Readings

From The Land Remembers by Ben Logan, pp. 234-35:
 

Nothing very exciting or unusual happened on winter evenings... [We] just gathered in a close and quiet warmth, feeling secure and immensely pleased with ourselves when we said goodnight and went off to our cold beds.

Such evenings were more fragile than we knew.

Once Father brought home a new lamp for the dining-room table, an Aladdin with a cone-shaped mantle. The light it gave was white, like the light from a bare electric bulb in a store. The new lamp gave more light, opening up the corners of the dining room, letting us scatter away from the little circle we'd always formed around the old Rayo.

I remember Mother standing in the doorway to the kitchen one night, frowning in at us. "I'm not sure I like that new lamp."

Father was at his usual place at the table. "Why not? Burns less kerosene."

"Look where everyone is."

We were scattered. There was even enough light to read by on the far side of the stove.

"We're all here," Father said.

"Not like we used to be."

Father looked at the empty chairs around the table. "Want to go back to the old lamp?"

"I don't think it's the lamp. I think it's us. Does a new lamp have to change where we sit at night?"

Father's eyes found us, one by one. Then he made a little motion with his head. We came out of our corners and slid into our old places at the table, smiling at each other, a little embarrassed to be hearing this talk.

Mother sat down with us and nodded. "That's better."

From The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, pp. 23-24:
 

In my small class in meditation for non-Vietnamese, there are many young people. I've told them that if each one can meditate an hour each day that's good, but it's nowhere near enough. You've got to practice meditation when you walk, stand, lie down, sit, and work, while washing your hands, washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, drinking tea, talking to friends, or whatever you are doing: "While washing the dishes, you might be thinking about the tea afterwards, and so try to get them out of the way as quickly as possible in order to sit and drink tea. But that means that you are incapable of living during the time you are washing the dishes. When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must be the most important thing in your life. Just as when you're drinking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life. When you're using the toilet, let that be the most important thing in your life." And so on. Chopping wood is meditation. Carrying water is meditation. Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. Each act is a rite, a ceremony. Raising your cup of tea to your mouth is a rite. Does the word "rite" seem to solemn? I use the word in order to jolt you into the realization of the life-and-death matter of awareness.

Modern physics has given us the insight that time and place intersect. Einstein theorized that we are located at any given moment not only in space but also in time: we are at a point of "space-time." Standing at this pulpit in this particular building on this particular planet in this solar system on the outer arm of the Milky Way Galaxy at this precise moment, I am at a point of space-time.

I find another, related hypothesis from modern physics to be equally insightful. According to Stephen Hawking, "Space and time not only affect but also are affected by everything that happens in the universe." This points to the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part. Space and time are inter-related, and the intricate webs of space and time both affect and are affected by everything in the universe.

I think these insights from modern physics are powerful. They are what led me to conceive of doing a sermon series tying together concepts of time and place. The more I've gotten into the topics of time and place, the deeper the web of connection between time and place seems to get.

For example, many of us increasingly feel disconnected from both time and place. We live our lives as if the places we live and work, the seasons of our lives and the rhythms of our bodies don't really matter. We may look at timepieces more than ever before, but do we really know what time it is? And for many of us, the places we live are now only incidental. Jobs and the pursuit of prosperity dictate where we live. Also, adapting to the increased pace of our lives has caused us to detach from place. As Wendell Berry observes, there is a profound difference between a path and a road. When we take a walk on a country path, we have time to observe the details of the place; when we drive by at seventy miles an hour, we are not able to be as observant. The details escape us.

Nowhere is the loss connection with place and the natural rhythms of time more apparent than in the fact that most of us spend the overwhelming portion of our days inside--separated from place and natural time. In the forever-bright fluorescence and the temperature-controlled, often windowless space of our offices, factories and stores, we really can't tell what time it is or where on earth we are. A clock may tell us the time of day, but it can't tell us the season, or even whether it's day or night time. A clock cannot tell us about the rhythms of our body.

I am convinced that one of the tragic results of this disconnection from time and place is the collapse of our communities. Our nation is paying a terrible price for this. Building a community takes time, and I think it takes connectedness to place, too. The deepest communities are those which are intimately connected with a place.

What's the answer? In these sermons, I have shared my prescriptions for living in time and creating a home in the world. My prescriptions could be summarized as a four-fold spiritual path. Nothing about this path is earth-shaking. I'm not saying that we have to renounce modern life and move to an Amish-type farm. The path I am suggesting is rather simpler, I think. There are four aspects to this spiritual path: Awareness, Intentionality, Participation, and Gratitude. Let me describe these aspects one by one.

The first aspect is awareness, or attentiveness. This aspect of the path calls us to be aware of ourselves, of others, and of the environment around us. It calls us to be aware of how we live in time and of our surroundings. We need, for example, to be aware of the pace of our lives. Are things generally too fast or too slow, or is the pace about right? Are our nervous system and our emotions able to keep up with our pace? We need to be aware of the burgeoning number of conveniences and time-saving devices we have at our disposal. We need to ask: are these things really improve the quality of our lives? Are they really helping us save time? We need to be aware of how we use leisure time and how we vacation. I suggest taking time each day to reflect on what we are planning to do with today's gift of time. Is what we are planning to do reflective of our deepest values and principles? Or is it tangential or even unrelated to who we are and what we most deeply believe and value?

At the same time, we need to be aware of the places in which we are. I said last week that is important to spend time trying to become as knowledgeable about the places we are as possible. It's staggering to me how much ignorance we have about the places we live. We take so much about place for granted. For instance, I was totally startled at Suzanne and Mark Marnocha's renewal of vows ceremony when Mark shared about all of the rivers he has lived near. "My God, I thought, I've lived by rivers in five of the six places I have lived" (and the sixth place was Nantucket Island, where there was no river but plenty of water nearby). Before that ceremony, though, I had never reflected on this continuity that ties together the places I have lived. In fact, most of the time I all but ignored the rivers that were the heart of those places. I would cross the river with hardly a glance. I can't even remember the name of one of the rivers I lived near! Would it have been possible a hundred years ago to live by a river essentially without noticing it, without even knowing its name?

The passage I read from The Land Remembers is a wonderful example of awareness. The father bought the new lamp without considering what affects beyond providing better light the new lamp would have. Probably without much awareness, the family scattered to the outer reaches of the lamp. Without much awareness, then, a small yet significant part of the family's life was changed. This is how many of us live most of the time. Fortunately in this case, the mother had an awareness of what the new lamp had wrought. Awareness is the first part of my spiritual path.

To summarize, we need to be aware of the particular moment and place we are--of our point of space-time. This is what Buddhists like Thich Nhat Hanh mean when they talk about mindfulness.

Awareness leads to the second aspect of my spiritual path: intentionality. Without awareness of ourselves and the webs of relationship in which we live, intentionality is impossible. Lacking awareness, we live by constantly reacting to others and to our environment. With awareness, we can become proactive, living with regard to our deepest principles and beliefs.

Returning to the story of the new lamp from The Land Remembers, the mother's awareness of the deep impacts of the new lamp led to the family's being able to respond with intentionality. They did not simply react to the lamp without awareness. Instead, they were able to choose consciously to keep the lamp, but also to return to their old, closer places to sit. That is intentionality.

Now before moving on to the third aspect of my spiritual path, I must add this: intentionality--as good and as important as I think it is--does not always work out the way we think it will. There are limits to intentionality. Even the most intentional person will not be able to control or anticipate everything. Much in our lives lies forever beyond our control. This reality is both the beauty and the curse of being human. Maybe the Serenity Prayer used in Twelve Step recovery programs is a good guide: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Intentionality works well for those things we can change--though not even perfectly with these, thanks to the surprises life has to offer. But it does not work well at all for those things we cannot change. Indeed, intentionality only compounds our error when we try to change that over which we ultimately have no control.

The third aspect of my spiritual path is participation. Cultivating awareness and intentionality, we then need to participate in life. I am convinced that participation in relationships is a crucial part of the answer to our struggles with both time and place. For example, most of us who feel we don't have enough time to do what we most want to do desire more time for relationships. We don't generally wish for more time so we could work more or watch more television, or even go to the mall or clean up the house. As the contemporary proverb goes, "No one on his death bed ever said, "I wish I had spend more time on my business." [Timelock, p. 208] The answer may be simply to take the time for these relationships. The nurturing and perspective we gain from such relationships may go a long way toward solving our time management problem--not by creating more hours in our schedule for us to do and accomplish more, but by revealing to us what's most important in life.

Relationships are crucial to place, too. As several people pointed out last week when we talked about creating a home in the world, it is good relationships that most make a place a home. A scene from The Land Remembers illustrates this. Ben Logan is talking with his mother about the hired men who itinerate from one farm to another. Ben's mother says of the hired men:
 

"I think they must be very lonely."

"How could they be lonely?"

"They never get close to anyone. You know, it's people that make a place a home. Ever notice how they always talk about places, never about people?"...

I climbed up into my pine tree to think about that. I felt like two people. I could see the hired men through Mother's eyes, forever lonely when they could have been settled and close to other people the way we were. But part of me wanted to wander as they did, possessed by no one while I searched to find out who and what I would be.

I climbed down from the tree and tried to say that to Mother.

She nodded. "I know. But you don't find who you are all by yourself. We find out who we are with other people." [pp. 170-71]

Just as relationships are crucial to place, so, too, place is crucial to relationships. Rootedness to place can be a wonderful blessing for relationships. Staying put for a long period gives us the time to establish deep relationships. Wendell Berry goes further: he suggest that how we relate to a place dictates how we relate to our fellow humans.

The final aspect of my spiritual path is gratitude. This may be the most important aspect of the path--and perhaps the most overlooked among Unitarian Universalists. Many of us have thrown out prayer, and with it, a way of intentionally contemplating and expressing our gratitude for all of the gifts we receive. Even if we don't believe in traditional prayer and don't find it meaningful, we need to find some way of expressing our thanks to the universe. For no matter how aware and intentional we are or how much we participate in life, most of what is good and beautiful about life comes from something more than ourselves. Most of what is good and beautiful in our lives is a gift given regardless of whether we deserve it or not. This is grace. We do not and cannot create a beautiful sunset or the power of a place or even mutual love with another person. We do not and cannot create time. Time and place and the web of relationships are all gifts from the universe. Why not be thankful for them?

I believe that the spiritual path of awareness, intentionality, participation, and gratitude can help us both live in time and feel at home in the world. The irony, though, is that the path takes time. Georgia O'Keefe observed: "Still--in a way--nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small--we haven't time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." To see takes time. To be aware takes time. To live intentionally takes time. To participate in the many webs of relationship takes time. To express gratitude takes time. In my view, there is no better way to spend time.

At the end of the Book of Job, Job says to God, "But I have spoken of great things which I have not understood, things too wonderful for me to know." [Job 42:3] These words pretty well sum up my thoughts and feelings as I conclude this sermon series on time and place. I know that I shall return to these themes over and over in the coming years, hopefully gaining an insight from time to time. But much about time and place will remain shrouded in mystery, beyond my ability to comprehend, beyond words. For the gift of this great mystery, I am grateful.

Berry, Wendell, Recollected Essays--1965-1980 (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981).
Covey, Stephen, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
Gallagher, Winifred, The Power of Place (New York: Poseidon Press, 1993).
Hanh, Thich Nhat, The Miracle of Mindfulness (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987).
Hawking, Stephen W., A Brief History of Time (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988).
Keyes, Ralph, Timelock (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
Logan, Ben, The Land Remembers (Minocqua: Heartland Press, 1985).
Sanders, Scott Russell, Staying Put (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
Utne Reader, January/February 1994 issue on "Too Busy?"