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September 2010

Coming and Going
BY MEG RILEY, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP

Eight years ago, my mother died from ovarian cancer. It was one of the greatest blessings of my life to be able to spend the last few weeks of her life caring for her as tenderly as she had cared for me in my earliest, most vulnerable time on earth.

Those last days I spent with her, as we drew nearer and nearer to her last breath, resembled two prior experiences in my life—waiting for a baby to be born, spliced together with caring for a new infant. It must have felt the same way to my mother. One afternoon she gestured across the room. “Something important is written on that paper on the wall! Give it to me!” “This?” I asked. “The wall calendar?” I handed to her and watched while she scoured the tiny numbered boxes. “It’s not on here!” she said. “Why isn’t my due date on here?”

Time as we normally understood it was a meaningless concept. Moments stretched into eons; days blurred into one another. There was no predicting or controlling how long the vigil would last. Only one thing was clear, stated by each hospice staff member who visited: People die when they are ready to die. There are no formulas to determine when death will happen. There was a palpable sense that we were waiting for an extraordinary moment, waiting for a gateway to open between the visible world of earthly living and the infinite world of stars and canyons, the mystery from which we are born and to which we return.

On one of my mother’s last days on earth, as her mind had already begun to diffuse, she spent several hours gazing at a photograph of herself, cheek to cheek with my daughter. The photograph was taken right after we had learned that the cancer was back with a vengeance, and she informed us that she was not going to do any more chemotherapy but was simply going to enjoy her final days. In the photo her eyes reflect that clarity and decisiveness. The face of my daughter, then five, was filled with her own decisive personality—a fierce connection to her grandmother and her own life force shone through her as well. As my mother studied this picture, she looked back and forth from one face to the other, murmuring over and over, “Coming and going. Coming and going.” After a while, she asked herself, “Who’s coming and who’s going?”

We are all coming and going, all the time. Life is a rhythm of transitions held by these two major journeys into infinity, birth and death. If you are like me, though, you miss a great deal of your life telling yourself that real life will begin after a major transition looming ahead—after you graduate from school, find a new job, get rid of a horrible roommate, meet with your parole officer, get married, get divorced—right after that, then life will begin!

That’s how we miss our lives, miss what we are given each morning as a gift, fail to notice the small moments of grace in our coming and going every day. Rumi, a Sufi poet, wrote:

The life gift is given
And then taken away.
It is not for us to know why, or how.
Grace comes with the creation word, Be.
That gate opens without hesitating.
Between the push of Buh
And the smooth launch of ee,
There is an infinite moment
When everything happens.
Grace comes with the creation word, Be.
That gate opens without  hesitating.

The Jews have a symbol to help remember the transforming nature of each gate that we open, every day—a mezuzah. A mezuzah is a case which contains a small, rectangular piece of parchment on which are inscribed words from Deuteronomy. It has a small opening near the top to reveal, on the reverse side of the parchment, the word “Shaddai,” one of the mystical names of God. The mezuzah is nailed in a slanting position, neither horizontal nor vertical, on the upper part of the right doorpost of the entrance of a dwelling. Each time they leave or enter the house, pious Jews kiss the mezuzah by touching the exposed word Shaddai with the tips of their fingers, which they then press to their lips, reciting, “May God keep watch over my going out and my coming in, now and evermore.”

Christian cathedrals, too, use doorways as opportunities to surround their visitors with holy symbols, as do edifices built by people on every corner of the globe. Those doorways create opportunities for transformation from our mundane everyday selves to the holy selves we long to be.

How do we, who find our religious home in a church without walls, find such sacred doorways to walk through to our sanctuary? I believe that grace lies in the conscious awareness of coming and going, not in the physical construction of grand doorways. A mezuzah is a tool to remind Jews of the sacredness of their daily lives. We can create our own tools to remember.

Parenting is one of the daily practices which has taught me most concretely that life is a series of transitions. With a child every day life is literally created anew. That child you put to bed last night is not the same child who wakes up the next morning. This is true most vividly in the early years, when talking, walking, new teeth, and physical growth are dominant. However, it is true on more subtle planes as children grow more socially involved with a wider number of people and influences beyond the parent’s control. Every day is an exercise in letting go. Whether you like or don’t like some particular thing about your child is irrelevant to whether they will find it important.

One of my tools with my daughter, now that she has entered her teenage years, is a sort of mantra given to me by a spiritual teacher. She said, when I described the power struggles which too often rear their ugly heads in our daily encounters, “Bless more. Control less.”

That mantra, usually accompanied by a few deep breaths, helps me to remember to let the gate swing open to that infinite moment when everything happens.

Breath is a tool which is always available. Sometimes I find myself unconsciously taking a deep breath before I embark on something new—make that scary phone call, open that envelope, make a decision. If we move from the unconscious deep breath to consciously using breath as the energy to open the door to the sacred, we may enter our sanctuary without walls at any moment. Breath is always there waiting for us, ready to transform everything.

I don’t mean every breath, of course. Unless we’re monks or mystics, much of our breath will be used in much more mundane fashion. We can’t live in a completely expanded state, and we will frustrate ourselves if we try. Breath is inhale and exhale, contraction and expansion.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron tells this story:

Sometimes out of the blue, people have amazing experiences. Recently a lawyer told me that while standing on a street corner waiting for a light to change, an extraordinary thing occurred. Suddenly her body expanded until she felt as big as the entire universe. She felt instinctively that she and the universe were one. She had no doubt that this was true. She knew she was not, as she’d previously assumed, separate from everything else.

A problem arose for this lawyer, however, because she wanted to hang onto this experience. Having glimpsed this truth, ordinary perception was no longer satisfying. Chodron continues:

Even though peak experiences might show us the truth and inform us about why we meditate, they are essentially no big deal. If we can’t integrate them into the ups and downs of our lives, if we cling to them, they will hinder us. We can trust our experiences as valid, but then we have to move on and learn to get along with our neighbors.

The grace of our lives is not to be found in those peak experiences, although they remain touchstones for us. Primarily, though, life is to be found—if it is found at all—in the coming and going, the contraction and the expansion, the squabble with our kid that releases itself through laughter.

I am, just now, awed with the privilege and responsibility of having been called to serve as senior minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Much of my initial imagining about this ministry is about creating portals of accessibility, envisioning the ways in which the large, diverse, and far-flung membership might find meaningful ministry with one another. I have been envisioning ways to let others know that we exist, that there is sanctuary for them within our wall-less walls.

I have been listening to many people about what this wall-less community means to them. I spoke with one CLF member who lives in India. He told me, “To me CLF means safety, a sense of belonging.” I was amazed by this. “Please tell me exactly how that works for you. What is it that gives you safety and belonging?” He explained that all of his life, with parents of different faiths who were shunned by their families when they chose to marry each other, religion had been experienced as something from which he was excluded. His family was never invited to weddings, funerals, or any other religious events.

“Now,” he told me, “I envision the members of CLF all over the world, and they have become my experience of God. I may not know God, or see God, but God is there, just as these 3,400 people are there!”

As I take up the mantle of this ministry, there is nothing I could wish for that would exceed this man’s experience of the CLF. There is no website, newsletter, or other communication vehicle that can accomplish this most central mission—that we might be touchstones of the holy to one another. Our shared commitment to this unique congregation can remind us that there are kindred spirits around every corner, even if they are unknown and unseen.

May we bring grace into our consciousness, allow our spirit to remember to control less, to bless more of life, to let go of the petty dissatisfactions that take us away from being.

May we bring grace into our relationships with our families, our neighbors, our communities. May we take a breath and arrive there with them, share that moment of intersection where we meet one another, remember that it is holy. Even if we simply wave at another parent in the carpool line, may we be there to enjoy the connection.

And may the Church of the Larger Fellowship, this seen and unseen community, provide sustenance and support as we go about our days. May simply remembering one another’s existence offer us a sense of belonging.

In all of our coming and all of our going, may we be with one another and may we care for one another. 

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Last updated August 17, 2010