Unity Church of Castro Valley
Sunday Message for June 3, 2007
The Rhythm of Creation
I would like to talk today about The Rhythm of Creation. In his book Sabbath, Wayne Muller tells a story of his illness. He writes: "Because a team of dedicated doctors and nurses skillfully treated my pneumonia - and through an intricate web of blessing and grace - I survived this most intimate conversation with my mortality. Still, for several months after I left the hospital, I continued to feel a weight of lingering weariness as my body worked to repair and renew what had been so terribly damaged and infected. I moved slowly, and not often. The smallest tasks exhausted me, and even reading felt like work. I had to take naps every day. There was a rhythm to my days; a good day was inevitably followed by a bad day; a time of clarity and strength invariably led to a time of weakness, and a recurring ache in my chest. I recovered in fits and starts, a gradual healing punctuated by periods of recurrence and remission. But curiously, my most reliable feeling during this outwardly difficult period was an inward sense of peace. I felt a visceral surrender, deep in the cells of my body, a surrender into the arms of whatever or whoever was holding and healing me. It all seemed blessed, somehow, even the frustrating rhythms of strength and weakness. I regularly recalled the words of Dame Julian of Norwich, who asserted time and time again that regardless what sorrows or challenges may arise in our life, 'All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'"
WAYNE MULLER'S STORY
Wayne ended up leaving his home in the high desert of New Mexico because the altitude and dry climate seemed to work against his healing. He and his family moved to the ocean where the lower altitude and soothing moisture would support the work of his body in regaining its strength. It was necessary, but sad, because they had to leave behind many good and beloved friends to move to the coast of northern California.
But, he now walks every day along the ocean, where he is more aware of the cycles of time. The ocean is such a good metaphor for the that. Wave after wave, the water climbs up the beach and recedes, threatens and calms, choppy and still. It is continual, rhythmic change. Driftwood, flotsam, jetsam, shell, and stone are tossed up and then swallowed back down. Things come and go.
It says in (Ecclesiastes 1:9) "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun." Time is something humans created, it can't be linear. Einstein showed us that light itself can bend, and time along with it. Everything begins and ends, and begins again.
Creation has a rhythm to it. There is light and dark, expansion and contraction, the seasons and tides, the cycles of growth and dormancy, of life, death, and regeneration. These are the characteristics of all living things, from the smallest quark to the largest galaxy.
The fruit contains the seed, and the seed contains the fruit. What we harvest in this season provides the seed for the next season. But in Sabbath time, in our time of rest, in our time in church on Sunday, we taste the fruit of our labor, and prepare the seeds for the week to come. If we get too busy, if we don't rest, if we don't take time for the holy, we miss this rhythm. One day we look up and we wonder where all the days went. How did we spend them, what were we doing?
A lot of us have lost this essential rhythm of creation. Our society thinks that action and accomplishment are better than rest. We think that doing something - anything - is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed and to meet society's expectations, we don't rest.
A good example is the cell phone. How many of you here have a cell phone and it's turned on, for fear that you may miss a call? How many of you cannot give yourself this hour of rest without contact with the outside world? What is it that is so important that you cannot give yourself this hour of rest with that which is holy?
Because we don't rest, we lose our way. We miss the guidance that would show us where to go, we don't accept the food from God that would give us strength. We miss the quiet that would give us wisdom. We miss the joy and love that come from effortless delight. Poisoned by this hypnotic belief that good things come only through effort, we can never truly rest.
LIFE & RHYTHM
All life requires a rhythm of rest. There is a rhythm in our waking activity and the body's need for sleep. There is a rhythm in the way day dissolves into night, and night into morning. In our bodies, the heart rests after each beat; the lungs rest between the exhale and the inhale.
We don't gauge the value of the seasons by how quickly they pass. Every season brings forth its bounty in its own time, and our life is richer when we can take time to enjoy each season. In the fall we chop and carry our wood, gather the harvest, rake leaves, prepare our home for winter, and give thanks. In winter we are dormant, a time for quietness, and reflection on our inner light in the midst of darkness. In spring we prepare the soil for planting, we prune what has been lost or dried up, we feed the soil and plant what is needed, and enjoy the flowers. In summer, we tend the garden, watch for weeds and crowding, thin what needs air and sun. We are at rest in the freedom of long days and warm nights.
It's also this way with our children's lives. With each passing year there is a different kind of care, now more holding, now more letting go. Successes are replaced by tender insecurities, confidence turns to awkwardness, until new triumphs straighten the spine and fill the soul with courage. Ever-changing qualities of attention are called forth, and love is offered in its season, now soft and yielding, now firm and resolute. All things require a particular kind of care, and move on. We offer our care and attention in this particular season, this particular moment, doing what is placed before us to do, with simple courage and no small faith.
When we know the seasons of things, we can feel their timing, their readiness. There is less pushing, more waiting to see what is necessary. When we feel these rhythms in our bodies, we are like a woman who knows a child is growing in her womb, but knows equally well that the time for her labor is yet far off. She is content to wait, knowing that every morsel of food she eats prepares the way for a child who will be born and go to school, perhaps marry, eventually grow old. All our work is fruitful in its season. We can taste the peach in the turning of the compost, smell the apple pie as we water the soil deep to the roots.
When we live without listening to the timing of things - when we live and work in 24-hour shifts without rest - we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms that govern how life grows: circadian rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and movements of seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.
When we rest, we can relish the seasons of a moment, a day, a conversation. In relationships, we sense the rhythms of contact and withdrawal, of giving and receiving, of coming close, pulling away, and returning. To surrender to the rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life itself.
Many scientists believe we are "hard-wired" like this, to live in rhythmic awareness, to be in and then step out, to be engrossed and then detached, to work and then to rest. (Exodus 20:8-11) "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it." This commandment to remember the Sabbath is not a burdensome requirement from some law-giving deity - "You ought, you'd better, you must" - but rather a remembrance of a law that is firmly embedded in the fabric of nature. It is a reminder of how things really are, the rhythmic dance to which we belong.
END OF HISTORY
During the time of Jesus, Palestine was filled with miracle workers and prophesies of a Messianic Age. It was commonly believed that the end of history must be near, and that the Messiah would herald the coming of the end time.
Jesus showed up in this atmosphere and his followers listened to his parables and his stories in terms of the predictions. If Jesus was divinely ordained and inspired - then he must be the Messiah who would signal the coming of the end time. Because of this, the disciples' own teaching took on a quality of desperate, imminent salvation. The scriptures of early Christian apostles are filled with directives to repent, the end is near, and the time is soon coming when Jesus will return in his Glory and judge the world. Many, including the apostle Paul, were convinced they would still be alive when Jesus returned.
Clearly this didn't happen; neither did many other predictions by early church leaders of the imminence of the final Kingdom of God as they understood it. They weren't alone; history is riddled with people, groups, and religions who have predicted how history would end. They usually predict an end that is in their favor, often when they were alive, and universally accompanied by the gleeful destruction of whomever they regarded as their enemies.
However, the failure of the messianic prophecies doesn't discourage us from seeking the Promised Land, the perfect future, or the fountain of youth. In western civilization we still believe we are the forerunners of a golden age; brought about by the miracle of technology, and we call it progress.
Progress is the road to the new and improved promised land. At the end of progress, we will all have peak efficiency, superior productivity, and an elevated standard of living. We will have thoroughly mastered nature and all its problems, we will all live in a place and time in which all will be well, all diseases cured, and all wars ended, with a chicken in every pot. We are on the glory road; we are hurtling toward the end time. There is no time to rest, because we are on a very important mission, to boldly go where no species has gone before. And we never rest. Every moment is a necessary investment in the goal of progress.
What we are building for the future is infinitely more important than whatever we have right now. Our riches exist always to be harvested in the future, not here, not now, but there, and later. We will see the promised land, we will make the big score, our ship will come in, our time will come, we will strike it rich.
If the promised land is the good and perfect place, then where we are right now must be an imperfect place, a defective place. If the future is sacred, then the present is profane. Every day we are alive, every day we are not yet in paradise is a problem - our daily life is an obstacle in our way, it is another day short of the end time. Today - because it is not yet perfect - is always a bad day.
This means that we have to work hard and long and never, ever rest because our main task is to get the heck out of here. We cannot rest because we are in ungodly territory, the land of suffering and tribulation, and the sooner we get into the good and perfect future - the only place where we will ever be truly happy and at peace - the better off we will all be.
But there is no place to go. Every time we finally reach the future, it vanishes into the present. This tendency of the future to keep eluding us does not, of course, teach us to be more present, but rather to accelerate faster. We redouble our straining toward the future, never stopping to see where we are, never pausing to taste the fruits of our labor. Our true nourishment will come when we are successful, when we are rich, when we are saved, when it is our turn. Thus, satisfaction and delight are forever just out of reach.
So we despoil our nest, we ruin our air and soil, because it is all dispensable. We won't be here long, because here is no good. It is not where we are going. Where we are going is good and holy and free and pure and perfect and it is not here. And we are on our way. Don't stop us, don't get in our way. Or we will have to mow you down, kill you, ruin your country, burn down your village, to save it.
This is the theology of progress. Only when we get to the end can we lie down in green pastures, be led beside still waters, and allow our soul to be restored. This is the psalm we sing when people have died. This is the psalm we save for death, because in the world of progress, you do not rest in green pastures, you do not lie beside still waters, there is no time. Never in this life, only in the next. Only when we get to the promised land.
But we must ask this question: What if we are not going anywhere? What if we are simply living and growing within an ever-deepening cycle of rhythms, perhaps getting wiser, perhaps learning to be kind, and hopefully passing whatever we have learned to our children? What if our life, rough-hewn from the stuff of creation, orbits around a God who never ceases to create new beginnings? What if our life is simply a time when we are blessed with both sadness and joy, health and disease, courage and fear - and all the while we work, pray, and love, knowing that the promised land we seek is already present in the very gift of life itself, the privilege of a human birth? What if this single human life is itself the jewel in the lotus, the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl of great price? What if all the way to heaven is heaven?
Sabbath challenges the theology of progress by reminding us that we are already and always on sacred ground. The gifts of grace and delight are present and abundant; the time to live and love and give thanks and rest and delight is now, this moment, this day. Feel what heaven is like; have a taste of eternity. Rest in the arms of the divine. We do not have miles to go before we sleep. The time to sleep, to rest, is now. We are already home. And 'All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'
SCRIPTURE: Ecclesiastes 1:9; Exodus 20:8-11
REFERENCE: Sabbath Wayne Muller
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Last updated
June 4, 2007
