Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
SAYING YES TO LIFE, EVEN THE HARD PARTS

SAYING YES TO LIFE, EVEN THE HARD PARTS

Last updated on: November 1, 2011 at 3:13 pm by James Ford

SAYING YES TO LIFE, EVEN THE HARD PARTS 2011-11-01T15:13:15-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A Sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

Delivered on the
4th of May, 2008

at the
First Unitarian Church of Providence

Text

This past week I facilitated a service at the cremation of a child who lived four hours. I first wrote “of a child who lived only four hours.” But I realized that what I was feeling and wanted to express is that there was no need for the modifier “only.”

The parents both identify as Buddhist so I found myself gathering materials out of the Zen tradition. And I came upon this story collected as a koan in the old Chinese anthology the Blue Cliff Record. “Great Master Ma was unwell. The temple’s superintendent visited and inquired after the venerable’s health. Ma replied ‘Sun-face-Buddha. Moon-face-Buddha.’”

That’s the whole case. It is helpful to know that in Buddhist legend a sun-face-Buddha lives for a great length of time—I’ve read eighteen hundred years; I’ve heard ten thousand. The point is simple enough: a life of wisdom of great length. A moon-face-Buddha lives for a single day and a single night. It is interesting to know that Mazu, Great Master Ma, one of the most wonderful of our Zen ancestors in fact died shortly after this encounter with the superintendent. He lived long, for a human, and it was a Buddha’s life.

As is four hours.

One old teacher of Zen said if you cut a golden staff near the foot, it is gold. If you cut that staff in the middle, it is gold. If you cut it at the end, it is gold.

But often our experience seems a little different.

The Diamond Sutra gatha, another important text in the Zen tradition, sings, “So listen to this fleeting world, a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

Some can hear this and think it is telling us the world is maya, illusion, and infer we need to abandon it in favor of the real beyond. And that is the teaching of some spiritual traditions.

But not the ones that inform my life. Not Buddhism, not Unitarian Universalism.

Rather, our lives are fleeting, a star to be glimpsed between passing clouds, a bubble dancing on a rushing river, a flash of lightning, a flickering lamp. The phantom, the dream—our lives—are also true, but only in so far as we give them a substance they do not possess, an identity separate from all that is.

What they are, what our lives are, yours and mine, are immediate exact expressions of the great empty, of the place without name. And in that, all are joined, all are one. And whether we live a hundred years, or four hours, that immediate expression of truth as one life, remains truth.

So terrible, so sad, so beautiful.

(Reprinted from Winter 2007 UU World)

As you know from the reading, last year I accompanied a family in the wake of the death of their child, a baby who lived only four hours. Sharing in such sad events is common currency for a minister of any faith. It certainly wasn’t my first experience of death and hurt. Not by a long shot. But, there was something particularly moving about this young couple, such lovely and reflective people. I was deeply moved by both the depth of their hurt and how they met it full on. It was so powerful. And it just tore at my heart.

As I’m both a minister and a writer I found my way of processing all this was putting my thoughts, my feelings up on my Monkey Mind blog which I consider an increasingly important part of my ministry. Surprisingly to me, not long after, it was picked up by the UU World and slightly edited was published in their Winter 2007 issue. Considering it was really a reflection on deepest hurt, I felt pretty good.

To be honest, I felt better than pretty good, because that wasn’t the end of it. First the original blog entry was nominated for a UU Blog award and then it actually won an award from Blogisattva, which as they say honors “excellence in English-language Buddhist blogging.” I had passing thoughts of how this was the way Robert Fulghum began, with a newsletter column about fundamentals learned in kindergarten. I began to imagine something along the lines of “All I really need to know I learned sitting on a Zen meditation pillow.” With those various bits of praise I began to wonder if I would need to perhaps adjust my hat size up a little. Well, actually some friends suggested maybe a bit more than a little…

Then in the Spring 2008 issue of the UU World in the letters to the editor section one commentator stated what she thought about my little reflection. After noting this was the first anniversary of the death of her child she wrote “Ford’s conclusion that four hours is as good as 100 years and that a golden rod cut near the foot of a golden statue is just as gold as if cut anywhere else rang hollow.”

My hat size shrunk just about instantly. First, I felt terrible that what I wrote poked into her personal wounds. Obviously my reflection did her no good. Then, I felt defensive. As she outlined her grievances, she mischaracterized what I actually said. So, there was a brief flash of indignation coursing through me, as well.

Of course that’s how it works. Whatever we who preach actually wish to get to, our precious thesis is often not what people ever hear. As likely as not, some sentence or even a clause in a sentence stops the hearer cold. And whatever the preacher hoped for is lost. Instead the listener, triggered by that word or sentence or image begins to follow her or his own current of thought and feeling down a very personal path.

Not that this is a bad thing. Over the years, I’ve received as much praise as blame for these personal sermons, as it were, that people have constructed while I was holding forth. So I have no complaint. Although as I’m aware of how often this happens, I do try to be careful about my choice of language and image, so that at the very least, I don’t inadvertently push people toward unnecessarily hurtful reflections. As best I can.

All that said; the writer of the letter was particularly concerned that she be allowed her personal grief. She didn’t need to hear about dreams or illusions. And, what I need to accept, it didn’t matter what it was I actually wrote. That’s what she heard, that’s what she read. And that’s what she felt was so important to challenge that she took up pen and paper and responded.

She wanted her grief, her sorrow at the loss of her child. Unfortunately, I know this particular sorrow. I, too, have lost a child. And I wish this experience on no one. There’s an ancient Chinese blessing: grandparent dies, parent dies, child dies. To have it happen in any other order is an affront to the human heart. The death of a child is among the hardest things we have to face as human beings. And it is impossible to deny it, or the hurt, a hurt that never goes away.

And. And there is something more.

I think of this “more” as a deep yes at the heart of life. Trying to describe these yeses, perhaps all of us have felt, and to which I’m calling us to reflect about, I think of Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah, which sings of David standing before the Lord, now a king, but also old and broken, filled with so much heartache. Failure and success taken together, and now, at the end of it all: just a burning moment, everything that happened in his life reduced to a heart naked unadorned hallelujah.

Today I want to talk about that hallelujah, that yes which seems to bubble up in our human hearts when we allow ourselves to be totally vulnerable. Not pretending it’s all pretty and nice. But taking it whole and in that finding a yes. Here today I want to hold up three such yes moments, three hallelujahs we might find at the center of our lives.

Here I find myself thinking of a wonderful little book called Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts) by Ezra Bayda with Josh Bartok. Actually, what I want to cite here is by Thomas Moore, who you may recall as the author of Care of the Soul. He wrote the forward to Saying Yes. And in that foreword Thomas Moore suggested the spiritual enterprise, the quest for meaning and purpose in our lives means “loving life when it seems to be a mess and not just when it’s going smoothly; opening fully to the unwanted…” Now there’s a real challenge.

We, of course, don’t need to invite difficulties; they come on their own, without any effort on our part. Heaven knows. The question, the only question, I believe, is how do we meet these things that happen? The first yes I think, is found in not turning away from what is. It is letting our joys be our joy and our sorrows be our sorrow. Embrace our joy. And, this is the hard part: don’t turn away from our sorrow, either. I’m not saying be passive. I am saying be present. There is a healing in this that is essential to a healthy life. And if you go away from our time here today with nothing more than this, I’ll feel I’ve been useful. But, as they say, “Wait, there’s more!”

This vulnerability also opens us up to a second yes. By embracing the sacred whole, we gain a perspective that means our decisions on where to go next will be a little more gentle, a bit wiser, and this is so important: a lot more useful. This is because our full presence to what is reveals that each thing is joined. We’re actually all in this together.

In Martin Luther King’s wondrous words “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Here we find the yes not just in our hearts, but; it seems, at the heart of the world itself. Your sorrow becomes mine, and mine, yours. I suggest a whole theology of social engagement can follow our encounter with this yes to the world. Sometimes, to me, this yes feels as if it were written upon our hearts from before creation. I believe it is the intuition that inspires our Unitarian Universalist image of an interdependent web of which we all are apart.

And, finally, please let me hold up one more yes, one more hallelujah. It is the one that has caught my heart, and driven my life. It’s very, very hard to put to words. Although I feel Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah, comes pretty close. But others tell of it, as well. I think of that hymn of the goddess, “Thunder, Perfect Mind.” I think of the poems of longing and love sung by Rumi. I think of Job’s encounter. And I think of the Desert Fathers, Christian monks and really, nuns as well, who fled to the Egyptian desert in the fourth and fifth centuries of our common era, seeking deepest wisdom.

What remains for us today are some writings, telling anecdotes, collected fragments of conversation and briefest homilies. My introduction to them was from the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s selection and translation, Wisdom of the Desert. Over the years I’ve found I return to this little book over and over again. Although the particular story I want to recount today I found in a different collection, Yushi Nomura’s Desert Wisdom.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said – (Elder), as much as I am able I practice a small rule, a little fasting, some prayer and meditation, and remain quiet, and as much as possible I keep my thoughts clean – What else should I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched out his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten torches of flame. And he said: If you wish, you can become all flame.

There are several ways one can take this little story. One way can be literalist and with that literalism either find comfort in hearing about miracles or to dismiss it as mere hogwash from wishful thinkers. Neither of these literalist encounters means much to me. Rather, I think it is about what can happen when we don’t turn away, when we embrace it all, even the hurt.

In this little story we’re being encouraged to find something and to do something. The set up is simple enough. A serious student of the spiritual way describes his (could just as easily be her) path. It’s clean. Live by a simple rule, nothing extravagant, just what it takes to hold the heart and mind to one’s purpose. Live with prayer and meditation and, I think wisely, a constant fall back to silence.

Here we find the yes of letting our joy be our joy and our sorrow our sorrow. Here we see the yes of our knowing, bone and marrow knowing we are all bound up together as one. And all this opens us up to the third yes. It is a hallelujah that echoes from within our hearts and fills the cosmos. It is not “hallelujah in spite of the difficulties and sadness,” not “hallelujah anyway,” but just plain in the face of it all as it is: hallelujah.

These are the flames – this hallelujah is the deepest yes. It is the true knowing of our lives. If we open our hearts fully to everything, turning from nothing; then, perhaps, just maybe, possibly, we’ll find those flames.

Certainly, at the end, I feel, these flames are what its all about. These flames are the burning power of presence, the transforming power found in our not turning away. Here we find the possibility of change, not in denial, or wishes, but based in who and what we really are: flames. Here, in these flames, I feel, we come face to face with God.

And for that, how can I say anything, but hallelujah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmI

Uncategorized

Previous Post

May 4, 2008

Candidating: Sunday

Next Post

May 4, 2008 Breaking News

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian group is known for not celebrating holidays or birthdays?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Episcopalians Orthodox Methodists Jehovah's Witnesses