Thanksgiving: Mt. 6:25-34

November 23, 2017
As preached by Sister Rebecca

Holy Wisdom Church

     Jesus in today’s Gospel gives us a commandment:  do not be anxious.  Jesus is not saying we ought not to feel worry, anxiety but rather not be ruled by them or identified with them:

      The American physician and writer, Lewis Thomas observes that people are ruled by them: “We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present…

Mary Oliver offers another slant on worry:

“I worried a lot.  Will the garden grow?  if not,  how shall I  correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong?  Will I be forgiven, can I do better?

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it?   Am I going to get rheumatism, dementia?  Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.  And gave it up.  And took my old body and went out into the morning and sang.”

Mary Oliver relates to her worries.  They are ‘faced and heard’ then they drop away.

     Feelings are one aspect of who we are as human beings, but our true nature is, as Teilard de Chardin wrote:  “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Or another way of expressing it:  We are humans seeking God; the Divine is here and now having a human experience in and through us.  And not just with the good and pleasant, but the whole of our experiences, including pain, all sorts of feelings such as worry and anxiety. All of these and more are not obstacles on our path.  They are part of the path.  We do not need to try to transcend them, but to be willing to become deeply intimate with our lived and embodied experiences.

      In a most difficult of events, a woman, Dorothy Hunt, described the fact that she had breast cancer.  As she lay waiting for the surgery to begin, she described how she felt no fear, just a complete curiosity. “This is the Mystery having a human experience and everything is OK and everything is present.” Later at the time for her checkup, she shares “that waiting for the result of the tests she felt very anxious, but also not wanting her anxiety to be different.  She felt free.  She is celebrating both the human and the Divine: everything is welcome:  whatever is arising: sadness, anxiety, anger, awe and wonder.

      For centuries in the western world, spirituality has often taught or implied that feelings are a distraction to truth, and that we need to get away from feelings, to distance ourselves from them.  But all aspects of our human nature are not only to be welcomed but also celebrated leaving behind the addiction to the storylines.  We just stay in the raw and innocent feelings without resistance or getting entangled in them.  The psalms portray and express this over and over again.

     Richard Rohr shares: “As I learn to rest and trust in the faithfulness of God, the anxious knots of my life begin to untangle. It begins to be possible to meet each day, not with fear and uncertainty, but with openness and acceptance.  I only need to open to the abundance of life that constantly pours out in an unceasing supply of goodness and blessing.

I would like to end with the hymn we sing at the Divine Liturgy during the Anaphora:

In all things and for all things we praise you, we bless you, we give thanks to you, O Lord and we pray to you our God.