March 12th, 2006
Can You Hear Me?
Rev. Amy Russell

A man is his late forties is sitting on a bus riding home from work late. It's spring and it's staying light outside later. Dusk is just falling with streaks of gray across the sky. He's tired after a stressful day working downtown in an office where phone calls and emails never seemed to stop. He stares ahead in the bus, barely awake. In this half conscious state, he thinks he sees someone he knows sitting a few seats ahead. The back of the head looks familiar, an almost balding middle aged man with a dark nylon jacket. Who is it, he wonders. He leans forward to get a better look and the man briefly turns around, glancing back. It isn't anyone he knows and he feels deep disappointment.

It looked almost like his brother he realizes. But his brother is gone. Died two years ago of a heart attack at age 50. He feels a sharp pang of that pain of loss. I guess people might say he was close to his brother. They would get together at a bar every couple of weeks and just talk. Talk about their lives, about their families, about just stuff. Anything. He could talk to his brother about anything. But now, who can he talk to like that? He can talk to his wife and he thinks he has a good marriage, but it's not the same. There are things that he can't share with her. Things like how scared he is about getting old. He could maybe tell his brother about this feeling of dread that has come over him. No one was like his brother. He feels this dark longing to just have a chance to sit down and talk to his brother again. What would he say? He'd tell his brother how lonely he is. How lost he feels. And how if his brother was there, he'd feel better. Wouldn't he? If only.

A young twenty something girl whose nickname is Jill lays on her bed staring at the ceiling. A year ago she moved into her first apartment and she's supporting herself for the first time. She moved to Atlanta after college with her roommate from college. It's pretty exciting. They are starting to meet people at their jobs and they go to bars and restaurants after work and have a couple of beers. Sometimes they'll run into people they know who will introduce them to other people their age. But lately Jill has realized that it's really tiring going to bars every night and the endless talking and flirting and mindless chatter that goes on and on. Jill has dated a couple of guys for a short time but they just didn't seem like guys she wanted to get very involved with. The talk was always so superficial, about what movies they'd seen or about their jobs. She was tired of that. She wanted a real relationship, a relationship that would fill this deep longing. Someone who would lean over, touch her cheek and then she'd know that he really loved her in an unspoken way, a real way. Someone who filled her up. Someone who would walk with her in that park where she saw those ducks the other day and the weeping willows. They wouldn't even need to talk sometimes because it would be just right. She yearned for this kind of relationship in her life. Sometimes it felt like she had a huge emptiness inside her. If she could only find that right man. Then she'd feel cared for. Then she'd be safe. Wouldn't she?

Gary seemed to spend a lot of his time lately outside on his skateboard. He'd leave the house as soon as they started arguing which lately was most of the time when they were both home. He rides his skateboard down the block and rides up and down the one hill there. Sometimes he even tries the fancy stunts on the stairs up to the basketball court. Gary remembers a time when his Dad would come with him and first they would go to the basketball court and shoot a few baskets and then his Dad would help him figure out how to do some of the skateboard stunts he'd seen on TV. But now his Dad just comes home from work, grabs a beer, and flops in front of the TV changing channels with the remote. And that's when it starts with his Mom.

Gary leans down and wipes some mud from the edge of his basketball shoe. He stands up and breathes in the spring air. It smells good. Like something is growing. It reminds him of once when they went camping as a family. It was in the woods and everything was green and damp and when you breathed in you smelled the earth and grass and the pine needles that were scattered everywhere under the tall trees. Gary remembered feeling so good that weekend. He remembers feeling like everything was right. Like the whole world was happy and good. And when he looked up at the sky, he could almost feel like he was a part of it. Maybe that's what people meant when they talked about God.

Gary wished he could have that feeling now. He thinks about how his grandmother taught him to pray. She taught him that he could do it anytime, anywhere. He could just look up at the sky and close his eyes and think in his mind what he wanted to say to God. If he did that right now, he'd feel silly. But if he did, he knew what he'd say to God. He'd say, how come? How come it's so screwed up? Why can't they get along and maybe even stop fighting long enough to notice him. Hey, God, can you hear me? I could really use some help right now. If there really was a God. If God was listening. And even if God heard him, what could God do? Gary didn't think his parents would be listening, even if God was talking to them.

Ruth. She just had her eighty-ninth birthday yesterday. Her children who live in Columbus and Cleveland came to celebrate. They had a party in the activities room of the nursing home. It was a little sad really when you think about it. Having a party in a place like that. Even balloons couldn't take away the smell and the sadness of the place. Ruth knew that. She saw how her son averted his eyes from the other residents sitting around in their wheelchairs, their heads down, barely registering what was going on. Only looking up when they heard the birthday song being sung. "Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you!"

Her grandchildren, though, they were something. They sang to her and even brought one of those boom boxes that makes music. They turned on some music that they thought she'd like, something from the swing era. And then her daughter, Kate, had danced around the room with her grandson, Matthew holding up his arms and smiling broadly at his brave attempts at cheering her. That was funny. Matthew looked so happy with his mom.

She thought about how it would be for them after she died. They'd miss her, she knew that. But soon they'd go on with their lives. She wondered what it would be like for her..

She didn't really believe in a heaven where people had some kind of heavenly bodies made of nothing. But would there be anything? Or just out like a light? That's it.

Ruth put her head down for a moment, she was so tired. She felt like laying down now and just letting go. What would it be like to just drift off and even go to sleep forever? She imagined being a part of a great light. A soothing comforting light. She wouldn't really need language. What would it be like to be a light particle? Just being energy. No brain to think with. But still some kind of strange consciousness perhaps- just like a pulse. Yes, maybe just like a pulse of energy. Something like your heartbeat. Thu- thum, thu-thum. Something like the feeling of love. When you loved really hard and tried to get that across to someone without saying anything. Just that feeling. Maybe that would be all that was left. But perhaps that would be enough. She wanted to let go of all this and feel just love.

Yearning to be heard. Yearning to be loved. We all carry around a longing to be loved and understood. This yearning to connect, to have union, to be one with another or with God or with the Universe is universal. We hear it in poems, in prayers, in every word that is spoken. What is it about human beings that has this need? And how can it be filled? Can it ever be filled?

In this yearning, we try to find ways to fill up this emptiness we sometimes feel. We fill it with business, with busy careers, busy volunteer activities, busy, busy, all the time. Some people seek to fill themselves by seeking out relationships, one relationship after another. Some find themselves with addictions, addictions to drugs or alcohol, addictions to sex, to gambling, to spending money. People can be addicted to almost anything that is something they can't seem to get enough of and can't stop seeking. They are trying to fill that emptiness. Fill themselves so they won't feel that yearning.

But in the mad grab of trying to fill ourselves up, we often forget something. We overlook the fact that we don't know what it is that we want in the first place. We don't know what will stop the yearning, the longing, so we grab at things around us.

Looking at this yearning, some might call this a religious impulse. Our need for something outside ourselves to make us feel better. "Religious?", you might say. "What's religious about addictions for things? What's spiritual about trying to grab things to make you feel better?"

It's the impulse, the need, this yearning that we're talking about. We long for completion, for union, to be loved. Maybe this is part of the biological urge to procreate. Maybe it's part of our urge for survival, that we feel safer when we're not alone. Maybe it's that "religious" gene" that some scientists are trying to prove now.

I don't know where it comes from. But I do know that we all have it. And how we seek to fill it controls our lives. Most of what we do outside of our basic survival needs is aimed at filling up this need. Our jobs, our relationships, our hobbies, our spiritual activities, our athletic endeavors- all of our activities are somehow aimed at filling up this emptiness.

When we're living full, complete lives and are filled with the joy of living or we're at least content with our lives, sometimes we feel completely filled and satisfied. We fill our need with people who love us, with activities and careers that fulfill us; we have spiritual lives that give us a feeling of grace, a connection with the universe. But for almost all of us, there are times in our lives, when we feel that emptiness again. And that yearning can often lead us to become seekers. Spiritual seekers, looking for the spiritual fulfillment that we've never quite found.

Houston Smith, a scholar of world religions, talks about how this need for humans is universal. "I consider the religious impulse to be a part of the human makeup; the search for cosmic understanding is as much a part of the religious impulse as the search for cosmic belonging." (The Way Things Are: Conversations with Houston Smith, edited by Phil Cousineau, p. 96)

The poems we heard today all speak of this longing to connect to the universe. Rumi's description of "some kiss we want" as needing a "touch of spirit upon the body." His poem describes the moon as offering us its face pressed upon our own. What a wonderful way to describe our longing for love, for union with the divine Spirit.

W.S. Merwin in his poem, "To the Gods" first explains how we began our history with great stories of the gods, then lost belief and were let believe that we had invented the gods. But in the end the poem says "whatever we say, we know there is another." He doesn't say what that other is, although he implies that the other includes all the light and all the darkness and the beginnings of all things. What is this "other"?

Some experience the other as Love, as an all-inclusive love, with no judgment, an unconditional love. Some experience the other as the natural world with its great beauty and natural ways of healing. Some experience the other as a God with whom they have a personal loving relationship.

All of these spiritual connections with the "other" are fulfilling when we find them. Our spiritual lives can be filled with love for God, for the earth, for people. However, many people in their spiritual longing do not find what it is they are seeking as long as they continue to seek outside themselves.

There have been many times in my life when I felt this hunger, this deep desire to connect with something. I remember a time when I was newly married and I was surprised to find myself very unhappy. I think I expected that when we got married, the relationship which wasn't perfect to begin with would somehow magically transform itself into a blissful state. My young husband and I were idealists. We had been practicing Buddhism for a few years. We had been taught that when we had a problem, we sat down and did our Buddhist meditative practice which was a form of oral chanting. So, I did this. I chanted and chanted. And cried and chanted. And cried.

Finally, I went to my Buddhist teacher and asked for help. She asked me about my practice and whether I was chanting to solve my unhappiness. I said I was. And then she asked me how I chanting. What form did my prayer take when I was chanting? I said that I chanted that my marriage would be better, that my husband would understand me better. She asked me "What about yourself?" "What do you mean?", I asked. "What do you ask of yourself?" "I don't know what you mean," I said.

"Do you think that your marriage can make you ultimately happy?", she asked. "Do you think that your husband will change and become that perfect partner who can fulfill all your needs?" I realized as she talked that is what I was hoping for, as unrealistic as it was.

"Do you think that you could find this ultimate happiness inside yourself, instead?", she said. "If you can't find happiness inside yourself, you aren't going to find it somewhere else", my teacher told me.

This is what I had been taught as basic Buddhist understanding, but of course, always forgot. That my own connection to myself would lead me to ultimate connection to the Universe. That as we are one with the Universe, we can find that ultimacy within ourselves. That happiness is never further away than our own heartbeat.

However, many of us in our spiritual longing fail to look for this connection within ourselves. How often do we quiet ourselves, sit silently, and find that peace within ourselves?

Taoism tells us that "The way to this union is through union with the self. There is a core to us, an inner self that is the key to the greater Tao." (Everyday Tao, Deng Min-Dao, p. 246) Many use meditative practices to connect with this "inner core". Some find this union in their art. Through their own expressions of self in dance, in music, in painting, in writing, many find a way into this inner sacred chamber.

The 15th century Indian poet Kabir talks of this truth again and again in his poetry. Here is his poem, "Breath"

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals,
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, not in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me instantly-
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.