Peace,
Rev. Laura
***
What Should We Do?
Spiritual Practices for Discernment and Decision-Making
The Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton
September 5, 2010
Rabbi Zusya tells us:
When I reach the next world, they will not ask me,
“Why were you not Moses?”
Instead, they will ask me, “Why were you not Zusya?”
The Sufi poet Rumi tells us,
if we waste the gifts we are born with,
It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task,
and you perform a hundred other services,
but not the one he sent you to do.
So human beings come to this world to do particular work.
That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person.
If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword
were used to slice rotten meat.
(from "The Real Work")
And I must tell you:
these teachings have saved me, over and over again,
the call to be who we are, to embrace the gifts we have,
and let those gifts set our path
in all those times when we don’t know what to do,
the times when the path is not clear
and we struggle to figure out what is right.
Know yourself, know your own priceless gifts,
embrace them and use them for good.
That’s it.
Know yourself, know your gifts, use them for good.
And that would be the end of the sermon right there,
except that it’s all easier said than done!
We are all bombarded with messages from other people,
and the culture around us,
about who we should be and what we should be doing.
Everybody has an opinion about how we ought to spend our lives:
our parents, our spouses, children, friends,
politicians, advertisers, newscasters,
even the person next to us at the grocery store has an opinion
about what we should be doing with our precious time on earth.
Now, sometimes that barrage of advice is helpful.
If our problem is a technical question, an information-type problem,
like if I need to learn how to fix a leaky pipe,
I probably don’t want to rely too much on my inner wisdom!
In that case, advice may be just what we need.
But so many of our problems aren’t technical problems.
I’m talking about problems of values:
What am I supposed to be doing with my life?
What can I do that gives me joy
and brings more good into this world?
Questions about relationships, maybe:
How can I be a better friend, a better partner, a better parent?
How can I be happy in the place where I find myself?
Questions about life transitions:
what am I supposed to be doing in this stage of my life?
All these questions where there really is no one right answer.
No one can tell us what to do.
Or, rather, they can try,
but it’s probably not going to help all that much!
Lots of people just love to give us advice
about these kinds of problems too.
Often the advice is kindly meant.
Sometimes it’s just plain bullying.
Either way, we are drowning in advice and feedback and instructions and best practices and helpful hints,
and some of it may actually be helpful, but a lot of it is just noise
that distracts us from what is really important—
the quiet wisdom within us,
the inner voice which our experience and our faith have taught us
is our best guide we have when we are lost and confused
and struggling to find the way forward.
So today I want to talk about three spiritual practices we can use
to help us tap into that voice of wisdom inside each one of us,
to discern what we should do when it’s not obvious,
when we feel confused and really don’t know what to do.
Two of these practices are for individuals,
and one is for groups, because there are times
groups have to wrestle with these questions too.
All three practices are just different versions of the same big practice:
Name the question.
Create a space for answers to emerge.
See what happens.
We’ll start with individuals.
The first practice is very simple.
If you are struggling to figure out what to do,
you can try sitting quietly for a bit,
settle your mind and your body down,
and then write down your question—
just write it down on a piece of paper—
and now you start writing an answer—
write whatever comes into your head,
don’t think too much,
in fact the less conscious thinking the better,
because what we’re trying to do here
is bypass the conscious layers of our mind
and tap into the wisdom of the unconscious,
the wisdom within us that tends to emerge
only when we’re not grasping for it;
it has a playful quality; it may surprise us with a completely new
and perfectly right idea.
So: write your question down,
don’t think too much,
just write and see what comes.
In fact I want to give you an opportunity to try this right now.
In your order of service there should be a blank piece of paper.
If you don’t have something to write with, please raise your hand
and I will bring pencils around in a moment.
Settle your mind and your body.
Take a mindful breath in and out.
Hold your question in your mind.
Write it down.
Now just start writing—write yourself an answer,
whatever comes into your head. Just write and try not to stop.
We’ll be in silence for a couple of minutes.
Again, please raise your hand if you would like a pencil.
Please begin.
(Silence. Ring bell to bring people back.)
I hope that practice will open up some new insights for you.
The beauty of it is that it’s so simple,
and it helps you turn inward to discern what you should do,
not somebody else, but you—
because so often, there isn’t one “Right Answer”
that’s right for every person.
We have to look within ourselves to discern what’s right for us,
how we can use our gifts. As Rabbi Zusya reminds us,
we can’t all be Moses, and there’s no need to try.
What we can be is ourselves, as fully as we can.
That’s the first practice.
The second practice I want to tell you about today
is the one Parker Palmer talked about in our second reading.
Remember he was trying to figure out if he should take that new job,
and he got a bunch of friends together to help him decide?
This is a very old tradition that comes to us from the Quakers.
It’s called a “Clearness Committee,”
and it’s a very safe and powerful way of asking for help
from people we trust, as we wrestle with these hard questions.
Because sometimes our own inner resources are not quite enough.
Sometimes we do need the help of friends
to get past our habitual ways of thinking, our fears,
our self-judgments.
The Clearness Committee is a way of asking for help
without triggering that flood of well-meaning advice
and judgment and criticism that is not helpful.
In a nutshell, in a Clearness Committee,
you invite a few friends whom you trust
to meet with you for a long conversation, three hours long.
You tell them about the problem you are struggling with,
and they try to help, and the absolutely critical rule is,
they are only allowed to ask questions--no advice-giving at all--
and the questions have to be open and honest,
like the one we heard in the reading:
“What would you like best about this new thing?”
Veiled advice in the form of a question is absolutely not allowed!
The pace is relaxed and gentle. Silence is OK.
Everybody tries to be attentive to the focus person
and open themselves up to be helpful to that person.
And, as we saw in the reading, tremendous insight can come forth
simply through the power of the right question at the right time,
echoing in the silence and calling up the truth that lies within us,
waiting to be evoked in a space of safety and trust.
We don’t have time to practice this today,
but this is something you can try for yourself, maybe for a friend—
it doesn’t cost anything except your time, your care,
and your willingness to be present and open.
If you want to know more about Clearness Committees,
you might visit http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/clearness-committee.
That’s the second practice.
Last but not least, I want to talk very briefly
about discernment practices for groups,
because here we are in a group, this congregation,
and we too, as a group, are constantly having to ask ourselves,
what are we supposed to be doing?
What is our mission?
How are we supposed to use our gifts,
all the good things we have going for us,
so that at the end of the day we can say,
we are the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton
as fully and freely as we know how to be.
We are this church, these people, as fully and freely as we can be—
not anyone else, but ourselves.
It’s so easy for churches, and people, to waste time
wishing they were some other way than the way they are.
If only we had more money...
If only more people came to church...or volunteered...or had a deeper spiritual life...
or whatever—anything to avoid dealing with what is
and embracing it and believing that what is, here and now,
is wonderful and magical and beautiful.
I believe the words of Rumi are just as true of our churches as they are of people:
[H]uman beings come to this world to do particular work.
That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person.
If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword
were used to slice rotten meat.
But if we do that work, the work that only we can do—
if we do that and nothing else,
“there’s nothing to worry about.” All is well.
But again of course this is easier said than done!
How do we know what our work is, in this moment?
How do we sift through all the possibilities of what we might be doing
and settle on that perfectly-right,
or even pretty-much mostly-right for now, thing that we must do?
We are so lucky that the Unitarian side of our tradition
gives us an absolutely brilliant model
for discerning our work and our mission.
Once again, it is beautifully simple.
We show up.
We open our minds and hearts.
We talk.
We listen.
Name the question.
Create a space for answers to emerge.
See what happens.
This is what our Unitarian ancestors believed:
when congregations don’t know what to do,
the wisdom of the gathered community,
meeting for thoughtful and patient and heartfelt conversation,
can and will tell us the direction we ought to go.
Maybe not in an hour or a day or a week or a month,
but if we keep talking and listening, wisdom will start to emerge.
Our Unitarian ancestors told us,
the spirit of truth can speak from anywhere.
You can’t predict who will say just the right thing,
voice just the right idea that makes the whole room sigh and say,
yes, that’s it, of course that’s it.
But if we can be with one another in a spirit of open conversation
and seeking, wisdom will emerge.
In this moment in the life of our church,
we’re about to enter one of these conversations.
The issue before us right now is about music,
the kinds of music we love and long to have in our worship.
We’ve said goodbye to a music director who served us so beautifully
for three years. We are facing financial challenges, and it isn’t clear
whether we can or should have a staff position
exactly as it’s been in the past.
But what we can do is be in the conversation.
Show up.
Open our minds and hearts to the wisdom waiting to emerge.
Talk and listen. Especially listen.
My hope is that we will embrace this time
to ponder and talk about the music that touches our spirits
and reflect our community
and offers an invitation to all those people
who aren’t here yet but may be just about to walk in the door.
I don’t have an easy answer for you.
I don’t know what we should do.
But I do believe that when hearts and minds are open
and people come together to share their best wisdom,
to embrace what is and who we are together,
a path will emerge.
We will find our way.
Today and always,
in this moment and every moment,
may we be guided by the wisdom deep within us.
May a path be found for all who seek.
And may we rejoice in this moment
which gives us the precious opportunity
to live into our gifts,
to become ever more fully that which we were always meant to be.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment