Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Be Balm: Being and Healing”
Rev. Rod Debs
August 12, 2007
Listen to the podcast at “Voices of Liberal Religion” (mp3)
Story for All Ages: “Time Out”
Sometimes there’s lots of activity and excitement—playing, jumping and making noise—at home, at school, wherever.
Sometimes it’s boring—when you have to be quiet or sit still and listen to your parents or teachers.
Sometimes we’d rather have some excitement—playing, running around, making noise! If we start some excitement—talking or running around and making noise, sometimes we have to go to Time Out. What does Time Out mean? …
Why do adults put kids in Time Out? … I think parents and teachers want you to be calm, to stand still and be quiet, so that you can listen and pay attention.
Adults take Time Out too. Do you ever see adults in Time Out? Not very often?
I give myself Time Out most mornings. After getting dressed, I sit quietly on a chair with my eyes mostly closed, and I just breathe. If my mind wanders, that’s OK. I sit still and notice what thoughts and feelings that I have. Then I take another breath and think about my breath going in and out. There are more thoughts and more breathing, and I get Calm and have Insights. Time Out helps me be calm and to pay attention to life the way it is.
There is a religion that is all about practicing Time Out: Buddhism. Buddhism calls Time Out, “meditation.” There are different kinds of Time Out meditation:
- Sitting Meditation, like Time Out at home or at school (sitting Buddha)
- Standing Meditation, like when you stand quietly in line at a store or at school
- Walking Meditation, like when you walk quietly outside maybe in the woods,
or when your class at school walks quietly in line to the cafeteria
- Reclining Meditation, like when wake up in bed before anyone else is awake
and you lay there quietly, with your eyes closed, paying attention
Other religions have a kind of Time Out they call “prayer.” The difference between Time Out Prayer and Meditation, is that prayer involves saying things and meditation involves listening or paying attention. In my Time Out, I pay attention to my breath, and I watch what thoughts come to my mind. Then I go back to feeling my breathing.
There are lots of kinds of Time Out meditations that adults do. I would like to teach you a Calming Meditation you can use if you ever have Time Out at home or at school.
First, let’s close our eyes.
- Begin by wiggling your toes. Pay attention to your toes. Tighten them. Now relax them.
- Now move your whole foot around. Pat attention to each foot. Now relax your feet.
- Now tighten the muscles in your legs. Notice your tight legs. Now relax your legs.
- Now tighten your butt muscles. Feel them tighten. Now relax your bottom.
- Now tighten your stomach muscles, forcing your air out of your lungs. Now relax your stomach (diaphragm) and breathe in. Breathe out and breathe in. Notice your breathing.
- Now tighten your fingers and hands into a fist. Feel how tight your fists and arms are. Now relax your hands and arms. Notice how relaxed they feel.
- Now tighten your shoulders and neck. Feel how tight. Now relax your shoulders and neck. Relax and notice how it feels to be relaxed.
- Last, scrunch your face up into a knot. Feel how tight. Now relax your face.
- Notice how relaxed you are: your face, your neck and shoulders, your hands and arms, your breathing. Your stomach is relaxed, your bottom, your legs are relaxed. Your feet are relaxed and still. Your toes are relaxed.
- Notice your breathing: out, in, out, in, out…
We have finished practicing one kind of Time Out Meditation that you can use Sitting. And you can use the Breathing Meditation— out and in, out and in—wherever you are, when you are Sitting, Standing, Walking or Lying Down. Time Out can be a very good thing! It is good for me. As you walk quietly to class, you are doing Walking Meditation.
Message: This morning I brought a couple sprigs of a plant from Jeannette’s Butterfly Garden. The flower petals have fallen from the sprigs, leaving only dead heads on its minty leaves. Here is a picture of Bee Balm in full bloom, or, more accurately, Monarda sometimes known as Wild Bergamot or Horsemint. Bee Balm has either purple, red or pink blossoms with tubular flower petals. In herb gardens like Jeannette’s, what attracts butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, is the sweet nectar in the tubular petals.
From when I was a kid growing up in the Evangelical Friends Church, I remember a song entitled “Balm in Gilead.” It began: “Sometimes I feel discouraged / And think my work’s in vain. . .” The chorus may be more familiar: “There is a balm in Gilead / To make the wounded whole / There is a balm in Gilead. . .”
Actually, there is a Balm in Gilead. East of the Jordan River is a hill country, at one time known as Gilead (meaning “rugged”). In the mountains of Gilead, present-day Jordan, there is a thorny tree, Commiphora opobalsamum and its flowers yield a fragrant resin used in incense, perfume and in medication, the Balm of Gilead.
I think of “balm” like, linament-salve you rub on sore muscles to soothe muscle pain. Palestinians who left their villages in the days before hot showers and sewage treatment plants, those who crossed the Jordan River, hiking long into the hill country of Gilead breathed deeply the fragrant “balm of Gilead” wafting on the mountain air. I imagine that the strenuous trek to climb the mountains of Gilead may itself have had a healing effect on the discouraged or wounded traveler. Similar, perhaps, to the Native American Indian’s rigorous Vision Quest into high mountains. “There is a balm in (rugged) Gilead.”
Several years ago, one of our best-known local Master Gardeners, Marie Harrison wrote in her Daily News column (10-31-03): “Those of us who have gardened for a lifetime know that the garden is a healing place.” Ms. Harrison wrote about how, as she cared for her husband in the days and months before he died, she repressed her own tiredness and grief. She felt that her problems were insignificant compared to his.
She wrote: “. . . there were short periods of time when I was able to connect with something other than my grief. They were the times I spent in the garden. Somehow, just the physical act of being out in the fresh air and pulling weeds or pruning and deadheading spent flowers allowed the stressors to fade into the background just a bit. I don’t think I forgot at those times, but the burdens somehow became lighter.” (Ibid.)
Marie Harrison described the “mind-boggling” responsibilities which teachers carry “day in and day out.” She writes: “I know. I did it for 30 years. Often I came home and headed straight for the garden. There I weeded and planted, dug and mowed, and worked at a feverish clip. And as I worked, the cares of the schoolhouse began to fall from my shoulders. Time took on an entirely different meaning as I began digging and dividing bulbs or doing other gardening tasks. The pace slowed. My mind cleared. I centered.” (Ibid.)
There is a calming rhythm that brings you down to earth, that grounds you who care for gardens, as there is a rhythm known by those who raise animals—like I do rabbits.
Marie Harrison scoops the point of my message this morning when she explains that other people have other healing practices. She writes, referring to her late husband: “Amiable Spouse used to come home from school and run three or four miles. Others take long walks or ride bikes. To each his own. But I still recommend the garden. It’s the place where I have found the most peace. Quite literally, it has been my healing place.” (Ibid.)
Gardening, running three or four miles (complete with heavy breathing—might I add), taking long walks, bike rides, there are many healing practices.
The question is this: Where do you find healing? Where do you find shelter from discouragement or wounding grief?
During my Minister’s Sabbatical in 2001, Jeannette, our teenage daughter Katrina and I explored Thailand’s countless Buddhist Temples (Wats) and monasteries. In those nine weeks, we spoke with quite a few monks. Katrina says she was pretty much “Buddha’d out.”
I was fascinated by the four basic postures of The Buddha. You see here the Buddha I obtained for religious purposes at Bangkok’s Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Here’s a picture of a golden Buddha taken from the train from Bangkok to Chaing Mai. The Sitting Buddha towers above the trees and rice fields. Sitting Meditation is perhaps the most familiar Buddhist with its calming focus on breathing “in and out, in and out.”
But how often do we find ourselves standing in line at the grocery store or at the bank? Here is a picture of the Buddha in Standing Meditation. When I try Standing Meditation, I find that I am far more at peace with waiting breathing “in and out,” observing my mind’s impatience and just breathing. I breathe and more calmly see the way it is.
I was especially interested in the Buddhist posture of Walking Meditation. My tiny pendant, and this larger one, like this picture are of the Walking Buddha. Have you ever started to walk through a door before you had pulled fully open, caught it with your foot first and then with your forehead? I’m afraid that I have done that more than once. My conscious mind has me here and then somewhere else, and the walking between here and there is just an irritating delay in my doing and doing and doing more. Walking Meditation is to pay attention to your walking and to breathe “in and out, in and out.” Now you are here. And now you are here.
When I discovered the Reclining Buddha, I was surprised. Is there a meditation you can do in bed, I wondered? Yes! Does it sink in yet? You can practice meditation, breathing in and out, in and out, no matter what your posture. As you pay attention to your breathing, as you sit or stand or walk or recline, if you pay attention to your breathing, you will see the way it is.
So much of my conscious life, my thinking reality, I am absorbed in feelings about the past or projects into the future. There’s a song from the 1970’s by the band, Five Man Electric Band entitled “Signs.” You may know the Chorus: “Sign Sign everywhere a sign / Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind / Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign”
My mind is so often cluttered with signs, plans, expectations, “do this, don’t do that,” “blocking out the scenery breaking my mind.” Driven by the chatter of my thinking, by the reactions of my emotions, flitting here and there, pushing me, driving me, my brain reality is caught up in the games of society and the games of my wants and wishes.
The question I have for you this morning is this: “Where do you find healing?” “What do you do to free your mind to come home to reality, to see the way it is?”
For some of us, washing dishes is a meditation, or cleaning house, or mowing the lawn, feeding the animals and shoveling their waste, holding your cat, dancing, singing in harmony with others.
I want to mention another meditation, the meditation of loving-kindness. when you and I pay attention to whoever presents themselves in this very moment, really paying attention, really seeing them and paying attention to their intentions behind their words and actions, seeking to honor their right of conscience, to honor their life journey, encouraging their better selves—no matter who they are, this is a meditation of loving-kindness. This is the meaning of grace: to give others even undeserved favor.
The practice of Universalism is that we do not pick and choose, selecting who is worthy of our attention and kind regard and who is unworthy. Universalism is expressed in our UU Principles, our “covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” It is a religious practice of taking one another seriously enough to give them our attention rather than being absorbed in our own purposes and how they fit into our agendas.
But for me it all begins with my own Breathing Meditation, taking my own life seriously. Whether sitting, standing, walking or reclining, my practice of breathing and paying attention to the way it is for me is important in whether I can do the same for others.
Meditation is a kind of study of my mind and of reality as it presents itself to me. Then when I practice the Meditation of paying attention to others, I can see my own intentions, see my own agendas, and at the same time take seriously, and generously, the other person’s intentions.
Where do you find healing and feel more energized and alive? What do you do that makes you feel more alive and more at peace with reality?
The Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Hnat Hanh writes: “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”
If you and I can wake up to life as it presents itself to us and to look at it all with kind regard, perhaps we will come to feel the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel who wrote: “Just to be is a blessing / just to live is holy.”
Those wise among us suggest, however, it is going to take some kind of practice!