Wisdom in the Extremes

“Wisdom in the Extremes”

Luke 4:1-13

First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown , New York

The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet

February 21, 2010

Lent 1

Readers of our midweek email know I have been enamored lately of a book by Robert Kull entitled Solitude: Wisdom in the Extremes. I did not previously know Kull or his book, but I was browsing in Borders recently and happened on it and bought it. It turned out to be a fortuitous selection for the days leading up to Lent and, in particular, for our lectionary gospel passage today in which Jesus was led by the Spirit of God to be alone in the wilderness for the proverbial forty days and nights.

In his book, written mostly in the form of a journal that doubled as his Ph.D thesis, Kull describes a year he spent absolutely alone in the wilds of Patagonia on the southern tip of Chile . He did it both to explore the effects of deep solitude on his body and mind and to seek insight into to spiritual questions he has had all his life. It is an extraordinary book. I have downloaded into my iPod every interview with Kull I can find on the internet and listen to them as I take my daily walks.

I see Kull as a modern day shaman of sorts, a kind of medicine man for our day as Jesus was in his – medicine being in the traditional sense of the word any practice or knowledge that can help to heal us, to integrate the various strands of our lives, to encourage us toward wholeness, and to teach us of God. A shaman spends time away from the community in solitude in order to come back to the community with wisdom – “medicine” – that will mend, repair, nurture, restore, or provide guidance to the shaman and to the community and to its members. In traditional parlance, if I talked about seeking medicine for my life, I would not be referring so much about aspirin and antibiotics but wisdom, vision, correction, and direction that will help me to put my life together in a good, healthy, and authentic way.

So Kull, living away from civilization for a year in the solitude of extreme conditions, returned with medicine he discovered not only for his own life but also for mine and many others who read his book. For instance, in an entry dated August 20, 2001, he wrote:

Last night, I went out to the rock, and sensed the world as Holy. I tried to see what usually keeps me from that

vision. It seems like desire prevents me from experiencing all of Life – the good, the bad, the painful – as Holy.

Peeling away layers of desire allows the sense of sacredness to flow in. Desire often includes the rejection of what is

and the wish to have something different (p. 178).

Ah, medicine for me as it teaches me how my desires can lead me away from the present moment, from the “now” of my life with all that it has to offer me of both challenge and delight. How can life be Holy to me if I am seeking to be somewhere else, in some other imagined circumstance or future, instead of immersed in the right here and now and the what is? Holiness, aliveness, a sense of the sacred, a feeling of connectedness with all of life only can happen when we are fully engaged in the present moment of our lives and paying attention to the feelings, reactions, and lessons rising up from within us. How many times in my life I have missed important lessons – the good, the bad, and the painful – that the present moment and circumstances have offered me because I am off romping in fields of my imagined desires and therefore not listening to my real life and to the God who is speaking into it.

If you are out shoveling snow, be shoveling snow, not desiring at that moment to be in the Florida Keys or the desert southwest. Grouse about it if it makes you feel better but by staying present to your feelings you may come to find surprising delight in the marvel of four distinct climatic seasons. That experience just might in a parabolic kind of way help you in a moment of need to deal better with the various emotional, relational, and spiritual seasons of your life. In a troubled relationship, desiring a different one might serve as a diversion but it will not lead to healing, renewing, or concluding the one you are in and so you will continue to drift in your life and I think there is no suffering worse than numbing aimlessness. Deal with your life as you are experiencing it without “escaping” into alternate desires, for your life only can become different or better by taking care of what is.

Jesus likewise journeyed into an extreme wilderness so that he could divine some “medicine” for his life and for those to whom he felt called to return with the good news of God. He had a devil of a time as he struggled with inner demons and temptations that are common to most of us. But he did it because he wanted to drink deeply of life and to experience the joy and the freedom that come with living in harmony with God and God’s ways, and then to come back and embark on a ministry of sharing what he had found.

Out in the wilderness, Jesus heard voices urging him to be relevant. (“Turn this stone into bread.”) He heard voices exhorting him to consolidate power. (“You will do well in the kingdoms of this world if you worship at the altar of greed and wealth.”) He heard voices pressuring him to do things that would make people stand up and take notice of him and give him the accoutrements of fame and celebrity. (“Throw yourself down from a high tower and God’s angels will catch you.”)

It was only by facing those voices head on, wrestling with them instead of repressing or suppressing them, that Jesus was able to pass through and beyond the temptations to live what would have been a lesser life, a life not illumined by the delicious subversiveness of God’s ways in the world.

Lucille Clifton was a poet from Buffalo who died a week ago at the age of 73 whose poem called “we are running” wants a place in this sermon:

we are running

running and

time is clocking us

from the edge like an only

daughter.

our mothers stream before us,

cradling their breasts in their

hands.

oh pray that what we want

is worth this running,

pray that we’re running

toward

what we want.

Clifton , I think, is saying that we are so busy running and running in our lives that often we have no idea if in the end what we have thought we wanted will prove to be so and if it will have been worth what we have had to forego or leave behind in order to run so much. Sometimes we are able to run far but not very deep. Following Jesus into his wilderness extreme and Robert Kull into his, maybe it is worth our Lenten while to seek wisdom in our own “extreme.” Doing so does not for us have to entail traveling to the remote wilderness of Patagonia or finding a cave in a desert for forty days. But how about something that may be “extreme” for you, something out of your ordinary routine or comfort that calls you to attention, makes you take stock of your life, invites you to listen to the voices whispering in and into your life that are easy to ignore or deny amid your running mind and your running around.

During these days of Lent, my “extreme” will be keeping a journal. As much as I like to write, I never have been very good at keeping a personal journal. Some wise person one time said that we do not really know what we think or believe about something until we write it down and I think my reticence about writing my life probably has something to do with not wanting completely to face it. Or not wanting to face down my demons and desires which, as Robert Kull’s medicine has taught me, is an avoidance mechanism by which I can preoccupy myself with some imagined alternative rather than dealing with the realities of my present circumstances. Maybe I haven’t wanted to face up to my failures. Or to face off with prospective changes that are more comfortable to postpone. So I shall hope for some “wisdom in the extremes” as I exegete my life in a journal through these days of Lent, confident that the Spirit of God will hover in and among my pages as much as the Spirit of God covered Jesus in the desert. I do not want to be running from my life or from God but into a deeper embrace of both.

Within these days of Lent, to what “extreme” might you go to listen more closely to your life and to God, discerning wisdom for the next stretch of your life?

Welcome to your Lenten journey, 2010.

Amen.

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