to use for travel, and partly to completely sever my connection to my 14-year home. I will do this because, deep down, I know that the next adventures I need to experience will not unspool before me until I take this step. “Home is where the heart is,” and I’m taking mine with me. I’ve never been to Paris. Not even to France. Not even to Europe. I have lived in West Michigan all my life, and have traveled only a little outside of this country. But even in this country I have been fortunate to meet people of many nationalities and from many walks of life. My experience has been that we all need and want the same kinds of, if not exactly the same, things.
And just as we are human together in the ways we like to recognize, so are we human in the ways we’d rather not admit to. We all feel fear. We react to fear in ways that are not productive for ourselves or others. We react to fear by lashing out at those we believe are causing that fear. We limit freedom for ourselves and others in hopes of remaining ‘secure’, when real security is an illusion. We promote hate and create arbitrary separations in our world, in hopes of maintaining control over it. And so, at this moment in time that so many find so frightening, we have choices to make, as individuals and as countries. Will we respond in fear and anger to something we see as an overt threat, which is really representative of our lack of control? Will we become extremists like the people we fear, by demonizing a particular group of innocent people, and by killing many in the attempt to rid ourselves of a few? Or will we find a way to love, by supporting people who are being constructive in the world, rather than fighting those who are destructive, thus becoming more destructive ourselves? My own mantra/prayer that I repeat when fear threatens to disable me or cause me to behave in unhelpful ways: The Universe is safe and filled with love. I say it over and over, even when I don’t believe it at the time – especially when I don’t believe it. I believe in the little ripples that even my individual thoughts make in the experience of the world. I can start there. I can change my thinking. From there, I can change my words and my actions. I hope my changes will help others with theirs. Little ripples can become big waves. Look at the Nuclear Freeze Campaign that happened about 30 years ago. It was the beginning of some changes, changes that have since gotten bogged down in the very fears and reactions that plague us now. Look into your heart. Look into the hearts of those you love. Banish fear – or at least recognize it and learn not to be reactive to it. Respond to every situation out of love, not fear. “Sure,” you’re thinking. “Sounds easy, but it’s not.” Perhaps. But even choosing to become more aware of the choices is a start. Start. The Kun Yang Lin Dancers have been visiting Grand Valley State University this week. I missed their performance on Monday night, and I hope I get to see them perform somewhere in the near future because the lessons they’ve shared with the classes I accompany throughout the week have touched me and spoken truth to me.
Whatever our vocation, and I speak best from the perspective of the performing arts, we tend to work at it very hard, thinking that will bring us happiness and fulfillment and the essence of the art. But we are wrong. While there is unending practice involved, work is a concept that is not helpful but detrimental. These dancers (Jessica and Grace) invited the students to play at dancing and to experiment with movement, within the context of ballet class. And most importantly, they challenged the young dancers to breathe, not just as many teachers have encouraged students not to hold their breath, but to actually make audible breath part of the dance steps. On one combination, I was instructed to give the introduction and then stop playing. The dancers felt the movement and the breaths together, and it was moving and magical! This made manifest for me the idea of us breathing together as human beings, of feeling each other’s presence at all times, and thus of experiencing one another as parts of the same pervasive, respiring and inspiring whole. I truly wish we all could have been there together to feel this happening. It’s something I won’t soon forget; and I hope the dancers in the class had as powerful an experience of this as I did. I hope they carry it with them and find ways to repeat it and draw more people into it. I hope Jessica and Grace and their fellow company dancers convey this message, this experience, and this feeling far and wide because it is about humanity and Godness. It is about all of us, together. |
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June 2016
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