"How Much?"

- or, -

Between Worlds;

being,

A Discourse Upon Money & Stewardship.

Before I begin this I must say a few words of appreciation.

You may know that I have just returned from New Jersey, where a very dear aunt died suddenly from a stroke. She had lived with my Mom and looked after her. So much changed so fast.

I saw family members, some of whom I had not seen for 30 years, some for 40 years, maybe more. There was a cousin who had been a tiny child; now he is a portly grey-headed man. On the way back I stopped by the old house where I grew up, where my Mom will no longer live, knowing that, next time I see it, it will not look much like her home or mine; it never will again. Time, like an ever-flowing stream, bearing us all away. The reunion was a feast of love. I cannot imagine what it would have been not to have been there.

I am so grateful to so many people here who just couldn't do enough to make it possible for me to be away those three days, and for all the kind words and expressions of care.

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We come here hoping to reflect on some great, some central questions of our existence, about our way in life. More than that, we come hoping even for some taste of spiritual experience, that is, to touch what is real and true in us: to find out who or what is living our lives. Is it our highest selves, our most elevated consciousness, the godlike potential held within us as a seed, that yearns with some real passion to live out our finest visions of the possible human and the possible human world? Or is something lesser living our lives, not our inmost selves but some outer rim of ourselves, some shallow convention-driven shell of ourselves, some superficial, socialized surface self that merely conforms to its social milieu — some hollow self driven by interests and drives that are not themselves under the command of some core Self, exalted by the inflow of deeper currents of life, the spiritual impulses, values, and vision that are essential to our human nature, but the way to which we sometimes lose, and our consciousness of which and connection to which often becomes dulled and blocked by lesser things? We come to ask: Who or what is living my life? We live a divided existence, between two worlds. Here is the first dichotomy of our existence.

From the beginning of recorded history, we humans have been haunted by the intimation that we live in a world of mere appearances. Every teaching, every spiritual philosophy presents us with the idea that whatever happens, however our lives unfold, all this flows from deeper forces behind the world that seems so real to us. And we ourselves — there is another identity, our real self, hidden behind the self we believe ourselves to be. And one necessary role of religion is to help us experience that inner world in a very direct way so that it seems at least as real and compelling to us as the outer world.

We cannot very much love something that isn't even real to us.

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Now, some long time ago, somebody very clever invented a very clever device that constitutes a kind of contact point between that inner world of spiritual capacity and high consciousness, that flows from some deep inner well — a contact point between that inner world and the outer world of material realities. Because after all we live in this world.

So this invention brings the two sides of ourselves into contact quite brilliantly. And of course the contact point, the device whereby the two worlds can come into relationship, is money. Early coins had the gods on one side and temporal symbols on the other.

Because of it, we can know who or what is living our lives. In a first draft of this, I was going to so easily know, but the easily bit jumped off the page and said no, no, no. I'm afraid it's not that simple. It's the point of contact between fundamental forces in our lives, yes, and just at that point, we have to struggle, ask hard questions about the harmonization of our inner and outer lives. Maybe risk, maybe make mistakes, maybe undergo some purgatory in the path to consciousness. There is both an "exalted possibility" and an "inner difficulty in treating money as an instrument of self-study in the midst of ordinary life." [Needleman 126] We have to find our place properly in both the social community and the kosmic universe. We have to get it right. We have to be very conscious. This conscious place between worlds is a place inhabited by no other creature we know of.

It's not that there's something wrong with the material world, something wrong with our living in it. Our problem is that we walk through it as if in a drugged trance. Instead of experiencing things directly, we experience them through a spell cast by the advertising gurus. They invent a new desire we are all supposed to have, for something we never saw and never wanted before, and presto, we must have it. All of a sudden we all want a solar-powered towelrack, or whatever it is that somebody wants to market. We must have it.

We have to become more conscious. Conscious in our experience of the material world. Conscious of that other, inner world we inhabit, the realm of spirit; and conscious of this place between worlds where we are.

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And there is another dichotomy about our human existence — the one between our private "survival-self" and the larger world of life beyond our skin. In The Noetic Sciences Review six years ago, Arthur Deikman wrote about it:

It is not a compulsion but a recognition that tugs at me. Self-interest and self-concern subside and disappear as what-is-called-for takes over. When I surrender to it I get in touch with another dimension that is hard to describe and elusive to the grasp. . . .

Imagine that our awareness is a pond connected by a narrow outlet to the ocean. At the mouth of the outlet there is a standing wave — the survival self — that blocks the ocean currents from entering the pond. As the survival self subsides, more and more of the ocean currents can gain access to the pond, which then begins to resonate with the ocean. The pond then "knows" the ocean by resonating with it, in part becoming it.¹

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The message here is nothing new at all, but old as our deepest aspirations. It is about a quality of life we spend our days in search of; that we come here in search of. Here — in this place between worlds.

I think of Ken Patton's words, familiar to many of you, words with which we began today's service.

This house is for friendships,
A haven in trouble,
An open room for the encouragement of our struggle.
It is a house of prophecy, outrunning times past and times present in visions of growth and progress.
This house is a cradle for our dreams, the workshop of our common endeavor.

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Is it? What does it take for this house to be those things?

This faith of ours, like a stream of light, seems to shine through those whose hearts and minds it wins.

It reminds us always that there is a life and a work inherent in us. When we live it, spend ourselves and be spent, it glows with an strength that may astonish you. Further — it is infectious, which is one of the reasons for community, if it is of the right kind.

It affects everyone it touches.

The researcher Laurent Parks Daloz conducted a study² to find out what kinds of experiences increased the probability that a person would live a life of commitment to a larger whole, and what factors foster a greater spirit of giving in society. And he found factors which, if they are a significant part of the first thirty years of a life, seem to spell the difference. There are exceptions, of course — but in general terms, without any of these experiences a person seems to wind up in a fearful, clutching, possessive mode without an ability to give or commit to larger purposes. Among these:

§ The experience, as a child, of having been "seen": really seen for who he or she is.

§ Having, as a child, at least one parent who is actively engaged publicly.

§ Growing up in a home that is hospitable to the wider world, not defensively closed off.

§ Participating in youth groups; and active participation in a religious community.

§ Having contact with people who model commitment in the community; having mentors.

He went on to do more study: he wanted to know what it is about those people who exhibit a passionate life-commitment to the common good in a world that is getting so complex that most people just retreat into their own private worlds.

What is different about them is that they understand how their work impact their community. They are really convinced that their work makes a difference. They have opportunities to figure out what it is that gives life meaning; have some place where they are encouraged to contemplate the meaning of their lives.

They have had real connections with somebody who's been marginalized in the society. They act with consistent courage in the face of criticism and discouragement.

Their imagination is active, full of images of the world as it might be; and they can imagine the challenges they will face if they themselves become factors in change, and they can imagine the courage it will take and how the kind of person they want to be might act courageously.

And then, tellingly, his study says we must have, and I quote, "those who are kindred spirits; who provide perspective, comfort, advice, challenge and confirmation that one is not alone." (51)

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So — "this house" — to use Ken Patton's term — this Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence — can be an instrument for awakening us to consciousness in this place between worlds — awakening in us the beauty of a life lived from out of what is real and true in us, our highest selves, our most elevated consciousness, the godlike potential held within us as a seed, that yearns with some real passion to live out our finest visions of the possible human and the possible human world. It can be that.

But there is an arena where we are confronted with the question of whether or not this place is doing that for us; or more to the point, confronted with the question of who or what is living our lives, the lives we bring here and take home from here.

Who or what in me is making the decisions about how much I need for my own comfort and pleasure, how much will bring me joy and how much will simply dull my finest human sensibilities and alienate me from my best self.

Our checkbooks and credit-card statements are an arena where we may confront the question of that relationship between the worlds we inhabit and how much we are actually in command of the relationship.

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Here is one point where each of us has some grip, some "purchase," if you'll excuse the term, on the gritty roaring world out there — unless, of course, it's really the other way around, and the world-out-there is living our lives.

A friend who cannot manage his finances and get in control of them, or get out of debt, is explaining to me why he needs certain luxuries that he cannot afford, why he does feel any obligation to replace his light-bulbs with compact flourescents. He says, look at Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Look at Bush's friends. They indulge themselves, and waste resources, and pollute, in a degree so far surpassing anything I do or could ever do, — look how much! — and look, they get away with it, so why should I worry about these little excesses of mine?

But you see who is living his life, at least on those matters, don't you? Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling and Bush's friends: he's swallowed their values even while he protests them. How much difference is there, really? He has, on this point, no real connection with his own human power and domain; he's handed it over to somebody or something else.

Something besides our most conscious, highest selves — that is allowed to live our lives for us — is a pretty good definition of a demon, isn't it? Indeed, that defines the entire culture of Enron. Everybody was doing it. Nobody was living out of any core Self, it would seem. And that also defines the culture and the spiritual bankruptcy that proposes, just as the shelters are being closed and the desperation of the most vulnerable is rising — that proposes nice tax breaks for the richest. But to allow that raw greed and spiritual bankruptcy to fill us with cynicism and to dismiss the significance of our own choices is to bow before that false god and worship it along with everybody else. We must remain in command of our own inner domain. Live our lives from the inside.

Something strange lived those lives at Enron, wrote Mr. Cheney's and Mr. Bush's energy policy. We can call it all kinds of things — stupidly brilliant, crazed, self-destructive, out of control — but we are here in quest of health and human fulfillment, our highest human possibilities. So we've have seen a little bit into their checkbooks and balance sheets — but there is no self-knowledge until we go on to look at our own.

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Our Board has proposed a modestly ambitious budget. Not wildly so — there's no more ministerial staff in it, and we haven't yet addressed our serious lack of space, and in other ways it doesn't fully match our dreams. But it is a strong and really courageous start.

I hope your imagination is racing toward pictures of a congregational life that fosters those experiences described by Laurent Parks Daloz — for all of us. But I hope, too, that by now, you don't have to rely wholly on imagination to see such a place. I hope you can genuinely say that you can look out here and see that vision really coming into being.

Just quietly, in your own heart and mind. Ask this: what do you expect we can accomplish, really? Is it really taking form? Are our highest impulses really taking form here?

Will lives be changed here? Are they being changed here?

How much difference will it make in the community ourside our doors? Is it responsive to the demands, requirements, and possibilities of these times, in various ways, small or large?

What do you see? How much do you expect?

When a vision awakens in somebody do they bring it here to get fed and watered and nursed into reality, or will vision get numbed into oblivion? do we ever expect anything to happen? would we ever risk anything?

I mean, if the answer to all these things is in the negative, well then, what we would have here would be a massive crater of missed opportunity, a black whole to suck all the hope out of us and lock it away someplace where it will never be seen again. Make for the doors. No one would ever come here if they were really contented with a negative response to these questions, not unless they had nothing else to do. Even if you thought you came only for the friendships: if we really expected nothing to come of our being together, we would not like each others' company.

But if your answer is, in some significant ways, in the affirmative . . .

How does this happen in community, in congregational life? This is no ordinary place. I wonder if we understand that. And the question is: How much of ourselves are we willing to risk, to invest, to spend?

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There has to be a place where wider possibilities are opened for us all, where we can see beyond the sinister possibilities that leave us cynical and numb. There has to be a place where people can go and find the light and the community and the spaciousness that they need.

There has to be a place where there are others to notice the tangled threads of our lives, look deeply and really notice the patterns our lives are trying to weave: — people whose gentle care can see the beauty that would unfold in our lives and, with their love, call it forth from the tangle, so that, out of the material given, our lives may become artworks.

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I am not here to make you feel guilty — not unless you are failing to serve your own highest possibilities, anyway. Not unless something or someone other than your highest and most conscious self is living your life.

I know very well that each of us faces our own realities of living in this world, and our own financial realities and obligations. I know what it is, I have not forgotten, what it is not to have enough to house myself, feed myself, pay my bills. I know what it is to lay awake at night worrying about these things. You yourself, and not I, and not the Canvass Committee, but your yourself — can be the only judge of what this time calls on you to do. Stewardship means the faithful and responsible use of what we've got in the service of what is highest and best in us. Sometimes the stewardship of our lives does not call for giving away the little we have to live on, and depriving ourselves of essential things. But in some way or another —

There is a Next Step for you, for me, for us. It speaks; it beckons. And as a candle is for burning, so are we meant to spend and be spent in the living of the life that is given to us, in the pursuit of the work that is laid before us, in the service of the Mystery of life.

If you find you can sit here, week after week, without ever feeling anything that is done or said making any claim on you, —

Maybe there is some other place that can open to you the realm of authentic and engaged living. It would be worthwhile to find it.

But if this is the place, or if this place looms large among those places for you . . . today, we ask you to consider what that means, and what is at stake, and what it is, in us and in this world, that calls and summons us.

1 Arthur Deikman. "The Spiritual Heart of Serving," in Noetic Sciences Review, Winter 1997.

2 Laurent Park Daloz, "Can Generosity be Taught?" Essays on Philanthropy, no. 29. Indianapolis: Indiana University, 1988, 6.

Readings

Arthur Deikman. "The Spiritual Heart of Serving," in Noetic Sciences Review, Winter 1997.

It is not a compulsion but a recognition that tugs at me. Self-interest and self-concern subside and disappear as what-is-called-for takes over. When I surrender to it I get in touch with another dimension that is hard to describe and elusive to the grasp. . . .

Imagine that our awareness is a pond connected by a narrow outlet to the ocean. At the mouth of the outlet there is a standing wave — the survival self — that blocks the ocean currents from entering the pond. As the survival self subsides, more and more of the ocean currents can gain access to the pond, which then begins to resonate with the ocean. The pond then "knows" the ocean by resonating with it, in part becoming it.

. . . It is as if you came to a stream and wanted to drink. If you persisted in trying to grab the water — your usual approach — you would obtain nothing. If you want to drink you would have to cup your hands. It has nothing to do with piety; it has everything to do with the nature of water.¹

Jacob Needleman, from Money and the Meaning of Life

Money, I'm convinced, is an inspired invention by people who understood the play of forces in human life. There must have come a moment when something was needed that could facilitate man's material life in an expanding society. It must have been created as a means of recognizing that human beings have individual property rights, but at the same time that no human being or family is self-sufficient. In other words, money was created — by the keepers of the sacred teachings underlying all human societies — to maintain a relationship between man's spiritual needs and his material needs. What I'm trying to say is that money is intrinsically a principle of reconciliation, of the harmonization of disparate elements. No wonder that in ancient Greece, Hermes was both the god of commerce and the god of communication between man and the immortals, the god of the borders, the god of exchanges.

Money and the Meaning of Life. New York: Doubleday Currency,1991, pp. 114f.

Meditate

Sometimes the events of life jolt us, as if out of a sleep, as if we had been sleepwalking. And then we may know the highest human attainment, consciousness, and then we may understand Henry Thoreau's call, that there be dawn in us, that we might learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake and not be overcome with drowsiness.

How much there is that we dare not see, but avert our eyes, but in averting our eyes, we see neither our own powers and capacities, nor the gods at work in the great struggles of these days. Let us be awakened and take our place and know the power of our destiny. And in looking, let us see the glories and splendors of this world and this life.

In this silence,

Let us awaken to what is possible in these lives of ours!

Copyright © 2003 F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.