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“The Simple Things” Allison Farnum, Summer Minister Ann McCallister, Worship Associate Unitarian Church of Evanston July 15, 2008 At least once a year, no matter where I live, someone from the local evangelical church comes to “spread the good news.” This random, unexpected knock on the door leads usually to, what they consider, the ever- compelling question, “If you died today, do you think you would go to heaven or hell?” The question is not compelling to me, and I usually end up trying to get them to come to my Unitarian Universalist church, where we ask the compelling questions that affect all of creation in the here and now. But any question that begins with, “If you died today…” is bound to get your attention. Death touches us all, sooner or later. And the shadow moments of death elicit the more compelling questions, cutting through every day concerns to the pith of why we live, why we exist in the face of the eventuality of death. Death, either the eventuality of our own, or of a loved one, often reveals the deeper priorities, the simple things that make life most meaningful. A man, my 90 yr old grandfather, wakes up in his house. He wakes up and remembers she is not there. He wakes up and remembers that she died months ago. Can it be, he wonders? Each day he wakes up and remembers the simple things that mattered in their life together. Her smile. Their lunchtime ritual out on the porch: always the same. Melba toast, cottage cheese, pineapple, and perhaps the decadent sugar wafer or piece of chocolate candy. He wakes and remembers the simplicity of their lives together- habits and pleasures and pain crafted into bittersweet memory. After sixty years of companionship and mutual devotion, she is gone. His life could be thought of as easier now. No more fussing about the crumbs on the counter. No special looks of reproach when his stories got too long. His life could be thought of as simple, but without her it is instead a complex journey to navigate. How will he cut his hair? Go to the grocery? How will he live now that his world has been turned upside down? Looking back is bittersweet- he knows he has lived his life well. He says it was the simple things that mattered most. Imagine for the moment: Imagine that a stranger knocks on your door. You feel strangely comfortable when you answer the door. The man has sleepy, deep brown eyes, a long beard, and an old-fashioned suit. He is shy in your presence- enough to make you wonder how he ever got up the nerve to knock. Perhaps you wonder how you will sweetly tell him that you are not interested in his church, that you have your own, that services are at 10 am, and won’t you like to come? As you play out the next three minutes in your imagination he waits patiently. “Can I help you?” you ask. He opens his mouth to speak, clears his throat. He says to you, “I have been musing upon humanity, and am compelled to ask this question. If you may, kindly consider this, “When you come to die, will you come to discover that you have not lived?” You pause, sigh, close your eyes to gather your thoughts, take a deep breath to speak, ….and he is gone. Yet the question lingers in the air. More frightening, I would guess, than the specter of hell to Unitarian Universalists is the doom of a life not lived. Henry David Thoreau says he went out to the woods to live deliberately. Walden; or, Life in the Woods portrays a two-year period in Thoreau's life from 1845 to 1847. In Walden, Thoreau declares, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;” Imagine what Thoreau felt like when he returned from Walden. The busy carts in the dirty streets, The quick clip of people at the markets, All he can see is the birds bathing in the puddle, frothing up glistening beads of water into the air, unnoticed in the hustle and bustle. Though the landscape had not changed, he surely saw the world with different eyes. Yet Thoreau always remained engaged in the world, in civic life. When he was at Walden he wrote the famous essay “On Civil Disobedience” in response to his tax refusal- in protest of the Mexican American War. He did not simply sit on the mountaintop, untouched by “worldly concerns.” Perhaps he had succeeded in, as he says, “driving life into a corner,” and what “meanness” he saw, he “published it to the world.” “Living is so dear,” he says. The simple fact of our existence carries with it the complex decisions we face in the hustle and bustle of every day. It is no wonder that monks would run to the hills, the mountaintops, away from worldly concerns that might tempt them away from the deeper questions about the essentials of existence. Living the simple Life, getting to the bare bones of what is most important to us, does not mean running away from the world. As Unitarian Universalists, ours is an embodied theology that focuses on the here and now, the health of human bodies, the health of our environment. That which is most sacred in our lives is often grounded in the world of personal experience- God or the sacred is that or those who we can seek to know, sense, and feel. Thirteenth century Zen teacher Dogen tells his disciples that awakening in Zen is possible for all people- that one person’s practice is a part of the practice of all awakened beings, and that one person’s practice contributes to the Buddha in all beings. He likens this individual awakening as a dewdrop that reflects the entire moon. We all glisten with our true nature, a unifying Buddha nature. Transcendentalists like Thoreau believed in such a Unity, called the Oversoul, asserting that humans have a direct relationship with God and nature, a reflection of Divine Mind. Yet humans minds, particularly in today’s dominant culture, well, our minds simply get complicated: rent to pay, work to do, credit card debt to manage, not to mention the ever-demanding schedule. Living a simple life seems almost laughable and very counter-cultural. The “simple life” has turned into another marketing strategy. The Shaker tune says that it is a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free. But what of this freedom? Can leading a simple life free us from the endless siren song of bigger, better, faster that mainstream American culture preaches? Living deliberately is to deliberately reason through the message of bigger, better, faster. Are we not enough? Is it not a gift to be simple, to sit with where we are and turn round in our minds and hearts until bow and bend to find a place just right. This gift of freedom is not freedom to do whatever one pleases, but it is the gift to make good choices, to live simply instead of grabbing on to the next best thing that preaches a magical message of instant satisfaction. That is not our theology. A reasonable, free faith requires taking time instead with the part of us that says we are a cherished part of a larger whole. From the reading this morning , Whitman speaks of his soul: And you, O my Soul, where you stand, Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them; Whitman sees humans, the patient spiders that we are, in measureless oceans of space, seeking relationship. We cast filaments out to create a web, but where will they take hold? Perhaps, to live simply, is to acknowledge the vacant, vast surrounding of the soul. The longing for Unity that is deep within us is a vacancy. Must we fill it? The belly will soon again be empty, the shopping bags deflated of merchandise, the bank account depleted, and the heart ever-yearning harder for the simplest of things: Love. And our souls do not cast about alone in space. Together, we seek spheres of connection in this community, this nation, this planet. Walt Whitman describes his soul as “Surrounded, …., in measureless oceans of space, Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.”
I wonder if he fears that the gossamer will snag on what Thoreau called “not-life,” the parts of life not lived. Yet Whitman trusts that a bridge will be formed- a connection, an intersection of gossamer to gossamer. The interdependent web of Life Here we labor in forming that necessary bridge from the Holy in ourselves to the Holiness around us, anchoring our lives in the simple yet difficult belief in Love. Thoreau is at your door. “Life is so dear,” he says. He has just asked you, “When you come to die, will you come to discover that you have not lived?” What are the simple things, the essential facts of life that you need, that we need together? I invite you take the next few minutes of quiet to think about what is most essential in life- the simple things could be abstract or concrete… after a few minutes, speak one word out loud, or in your heart, that expresses what is most essential in your life. If you don’t know, then just sit with the question. Hear what you can, and honor what is spoken in the heart. We will sit again in quiet before we close together. (Chime) sharing (Chime) “A Noiseless, Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman, selected by worship Associate Ann McCallister Unitarian Church of Evanston
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