Sermon, Sunday, February 9 2025
By F. Vernon Wright V
Reading: Trusting the Present Moment
When I take my seat in the morning to meditate, it’s not like, “Oh my god, now I got to meditate, and then I got to have all the right conditions, it has to be quiet, or the sun has to be shining, or whatever it is, so that I can have a moment of respite and ride on the waves of my breathing in my body, it’s not no, no, it not one more thing you have to squeeze into your day, it’s a love affair with the present moment, which is the only moment no matter how old you are, the only moment that were ever actually alive in, and therefore have any snowballs chance in hell of leveraging into wakefulness, and actually we don’t need to leverage it- that taking ones seat in that way, is a love affair in itself; it is the intention but it is also the result. And that’s where the phrase non dual practice comes in.
People think, “Oh meditation I’m supposed to have a certain experience… Now I’m meditating, so oh my God, my butt is hurting, my neck is hurting, my shoulders are up, and my ears… everything is wrong with me, I’m having a terrible meditation.” No that’s perfect because everything I just said- those are just thoughts moving through your mind, and they’re not the full truth of what’s happening in the present moment. So as soon as you realize that, than maybe it is a love affair, maybe I can put out the welcome mat for things exactly as they are including all my inner narratives in my head, and I can realize awareness doesn’t have a problem with it?
Transcribed from Jon Kabbat-Zinn
Falling in Love with the Present Moment
So that’s Jon Kabbat-Zinn’s little Valentines message for us all, have a love affair with the present moment!
I have been sitting or swimming in meditation and going about my day with this idea for a few weeks now. When he talked about that duty mindset: “Oh my god, its that time again, I had better sit down on that mat and meditate, cause I’m a terrible person if I don’t”- I had to laugh, at least as much as the time I got a 120 dollar speeding ticket rushing on my way to meditation a few years ago you know- ah… to slow down and relax?
Meditation is not a task. When its time to meditate or forest bathe, or do yoga, or what ever it is you do to keep you centered, do it with that same sense of mystery and expectation, longing- you know, when you were a young person- and you got infatuated- and you couldn’t stop thinking about that special one. And actually, the special people of your life do visit you in thought form, and even the pangs, and throbs, “wished I could have been betters”- when you’re on the mat, and for a moment that’s all there is until you recognize, “yes I’m thinking again,” and a greater spaciousness begins to emerge. “Perhaps all sound arises on some level from love, the people driving, the sound of the plane, the birdsong, the wind.” Thinking again. And then that deeper spaciousness. A single, undefinable, exhilarating calm, in which all things are contained and held- that single, present moment of aliveness which is, both yours, and everything’s. “We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man (the human being) is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.” As the great Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson once said.
And I’ve been bringing this same mind-set into going into church and meeting with people, and talking to them. I bring it when going home at the end of the day, napping, getting dinner together, or perhaps asking for Kat to order out, going to the night meetings, sometimes a few meetings in a row- each group talking about something totally precious and important in its own right. Each moment is beautiful.
But then, you know, maybe someone in the family is going through a hard time, and they need lots of support, and you see the frustration in yourself rising, because your own little peaceable kingdom is being ruined, and that’s okay because, its okay to want things to be other than they are, so you just reach out and give that person a hug, and you listen for a while.
Then its time to get ready for bed. I check my phone and there’s the news and the ten billion dastardly deeds being done by that orange man, hogging all the media attention, while Elon and his 26 year old tech wiz have been somehow and unconstitutionally handed over the federal purse strings, and unilateral, disastrous funding issues are occurring all up and down the line, and its miserable, and probably really is a coup d’état. ICE is rounding people up at Market Basket, maybe I ought to be driving to DC right now, or attaching myself to immigrant families, like those journalists who used to accompany human rights workers facing the death squads of Elsalvador, or Colombia, but I’m your minister, and its 10:30 pm and I’m tired and then I remember the breath- being present to this moment, “Vern just brush your teeth…”
Well, yes, there’s so many things to be concerned about that is the reality. We can’t change how crazy and mean our nation has become over-night, and how much crazier and meaner it most likely will become. But as Zinn said in a recent Brown lecture I attended, mindfulness is sometimes recognizing that you can’t change the anxiety- that it is just the wind, but with mindfulness you can adjust your sails. So the events of this nation right now, and all of the things we may, or may not have to do in response to it, shall for today at least, be the wind in our sails. As sailors know, when the wind gets really strong, you have to reduce the sails- all the way down to bare poles if necessary. We will have to keep a weather eye. All hands must be on deck, but we can do it.
One hundred and fifty years is a long time for being a church, and we have weathered much. This ship gives home and support to bright people who change the world and do brave things, like getting women the right to vote, fighting against facism in WWII, standing up to McCarthyism, protested segregation, conscientious objecting to Vietnam, seeing through the lies of Ronald Reagan, opposing the invasion of Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction, being outraged at Jan 6, being horrified by the treatment of the the Palestinian people. So we’ve seen stormy weather before but here we are in this present moment waking up to new fallen snow looking at each-other in digital windows with warm mugs of coffee. Right here and right now it is good to be alive!
Let us in this present moment shake off the shroud of fear, and despair, and fall in love to the wonder, let us in each moment respond fully, lively, potently. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love without power is nostalgia, power without love is tyranny.” Oh yes he did, and so much power right now without love! But we can love in this moment now, and rest assured, in that inestimable power of the moment, what ever it is we need to do, will mean something- will shine with the radiance of the oversoul- will indeed bring greater justice and wholeness into this world! Blessed Be!
