The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

 

Pretty good description of amazement, isn’t it? 

 

Sounds a lot like other stories of the season...how about the one that goes...” When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, with a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.” 

 

Or this one....”and lo the angel of the lord came upon them and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid....and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts...”

 

Apparently this is the season for amazement.  Dazzling lights. Santa Claus on the rooftop. A miraculous birth under a glorious star announced to shepherds by a choir of angels. 

 

This is the season of amazement, but most of the time, I have to admit, I’m not feeling all that amazed.  And isn’t that a pity? 

 

I was thinking about this the other day...about this unfortunate aspect of my personality. You see, I grew up feeling like a hick and an outsider, and by following the completely wrong star, I arrived at a tactic to appear more cool and hip....to never show my naiveté...which practically, translated into never showing excitement or surprise. It seemed to me that to show anything like amazement was not just unfashionable, it was downright uncool. I wanted to act as if I had seen everything, been everywhere, couldn’t be surprised by anything...

 

No wonder I am touched by... Wait a minute. ”No wonder?” What an inappropriate saying for today. “No Wonder”. We say this so flippantly...with the implication that anything that is matter of fact is also unsurprising and without any wonder content. I recall a poster created by the resident artist, Steven Rydberg, at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. It stated simply, “Imagine a world without imagination”. Well, I wonder about a world without wonder. It would not be very wonder-ful, would it?

 

Back to what I was saying about my childhood decision to appear all-knowing at any cost. No wonder, or rather, isn’t it wonderful...that I am now touched by the lines in Mary Oliver’s poem “Mysteries, Yes” where she says, “Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.” (Paula currently has these words as part of her email signature.)

 

Just look where I’ve come! Here I am, a minister within a tradition whose first source of wisdom and inspiration is our “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder which moves us to a renewal of spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.” I no longer want to have all the answers, and belong to a religious tradition that values the questions. I used to want to appear to be a know-it-all....here I am now preaching about living with amazement...about living with a childlike wonder for the incredible world that surrounds us.  

 

Okay, well not everything is worthy of this wonder. At first sight, Coyote and his friends were dazzled by the bright lights of the mall, but soon found that it wasn’t everything that it appeared to be. But in the story, and in our lives, remember that amazement needn’t get in the way of our critical thinking and discernment. It is simply that initial, stop-in-your-tracks, awareness of what stands in front of you. Amazement is a deep breath, an intentional opening of one’s eyes in wonder. Taking it all in, in a holy moment of respect. It’s a spiritual practice, I think, a practice that Judaism calls halacha, the art of amazement, the habit of seeing the mysterium in the most commonplace.

 

So, it’s present in Judaism, it’s present in Islam, especially in Sufism, it’s present in the charismatic branches of many faiths...this respect for amazement and mystery. Is it present in Unitarian Universalism?   Our first source claims that the direct experience of mystery and wonder is affirmed in all cultures. Is it affirmed in our culture? 

 

Well, it certainly has been a part of our history. The 19^th century Unitarian Transcendentalists were steeped in a sense of wonder and sought direct experiences of the divine. Emerson wrote:
“Crossing a bare commons, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky...I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration...glad to the brink of fear...Standing on bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I became a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I see I am part or parcel of God.”[2]

 

My sense is that this is an aspect of religiosity that we are re-claiming.  Last year the non-fiction book club read “Reason and Reverence” by William Murry. Murry is a humanist who is working to incorporate a sense of reverence and awe into his life and into his personal religion. I daresay that twenty years ago, language of reverence or mystery would have been unwelcome in many Unitarian Universalist congregations. Like me, our tradition went through a period where the presence of wonder and amazement was poo-pooed, to use the technical term.   Just as I can look back on the young girl that I was with distain, I could be critical of our past, but in this moment, I choose another way. Rather, I say, isn’t this amazing? This is the beauty of this faith...we are on an ever-evolving journey in which we circle through seasons of thought and understanding.  Isn’t this amazing and beautiful? 

 

The work of all religions, on some level, is to provide us with an all-encompassing interpretation of life...a vision of what is and what ought to be. Yet we do this from a very limited perspective...we are mere specks in the scheme of the universe...and we can never attain this all-encompassing vision or interpretation. And so, we wander through the woods...sometime drawn to bright lights, sometimes drawn to reading and thinking by the fire. There is simply too much out there for us to hold all at once....and isn’t that amazing? It matters not what we see, or what crosses our path. What matters is that we take it all in with wonder. 

 

If I were to try to capture the current Unitarian Universalist version of religious amazement, it would go something like this (and I give most of the credit for this to my colleague David Grimm[3]): 

We are amazed by and accept that being alive is to be part of a wholly-natural and always-evolving process. We are awed and humbled by the miracle of this interconnected and interdependent web of existence.   We choose to stand in amazement in the face of seeing that there is always more truth, more beauty, and more goodness out there.  We wonder at our human capacity to bring more of that truth, beauty and goodness into our collective lives. And, we find it simply astonishing that as humans, we can choose to do the good and right thing...we can choose to bless the world. 

 

This is our language of amazement. Or it could be. 

 

But here’s the picture that comes to mind...you know how it is when you’re standing in front of some miracle...the wonders of the earth...a newborn child...an incredible piece of art, and everyone around you...and sometimes even you...everyone is snapping pictures furiously. We are trying so hard to capture the moment that we let it slip by without being completely present to it. And, I would say, this rather captures where we are right now as a religious movement...snapping photos of wonder rather than simply sitting still and drinking in the mystery. We’re so used to having to do something, think something, write something, create something, that we are out of practice at simply being.   

 

A few years ago, Rev. Kendyl Gibbons, minister to the Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, wrote an essay for the UUWorld Magazine[4], in which she said:

 

“As a young Unitarian Universalist in the 1960’s I was educated about human sexuality in a relatively open fashion;  human religious experience, in contrast, was a closed book. I discovered my spirituality in much the same way that my peers raised in more conservative faiths discovered their sexuality—accidentally, furtively, without guidance, moved by overwhelming inner tides, and with some sense of shame…To my parents and teachers—almost all of whom had grown up in other religious traditions—the absence of texts, rote prayers, sacraments, holy objects, and moralistic picture books represented freedom. But without any language for my emerging sense of mystery and wonder, I came to feel the contrary: deprived of the tools with which to understand or express those experiences.” 

 

I think we here are really blessed to have a Religious Exploration Coordinator, Ben Wolfe, who understands the need for giving our children the tools and the language to access the mystery and wonder of our world, so that they might discover their own spirituality. Now, we just need to give that gift to ourselves.  We are really really good at doubting and questioning; and perhaps that’s why amazement is difficult for us. Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that when we are in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question, because there is no answer in the world to our radical wonder. Amazement, then, brings the absence of questions...perhaps a scary place for us. And get this line...Heschel said, “Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.”[5]

 

Need more convincing...?  Many great minds agree...

 

Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo[6] has written that the tendency to take everything for granted and the indifference to the sublime lie at the root of all irreligiosity. Rather, he writes, religion is a protest against taking things for granted...it is the art of living in amazement.  

 

One of my heroes, Alfred North Whitehead, the philosophical father of process theology said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious...Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.”[7] 

 

And, Albert Einstein writes of his “rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law,” which for him “reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”[8]

 

Yada yada yada. All words. I guess it comes down to this. We can go through our lives without wonder and amazement, and it would be pretty lacklustre. Or, we can choose to live with amazement, and like Mary Oliver, keep company with those who say “Look!” and laugh with astonishment and bow their heads. 

 

Once asked by an interviewer what he believed to be his greatest gift, Heschel replied, “My ability to be surprised.”   Man, would I love to have that gift!   He must have been an incredible person...I should probably short list him on my list of historical people I’d like to have to dinner. He is said to have once opened a lecture with the words, “Ladies and gentlemen, a great miracle has just taken place...the sun has risen again...” Yep. Definitely someone who laughed with astonishment and bowed his head. 

 

In another poem, one that is often read at memorial services, Mary Oliver writes: “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

 

Would that it were true for all of us...that we would take the world into our arms, as the blushing, naive, unfashionable bride of amazement. What a wonder-ful way to live!
May it be so. 

 

Ladies and gentlemen. We have just witnessed a miracle. The sun has risen again. 

Go now in peace and light, to celebrate the returning sun with amazement!

 

---