10.18.15
Opening Words
Our opening words this morning are excerpts from an ancient text called “Thunder, Perfect Mind.” This is a text dated to approximately the second century. It speaks in paradoxical and contradictory phrases in the voice of a divine feminine power.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and the scorned,
I am the harlot and the holy one.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am she who is honored and praised and who is despised scornfully.
I am peace and because of me war has come to be.
And I am an alien and a citizen.
I am substance and she who has no substance.
Give heed, then, listeners,
For I am the one who alone exists,
And I have no one who will judge me.
Come into this space, where this morning we ponder embracing opposites, loosening our hold on just one way of being in the world. It is good to be together.
Sermon
In the play Fiddler on the Roof, there is a scene in which Tevye, the main character, is among a crowd arguing about an issue. After one man makes his argument, Tevye says, “He is right.” Another man makes a counter argument and Tevye comments, “He is right.” A third man reacts: “He’s right and he’s right…?! They can’t both be right!” And Tevye says, “You know, you are also right.”
One could say Tevye is just trying to be a peacemaker, or even a relativist, but perhaps Tevye’s comments model the idea of non-dual consciousness – or, our short-hand for today’s sermon: Both/And.
Here in the West, instead of seeing the world through the lens of Both/And, we tend to be all about Either/Or: right/wrong, good/bad. The stark division in our current two-party political system is the Either/Or mentality driven to its breaking point.
Instead of choosing between two apparent opposites, what if we could do as Catholic spiritual teacher Richard Rohr says and “hold the tension?” He says that holding the tension is when, “you don’t split everything up according to what you like and what you don’t like. You leave the moment open. You let it be what it is in itself and you let it speak to you.”
Other experts at “holding the tension” must be quantum physicists. The Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman said, humorously, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” There is disagreement over whether light is a wave or a particle! Physicists have had to accept that some theories complement each other even when they contradict each other. Feynman said, “The ‘paradox’ is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ‘ought to be.’”
On this subject, Unitarian Universalist minister Bruce Bode emphasizes the difference between truth and consistency:
“Truth is not necessarily consistent, and to be consistent is not necessarily to discern truth…When we find ourselves suffocating, struggling for air, or becoming defensive and rigid or even a little paranoid; perhaps it’s because in our mental outlook we are trying to be too consistent. Perhaps our system needs to breathe a little. It needs a little more air. It needs a little less concern about consistency, and a little more concern about reality…Life is larger than any system that attempts to make sense of it.”
Fanaticism can happen on both the left and the right when we stifle one side of an argument and let the other side have complete control. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
So if you come across something you like that doesn’t quite fit with your current way of thinking, it’s okay, just make another room in the house of your mind.
More realistically, though, most of the time we are already stuck in an either/or way of thinking, so we likely aren’t even open to the possibility we will like something that doesn’t fit with our current system. Instead we should strive to take on a way of being in the world that renders us open to alternatives.
Richard Rohr says that this nondualism – this both/and way of holding the tension – is the best descriptor of higher consciousness. He says, “I’m not [arguing] to change anyone’s beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, or moralities. I’m hoping to change the mind by which you understand these very things.”
The future of our ability to get along in this world hinges on our ability to embrace Both/And. Consider how divided we are: pro-life vs. pro-choice… Israel vs. Palestine… And then there are the seemingly unresolveable dilemmas in our daily lives: “work/life balance” for example, or the question so well articulated by E.B. White who said “Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it.”
Richard Rohr imagines that the wondrous word “AND” can help us navigate seemingly intractable divisions and dilemmas. He says:
“And” keeps us from dualistic thinking
“And” is willing to wait for insight and integration
“And” helps us to live in the always imperfect now
“And” keeps us inclusive and compassionate toward everything
“And” demands that our contemplation become action
“And” insists that our action is also contemplative
“And” heals our racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism
“And” keeps us from the false choice of liberal *or* conservative
“And” allows us to critique both sides of things
“And” allows us to enjoy both sides of things
“And” helps us face and accept our own dark side
“And” allows us to ask for forgiveness and to apologize
“And” does not trust love if it is not also justice
“And” does not trust justice if it is not also love
“And” allows us to be both distinct and yet united
I’ve been talking about this Both/And thinking mostly as related to ideas. It is also related to our very own identities.
Each of us is full of contradiction and paradox. We are strong and weak. We are forgiving and vindictive. We are put together and a total mess.
The poet Walt Whitman got this. In his long poem, “Song of Myself,” he says:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Don’t you just love that…? “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
So what contradictions do you contain?
One of my most cherished memories from my previous ministry as a college chaplain is when I asked that question in our living room to a gathered group of about 30 college students. “What contradictions do you contain?” Their responses poured from them as if they had been dying to tell someone.
We have this morning one very ancient response to that question. The text “Thunder Perfect Mind” – from as early as the second century – embraces the concept of Both/And.
The scholar Elaine Pagels said: “‘Thunder Perfect Mind’ is a marvelous, strange poem. It speaks in the voice of a feminine divine power, but one that unites all opposites. One that is not only speaking in women, but also in all people. One that speaks not only in citizens, but aliens, it says, in the poor and in the rich. It’s a poem which sees the radiance of the divine in all aspects of human life, from the sordidness of the slums of Cairo or Alexandria, as they would have been, to the people of great wealth, from men to women to slaves. In that poem, the divine appears in every, and the most unexpected, forms….”
This is the poem Niki and I have handed out to you this morning, line by line – not the entire poem but excerpts. And I’d invite us to a communal reading of it now.
I want to do a communal reading so as to embody that the multiplicity we are about to hear from the poem is contained in each of us individually – and within this very community – and within our larger world.
So the way this will work is this: When you came in, you may have been given a slip of paper with a sentence on it. If you feel uncomfortable reading that sentence aloud in a moment, no judgment at all – just ask your neighbor if they will read it. It’s okay for one person to read more than one. We’ll start over here and move this direction. I’ll try to guide us. When it seems like your turn, just stand, and read your line of the text with a strong voice and then sit down. …
We are large. We contain multitudes. Let this communal reading help us bring that reality into this space so we can imagine it and live into it.
…[Selected lines from “Thunder, Perfect Mind” read here.]
And I will end our communal reading with these lines from the text:
For what is inside of you is what is outside of you.
And the one who molded you on the outside has made an impression of it inside of you.
And that which you see outside of you,
you see inside of you. It is manifest and it is your garment.
I’d like to close my sermon by hearing from you all with one more optional exercise. You have with you in your order of service a blank piece of paper. I’d like you to consider the question I asked those college students: What contradictions do you contain? This will be anonymous. During the next piece of music, you’ll have a chance to reflect and write. Then I’ll collect the responses and read them aloud, creating our own communal poem.
So, if you are so moved, write your response to the question:
“What contradictions do you contain?”
[What follows are the responses that were created by the congregation and read aloud.]
I am outspoken but I am shy.
I am love and I am fear.
I’m from the south side and from the north side.
I’m here with you now and somewhere else alone.
I am a consumer and a conservationist.
I am found and I am lost.
I compromise and I am dogged.
I am happy and I am sad.
I am aging but I am young.
I am a builder of art and its destroyer.
I am confident and insecure.
I am lightness and darkness.
I am a conservative and a liberal.
I am alone yet one of many.
I am hopeful and I am afraid.
Love lifts me up, Love brings me down.
I am knowledgeable and I am ignorate.
I am venal and I am holy.
I am fluffy and I am an athlete.
I am giving and selfish.
I am whole and incomplete.
I am all knowing. I know nothing at all.
I am movement. I am forced stillness.
I am the parent, and I am the child.
I am wise and I am unwise.
I am strong and weak.
I am love. I am judgment.
I feel better and I feel incomplete.
I am a peacemaker and I am a fierce fighter.
Let us embrace Both/And with courage, wisdom, and patience, holding the tension as we live our way into new ways of being. Amen. Blessed Be.
-Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon