“The Tao of Spring”
Rev. Linda Simmons
April 23, 2017
The great lesson of the Tao is that things are as they are and that we must learn to be with them rather than struggle against them. When we can accept our own nature and the nature of all that is, says the Tao, we can live in harmony with all life and so know beauty, love, peace, happiness.
The book that is so sweet in explaining the Tao that has captivated me is The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. He begins by talking about a famous painting called The Vinegar Tasters in which three men are standing around a vat of vinegar having just dipped a finger into it.[1]
The first man has a sour look on his face and is K’ung Fu-tse, or Confucius, who believed that the present was misaligned with the past, and that the way of truth was found in following the Ancestors and a series of very precise rules of behavior.
The second man has a bitter expression on his face, and is said to be Buddha who believed that life on earth was filled with attachments that led to suffering. The only peace in Buddhism, simply said, is to transcend the world, to see everything as illusion, and to let go of all attachment and desire.
The third man, Lao-tse, is smiling and he is the founder of Taoism. He believed that harmony “naturally existed between heaven and earth from the very beginning and can could be found by anyone, anytime,” not by following rules or transcending what seemed to be, but by becoming one with all that is.[2]
For Lao-tse, everything has its own nature, including each of us, and when we can be still enough to learn it, we can become one with all that is and be happy. Simple happiness is the by-product and of course happiness creates peace, love, ease, environmental protections, higher wages, more benefits for all, more humanitarianism.
Lao-tse smiles because life is sweet. All of life. That’s the rub. To find the sweetness in life by not resisting it, by learning to be at one with all of it.
Can we ever just be with a life for its simple beauty, its soft expression of love, of breath, of color, of warmth, of embodiment? Can we ever even be with our own lives for just a moment with the love of one who gave birth to us, loving us simply because we exist?
Not easy. Taoism wants this of us. Winnie the Pooh, the ultimate Taoist, does too!
And Taoism also tells us that everything has its own place and function, even each of us and that when we know who we are, we can just give into it being so, we can live with ease and grace, and allow others to do the same. When we can see ourselves for who we are, we can allow others to be who they are too.
This makes intuitive sense doesn’t it, to a point. I cannot abide that we are to be quiet and flow with the water if the water takes us all over the waterfall into racism and homophobia and unjust war and hatred. If we stand in the water, and walk against the tide, might this too be part of the Tao when we know that it is time to turn against the flow and that the tide can be changed?
Action in Taoism is called Wu Wei. It literally means without doing, causing or making.[3] Practically speaking, it means without meddlesome, combative or egotistical effort. Basically, it means not going against the nature of things, seeing what is there and working with it, through it, beside it and knowing when and how to act within what is.
I think Taoism includes noticing that the stream is ready to accept change, can shift, might become other than what it is if we stand together in the flow at the right time, in the right way, with the right heart. Is this kind of knowing, this kind of discernment, not also part of being one with all that is?
Taoism does not mean that we need to stop changing and improving, just that we don’t try to change and improve things that can’t be changed or improved. The trick is knowing the difference of course. And that I believe requires that we listen and see things as they and that we listen to and see each other as well.
Sounds easy but I think it’s really hard. I know when I do it because I don’t get a stomach ache before, during or after the action.
In ministry we call this, non-anxious presence. Another good one but not easy to achieve.
In these political times, how are we to know when it is time to act and when it is time to go with the flow or how do we know which actions come not from combative desire to control but that arise from being one with what is? And what about perspective? Could not my longing to be treated as an equal as an immigrant, person of color, queer person or person of disability seem to another as combative when they are unwilling or unready to recognize the crucial importance and right of this stand or when they are not able to see that the Tao offers us allas people a sacred place of wholeness and freedom?
And also important, what about when we want to just rest a bit? Can we be good people resting and loving and laughing and eating when so many go hungry? Can we celebrate having jobs we love when so many are being exploited? Can we love decorating our houses when so many are homeless? Can we feel like good people, even good Unitarian Universalists, while the world suffers so even when we are not on the front lines or joining social justice groups or writing letters to our congress people?
You know the old joke: Why did the Unitarian cross the road? To support the chicken in search of its own path! We have a built in theology of caring for all others in search of their freedom and dignity, even chickens!
Let’s look at this from another vantage point for a minute.
Last week, I participated in a webinar with the Palliative and Supportive Care Team, Charlene Thurston and Bonnie Fitzgibbon. We watched and listened to a power point called Our Role in Pain and Symptom Management.[4]It was presented by Gary Gardia who is an LCSW and really smart and grounded. It was geared toward social workers and chaplains. I am a chaplain on this team.
Gardia asked many provocative questions throughout the webinar. One of those was: If people haven’t faced something before, how do they know what they need when facing it?
Gardia was talking about helping people face what they needed to face so they could have their best possible experience of dying. He told us it was up to us as chaplains to help people move beyond problem solving, even pain management, so that they can be with the experience of dying fully, which may even allow the experience of peace, maybe even open us to something unexpectedly beautiful and tender.
The underlying assumption he was working with is Taoist in principle I believe: everything in nature, and death is surely part of nature, when experienced deeply, when experienced on its own terms, has beauty, has possibility, has an ability to become part of who we are and to make us more of who we are in the process, which produces as a byproduct- peace.
And what is this Who We Are? According to Gardia, we are a totality of human experience that include the biological, the psychological (relating to mind, thoughts, behaviors), the emotional (the translation of all of life into feelings), the social (who we are in relation to others), the spiritual (the meaning we give to human existence and experience) and the religious (how we do the spiritual together).
I would have added one more component, the intersection of all of these, the place that you and I touch and mingle and change one another through this touching. Let’s call this piece the interconnected web of all existence.
When I heard Gardia explain this totality of human experience, I thought: When we see one another, hear one another, consider one another and experience one another- it changes us, the way we see and hear and consider. And this allowing ourselves to be changed by one another, that is what is means to be fully present in our humanity. And that’s enough as people who are social activists and Unitarians and Taoist and just human beings.
There is room for all of us here. And making this room, continuing to keep this room sacred, continues to ensure that we are becomes more than we know how to be alone. That’s something good and real.
As David Whyte says, “No self survives a real conversation.”
“No self survives a real conversation.”
I am reading a book series called, the Mitford series. It’s about an Episcopal priest named Father Tim who lives in a very small town called Mitford. It chronicles his life and dilemmas and woes and joys as a minister.[5]
There’s no talk of sex and no swearing. Very peaceful. The little town works hard to stay a little town and does not expend any effort to attract tourism. A sort of Nantucket without trying so hard.
Father Tim walks everywhere and he loves his parishioners. They are quirky and difficult and beautiful. I see so much of you and me in his words and woes. It comforts me greatly.
Oh ya, and he has this dog who was a stray and just attached itself to him and is a huge pup (Father Tim calls him a black Buick) with tons of energy and the only thing that will calm him down is the quoting of scriptures. So he’s always yelling things out like:Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Or when the dog, called Barnabas, is jumping on parishioners and licking their faces, he might yell out, Repent and be baptized[6]at which point Barnabas will lay down immediately at Father Tim’s feet.
The theology in the book is Christian of course, so there are times I need to do some UU translating. For instance, there’s one story about a young woman who is not well, who has decided not to undergo what would be difficult treatment with unsure results. One of Father Tim’s congregants who is a doctor comes to see him to talk to him about this, how he wants very much as a doctor to help her, to assist her in receiving the care she needs, to help her understand that it could be successful and not as arduous as she imagines. He asks Father Tim at one point what words he should use to convince her of the merit of treatment.
And Father Tim says he doesn’t have to worry so much about that because they are a team that includes God and if God thinks it’s best for her, then it will happen.[7]
Translating this a bit into UUism and maybe some Taoism too, I thought that this made so much sense, that when we are able to trust each other, the totality of who we are: our fullness, ournature and substance and quintessence:then we do what we can, we show up, we participate, we listen, we allow ourselves to be changed through the web that we live in and is part of who we are and then we give it all to one another and let go. Father Tim called this other participant in the team, God, I call it the place where we are one with who we are and where we are one with each other and all that is. Does it matter what we call it?
What we need when we haven’t faced something before is each other and the peace and ease of ourselves when we are reminded that we know the way.
Who we are when we doubt we are enough and when we doubt that it is time to be who we are or even to allow others to be who they are is acomplex people who deserve gentleness and respect because we are all wound up in each other’s longing, love, hope, destruction, need, desire, emptiness and fullness.
And if we are to listen to the Tao, the way to happiness is to lean in to what is, to notice all of it and love it enough to feel peace and hope and know too when it’s time to stand against the tide and offer another way of being.
And I see you do this all the time: each time you shovel out a neighbor, make dinner for a friend, knit a shawl for someone grieving, ask someone to tea or lunch, help someone clean out a garage, listen to a story of joy or suffering, celebrate a new or not so new life and show up to support others who are in need, and question yourselves and allow others into your lives to question you too.
And so we arrive where we began, being still and seeking, looking for what has not been named already by knowing the names of what is already, watching and waiting and then playful naming and celebrating our interconnection to the patterns in which we already live, renaming and rediscovering self.
I close with a tidbit from Winnie the Pooh, that great Taoist of all time:
“It is hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffing slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.”
Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said:“It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.”
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened anymore….
“What about me?” said Pooh sadly. “I suppose I shan’t be useful?”
“Never mind Pooh,” said Piglet comfortingly. “Another time perhaps.”
“Without Pooh,” said Rabbit solemnly as he sharpened his pencil, “the adventure would be impossible.”
“Oh!” said Piglet…and Pooh went into a corner of the room and proudly to himself, “Impossible without Me! That sort of Bear.”[8]
Yes, impossible without all of you. You are all that sort of Bear too.
Amen.
1
[1]Benjamin Hoof, The Tao of Pooh (New York: The Penguin Group, 1982), 2.
[2]Hoff, 3-5.
[3] Hoff, 68.
[4]Gary Gardia, “Our Role in Pain and Symptom Management,” September 8, 2016.
[5]Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford (New York: Penguin Books, 1994).
[6]Karon, 16.
[7]Karon, 233.
[8]Hoff, 117.