My Altar in the
World
Dr Gaye W.
Ortiz
Worship can
take place within four walls, like we are doing this morning, but it can also take place outside
of them.
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
This line in
Mary Oliver’s poem ("It Was Early," Evidence, 2009, pp 20-1) is a source of great reflection and meditation – and
challenge – to me. During the three decades I spent as a Catholic, I developed
a real appreciation for the sacramentality of matter. The Mass is central to
the Catholic faith, and its climax comes when Catholics receive the sacrament
of the Eucharist. The idea behind the Eucharist – that it is the body and blood
of Christ – draws upon the idea that plain, ordinary things can hold within
them something of the sacred. So the bread, which is a food product that is
made with flour, water, oil, yeast, salt – can with faith become flesh, and wine, one of the oldest beverages
known to humanity made from the grape – can with
faith become blood.
Now, I have
italicized with faith in my sermon
text, and the words ‘with faith’ are the crux of the matter. In coming to terms
with the Eucharist Catholics have to be willing to suspend belief, succumbing
to the irrational or mystical or mysterious, in order to go along with this
central tenet of the Roman Catholic faith.
But sacramentality
to me as a Unitarian Universalist is nothing to do with the Catholic notion of
the Eucharist. It is my intuitive feeling that there is a special something to
all of creation; it is grounded in my recognition of and commitment to the 7th
Principle, the interconnectedness of all existence of which we are a part. The
belief that everything is connected suggests that there is something sacred,
something of the divine in that connection…however each of us defines that in
our own lives and experience. Sacred to some of us is a word we find hard to
identify with: it can mean that we regard something with reverence, that has
religious importance, that calls for veneration or respect.
Think of the
Promised Land that the Israelites sought in the desert for 40 years…think of
the sacred ground where Moses was commanded to take off his sandals…the Qaaba
to which Muslims face when they pray…a tree, a mound or a stone for those who
practice earth-centered religions. What is the feeling that we get when we are in
a sacred place, a place we find special, for which we have respect? Think of a
sacred place or space where you have felt called out of yourself, have perhaps
connected with a larger sense of purpose; this is where we can begin to talk
about spirituality. Maybe we use terms like ‘spiritual seeking’ or developing a
‘spiritual practice’ around certain things: prayer, meditation, other kinds of
internalizing of a spiritual nature.
But for this
morning we can broaden that idea of a spiritual practice to include being and
doing, interior and exterior modes of spiritual practice. One day I will be
able to sit down and write about my favorite spiritual practice, the
spirituality of grandmothering. That is a ‘doing’ kind of spiritual practice,
not in my head but certainly in my heart.
And the reason
I feel I can say it is a spiritual practice is in part due to reading a book by
Barbara Brown Taylor called An Altar in
the World (2010, HarperOne). Taylor expanded the definition of a
spiritual practice for me in her reflections on doing everyday things. Her idea
of spiritual practice taking place within the context of a ‘geography of faith’
means encountering the holy in unexpected places, being mindful of the miracles
and blessings that come to us in our physical environment. And by this I mean
the sheer amazement and joy that we can have by looking at a leaf or an insect
through a magnifying glass. It’s not that there is some magical power or
supernatural element, but that the very existence of each created thing is a
source of wonder. I felt that very keenly when we were in England earlier this
month and got the phone call one afternoon that our daughter Molly’s best
friend Helen had just had a baby boy…we went to the hospital and got to hold
Freddy, just barely one day old. How perfect and precious he was! “Sometimes I
need only to stand where I am to be blessed.”
 |
| Holding Master Freddy, 1 day old |
This morning I
want to use 3 of the chapter headings from Taylor’s book – the spiritual practices
of getting lost, of encountering others, and of saying ‘no’ - in order to frame
the experience of worshipping at my own altars in the world. These spiritual
practices can take us out of our heads, where we spend so much of our time.
Taylor, a
renowned preacher from north Georgia, is not perfect, and she is forthcoming in
recalling times when she fails to encounter the sacred – this is a comforting
thought for us who are amateurs in spiritual seeking. So, something to remember
is that we should be open to the possibility of encountering the sacred where
we least expect it. Last week Wilfred and I returned from the trip I just
mentioned, back to the United Kingdom, where we lived for over 20 years. Our
trip was confined to Yorkshire, and we had 9 lovely days to go to favorite
places, eat favorite foods, and meet up again with old friends. We rented a car
at Manchester airport, and Wil was an able chauffeur. As we drove from the
airport to our friends’ house in Shipley, West Yorkshire, there were so many
memories…of getting lost on those very roads!
In an earlier
career working for Yorkshire Television as a program researcher, I managed to
get lost practically every week on the roads and in the dales all across
Yorkshire. It was my job to arrange shoots so I needed to know – in those days
before Google maps – how to get to the locations and then give directions to
the camera crew and my director. It was pretty embarrassing when I would get it
wrong, but rewarding when at last I found what I was looking for. When I went
off the beaten path I was often amazed at where I was being taken in my
lost-ness.
Taylor says
that if we let ourselves be lost, we can see the unexpected benefits that arise
from our failure to navigate accurately. Of course, when we do get lost, we
realize the need to summon up the skills that will help us on our way again –
managing our panic, marshalling our resources, taking a good look around to see
where we are and what this unexpected development might offer us (Taylor, 72).
Taylor mentions
the fact that for women, it is easier for us than it is for men to get out a
map to see where we need to go. “Why does it take thousands of sperm to
fertilize a single egg? Because the sperm refuse to stop and ask for
directions” (80).
Let’s broaden
out from being literally lost and think of how we got to where we are today. Sometimes
we set our life’s path squarely on what we want to be. When I mentioned to a
student recently that it took me many years to know what I wanted to do in
life, he snorted, “I can’t understand those kinds of people who do know – my girlfriend knew she wanted
to be an optician when she was 11.”
We never expect
life to turn out the way it does; sometimes we lose our way through divorce,
loss of loved ones, illness and addiction, career changes…Taylor says that,
after getting lost in life a few times, she has decided to stop fighting the
prospect of getting lost and to “engage it as a spiritual practice instead”
(73).
Setting out on our path in life, and assuming that it will take us
directly to where we want to go, we may become very disturbed by anything that
deflects or delays that arrival.
Think of the Promised Land that the Israelites sought in the desert
for 40 years…
There are many
biblical stories of people losing their way, most notably the Israelites after
their escape from years of bondage in Egypt.
“Think of the
Promised Land that the Israelites sought in the desert for 40 years…” They
learned the ‘holy art’ of being lost and endured so many misfortunes in their
40-year wandering that, Taylor says, “when they finally arrived in the land of
milk and honey, they knew how to say thank you and mean it” (75).
Getting lost
means that we become vulnerable, and Taylor tells us that there is “something
holy in this moment of knowing just how perishable you are” (76). Maybe we can
accept that there are ‘spiritual fruits of failure’ (78) and that consenting to
be lost can build up the spiritual muscles we need for radical trust: trust
that we can rely on our own resources but also find value in being a stranger
in a strange land: the Hebrew Bible calls on its people to love the stranger,
for they were once strangers in the land of Egypt. Taylor wisely tells us, “Those
most likely to befriend strangers are those who have at some time been
strangers themselves. The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to
know what it means to be lost yourself” (83).
Love your neighbor as yourself
Now to what has
been described as the ‘hardest spiritual work in the world – to love your
neighbor as yourself’ (93). In our UU congregations we strive to live in
covenant with each other, and perhaps a way of making this a spiritual practice
is to reconsider our patterns of everyday interaction with people. Can we aim
to make every encounter with a human being a holy one? Is that what our first
principle, to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, is all
about? Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that a lot of the time we fail miserably
to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially in our daily routines when we
treat others as means rather than as ends. Think of the casual encounters you
have each day, with the person behind the counter at the gas station; the
server who takes your lunch order; the receptionist you speak to on the phone
to arrange a medical appointment.
These people
often melt into the background of our busy lives, and sometimes the last thing
we need is to use up our precious time to make eye contact, say thanks as if we
really mean it, risk engaging with another human being…then think of what Jesus
said in his story about God telling the righteous they can inherit his kingdom
because when he was hungry they gave him food; when he was thirsty they gave
him something to drink; when he was in prison they visited him; and when he was
a stranger they welcomed him. They replied, “Lord when was it that we did these
things?” For even the righteous, these encounters had melted into the
background of their busy lives. But then Jesus gives us the punchline of the
story: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you,
whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,
you did for me.’ (100)
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says “The supreme religious challenge is to
see God’s image in one who is not in our image”. Taylor
echoes this when she says that “What we have most in common is not religion but
humanity”… “the degree to which we believe that our faith is what makes us human is the same degree to which we will
question the humanity of those who do not share our faith” (99).
A challenge
then for us UUs, many of whom have found this faith later in life and who cherish
its liberating force in our lives, but who still bear spiritual scars that make
it hard to be accepting of those who profess other faiths, especially the
faiths from which we are liberated. Jonathan Swift’s comment cuts to the quick
of our self-assured tolerance: “We have just enough religion to make us hate
one another, but not enough to make us love one another” (99).
The spiritual
practice, then, of letting an encounter with another person change you, is a challenging
one; it challenges us to get over ourselves. It challenges us to love our
neighbors as if they were ourselves.
And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.
The final
spiritual practice is that of saying ‘no’ – specifically, of creating a Sabbath
space in our lives so we can say ‘no’ to busyness and yes to doing less. “And
there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.” Remember where the
idea of the Sabbath comes from? The creation took 6 days, according to the book
of Genesis, and so on the 7th day even God had to rest!
The chapter by
Taylor on saying no recalls for me growing up here in Augusta, part of the American
South where the Sabbath really was a
day of ‘no’ – no riding bikes, no going to the movies, no store open for shopping…and,
as Taylor says, the commandment about keeping the Sabbath holy might as well
have read, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it boring” (127). Those Sunday
afternoons were sandwiched by church services morning and evening, and they
were the times when I would sit on the front porch of my grandmother’s house
with my aunt and sing through the Southern Baptist hymnal.
Taylor suggests
we develop a Sabbath ‘vision’ where routines of the week give way to one day of
family get-togethers, worship, and rest. The rise of consumerism and television
since my days on the front porch have completely transformed the way we
Americans spend Sundays. We have added more and more to our lives, but there is
a quote from the mystic Meister Eckhart that we should pay attention to: “God
is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by subtracting” (121).
To have a day
marked off as different from the rest – as Jews have with the ritual of the
Friday evening Shabbat service – might remind us that in the story of creation
God rested on the seventh day and even called it not just good but holy,
“making the Sabbath the first sacred thing in all creation” (130).
Not only that:
Taylor says that “if Bible lovers paid as much attention to Leviticus 25 as to
Leviticus 18 then we might discover that God is at least as interested in
economics as in sex. Because in that chapter there is a command for a Jubilee
Sabbath once every 7 years when slaves are freed, debts are forgiven, property
is restored, and there is “a year of complete rest for the land” (132). So
while sitting on the front porch is not economically viable, it is a spiritual
practice that gives rest “to each of us individually, our families, our faith
communities, our neighbors, our systems of justice, our human economies, and
our planet” (134).
Some of us are
unable to say ‘no’ and can find ourselves regretting the constant state of
stress that it causes. I once knew someone who would become ill every Sunday
afternoon; Taylor names that tendency in many Americans as Sabbath sickness,
the feeling of queasiness when you are enjoying your weekend but begin to
realize that tomorrow it is back to the grind. You are enjoying your Sabbath
too much! Taylor suggests that if we resist the idea of making the Sabbath
holy, that we make 2 lists on one piece of paper: on one side list all the
things you know that you want to do but never take time to do. On the other
side, make a list of all the reasons why you think it is impossible for you to
do those things. Then keep that paper where you can see it…and start small if
you can’t give yourself a whole day of spiritual freedom.
“Sometimes I
need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed”. Are you ready to worship at
the altar of your world? Can you navigate in your own geography of faith? Can
you lose yourself along the path of life – make time for encountering the
stranger – say no to seven days of busyness? The blessings that we receive from our
own spiritual practices will help us slow down, live with purpose and pay
attention to this wonderful, sacred world in which we live.
May it be so.
Blessed be. Amen.
Gaye W Ortiz
July 2012
