Readings



Whose Are We?

by the Reverend Arthur Vaeni

(10/2/11)

Last April the ministers of our Pacific Northwest Chapter

convened for our annual spring conference.

The program for our gathering focused on our,

considering, wondering about, reflecting on the question,

Whose are we?

Actually, that one as well as related questions—such as:

Who or what lays claim to my heart?

Who or what actually lays claim on me?

Who or what should lay claim on me?

Who or what should not lay claim on me?

Who or what do I wish would lay claim on me?

While I wasn’t surprised by what surfaced in me

as I considered and responded to those questions,

it was revelatory nonetheless.

I can appreciate that some would have trouble with such a program,

or wouldn’t find it to be of much value.

There’s a cartoon of a middle-aged woman.

We see her with her hands clasped behind her back,

as she’s apparently deep in thought, gazing out the window.

The caption reads:

“All Susan seems to hear from her inner voice is a lot of gibberish.”

I can see how that could happen.

Certainly, among my own insights

there was some amount of gibberish strewn about.

If I had any critique of our Chapter ministers’ program,

it’s that I could have used less talk and more silence.

I realize, in part at least, that’s just a reflection

of my preferred way of being in the world.

Even so, there’s considerable value in just sitting with something—

letting one’s self be still,

letting one’s thoughts about a question arise from silence

without judgment or elaboration or gibberish.

Nonetheless, however you approach this endeavor,

there’s value in taking the opportunity to ask yourself such questions:

Who or what lays claim to my heart?

Who or what actually lays claim on me?

Who or what should lay claim on me?

Who or what should not lay claim on me?

Who or what do I wish would lay claim on me?

I know there are some who may feel that having “shoulds”

in such a self-reflective exercise could be counter-productive.

Puritan that I am, though,

I believe that on occasion, “shoulds” have their place.

For example, one of my responses to the question,

What should lay claim on me? was excellence or the pursuit of excellence.

While one of my responses to the question,

What should not lay claim on me? was perfectionism

or the pursuit of seeking perfection.

Both are worthy aspirations- to pursue excellence and not to pursue perfection-

and in having them laid out side by side,

I had the opportunity to consider them together –

to see, for example, how the desire for excellence

arises from a commitment to life’s well-being,

and the resolve to engage life not in a haphazard or half-hearted fashion

but with an enthusiastic whole heartedness.

Whereas, the pursuit of perfectionism

arises from the fear of not being good enough,

of being perceived by others and myself as not entirely worthy

unless I do something just right.

And when I do things just right, then, I believe, I truly am worthy,

kind of like the heavenly angel portrayed in the Sunday funnies

who is shown sporting a jet pack,

talking to another angel who is adorned with the usual set of wings.

The angelic jet pack wearer is telling the other, “I was very very good.”

So, in responding to those “should” and “should not” questions,

I was able to remind myself, to deepen my knowing,

that, in fact, living the good life isn’t essentially about being good,

especially when my goodness is spurred by fear,

but, rather, it’s about living with a whole hearted engagement with life-

living with a whole hearted love for life.

Again, the questions:

Who or what lays claim to my heart?

Who or what actually lays claim on me?

Who or what should lay claim on me?

Who or what should not lay claim on me?

Who or what do I wish would lay claim on me?

Circle round them more than once, allow for some silence in between

and with any luck you’ll go deeper, perhaps, broader with each asking.

Our culture tends to honor activity.

We like to imagine ourselves as doers,

as people who achieve, produce, accomplish.

That’s good, but activity that’s uninformed by occasional contemplation,

can lead to a life that lacks meaning and purpose.

It may be productive, but of what, toward what end?

That ancient Sufi mystic, Rumi, tells us:

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.

You think you know what time it is.

It's time to pray.

You've carved so many little figurines, too many.

Don't knock on any random door like a beggar.

Reach your long hands out to another door,

beyond where you go on the street,

the street where everyone says, "How are you?"

and no one says How aren't you?

Tomorrow you'll see

what you've broken and torn tonight, thrashing in the dark.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about.

He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us, you're causing terrible damage. If you've opened your loving to God's love,

you're helping people you don't know and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you know,

if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe.

I appreciate that line—

“If you are here unfaithfully with us, you're causing terrible damage.”

What do you suppose he means by that?

Parker Palmer, the Quaker, writer and educator,

suggests that Rumi believes we’re here unfaithfully,

or we’re living unfaithfully when we’ve lost touch with our deepest self.

In Mr. Palmer’s reading that Myra shared earlier, he tells us:

[W]e are born with a seed of selfhood

that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness-

and encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here,

and how we are related to others.

We may abandon that knowledge as the years go by,

but it never abandons us.

I find it fascinating that the very old, who often forget a great deal,

may recover vivid memories of childhood

of that time in their lives when they were most like themselves.

They are brought back to their birthright nature

by the abiding core of selfhood they carry within –

a core made more visible, perhaps,

by the way aging can strip away whatever is not truly us.

Philosophers haggle about what to call this core of our humanity,

but I am no stickler for precision.

[He, then, identifies the various names it by which it is called-

true self, original nature, integrity, divine spark, soul. Then, says,]

What we name it matters little…But that we name it matters a great deal.

For “it” is the objective, ontological reality of selfhood

that keeps us from reducing ourselves, or each other,

to biological mechanisms, psychological projections, sociological constructs

or raw material to be manufactured into whatever society needs-

diminishments of our humanity that constantly threaten the quality of our lives.”

According to Parker Palmer,

when we lose touch with this “it” – our soul, our true self, our integrity,

then, we become divided and, potentially, dangerous.

For when we lose touch with our soul, true self, integrity,

then, we’ve essentially lost touch with that which grounds or connects us

to life’s larger existence and to our own wholeness.

We are, then, divided within ourselves.

Further on in his book, Parker Palmer tells us:

“The divided life, at bottom, is not a failure of ethics.

It is a failure of human wholeness…

[This] is vividly illustrated by a story in the news as I write,” he says.

“The former CEO of a biotechnology firm was convicted of insider trading

and sentenced to seven years in prison

after putting his daughter and elderly father in jeopardy

by having them cover for him.

Asked what was on his mind as he committed his crimes, he said,

‘I could sit there thinking I was the most honest CEO that ever lived

[and] at the same time…glibly do something [wrong] and rationalize it.”

Mr. Palmer concludes,

“Those words were spoken by an expert at compartmentalizing-

a much-prized capacity in many lines of work

but at bottom no more than a six-syllable name for the divided life.”

Now, most of us who live divided lives, likely won’t be led to lives of crime,

but neither will we be led to lives of meaning and purpose,

for when our lives are divided, we’re apt to lose touch with what truly matters.

When that occurs we fail to speak up

when our words could have made a difference,

or we engage in our work with a constrained commitment,

or we’re apt to treat other people as objects,

or generally in ways that fail to honor their humanity,

or we simply settle for giving and receiving less love in all we do

than we could share if only our integrity, our souls were fully embodied.

Certainly, when we live divided lives,

we can be led to do bad things as occurred with the biotech CEO.

Commonly, the divided life proves to be a diminished life,

possibly, like the man whose obituary is being read in New Yorker cartoon.

Two women sitting at a table, drinking coffee,

one of them reading the newspaper to the other:

“Says here,” she reports, “he leaves behind a wife, two children,

and forty-seven twitter followers.”

Admittedly, I’ve yet to become a twitter devotee, nevertheless,

forty-seven twitter followers just doesn’t seem like much of a legacy.

The danger most of us divided beings pose

is the danger evoked by unfulfilled potential,

the danger of contributing to a creation

that values form over substance, pleasantness over all-embracing love.

Again, Rumi tells us:

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.

You think you know what time it is.

It's time to pray.

You've carved so many little figurines, too many.

In other words, Forget your life by letting go of the distractions

that constitute so much our lives – our need to judge,

to worry or feel anger over little slights,

to possess more than we need, to do for the sake of doing.

Say God is Great, that is,

recognize Life is a mystery beyond our comprehension,

and our individual lives are wondrously immersed in it.

You think you know what time it is.

It's time to pray.

You've carved so many little figurines, too many.

I understand this to mean don’t rush headlong into each day, day after day,

engaged by diddling tasks, carving little figurines.

To pray is to pause from our headlong rush

and remember that our lives are not separate from all else

but are inter-related with all other lives,

ultimately, dependent on an existence we cannot fully comprehend.

To pray is to engage in contemplation, to ask ourselves Whose am I?

“Inside you there's an artist you don't know about.

He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.”

That artist inside you is your true self, your integrity, your soul.

“If you are here unfaithfully with us, you're causing terrible damage.”

When we move through our lives, unaware of –having lost touch with

our true selves, our integrity, our souls,

then, we’re more likely to cause harm

because we’re oblivious to our connections,

to our interdependence with all other people, all other life.

Rumi concludes, “If you've opened your loving to God's love,

you're helping people you don't know and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you know,

if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe.”

I understand opening our loving to God’s love

as living with gratitude for the gift of life

however we believe existence or we came into being.

I understand it as recognizing that this opportunity to be alive,

and particularly to be alive with the added bonus of consciousness –

to be conscious of our relatedness,

of the myriad large and small experiences of love we’ve known—

that’s how I understand opening our loving to God’s love.

It is our awareness, however poorly we may be able to articulate it,

it is our sense or experience of our relationship with existence

that is the source of our love for life.

When we’re able to live with such awareness,

then, we’re more likely to be in touch with our true selves,

and when we’re in touch with our true selves,

then our lives assume a wholeness.

We are no longer divided but we live as whole persons.

and as Rumi implies, by sharing our love as whole persons,

living interdependently with all other persons,

we're helping people we don't know and have never seen.

May each of us periodically engage with the question, Whose am I?

asking ourselves Who or what lays claim to my heart?

Who or what actually lays claim on me?

Who or what should lay claim on me?

Who or what should not lay claim on me?

Who or what do I wish would lay claim on me?

And in so doing may we deepen our connection to our wholeness—

so may it be.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download