Stillness of the Earth

this sermon was given at First Universalist Parish in Chester, Vermont.

The prayer of the Ute Indians begins: "Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light." Well, there have been some nights recently that weren't still. The wind has whipped around our house. The wind chime outside the door rings and rings. There have been some wild nights, at least in Saxton’s River, Vermont. And then there would be times that were completely still. There were also times of silence and stillness. "Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me." I’ve been humming that chant for the past week in preparing this sermon and realized that there were three pieces that were involved and that each required something of me. Find a stillness. I imagined what it felt like for me to have lost something and be looking for it. Frustrating! Where is that piece of paper, those glasses, my keys? And I end up going around the house, trying to re-trace my steps, it takes effort and what a relief when it, the lost thing is found. Here it is! And finding stillness can feel like that I think. It takes concentration and may end up being frustrating and come upon us unexpectedly. A moment to sit and be silent. A moment to appreciate the quiet or the sounds. Stillness isn’t necessarily going to be in silence. There might be quite a lot of noise and activity happening and that stillness is inside. So when we find that lost stillness if it has been lost, then…we have to hold it. The work isn’t over. Hold the stillness. Hold the stillness? How do we do that? For this piece, I think it is good to have silence. It helps to be in a sanctuary. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “Not insulation of place, but independence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock, are a sort of mechanical aids to this, that they are of value. Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred.” For him, these places and elements of nature – the forest, the rock were needed in order to remember and gain insight, divine insight. He goes on to warn the audience not to use solitude to the exclusion of society. Both are needed. We live in the world, in a community, in the public. He says don’t fool yourselves. “You can very soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. Its foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. Then accept the hint of shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which true nature gives you, and retire, and hide; lock the door; shut the shutters; then welcome falls the imprisoning rain, -- dear hermitage of nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. Digest and correct the past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life.” Dear hermitage of nature, dear earth. The stillness of the earth. Emerson doesn’t shy away from saying that there will be perhaps shame – from being too much in the world and letting it rule us. And that we need to accept that shame, that spiritual emptiness and waste, which knowing our true selves can reveal. We do need to know ourselves, our true natures. It is good to remember he wrote this in 1838 and he is speaking to a group of intellectuals, a literary crowd that might really need the reminder to hide and shutter the windows. They might really need to retreat into themselves and deal with what they might find. They needed some silence. And they needed, we all need time to heal. We all need the stillness.

We need to be close to the earth, whether it’s in our backyards, in the mountains, and we need to remember to look up and see the beautiful moon shining down; we need that time. In Nancy Wood’s poem she finds her help in the mountain where she takes herself to heal. And the stream give her comfort and the trees keep her company. By allowing ourselves to be held and becoming a part of the earth - becoming the water, becoming the stone - we can be transformed.


“So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.”

In our Religious Education program, our older children in the Neighboring Faiths class are exploring common ground they have found in the faith traditions they are exploring. They are studying Islam this morning, they went to a service at the Catholic Church and they attended Quaker meeting a few weeks ago. Prayer is common to all three but there is quite a variety of ways to pray. What I immediately thought of was silence – moments of silence in a group, in a service – this is common ground. Or if not silence then stillness. This is what Quaker meeting is all about and is one of the reasons I particularly loved attending. Both because we sat in silence for many minutes, most of an hour usually and because each voice that spoke was valued as coming from an inspired place, coming from a still place. And those words needed to be shared in that moment, that morning with that group of people. And the rest of the people there are holding the stillness in order for them to speak. It’s a relationship. We have our time of silence together at every service. Many would say it’s the most important part for connecting with each other, for connecting with whatever power or energy sustains you. In that moment of stillness, unexpected insights might come in; you might hear your own voice. So we find that stillness, we hold it. And we are holding it for not only ourselves but others. And with all three of these tasks – “tasks of stillness” I’m calling them, a bit of faith is needed. Knowing, hoping you will be able to find some stillness, holding that for yourself, for others around you. And then…and this is the hardest part of all – let the stillness carry me. Let the stillness carry me. Imagine when you are swimming and you turn on your back for a moment and let the water carry you. I actually can’t stay that way for more than a few seconds, I find it very disconcerting! But letting the stillness carry us is again, letting that still, small voice speak.

Muhammad Yunus heard a small voice (or maybe it was a giant voice!) say to him, you can help to end this grueling poverty with just even a dollar of your own money. Give your money to someone who needs it. And if you put your faith in people then, amazing things will happen. He brought an idea to life in 1974 and then thirty-two years later he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His name has become a familiar one but it wasn’t when he began. He was teaching economics in Southern Bangladesh that was devastated by famine. When he began seeing all of the people that began coming to the capital – everyone looked the same. Old and young and they were starving. He couldn’t just go back and teach lofty economic theories in his classes, he needed to understand a poor person’s life and then figure out a solution. Gandhi’s words: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Muhammad Yunus has been called a revolutionary for coupling capitalism with social responsibility. He had many who thought he was crazy for what he was doing. Offering money and loans to people who had nothing? He transformed what economics in rural villages could be. And I know he must have had some moments of stillness, some “Quaker time” as it is sometimes called, where he could listen. And then he had to heed the voice. I think he felt like he had to do something, anything to combat the poverty. And he empowered people by making the money a loan – not with any time frame on paying it back but again, putting his faith in them. He saw them as individuals with the potential to transform their own lives with a little help from him.

And the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. We just celebrated his birthday and we all know that his dream, his vision was and is still a radical one. Yes, all citizens of the United States can vote and yes, our schools are integrated. But the devastation of Hurricane Katrina is a striking reminder that we are far from an equal society. The number of African American men in prison today is staggering. The infant mortality rate for African American children is high and the statistics go on and on. These are hard and overwhelming truths to contemplate. We have to live with them. But we can live with them together. We can talk about what we want to do as a congregation to combat poverty, to lend our dollar to a project or cause, to put our faith in someone. The last hymn we’ll sing today is in honor of his work: “I woke up this morning with my mind, it was stayed on freedom.” Muhammad Yunus knew that he would have an impact, a lasting impact if he gave a dollar to a person that he met in a village in Bangladesh. But I don’t think he was doing it for that reason. I don’t imagine he had any idea that thirty years later he would be accepting the Nobel Peace prize. He did it because it was the right thing to do. When Martin Luther King shared his “I Have a Dream Speech” that day in 1968, I don’t think he knew what might happen but he had to share his dream.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.” He spoke of transforming racism and prejudice and about faith. His faith, his sense of what had to be done, of how the society, this country needed to change, had to change was strong. It had to be!
“This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

It isn’t always clear to me what I should do. What action should I take? Give a donation to this cause? Write a letter to one of my representatives about an issue? There is so much to be done and it feels overwhelming. So I think it’s remembering that the small gestures do matter. Collecting canned goods to donate to the food shelf, volunteering at the teen center or the library, and...you probably know what I’m going to say – finding those moments of stillness and letting them carry you.
“Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me. Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.” There is a stillness when I am out among the pine trees and grasses. The trees sigh in the wind; it gently or vigorously bends their branches. But there is stillness. It’s there. I can let my breath out. (when I remember.) Sometimes when I’m inside a building or in my car, I feel like I am holding my breath. Waiting…always waiting to exhale. It’s as if by exhaling I am letting go and by letting go, things might fall apart? Perhaps. But it’s the letting go that those small voices can speak – that idea that someone might think is crazy or ahead of its time. The revolutionaries began as ordinary people living their lives and became revolutionary because there was something they needed to do and they couldn’t not do it. Muhammad Yunus. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each one of us. Those revolutionary acts of kindness, the willingness to be held, the faith to listen to the voice. Mary Oliver’s familiar words in her poem, The Journey that during a wild night that was already late enough she has to walk away from all the clatter, all of the people demanding her time and attention “and little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.”

In this new year…of remembering and beginning again, let’s remember to cherish any moments of stillness and let them carry us to new places, new awareness. Through the healing found in the mountains and land and earth, let us allow the earth to teach us kindness. Let us allow the stillness to bring us home.

May it be so.


Resources and Readings:

Earth Teach Me
A prayer from the
Ute Indians of North American

My Help Is In the Mountain
by Nancy Wood

The Way of the Heart by Henry J.M. Nouwen, theologian

"I Have a Dream" Speech by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

"Find a Stillness" and "Oh I Woke Up In the Morning", hymns from Singing The Living Tradition

The Journey by Mary Oliver