PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we’re here today in our herky-jerky manner. We’ve raced here to find peace, and tranquility. We’re caught up in our contradictory thoughts that scold us worse than any parent ever could have – we are, in truth, our own worst taskmasters. What can we do about it? It’s time to realize that we are not alone in this business of having a life that seems ordered on the outside, but on the inside is a web of tangled skeins. Trying to separate the threads of the skein internally only pulls the knots tighter and we long for release from this mind that will not let us be. It’s time to start to show the cracks in our lives, time to let others in on our big secret, which, once we do it, we find out it’s their big secret, too. We’re lost and lonely, and there isn’t a prayer in the world that can change that. But we do have each other. Help us to realize that what separates us from our neighbor is our inability to simply open up and let out our secrets. We are individuals, that’s true, but defining ourselves takes community, and the only way to define yourself inside community is to share with others what’s on your mind. You might be surprised. It may very well be that collectively we hold things that we are not proud of, and yet, we are not alone in this shame. There’s an old tradition in Jewish synagogues, one person stands up and tells a bad story about themselves, and then another stands and tries to top that bad story by a worse story. The winner is the congregant who can tell a horrible story about themselves that no one else can top! What a turning of the tables that would be for us all – to admit our foibles and be rewarded. May we have the strength today to admit that we are human, not perfect, a marble cake of contradictory feelings, and may this admission be greeted with the loosening of others as they decide to leave the conspiracy of silence and let it all hang out. In a popular song we are reminded that there is a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. Let’s open up and let in the light of love and friendship. Let’s embody our humanity and be proud of it. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Responsive Reading #645
Song of the Open Road

“What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe… These foundations solidly established … make us know that there are two truths of faith equally certain: the one, that man, in the state of creation, or in that of grace is raised above all nature, made like unto God and sharing in His divinity; the other, that in the state of corruption and sin, he is fallen from this state and made like unto the beasts.” Blaise Pascal, Pensees 434

          Here’s the same thought expressed by Kris Kristofferson in his song from the early 70’s, entitled, The Pilgrim, Chapter 33.

“He’s a poet, he’s a picker—
He’s a prophet, he’s a pusher—
He’s a pilgrim, and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned—
He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,
Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”
The Pilgrim; Chapter 33, Kris Kristofferson

Introduction: There was a professor at the University of Florida in the Psychology Department by the name of Sydney Jourard when I was attending that university from 1965-1969. The first book I read that Dr. Jourard wrote was Disclosing Man to Himself. It is a study in self-disclosure and how telling others about ourselves not only informs them who we are, but also keeps authentic the notion that there is something about us that is real and perhaps the best way to discover what is real is in dialogue with another human being.

          Also, at the University of Florida in 1965 was Dr. Thomas Louis Hanna, Head of the Philosophy Department, a graduate of Texas Christian University, where he played football and was also a collegiate middle-weight boxing champ in the late forties.  He graduated from TCU with a BA in Philosophy, and a minor in Music. Dr. Hanna went on to the University of Chicago where he earned a Bachelors of Divinity degree, and then his PhD in Philosophy.

          I first met Dr. Hanna in Hume Hall, the dormitory I lived in during my freshman year at Florida. I saw a poster on the bulletin board of Hume Hall and it advertised that a Dr. Hanna, Head of the Philosophy Department, would be speaking on the Playboy philosophy in the Recreation Room that night.

          I wandered down there expecting to see a few people, but the Rec Room was packed. It was standing room only, and I was one of the ones that were standing. Dr. Hanna went on to explain to his audience, who were, if not subscribers to Playboy Magazine, certainly borrowers of that same magazine, what he saw to be the implications of the Playboy philosophy. We were all anxious to hear about this because we all wanted to be the BMOC. Does anyone remember what the BMOC was? The Big Man on Campus. And although we knew that the BMOC was popular, wore the right clothes, drove a cool car, we also suspected that an explanation of the Playboy philosophy might give all us geeky freshmen a leg up on how to woo the girls and get them where we all wanted them – nudge, nudge, wink, wink!         

          Dr. Hanna was smooth. He explained the Playboy philosophy from Hugh Hefner’s viewpoint, and really I can’t remember what that entailed, but then he went on to do a critique of this same Playboy philosophy as being mainly masturbatory and definitely non-personal. This, I shall never forget. He, in fact, wasn’t saying anything bad about masturbation, but he was saying that a magazine whose literary merits were sublimated by the pictures of naked co-eds, or at least young women old enough to be co-eds whether they were or not, a magazine of that type lent itself chiefly to the masturbatory process. And the final question he asked all these very young men was, What kind of relationship and philosophy can you expect to have with and toward women, when the majority of the time spent with the magazine is practicing sex with an air-brushed symbol totally removed from any personal interaction, and hermetically sealed from the sights, sounds and smells of a real woman?

          We may have been freshmen but we understood the answer to this merely rhetorical question, and further more, we understood the implications of a philosophy so implemented. More interesting to me than the Playboy philosophy is how Dr. Hanna had played a sort of bait and switch with us, we had expected to learn how to be the BMOC, but what we had really learned was that such a person would be a hollow man, a straw man whose attitude toward women was based upon only one of the attributes of femininity and lacking all basis in the real world.

          But what does this have to do with the corruption of grace and the grace of corruption? Perhaps you can see parallels already, perhaps not? There is a connection, and as we go along, it will become clearer, I promise.

          I remember very clearly one afternoon in spring as I was leaving another dormitory, Murphy Hall, I saw Dr. Jourard and Dr. Hanna playing handball on one of the outside courts that lined University Avenue. I stopped and watched as these two youthful full-grown men played a difficult game at top speed. I didn’t stay to see who won, but I can tell you that they could have played against much younger men and held their own.

          This image of these two men playing handball is especially poignant for me, because both of these men are now dead. Dr. Sidney Jourard was working on his sports car when the jack he was using collapsed and the car landed on his head. Dr. Thomas L. Hanna, at the age of 62, and with the physical reflexes of a man in his 30’s swerved to miss, it is conjectured – since no one saw the one-car accident – swerved to miss a dog, cat, squirrel or other sentient being and left the roadway and collided with a telephone pole.

          Two years before Dr. Hanna died (when he was 60) he realized that he had to tell everything he knew about our bodies and their inherent dignity, divinity and grace, he had to tell all this to the world at large.       

          He and Sidney Jourard were buddies, and Tom Hanna knew that not to disclose fully everything that he had learned about himself and his body would be in essence hiding from his fellow human beings and ultimately hiding from himself.

          The point is most people are taught to hide their true feelings. In polite society it is not considered kosher to be frank, it is not considered a part of everyone getting along to disclose that you do not agree with the dominant cultural position, no matter what the issue is.

          It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see that this same sort of suppression, this same kind of domination is at work today when it comes to the war in Iraq, the proper treatment of prisoners of war, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and the erosion of our democratic processes, global warming – the list goes on and on. In some circles it is still considered unpatriotic to voice an opinion counter to the dominant culture.

          Shifting back in time.

          In 1799 Frederick Schleiermacher, who is sometimes called the “father of liberalism” published his first work. Schleiermacher maintained that religion was not a form of knowledge (as the rationalists and orthodox believed) nor was it a system of morality, as Immanuel Kant put forth. For Schleiermacher religion was not grounded in pure or practical reason, but in Gefuhl – the German word for “feeling.” This is not sentimentalism, nor sudden conversion experiences, but a profound experience of our “dependence” upon the ONE on which all existence depends. In other words an absolute dependence upon God, or the ground of Being. The purpose of the church for Schleiermacher is to relate these absolute feelings of dependency within the church and to future generations. The emphasis is on sharing these feelings with one another – disclosure. These feelings of dependency occur on three levels; the self, the self’s relation to the world and the self’s relation to the ground of being. For Schleiermacher anything that doesn’t deal with these three levels of feeling is not theology, period.  

          For theology to deal with the feelings of the self, and its relationship to the world and the ground of our being is as close to existentialism as one can get without calling it that. And the kind of philosophy that Dr. Hanna was doing back in the sixties and seventies, and the kind of psychology that Dr. Jourard was practicing – both of these were existential in nature. Existentialism is concerned with the feelings that one has within one’s body – feelings of grandeur, feelings of passion, anxiety, despair – all heavy internal emotional states.  

          Within the world of theology I come down with the existentialists and with Schleiermacher. Religion is about my relationships with myself, my relationship with my world and my relationship with that which I am totally dependent upon for my well being.

          Most of us come from religious traditions that claim that we were born into sin. That is, we were raised within an environment that saw human life as basically tainted from the word go! Obviously, this is a way of thinking about life that is basically pessimistic.

          Buddhists do not believe in the notion of original sin, and their quests through meditation and sutra readings are bent in the direction of rediscovering our original face before we were born, or in other words, finding out what the world and we looked like before we were told by the world what they’re supposed to look like.

          In his work Sidney Jourard was stressing that if we successfully hide from others, we will end up hiding from ourselves and there will come a time in which we do not know who we are simply because we have not shared who we are.  We are individuals, true, but we define ourselves through community.

          In the vein of liberal religion, via Schleiermacher, our first responsibility is our responsibility to our selves. If we are to have adequate relationships with the world and with eventually the ground of our being, then we had better be in communication with ourselves. Who are we?

          Quite simply, we are this body. We live our lives within the framework of this physical entity and we receive impressions of what the world is like both from outside our skins and from within. To not honor the communications that we receive from within our bodies is to short-circuit our understanding of who we are and what our place is in the world.

          Thich Nhat Han said world peace begins within the human heart. For the world to be at peace we must first be at peace inside ourselves.

          In like manner, if we are to be autonomous and free individuals, who can make responsible decisions about who we are and how we ought to operate in the world, then we must honor the first relationship – the relationship we have with ourselves. Jesus said, and he was merely quoting older Jewish scriptures, You must love your neighbor as yourself.  Yet, if there is no love of the self, there can be no neighborly love.

          We can no longer speak of a mind body split. Dr. Hanna retooled a Greek word to stand for both the body and the mind, because he saw no separation between them. He called human beings somas. The Greek word “Soma” is used in science and medicine to refer to a cell body, but Dr. Hanna’s contemporary definition sees somas – sees us – as much more than simply bodies acted upon by outside forces. We are at one and the same time, somatic beings that have internal perceptions about the world and ourselves and we are capable of controlling how we function.

          But how do we regain control in a world, which seems to be spinning out of control. The first thing we do is to take charge of our bodies.

          In Dr. Hanna’s terms about 85% of the Industrial populations of the world suffer from SMA – “sensory-motor amnesia.” That is, we have lost contact with our bodies and forgotten how certain muscle groups are supposed to feel when relaxed. SMA describes the effects that a lifetime of daily stresses has upon our bodies.

          There are basically two disorders that demonstrate this sensory-motor amnesia.

          The first is the “red light” reflex and is best demonstrated when someone fires a gun behind you and you didn’t even know they had a gun. And it looks like this. (Demonstrate)

          There’s nothing wrong with this reflect, it has saved many a soldier’s life. What’s wrong is when these responses are continually involved in our daily stressful lives. Worry brings the shoulders up because it’s part of this same withdrawal response. In fact, it’s impossible to say, “Oi Veh!” without lifting the shoulders.

          The second is the green-light reflex. This is very prevalent in industrialized societies. It’s that get-up and go quality that typifies the North American consciousness.

          This is what the Green Light response looks like. (Demonstrate)

          If we are to typify these two responses – the red and green light responses – we have to say that while the red light reflex is negative distress, the green light reflex is a positive response.

          This response is awakened in us when we are just babies. The ability of a baby to finally hold its head up, to flex its legs out at the age of six months, and finally with its head lifted and straightening out its knees, the child begins to crawl and that is the culmination and full discovery of the Green Lights reflex.

          But what happens in an industrialized world when we are perpetually put into a Green Light reflex? What happens if the stimulus for the Green Light reflex is constant in such a society? Continual repetition guarantees that the reflex will be constant, habitual, and eventually unnoticed. When this happens we are in sensory motor amnesia (SMA) and what we feel after a day of this Go! Go! Go! is tired, sore, and worn out. After a lifetime of such stress we feel sick and tired, and ready to die!

          In older people we often see combinations of these two – the red light reflex and the green light response. (Demonstrate.)

          Again, what does this have to do with the corruption of grace or the grace of corruption? How does this talk of bodies and green /red light responses inform any discussion about whether we are like unto the Gods, or bestial?

          It’s very simple, really. Life is a marble cake. You ever notice that? It’s never all chocolate, or all vanilla. It’s a swirl of this and a blending of that. Those who wish to see life as black or white, right or wrong are disappointed when confronted with this swirling inconsistency. In order to maintain a philosophy of life that does not admit the marblecakeness of life children are taught not to touch themselves, that they do not feel what they feel, women are told that they are not equal to men, men are taught that boys don’t cry and older people are taught that they are misshapen because that’s what old age looks like. Lies! Lies! All lies! 

          It’s time to stop trying to get our bodies to fit inside philosophies and theologies that are anti-life. It’s time for the body to assert itself and say what it feels and how what it feels translates into relationship and community. It’s time for embodied spirituality.

          Let’s face it; we are many things that do not go together …

“We’re poets, we’re pickers—
We’re prophets, we’re pushers—
We’re pilgrims, and preachers, and problems when we’re stoned—
We’re walkin’ contradictions, partly truth and partly fiction,
Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on our lonely way back home.”

          I feel, like my mentor, Dr. Hanna, that I, too, will die before long. Let’s face it, if I live 30 more years I’ll be 90 and what are the chances of that? I do not wish to leave this world, or this congregation before I have given to you everything I know about how to be a non-anxious presence in your bodies and in this world. In an effort to do just that this sermon has been, and is, a preamble to a course that I will be offering in Adult Religious Education this fall. This sermon is the spiel of a snake-oil salesman.

          This course will begin on Saturday the 2^nd of September from 9-11AM and continue every Saturday after that for six weeks – ending on Saturday October the 7^th.

          Those who wish to explore the idea that they may be suffering from Sensory-motor amnesia are more than welcomed to attend. What I can promise you is – even if you do the movements poorly and don’t practice them everyday, you will still see a noted difference in how you feel, and how you get about in this world.

          Every good sermon has a prescription for the congregation; this is my prescription for you. Come to the classes, buy the book (it will cost you exactly $16.52 if you buy the book from me), do the movements suggested, and learn to live free inside your own skin. Freedom, independence and autonomy – these qualities – are what human life is all about. And who among us could not use a means of becoming more self-responsible?

          At the end of this service the ushers will have clipboards in the foyer. Please stop, sign up and together we can learn to be free and self-regulating human beings. Caution: there is a limit of 20 people in this beginning class.

Conclusion: Dr. Hanna saw over 3000 patients. He taught them the necessary information so they did not have to keep coming back to see him. He taught them that the sensory-motor system is a closed loop in the cerebral cortex and that by daily movements that take no more than 10 minutes one can retrain the brain to recognize what the relaxed state of our bodies feels like.

          What is the relationship between corruption and grace, grace and corruption? Redemption comes not through ascending to the Gods, but descending into our bodies. Being totally present and taking back control on the physical level is my definition of grace. God, enlightenment, health do not reside outside our bodies, but within – come join in the journey to the center of our selves.

          The true relationship between our corruption and our grace is like a Texan standing in his pasture. His feet may be in the cow manure, but his hat is in the stars. We are that consciousness that spans this great divide. The fallen state of human kind – the bestial, and the raised state made like unto God are but the warp and woof of life’s material, but as it passes through our hands and bodies surely we feel the difference, yet know it to be of one skein.

          Remember the ending I give to everyone of my prayers, In the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, here we are again, gathered together as a covenanted community, sitting side by side, some with eyes closed, some not, sitting and being quiet. In the quietness of this moment we think of those places in this world that are ravaged by war, famine and strife. We thank our lucky stars that in this place tanks are not making their way down major thoroughfares, that armed soldiers are not posted on street corners and that when we fall asleep at night it is not with a symphony of bombs in the background or the thought that in the middle of the night we may be awakened by an air raid. Being in gratitude is but our initial response to the world’s situation, which seems always to be desperate. In our vision for this church we have vowed to be an inclusive religious and spiritual community, to support each other’s search for meaning and purpose and to join together to help create a world filled with compassion and love.  Viewing the news and reading the newspapers of the past few weeks it seems inconceivable that we can help to create a world filled with compassion and love, yet just by joining together this morning, by taking the time to seek peace in our own hearts, by putting aside our petty differences, by sitting here in the stillness of this sanctuary, we are, in fact, helping to increase the peace in this world. Thich Nhat Han said that true peace begins in the heart, for when we are at peace with ourselves, with our significant others, friends, children, and extended family we are a center of stillness, which reaches out to other centers of stillness and peace. Together we at First Church Austin have a chance to teach peace to the rest of the world. We, gathered here today, are about as disparate a group as you can get. Yet, we have covenanted together to support one another to find meaning and purpose in a world filled with meaningless death, and purposeless destruction. May we gather from one another this morning the will and desire to go forward into a world that does not expect us, does not necessarily support us, and will definitely be surprised when we show up. Being here today is part of that showing up. We build here today the peace we will carry in our hearts for the coming days. May that peace reach out to other peace and may peace and meaning fill our hearts and the world. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is precisely everything.

Amen.

SERMON:     The Thinking Reed – The Nobility of Impermanence

Responsive Reading #611
The Rule of St. Vonnegut

“Hello, Babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies you get about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”         - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

          Introduction: What’s the essence of a good scary story? I imagine a wintry evening – it’s not hard to imagine, it’s more like wishful thinking in this hot August weather, isn’t it? – so I see a blustery wintry evening. Outside is fit neither for man, nor beast. Ah, but inside, there is a fire roaring – hopefully in the fireplace, yes, it’s in the fireplace, and the warmth it gives can warm your front or your back, but not both at the same time. The shadows from those sitting around this huge fireplace are thrown against the walls of a large room with high ceilings. Victorian furniture postures itself throughout the room, and above the fireplace is an oil painting of a man in a uniform. You’re not sure … it could be a Civil War uniform, or maybe a uniform from an earlier European campaign. The look on the man’s face is pensive, as if he were contemplating his life as he posed for the artist, contemplating the time he has left, once he leaves the artist and goes back out into the world that has given him this uniform, not to pose in pictures, but to wear as he gallantly rides into battle facing canon and grapeshot alike, bullets whizzing overhead like bees determined to make a hive out of his head. And you wish the lights were on in the big house, but the storm that’s blowing through has taken down the power lines, and the only light that reflects off the faces of those gathered there is the dancing firelight. It is at this moment that someone says, “I have a story to tell everyone.” And chances are it’s not a story about blue skies and rainbows, because on a night like this one we want a scary story, a story that will delight us in its telling, raise the little hairs on the back of our necks, and afterward, when we’ve taken a candle up to bed, it will be the kind of story that haunts us in our dreams.

          We gather this morning beside our chalice. There on the wall is the large representation of the flame, and here on the pulpit the literal reminder of its essence.

          Religion is a funny thing. It’s organized so that we might have peace in the face of the abyss, but make no mistake it is the abyss that inspires it and us.

          And so here this morning, gathered around our firelight, and I wish to tell you a scary story. It’s the story of our impending doom. It’s doubly scary because it’s a true story. Oh, the details will be different for each of us, but the end … the end, my friends, will all be the same. Death awaits each and every one of us. And death cannot be bargained with, or thwarted, or put off. When death is on death’s mission there is only one thing that will satisfy it, and that is the fulfillment of its mission … to bring death, to end life, to have the breathing and heartbeat stop, cessation of all life functions.

          There is a sense in which death can be seen as a monster. It will succeed and it cares not whom it comes to. The child you adore, the elder parent, yourself; they are all in line for death’s services.

          Most of the time we are in denial about death. Oh, we know it happens, but hopefully it happens to others and when it does we breathe a sigh of relief, and say, “It’s not me. I’m alive. I’m still here!”

          Blaise Pascal, the gifted mathematician and physicist of the 17^th Century said, “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him. Because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this…”

          Old Pascal, that pesky Frenchman knew what he was talking about. He didn’t even live as long as Elvis. He died after a long illness at the age of 39.        

          But Pascal had an advantage over us today. In the 17^th Century death was omnipresent. People died at home. Persons who died at home were prepared for burial at home. Laid out on the same table on which they had taken their meals the family washed the body, dressed it, and prepared it for internment. The moveable feast continued, but now it was the worm’s turn.

          Today we are protected from death. That is, we are kept away from those dying. Hospitals are there to prolong life even past the point of absurdity. Those who have died are whisked off to mortuaries, where they are drained of vital fluids, embalmed with noxious chemicals, dressed in their Sunday best and propped up in outrageously expensive oblong boxes for viewing.

          When my father was a young boy, there was a man in his neighborhood in Bluefield, West Virginia who died one afternoon in his hammock. No one knew he was dead until his wife called for him, for the third time, to come to dinner. She did think that was odd. This was a man who enjoyed his feedbag, and was not known to be late to the trough. When she walked out in the twilight of the summer evening she found him peacefully asleep … forever.

          The morticians had a time with his body. The body had become stiff with rigor and he was stuck in a “U” shape. They corrected this malady by tying him to a two by six that they laid in the bottom of the coffin. They were pleased with the work that they had done and on the day of the service delivered the body to the church for viewing. Members of the family and those from the neighborhood filed by and looked for the last time on the visage of the dearly departed.

          After the viewing the top of the coffin was shut, but not fastened. The Minister at the Bland Street Methodist Church climbed into the pulpit and was, he thought, doing a fabulous job of eulogizing the deceased and bringing the living perhaps just a bit closer to their creator. It was during the climax of his eulogy, when he was warning those there present that the time of one’s death was unknown and encouraging them to remember that death could come unannounced and take them, that the 2 X 6 broke. The top of the coffin popped open and their neighbor and friend sat up so abruptly that the whipping action of his resurrection caused his hair to fly about his head as if he were nodding in agreement to the preacher’s warning.

          My father said that when the dust settled there were but a handful of those who had been there still in attendance. The old, the infirm, the feeble, and the curious were there to hear the benediction and marvel at the dead man’s acrobatic abilities.  There is the story of the Zen priest who was asked to the home of a nobleman. The nobleman had a son who was incorrigible and it looked very much as if he would be a wastrel and waste his life in pursuits of pleasure and adventure. The nobleman asked the Zen priest if he would talk to the boy. The monk came to the house one morning and he and the boy disappeared into the early morning fog. The boy was gone all day, and when he got back, he ate his supper and went immediately to bed. The next morning, he got up bright and early, did the chores that had always been expected of him, but never really accomplished, then went to school and studied until it was time to go home. He never talked back to his father, or mother again, and it looked very much like he was going to be a different young man. Not able to stand it, the nobleman walked to the temple to see the priest. “What,” demanded the father, “had the Zen priest done to accomplish this transformation?” The Zen priest was sweeping the sidewalk outside the monastery and he leaned on his broom, and smiled. It’s very simple, he said, we walked to the village on the other side of the mountain where I showed him the dead body of a young man his own age. 

          “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him. Because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this…”

          The Tibetan Buddhist monk, Milerepa, sat in a cave for years and meditated on his impending demise. In the midst of his meditations horrible monsters visited him. But instead of fleeing the cave and his chance for enlightenment, Milerepa sang to the monsters. “Isn’t it wonderful you monsters came today. You must come again next week. From time to time, we should converse.”

          How many of us when we have what we consider a bad thought, simply try to push it from our minds? Or if we have a nightmare from which we awaken in a sweat look forward to going back to sleep in hopes of reentering the bad dream?

          Perhaps we have been mistaken in our judgment of death? Perhaps death is, as Don Juan tells Carlos Castaneda, our ally, on our left and an arm’s distance from us at all times. Unaware of this boon, we treat death as a monster when all along it could be a wise and discerning friend.

          In her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen has a story entitled “The Wood-Of-No-Names.”

          Just before she meet with Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice (of Alice in Wonderland fame) enters the wood-of-no-names and encounters a fawn. Neither the fawn nor Alice can remember their names. No matter. They walk a ways together, ‘Alice with her arms clasped lovingly around the soft neck of the Fawn, until they come to the edge of the wood. Once there, the fawn suddenly remembers its name and looks at Alice with horror. ‘I’m a fawn!’ it cries out, ‘and, dear me! You’re a human child!’ Terrified, it runs away.

          Dr. Remen continues, As a child I spent many summers alone on a deserted beach on Long Island, gathering shells, digging for little clams, leading a far different life than the city life I led the rest of the year. Day after day I watched everything, developing an eye for change in all its subtlety. The rest of the year in New York City, I did not look directly at anyone I did not know and did not talk to strangers.

          There was great peace in those summers and a new ability to be without people and yet not alone. I have many good memories of that time. Every morning the sea would wash up new treasures – pieces of wood from sunken boats, bits of glass worn smooth as silk, the occasional jellyfish. Once I even found a pair of glasses with only one lens left in them. Some of the most vivid of these memories concerned the beautiful white birds that flew constantly overhead. I remember how their wings would become transparent when they passed between me and the sun. Angel wings. I remember how my heart followed them and how much I too wanted wings to fly.

          Many years later I had the opportunity to walk this same beach. It was a great disappointment. Bits of seaweed and garbage littered the shoreline, and there were seagulls everywhere, screaming raucously, fighting over the garbage and the occasional dead creature the sea had given up.

          Disheartened, I drove home and was halfway there before I realized that the gulls were the white birds of my childhood. The beach had not changed. The sacred lives beyond labels and judgment, in the wood-of-no-names. The sacred lives beyond labels and judgment, in the wood-of-no-names.”

What am I trying to tell you? I’m telling you your death can be your friend – you need to get to the wood-of-no-names and there in the privacy of your life reach out to your death – embrace it. It has been with you since the beginning.

We stigmatize it, but we forget – companionship is companionship regardless of the source.

          Besides, death teaches us. Through the death of our animal friends it teaches us, through the death of our grandparents, our parents, brothers and sisters, and unluckily even the death of our children – we are constantly in the classroom and the teacher is Death.

          With us from the depths to the heights – never judging, just there – our own personal death.

          Death is no enemy. Fear is the troublemaker. Death without fear is homecoming.

          “But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him. Because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this…”

          I have a friend, Brent Michael, that’s a recovering alcoholic and he’s been one for over 30 years. Many years ago when he was a practicing alcoholic, Brent was speeding his way through part of West Virginia on his way to Washington for a big meeting. He’d been drinking, but that wasn’t unusual. This particular afternoon it was raining quiet heavily and he’d finished the bottle of Vodka that he had, and was disappointed until he realized that he had put a brand new pint of Vodka in the glove box a few days earlier. He leaned over to open the glove box, and that leaning was just enough to send the car veering off onto the right shoulder. He knew he was going off the road, but the bottle was caught behind a map, and instead of looking up, he kept fumbling with the pint until he’d fished it from the glove box.

          When he looked up he was about 30 feet from a bridge abutment and before he could react, he ran smack dab into it at 60 miles an hour.

          The rest of what he remembers he remembers from a height above the accident. He says he can see himself in the smashed up car and the steam rising from the crushed radiator, and now a car has pulled up behind his wrecked car. The man in the car gets out and fearing that Brent’s wrecked car might explode he pulls Brent from the wreck and lays him on the road, in the rain. For some reason the man is concerned that Brent’s head is laying on the road so he grabs the dry cleaning from the hook in the backseat of Brent’s car, and wadding it up, pushes it under Brent’s head so that at least he looks more comfortable.

          Now, the entire time, Brent is out cold, but seeing this from above, like so many who have had near death experiences. And Brent is mad, mad as hell, because he’d just picked that dry cleaning up and it had cost him a bundle.

          The next thing my friend remembers is standing in a tunnel of light not sure where he is, or what it is he’s supposed to do. Then out of the darkness surrounding the tunnel a child’s hand, lily white, is extended toward him, palm open. He takes the hand and together they begin walking toward the light. Then, the owner of the hand speaks. It is the voice of a young girl. “Would you like to go into the light, or would you like to go back?” They have stopped walking toward the light and are just standing there. The voice continues, “If you go back, you’ll have lots of pain, and you’ll have to change your ways, but if you go forward into the light, you will be at peace forever.”

          The next thing Brent remembers is awakening in the hospital, bandaged and in a great deal of pain. That was the beginning of his sobriety.

          Is it possible that death for my friend Brent Michael was a young girl with a lily-white hand?

          In the wood-of-no-names anything is possible.

          Conclusion: We will all die. Everyone. But death may be something other than the onerous ending of our lives.

          Buddhists do no believe in a permanent self. They see the apparition we call self as the mere resemblance of outward form recognized by memory.

          Those grasping around us – thieves, robbers, politicians, generals, presidents, everyone who is out just for themselves – they are dead while still living. They gather around themselves wealth, power and imagine that, that will keep death at arm’s length and ease the pain of their eventual disappearance.

          How much better would it be to see through the fiction of self and simply disappear in each moment – disappear into breath, disappear into watchfulness, disappear into the non-anxious presence, disappear and be reborn as passers-by, reborn with the heart that never dies.

          How can death be the enemy when we have walked with it, our arm lovingly thrown around its neck through the wood-of-no-names?

          The next time you have the feeling of your impending doom; I want you to do yourself a favor. Instead of turning away, or turning on the television, or picking up the telephone to call a friend, I want you to sit down and have a heart to heart talk with that unnamed entity that has been with you since your birth. And perhaps, just perhaps, within the wood-of-no-names, you will share your finitude with that which will bring it about. Don’t be surprised at what you find out. In the wood-of-no-names all are kindred spirits.