SERMON: "The Riddle of the Holy"
Rev. Paul Beedle
July 30, 2006
MEDITATION: “That Which Holds All,” by Nancy Shaffer
SERMON: “The Riddle of the Holy”
Robert Frost wrote a little poem that I love, but have had a hard time remembering correctly. It goes: “We dance `round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” For the longest time, I kept misquoting it as: “We sit `round in a ring and suppose...” – I had everybody sitting, us and the secret, too. Now when your subconscious gives you a hint... I'm going to begin this morning by talking about dancing.
I have two personal stories for you about dancing. One is that, about 7 or 8 years ago, I enrolled – with the woman I was then dating – in a ballroom dance class. It was wonderful dancing with her, because she's a very kinesthetic person, very at home in her body and graceful and confident about how to move in it. Her experience was a little more frustrating, because I don't have that kind of confident relationship with my body, and I was always trying to figure out in my head how the dance was supposed to go rather than just doing it and learning how to flow in it together with her. She took to placing her hand over my heart and saying “move from here.” Sometimes she would place her hand on my forehead first and say: “Come down.” – then, moving her hand to my heart, she'd say: “Move from here.” She had it exactly right, and when I followed her in this, I could lead her and flow with her in the dance. In time we even found the courage to go dancing together outside of class!
My second dancing story is that, in seminary, I took a class called “Theokinetics.” “Theokinetics.” It was about using dance – and through it, tapping our kinesthetic knowing and our non-linear thinking – as a way of interpreting scripture. We did a lot of movement exercises to become more aware of our physical selves, and we did a lot of right-brain stuff including drawing with crayons. We read some things about multiple intelligences theory. And all the while, over a period of 8 weeks or so, we were each meditating on a text we had chosen for ourselves at the beginning, on a couple of occasions taking a word or phrase from it to explore – literally – how it moved us. Toward the end of the course we led a chapel service for the seminary community, in which some of us took turns presenting our finished dances. A small percussion ensemble improvised music according to what they saw us doing. When my turn came, the experience was extraordinary. I had chosen the passage about Elijah seeing God not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in the sound of fine silence (sometimes it's rendered “the still small voice”). So I had been practicing how to move like the wind and the earthquake and the fire and the fine silence. When I danced in that chapel service, all I can say is that the text changed under my feet. It seemed to me I was dancing not Elijah looking for God on the mountainside, but something more like the episode just before that, where Elijah battles the prophets of Baal in a burnt offering contest. When I was done, it took some minutes of hard breathing to get my breath back, I had danced so energetically. It was as if some other breath, or spirit, had gotten hold of my dance, and there it was, not quite as I'd planned it or imagined it, shaped in part by the improvised conversation between me and the musicians, connected and authentic and powerful and flowing in a safe channel that afforded it expression and meaning that all present seemed to appreciate. I came away from that experience convinced that no such thing would have happened without those 8 or so weekly blocks of time spent with about a dozen other students and an able leader, sharing the experience of exploring our kinesthetic selves and growing to appreciate and trust one another in this non-linear, unexplored spiritual territory.
So ... if the holy is a riddle, is dancing `round in a ring the answer? Part of the elegance of Frost's couplet is that he puts us in motion – dancing – while the secret is still, quiet, sitting in the middle: the sound of fine silence, the still small voice. Our figurative dancing doesn't bring us direct knowledge of that silent stillness. And I'm not about to say that my personal experiences with actual dancing contained any insight into the riddle of the Holy. But thinking back on them, in connection with Frost's little verse, they give me insight into how I relate to that riddle and what kind of ring dance we do around it together in religious community.
It was our opening hymn that inspired me to speak of the holy as a riddle this morning. When the hymnbook commission made their editorial decision to have every hymn's title be its first line, they made a riddle out of this hymn. They probably wanted to save paper and ink in the indexes in the back. But the hymn's original title put its verses in a context, which named the “it” :
It sounds along the ages, Soul answering to soul;
It kindles on the pages Of every Bible scroll;
The psalmist heard and sang it, From martyr lips it broke,
The prophet tongues out-rang it Till sleeping nations woke.
(This could be in The Hobbit, you know?)
From Sinai's cliffs it echoed, It breathed from Buddha's tree,
It charmed in Athens' market, It hallowed Galilee;
The hammer stroke of Luther, The Pilgrims' seaside prayer,
The Oracles of Concord One holy word declare.
It calls-and lo, new justice! It speaks-and lo, new truth!
In ever nobler stature And unexhausted youth.
Forever on resounding, And knowing nought of time,
Our laws but catch the music Of its eternal chime.
What is it? William Channing Gannett's title for this hymn was: “The Thought of God.”
By the way, the original poem did not mention “the Oracles of Concord” – a reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his circle. It referred instead to “the testament of Torda” – meaning the 16th-century Transylvanian proclamation of religious toleration that said “every orator shall preach the gospel by his own (personal) conception, at any place if that community is willing to accept him ... because faith is God's gift born from hearing and this hearing is conceived by the word of God.” Emerson's message wasn't so very different. In the Divinity School Address he admonished ministers to preach from their own life's experience; during his ministry he preached on “the Heaven of a common life” and believed in a universal truth that we discover in “Conversation” through our differing perspectives; and in a sermon on “Self and Others” [1] he said: “We never converse without seeking ... to find ourselves in each other ... Especially as [we] are good do [we] understand each other, for then the spirit of God in [us] is less and less disguised and [we] feel that [we] are inspired by one soul.”
“The Thought of God.” Remember Nancy Shaffer's story in this morning's meditation? All those names for and phrases to describe God? One after another after another? Tongue loosened, she found she couldn't stop, and as she went on, and as she dared to speak, to risk, no one laughed, the room was silent, and others began to offer names, to speak, to risk. “And then, there wasn't any need to say the things she'd thought would be important to say, and everyone sat hushed, until someone said Amen.” Why did “she” start this? “Because she wanted everyone to feel included in her prayer.” And as she let go, although it wasn't going as she imagined – as she responded sensitively to what was happening in that moment, her prayer became their prayer also. And everyone sat hushed to hear the sound of fine silence. I wonder: did this really happen, or did it come from Nancy's imagination? Was she, or did she imagine herself, in the pulpit? Or was she that someone in the pews who said “Amen” – who was attuned to that gathering and felt when the fine silence was complete? Or was she a passive witness to this miracle? I can imagine it in any of those ways.
How do we have a conversation about something we have sometimes so much and sometimes so little trouble naming? I draw four lessons from my experience with dancing.
First: it's important to practice. It's because we went to several weeks of ballroom dance classes that I became able to stop thinking about the steps and just follow them. It's because we had 8 or so weeks of practice with movement and non-linear, right-brain activity that we could produce a powerful and affecting chapel service with improvised dance and music. Regular practice builds skill, trust and courage. If we want to be good at talking about the Holy, it's important to practice.
Second: it's necessary to get out of our heads, out of our left-brain, linear habits of thought, and [touch chest] move from here. Compassionate engagement with one another is essential when we can't agree on one way of talking about the Holy. “If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.” And, “we need not think alike to love alike.”
Third: it's important to move together, to respond to one another. When we followed the form of the dance – waltz, tango, marengue, whatever – and we moved from the heart, and we responded to each other when we moved, it just flowed and brought us a deeply-felt joy. When the musicians responded to our movement in that chapel service, and we responded to their sound, the dance took on a new shape that we created together – and all who witnessed that moment and shared that energy played a part and gained something of value. It's important to move together and respond to one another.
And fourth: It's important to feel safe enough together to risk, and to risk only when it feels safe. We had several weeks of dance class behind us before we went ballroom dancing in public. We spent 8 weeks exploring and sharing and building trust before we were ready to lead an improvisational chapel service, and it took us a few weeks to get comfortable enough to risk looking silly to one another in class. Without that sense of safety, either experience might have felt embarrassing, even painful. It's important to feel safe enough together to risk, and to risk only when it feels safe.
There are ways to meet all four of these conditions in our congregational life together. Our covenant groups program, for example, is designed to provide these four conditions that help us so much to speak of and share the Holy together: regular practice, engaging one another from the heart, moving together in response to one another, and establishing a healthy balance of safety and risk. Other programs might equally serve, if we are attentive to creating these conditions.
So in answer to my own question: yes, I do think that dancing `round in a ring and supposing – or even just sitting `round in a ring and supposing – is the answer to getting near to that mysterious secret, that fine silence, that still small voice, the Holy. The powerful spiritual practice of deep listening and compassionate engagement enriches our inner lives, our life together as a faith community, and our engagement with the wider world. And it can help us to see the Holy in each other.
My friend and colleague Ned Wight ends all of his sermons, saying: “So may it always be, Shalom, Blessed Be, Insha'allah, Aho, Namaste, Amen.” Anyone have something to add?
[pause]
Hallelujah! And let the people say: Amen.
[1] All three of these titles were supplied by an editor, not by Emerson himself; to Emerson they were sermons #37, 52 and 104, respectively (preached 8, 2, and 6 times, respectively).