Today I find myself thinking back to my 16-year-old self. I can picture her in my memory: long wavy hair parted in the middle, like all the other non-conformists, and wire-rimmed glasses.
That young girl had ambitions. She was for starters a staunch feminist, with no interest in raising a family. She was an unabashed political liberal, devouring the Boston Globe every day, and extremely interested in international affairs. She sometimes had thoughts of becoming Secretary of State.
She had ambitions, and opinions. She was a flaming atheist. Her very traditional parents would be forgiven for thinking that she had been switched at birth, that the stork had made a serious mistake.
And so today, I think of her, and how life has carried her along, evolving, and ultimately becoming someone she would never have envisioned, or could possibly have anticipated. And I found myself looking back and wondering, how would I, at 16, have articulated a vision for my life?
This month we are exploring the topic of Vision. The notion of having a Vision is much valued in our culture: people are celebrated for being visionary. Corporations and institutions and congregations are urged to create Vision statements. But what does vision mean for us as individuals, in our own lives?
In our story this morning, Debra shared with us the difference between seeing, and vision. The owner of the land where the dinosaur skeleton was discovered certainly saw it. He knew it was there. But he had no vision, and by that I mean that he was unable to grasp the meaning of the skeleton: the importance of it. It took the guest, with his curiosity and ability to sense the greater meaning of the skeleton, to understand it as a history-changing discovery, to have a vision for it, and secure a place for it in a museum, to bring it to the world’s attention.
Day in and day out, we witness our own lives unfolding. In ways both general and specific we try to make plans for our future: plans for personal success. We think about careers, where we want to live, how many children we want, if any, how to make our first million by the age of 30. We seek to become more effective managers, or to accomplish more in a day. But those are in fact, plans, not visions. Our plans, as important as they are, tell us what we want to become, but not necessarily who.
Psychiatrist Carl Jung put it this way: “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
“Who looks inside, awakens.”
Our vision, then, could be a thought of as a power within each of us. A force that calls us forward, helping to guide us toward our potential.
After I let go of the idea of becoming Secretary of State, I briefly considered law school. What other sensible plans would there be for a political science major? And yet, a voice inside me kept whispering that perhaps I might find that boring. Did I really want to be reviewing contracts for a living? Looking back, I can see the beginning of an awakening, long ago, a very quiet voice telling me who I was. But of course, it was just a beginning.
Irish poet and priest John O’Donohue had this to say: “It takes us so long to see where we are. It takes us even longer to see who we are. This is why the greatest gift you could ever dream is a gift that you can only receive from one person. And that person is you yourself. Therefore, the most subversive invitation you could ever accept is the invitation to awaken to who you are and where you have landed.“ (John O’Donohue, https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/407/the-question-holds-the-lantern)
I titled this sermon “Re-visioning.” I love how we can suddenly see a word through new eyes and understand it in new ways. I was struck by this ordinary word, Revisioning: how frequently and casually we talk about revising, making revisions – to our writing, perhaps, or to our plans. And suddenly I saw that word – revision – more fully. Re-vision. When we revise parts of our lives, our hopes and dreams, we are in fact, re-visioning.
Not long before he was killed at the age of 40, singer John Lennon wrote these words: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” I used to find that I actively resisted long-range planning for my life or my career: I used to say to people, “But it’s not fair. We only have half of the information. We know what we want, but we don’t know what is going to happen to us.” And certainly that is true. We might not be able to have the child we long for. Perhaps we don’t get accepted to college, or can’t afford it. Maybe we were drafted into the military, or were badly injured in an accident, or lost a partner. Life happens every day, and every day we respond to it, try to adjust, to make new plans.
But at the same time we are adjusting our plans and adjusting to new realities, our vision continues to evolve as well. For vision emerges not from our changed circumstances, but from our awakening, from our growing awareness of our passions, our essence. This emerges bit by bit, from the awakening of our souls, from going into the dark, as poet David Whyte put it. (David Whyte, Sweet Darkness) We accept the invitation to awaken, to see in new ways, to notice an event, a desire, and to give it new meaning. My 30-something self was ice-skating on a pond one winter afternoon with a group of friends, and had a moment of awakening: that I very much wanted to teach my children how to ice skate. And that, right then, was the beginning of a yearning for motherhood. Was this the same vision I had always had for myself? Not entirely, but it was a vision more fully realized, a glimpse of a fuller vision, shown to me by my soul’s growth and awakening. Standing there on that frozen pond, I understood that something new had emerged for me.
In order to sustain our vision, to nurture it, and to allow it to emerge more fully, we must take notice. The scientist in Debra’s story didn’t just see the dinosaur skeleton, he noticed its importance, understood its meaning. For us to awaken, we must be mindful of what we see unfolding around us. The passion within us shapes our observing, and helps to form it into vision, and re-vision.
UU minister Victoria Safford wrote, “…to see, with open eyes, is a spiritual practice and thus a risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences. The awakened eye is a conscious eye, a willful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable…That kind of seeing is a choice, and it is a sacred practice.” (Victoria Safford, “Open Eyes,” in Walking Toward Morning, Meditations, (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2003.) p. 29.)
“Wake now, my senses,” we sang. “Wake now my senses, and feel the earth call;
Feel the deep power of being in all.”
Our vision is an expression of our very essence, this deep power of being. It is the expression of our souls: our yearnings, our sense of who we truly are at our deepest core, even too deep for words. It is our soul’s response to the call of the universe to us: the call to live into our being, to allow ourselves to become our truest and most authentic selves. And to do that, we must learn to listen, to observe, not just to see what exists on the surface (oh, look, a bunch of bones!) but to be willing to delve below the surface, to search out the meaning. This takes courage, to ask yourself, “Who am I really? Am I still the same person I was at 16? Does my life bear any resemblance to the life I thought I wanted to live?” And that inquiry can lead to this: to growth, to flourishing, to expanding your mind and your heart beyond anything you ever could have planned.
John O’Donohue put it this way: “When your soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You…slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown…
Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns…Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change.” He continued, “You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits.” (Ibid.)
Re-visioning is risky. When we start to hear the whispers of awakening, to sense that our vision is expanding and growing, we must decide whether to respond to that call of our soul. In a life that is mindful, there will be those moments that cannot be ignored, like that long-ago afternoon on the frozen pond: that sense that something has shifted, has grown, and that a response is required.
At the beginning I asked a question: how might my 16-year-old self have articulated my vision? Back then I didn’t really have the words to consider a question like that. I was making plans, and of course over the intervening years, bit by bit, the plans changed over and over, evolving into a life that I could never have imagined. But what would my vision have been? I can’t really be sure. But in thinking back, remembering that 16-year-old, I think my vision for my life was to achieve my potential. I was so dissatisfied with what was available to a young woman in those days, the limited career choices, the expectations that I would want to be a wife and mother. My parents’ lack of ambition for me. It felt stifling. And so the vision, the passion and force that was wordlessly emerging, was to live the fullest life that I could imagine. To fulfill my potential. Over the years, the plans changed drastically, until here I stand before you today. But the vision proved to be a lantern leading the way, bit by bit, step by step leading me along dark paths. The vision was larger than myself at any one time; it was my response to my soul’s calling to me.
My friends, my wish for you all is that you can awaken to the voice announcing your vision, your passion, your purpose. May you understand your vision as the calling of your soul, wherever it may lead you. May you find a way to heed that call, to sustain your vision, and to re-vision, through all the changes in plans and all that life might put in your way.
Blessed be.
Amen.
