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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
...and Thich Nhat Hahn
McFarland UCC member Heather Wallace shared a quote with me this morning from a book featuring the teachings of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn. Here's the quote:
"There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, 'Where are you going?' and the first man replies, 'I don’t know! Ask the horse!'
This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. We are always running, and it has become a habit. We struggle all the time even during our sleep. We are at war within ourselves, and we can easily start a war with others. We have to learn the art of stopping—stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us."
What an amazing teaching and metaphor. Most of us don't even realize when and how we're "riding a horse," and that the horse often has a mind and will of its own. There are so many horses running around with our lives and world on their backs these days...
"The horse is our habit energy." Habitual ways of thinking and acting. And Thich Nhat Hahn says that sometimes what we need most is to "stop our thinking."
That reminded me of Romans 12:2: "Do not let the world cram you into its mold or its way of thinking" (JB Philips translation)
This can speak to us in so many ways. We could certainly apply it to so-called "conventional wisdom" when it comes to politics and so many social issues. The applications are endless.
Among other things, I hear it as an invitation to take a good look at the unrecognized forces and agendas and emotions that seem to almost have a will of their own and that can easily take us in directions we don't really want to go. I hear it as an invitation to pause and take a good look at some of our own foundational assumptions. Things we've been taught were true but that may not be at all. So much of what rules our lives and our actions and our attitudes is based on habitual ways of thinking (and feeling) that we don't stop to question, and that may not be objectively true or necessary at all. There are entire industries such as advertising and much of the insurance industries for example that require that we be fearful and afraid somehow if we don't follow their advice or buy what they are selling. Political campaigns often thrive on fanning the same coals of fear within us. Do we HAVE to be fearful? Do we HAVE to be anxious? Do we HAVE to be insecure? Will what they are selling actually make us any more secure and less afraid? These horses can run away with us if we let them.
The potential applications of this teaching are endless, but here's one of another kind.
Recently in one of our Sunday morning Bible Studies we were looking at a Bible text that at first reading made it sound as though God is a Being we need to fear and who will punish certain kinds of people and not allow them to "enter the Kingdom of God." Understandably, a number of us didn't like what it was saying at all about God, and it struck some of us as a good example of why we don't particularly like the Bible itself and why some of us have struggled with whether or not we can call ourselves Christian.
But then someone said, in essence--Hey maybe there's a completely different way to think about this. That person said, "Because of my own experience and overall Scripture studyfor the last few years I no longer see God as a punishing God who needs to be feared at all, and I don't see Heaven as a place we go after we die if we somehow pass God's test. I don't buy any of that. So either these kinds of texts are just plain wrong--or there must be other ways to understand what they are saying.
Others agreed. It's time to get off that fear horse and stop thinking about God as an angry Father Figure Judge who needs to be feared. We looked at the text in the original Greek, and found that there were other ways to interpret certain key words that made a huge difference. We talked about the whole concept of "judgement" and realized it could be construed as "a time of reckoning" or "facing consequences for our own poor choices" and that maybe what the text was talking about was the pain we bring on ourselves and each other when our lives are off-Center spiritually. That made sense to all of us, and we agreed that it is a good thing that we humans are somehow accountable for our choices and actions, because a society in which people can act destructively and unjustly without any consequences and distort truth without checks or balances is on a course of violent self-destruction and possibly a complete collapse. That made sense to us.
The whole notion that God is an angry judge to be feared is a "horse" that way too many Christians are riding. That wild and dangerous horse needs to be stopped, fed some fresh food, and loved back to health. "Gentled," as they would say in the horse world.
What "habit energies" are you riding? What ways of thinking do you need to either stop altogether or somehow redirect? Let that be the focus of your prayers. Sometimes what we need most is to simply know that we're riding a horse. Once we're aware and have named this for what it is, often the grace we need to stop moving in a certain direction is simply given. Name and reframe, and the power of that horse is often significantly diminished.
But since brother Thich Nhat Hahn got us into this, let's let him have the final words here;
How can we stop this state of agitation? How can we stop our fear, despair, anger, and craving? We can stop by practicing mindful breathing, mindful talking, mindful smiling, and deep looking in order to understand. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love, and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy. But our habit energies are often stronger than our volition. We say and do things we don’t want to and afterward we regret it. We make ourselves and others suffer, and we bring about a lot of damage. We may vow not to do it again, but we do it again. Why? Because our habit energies push us. We need the energy of mindfulness to recognize and be present with our habit energy in order to stop this course of destruction. With mindfulness, we have the capacity to recognize the habit energy every time it manifests. “Hello, my habit energy, I know you are there!” If we just smile to it, it will lose much of its strength. Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us.
Hope to see you in church outside this Sunday or somewhere soon!
Pastor Bryan
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