Making Choices

A service for 3rd February 2013.

Reading - Chapter 23 from The Life of Pi by Yann Martel  




               

Reading - The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Address:

In the last ten days I made rather a strange decision for me.  I chose to go to the cinema, not once, but twice, and each time to see what turned out to be a rather long film.  First I had better explain why it was a strange decision.  Well you see the thing is that I cannot sit for long periods of time without suffering with severe discomfort because of the arthritic problems I have in my hips and spine.  Since the arthritis developed in the 1990’s I only rarely have made a trip to the cinema and then it has to be to see a film that I feel I really must see.  So you can perhaps understand my dilemma when not one but two such films happened to be showing.  And I must say that both films were worth the discomfort I suffered in seeing them.  In the end both films made an impression on me in terms of reflecting on my religious beliefs and the choices that I have made over the last decade of my life.  The films were The Life of Pi and Les Miserables and both films struck me with their message about God, about faith and also about the choices we make in our lives.

 

Before I look at these two films I am in no way going to attempt to tell you the stories.  If you want to know then you too will have to choose to go and see them or read the books.

Looking at these films in reverse order I shall begin with Les Miserables, a musical version of Victor Hugo’s rather long and difficult novel which has probably plagued many English Literature students in their time.  I have not read the book, nor have I seen the musical before but I must grudgingly admit that I admired this film even though I am not a lover of musicals generally. I never could understand why one would sing a story. But looking beyond my difficulty with the music the depiction of the story made me want to read the novel.  One of the things that struck me about the story was that it all hinged on choice.  Caught in the act of thieving from a church, the main character is saved by a priest who chooses to help the thief and claims that he was not stealing after all but only taking what he had been given.  This simple act of charity on the part of the priest causes the thief to look at his life and turn it around. He develops a belief in God and chooses to spend his life trying to make amends for the wrongs he has committed in his earlier life and this influences how he reacts to future events.  It reminds me of a Buddhist tale that can be found in Bill Darlison’s book of wisdom stories The Shortest Distance. 

The Thief who Became a Disciple which tells how  - One evening, as a holy man was saying his prayers, an intruder entered his house and, holding a big, sharp knife to the holy man’s throat, demanded his money or his life.  Unruffled, the holy man said to the thief, ‘Don’t disturb me. Can’t you see I’m busy? There’s some money in the drawer over there.  Take it!’, ‘but don’t take it all,’ he said ‘I’ve got some bills to pay tomorrow.’

The intruder, surprised at encountering such a strange response, left some money behind, and as he was leaving the house, the holy man called after him, ‘Isn’t it good manners to thank a person when he gives you something?’

‘Thank you,’ said the thief, and off he went.

Some days later, the thief was caught by the authorities, and he confessed all his crimes, including his offence against the holy man.  Who, when called as witness for the prosecution, said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, this man is no thief.  I gave him the money, and he thanked me for it.’

The thief was jailed nevertheless, but on his release from prison he went to the holy man and became his disciple.

In both the film and this tale someone’s life is turned around because their choices are influenced by the choices and actions of someone who has devoted their life to God and in their turn the thieves choose to seek salvation through searching for God or religion in their own lives.

When it comes to The Life of Pi – I have read the book and was deeply moved by it.  There is much in it about belief and God that I find relates to my own religious development.  In most reviews of both the book and the film it is spoken of as a spiritual experience that will move one spiritually and make one believe in God.  I find the chapter that I read to you earlier speaks to me about my own personal search for God and why it is I was drawn to the Unitarian faith.  It emphasises that there is not one particular God but rather that there are many ways in which to experience God for oneself.  Following the point where the imam and the priest proclaim: “But he can’t be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim. It’s impossible. He must choose.”

The chapter continues with this passage:

“. . . my father said, “I suppose you’re right.”

 Mother looked at me. A silence fell heavily on my shoulders.

“Hmmm, Piscine?” Mother nudged me. “How do you feel about the question?”

“Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God,” I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.

My embarrassment was contagious. No one said anything. It happened that we were not far from the statue of Gandhi.  I fancy that he heard our conversation, but that he paid even greater attention to my heart. Father cleared his throat and said in a half-voice, “I suppose that’s what we’re all trying to do – love God.”

I thought it very funny that he should say that, he who hadn’t stepped into a temple with a serious intent since I had had the faculty of memory.  But it seemed to do the trick.  You can’t reprimand a boy for wanting to love God.  The three wise men pulled away with stiff, grudging smiles on their faces.

Father looked at me for a second, as if to speak, then thought better, said, “Ice-cream, anyone?” and headed for the closest ice cream wallah before we could answer.  Mother gazed at me a little longer, with an expression that was both tender and perplexed.

That was my introduction to interfaith dialogue. Father bought three ice cream sandwiches.  We ate them in unusual silence as we continued our Sunday walk.”

This is a powerful passage about the question of choice when it comes to faith.  In the end we all have to choose.  Our lives are continual acts of making choices; from the moment we get up in the morning and decide what we shall wear and what we shall eat for breakfast, until the moment we go to bed and fall asleep. Choices govern our days and the way we live our lives; sometimes they are choices affected by the actions of other people but more often they happen in spite of the actions of others a bit like in the story today. Sometimes they are small insignificant choices but sometimes they pertain to the larger more significant questions.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says:
I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.

So maybe, whatever sort of choice we have to make, just maybe those choices that we have made and are yet to make will have a lasting effect not just on our lives but on the lives of those all around us. Just like the lives of the thieves from Les Miserables and the Buddhist tale were made different as a result of their choices in response to another’s actions.

Whatever happens though, in our choices it is important that we can make the decision as the poet Robert Frost asks in his classic poem on choice . . .
 

To take the road less travelled, maybe, or

To set out not knowing what will happen, or just…

To walk with hope amid the questions….

For after all, as John Schaar said:

         The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

Maybe by making the choices we have already made, the choice to be here in this Unitarian Church following a faith that is after all a faith of choice….  Maybe, like Pi we are all making the ultimate choice:  the choice to love God wherever we find God to be.

   So may it be.  Amen      

Song of Myself

This is an address on Walt Whitman and why I love his poetry.

Walt Whitman

Last week the poet Michael Rosen wrote this comment:

“I'm probably jumping the gun a bit here, but the press is full this weekend with accounts of what is anticipated to appear in the new guidelines for Primary English.
What seems to be coming up is a requirement that all primary children from the age of 5 should learn poetry by heart.”

From the discussions that have been on the radio and television this week Michael Rosen was correct, as part of his Curriculum reform Michael Gove is suggesting that all infant and primary aged children should be expected to learn and recite poetry along with times tables and other facts.

Now as an ex teacher I can see the value of learning things by rote and that includes poetry, but when it comes to poetry I am a little unsure as to how it will affect children’s future attitudes if it is not handled properly.  I am sure there are those of us here who can remember being made to learn verses by heart when we were at school.

I certainly can, and I never did find it easy.  Times tables I could manage but poetry – well I never did manage to commit any to memory. 

Did any of you?

And I wonder how many of you actually read poetry now today and if you do was it because of this learning experience?

As this news played out I began to think about where my love of poetry came from – because as most of you are aware I do love poetry.

Well it didn’t begin during my school years at all.  No, I know the exact year when I turned to poetry and began to read it.  It was 1989 and I was 40 years old.  It happened when I went to see a film that was released that year, starring Robin Williams – it was called ‘The Dead Poets Society’.

In it Williams plays the part of one John Keating, a rather different teacher of English, especially poetry.   

                                         

One of the most memorable speeches for me was when John Keating says to the boys he is teaching:

‘We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?’

                                       

It was a mixture of those words and the image of Robin Williams striding about saying call me: "O Captain! My Captain!," in reference to a Walt Whitman poem, that set me off reading poetry for the first real time.

Now I must admit I didn’t take to Walt Whitman’s poetry then, it was, I think, far too American and I didn’t really understand it.

It took me finding the Unitarian church, a decade or so later, to begin to appreciate Whitman.  Not that he was a Unitarian, no he was a Quaker if anything but he has even been called an atheist.  However he did move in Unitarian circles and was friends with people such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

‘And the Transcendentalist movement, to which Whitman belonged, was firmly rooted in the Unitarian tradition.

And then, of course, there is his tangential association with Bolton Bank Street chapel, which has connections with a local Whitman society, which has been in existence, on and off, for over a century. In 1887 two Bolton men, J.W. Wallace and Dr. John Johnston, sent birthday greetings to Walt, and to their great surprise and delight, he responded, and a regular correspondence – over one hundred letters – ensued, until the poet’s death five years later. Now, on the nearest Saturday to Walt’s birthday, 31^st May, there’s an annual Whitman walk, in which participants wear sprigs of lilac, Walt’s favourite flower, and make frequent stops to read from Leaves of Grass and to drink from a ‘loving cup’. On the Sunday following there is a service in Bank Street Chapel, to commemorate the Whitman Society’s association with the Unitarian movement.  

                                                                                                                            

   What is it in Whitman’s poetry that was so appealing to the Unitarians of 19^th century Lancashire and to contemporary Unitarians worldwide? One reason is his independent, almost revolutionary, spirit. His poetry, in both style and content, is radically new. His verse is free, direct, accessible, untrammelled by conventional decorative features such as rhyme and rhythm. Emerson recognised that Whitman’s was the first authentically American poetic voice. Before him, American writers, including Emerson himself, had copied European models, but Walt struck out on his own. ‘Resist much, obey little,’ his words of advice to the American states, could be taken as the motto of his own life and his own work.’ (Bill Darlison)

                                                   

Walt Whitman is not an easy read, his poetry is full of uncomfortable things and a lot of it was not allowed in print at first because it is sexually explicit.  Also his poems are extremely long and I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to read them whole but maybe try dipping in and you find such wonderful delights as:

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

And it is verses such as that second one that call out to me now as they speak of the soul.  How Whitman can be called an atheist I do not know for his poems are full of the soul.

Audrey Addison Williams  says: “My prayer for all of humanity is that we learn to live from a place of "soul". In my work, I am stunned by the number of people who have no idea about the longings of their heart and soul. They live like robots, doing almost mechanically what they feel they must do. Than we spend billions on medicine and doctors trying to figure out why we are in so much pain. Today, listen to your heart, connect with your soul. Your soul has all the wisdom you shall ever need. “

Whitman’s most famous poem, that I read from in our reading is the ‘Song of myself’ and it is full of words of wisdom that speak of life, of love and for me of God.

Those words at the end of that verse I read:

“I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd

    by God's name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.”

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

These words sum up my whole theology. His God is probably not the God of Christianity, but Whitman’s poetry is drenched in what we might call God-consciousness. As the Rev Bill Darlison says:

This may be pantheism, deism, panentheism, it may even to some be considered blasphemous, but it is certainly not atheism. Whitman has no belief in a static revelation; the genius behind all the great religions is the inexhaustible genius of the human race which is as active now as ever it has been. He doesn’t object to special revelations, but, he says he considers ‘a curl of smoke or the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation.’[Song of Myself] The simplest creature is a manifestation of God, a miracle, a revelation:

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars...

And the narrowest hinge of my hand puts to scorn all machinery.....

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

Walt Whitman’s poetry gives you a recipe for living.  He tells you first and foremost to be yourself and in the words of Robin Williams, as the teacher John Keating he says in no uncertain terms that Latin phrase ‘Carpe Deum’  which means ‘seize the day’

Seize the day.

Just opening my book of Whitman’s poems at random the poem I found was this:

DAREST thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
2 No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,	5
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
3 I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou—all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region—that inaccessible land.
4 Till, when the ties loosen,	10
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
5 Then we burst forth—we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul—prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last—(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.	15

I could go on - there are so many poems that cry out to be read.  But do I read them because I was made to learn poems by heart as a young child?  No I read them because as an adult I have come to poetry myself.  I have travelled in my own way just as Walt would have wanted me to because as he said:

“ No one is going to do the hard work for you, you must find the meaning of your life & your destiny yourself.”

And so it must be for our children too.

So May it be

    Amen          

---