A Wintry Faith

A Sermon by

Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

Sunday, 10 January 2010

Our reading this morning is from the poet, Wallace Stevens, a famous poem of his about winter called “The Snow Man.”

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

There is a hole in my living room where the Christmas tree once stood. We finally took it down this weekend. I wonder if we were the last. Has anyone else still got their Christmas tree up? [Laughter] Yes, all right.

For us, the time was right. The branches had become dry and brittle and turned a lighter shade of green than they had originally been. And the heavier ornaments, the big ones, were beginning to slide off the sagging branches and crash on the floor which is how you know it’s time. But I have to admit that I’ve always hated taking down the Christmas tree because in the weeks that it’s up, it literally becomes the center of our little apartment. When I wake up at dawn, the first thing I do is plug in the lights and I sit down and meditate in the glow of the tree. For me it’s almost like a fire; it draws me and mesmerizes me. We eat beside it. We invite our friends and family all around it and then, suddenly, sometime after New Year, right about now, it is unceremoniously dumped out on the street where, at this very moment, it languishes, waiting for the City to come and pick it up.

Meanwhile, back in the house, there’s this empty space where the tree once stood. And even after we shuffle the furniture around and try to fill it up, you can still sense that emptiness. January can be like that sometimes, a deafening silence after the clamor of the holidays; an empty space where once lights and presents delighted us; a big hole in our calendar previously filled by holiday parties, or concerts or dinner with friends and family. Sometimes there’s a sense of absence in this season, a sense of loss even. On top of it, it’s cold and grey; it can be a little depressing, which is why, if it were up to me, I’d leave the Christmas tree up until the Cherry Blossom Festival. [Laughter]

But this weekend, as I sat on the couch and stared at that empty place in our living room, I had to ask myself why am I so reluctant to confront this bare space, this bare wall? What is going on for me here? And before I could even ask the question, the answer came. It’s hard for me because it reminds me of the empty places inside of myself, of the lonely places inside of myself, places I don’t want to confront, blank walls I don’t want to stare at. And usually, I don’t have to, except when things suddenly quiet down. Like right about now. Like winter.

I think that many of us are reluctant, maybe even a little afraid to be alone with ourselves, really alone. We’re uncomfortable staying silent and focused long enough to look inside ourselves and confront what’s there. Maybe we’re afraid that we’ll find some vast emptiness, some meaninglessness. Or maybe we’re afraid of the pain and the sorrow and the ugliness that we might find there. Like Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness who looks inside his soul and says, “The horror! The horror!”

Such fears have always prevented people from pursuing a life of the spirit. But our own culture has developed even greater and more insidious distractions from this kind of self-reflective life with our televisions and our I-pods and our Smart Phones. It’s a wonder we ever get any time to reflect or to meditate or to pray. You know, sometimes I’m sitting on the Metro going to and fro somewhere which I always think is the best time to take a little time for yourself. But I always see these people working their Blackberries, and I could swear that they’ve already answered every e-mail that’s in their in-box. They’ve texted every friend they have to tell them about their plans for the night; they’ve visited and browsed all their favorite websites. But still, there they are, clicking and scrolling away on their Blackberries.

We’re hesitant to just take the time to be alone with ourselves. What is it that we’re afraid of? Who knows what we might discover? The great teachers of the spirit assure us that, while the journey inward into the emptiness inside is not without pain and struggle, we need not fear the emptiness. They affirm that there is indeed good news in the emptiness. The Buddha was the great prophet of emptiness. For him, emptiness – shunyata – was the desired goal of meditation because only when we empty ourselves do we come to realize our intimate connection with all that is, with all of creation. Emptiness, nothingness, is the great end of Buddhist instruction. In fact, there’s a great cartoon about the Dalai Lama. It’s the Dalai Lama’s birthday and he’s got this wrapped present and he opens the present and he looks in and he gets this big smile on his face. The box is empty inside and he says, “Nothing! Just what I’ve always wanted!” [Laughter] Emptiness.

Or this, from the great Sufi tradition. The Sufi poet, Kabir, used to carry about with him a big empty clay jug and as he went around teaching, he would show this jug to his listeners. He would show them that it was empty inside and then he would recite this poem. He would say, “Inside this clay jug, there are canyons and mountains, and the makers of canyons and mountains. All seven oceans are inside and millions of stars. The acid that tests gold is here and the one that judges jewels. If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth. Friend, listen. The God I love is inside.”

And that’s what our Unitarian ancestors believed too, that our soul was the dwelling place of God, the stomping ground of the spirit. Winter has been my teacher in this regard. The spare landscape, the long hours of darkness, the post-holiday lull. They teach me to slow down, to be a little quieter, a little less busy. They teach me to look inward and to confront the empty places inside of me.

I want to share an experience with you that I had, one of my experiences of learning from this winter season. Chris and I live in an apartment not too far from here that we call “the tree house.” Now it’s not exactly a tree house, but it feels like one because the windows of our apartment look out onto three enormous shade trees that are planted right outside of the building. Look right out into the canopy of those shade trees. The shade trees are planted really close so that the branches actually scrape our windows when the wind blows. I suppose if I were younger and lighter I might have the guts to crawl out into the trees and climb right into them; they’re so close by.

Our tree house gives us no end of delight. In springtime, the trees burst open in white blossoms and all you can see out the window are fluffy, white flowers, as if there were a blizzard outside. And then the spring wind comes along and blows the blossoms away and the trees are left with these tender green leaves, the color of pea shoots. In the fullness of summer, the canopy completely envelopes us, protecting us from the heat and bathing our living room in a cool green shade, and introducing us to the creatures of the canopy – the quarrelling squirrels who sometimes take a timeout on our windowsill. Or the sparrow who miscalculates and smacks our window with a thud and then flaps on.

But winter is quite a contrast. With the leaves gone, the pale winter light comes pouring through the windows and we can finally see the neighbors across the street for the first time. It’s tempting in the winter not even to notice the trees and to finally just kind of look around. But one morning just a couple of winters ago, I was sitting on my couch and I was meditating in the morning. I had my back to the windows; my back was to the trees and the morning sun was coming up. And I opened my eyes in my meditation and the shadows of the thousands of branches of the trees were sprayed across the wall on the other side of my living room. It was a beautiful, intricate tapestry of branches, of shadows, in intricate detail.

The winter has taught me to pay attention to these small details and now it is my favorite time of year in the tree house. The winter has taught me that this season is a revealer, allowing us to see things we wouldn’t otherwise see, to notice things we wouldn’t otherwise notice. Winter is a truth-teller, revealing the hidden structure of things. This is what I mean by a wintry faith. I mean a faith that is comfortable confronting the bare essentials of life, a faith that can see the beauty not only in the promise of the spring or in the abundance of the summer, but in the spare winter too. A wintry faith. Wallace Stevens called it “the mind of winter.” He said “One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees crusted with snow and not to think of misery.” It takes a wintry faith to look around in bleak mid-winter and see not misery but beauty and structure and form.

So the truth is I no longer loathe taking down my Christmas tree in January. For me, carefully stripping the ornaments one-by-one and slowly unwrapping the lights has become a kind of ritual, a small ritual of relinquishment. A stripping away of life’s distractions and a return to the essentials. And sometimes, just sometimes, when during my morning meditation I’m staring at that blank wall where once my Christmas tree stood, if the light is just right and I’m paying attention, I won’t see there just a blank wall, but that beautiful tapestry of the branches of the trees outside. There is more to this season than meets the eye. There is more to the emptiness than meets the eye, the emptiness within and the emptiness around us. Kabir, once again, said it best: “If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth. Friend, listen. The God I love is inside.” Amen.