SERMON: "The Spiritual Rodeo"
Rev. Paul Beedle
March 16, 2008
How is spiritual practice like a rodeo?
(With the annual Houston Rodeo upon us, I couldn't resist the metaphor.)
The first likeness between a rodeo and spiritual practice is that they both arise from a need to practice useful skills. Rodeo events – especially roping and horse-riding competitions – derive from the working practices of herding cattle. Roping was a necessary skill so that herders could immobilize a calf or steer in order to brand it or provide it veterinary care. Skillful horse-riding is how you got close enough to rope it. And the horse was more than transportation: the horse was a partner in calf-roping. One end of the rope is around the calf's neck, the other is tied to the saddle. The horse was trained to hold the rope taut so the calf wouldn't get loose while the cowboy tried to tie its legs to immobilize it.
The partnership of horse and rider is another likeness between a rodeo and spiritual practice. The horse needs to be trained for the work, and more fundamentally, the horse needs to be friendly to its rider. It needs to be willing to be ridden in the first place. Another rodeo event – bronc riding – is supposed to be about that aspect of the partnership. Of course, in today's rodeos, the bucking bronco is not actually a wild horse, but often is bred and trained to perform in bronc riding events. But the origin of the event is in the work of cattle herding, which required tamed and trained horses. What's this got to do with spiritual practice? There's a Chinese proverb that goes: “A man in a passion rides a wild horse.” We are complex creatures, we human beings. When we try any form of self-discipline, the many parts of us need to be aligned: mind, heart, body, spirit. And most fundamentally, we've got to be willing to accept the discipline. Inevitably, some part of us rebels: our minds are distracted, our hearts aren't in it, our bodies get uncomfortable, our spirits get tired. When that happens in spiritual practice, as in the rodeo, the partnership of all those parts of us needs to be held together for the sake of the practice and its benefits.
In her book, Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this:
“The truth is, I don't think I'm good at meditation. ...I can't seem to get my mind to hold still. I mentioned this once to an Indian monk, and he ... quoted to me from the Bhagavad Gita, ... `Oh Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding ... as difficult to subdue as the wind.' ... Like most [of us], I am burdened with what Buddhists call the `monkey mind' – the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is ... that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in this moment. ... But to stay in the present moment requires dedication to one-pointed focus. Different meditation techniques teach one-pointedness in different ways – for instance, by focusing your eyes on a single point of light, or by observing the rise and fall of your breath ... [or] with the help of a mantra, sacred words or syllables to be repeated in a focused manner. ... Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with. Something healthier. ... Like love... [A] monk told me, `The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.'” [1]
In the middle section of the book, she recounts her time studying meditation in an Indian Ashram, a community devoted to spiritual practice. She had a very hard time calming her mind in meditation. She experienced her mind as not so much a chattering monkey, as an adversary. It just didn't want to submit to meditation's discipline of quiet listening. She describes a breakthrough, when she at last tamed her bucking bronco mind:
“When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being – and a normal one, at that? The thoughts came up as usual – OK, so it will be – and then the attendant emotions rose, too. I began feeling frustrated and judgmental about myself, lonely and angry. But then a fierce response boiled up from somewhere in the deepest caverns of my heart, and I told myself, `I will not judge you for these thoughts.' My mind tried to protest ... But suddenly it was like a lion was roaring from within my chest... And this is what it roared: `You have no idea of how strong my love is!' The chattering, negative thoughts in my mind scattered in the wind of this statement like birds and jackrabbits and antelopes... Silence followed. An intense, vibrating, awed silence. The lion in the giant savannah of my heart surveyed his newly quiet kingdom with satisfaction. He licked his great chops once, closed his yellow eyes and went back to sleep. And then, in that regal silence, finally – I began to meditate...” [2]
Now that she had found that partnership of heart and mind that enabled her to meditate – now that horse and rider were a team – she could move on to more complex teamwork, like moving from bronc riding to calf-roping, shifting the focus from taming the horse to training it to help with the work. This was more challenging. She writes:
“The biggest obstacle in my Ashram experience is not meditation ... [but] a chant called the Gurugita. ... I do not like it at all, never have... I love all the other chants and hymns of this Yogic tradition, but the Gurugita feels long, tedious, sonorous and insufferable. ... The Gurugita is 182 verses long ... and each verse is a paragraph of impenetrable Sanskrit. Together with the preamble chant and the wrap-up chorus, the entire ritual takes about an hour and a half to perform. ... The Gurugita is basically the reason you have to get up at 3:00am around here. ... Like much of Yogic scripture, it's written in the form of a conversation, an almost Socratic dialogue. The conversation is between the goddess Parvati and the almighty, all-encompassing god Shiva. ... She is the generative energy of the universe; he is its formless wisdom. Whatever Shiva imagines, Parvati brings to life. ... In the Gurugita, the goddess is asking the god for the secrets of worldly fulfillment, and he is telling her. It bugs me, this hymn. I had hoped my feelings about the Gurugita would change ... that putting it in an Indian context would cause me to learn how to love the thing. In fact, the opposite has happened. Over the few weeks that I've been here, my feelings about the Gurugita have shifted from simple dislike to solid dread. I've started skipping it and doing other thing with my morning that I think are much better for my spiritual growth, like writing in my journal, or taking a shower...” [3]
She eventually buckled down and committed herself to chant the Gurugita with the Ashram community every morning, whether she wanted to or not. It was not fun. It was a chore. The hour and a half seemed unending every single morning. And then one day, she discovered how much her determination had grown to master this practice and get something out of it. Here's how it happened:
“I woke up only minutes before the Gurugita was to begin, motivated myself reluctantly to get out of bed, splashed some water on my face, dressed ... only to find that my roommate had left the room before me and had locked me in. ... My first thought was: If there were ever a good excuse not to go to the Gurugita, this would be it. My second thought? Well – it wasn't even a thought. It was an action. I jumped out the window. To be specific, I crawled outside over the railing, gripping it with my sweaty palms and dangling there from two stories up over the darkness for a moment... Then I let go and dropped backward maybe twelve or fifteen feet through the dark air to the concrete sidewalk below, hitting something on the way down that peeled a long strip of skin off my right shin, but I didn't care. I picked myself up and ran barefoot, my pulse slamming in my ears, all the way to the temple, found a seat, opened up my prayer book just as the chant was beginning and – bleeding down my leg the whole while – I started to sing the Gurugita. ... I sat there, singing and bleeding and thinking that it was maybe time for me to change my relationship with this particular spiritual practice. The Gurugita is meant to be a hymn of pure love, but something had been stopping me short from offering up that love in sincerity. So as I chanted each verse I realized that I needed to find something – or somebody – to whom I could devote this hymn, in order to find a place of pure love within me. By Verse Twenty, I had it: Nick. Nick, my nephew, is an eight-year-old boy ... a child for whom life is never simple, a child who hears and sees and feels everything intensely, a child who can be overcome by emotion so fast sometimes that it unnerves us all. I love this boy so deeply and protectively. I realized ... that it was nearing his bedtime back home. So I sang the Gurugita to my nephew Nick, to help him sleep. Sometimes he has trouble sleeping because he cannot still his mind. So each devotional word of this hymn, I dedicated to Nick. I filled the song with everything I wished I could teach him about life. I tried to reassure him with every line about how the world is hard and unfair sometimes, but that it's all OK because he is so loved. He is surrounded by souls who would do anything to help him. And not only that – he has wisdom and patience of his own, buried deep inside his being, which will only reveal themselves over time and will always carry him through any trial. He is a gift from God to all of us. I told him this fact through this old Sanskrit scripture, and soon I noticed that I was weeping cool tears. But before I could wipe the tears away the Gurugita was over. The hour and a half was finished. It felt like ten minutes had passed.” [4]
And here's a third way that spiritual practice is like a rodeo: let's say you rope the calf the fastest and win the event. Do you always rope the calf the fastest? No. But you know you can. Even if you haven't ever won the event, you know how to rope a calf, and you know from practice what are the hard parts for you. You know where you lost time. You know how well the horse is cooperating. You know the difference between when the horse needs more training, and when you do. And if you find yourself herding cattle, and the need arises to brand or care for a calf, you'll respond more confidently because of your practice for the event.
Did you know that the rodeo is the official state sport of Texas? Are you surprised?
Did you know that spiritual practice is essential to faith? Are you surprised?
The events in the spiritual rodeo are as diverse and as interrelated as those in the rodeo rodeo. There's meditation, there's prayer, there's deep listening, there's dialogue, there's various forms of leadership, there's service in the world, and more. And just as some folks are cut out for calf roping, and others for barrel racing, and so on, so with spiritual practices. We have gifts for them, or not, just like we have for anything else. But each one is related to one or another of the working practices of our lives. Different practices help us in different ways. So it's good to explore and try them out, even when your mind gets in the way, or your heart isn't in it, or your body aches, or your spirit is tired. Because when the need arises in your life to use the skills of one-pointed focus or heartfelt expression or listening or dialogue or leadership or service, you'll respond more confidently, knowing how it's done and what's most challenging for you.
May each of us discover an event in the spiritual rodeo in which we excel, and may we remain open to trying out new events that can help us to grow and to live. So may it be. Amen.
[1] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, pp. 131-2, 141.
[2] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, pp. 157-158.
[3] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, pp. 161-162.
[4] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, pp. 167-169.