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Sermon by Chris Holton-Jablonski
by Chris Holton-Jablonski
From our very first days, we are conditioned to crave. We are living in a world in which our schools are faced with grim economic realities. Here in California, with so many of our educators recently laid off, we know the pain of financing education. Some Principals are faced with a choice between cutting programs and laying off teachers or opening their schools to outside sources of income. Imagine the opposite. One of my favorite bumper stickers speaks of a day when schools would have abundant funding, enough to research and invest in new modalities and technologies of learning and the military would be forced to have a bake sale, to embroider camouflage Nike symbols to their uniforms. A day when the President would introduce the State of the Union address as being brought to you by the good people at Coca Cola. Intensely powerful forces are bent on making us consume more and more, and they are targeting us at younger and younger ages. · · · Yet we can know craving's release. The world of advertisement is focused on convincing us that we are lacking some fundamental ingredient to our lives. That we have been living at half capacity, that we could be faster, better, sexier, smarter, richer, and more powerful if we were only to try at last these fantastic products. Consumer culture is boring a hole inside our sense of self. Creating a chasm of want, which can never actually be filled. And that's the genius. This craving, this desire is self perpetuating. Like a virus or a cancer it spreads through our being. The more we feed our cravings, the more powerful they become. The more we buy, the more we want. Like the king of this morning's story we fill our houses to overflowing with gifts and treasures and we are not satisfied. There is always the next size up, always next years model.
The cell phone pager walkie talkie with Palm Pilot, Personal
Computer, Digital Camera and email capability. As quickly as
products are produced we consume them. With a desperation and
abandon we try to fill, to nourish this chasm, only to feel it
widen. Just this summer my fiancee and I were visiting a winery just north of here. Two young women were at the counter buying a case of six expensive bottles of wine. One of them said, as she handed over her credit card, "I'm not going to do my banking until I get my next paycheck… for now I'm just going to hold my breath and keep shopping." · · · We can know craving's release. Often the drive into consumption is driven by emotion. We indulge in retail therapy. In the wake of September Eleventh I reeled in sadness. I had just moved clear across the country to start seminary. One week into school, tragedy struck and I felt deeply alone. I was lucky. My friends and family were well. But all of them were thousands of miles out of hugging distance. I ached. Something broken within me compelled me to seek out healing, to seek out something to bind my wounds. I did some first rate emotionally driven consumption. I had moved out here with only what I could fit into my small car and so had no furniture. I had the itch, my craving animal soul feared the depths of my sadness. I joined in the salmon stream of IKEA. Frantically returning to see what in their mischievous maze I still lacked. I fed my animal soul. I gasped for air in the smoky oven. I fed my craving and it was not sated. Now luckily I saw what was happening and stopped myself before I was swamped with towering debt. Even in the throws of depression, even in the consumptive craze, all the while we can know the sweet basil and fresh breeze. We have a center to come back to. We can know craving's release. In her book, Drinking, A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes of her own struggle with alcoholism. She writes, "A woman I know named Liz calls alcoholism 'the disease of more', a reference to the greediness so many of us tend to feel around liquor, the grabbiness, the sense of impending deprivation and the certainty that we'll never have enough. More is always better to the alcoholic, more is always necessary." Alcoholism is a disease. And one of the symptoms of the disease
is the gnawing, the itchiness, the craving. Life revolves around the craving's feeding. · · · This kind of hunger is only ever partially quenched. Only temporarily sated. · · · Maybe its coffee. The necessary head clearing day-starter. Maybe it's that cool smooth tobacco flavor. Maybe it's the rush of a heroin high or the feeling of a new pair of shoes. Whatever the external expression, the internal reality is craving. A yearning for something, a dissatisfaction with life as it is. And we can know its release. Aspects of ourselves and our souls, are woven fine. We are brought into this world tasting, being, at once spirit and human, both clear and blessedly befuddled. We have been given the delicate and awe inspiring task of walking in between these states, of choosing how we will live in this world. And these choices matter. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha is reported to have said,
The Buddha taught us that all of suffering comes from craving. Either craving something that we do not have, or craving that something we do have would be different. Craving change, or craving stasis. Craving something that is not. He says that when we live carelessly, when we blithely go along with the tides of consumerism, devouring useless objects, filling ourselves with things, we suffer. And as we continue the cycles of consumption we heap suffering upon suffering. We go from existence to existence as the ape swinging from tree to tree seeking fruit. We skirt around the edges of the lessons of our lives only to be born into them again and again. But we have another option. · · · I remember a dear friend of mine who was a part of a meditation group with me. His name is Ramesh, a precious and beautiful scientist in his late sixties. At the end of one of our sittings he was in tears, overcome with joy. He said that he was so grateful to finally, even at his age begin the process of training his mind and his heart. He said that he felt how often he had opportunities throughout his life to begin, but chose not to and that now he felt contented and deeply appreciative to have begun to unwind the ball he had spent his life winding. I remember so clearly the beauty of his tears as they streamed down his smiling face. Water from his blossom. · · · We have a unique opportunity as human beings to engage with this life. To live deeply and choose to begin the lifelong process of unraveling. Craving is hard to quell, and unengaged it will grow with abandon. But we can know its release. Contentment and abundant peace can flow. · · · We can affirm through our lives and our actions a glorious abundance. If we feel the fresh breeze and smell the sweet basil scent of our truest identity, if we taste more and more our clarity and truth, we can allow these clinging and grasping states to begin the slow and steady slide out of our lives. Indeed you all have been doing just this. In the face of a world which promotes individualism and personal advancement you have come together to affirm community. In a time of economic scarcity you have taken on the immense task of building a spiritual home from the ground up. It is one thing to go to church. It is quite another to create one. This is a powerful achievement. This is precisely the kind of action, the kind of endeavor which places your hearts in alignment with what you hold most holy and most dear. This is precisely the kind of action that affirms radical abundance and plenty. A handful of people come together and affirm that there will be enough money, enough energy, enough excitement, enough time, enough refreshments, enough rent, enough love and enough commitment to build here a spiritual home for yourselves, for your children, and for all those who will come into this circle in the years to come. · · · This is how we know craving's release. · · · In this time of potential you are setting the patterns, planting
the seeds which will define how this community will grow. Take
care in the sowing. Here you can be known, you can be held as you do the deep
work of your unique unraveling. Here you can pour out your cravings,
release yourselves from your suffering, and know your own clarity
and power. May we smell here sweet basil, feel here cool breezes. May we thrive and flourish in fullness and contentment. Amen  |