PSI Annual Journal 2001

I' d like to begin these remarks on "Spiritual Discipline" with a poem which I think distills to its essence and identifies the objective of the kind of activities I' ll be discussing. Richard Gilbert read a portion of this poem at the Service of the Living Tradition yesterday morning. Entitled "The Summer Day", here are Mary Oliver' s words in their entirety:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and
down --
Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her
face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don' t know exactly what a prayer is,
But I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the
fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn' t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what it is you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

We could identify many reasons for cultivating a personal spiritual discipline, but for me what it all boils down to is the question Mary Oliver poses at the conclusion of her poem: What is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life? If human beings are to live as richly, meaningfully and joyfully as I believe they are meant to – if we are to "suck the marrow clean from life' s bones," to paraphrase Henry Thoreau -- then we cannot ignore, cannot sidestep or defer that question. And ultimately we must come up with an answer that quiets our restless minds, quells our chronic anxiety and provides our disoriented spirit with a truer sense of direction.

Mary Oliver' s answer to that question is simplicity itself: she has resolved to pay attention, nothing more or less than that. Now, as a Pulitzer prize winning poet Oliver surely enjoys a few privileges to which we who work in institutions have less access. Our daily demands may be heavier, our responsibilities more onerous, our worries harder to walk away from. Nor is the urban environment in which most of us live as conducive to flights of poetic fancy as Oliver' s pastoral environment.

Nevertheless, Oliver poetry, characterized by spare, evocative imagery and detailed observation inspires and motivates us. Like Japanese Haiku, her poems are vivid, immediate, sensuous and emotionally engaging. To read her words is to be there with her, and to feel the prickle of the grasshopper' s feet on one' s own palm, to hear the whirr of its wings as it leaps away. For me, this kind of poetry and this type of experience have profound spiritual implications.

I want to talk about spiritual discipline in a Unitarian Universalist context, but the first order of business is to define our terms. What do we mean, what at least do I mean, by spiritual? And what does spirituality have to do with that unappealing word "discipline?"

If you asked a room full of Unitarian Universalists for a definition of spirituality, achieving any sort of consensus would be a challenge. Like the word "love", spirituality has become one of the more imprecise yet seductive words in our religious lexicon.

About a year ago, the editors of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun attempted a definition of spirituality, saying that it was a "lived experience" exhibiting one or more of the following qualities: A feeling of awe and wonder, of gratitude toward the world for its own sake rather than for its practical utility. Second, a recognition of the ultimate Unity of all being, and of the sacredness of all life. Third, a sense that the universe is abundant and that all human beings are entitled to share the blessings of creation. Finally, spirituality includes an awareness of a trans- or supra-personal conscious energy that cannot be wholly grasped but which infuses and informs Nature and tilts Creation toward freedom, compassion, creativity and generosity.

I find little reason to quibble with this rather comprehensive definition of spirituality, nor do I find it inconsistent with my colleague James Ishmael Ford' s more succinct description of spirituality as "that which gives life." As Ford points out, etymologically, "Spiritual" comes from the Latin word for "breath," which represented the life force in many ancient cultures. "Qi" the underlying principle of much oriental spirituality, is expressed by a Chinese ideogram which can also mean "breath." In the most fundamental sense, then, spirituality is that which prompts and challenges us to explore the full possibilities of being alive.

Commentators representing other perspectives and spiritual traditions offer alternative definitions. The popular Jungian writer and therapist Thomas Moore argues that "transcending the personal, concrete, finite particulars of life" is the business of spirituality. It has to do with raising our consciousness, identifying and expressing our highest values.

Moore contrasts spirit and soul work. He associates the latter with activities that help us to "feel" existence in all its sublime and aching beauty. For Moore, these two concepts – spirit and soul – are the yin and yang of life: the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete, the eternal and the impermanent, the light and the dark. Moore treats them as separate categories of awareness and experience, yet I suspect that most of us use these terms -- "soul" and "spirit" -- interchangeably.

The word "spirituality" does not appear in A Testament of Devotion, a slim volume by a contemplative Quaker, Thomas Kelly. But from his discussion of the fruits of Quaker religious practice, Kelly clearly qualifies as a "spiritual" writer. "If we really want to," he says,

"each of us can live a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity". All our separate selves, our multiple roles in life, can be organized by a single, mastering Life within us.

Spirituality, Kelly suggests, is about achieving internal harmony, gathering one' s fragmented, distracted, wavering personality around the "true" Self, acknowledging its wisdom and submitting to its authority.

I want to say that all of these opinions are valid, and each offers an insight about the meaning and intent of spirituality. Yet none quite captures what that poem by Mary Oliver so cogently expressed -- that before everything else, spirituality is about a quality of awareness, of attention, of perception. It is about being "awake," in the sense that the Buddha claimed to be conscious and awake. Jack Kornfield says that spirituality isn' t about any sort of specialized knowledge or profound understanding. It has to do, rather, with a way of being completely present for and radically open to life in all its nuances, all its manifold pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty.

"Out of this simple presence," Kornfield writes, "empathy, love, responsiveness, all good things are born."

At this point I' d like to bracket our discussion of spirituality for a few minutes and turn to the word "discipline." It ought to be obvious that any religion worth its salt, any spirituality for that matter, demands a greater or lesser degree of discipline. For practicing Roman Catholics, the sacraments are a discipline, just as scriptural study is for evangelical Protestants. Proselytizing is an essential part of the Jehovah Witnesses' discipline, and Mormons both missionize and practice tithing. Praying, fasting, pilgrimage and charity are Muslim disciplines. The focus in many Eastern Religions is on the transformation of consciousness using a wide array of physical and mental exercises.

For many of us, the word "discipline" has certain negative connotations. Linked to the word "spiritual, it simply stands for the intentional, systematic pursuit of activities which are believed to be personally or collectively efficacious.

Whether we realize it or not, whether we call it that or not, discipline is also a feature of Unitarian Universalist faith and practice. We' ve all heard the old joke about spiritual seeker who came to a crossroads. A sign to the right said "this way to heaven." The other said, "this way to a discussion about heaven." Because he was a Unitarian Universalist, the traveler took the road to the left.

Well, that classic gag makes a whimsical but relevant point about our own spiritual orientation and preferences. Structured study and discussion, often preceded by learned discourse, has long been the Unitarian Universalist way of religion. What we believe in our hearts, what we pay allegiance to, must first be resolved in our minds. Traditionally and with rare exceptions our discipline has been intellectual, analytic, empirical, but it was always a discipline. As religious liberals, we sifted and winnowed, critically examining and testing religious claims and propositions with the enthusiasm of scientific investigators. Often we took pride in the rigor of our methodology, and contrasted ourselves favorably with those whose religious life rested on the shakier grounds of faith and intuition.

Human and community service is another discipline that Unitarian Universalists have tried to practice. One of our more widely used liturgical covenants states that "Service is our prayer," while another extols it as "our law." We encourage one another to live not only thoughtful but generous spiritual lives; to cultivate our conscience as well as our understanding.

Neither of these religious disciplines is peculiar to us, unique to our own faith tradition. When the Dalai Lama visited Madison a couple of years ago and I had the privilege of spending four days listening to his scriptural commentaries, I was struck by his rigorously intellectual approach to Buddhism. Indeed, in the course of his reflections the Dalai Lama underscored the importance of formal logic and systematic analysis to the development of a mature and refined spirituality.

For Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, service represents the flip side of the spiritual coin. Asked what sort of spiritual practices he would recommend to an aspiring Roman Catholic, Weakland responded that he or she ought faithfully to attend Mass for six months and during that same period work in a food pantry or soup kitchen. Together, these two activities will sufficiently orient one to the Roman Catholic spiritual way.

So obviously, the disciplines of reason and service are widely practiced. But they do count for more in our tradition than in some others and, to the extent that we have one, they do represent our spiritual practice. The question is whether a discipline of this sort is adequate, and whether it can provide us with the kind of awareness we need to feel truly happy, at-home in the world and fulfilled.

My own conviction is that what we have, what we do as religious people, is commendable as far as it goes. But quite often Unitarian Universalism feels to me like a stool with only two legs, and without a third it cannot bear the weight of the suffering, uncertainty and inner turmoil that give rise to our religious aspirations in the first place. Now, I was raised in a thoughtful, socially responsible Unitarian Universalist household. But thirty years ago I realized that there was something lacking, and I began to search for and put into position the third leg of that stool.

From the age of twenty I have tried to incorporate some form of meditation or "inner work" into my daily life. While studying at Starr King seminary in the early seventies, I attended classes at the Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist center in Berkeley and began to practice a little Hatha yoga. I had been a miler in high school, and at about the same time I began running again. A quarter of a century later, I still run "meditatively" forty minutes a day, six mornings a week.

Eventually I shifted from the Nyingma style of meditation to forms taught by Thich Nhat Hanh' s and the Vipassana schools of Buddhism. Five years ago I began a more serious study of Hatha and Kriya yoga and enrolled in a t' ai chi class. These days, my daily spiritual practice includes running, t' ai chi, and perhaps twice a week I throw in a yoga session.

I believe strongly enough in the importance of this type of spiritual practice for religious liberals that I conduct a class in movement meditation for ten weeks in the Fall, the Spring and sometimes the Summer. In addition, I often incorporate meditation and Qi Gong exercises into other classes, and they have become a major component of the weekend retreats I facilitate in mid-Winter. I suspect that members of my congregation now accept the legitimacy of these endeavors and are beginning to acknowledge them as a "normal" part of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.

I realize that meditation, whether sitting or active, is not everyone' s cup of tea. More than a few old-line religious liberals continue to dismiss all such activities as subjective, self-delusional navel gazing. I want to respect such feelings, and as a minister to a diverse congregation, I try not to impose my views or my priorities on anyone. But I do seek to create as many opportunities as possible for Unitarian Universalists to experiment with and explore non-cognitive, contemplative approaches to the spiritual life.

I, for one, happen to believe that our movement' s Purposes and Principles offer ample warrant for the sort of practices I' ve mentioned. Among the Six Sources from which Unitarian Univeralists receive inspiration we find,

"Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."

This is precisely the awareness, the illumination, that all forms of meditation are intended to elicit. In fact, I' m not sure how one would regularly get in touch with this ineffable species of "truth" without a disciplined contemplative practice.

At least three of the seven Principles of our faith also suggest the appropriateness of such activity. If as a faith community we are committed to each other' s spiritual growth; if our search for truth and meaning is truly free and comprehensive; if respect for the interdependent web is to become more than an abstract duty, then the third leg of that stool is necessary.

Indeed, I would be so bold as to suggest that while Unitarian Universalism might well survive and even boast a modest measure of success in its current form and with its current agenda, without a more intentional cultivation of the inner life, it will never achieve its true potential. At present our movement just doesn' t provide the tools many people need to achieve spiritual realization. Nor do we regularly emphasize the importance of those tools. The notable Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel put it well when he said,

All things have a home; the bird has a nest, the fox a hole, the bee a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. Weary, sobbing, the soul, after roaming through a world festering with aimlessness, falsehoods and absurdities, seeks a moment in which to gather up its scattered life, in which to divest itself of enforced pretenses and camouflage, in which to simplify complexities. Such a home is prayer.

Whatever we deign to call it – prayer, meditation, inner communion, the cultivation of mindfulness – it all comes down to the same thing: spiritual hunger requires spiritual sustenance; the spiritual call demands a spiritual response. Reason and analysis are powerful means of discernment, but I do not believe we can "think" our way to spiritual health any more than we can live by bread alone.

Now, I, like many others, maintain a daily running, t' ai chi and meditation regime for a number of eminently practical reasons. I am convinced that these activities are beneficial, both physically and emotionally, and this opinion has been validated by a good deal of empirical study. Running keeps my weight stable, maintains cardiovascular fitness, reduces tension and mitigates depression. Mentally, I find that running – which I always do alone and without electronic stimulus – improves my creative and problem solving abilities. Many a sermon has become "unstuck" on my morning run.

T' ai chi provides its own set of advantages. It is the most effective means I have found to identify and resolve muscle tension, and to improve my coordination and balance. As I grow older, the stresses of life take an increasing toll and "movement meditation" provides an effective antidote. Furthermore, both sitting and movement meditation act as a "brake" on a lifestyle that often feels far too frenetic and unfocused. One writer has described meditation as a "parachute" because in this fast-paced, demanding society of ours we need to find effective ways to control the social and psychic free-fall that can be exhilarating, but also deadly. If we have no tools, no strategies ready at hand to slow life down, frustration increases and our satisfaction with work and home life begins to erode. Meditation puts on the brakes before we lose control and crash.

These, then, are a few of the benefits I derive from my own spiritual practice. Important as they might seem, however, they still are ancillary rather than essential outcomes of this work. All phases of my health – physical, mental, emotional – are enhanced because I faithfully pursue these activities. But this is not, ultimately, why I am committed to them.

Two comments by speakers at this year' s General Assembly have stuck with me these last few days. In one, Robert Moore quoted or paraphrased the great 20th century theologian Paul Tillich to the effect that the ultimate purpose of spirituality is to "experience a joy without which the rest of our work seems in vain." These are my sentiments exactly: the practice of spiritual discipline is about finding joy.

A retired, senior colleague of mine, Leon Hopper, offered a second nugget of inspiration. In his Berry Street Essay delivered last Thursday to 500 UU clergy, Leon summed up fifty years of parish experience by saying that "Ministry is grounded, above all else, in the practice of presence."

These two observations are, I believe, closely correlated. Joy and presence. To be joyful we must be present; to be present is to know joy. To be effective in ministry or any other form of service is to be both present and joyful.

I began these remarks with a poem by a woman whose powers of poetic imagination have been finely honed by the practice of presence. Mary Oliver enjoys a sense of intimacy with and deep appreciation for the natural world that is obviously the fruit of a patient and disciplined spiritual practice. We who embrace the Seventh Principle, who preach "respect for the interdependent web," would be wise to balance our ambition to save Nature with an equal commitment to savor it, because that is where the energy, awareness and compassion we need to be strong and convincing earth-advocates comes from. "What I know in my bones is that I forget to take time to remember what I know," Terry Tempest Williams writes.

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whispering of grasses, the shimmering of leaves. Nature' s sounds require patience; not just the ability to hear, but the capacity to listen.

Our relationships with each other, with the human universe, can also be transformed by spiritual practice. Robert Inchausti, a professor of literature who began his teaching career at a Roman Catholic academy for adolescent boys, reminds us how easy it is, when we become busy and distracted, to objectify our fellow human beings, and how important it is to step back and become fully present to and for one another. In his first year of teaching, Inchausti struggled with his role, but then he began to use the periods of focused, silent classroom meditation to his advantage.

Sometimes my mind would become clear and all the internal chatter would cease (he writes), and my students would have to call me back to consciousness. "Mr. Inchausti, the meditation is over. My Inchausti, are you still here? Earth to teacher."

When I would emerge from one of these prayers and look at my students, their presence often struck me as miraculous, and I would listen to them with renewed interest and attention, in hopes of discovering who they were and how they had gotten there.

As the semester progressed I began to see more and more of my life as prayer. And I experienced my teaching and prayer in almost the same way: as a quest for perfect, undistracted attention to the task at hand, with each task an end in itself, a doorway to bliss.

Spiritual practice is all about paying attention, or what Thich Nhat Hanh and other Buddhists more suggestively call "mindfulness." We suppose, of course, that we are always "paying attention," and in a manner of speaking, so we are. In order to survive, in order to work, study, parent and even play effectively we must pay attention. But masters of spiritual practice encourage us to be more intentionally mindful; to cultivate the ability to hold, maintain an unwavering awareness of life' s ebb and flow, its unfolding majesty.

The goal is not just to look, but to see; not only to listen, but hear; and when we run, as that memorable line from the movie Chariots of Fire puts it, "to feel God' s pleasure" in our bones and sinews. The flow of our thoughts and the surges of our emotions are also meant to become objects of attention. By attending to this interior universe we gradually come to know, understand and ultimately are better able to govern ourselves.

In his book Flow, University of Chicago psychologist and consciousness researcher Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi argues that "the control of consciousness determines our quality of life, a fact that has been known for a long time; indeed, for as long as records exist." The author goes on:

Each person allocates his or her limited attention either by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy, or by diffusing it in desultory, random movements. The shape and content of life depend on how attention has been used. It is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.

The Christian inspirational writer Kathleen Norris echoes the scientist' s thesis, saying, "Attention is all. Praying is not doing, it is being."

This discussion of spiritual practice has rested so far upon a completely naturalistic framework and has steered clear of metaphysical questions and considerations. Personally, I do not think there is any intrinsic link between meditation and metaphysics. In the ancient Pali language, the tongue spoken by the Buddha, the closest equivalent we find for our English word "meditation" is Bhavana, which means simply "development through mental training." Like skills in logic, critical thinking, synthetic reasoning, music or emotional reflection, mindfulness is achieved through expert instruction and faithful practice. It is a latent capacity which, when awakened and unfolded, increases our enjoyment of, compassion for and sense of identification with the "life that maketh all things new." Clearly, spiritual practice has less to do with other worlds and their attainment than with our relationship to this world.

However, there are those who say that the practice of spiritual disciplines like yoga and meditation makes us aware of a non-material reality that in our everyday lives we tend to overlook. The "observing self" is the name Arthur Deikman gives to this reality, which is, he says, the very ground of our experience. Ken Wilber concurs, and uses the term "Witness" to identify that part of our psyche which remains constant and eternally vigilant, while the rest of our physical, mental and emotional makeup is subject to continual transformation and dissolution. "There is something within you," Wilber writes,

that is not memory, thoughts, mind, body, experience, surroundings, feelings, conflicts, sensations or moods, something that remains untouched by the flight of time, and that is the transpersonal witness and self

Wilber and others suggest that this transpersonal entity, this pure awareness, this spotless mirror is the essential "me." But it is also you, a universal consciousness that we share with each other, with the universe itself and which is bound by neither spacial nor temporal limits.

I find the possibility intriguing. And as an open-minded, experimental movement for whom the "quest of truth" is sacrament we owe it to ourselves to entertain and to explore such possibilities.

I think many of us are ready, even eager. The problem is commitment. We are, for the most part, a casual bunch of spiritual seekers. But in this arena as in so many others, results don' t come without practice. If it' s joy we want, insight we want, peace we want, then we must learn step-by-step to pay attention. And to tell the truth, if we put the same time and effort into mindfulness training as we do perfecting our backhand, our bridge game, our fluency in French, our on-line communications, or our bargain hunting abilities, we' d all have grasshoppers eating out of our hands in no time.

So now, to echo Mary Oliver and Dick Gilbert, just what is it you plan to do with your own wild and precious life?

PSI Symposium Annual Journal 2001