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Fleeing for Tarshish
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Douglas Taylor
on July 21, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
I have three wonderful, amazing children. The youngest, Piran is
almost eight months old now. He is getting so big and active. He is
crawling around everywhere and pulling himself up to stand as often
as possible. The combination of crawling and standing makes
climbing the stairs a lot of fun. Just the other week my wife told me
he had a new favorite toy: the vacuum cleaner. It is amazing how
much more often the floor needs to be vacuumed when there is
someone crawling around on it. And it is amazing how much fun little
ones have with toys that are not really toys. Now, his love of the
vacuum cleaner has waned and his attention is devoted mostly to a
hairbrush, but for awhile there he liked to sit and pat the vacuum
cleaner. One afternoon, Piran was climbing the stairs (with me right
behind him) and discovered the vacuum cleaner on the landing; just
sitting there on the landing as if it too had merely paused on its own
journey up the stairs and was now waiting for him. And suddenly
Piran was caught between two strong desires. Should he continue to
climb the stairs, or stay and pat the vacuum?
This, in a nutshell is what my sermon is all about: The art of making
choices. We adults are occasionally caught in this same way between
two or more equally attractive choices, and we are torn as to which
course to pursue. Usually the dilemma has heavier consequences
attached to it than simply picking between climbing the stairs or
patting the vacuum. And the heavier the consequences, the harder the
choice is. Should I stay in my current job or jump for the more
exciting though riskier job? Should I work to rebuild a broken
relationship or pick up the pieces and move on? Which path shall I
follow as my road diverges in this yellow wood? I read somewhere
that "good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from
bad judgement."
And this is what made me think of Jonah. Because often our choices
are not made in a vacuum. We have clues as to which way to turn.
In the yellow wood, Robert Frost looked down each road and noticed
one "was grassy and wanted wear," and so based his decision on that
information. But how do we judge the information we have to come
to our decision? Jonah had a very clear indication as to which way to
travel, and he picked the opposite direction. According to countless
study guides, Tarshish was the farthest sea port to the west, all the
way on the edge of the Mediterranean sea in Spain. Nineveh was over
to the east. The story of Jonah, the way many people read it, is
really a satire because he sets out to refuse God by failing to
prophesy. He tries to run away, and if you read on or if you recall
the story, he turns out instead to be wildly successful. The town
of Nineveh repents because of his preaching, something that happens
so rarely in Hebrew Scripture. Prophets are always being scorned,
ridiculed, and ignored. But for Jonah the whole city, all its
inhabitants and even the cattle, repent from wickedness by putting
on sack cloths and sitting in ashes. That's right: even the
cattle -- in sack cloths, sitting in ashes. Here is a prophet who
really did not want to even show up, and at his mere word, the whole
town repents and is saved. It's quite a clever story really.
But what caught me, was how Jonah is given a very clear signal as to
what to do with his life, and he takes off in the opposite direction.
Now we don't get much God speaking to individuals these days, and
the conservative Christians have varying answers to that point. The
way I see it, the voice of God can come through the mouth of any
number of people who at one time or another offer a word of good
counsel or a thoughtful nudge of encouragement. How often do we
have a problem, though to which the solution is so clear and yet we
somehow end up doing decidedly unhelpful things instead! The
reasons why can be of several variety. It could be that we are
following a knee-jerk pattern that we learned when we were young.
It could be we are hopelessly (or seemingly thus) drawn to unhealthy
situations. It could be we are in the habit of suppressing our deepest
longings in favor or what we think we are supposed to want out of life.
It could be we just aren't thinking things through. Whatever the
reasons, we sometimes find ourselves longing for better decision-making
skills; or at least a better understanding of how we do it when
we find we have done it well.
Sometimes that is the only clue we can be certain of as to whether or
not we have chosen well. When we can look back and say, things
have worked out for the best and that was a good choice on my part.
The phrase from Christian scripture "By their fruits ye shall know
them," was originally intended to be about good people and the good
deeds they do. In our case this morning it can also be applied to our
good choices and the good outcomes resulting. This is great, but
what do you do before you've made your decision to get some
assurance that you are choosing well.
Well, a book I was reading recently picks up those very questions. In
Pierre Wolff's book, Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well
he writes:
Can we avoid waiting until harvest, because by then it may be
too late? Is it possible to have a systematic method of
choosing what will guarantee good fruit? It is impossible
beforehand to assure with absolute accuracy that what we are
going to plant today will result in our own well-being and the
well-being of others. If we retain the image of fruit, we can
not forecast perfectly what tomorrow's weather will bring or
the effect it will have on our seedlings. Will there be
tornadoes or a gentle rain, drought or perfect sunshine? Who
can predict? However, if a farmer methodically takes good
care of the soil, prunes the fruit at the right time, uses the
proper fertilizers and insecticides, and takes precautions
against frost, good fruit may usually be anticipated. So also,
a method of decision making reduces the hazards of being
mistaken and puts the odds in our favor. ... [And then a little
further down the same page it says this.] All ripe fruit, when
it is finally harvested and delivered, has undergone a
maturation often accomplished by methodical labor. (p. 13-4)
Wolff's contention is that, when done well, the decision making
method he outlines in his book will lead to a sense of harmony within
oneself in relation to whatever the decision is about. Of course, as
he indicates in the above passage, you can make the right choice and
still be hit by drought or tornadoes over which one can not control.
But there again, how you respond to the outside events in your life
is still your choice, as Robbie Walsh said in our meditation. I
think one of the key pieces to this is owning your part in the
process. You need to know what you can control and be responsible
for that.
OK, enough about that, let me tell you about this special method
Wolff offers us. He offers us "Discernment." Discernment is the
word used when there is a religious element to the decision making
process. And it does not take too big a stretch to see a religious
element to every major decision, especially when you define religious
the way we do around here. According to Wolff there are four
components to discernment: your time, your head, your heart, and
your values. I'll cover them briefly, so your all with me. And as you
are thinking about this, think about how this applies not only to how
one individual, (yourself, for example) but also to group decision
making. We as a congregation make decisions together, when they
are big ones, we would do well to follow a method of discernment!
Time, the first element, is a basic component, perhaps the
basic component because when we don't take our time with our choices,
we usually end up reacting rather than responding. Responding means
you choose to behave in a particular way to the events around you;
where as reacting is more like a learned reflex that may or may not be
helpful or even what you really want to do. You need to allow time
for the discernment to work. Now, like anything you practice at, you
can develop your discernment skills to the point that choosing well is
like a reflex or a positive reaction in those situations when you don't
have much time to respond. But what you really want, if at all
possible is to take time to fully consider the two roads that diverge
before you.
The next component will seem obvious, I think for two reasons. Your
head needs to be a part of the discernment process. The two reasons
I think this will sound obvious to all of you is first, because we are
Unitarian Universalists and the idea that the brain should be engaged
in every activity is just a given. And second, because when most of us
take time to consider a decision, we do just that: we consider it, and
we think it through. This is the point in discernment where you would
write out a list of pros and cons. This is the point at which you would
uncover the possible outcomes. I could stay here and pat the vacuum,
or I could continue to climb up the stairs, or I could pat the vacuum
for a little while and then climb up the stairs afterward. Now, a
perfect, objective analysis of any given situation or dilemma is not
humanly possible, so don't try. We are not machines able to be
completely objective and emotionless. Just because a person can
reach a sensible decision based solely on intellectual analysis does
not mean that said sensible decision is the best decision for all
people in all situation, or even if it were, that any person would
actually want to follow that choice!
It may sound odd to talk about not wanting to pick the choice that
seems to be the obvious answer after we've thought it through, but
Wolff gives this example: Think about the process of selecting a
mate. If you find a person who is roughly your age and is in good
health; who shares similar interests, values, and even cultural
heritage with you; yet you do not love this person! Your brain
weighs things and turns up yes, yes, yes to this choice of life
partner. Yet the heart says no, and that is the end of that. Pascal
said, "The heart has reasons that reason does not know."
Discernment is not simply a process of figuring out what is sensible.
It also includes the element of what you want. I mentioned early on
that when Robert Frost looked down each road in his yellow wood
and noticed that one road was worn by many travelers and the other
was not so; and thus based his decision on this information. But how
did he weigh the information he got by looking down each road? Was
he stirred by a sense of longing or adventure? Maybe he doesn't really
like being around other people and the thought of all those other
travelers on the more common road just "turned him off," you might
say. One of the ways Wolff talks about this is to say, "Does one
solution seem to resonate while another seems to stifle?" Emotions
come a various levels. Listening to your heart is certainly done at a
level of depth.
So far I have told you about the elements of mind, heart, and time. I
now speak of values, for it is the inclusion of values is what sets
this decision making process apart as distinctly religious. It is
values that leads us to make hard choices that may not seem the most
sensible or feel good. And it is here that I digress from Pierre
Wolff's book. Which may be a very good thing, because this sermon
was beginning to feel too much like a book report. I will say,
however that Wolff's book is about the only one I could find that
offered guidelines beyond an author adding a few pages or even a
chapter on discernment which usually focused on prayer as
discernment rather than discernment itself.
Values are the key element to a sound decision making process. I
have a bookmark with a pithy quote I like: "Set your course by the
light of the stars," it says, "not by the lights of every passing
ship." This image of navigating a ship is a fine analogy for
choosing well. We often feel like we are in uncharted waters and
those old maps that have places marked "here there be dragons"
seem to fit with what it's like to try to work through significant
dilemmas. Shall I invest more of my free time helping out at the
nearby soup kitchen or at my church, or shall I spend it with my
family? Shall I carry this child to term and give it up for
adoption or shall I terminate this pregnancy now? If I get into
the university I really want, which course of study shall I
pursue? I'm worried that my teenage son might be skipping school
and doing drugs, how shall I respond? When is it time for me to
stop driving because of my age? Indeed here there be dragons for here
we touch on deep things. What we think is best and what we
want or desire may hit up against our strongest values. Our values
can serve as stars by which we navigate.
Which leads me to share with you an updated, modernized analogy
along these same lines. Discernment is like having a spiritual GPS.
I learned about two months ago when my father-in-law came for a
visit that GPS stands for Global Positioning System. These are fun
little gadgets that tell you exactly where you are within 20 or 30 feet
using latitude and longitude and then some of the more sophisticated
ones will translate that to street names. These things are turning up
in cars and in the belt pouches of high-tech hikers. What fascinates
me is how these things work. There is a system of about 24 satellites
that were put into orbit spanning the whole planet for the purpose of
airplane navigation. A GPS device will triangulate your position
based on your distance from three or possibly four if necessary
satellite readings. I found a very neat website which explained the
physics of it to me. It's very interesting.
Well, I got to thinking, wouldn't it be great if we had metaphysical
versions of this device. What if we could create a little electronic
toy that could tell you where you are spiritually. The satellites to
measure by would be our values. You could find yourself in unfamiliar
territory and pull out your SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, and
based on your distance from the values of honesty, personal integrity,
and financial security you should probably steer clear of that job
offer from the corporate auditing firm and stick with your job as
bookkeeper for a non-profit organization.
When Jonah is down in the belly of that great fish he does some
serious discerning and lets out this long prayer about how awful life
can be but he gives thanks all the same to God who is about to
command the fish to release him. And he pulls out his SPS, Spiritual
Positioning System, and discovers that the whale must have traveled
a bit in those three days and three nights, because he is no longer
anywhere near self-righteousness and presumptuousness and he is now
moving pretty close to humility and compassion. One of the lines in
the prayer is: "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace
that could be theirs." (Jonah 2:8) Those things which you value, those
things that deep down define you because those are the things you
hold as your guiding principles; those things should be worthy of such
honor. One of the lessons Jonah's story can offer us is to be careful
what values we use to guide our choices.
What are the nearest satellites to you, what are the values you use
when plotting your course? Perhaps three of them are enough to
triangulate yourself in a faithful discernment process. Hold fast to
the clearest thoughts of your mind, the deepest longings of your heart,
and the bedrock core of your values. And take your time.
Allow me to close by offering this brief prayer of discernment given
to me a few months back by a member of this congregation, Bob Harrison.
May this or something better now manifest for me in totally
satisfying and harmonious ways for the highest good of all
concerned.
In a world without end, may it be so.
Office@CedarLane.org
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