Coming Into the Presence

I'm going to talk about God this morning. We hear so much about God. Some of us read about God on the news, others of us hear about God on the playground or in school. Some of us may never have heard a conversation about God in a Unitarian Universalist church and wonder what we think about God.

There are at least two ways in which my words this morning may be hard to hear. One is that we usually associate the word God with a male God. Today I'm using the G-word to refer to what some call Spirit of Life, or Ground of All Being, or Source of All Existence - be it male or female or both or be it energy. So if your God is female, know that I am talking about Her.

The second way in which my words this morning may be hard to hear is that some people just don't like to hear the word God. I want you to know I'm going to say the G-word at least 81 times in my sermon this morning. So it's OK with me if you want to go back to the nursery and be a Baby Buddy this morning, or read in the youth room, or take a walk.

I want to begin this morning with a story. It's an allegory. There are at least two elements of the story which stand for God. See if you can figure out what they are. The name of the story is When the Sun Rose and it's by Barbara Helen Berger, a writer from Washington state:

When the sun rose today, a friend came to visit me. She came in a carriage bright as the sun [pulled by a lion]. Even the stones in the road were shining. Her lion stopped at my gate. Then she got out of her carriage and came to my door: I opened it and said, "Come in!"

The lion came in with her. I was afraid. Yet his feet were quiet as sunlight on the floor. And my whole playhouse was warm. We sat down and had some honey cake and tea. The lion had blueberries with cream. Then our dolls traded dresses. The lion purred. And we made rainbows all day.

Then my friend had to say goodbye. Her carriage was gold as sunset. "Will you come again?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "I promise." All the way, I watched her going home. Even the stones had long shadows.

Now it is dark. My friend is gone. But she will keep her promise, I know, for the rainbow we made still shines on the wall. And my house is full of roses.

What things in this story stand for God?

Now I want to read a poem. It is also about God. It's called "The Absence," and it's written by R.S. Thomas. It is the reading for today in The Daybook, a Contemplative Journal. Here is the poem:

It is this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. I modernize the anachronism of my language, but he is no more here than before. Genes and molecules have no more power to call him up than incense of the Hebrews at their altars. My equations fail as my words do. What resource have I other than the emptiness without him of my whole being, a vacuum he may not abhor?

The word "God" is a difficult word to use because different people feel different things in their bodies when someone says the word. Some people feel warm and happy, like the little girl whose friend came to visit her. Some people feel empty like the speaker in the poem.

Perhaps when I say the word "God" an image forms in your mind. For some of you that image may be of an old man in the sky with lots of long white hair and a long white beard. He may be dressed in a long white gown. For others of you that image may be of a woman - perhaps a young, brown-skinned woman with flowers in her hair. For yet others of you that image may be of light - light of different colors, perhaps, swirling about the room, gently washing over and through everybody and everything.

I think you all have either a feeling in your body or an image come to your mind when you hear the word "God". It may be an image or a feeling you like and that is useful to you. It may be an image or a feeling you don't like and that you wish would go away - like a bad dream you keep remembering when you wish you didn't.

For a moment, forget about your own personal feelings about God and images of God, and let's talk about language. What is this?

Wow! What a lot of names for this one little piece of fruit! Here's an idea I want you to remember. The word "apple" or the picture which comes to mind when we hear the word apple or the taste we anticipate when we think about eating an apple is not the same thing as the apple itself. Language is a way we have devised to talk to each other. However, the language you use to talk about something is not the same as the thing itself. So every single word we have is only a pointer - something we use to point to something else.

The word "God" is not God. It is a pointer to refer to something else.

Where is God?

We have a lot of different ideas about where God is. Some say God is up there, in the heavens - or over there, beyond the horizon. Both of these ideas talk about God as being separate from us. A fancy word we use to describe this idea about God is that God is transcendent. Some say God is in here, in our hearts - or in every cell of our bodies. A fancy word we use to describe this idea about God is that God is immanent. Some say God is all around us and in us, present to us both in a transcendent way and an immanent way. A fancy word we use to describe this idea about God is that God is omnipresent. Some people, like the poet R.S. Thomas think of God as a "great absence," the "emptiness" of one's whole being, "a vacuum." There is no right way to think about where God is - or isn't.

Some people never make pictures or images of God. If you go to a Jewish synagogue or temple you will never find an image of God. In the old Jewish stories one didn't even say the name of God. They used words like Yahweh or Jehovah to refer to God. We translate the word "Yahweh" as "God", but it really means "I am who I am" or "I will be who I will be."

Some people have many images of God. This is a statue of the Hindu god Kali. Some people call her a goddess, because she is feminine. Today I'm using the word "God" to refer to all images of god, both male and female. Recently I drove to Sebastian, Florida where I saw a big stone carving of Kali. People come to the garden where this statue is and pray to the statue, as if the statue were Kali. They may know in their heads that the statue is not Kali, but they behave as if the statue were Kali. They bring gifts, and they bring their very best behavior when they come to sit or kneel before the image of Kali.

These are two images of Jesus we see often. One of them shows him suffering. The other shows him welcoming his followers or little children to a healing embrace. For some people Jesus is God. If they are suffering, it helps them to remember that Jesus also knew suffering and understands how they feel. If they feel unloved, it help them to remember that Jesus loved every single human being, regardless if they were male or female, young or old, rich or poor, not very smart or intelligent. When people sit or kneel before an image of Jesus they bring their very best behavior. They may also light a candle, to remind themselves that there can be light in darkness and to leave evidence of their presence in the presence of God.

Listen to this sound for a moment and tell me what you hear. [pour water] Look outside. What do you see?

For some people nature itself is God or they see God most easily in nature. When they sit before a pond or a river, climb a mountain, walk on the beach, lie down under a tree, or sit in a garden, they feel like they are in the presence of God - just as surely as the man who kneels before Kali or the woman who sits before Jesus.

What is this? [a cross]

A cross is an important religious symbol. Some people think of it as belonging to the Christian religion. But it belong to all religions when it's a symbol for our relationships with God.

This part of the cross goes up and down. We call something that is up and down "vertical". The vertical part of the cross describes the vertical dimension of our relationship to God. The vertical dimension of our relationship to God comes when we are talking to or listening to God or simply being in the presence of God. There are just two in this dimension, me and God - or, for correct grammar's sake - God and I.

You don't have to have an image of God to have a vertical dimension to your religion. One end of the vertical will always be "me," or "I," the self. The other end can be anything God-like you want it to be - perhaps your best self, or that which calls you to be the best self you can be, or your values, or the rules you live by (your ethics), or the creative possibility you have yet to explore, or the great absence (or void).

Prayer or meditation is our most common way of communicating with or being aware of our relationship with God or the void. This is the language of the vertical dimension.

This other part of the cross, the one that goes parallel to the ground, is called the horizontal dimension of our relationship with God. The horizontal part of our relationship with God comes when we are talking to or listening to or simply being in the presence of others - other people, other creatures, for some, all of life. Indeed, the horizontal dimension calls us into relationship with all being.

Love is our most common way of being in a spiritual relationship with all being. This is the language of the horizontal dimension.

When we carry our dishes to the sink, rinse them and set them in the dishwasher; when we listen to someone who is sad tell us their troubles; when we drive an elderly person who can't drive to the pharmacy to pick up his prescriptions; when we hold the hand of someone who feels unloved; when we stoop down to pick up a piece of trash and carry it to a garbage can; when we watch the sun rise over the Atlantic; when we sing with others on a Sunday morning, blending our voice with theirs; when we take time to listen to a music student play a new piece for the first time - these are times when we are in relationship with God in the horizontal dimension.

For some people it's hard to separate the vertical and the horizontal - it's as if they draw a circle, connecting the two, to symbolize Oneness, the never ending connection between the vertical and the horizontal.

For some people it's important to separate the vertical and the horizontal - to take time every day or every week for the vertical, to identify parts of the day or the week when they are paying attention to the horizontal.

There's a story about a woman who was very sure in her relationship with God. She liked to take lots of time praying to God and lighting candles in her house before images of God. One time there was a very bad storm in her town. The river threatened to overflow its banks. Someone from the sheriff's office came to the woman's street and knocked on every door, advising the people that it was time to leave their houses and go to high ground. The woman refused to leave. She said God would take care of her.

Pretty soon the river did overflow and started running down the street where the woman lived. More and more and more water flooded the neighborhood where the woman lived, and pretty soon the water was coming up the stairs of her front porch and into her house through the cracks around the door. The woman saw a man in a rowboat out in the street. He called to her. "Put on your galoshes and come out on your front porch. I'll come get you with the rowboat." The woman called back, "No, thank you. God will provide for me."

After a while it was so wet in the woman's one story house that she decided she better go out a window and climb up onto the roof. This was hard for her to do, but she managed. Fortunately the roof wasn't too steep, and although the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was blowing so hard trees were falling down, the woman managed to stay on her roof. After a while a helicopter came with a long ladder dangling down. A woman in the helicopter called down to the woman, " We'll save you. Grab a hold of the ladder and climb up." "No, thank you," the woman said, "God will provide for me."

Well, the rain and the wind and the cold turned out to be just too much for the woman, and she died. She was very surprised to find herself in heaven standing before God. God was very surprised to see her there. God said, "I thought I had provided for you. What happened?" "I don't know," said the woman. "I'm just as surprised as you are. I knew you would provide for me, but, somehow, here I am. What kind of provisions did you make for me?" "Well, said God, "first I sent a woman from the sheriff's office, to warn you that the river was rising. Then I sent a man in a rowboat. And finally I sent a man and a woman in a helicopter."

Well, you all know now that I've just told you a very old joke, but there is truth in this story. It's important to notice both the horizontal and the vertical dimension of God, because sometimes God speaks to us through other people or other beings or other life forms.

There's one more thing I want you to know about God. If you are a Unitarian Universalist, it is O.K. to believe there is a God. The fancy name for someone who believes in God is "theist." If you are a Unitarian Universalist, it is O.K. to believe there is no God. The fancy name for someone who believes there is no God is "atheist." If you are a Unitarian Universalist, it is O.K. to be unsure whether there is a God or not. The fancy name for someone who isn't sure one way or the other is "agnostic."

We Unitarian Universalists are blessed in that we honor many different ideas about God. The important thing is not what someone believes, but how they behave - whether they treat other people and beings and the planet with care and concern. This is the way we honor our third principle - acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth - and our seventh principle - respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Let's sing a Hymn 159, which reminds us that no matter how important our own beliefs, there are always those who believe differently, and it's important to honor their beliefs, too.

Prayer for a time of drought

Spirit of Life, we open our hearts to you this morning during a time of drought. Our land is parched. The vines climbing our trees along the roadway are bronze instead of green. Too many of our palm fronds are brown and withering. Our citrus trees are taking juice from their fruits because there is no water in the earth. Our creatures thirst, for there isn't enough sweet water for us all.

As the land is parched, so, too, some of us are experiencing dry times in our lives. We wander through our days as if through a desert, stumbling in the dunes, weak from lack of moisture. We feel the grit of sand in our shoes, irritating us, impeding our progress.

We pray this drought may break. We pray that this cycle of death may bring new life, both in the earth and in our hearts. We are grateful for the small sprinkles of life-giving water energy we've felt this week. We pray there may be more. When the downpour comes, dear Spirit of Life, may we be as grateful for its bounty as we are unmindful now for your abundant gifts during this drought. So be it. Blessed be. Yes!