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A Meaningful Life

By Charles Rush

September 13, 2009

[ Audio (mp3, 5.5Mb) ]

got an email from a friend of mine this year who was moving her Aunt for her Aunt's 10th and probably final move. This time here Aunt needed a lot of help as one of the Aunt's children lived a long way away and the other one had died. The Aunt was moving out of the house and into an apartment that was much more manageable, so the two of them were going through what to keep and what to throw out.

She is up in the attic and there are all of these boxes that are sealed. She opens them up and they are filled with Christmas stuff, really beautiful pieces that make the season festive, hand carved crèches, and wooden spindles from the old country in Northern Europe.

She goes back down stairs and asks her Aunt about the boxes. She never remembered seeing them as a young person. Her Aunt responded that she'd collected them for years when she was young but then she just never found a good reason to go through all the work of getting them set up and then she pretty much forgot about them and really didn't even know what she had.

She goes back up to the Attic, opening more and more boxes and finally comes across this exquisite cut glass punch bowl, looks like it has never been used. She can tell from the contents of the box that it has been packed and repacked, stored, but never used.

She is sitting there and suddenly she is overwhelmed with sadness over all this potential life that is still in the box. She said it was like looking at Christmas that never actually came. She found herself just weeping until she was filled with fear and she left the whole lot of things where they were for quite some time.

This is one of the ways our soul cries out to us, in this case somewhere during mid-life. You have this deep intuition that life is moving fast around you, that you might not be actualizing the potential resident within. You sense how fleeting things are at the same time you want to fill the moment. You have this sense of deep loneliness for only a moment because it is an anxiety that is worrisome enough to us that the instant we experience it, we start to banish it, defend against it, just change the channel.

She wrote me a note with a couple other friends and asked us what she should do with this? I wrote her back and said, “Let's have a Christmas party this year with that punch bowl. My Grandfather gave me a recipe for special flavoring in the punch that will bring about happiness.”

That exchange started a reflection for her on her childhood, her family's emotional reserve, their need for control- all these issues that made for interesting therapy sessions no doubt. But collectively, all of these emotional and family dynamic issues, well up in this deep residing need for meaning in our life. Do you ever have a moment where that sadness overtakes you with a depth that is surprising even to yourself? Among other things, it a regularly recurring way our soul cries out to us that it needs to be nourished.

The converse is true as well. You ever have a moment when you suddenly feel a deep sense of belonging in the world, where everything feels like it is lining up and your place in the world is suddenly coherent. Things just feel like they are coming together and that the best is yet to come?

I was at the farm last month, it was the middle of the night, I woke up because the moon was so full and bright that I walked outside in my bare feet beckoned by the sheer mystery. The moonlight shone through the trees so that everywhere it was like low level day almost. I was just looking up through the forest wondering what kind of animal activity you get when the night illumines like this, how at home I really feel there, and I can feel at home because I am so grateful that my girlfriend, who became also a wife and also a grandmother somehow- my girlfriend is happy to be in the quiet out on her land and she thinks I have something to do with her happiness… And I'm looking out over the grass and the pond and the tractor- Oh, the greatest machine ever invented- and I just looking around at all of this and I know that I'll lay down some strong memories here with the rising generation. And it is all… it is all good… just like they say at Tito's Burrito's. It is all good.

I have a friend who is right now at the top of his career. Most of us are just trying to stay employed, but he is bursting with ideas, connecting with people, putting together creative new initiatives. He is finally in the Director's chair. This is his moment and when you are around him, you get dizzy with all this intensity. Recently, I said to him, ‘you know…'

“Don't say it” he replied.

I was going to say, ‘You know, these are the good old days for you my friend.' He didn't want me to say it because it might jinx something…

You ever feel like that for a short but thick moment? That is your soul overflowing with contentment. Buddhists and Hindu's call this state ‘Atman' when you feel briefly connected and in harmony with the world around you. Usually in the East, they depict it in the statues of the Buddha as a kind of serene peace. In the West, we would describe it differently, as a sense of intensity and fulfillment. We are more likely to experience it, not through meditation, but when our lives are just filled with good things and blessings. Either way, in those moments, we are exuding our connectedness with the spiritual dimension of our existence. When that is in sync, we feel blessing welling up and overflowing in our lives.

Jesus taught us that we are in sync spiritually when connect to that spiritual transcendence in our lives. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul.”

Jesus taught us that we are in sync spiritually when we sense our connectedness to each other. “Love Your Neighbor as yourself.”

Judaism teaches us, the Bible teaches us that we are both body and soul. The body is important because if it is not healthy, we can't fully realize the higher reasons for which we live. So we have to care for it and take care of it.

But our body is also limited by our physical needs. Those needs can and do drive us. We have instinctual aversion to fire that we cannot control. Your body runs low on water, not only does it completely alter your mood, if you get thirsty enough, you will do almost anything to get water asap. The same thing with food as every mother experiences sometime when they miss just one feeding- it is amazing. I was reading a humorous article on the brain, sex, and adolescent boys. The author noted that they think about sex every 90 seconds on average, unless they were my fraternity brothers and then it was every 15 seconds. Our bodies are just programmed to respond like this, so sometimes you can't tell who is riding who, libido or ego?

So, the Rabbi's used to say that our bodies are inherently selfish. Their foundational motivation is their own survival, so first they take care of themselves. This is the nature of our physical existence. And that is one dimension of human nature.

But the other dimension of human nature is the spiritual dimension that Jesus is talking about in our scriptures. Our souls have this dimension of humility to them in distinction to self-regard of our physical impulses. Our souls have this capacity to rise above ourselves, to see others in need and to respond with sensitivity. We can, so to speak, transcend ourselves.

That is why in Judaism, as you probably know, one of the fundamental images of God is the burning candle. It represents the flame of our souls that is rising up, transcending ourselves, reaching towards God.

“A man once visited the Rebbe and complained about the lack of meaningfulness in his life. Yes, he had a successful career and a healthy family, but at the end of the day, eh felt lonely and empty.

“Do you ever devote time to your soul?” the Rebbe asked him.

“How can I have time for my soul when I am so consumed with work and family?”

“There is an old saying”, the Rebbe replied, ‘That when two people meet, it is two souls against one body. Because bodies are self-centered by nature, they cannot join forces- each pursues its own physical needs. Souls, however, are selfless by nature, so when two people join forces, their souls converge. May I suggest to you and I resolve here and now a time each day to study and pray (to think on higher thoughts), and do an additional good deed for someone else. By connecting upward and connecting outward in compassion, you will nourish your soul and give focus and meaning to all that you do, rather than your being controlled by the random forces of your life.”[i]

Upward (looking above) and onward (touching the lives of those around you in compassion)… Love God with all your heart… And love those around you as yourself. This saying is hard, not because it is difficult to understand but because it is difficult for us to actually practice. We have to come back to it again and again with new resolve.

Perhaps you've seen the short film that features two grown men sitting on a park bench, father and son. The son is in his late 40's and the father is in his late 70's, looking like he might be losing some of his faculties. They are sitting their quiet, looking bored, the way that sometimes we feel when we are with our families physically but we really wish we could be doing something that we need to do or go some place that we want to go.

The older man says ‘What is that?'

The son says ‘A bird'.

The older man says ‘What is that?'

The son says, louder this time, “Dad it is a bird”

The older man says ‘What is that?'

The younger man screeches impatiently, “Dad, it is a sparrow… A sparrow okay?

The older man walks away and returns with a book and says to the younger man ‘read, out loud'. It is an entry from the older man's diary from many, many years ago. It said “Today I took by two year old son to the park. We sat on the bench. 21 times he asked me ‘What is that?' Each and every time I hugged him and said, “it's a bird”.

They sit there on the bench as the camera pans out behind them. After a bit, you see the son put his head on his father's shoulder and hug him.

Why is it that we are like that? I don't know but we are. We have to come back to this time and again.

And sometimes, it seems that it is hardest to break out of the box and be genuinely compassionate with people in our birth families for reasons that are as complex in our family lives as we are in our internal lives.

Perhaps, it was for that reason that St. Paul once suggested that the Church ought to become a spiritual family of families, where we find surrogate spiritual mentor parents and adopted spiritual sisters and brothers. This community is the place where we learn and re-learn what it means to love and nourish others, thereby becoming stronger spiritually and nourishing our own souls. This is the place that we intentionally open ourselves to becoming more profoundly connected with integrity and lift one another up, celebrating with one another in our seasons of joy, comforting one another in our seasons of sorrow.

“To be a wholesome and healthy person, your body and soul must work in harmony. We need not choose one over the other, indulgence or abstinence; we can and must merge the body and soul. And this means uniting the body and soul to fulfill the mission for which we were all put on earth: to lead a meaningful, productive, and virtuous life by making this physical world a comfortable home for spirituality and Godliness; Everyone of us fulfills this mission using our unique abilities and talents, whether a person is a teacher or a parent, a businessman or a scientist. We must all seek to become aware of our mission and actualize it by conducting our lives from minute to minute, from day to day, from year to year” growing in the depth of our expression of love.[ii]

The Spiritual life is an experiment in learning the more profound way of love; we need each other in order to do it; so we are glad you are here. What is it that you can contribute? What is it that you can bring that makes others stronger and deeper? What is the one good deed that you can do at the moment?

Make some time for prayer and study. Add one good deed in and through our community. Nourish others and discover that as a by-product, you are getting spiritually healthier yourself. We are glad you are here. And… Welcome Home.

[i] This story as well as the ideas of this sermon come from a collection of the writings of the Grand Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The book is called “Toward a Meaningful Life” (New York: William Morrow, 1995) see chapter 1, p. 3 for the quote. The ideas of the chapter are introductory thoughts for Jews and Christians. I was surprised reading the book that it was as good as it is. When the Rebbe was alive, people came from all over the world, to ask him questions and he answered them after the Sabbath meal. A group of students would memorize them (as they were forbidden from writing them down on the Sabbath) and would faithfully represent them the next day.

[ii] Ibid. p. 5