Where to Stand

 

SERMON TEXT (Scroll to bottom for YouTube Link)

From the Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton I in particular.
“…Time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.”

In the subway below London,
as the ten-ton bombs of World War II crushed
stones that had stood for nine centuries,
as warning sirens screeched and screamed
and family heirlooms disintegrated
along with entire households of hopes and memories,
the American Anglophile poet, T.S. Eliot,
wrote to himself, and to us:

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith but the faith and the love and hope are all in the waiting…
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

To wait without hope
may be more than some of us can stand.

To wait without love
may seem advice from the Dark Side.

To Americans
the suggestion we wait,
or that we do without something,
may seem a scandal.

But this counter-cultural spiritual wisdom
has traveled light years to be glimpsed by us
and remembered again.
It is a stranger, deeper, nearer,
truer hope
than the one offered
in the shallow waters of economic thrills,
digital illusions,
and nationalistic clamor.
When we are threatened by wars
and rumors of war,
there is a place we can stand.

When we are surrounded by the kinetic energy
of consumerism building like a tidal wave
and heading our way,
there is a place to stand.

When the external voices of greed, anger
and hatred bark
in a cacophony of chaos seeking to confuse us,
there is a place to stand.

When real but distant dangers
of things we cannot control
are made to seem hyper-present and menacing,
there is a place to stand.

When illness has placed its cold fingertips
around our arms and dragged us
into an unknown future,
there is a place to stand.

When unexpected events
have made our jobs seem fragile,
our relationships vulnerable,
prosperity beyond our reach,
there is a place to stand.

This place we are invited into –
this point on which we can stand –
is a moment without hope
without love,
without knowledge
without control
without splendor
without name.

It is the place T.S. Eliot describes
as the “the still point of the turning world.”

It is a place we need to know about
when the world is in chaos
and we no longer know what is true
or hopeful
or lovely.

When life and events have spun us off-balance
and competing voices yell at us
for allegiance,
yet hold no note of credibility,
it is a place we need to know about
so that we can stop
and listen
and hear.

“At the still point of the turning world,” Eliot writes,
‘…there is only dance…”

This point, this still point, really exists.
It is an actual place, not virtual.
The still point is the place
where the dancer spins on her toes.

The still point is the place where the dancer achieves
seemingly motionless balance
at the very moment of tremendous rush and spin.
The dancer, spinning vigorously
maintains balance
and clarity of mind
by focusing her eye
at a single point on the horizon and
keeping it there.

Let go that focus
and the balance is endangered.

Let go that focus
and dizziness is sure.
Let go that focus
and the dis-ease of stomach and throat
will deteriorate the dancer’s balance
from within.

When the dancer spins
she becomes a top of flesh and bones
balancing perfectly upon her toes.

It is a moment made possible
by a fixed point outside the parameter
of the spin
and fiercely held.

The still point of the turning world
is found when we choose our focus
and keep it there
even though everything else
seems to be spinning with violent energy
and calling at us
to look up or down
or away.
The still point of the turning world
is the place we can stand
and find our balance
no matter what is going on around us.

This is not merely a metaphor
or a therapeutic strategy
or a mental trick
meant to calm us down in moments of stress.
It is a truth of spiritual wellness
that can bring us balance and peace
even in the midst of chaos,
if we are willing to wait without hope as we spin.

Why? Because we are so inevitably centered
in our own self-absorbed motion
that we only know to hope for what we want.

We only hope
for what we think would be good for us,
we only hope for what we think is possible,
we only hope for what we can imagine.

But God is the author of true hope,
and hope is revealed at it own time
and in its own way.

As it is with hope, it is with love.
We are so enamored
with our own desires
that we love most and best
that which loves us back.
We only love what we hope to have,
only love that which is beautiful in our sight,
only love that which meets our needs
and strokes our desires.

But God
is the author of true love
and to love that which is holy
is a gift of the spirit
not of our own making
or evoked by our own desiring.
At the still point of the turning world,
hope and love
are suspended
until our balance is returned
and we can see clearly again.
It is the willingness to trust in this suspension
that returns us to balance.

At the still point of the turning world,
hope and love are suspended
until we can end our centripetal motion,
stand still
and breath deeply
in a moment of wisdom that is greater than us.

Surely we have all had such moments
somewhere along the way.
Often we are brought to them by crisis.

For those who have ever been engulfed by grief,
mummified alive
by the pain surrounding death,
you may recall that first moment of daylight
when you suddenly realized
you had forgotten to be sad.
Even though the grief returned,
at that moment there was a crack
that appeared and hinted
about relief in the days ahead.

For those who have known the torture
of mental illness,
there may have come a moment
when the control you thought
had been lost forever, returned – slightly at first
but then more and more.
At that first moment you could look backward
and forward, and see clearly
for the first time in a long while.

For those who have known
the threat of death,
a chronic disease that ebbs and flows,
you may have known a moment
at which you made peace
with the presence of disease in your body –
not surrendering to it
but greeting it with an acknowledgment
that staked your claim on the future.

For those who have known
the confinement of addiction
you may have stood in a moment of recovery –
a moment when all motion came to a standstill
teetering on a single choice.
That choice didn’t suddenly make everything better
but you stepped outside of a black hole
and felt the light.

At all such moments
it is too early to hope or love,
because to hope and to love
would inevitably be for the wrong thing.

It would be the hope
to have our own love fulfilled or protected.

It would be the hope for a cure
while missing the chance for healing …

It would be the love of life so fierce
that it does not hold and receive
the treasures of knowing our own mortality…

It would be the quixotic love of self
that imagines recovery
is only about the absence of pain.

When we have been taken up
in the chaos of loud and competing loyalties
hawking multiple desires and needs,
we often end up loving the wrong things
and hoping for the wrong things.
It is then
we need to find the still point
of the turning world.

The dancer’s gift –
the spiritual practice we need for ourselves –
is to place our focus on a single point
when the world is spinning
and we no longer feel centered in our lives.
This is why the Christian calendar
creates seasons in which to reach for the still point:
Advent before the explosion of Christmas,
Lent before the rush of Easter
and the scattered release of summer.

Advent and Lent are exercises, spiritual practice.
Used for this purpose
they strengthen our abilities
to focus on a single point
and return to balance –
and so reconnect with the center of our lives.

Is our focus on a golden ring,
a winning lottery ticket perhaps?

Is our focus on achievements
with public recognition
and the acclaim of others?

Is our focus on having all the right stuff?

Is it on looking great
and giving the appearance of happiness?

Is our focus on the next big thing?

Is it making someone love us,
or love us the way we want to be loved?

Is it changing the world the way we think it ought to be changed?

Is it on fixing someone, making them better, saving them somehow?

If the substance of our focus is on these things,
we will spin wildly out of balance
because none of them can withstand
the centripetal force of self-orbit.
None of them offer balance.

At the still point of the turning world,
where the sweet spot of peace is to be known,
it is very clear which focus has delivered us there.

When the turning world
has begun to make our lives wobble,
our relationships teeter,
our sense of self so external
that we reach outside ourselves
to catch our balance,

it is time to seek the holy –
to look for the ordinary sacred near us.
Does the pandemic have us anxious
and out of sorts?
Do the activities of the post-election
enrage us to the point of distraction?
Are we perpetually glum or strangely detached
in the fog of social distancing?
Have the limitations of this past year
stomped on our hopes and desires?
Are we scratching to get out
of a place where we are not really trapped?

Then our focus is on the wrong thing.

These are all natural sensations of course,
given the situation we are in,
but it is not inevitable that they would
knock us off balance, or even down to the ground.

We need to find a different focus
than whatever has led to feeling this way,
to possessing our spirit this way,
to leaning our lives
away from our better selves – our spiritual center.

The dancer keeps her balance
by concentrating on a focus beyond the still point
of her turning world,
and that is what Advent is meant to do.
This is a time in which to regain our balance
by re-focusing our attention
on the ordinary presence of God
in our midst.
It is the ordinary presence of the sacred
amidst our routine lives,
so much a part of the warp and weft
of who we are and what we do
it goes unnoticed beneath our chins.

The still point awaits us,
it is where we dance.