“Were the Whole Realm of
Nature Mine”
4.
"Now Is the Time to Give Our Hearts"
Psalm 49
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
July 18, 2010
A
couple of weeks ago on a Tuesday I celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of my
ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament.
I came into the church for a few minutes that day to take care of some
things that needed my attention, but then I decided to spend the rest of my
celebratory day at Lily Dale. It was
a fitting venue, I thought, because thirty years ago I would not even have
considered setting foot in the place as I would have been persuaded by those who
cautioned that it was devilish, demonic, and dangerous to one’s everlasting
soul. As it was, twelve or thirteen
years ago, on my way to meeting Paul Hedin for a presbytery gathering in
But
I went back, and back, and back again over the years.
I find the old growth forests at Lily Dale, its fairy trails, and its
secluded lakeside hideaways make it one of the most peaceful places I know.
I always feel replenished after a couple of hours there.
More, as my religion has grown up and I have come to understand that
God’s ways and thoughts are not limited to my own, I have learned something
there about mystery and openness and freethinking.
Lily
Dale bills itself as the largest Spiritualist community in the world.
One of the hallmarks of the religion of Spiritualism is its belief in the
continuity of life. That is,
Spiritualists claim it is possible to communicate with those who are now “in
spirit,” or, as we would say, with those who have died, thus “proving”
that this life on earth is not the last of us.
(Here, I do want to say that I never have gone to Lily Dale for such
“proof.” I have trusted God for
my life and I trust God with my death and I believe the words of our risen Lord
when he said, “Because I live, you, too, will live.”)
Nevertheless, the Spiritualists’ assertion that they can communicate
with those in spirit and the apparent ability of some of them to do so feeds my
maturing religious sensibility that life is bigger, more expansive, and
infinitely more curious than most of us think it is and that we do, indeed, only
know a thimbleful of reality.
During
church services at Lily Dale, much of those services being similar to ours
though not nearly as good (smile), and during special “message” services,
mediums open themselves to those in spirit who may want to make contact with
someone who is present at the gathering. Only
twice in all my years of going to these services has a medium “come to me”
with a message for me from someone in spirit.
The first time was eight years ago and I was more than a little taken
aback when the medium said to me that she was getting a grandmotherly vibration
who wanted to say something to me and that her name is Margaret.
“Do you understand,” the medium asked me.
“Can you make sense of that?” Well,
yes, that is my mother’s mother.
The
second time was on the afternoon of my thirtieth anniversary ordination.
The medium said again that she was getting a grandmotherly vibration. No
name this time, but she told me that this woman had tremendous lower back pain
and arthritis in her last years on earth. Did
I know who that could be? Does it
make sense? Yes.
Again it was my mother’s mother. I
guess all of those years of playing Yahtzee and Parcheesi with her really struck
a bond between us.
Do
you want to know what the medium said to me?
She told me that my grandmother was saying to me: “You are an
intellectual. You like words and
thoughts. You like to study and to
reason things. And your intellect is
bathed in spirituality. You have
more of a connection to heaven than you know if only you would listen better.
(That sounds like my grandmother.) Then
she went on to say, “You are facing decisions in your life that will not be
able to be decided by intellect and reasoning alone.
You are going to have to give your heart to them.”
The
psalmist said in our reading today that “the
meditation of my heart shall be understanding.”
In other words, it is as Blaise Pascal once wrote – “the heart
has its reasons that reason cannot know.”
Neither the psalmist nor Pascal were disparaging in the least either
reason or the intellect. They simply
were saying that reason and rational thought are not ultimate, but at best
penultimate. It is the heart that
has to be listened to most of all. It
is where the deepest truth resides. It
is from the heart that our lives find their meaning.
This
was further impressed on me as I listened recently to a recording by one of my
favorite poets, David Whyte. He was
telling of a time in his life when he was exhausted, but exhausted in a way
deeper than a good night’s sleep could fix.
His life was flat. He had
little energy. His creativity was
flagging. Somehow he got into a
conversation with a Benedictine priest and Whyte told him about his exhaustion.
To which the monk replied to him, “The antidote for exhaustion is not
rest. The antidote for exhaustion is
wholeheartedness.” If we are
not giving our whole heart to something in our lives – our work, a
relationship, a dream – we’ll find ourselves feeling exhausted.
We always can find reasons not to give our hearts – it may be
inconvenient to do it, it may be costly, it may disappoint or frustrate the
expectations others have of us, it may ask us to change our lives or to go in a
new direction and that can be very scary. But
as the psalmist makes clear – the
meditation of my heart shall be understanding – until we listen to our
hearts, until we live wholeheartedly, until we give our hearts to that to which
is calling to us, we shall not know peace in our lives nor contentment nor a
sense of harmony with God and the universe and life all around us.
You
would expect me as a preacher to urge you to give your heart to God.
And I do urge you to do that but with this caveat.
We give our hearts to God best not by becoming more spiritual or
religious but by doing that to which we sense our deep heart to be leading us.
Giving our heart to God does not mean we become more overtly pious.
It means living wholeheartedly. “The
glory of God is a human being fully alive,” St. Irenaeus said.
When the first question of the Shorter Cathechism of the Presbyterian
Church asks, “What is the chief end of
man?” and provides this answer – “The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever,” it
is saying the same thing. We glorify
God, we enjoy God by living
wholeheartedly for “the meditation of my
heart shall be understanding.” When
we live with divided hearts, when we close ourselves off from what our hearts
are trying to tell us, when we allow fear to override or overrule what our heart
is trying so hard to say to us, we get exhausted, restless, restive, resentful.
Nature,
it seems to me, the whole realm of it, lives in accord with its heart.
It is why Jesus so often retreated to wild places for solitude between
his times with the crowds of people who gathered around him.
It is why nature occupied such an important place in his teaching and
preaching. “Look
at the birds of the air,” he would say.
Or “consider the lilies of the
field.” It is why when he gave
us a way to remember him and to continue in his way he looked to nature – the
fruit of the vine and a loaf of bread.
Wendell
Berry has a poem about nature’s heart. It
is called The Peace of Wild Things and
in it he says,
When despair for the world grows in
me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the
presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For
a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
There
is something about nature that helps us to return to our hearts where we can
experience the grace of the world, the grace of God. Knowing
that life is rooted in that grace, we then can give our hearts as they are being
led, and be free.
Now
is the time to give our hearts. We
cannot withhold our hearts from where they are leading us and still be, as God
desires for us, fully alive. To what
or whom or where are you being called to give your heart?
Give
it.
Amen.
Copyright
© First Presbyterian Church 2010