Reflections for May 10
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church

 

Spaciousness in Between, Part One©

One of the frequent comments about life in this time of pandemic, here in Coronaville, is that it’s hard to keep track of what day it is. Let’s be clear; it’s Sunday, and Happy Mother’s Day to all of our moms. But yesterday it was hard to remember not just the day of the week, but what month it was, given the snow falling and the cold wind whipping around us. It really was a very typical early March day. I looked back at the March calendar and noted that it was on March 10 that Governor Baker first declared a state of emergency for Massachusetts to respond to the growing Covid-19 threat. So here we are: two months to the day since we entered this period of isolation and waiting. And somehow I think it’s still March. March the 71st, I think. We seem at some level to be stuck. We know where we are, but when are we?

Last week we began a conversation about thresholds – those places in between. I named them ‘liminal spaces’ – those places that are neither where we started out nor where we ultimately are going. We spoke mostly about how to recognize when we are in one of those times or those places, as we are today, and how to respond. We talked about the difference between change, and transition. Our conversation implied that we were moving through the liminal time, crossing the threshold. But today we’ll consider what can happen when we consciously choose to stay in the time and place in between. Can we learn to love the space, the spaciousness? In Mary Oliver’s words that Pat read just now:

“The blue heron’s gray smoke will flow over me for years and the wind will decide all directions until I am safely and entirely something else.” (Mary Oliver, “What the Body Knows,” in New and Selected Poems, v. 2, Beacon Press, 2005.) Do you hear the acceptance of space in her words?

Although we never asked for it, we are being granted space right now. And so much of our mental and physical energy has been devoted to creating safe space for ourselves: learning how to protect ourselves from the Covid-19 virus, learning how to obtain all we need in ways that keep us healthy. That takes a great deal of our creativity and our ability to plan and respond. But underneath all the energy required to learn new skills, we also have time to sit, and think, and to breathe. How are we using this space?

Spaciousness in Between©

People reading Stanley Kunitz’ poem “The Layers”, almost always wonder what he meant when he wrote, “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” I read an interview with him in which he said that the lines came to him in a dream. It’s possible he didn’t know what he meant any more than we do. But here is my guess: he is inviting us to experience life below the surface. I thought about this in recent days as I finally got out into the yard for some leaf raking; peeling back the old dead leaves littering the surface, and reaching the rich soil below, with its earthworms and other virtually invisible creatures, and its seeds waiting to sprout. Much of life is waiting just below the surface, out of our view.

In contrast to the leaf raking, I have also been thinking this week about sitting, about stillness. I read an interview with the Reverend angel Kyodo Williams, a Zen priest, who spoke eloquently about the great momentum of our human lives. Reverend Williams commented that all our emotions and our sense of self are affected by everything that happens to us externally as well. And a great deal happens to us. She said, “There is so much momentum to every aspect of what drives us, what moves us, what has us hurtling through space, including all of our thoughts and even our own sense of our emotions; how we interpret any given feeling, any experience of discomfort; where that discomfort sits in our bodies. It’s not just that we have a feeling of pain or awkwardness. It’s that we then interpret that.” Interview with Krista Tippett, https://onbeing.org/programs/angel-kyodo-williams-the-world-is-our-field-of-practice/

Reverend Williams went on to say that we gather this information at such a great rate of speed that we don’t have the opportunity to sit with our emotions and our self-knowledge. We collect it constantly, but we don’t have time to process it. Eventually, she commented, we start to feel inside somewhat like the junk drawers we all have in our houses. We lose track of what belongs to us. What emotions and experiences are really yours? What might have belonged to your parents, to your past life?

And so, when we are given this period of time in between, this time out of time, can we practice sitting with ourselves, letting ourselves become quieter, as the world around us has grown quieter, and sort through some of the emotional belongings we are carrying?

Granted, as I said earlier, we are caught up in such a surface rush of learning new coping skills and strategies: how to buy food, how to find out where to buy the items in short supply, how to clean everything, to make masks, to wear them properly, and so on and so on. We have been challenged every day and we rise to the challenge. Think of what you have learned in the past two months, and how you are living differently already. And yet, this is all on the surface of our lives; this is the litter.

“Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

In this pandemic time, we are invited to create spaciousness for ourselves. We are forced to put down so much of what made up our daily lives; the rushing around, the errands, the meetings and commuting, the kids’ and grandkids’ games and events. There is spaciousness in this between time, that we have probably never been offered in our adult lives. Can we sit with it? Those of you who meditate know how difficult this is. Sitting seems at the beginning only to let us hear all the noise in our lives more clearly; all the litter. Reverend Williams commented, “Sitting lets us just, first of all, recognize that we are this massive collection of thoughts and experiences and sensations that are moving at the speed of light and that we never get a chance to just be still and pause and look at them, just for what they are, and then slowly to sort out our own voice from the rest of the thoughts, emotions, the interpretations, the habits, the momentums that are just trying to overwhelm us at any given moment.”

It is so difficult to discern our own voices, our own feelings and beliefs, to separate that away from all the ideas and emotions that have been imposed upon us, that we have collected and tucked away throughout our lives. The speed, the pace of our living, keeps us from that discernment. We are being offered space and time to learn about ourselves, to get to know ourselves in a new way. What might happen? Where might this work lead you?

This morning I am inviting you into a spacious place, right now, here in between our former lives where we took so much for granted, and a future that we cannot yet envision. Instead of thinking of this time as uncertain, as shifting, as neither here nor there, I invite you to think of it as space for yourself. How can you offer yourself room to make discoveries in this time? How can you find new ways to understand yourself, and ultimately to love yourself?

Going below the litter, we reach a place of transformation: not superficial change, as we talked about, but fundamental new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. Who are you? What do you most deeply care about? Does your daily life match your deepest desires and beliefs? To ask these questions and listen for the responses from deep within, is to seek transformation; not change, but transformation. It could lead to a new way of looking at ourselves, and our world.

My wish for you, for us all, is to be able to use this time to sit, to listen, and to go below the surface, into the deeper layers. May you find space, and welcome it.

Blessed Be.
Amen.