A Sermon Prepared for West Seattle UU Fellowship
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan
January 12, 2002
READING
The reading is from the bible, The Wisdom of Solomon chapter 6:12-16
“Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love
her, and is found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her. One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty for she will be found sitting at the gate. To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care, because she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought.”
Robert Coles Excerpt from a privately published essay on “A Witness to Public Education”
SERMON
The life I have lived has been one of privilege. It has given me great rewards and opportunities, but it has also saddled me with certain blinders and filters. We heard in our reading how the filter of privileged education can affect us, when the distinguished educator Robert Coles humbly described his moment of conversion when he realized that his life experience had blinded him from letting working class students be his teachers. Likewise, we all could easily miss lessons offered us by people who are different from us.
This week there was a photograph taken in Cairo, Egypt.
The picture showed a group of about a dozen people. A middle-aged woman
sits in the center of the picture, on the ground, wearing a long loose fitting cotton dress and with a bandana covering her hair. She is surrounded by about a dozen children of all ages and teen-age boys and girls. A mountain of trash and
garbage surrounds them. Looking at the picture, you can almost smell the garbage, the stench of moldy material and rotten food.
The story said that these are the “garbage” people—the Zabaleen people—those who sort the garbage by hand. They sort it into separate piles of paper, plastic, metal and waste so they can take it to the recyclers. They work for free. They get only what they can scavenge for themselves.
In the picture they are LAUGHING. Not timidly smiling, but laughing with wide open mouths and sparkling eyes. I think if I were there I would want to join in with them.
But how can garbage sorters in Cairo teach ME anything? Me, living in the richest land on earth, and with 22 years of schooling? Several of those 22 years were in fourth grade… Perhaps, just perhaps,
these 22 years have contributed to my ignorance. We are each given a certain fate—a time and family and country to be born into, and we are given our own unique psycho-biology. We don’t control our fate. What we do have control over is our response to it.
The Zabaleen people are of the lowest social and economic status in the world. They sort other people’s garbage in Cairo!! Yet they are LAUGHING. As I imagine their life, I watch my reactions inside of me. I think that I lose my perspective, living in this rich country, of what material needs are required to bring me happiness. But my fate has created high expectations for happiness and success. I ask myself, what basics do I need to feel like laughing? And how can I respond to my fate, how can I live a good, fun and moral life?
The answer is not one answer. Life is complex, which all the more exciting and interesting, and seldom boring.
The Buddha helps us see where to look for the answers when we hear his words that “everyone is our teacher and everyone is doing exactly the right thing to help us learn.” I think he meant that everyone in the world has something to teach you. Sometimes they will teach you by sharing their own unique experiences with you, deepening your perspective on your own life and your vision for your life. But often they will teach you by the triggered reaction within you that, if you are awake, can teach you profound things about yourself.
We don’t have to go looking for teachers, they are all around us offering us their pieces to our life’s puzzle, whether they know it or not. As our reading from Wisdom of Soloman suggested—wisdom graciously appears to us on our path. Lessons are not hidden but are openly given, free for the taking. If we want to learn we need only to make room for them. But our egos get in our way.
There is the story of the old Zen Buddhist monk who received a new student. The young student introduced herself and the master beganpouring tea. The student spoke effusively of her life and of her manyachievements. The master continued to pour tea. As the student talkedon, the tea spilled over the sides of the cup.
“Stop,” said the young woman. “Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
The old master smiled, his eyes twinkling as he replied, “You cannot fill a cup that is already full.”
We can be so full of ourselves. We often want to impress others. In our insecurity we can be more ready to speak than to pay attention.
Pay attention, be alert. That means focusing on the present moment, not on what I wish I had said a moment ago, not on worry about tomorrow.
Worry—now there’s topic on which my family could teach a college course. I come by it honorably through my lineage. And I saw my family in the comics this week.
Even cartoon characters in the paper can teach us, if we pay attention; they can hit us right between the eyes with their messages. It was a cartoon of Gasoline Alley. The wife, Phyllis, my mother’s name, ironically, is worrying about her husband Walt going out for a walk. Walt, you see, is getting a little forgetful, and could get lost. Walt replies:
“Phyllis, worrying is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.”
I need to keep re-learning that lesson, for along with my strength and skill of anticipating issues, I can also worry too much.
But I digressed--I was saying that paying attention and being alert is letting go of the past and letting go of worry for the future; paying attention is about being here NOW. It’s about being awake in the present moment, asking ourselves what is happening NOW, and what does it teach me? What is happening to me inside? The most important lessons are learned by WATCHING OURSELVES. Why am I reacting so strongly? What can I learn about myself if I look at my reactions? As my life is changing, and it is, who am I becoming?
Let me give you a chance to look inside. To see your reaction. It is not a test, your reaction won’t be right or wrong. It will just be. It is a cold day in January in downtown Seattle. You are hurrying to an appointment in the middle of the day. The place is bustling, with busses streaming by, lots of cars and bike couriers making their way through it all. You know you can just make the crossing light at the intersection when you see the people ahead of you are slowing down, separating, going around something. Then you see a shabby man lying on the sidewalk. How do you react? Take a look inside. Do you wonder if he needs help? Do you feel irritated that he is blocking the sidewalk? Do you see a disgusting drunk? Or do you see something else? And what do your reactions tell you about your values and emotions?
That man is your teacher. The most profound teacher is the person who can help you see inside yourself, to see who you are.
Acquaintances
Maybe one of the most difficult but illustrative sources of teaching can come from the person who irritates us, and even angers us.
There are a couple of acquaintances in my life who have both changed careers, but who always introduce themselves as having been a former doctor or former lawyer. It really has started to bug me, after hearing them each say this about a hundred times, and I wonder, why does it bug me? I have to look at my reaction. Is it a reaction to ego elitism or is it jealousy on my part? Why do the words of another person irritate me? Is it because I see myself in them? Do I have to take a look at my ego, and a need make an impression on others? Is there some mirroring of my own insecurity here?
My Boss
Now in regards to people who anger you, I suppose that’s happened to me a time or two. One day when I was still directing Mercer Island Youth
and Family Services, I found myself spouting off angrily about my boss, who
was proposing to reduce our resources. My anger felt out of control. This was
MY AGENCY, I had founded it, built it up, created endowments, long before he
came to town.
When I calmed down long enough to figure out what was happening inside of
me, I looked at my reaction. I realized that it was my old demon of wanting to
be in control of my territory. I was used to a great deal of independence from
previous bosses, and the limits being placed on me by this new boss were
tapping into my rebellion—something I didn’t do enough of as a child. He had
a right to present his vision. He was my boss. Could I let go of holding so
tightly to the reigns? I can hear my dad speaking through me. “Life isn’t fair.
I’m not getting my share.” And I think, do I really want to go there, to be
looking through my day for when life is fair and when it is not? Am I so sure
that my way is the right way? People with whom we are in conflict can be our
most profound teachers if we look at and own our reactions to them.
Norma
Our elders can be wonderful teachers. One woman in my life who teaches me is Norma. Norma is eighty-one years old. She is married to my husband’s stepfather, Bud. He’s ninety-one, and due to being diabetic, he has only one leg, and spends most of his time in his wheel chair. They live in a mobile home in Everett.
They don’t have much in material possessions. Norma lives to delight in taking care
of Bud. For the last two years she has been receiving various treatments for lung
cancer. Every week we take her for chemo or CAT scans. And I notice that she is
slowing down. I never hear her complain. Every day that she gets to get out of bed
and fix Bud his favorite food is another precious gift of a day. She is always cheerful
and grateful. She is my teacher. When I am around her I notice that I feel more cheerful. But more importantly, perhaps, she does help me look at my own fears of prolonged disease and my concerns about whether I will die a good death, in good relationship with those I love. And I remember to be grateful for each day that I am given to rise for work and play and loving. Norma is my teacher.
Dr. Nash
We find teachers in good art –paintings, dance and music, written word and
Movies. Art creates space in us—space to laugh, to mourn, and to wonder who and how and why we are. And we learn from the characters in novels and movies as we watch how they react to the happenings of their lives. I see a lot of movies. One character who fascinated me was Dr. John Nash, in A Beautiful
Mind, the Princeton professor of math who suffered from mental illness. He said towards the end of the movie that he had spent his life looking through mathematical equations for logic and reason, and that he had struggled with physical and metaphysical and psychological madness, and indeed we watched his struggles on the screen--but he said his most important discovery was that it is …in the mysterious equations of love that logical reasons can be found.
When he said, it really moved me. Why, I wonder. My reaction shows that I am a romantic. That I find love mysterious and not always
logical, sometimes frustrating and always needed. That I am fascinated by paradox-- in this case the paradox that sharing our love with others—friends, family, lovers--is both an indefinable, unequatable experience and a reason for living. Indefinable….and reasonable. I love it!
CONCLUSION
Children and elders, people in the news, acquaintances and bosses, comic and movie characters…Doesn’t it make life exiting and fascinating—knowing that there are so many teachers? Doesn’t it make the people in our lives more precious knowing that they offer pieces to the on-going creation of our lives, and we to them?
Rabbi Laurence Kushner, in his book Living a Life That Matters, writes that
“Each lifetime is [made up of] the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. For some, there
are more pieces. For others, the puzzle is more difficult to assemble. But know
this: you do not have within yourself all the pieces to your puzzle. Everyone
carries with them at least one and probably many pieces to someone else’s
puzzle. Sometimes they know it; sometimes they don’t know it. And when you
present your piece, … to another, whether you know it or not, whether they
know it or not, you are a messenger from the Most High.”
So this is where God gets into it. God, or the Spirit of Life, or the Interdependent Web as we Unitarian Universalists call it. Whether planned by some cosmic consciousness or the result of a mysterious equation of evolution, we are all dependent and affected profoundly by each other. We are all part of something greater. People are learning from you and you from them. The reactions we have to each other are messages, rich in wisdom, for how to live a good, fun, and moral life.
Are you aware of the people in your life--who are offering you lessons in wisdom? Who are your teachers?
As you walk the paths of your life, there will be people who graciously appear to teach you, if you are open to their wisdom, if you slow down, pay attention, reflect on your reactions, and be present to yourself. Their lessons are not hidden but are openly given. Free for the taking. Everyone is your teacher. This I believe.