Dedicated to Dr. Stephan Davis, theology professor, Aquinas College

Good morning!  I am honored and delighted to be with you this morning…to serve you as preacher.  I have some pretty big shoes to fill.  I mean literally….Ian’s shoes are bigger than mine, but I’m happy to give it a try!  Some of you noticed that I was missing all of July.  I’ve been participating in an alternate reality.  I’ve found out what other people do with their Sunday mornings.  They are out on trails and roads keeping fit!  I’ve been helping my husband train for a half iron man competition.  He would bike 50 miles, I would cheer him as he came back, then I would bike along with him while he ran 10 miles.  I found much to enjoy while on the trail:  the six hundred colors of green this summer offered, moving through alternating sunlight and shade, sharing deep intimacy while keeping pace with my husband’s footsteps, offering greetings to those we met on the trail and getting stronger in the process.  The race was held in Benton Harbor with over 2700 participants, many of the tri-athletes in their 70’s and 80’s, people still challenging the limits of their bodies.  Pushing my body to that degree is definitely an alternate reality!  As the Olympic Games begin I am aware of the alternate reality which exists for world class athletes.

Last week Ian used the metaphor of an oceanic reality to help us grapple with the Heart of Islam and with our sense of Oneness.   Today’s ritual of eating as a cosmic act supports another alternative reality, another metaphor – the idea of a Eucharistic universe.  This summer I’ve taken a theology class on Paul, focusing on his undisputed letters and exploring the Greek language.  The term eucharist comes to us from the Greek and means “thankfulness” for good gifts.  Today I attempted to re-frame that definition in light of our newest scientific understandings of the universe --  from its farthest reaches to its smallest quantum particles -- eating as a cosmic act.  Another metaphor for Oneness.  My attempt today is not the definitive answer to this ritual.   There could be many more.  As progressives we are still exploring what an expanded consciousness needs to support its growth.  We are no longer looking for definitive answers.  And today we begin a series asking questions around ritual, religion, and prayer,  and considering them in light of wellness and their relevance for this community.

As you stand along side me and we look at the meaning of ritual together, we explore the question:  “Is ritual good for your health?”  Do you like ritual?  What if anything does it do for you?  Good ritual like good religion points to something beyond itself.  The elements and gestures of good ritual point beyond themselves to something More.  For us, the ritual points beyond dogma and institution, something to make sense of our embodied human experience.  In the fullness of our human existence we can experience gifts as part of our universe.  We can come to a new experience of religion.  We can be grateful for all that has come before.  We are grateful because we couldn’t be here without our previous experiences.  They have brought us to this place.  I experienced moving beyond dogma and institution in a new context at the Integral Christianity conference in Boulder last April.  I was actually able to experience Roman Catholicism beyond the institution of the Church and was able to let go of my anger and victimization.  When I came back from the conference I told Ian that I could be Roman Catholic again.  Do you know what his response was?  He said, “Oh, those integral people… they take all the fun out of things.”  [You know….I could be Roman Catholic again.]  Suddenly I can freely appreciate the beauty and history of that theology.  Even more I can move to a place that transcends yet includes all religions:  a new vision as I move further into my role as an Interfaith minister.  Gifts of the universe?  Eucharist?
 
I’d like to share a story about gifts and what it means to live in a Eucharistic universe.  Friends of this community last June traveled to Chicago to help their daughter move so he had his big truck along.  On this particular Saturday night he had to try to find a place to park this large truck on the jammed downtown streets somewhere.  If you’ve ever been to a big city you know what parking is like.  He finally found a parking place 45 minutes away from where they were staying.  Frustrated and anxious to get back to spend time with his family, he parked in a questionable spot near one of the museums.  This particular spot didn’t have a sign saying he couldn’t park there but the surrounding parking places had all kinds of signs and warnings.  So he took a chance.  The next morning as he walked to the truck he was thinking that he would probably find a very expensive ticket sitting on his windshield.  You probably remember a similar experience or feeling.  Sure enough as he got closer to the truck, he caught sight of something yellow on his windshield.  But when he reached the truck and took a closer look, what he saw…surprised and amazed him!  Rather than a $400 parking ticket he saw that someone had placed a sunflower under his windshield wiper.  Expecting one thing he received instead a wonderful gift, and he didn’t know what to make of it.  None of the other cars had sunflowers attached.  What did this mean?  He moved his truck and took the sunflower back to his family.  He wondered what they would make of it.  As it happens, it was Father’s day and as they celebrated the day with the ritual of giving gifts and he opened a card from his daughter…guess what was on the front of the card?....sunflowers!  And sunflowers had always been his wife’s favorite.  They all consider themselves to be rational, logical people and this series of events had caused them to pause and wonder.  Although this synchronicity was delightful it set into motion all kinds of questions for their family about the way life works.  What kind of life is this where things like this happen?  Can you think of time that was like that for you?  Do you experience random gifts? experience synchronicity?  Does synchronicity indicate some acknowledgement of expanded consciousness? 

Eckhart Tolle and Carl Jung would say that yes, synchronicity is exactly the result of a state of expanded consciousness.  Hindu and Buddhist traditions teach that the world as we know it is “maya”, illusion:  What we think we see is not enough.  There is so much more to see.  There is so much more to experience.  They also use the word “lila” which is play.  With an expanded view of the universe we find ourselves in “play”, in bliss.  We find sunflowers, when we might have found parking tickets.

The delight and expansiveness we find in this altered sense of reality is gratifying if not a little scary like this family found.  That’s when we discover that in order to keep integrating this broadened reality, this Ultimate Reality, we need more than simple awareness.  We discover that in order to live into this fuller reality we need communities, practices, and rituals to support expanded awareness, to support our growth.

During the Integral Transformative week I attended in June of 2005 I learned the need for cross-training.  Integral Institute advocates a cross training which creates daily rituals integrating all the parts of ourselves: such as the practice of a spiritual dimension in physical training; a psychological component while learning cognitively, etc.  Integral advocates bringing our broadened awareness to everyday activities.  What about your morning ritual?  How do you greet the day?  Without changing a thing could you just add a simple intention for your loved ones or the globe as you shuffle to the bathroom, make tea or coffee, and get prepared for the day?  If you’re driving, at every stop could you just send “peace” or some other personal intention out into the world?  It’s time to move beyond Platonic ideas of our realities, our bodies as segregated selves, our being as compartmentalized aspects.  Integral philosophy asserts that humanity is ready for the next step of evolution, living as integrated human beings, more than the sum of our parts.

Our view of the universe, our cosmology, also impacts the ordinary normal activities of our lives.  If eating is a cosmic act, then how do we eat?  Have you ever thought about food?  Have you ever considered that food has a reality beyond fat, sugar, protein, cholesterol, or calories?  We all know that Mediterranean diets are considered to be healthy but is it simply the kind of food eaten?  In the Mediterranean, food is not a “diet”.  It is a way of life.  You walk one or two miles to the place you are to eat.  You savor small portions of locally grown food deliciously prepared over a long mealtime.  Food eaten slowly and chewed well is digested differently and more effectively than food that is bolted down.  You drink red wine as a complement to the food not to medicate your emotions.  You enjoy the people you are with – you take the time to look them in the eye.  You enjoy your surroundings, the color of the walls or even better eat outdoors, and then once again you walk the one or two miles home enjoying the night sky and stars, ready for sleep.  This way of life is living in a Eucharistic universe.  Can you see that this kind of ritual around eating is good for your health?  Consider this way of nourishment compared to wolfing down fast food in your car on the way home from a stressful day of work while listening to the news?  It’s no wonder our culture has issues with food.  We’re malnourished on a much deeper level and seeking to fill the void.  Mother Teresa after a visit to the US said that we are the most materially rich country in the world and the most spiritually malnourished.  In ancient Buddhist monasteries only those enlightened enough were allowed to touch or prepare the food.  Imagine if the first question on a McDonald’s employment application was, “Are you enlightened?”  An acupuncturist at the Wege Center in Grand Rapids, Dr. Zhou has stressed to me that in Chinese medicine the stomach is critically important.  We access Chi or the life force first through breathing, but the second powerful way we bring the life force into our bodies is through our stomachs.  Chi comes into our bodies in the food we eat and how we eat.  How we eat is critical.  When we begin to embody our expanded awareness of the universe, all the gifts the universe offers, we begin to change how we do things.

There is hope and positive change happening around food and nourishment in our culture.  Eating as a ritual or practice which supports life is beginning to catch on in the organic food movement.  What we eat is critically important.  Locally, places like Crestwick Farms, people like Chris Bedford of Sweetwater Market, Dan Gleason, and many of you are working for this change by honoring the human being and their environment.  We know the change to support our new awareness doesn’t happen all at once.  It can be frustrating or overwhelming as we begin to look at our lives and consider what needs to change.  But it can happen.  And the beauty and gift is that we can do this together.  We are free to explore together what gives the most life, especially in this progressive community.  During the wellness fair on Sunday Aug 24, our hope is that you can begin to explore which practices and rituals have the most meaning for the life of you and your family.   

Good ritual points to a way of life which integrates our broadened consciousness, our expanded awareness, and deepens our understanding of what we call life, deepens our understanding of our place in the universe.  In accessing the gifts of the universe, we find more gifts, more life.  At the same time we find that we are being changed on a cellular level.  This is what Paul means by the glory of transformation.  Sometimes it is manifested only one cell at a time.  For Paul and Christianity the Christ event changed everything, changed the cosmos.  Paul believed that Christ is the Cosmos.  It’s fascinating to me to place that theology alongside a progressive stance – it seems that there is much to explore.  It’s amazing to me that a first century Greco-Roman speaks of transformation, alternate realities, a new age.  It was a new age.  And it looks like we’re on the edge of a new age again or simply understanding our age from a new perspective.  Bruno Barnhart calls our time “the second axial age.”  He speaks of this age as one that comes back to earth.  It is re-balancing the male sky god and the spiritual as higher or “out there” with the feminine earth goddess and valuing the spiritual as an interior reality.  Jack Kornfield reminds us of our interior universe.  In yoga we are asked, “Can you have as much life on the inside as you find on the outside?”  This age moves us into transpersonal psychology and depth anthropology – a deep sense of being human.  Once again this balance is about becoming integrated, more than the sum of our parts. 

Some might refer to the stars and planets as the year 2012 marks the end of the Mayan calendar, and the end of an age.  They would tell that we have been transitioning out of the Piscean Age which was hallmarked by enlightened saviors or leaders for some decades now.  And with the year 2012 we begin decades of transition into the Age of Aquarius which is hallmarked not by enlightened leaders but by an enlightened collective – the interior work we do individually will influence and aid all of humanity.   An age hallmarked by humanity advancing together.  Not an age to fear but an age to welcome.

When we live from a place of intimate connection in the universe, part of the Web of Life, we live with thankfulness for our place in the universe.  All of life takes on richer meaning.  Our experiences of connection move into our lives as synchronicity.  We find “sunflowers”.  Our rituals and practices which support this expanded consciousness can only be good, can only lead to more health, and to more Life.  May it be so.

References

Gonzalez, Paula & Caroline Webb,   Earth Light Magazine, Spring 2004

Northrup, Christiane, MD  Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, New York: Bantam Dell, 2006.