{"id":239,"date":"2019-11-10T21:49:05","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T21:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2019-11-11T01:27:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T01:27:29","slug":"for-all-that-is-our-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"For All That Is Our Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many folks make a personal spiritual practice of reflecting on their lives.\u00a0 Mindfulness is a way of observing life closely as we\u2019re living it. Keeping a diary, journaling, or writing a memoir is a way to make sense of life in hindsight, and to carry the life lessons we learn forward, for ourselves, or others.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We are talking about spiritual practices this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What is spiritual practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Spiritual practice is the\u00a0doing<\/em>\u00a0part of religion.\u00a0\u00a0What do you\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0with your faith?\u00a0\u00a0How do your\u00a0activate<\/em>\u00a0your faith?\u00a0\u00a0In what way does your faith affect the path of your life, the choices you make?\u00a0\u00a0Inwardly, spiritual practice is the action you do to further explore and deepen your faith, and outwardly spiritual practice is the action you do to express your faith through your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What do you do as a person of faith?\u00a0\u00a0As Unitarian Universalist minister, Harry Meserve once asked, \u201cIf Unitarian Universalism were a crime would there be enough evidence to convict you?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Spiritual practices are those regular actions we take to explore the essential questions of our existence and to live out our answer.\u00a0\u00a0These are what I call the spiritual questions: \u201cWho am I?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat should I do?\u201d and \u201cWhy does it matter?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The three questions of Identity, Purpose and Meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We can ask those questions in the first person singular.  Who am I, What should I do, and Why does it matter, to me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Or we can ask those questions in the third person plural.  Who are we?  As a community, like a church.  Who are we as human persons?  Who are we as a web of life on the planet, or as members of an interdependent web of all existence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What should we do?  What\u2019s the mission of this church?  What should we do as a human species to solve our troubling issues worldwide, such as our faith goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all, or to combat the environmental destruction our actions have taken?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And why does it matter?  Why does it matter to us<\/em> as a people of faith, as Unitarian Universalists?  Why does it matter to all of us collectively as a human community?  Why does it matter to the earth or the universe whether we do this or that, or do nothing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When you ask those three spiritual questions in the plural form:\u00a0\u00a0Who are we?\u00a0\u00a0What should we do?\u00a0\u00a0And Why does it matter to us?\u00a0\u00a0Then the three spiritual questions start to look like the three dimensions of a complete faith that you\u2019ve probably heard me talk about before:\u00a0\u00a0Beliefs, Values, and Actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In our western culture, following from the Christian model and our own faith history in Protestant Christianity, we usual think of faith only in terms of beliefs.\u00a0\u00a0We ask \u201cWhat do you believe?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0What do you believe about the Bible?\u00a0\u00a0What do you believe about life after death?\u00a0\u00a0The question of whether you believe in God or not continues to have more importance in our churches then the question deserves, in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Your beliefs are your description of reality.  Your beliefs are your worldview.  Your beliefs are what you hold to be real, both the material parts of existence available to investigation by science, and those immaterial parts of reality beyond the scope of scientific examination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But we know that beliefs are not the entirety of a faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We know that a complete faith is also concerned with values.\u00a0\u00a0What is important to you?\u00a0\u00a0In Unitarian Universalism our statement of 7 Principles has become central to our faith because we define our religion by the values that we hold in common, even as we embrace diversity in our beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And finally, as anyone who has looked aghast at the American evangelicals\u2019 support of Donald Trump can attest, beyond what you say you believe, and beyond what you say you value, faith also, importantly, consists of what you actually do with your faith.\u00a0\u00a0How do you actually live in the world?\u00a0\u00a0Actions are often more revealing of your true beliefs and true values than the beliefs and values you defend by your words alone.\u00a0\u00a0How do you act?\u00a0\u00a0How does your faith live through you and express itself in the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So, a complete faith is Beliefs.  Values.  And Actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And that trinity, then, nicely overlaps with the other trinity of the spiritual questions:  Identiy, Purpose, and Meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Beliefs are related to identity.  Who am I?  Who are we?  What is real?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Actions are Purpose.  What should I do?  What should we do?  What\u2019s the goal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And Values are Meaning.  Why does it matter to me, to us, to the universe itself, or to God (if you\u2019re so inclined)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Spiritual practice finds itself in the component of a complete faith devoted to action.  What do you do with your faith?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            After the first of the year we will start to look at the aspect of the spiritual question of purpose which has to do with goals \u2013 what is spiritual practice for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For now, though, we are just looking at the doing itself, the varieties of ways in which people explore their faith inwardly, and express their faith outwardly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We started this series by looking at several ways that people engage in spiritual practice within a spiritual community.  Spiritual practices like worship, ritual, hymn-singing and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Then we moved on to spiritual practices that people do individually, sometimes surrounded by other people doing the same thing, but each having a private experience.  Spiritual practices like following dietary practices, movement practices like yoga or walking a pilgrimage route, meditation, or prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Today I want to talk about perhaps the most solitary kind of spiritual practices.  These are the spiritual practices that I call \u201clife review.\u201d  The well-examined life.  The thoughtful, intentional, regular, reckoning with who I am and what I have done as the days go by.  The spiritual practice of examining one\u2019s own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the smallest scale, life review might look like a mindfulness practice.  Mindfulness is a form of mediation where one attempts radical awareness of one\u2019s own life, in real time, while you\u2019re living it.  While you\u2019re washing the dishes, just washing the dishes, not also thinking about other things, or listening to the news.  When you\u2019re walking just following your steps and staying connected to the time and space around you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Life review on a larger scale might be done on a day by day basis, such as a person who wakes up each morning and spends a few moments setting an intention for the day, and then, before they go to bed at night, spends a few moments reflecting on the day that passed.  This spiritual practice might also include keeping a daily diary, or journaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The idea is to draw out the significance of a life, beyond just the stream of experiences of a life.  Engaging with those question of, who am I?  What matters, to me, in my life?  And what should I do, starting tomorrow, with the rest of my life, to more completely express my singular nature and the values that are most important?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Finally, on the largest scale, a spiritual practice of life review might include writing a memoir, looking back at one\u2019s entire life to mine a lifetime of experiences.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            For the last couple of months I\u2019ve been re-reading Proust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Proust\u2019s novel in seven volumes, collectively known as Remembrance of Things Past<\/em>, in its English title, or A la Recherche du Temps Perdu<\/em> in French (In Search of Lost Time), is a life review at its largest scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The work is a fictionalized memoir of Proust\u2019s life.  It begins at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century and ends shortly after the First World War.  The action takes place in Paris, and in the French countryside, and one scene in Venice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I don\u2019t imagine that Proust would have considered writing his novel a spiritual practice, but the novel is certainly spiritual in the way I\u2019ve been defining that term.  The questions of Identity, Purpose, and Meaning, fill the book from beginning to end, both as the author and character of Marcel obsessively examines his own life, and in the parallel lessons the reader can learn for themselves through following Proust\u2019s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I say I\u2019m re-reading Proust, because I first read the novel when I was in my 20s.  I\u2019ve had the volumes sitting on my bookshelf ever since then, moving them with me from apartment to apartment.  I had always meant to read it again someday, but hadn\u2019t necessarily meant to read it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Then, Jim and I had a dinner party a few months ago, and as the guests were leaving they walked by the bookshelves in our hallway toward the door and one of my friends noticed the volumes of Proust and remarked on them.  He had read it, too.  We exchanged a few comments on the book.  And so, after not thinking much about Proust for a long time, suddenly I felt drawn to tackle it again.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Opening the book again, I was immediately drawn into Proust\u2019s world.\u00a0\u00a0But now, being nearly 60, instead of just past 20, the book has a much different meaning to me.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m less frustrated with the characters\u2019 manifest flaws, more sympathetic with their neuroticism and self-defeating behavior.\u00a0\u00a0It all seems more true of human life to me now than it did in my idealistic youth.\u00a0\u00a0And now, reading Proust the second time, and remembering as I read now some of my experience reading it the first time, where I had been as I read, who I had been with, and also noticing what events and references and insights in the novel I had forgotten, or not understood, or mis-understood, I\u2019m having an experience much like the one that Proust makes the theme of his novel: the experience of living in the present reality, and yet forever feeling invaded by involuntary memories of earlier life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Whereas a mindfulness practice would push away those memories, Proust welcomes those memories, but sees them not as \u201cliving in the past\u201d but as an integral part of the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What Proust does, in writing a fictionalized story of his own life, from the point of view of an older Proust, looking back at his childhood and earlier adulthood, and recording all of the flaws and obsessions, and jealousies in love, and misplaced values about social standing that end up being trivial, he is able to track the development of his life from rather obscure and unimportant person to, eventually, becoming one of the 20th<\/sup> century\u2019s best known and most important writers.  And, at the same time, to transform the events of his life:  petty and confused, cruel and small, into a remarkable creation of enormously significant art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Proust ends up making in the present (his present as a writer) a creation that builds from the materials of the past, but transforms the past, passed through his genius, into an artifact of the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This is the spiritual practice of life review:\u00a0\u00a0the transformation of the facts of life into the meaning of life.\u00a0\u00a0From the what happened of the moments of the day in chronological order, to the what for.\u00a0\u00a0So that the raw materials of a life are not simply moved through and abandoned as we pass our days, but life is saved, sorted, collected, examined, re-arranged, and transformed into a life deliberately created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            To be a spiritual practice it must be regular: a half hour every day, or every evening, or a set-aside time once a week; to sit down with a laptop, or a pen and a notebook, or a sheet of paper and a drawing pencil or a box of watercolors.  And to pass the events of life through the reflecting and creative mind.  Remembering and recording with honesty and humility, and pride and purpose.  So this happened.  Then this.  What can I learn?  What can I make?  What can I save?  What will I transform?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For work and its rewards, for hours of rest and love;
For sorrow we must bear, for failures, pain, and loss,\u00a0
For each new thing we learn, for fearful hours that pass:\u00a0\u00a0
For all that is our life we sing our thanks and praise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many folks make a personal spiritual practice of reflecting on their lives.\u00a0 Mindfulness is a way of observing life closely… Read more For All That Is Our Life<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}