Beyond Belief
April 22, 2012
Rev. Katherine Cates 

Let us pray:  We ask that God be here with us as we join our hearts and minds to a common purpose, which is to come to know ourselves and our relationship to God, and to align our hearts with the heart of God. 

Happy Earth Day!  I looked up the history of Earth Day and the first one was held in San Francisco and a few other cities on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring.  A month later on April 22, the Wisconsin senator, Gaylord Nelson, took a leading role in organizing an environmental teach-in in order to “stem the tide of environmental disaster” and to highlight the “picture of a society that's rapidly going in the wrong direction that has to be stopped and turned around.”  Earth Day is now observed in about 175 countries by hundreds of millions of people. 

While there is some debate about how well we are succeeding at stemming the tide of environmental disaster, the majority now seems to accept the need to be more aware of our impact on the Earth’s natural environment and to make an effort to reduce polluting and destructive practices.  Achieving this shift in worldview took tremendous effort, campaigning, and scientific study.  I remember moving to Chappaqua in the summer of 1964 when my parents bought the home my grandparents had built in 1933.  Since it was a family transaction, we inherited all the contents of the attic, basement, and toolshed.  In the woods behind the toolshed was a pile of discarded paint cans and rusted containers that likely held materials that would get you in trouble with the law these days.  I was told not to worry about it because the earth would take care of it.  Good old Mother Earth.  She cleanses, rinses, scrubs, burns, freezes, transmutes, but it has been hard to keep up with her kids.  We have been like adolescents taking our mother for granted.  Destroying irreplaceable species, spilling toxins in our food, mucking up our water.  Poor Mom.  But growing up successfully, evolving, means that we become more responsible and open-minded rather than clinging to beliefs and assumptions that limit our awareness.  In the face of new evidence, we shift our beliefs rather than fearfully holding on to old ones.  That is the hope, at least.

          In the first reading from Acts, the people in the temple were “filled with wonder and amazement” when Peter and John blessed and healed a lame man in the name of Jesus.  Peter scorns them saying, “Why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us?”  He essentially tells them “We told you so.  You foolish nonbelievers chose to save your murderer Barabbas instead of Jesus, the holy and righteous one.”   Yet, only a short time before this event, Peter and the other apostles themselves had demonstrated their own unbelief.  In today’s reading from Luke, the resurrected Jesus stood among the apostles, who were “startled and frightened” at his appearance.  After all that Jesus’ had foretold during his ministry, after his encounter with the women at the empty tomb, after appearing on the road to Emmaus, he still had difficulty getting his followers to believe.  They were more likely to believe that he was a ghost or spirit than that he had bodily risen from death.  Can we blame them?  It is difficult to believe anything that we haven’t personally experienced before, especially if it threatens to shatter our comfortable view of reality.

          I knew everything when I was thirteen.  And I was so embarrassed about how clueless my parents could be.  I rejected religion after my confirmation, thinking it was a bunch of unbelievable stories that had nothing to do with my life and my personal concerns.  My parents were very patient and accepting, thank God, and allowed me to find my own way.  It has always been my nature to be pensive about existential matters and I have always sensed a mystical realm at the edges of my daily life.  Rather than distancing me from spiritual concerns, leaving organized religion actually magnified them.  I explored the metaphysical world with an open mind and without measuring every phenomenon against a religious belief system.  I have continued to explore my relationship with the divine in the same manner, which was demonstrated in an experience I had right here in this sanctuary. 

About eight years ago, a fellow church member and I were seated here, facing each other, for Friday morning prayer and meditation.  As we entered into the silence, I felt an uplifting expansion of my energy.  I became aware of a masculine presence to my right, as though he was sitting with us.  He seemed huge, as though he would be seven feet tall, and he glowed with love and joy.  You know how you feel when you see a glorious sunset or have a peak emotional moment?  You don’t want it to end, but you can’t sustain such a moment forever.  We continued in the silence for longer than usual and eventually opened our eyes.  When I looked at my prayer partner her eyes were wide open and excited.  “Did you feel that?”  I asked.  “It was Jesus!” she exclaimed.  I nodded quietly to acknowledge her experience, but I wasn’t making that assumption.  Powerful, big, masculine, loving, uplifting energy was my experience, a wonderful experience.  But, if I had been with a Muslim prayer partner, would she think that Mohammed had joined us?  Would others have been convinced that it was Archangel Michael, or the Buddha?  Still others might have been frightened, as the apostles were when Jesus appeared, and thought it was a ghost or even Lucifer (remember that the name means “of light”).  And finally, others might have assumed it was “just our imagination” and denied or dismissed the experience. 

          There is a tremendous freedom in just accepting an experience as it is and not trying to label or define it.  It can be divisive when people have spiritually illuminating moments and then bind those moments within the framework of their religious belief system.  Then they feel justified in promoting their faith as the one true faith because their personal spiritual experience is now seen as a religious experience.  I saw this when I attended a born-again Christian breakfast meeting years ago and the facilitators of  “speaking in tongues” were certain that the surge of energy and welling up of love and tears is the Holy Spirit as defined by Christianity.  They believe that only by declaring Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior will you enter the kingdom of God.  Well, I had felt that same energy years earlier when working with a Jewish man named Israel. 

          Lord, I believe!  Help thou my unbelief!  I empathize with that conflicted man in Mark 9: 24.  We human beings like to make sense of things by finding The Answer.  Well, maybe there isn’t one.  Maybe the most peaceful, healthy way to go through life is to just experience it.  Mindfulness meditation, which has its origins in Buddhism, teaches us how to become purely aware in the now moment without judging, criticizing, or evaluating what comes to our awareness.  Just notice feelings, thoughts, and sensations as they emerge, with interpretation.  It is a very freeing, refreshing practice.  Let’s do it for a moment.

(Guided meditation) 

          This practice has helped me to experience feelings of peace, love, joy, oneness; all those things that are associated with God.  I love the biblical phrase from Psalm 46; “Be still and know that I am God.”  Notice that it isn’t “Be still and believe that I am God.”  Stillness of body and mind allows us to attune to the underlying life force, however you want to define it.  Experience allows us to go beyond belief to a way of knowing.  Open your mind and heart to the wonder of pure being.  Experience life fully.  Thanks be to God.