On Certainty

Betsy Tabor, Worship Associate

 

Last fall, a friend took me to a Zumba class!  Zumba is a dance-based fitness craze—a combination of hip-hop, funk and Latin dance moves. Suddenly, one’s hips have a life of their own, which, while not necessarily pretty, is very fun. Well, I enjoyed this so much that I became a huge fan of Zumba and of my Zumba teacher.  I sent her encouraging emails and suggested song ideas. She could do no wrong.  I insisted that all my friends come try Zumba. As my Dad used to say, Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

 

For me another thing worth overdoing is collecting quotations. Dozens of them adorn our bathroom wall—during a church meeting at our house once, Brad Greeley exclaimed that he could spent a week in there, reading!  Every quote has its season, and over time they get taken down and pasted into a special book.  Reading through this book is like a trip down the memory lane of my state of mind.  Different quotes recall different eras.  Sometimes I smile and think, “Thank goodness I figured that out and have moved on.”  Other times, I realize that I’m right back where I was in 1995, yet again.

 

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, from around 1900. It goes like this:  “I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”   I am impressed that Rilke was thinking such deep thoughts at the tender age of 28!  I sure wasn’t at that age, but for the middle-aged me, the notion of living and loving the questions, and not the answers, is what it’s all about!  It’s why I’m here at South Church. 

 

And that has me thinking these days about answers—and, when we know we have figured out an answer to an important question, about our certainty about it.  Of course, there are things we’re never quite sure of:

 

 

These are big, hard questions, to which there are not easy answers.  If any.  But today I’m interested in the questions we think we do have answers to.  I’m interested in how sure we are about our own points of view and how certainty can play out in the world….I’m especially interested in the hazards of being certain….

 

 

 

There are things we feel certain about that are different for each of us.  What are you certain of? 

 

To many of us, life can feel easier when we are certain about things.   J As Jeannie Daniels used to say after checking in at a covenant group meeting, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!”  Some of us hang on to our stories with all our might.  During my decidedly accomplishment-less mothering days, I have hung on to my academic degrees and accomplishments from my 20s and 30s.  That was over twenty-five years ago!  But without the certainty of my resume, who would I be?  And for that matter, is it even my story that I’m so certain of?  No, much of it is a story that was scripted for me—by my well-intentioned parents, by society, by all the “shoulds” in my brain.  But that’s another subject.  I think. J

 

In a support group I once heard a great parable about certainty and expectations:

 

The newlyweds were off to Italy.  They had bought a bunch of guide books and made wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Michelangelo’s David. The gondolas in Venice. They had learned Italian.  It was all very exciting.  After months of eager anticipation, the big day finally arrived. They packed their bags and off they went. Seven hours later, the plane landed, and the flight attendant announced, "Welcome to Amsterdam."

"Amsterdam?!?" they cried. "What do you mean, Amsterdam?? We signed up for Italy! We’re supposed to be in Italy. All our lives we have dreamed of going to Italy."

But there had been a change. They'd landed in Amsterdam and there they had to stay.

So they had to go out and buy new guide books. They had to learn a new language. And they met a whole new group of people they never would have met had they gone to Italy.

It was just a different place. It was slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after they’d been there for a while and caught their breath, they looked around.... they began to notice that Amsterdam had windmills.... Amsterdam had tulips….Amsterdam even had Rembrandts.

Meanwhile, everyone they knew was busy coming and going from Italy... and they were all full of what a wonderful time they were having there. For the rest of the couple’s lives, they would say, "Yes, that's where we were supposed to go. That's what we had planned."

The moral of the story is that the pain will never, ever go away... because the loss of a dream is a very significant loss.  But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, very lovely things ... about Amsterdam.

The newlyweds had a story, they had a plan.  They were certain of so much.  But look how it all turned out.  Everything they were sure of came about differently than they had expected.  And it was fine.  We think our lives are going to be a certain way and, as often as not, our issues aren’t at all what we thought they would be.

 

Parenting is an arena where I once felt quite certain about some things and where, now, I am more than uncertain!  Early on, we might have an idea of what kind of parents we’ll be, what our families will be like.  I would have to say that mine has not turned out to be what I once imagined.  How bewildering that values I tried to instill in our kids have come back to bite me.  For example—for  years we were a No TV Household.   We did that so well that when our 5 year-old daughter came home from Disney World with her indulgent godmother, she reported back with amazement that every time they turned on the TV, there was a program on! J  Despite my certainty and somewhat rigid follow-through about raising the kids without TV, today that girl’s 17-year old brother loves TV, watches it all the time.  And guess what happened to my own certainty when that once clueless daughter came home from college last winter with a full season of Grey’s Anatomy on DVD?  Yup, I got hooked.  Don’t call me on Thursday night! 

 

So, how certain is certain?  Maybe the Universe has maneuvered this president into office to move humanity forward in some way.  Maybe—and this gets my vote—Don Imus is a sincere, compassionate man.  As for TV,  Grey’s Anatomy is pretty wonderful J.  Maybe when you turn 56, the TV can come on again.

 

But we’re in church together, so let’s look at that.  I live in a two-church home.  To use my husband John’s words, after signing the membership book here, he “missed the Baby Jesus,” and eventually he headed back up the hill to St. John’s Episcopal Church.  John and I have moments of perfect compatibility around our divergent spiritual paths.  What could be more personal and more important, more worthy of respect than finding one’s spiritual path?  But, you know?  It is hard to enthrall your  partner about a service that’s hit you right here, when he’s coming from a different, equally enthralling spiritual place.  Sometimes, lunch on Sunday sounds a bit competitive—We had an awesome testimony about … Oh yeah?  You should have heard the sermon on St. John and the Gentiles…And on it goes.  Fact is, we are each pretty certain about our spiritual path.

 

Magnify that scenario and consider UU’s and  the Christian Right’s mega-churches.  These are the gigantic evangelical churches whose memberships run into thousands.  I’ve read about some that seat 3500 people.  You may have seen them on TV--instead of an altar, there are multiple 20-foot high screens featuring scenes of Biblical drama, singers and bands.  There are huge amplifiers.  Some of the ministers look right out of central casting—some are charismatic, some folksy, some hard-hitting, all of them riveting.  The message is pure and simple.  Clear and certain.  This is what we believe.  This way is the only way.  If you are a true believer, you will be saved.  Guaranteed!  Thousands and thousands and thousands of upstanding, productive, thinking Americans worship in these churches, and, to be sure, they are certain that this brand of religion, this spiritual path, is The Way.

 

In the December issue of Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan wrote, we live in “a time when… human-kind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all…”  I agree with him.  Which is why Pema Chodron’s teachings resonate with me.  I am not a scholar of Buddhist philosophy, but I understand, from listening to several of her books, that, for Buddhists, uncertainty is all good. J She teaches that cultivating an attitude of curiosity and openness is not only at the heart of enlightenment, but is the key to compassion, to softening our hearts, to bringing people together.

 

“A warrior,” she writes, “accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe.  But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty.  This not-knowing is part of the adventure.”

 

Despite our UU traditions of questioning and questing and opening ourselves to the mystery of things spiritual, I have been concerned of late because it seems to me that I, for one, am darned sure of myself and darned sure of my approach—or perhaps I should say, our approach to religion. I’m guessing that most South Church people also feel pretty certain about this religion. I wonder how good a thing that is for the world?  I think about Pema Chodron’s room that’s so perfect, that you’re so certain of, but that closes you off to others and can become a prison!   Granted, this sanctuary is no prison, but I’m pretty certain about what I like in our room—this room of ancient carvings, wavey glass and creaky pews—and I would wager that my certainty is not unlike the certainty that, say, the Bethany Evangelical congregation feels about its brand new, almost stage-like altar across town.  I wonder if I am not so unalike my perception of the Religious Right folks in my certainty about our faith.  This is what we choose, and that is what they choose.  And—yes, Pema Chodron—here we are at a great distance from one another…here we are at We and They. 

 

I get that in churches and temples and ashrams we are all trying to answer the same questions and that we’re  just using different words than one another.  And I am challenged to open my heart and be a little less certain about the UU way—which, to use Rilke’s words, is the way of “living the questions” and “living our way into the answers.”  It is also a challenge for me to be a little less certain, less judgmental, about the Christian Right’s way.  Even though “our way” is to be open and questioning and accepting of all paths, I can sometimes feel a bit lofty here in my special UU way of being, this way that I think is preferable to everyone else’s way.  Do you feel special that way, too?  I wonder…where does certainty, or uncertainty, fit into our spiritual development? 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have found this spiritual home.  And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling certain that I belong here.  I’m not sure that translates into certainty about what I believe!  J  What can we be certain of, for sure?  A few years ago, one of our ministers, Marta Flanagan, called up Ellen Forbes one Saturday afternoon.  ( I guess that’s when ministers write sermons.)  “What do you know you can count on in life?” she asked Ellen.  Looking out her window onto the Piscataqua in the distance, Ellen said, “Well, I know for sure that the tide will come back in this afternoon.” 

 

I can go with that!  With gratitude, and with certainty,  I know that spring will follow winter, and summer will come after that.  The tides will reflect the moon’s circles around Earth.  We can look up exactly how many hours of daylight and nighttime there will be for any given day.  We are certain of these things.  The other certainty, by the way, less cheerful and of which there is also no doubt, is that I most definitely am going to die.  (As are you!)  Beyond these, my certainties are few, if any. 

 

Seven years ago, when my Dad was dying, I  struggled over how to comfort him, what to say to this lover of life who was not a church person, this very ill scientist who  I knew was skeptical about heaven or an afterlife.  I consulted my friend Ashley Prend—Ashley had written a best-selling book on bereavement.  She said that she found two phrases useful in end-of-life conversations.  One was, “I like to think that…”  and the other was, “It helps me to think that….”  Dad’s brother Walter had written a song using words from a piece by none other than…Rainer Maria Rilke.  (It is a small world J)  Throughout Uncle Walter’s song, called Two Little Solitudes, runs the line: “All you can hope for on both sides of heaven is love.”  So during Dad’s last weeks, I used Ashley’s two phrases a lot.  I’d say, “There’s so much love in this room right now, and, you know, Dad, that reminds me of Walter’s song—“It helps me to think that on both sides of heaven there is love.”  Or…“I like to think that, in the years to come, you’ll somehow always be around.”

 

Ashley’s two phrases are  helpful to me around this certainty business, too.  Instead of coming down on one side or the other of a tough question, instead of responding in black or white, I can find shades of gray, a place I can comfortably be in the moment, when I say, “I like to think that…” or “It helps me to think that....”  I try to use these phrases in my world outside the UU community, hoping that people will respond in kind.  I want to hear where my friends and my family are on their spiritual paths—I like to think…that I am curious, and open, and that these kinds of conversations can bring us together and make a difference in this world.

 

I wrote most of these words last summer and felt pretty solid about them.  Bordering on certain!   They say that things happen for a reason.  Imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that my Zumba teacher, whom I’d been exuberantly promoting, is a member of our local evangelical mega-church!  J  Here I’d been feeling so  evolved about being open to others’ faith, especially to those churches which seem so different from ours….And I have to tell you, I was really thrown by this revelation!  There’s no ending to this story because practicing what I have just preached is going to be hard.  Of course I still think she is great.  I still talk up the class and go all the time.  But my spiritual challenge is clear before me—and I need to screw up my courage to talk with this evangelical Latin dancer to see where she is coming from spiritually! J  Our work is never done….

 

While I am certain that we’ll all die someday and certain that high tide this afternoon will be at 1:33, my gentle suggestion to you is to think about the role of certainty—or uncertainty—in your spiritual life.  I suggest that we heed Pema Chodron’s concern about being overly certain about things.  Let us take comfort and be grateful for the predictability of flowers and trees and moons and stars. And with all that is not quite certain—or not at all certain—let our hearts be open and our minds be curious.  Let us have conversations out in the world about the big questions. 

 

My homeopathy teacher Nancy Frederick says, “There’s room here for all of us.  Sometimes we just have to stand far apart”!  And while we do sometimes stand far apart, I think the key is to be talking with one another, deep-down talking.  While we can appreciate what makes UUs different and, I would say, freer in ways than members of other religious groups, let us also walk in the world and model…our…uncertainty.  Let us say, “It helps me to believe that…” or “I like to think that…”  And then let us ask others, “What does it help you to believe?....” Let’s see where the conversation takes us.  We are all in this together.  Here’s to curious minds and open hearts.  Amen