I am sure that we all had
plans for this year, ideas about what we would like to be doing, perhaps
certain expectations and they have not quite worked out. I am sure that all of
us have had to live with much disappointment at times. Many with deep tragedy,
it has been a difficult last six months, of this there is little or no doubt.
Not that they have all been
bad, there have been some lovely surprises too, some unexpected gifts have come
our way no doubt. Sometimes these things can come from our greatest challenges
as new connections and perhaps creations have grown from the suffering, perhaps
you have risen to the challenge in new and surprising ways as so many have.
Maybe you have been surprised by spontaneous and perhaps continuous acts of
kindness, I know I have.
This brings to mind the wonderful poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
In an interview with Krista Tippet on “Onbeing”, that Sue recently shared with me, she explained what the poem is about and where it came from.
“Well,
I really feel, amongst all my poems, that this was a poem that was given to me.
I was simply the secretary for the poem. I wrote it down, but I honestly felt
as if it were a female voice speaking in the air across a plaza in Popayán,
Colombia. And my husband and I were on our honeymoon. We had just gotten
married one week before, here in Texas. And we had this plan to travel in South
America for three months. And at the end of our first week, we were robbed of
everything. And someone else who was on the bus with us was killed. And he’s
the Indian in the poem. And it was quite a shake-up of an experience.
And
what do you do now? We didn’t have passports. We didn’t have money. We didn’t
have anything. What should we do first? Where do we go? Who do we talk to? And
a man came up to us on the street and was simply kind and just looked at us — I
guess could see our disarray in our faces, and just asked us in Spanish, “What
happened to you?” And we tried to tell him. And he listened to us, and he
looked so sad. And he said, “I’m very sorry. I’m very, very sorry that
happened,” in Spanish; and he went on. And then we went to this little plaza,
and I sat down, and all I had was the notebook in my back pocket, and pencil.
And my husband was going to hitchhike off to Cali, a larger city, to see about
getting traveler’s checks reinstated — remember those archaic things?”
She
continues
“And so this was also a little worrisome to us, because, suddenly, we were gonna split up. I was going to stay here, and he was gonna go there. And as I sat there alone, in a bit of a panic, night coming on, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, this voice came across the plaza and spoke this poem to me — spoke it. And I wrote it down. I was just the scribe.”
So out of this terrible
situation, when something horribly unexpected happened, beautiful unexpected
things also occurred. The response to what happened was in so many ways
beautifully creative, both the kindness of the stranger, but also from this
unexpected voice of inspiration that just came to Naomi as she wrote the poem,
while waiting alone and somewhat terrified, waiting for her husband’s return.
Where that inspiration came from is a beautiful mystery, but perhaps not to
those of us who believe in the God of Surprises. That said I know many folk
don’t believe in that kind of God, but God for some of us comes alive in that
loving and creative response to life’s challenges, some pretty horrific at
times.
I love that she described the
poem as just being given to her. It is said that Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild
Geese” was one of the poems that she said was just “given to her”. Some call
this grace, others give it another name. As anything ever been given to you in a
similar way? Perhaps something to ponder.
I wonder what we expect from
life when we step out into the world. I wonder what we receive, do we notice
all we receive, do we only notice the blessings or the curses that come with
choosing life. What do we do with what life offers to us, does to us, how do we
respond ourselves? How do we respond when something happens to those around us,
do we ourselves offer kindness to strangers like the man who offered love to
Naomi and thus inspired that loving voice to be heard as she sat down with her
pen and pad. It matters how we respond, it really does, who knows what chain
reaction we might set off with any and every interaction.
It matters how we respond to the unexpected things that happen in life. Perhaps even more during these times of global disturbance. How we respond to events matter, do we respond with more fear, or do we respond with kindness? For me God is in the action, the response. People can believe and disbelieve what they like but surely our faith is shown in our actions, in what we do and what we do not, the seeds that we plant each and every day in our simple human interactions. We plant seeds and if they are nurtured properly, they will grow into who knows what, perhaps something beautifully unexpected.
These thoughts bring to mind the
following beautiful words of wisdom from Octavia Butler’s series “Earthseed: The
Book of the Living” the collection that made up "The Parable of the Sower" and "The Parable of the Talents"
“All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change.
God Is Change.
In this work of science fiction Octavia Butler depicts God not as a figure or an all-encompassing nature, but “change”, a process that is somehow out of humanities control and yet working within humanities actions either for or against its will. In this work of fiction, the believers did not pray to their God, instead they learnt to shape and be shaped by God through their actions.
“We do not worship
God.
We perceive and
attend God.
We learn from God.
With forethought
and work,
We shape God
Octavia Butler wrote some fascinating science
fiction including two pieces that looked into what the world might be like in
2020 “The Parable of the Sower” and “The Parable of the Talents”. I wonder if
she would be surprised by what she saw, in some ways yes, in others perhaps
not. Of course we cannot know the answer to this as she died in 2006.
This final quotation from Earthseed does seem to
speak of our time;
“When apparent stability
disintegrates,
As it must-
God is Change-
People tend to give in
To fear and depression,
To need and greed.
When no influence is strong enough
To unify people
They divide.
They struggle,
One against one,
Group against group,
For survival, position, power.
They remember old hates and generate new ones,
The create chaos and nurture it.
They kill and kill and kill,
Until they are exhausted and destroyed,
Until they are conquered by outside forces,
Or until one of them becomes
A leader
Most will follow,
Or a tyrant
Most fear.
Does this speak of our world today?
Our world needs us to find
a way to unify to work together, to connect to that power of change that brings
about love and kindness and thus inspire one another to live from this loving
kindness rather than fear. The seeds we plant today will make the difference
not only now, but in the years to come. We must become the change we wish to
see in the world, we must bring to life that Divine change.
Did you have plans my
friends. I know I did. I had great expectations about my life, particularly
this year. It has not gone the way I would have expected. I know I am not alone
in this.
As Robbie Burns famously
wrote
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
No matter how careful we plan and scheme life never
works out exactly as we would like. Life is full of surprises, we all live
tales of the unexpected some amazing, some terrible. Life is awry and usually
or do I mean unusually incredible. Brother David Steindt Rast said "Another name for God is
surprise." Ah yes the God of surprises, isn’t this the true nature of
life? Surprise. It fills me with awe.
We cannot predict the future; it truly is unwritten. We do not know what
is coming. There will be some difficult challenges ahead, there will also be
beautiful moments too, some will be unexpected. They will come perhaps in our
most difficult moments. These moments will affect us and change us, just as our
responses will change and affect others. Therefore, it is important what attitude
we take into life.
So, let us go plant seeds of love and let us become fertile ground for
those seeds to fall on, to be nurtured and cared for, to flower and grow.
Let us go out into the world in hope, if not expectation.
I am going to end this morning with a little bit of David Whyte “Learning to Walk”
“Learning to Walk” by David Whyte
Walked out this morning
into a broad green garden
with the rising sun in my eyes
and the first hint of the day’s heat
touching my face,
feeling as broad as the garden
and young as the day
and soaking up the heat
in my black tee-shirt,
walked straight forward
out of the gate,
through the wood,
along the river,
toward the mountain
and thought of the future
I could make in the world
if I walked toward it
like this,
with my face toward the hills
and my eyes full of light
and the earth sure
and solid beneath me,
walking on
with a fierce anticipation,
and a faithful expectation,
with the sun and the rain
and the wind on my skin…
From “River Flow: New and Selected Poems”
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