Learning to Stay

A Sermon Delivered by Rev. Tamara Lebak, Assistant Minister
At All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK
on April 20, 2008

 

April is a very auspicious month for me.  It was three years ago in April (on April Fools’ Day actually) that I was granted preliminary fellowship in the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Two years ago in April (and once again the weekend of April Fools’) I was ordained in Cleveland at West Shore UU Church, where your very own Marlin Lavanhar offered my charge to the ministry.

Then, last year in April, we formed the committee on ministry that has brought us through this process of a two year hire to call.  And today, of course, at the special congregational meeting following the second service, you will have the historic opportunity to decide whether or not to call me as your Associate Minister.  (I am so glad this time it is later in the month and not April Fools’ weekend – I don’t think my heart could take it.)

I don’t know whether you remember, but this sermon title “Learning to Stay” has actually been on the marquis outside before.  It was in December, the week of the ice storm, and I opted to postpone this sermon and seize the moment by preaching instead on “Power and Powerlessness,” on the Sunday our sanctuary was without electricity.  Maybe I was a bit eager in December, but ironically, due to the forces of nature, “Learning to Stay” would have to wait. 

I have also waited a long time to hear Jack Kerouac in the context of church.  Our first reading was taken from his On the Road, and I found something that rang very true for me in its pages growing up.  On the Road has become a kind of gospel to many.  To quote NPR’s Renée Montagne, “The story couldn't help but give birth to a legend.  Jack Kerouac, fueled by inspiration, coffee and Benzedrine, sat down at his typewriter and in one burst of creative energy wrote the novel that would make him the voice of his generation.  The book was On the Road, completed – from start to finish – in only three weeks.  At least, that's how the story goes.  Reality was, of course, a little different.” ¹

            And just to add to the intrigue of this gospel of a generation, he typed the entire book on just one long, scrolled piece of paper.  Like the highly-trained jazz musicians he was emulating,

Kerouac actually spent a good deal of time preparing for that creative eruption.   

Montagne also reported that, “Carolyn Cassady, the wife of Neal Cassady and hostess to Kerouac during the writing of On the Road, remembers her houseguest and friend as a much more sensitive, disciplined writer than most of his readers imagined.  She says Kerouac was always on the lookout for material, which he would record in a tiny notebook until he slowed down enough to pull the fragments together.”

Kerouac didn't like all the attention that was focused on the faster aspects of his life:  the speed of his writing, the music he listened to, the overnight success.  But the legend surrounding On the Road persisted, in part, because some of the story was true.  Though the book didn't really emerge from his brain fully-formed in those frantic three weeks of writing, as I mentioned, he did actually type it up on a single scroll of paper, 120 feet long.  It was as though he knew that the fragmented, stream-of-consciousness writing he was in the process of, needed some kind of unifying form.  So he would at least deliver that unification in its physical state.

On the Road takes note of something that is engrained in American culture and history, and is present in our Oklahoma Pioneer Spirit.  It names the angst of being stuck.  It names the tensions of our inheritance and our yearning to take off on the open road.  To have the freedom to leave, to explore, to dream, to be uninhibited.  But in its exploration of the limitless, it asks the question:  what would you commit your life to?  What really matters?  What do you really want underneath the surface of it all?

On the Road grabbed my sense of adventure and magnified it 100 times.  It stayed in my trunk while I went on road trips all around the southwest, and my worn-out copy even traveled with me to Belgium when I left home to live abroad as an exchange student.  It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that Kerouac was pointing to something even bigger than a literal escape.  He was pointing to a metaphorical journey.  A journey that is pointed to in so many classics that hold up over the test of time.  A journey inward.  A feeling of being lost in the world.

The Midwesterner in the excerpt that I read earlier was not faulted because she liked to sit on the porch.  Kerouac was pointing out her resignation:  her numbness to her life and her situation.  Her inability to stay.  In his novel Kerouac points to a persistent desire to wake up – to reject what is presented to us as duty and as culturally valuable without consideration and choice.   

He points to our yearning to belong, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and the struggle of how and when to stay.

Lately, I have been saying “stay” out loud quite a lot.  My out loud “stays” are directed at our 14-month-old Boxer/Labrador mix named Maddie.  Jill and I have not had a puppy in 8 years, so there has been training – for all of us.  Maddie is pretty excitable and can be a bit eager, so learning to stay put, when there are so many other things she could be doing, is a tough one to learn and to teach.  Early on I had to repeat the command over and over.  Stay… no… Stay… Good girl.  Isn’t it true that so often we find ourselves teaching exactly what we need to learn?

She has taught me something else too.  Maddie has a tough time staying when she is at home, in the house or yard practicing commands in familiar territory.  But on leash, in a new setting, when she’s unsure, unfamiliar with her surroundings, she is a very different dog. 

Last week I took Maddie to visit my father at the VA Hospital in Norman.  In that very unfamiliar setting with strange sights and smells and wheelchairs rolling around and strangers approaching her, Maddie actually goes quite ZEN.  She sits, stays very calm and is very alert and curious.  She follows all my commands.  Her patience seems to increase considerably.  It is as though she sits in contemplation, reserving judgment.  Since I am partnered with a lawyer I feel it important to insert here that a “stay,” in legal terms, actually means “to temporarily stop a judicial proceeding.”  It means, in essence, to stop judgment. 

Learning to stay at an interpersonal level takes reserving judgment.  But staying awake and aware to our experience and our own process is not easy.  In her book, The Places That Scare You, ordained Buddhist nun Pema Chodron talks about what it means to stay.  To stay with vulnerability, to stay in relationship, to stay with discomfort, to stay with our awareness.  We are so easily hooked, yanked out of the present moment into some former storyline, or into our own expectation of a future outcome, that we ignore the present moment and all of the information that it is providing us.  It goes against our nature to stay present when the world around us is changing so much.  When Chodron finds herself distracted, she uses the mantra stay…  stay…  just stay.

I find this is helpful for me as well.  And I think of our dog Maddie, as I tell myself to stay, and how I correct her as soon as I can see that her mind is wandering.  So, when I feel judgment…  stay.  Or discomfort…  stay.  Or restlessness…  stay.  Or impatience…  stay.  I try to stay long enough to determine whether there is a possibility that my need to flee is necessary. 

Stay curious enough to explore whether or not my initial assumptions could in fact be wrong.

I try to stay present enough to bring into perspective what I really want out of the current situation.  What really matters?  What values underlie my choices right now?  How do I want to be? 

            It is spring, so I have been doing a lot of pre-marital counseling lately.  One of the things I do with couples, to help them to focus on what really matters and how they want to be with each other, is to have them name for one another their ‘poker tells’ of distraction.  What I mean is, to have them identify when they start feeling the other person has checked out and is no longer fully present.  If you are partnered, you likely know exactly what I mean.  When it feels as though the person to whom you are speaking is physically present, but they are not really there.  Their emotional, moral, spiritual presence is hiding behind a protective wall that they may not even be aware of. 

This wall shows up when we are hooked.  When we are traveling on some mental journey of anger, or loss, or distraction.  Sometimes we get hooked by the idea that whatever is happening in that moment – a disagreement or challenge – is permanent.  So we become trapped in the idea that it will always be this way.  But as we all know, no situation is permanent.  People change; circumstances change.  And the place for intentional change, the place for transformation that can move us to deeper and deeper intimacy, to a more substantial and meaningful relationship, is in the moment.  It is in the now, when both parties are present – when both parties are committed to emotionally and morally engaging with each other.

With some coaching, these couples can draw their partner’s attention back into the moment.  In our session, I usually have them face one another and hold hands, seated, but physically mimicking how they will be on their wedding day when they speak their vows.  I encourage them to let their partner know when they check out.  That they need them to show up.  To hold them accountable.  To encourage them to stay.  Stay in the room.  Stay at the table.  And not tolerate one another’s disengagement or disappearance.

            Learning to stay present with ourselves and our partners is challenging.  So what can we learn about staying at the table in a group when the stakes are high?  I argue for risking.  After you have stayed, and taken in more information, and checked out your discomfort.  After you are clear you are not hooked, I argue for taking the risk to be vulnerable and speak what is on your heart and mind because it may be exactly what the group needs. 

Chodron argues that the best way to facilitate any transformation process is actually to learn to stay.  My colleague, Unitarian Minister Sean Parker Dennison writes, “I am deeply committed to staying at the table.  Even when it hurts, even when I am terribly disappointed, even when I am stunned by the seemingly willful ignorance of people that I otherwise respect and admire.”  He continues, “For the most part, the people who walk away from hard discussions are doing one of two things: One, they are exercising privilege because they don’t have to face the questions and consequences of their actions, or two, they are saving their souls because of the pain and rage they feel in the face of ugly words, acts, and attitudes.”

For the most part, when my friend leaves the table, he is saving his soul.  He is exercising his remaining power in response to being told he does not exist and does not matter.  Sometimes it is all he can do to find a way to walk away with some grace.  Staying at the table takes courage and faith.  Sometimes the people who are attacked, oppressed, and erased have sufficient courage and faith, sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes staying at the table is a matter of being willing to make do with how broken the world really is and loving the people anyway.

Dennison continues, “I do believe that the only way things and people will change is if we stay at the table.  But sometimes that means asking the very people who are already deeply wounded by oppression or lack of power to keep putting themselves in harm’s way.  Sometimes we can do that.  Sometimes we can’t.  Sometimes we have to go away and save our own souls for awhile.”  Dennison writes, “I believe that the spiritual practice is to come back to the table when we have the strength again.” ²

One of the ways that I gather strength for difficult conversations is my Qigong practice.  Qigong is a combination of intentional breathing and movement that is designed to help gather energy from our surroundings.  It is like a more relaxed version of Tai Chi.  One of my favorite movements in my Qigong practice is called Watching Clouds Pass.  In this movement, the practitioner keeps their core still, while turning from side to side with their hands and fingers moving in front of them, as the clouds.  The goal is to toggle your gaze, and focus in between the center of your palm and the world spinning past. 

Watching Clouds Pass is part of all classic Tai Chi traditions and anyone who practices Tai Chi or Qigong will likely tell you this is one of their favorite movements.  It reinforces a feeling of calm centeredness.  It reminds me that even when the world is changing all around me, when I am calm and curious, my mind is clearest.  I notice anger.  I notice judgment.  But I am clearest, when I stay. 

Staying takes practice.  And it takes faith.  Faith that the other parties will show up fully as well.  Sometimes it is our showing up fully that prompts them to do the same.  I have always loved the verses in Ruth that Marlin read earlier.  They are often read at weddings, when couples are professing their deepest commitments to one another publicly.  The Gentile, the Moabite, Ruth says, “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.  Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.”  Staying takes commitment.  And staying in real relationship takes all parties showing up fully.  It takes risking being vulnerable to one another. 

Over the past two years, I have shown up with my whole self.  I have risked being vulnerable with you by sharing my story, my music, my ministry, my passion, my frustrations, my grief.  And you have showed up for me.  You have allowed me to walk with you in your joy and your pain, in your struggle to discover your gifts and to manifest your values in this world.  You have resisted the temptation to only skim the surface and instead you dove deep into what is at the core of your hearts and souls with me.  And for that I am deeply grateful.  I am so blessed for the time we have already shared.  And I want to be clear, now more than ever, that what I have learned over these past two years, is that if you will have me, I want nothing more than to stay.

I love you.  May love guide us on what I hope will be our long journey together.

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1. http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/ontheroad
2. Dennison, Sean Parker citation (book title?) (article?)