Time, Time, Time, It’s Just a Matter of Time: The Beauty of Impermanence

EASTER APRIL 24, 2011
Rev. Kirk Ballin

Readings

RESPONSIVE READING #530  “Out of the Stars”

“Out of the stars in their flight, out of the dust of eternity, here have we come, stardust and sunlight, mingling through time and through space. Out of the stars have we come, up from time; Out of the stars have we come. Time out of time before time in the vastness of space, earth spun to orbit the sun, Earth with the thunder of mountains newborn, the boiling of seas. Earth warmed by the sun, lit by sunlight: This is our home; Out of the stars have we come. Mystery hidden in mystery, back through all time; Mystery rising from rocks in the storm and the sea. Out of the stars, rising from rocks and the sea, kindled by sunlight on Earth, arose life. Ponder this thing in your heart; ponder with awe: Out of the sea to the land, out of the shallows came ferns. Out of the sea to the land, up from darkness to light, rising to walk and to fly, out of the sea trembled life. Ponder this thing in your heart, life up from the sea: Eyes to behold, throats to sing, mates to love. Life from the sea, warmed by sun, washed by rain, life from within, giving birth, rose to love. This is the wonder of time; this is the marvel of space; out of the stars swung the Earth; life upon Earth rose to love. This is the marvel of life, rising to see and to know; Out of your heart, cry wonder: sing that we live!”  – Robert Weston

“ Now,after the Sabbath, toward dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead…So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and graet joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” – New Testament, Matthew 28: 1-8

“The essence of Life is fleeting. Life might be over in the next instant! Remembering impermanence can teach you a lot about how to cheer up. It’s OK to let it scare you. Seeing your fear can heighten the sense of gratitude for the preciousness of human birth and the opportunity to [live and] to practice. – Pema Chodren, Comfortable With Uncertainty

Meet this transient world
with neither grasping nor fear,
trust the unfolding of life,
and you will attain true serenity. ~Bhagavad Gita

Thoughts which came to me during a particularly challenging time, a couple of weeks ago:
“I regret the things I cannot change in my past; I accept the limitations of my present; I am emboldened, empowered by the impermanence of my future.”

Sermon

Congregational Chant:  TIME, TIME, TIME, IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME, TIME, TIME…..

Well, it’s that Time of year, again. Time for the U.U. conUndrUm (that has 2 Us in it). It’s when Unitarian Universalsits across the country – -throughout the world, even – puzzle over how to best deal with this Holiday of Easter, within the context of being a religious community. It’s like Christmas in that most of us grew up “celebrating” the event within the experience of being part of traditional Christian churches. So like Christmas, it is a customary and traditional occasion that permeates our culture and one which we find ourselves needing to acknowledge, to find some relationship with Easter, in some way.

But unlike Christmas, Easter poses a unique challenge.  For with Christmas, even for non-Christians, it’s easy to get into the spirit of the birth of a child and all that a humble child embodies in ways of hope, joy, faith, love and promise. With the Christian Easter, however,  for many of us, embracing the image of a persecuted, tortured, suffering man left to die on a cross does not spark joy, and in addition to that, we are asked to believe that this man, Jesus, actually rose from the dead, as Christ, as the Son of God, and that his death and subsequent resurrection offered the rest us the chance for eternal life, if we are to believe in him and his sacrifice.

So today, U.U. worship leaders across the country are spinning Easter for their congregations into something more accessible, palatable, something more in tune with spring and the cycle of life that reflects the pagan origins of Easter, or how the symbolism of the tomb or sacrifice, or rebirth is a call for human transformation, as way of dancing around the doctrine of the Christian Church, that rests upon literally believing in the death and resurrection of a human life form – a belief that stands in complete contradiction to what is observed in all of Nature.

So I bring to you, this morning, my own spin, but a spin that I think is not trying to squeeze something out of the Easter traditions, not trying  to re-interpret the Christ story or even seeking seek refuge in the pagan understandings of the cycle of life, but rather to put into perspective the reasons for these Easter stories mythologies; the Why of Easter. For what I think gives cause to Easter is what we just finished chanting about. Easter is about Time; It’s Just A Matter of Time.

Perhaps I am being species-centric in saying this, but as far as I know or any scientific studies have shown, we human beings are the ONLY species that have the mental capacity, the mind, to be so self-aware that we also have a sense of time – as in having an understanding of past, present and future. We are not only aware of the fact that we are born, we are also aware of our present status , AND, this is a biggy, we are also aware of the fact that in the future – we will die. In other words, we are aware that time, or at least our own individual awareness of time, is finite; time as we know it comes to an end. Our time as living beings is impermanent.

Pretty crazy when you stop and think about it. We know how we started; we know we’re here now; and we know we’re going to end. And we know all of this in this very moment,. as sure as we are here, together, we know that someday will be dust.

Soooooooo. I think, being the thinking, feeling, self-aware beings that we are, that knowing impermanence, death, the end of time for each of us is our inevitable outcome can be pretty anxiety and fear producing, if only mostly churning at the subconscious level. This is particularly true as we get older and as we see the inevitable consequences of time running its course. We know our days are numbered. Happy Easter!!!

But I think this IS the why of Easter, whether the pagan or the Christian Easter mythology, but more pronounced within the Christian Easter (and of course there are other belief systems seeking to do the same thing). The why of Easter is to extend the March of Time beyond our finite, impermanent lives to Time in an infinite capacity; to convince ourselves that death is not the end of time for you or for me, but rather it is a gateway into endless Time: Christ and the Resurrection and Eternal Life, or the never ending cycle of life of which we are eternally a part of.

In other words, these belief systems are an effort to buy ourselves more time. They are meant to reduce our anxiety and fears about death. In fact, in the Christian mythology, death is given as the necessary step to acquire this extended warranty on life, as long as you believe in Christ.

Attempting to reduce the fear of death, the end of time, by creating more time to be rewarded after you die, thereby changing how a person sees him or herself in the world, is a  pretty remarkable human construct, when you think about it. Sort of like a psychological inoculation against the fear of the death.

But like most inoculations, they wear off and you have to get booster shots from the church doctrine – particularly at Easter time, to keep you believing in this Extended Time package.
So counting on Extended Time is still a pretty fragile place to be. The promise of something you don’t know or see or have experienced or talked about with anyone who knows what Extended Time is all about has to be dependent upon faith in something you’ve been told by others, and have to be retold by others over and over again – yet you still don’t REALLY know if there’s eternal life waiting for you or not. The anxiety and fear are still lurking within your mind. You still fear the impermanence of your existence, or at least fear whether you’ve believed and practiced enough in the right way to qualify for this Extended Warranty.

These Easter stories and other stories that want me to believe in an eternal timebank for my soul or anything else aren’t for me. I’d rather deal with the reality I know, which is what time is: a beginning, a middle, and then an end; it happens to everything. Impermanence reigns.  Impermanence is forever.
When you think about it, life IS pretty dangerous. Life’ll Kill You and Then You’ll Be Dead is how the Warren Zevon song goes. Every breath may be our last breath. So rather than fear the next breath, I say let us try to live the next breath. Try to make each breath count for the life we have left to live. The only time we have is the time we have now.

I shared with you in the readings the train of thought I had a couple of weeks ago that grew out of a challenging situation I was dealing with. In that challenging situation, I became acutely aware of my time here in this life. I accepted that  I could not change the past, I was humbly aware of the limitations of my present, yet in knowing that my end lay before me in the future, I felt a sense of being emboldened, of being empowered knowing that the one for certain truth of my reality, my impermanence,  was playing out, and rather than fearing or trying to deny that impermanence I was going embrace it for what it is: THE reality of Creation. My impermanence is what offers me the opportunity to really feel alive.

The paradox of knowing and embracing our impermanence is that it can spur us to choose to live our lives not simply to deny time or fend off death, but to live our lives to seek out what each of us witness as beauty in this world, and to know that it is all fleeting, and thereby,  all the more worthy of our attention. A flower in perpetual bloom is not beautiful. A flower that blooms for a short span of time grabs us because of its fleeting beauty.  It is in the impermanence of Creation that beauty is born. To spend the short time in consciousness that we have as human beings, and waste it in being in fear of impermanence or in anticipation of some unknown future beyond time as we know it is not a life lived. To embrace our impermanence and to live our lives like the flower as an opportunity to display our own beauty and to nurture beauty, as each of us defines it,  in the world, as fleeting as it will be, is to live life as it was created to be.

“Out of the Stars we have come, up from time, time out of time, this is the wonder of time, this is the marvel of life, rising to see and to know; out of the heart , cry wonder, sing that we live.” That is the Beauty of Impermanence: to embolden and empower us to live. Only we can give life to life. Death will simply take care of itself. Don’t worry about it.

“Meet this transient world with neither grasping nor fear, trust the unfolding of life…”
Happy Easter! Amen.