Download MY WAY OR THE HIGH WAY A Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan

MY WAY OR THE HIGH WAY
A Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan
University Public Worship
Stanford Memorial Church
March 7, 2010
God exclaims in this morning's reading from Isaiah:i "For as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways." So, my way, as a human being, is portrayed
as the low road, and God's way as the high way. There's either my way, which likely won't get
me very far, or God's way, which I'm told will lead to eating and drinking what is good and to
living well. My way or the high way, and the high way is far to be preferred.
How can we even begin to understand and follow God's way, though, if God insists that
"my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways." One traditional possibility,
pursued in all religions, and the one I want to talk about this morning, is to listen to our mystics.
For they are the ones who report direct experiences of God, who say they've seen God face to
face, who have heard and felt his presence all around them and within them, who know the most
about the high way. The biblical scholar Marcus Borg speaks of Jesus as a mystic. For Jesus,
God was an experiential reality. Jesus was one of those people for whom, as William James put
it, God was "a firsthand religious experience rather than a secondhand belief."ii Matthew, Mark
and Luke's gospels all report that when Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit or the Spirit
of God descended upon him like a dove.iii Then he went out into the wilderness on a kind of
vision quest for forty days, during which he was led by the Spirit.iv He fasted and had what we
might call now call hallucinatory experiences -- demonic as well as divine. There were many
times in Jesus' life when he felt the Spirit of God upon him.v He healed through the power of
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God's Spirit, he taught with the authority of the Spirit, and he was accused by his enemies of
being in league with an evil spirit."vi
Of course there have been many others in the history of religion who've been considered
mystics. Take the Buddha, for example, and the bodhisattvas who have followed him. Both the
historical Buddha and a bodhisattva named Siddhartha appear in Herman Hesse's novel with that
title. Siddhartha's Self by the end of the book has merged into unity with the universe: "There
shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of
desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream
of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the
unity of all things."vii Siddhartha remains in his worldly occupation as a ferryman, literally
taking people back and forth across a river on his boat, but also helping to ferry those interested
to full mystical awareness, as he does with his friend Govinda.
In his comprehensive text on mysticism, which he sees to be at the root of all religions, viii
F.C. Happold expresses this phenomenon as an apprehension of “the temporal in the eternal and
the eternal in the temporal” which occurs both in feeling and in thought.ix It’s an understanding
that there’s a “Divine Ground in which all partial realities have their being.”x Happold also
speaks of a spiritual dimension within each of us, or spark of the Divine, which can be
consciously reunited with the Divine ground of being through mystical awareness. That can take
place in a variety of ways – often through contemplation or meditation.xi
Even an atheist like Sam Harris writes generously of mystical experience as revealing “a
far deeper connection between ourselves and the rest of the universe than is suggested by the
ordinary confines of our subjectivity.”xii He doesn't define mysticism as God-consciousness, of
course, but he explains that "At the core of every religion lies an undeniable claim about the
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human condition: it is possible to have one's experience of the world radically transformed...
[There is] a form of well-being that is intrinsic to consciousness in every present moment."xiii He
describes the change in consciousness that Jesus experienced "after forty days and forty nights in
the desert," or that others experience "after twenty years in a cave," or that can be brought on
simply when "some new serotonin agonist has been delivered to your synapses."
Mysticism for Harris has a long history in "our attempts to explore and modify the
deliverances of consciousness through methods like fasting, chanting, sensory deprivation,
prayer, meditation, and the use of psychotropic plants."xiv But it can't all be dismissed as simply
a matter of brain chemistry, because there are also behavioral, ethical, and political dimensions
of how mysticism get created, played out, and later described.xv Mysticism, as Harris explains, is
always "amenable to inter-subjective consensus, and [to] refutation."xvi
I had two personal experiences during my late teens which I later came to call
"mystical." One occurred the summer before my freshman year in college when I almost fell a
couple of hundred feet to my death in the Grand Teton mountains of Wyoming. The other
happened one night on a beach in Florida during a freshman year vacation. In the first case, I
became hyper alert, and all of my sense perceptions were heightened well beyond anything I had
ever experienced – feeling my heart beating, every breath in and out, each muscle tightening and
loosening. I sailed through a huge range of emotions, and saw more brilliant colors than I’d ever
imagined. In the second case, I felt I’d merged with the wind and waves and light of the moon.
Everything, including me, throbbed with connection and pulsated with the same rhythm.xvii Both
of these experiences undoubtedly had biochemical bases -- aided no doubt by adrenalin in the
first case and alcohol in the second -- but they've also had lifelong impact as they've given me
broader understanding of the expanse of consciousness, affected the way I think about the world,
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become part of my personal narrative, and been related to others' experiences as related in
poetry, art, literature, and drama.
By the second semester of my freshman year in college, I’d become interested in the
human phenomenon of mysticism. I come upon a book by Aldous Huxley called The Doors of
Perception. First published in 1954, the book discusses Huxley’s claim that identifiable
biochemical changes in the brain produce the state of mind that has long been called mystical
awareness. Huxley’s book title is taken from these lines of the English visionary artist and poet,
William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it
is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through' narrow chinks of his
cavern." Huxley explains that religious mystics have long used methods to alter their brain
chemistry and thereby cleanse the doors of perception, like fasting, sensory deprivation, yogic
breathing exercises, prolonged chanting, shouting or singing. He predicts that it will not be long
until mystical experiences can be stimulated simply “by touching certain areas of the brain with a
very fine electrode.”xviii
But Huxley refutes those who would say that mysticism, which he feels lies at the root of
all religions, is merely a matter of biochemistry operating in specific locations of the human
brain? For all of our experiences are chemically conditioned: As he puts it, “[I]f we imagine
that some of them are purely ‘spiritual,’ purely ‘intellectual,’ purely ‘aesthetic,’ it is merely
because we have never troubled to investigate the internal chemical environment at the moment
of their occurrence.”xix The logical, rational thinking of scientists and philosophers is just as
chemically conditioned as the mystical experiences of religious people.
I may sound as if I'm getting a long way from our Bible lessons for the day and from
what will be helpful to you, as parishioners here in Memorial Church, as you face exams and
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term papers, go to work, live in the time of the Great Recession, and just try to keep your head
above water. I have two specific suggestions for you to consider in this Lenten season:
meditation and appreciation of nature during the "lengthening of days" -- the etymological
meaning of the word "Lent."xx These are methods to go beyond "my way" in search of the
higher way.xxi
The Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh has written a clear introduction to mediation
in his book Miracle of Mindfulness. He asks us to sit in a comfortable position for as little as
twenty minutes a day. Keep your back straight -- try it right now. Keep your head and neck
aligned with your spinal column. Focus your eyes a yard or two in front of you. Relax your
muscles, starting with worry-tightened muscles in your face: "Let all the muscles in your hands,
fingers, arms and legs relax. Let go of everything. Be like the waterplants which flow with the
current, while beneath the surface of the water the riverbed remains motionless. Hold on to
nothing but your breath..."xxii
One way of focusing on your breath in mediation is simply to count "one" in your mind
as you breathe in, and then count "one" again as you breathe out. Then count "two" as you
breathe in; count "two" as you breathe out. Continue up to ten, and then start over again at one.
If thoughts and feelings arise during mediation, you should try neither to get lost in them nor to
chase them away. You should acknowledge their presence without becoming attached to them.
For example, you may think, "It's late and the neighbors are really making a lot of noise," or "I'm
feeling sad." The ideal is simply to say to yourself, "I'm thinking about my neighbors now," or
"A feeling of sadness has just arisen in me," and then return to your breath."xxiii Meditation as a
higher way will give you an overall sense of peace and well being, according to this Buddhist
monk. By learning how to follow your breath, you can be more present to simple, everyday
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actions like eating an orange, washing the dishes, or going about your work. The more mindful
you become, the more of a sense of wholeness you will experience.
Another higher way is appreciation of nature. What better place to be able to do that than
here in California? The founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir, mystically communed with God
in the high country of this state. He wrote: "I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he
did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have
discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the
world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."xxiv He claimed that "In God's
wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness."xxv
"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings," he taught. "Nature's peace will flow into you
as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms
their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of
enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail."xxvi
I got some sense of what Muir meant when I taught at Tufts University's European Center
in the French Alps for several summers in the 1990's. There is a walled garden behind the
Center overlooking the cleanest lake in Europe, Lake Annecy. The lake is rimmed with
mountains, some of which retain snow on their peaks well into June. I invited interested
students, faculty and staff to join me to sit outside in the garden in silence before classes began
each day. The vista beyond one wall was of a great spreading tree to the left, plunging cliffs to
the right, the blue-green lake ahead, two razor-backed mountains beyond, and a palatial sky
overhead. With the changing weather, the tableau kept shifting its elements and emphases like a
kaleidoscope.
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Rays of sun slanted over another wall to warm our backs on some days, and other days
we bundled against the early chill or hooded ourselves in a gentle mist. Even on rainy days,
when we had to sit inside next to the open windows, the birds outside serenaded us, the sweet,
fresh smell of flowers drifted in on the breeze, and we were enthralled. In the last five minutes
of fifteen each day, I would break the silence to ask if anyone had a favorite poem to read, and it
usually would be from nature literature: Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Annie Dillard, e.e. cummings, William Wordsworth, Denise Levertov. There were
also offerings from the Muslim poet Rumi, prayers of St. Francis of Assisi, scripture from the
Hebrew Bible and the Hindu Vedas, sayings of the Buddhist lamas, and Native American voices.
We felt we had some access to what the mystics experienced on many of those early mornings in
the Alps.xxvii
That kind of nature consciousness is available here virtually everyday on the Stanford
campus, walking up to the dish in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. In the words of the
Stanford Hymn:
Where the rolling foothills rise
Up towards mountains higher,
Where at eve the Coast Range lies,
In the sunset fire,
Flushing deep and paling;
Here we raise our voices, hailing
Thee, our Alma Mater
Jesus tells a parable of a gardener in a vineyard in this morning's gospel reading.xxviii The
owner had found that his fig tree hadn't been bearing fruit for three years and wanted it cut down.
But the gardener asked for another year to tend the fig tree, with the expectation that it would
indeed bear fruit with careful attention. May we pay attention in our own lives -- in particular to
our own breath of life and to the glory of nature that surrounds us -- so that we may get on the
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high way toward God, toward a personal experience of the foundational energy of the universe.
May the Holy Spirit make a dwelling in each of us, giving us strength so that we might live fully
in its glory. AMEN.
BENEDICTION
(The closing words are those of Ralph Waldo Emerson:)
"Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought;
That the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature
are in our own minds.
Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence,
The universal beauty, to which every part and particle
is equally related, the eternal One.xxix AMEN.
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NOTES
i
Isaiah 55: 1-9.
Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), p. 60.
iii
Matthew 3: 16; Mark 1: 9-10; Luke 3: 21-22.
iv
Matthew 4: 1; Luke 4: 1; in Mark 1:12 it is reported that "the Spirit immediately drove him
out into the wilderness."
v
Luke 4: 16-21,
vi
Borg and Wright, The Meaning of Jesus, p. 63.
vii
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (New York: New Directions, 1951), p. 111.
viii
F.C. Happold, Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology (London: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 16.
ix
Happold, Mysticism, p. 19.
x
Happold, Mysticism, p. 20.
xi
Happold, Mysticism, p. 20.
xii
Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Religion (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., 2004), p. 40.
xiii
Harris, End of Faith, p. 204.
xiv
Harris, End of Faith, p. 210.
xv
Harris, End of Faith, p. 226.
xvi
Harris, End of Faith, p. 220.
xvii
Scotty McLennan, Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its
Meaning (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), pp. 64, 207-209.
xviii
Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), p. 121.
xix
Huxley, Heaven and Hell, pp. 127-128.
xx
T.F. Hoad, "Lent," The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1996),
Encyclopedia.com. 6 Mar. 2010 (http://www.encyclopedia.com)
xxi
What follows in the next two paragraphs is from Scotty McLennan, Finding Your Religion:
When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1999), p. 143.
xxii
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1976), p. 35.
xxiii
Hanh, Miracle. pp. 21, 38.
xxiv John Muir, "Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon", Overland Monthly (August, 1873);
republished in John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, edited by Linnie
Marsh Wolfe (University of Wisconsin Press, 1938, republished 1979).
xxv John Muir, Alaska Fragment (1890).
xxvi John Muir, Our National Parks (1901).
xxvii
McLennan, Finding Your Religion, pp. 156-157.
xxviii
Luke 13: 1-9.
xxix
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Oversoul," in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1993), #531.
ii
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