"The Ordinary as Mask of the Holy "

A couple of months ago Betty and I saw a play, "Oscar and the Pink Lady" at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.  We knew nothing about the play or about the playwright, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.  We did know that the play had only one actress, Rosemary Harris, which was enough for us.

As we entered the theatre we were handed a copy of "Performance Magazine" which included program notes about Rosemary Harris and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Here is a direct quotation from the brief write-up about Schmitt, the playwright:

  "Spirituality is one theme which Schmitt explores. . . . It's a subject that he found
   himself face-to-face with one night in the desert, a night that ultimately changed
   his life.  (Schmitt said) 'I had gone into the Ahaggar desert with some friends. . . .
   When night fell, it started to get cold, so I buried myself in the sand since I had
   nothing with me.  I should have been frightened but in fact I felt quite the
   opposite: the lonely night under the starry sky was absolutely thrilling. I
   experienced the feeling of the Absolute.  I became convinced that there is some
   Order or some Intelligence protecting us."  [Performance Magazine, October, 2007, p.13]

The next step for me was to "google" (Isn’t that a marvelous new verb!) Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.  I learned he is a French author, with many novels and plays to his credit.  He holds a doctorate of philosophy.  In 2004 the literary magazine "Lire" did a survey of their French readers, to discover what books had 'changed their lives.'   To my surprise I found that "Oscar and the Pink Lady," was featured as life-changing along with others such as "The Little Prince" and the Bible.
                               
The play, "Oscar and the Pink Lady" is about a little boy, Oscar, who is dying with cancer.  He is befriended by a hospital volunteer, the Pink Lady, who as a volunteer has time to communicate with Oscar better than the health care professionals.  The play is "spiritual" in that it deals with life and death honestly and openly.

Schmitt’s experience in the Algerian desert, which became formative in his writing, reminded me of an email I had several years ago from Bruce Hanna, a member of the Unitarian Congregation in Santa Barbara.  Bruce sent an email to friends in which he wrote, "I think of spirituality as a perspective that helps one transcend the mundane, to get in touch with the essence and beauty of existence."

Bruce wrote that email during a time when his wife, Linda, was dying with cancer.  Bruce said when Linda was first diagnosed he attempted to "fix the problem," by enlisting the best medical care available.  Finally, realizing the cancer could not be "fixed," he and Linda decided to celebrate their lives together rather than waste time wallowing in victim behavior.  Then Bruce writes:

   "Finally, we found the human spirit and the universal within our own
   tragedy.  Instead of dwelling on what we had lost, we focused on our
   gifts - how lucky we have been - lucky to find each other, lucky to have
   thirty years together. In the final stages of Linda's life, we have reached
   a simply but intense spirituality - given our culture's denial of death we
   have broken some taboos by talking and writing openly about Linda's
   cancer and its progression.  The fundamental lesson in our spirituality in
   this case . . . (has been to) accept reality and adapt to make the most of our
   remaining experience together."  [private correspondence]

I have shared this material because each, in different ways, illustrates the  profound reality that spirituality is not something confined to worship services or retreats at monasteries.  More than anything else, spirituality is paying attention to the extraordinary possibilities within the ordinary.

I am aware that we Unitarian Universalists are ambivalent about such terms as "spirituality" to say nothing of "worship" and "prayer."  A few years ago, Rev. Bill Sinkford, President of the UUA, talked about a "language of reverence." Who knows how much ink has been spilt with explanations and people not satisfied with explanations.  We Unitarian Universalists are uncertain if not frightened by the notion of reverence.

One of the problems is that while some words can be easily defined, the word "spirituality" is better described than defined.  The dictionary circle around the terms spiritual and spirituality, perhaps finally determining that spiritual is "not tangible or material."  So spirituality relates to being intangible or immaterial.

Several years ago the Unitarian Universalist Association published a small pamphlet with the title, "Spirituality:  Unitarian Universalist Experiences."  The important note is experience not definition.  Dan Wakefield, a UU layman and author, wrote, "I think of spirituality . . . as a name or label for the whole thrust and impulse of humanity to see beyond its immediate concerns and to act beyond ego."

Romemarie Smurznski, a UU Minister relates spirituality to "connections with people, with animals, with nature, with energies deeper than the human eye can perceive."

The point being that there are about as many definitions of spirituality as there are definers; as many experiences as people who experience.  One of the best descriptions of a spiritual experience is from A Powell Davies, used as the Reading for this Service.  Davies experiences a sunset on two levels.  One level might be called the scientific, an explanation of light and moisture.  He saw the sunset with his eyes.

However, he also "saw" the sunset or experienced it with his soul, with a sense of wonder and joy and solace.  So that, ". . . the sunset is not only in the sky it is in my soul."

I have been nurturing for about a year a Christmas Cactus, which decided on its own to be a "Thanksgiving Cactus."  It has bloomed at least a month early. It is a riot of lovely magenta blooms, falling in a skirt around the pot.  I read somewhere a description of the effect flowers have upon we human beings:  "Each year flowers call our attention with quiet insistence to the eternal rhythms of nature, striking a resonance that lies deep within us."   My experience of my "early bird" Christmas Cactus is that the resonance has something to do with spirituality.   In some miraculous way, an ordinary flower, when we will stop to notice, can touch the deep recesses of our being.  For example, the words of William Wordsworth:

    "I wandered lonely as a cloud
     That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
     When all at once I saw a crowd,
     A host of golden daffodils . . . ."   

Wordsworth continues the poem using various analogies to express his joy at noticing the field of Daffodils and then concludes:

    "For oft, when on my couch I lie
      In vacant or in pensive mood,
     They flash upon that inward eye
     Which is the bliss of solitude;
     And then my heart with pleasure fills
     And dances with the daffodils."

Perhaps, however, poetry or flowers or sunsets may not be your "cup of tea."  So permit me a very personal illustration of finding the holy in the ordinary.  In those long ago days when our first child was born fathers were not allowed in the delivery room.  I waited in a small room in the hall.  Betty's Aunt was the delivery room nurse when both our children were born.  Aunt Virgie had been present for the birth of countless babies.  I doubt she was bored with the whole process, but babies were born every day of her working life.  New babies were an ordinary experience for Aunt Vergie.

Aunt Vergie brought Baby Martha, our daughter, out to the waiting room to show me.  As is true for all new fathers, I was absolutely sure Martha was the most beautiful baby that had ever been born.  Martha was not an "ordinary" baby; I was thrilled!  Suddenly in the midst of my ecstasy Aunt Virgie reached down with her thumb and forefinger and rearranged Martha’s nose saying something like, "Oh well, her nose got a little squashed coming out, but I can fix that!"  I wanted to say, "Wait a minute!  That’s not just any baby, that’'s Martha!"

The point is obvious.  There are times in life when what appears to be ordinary is imbued with the extraordinary.  Betty and I are fortunate to live on the top floor of a building overlooking Mission Bay in San Diego  The sunsets are absolutely beautiful each winter. We frequently stand on our balcony and watch the colors change as the light and clouds and probably pollution paint a marvelous picture in the sky.

I can't say that our experiences are exactly similar to that I understand A. Powell Davies to be expressing when he wrote about seeing a sunset.  However for Betty and me we have an experience of beauty and wonder as we see the sunset with both our eyes and our soul.

Finding the holy in the ordinary will require awareness - perhaps that's another name for soul.  Soul may be the quality of becoming aware of the extraordinary in the ordinary; of not merely seeing a sunset but experiencing it with wonder, beauty and awe.  Perhaps you remember "Trudy the Baglady" in Lily Tomlin's Broadway play, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe"?

   "On the way to the play we stopped to look at the stars.  And as usual I
   felt in awe.  And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have
   to be in awe about something.  Then I became even more awestruck at
   the thought that I was, in some small way, a part of that which I was in
   awe about.  And this feeling went on and on . . . my space chums got a
   word for it:  'awe infinitum.'"

Trudy found "awe infinitum" in the ordinary experience of noticing the stars; but the key is "noticing."  Generally speaking our culture has taught us to move through life without paying attention.  Too often we are like "water skippers" those little insects which skate along the surface of the pond and never experience the depths.

To be sure, part of our failure to pay attention is related to the fact that we are bombarded with stimuli.  Billboards and television commercials, signs on stores and bumper stickers all clamor for our attention.  There is some health in not seeing, not hearing.  However there is also some sickness of the soul if we fail to pay attention to our life experiences.

A recent issue of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter encouraged meditation and deep breathing as one way to "focus on the present."  The article concludes:  "With regular practice, meditation can become a daily pleasure.  The potential health benefits are an added perk."  The key word is "focus."  Making an effort to pay attention, to live in the present, to breathe deeply will pay big benefits not only for our health but for our spirits.

The key is to pay attention:   For Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, paying attention to his experience in the desert; for Bruce and Linda Hanna, paying attention to living and dying with melanoma; for A Powell Davies, paying attention to realization that the sunset is more than light and moisture and pollution; for Wordsworth, paying attention to a field crowded with Daffodils.  Pay attention to what lies beyond the purely visual,

In a very real sense, spirituality, the ability to be aware and to be awestruck, may be what separates homo sapiens from other life forms.  Awareness or awe may be identified with a concept of God or divinity, or may be more humanist/realist.  Spirituality has little to do with being either theist or humanist; but much more to do with awareness of, and awe about the experience of life itself.

I do not know the source of the quotation from Louis Dupre, used as the second Reading for today.  I’ve been keeping quotations for about 50 years, sometimes without their bibliographical reference.  However, Dupre is right:  "One of the more ominous signs of the spiritual impoverishment of our time is that believers (I would say "we.") have lost much of the sensitivity needed to perceive the symbolic within the literal."

In preparation for this sermon I re-read a sermon from Harry Emerson Fosdick, long time Pastor of Riverside Church in New York City.  I had first encountered Fosdick long ago when I was in seminary.  Fosdick tells of a woman who ". . . climbed an Alpine height on an autumn day, when the riot of color in the valley sobered into the green of the pines upon the heights, and over all stood the crests of eternal snow" of the Alps.  The woman stopped, looked around and said, "We heard there was a view here; where is it?

I could laugh about that, except that I remember too well that for 5 months I was with you here in Santa Monica.  How many times was I downtown on Ocean Drive and failed to look to the west, to the love view out over the Pacific?

Each experience of the holy is as unique as our unique personalities.  However one thing similar in all experiences is the willingness to pay attention.  I use the word willingness carefully because I believe paying attention is an act of will.  WE will either flit through life like moths circling a light, or we will pay attention less we miss the holy hidden just below the surface of the ordinary.             

Readings for the Service, November 25, 2007

"Take this sunset, I said to myself.  There is no soul in it.  It is just something that clouds do to a source of light.  And what are clouds?  They are nothing but moisture suspended in the earth's atmosphere.  And what is this sea that reflects the sunset?  It is just a great waste of waters, bleak and desolate.  Not one thing that composes this sunset is aware of the sunset.  Not even the sun, for the sun is nothing but a ball of fire.  And my eyes that see all this, what are they but water and dust, briefly blended for the short space of a human lifetime, so that this insignificant blob of protoplasm that I call myself may see something that isn't altogether there?

But isn't it altogether there?  I immediately asked myself.  If I am not seeing this sunset with my eyes alone I am seeing it with a sense of wonder and joy of beauty, and the solace of it is slowly pervading me even while I stand and look.  I am seeing it with what I can only call my soul.  If I do not call it that, I cannot call it anything; yet there it is.  I cannot define it--no, but this sunset as a thing of beauty is definitely real.  Indeed, the sunset is not only in the sky; it is in my soul."  (A Powell Davies)

"Spirituality refers to a more intense inner awareness of what surpasses ordinary life.  The alertness is what counts.  One of the more ominous signs of the spiritual impoverishment of our time is that believers have lost much of the sensitivity needed to perceive the symbolic within the literal."  (Louis Dupre)