October 7, 2018

The Rev. Heather Janules

One of the blessings of New England is living through the transitions of the seasons, the extremes of bitter cold and snow in winter, the muddy chill of spring, the bright blaze of summer and the odyssey of color that is autumn. Each season brings gifts and challenges. Any way we look at it, we cannot say we are bored.

As many know, I adopted a dog about a year ago, a sweet beagle/basset named Temple. This past spring, I learned that living with a beagle brings a new dimension to that season, what I call “Rabbit Watch.”

Rabbits are born in the spring and this year they earned their reputation as prolific procreators. These wide-eyed, brown, furry cotton tailed critters were seemingly everywhere, inspiring me to agree with the person who posted on the residents’ page, “It’s a rabbit’s world; we just live here.”

Living among many rabbits can be pleasant, even fanciful. But when you also live with a beagle, the rabbity nature of the world becomes challenging. Beagles have been bred for generations to chase rabbits and it is likely that Temple was trained to do so by her previous human.

Beagles are also notoriously stubborn so once they track a rabbit, there is no redirecting. Taking Temple for our regular walks, I had no choice to submit to her obsession, with Temple enthusiastically wagging her tail and making high-pitched yips whenever she smells rabbit. When she spots a rabbit, she stands stock still and then begins slowly moving forward. In time, the rabbit realizes it is being stalked and hops away, inspiring Temple to pursue and bark and bark. This happens early morning. This happens late at night. She never catches the rabbit; I think she wants me to be the hunter. But nothing interrupts her focus on chasing rabbits and sounding the alarm, no matter how many times I tell her I do not have a shotgun and if I did, I would not use it to shoot rabbits.

One night in early summer, I brought Temple to the small field near my house so she could relieve herself before bedtime. Unfortunately, as I was soon reminded, nighttime is also rabbit time. Perhaps afraid of the people and dogs that visit in the day, many rabbits were in the field after dark, munching on grass. In the dim light from the street lamp, I could see their silhouettes. And, of course, so could Temple. In this place with so many rabbits, there was to be no attention paid to answering nature’s call. Impatient to go to bed, I grumpily waited for what felt like an hour with my beloved but stubborn and obsessed dog, plotting her pursuit.

And then something happened that snapped me out of irritation. As I turned longingly towards home and bed, I began to see something emerge from the dark. The solid black of night gave way to shades of grey and then brown. Motion. Something was in the field with us and moving closer. At the edge of the street light where the dark gave way, it then came into clear view. Approaching me and my thirty-pound dog was a large coyote.

Thinking back to that moment, I recall a number of strong and conflicting feelings. My first reaction was surprise. I had never seen a coyote in this field, never mind a coyote so close. Being so near a creature this beautiful and powerful, so wild; I was moved to a place of awe.

But then the reality of the moment also sunk in. As Temple was drawn to the rabbits, so too was the coyote. But the coyote was also drawn to Temple, moving swiftly in our direction. In that instant, I recognized that Temple had transformed from predator to prey.

I then sprung into action, waving my arms and yelling, as posters at Horn Pond taught me to do. The coyote abruptly turned course and ran back into the dark. Shaken, I pulled on Temple’s leash so we could go in the other direction towards home. So focused on rabbits, Temple didn’t seem to notice the coyote – and our close call – in any way.

I am so thankful that this is the end of the story. Thinking back on that night, I knew the coyote could have severely hurt or killed Temple. In the light of day, I also realized that the charcoal-looking stool I sometimes see in the field is a sign of regular visits by coyotes. I realized that the many “missing cat” signs I had seen of late perhaps added another chapter to this story.  I realized a simple truth about hungry wild animals and thus realized what I should have known all along – we live in a dangerous world and, despite considerable human intelligence and will, we are always vulnerable.

I am grateful to Pema Chodron, author of this morning’s reading, who reminds us that fear is natural. I am grateful for her affirmation that we fear when we get closer to truth.

The truth of our vulnerability is what invites me into spiritual reflection. How do we “arise and greet the day” amid the reality that no amount of planning or protection can ultimately ensure safe passage through life? What is our – what is your – spirituality of surrender?

Pema Chodron became my companion while exploring these questions, through her classic book “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.” Chodron is a good companion as she takes these questions seriously in her own life, her book the result of much practice living into difficult unknowns.

My encounter with the coyote moved me to see how intimately life dwells in the presence of death. But death can be a metaphor for all the other painful changes and spiritual insults we endure. These past two weeks, our nation has born witness to stories of courageous survival from sexual assault. And Chodron recalls a time when her life changed forever in another way, a moment she describes as a “genuine spiritual experience.” She writes:

I was standing in front of our adobe house drinking a cup of tea. I heard the car drive up and the door bang shut. Then [my husband] walked around the corner, and without warning he told me that he was having an affair and he wanted a divorce. I remember the sky and how huge it was. I remember the sound of the river and the steam rising up from my tea. There was no time, no thought, there was nothing — just the light and a profound, limitless stillness.

This transcendent moment was short-lived, swiftly evolving into something more primal. Chodron concludes, “then I regrouped and picked up a stone and threw it at him.”

The divorce that followed this confrontation was a catalyst towards Chodron exploring Buddhism. And the lessons she learned from the death of her marriage and the Buddha’s teachings became articulated in a sign she pinned to her wall: “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

This is the essence of Pema Chodron’s life lesson and her teaching. But this lesson is not very clear and far from easy.

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us…” Recently, I was reminded that sometimes the search for the indestructible comes up empty.

A few weeks ago, our Intern Minister Marianne and I attended the ordination of the Rev. Liz Weber at Arlington Street Church. In the service’s homily, the Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie named an important truth. When we face tragedy, difficulty and loss, people often tell us that “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” But, in the end, the simple fact is that “what doesn’t kill us…doesn’t kill us.” We all know people who became broken through one of “annihilation’s” many guises – abuse, assault, war, addiction, loss. Finding “that which is indestructible” is not a given. Seeking “that which is indestructible” can often be, in the midst of suffering, nothing short of a leap of faith.

And it would be easy to focus on “that which is indestructible” without really hearing the beginning of Chodron’s commandment. She names that it is we who “expose ourselves over and over.” Our healing, our enlightenment emerge from defying our natural reaction and choosing to move towards pain. Paradoxically, we don’t grow through seeking wholeness but turning away from comfort and claiming that which is fractured or unresolved in our lives and in ourselves with clarity and compassion.

I love how Pema Chodron advises how to embrace what repels and frightens us. She asks us to be fully open to the reality of this world and to receive it without judgment, to not give our experiences “names.” Names like bad or good, predator or prey, coyote or companion, betrayal or fidelity. She asks us to greet all of life – including the reality of death – and all of ourselves – including what we see as ugly or broken – with compassion. Without judgment but with love. For when we learn to greet all of creation with love, we learn to love our vulnerable selves as we, too, are part of creation.

This Sunday, we begin a month centered on the theme of “sanctuary.” Sanctuary, the literal and figurative places where we find safety and solace, is critical in a spirituality of surrender. For us fragile beings may find the courage to turn towards our pain and our fear but this courage is found through connecting to something larger than our individual selves.

So many of the world’s faith traditions speak of the holy in terms of relationship, reminding us that, in the cosmic sense, we are not alone. As the choir so beautifully sang today, Psalm 139 affirms:

you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
    behold…you know it altogether…

Search me…and know my heart.

And this holiness is found through our human connections, perhaps a reflection of how we are loved by the divine, perhaps the only divinity there is to know in this world.

In Liz Weber’s ordination service, Kim Crawford Harvie recalls a conversation with her friend and colleague Susan Moran. Some of you remember Susan from when she served this congregation. In Kim’s retelling of Susan’s story, she refers to Susan’s best friend, Mary Harrington, the former senior minister of this congregation. Kim writes, in part:

[Susan] sustained a brain injury in a bike accident.  Not long afterwards, her husband went out for a run and died of a massive heart attack, leaving Susan with two young children.  Then her best friend was diagnosed with ALS, and then Susan was diagnosed with the same aggressive breast cancer that killed her mother…Susan survived on a death-defying sense of humor, family and friends, and her [faith] who held and upheld her through it all. 

One day, just when we couldn’t imagine that things could get more dire, I visited and found her… elated.  She told me she’d learned that biblical scholars had a new theory about the story of Job…that the first two chapters were originally a stand-alone story…

You remember the story:  Job is the wealthiest man in the land with a loving wife, seven sons, and three daughters…Then somebody’s twisted idea of G*d makes a deal with the devil and decides to test Job, and his terrible suffering is that by which generations measured all suffering. 

I was ecstatic at Susan’s news, because one of the most offensive and unbearable parts of Job’s story is that his friends turn out not to be friends at all…But all that happens after the first two chapters.

Here’s the final, beautiful passage at the close of Chapter 2 — the end:

“When Job’s three friends heard about all these calamities
that had befallen him,
each came from his own house…
They went together to go and mourn with him and comfort him.
When they saw him from a distance, they could not recognize him, and they broke into loud weeping. 
Each one tore his own robe and threw dust into his hair….
No one spoke a word to him, for they saw how very great was his suffering….
And they sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights.”

…It turns out that Job’s friends tell us a lot about what it means to be a true friend: 
What doesn’t kill us doesn’t kill us, 
But those who love us can make us stronger.

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.” That late summer night, I came intimately close to part of nature that could have caused so much pain for me and my beloved companion. Since then, I avoid the field after dark and carry a flimsy plastic whistle so I can make noise should we meet another coyote. Sometimes our defenses against the powers of this world are laughable.

But meeting the coyote taught me the importance of turning towards pain, of greeting all of life with compassion. For, like the coyote, there are parts of me that are hungry and wild. There are many ways in which, like the coyote and Temple and the rabbits in the field, I am vulnerable and afraid.

For the times we seek to “expose ourselves to annihilation,” may we make these courageous turns, knowing we are not alone. Through the sanctuary of our connection to the holy, what Chodron calls “the love that will not die,” and the sanctuary of those who themselves turn to us with compassion, may we give thanks for the things that “do not kill us.” and be open to finding “that which is indestructible.” May we:

Open our eyes to see that life abounds;
open hearts to welcome it among us.
The light of love here shines upon each face.
May it bring faith to guide our journey home.

Topics: Surrender