2008 SERMON LIST

Rev. Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
RevAnnFox@aol.com

Unitarian Universalist
Society of Fairhaven

Catching Butterflies

a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox

August 23, 2008

Note: A short reading is attached, which you might like to read first.

            How skilled are you at catching butterflies? Even to follow a butterfly for more than a minute is not easy. Yesterday, there was a huge black one with orange dots in our garden. It flew a crazy path around and about before finding our Butterfly Bush. A poet observed two butterflies mating. This is Danna Faulds’ poem called “Two Butterflies Meet”: 

            Two butterflies meet in midair.
            They celebrate their intimate
            pairing, and fly as one being
            with mingled wings. When
            their impromptu coupling is
            complete, they take their leave,
            no sadness in the parting.

--from Go In and In by Danna Faulds (p. 68)

If you really want to know how to catch a butterfly, you can log onto a children’s website on the Internet. It advises: 

  1. Look for butterflies May-August. (You’d better hurry up in our area because the Monarchs are all gathering in the bushes of Horseneck Beach in Westport. They cover all the bushes; it is quite a sight! Within days, they’ll take off en mass for South America.)
  2. Know their favorite environment: fields, mountains, wildlife refuge, a garden.
  3. They love nectar and are important pollinators. (Grow sweet peas or plant a butterfly bush and watch them come time and time again.) Spray your hand with sugar water and watch them sit on your hand.
  4. Raise them from caterpillars and watch them change. (One of my friends does this and so has dozens of butterflies in her garden.)
  5. Buy a bug kit with a net. Keep the net behind you or at your side. Follow the butterfly, then sweep the net when you get close enough to catch the butterfly.


            I have watched people hunt for butterflies. Their concentration is very intense and there is great excitement and joy when they move into the catch. It’s even a delight to watch the catchers. Warm summer days offer us many such activities—the kind that bring us easily, and often unintentionally, into the NOW, the present moment of awareness. Some people who retire discover this state of being. If you ask a retiree, “How is retirement for you?” and they answer, “Oh, it’s won-der-ful!” you’ll know that they’ve discovered the NOW. Spiritual teachers tell us that we don’t have to wait for retirement if we practice being in the NOW and there would be far fewer accidents on the road and far happier people.

            Why don’t we all live in that joyful present moment? The writer, Eckhart Tolle [toe-lee] we heard this morning tells us that it is because we live in our shallow self, our ego self, not our spiritual Self.

            I was astonished when I read his story because it was so similar to the day I discovered my own two selves. I was driving home from work and listening to a story on NPR of a popular political science professor in a South American country who challenged the government about causing the disappearance of thousands of people. She was famous for wearing red high-heeled boots. One day she disappeared. Her wealthy family offered a huge reward for news of her. They were led to her dead body in a field. She was wearing the red, high-healed boots for which she was so famous. I was so caught up in the terrible sadness, that I had to pull off the road and I sobbed. Then I said, “How upset I am! But wait a minute! Who is the ‘I’?” There I was observing the self that suffered the tragedy of this brave woman. In the days that followed, I kept coming back to this moment when I noticed my two selves. I noticed that I was actually sad about a lot of things but being of an optimistic nature I was used to smiling, in spite of sadness. The woman’s story had become an outlet for the sadness I carried on an ongoing basis. This began my spiritual exploration into who I was and who I was in relation to others. But I didn’t become famous, like Eckhart Tolle. The whole idea of what the ego self is and the spiritual self is exploded before me but it took some years to unpack it all. These two selves are so clear in Hindu scripture; Buddhism, a reform movement of Hinduism, had taken up the concept and made it a fundamental part of their religion.

            You heard that Eckhart Tolle was deeply depressed and suicidal when he made his discovery. He calls his spiritual self his “I AM” nature. He says that we are unhappy because we identify with our thoughts and with the material world. The place of unbelievable happiness is the place of no thought, instead of the place of random streams of thoughts that are full of fears and anxieties. When we begin being a witness to our thoughts, we can move through them to a place of Beingness, a timeless place that can help us handle life’s demands with greater clarity and peace.

            With all this talk about two selves—ego and Being—perhaps it’s time for a humor break.
Question: What do you call a schizophrenic Buddhist?
Answer: Someone who is at two with the universe. Get it?

But what is this place of “Being.” Is it God? Since the word God has a lot of baggage for many people, perhaps we can define Being as that place or energy where we all connect. (I love the 13th century poet, Rumi’s line: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”) [from The Essential Rumi, p. 36] Most of life’s problems boil down to being alienated, disconnected. We are disconnected from our friends, our children, our brothers, sisters, aunts, and so on, and perhaps from our Self—our Being self. How unhappy we are when we’re disconnected. (Note: Sometimes, however, we have to remain disconnected to allow the other person space to want to reconnect.)

Eckhart Tolle tells us that being aware of and witnessing our thoughts is the first step to enlightenment. Connecting with our Being self is our next step and this is when we are in the present moment of awareness. (In moments of joy, you are in your Being Self.) I, too, believe that these steps are what we must all recognize in order not to continue causing havoc in the world. Recognizing Being in the self helps us to see it in others. I wholeheartedly believe that this is the way to Peace within and peace with others.

Our country prides itself on being a religious people. As we move towards the elections, we will witness the divisive nature of our religious stances. Witnessing the struggle for power will frustrate us. We will have our favorites but both sides will eventually dismay us as they grasp at any means that will win the election. We will hope for a savior but will have to settle for second best (or worse). Fear not, for we are all in this evolving human drama together. The best we can do is to maintain our own peaceful center by being in the NOW as much as possible. But how do we get to the NOW, or Being, or the place of catching butterflies, if you like?

            The first step is to want to live in the NOW and be COMMITTED to it. Next, set aside the time to witness our thoughts and feelings without judgment. (Recognize that feelings are intensified thoughts.) Then, focus on being in the place of no thought. Being, or the NOW will arise. Following is what we printed in the Order of Service to nurture being in the NOW:

Practices for Being in the Moment (inspired by Eckhart Tolle):

  1. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer yourself: The time is NOW.
  2. Notice your thoughts. Look at them. Be a “witness” to them. Say to yourself, “These are interesting.” Then just keep your mind trained on witnessing the thoughts. Do not judge or label them, just witness. Soon you’ll be in a place of “no thought” and peace and joy.
  3. Focus on breathing when thoughts creep back in.
  4. In times when you’re caught up in emotions, observe them; notice what’s going on. Don’t judge; just notice. Remember that Tolle told us that emotions are thoughts expressed in the body.
  5. If you commit to these practices, you will more and more come to know Being, No Thought, Joy, Peace, your TRUE Self. Guaranteed!


            Although there are dozens of books on the market about the present moment, I highly recommend getting Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of NOW. You can get it used for a dollar on Amazon.com, which is what I did. (Of course, it is $4 for shipping.) You might read this book in a week, or a year, or many years. The book was on the market for five years and its popularity spread by word of mouth before it became a best seller, thanks to Oprah Winfrey who said that Tolle’s books changed her life. (I’ve only seen Oprah’s show once but she seems like a wise person to me.)

Our third principle—acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth—explicitly calls us to growth of this kind. There are many ways of growing spiritually; this is one—I hope you find yours!

 

Reading: from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
(Pronunciation: Toe- Lee, as in Slowly, Wickipedia)

            I have little use for the past and rarely think about it….Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about…somebody else’s life.

            One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room…everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.

            “I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me; the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”

            I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts…I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy…and then…gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake….I have no recollection of what happened after that.”

Note: Eckhart awakened the next day with the image of a great diamond in his mind and the sound of birds singing emanating from the diamond. He then spent the next five months in place of “uninterrupted deep peace and bliss”.

© The Rev. Ann C. Fox

Return to the top of the page.