“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
Could it really be that simple?
Just let the soft animal of your body love what it loves?
Those lines are from one of Mary Oliver’s most well-known poems: The Wild Geese. You’ve probably heard it many times. It can happen that when we have heard words…or felt feelings for that matter…over and over…they begin to lose their power, their sharpness. They can lose their ability to wake us to truth.
Could it really be that simple. That all we have to do is relax into who we truly are and remember that there are certain things and certain people that we really do love…loving ourselves being at the top of the list?
Is that the spiritual discipline, is that the practice we need to follow?
Doesn’t moving toward wholeness…doesn’t living into justice, equity and compassion…doesn’t it take labor and energy…isn’t that the work of lifetimes?
Can we just relax into it?
Doesn’t it also require devotion?
The devotions of a holy man in India were reported by Reuters a few years ago. He was called the Rolling Saint.
“Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for world peace and eternal salvation.”
His rolling devotions inspired this poem:
“He started small, fasting here and there,
Days, then weeks. Once, he stood under
A banyan tree for a full seven years, sitting
For nothing—not even to sleep. It came
to him in a dream. You must roll
on this earth, spin your heart in rain,
desert, dust. At sunrise he’d stretch, swab
any cuts from the day before, and lay prone
on the road while his twelve men swept
the ground in front of him with sisal brooms.
Even monkeys stopped and stared at this man
Rolling through puddles, past storefronts
Where children would throw him pieces
Of butter candy he’d try and catch
In his mouth at each rotation. His men
Swept and sang, swept and sang…
He rolled and rolled. Sometimes
In his dizzying spins, he thought
He heard God. A whisper, but still.
Is that the level of devotion required of us? Do our devotions of the spirit need to be at the superhero level…to receive just a whisper…just a hint of connection with the spirit of life…however we may name it?
Devotion is our spiritual theme for the month of December and devotion, as a spiritual discipline, poses some challenges for liberal religious folks.
Devotion can mean specific prayers or religious practices…”they were not to be disturbed at their devotions.”
Prayer, mediation, Tai Chi, the whirling dance of the Sufi Dervishes…these are all devotional practices. So is Lotan Baba’s rolling.
As is Mary Oliver’s practice of centering on what we love.
But devotion can also mean love or loyalty to a person or a cause. “They were devoted to one another.” Or “They were devoted to the cause of reproductive justice.”
Used in either way, devotion suggests that we are not, after all, the center of things, or at least not the center of everything…that there might be a higher power or calling or a value that commands our loyalty…that calls us to behave in certain ways and even requires us to put our own self-interest in second position…
And it suggests that there is work involved. Anyone who has sustained a marriage or intimate relationship for any length of time knows that that devotion requires effort. Am I right? You may not need to walk on your knees for a hundred miles, repenting, but I have said and meant “please forgive me” more times than I can count. And based on what you’ve told me, I am not alone.
Real devotion to a cause can also impose real requirements. Hasn’t a commitment to environmental justice and sustainability…hasn’t that required changes in your own life?
It may not be rolling across India, but then we haven’t reached sustainability yet either.
Devotion is something that is freely given. If there is any compulsion, that is a different conversation.
Devotion is freely given, but it requires a giving up of the priority we might place on our own wishes, our own preferences, our own habits.
To use language that we are beginning to get accustomed to, we cannot center our own wishes all of the time.
Devotion asks us to limit our freedom in the service of someone or something higher…larger…something that is not “us.”
We submit ourselves to the needs of a partner or the requirements of a cause.
Submit ourselves.
Is this beginning to get just a little uncomfortable…because we do treasure our freedom. Submission…well, we didn’t sign up for submission…did we?
Devotion can call for a sacrifice of personal freedom…in the service of a larger love.
I asked our Board of Trustees about devotion at their meeting last week. I asked them what person or value or cause they considered themselves devoted to. And I asked them how First Unitarian supported them in that devotion.
It was one of the quietest and most “devotional” times I’ve experienced with the board. The Board moved into that space of silence and honesty…into a devotional space.
Several named family as what they were devoted to. And that can be hard because First Unitarian is not a place that is comfortable for all the members of every family. The search for truth, the practice of gratitude and connection to the holy, to the spirit…Board members said they were devoted to these as well. And that this church honors all of those.
Board members also spoke of the importance of living life now…”this is the day we have been given”, and how we are growing in our devotion, our commitment to building Beloved Community both in our personal lives and in the expanding circles of our communities and our world.
First Unitarian was described as devoted to Building Beloved Community at scale.
When I planned this sermon, I thought I would go from this point to discuss the tension in our faith between individual freedom and collective responsibility…accountability is the language we are beginning to work with.
I imagined I would offer a word about how the Beloved Community is always a work in process…never really completed…always challenging our assumptions…always expanding the circle of our concern..
And I thought it could be a peaceful but purposeful sermon…calling us all to devotion to the work of justice, equity and compassion…within us and in our world.
And perhaps that is still my message.
But this has been a tough week…a tough week for me and I think for many of you as well. First, there is the new Covid variant and the not-knowing what impact it will have. I know many of you must have brought that concern with you into this space.
And then another tragic mass shooting…a child killing other children…with a gun provided by his parents…
Do you realize just how much tragedy, just how much sadness and loss we have grown accustomed to holding?
But it was the arguments in the Supreme Court this week that brought home the truth of where we are in this country…the truth that broke my heart open.
The arguments in the Mississippi case to overturn Roe v Wade took place on Wednesday. That morning I joined other progressive religious leaders at Temple Beth Israel for a Planned Parenthood event of witness and prayers that women and all those who bear children might continue to control their own bodies.
Oregon, we know, is the gold standard for reproductive justice…not perfect by any means…but conditions will not change here in Oregon for those who bear children. Nor in California or New York. But the situation is likely to change dramatically in Mississippi, where there is only one abortion care provider left…and Texas and Missouri and Montana…more than half of these United States.
Professor Michelle Goodwin describes this as a war on women. It is likely that the court will usher in a day when a young girl, a child herself, will be required to carry to term a child resulting from rape or incest.
A justice of the Supreme Court of the United States said that that would be no great punishment. That child could just leave the baby at the firehouse door.
This was said by a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Thankfully, there were other voice. Justice Sotomayor said there would be stench hanging over the court if it overturned Roe or allowed Roe to be overturned in practice…
Just like there is a stench that hangs over the court for its gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
We need to be prepared not only to do the work of building Beloved Community here, within this congregation…and in our personal lives…
We need to be prepared for a time when the progress toward justice, equity and compassion…when progress we assumed to be settled…
We need to be prepared to live in a nation where voting rights are no longer guaranteed…even in theory.
Where the right to reproductive health care depends on where you live or how much money you have…
Do you know that maternal mortality in this country is already higher than in any other 1st World nation… In terms of support for maternal health we are already at the bottom of the list…
We are returning to a world even more sharply divided between haves and have nots…where have nots are disproportionately Black and Brown…but also white.
As religious people, our most fundamental commitment…the value to which we are devoted above all else…is to a world that is not organized around the privilege of the few and the oppression of the rest.
We are devoted to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. None of us truly saved until all of us are saved.
But we are emerging from the pandemic into a world where victories we believed to have been won…settled…are in danger of being reversed.
The work of building beloved community…we know… is never completed. Beloved Community is always a work in process.
The truth this week forced me to know, is that the need for our commitment…the need for our devotion will be even greater…
We have entered the season of longest dark, a fallow time for the earth when there is rest and renewal and the gathering of energy for the promised coming of spring.
This is the time called Advent in the Christian liturgical calendar, a time of waiting for the miracle of new birth.
In that tradition it is also a time of preparation. A time to prepare for the coming of new hope.
And so, in this season, it is important to rest and to find renewal. In gathering friends and family in person for the first time in a long time…for many of us.
In remembering seasons past and the love and the support that saw us through trials and tribulations before
In centering our lives on what we truly love…
We need the renewal of this season because more is going to be required of us.
And I believe that we need to deepen our devotions…our commitments and our covenant…
We need to deepen our devotions…together…
So that we can be allies to others in our community, and to ourselves as well.
Allies, truth tellers, lovers…
Lovers of life…devoted to the hope we can create together.
And whether we pray or meditate or roll or dance our devotions,
We will need to be ready to make them real.
in the words of our reading this morning…
“Help us see ourselves in all creation, and all creation in ourselves…[and] ourselves in one another.
… so our ethics [become] our politics, and our actions [become] the [embodiment] of our words.
We have our work cut out for us. But we can do this. As long as we are clear about the stakes and devoted both to the power of love and to each other.
We can find hope…together.
Prayer
Will you join me now in that space of silence and honesty, that is known by many names and no name at all? Will you join me in our shared devotions? Will you pray with me?
Let us begin with a deep breath in…together…and out.
And another…in…and out.
Feel your body. Its parts. Feel for tension…in your shoulders…your chest…your legs.
Where you find tension…allow your body to let it go.
Feel the seat upholding you and sense the firm earth beneath you.
Now look to your center…your heart…your spirit…
See the love that is held there. Feel its power. And its goodness.
If that love is constrained…by fear…by old harms and the scars they have left…or by new bruises and tenderness…
Allow yourself to know that that love at your core is strong…strong enough to heal hurts and strong enough to salve the tender places…
Sense the spirit of life at your core…and in those around you…
Each of you a source of hope…
And allow yourself to pray in gratitude and in honesty and in hope…
Allow yourself to know all that holds us back from Beloved Community
Allow yourself to know all that holds you back from your power.
But also allow yourself to feel strength that can join with your own. strength…
Strength that can make the vision of Beloved Community
More than an idle dream.
Before returning, feel the strength and the stamina at your core.
Begin to return. Renewed. Breathing in and out. Return ready for the days ahead.
Return knowing that this place of rest will be available to help renew you in the days ahead.
Return strong and devoted to the power of love that you have found within…the power of love that can help shape the world…a world in which we want to live.
May that be so.
Amen
Topics: Devotion