To Whom It May Concern
Rev. Jen Crow
Just over a year ago, the writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, published a book called Eat, Pray, Love. Perhaps you've seen it on the New York Times Bestseller list or on your last browsing trip through Barnes and Noble - it's a book I've meant to read for months now - and thanks to this sermon and our month of exploring prayer together - I finally picked it up.
In the book, Gilbert shares the story of her own journey to three countries - and luckily for us, in writing she plays tour guide not only around the world but through her own heart as well. As the book opens, the stage is set - it is the beginning of a long journey, with destinations yet unknown - and there she is - huddled in a small room next to the bedroom where her husband slept in a suburban home they own together - alone and sobbing on the bathroom floor as the realization continued to come to her that her marriage was over.
"This part of my story is not a happy one," she tells us. But she shares it because, in her words, "something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life. . .What happened was that I started to pray.
You know - like, to God.
Now this was a first for me. . ." she writes - but in that moment of pain she set theological argument aside in favor of expedience. "In the middle of that dark November crisis," she writes, "I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopelessness and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think I'd read that in a book somewhere.
"What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: 'Hello God. How are you? I'm Liz. It's nice to meet you. . .I'm sorry to bother you so late at night,'. . .'But I'm in serious trouble. And I'm sorry I haven't ever spoken directly to you before, but I do hope I have always expressed ample gratitude for all the blessings that you've given me in my life. . .I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don't know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. . .'"
And so, she writes, "the prayer narrowed itself down to that simple entreaty - Please tell me what to do - repeated again and again. I don't know how many times I begged. I only know that I begged like someone who was pleading for her life. And the crying went on forever.
"Until - quite abruptly - it stopped.
"Quite abruptly," - she says - "I found that I was not crying anymore. I'd stopped crying, in fact, mid-sob. My misery had been completely vacuumed out of me. I lifted my forehead off the floor and sat up in surprise, wondering if I would see now some Great Being who had taken my weeping away. But nobody was there. I was just alone. But not really alone, either. I was surrounded by something I can only describe as a little pocket of silence - a silence so rare that I didn't want to exhale, for fear of scaring it off. I was seamlessly still. I don't know when I'd ever felt such stillness.
"Then I heard a voice. Please don't be alarmed - it was not an Old Testament Hollywood Charlton Heston voice, nor was it a voice telling me I must build a baseball field in my backyard. It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self. But this was my voice as I had never heard it before. This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. . .How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?
"The voice said: Go back to bed, Liz.
"I exhaled.
"It was so immediately clear that this was the only thing to do. I would not have accepted any other answer. . .Go back to bed, Liz.
"In a way, this little episode had all the hallmarks of a typical Christian conversion experience" - Gilbert writes - "the dark night of the soul, the call for help, the responding voice, the sense of transformation. But I would not say that this was a religious conversion for me," she goes on, "not in the traditional manner of being born again or saved. Instead, I would call what happened that night the beginning of a religious conversation. The first words of an open and exploratory dialogue that would, ultimately, bring me very close to God, indeed."[1]
Elizabeth Gilbert's first experience with prayer may be familiar for some of us. These dark nights of the soul come for many of us at some time or another - they have been coming, in fact, to humans for centuries - and for many, they are an integral part of the spiritual journey. From the Christian perspective - as the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "Like every believer I know, my search for real life has led me through at least three distinct seasons of faith, not once or twice but over and over again. Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again. . .In Greek the word is psyche, meaning not only 'life' but also the conscious self, the personality, the soul. You do not have to die in order to discover the truth of this teaching, in other words. You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart."[2]
Lying flat there on the dirt floor basement of our hearts - most of us come face to face with the difficult reality of our situation - with the unchangeable and frightening facts - and in that moment we may just become willing to try something we've never tried before. We may, as writer Elizabeth Gilbert did, turn to prayer - we may, as so many others have done before us - turn to living life in the moment, banishing fear of the future to the best of our ability, we may reach out to our family and friends - sharing the truth of our situation and our feelings for the first time. Whatever path we choose - lying there on the dirt floor basement of our hearts - we will choose well if rather than simply trying harder with the tools we've always used - we turn in that moment to something different. When things feel impossible, as my friends have always said - be willing to choose different.
As Unitarian Universalists - we come to prayer from many different perspectives and traditions - and we approach prayer here, in this church in this month, from many different places. Some of us might know that feeling of crisis that Elizabeth Gilbert described - others may never have experienced that gut wrenching pain, but be living with a feeling of calm and contentment - still others may feel a longing, a searching, a hope for something more connecting, more meaningful in their lives. Some of us may come to this topic with a feeling of dread - not wanting to sit through a month of sermons on a subject we are sure does not apply to us - while others may feel a kernel of hope that a practice they've turned to for years is finally being brought out into the light. Whatever we bring to this place today, one thing we can be sure of is that we come to the topic of prayer from many different places and perspectives - with a wide variety of experiences behind us and awaiting us.
We can be sure that given our different backgrounds, experiences, and hopes - that we will have different opinions about the relevance of prayer to our lives - and as we begin our conversation today - I want to reassure you that I will not attempt to win you over to one particular point of view or the other - I will not engage in the ever-popular game of finding and showing off the scientific proof that just so happens to neatly support only my point of view - rather what I will ask all of us to do this morning and this month - is to lean into all 3 legs of the stool that is our balanced faith - the faith we have, as Unitarian Universalists, that calls us to engage our reason, our conscience, and our experience when it comes to matters of religion.
Because when it comes to prayer - willingness is the key. Willingness to try things out, willingness to follow ideas not our own, willingness to try and fail and try again, willingness to explore. Our reason can take us only so far in understanding prayer - we will have to use our conscience and our experience too if we wish to learn more. But having said this - I want to be clear, here, that as we begin this conversation about prayer I am not asking you to leave your reason at the door. Truly engaging in an exploration, in a conversation, in an experiment - requires that we bring our scientific minds to the table as well. We need that part of science that has been the root of all progress - faith in the scientific method itself if we are to learn. Search and search again, it asks of us, always with an open mind. So let us bring the tools of science with us on our journey as well - the tools of open-mindedness, of curiosity, of possibilities we cannot imagine before we begin. Let us come to the conversation just as eager to be proven wrong as to be proven right - sure that whatever we experience will only further our learning and our growth.
My first summer here in Rochester, I offered a six week class titled "Working Toward Prayer." Now it was summer, so it was a small class to begin with, but the class thinned even more as it became clear that we would not - primarily - be talking about prayer in the abstract - but rather that we would be practicing prayer in the here and now. Anxiety rose in the participants - How do you begin, folks wanted to know - what do you say - how do you address a God or a universe or that still, small voice within yourself that you aren't even sure exists? And what if you're not really sure if that God or universe or still small voice cares a wit about you or actually has the power to do anything with your requests - your sadness - your gratitude - what then?
It quickly became clear that we could spend the entire six weeks of our time together just trying to answer these questions - and that if we did so - we would never begin. We would never, as a dear colleague says, move beyond trying to describe the holy and into the experience of the holy. So I asked the participants in the class to put aside the opening address of their prayers - I asked them to let go of the argument, of the discussion, of trying to understand - and to lean in to that sometimes weak 3rd leg of our faith - the wisdom of our own experience. I asked them to simply begin.
There are many jokes out there about Unitarian Universalism and prayer - and while I find many of them disappointing - there is one that I think offers a bit of wisdom along with its punch line. In the joke - a circle of interfaith clergy have gathered - Rabbis, Imams, Buddhist Priests, Hindu Priests, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarian Universalists, they're all there. As the group gathers they begin with prayer - and as they stand there together in a circle holding hands each clergy person offers their address to God. The Protestant minister prays to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Hindu Priest offers Namaste - bowing to the light in each person, the Imam - begins with Allahu Akbar - God is great - the Buddhist Priest, in the tradition of Thich Naht Hanh - begins with a smile - and the Unitarian Universalist minister prays - to whom it may concern.
It's true that we Unitarian Universalists are a diverse group when it comes to what we believe in - and it is true that it can be quite challenging for a Unitarian Universalist minister to offer a prayer that represents who we are - and in this joke - while I could get offended at the absence of a common language among us or the reluctance to use the simple word God as shorthand - I choose instead to look at the wisdom the minister displayed by refusing to engage in any argument at all about how to address the holy.
Just begin, I told our class two summers ago - just begin as Elizabeth Gilbert did there on her bathroom floor, just begin and let the experience answer your questions. What we call the holy or even if we believe in the holy matters little when it comes to prayer. We tend to forget that a belief in God is not required for prayer - even though the Buddhists have been praying for centuries. All we have to do is pay attention, the poet Mary Oliver tells us, "Just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak." In this doorway that is prayer - in this silence in which another voice may speak - we may find ourselves strengthened, directed, calmed and centered, grateful.
Years ago, my doubts about prayer were addressed by the Episcopal priest leading my confirmation class - why pray, I wanted to know, when it surely will not do any good, when it will not change things as they are here on earth? My priest looked me straight in the eye and offered an answer I will never forget - "Prayer doesn't change things, she said. Prayer changes people, and people change things."
In that moment she placed the ball squarely back in my court. It wasn't up to God to change the world - it was up to me. The only question remaining was whether or not I was willing to try and change the world. Was I willing to share my little grain of hope, as the poet, Denise Levertov wrote, trusting that in sharing it - it might grow? Was I willing to let prayer change my heart, trusting that in sharing my hopes they might increase - "like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source - clumsy and earth-covered - of grace."
In my life prayer has been like the planting of seeds - the splitting of bulbs - the improbable strengthening of small hopes and the clear guidance needed to live through heart-wrenching situations. Prayer has helped me to keep my balance - to continue reaching out - to hear and follow that still small voice within whenever I can just make the time and the space to listen. And prayer has helped me to win out against hopelessness - to start over again and again - fine-tuning my attention to the gifts that do exist - to the changes that are happening.
I have prayed in the morning and at night, before meals, at bedsides, and even, I have to admit, in public restroom stalls all over the world.
I believe that our prayers work if we are willing to be changed by them - if we are willing to open our hearts to the possibility, as self-described humanist UU minister Roger Cowan says, that "God is not me."
As this month of prayer unfolds - let us simply begin - offering our prayers in whatever way we choose - to whomever we choose. May our prayers be like planted bulbs, growing even in the darkness, eager to bloom months later when we have forgotten to expect them. And as we pray, let us be changed, let us feel the responsibility and the hope that lives in each one of us, and let us move our feet, building the community of love and justice we so long for here in this world.
May it be so, and Amen.
Jen Crow, Associate Minister
March 4, 2007
Rev. Jen Crow
Just over a year ago, the writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, published a book called Eat, Pray, Love. Perhaps you've seen it on the New York Times Bestseller list or on your last browsing trip through Barnes and Noble - it's a book I've meant to read for months now - and thanks to this sermon and our month of exploring prayer together - I finally picked it up.
In the book, Gilbert shares the story of her own journey to three countries - and luckily for us, in writing she plays tour guide not only around the world but through her own heart as well. As the book opens, the stage is set - it is the beginning of a long journey, with destinations yet unknown - and there she is - huddled in a small room next to the bedroom where her husband slept in a suburban home they own together - alone and sobbing on the bathroom floor as the realization continued to come to her that her marriage was over.
"This part of my story is not a happy one," she tells us. But she shares it because, in her words, "something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life. . .What happened was that I started to pray.
You know - like, to God.
Now this was a first for me. . ." she writes - but in that moment of pain she set theological argument aside in favor of expedience. "In the middle of that dark November crisis," she writes, "I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopelessness and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think I'd read that in a book somewhere.
"What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: 'Hello God. How are you? I'm Liz. It's nice to meet you. . .I'm sorry to bother you so late at night,'. . .'But I'm in serious trouble. And I'm sorry I haven't ever spoken directly to you before, but I do hope I have always expressed ample gratitude for all the blessings that you've given me in my life. . .I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don't know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. . .'"
And so, she writes, "the prayer narrowed itself down to that simple entreaty - Please tell me what to do - repeated again and again. I don't know how many times I begged. I only know that I begged like someone who was pleading for her life. And the crying went on forever.
"Until - quite abruptly - it stopped.
"Quite abruptly," - she says - "I found that I was not crying anymore. I'd stopped crying, in fact, mid-sob. My misery had been completely vacuumed out of me. I lifted my forehead off the floor and sat up in surprise, wondering if I would see now some Great Being who had taken my weeping away. But nobody was there. I was just alone. But not really alone, either. I was surrounded by something I can only describe as a little pocket of silence - a silence so rare that I didn't want to exhale, for fear of scaring it off. I was seamlessly still. I don't know when I'd ever felt such stillness.
"Then I heard a voice. Please don't be alarmed - it was not an Old Testament Hollywood Charlton Heston voice, nor was it a voice telling me I must build a baseball field in my backyard. It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self. But this was my voice as I had never heard it before. This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. . .How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?
"The voice said: Go back to bed, Liz.
"I exhaled.
"It was so immediately clear that this was the only thing to do. I would not have accepted any other answer. . .Go back to bed, Liz.
"In a way, this little episode had all the hallmarks of a typical Christian conversion experience" - Gilbert writes - "the dark night of the soul, the call for help, the responding voice, the sense of transformation. But I would not say that this was a religious conversion for me," she goes on, "not in the traditional manner of being born again or saved. Instead, I would call what happened that night the beginning of a religious conversation. The first words of an open and exploratory dialogue that would, ultimately, bring me very close to God, indeed."[1]
Elizabeth Gilbert's first experience with prayer may be familiar for some of us. These dark nights of the soul come for many of us at some time or another - they have been coming, in fact, to humans for centuries - and for many, they are an integral part of the spiritual journey. From the Christian perspective - as the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "Like every believer I know, my search for real life has led me through at least three distinct seasons of faith, not once or twice but over and over again. Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again. . .In Greek the word is psyche, meaning not only 'life' but also the conscious self, the personality, the soul. You do not have to die in order to discover the truth of this teaching, in other words. You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart."[2]
Lying flat there on the dirt floor basement of our hearts - most of us come face to face with the difficult reality of our situation - with the unchangeable and frightening facts - and in that moment we may just become willing to try something we've never tried before. We may, as writer Elizabeth Gilbert did, turn to prayer - we may, as so many others have done before us - turn to living life in the moment, banishing fear of the future to the best of our ability, we may reach out to our family and friends - sharing the truth of our situation and our feelings for the first time. Whatever path we choose - lying there on the dirt floor basement of our hearts - we will choose well if rather than simply trying harder with the tools we've always used - we turn in that moment to something different. When things feel impossible, as my friends have always said - be willing to choose different.
As Unitarian Universalists - we come to prayer from many different perspectives and traditions - and we approach prayer here, in this church in this month, from many different places. Some of us might know that feeling of crisis that Elizabeth Gilbert described - others may never have experienced that gut wrenching pain, but be living with a feeling of calm and contentment - still others may feel a longing, a searching, a hope for something more connecting, more meaningful in their lives. Some of us may come to this topic with a feeling of dread - not wanting to sit through a month of sermons on a subject we are sure does not apply to us - while others may feel a kernel of hope that a practice they've turned to for years is finally being brought out into the light. Whatever we bring to this place today, one thing we can be sure of is that we come to the topic of prayer from many different places and perspectives - with a wide variety of experiences behind us and awaiting us.
We can be sure that given our different backgrounds, experiences, and hopes - that we will have different opinions about the relevance of prayer to our lives - and as we begin our conversation today - I want to reassure you that I will not attempt to win you over to one particular point of view or the other - I will not engage in the ever-popular game of finding and showing off the scientific proof that just so happens to neatly support only my point of view - rather what I will ask all of us to do this morning and this month - is to lean into all 3 legs of the stool that is our balanced faith - the faith we have, as Unitarian Universalists, that calls us to engage our reason, our conscience, and our experience when it comes to matters of religion.
Because when it comes to prayer - willingness is the key. Willingness to try things out, willingness to follow ideas not our own, willingness to try and fail and try again, willingness to explore. Our reason can take us only so far in understanding prayer - we will have to use our conscience and our experience too if we wish to learn more. But having said this - I want to be clear, here, that as we begin this conversation about prayer I am not asking you to leave your reason at the door. Truly engaging in an exploration, in a conversation, in an experiment - requires that we bring our scientific minds to the table as well. We need that part of science that has been the root of all progress - faith in the scientific method itself if we are to learn. Search and search again, it asks of us, always with an open mind. So let us bring the tools of science with us on our journey as well - the tools of open-mindedness, of curiosity, of possibilities we cannot imagine before we begin. Let us come to the conversation just as eager to be proven wrong as to be proven right - sure that whatever we experience will only further our learning and our growth.
My first summer here in Rochester, I offered a six week class titled "Working Toward Prayer." Now it was summer, so it was a small class to begin with, but the class thinned even more as it became clear that we would not - primarily - be talking about prayer in the abstract - but rather that we would be practicing prayer in the here and now. Anxiety rose in the participants - How do you begin, folks wanted to know - what do you say - how do you address a God or a universe or that still, small voice within yourself that you aren't even sure exists? And what if you're not really sure if that God or universe or still small voice cares a wit about you or actually has the power to do anything with your requests - your sadness - your gratitude - what then?
It quickly became clear that we could spend the entire six weeks of our time together just trying to answer these questions - and that if we did so - we would never begin. We would never, as a dear colleague says, move beyond trying to describe the holy and into the experience of the holy. So I asked the participants in the class to put aside the opening address of their prayers - I asked them to let go of the argument, of the discussion, of trying to understand - and to lean in to that sometimes weak 3rd leg of our faith - the wisdom of our own experience. I asked them to simply begin.
There are many jokes out there about Unitarian Universalism and prayer - and while I find many of them disappointing - there is one that I think offers a bit of wisdom along with its punch line. In the joke - a circle of interfaith clergy have gathered - Rabbis, Imams, Buddhist Priests, Hindu Priests, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarian Universalists, they're all there. As the group gathers they begin with prayer - and as they stand there together in a circle holding hands each clergy person offers their address to God. The Protestant minister prays to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Hindu Priest offers Namaste - bowing to the light in each person, the Imam - begins with Allahu Akbar - God is great - the Buddhist Priest, in the tradition of Thich Naht Hanh - begins with a smile - and the Unitarian Universalist minister prays - to whom it may concern.
It's true that we Unitarian Universalists are a diverse group when it comes to what we believe in - and it is true that it can be quite challenging for a Unitarian Universalist minister to offer a prayer that represents who we are - and in this joke - while I could get offended at the absence of a common language among us or the reluctance to use the simple word God as shorthand - I choose instead to look at the wisdom the minister displayed by refusing to engage in any argument at all about how to address the holy.
Just begin, I told our class two summers ago - just begin as Elizabeth Gilbert did there on her bathroom floor, just begin and let the experience answer your questions. What we call the holy or even if we believe in the holy matters little when it comes to prayer. We tend to forget that a belief in God is not required for prayer - even though the Buddhists have been praying for centuries. All we have to do is pay attention, the poet Mary Oliver tells us, "Just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak." In this doorway that is prayer - in this silence in which another voice may speak - we may find ourselves strengthened, directed, calmed and centered, grateful.
Years ago, my doubts about prayer were addressed by the Episcopal priest leading my confirmation class - why pray, I wanted to know, when it surely will not do any good, when it will not change things as they are here on earth? My priest looked me straight in the eye and offered an answer I will never forget - "Prayer doesn't change things, she said. Prayer changes people, and people change things."
In that moment she placed the ball squarely back in my court. It wasn't up to God to change the world - it was up to me. The only question remaining was whether or not I was willing to try and change the world. Was I willing to share my little grain of hope, as the poet, Denise Levertov wrote, trusting that in sharing it - it might grow? Was I willing to let prayer change my heart, trusting that in sharing my hopes they might increase - "like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source - clumsy and earth-covered - of grace."
In my life prayer has been like the planting of seeds - the splitting of bulbs - the improbable strengthening of small hopes and the clear guidance needed to live through heart-wrenching situations. Prayer has helped me to keep my balance - to continue reaching out - to hear and follow that still small voice within whenever I can just make the time and the space to listen. And prayer has helped me to win out against hopelessness - to start over again and again - fine-tuning my attention to the gifts that do exist - to the changes that are happening.
I have prayed in the morning and at night, before meals, at bedsides, and even, I have to admit, in public restroom stalls all over the world.
I believe that our prayers work if we are willing to be changed by them - if we are willing to open our hearts to the possibility, as self-described humanist UU minister Roger Cowan says, that "God is not me."
As this month of prayer unfolds - let us simply begin - offering our prayers in whatever way we choose - to whomever we choose. May our prayers be like planted bulbs, growing even in the darkness, eager to bloom months later when we have forgotten to expect them. And as we pray, let us be changed, let us feel the responsibility and the hope that lives in each one of us, and let us move our feet, building the community of love and justice we so long for here in this world.
May it be so, and Amen.
Jen Crow, Associate Minister
March 4, 2007
- Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, Pray, Love : One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006). pp. 12-16.
- Barbara Brown Taylor. Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (Harper San Francisco; 2006). p.xi.