Centering Down

December 9, 2001

How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one's self pass by!

--Howard Thurman

Part of my joy in the holiday season is that it gives me an opportunity, if I will take it, for reflection and for turning within. The Hanukkah and Christmas season is a meditative time, made more so by the shortening days and lengthening nights of early winter. This year, the season so far has been softened by the unseasonably warm weather we have been experiencing, but, of course, we knew that this brief respite from winter would end, and that the cold and dark would settle on us soon enough.

Over the years, I have used the season of Advent which leads up to Christmas as a time to deepen my understanding of Judaism and Christianity. Even before I had definitely decided to enter Divinity School, I had begun to explore the religious roots of the holidays and of my own faith. One year I decided to read the entire New Testament, surprised to find that there were four gospel accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus, but that only two of them included any information about his birth, and that these accounts do not agree in all particulars. I read Paul Tillich's A History of Christian Thought, and recall especially his revelation that the Trinity could not rationally be explained! In later years I have learned about the historical roots of Hanukkah--not, incidentally, a very important holiday in Judaism, but one with which I think Unitarian Universalists in particular can sympathize for its historical roots in freedom and its pagan celebration of light at the darkest time of year. I have read Jaroslav Pelican's Jesus Through the Centuries, and a biography of St. Augustine, and Marcus' Borg's Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

All of this effort has been a way of deepening my appreciation of this special time of year, which for me holds so many warm and wonderful personal memories. The Christmas season at its best is an experience out of time, which is, at least in part, a definition of the mystical. That is, at this season of the year time can sometimes seem to telescope down to the essentials, and belie the passage of our years and with them, our lives. I always hope that there will be a few days and nights in this too busy season when I can find time just to sit quietly and meditate on the journey of my life thus far. It is what the great Black preacher and educator Howard Thurman called "centering down":

How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one's self pass by!

This year, when the whole question of religion has been placed before us in a new and perhaps frightening way, I think this is more important than ever. It is important to take the opportunity which the season provides for a deepening of ourselves and of our religious understanding. Scrape below the surface and you will find that there is a timelessness there which all of the great religious holidays in every religious tradition seek to capture. You, too, can capture that sense of timelessness, if only you will take the time to try.

In his book of meditations entitled The Centering Moment, Howard Thurman wrote,

We wait in the quietness for some centering moment that will redefine, reshape, and refocus our lives. It does seem to be a luxury to be able to give thought and time to the ups and downs of one's private journey while the world around us is so sick and weary and desperate. But . . . we cannot get through to the great anxieties that surround us until, somehow, a path is found though the little anxieties that beset us.

This, it seems to me, is the challenge of any religious life, that is, of any attempt to lead what one might call a "religious" life. It is to find a balance between a purely "spiritual" religion (which James Luther Adams called purely "spurious" religion), and a religion which addresses in some concrete way the realities of a world which is "sick and weary and desperate."

For who can deny that the world is sick and weary and desperate? The war in Afghanistan rages despite our comfortable insulation from it. Poverty and homelessness abide in the streets of our wealthy nation. Famine and hopelessness coincide throughout most of the Third World, affecting billions of people. Corruption and oppression and genocide exist beside racism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, and misogyny. The world is a desperate place! It definitely demands our attention.

It was so 2000 years ago. The stories of Jesus' birth in the gospels may not be literally true, but they contain truth. Children are still threatened. Absolute power still seeks to extend itself. Poverty still reigns. Hanukkah celebrates the life and death struggle for religious freedom, which continues to this day. Cruelty is an ever present reality in this world. Peace is still a dream, goodwill toward all only a hope.

The world needs us, but it will certainly overwhelm us if we do not take the time to care for, and deepen, our own spiritual lives. The greatest reformers and saviors of the human race are men and women who have a deep spiritual life as a foundation for their work. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa of Calcutta, the Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, Moses, Muhammad. All were possessed of a deep spirituality which gave them the courage and strength to carry on, despite impossible odds, and which enabled them to show us paths through what the old gospel song calls "this world of woe."

Jesus, whenever he was confronted by a crisis, withdrew to a quiet place to pray. There he would gather himself for the coming struggle. There he would also confess his weakness in the face of the principalities and powers of his day and declare to his God, "Thy will, not mine, be done." But he did not remain there. He went back into the world, bringing his vision for how we might create God's kingdom here on earth. The odds were against him, as they are against all who swim against the currents of the world as it is, but his example and his vision, and the hope it engendered, live on all these many years later, giving us something to strive toward in our day.

A little prayer above the door of a Unitarian Universalist Church in Chicago captures the movement which is called for in all our lives:

Out of the world of the many
Into the world of the One;
Out of the world of the One,
Back to the world of the many.

Religion must be more than escape. It must be more than a self-centered yearning after our own physical and mental well-being, or a self-satisfaction with the way things are. Religion demands more from us than that. It demands that we be fully engaged in life.

Thomas Merton, one of my favorite spiritual writers and mentors, writes in Thoughts in Solitude that "The solution to the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis, but first of all by living." Similarly, in his book Contemplative Prayer, he writes that "Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life."

The purpose of "centering down" in meditation or prayer is not to escape from the world, then, but to prepare ourselves for whatever it is that we are called to do in the world. It is not to escape from our lives, but to discover how we might live them. It is not to take refuge in inaction, but to find the strength and courage to take the actions which are revealed to us. As Merton wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation, "There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from the conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other[s]. . . ."

Equally important, the purpose of "centering down" is to come to know ourselves better. How can we know others if we do not know ourselves? How can we be free to help others if we cannot help ourselves? And to know ourselves and help ourselves better we must take the time, as Thurman says, "to sit quietly and see [ourselves] pass by." If we do not take the time get straight with ourselves, how will we ever straighten anything out?

Part of the reason for my upcoming sabbatical, perhaps the most important reason, is to come to know myself better so that I may help to guide this great and historic church into an uncertain future, be more present to all of you, shed more light on the journey of life upon which all of us are embarked, and try to build up the beloved community of which we dream. The word "sabbatical" comes from the Sabbath: a day of rest. Among the ancient Jews, a "sabbatical year" during which land would lay fallow was observed every seven years.

Like Thurman, I feel that it is a great luxury to have this time in which to look within. But also, I feel the necessity of doing so at this particular time in my life, and I am grateful to all of you for the opportunity it will provide me to have some time away from all the "little anxieties" of my work in the ministry, so that I might return renewed to face the "great anxieties" and challenges of a troubled and troubling world.

My hope for each of us, during this holiday season, is that we will make the time for centering down, be it only in minutes stolen from our busy days. Far from being a selfish act, taking time for ourselves can be a way of preparing us to act unselfishly for others. It is not luxury, but necessity. May we find in our quiet moments the strength and courage to carry on in all the twists and turns of our lives' journey. And may those moments, in turn, lead us back outward into a world desperate for the work of our hands and hearts.

Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock