"'Eh, I could eat' Spirituality"
Ted Potter, Henrietta UCC – 8/23/09
When was the last time you felt really connected to God? I mean, truly connected. When there was nothing between you. None of the trappings of life, no distracting thoughts, no ego. Just a pure, heartfelt connection.
I'd be willing to bet that it wasn't when things were going well. Sure, there might have been moments of pure bliss that counted. Maybe as you watched a beautiful sunset or a child's innocent play, you felt your heart start to overflow with love and gratitude, temporarily washing out your day-to-day cares and concerns, and giving you that feeling that God's love was shining through you at that moment.
But in my experience, some of my deepest and most earnest connections with God came when things were going completely, horribly wrong. Here's an example: stomach flu.
How many of you have had the stomach flu? If you've had it, you know what I mean. It's one of the worst feelings you can feel-- that feeling that you're never going to stop throwing up, that just when you get that temporary respite for a minute, another wave of intense nausea kicks in and takes over. Your entire body is held hostage to the sickness, and you can think of nothing else. Well, maybe one other thing. God.
I've had many intense bargaining sessions with God while curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. I can't remember exactly what I promised God during those times-- I assume it included my first born, all my money, or maybe even body parts. Those of you who have had it know the depths of earnest desperation you can reach at those times. My bathroom floor promises probably included going to church more, and thank God I found a church where going is a win-win proposition for me, instead of something I do just because I think God will like me better.
But weird as it sounds, that horrible situation provided me an opportunity to cast aside all the normal static that stands between me and God. All the TV commercials, daily stress, worry about the future, all of that dropped away as I focused, laser-like, on talking to God and fervently hoping God would hear and respond. It ‘s a pure moment, when all the normal feelings of ego go away. You can’t control anything—you can’t even move, for fear of hastening the next wave of nausea.
And instead of feeling those normal feelings of irritation at minor annoyances, or being judging of other people, you feel so low, the lowest of the low, and you are filled with desperate, full-throated love and gratitude when your friend or your wife brings a cool, damp cloth to your forehead. And that deep love and gratitude, I believe, comes from the Godly place of one human connecting with another through God’s love.
Now, I'm not recommending you go eat some bad egg salad in an attempt to get closer to God. But I’ve often thought, why don’t we feel that depth of love and gratitude for others all the time? Maybe because it would be exhausting? Or we’d have to fake it too much? After all, people in our lives do do a lot of irritating things. C’mon, how am I supposed to love my neighbor when my neighbor keeps borrowing my tools and breaking them?
It’s not an easy question, and I don’t have an easy answer. But I believe the answer lies in how we feel when we’re down. I think it’s harder to be close to God when things are going well. The verse from Proverbs 27:7 hints at it: “He who is full loathes honey, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.”
When you’ve been noshing on junk food all afternoon, come dinnertime, are you truly hungry? “Eh, I could eat.” When things are going well, is there a danger of, instead of us being filled with gratitude and love, we think about God and say “Eh, I could eat”?
Let me pose what is kind of an uncomfortable question for you to think about: Is the purpose of suffering to help remind us to get closer to God?
Here’s another example from my life, a pretty recent example actually. As many of you know, in January of this year I was laid off. And it took me 5 months to find a new job—about 5 months longer than it ever took me to find a job previously. It was quite a shock—for 19 years I was at the top of my game in the computer software world, being pulled from company to company, from position to position, by people that had worked with me and wanted to again.
All of a sudden, I was thrust into a goldilocks world of applying for positions in what experts were calling the worst economic conditions in a generation. I seemed to be a round peg in a sea of odd-shaped holes. I heard any number of reasons why, after 19 years of being sought after, I suddenly didn’t fit anywhere. “Too technical.” “Not technical enough.” “Too senior.” “Not senior enough.” “Too much project management.” “Not enough project management.”
It was a humbling experience. Humbling and depressing, with many ups and downs along the way. I often joked that, instead of the severance package, my previous employer should’ve provided a candy dish of Prozac.
Fortunately, I was able to use those deep depressions to look inward and take a voyage of self-discovery that I had never quite gotten around to before. A couple thousand years ago, Socrates said “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, I finally got around to examining my life, and myself, and found out some interesting things. I can’t reveal them all today, but I took ownership of certain parts of my personality that I had either dismissed or unfairly shunned, and realized that they were what made me unique, and were in fact strengths.
Like the fact that I am much better at starting things than finishing them. Much better at generating ideas than picking one. I can talk to anybody about anything. And I tend to be good at putting people at ease and drawing them out. I see patterns and associations in weird ways that others may have missed. I’m a very quick learner.
But even more importantly, I learned that my fears were getting in the way of my hopes, and my ability to be the very best father, husband, and employee I could be. I devoured books like Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth”, which gave me one of the best reasons I’ve found for suffering: to break down the ego. In the darkest despair of my 5 laid-off months, I could feel my ego begin to crumble. In “A New Earth”, Tolle suggests two things to help the process of breaking down the ego:
1. The first thing is to be as aware as you can of how you feel. Write down exactly what you’re feeling, without editing it. I remember waiting outside of offices for job interviews, and scribbling madly in my notebook: “I feel afraid that I’m going to say something stupid. I’m worried they’ll think I’m a fraud. I’m afraid they’ll expect me to know something I don’t know.” The more I wrote, the more I put a name on the nameless fear that gripped the base of my brain, and blocked the connection with God that would allow me to channel God’s love and purpose into the interview. And the more I named each fear, in all its many facets, the more I loosened its grip on me.
For those of you listening right now, think for a moment about what you’re feeling. Of course, the first thing you’d write down is how excited you feel about listening to such an inspired sermon. J But after that, what are you feeling? Maybe you’re a little tired? Parts of your body are warm, or cold, or aching? Maybe you’re afraid you’ll fall asleep, or that this sermon will never end. Take a moment to just pay attention to how you’re feeling right now, without judging it. (Pause)
2. The second thing Tolle suggests is to just focus on what you’re doing at the moment. If you’re walking across the room to pick up a book, your purpose at that moment is to walk across the room. When you pick up the book, that’s your purpose. When you start reading it, then reading it becomes your purpose. This can be incredibly calming and centering. I remember one of my worst moments, feeling like the world was crashing around me, like I would never, ever get a job again, and my family would have to live in a cardboard box under a 490 overpass. I was making dinner, and I just started saying to myself, “I’m chopping the onion”, over and over again, like a mantra, as the knife went up and down on the cutting board. “I can’t fail if I’m just chopping the onion. I’ve chopped onions before, and did a good job.” That present moment focus on what you’re doing can get you through a lot.
Tolle isn’t the first philosopher to talk up the benefits of suffering. In today’s reading we heard from a fairly well-known philosopher and teacher from about 2000 years ago. Take a look at the Beatitudes. At least 5 of the 9 things Jesus says are “blessed” come from suffering. The translation we read today, from Eugene Peterson, is so good I want to read it again here. Pay particular attention to what leads to closeness with God:
3"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
4"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
5"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.
6"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.
7"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.
8"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
9"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.
10"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.
11-12"Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
Pastor Dave once said something along the lines of “In order for your heart to open, it has to be broken first.” I told a friend that and she said “Whoa, does he warn you before he drops something heavy like that on you?”
Isn’t our ego part of that shell, that armor around our heart, that prevents us from fully connecting with God? A Zen parable tells of the young man, full of himself, eager to impress the Zen master of a school the young man wanted to join. As the master began pouring the tea, the young man went on and on about his mastery of Zen, even at such a young age. As he kept talking, the master kept pouring, until the young man cried out “Stop pouring! The cup is overflowing—you cannot put anymore tea in it.” The master replied, “So it is with you—how can you learn anything if you are already so full?” In modern language, it might be said that the young man was “full of himself”. Full of ego.
I’ve heard it said “Never let a crisis go to waste.” I’d like to believe that the suffering I endured during my 5 months in the out-of-work wilderness, I put to good use in terms of breaking down my ego, learning about myself, and, most importantly, getting closer to God. The first two lend themselves to the third—ego and not knowing yourself are often stumbling blocks to connecting with God.
Can suffering turn those stumbling blocks into stepping stones?