Sermon given by Intern Minister Tori Rosati, March 13, 2022.
I have always been a bit of a people watcher. Nothing filled my younger self with more joy than to grab a warm beverage, find a city or park bench and watch the world go by. This practice always fills me a sense of wonder and amazement that world can hold so many different people. That each person that walks by has a whole life (friends, family, experiences) inside. And here they are for a fleeting moment – coming from some unknown place or circumstance and on their way to another.
When we first started attending church, I found myself caught by the same wonder and amazement. This practice of watching the world around me at church would often translate into, and to the dismay of Tim and girls when they were anxious to leave, my lingering in a corner of our fellowship hall, or tidying up in the kitchen, just to take in this beautiful scene of people for a moment longer– awkwardly and lovingly co-existing together. So many different people… coming from their own separate lives (their individual experiences, joys, and sorrows) and when they left, moving on to some other place – but while they were here – gathered together in that space – they created community - these companions with their conflicts and connections – their differing backgrounds, beliefs, heartaches and joys – all being human together. My sense of wonder and amazement quickly turned to one of profound love.
As we reflect together this month on the theme of “acceptance” - this practice of lingering and taking in the world around us feels significant both with its possibilities and its limitations.
In this time of war, environmental degradation, social oppression and pandemic – there are so many things that are just impossible to “accept.” Over these last two years, and still in this moment, we are all experiencing the grief, trauma and overwhelm that comes from holding weight of the world and our current circumstances. Accepting the world as it is – is so very painful.
And there is so much to be grateful for – our growing building, coming back together again in new ways, the small kindnesses and victories that exist in our midst. But, just as it is hard to hold and bear witness to our great challenges – it is too, hard to allow ourselves to rest in the joys that exist alongside them.
How do we hold it all? And to what end?
Here, I’d like to offer a concept and contemplative practice known as the – “the long loving look at the real.” This practice was coined by Carmelite Priest, Fr. William McNamara in a now somewhat dated book, “The Human Adventure,” where he offers contemplation as a response to the challenges of the world. Like acceptance, contemplation is often viewed as a practice of doing nothing, escaping up the mountain when the world is on fire. In the churning, tumultuous world around us these practices can feel like withdrawal from or subjugation to “what is” in favor of personal enlightenment and escape. But, what if they are more than that?
The long loving look at the real, McNamara, is not merely a passive practice of withdrawal from life, acceptance as abdication – but rather the very essence of how we engage with the Divine and live our faith in the world. It is not a haven from the world but what we find when we are below the timberline where we live amongst the things that break our hearts and the things that break them open.
So let’s unpack this term – the long loving look at the real.
The long is an invitation to pause, to linger if you will. The long is the resting on a seat on a city bench, lingering in the corner of the fellowship hall, or the scan of the faces on our zoom screens. It calls us to rest our gaze, our attention, our awareness beyond what may feel comfortable.
The loving calls us toward oneness with what we are encountering. McNamara says that to contemplate, is to be in love. Repeat. But this isn’t some kind of passive love – it is a radical love that brings us into union and connection with the world around us.
The look – which is more of an embodied, multi-sensory encounter of sight, sounds, touch, and smell. The look calls us to witness. To linger our love on what is in front of us.
And finally the real. Ah, the real – this is the hardest part. As Frank so beautifully reminded us last week the real is not the rose-colored glasses nor the tendency toward despair. It is the raw joyful abandon, the biting cold, and the mundane and ordinary – all of these things mixed and mingled in our midst. It is the place our poet reminded us of earlier – the valleys of our lives with their good and evil, their rosebushes and brambles, their wildflowers and mud.
But…what are we doing, exactly when we are engaging with the long loving look at the real? For me, this practice offers both rejuvenation and renewal, as well as encouragement and motivation to continue on when I don’t know what to do.
There is rejuvenation and renewal found in loving the world despite it all. Those small kindnesses, those moments when we savor, nurture, and give thanks for the gifts we have are essential. They are the moments when we fill our cups and remember that goodness exists – even in its sometimes small and fleeting ways – coming from some unknown place and on its way to another. In these days of violence, suffering and overwhelm – these moments are radical – they are prophetic and they are so needed if we are to continue the course.
And…these pauses, these lingering moments of contemplation and witness encourage and motivate, they make a difference. They are the very thing that motivates and inspires us to participate in the transformation of a struggling world. Like Julia Butterfly Hill who stayed among the trees – bore witness to them, their plight and the plight of the larger ecosystem - and through her steady witness – transformed a moment. We can’t know what to do until we have encountered what is.
Because the Long Loving Look at the Real is participatory – not removed up some mountain top. And it is the one place where, as the great mystics and poets have reminded us where we ultimately encounter the Divine.
Trappist monk, author and activist, Fr. Thomas Merton had a famous mystical experience some years after he joined the monastery in Gethsemane in Kentucky. He was visiting a bustling shopping district on an errand in Louisville on the corner of Fourth and Walnut street when he encountered the Divine. He would later write, “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness…” He goes on, “As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people they are walking around shining like the sun.”
This moment for Merton was a pivotal one in his life and shifted his spiritual trajectory from a quiet monastic life. His long loving look, and its transformative power, translated into a decade of writing, working, and intense engagement in the social justice challenges of his day. His biographer, William Shannon would write, “One of the things going on in him [following this experience] was the maturing realization, born of this contemplation, that it is not possible to leave the world in any real sense…there is simply no place else to go… He experienced the glorious destiny that comes from being a human person and from being united with, not separate from, the rest of the human race.”
Waking up from a dream of separateness. For me, lovingly lingering my gaze, like Merton on those city streets, reminds me I am part of all this. All these comings and goings. The dismantling of our dreams of separateness bring us down where we meet each other. Replace our rose colored glasses and our negative filters with action and intention, with word and deed, with prayer and presence. And this gaze, this posture to life can be done anywhere – despite the limitations of these times.
My experience of this congregation is that for the last two years you all have been doing that very thing – staying in the valley. You all stayed. Your food justice efforts expanding when they were needed most, pastoral miniseries ensuring everyone was still held in the bonds of community, creating safe and connective spaces for gathering on zoom, and through these efforts, lovingly lingering in each other’s midst.
Some of us participated in a the recent Lectio Divina series put on by the newly formed Ministry of Arts group. Similar to the long loving look, we engaged in contemplative encounters with first a piece of poetry, then a painting, and finally a song.
At the end of each of these gatherings, reminiscent of those church encounters in the fellowship hall, I was overcome with a strong lure to linger. I realized after the first one it is because in that space, I was not only engaged in a long loving look at the particular artistic expression, I was also engaged in a long loving look at this group of fellow companions, gathered here on zoom – from all the places they came from and until they moved on to the places they were going – for this lingering moment suspended across time and space we encountered each other and it was loving, it was real, and it was Good.
So.. the long loving look can be a balm for our trying times. It can be the thing we do to rejuvenate – a thing that infuses us with joy to draw on for the road ahead.
And it can also be the thing we do when what we are called to witness breaks our hearts. To know that when we look on the pain of the world in this way, we aren’t alone. Because as our poet from earlier reminded us – God our however we understand that which is greater than ourselves, is down here among the real. We aren’t alone because the forces of peace, justice, and Love are down here with us.
So in these days and weeks ahead – let us draw on our shared faith, our community, and our loving practices to help us to stay below the timberline – where our city benches and street corners face the world going by. Where our fellowship halls and zoom screens capture the loving existence of a people being human together. Where we live among the trees, and not tower above them. To linger when we want to retreat, to love when we want to despair, to encounter when we want to turn away. Let us remember that these actions, however small, these actions matter. This is a radical and prophetic call. If we want to experience the peace, justice and love possible in this world – we have to be where they are – and they are down here…
Down here where…
“The paths become overgrown with the vines of good and evil
Where the earth grows both rosebushes and brambles…
Where there is a kingdom of people who are both bitter and sweet
Where life is both heart filling and heart breaking” (“The Timberline,” by John Roedel)
Down here in the real of our lives where the coffee percolates, the bustle of street corners are filled with people in their endless comings and goings, and where love, like a shining sun, lingers long.