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Serenity
Rev. Sharon K. Dittmar
November 24, 2002

        I was on a beach in Florida.  My husband, Peter, was on one side, my son, Adam, on the other.  The tide was low.  No one was around.  Quiet, calm, blue, blue, turquoise, blue, and that lulling ocean sound.  I looked down and saw that I was starting to burn.  I said to Peter "I'd better go in."  He opened his mouth in reply, and the alarm rang.

         When I woke up in my bed I couldn't believe that it was November, the room was cold, the light was dim.  Take me back, I thought, to the warmth, the lulling ocean, the blue.  Don't tell me I have to get up, make baby bottles, get dressed, and go to work.  But I had to laugh too.  Of course it was a dream.  Adam was making no noise on the beach in my dream, just laying there on his own little blanket.  Of course it was a dream.  There was no one else on the beach.  Of course it was a dream.  There were no household chores, no problems, no fatigue, no people, no work, nothing but quiet, calm, serenity.

Serenity.  Was my dream really serenity?  This question began to bother me, plague me.  If my dream was serenity, then I didn't think I would be having any serenity at all this year and this was a disturbing realization.   What is serenity?

         According to my very old Webster's Dictionary, serenity is defined as "clear and free of storms or unpleasant change; shining bright and steady, marked by utter calm."  This definition placed me at a crossroads, never, in my 36 years of existence, has my life been marked by utter calm.  Sure there have been moments, even hours strung together like this, but two days in a row, a week without unpleasant change or storms?  Never.  You know, someone in my family is sure to call and upset the apple cart within a week.  Wednesday will always arrive and I will wonder (even if just a little bit) how the sermon will get written, and these are the easy things.  These aren't even situations like death, congregational conflict, or illness.  If I wait for all the forces of life and the universe to align in order for serenity to transpire, I will die an old, un-serene woman.

Then I had a thought, a memory actually.  Over twenty years ago, in my high school English class, we had to read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, a remarkable book.  One of the scenes that still lives with me is of an inventor, a man who wants to make a machine so that he can capture beautiful moments in time.  (I might have some of this wrong, it really is twenty years since I looked at the book, but this is my memory).  Of course he fails and is utterly dejected.  His wife comes out on the porch to sit with him and tells him that if he saw an extraordinary sunset every evening, he would stop appreciating them anymore.  Extraordinary sunsets are extraordinary precisely because they don't happen that often, because they happen amidst the jumble of our lives, catching us off guard, stunning us with their beauty and majesty. 

I've always remembered this lesson from Dandelion Wine.  It lived with me.  It is impossible to hold onto all the best moments and things, to string them together in a seamless row of peace and joy, serenity.  Life is what happens when you live.  Serenity is a work in progress, a practice, a choice made amidst the jumble and chaos of everything else.  This gives me great comfort, because I just might have a chance at some of this serenity this year.

In his book, The Soul's Religion, Thomas Moore, makes a compelling case for spiritual emptiness as an experience of serenity.  Moore understands spiritual emptiness as a sophisticated ignorance.  He describes it as a combination of certainty and unknowing, sort of an openness to mystery. 

In our reading for this morning he likened spiritual emptiness to the Pantheon, a building that is both open to the infinite and enclosed within its own shelter.  As he writes "I saw how grace pours into us-when we are foolish enough to leave a hole in our intelligence or smart enough to install a well-oiled door in the top of our heads."[1]  To me, this seems more like serenity, a wisdom about certainty and unknowing, an ability to rest with both of these without losing self-esteem or direction.  Serenity is not a condition of life, it is a way of being in life, or living with life.  Moore's concept of spiritual emptiness is a better definition of serenity.  This emptiness creates space for reflection, new experiences, a sort of holding area in the midst of chaos and distress.  To me, this emptiness creates serenity, and this emptiness can be accessed at any time (rather than waiting for a dream about the beach).

Moore has a story in his book that emphasizes this spiritual emptiness.  He writes:

Real understanding is a creative mixture of certainty and unknowing.  The trick is to know even when you don't understand.  David Chadwick tells a story of Shunryu Suzuki [a Zen master] that exemplifies holy ignorance.  The Tassajara community was on a strict silent retreat, and Shunryu Suzuki and other members had been working all day trying to clear a heavy rock in a gully.  Some people passed by on a bridge overhead and shouted down, "What are you doing down there?"  Suzuki, breaking the sacred silence, cried out, "We don't know."[2]  

As Moore explains "Breaking the silence was emptiness, as was [Suzuki's] statement, which I take quite seriously, that they didn't know what they were doing."[3]   I absolutely loved this story and laughed out loud when I read it.  There is a lot about my faith life, and life in general at times, that seems like moving heavy rocks out of a gully for no reason.  Do we actually have the wisdom, the confidence, to be spiritually empty, to claim that as resourceful and intelligent as we may be, at times we certainly don't know?  Of course we do.  It's just tricky, knowing when we don't understand, and then having the courage to admit it.

When I was in high school a friend of mine introduced me to the Serenity Prayer; "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  I was so taken with this prayer I asked my friend to copy it for me and then carried this copy in my wallet for years.  Turns out I am not the only person impressed by the Serenity Prayer.  Since 1939 this has been the prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Again this is a good example of trying to create serenity, some space, in a world of chaos.  Alcoholism is a crushing and consuming disease.  Alcoholics are addicted to an ultimately poisonous substance that alters personality and behavior.  Self-aware addicts will tell you that they crave these drugs at the expense of family and friends, jobs and health.

If you attend an AA meeting, members engage in an early ritual of holy ignorance, certain unknowing, creating space for serenity.  Every speaker identifies him or herself, "Hi, my is ____, I am an alcoholic."  And then everyone in the room says "Hello, _____." 

This is always a powerful moment like a call and response song, opening and benediction, an admission of knowledge and ignorance.  I am, and I am an alcoholic.  And for this truth, an individual is rewarded with the recognition and acceptance of the community "Hello, _____."  We see you as addict and more than your addiction, as an individual with choices.  But the admission is the pass, the entry in, and it is powerful in its humility ("What are you doing down there?"  We don't know.")  which leads to acceptance, for its ability to create space for a higher power to enter in, and the potential for members to become clean and sober and then help others on their way.

Oh, this elusive wisdom, "the wisdom to know the difference."  Lao-tse wrote "He who knows others is learned.  He who knows himself is wise."  Thomas Moore writes "The idea in emptiness is to trust life's own wisdom instead of ours."[4]  The more I read about serenity, the more the word "wisdom" kept appearing.  This is the tricky part.

When I think of wisdom I think of just a few people I have know, Betty King ("Sharon, why are you trying so hard?"), Letty Bergstrom (a woman who always seems to actually be listening),  even ironically enough Professor Niebuhr, my thesis advisor and nephew of Reinhold Niebuhr who wrote the Serenity Prayer.  Let's just say I had a very untraditional, feminist thesis in Divinity School, and the elderly, learned Professor Niebuhr followed me all the way with help, never betraying frustration or dismay.  I think that the wise people I know have all been able to make space, to listen, to open themselves to something new, potentially unpleasant.  I think that they would all be capable of saying "I don't know", which would make me trust them even more, not less.

Thomas Moore says that as people who like to fill our minds with facts and our life with things, we find it difficult to cultivate spiritual emptiness, which he defines as an intellectual and emotional openness.  In the search for serenity, intellect, combined with emotions, can be disruptive.  As William Gerber writes in his book Serenity: Living with Equanimity, Zest, and Fulfillment by Applying the Wisdom of the World's Greatest Thinkers,

The very fact of our yearning for knowledge, truth, and control of nature is itself a factor in our bondage.  Loren Eisley expressed this finding in three different ways:

a.  "The thirst for illimitable knowledge  . . . conflicts directly with the search for . . . serenity."

b.  "Knowledge, or at least what the   twentieth century acclaims as knowledge, has not led to happiness."

c.  "[M]an's technological triumphs have frequently been at odds with his hunger for psychological composure."[5]

        Both Gerber and Moore appreciate the intellect.  But both raise this interesting issue.  If we value intellect too highly, we can pretend to know instead of opening ourselves, creating the space to learn more.

Moore writes with great insight on this: 

Our problem with knowledge is largely an emotional one.  Above all we don't want to be wrong.  The secular form of scientific knowledge, in bracketing out mystery and mysticism, leaves us on shaky ground.  Only part of our intelligence is engaged, the part that works with facts and measurements.  Since that approach is incomplete, it leave us worried, because intuitively we know there is more to be considered.  A sense of mystery . . .  would round out our intelligence.  Not knowing would be part of intelligence-an idea many religions have taught for eons.[6] 

Moore's observation is perceptive.  When we are afraid to be wrong, to sit with our thoughts and feelings, to consider other opinions, we avoid the creation of spiritual emptiness, space.  We are too afraid of what we might find or feel.  This can drive us to acquire more facts which pushes serenity, and ultimately wisdom, even farther away.  I was a text book case for this while researching this very sermon. 

I flipped through a biography of Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian and author of the serenity prayer, and I began to get anxious because I couldn't remember how to define two theological schools of thought that impacted Niebuhr, Social Gospel and Christian Realism.  In fact, I'm not sure that I ever learned a definition of Christian Realism.  Anxiety began to settle upon me.

Then I realized that there is space for this ignorance, this gap in my education because; 1) I could of course read up and define it by next week if need be, and 2) it doesn't matter for the purposes of this sermon.  This was the funniest part of all.  I guarantee that if any of you ever make your way to my office looking for serenity, desperate for some peace, concerned about chaos and loss in your lives, you will not care about Social Gospel and Christian Realism. 

Niebuhr's theology is  relevant in certain circumstances, significant to twentieth century theology, and definitely interesting.  But it isn't necessary to help someone in a pastoral situation, and may just be counterproductive to serenity.  It would be a distraction.  Six decades of alcoholics haven't needed to define the Social Gospel.  They needed courage and wisdom, and hope.  They needed to be, to do, to let go, to turn over, not to know.  One of the hardest parts of spiritual emptiness is to let go of knowing everything, to make way for some ignorance, to welcome it even so there is room for the new.  It is so hard to let go of our control.

Moore doesn't advocate for either or, scientific knowledge or mystery.  He's far too perceptive for that.  He advocates for both.  Learn the facts and measurement and create space.  A wise person holds both certainty and the unknown in balance.

An openness to spiritual emptiness, space, requires living in the present, as opposed to the past of the future.  The need to live in, experience the present, appears in the literature on serenity.  As the author of one book reminds readers "I will gently encourage your lively mind to return from its perpetual wandering.  Its constant worrying about the future, the rehashing of the past."[7]  Gerber references poet T. S. Eliot who refers "to being alertly present here and now as constituting 'liberation/from the future as well as the past.'"[8]  Gerber also quotes feminist existentialist Simone de Beauvoir "What astonishes me is the fact of finding myself here and at this moment, deep in this life and not in any other." [9]

The temptation of our monkey minds is to place ourselves elsewhere, memories of the past, plans or worries about the future.  We are like the inventor always looking for, planning for the next sunset instead of witnessing the day and moment in which we live.

At the end of Gerber's book he offers an entire year's worth of physical and intellectual exercises.  One night includes repetition of this phrase "Aware/of wonders, Composed/and calm" with coordinated intakes and outtakes of breath.  These exercises might sound silly, but I think they are legitimate attempts to locate our minds and bodies in the present, what is here and now, so that we can create spiritual emptiness, and just maybe find serenity. 

Another author chose to focus on this list of qualities through exercises; stretching, breathing, practicing compassion, gratitude, awareness.[10]  She uses phrases like "Soften the neck."  I hear that and I think, "You can't soften your neck.  You will make yourself vulnerable!"  Vulnerable to what?  There is no pack of wild dogs outside the sanctuary doors.  I don't think that the members here are going to spring from their chairs and attack one another.

Vulnerable, vulnerable to the present, to feelings, to change, space.  Not prepared, not knowing, just open.  At some point, when you don't think anyone is looking, try softening your neck, slowly breathe in and out.  Say "Aware/of wonders, Composed/and calm."  Then see what you notice and how you feel.

Serenity is not what happens when everything and everyone is calm.  Serenity is what happens when, no matter the circumstances of your life, you choose to create space for spiritual emptiness, for authentically witnessing the present.  When you go to the beach the sand will blow in your eyes, the sun will burn your skin, and if it is the wrong month, Greenhead flies will bite you.  As someone who has spent a bit of time there in reality, I can tell you, a day at the beach is no day at the beach.  The even better news, though, is that serenity is at hand, within each of us, if we will leave an opening in the top of our heads and just let ourselves be.

Reading on "Spiritual Emptiness"  

As people who like to fill our minds with facts and our lives with things, we may find it difficult to cultivate emptiness, which is both an intellectual and an emotional openness.  But spiritual emptiness is not literal nothingness.  It's an attitude of nonattachment in which we resist the temptation to cling to our points of view.  This kind of emptiness, confident but never certain, gives us the room to be flexible and self-aware . . . It was raining the day I first saw the Pantheon in Rome.  My wife and I stood in the cool, damp air and marveled at the oculus, or "eye" in the top of the temple 140 feet above the plain stone floor.  The emperor Hadrian is responsible for the current shape of the building.  It is said that he wanted the hole in the top to reveal the sky so the temple could mirror the human condition of being both exposed to the infinite universe and enclosed in its own shelter . . . A first step in spiritual progress is to find the empty place, the hole in the fabric of meaning and culture through which the infinite and mysterious can enter.  That emptiness may be a lull in time, a moment of reflection, a day off, or an uninvited reverie.  Spatially it may be represented in a broad expanse of land or in an empty chapel or meditation room.  Emotionally it may be a painful loss or breakdown.  Intellectually it could be an open question, a doubt, or a new way of thinking . . . On that rainy day long ago I stared at the stone floor of the Pantheon, getting wet from the drizzle that sprinkled in from the hole in the roof.  I had seen pictures of divine grace as drops of rain, and now for the first time I saw how grace pours into us-when we are foolish enough to leave a hole in our intelligence or smart enough to install a well-oiled door in the top of our heads.

   —from The Soul's Religion by Thomas Moore

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