It’s been a difficult week. The same day we heard news of 33 killed in the Virginia shooting, we heard of another 200 killed in bombings in Baghdad. The earth receives these dead lives solemnly, drenched in the blood of victims and soaked in the tears of loved ones.

The same earth that silently catches the blood, sweat and tears of tragedy, creates wondrous jewels in its own alchemical transformation.

A lump of graphite buried deep in the dark earth, somehow, at the right time, becomes a brilliant diamond.

A gritty bit of sand invades the tough exterior of an oyster, somehow, and at the right time, morphs into a pearl.

Tears turn into diamonds, pain into pearls

The same earth that holds the raw stuff of existence and potential, is a common cup holding the blood of human destruction.

Like the earth, we pause now solemnly and silently to hold the pain of loss in the common cup of human compassion. We honor those killed and we commit to living with the unshakeable optimism of the earth itself……… (a minute silence)

Making Sense out of Senseless Death

Time magazine has as it front page caption this week- “Making sense of the massacre.”

Whether you believe in a good God, or if you believe in the basic goodness in human nature, or whether you feel that life is beautiful, somehow you need to find space in your mind and heart to make sense of tragedy.

So how do you make sense out of senseless death?

Because the shooter in Virginia claimed to be modeling his actions on the lives of Jesus and Moses, there is a particular responsibility on progressive religion to make some sense out of this suffering.

What I want to do this morning is to walk through the story of the healing of the blind man (John 9) as a parable that speaks to how the earth offers glimpses of meaning in the midst of the madness. My hope is that you leave here this morning, more deeply connected to the earth as your source, caring more passionately about sadness and living more optimistically even when surrounded by despair.

So come with me to the story. It’s not an original story. It’s probably borrowed from Greek mythology. Asklepios, the Greek god of medicine and healing, according to the legend, told a blind soldier Valerius to rub the blood of a white cock and some honey in his eyes and to repeat the procedure for three days. He was healed. My point in telling you that the gospel story is not original is not to take the magic out of the story, but to ensure that we look in the right place for the magic.

The wonder in the story is not in the literal healing, which may or may not have happened. The miracle is contained in the style of story telling, and its inviting symbology. The story is told in a certain style and with certain details, in the pattern of the Greek myth, to direct us to ask questions of our own lives.

In particular, it takes us in three directions.

1. It’s a story that invites us to consider where our blind spots are.
2. It’s a story that warns us that transformation comes about in the most unlikely and messy ways
3. It’s a story that draws a most profound connection between the earth and our seeing, not our sight, but our perception.

Blind Spots

Where are your blind spots? The curious thing about blind spots is that we don’t usually realize we have them, because our brains fill in whatever pieces are missing from our sight. Our brain takes information from the other eye, or it fills in missing details with patterns from the past, assumptions or expectations, and creates the most believable or palatable story. Our brain does all this without us always consciously realizing that this is what is happening. We think we have the whole story, but in fact we only have a partial story.

Blind spots are closely related to blind fever- a phrase created by Stephen King in Dreamcatchers to describe the ability of the brain to convince the person that they see what they want to see. The person could be so convinced that they could pass a lie detector test saying that they see what they think they see.

In your response to the Virginia shootings, what do you see, and what are your blind spots?

Were you, like me, left with a rage about gun laws in this country?
Did you lament the health care system that let this delusional man down for so many years?
Could you muster any compassion for the shooter?
Did the situation leave you with a general mistrust of people?
How did the shooter’s use of religious language leave you feeling about your own tradition?
What did you think of the media’s use of the shooters images and videos so soon after the tragedy?

Or what combination of responses did you feel?

Or to put it another way- where do you place accountability for this situation, if anywhere?

We learn from each other, if we are open to each person’s partial perspective and recognize our partial perspective.

The interesting thing in the gospel story is that it’s the religious folk who have the blind spots, more than the blind man. They are hung up on the religious minutia- whether it’s kosher to work on the Sabbath, whether the man was blind because of some sin or because of his parents’ sin. They need someone to blame, and this becomes their blind spot. They are unable to see that this is a lesson for them as much as it is a transformation for the blind man.

They have blind fever, because they see what they have already decided to see- a radical trouble maker named Jesus breaking the law.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there is some reason for the Virginia shootings, some divine purpose. What I am saying is that now that it has happened, like the religious folk in the gospel story, what are you going to learn about yourself and your responses?

If the Virginia shootings make your compassion larger and wider, your social perspectives broader and more passionate, your religion more self responsible, then you give the death of 33 people some meaning.

The Most Messy and Unlikely Transformation

Of all details to include in the healing of a blind person, mud or clay and human spit seem just about the least likely elements. Mud actually blocks light and air, and is an irritant to eyes. Transformation for the blind man comes about through the most painful and messy forms of alchemy.

Sometimes we expect growth, and transformation to come about in glorious and superhuman manifestations. More likely, transformation comes about in dark places when our hearts break wide open to the possibilities that grow out of pain. Most often, transformation comes about when we take hold of our most human qualities, saliva, and the earth’s most basic elements and trust them as the path on which we must travel.

In the context of the gospel story, using clay is also subversive. This was tantamount to making bricks on the Sabbath, something that was expressly forbidden in Hebrew law. Transformation in the story was as much for the onlookers who needed to catch the spirit of the law before the letter of the law could have any meaning. They needed to understand that the spirit of the law would place compassion over righteousness. They needed to get that it’s more important to do good than to be good- more important to treat people right than to be right.

They also needed to get beyond the stigmas attached to superficial qualities, like blindness. And I can’t help wondering whether part of the tragedy of Virginia was the stigma of this man’s mental illness and the inability of the system to put solid earth under his feet from which he could find his path. A combination of mud, representing the stability of earth, and spit, representing human solidarity, could have made such a difference in this situation.

What are your mud and spit? Where does your ability to keep on keeping on come from? How do you offer and receive earth’s constancy? How do you offer and receive human support?

This is the stuff of marvelous alchemy in your lives. This is where the rough shapes, the lumpy flesh that make you who you are, shine like a diamond manifesting and reflecting all the tears and joys of the universe. And that leads me to the third point.

The Earth is our Teacher

Earth reflects life and life reflects earth. Earth Day is so much more than ecology and climate change. I’m pleased if you care enough about the future of the planet to change your levels of consumption and waste. I’m so much more excited if this Earth Day inspires you to wake up to the fact that when you live in harmony with the earth you are more alive.

Howard Thurman said- “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Will you come alive to the fact that in the earth, your small self can be transformed into the work of the Kosmos? Will you consider it this Earth Day, and especially in the light of more tragedy in our world? What the world needs is for you to wake up and come alive to the radiant wonder that surrounds you.

The gospel story is far more a story of expanding perspectives than it is about a blind man seeing. Sight is only part of the story. Perspective is the larger part.

The Earth is our teacher. It receives all things without prejudice or preference. It has no concept of Sabbath or work. All things are one to the earth. They come and they go, they birth and they die, they morph and they grow. All things contain the potential for all other things. The earth receives all things, holds all things and then, somehow, at the right time, mixes them together into some new growth.

If we really got that, as a society, there would be no Virginia Shootings, there would be no War in Iraq, and there would be no global warming from human extravagance. The root of violence and the root of earth abuse are one and the same- we’re not addicted to oil, we are addicted to living as if we are separate from all else. Freedom and transformation lies in the possibility of waking up to our interrelatedness.

The same earth that silently catches the blood, sweat and tears of tragedy, creates wondrous jewels in its own alchemical transformation.

A lump of graphite buried deep in the dark earth, somehow, at the right time, becomes a brilliant diamond.

A gritty bit of sand invades the tough exterior of an oyster, somehow, and at the right time, morphs into a pearl.

Tears turn into diamonds, pain into pearls

The same earth that holds the raw stuff of existence and potential, is a common cup holding the blood of human destruction.

Your heart, when you allow it to break open in the face of tragedy, is larger and more responsive than you could ever imagine. It’s large and its growing wider every day. It’s full of wondrous jewels just waiting to shine forth. They reflect all the tears of the world. They reflect all the possibility of the world. They reflect a beautiful, sparkling Earth and they reflect all beings.

Burying violent images of Jesus

One final comment. In his delusion, the shooter felt that he was mimicking Jesus. Its time to leave behind the Jesus who is used to justify violence. May this image of Jesus be buried along with the shooter. Its time instead to reclaim the Jesus who knew the alchemical wonder of the earth. Its time to reclaim the power of transformation, when all things exist in all things, when no one is ultimately to blame, when all perspectives are partial and valuable- when the grounding quality of earth combines with human solidarity to produce the most miraculous transformation of all. Human folk waking up to what makes them most alive.

What makes you most alive? Search it out, and then go and do it.