Getting Low and Letting Go

Chalice Lighting: A Reminder by Beatrice Hitchcock
The flaming chalice is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.
It is as an everlasting flame for this community.
It offers its warmth to those who are cold.
It provides light to those who would see.
It purifies and transforms this sanctuary into sacred space, this congregation into sacred community.
May its flame burn true and high and strong.

Offertory Words:
It is said, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver,” yet we’ll accept from a grouch as well.  As the ushers prepare to gather this morning’s offering, may each of us look into not just our wallets or our checkbooks to see how much we have with us.  Let us look into our hearts, as well, and see what is available there – how much love, how much generosity, how much faith, how much gratitude, how much hope – and let us give our offering from that account.

Let us say the Offertory Words printed in your bulletin in unison:
Let us be grateful for all those who share their gifts, for we are enriched by their giving.  And let us be grateful even for our needs, so that we may learn from the generosity of others.

Children’s story:
Two monks were walking down a path when they came to a shallow muddy river.  A grouchy old woman waited there, not wishing to cross the river.  One of the monks lifted her onto his shoulders (something he was NOT SUPPOSED TO DO) and carried her over to the other side and dropped her down, gently.  The other monk was mad that the monk had gone against their code (Which forbade them from carrying women across rivers).  He said, Brother, why did you pick up and carry that grouchy old woman across the river?”  The second monk replied, “Why are you still carrying her?  I put her down hours ago!”

How can we let go of things that make us mad?  Why did the one monk get so mad and the other let it go?

PRAYER- QUIET TIME

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING by David Whyte
I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that thinking for a moment it was one day like any other.  But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room, it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep, it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night.

And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love, this is the black day someone close to you could die.  This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next and I found myself sitting up in the quiet pathway of light, the tawny close grained cedar burning round me like fire and all the angels of this housely heaven ascending through the first roof of light the sun has made.

This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.  This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life.  There is no house like the house of belonging.

READING:
Let Go of Something (Danna Faulds)

Let go of something, somewhere.
Use yoga to become aware, to touch what lies beneath the surface of the skin.
Is there tension longing for release;
a knot of fear so deep and familiar that you believe it’s part of who you are?
Ease into dark corners, locked rooms, unexplored hallways.
Gain entry not by force or will but only by softness.
Enter on the wings of breath, and turn the key of self-acceptance to let go of something, somewhere.

SERMON:

Get low, let go.  Get low, let go.

What are you holding onto?  What do you hold onto?  Your feelings?  Your righteousness?  Your ideas about the church and the world?  Are you holding onto outdated ideas about yourself?  Are you a sentimental saver, who holds onto photographs, fortunes from cookies, ticket stubs, dried flowers?  (Guilty!) Are you a grudge-holder?  How do we hold onto that?  What are you holding onto?

How does it feel to let go?  What does it mean to let go?  Let’s start with a simple exercise: tense up your face; good!  Scrunch it up.  Now let it go.  How does that feel?  Now try tightening up your fists; clench them hard, now let them go.  Is there a spot behind your shoulders?  Hunch your shoulders (put your shoulders up to your ears; now let them go.)  Take in a deep breath, now let it go.  Our bodies are so often the sad, sorry receptacles of our thoughts, feelings or ideas.  We worry, we hurt, we feel slighted by other people’s inattention or absorption in their own lives.  We have real trauma that can lodge in our bodies.  We can’t control other people, but we can control our reaction to them and their opinions.  How does holding onto the ‘low’ keep us from ‘letting go?’

We humans are social animals.  It does matter what other people think.  I work in a profession where observations, evaluations and student test scores can determine job security.  We live in a community where many people know one another’s business (for better or for worse!) and gossip is just another form of social control.  What will they think?  People are talking.  Did you hear about…?

I don’t want to say it doesn’t matter, but the older I get, the more I realize: it matters less than we think.  Time to let it go.  There’s a great saying: what other people think of me is none of my business.  As a perennial people pleaser, I need to remember this radical point of view.  Let it go, Heidi, and honor your ideals, and do your best work.  When you make a mistake, take responsibility, then let it go.  You can’t please everyone all the time, and whoever said you had to?  Letting go of this impossible feat was so freeing.  Someone didn’t like the last project I assigned?  That’s okay.  I spoke too long at the MLK jr service?  That’s okay, too.  Let it go.

To be clear, in no way do I wish to use “let it go” as an insensitive refrain.  No one wants to be around a Pollyanna who is ‘always happy’ or ‘always positive’.  Conversely, no one wants to be around a Debbie Downer or Negative Nancy.  It is our human condition to have highs and lows, peak experiences and emotional valleys.  What I want to focus on is how letting go of that which doesn’t serve us is an ongoing spiritual practice and one of the keys to living a life with more contentment.

The dark corners, locked rooms, unexplored hallways in the reading are the symbolic “low places” in our lives.  Danna Faulds’ poem is about how these ‘stories we tell ourselves’ may turn into physical ills but how naming them and letting them go can sometimes provide relief.

Do we want to be right or do we want to be happy?  The answer seems clear to me.  Holding on to anger may have a physical effect that doesn’t serve our highest self.  Perhaps it is just coincidence but I remember a recent conflict where I was angry and hurt and I recognized that these were just feelings, but I could not let it go.  I kept holding on, gripping, grasping, replaying the tape in my brain and my heart.  I found myself playing the part of angry woman.  It took a lot of energy to stay mad, even after the supposed offense was talked about (and the other party took responsibility).  I wanted to hold on to that feeling! But for what?  I couldn’t let it go.  I even told myself, let it go, let it go.  What was it that I couldn’t surrender?

When finally I did give in and stopped feeling mad (and hurt, and jealous, and insecure and vulnerable), I ended up with the mother of all head colds.  I truly believe that my immune system was so revved up by ‘being mad’ and not letting go, that I ended up under the weather.

Lao Tzu wrote, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”

At the time I was an angry, unsatisfied, insecure woman.  What might I have been?  A kind, understanding, satisfied, secure woman.  Which sounds better to you?

Since the title of my message is Get Low to Let Go, I wanted to touch on yoga, one of my new practices.  Getting low in a yoga pose is a great way to let go.  Child’s Pose is almost as low as you can go: while not specifically a prayer, it has humility and comfort.  Low plank is close to the ground, then it transitions to downward facing dog.  Yoga is so much more than just a physical workout or a sitting meditation.  It serves the spirit and the body.  Through the physical poses, there is a meditative, restorative element.  Yes, I get a good all over body workout, but mostly I feel it is good for my soul.

And here’s why: a common refrain is: “It happened, let it go, it’s over.  Don’t tell yourself a story about what happened.  Let that go.”  Even to the point that at the end of class, we are told: be grateful for the time you spent practicing on the mat, and let it go.” The good and the bad, the success and the struggles: we are told to let them go.  You fell out of the pose that usually so easy?  Let it go.  You did that challenging asana that made you feel like a yoga superstar?  Good for you, but let that go, too.  Wait, we’re supposed to let go of the good, too?

My yoga practice reminds me that for all of our plans and goals and memories and sentimentality, we all really just have this moment, this now.  To be awake and present is one of the keys to enlightenment.  The way of non-attachment is a practice; we get good at what we practice.  How do you practice letting go?

I want to acknowledge Connie Komack for her 2009 sermon “Responding to Change: the art and practice of letting go”.  I found it in the archives of our office.  She wrote, “The Buddhists teach that attachment to anything-material or non-material-is a result of craving or desiring something we cannot or should not have.  Attachment forces us to live in the past or in the future, rather than in the present moment-which is our only true reality.  Lama Surya Das describes attachment as “holding on tightly to something that is always slipping through my fingers – it just gives me rope burn”.  But, he continues, “letting go-non-attachment-relieves the constant painful irritation.”

In the children’s story, the monk who carries the old grouchy woman has performed an act of kindness, although he broke a rule (to carry a woman).  He did it, it was over, it was done.  His partner, on the other hand, had been ‘carrying’ the old woman for hours!  I just love this story, even though too often, I see myself as the monk holding on, versus the monk who has helped and let go.  (It is getting better, admittedly!)  Who is happier?  Who has helped someone else by acting nobly?  Who has let go of the entire affair and moved on back into the present moment?

While looking at the Internet for some inspiration, I discovered Bill Ferguson’s Mastery of Life website.  Ferguson is a former divorce attorney, who gained national attention for his ability to take the conflict out of divorce.  Fifteen percent of his clients never divorced, and the ones who did were able to part as friends.  His focus was on healing relationships.  He showed his clients how to end the conflict and to restore love, not as husband and wife, but as one human being to another.  He closed his practice in 1985 and became a published author and motivational speaker.

He writes, “To make the process of letting go a little easier, there are two very important steps to take.  The first step is trusting.  Trust that no matter what happens, you will be okay.  When you know that you will be okay no matter what happens, letting go becomes relatively easy. The more you trust, the more you let go and the more life turns out okay.  This in turn reinforces trusting.  When you don’t trust, you fight, resist, hang on, and withdraw.  This makes everything worse, which reinforces “don’t trust.” Ferguson continues, “If you are engaged in your spirituality, a powerful way to let go of resisting and hanging on is to give your situation to God.  Life always seems to clear up when you do this.”  Twelve step programs will say, “Let go, let God.” “The second and most important step in the process of letting go is to be willing to feel your hurt.  This is important because it’s the automatic avoidance of the hurt that forces us to resist.  We think that we’re resisting certain circumstances, but we’re not.  We are resisting all the feelings and emotion that are being triggered by the circumstances.The key to releasing emotion and releasing it quickly is to feel your hurt willingly.  Feel it deliberately and purposefully.  Feel it because you choose to.  Reach in, grab it, and pull it out.  Let it come and let it go.” So when you experience an emotion, your brain is actually only experiencing it for 90 seconds.  That anger that I kept holding onto?  It lasted for days.  I knew I was mad but I kept holding on, I couldn’t let it go.  The replay of the hurt, the frustration, the righteousness became larger than the original emotion itself.

I’d like to close on another more personal, more positive anecdote.  This summer I participated in a yoga challenge: 4 yoga classes a week for 4 weeks.  This was a lot for me, but I did it! We were asked to have an intention for the month (something else I so appreciate about yoga: setting intentions); mine was showing kindness to myself.  For years I had muscle tension and pain behind my left shoulder blade.  Getting massages helped and working out made it feel more intense, but it was the knot that wouldn’t go away.  During one of the last classes in the yoga challenge, I said to myself, “I don’t need to feel that pain anymore, I can let it go.” And since that moment, it has gone away.  Now what does this mean?  I don’t really know, but I do know that my heart is in front of that scapula.  I believe that day I made a conscious intention to heal myself and let go of the pain and the tender, broken heart I have had since a frightening, violent experience.

To quote Danna Faulds’ poem from the reading:
“Gain entry not by force or will but only by softness.
Enter on the wings of breath, and turn the key of self-acceptance to let go of something, somewhere.”  This broken heart wasn’t serving me, it was time to let it go, with softness, with breath, with self-acceptance.

So as you go out into the day, take some time to think: what am I holding onto?  How can I let go?  What dark corners or locked rooms need opening?  And may you end up feeling in your body, your soul, that you are in the house of belonging.

May it be so.
Feb 8, 2015

By Heidi Wakeman
Unitarian Universalist Society of Rockport