Recommended Reading Lenten Series

Recommended Reading Lenten Series: Ten Poems to Set You Free,

by Roger Housden

All Souls Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan

February 24, 2008

The Reverend Doctor Brent A. Smith, copyright@2008

^Readings

^{The two readings this
morning are two of the poems of the book, Ten Poems to Set You Free, along with
a short commentary by the author, Roger Housden. Another of the poems in his
book will be our Prayer, three others will be in the sermon, and still another
will close the sermon and compliment the Benediction. In the Introduction to his
book, Housden admits that “underlying this title is a question, one which echoes
through every one of these poems: How can I stand freely in the truth of my
life, feel the mettle of my unique existence, and act from there, whatever my
outer circumstances may be? Sometimes I know what it feels like to stand in the
center of my life and other times I forget. I lose myself in concerns and
anxieties that have me running in circles like a gerbil in a cage. One reason I
write books is to provide a structure, a context for the exploration of a
question [such as this.]” Similarly, our Sunday worship liturgy is designed as a
structure for the individual to explore how one can stand freely in the truth of
his and her life, and live in that truth for the rest of the days of the week.
Liturgy as ours, in a faith tradition as ours, is like good poetry, which
Housden knows, “emerges from the wellsprings of the human spirit, and if we are
in the right place in ourselves to hear it, it can call forth our own
inarticulate knowings, and offer a mirror into the core and truth of our own
life. It can show us the spark, the fire at our center, which, in the end, is
the only thing in us likely to endure, the one thing worthy of our true name.
That fire is the real life in us… [calling each of us to remember] who you are
and can be.”}

^{Self-Portrait, by David Whyte}

^{It doesn’t interest me if there is one
God}

^{or many gods.}

^{I want to know if you belong or feel}

^abandoned.

^{If you know despair or can see it in
others.}

^{I want to know}

^{if you are prepared to live in the world}

^{with its harsh need}

^{to change you. If you can look back}

^{with firm eyes}

^{saying this is where I stand. I want to
know}

^{if you know}

^{how to melt into that fierce heat of
living}

^{falling toward}

^{the center of your longing. I want to
know}

^{if you are willing}

^{to live, day by day, with the consequence
of love}

^{and the bitter}

^{unwanted passion of your sure defeat.}

^{I have heard, in that fierce embrace,
even}

^{the gods speak of God.}

^{Look in the Mirror.
“Self-Portrait” is a poem David Whyte wrote after looking in the mirror one
morning. I don’t know what kind of morning it was for him, but I suspect that
things in his life were coming to some kind of head, that something was calling
him to stand up, wake up, and be honest about what his life was needing him to
be and do… His is a voice that will always champion the truth of the soul over
the clamor of the social personality. What do [you] see when [you] stumble out
of bed in the morning and gaze in the mirror?}

^{Every Sunday in our
worship liturgy, the First Reading demands that you prepare yourself to meet
this piercing call to honest and deep self-examination. Some ignore this call,
resist it, or flee from it, and thus remain imprisoned, contained by the passing
flux of life. Others answer this demand to live as human beings were created to
live, in spiritual freedom.}

^{The Layers, by Stanley Kunitz}

^{I have walked through many lives,}

^{some of them my own,}

^{and I am not who I was,}

^{though some principle of being}

^{abides, from which I struggle}

^{not to stray.}

^{When I look behind,}

^{as I am compelled to look}

^{before I can gather strength}

^{to proceed on my journey,}

^{I see the milestones dwindling}

^{toward the horizon}

^{and the slow fires trailing}

^{from the abandoned camp-sites,}

^{over which scavenger angels}

^{wheel on heavy wings.}

^{Oh, I have made myself a tribe}

^{out of my true affections,}

^{and my tribe is scattered!}

^{How shall the heart be reconciled}

^{to its feast of losses?}

^{In a rising wind}

^{the manic dust of my friends,}

^{those who fell along the way,}

^{bitterly stings my face.}

^{Yet I turn, I turn,}

^{exulting somewhat,}

^{with my will intact to go}

^{wherever I need to go,}

^{and every stone on the road}

^{precious to me.}

^{In my darkest night,}

^{when the moon was covered}

^{and I roamed through wreckage,}

^{a nimbus-clouded voice}

^{directed me:}

^{“Live in the layers,}

^{not on the litter.”}

^{Though I lack the art}

^{to decipher it,}

^{no doubt the next chapter}

^{in my book of transformations}

^{is already written.}

^{I am not done with my changes.}

^{I Am Not Who I Was.
Stanley Kunitz was in his seventies when he wrote this poem. Today, at
ninety-eight, he is still writing, the oldest active poet alive. Still now, at
his venerable age, he does not consider himself ‘done with my changes’… His
daily existence is dedicated to the life of the soul, and the soul of a man like
Kunitz never stops flowering… The work of transformation will continue for as
long as he lives.}

^{Every Sunday in our
worship liturgy, the Second Reading invites you into the cost of personal and
spiritual growth, which liberates and transforms the individual and community.
Some ignore this invitation, resist it, or flee from it, and thus remain
imprisoned, contained by what they will not let go of and release. Others answer
this invitation to become something new.}

Sermon

^{I approach the building and
enter it, take my seat in the silent sanctuary as the Prelude begins, the noise
from the foyer begins to subside, and people of all sizes and shapes, and hopes,
experiences, burdens, and desires begin to fill the room. This is a ship not of
fools but of souls, departing for deep waters. Do I want to get on board?}

^{Freedom. Republican
President George Bush talked about it as if he were a Democratic President of
the 20th century. Southwest Airlines promotes it as the advantage gained by
flying about the country. High school seniors think it or shout it out bounding
out of their school on the last day of classes. Freedom.}

^{It is the single most
misunderstood and misused word today. It can mean, simultaneously, “license to
do anything you want,” “the ability to get anything you desire,” “the capacity
to go anywhere you want at any time,” and “the power to do anything you will to
do,” amongst a whole host of others. In our society we talk about free speech,
although no speech is free of the boundaries of context, history, inflection,
and nuance of meaning. For speech to be free of those, would require silence,
the absence of the sound, a contradiction. In our society we talk about the free
mind, but every mind is formed with the boundaries of psychological makeup,
sociological forces, and family history, and every idea has a biography of some
sort. We may think of freedom as the opposite of regulation, and sometimes it
is, but regulation and boundary and discipline can just as much shape and
strengthen freedom as oppose it.

    And what could “spiritual
freedom” mean, a term used in our faith tradition for several centuries now?

    How can I stand freely
in the truth of my life, feel the mettle of my unique existence, and act
from there, whatever my outer circumstances may be? Sometimes I know what it
feels like to stand in the center of my life and other times I forget. I
lose myself in concerns and anxieties that have me running in circles like a
gerbil in a cage. One reason I write books is to provide a structure, a
context for the exploration of a question [such as this.]

    I would submit there is no
better description of the purpose for regular Sunday worship in our faith
tradition than this: Worship provides a structure, a context, for the
exploration of the question, “How can I live in the truth of spiritual freedom,
the truth of my life?” Part of this context is that we explore this together, in
the public presence of one another, in order to give individual’s strength to do
this difficult work and to remind each of us of meanings and realities larger
than the “me.” The liturgy on Sunday morning within this faith tradition, is so
that as many individuals as are willing – all souls who are willing – may seek
to practice standing freely in the truth of their various lives during this
hour, in order to practice living in that truth for the rest of the days of the
week. This is the trust, confidence, faith behind what we do here each week:
There are human expressions – poetry being one among many, the witness of a
sermon being another – that emerge “from the wellsprings of the human spirit,
and if we are in the right place in ourselves to hear it, it can call forth our
own inarticulate knowings, and offer a mirror into the core and truth of our own
life. It can show us the spark, the fire at our center, which, in the end, is
the only thing in us likely to endure, the one thing worthy of our true name…
[calling, remember] who you are and can be.”

    Liturgy is the work of
putting the self in the right place for one hour, to practice living in the
right place the rest of the week’s hours. To be in that right place for us to
hear what springs from the human spirit requires us first to practice
cultivating an eager gratitude:

Shake off this sadness, and recover your
spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom
life
is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final
pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of
death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing
which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into
your
own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn
it
to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your
motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead
in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a
group
of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to
gather yourself.
-Throw Yourself Like Seed, Miguel de Unamuno

    I look around the room of wood and
muted light, feel the fabric of the seat, listen to the music, sing, smell the
fragrance of candle wax and wood, and I wonder: Do I trust enough to uncover my
soul to myself? Does the presence of these people give me the confidence to
admit into my silent thoughts my shortcomings, failures, mistakes, and
embarrassments? Will I muster the courage to complete my inventory sheet? And
can I find the faith to start anew, like I am born again, but not; like gaining
wisdom as if for the first time, and even more, full of promise?

    How many thoughts flow
through your human mind in the course of a week? Billions? How many feelings or
sentiments come over your in seven days time? Millions? How many impressions
make their way to our brain for analysis, and how many experiences do you think
the average person would claim from Sunday afternoon through the following
Sunday morning? It is no wonder the ancients declared a Sabbath, a time for
rest; for the physical body to be still so that the mind and emotions could slow
down some and come under some influence from us, instead of us being tossed
about by them like a sailboat on a lake in a nor’easter.

    Of course, people took the
concept of a Sabbath and made a rule out of it, that one had to rest to be holy,
and like any law-making the rule kills the spirit. Almost. But, it is still
true. Our lives mean more than we fathom, and if we don’t take time to engage
ourselves in listening, to ancient and modern words, then we will miss what is
greater. It will fly by us like the wind and it will be only happenstance when
we ask why this is, or who we are. A prayer is not so much a request made to God
as much as a wake-up call to ourselves. To gather the courage to listen to the
soul. To gather strength by doing this with others. To practice deep learning by
traveling deep and being willing and able to listen and hear what God is calling
me to do, to be, and to become. To hear my own name.

Be still
Listen to the stories of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?”
-In Silence, Thomas Merton

    As I sit here in this sanctuary with
these others, seeking to know and understand some truth in my life, listening to
this man’s sermon, do I sense that when he is talking about himself, he is
talking about me, too? The ancients said we spend most of the moments of our
days asleep. Am I asleep? Do I slumber while the fire at the center of things
keeps me warm and it secretly hopes and longs I wake to tend to it and enjoy its
beauty? But, if I think the sermon the preacher is preaching – and so hard,
there, see those beads of sweat on his brow – is about his life and for mine, I
have to open myself up not to the fire he sees but the fire that illuminates my
life. I have to use his life in his sermon as a doorway for my own, and enter
his life in order to enter mine. Do I want to make that effort? Examine my life
as he is examining his? Try to see the fire in my life as he is struggling to
see the fire in his? To practice living deeply this morning so as to practice
living deeply and awake the other days of the week?

Have you ever tried to enter the long black
branches

of other lives-

tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full
of honey,

hanging

from the branches of the young locust trees,
in early summer,

feel like?

Do you think this world is only an
entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the
water divides

with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Never to lie down with the grass, as though
you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your
wings over

the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the
complaint

that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for
the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one
foot

in front of the other, all attentive to
what presents itself
continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not
observed

with admiration, even with rapture, the
outer stone?

Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you
wander away

from wherever you are, to look for your
soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave
your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass,
which is

the mystery, which is death as well as
life, and
not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be
overcome

with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine

god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his
house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers
of the

present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s
pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have
opened

in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and
rustle in the wind!

~

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and
calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more
difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

~

Only last week I went out among the thorns and
said

to the wild roses:

deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl of two of music, damp and
rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their
delicate watery bodies.

~

For how long will you continue to listen to
those dark shouters
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

~

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and
what’s coming next

is coming with its own heave and grace.

~

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced,
among the quick things,

upon the immutable,

What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn’t ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the
peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the
ocean’s edge.

I climb. I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
-Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black
Branches, by Mary Oliver

    I climb. I backtrack. I
float. I ramble my way home. Has poet Mary Oliver ever delivered a sermon? Has
she ever stepped inside one sitting in a pew? It sounds as though she has. The
Scripture for every morning reads, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
set you free?” Well, preacher, do you really want to know the truth? Well,
hearers, do you really want to know the truth? The only truth a preacher, any
preacher or priest or rabbi or Imam or shaman of any kind can deal out, is the
truth of his own life. And the only truth a hearer of sermons can hear is the
truth that emanates from his own mind and heart, from her own direct connection
with God. But, when you hear a preacher telling truths on himself, in that all
elusive manner of humility and awe, each hearer is invited to step closer to her
truth. When you read a poet telling truths on herself, in that all elusive
manner of humility and awe, each reader is invited to step closer to his truth.
Listening to a sermon, and writing and delivering it, are really the same thing
through different lives, as reading a poem and composing it are really the same
thing through different lives.

    So, hearer, do you really
want to hear the preacher tell his truth because, in covenant walking together,
it will mean you will have to confront the truths of your life as well?
Preacher, do you really want to tell the truth? Be careful what you ask, for in
asking it becomes a demand, an obligation, and responsibility. Truth confronted
requires something of us. Be careful. Truth confronted requires personal
examination and confession to self, for there to be any hope for reconciliation
and reform and the creation of a new tomorrow.

    Do I dare to enter the long
black branches of others lives? I am so afraid to do so. I fear that the pain of
others’ lives will supplant or compound my own. I keep an introvert’s distance
from people because I am not certain I am accepted by them. Caution, the dark
shouter yells, and often I obey. I maintain an extrovert’s posturing because I
feel guilty for the mistakes I have made in the past. Prudence, the dark shouter
yells, and often I obey. I want to be liberated from obedience and towards the
living of my life.

    Do I think this world is
only an entertainment for me? Does the cry for justice that emanates from real
people who stand oppressed and tyrannized like grass amongst weeds, invite me to
lie down beside them as if I were grass, too, like them, and weeds like others?
It is not amusing to do so, not entertaining, not happy-talk walking into murky
floodwaters where some are drowning; wading in the waters in order to help
purify it and satisfy their thirst.

    What is missing in my life
that I can’t purchase with my ATM card and a bottomless credit balance? What do
I need to be liberated from in order in freedom to live towards the divinely
created image that the ancients said I am? My selfishness that confuses my wants
with what is best? My helplessness that whispers prudence when I need to act
boldly and intentionally? My need for security that advises cautionary silence
when I should speak up? My past that imprisons me in replaying misdeeds and
miscalculations long after they have really floated away when I haven’t?

    Our words and our thoughts
and our sentiments can bind us to one another in sharing burdens and trials, or
keep us at well more than arm’s length from each other and from an Affection
that redeems all kinds of weather. Our words and thoughts and sentiments can
make us wonder lovingly at the strangeness of another and of human being, or
find disgust in that strangeness. Our words and thoughts and sentiments can keep
us apart and aloof from the lives of others, or we can use them as vehicles to
enter into the destiny of others, making their burdens ours to share, their
triumphs ours to rejoice in, and their destinies ours to share.

    In the preaching of the
sermon I ask myself how I can sacrifice prudence and caution and fall into the
life of humanity, which is the way creation moves and breathes and is a living
entity. Fall in! Fall in! Fall in, brothers and sisters, the water’s fine!

    And if you begin to
practice this on Sunday morning, and make it a living practice in your life
during the week, you will see that religions, churches, governments, societies,
even your workplace, will not contain you for you will be beginning to shape the
Spirit in you towards freedom and the Spirit will work on you in this way. There
will be the subtle but powerful temptation to see this freedom as thriving, even
requiring, independence from spiritual community, from relationship with others,
because the temptation today is to believe that freedom is best and only
possible absent of relationships; or that it is a commodity or brought about by
a political entity like a government or army. But, that is not spiritual
freedom, and practicing in that way, the heart soon grows weary and cynical, and
the mind locks onto a new orthodoxy it doesn’t even realize it has come to
worship. We forget what we are and who we are, and so we need gather at least
once a week to be reminded of the promise we are and the hope we bear.

    For what we seek is an
ancient understanding and what we endeavor to practice in our living is an old
truth. God loves all souls. Every individual is created in the form of that
Divine Affection. It is our spiritual work to liberate that Divine Affection in
us and our spiritual practice to liberate that Divine Affection in others. There
are many hurdles that challenge our capacity to live towards this spiritual
freedom. Yet, when we do the arc that is creation comes nearer to its
completion. The sound of the beginning of our worship service every week is a
call to each one of us to practice spiritual freedom for an hour so as to live
into it every other hour, such that in love, we would live in both unity and
spiritual freedom as one family, the human family.

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who lets a bucket down and brings
up a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?
Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
And opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
And leaves with blessings.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.
Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes the moment
of feeling the wings you’ve grown,
lifting. -Rumi
BENEDICTION
Be not afraid. And seeing there is naught to fear, and bearing
witness to what can never die, go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Search all things
And hold fast to that which is good.
Render unto no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted.
Support the weak.
Help the afflicted.
Love all men, love all women, love all children,
Love all souls.
Serving the Most High.
And rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.
Amen.}