A Path of Letting Go

Once upon a time I used to read a lot of poetry. That was back in another life, when I was a graduate student in poetry and creative writing at a couple of fine universities in Maryland and Virginia. I still read poetry, of course, but not as voraciously or as seriously as I did in those days. And I have to confess that of all the poems I read, the one poem that had the biggest impact on me was this one by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

“You must change your life,” Stephen Mitchell’s rendering of the original German “Du mußt dein Leben ändern,” really spoke to me as a perpetual graduate student with no real career prospects. So I took Rilke seriously and made some changes, changes that brought me to seminary at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, to my current job with the Unitarian Universalist Association, and to a home in Saint Paul, Minnesota with a wonderful family and a cat name Chloe. All because of a poem. Okay, not just because of a poem. But because I was willing to make some changes in my life, willing to undergo a Transformation, which is the topic if this week’s small group ministry session based on resources from SpiritualityandPractice.com.

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

The great metaphors from all spiritual traditions — grace, liberation, being born again, awakening from illusion — testify that it is possible to transcend the conditioning of my past and do a new thing.
— Sam Keen in Hymns to an Unknown God

Check-in/Sharing

Topic:

An Excerpt from A Path and a Practice: Using Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching as a Guide to an Awakened Spiritual Life by William Martin

William Martin presents his lyrical translations of Lao-tzu’s spiritual classic along with practical application of its truths. Here is an excerpt that contains a translation from the Tao Te Ching on letting go and a philosophical explanation of it.

This is a path of letting go
so there will be room to live.

If we hold on to our opinions,
our minds will become dull and useless.
Let go of opinions.

If we hold on to possessions,
we will always be at risk.
Let go of possessions.

If we hold on to ego,
we will continue to suffer.
Let go of ego.

Working without thought of praise or blame
is the way of true contentment.

This is a path of letting go
so there will be room to live.

Thinking ourselves somehow separate from life, we conclude that our safety and well-being are dependent on our ability to control our circumstances. Attempting to control circumstances, we separate ourselves from those circumstances to such a degree that we end up bringing to ourselves and to others misery rather than promised safety. Lao-tzu teaches us to let go. We let go of the belief that control is possible. We let go of the notion that our efforts at control will keep us safe. We let go of the countless conditioned beliefs that have promised safety and happiness, only to deliver anxiety and suffering. We eventually let go of even the ideas of who we are as a separate ego.

This path accepts that developing an ego is an essential element in human growth. But it also suggests that this development might be a stage of human development rather than its end product. Developing a cocoon is a natural and essential part of being a caterpillar. But the time comes when the cocoon softens, wears out, and opens up. What if this is the case for all our opinions, possessions, and even for our ego? What if, when the cocoon of ego opens, instead of the feared abyss we find a butterfly?

Questions: Share the story of a transformative experience, one you came out of feeling like a different person. It might be an encounter with a person, a story, or a work of art; an occasion of intense joy, sorrow, or pain; or a time when you faced an illness or another challenge that resulted in your making changes in your life.

Check-out/Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

You are destined to fly, but that cocoon has to go.
— Nelle Morton quoted in Writing from Life by Susan Witting Albert

To Practice This Thought: Invite Transformation into your life by making simple changes. Start by doing something different — walk to work by a new route, answer the telephone with your other than usual hand.

Group Session Plan based on resources on Transformation from www.spiritualityandpractice.com.

For a PDF version of this small group ministry session, click here: Transformation.

For more information on small group ministry, visit the UU Small Group Ministry Network.

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Give Me That Old Time Spirituality

Okay. Before I get to the main point of this post (increasing the Spirituality Quotient of the average UU congregation), I’d like to offer a couple of great resources that can help congregations that may be putting a “greater emphasis on social service programs or church committee work than on promoting spiritual growth” (see yesterday’s post for what that’s all about). The first resource is called “The Spirituality of Service.” The second resource is called “Spirituality & Service.” The first is an article by the Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom about how “giving our time to our congregations can be spiritually transformative.” This resource addresses the lack of spirituality in committee work. The second resource is primarily for young adults, but I think it would be great for anyone looking to deepen the spiritual aspects of social service programs and social justice work. Taking these resources seriously could help almost any congregation turn committee work and social service programs into opportunities for spiritual growth.

But on to the real point of this post: offering congregations with little or no emphasis on spiritual growth something from our tradition that might help them bring spirituality to the fore. It’s a resource that I’ve been aware of since the mid-90s, and I really find it odd (and a little disheartening) that it isn’t used more often. I’m talking about “The Roots of Unitarian Universalist Spirituality in New England Transcendentalism” [PDF] by the Rev. Dr. Barry Andrews. As I said, I’ve been familiar with this article since I started working as a religious educator in Bloomington, Indiana, and the first thing I did when I discovered it (I believe it was printed in a REACH packet with an introduction by Judith Frediani) was to develop an adult religious education class so others in the congregation could benefit from Barry’s wisdom.

I’m not going to go into much detail about the article because I really really really want you to read it (and check out Barry’s website on Transcendentalist Spirituality while you’re at it). But I’ll tell you what I think the coolest thing about it is: the spiritual practices of the Transcendentalists (Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau, et. al.) that Barry describes are 100% applicable to the 21st century. In fact, the religious education class I developed gave participants a contemporary example of each one. Here there are: excursions in nature, contemplation, reading, journal writing, conversations, simple living, and social reform. The class I developed took about three hours, with a half an hour or so devoted to each practice (with some practices doing double duty, like an abbreviated small group ministry session on simple living). I could easily see expanding the experience so that it would take several weeks, with a session on each practice.

At any rate, I could imagine an adult religious education experience like this being part of the membership journey offered by UU congregations. It would introduce newcomers to Unitarian Universalist history and theology, and give them a taste of the spiritual practices that the congregation might offer on a regular basis, like book groups, small group ministry, field trips, etc. All of these sort of things can become opportunities for spiritual growth if we let them. And if they were good enough for our Transcendentalist forebears, they’re good enough for me.

It’s the Spirituality, Stupid

I normally wouldn’t use the word “stupid” in the title of a post (or in the post itself, for that matter, unless I was referring to something stupid I had done). But in this case, I’m taking the title directly from something I found recently in the Huffington Post (which has an excellent “Religion” section, by the way)—an article by David Briggs, a columnist for the Association of Religion Data Archives, called “It’s the Spirituality, Stupid: Vital Congregations Cultivate Personal Piety.” In the article, Briggs notes that

There are times when research findings are so obvious they are almost beyond questioning. So it is puzzling that growing evidence showing the importance of congregations cultivating the spiritual lives of the faithful is so routinely ignored.

The research findings he’s referring to come from our old friend the latest Faith Communities Today survey, which states that “the percentage of U.S. congregations reporting high spiritual vitality declined from 43 percent in 2005 to 28 percent in 2010.” Yet at the same time, “the No. 1 reason people gave for moving from a spectator to an active participant in their congregation was this: ‘I responded to an inward sense of call or spiritual prompting.'”

Long story short, attending to the spiritual needs of members, friends, and seekers is a must for any congregation that wants to thrive and not merely survive. This might be a tall order for some Unitarian Universalist congregations that insist on maintaining their humanist identity at all costs. Nothing wrong with humanism, mind you (I consider myself to be one). But if spiritual seekers are coming into the door of a congregation looking “to connect with God and a community that connects with God,” only to find a community that places a “greater emphasis on social service programs or church committee work than on promoting spiritual growth,” those seekers may not stick around too long.

And here’s the thing. All signs point to fewer and fewer people in our country even bothering to check churches out, let alone become regular attenders. That means there are going to be, as UUA President Peter Morales says, fewer and fewer visitors for us to repulse. But how are congregations with little or no experience in promoting individual spiritual growth supposed to suddenly become adept at it? Where would one even begin?

The best place to start, I believe, is with our own tradition. A tradition about which Unitarian Universalist scholar David Robinson has said

Like a pauper who searches for the next meal, never knowing of the relatives whose will would make him rich, American Unitarians lament their vague religious identity, standing upon the richest theological legacy of any American denomination. Possessed of a deep and sustaining history of spiritual achievement and philosophical speculation, religious liberals have been, ironically, dispossessed of that heritage.

More on that tomorrow.