“Paying Attention to the Surprises of Life”

A Sermon by Peg Morgan
August 6, 2000

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet … “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.1

I love breakfast and I love mornings. One summer morning after I finished my breakfast I took my cup of dark roast coffee out onto the back deck of my former capital hill home, enjoying the aroma of the coffee as much as the taste. As I usually did, I looked out beyond my yard, over the tops of the evergreen trees, over the houses on the hill below my home. It was a pleasant view that I relied on, though something drew my eyes downward, to my empty flowerbed.

Life had been too busy to plant flowers, with theological school classes and my full time job. And yet my eyes focused on a surprising sight. Standing proudly on a tall, green, branch-less stem, a flower was closed tight. Where did the flower come from, standing there like a solo act in the midst of a big empty, brown flower bed? When did it come? That’s when it happened. While I gazed, the flower, like time lapse photography, opened its petals until it was smiling at me; now bright yellow and two inches wide! I caught my breath, transfixed for a few moments as the flower opened. Oh my God! A flower just opened before my eyes! I was touched by wonder and awe. It was life opening up to me.

Later I would seek to figure it out…what kind of flower was it? I knew flowers opened over a period of hours and days, but to see it opening within a few seconds of time, putting on its proud show for me. Is there an explanation? hummmm. I got out my Sunset Western Garden Book and identified it. Walla! A morning primrose! Now I understand, I can name what it is! We UU's are so good at reasoning and intellectually figuring things out.

But figuring things out in our heads is not the whole of life. What I want to talk about this morning, is the first few moments of being surprised by connection with life. Those moments before we start categorizing and labeling things, the moments when we feel intimate with life, before we start thinking and analyzing. These moments are the moments when we witness the essence of and feel kindred to some part of life. Moments of awe. Moments of being surprised by joy, and we all have them, whether we call ourselves humanist, mystic, atheist or god-fearing…We would explain them and understand them with different words, but the experience of unexpected moments of joy is one we hold in common.

I know that I wouldn’t be talking to you about this subject if it didn’t have some important relevance to my life. I just retired on March 1st from a career that was very demanding--where I set goals, worked at objectives, and achieved success. I was pretty good at orchestrating and being responsible. But being so busy and in charge meant I would miss some moments of joy.

Being in charge was something I probably began to crave early in life. I came from a family that loved and wanted me, but we had our problems. Mom was hard working, and kept us fed and safe. In spite of the fact that my Irish father struggled to find his way economically, he shared a great sense of Irish humor his whole life long, even up to the day before he died. I inherited his humor. He also taught me that it is never too late to tackle a difficult problem, as I watched him successfully complete alcohol treatment at age 70.

I became a woman who was focused, and who took responsibility, which is good; this has served me well. The downside of such a directed life is that it probably kept me from noticing and enjoying some of the special things going on around me.

I'm at a stage of life now that I can pay more attention to the surprise gifts of connection that are in my everyday life, IF I open my eyes, take time, and pay attention. When I let go of orchestrating life too tightly, when I stay alert to the possibility of deepening experiences, then life, as the flower, opens itself to me.

And I'm noticing that there are many paths to these moments of joy. I'd like to share three paths that have been meaningful to me.

The first path is the unexpected encounter with a stranger. One evening I went to Cucina Presto on Mercer Island, seeking the pleasure of eating my favorite Asian Chicken Salad before going off to an evening meeting. I sought also an hour of quiet before jumping back into the fray. I was in theological school at the time, and in the middle of my Independent Study on Islam. A major part of the study was the reading of the entire Koran. It is a fine looking book, with gold etchings in intricate patterns. On one side, in the middle of the decorations, it says: The Holy Koran. The other side just had gold decorations.

I anticipated getting a few more pages read over my Asian Chicken. I walked up to the counter to order, placing the Koran face down. Now why did I do that? Have you ever turned over a novel so others wouldn't see what you were reading, or put one of those knitted book covers on a book before going on an airplane? Maybe I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I was reading the Koran. Maybe I just wanted a little anonymity or invisibility before going on to a meeting.

Standing there at the counter was a tall, lanky, dark skinned young man. He immediately became animated. "You are reading THE BOOK!" he said, excitedly. "Excuse me?" I said. "You are reading the Koran." How did he know that, I wondered. Then I looked down and realized that the decoration on the underside of the book, which I had strategically faced up, was actually no vague decoration, but the Arabic letters spelling out Koran.

He would soon join me at my table. "The Koran is my Holy Book," he said with his eyes smiling. I realized that he was having a moment of communion with me, surprised to discover a connection with his faith, right in the middle of his restaurant. He asked me how I liked the Koran, which caused me to fast forward through my memory of repeated descriptions of social and inheritance rules and improved protections for widowers and orphans, descriptions of heaven and hell…I told him I found it interesting. "What is interesting?" he asked. "There are many rules spelled out in it, and repeated over and over. Do you agree with all of them?" I said. "Yes," he replied without hesitation. He began sharing with me his belief in the revelation to the prophet Mohammed by Allah. He was eager to share the comfort the Koran and its teachings brings him and the guidance it provides his life. He spoke about how he stores up his required prayers until he gets home, and of how he should not look me in the eyes out of respect for me. Like the morning primrose, he just opened up as I showed interest in his faith.

It was exciting for me to talk with him, to put flesh to what I had been reading. But more than the content of what we were saying, for me there was also a non verbal experience, the feeling of spirit connection, a spiritual intimacy that came from his sharing of what guided and motivated his daily life.

I'm glad he could read Arabic, and I realize that had I truly been successful in covering up the fact that I was reading the Koran, I would have missed hearing his story. Encounters with strangers require some revealing of oneself, some taking of risks, and some paying attention to the opportunity for a common receptive opening. This is the path to joyful surprise through an unexpected moment of meaningful connection with a stranger.

A second path to surprising joy is an unexpected moment of active compassion. A friend of mine was in a grocery store recently, and heard the breaking of a bottle. A little boy had dropped a glass bottle of Western Family vegetable oil that he was hurriedly carrying to his mother’s cart, still a couple aisles away. The boy looked at the pool of yellow, slick oil and pieces of sharp, broken glass. His face was stricken. His eyes were opened round and wide like saucers, and his head hung low. A store clerk approached, and in an uncharitable mood, asked abruptly “Who did this?” My friend, a man in his early sixties, spoke up and said “I did.” The boy’s eyes met my friend’s. For a brief moment they connected. The clerk mumbled, “Oh” and began to clean up the mess. My friend feels that he received a gift of grace that day--the experience of drawing close to another life. It was a unexpected encounter, an opportunity soon over, but with lasting meaning. The connection between the little boy and my friend was deep because the boy was surprised by someone reaching out to him, understanding his powerless plight. This path to joyful surprise is the path of active compassion.

A third path I find to surprising joy is the path of communion with nature. My experience with the flower was one of these. Many of us have experienced the joy of being in the woods and suddenly finding ourselves looking into the eyes of a deer. The deer looks at us for a moment, and then darts away, as if the deer is caught in the initial experience of connection and then starts thinking this might not be safe.

Back in the 80's, I had a surprise experience of communion with nature and with my heritage. I went with my family to Ireland. We had a great time going through castles, climbing hills, listening to authentic Irish fiddle music, and meeting relatives we hadn’t known. One day we approached the Cliffs of Moher, on the West Coast. It is a popular stop that attracts lots of tourists. So many that people make their living catering to the tourists, like the donkey with the Irish pipe in his mouth, waiting for you to pay to have your picture taken with him! We walked past the donkey, down the path to the cliffs. I wasn’t expecting much.

I looked over the cliffs. Thousands of birds were soaring up and down the mile deep cliff, each singing their song. The waves of the ocean pounded the cliffs with enormous power. Together the songs and the waves, created a symphony of sounds. I stood there a long time, with slow tears running down my face, feeling a part of it all. The moment spoke to me of the most spiritual and sacred part of being surprised by joy. The part before we start thinking about it! We humans survive by thinking, by categorizing things--as to whether they are good or bad; should I run? should I stay? As I stood there, I didn't think. I just was. I just experienced. I will never be able to find words to fully describe my experience there on the west coast of Ireland. I had stopped just to look at another tourist site, but instead I was given a deep connection to the Irish land.

These moments of being surprised by joy are best left free of being corralled by words. This path to joyful surprise is the path of mystical connection in nature.

As I journey on in life, I am learning that the illusion of control is just that, an illusion. Control is both less possible and sometimes less desirable. I appreciate the surprises of life, the unexpected moments of joy that are there each day if I pay attention. Are these moments merely pleasurable interludes in our day? No, they are more than mere pleasure. My friend in the grocery store experienced feeling what the boy felt. He was connected; he could feel the little boy’s anguish and fear. At the Cliffs of Moher I felt the harmonies of the energy of the birds and the ocean. I was a part of Ireland. These are spiritual moments that offer us the experience of being connected and a part of what we UUs call the Interdependent Web of All Existence. This Interdependent Web, our seventh principle, does not just mean the known food chain. It speaks to all parts of earth and its life forms as being made of the same star stuff. It speaks to the possibility of the Gaia Hypothesis which suggests that the earth is a living organism and all of us and the other life forms are part of the living earth. If these moments of joy are meaningful, it may be because they are moments in which our spirits feel the connection with the web of life, with our common rootage in a common Spirit.

Contemporary Zen Buddhist mystic and author Ken Wilbur would weigh into this conversation by saying that what is going on in these moments of feeling connected is a remembering of who we are, of remembering that we are part of a greater spirit or consciousness. Wilbur goes on to tell us the essential concept of the major mystical traditions, that certain times in our lives we get glimpses of being united with what he calls “unity consciousness” something greater than ourselves alone. Wilbur would describe the moment of unity when the morning primrose opened as the time before I try to understand it, before I look it up in a garden book. He says “It’s what you know before you know anything else, what you see before you see anything else, what you are before you are anything else.” And he would recall from his own experiences that in those moments, the burdens and worries of his life didn’t matter, his troubles weren’t present to him. Which is exactly what one of our own members shared with me earlier this week, when we were talking about mystical experiences. He described a time as a teenager when he was out near his home at the banks of a wood mill pond, with vegetation and birds all around. Despite having plenty to worry about in that time of his life, on that day he felt connected to all that was there, and he remembers the absence of worry. No worry about how to afford school clothes, no weariness from picking the current farming crop. Rather, a wonderful sense of lightness and of being a part of all the singing birds, the green trees and pond grass.

As we heard in our reading, Vaclav Havel would tell us that these moments are more than today’s pleasures. These moments should instruct us to live our lives respectful of our relationship with all of life. He reminds us that:

We are part of a greater whole…The only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of certainty that we are rooted in the earth and at the same time the cosmos. This awareness allows us the capacity for self transcendence.

I invite you to travel your days with your eyes wide open for special transcendent moments of life—call them mystical, or call them spiritual, or call them connection. It doesn’t matter what you call them, or exactly how you explain them. They are ours to treasure. They are all around us, ready to surprise us with joy.

Like Pooh I wake in the morning and anticipate breakfast. Like Piglet, I wonder what exciting thing will happen to me today.

1Benjamin Hoff, Tao of Pooh, page ix

Ken Wilbur, No Boundaries