I developed the following remarks for the worship service at
the Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists on Oct 7, 2012. They are intended, in five to seven minutes,
to answer the question “What is Spirituality?”
I’m grateful to Carol Plummer, the lay service leader, for the invitation
to participate. The SCUU web site can be
found here: http://scuu.org/site/.
…..
Most of you know my wife Linda. We met here at Sugarloaf. When we were first getting to know one
another we had a conversation in which Linda said: “I don’t do spiritual.” My response to her was something like “But
you play music. To me music is spiritual.”
And she said “I think of it that way
too!”, and we talked about how at a contra dance the band will shift the music up
a key and there’s this surge of energy and the whole thing becomes more alive
and spirited. Now I’m sure that when we
call a dance or a person or a conversation “spirited” we mean something
different than if we call a dance or a person or a conversation “spiritual”,
but I’m also sure that the connection in language isn’t an accident. I think that most of us who are interested in
spirituality and spiritual practice seek in part to be more alive, more
spirited.
Two sayings come immediately to my mind in this
connection. One is a phrase placed on
the lips of Jesus by the evangelist John, chapter 10 verse 10: “I have come
that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The other is from Joseph Campbell, from the
well known interviews with Bill Moyers. Campbell says: “People tell us that we’re
seeking a meaning for life. I don’t
think that’s what we’re seeking. I
think that what we’re seeking is the experience of being alive.”
I’m going to segue this into the big ugly, that big looming
thing that so disturbs and frightens most of us: our inevitable personal death. For Christians the words of Jesus just quoted
can cover that base as well.
Christianity, like most religions, offers the promise of life that goes
beyond the death of the body in this world.
Joseph Campbell has a teaching on this score too. For me it’s a very compelling teaching and a
cornerstone on which much may be built.
Moyers asks him “What about the dark gate?” and Campbell says “Oh,
that’s no problem at all. That a
question of whether you identify with the light bulb, or whether you identify with
the light, of which the bulb is merely a carrier.”
And I think that here we’ve reached the nib of the
question. I think that spiritual seekers
almost universally seek a connection with something greater than the embodied
self, with the light rather than merely the bulb.
We seek a connection that can free us from the prison of separate,
individuated, personal existence. People seek and find that connection all the
time in all kinds of ways, many having nothing to do with religion as it is
conventionally understood. I witnessed
such a connection . . .
. . . a few years ago I participated in a workshop on vocal
improvisation. Our coach offered us an
exercise for clearing the mind’s ear of musical ideas and then going into an
improvisation so that something new can emerge.
We worked with that for a bit and then formed a semi-circle of chairs
and began each taking a turn. There was
a guy in the workshop, Charles. He was a
masterful pianist, I heard him play. He
was not an experienced singer. He’d
chosen this workshop as a way to stretch himself musically. Charles went to take his turn and there he
was doing the clearing and then suddenly his voice soared. And I was going like this [hands
shaking]. It was acutely painful for a
moment to be in the presence of that energy unprepared. I got my hands on the arms of my chair and
grabbed hold. I was sort of all right
then. And Charles sang out this
music. It knew exactly where it was
going. It had a conviction that snapped
you to pieces. And it knew exactly when
it was finished. And there we were in
the semi-circle, astounded; our jaws half way to the floor as they say. Charles went to take a step toward his chair
and his legs crumpled underneath him. He
actually fell, but he was all right and he got to his chair and in the moment
his weight was supported he exclaimed: “WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?! WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!”, in just about
the way I said it just now.
There’s a simple and obvious answer to the question “where did
that come from?” It came from within
Charles. I don’t have a problem with
that answer. I’m not going for anything
metaphysical or supernatural here. I don’t
care about those things. But I don’t
think the answer really answers Charles’s question. What was that inside of Charles? What font of creativity that he didn’t know
about until then? And it wasn’t just
inside of Charles. I know because I
heard the music. We in the semi-circle could not have been
touched, and we were touched profoundly I promise you, unless we were touching
whatever it was that Charles touched.
I’ll end my remarks with words that are part of my daily
spiritual practice, and that I’m sure most of you will recognize as adapted
from the 23rd psalm of the Jewish bible:
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff they comfort me.
You prepare for me a table in the midst of my fears. You anoint me with light, my cup runs
over. Surely goodness and mercy will
follow me all the days of this life, and I will dwell in the house of light,
forever.
…..
Notes:
1) The vocal improvisation workshop was offered by “Music
For People”, an organization dedicated to empowering musicians of all levels to
improvise music freely. Their web site
is here http://musicforpeople.org/my/.
