Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, August 6, 2023.

How are you spending these summer days? I hope you’re getting some time to enjoy them, some time to breathe in the summer air and savor the blessings this season has to offer. I hope you’re getting the opportunity, as Mary Oliver put it, “to be idle and blessed.” Are you getting enough of that? Because you need it; we need it, don’t we?

I am fortunate that our church life slows down in the summer, and I get a generous amount of vacation time, and especially this summer, I’m taking full advantage of it! I started writing this sermon sitting outside, under the shade of an umbrella beneath a blue sky, as puffy white clouds sailed overhead, and were reflected in the saltwater bay in front of me. My wife Tracey and I were up in Nova Scotia for several weeks, where it was nice and quiet, and things moved slowly, and there was plenty of time to sit and watch the wind blow through the grasses, as the bees and butterflies moved among the wildflowers, and every now and then, a little boat would make its way across the bay. 

For a week our daughter Emma was with us, up from New York City, and not long after she arrived she told us she was shutting down her phone, and putting it away. She hadn’t done this for years, she said, and wanted to see what it would be like. 

In the following days Emma sometimes observed how often Tracey or I would pick up  our phones—to check the weather, or the news, to read about a World Cup game or see if anyone had emailed. One day Emma said that the reason she wanted to turn off her phone was because she’d noticed that when she’s on her phone, she can lose touch with her body. That scrolling through the news or social media takes her out of this present moment, which is where she wants to live. 

I’ve been thinking about this, and trying to be more mindful of how often I look at my phone. How often I do this when I’m bored, or want a distraction. And how the phone, and computer, and TV are not the real world, they’re not the world we live in. They can be helpful and enjoyable tools, but they offer this curated. distilled, often exaggerated or more breathless version of the world. But it’s not the real world. 

This week I’ve been reflecting on how this season invites us to use our senses to their fullest—to smell those flowers, to feel the cool tang of that salt water, to watch with wonder that full moon rising, to hear the wind blowing through those trees, as they offer their delightful shade.

A few years ago the journalist George Monbiot (MON-bee-oh) wrote an article titled, “Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality,” in which he described how detached people can become from the real world when we spend increasing amounts of time online, in virtual worlds. He wrote:

“Is it any wonder that we live in a post-truth era, when we are bereft of experience?

“It is no longer rare to meet adults who have never swum except in a swimming pool, never slept except in a building, never run a mile or climbed a mountain, never been stung by a bee or a wasp, never broken a bone or needed stitches. Without a visceral knowledge of what it is to be hurt and healed, exhausted and resolute, freezing and ecstatic, we lose our reference points. We are separated from the world by a layer of glass. Climate change, distant wars, the erosion of democracy, resurgent fascism – in our temperature-controlled enclosures, all can be reduced to abstractions.”

He’s describing a more extreme version of contemporary life than most of us inhabit, a world in which people primarily live and make relationships online, rather that in person, but don’t we need take his warning seriously? Who among us hasn’t had the thought, “I could spend less time looking  at my phone, or computer, or TV?” 

The problem with these devices, as useful l as they can be, is that the pull us away from the present moment. They pull us away from life. And you want to be as fully alive as you can, don’t you? I certainly do, but that phone in my pocket can be so tempting! And distracting—Tracey could tell you that when she’s trying to talk to me, and I’m glancing at my phone, I’m not hearing what she’s saying. 

I need this invitation, and maybe you do as well— to put away that phone or turn away from that computer or TV, in order to be present to this moment, and this day. To look around and drink in the gifts of this miraculous world—the sights and sounds and smells that are all around us; including the painful and the unpleasant as well as the beautiful. 

Joseph Campbell said, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

This is what I’m taking about! The awareness, if being alive, and the joy and fullness that comes with this awareness. It’s a religious experience, isn’t it? That leads into connection, and tenderness, and gratitude.

Especially now, in our fast-paced, technology-driven world, don’t we need to carve out time and space to just be still, to just be in our bodies? Time to turn down the chatter in our brains and feel the touch of the wind on our skin, to hear the buzzing of a bee or mosquito, to taste that warm tomato just plucked from the vine? Don’t we need to have experiences that we can simply savor; slowly, deeply, gladly?

Next weekend brings the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. But any clear night is a good time to get out to a dark place, and and look up at the stars. It’s magical, isn’t it, to see the Big Dipper and the Milky Way? The expansiveness of the night sky reminds us of our place in the universe; that we are both incredibly small, and at the same time, we are part of something vast and amazing. It is all here, and we are part of it. All we have to do is wake up to this reality, and when we do, we start to see that there are little miracles all around us!

This is the call we heard this morning from Gretchen Haley:

Give up the fight
For some other moment
Some other life
Than here, and now
Give up the longing
for some other world
The wishing
for other choices to make
other songs to sing
other bodies, other ages,
other countries, other stakes
Purge the past; forgive the future—
for each come too soon.
Surrender only to this life,
this day, this hour,
not because it does not
constantly break your heart
but because it also beckons
with beauty
startles with delight
if only we keep
waking up.
This is the gift
we have been given:
these “body-clothes,”
this heart-break, this pulse
this breath,
this light,
these friends,
this hope.
Here we re-member ourselves
All a part of it all—
Giving thanks, Together.

Too often religion has tended to separate people from their bodies, to see the spiritual as somehow above and apart from our physical selves. And our contemporary culture doesn’t help either—its glorifying of particular types of bodies can make the rest of us feel inadequate or ashamed of these bodies we’ve been given. But aren’t our bodies wonderful gifts? Which not only what make it possible for us to be here, breathing in and out, moving through our world, but these bodies and these senses are what allow us to touch and be touched, to taste and smell and experience this world all around us.

The invitation is to get into this warm and radiant season, while it is here. To live into our bodies, while we can. To  awaken our senses, and inhabit this moment; to be grateful and glad for these gifts, and these companions, now and always,

Amen.