Thin Places

         There is a phrase that the "religious" folk I know use to describe places where one encounters the Divine.  We refer to them as "thin" places: places where the barrier between this world and something more sacred, more spiritual, more mystical becomes thin.  These are places where you can feel God, whatever it is that God means to you, where you can touch something beyond this world, where the presence of the holy becomes almost tangible.  There are specific places around the world that are often described as these thin places, places where the Divine seems to hover, play, reach down to us, or simply to be more accessible.  Four of the thin places I have visited are Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, Zephyr Point in Lake Tahoe, Iona in Scotland, and Asilomar Beach near Monterey, though there are many other such places.  These are enchanting, almost magical areas where the beauty of nature seems to stretch out forever.  When you are in these places, you feel the ruach, or Spirit through every single breathe you take. There is a sense that time stops, or moves differently, while you are there: clocks have no meaning and the only thing that is important is being, is existing, is breathing.  In each of these places it feels that you not only see and breathe beauty, but you become part of it.  There is a thinness not just between the sacred and mundane, but between yourself and all creation.  It is easier to understand at these sites that everything really is just ONE and that you are a small part and yet an essential part of the rhythm and movement of life, of love, of existence, of being.
        Perhaps it is harder to feel this amidst the craziness of the cities and suburbs where many of us live.  When people are rude, angry or unkind and you have to watch with an incredibly alert eye driving around because of the craziness of those who are focused solely on their own needs, their own schedules, their own desires and worries in this life, it is harder to open yourself to connection with all things.  I shrink from taking down the wall between myself and those who cannot see me as anything but a barrier, an unfortunate obstacle on their path to rush to wherever they are going next.  Being open in those moments means being vulnerable to another's anger and angst and that is uncomfortable, to say the least.  It is harder to maintain a strong sense of the presence of God in the face of so much busyness that tends to have greedy and self-serving aspects to it.  
        But this weekend I found myself reflecting that "thin places" are not just physical places where we might go.  I attended a concert Saturday evening where a piece was performed that was so incredibly beautiful that I found tears running down my face before I was even aware of it.  I was moved beyond myself and into that place of "thinness" where I wanted to literally be part of the music, where I was enveloped in something beyond this world, where I was transported beyond the journey we walk and into the Presence in which we live.  Recently someone told me about a sunset she had seen that was so beautiful that she wept because she wanted to be in the sunset, to be enveloped in its beauty beyond just the visual experience of seeing it.  Each of our senses can bring us into that place of thinness: the song of a bird, the beauty of a forest, the smell of the mountains, an unexpected and wondrous taste, the ocean waves lapping against our feet: all of these can bring us into a sense of the eternal, into a deep connection with all that is awe-some and profoundly lovely, into a timeless place of pure being.  Experiencing or witnessing acts of kindness can also move us into those places of realizing there is good, that we are surrounded by something that encourages generosity, care, openness and love when we are open to it.
        As the piece of music that touched and deepened in me as a "thin place" came to a conclusion, I glanced around me at the other people attending the concert.  While many appreciated the music, not all had been moved in the same way.  Not everyone in that space had encountered the Divine, a transcendent moving, a connection to the beyond.  And I realized that thin places are not universally so.  When I was on Iona, those we travelled with did not experience it in the same way.  It was "very nice" but not transformational for everyone, as it had been for me.  When I am at Lake Tahoe, I have heard people snipping at their children or complaining about their lodgings: for them, too, that place may be a nice place to visit, but it does not always refresh, reform and renew in the way it does for me.
         The truth is that encountering a thin place is much more about how we stand in any particular moment.  We have met people who radiate "holiness," for lack of a better term.  These are people (like the Dalai Lama, Father Chacour, Maya Angelou, Ben Weir, Mr. Rogers) who, when you stand in their presence your breathing changes.  You slow yourself and are present despite whatever else is going on with you.  They call this out of us because of their stance in this life.  They see the holy that is there around them all the time.  They live in the wonder of the transcendent, and they are unafraid of the vulnerability of being open to the reality of our deep connection and unity to everything around us.  They create thin places around them for all of us who encounter them simply by standing in that thinness themselves.
        And the thing is, this is a stance that all of us can cultivate.  It takes intentionality, a willingness to be open to seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling and experiencing where God is in any one moment.  It requires breathing differently, moving with purpose rather than rushing around, taking time to not be human doings but to be human beings.  But, as we see with the people and places who are "thin" around us, when one is willing and able to do that, it is not just a gift to the persons being in that Divine presence, it is a gift to all around them too: one person's stance can cause others to also breathe differently, to move, hear, see, and experience our world differently.
       I am grateful for thin places, both physical places and the thin places that are created by art, by beauty, by kindness, and by courage.

Sermon from last Sunday in July - Lord's Prayer

7/31/16

Luke 11:1-4

Matt 6:9-13

An interviewer approached a Jewish man who was praying at the wailing wall in Jerusalem.  This wall is the only part of the temple that remained after the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 A.D. and to this day remains a place where faithful Jews can gather to lift up their prayers to God.  The interviewer asked the Jewish man to tell him about his praying.  The man told the interviewer that he had been coming to the wailing wall every day for 60 years.  When asked what he prayed for he responded that he prayed to God to bring peace to the world, to end war, oppression and poverty.  This man spent at least an hour a day praying with every fiber of his being that God’s kingdom of Shalom, of wholeness, of peace would come to earth.  The interviewer was moved deeply by this man’s profession of faith and dedication to prayer.  After a moment of awed silence he finally asked the faithful man how he felt coming to the wailing wall day after day.  The faithful man replied, “I feel,” and he paused, struggling to find the words to express his feelings.  “I feel,” he started again and as the tears began to course down his face he finally choked out, “I feel... like I’m talking to a wall.”

               This morning we read to you both gospels that contain versions of the Lord’s Prayer.  What we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer is not in all four gospels, but only in Luke and Matthew. Did anything strike you during the reading of these two versions of the Lord’s Prayer? 

               Let me share with you one more translation – this is another translation of the Matthew version:

Our Daddy in Heaven,

Reveal who you are.

Set the world right;

Do what’s best – as above, so below.

Keep us alive with three square meals.

Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.

Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.

You’re in charge!

You can do anything you want!

You’re ablaze in beauty!

Yes. Yes. Yes!

               Again, anything strike you?

               The bottom line, and what I want to talk about with you today, is that there are several problems with the way we say the Lord’s Prayer now.  First of all, and most importantly, our current way of saying the Lord’s prayer is just plain inaccurate.  And there are a few things I want to highlight about that.  First, the word we translate “Father” which is a very formal word of address, should be properly translated from the Greek as “Daddy”, which is a word of intimacy and closeness.  The word is actually Abba, and it is a word that young children would have used to talk to a close parent.  This word is not just one of familiarity, of closeness, it is also a word of trust, of dependence, of recognition that God as our Daddy, as our Mommy, is someone we rely on, someone we need for our very being, someone we love dearly and who loves us dearly as well.  Same with the word “thy” and “thine”.  These have become very formal words.  And again, that is a mistranslation.  Originally, the words “thine, thou, thy” were actually words of intimacy, proclaiming a closer relationship than the word “you”.  It was at the time when they were words of closer intimacy that they were placed into this prayer to make the translation right.  But now that those words are actually “distancing” or “formal” words, they make the translation inaccurate.  Jesus was making a very strong, clear and, frankly, a very scandalous statement at that time.  I think judging by how we say the Lord’s Prayer now, it is scandalous in our own time as well, by telling us we should pray in an intimate way with God.  Address God as Daddy, (or Mommy – words of intimacy and closeness), use words that indicate an extremely close relationship such as “thy” or “thine” used to do.  We are not following what Jesus asks us to do when we use terms that distance God rather than pulling God closer.

               Secondly, words like debt or trespasses are old, confusing, unclear, and again inaccurate.  What Jesus is calling us to do is to pray to God to forgive us when we mess up.  Debts and trespasses imply mostly monetary and space misuses.  Both of those are part of the “messing up” umbrella, certainly, but not all of it by any means.  We shorten and also obscure the prayer by using those words.

Thirdly, as I have mentioned before, a large part of the Protestant reformation was an insistence that God gave the scriptures to ALL people and that therefore they should be written in our own language, the language of the people.  Our scriptures have become written in our own language now.  However, at the same time, we have hung on to old language that is no longer the language of the people in things like the way we say the Lord’s Prayer.  As we read in today’s scriptures, the way we say the Lord’s Prayer is NOT an accurate translation into today’s language of the people.  But we have become used to the way we do it.  It brings comfort at some level to say it in the words our parents used and our parents’ parents used.  There is value in that.  But there is also a cost.  Part of the cost is inaccuracy in understanding.  But a bigger cost is that the children do not know what they are saying.  How can it truly be a prayer for them if they have no idea of the words they are using?  We’ve all heard the jokes of children’s hearing of this prayer, “Our Father, whose art is heaven, Howard be thy name.”  And I have to ask if leaving our children out of this prayer is worth the value we find in the tradition of saying the prayer in a familiar way.  We are failing to pass it down to them in a meaningful way, which means it probably won’t stay in their lives.  Is that really what we want?  The prayer does not have the same meaning for them that it does for us, though frankly, I wonder if it has the same meaning for us as well when we rotely say words that are not part of our current speech.  And while we can talk about what these words mean with the kids, saying our most common prayers in THEIR language, in the language they use also sends an important message that God is not so lofty as to not want to hear from children.  God is here, and accessible and open to hearing even from our kids.  And again, while speaking to God formally may have a message of respect towards God that has value, it also sends a message of inaccessibility.  The very message, in other words, that the protestant reformation was working to challenge.  More importantly, the very message that Jesus was trying to confront.

            Another problem with the way we say the Lord’s Prayer is that by saying it together the same way every week, we also miss the larger message of the story and of the prayer.  The paragraph right before the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, again using the Message translation reads: “The word is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant.  They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God.  Don’t fall for that nonsense.  This is your parent you are dealing with, who knows better than you what you need.  With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.  Like this…”

Did you hear that?  We aren’t supposed to use a formula or program when we pray.  Instead we are to pray “like” the Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus didn’t say, “pray using these exact words.”  In both gospels a most accurate translation is “pray like this” or “pray in this way”.  “Pray in this way” means, these are the ideas and things about praying that are important for us to do.  And there is much in the Lord’s Prayer that is important. 

            Someone once pointed out that if you want to know what to pray for you could use the acronym ACTS I. 

Those letters then stand for

Adoration

Confession

Thanksgiving

Supplication

               And

Intercession.

In other words, just as in the Lord’s Prayer, we are called to

adore or express our love, “Holy is your name, Yours is the kingdom, power and glory”,

Confess: “forgive our sins as we forgive others”

Offer Thanksgiving,

Lift up prayers for the world, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”

And pray for our own needs “Give us this day our daily bread, don’t lead us into temptation, deliver us from evil”

Another way to say this is that in our prayers, as in everything else we do in life, we are called to do three things:  Love God, love others and love ourselves. 

The passage in Luke goes on to tell us to pray with all urgency, to pray continually, to pray as if your life depended on it, which of course it does.

               That is the message of the Lord’s Prayer.  Jean asked me a couple weeks ago why I begin the Lord’s Prayer with all of you but then mute my mic for most of it.  I do that because I recognize that you need to say the prayer in the way that is most meaningful to you.  Prayer really is about our relationships with God, and if your relationship with God calls you to pray it in the way you always have, I honor and respect that.  For me, my relationship with God calls me to pray it slightly differently, using words that are in the language of my children and connect me more intimately with God.  I therefore use “you” instead of ‘thy and thine”.  I use “holy” instead of “hallowed” and I use “sins” instead of debts.  I pray what has become known as the Ecumenical Version of the Lord’s Prayer and that more and more of our congregations use for exactly the reasons I have outlined.

Our Father/Mother/Creator who is in heaven, Holy is your name.

Your kindom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread

Forgive us our sins
   as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
   and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
   now and for ever. Amen.

But again, I recognize and honor that your relationships must be your own.  I encourage you to think on these things, but you must ultimately be guided by your relationship with God. 

               I want to end today by sharing with you a prayer written by the Rev. Dewane Zimmerman.  He wrote

The Lord’s prayer (as it might be prayed by God to us):

(I encourage you to listen differently and to ponder these in your hearts):

My children who are on earth:

You reverence my name

But you do not celebrate my will for you.

You pray my kingdom come,

But how can it

When you ARE what I mean by my kingdom?

You pray for your daily bread,

But you have enough-and to spare.

You pray for forgiveness of your sins,

But how often you will not forgive each other.

You ask me not to lead you into temptation,

But what can I do for you

That I am not already doing?

Use the gifts I am giving you

And you will know my power and glory

Forever and ever.  Amen.

That inner ache - the human condition

     The inner ache, that sense of missing something, a feeling I think most of us experience at one time or another, takes on many forms.  For some it takes on the form of loneliness, a wanting to connect to others, to feel understood, embraced, loved fully and completely for who we are. Others have described it as a desire to "go home" and have said that this place (this life) is just not home, somehow. They feel restless, lost, out of place. For some it feels like an absence of meaning or purpose.
     Our culture has, for awhile, tried to find the fulfillment of that emptiness or ache in the form of "true love", something described as incredibly rare and by some as only for "one couple in every hundred years". Other practices don't see it as that rare, but still emphasize that this partnering somehow makes us whole. Many faith traditions offer a belief of "the two becoming one". Some honor marriage, therefore, as a sacrament in which God has made one whole out of two halves, a whole that cannot be divided no matter what. I understand the value in that thinking, and maybe for some people that is true. I had a very good marriage. My husband and I were very well suited to each other and rarely disagreed, let alone argued.  We played well, worked well, parented well, partnered well together.  We were compatible in our theology, politics, finances, ideas of parenting, level of cleanliness, foods we liked, activities, books and movies we enjoyed... actually I can't think of much that was incompatible until the end.  For many years, I was happy with him and with the marriage. Still, I never felt that somehow I was "made whole" by the marriage.  And by that, I mean three things.  First, I never felt that I had been only a half a person before. Second, there were still times in the marriage when that ache, loneliness, emptiness, yearning was present for me. And third, when the marriage ended, I did not feel that I became half a person again.  There was a ripping, a tearing, but not into two halves of a whole. Instead it was the ripping and tearing of any close relationship that is injured, damaged, or torn. It was deeper because the relationship was deeper. But it was not because I was torn away from my other half, but because we were tearing another chink into the divisions of the world. I think that, perhaps, the whole idea of "true love" being incredibly rare is an attempt to explain why, despite partnering and marriage, most of us still do feel that ache at times, even in good marriages.  But, at least for most of us, I don't believe we really can be filled by another human being. We aren't "half of a whole, waiting to find the other half," rather we are a puzzle piece in a huge picture, the whole of which is bigger than we can see or imagine.  It includes all of us, and I would say all of creation.  We are pieces of creation, and our separation from that body, into individuals who sometimes seek our own good at the expense of the whole, leads us into this feeling of disconnect, of ache, of separation. Until we are united again in a vision that we truly are one and that what hurts me hurts you, what hurts you hurts me, and that therefore we must work together for the good of everyone - until we have this unity, I think there will be that aching, that yearning, that sense of not "being home" and of not "being whole."  We aren't home, because we are torn from one another and can not rest in a sense of unity.  We aren't whole because we are like a shattered mirror, with many pieces that cut and stab, unaware that until we work together, we will never be a whole.
     I had a wise spiritual director once say that that inner yearning is, ultimately, the desire to connect more fully to the Divine. To me this is a recognition that together we are more than the sum of our parts. Together we have meaning. Together we are a work of art, created by something we cannot begin to comprehend, and yet something that we ache to be a part of.  We yearn to be a note in a beautiful piece of music, not singing it on our own, but being sung as part of a universal chorus.  We ache to be a part of an amazing piece of art, not simply another slash of color painted at random and drifting around, but an irreplaceable part of a creation that has beauty and light and wonder.  We long to be part of a lovely and purposeful dance, not simply a movement on it's own, but a movement with meaning and purpose that works together with all of the other movements to become something we all are part of and that guides and fulfills each part even as it is in itself breathtakingly wondrous.
    Moments of transcendence take us into that larger vision.  But returning is hard as we once again fall into our own unique space and struggle to find the whole once more.
    Still, keep striving.  Keep searching.  Keep reaching out to find your place in that whole.  The ache itself calls us to do that, to be a part of putting the puzzle pieces together and of helping to imagine the picture, the music, the dance, that is bigger than we can see.  It is only together that we can be the creation we were meant to be.  And it is only together that we will finally be "home", and "whole" and connected with that which is bigger than the sum of the parts.  It is only together that we will be with the One who made us and creates us to be beautiful.