In the Water with the Seventh Principle

I've had a number of requests for the text of the sermon I preached at First Unitarian Church of Providence on Sunday, July 31, 2016. It was an experience I am most grateful for. Here is the text in its entirety, with some photos for good measure.

Good morning. It’s my pleasure and privilege to be here today to talk with you all about my understanding of the 7^th Principle of Unitarian Universalism, which, for those who don’t know, is “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” For me, I am most aware of that interdependence when I am in nature – particularly in or on the water.

Ecologist and writer Rachel Carson wrote about the innate curiosity that children are blessed with, and she wished that all people could retain, in her words,
...a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout  life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. 

It is through snorkeling that I first fully recognized that sense of wonder and curiosity in myself.  An ugly word, snorkel, from the German schnorkel, related to both snout and snoring, and a word that has only been in popular use for about 70 years. What a crass sounding name for such a peaceful pursuit.

I was an accidental convert to snorkeling. I had had glimpses over the years of how transcendent life in the water could be; the wonder of bioluminescent plankton during nightswimming in the Caribbean at the turn of our current century, my hands pushing apart the water to see the trails of magician-like light in the dark sea, as well as a small area of a coral reef so full of marine life and color that my father called it “the cathedral.” 

Having said that, however, my “conversion experience” wasn’t complete until I lived in American Samoa, where the warm South Pacific waters teemed with all manner of creatures, even in very shallow water. A marine biologist friend provided an excellent education in my initial days there, identifying fish for me and advising on the best spots to see certain species. I snorkeled at least 3 days a week, and I started to dream of dorsal fins. Off Gataivai, my favorite snorkel spot, I'd often see large green sea turtles, each sighting always a cause for delight as it flapped its front legs through the water like a child making a slow snow angel. In a couple minutes' swim from shore, I could often find and identify a whole catalogue of butterflyfish - from palest peach with light gray speckles to the glorious reticulated butterflyfish, with a pattern like a guineafowl. And there were bright yellow lemonpeel angelfish, parrotfish, aggressive Picasso triggerfish, pennant bannerfish, pink and green wrasses. Families of coppery spotfin squirrelfish. Moorish Idols, a name that always makes me think of "Othello" being performed before Simon Cowell. 

Speckled butterflyfish and Moorish Idol, Samoa, December 2010

I was increasingly approaching my time in the water with reverence: my father’s previous assessment of the Caribbean reef as a cathedral seemed more appropriate than ever. Snorkeling makes you very aware of your own breath; in the stillness and focus, it can be a practice – of breathing in peace and breathing out love, as we will sing in a few minutes. My time in the water reminds me of the unison affirmation we read at the beginning of the service: Let us open our eyes to see what is beautiful.

Being in the natural world reminds me to be fully present. It is always teaching me to be grateful for what there is, not what there isn’t. One of the most magical things about snorkeling – indeed, about being in the natural world more generally – is that there’s always something to see, even if you’re not in the tropics. Largemouth bass in lakes of New Hampshire and New York have seemed to wonder why it is that a being so much larger is quietly observing them for minutes at a time without any aggression or sudden moves. In chilly waters off Cape Town, South Africa, I have marveled at purple sea urchins and orange anemones. Closer to home, in Westerly and Jamestown, are small translucent comb jellies known as “sea walnuts,” which appear to have delicate bright rainbow wires running through their watery bodies. Perhaps it was the abundant sea turtles and butterflyfish of my South Pacific waters that first led me to snorkeling as a spiritual practice, but as I have learned, they are not the only creatures worth revering.

Orange anemone, Boulders Beach, Cape Town, South Africa, May 2013

Similarly, there is a river I visit every week. It’s a place that has become a sanctuary for me over the past few months as I’ve been on medical leave and going through chemotherapy. I sit on its banks and watch and listen for all manner of life it contains. I am immediately lulled into relaxation by the white noise of ever-moving water.  My patience is often rewarded with sightings of my beloved herons, particularly a black-crowned night heron who fishes from a mid-stream log, so still and patient as the water rushes by. But there aren’t always herons. 

My black-crowned night heron friend,
East Providence, RI, July 2016

The burden of expectation can be heavy – if I go hoping to see only one species and I don’t see it, then I risk being disappointed. I have been guilty more times than I can count of what I think is a mistake for naturalists: being so focused on seeing something “special” to tick off a bucket list that I overlook the marvels of the everyday. But if I go into nature with an open heart and mind, then whatever I encounter will be rewarding. So I am learning to remind myself that if I am only looking for herons, I might miss the sandpipers. Or the cedar waxwings. Or the mink. Or the mama mallard trying valiantly to get her ducklings to follow her upstream.

The second part of the unison affirmation is Let us open our minds to learn what is true. Aside from the respect and reverence I afford to the water and its myriad creatures, snorkeling – and being in nature more generally – sparks my intellectual curiosity, so that after I’ve experienced the peace and focus of observing, I want to learn more about what it is that I see. Anyone who has visited my home knows that I have an amateur naturalist’s ever-expanding collection of specimens, be they shells, feathers, or butterfly wings; moreover, there’s an entire row of nature guides on a shelf in our living room dedicated to birds, salt and freshwater fish, clouds, butterflies, and the like. I bring my field notes together with these and other references – like my trusty Audubon iPhone app – to answer my own questions, such as What winter shorebird is making that frog-like croak? A male hooded merganser. Why are the markings on this young angelfish so different from an adult angelfish? Because they transition into different colors as they mature. Just as there is always something to see, there is always something more to know.

Why do I turn to the natural world to comfort myself? The poem The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry guides me:

Borrowed from pixteller.com

          In and on and under the water I find solace. It is so easy to despair, when each day seems to bring a fresh global horror, when neo-Fascism is ascendant in our politics, when so much chatter in the public sphere or social media seems to deny our interdependence. When we fail to recognize that each of us is as holy and broken as the next, just as our planet is.  And that’s not including the slings and arrows in our personal lives – from the frustrating little stuff, like the driver that cut us off merging onto the highway or the stranger who left a bunch of beer cans at a campsite, to the big things: grief of losing those we love; devastating, debilitating illnesses; toxic relationships. But we can find some measure of peace, perhaps, in nature. It is grander than I, and yet I belong. As do we all.

And then, I hope, we can look outside ourselves to return to the human world, which brings me to the third part of the unison affirmation – Let us open our hearts to love one another, because the 7^th principle is not, of course, merely an environmental statement about the interconnectedness of the natural world: it is about how we all are interconnected personally as well.

The work of Mary Oliver is likely familiar to many of you – I like to think of her as the de facto poet laureate of Unitarian Universalism. There’s a line from her poem “The Summer Day” that I often think about – “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.” And I don’t. But I do know that just as they say there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no atheists the night before brain surgery, either. And I know that in the wake of my initial diagnosis with brain cancer almost six years ago, my family and I were blessed with remarkable love and support from across the globe. As many of you know, I was medically evacuated from American Samoa to Auckland, New Zealand for treatment. A Muslim doctor from Singapore accompanied us. Kiwi hospitality was remarkable – a retired couple in the apartment next to ours baked cookies for us, and took my dad on a fishing trip to their weekend getaway. A Methodist minister with an Anne Lamott quote in front of his church and a statue of Buddha at the door of his parsonage took me out for tea every week.

And my own tribe across the globe – religious, agnostic, humanist, and atheist – kept me in their thoughts and sent up prayers to their higher powers. One lapsed Catholic friend told me that his mother only has mass said for people in really tough situations – but she had a mass said for me. Observant Jewish friends traveling in Bangkok visited Wat Po – the temple of the reclining Buddha – and dropped coins into bronze bowls for me, which is supposed to bring good fortune. There was so much positive energy in the world being directed our way, a diversity of religious and spiritual traditions and practices that lifted us up in our time of need. Call it the grace of God, call it holiness, I know that we experienced it, with deep gratitude, as the interdependent web of existence.

(Brief choral interlude - I sang the chorus of this unaccompanied. This is a fun version.)

  It wasn’t only this diverse response to my diagnosis that brought me to Unitarian Universalism and this church, but it played a role. Here our family has found the balance we wanted in a faith tradition: an ethic of compassion and social justice, an abiding respect for the wisdom of the world’s religions, reverence for the natural world, and a community of good people we are proud to know and call friends.  We have experienced that in earnest again over these past few months, since my brain tumor started acting up once more. So many of you here – and in the wider world – consistently demonstrate the seventh principle in your care towards all of us. I hope that I will be able to do the same for you, in my words and actions.

         I don’t generally consider myself a cancer “survivor,” since the reality is that I will probably live with my brain tumor for the rest of my life, however long that may be. But last October I decided that I wanted to literally mark the five-year anniversary of my diagnosis, so I asked a friend who’s a gifted tattoo artist to help me commemorate it. I chose a heron since I believe that they are always teaching me how to me more fully present in the natural world. And I chose words of hope from a haiku by Kobayashi Issa, often quoted by our previous minister James Ford: This world/is a dewdrop world/And yet/And yet…

         And yet. And yet... These words are now engraved in ink below the heron on my back. I want the hope contained in “And yet” to remind me of respect for interdependence.  May we all be stewards not only of our earth, but of each other. Thank you.