First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
December 15, 2002

The chaos is fully upon us by now, is it not? The seasonal pressure cooker is turned up full blast; the newspapers are full of advertisements, the parking lots at the malls are full of cars, there are carols on the radio and lights on the houses; there are stacks of cards waiting to be written and addressed, and gift lists half checked off; somehow a tree must make its appearance and take unto itself lights and ornaments, somehow butter and flour and cinnamon must be fused into edible love; plane tickets or car trips must be formulated, or else a dauntingly empty day must be anticipated. J.C. Penney is selling a bombed-out doll house complete with guns, rocket launchers, and an American flag, under the title World Peace Keepers Forward Command Post, and Hammacher Schlemmer will custom order you a carved wooden scale model of a 1954 Mercedes 300SL, for only $5,000. No doubt about it; it's Christmas time.

Christmas time, when our already over-consuming, over-ambitious, over-achieving, over-wrought 21^st century American culture kicks into high gear, holding out the carrot of fulfillment, tranquility, and love at the end of the marathon, if only we complete it successfully. Which somehow, despite our most frantic and exhausting efforts, we never entirely do - at least, I never entirely do. I always think I should have started earlier; if only I had been more prepared, the season wouldn't catch me up this way, and I could go from one activity to the next in some calm, orderly, reflective way, instead of rushing around as I always seem to do, breathlessly determined not to miss anything. The result of that determination, of course, is that in a way I miss everything, for nothing has a chance to penetrate. Fulfillment, tranquility, and love are a lot like tea, I think; you have to steep them for a while in order to get their genuine flavor. If you can't sit with something long enough for it to soak in before you're off to the next thing, it just runs off and doesn't change you, doesn't nourish you. And that happens to me most of all at Christmas time, which is very sad, because I love Christmas.

I love the spirit of Christmas, and the way that spirit is embodied in the stories of our culture, from the Miracle on 34^th Street to Scrooge in A Christmas Carol to George Bailey's Wonderful Life and Amahl and the Night Visitors and the Grinch and yes, even the unwed, out of town parents looking for a place to have a baby once upon a time in an overbooked town called Bethlehem. I love wrapping paper and shiny ribbons and glittering ornaments and twinkling lights and wreathes and stockings by the chimney and the whole nine yards. Perhaps this is what happens when you raise an aesthetic hedonist as a rational humanist; I'm not picky about the mythology, but I'm a total fool for the decorations! And I long - how I long, every year but especially this year! - to hear the angels' song, to be renewed in the promise of Peace on Earth, goodwill to all people. What is wrong with us? What in the world and in the name of all that is holy is wrong with us, that we don't live that way? Why does it come back every Christmas as some sort of far off vision, that ancient dream of people everywhere, that we might just stop killing each other? Stop killing and stop preparing to kill, and put our minds and energies into figuring out how to get along on this planet - how hard does that have to be? How hard do we have to make it? But I love Christmas because every year it comes back with the same question, the same vision, the same simple, impossible possibility; that finally our humanity might triumph over our hubris, and we might discover the good will -- not in heaven but in our own hearts -- to make the peace that will only come when we, the members of the human race, are ready to receive it.

It's hard, this year; there's an awful lot of that hubris stuff going around. The Catholic Church in Boston is on the brink of bankruptcy, and its leader, Cardinal Law, has resigned in disgrace. So much pride, to think that the keepers of religious community should be withheld from common accountability when they use their power to victimize children. One of the leaders of our nation's highest governing body, Senator Trent Lott, is having his fitness for office questioned, after his hyperbolic expression of regret that Strom Thurmond's racist party platform wasn't elected in 1948. So much arrogance, to imply that our country would have been a better place without the civil rights progress of the last fifty years. And of course, President Bush, with the blessing of congress, stands upon the brink of invading a third world nation with all the military prowess of the United States of America, because it seeks to build, own, and potentially use weapons of mass destruction. What hubris is greater than beating up someone else for doing what we do, and have every intention of continuing to do, ourselves? It's like an epidemic of haughty pride; and where is the vaccine for that?

Actually, you know, I think that if you do it right, the whole point of Christmas is precisely that; to be a vaccination against the plague of arrogance. It is meant, in the symbolic economy of the human spirit, to remind us that true greatness has its origins in humble things; that a Grinch can be redeemed by a song, that an ordinary life in an insignificant town can make an enormous difference, that a child born ignominiously in a stable can leave a mark of light upon the world. But somehow, all those stories that we already know haven't succeeded in changing us, haven't made us able to confront the hubris of our culture without becoming infected, haven't enabled us to have the Christmas that our human spirits long for. So here's what I'm thinking; maybe we need to look around and stretch ourselves a little bit; maybe what we need this year is a more Buddhist approach to this Christmas season. Because we are pretty much stuck in our western emphasis on glory and power and majesty and achievement and success, and maybe we could find what will help us right now in a tradition that teaches simplicity, clarity, focus of mind, and calmness of heart.

It's not such an alien story, either; anyway you slice it, Siddhartha Guatama was an over-achiever. You may remember that legend has it that he was born without causing his mother any pain, and immediately after his delivery he took seven steps and made the announcement that this was to be his last reincarnation. He was raised as the most privileged of princes, but instead of becoming a spoiled and demanding child, he grew up stronger and more skilled, more radiantly beautiful, and more just and compassionate than any of his fellow students and playmates. Given the choice of all the most attractive women in the kingdom, he chose for his wife a woman distinguished by her kindness and modesty. Although his father had sought to protect the young prince from any knowledge of the suffering of life, Siddhartha insisted on experiencing the world that lay beyond his palace gates, and having seen for himself the realities of sickness, pain, and death, he resolved to discover the answer for overcoming these troubles of the human condition. No small plans for that one! Even as a spiritual seeker, Siddhartha had to out-do everyone else in his practice of austerities, but this still did not bring him the answers he sought.

Finally, emaciated from his rigorous fasting and nearing death, he ate some rice and drank some milk to sustain his body, and settled himself among the roots of the famous fig tree, determined to see his own way into the essence of things, and discover how best to live in this world. It was a silent, inward journey, as many of our most difficult struggles often are. Finally, having overcome his own fears, temptations and distractions, he was able to attain a state of awareness and calm, in which his mind reflected the reality of the world without any distortion from his own feelings or desires. In this state, he was able to examine the truth of his own life, the unity of all life, and the interdependence of all creation. There is an image from the Hindu tradition, which Siddhartha would have known; it is the net of Indra. If you imagine a great net, as big as all space, with a jewel at every intersection where strand crosses strand, and imagine that each of these jewels has as many facets as there are other jewels in the net, each reflecting all the other jewels, and being reflected itself, so that every jewel is reflected an infinite number of times, that network of mutuality is the nature of the universe, in which everything that exists is connected to everything else. It was that essential interconnection that Siddhartha realized in his night of enlightenment, which the holiday of Bodhi Day celebrates.

Allowing for the exaggerations of pious legend in all of this, what we do know historically is the teaching that would shape the culture of the eastern world for thousands of years. Out of his transforming experience, Siddhartha, henceforth known as the Buddha, or the Enlightened One, elucidated the four noble truths of what would become Buddhism. The first of these, which is perhaps the most commonly misunderstood, is often translated to state that life is suffering. This may be an overly pessimistic and dichotomous interpretation. It seems to me that the first noble truth is the recognition that life is inherently difficult, that trouble is necessarily part of it, and this can be quite liberating, for it means that we didn't do anything wrong. It's not that our lives - or our Christmas seasons - would be serene and sensible and easy if we hadn't messed them up. Instead, the Buddha says, they come messed up. They are pre-muddled before we ever get them, like a Rubik's cube that has already been twisted into chaos. Life is full of problems, that is its nature. The second of the Buddha's propositions is that we suffer from these difficulties or problems because we are attached to the way we want things to be. We are so invested in getting our own way, in wanting the world to be the way that we envision it, that we suffer when it doesn't turn out like that. The third noble truth, which follows from these two, is that we could stop suffering if we would stop being attached, if we would recognize the impermanence of all things, and let go of our need to control them. Finally, in the fourth truth, the Buddha showed what he called a 'middle way' to attain this release from attachment, and he offered eight steps for a gentle practice of right actions and contemplation that will lead to the kind of calm clarity that makes it possible to let go, and so to find freedom from suffering. This does not mean that life won't still have problems, but they need not make us constantly suffer about them. And this, it seems to me, is exactly what I need to do about all this Christmas chaos.

As Michael McCormick says in the reading, I need to find the time to calm my heart and mind, and allow myself to reflect on the true nature of life, on my actions and their consequences so that I can humbly take responsibility for my own life. If we could expend on the clarity of our lives just a fraction of the energy that we expend on their complexity, I suspect that we would find them immensely more satisfying and coherent, and the same thing goes for this frantic season. What is it that we want from Christmas, anyway? And incidentally, I think that's the way to ask the question; not what do you want for Christmas, but what do you want from Christmas? What would make this whole holiday extravaganza meaningful and satisfying to you? What is it supposed to be all about; what is at the heart of it? And then, how can we let go of our attachment to all the expectations that always seem to come along with the whole seasonal package? Because the more we are attached to some picture in our heads of 'the way things are supposed to be', the more likely it is that the world won't live up to those expectations - and that we won't live up to them ourselves - and then we will end up feeling sorry for ourselves for no other reason than our attachment to our fantasies.

Put it this way: I advise you to be suspicious of anyone who wants you to 'make' a memory. This is the subtle message behind much of the sentimental advertising at this time of year; we are supposed to be about the project of creating an indelible experience for someone else. Typically, this seems to involve surprising them with a Lexus, or a diamond, but it can also take the form of home-made cookies, or family outings, or pictures from the digital camera, or giving to charity. Whatever the scale, it is essentially a losing proposition, for as soon as you try to make a memory, all the spontaneity and truth go out of the event. Some of the people who first proposed this idea were funeral directors, who urged their clients to have the bodies of their loved ones embalmed and beautified for the sake of creating 'memory pictures'. Trying to 'make Christmas memories' is a recipe for stress and dissatisfaction; people never read their assigned parts in these scripted dramas the way they are supposed to, and the results rarely measure up to the pictures we have in our heads. If you think about the memories that you actually do cherish, you will probably find that they were not designed to be memories. Rather, they are actual moments out of actual relationships, that somehow expressed something essential and precious about the reality of that relationship, often in some unanticipated way. Most likely, it couldn't have been scripted, and as the saying goes, ya hadda be there. At the very least, try not to get attached to the idea of making memories, for yourself or anyone else. Concentrate on living authentically, and the memories will accumulate all by themselves.

So what happens if we add Bohdi Day, the celebration of enlightenment, to our collection of Yuletide observances? Maybe a little message to calm down and wake up, maybe an impulse to sit still for a while, and wait for wisdom to catch up to us, instead of rushing around trying to keep pace with our fantasies. Maybe the simple recognition that Christmas time is a busy, stressful, overwhelming season - that's just the way it comes, and we didn't do it. We can practice letting go of our attachment to running the universe and having our own way about everything; that would help a lot with that hubris problem we talked about earlier. You won't hear the silent song of the stars on a still winter night if you are busy trying to take over the world, and you will miss the crystal wonder of the falling snow if you're in too much of a hurry to just stand and watch it all around you for a while. The baby's smile will only open up like a flower if you are there long enough to be captivated; it can't be scheduled. These are the things of which real memories are made.

Slow down. Let go. Simplify. The longest night will come, and pass, whether we have baked or decorated or entertained or shopped or shipped or not. The gifts of love are seasonless, as is the heart's hunger for quietness and clarity. The Buddha's message is one that should resonate with us as humanists; take the time to think about what you are doing, look carefully at your own life and the interconnection and impermanence of all things, release your attachment to your desires, and quit trying to run the universe. Bohdi Day reminds us that enlightenment is a practice of the mind and spirit, and that the light we seek in this season must shine from within us as well as around us. And you know, our own western religious heritage is not without its teachings of simplicity and inner light; let us conclude our time together, and set a tone for the week to come, with the old Shaker hymn whose message is especially appropriate for these days, 'Tis the Gift To Be Simple.