Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Albert Einstein, the great physicist who fled the Nazi’s in 1933, and came to America to live and work at Princeton University in New Jersey, was once traveling from Princeton on a train. The conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket for his ticket. He couldn't find it, so he reached into his trouser pockets. It wasn't there, so he looked in his briefcase, but it wasn’t there either. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn't find it.
At this point, the conductor interrupted his search to say, "Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I'm sure you bought a ticket. Don't worry about it.”

            Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle
punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned
around and saw Einstein down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.
            The conductor rushed back and said, "Dr. Einstein! Dr. Einstein! Don't worry. It’s not a problem. I know who you are. You don't need a ticket. I'm sure you bought one."
            Einstein looked at him and said, "Young man, I too, know who I am. What I don't know is where I'm going."

I’m sure most of us have had a somewhat familiar experience, especially as the number of life’s experiences increases. That time when for a moment we have had to stop and ask, “Now where was I going?” Which sets the stage this morning, for asking the question for us, as for Einstein, namely, “If we don’t know where we’re going, how will we know when we get there?”

So, where are we going? What is the destination of the spiritual journey on this last day of January in the year 2010?

Back in 2007, when we realized the first hints of a troubled economy beginning to tank, few of us anticipated its severity. Many Americans had ridden on a wave of unprecedented prosperity. Among some there was a kind of take a flying leap attitude, and worry about growing wings later…knowing that surely, there would be more of “that,” wherever it was “that” came from.

Unfortunately, three years later, we’re still reaping the harvest of unregulated greed gone to seed, and an ensuing economic-system-meltdown that’s teetered dangerously close to the brink of collapse.

All of a sudden it seems as if we missed a verse? Or was there a chapter that we skipped? It poses a, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” kind of song. We begin to wonder about the paths we’ve taken…about how we’ve lived our lives…about this life…this moment? What happened?

I saw the movie, “Up in the air,” recently. The movie itself poses a surprisingly serious existential question. But one of the more humorous and yet pungent points comes when the central character, George Clooney, feels a twinge of remorse for his absence from his extended family through the years. So he comes in off the road to attend his only sister’s daughter’s wedding. As a confirmed bachelor, commitment is really not his thing, as everyone knows, especially his sister.

It’s upper Wisconsin, cold weather, ice and snow. On the day of the wedding, before he can get to the church, he receives an almost hysterical phone call from his sister: “Come to the church. Quick!” He races out and over, opens the door of the church, only to be confronted immediately by his sister who tells him the groom has cancelled. He is not going through with the wedding. And he is sitting alone in a room nearby. For once in your life, she implores, do something for your family. Go fix him!

Clooney protests, given his own life’s resistance to marriage, but his sister insists. Conditioning it all in the background, is his niece who is crying her eyes out.

So Clooney walks in to the room where Jim, the groom, is sitting. Clooney sits down, and quite awkwardly seeks to find out why Jim has backed out of going through with the marriage, especially at this late date?

Jim begins to explain, and in so doing he encapsulates the whole life experience…one of the crises of adult life. He says:

“You know, I was just lying there last night in bed and I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about the wedding and the ceremony and all. Us buying a house and moving in together. Having a kid…having another kid.

“Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, football games, all of a sudden they’re out of school, getting jobs, getting married. And then, you know, I’m a grandparent. I’m retired. Before you know it, I’m dead…and I just kept thinking…what’s the point?”

In the movie theater, the audience, made up mostly of seniors, laughed. But it was not a belly laugh. It was a resonating laugh…when we realize a very serious point about our own lives has been put in a humorous way, but serious nonetheless.

James Fowler has written about the five stages of faith, that don’t always have chronological years attached. Somewhere along the way, did we miss one?

Others have used quarter-century markers to note those distinctively different periods and times in our lives. And author Gail Sheehy (who may be here with us this morning), has written extensively about the many ways to examine the dynamics of passages…those markers in the right of way of the road of life on which we travel.

And yet when all is written and spoken, when the movies and books and plays are over, it is still left up to you and me to make a decision…a choice for how we will live the next day of our lives…or more accurately, this moment, of this day, of our lives. And in so doing, have it chart out for us, where we are going.

But the point of this sermon is that there is a question prior to that one, especially for this congregation…this congregation whose roots include Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists, Humanists, and a whole lot of Whatevers. It’s what is the destination of our spiritual search? And the answer depends in great part on how we understand where we came from.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the study of where life started, and how the planets and stars and our Universe came in to being. As you know, in science that’s called cosmology, the study of origins…of the cosmos. On a scientific level, it involves physics, mathematics, chemistry, and biology, as well as anthropology, geology and astronomy, to mention only a few. It doesn’t take long before I’ve gone beyond my pay grade in all those fields.

But the phenomenal thing is that in recent decades, cosmology has also begun to include metaphysics, religion and theology. And sometimes you can’t tell which one is the other. Here’s a little of what I mean:

In 1949 on radio, Fred Hoyle first used the words Big Bang, to explain the transcendent explosion that sent energy racing through the Universe in every which way and at unimaginable speeds. And even now, things so enormous as galaxies are birthing and expanding at enormous velocities – all as a residual effect of the Big Bang! For example, our solar system is traveling outward at 44,000 mph.

But here’s the spiritual point: It comes from the late great physicist David Bohm, who died in 1992. He was an admired colleague of Einstein’s. Incredibly, during WWII, he was prevented by security spooks from working on the A-Bomb, even though it was his dissertation in theoretical physics that provided its framework. But for our purposes this morning, Bohm had a fascinating theoretical framework, suggesting that the Universe has a memory that predates the Big Bang. In it, there was what we might call the egg of the universe in which all things were one, and all places were one. Mind and matter, space and time, were not distinct, one from the other. Instead, they were all floating in the same yolk, so to speak. And the Big Bang, as it were, followed after that – and literally blasted everything into being.

Here’s the spiritual point: Bohm suggests that deep down in the being of all things – the tiniest core – there still remains…there still is retained…the memory of being one: before the Big Bang.

Which I read to mean this: when we seek to find a new level of spirituality in our lives…when we seek to connect with that which is more than we are…what we are really doing, perhaps, is expressing that inner primordial drive to return to the One of which everything was before the Big Bang.

It’s why we get quiet so as to concentrate…it’s why we watch sunsets and sunrises…watch waves…look at trees…love flowers. Somehow it resonates with special space and time. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so pleased with our new facilities which we take possession of Feb. 17, and hopefully begin using shortly thereafter: It will enhance our efforts to create a sense of sacred space…where we can tap in to the otherness of our existence…where we can utilize the faiths of the ages to address this moment in time…where we can chart a course for the future that we are called to be…where we can be beckoned to tap into the Being beyond Being…into Being itself…into that which beckons us from before the Big Bang.

Because if we admit to an originating Source for this Universe and our lives, then it means creating a conscious acknowledgement of our connection to that Source; it means recognizing that others are separated from us but not more than six degrees. It means that the way we live and love and learn…the ways we give and share and seek to help…there’s a reason for that: We’re connected…not only to each other…but to an originating Source.

I once looked at a piece of art that was so abstract and without representation that I simply did not know how to respond to the artist who had painted it and was standing by my shoulder as I viewed it. Finally, I committed the cardinal sin against any artist or creative work. I said, “Sue, that’s very interesting!”

Without warning, she literally screamed, which she followed up by stating, “Wayne, say you hate it. Say you don’t like it. Say you don’t understand it. But please for Christ’s sake, don’t say, ‘It’s interesting!’”

After I had recovered from the shock of her scream, and had convinced her that I really didn’t find the painting interesting in any way, shape or form, she introduced me to a perspective of art that I’ve found illuminating ever since. She said this:

Every work of hers had a center. Once you found that center, then understanding of the work itself would come.

So I looked and looked. I even turned my head sideways. Finally, she pointed me to a tiny white spot. I then stepped back and sure enough there was a sense in which the rest of the piece all revolved around and towards that one little speck of white. But before she screamed and led me to search for a center, I had found it only “interesting.”

The point being is also what physicist Bohm was describing, though on the canvas of the Universe.

Within each of us, there is that center that is resonant with the center that was the heart of the Universe before the Universe existed. That means our center stems from the stuff of the stars…and the dust of the heavens. Within us reside the mud and the blood that seek through eons of evolution, so as one day to struggle to stand and upon standing to stand. And in life as well as in death to be joined in with that original center from whence we came and where we go and from which we are.

That center gets so easily obscured sometimes by the tugs and pulls of living. We cover it up with stuff…and even deny its existence. Until one day, something happens…something we didn’t anticipate in any way. And it’s only then that we rediscover what the holy ones of all time have known…as artists have known…as even some physicists…and as each of us seeks to know…and it is that at the core of our being, there still is retained…the memory of being one. There is a resonance within us of the music of the cosmos…an opening to the Mystery of the Universe…a manifestation of that which seeks to connect all that is and was and ever shall be.

[1] Presented Jan. 31, 2010 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, temporarily meeting at the Crestwell School, 1910 Park Meadow, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.