Readings
for Reflection
From
the Over-soul by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The
Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only
prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as
the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul,
within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with
all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the
worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality
which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass
for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue,
and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become
wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty.We
live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.Meantime
within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty,
to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.And
this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible
to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act
of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and
the object, are one.We see the world
piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole,
of which these are the shining parts, is the soul…
…
the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs;
is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison,
but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not
the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will;
is the background of our being, in which they lie, -- an immensity not
possessed and that cannot be possessed.From
within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes
us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.A
man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide.What
we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does
not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself.Him
we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear
through his action, would make our knees bend.When
it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through
his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love.And
the blindness of the intellect begins, when it would be something of itself.The
weakness of the will begins, when the individual would be something of
himself.All reform aims, in some
one particular, to let the soul have its way through us; in other words,
to engage us to obey.
From
the words of Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo:
When
we ponder on these things, we begin to perceive how feeble in their self-assertive
violence and how confusing in their misleading distinctness are the words
that we use. We begin also to perceive that the limitations we impose on
the Brahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind
which concentrates itself on one aspect of the Unknowable and proceeds
forthwith to deny or disparage all the rest. We tend always to translate
too rigidly what we can conceive or know of the Absolute into the terms
of our own particular relativity. We affirm the One and Identical by passionately
discriminating and asserting the egoism of our own opinions and partial
experiences against the opinions and partial experiences of others. It
is wiser to wait, to learn, to grow, and, since we are obliged for the
sake of our self-perfection to speak of these things which no human speech
can express, to search for the widest, the most flexible, the most catholic
affirmation possible and found on it the largest and most comprehensive
harmony.
Sri
Aurobino, The Life Divine, chapter 4
Sermon
Today
is Lynn Ashley’s big day.She will
be ordained this afternoon at 4:00 as a minister within the Unitarian Universalist
Association.I pondered what I could
say that might be meaningful on the morning of this august occasion that
might help prepare us for the service this afternoon.
You
are likely to hear at her ordination talk about being called to the ministry. In
the Bible, Samuel, Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus, were all called, all
touched by God and told to step out in front of their people.Modern
candidates for Christian ministry are still tested to show evidence that
God has selected them for leadership of a church.While
we Unitarian Universalists do not use this standard, the rigor of our credentialing
process is daunting.The ministerial
candidate needs an intense drive to jump through all the hoops and receive
the first level of certification that Lynn has received, called “preliminary
fellowship.”
So
where does this energy, this passion, this calling come from?Every
seminarian I knew during my training wrestled with this question repeatedly.Who
am I to think I can be a minister?Am
I pursuing ministry out of a selfish motivation or is there something greater
than me from which this drive comes?Is
the source of this energy emerging from the depths of my soul?
When
I shared this thought stream with Lynn, she immediately told me a favorite
story of her beloved grandmother.When
she was a little girl, her grandmother would smile affectionately at her
and say “Bless your soul.”Lynn remembers
having two conflicting feelings about hearing her say, “Bless your soul.”First
she loved the feeling of it, the way it communicated her grandmother’s
love. “Bless your soul.”But her
mind was disturbed, wondering, “where is my soul?”She
knew where her nose was, and her hands and feet.She
even knew a little about having internal organs like a heart and a stomach.But
just where was her soul?In Mary
Oliver’s poetry:
Is
the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
The wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
(from
“Some Questions You Might Ask” House of Light, 1990)
I
think, this moment of questioning foreshadowed her recognition that she
was a Unitarian Universalist.Many
Unitarian Universalists have this similar sense of dis-ease in relation
to thinking about having a soul.Few
of us are comfortable with its lack of material existence that can be measured
scientifically.And yet, almost all
of us recognize there is some agency within us that directs our choices
and animates our personality.
A
helpful analogy for me in thinking about locating the soul has been my
work in computer programming.One
can ask the same question--where is the computer program in the computer?You
can’t weigh it.You can’t point to
one place and say “There it is!”The
program may be distributed through many different places, swapped to a
disk, even run interactively with a computer network that spans the globe.It
is like asking, “Where is the Internet?”A
program is a pattern of ones and zeros that appear almost random, until
they are executed by the processor to accomplish some task.
Current
interest in the soul in liberal religious circles was renewed by Thomas
Moore’s book, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness
in Everyday Life.His definition
may help us begin to get a handle on locating the soul.Moore
defines soul pragmatically as he writes:
“Soul”
is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves.It
has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance.I
do not use the word here as an object of religious belief or as something
having to do with immortality. (p. 5)
Thinking
of soul as 'a quality' or 'a dimension of experiencing life' is reminiscent
of the work of theologian Paul Tillich who described “religion is the aspect
of depth in the totality of the human spirit.”Tillich
described two modes of being in the world.One
was riding on the surface of things, being reactive without being reflective,
acting from habit and social norms.The
other was operating from a sense of depth that might be described as being
“soulful.”Rather than being driven
by external circumstances, the soulful person takes everything in and integrates
it with their personal beliefs and experiences.The
soulful person acts from an interior sense of self.
So
the idea of soul points to a deep interior well springing from a mysterious
source. One can survive just fine without finding this well.But
to experience our soulful nature, one must drink this living water.
Emerson
felt that the source for this well was the divine.Again
I quote from the Over-soul:
Of
this pure nature [of soul] every man is at some time sensible. Language
cannot paint it with his colors.It
is too subtle.It is undefinable,
unmeasurable, but we know that it pervades and contains us.We
know that all spiritual being is in man.A
wise old proverb says, "God comes to see us without bell"; that is, as
there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens,
so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and
God, the cause, begins.The walls
are taken away.We lie open on one
side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God.(Over-soul)
The
struggle many Unitarian Universalists have (that Emerson clearly didn’t)
is associating our interior reality with some divine connection.Many
resist the idea of some supernatural origin, of some fire-wire link between
heaven and earth, of some cosmic hookup to allow us to download the divine
mind.Metaphorically, the concept
of soul might be useful, but there is no physical connection that any scientist
has discovered.
Many
of us are also wary of using the concept of soul to describe some spiritual
ejection seat that transcends death.After
all, what part of the personality, something acquired here on earth, can
we take with us when we go?The idea
of a personal soul that can escape the trials and tribulations of this
world and land in another has justified all manner of evil.The
Islamic religious warriors lusting after heavenly virgins, the untouchables
in India hoping for a better reincarnation, the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult
hitching a ride on a UFO, even faithful church-goers who won’t rock the
boat, won't resist institutionalized abuse and oppression, hoping for clear
sailing into Jesus’ arms after death, all are pathologies of the soul concept
that drain human courage to live rather than die.
Even
though the word is tainted with evil, I believe the word soul can be reclaimed
to the widest, the most flexible, the most catholic affirmation possible
and restored to the largest and most comprehensive harmony.
The
insight oriented methods of Buddhist meditation have been quite helpful
to me in beginning to explore the deeper dimensions of consciousness.The
goal of the meditator is to be right on the edge of moment-to-moment experience.To
do this, one must discipline the mind to hold one object steadily.One
must learn to resist being hijacked by one thought, feeling or sensation
but rather simply to note the experience then return gently to the object
of concentrated awareness.This
is much like watching a long freight train go by.Each
car is seen as it passes by and then the next one is observed in sequence.The
mind resists being captured by one particular car and then being carried
far down the tracks, losing awareness of moment-to-moment experience.
Think
about commuting to work.It can feel
routine and boring driving or walking the same route every day. Typically,
instead of seeing the variety, we tend to focus on the landmarks we use
to navigate which do not change, thus missing most of the show.
It
doesn't have to be that way.Each
day can be a discovery as no two commutes are identical.The
seasons change, the traffic patterns change, the stoplight patterns vary,
the scenery is constantly changing.This
time of year with the beautiful changing leaves makes this obvious.And
the noticing can become very subtle, seeing with the eye of an artist or
hearing with the ear of a musician.The
angle of perception of the same scene can make the experience of seeing
quite different.The sounds on a
commute are constantly new and different.One
can view each commute as a new adventure, if the commuter pays close attention,
moment-by-moment.
In
meditation, I’m gradually learning to explore in detail the content of
the present moment without chasing one particular object or resisting one
particular sensation.The result
of this mental training is to increase one’s subtle awareness. An open
and undirected mind generates a greater receptivity and sensitivity.Think
of looking for Waldo in a cluttered scene and being able to find him effortlessly.What
can suddenly emerge out of a wide field of awareness is something that
has a slight charge to it that pulls the attention, that allows in an experience
of reality that extends beyond us to come to our attention.
This
process is like opening the iris of a camera to let more 'life' in.Clearly
there is far more in this world than there is to be found in this body.One
way to bring that more into our minds is through our eyes and ears.Another
way is to sit on the banks of the river of life and watch what flows by.Watching
the river until one day you notice that you’re not watching the river…but
are already in the river.Not only
are you already in the river…you are porous and the river is flowing through
you constantly.There is nowhere
to stand and not be part of it all.
Confronting
the illusion of separation from the stream of life begins to reveal the
nature of the soul.Through the semi-permeable
boundary of the self constantly flows this soul quality of existence.Meditation,
prayer, spiritual practices of many forms help one notice its subtle movement
more clearly, and attune one’s awareness to a feeling of soul recognition,
that feeling that the Transcendentalists named intuition.And
when one begins responding to, integrating and reflecting that soul quality,
love comes to life.
This
is what I hear in these lines from a beautiful poem by Rumi:
A
clapping sound does not come from one hand.
A thirsty man calls out, 'Delicious water, where are you?'
while the water moans, 'Where is the water-drinker?'
The thirst in our souls is the attraction
put out by the Water itself.
We belong to It,
and It to us.
(From
Coleman Barks book, Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion, Threshold Books:
Vermont 1991 p 58)
As
the experience of this soul quality becomes more familiar, it begins challenging
the transient artifacts of conditioning we call self.The
tree in summer appears full of leaves, full of personality.The
tree can appear to be only leaves until the fall strips them away in a
blaze of color. The autumn breezes reveal strong branches that reach down
into the earth that connects all trees.The
soul is the sap that animates the tree rising from the ground of being
again and again.Elizabeth Kubler
Ross put it in these words, "
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the
sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed
only if there is a light from within."Again
in Emerson's words, "
a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing,
but the light is all.A man is the
facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide."
Becoming
more intimate with this soulful quality of existence comes with a tug.It
persistently calls out to us for a response.One
response which Lynn and I have chosen, is seeking ways to bring ourselves
and others into deeper relationship with their soul through serving as
their minister.
Whether
we feel called to the ministry or not, let us appreciate those who do choose
to tend our souls.The search for
soul brings us to our inner well of living water and refreshes our energy."When
it breathes through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through
our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affection, it is love."May
we all find our inner wells, drink deeply, and feel reverence for this
precious gift that unites us all.
Copyright © 2003 by the Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.