Trust that You Are Held ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
November 10, 2024
Like many of you, I have spent large amounts of time this week feeling struck speechless. I’ve experienced almost a sense of suspended animation, a certain stuckness: that I’m not feeling enough, doing enough, and especially, not saying enough.
It’s an odd condition to be in for someone whose call includes public speaking.
So I had a good laugh yesterday when a colleague, the Reverend Heather Rion Starr, posted on one of the UU ministers’ Facebook pages:
“Colleagues!” she wrote, “I came upon The Best Sermon title for tomorrow! I’ve really been wrestling with what *had* been my sermon title (“Too Soon To Tell”) and then what it was on Wednesday evening (“Be the Helpers”) and now it’s Saturday morning…but I’ve got it: “There Just Are No Words.” Only, then,” she went on to say, (if there are no words) “I have a problem… “
For of course, we do need to find words, roughly 2000 of them, to offer our congregations. And several of the few words that do come to mind are Not Suitable for Worship.
But it came to me over the course of the past few days, as I grappled with my own anger and sadness at the results of the presidential election: since beginning my ministry here with you in 2015, it has felt at times as though most of the time our Sundays together have been a response to one disaster or another: the horror of mass shootings, Covid, wildfires, the 2016 election, Covid, January 6, 2021, hurricanes, Covid, Ukraine, Gaza, and now this week. I find that looking back, what I consider to be normal times, such as the Obama Administration and before, are beginning to feel like a distant memory.
And so here we are again, my dear ones. Over these years we have been called upon again and again to be resilient, to be creative, to respond, again and again. And we have. Just think of all that’s been asked of you in the last decade. So today is not a day to problem-solve or to analyze what went wrong, or to engage in calls to action. Those days are coming. But today is a day to be together, to just hold on with one another, to seek nourishment for our souls and to allow ourselves to feel whatever feelings need to be named and acknowledged.
Before we go any further, I’m going to pause here, and invite you all to speak. If you want, please call out an emotion that you are carrying with you today. Feel free to say more than one. Feel free to yell! Ready? What are you feeling?
On Friday I met with some colleagues on Zoom, and we asked ourselves the question: ‘is it inevitable that things have to fall apart from time to time?’ And then we wondered, ‘do things have to fall apart in order to be rebuilt?’
I don’t have answers to those questions, but I am thinking about them, and I invite you to sit with those questions as well.
Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist nun, grappled with these questions in her famous book, When Things Fall Apart. And as I always remember, she didn’t title her book, ‘IF things fall apart,’ but rather ‘WHEN’. For in truth, the cycle of growth and loss, of hope and despair, of health and illness, of life and death, is always being carried out around us. Within this cycle, we live our lives.
This is, perhaps, the spiritual work of our lifetimes, to acknowledge this truth, and to accept it.
Pema Chodron introduced the spiritual practice of Tonglen, which we explored a few minutes ago. She described it as ‘receiving and sending’, breathing in despair or anger, and breathing out hope and love. She uses this form of meditation as a way to awaken bodichitta, which is the Sanskrit word for ‘the noble or awakened heart.’ Tonglen, wrote Pema Chodron, is the opposite of our usual instincts. We try to push away pain, and to take in pleasure. Instead, we take in the pain of ourselves and others, and send back breaths of pleasure and compassion and love. (p. 88)
The simple act of being willing to allow thoughts of pain and suffering into our hearts, through our breath, enables us to cope with our own fear and grief. It is so easy, when overwhelmed with sorrow or fear, to try to wall ourselves off, to protect ourselves, so that we don’t have to feel this pain and discomfort. But what happens when we build walls around ourselves? We are no longer available to others. We can become more fearful, and hardened. And we cannot receive what help, support, and love that others might wish to offer to us. It’s a paradox, really, that the more we try to protect ourselves, the more vulnerable we become. It is in opening our tender hearts that we can gain the support and love from others that we need to survive.
Pema Chodron wrote, “It is said that in difficult times, it is only bodhichitta, the noble heart, that heals. When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself. This is the time to touch the genuine heart of bodhichitta. In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the middle of feeling misunderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things, the genuine heart of sadness.” (p. 87)
If we have become too walled-off, too protected, we might wonder if our noble heart, our bodhichitta, has somehow withered away. But Pema Chodron likened our bodhichitta to a jewel. Imagine digging up a jewel that has been buried. It can emerge bright and colorful and unaffected by the long burial in the soil. It will be unmarred and shining.
These past few days, many of us, including me, have backed away from the aftermath of the election. It’s been an exhausting several months – truly even several years – and it is time for us to rest. The vicious language we have been subjected to, the misogyny and racism, the lack of decency and respect, has taken its toll. It’s abusive, and it’s traumatic. It’s bullying. It is time to turn away from the abuse and also from the incessant analysis, the requests for money, all the demands on our heads and hearts. We deserve to rest, to tend our spirits, to heal. And as we do, we wonder what we can trust in the days ahead.
It’s time to give ourselves permission to travel inward for as long as we need: to go deep within, to find the hidden jewel shining in the darkness, that is our noble heart. Pema Chodron called this ‘the love that will not die.’
Pema Chodron commented that a common metaphor for a spiritual journey is often a climb up the side of a mountain. But she reminded us that in climbing upward, we too often leave others behind. It’s a form of escape. And so she urged us to remember that the spiritual journey is downward: down deep within, into our inmost selves, moving toward the emotions that we would prefer to leave behind, to wall off.
The ancient Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “Life’s water flows from darkness. Search the darkness, don’t run from it.” (Rumi, Night Travelers)
And so, to begin on this journey, we trust ourselves to travel inward, to not fear darkness, to seek out our noble hearts, and connect with that love deep within.
Our religion talks a great deal about love. We think of God as a force of Love, life-giving, always present. Our new values place Love at the Center of our tradition. Maybe that is where you chose to place your heart sticker, at your heart center, as I did. Our work is not to define this Love, or to figure out where it comes from. Our work is to learn to sense its presence, to look for it both within ourselves, in our noble hearts, and around us.
I’m thinking of a song that I hope we’ll learn to sing together one day. It goes:
“There is a love holding me
There is a love holding all that I love,
There is a love holding all,
I rest in that Love.
May you trust in the love holding us, and in the coming days, may you rest in that love. And when you are able, may you find ways to share it: to send it forth on your breath to those in the world who need it.
But for today, may you love and know that you are loved.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
