MEDITATION: "Footprints," by Margaret Fishback Powers.

READING: Mel Ash, THE ZEN OF RECOVERY, New York, G.P. Putnam's, 1993; pages 31-33.

A friend of mine once spent several months in an ashram in India. Needless to say, on his return we all wished to garner the wisdom he had gleaned. The lesson which he took to heart the most was one he had heard several times from the guru: "The most important journey which we can make is one of eighteen inches. The journey from our head to our heart."

Some of us feared that he was still suffering from jet lag. On being asked what he meant, he told a story. It seems that shortly after creating the human race, God had become annoyed with them. This is not a new theme, of course, as the Bible tells us in the story of Noah and the Ark.

According to my friend, God had become annoyed with humanity because they kept tugging at his coat sleeve, chanting "More! More! More!" Wherever God went human creatures popped up demanding "More, more, more."

In desperation, God realized that he would have to hide somewhere to escape from the incessant demands of this newest being. But he could not think of where he might go that human beings would not be able to find him. He thought he best consult the council of angels for suggestions as to where he could hide from humanity's neediness.

The first angel he approached suggested that God hide in the Himalayan mountains. Surely humanity would not find him there. But God wasn't so sure: No, he knew his children well enough. They would find him in the snow capped peaks of the Himalayas. The second angel he encountered thought that the Moon would be a thoroughly secure place for God's escape. Briefly, God liked the idea, but quickly he decided, no mankind would seek him even in the barren craters of the moon.

God sought out the wisest of angels. She thought for a moment and then beckoned for God to lean over. As she whispered in God's ear, he slowly smiled and faded, and then, disappeared. The other angels approached her and asked her what suggestion she had made. She said that if God truly wanted to escape from the tiring demands of the human race, then he must hide in the last place they would think of looking for him. When God asked her what she thought that place was, she had simply said, "The human heart." And so he had disappeared into this most secure of hiding places.

The notion that God is hidden is not a new one. It expresses our concern that we cannot fully name the divine, that we cannot capture, cannot package what some have deigned to call God. It is impossible to name that which we rely on the most. In the East, the outlook which expresses this most clearly is Zen Buddhism. And in the West, I think that our Unitarian Universalism makes the most out of it.

I am suggesting that Unitarian Universalism and Zen are saying something similar on the difficulty of describing, of naming, that which we rely on. Firstly, I want to talk about our Unitarian Universalism. Then I will reflect on Zen, and hopefully proceed to bring them together.

Unitarian Universalism emerges within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Ten Commandments which Moses brought to us from the mountain top are a central element of that tradition. We find the hiddenness of God within these commandments. The second commandment tells us not to make any images of God. This is because they are always inadequate. Again, when we attend services at synagogue, the name of the Most High is not spoken or written, but suggested: "G-d."

This difficulty in naming we UU's move from a marginal concern in the Judeo-Christian tradition to the very center of our celebrations. We honor the diversity of beliefs, as we say in the Purposes we are developing for our congregation. At times I think that we are trying to be so respectful that we make no attempts at naming that which we rely on. Perhaps it seems that we think we rely on nothing. If nothing else, we avoid controversy by not mentioning the unmentionable

This aversion to naming the unnameable cause us problems. It cause us problems when we talk with our children about spiritual matters and it causes difficulties when we celebrate traditional times and holidays.

When we talk with our children, we may have difficulty with the vocabulary. Recently I talked with the Father of two of our church children. He was concerned that they were talking about Heaven as if it were a real place, something he doubts, and which I find at best confusing. His children were saying that if he didn't believe in heaven, he wouldn't go to heaven.

We need to hear children's discussions with a non-literal ear. They are naturally closer than adults to a religion of the heart. Faith development, as with moral development, is richly imaginative in young children. The lesson they are learning may be quit different than the one we see on the surface. I suggested that an important lesson they were learning is that our actions have consequences. Well into the 19th century people were jailed for denying belief in the afterlife, as it was seen as undermining social mores.

Because of the different learning levels of little children versus adults, it has frequently been remarked that Unitarian Universalism is faith for adults, not children. But even as adults, we may find language problems, the hiddenness of the divine, interfering with our spirituality. Recently at a meeting of the Worship Committee, we discussed the services during December. The difference in language between traditional holiday carols and the vocabulary of the rest of service could seem glaring to some. I was urged to make more effort at translating modern faith into the old time religion underlying such things as the Virgin Birth and the walk of the Three Kings.

With this much in mind, it is worth pointing out the need to make that journey of eighteen inches, from our head to our heart. All too often at the holidays and other times of intense emotion, these language concerns get in the way. I see the problem arising from the fact that we have taken our hearts to high school, maybe college and possibly even graduate school. Yet we have left our hearts back in kindergarten.

Heart and head talk different languages. We need to help our hearts and heads talk in the same language, even if they never agree fully with each other. If God be hidden in our hearts, our heads need to know how to listen. The course BUILDING YOUR OWN THEOLOGY, developed by our denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, is a principle means of getting our hearts and heads talking together, preparing for the journey of eighteen inches.

Let us turn from our UUism, to Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism has been attractive to many seekers. In part this is because, in the words of Albert Einstein, "If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism."

Our reading this morning was taken from Mel Ash's THE ZEN OF RECOVERY. Mel is a Unitarian Universalist in Providence, RI, and in the acknowledgments thanks Thomas Ahlburn, the minister of the First Unitarian Church there. In the reading Ash contrasts faith and belief:

Faith is the unspoken, nameless and formless yearning for
completion and wholeness.  Alone and unaided, it can pull us
to union with our god or true self like a great free-
floating balloon.  Belief is the anchor that keeps our faith
from ever ascending and testing its limits.  Belief is the
limiting and inhibiting of faith.  Zen points out to us the
areas of our lives where our faith in ourselves has been
silenced by the rigidity of belief.  Once pointed out, we
are freed to ride our faith to heights unimagined and
certainly not permitted by the jealous jailer called belief.
(Ash, page 32.)

In terms of my contrast of head and hearts, faith is of the heart: its longing and trust in the quest for wholeness, following one's bliss. The head, the mind with its conceptual apparatus, its creeds and weighty doctrines, is the jailer of the heart, as Ash tells us belief is the jailer of faith.

Zen attempts to kick our mental apparatus out from underneath our rationalizations so that we can taste living. These mental, or brain, kicks, so to speak, are called koans in the Zen teaching tradition. We focus our minds on something paradoxical to expose the limits of our rationalizing skills. Perhaps the most famous of these mind twisters is the question, what is the sound of one hand clapping.

Another one comes from the first Zen Master, the Bodhidharma. Early in the training a monk who would be come his successor approached him. After many extreme trials and tribulations, he said he had come to ask Bodhidharma to bring him peace of mind. The Bodhidharma responded, "Bring me your mind and I will give it peace." The monk answered, "I have searched for my mind and I cannot find it." "There," said Bodhidharma, "I have given it peace."

The paradoxical mind twists with which the Zen Master confronts his student to get him to let go of his mental maps, his cognitive apparatus may be thought of as enlightenment by cognitive dissonance. It is not unknown in our Unitarian tradition. Perhaps best known in that tradition is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was among the first American thinkers to take Eastern religions seriously. In his pivotal essay "Self- Reliance" he plots a strategy not dissimilar to Zen thinking:

     The ... terror that scares us from self-trust is our
consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our
orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint
them.

     But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? 
Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you
contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public
place?  Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? 
It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory
alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring
the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and
live ever in a new day.  In your metaphysics you have denied
personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the
soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should
clothe God with shape and color.  Leave your theory, as
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

    A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  

Emerson urges us to let go of the conceptual apparatus we use to cling to our spot in the sun; to give up our attempts to secure our world. This I find in Ash's description of Zen, "Just as we would put down a load that has gotten too heavy for us, so too can we put down our heavy load of self, which we identity with our personal situations, ideas and beliefs."(Ash 32).

Both Unitarian Universalism and Zen urge us to let go of, at least be loose with our conceptual framework. what counts is not what we think but who we are. It is not creeds but deeds as the oldtimers were wont to say. We just need to let go!

This reminds me of the fellow who accidently slipped into a deep canyon. On they way down he was fortunate enough to grasp a branch growing on the side wall. Briefly hanging there he wondered what to do. He decided that if ever the time had come for him to experiment with prayer, this was it. He turned to heaven and in a loud voice asked for help. Much to his surprise, a deep voice boomed out in response. "Just let go. Everything is okay."

Precariously hanging there, he thought for a moment, and then called out, "Is there anyone else up there?"

Hundreds of years ago, the Chinese Zen master Ta-hui wrote:

           "Hanging from a cliff, let go-
           and agree to accept the experience.
           After annihilation, come back to life--
           I couldn't deceive you."

Unitarian Universalism is not an easy faith. It is not a short cut through the tangle of life. Yet we can say, "Let go." We are not sure what happens next.

Even if we do not know how or what to name it, let go anyway.

It may be that the fall is only 18 inches.

Frank Carpenter
Channing Memorial Church, Newport, RI.
Last revised, March 6, 1997.