One of the fairy tales that I remember strongly from my childhood is Jack and Jill. 

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

Up Jack got and home did trot
As fast as he could caper;
He went to bed to mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.

I’ve always loved that nursery rhyme.  In recent years I have discovered that it may be an allegory.  It may be speaking of a social situation in France in the 18th Century.  “Jack” may be Louis XVI.  Louis ascended to the throne (coming up the hill). He ruled France at a time of economic turmoil.  He brought all sorts of financial reforms to the country (fetching the pail of water). They were not popular (he lost his head, literally) and Marie Antoinette was not far behind.

Well that’s interesting!  But you know what?  As a kid, you don’t care about that stuff.  It’s just a great story.  It’s a wonderful image of someone who climbs a hill, meets upon an accident, and then has a wonderful happy ending, mending his own head.  It’s a romantic and heroic story.

Building an Imaginal Landscape

Duncan Littlefair did a sermon series in the 1970’s called Myth, Fairy Tale, Poetry and Religion.  In it, he suggested that there is a latent wisdom that lies within every one of us.  It’s a wisdom that is made up of a series of ancient images, images that come from religious myth and cultural imagery, and images that come from fairy tales and poems.  You don’t always realize the wisdom is there.  But at times of crisis in your lives you often access that wisdom. This wisdom that is a life long collection of images and stories could be called your imaginal landscape.  It’s where dreams and visions emerge from.

Duncan suggested something very significant in one of these sermons. He said that the religion you learnt as a child, you still have.  Whether that religion manifests as baggage for you or as opportunity, no doubt there is some mixture. Either way, the religion you got as a child you still have.

He also said that the religion you learnt as a child was a series of pictures, a landscape, and as a child you didn’t place any particular meaning or purpose in the imagery, you just built the landscape.  As you mature and have certain life experiences and develop cognitively, you begin to add meaning to your imaginal landscape.  As you fill this imaginal landscape with meaning and purpose, you develop values, beliefs and a vision.

Myth and Fairytale in the Bible

There is a distinction between myth and fairy tale, and you see examples of each in Matthew 17, which begins with the myth of the transfiguration that occurs high on a mountaintop. Its an extraordinary story with voices from the clouds and people becoming dazzling white. A peculiar thing about myth is that it is not a miracle in itself, it probably never happened, but it is describing a profound experience with miraculous language.

The point of myth is to put extraordinary language and imagery on human struggles and challenges.  Myth connects with something deep in the psyche, something very ancient. Myth inspires you to rise above the challenges that have you stuck and to see them from a higher perspective, like a mountaintop.  When you see a problem from a higher perspective, it seems more manageable. You can break it down into pieces from a distance, from a height, and you can just solve one part of the problem at a time.

So a myth, such as the transfiguration, uses awe-inspiring imagery to describe an experience that feels extraordinary.  Myth inspires you to get unstuck from your everyday challenges. 

Matthew 17 also has a little fairy tale in it.  It is talked about as a parable, but I think parables and fairy tales are much the same.  Jesus says “with faith you can move a mountain.” 

The difference between a fairy tale (or parable) and a myth is that a fairy tale uses everyday examples and language to describe the challenges of life, and the heroic or happy endings are often described with similarly ordinary language. Fairy tales encourage you to stay in the challenge and know that many before you have had the same challenge.  It’s no accident that the name Jack appears in so many fairy tales.  Jack is a universal name.  Many Jacks have climbed a hill before to fetch a pail of water and fallen.  You have climbed a hill many times before, and many times you have fallen. The point of the parable, the fairy tale, is that you can manage your everyday challenges because many have before you and you have many times before.

The Bible is full of myth and fairy tale, parable and poetry.  This morning, we created our own imaginal landscape when the kids participated in moving the mountain of stones by removing one at a time. Remember that kids don’t place all the meaning on the exercise that you and I do as adults. They don’t know what debt is, and they don’t care about the operations of our community. What they gained this morning was an image of a mountain being moved.  That image will stay with them. They will fill it with their own meaning in time, but for now it’s part of their imaginal landscape.

Moving Mountains- Building Imagination and Vision

There is a controversial artist whose name is Francis Alÿs. Some of you may know of him. He once pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City.  As he pushed it through the streets, it slowly melted.  And the point for him was that sometimes making something is making nothing, and sometimes making nothing is making something. That’s another story for another day.

He also created a piece called Moving Mountains.  He had 500 volunteers stand at the bottom of a sand dune near Lima, Peru.  He did it there particularly because it is a place full of political and economic refugees, a poverty stricken, a landless community.  The 500 people lined up at the bottom of the sand dune with shovels.  He synchronized them so they took a shovel and moved it forward at exactly the same time.  Over the course of a couple of hours they succeeded in moving the mountain 4 inches.

It’s a beautiful project, futile and heroic, absurd and ingenious at the same time.  4 inches is almost nothing.  And yet it would have taken the wind years to move the mountain the same distance. Like all good art, there is no absolute truth attached to the exercise. Rather the participants, audiences, and future generations are invited to fill the image with their own meaning.

He offered this art as part of the imaginal landscape for the poor refugees of Peru.  Future generations would look back on the day that the mountain was moved and fill it with their own meaning. It would inspire something deep within them to believe that even seemingly insurmountable odds can be overcome.

Moving Mountains at C3/CCC

When I think about future generations of this community I wonder whether they will look back on the day that the mountain was moved in church.  I wonder what meaning they will fill that image with.  They will do things that you and I can’t even imagine at this point.  They will have vision for this community beyond anything we have even considered.  It brings tears to my eyes to consider that they may look back at us as having given them a legacy.

This community has moved mountains many times before. In 1997 this community became independent from the Reformed Church.  Under the leadership of Dick Rhem this community became independent and free-spirited.  They will hear that story, and the image of moving mountains will have all sorts of profound meaning for them.  They will hear stories about how we raised $1.3 million to eliminate our debt and create the platform for future groups to build on. The moving of the mountain will be filled with all sorts of profound meaning.

Moving Mountains One Pebble at a Time

Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, wrote-

“Every individual undertaking, every individual thought, word, or action which leads to the transformation of the Self and to the lifting of any other being, is of extraordinary importance. It is not necessary to move mountains to move mountains. It is necessary only to move pebbles.

We must become People of the Pebbles. We must do our work on a person to person basis. Then we shall move mountains. Then the mightiest obstacles shall crumble, and the way shall be made clear. “

The reality about moving mountains is you don’t move the whole thing at once, you move one piece at a time. There is a great story from the Zen tradition.  A Zen master was walking the bottom of a mountain one day and found an empty well.  It was a snow capped mountain, and the master took a teaspoon and walked to the top of the mountain, filled the teaspoon with snow, walked back down and put the snow in the empty well.  He then turned around and went back up the mountain and filled the teaspoon again, and came back and put it in the well.  He did that all day.  At the end of the day there was still hardly anything in the well. 

His exercise was at the same time futile and heroic, absurd and ingenius.  He saw a problem and he did something.

Faced with the problems that we have in our world today that sometimes overwhelm us beyond words- global warming, poverty, racism, violence, wars, and any number of personal crises, the example from the Zen master is to do something. Start with one response. Know that you are doing something, and that something is enough.

Faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, do something.  Hellen Keller once said, “Only in the dark, can you see the stars.” Only when you face the challenge head on can you draw from deep within your psyche the vision to see beyond the challenge. Manage a piece of the challenge; make a piece of the problem go away.  Make the problem more manageable; make it so that it is not insurmountable anymore.

Working with the Mountain

There is a profound spiritual truth, but also a very practical truth.  I offer it to you by way of a story out of the Hasidic tradition.  It’s a story out of Poland in the 18th century.

Baal Shem Tov tells the story of climbing in the mountains when he would become lost in nature, completely at one with his surroundings.  With his eyes closed, meditating as he walked at the top of the mountain.  He was so lost one day in his meditation that he headed straight towards the edge of the cliff.  The next mountain over saw what was happening, and it accommodated itself to the meditating Rabbi.  The mountain moved over so that as he took his first step over the cliff his foot landed on the other mountain.

When facing challenges in your life, don’t see the challenge as your enemy. Work with it and not against it.  The mountain is not your enemy. Work with the mountain. Now here is the spiritual truth. Life accommodates itself to you when you are in tune with your highest purpose, when you are in tune with your core values. The mountain will move to meet you at least half way.

This is a profound spiritual truth, and one that has everyday application.  It’s one that grows out of the imaginal landscape of imagery, such as moving mountains.
When you are in line with your highest purpose, when you are at one with life, when you are living in tune with your core values, life will move to meet you. As this community lives in line with our core values, our future will open up before us as if mountains are shifting to accommodate our every step.

I leave you with a piece of poetry from Emily Dickinson that offers a definition of hope. I also think it is a definition of imagination, optimism, courage and vision.

Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches on your soul,
And sings a tune with no words,
And never stops.

You can move mountains; you already have many times in your life.  This community can move mountains, it has many times before.  In fact, the courage and the strength to move mountains is built into the imaginal landscape of this community.  It is the thing with feathers, perched on your soul, singing a tune without words, and it never stops. It’s sometimes hard to hear. But it never stops.