Stones in the Path

A Sermon Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette

May 15, 2005

By the Reverend Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Readings
 

Venerable Pannyavaro

How to do walking meditation:
Establish your attentiveness by first noting the standing posture and the touch sensations of the feet at the start. (You will need to find a walking path with a level surface from five to ten metres on which to walk back and forth). The arms should hang naturally with the hands lightly clasped in front. Allow the eyes to gaze at a point about two metres in front of you on the ground to avoid visual distractions. Then as you walk keep the attention on the sole of the foot, not on the leg or any other part of the body.

For the first five minutes you can note just three parts of the step: 'lifting', 'pushing', 'dropping'. Then mentally note or label each step part by part building up the noting to its six component parts: 'raising', 'lifting', 'pushing', 'dropping', 'touching' and 'pressing' - concurrent with the actual experience of the movement.

While walking and noting the parts of the steps you will probably find the mind still thinking. Not to worry, keep focused on the noting of the steps if the thoughts are experienced just as 'background thoughts'. However, it you find you have been walking 'lost in thought' you must stop and vigorously note the thinking as 'thinking', 'thinking', 'thinking'. Then re-establish your attention on the movement and carry on. Also be careful that the mental noting does not become so mechanical that you lose the experience of the movement. 

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
 

Sermon

If you can walk, then you can dance…..

Laurie Anderson said:

You're walking. And you don't always realize it, but you're always falling. With each step you fall forward slightly. And then catch yourself from falling. Over and over, you're falling. And then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.

That’s how the song went.  That idea -- the idea that as we are walking we are catching ourselves from falling over and over – now that’s an interesting idea.  It’s powerful – it makes our walking sort … an achievement.  Walking is a balancing act, a skill – I have been watching Daphne Fay, Sarah Boulac’s baby, learning to stand and walk.  I see the pleasure and sense of achievement on Daphne’s face when she stands for a moment on her own and then down – boomp – she goes – onto that merciful padding of diaper that protects her.  She realizes what Laurie Anderson said: You're walking. And you don't always realize it, but you're always falling. With each step you fall forward slightly. And then catch yourself from falling. Over and over, you're falling. And then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.
 

This is the reality of righting yourself – or as the dictionary calls it -- regaining an upright or proper position.  When I am watching Daphne, I’m excited for her – I’m cheering inside for her.  I’m happy for her accomplishment and as one of the upright, I’m feeling this sense of welcome for her.  It’s awesome – gravity-defying.  When I went to Stonehill College in Easton Massachusetts to study with Thich Nhat Hanh, I studied walking meditation.  I felt a little like Daphne must feel.  Practicing walking meditation sounds so easy – you just walk slowly paying attention to your walking and your breathing.  But it’s not so easy.  Thich Nhat Hanh says the real miracle is not walking on water but walking here on the earth.  When you slow down your walking you become intimately aware of all the elements that go into it.  I found myself wobbly, uneven, it took a while to figure out inside all those steps that Elizabeth shared earlier -- 'raising', 'lifting', 'pushing', 'dropping', 'touching' and 'pressing'. And then to master them all while walking slowly and calmly – it was like finding myself dragged out onto the dance floor in a light drenched bar and having the music for a line dance start.  Not me baby – not me.   We have to have many basic skills to live and walking is one of them.  It’s a moment by moment victory over gravity.  And for some that is more than enough – for those who never gain or have to regain the use of their limbs… it would be more than enough.
  

Last week we were talking about Buddhism and the eightfold path: Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Mindfulness, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Concentration – they are ways of righting yourself.  I touched on the idea that Rightness is a sense of balance, of walking well – of finding a center and being right with that center.  Zorba the Greek – the character created by Nikos Kazantzakis said:  “That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."

And if life were as simple as that it would be fine.  However, we don’t only have to contend with gravity – oh no – the path that we walk isn’t smooth, itself.  Like the picture on the cover of your order of service – it looks like cobblestones to me -- the path is uneven – stony, pebbly.  Walking at Stonehill, I could see the nuns and monks of his order all of them gliding so easily it seemed.  But the ground we did our walking meditation on was rough woodsy ground, with many pebbles and stones.  I felt as though I could feel every curvature of the terrain, every stone.
 

Thich Nhat Hanh made it look like so smooth – but my feet were trying to feel out every root and every rock and nearly stumbling rather than walking mindfully.  I wished that the path were smooth.  I am pretty sure that it would have been easier to stride along quickly and just get some place – but I can’t help but wonder how many missteps we take in our lives, how many clumsy, even destructive steps we might take because we want to speed over the bumps, avoid them, rather than feeling the uneven ground over which we move.  Someone asked me the other day – are you talking about pebbles or stones here or boulders?  Well, it can make all the difference – and yet it’s mostly a matter of scale – or how much help you may need to right yourself….  We have to find that rhythm that Zorba was talking about in spite of the roughness and stoniness of the road. Zorba himself knew about the roughness of the road – he called life “the Full Catastrophe”!  It’s the fullness of living – all the joys and sorrows – everything you face, each of you in your seats reflecting.  I visited with Margot Sondgeroth only hours after she delivered her four pound son Eli, by Caesarian section. I was so deeply aware of the terror and joy of living.  I was even more aware when I went to see Eli in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and saw all the tiny babies struggling on the edge of life.  And their families as well.  Kevin was allowed to hold Eli – tiny little thing – and the awe was palpable.

I was aware of the terror and joy as I sat on a lovely, sunny afternoon on the Dufair’s deck and talked about their baby Emma’s dedication coming in two weeks on the 29^th.  The garden was lovely, Anna had an appetite in spite of her chemotherapy and radiation, Jason was feeling relaxed for a moment and they were planning a celebration.  We have to face the full catastrophe at full pace, moving forward – because there is no other direction in which to move.

One of the things that moved me while I was walking around Stonehill College was that someone – people – were taking the stones off the path and making these remarkable stacks – sort of Druidic in nature – one stone piled upon another in the most precarious way – and yet balanced.  It was a way to take the things that could trip us and turn them into sculpture and even into a message – each stack was firmly balanced – even though it looked as though a stiff wind might blow them over they each were stacked with a center of gravity that was grounding, strong, and created beauty.  They multiplied as we stayed through the retreat – there were many, many stacks by the time we all departed – messages from one person to another that the obstacles were part of the texture, beauty, and miracle of our lives – part of what makes us creative.

The Bible begins with Genesis, the beginning, and in the beginning there was a moment that people have come to call the Fall – but it was not a Fall – any more than walking is really falling – it was the movement forward into life, into the path of life -- into the challenge of being these finite people with these infinite minds.  No direction but forward.  Into the Full Catastrophe.  There’s a reading at the back of your hymnal – #665 – you don’t need to turn to it now – but it is from the work of Adrienne Rich.  It is as worthy a meditation as a piece from the Book of Common Prayer.  Rich, who has been one of my spiritual guides, said
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
Make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history or music,
That we should begin with simple exercises first

and slowly go on trying the hard ones,

Practicing till strength and accuracy

become one with the daring to leap into transcendence.
And in fact we can't live like that:

we take on everything at once

before we've even begun to read or mark time,

we're forced to begin in the midst of the hardest movement,
The one already sounding as we are born.

           
We don’t get the chance to study to have the virtuosity we might like to have and yet – there is time – time to write the poem, to pay attention to the step, time to breathe, to gather at church and reflect, time for prayer and meditation, there is time.  You know the line about the meditation teacher who’s asked “You must be so busy teaching and everything – how do you find time to meditate for an hour a day?”  – and the teacher says – yes – when I am really busy – I make sure that I meditate for two hours instead.  That way I’m sure that I can get things done.  

           
And for some simply walking is enough – for those who never have or have to regain the use of their limbs… it would be more than enough.  Sometimes walking comes with pain and struggle.  Sometimes it comes not at all.  But all in all it seems like a waste of life energy.  The song the choir is going to sing says – If you can walk you can dance. It means that once you know the basics you can become creative – you can take wing.  I knew a woman, many years ago, a polio survivor who moved with the use of a wheelchair.  Her name was Eleanor.  I used to see her at all the dances we would have in our community of Little Five Points in Atlanta, Georgia.  And she would be always out there on the dance floor spinning her wheelchair, dancing with a partner, wheeling in rhythm with the music.  Even though she couldn’t walk, she could dance.  Dancing means something different at different stages of life, in different conditions of life –my aunt JoAnn, who just visited for Passover, used to really cut the rug with my Dad when they would get together.  I remember watching them in her living room in North Carolina, while they would jitterbug.  Now that my Dad is 85 I notice that he still swings his hips to the music every so often – but he is less likely to go Stompin’ at the Savoy.  Walking is a moment by moment victory over gravity.  And sometimes gravity takes more of the lead.   

Yet walking is more than that.  There is in every step a moment of choice – a moment when you could choose not to right yourself and fall or choose to move in a completely new direction. 

           
But of course every moment is a moment of choice – a moment of furled possibility.  It is in your hands and feet.  In every moment you have a chance at some virtuosity – it may not emerge right away – it doesn’t. It’s all relative anyway.  Virtuosity in life requires the same thing that it does to get to Carnegie Hall – practice, practice, practice.  Jon Kabat-Zinn in his recent book, Coming To Our Senses, talked about wise feet – the feet of people like Mikhail Baryshnikov and Martha Graham or people whose feet are so well trained, so familiar with the ground, with movement, that they can handle the challenges of new surfaces and can move with a grace that few people can hope for.  But then – we don’t all want to be divas of dance.

In the song that the choir is going to sing it says --
If you can walk, then you can dance
If you can talk, then you can sing:

It was about fifteen years ago that I decided to sing in front of a congregation.  My voice was nothing special – I had never used it in public – only on family car trips.  But I wanted to get people to work up the nerve to come to workshop on songwriting and so I got up in front of the congregation and sang this song from Sesame Street and – thank goodness – the workshop filled up – perhaps they only registered out of pity – but the fact was that my risk encouraged them to risk, too
 

If your heart beats, then you can love. 
If you can breathe, then you can live:

Your body is not the husk given to carry your soul around during a life sentence on a desolate rock – but is a flower of great beauty all of evolution has shaped to invite you to be an integral part of the ongoing life and beauty of this cosmos.  You are not here to repeat history or walk the same paths as all the generations before your.  You are not here to carry your head around – but to feel the wind and the water to feel the world on your skin and to touch the world in return.  Your body is not merely a tool for use while on this planet – your body is a wondrous instrument that can bring new life into the world, create art, embrace other bodies, help the suffering and oppressed, save itself, rebuild itself, and surprise history.  You are here to bring the wonder of the world forward – you are a self creating life, creating more life in everything that you do.  There is power in your body to do wonders.
 

The song goes on --

If you can cry, then you can laugh:
If you believe, then you can pray:
If you have lips then you can smile:
If you can think, then you can hope:

Your mind are heart are not merely here to do the grunt work of survival. Your mind and heart are not whirring to worry your life away or live in fear or habit.  Your mind and heart are given to you not to grind your axes, replay the past, or carry grudges.  They can transform pain into wisdom.  They are here to open the miracles to you – the miracle of walking on land, of arising on the day, of seeing the world in a grain of sand, of drawing close to wonder and awe, of encountering surprise, of bringing joy into the world and imagining things that are fresh and unique and offering those up to the circle of life. 

And the song goes on --

If you can sleep, then you can dream:
If you can feel, then you can care:
If you can wish, then you can be:
So dance and sing, and love --  be free.

Sing glory, sing glory, hallelujah. 

Let us get beyond falling and catching ourselves – there is a power in knowing that every step that we take is a fresh beginning – in knowing that life is made new every time we choose to engage deeply into life.  Let us move beyond falling and catching ourselves to that moment of choice – breathless as it may be – that moment of choice between walking and falling.  There is enough uncertainty in life, enough that feels like a movement out into uncertain space – because that is life – movement through uncertainty – but as long as we are here we might as well dance.  In that moment of choosing let us choose instead the dance – not a wild chaotic jangle of bodies but a right and purposeful movement of hearts and minds – a creative movement.  If we are challenged, as Unitarian Universalists, to be anything – it is to be creative – to be a creative movement.

So you are given this one wild and precious life.  And you can walk with it – and that is a miracle – even if your walk requires a cane or a wheelchair – but you can also dance with your wheelchair or cane and rise.  I offer you this – that we are not here to do what has always been done, we are not here to walk the same ground over and over, to live a safe narrow life for ourselves alone.  Remember how good it felt a month or so ago when we stood together and did the hokey pokey – it felt good because we were, in fact, putting our whole selves in and shaking it all about.  It felt good because we know that we are finite creatures of infinite possibility and we are here together.   We are here to be for each other – to remind each other of our ability to make art from obstacles and make beauty and love where there was emptiness.  We are here and have the power of choice.  We have the choice in every step to rise – and to dance.  We are here to move ourselves, to move together, to move the world.  Into the dance.