THE PROPER USE OF SPIRITUAL METAPHORS

Based on a sermon delivered September 24, 2000

at

The First Unitarian Society of Denver, Colorado

When Jim Hobart emailed me, about a month ago,  to ask for my topic for this morning’s sermon,  the phrase you see in your program (“We’ve Gone About As Far as We Can Go”)

popped into my mind.  I’m not quite sure why.

It may be  because on that day we were in Fairbanks Alaska making plans to travel to the Arctic Circle and I was debating with myself – I do that a lot – whether to go all the way to Prudo Bay, on the Arctic Ocean.  As far north as you can go by road in the United States.  And I was thinking, well is that really “as far as you can go.”  Where is “as far as you can go?”

Perhaps it was because I had, in the previous two months,  preached on Our Way of Being Religious” five times and in that sermon I stressed the fact that we UU’s were, and are still, always “moving on”.  One great answer to the question, “Where to UU’s stand?”  is  “UU’s don’t stand, they move!”

I’m not sure why I chose the topic, perhaps I was thinking of the excellent Odyssey presentation Jim Hobart presented at the UU Ministers’ Retreat at Ghost Ranch in May and how each of us can describe our personal history – exterior and interior –  as a  journey.

Perhaps I chose the topic because journeying has been our lifestyle since we sold the house in Littleton, where we lived for 24 years and took to the road in a 23 ft. travel trailer.  For the last three years, “home” was “where we parked it.”   Yes, that’s certainly one reason I chose the topic.

But after telling Jim the topic I changed my mind.   I rose to a higher level of abstraction – some would say a higher level of obfuscation.  While “journeying” is the metaphor I use most often to describe my inner life,  it is not the only metaphor – and it may not be the best.  Then I asked my self “What is the proper use of metaphor in the life of the spirit?”   So, we finally come to the proper title for this sermon:  The Proper Use of Spiritual Metaphors.”

There are many metaphors used to describe the inner life: that which, these days is being called “spirituality.”  One that I’m not going to discuss this morning is the metaphor of the craft.  I’m sure you’ve all heard of the latest UU manual using this metaphor. It’s about Harry Potter and his life in the Hogwart School of Sorcery.  Oh, you didn’t know that the author of the Harry Potter books  is a UU?  She’s not?  If not, why is her  latest book a variation on our flaming chalice – “The Fiery Goblet?”

Seriously, “crafting” is one way to think about the inner life – the life of the spirit.  And what do I mean by “spirit?”

I mean those  great areas of human life that cannot be quantified, that don’t follow the rules of the material world – that have no mass or velocity, that do not obey the second law of thermodynamics or even the law of gravity.  Spirit is not containable or extendable it cannot be confined and it cannot be bartered.  One cannot say what it is – only what it is not.  One can describe it only through metaphor.   Still it is as real as love, or courage, or loyalty or forgiveness.  It is what makes me me and you you.   And it has been described in myriad ways in all times and in all places, for spirit is what makes us human.

So what is the best metaphor for describing “The” Spirit”.  Well, every metaphor can be used or abused.  I want to talk about three this morning.   Were I a settled minister I’d take three Sundays for these, but being a paraplegic minister I have to cram them all into the allotted time this morning.

Perhaps the most familiar metaphor us has been battling.  “The life of the spirit is like a great battle.”   Martin Luther put this into the Hymn – it is – I’m almost ashamed to say, still in our Hymnal.  “A Mighty Fortress is our God …

Luther illustrates a misuse of the Battling Metaphor.  He personifies the positive and negative forces.   The good is a fortress the bad

“our mortal foe, who seeks to work us woe. His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.”

Luther was describing his personal experience a man divided with each aspect of himself at war with the other – a true split personality.  When one thinks of one’s self in these terms the temptation is to demonize half and deified the other half.  Even worse is projecting those perceptions of the inner world onto the outer world and seeing oneself as a “child of light” and one’s adversaries as “a child of darkness”.  Instead of dealing with “the enemy within” one arms against the “enemy without”.  The bloodthirsty history of the righteous Crusaders is all too familiar to require detailing here.  Nearly every war in Euro American history was fought to bring defeat “an evil empire.”

But the battle Metaphor need not be negative.  Martin Luther King and Mohandas K. Gandhi used it in a very different way than did Luther and Calvin or even our Unitarian Abolitionists who sought to end slavery by destroying slave owners.  There is always a battle raging in us between the lesser and the greater – a battle to mobilize our energies for the better or the lesser cause and that is not just a battle within the individual but within every nation, state, city, and congregation.  The battle is real but the adversaries are not people – people like us in every respect – but with lesser tendencies that keep us as individuals or as groups from doing all that we could do or being all we could be.

So, there is a proper and an improper way to use the metaphor of BATTLING.

There is also a proper and improper way to use the metaphor of journeying.

A couple weeks ago, on our way home  we made a quick trip to Skagway, Alaska. At the National Historical Park informational center I heard an interesting conversation.  A woman was asking what she should do and after making several suggestions, the ranger said, “Now if you want bragging rights…” and the woman interrupted and said, “Oh yes, that’s why I came to Alaska.”   I think a lot of visitors to Alaska could, if they were honest, admit to that motivation.   It’s one reason I travel.  Oh, there are more defensible reasons but one reason to travel is to be able to say, “Oh yes, I’ve been there.”  It’s one  version of that perennial and universal game, “Mine is bigger than yours.”

But there are better reasons to travel, to keep “moving on” for not getting “stuck” in one place.  Travel is broadening – and not just in an anatomical sense –  When one goes away from the familiar places to visit “strange lands and peoples” one gets a sense of the diversity and commonalities that unite us.  That is unless one travels on prepackaged tours that are proverbially described by the phrase, “If this is Tuesday we must be in Belgium”.  We saw such Tourists debauch from huge floating hotels is Sitka, Juneau and Skagway.  I can’t help but believe that most of them toured mostly for “bragging rights.”  Except for that they would have been better served renting a video.

There is a kind of spiritual journeying that is similar.  A way of skimming over the “spiritual” traditions without ever delving deeply in any of them. Such  holy tourists were caricatured centuries ago by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales.  You can see them today in Jerusalem, Rome, and Lassa.  But you can also see the true seekers after the Holy though most of them never travel.  It was of these that John Bunyan  wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress.  Similar works, travelers’ guides through the world of the Spirit are constantly being written recounting the inner pilgrimages of pilgrims on a quest.

Every religious tradition has a version of the Zen story of two masters who met on the road and who discovered, after some conversation that each was on a journey to become a disciple of the other.  There is a proper way to use the metaphor of Journeying and an improper way.  One improper way is to look with disdain at those who are supposedly at a lower or lesser way station than you are.  UU’s are, I fear especially prone to this abuse.   One church I’ve visited has just “fired” their minister because he fell victim to this tendency.   A lot of us ministers get away with this.  We stand at a “higher level” of the Holy mountain, and cast stones on those climbing behind us.   Not good!!   We need to help one another on the journey – to help each up the path he or she  has chosen not to insist that they take the same path we have trod – or to condemn them or ridicule them because they seem to be resting at a “lower” level.  It may be that I have taken a trail to a cliff from which I cannot escape without help – a place that keeps me from climbing higher.

Perhaps we’re confusing the sense of motion with making progress.  Like the man who said, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I sure am making good time!”  We’ve done this many times in our travels.   I remember one incident when I refused to stop to see a magnificent view of the Polychrome mountains to get to a roadhouse that was alleged to have the worlds best cinnamon rolls.

T. S. Elliot voiced that caution when he wrote,

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”

But Dorothy said it best, in a voice many millions have heard,  after her trip “over the rainbow” she said,

“I guess, if you can’t find it in your own back yard, you can’t find it anywhere.”

However, it may well be that one can’t find “it” in one’s own back yard, or in one’s own spirit, until one has seen strange lands and stranger people – so I speak no negative words against either geographical or physical journeying.

Which brings us to the final Metaphor for the activity of the Spirit – at least the final one I’ll discuss this morning.  And that is Growing.

That’s become a popular word these days in, of all places, political rhetoric.  Our president keeps taking about “growing the economy.”   It’s not a bad or a new metaphor. Epicurus, my favorite ancient philosopher, talked about life as a “garden”.  In our travels we have met many people who are “spiritually advanced” (another metaphor) who have never traveled.  They have often been gardeners.  Or they have been naturalists who knew and cherished the trees and flowers and mice and moose and martins and grizzly’s.  The same creatures others saw as nuisances or “fair game.”  We met a lot of those folks in Alaska.

Thanks to Garrison Keeler, many know Unitarians’ as “tree huggers”.  I’m pleased that the “in” metaphor among most newer UU’s is “growing”.  But we should not thing of growing only in the sense of a seed becoming a tree.  No, let us thing of  growing as part of a process that extends back in time to the infinitesimal and immemorial  origin of the Universe.   Let us imagine existence as an organic “web of being”.

Every where we’ve gone the song, “Sprit of Life” has been a favorite in UU congregations.  In some it is sung every Sunday.   The rich metaphoric language of Thoreau is being rediscovered among us and biological terms prevail as we try to come to terms with a new appreciation of the life of the spirit.

That spirit is not some “holy spook” but an inherent possibility resident in every person – and yes, perhaps in other creatures as well.  It cannot be quantified but it can be experienced, it cannot be circumscribed but it can be nurtured.  It cannot be tied down, but it can set us free.

Please join me in some moments of silent contemplation of the words here spoken and peaceful listening to that which is beyond all metaphors.

© 2010 REV. ROBERT M. EDDY