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“Rediscovering the Secret that Makes All the Difference.”
INTRODUCTION:
A young philosophy student goes to India searching for enlightenment,
and he finds an elderly, long-bearded, Hindu teacher, and asks him, "Do
you know the secret of life?" The Teacher answers, "Oh yes. I know
that." Surprised, the student responds, "You really know the secret of
life?" The Teacher responds with emphasis: "Of course, I do!" "Well
then,” asks the student, “Please tell me: what is the secret of life?"
The Teacher answers, "Oh, I can’t tell you!" "Why not?" asks the
student. The teacher responds, "Because, it's a secret!"
I Googled
the words, “Secret to Life,” and guess how many responses there were:
182 million! Which suggests that a lot of people are in on the secret,
or that there is more than one secret, or that we really don’t know what
the secret is. Whichever, for certain, the secret is out!
If so many are searching
for the secret of life, or believe that they have it, what about us?
Should we be searching for the secret of life? Surely there are some
special insights somewhere, some secret that would make a difference as
we live our lives each day.
In response to such a
question, the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, said that “Life can
only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” That’s
really the problem, isn’t it? Looking back, we can sometimes approach
20-20 acuity – in our hindsight. It’s easy to say what we should and
shouldn’t have done, who was right and who was wrong, and what the
problem and what the solutions were.
We can see clearly how
some things were so important and our decisions so critical. We also can
see how the accidents of life occurred, the unintentional intersections
of time, place and people. The unexpected meeting with the person who
would become our partner or spouse, the special friends we met all
without planning or intentionality. That’s when we look backwards.
But when we look forward,
there’s no such design or understanding. In other words, it’s like the
presents we stayed up half the night putting together before Christmas
morning. And there were even directions supposedly.
In the process, we were
absolutely convinced not only were some parts mislabeled, but there had
to be some parts missing. And how could you attach B to A, when it
looked like there were several Bs and only one A? Besides it’s late,
you’re tired, and making too many mistakes.
Which sounds a lot like
life sometimes, doesn’t it? We have the directions, guide books, the
bible, sacred scriptures like the Qur’an, and the Tao Te Ching,
self-help books, and one is even called The Secret. But the
pieces don’t always fit. The parts aren’t always marked clearly, or so
it seems. And sometimes we get so frustrated that we would like to see
whoever wrote the directions for life try putting it together,
especially if they can find the directions. And as the clock is winding
down, and the moment of reckoning approaches, we would like simply to
say to whoever is in charge, “Stop the world. I want to get off.”
This past Tuesday, I
attended my late brother-in-law’s funeral in Guthrie, Oklahoma, at the
Assembly of God church. There were more than 400 people present, with
some standing. The service went an hour-and-a-half; his daughter sang,
as did his granddaughter. The president of the construction company
where at one time Phil had been their Senior General Superintendent,
building those giant Wal-Mart super centers, he came and spoke. He was
not as polished a speaker as some, but it seemed to make his words even
more meaningful. He said, despite bouts of bad weather, unexpected
zoning regulations, and the difficult corporate practices of Wal-Mart,
that Phil had never failed to meet a construction deadline…that he had a
gift for picking out workers with more talent than their present
responsibility…and that when he found a menial job for his son one
summer, he was harder on him than anyone else, lest anyone think he was
playing favorites to his family.
On the way to the
cemetery, the cortege was led by Phil’s Classic Car Club, with his son
driving Phil’s 1950 Ford. I looked back once as we were ascending a
slight incline: the cars stretched for more than a mile with four
policeman and motorcycles attending.
At the cemetery there was
a Marine color guard, who played “Taps” and folded the flag on the
coffin and presented it to my sister whom Phil left a widow. Immediately
following that, Grace, my sister, sang “Amazing Grace” that wafted
through the trees and the Oklahoma springtime. Yet despite all of this
abundant support, Phil chose to end his life. The reality is that
sometimes life is hard…and so hard for some that they choose not to live
it any longer.
So when someone like me,
or those 182,000,000 Googlers, speaks of rediscovering the secret, what
is meant? What is the secret that makes the difference?
I.
First, we live with our
reality.
As Unitarians, we don’t
deal in make-believe, or construct fairy lands in the bye and bye. Life
is what we do, 24-7, whether we live 3-score and ten, 4-score or 5.
That means that half of
life is going to be in the dark and nighttime; and half is going to be
in the light and daytime. As Carl Jung puts it, “There are as many
nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's
course.”
So when we’re dealing with
the dark sides of life, how do we respond?
In answer, Eleanor
Roosevelt put it very simply: “I think somehow we learn who we really
are, and then we learn to live with that decision.”
So the first answer to the
question of the secret that makes all the difference is that it’s not
some hitherto undiscovered secret, that when uncovered will
revolutionize everything inside and out. Rather, it’s first discovering
who we are and then learning to live with that reality.
Many of you will remember
seeing pictures of one of Gauguin’s most famous paintings, entitled,
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? His painting
attempted to portray those questions, and in so doing provide a portrait
of the questions faced by humankind, so that we might know who we are,
and learn to live with it.
In a famous word portrait,
Socrates said, “Know thyself.” But we discover sooner or later that like
life itself, knowing oneself is a lifelong task. Sometimes there are
those pivotal times and moments, when we make decisions and follow them
with actions to live life at more
than a mundane level; to see, to feel, to act in terms of a more
informed awareness.
That’s all a part of the
secret of being who we are. But what’s the rest…what’s the second part?
II.
It’s realizing that in
this Universe, on this our planet, we ourselves, do not fit neatly
inside the lines, and should not expect to live our lives that way.
I had an artist friend at
the University of Oklahoma who would not let her daughter have coloring
books, because she didn’t want her to learn to paint in the
lines. She thought it was too limiting.
We human beings are the 2
+ 2 that do not equal 4. We are the effect that’s different than the
cause.
For example,
my wonderful mother and father had six kids. Everyone was and is
different. As adults, we didn’t come out the same, despite having the
same home life, and the same opportunities. That’s true of every one of
us here. Our lives are not predictable. We are not limited by the
expectations of others based upon their reading of what we should do
with our lives.
In fact,
that’s a fundamental truth that was crucial for our evolution. When one
cell split and then another, somewhere along the way, a mutation
occurred -- a Lloyd Fish or a Dan Tudor popped up – distinct and
different than everyone else. That difference…that distinctive... is
what has given us the incredible diversity that has made this planet
such a wonderful place to live.
We are not
robots popped off the production line who look like, talk like, think
like, see like, hear like, and sound like everyone else. No, we are
uniquely human, and uniquely individual. We share some basic overall
design elements, but even those are unique. None of us in here this
morning looks like the other. That’s because we are unique.
This Universe,
at least this corner of it, is a dynamic and changing process, not a
predictable result.
That’s why I
don’t like to use language such as, “The laws of the Universe,” as if
there are dimensions predictable and controllable. Sure, e=mc2, but
that’s not static and unmoveable. It’s energy and light and motion and
mass, all coming together in powerful ways to open the door to the
infinity of this Universe.
So the first
part of the secret is not only that we have to learn who we are and live
with that, but an absolutely crucial component of our learning is that
in living, we do not have to fit into a box…we do not have to go along
with the crowd…we do not have to color in the lines…and if we are true
to our evolutionary heritage, we will sometimes skew the process and
always be seeking to become the unique person we are and will always be.
III.
The third dimension to the
secret that makes all the difference is this: “The best things in
life are nearest to us.”
They don’t require a
Rhodes Scholarship…we don’t have to be wealthy…we don’t have to reach a
certain age. I’m sure we’ve all heard some version of the enduring
Broadway hit, The Best Things in Life Are Free. The lyrics say:
The moon belongs to
everyone
The stars belong to everyone
They gleam there for you and me.
The flowers in Spring,
The robins that sing,
The sunbeams that shine
They're yours,
They're mine!
And love can come to everyone,
The best things in life are free.
But even better, the best
things in life are closest to us. For example, think of the breath in
your nostrils. Can you imagine what an incredible set of organs enable
us to inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen?
Curt Goerke, who is a
Regional Director of the American Lung Association and here with us this
morning, came and spoke to the class I teach at FGCU. I’ve been part of
an effort to get the campus to go smoke free. As Curt explained the
damaging effects of cigarette smoke, there are those little cilia in
your lungs that separate the good and the bad as we breathe in carbon
dioxide. But when we smoke and inhale, it paralyzes them, so that the
bad stuff goes right on by and causes all the damaging things that
tobacco smoke – firsthand, secondhand and thirdhand – can cause. But
functioning properly, what a miracle our breathing apparatus is.
So when whoever leads the
meditation this morning, think also of how miraculous the process of
breathing itself is. And in your meditation, as you breathe, think
gratitude, think awesome, think how incredible our breathing is – in and
out, carbon dioxide in and oxygen out. Breathing is one of the best
things in life and it’s immediate to us.
As are the processing of
the light in our eyes, that allow us to see the beautiful plants before
us, the gorgeous flowers in the entryway.
But also the opportunities
we have before us, the chance to do for others, the challenge to seek
justice always, to lean into the light.
Bertrand Russell described
three things that guided his life that also are near to us: love, the
search for knowledge and compassion – expressed through helping others.
CONCLUSION.
Which ties in to the
following, which I read recently and which we’ve all heard I’m sure.
It’s one of those pieces that visualizes life so well that we need to
have it repeated every few years or so. It does what Kierkegaard
described: Understanding life backwards:
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