For All That Is Our Life

A sermon preached for the congregation at Eliot Unitarian Chapel

by the Rev. Dr. Daniel ÓConnell in St Louis, MO on November 4, 2007

An Eastern guru had a disciple and was so pleased with the man’s spiritual progress that he left him on his own. The man lived in a little mud hut. He lived simply, begging for his food. Each morning, after his devotions, the disciple washed his loincloth and hung it out to dry.

One day, he came back to discover his loincloth had been torn and eaten by rats. He begged the villagers for another, and they gave it to him. But the rats ate that one, too. So he got himself a cat. That took care of the rats, but now when he begged for his food he had to beg for milk for his cat as well.

“This won’t do,” he thought. “I’ll get a cow.” So he got a cow and found he had to beg now for feed for the cow. So he decided to till and plant the ground around his hut.

But soon he found no time for spiritual practices, so he hired servants to tend his farm. But overseeing the labors became a chore, so he got married to have a wife to help him.

After a while, the disciple became the wealthiest man in the village.

His teacher was traveling by there one day and was shocked to see that where there used to be a simple mud hut there now loomed a palace surrounded by a vast estate, worked by many servants. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked his disciple.

“You won’t believe this, sir,” the man replied. “But there was really no other way I could keep my loincloth.”

Sometimes we lose sight of the big picture.

Paul Shepherd, who is on the faculty at Florida State University says: “I’ve been going around the country to colleges talking to creative writing majors all over. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds over the last year. Only a handful will publish a book. Most of them will go into other fields.

“The question is: What are we teaching them? In my mind, what they can get is a sense of how to think creatively about where they are, and where they’re going, to see their lives as unfolding.

“It’s surprising how seldom we do this. For example. My students always have new cars, cars that are very nice. They have car payments to go with those cars.

“They dream of being a dive instructor on a ship in the Bahamas. Maybe they do some diving. It would take a couple thousand dollars to get that instructor certification. They could do it for a couple of summers. They can’t see how to get there from where they are. They don’t see the car as what’s stopping them.

“My wife is a law professor. Lawyers make good money. It’s hard when you’re making $200,000 a year to say, ‘I want to be a high-school history teacher. But– I can’t do that. I’ve got this house, and so on.’

“But there are many high-school history teachers living full, meaningful lives on their salary. They’re not living like lawyers, but to move from being a lawyer to being a high-school history teacher takes someone seeing their own life as a story they’re writing instead of one that’s being written for them.”

One of the key differences between orthodox religion and Unitarian Universalism is that orthodox religion tells you that the story of your life is already written. UU tells you that you can write your life story.

You can help make history, instead of being overrun by it. You can make a difference. You can change the world. You can do things, go places, make things happen. You. Yes, you!

But it’s easy to get sucked in to what the culture, the economy, the media tells us ought to be our priorities– instead of figuring out our priorities on our own and in consultation with people whose opinions we value.

And if seems like what the culture, the economy, the media tells us is in our best interest, then why not just follow their advice– like so many other people seem to be doing?

We’re told: be healthy, be wealthy, be happy. Buy these products, subscribe to this publication, and you’ll get all 3. Ready, Set, buy, spend, consume! Wheee!

Imagine a young woman — call her Anna— who’s just finished her education and is headed out into the real world. She’s bright, talented and loaded with potential. Our culture will encourage Anna to dream several dreams.

Be happy. A recent survey informs us that 84 percent of Americans describe themselves as “pretty happy” or “very happy.” If Anna is to be happy, some studies suggest that she should marry, be a Republican, locate herself in the upper-middle class, live in a warm climate, be a Caucasian of course, and be a senior citizen.

Well, Anna is 22 so she’s no senior citizen, but perhaps she can be happy anyway. Okay, #2.

Be healthy. Our magazine covers, billboards and TV screens all speak to our obsession with health and beauty. So young Anna is going to hit the gym, wax those brows, apply some of the tooth whitening strips, and she will look to win friends and influence people who do all of the same.

Be rich. The culture, the economy, the media tells us we can “have it all.” We can have the “good life, at a great price, guaranteed.”

And Anna can have all of this if– she knows The Secret

The Secret is a DVD, but it’s also a book, and it is ranked #21 on Amazon dot com this week. It is a huge seller among evangelicals. It has been featured on TV by Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, the Today show and Larry King Live.

The Secret is a book, but it’s also a franchise, and a movement. The Secret is a sort of mind over matter philosophy, a name-it and claim-it, health & wealth gospel.

It is the most recent version of Science of Mind movement that began about 200 years ago. This philosophy informs Christian Science, Unity, and other denominations.

The basic idea is the Law of Attraction— our feelings, thoughts and desires attract and create actual events in the world and in our lives. While hidden to most people, the true secret to success and happiness has only been adopted by the cultural movers and shakers over the centuries who have realized that positive thinking invites positive experiences.

The idea is that there is only one reality, one universe, and there is a universal consciousness, and we are all a part of it. That's not the part that bothers me, particularly.

The Secret tells you that you can have anything you want, you can do, or be whatever you want. Even that doesn't bother me too much.

But when The Secret says the universe is your personal butler; when all of creation is merely your playground; when there is no moral or ethical standards– then watch out. The Secret quotes a book that says "Jesus and other biblical figures were millionaires, who had more affluent lifestyles 'than many present day millionaires could conceive of." (109).

Um, that's not what I read about Jesus and money. Like when Jesus talks about money, about serving God or Money– that you can’t serve both, and throwing the moneychangers out of the temple, and all the rest. Jesus is pretty clear about money & the meaning of life.

And I don’t care what The Secret says: Jesus would not be driving a Hummer today.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of positive thinking. I like the idea of creating something unique with your one wild and precious life.

I am disappointed in a philosophy that says there is no basic call for us to do good deeds, no command to love our neighbor, no need to help the needy. No demands whatsoever. That way lies oppression. And unhappiness.

And you can lots of great toys. You can have the estate, the cow, the cat. And you can be relatively wealthy. And your health is good. But you can still face an existential crisis.

Yes. People can be healthy & wealthy & still unhappy, bored even.

We can go to the movies, the theater, the mall, the gym, the stadium or the entertainment complex set up in our own family room. But some days, none of that is enough.

A Yankelovich survey of some 2,500 U.S. consumers found that 71 percent desire more novelty as part of their lives, and that was an increase of 4 percent from a similar survey the previous year.

The study concluded that “Just as a drug user develops a tolerance and needs larger doses to achieve the same effect, so, too, have we developed a tolerance to amazing events.”

Author Patricia Spacks argues that boredom is especially pronounced in recent times. She has surveyed several centuries of English literature and noted that references to boredom multiplied significantly from the 18th to the 20th century.

There is a whole book in the Hebrew bible about this– Ecclesiastes.

Let’s consider Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities!” he says. “All is vanity.” But the word he uses doesn't mean "excessive pride in appearance," which is the modern definition.

Vanitas, is the quality of being empty, which is closer to the meaning of the Hebrew noun here, hevel, which means “breath, vapor, void, futility” and the like. His search for meaning is “vanity of vanities” or “utter futility.”

Hmm. The search for meaning, an utter futility? Ouch.

The book of Ecclesiastes has been called one of the most pessimistic books in world literature. It has also been called one of the most realistic. Everything, he says, everything, ultimately, is emptiness in this world. So, taking pleasure in all of life, in both work and play, is to accept one of God’s greatest gifts to human beings.

Interpreters remain divided on whether this view is pessimistic, realistic or a brave blend. Personally, I think it’s a little pessimistic.

I also think it’s amazing this book made it into the Hebrew bible. It's more existential than religious.

These are the sentiments of a man suffering the boredom of existence. “I ... applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.”

He’s disturbed by the inability to find meaning in his daily life. He feels that nothing he has done or achieved makes any real difference, and he fears that he’ll go to his grave without discovering how to hold onto contentment. Some commentators say he is simply bored.

I don’t agree. I think he is facing an existential crisis. What is the meaning of your ‘one wild and precious life?’

He has no answer. Just memories.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I woke up. I didn’t know I had been sleeping. I knew I had been bored, but not that I had been sleeping. But then I woke up. When I woke up is when I realized I had been sleeping.

I had been sleeping through my adolescence and woke up in a large aluminum tube, traveling 450 mph at 1,000 feet above ground level in a fitful wind, as this tube was coming in for a landing or a crash at Norfolk, Virginia.

And a near death experience woke me up. I don’t think I’ll ever be bored again.

And if you read Ecclesiastes all the way through, you discover that the author doesn’t “conquer” boredom, or the existential crisis. Rather, he learns to live with it. As we all must do.

Before he gets there, though, he tries several remedies. He becomes a hedonist, living only for pleasure. He becomes an ascetic, living as simply as possible. While he does find some immediate gratification, he also concludes that such is all the reward there is.

But for all his experiments, he never tried helping others. It’s counterintuitive, but time and again, those who find an outlet for their lives that involves caring for others discover that whatever else life is, it isn’t boring.

Consider Norman Borlaug. After growing up on an Iowa farm, and graduating from college, he went to work at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation on a project to boost wheat production in Mexico.

That was the start of a life work that earned him the title of “the man who fed the world.” By carefully cross-breeding thousands of varieties of wheat, he and his team eventually produced a type that was highly resistant to destructive fungi and also yielded more grain. That development enabled Mexico to become self-sufficient in wheat by the late 1950s.

When the seed was introduced in other parts of the globe, it helped to stave off mass starvation in several countries..

He also worked on the economic side of things, insisting that governments pay poor farmers world prices for their grain. Many developing nations were not eager to do that and required their farmers to sell to a government food program at less than half of the world price. Borlaug used his prestige in the grain world, however, to persuade the governments of India and Pakistan to abandon that self-defeating policy.

When Borlaug received the Nobel Prize in 1970, the Nobel committee chair explained, “More than any other single person of this age, [he] has helped to provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace.”

Now, Borlaug is 93 years old and still working to keep hunger at bay. So, do you think Norman Borlaug is bored? Or suffering existential dread? Not likely.

We can't all be Nobel prize winning scientists. But everyone can do something.

Inmates at the Southeast correctional facility in Charleston, MO recently grew a bumper crop of tomatoes, cabbage, radishes, and other vegetables on six acres of prison land– and gave it all to a local food bank.

The project is one of Missouri’s seven “restorative justice gardens,” in which inmates, as part of a volunteer prison program, grow produce for schools, senior centers, and other non-profits.

Officials say the program has a waiting list of 200 inmates. “This is almost like being free here,” said inmate James Burton. “I like knowing I’m giving to the elderly.” The Week, 11/2/2007.

We can make the world a better place. We can sign up to drive, feed and host the homeless right here in Eliot Chapel 3 Thursdays a month with our Room At The Inn program. Right here in church. How convenient is that?

Our social action team organized a CROP walk last month to help combat poverty. They got people informed, got our kids and adults involved, got them moving, and raised over $2400, about 10% of that was through our split collection.

Earlier, we sang "for all that is our life we sing our thanks and praise; for all life is a gift which we are called to use to build the common good and make our own days glad."

We can get involved in escapist drama. But we can also get involved in building a common good– and thereby– make our own days glad.

We just have to wake up a little more. Wake up our senses, wake up our conscience, wake up our vision of a better world. Let's sing it shall we? Wake Now, My Senses, #298