Sermon: Grateful in the Eye of the Storm by Rev JD Benson,
First Parish Brewster, November 25, 2012
Grateful in the Eye of the Storm
It’s Thanksgiving Weekend and we're here to celebrate, that's right, right here in the eye of the storm. What storm you ask? Why, this one of course. What eye of the storm? This one. All of them actually. All those calm places we experience, when we are awake, in moments, even knowing the eye is, after all, at the center of the big storms, the hurricanes of life we experience directly or indirectly. Here we are in gratitude for those exquisite calm places and for what we learn from the times and events of chaos too, in the eternal now!
I want you to leave at the end of this service with three points percolating in your hearts and minds:
First, that we have an fundamental need to express gratitude—that is, to make meaning and in that to express our gratitude in some way, and it saves us. Second, that we aren’t nor should we be grateful for every life experience; and third, that we can experience greater joy and that wonderful feeling of gratitude if we can allow ourselves to neither feel guilt for our joy nor wall ourselves off from our own or other people’s suffering.
[1) The fundamental need]
In the WS Merwin poem that Twinks read, entitled “Thanks” we hear a wake up call. Merwin tells us that most of our “thanks” are meaningless in the face of the tragedies of life—“ dark though it is”,this life: the wars, the beatings in stairwells, animals, forests dying. We’re on automatic, at best, giving an empty, cheap “thank you”—in the moment even as so many suffer. It is in the last lines of the poem that he solidifies for us his view that modernity put us squarely on a path of destruction. Maybe no one is listening. What meaning does "thank you" have then?
Sometimes “Thank you” feels empty or at least not enough. Is that the way it seems to you? Maybe even that “thank you” has become a commodity? Something we purchase with a smile or a bow or the opening of a door? Are we supposed to disavow those small matters? Or to put them in context of the larger world in which we live. Are we to find a way to a deeper relationship with our gratitude? One thing we do here at First Parish is make a practice of thanking one another for the things we do for our community and what we do together for the community beyond our walls. It is a meaningful practice that grows our souls!
The Hindu greeting, Namaste, is an example of a deep in the belly expression of a gratitude. “I bow to you” or, more poetically, Ram Dass’ a sense of the word’s meaning: “I honor the place in you of light and love and when you are in that place in you and you are in that place in me, we are one.” Is that not more than a greeting in our typical sense, but a rich gratitude? When you hear that, really let it in, does it awaken something deep in the belly, opening your heart, growing your spirit? It is a deep thank you to my hearing.
Ghandi said that there is a basic human need to express our deepest longings and that prayer is a right vehicle for expressing those longings. I wonder if he might have also felt that acknowledging to ourselves our gratitudes and expressing them also fulfills a basic human need.
Being thankful, giving thanks itself, has a purpose in and of itself. Giving thanks to one another, to the Spirit of Life known by many names, an attention, focus --- grateful even in the quick moment in the eye of our storms, being and expressing our gratitude saves us.
When I first got sober over 32 years ago my AA sponsor told me to make gratitude lists every day. I didn’t do it. Not every day, I confess. But I did it often enough that it stuck with me. In times of turmoil in my own life, my own deep doubts about my own existence, my own value in the world, my pain about relationships, my abilities to do all the things I think I should, that I used to be able to do, it saves me, that gratitude list, from a deep spiral downward, it brings me to a place like the eye of a storm, a place even momentarily of calm. When I began this spiritual practice it was admittedly very narrowly focused, just on my own daily life, all I or anyone in early recovery can reasonably manage, I was assured.
Now, so many years later, making the list—on paper or computer or in my mind--and expressing gratitude, it’s a lot like prayer to me: fundamental. As with most things, I falter, probably too often, but I do recognize this need and seek to attend it even, especially perhaps, in the midst of all the so much, the too too much of our lives, our world.
If you and I are, right now reasonably comfortable in our daily lives we have to think that we are in the eye of an enormous storm. The storm that destroyed parts of New York and New Jersey’s coastline, yes. The storm that is in this moment in “truce” but who knows what the next moment will bring in Israel and Gaza, yes. Our personal loneliness, some of us, as the holidays approach, yes. Grateful in the midst, gratitude persists, our thank you, thank you, thank you in the eternal now.
Being grateful and expressing our gratitude saves us.
[2) We are not required to be thankful for everything that comes our way.]
In all the years I was involved in the work that the AIDS epidemic brought upon us, people who were not on the front lines would say to me, “What a terrible, what a hard job you have! How can you do it?” It never ceased to amaze me that so many people would think that counseling our brothers and sisters living with a disease or at any point in the continuum of HIV/AIDS would be “terrible”. The work with the people infected with HIV or who were living with AIDS, or their family members or friends---that was neither “terrible” nor “hard” in the way most folks meant it. The disease, yes, a terrible thing. Being with the people, on the other hand, was a blessing--maybe sometimes for them, but always for me. I would have happily relinquished it if we could just not have had AIDS in the first place. But since it arrived and since I entered the service world in the AIDS arena, I felt I was in the right place, that my life had meaning each day, that while what I could do was small in the face of the effects of the disease itself on the human body and spirit, I was doing what I could, and I knew moments of hope, moments of joy, and yes, moments of gratitude. I’m definitely not one to say there is a silver lining in the AIDS epidemic. If AIDS has led to some people changing their attitudes towards others against whom they previously discriminated, well that’s fine of course. We are grateful for that. But frankly, we could have done better and come by those transformations without the devastation of a cruel disease, couldn’t we have?, a disease that continues to take the lives of so many around the world?
No, I’m not grateful for that or any other disease. There is something, however, to be learned in the midst… about the human spirit that sometimes, absolutely incredibly, rises up from the depths of despair… that sometimes, just in moments, gives us hope and something for which to be grateful. No, we aren’t grateful for the harm people inflict on one another, on us. No great good purpose in staying in the line of fire, the line of abuse heaped our way. If you are in an abusive situation I pray you will find your way out physically, emotionally, spiritually, in all ways, and quickly. And, in time, that you and I, we can learn from those experiences something that transcends the harm in some way, that serves our greater understanding and purpose, our ability to empathize and demonstrate compassion.
[3) Neither Guilt nor Closed Heart Shall We Cultivate]
It’s natural to want to stay in a comfort zone, that eye of the storm calm place, even as we know there is chaos in the storm of life that swirls all around us. We need not feel guilty nor close our hearts because we are in the calm while the atrocities surround us. That doesn’t mean we should be satisfied. Just that feeling guilt about it is actually limiting and destructive. Just that closing ourselves off from other people’s suffering in a false effort to protect our little piece of peace is actually limiting and destructive.
Guilt prevents us from being wholly in our joy and gratitude. When I first returned from Nicaragua I felt guilty running water because my hosts in Managua had no access to water. It did them no good for me to feel guilt. It didn’t bring water to their shack. Guilt only took something from my experience of having the gift of running water, something I imagine they would have enjoyed and been grateful for. Taking action to help a community have access to water—supporting the work of building a well in their community is not dependent upon guilt but upon good will and finding a way to do it.
And when we go to the opposite end of the spectrum from guilt, to a place in which we create walls, gated communities for our hearts so we can turn away from the suffering of others more easily we cannot feel the depths of the range of our emotions including gratitude for what we have or experience, including real empathy for others—we cannot feel fully the bitter or the sweet. What is there to do but to pay attention, notice, choose a different path.
Twinks told us she put pebbles in one pocket and each time she saw something good that someone did she thanked him or her and moved a pebble from that pocket to the other. That was her way of being sure she expressed gratitude. I wonder if it’s a way of seeing the empty spaces too, that is, the moments of relative neutrality or even negative occurrences. You cannot fully see the shadow without fully embracing the light.
During our offering this morning we will be passing around two baskets, one for your financial offerings for the support of the work of this church. In the second basket that reaches you will be small glass pieces of different colors. Take one. Put it in your coat or other pocket. When you empty your pockets at night and set down your keys, your wallet, your change purse, find a place for the glass as well. When you fill up your pockets, your purse in the morning, pick up the glass piece and place back in your pocket or purse. Every time you touch it, every time you see it, notice. What have you to be grateful for in that very moment? How might you express that gratitude: to the Creative Force known by many names, to a person, to whom my you share your gratitude? Notice any obstacles. Notice how open or not your heart feels.
Pay attention. Practice gratitude. Let your heart open. Grow your soul. Namaste.
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