I’m running up on a very busy weekend at the church.
This Saturday we are joining with our sisters and brothers at Beneficent Congregational Church in downtown Providence to put on a feast and party for the homeless and those at risk for hunger. Just too much food and entertainment. A couple of speeches, but not much. This will be the second time we’ve done this. The last time we provided a spread for a couple of hundred folk. Coordination is a big deal. And a lot of good hands are on it…
A tiny subtext is how Beneficent was founded as a schism from our church, which while at the time (early eighteenth century) we were still officially Congregational, we were from the get go at the radical end of the spectrum. The leader of the schism denounced our minister as preaching the “damnable doctrine of good works,” and led the walk out. Turned out the gang that left were too liberal, as well, and he went on to found a third congregation, which has long since dissolved. In the years that have followed we have vied with each other for being in the forefront of the call for justice. And, I’m really proud that on my watch we’ve started working together on projects of mercy and justice.
This event is in some ways a lead on for the following Saturday for a march on the statehouse calling on our legislators to remember those who have been most hurt in these turbulent times.
Sunday, after preaching a sermon reflecting on the ministry of the great Unitarian divine William Ellery Channing, and the theology he called “salvation by character,” between one and five we will be throwing our church’s doors open for our annual Amnesty International Write-a-thon. We usually get several hundred people passing through writing a letter or a dozen. There are other events built around it. This time we have a speaker in the afternoon, a political refuge escaped from Iran’s torture chambers, in part, thanks to Amnesty’s program…
It all sets me to mind about the rush of things, our choices of how to live in this world, and why we might make such decisions.
This all reminds me of case 46 in the koan anthology the Wumenguan, the Gateless Gate.
In the Sutherland/Tarrant translation the text goes:
The priest Shishuang said, “How do you step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?”
Another eminent master of former times said:
You who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole,
although you have entered the Way, it is not yet genuine.
Take a step from the top of the pole
and worlds of the Ten Directions are your total body.
People who like Zen literature, are often taken with that image of stepping away from the top of the pole. They often think it is an invitation to experience the great emptiness, what Wumen commenting on another case called “the vast all-encompassing crater.”
No doubt much of the work of the Zen way is about finding our true home in the great empty, the vastness, the one, the open, the boundless.
But, in fact, this case, is not pointing to the experience of emptiness.
And those who give that response in the room meeting the teacher, are sent away to reflect some more.
For those who care, here’s a secret.
The koan, that little telegram from the heart of the universe, assumes we’ve had that taste.
We’ve noticed how we’re woven out of it all, the great empty is our mother, and how each of us, each and every precious one of us share that secret truth.
The question here is what next?
The question is how do we act in this world of hurt knowing we are totally, completely a part of it?
The step, the step away from the top of the pole is found in that phrase, I suggest, form another sage on the great way, “salvation by character.”
Not just who you are, but what you are…
Not just what you find, but what you do…
So…
What are your choices in this world of freedom and constraint?
What will you do with that one life?
Precious.
Passing.
Woven out of this world.
Well, if you’re in Providence, this weekend, I have a couple of suggestions…
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