Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County

Walking Through a Generous Universe

Rev. Peter A. Friedrichs

June 10, 2007

I took the title of today's sermon from a magazine article I came across last summer. Irene and I were staying in a small cabin community in Montana, and Irene was reading an issue of "Montana Quarterly" that had been left in the room. She pointed to an article, which bore the title, Walking Through a Generous Universe, and said to me, "Now there's a sermon for you." She does that to me all the time, pointing out potential sermon topics and challenging me to preach about them. As usual, she was right about this one, so here we are.

The article described the life of Tony Rasch, a 60-something resident of Bozeman, Montana, who had recently completed a hike from Mexico to Canada. Tony was not, however, one of those "through-hikers" who set out from the Mexico border in early April and finished his trek in Canada that fall. In fact, it took Tony nearly 25 years to complete this personal quest of his, taking a week or two each year to walk different segments of the trail. Tony walked every step of the trail by himself, and it took him nearly half his life to reach the end. He carried a pack that held 9 or 10 days worth of food, a couple changes of clothes and a rain jacket, but no tent or other shelter. As the article reported, "Rasch eschewed the clap-trap of modern backcountry gadgetry, the stuff many hikers have come to see as essential." No GPS, no cell phone, not even a watch.

Rasch's schedule would typically have him up at first light, hitting the trail after eating a piece of chocolate. He would often stop to jot some notes in his journal about the plant and animal life he encountered, or to take a few pictures. Traveling 15 to 20 miles a day, he'd usually find a place to stop around mid-day, when he'd snack on some sardines and crackers, then go exploring a nearby peak or mountain ridge until it got dark. "If I wanted something hot for dinner, I'd throw a can of beans into the fire," he said. Reflecting on his lifelong journey through the wilds of the American West, Rasch told the reporter that he always remained open to possibility and to impulse. He said, "I feel like I live in a generous universe. Doors open for me, as they open for all of us. I walk through, keep going, and more doors will open."

As we move into the summer months, we begin to feel again the abundance that the world has to offer us. The leaves on the trees have achieved their succulent fullness, the rich dark green telling us that they are consuming maximum carbon dioxide and producing maximum levels of oxygen. Our gardens have taken full root, some beginning to produce early crops like peas and beans. The heat of the summer sun calls us to the shore and the beaches, where we stare out at the vast expanse of the ocean, with all its teeming life. I don't know if you caught any of the episodes of the series "Planet Earth" on the Discovery Channel recently, but in just a few short hours of television the producers of this series captured the rich diversity of all creation, from the smallest larva to the tallest mountain. It was impossible to watch that show and not feel both awed and moved by the rich diversity of life on this small planet.

Now, this series was not all sweetness and light. There were times when it was difficult to watch, and even downright disturbing. When polar bears swam sixty miles out to sea in search of pack ice, drowning from exhaustion. When lions attacked a newborn elephant, despite the heroic efforts of the herd to protect it. When sea lions were viciously consumed by great white sharks. These moments of drama and danger and death remind us that the world is not just a place of beauty and wonder, but also one of pain and loss and grief. In all its abundance, our world is no idyllic Eden, where the lion and the lamb sleep safely in each other's arms. The fullness of life inevitably leads to the emptiness of death. And yet, as each winter turns to spring, we are reborn in our hope for a new life, a life that seems to reach toward fulfillment in the halcyon days of summer.

Our connection to nature reminds us of our own human nature. Like the world around us, we are at once both beautiful and brutal, equal parts awe-inspiring and awful, frequently grand and often grandiose. It is this tension between who we are and who we hope to be, between our actuality and our deepest aspirations, that is lived out in the cycles of wounding and forgiveness, of addiction and recovery, of disappointment, discouragement, and dreams that won't die. When we are suffering from a deadly illness, when the end of a relationship has left us battered and broken, when our jobs are in jeopardy, during these and countless other winters of our souls it is hard to trust in the promise of spring and the fullness of summer. And yet, summer is here again.

How might it change us, how might we live, were we to trust in the abundance of the universe? If we were to believe that there is more than enough for all of us? There are, I think, two drastically different paths down which we might travel in a world where we appreciate the abundance all around us. The first leads us to say: "There's more than enough to go around, so I can have anything and everything I want. I'm entitled to it, and since there's plenty for everyone, I'm not hurting anyone if I take what I want." This is the theory behind the best-selling book and DVD called "The Secret." Have you heard of The Secret? The book has spent the past 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and the DVD has been the best-selling film on Amazon.com since March. Simon and Shuster, the publisher of the book, has just run a second printing of 2 million copies, the largest second printing in its history. It's all over the Internet, having spawned "Secret Societies" and so-called "Powerful Intention Communities." It doesn't hurt that Oprah Winfrey has gushed over it and dedicated two separate episodes to it.

The authors of The Secret tell us that the Secret is so powerful that it's been kept hidden from most of us for hundreds, even thousands of years. Until now, it's only been shared among the most wealthy, the most powerful, the most learned. People like the Buddha, Aristotle, Shakespeare and Martin Luther King, Jr. Once you learn the Secret, you can have whatever you want - wealth, fame, popularity, fulfilling relationships - and you can be whomever or whatever you long to be. The Secret is the simple law by which the entire universe operates, and once you learn the Secret you will never want for anything again. And now, for the first time in history, the Secret is available to you…for the low, low price of $23.95.

You might be able to guess from my remarks thus far that I'm not impressed by The Secret. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll tell you that I sat at the bookstore for about an hour the other day and read through it. If I thought it had any real value, I would have bought it, but I didn't, so I returned it to its shelf when I left the store. The Secret is what Rev. John Buehrens calls "spiritual fast food." In the moment it might satisfy your cravings, but in the long run it offers little sustenance and can even be harmful to your health. I will grant you that The Secret contains some elements I can support. It talks about the abundance of the universe and the importance of cultivating a sense of gratitude toward the gifts we are given. But that's where it ends. Because The Secret teaches that the world's abundance is available to you for your use and your personal pleasure. It is, in some ways, a throwback to the pre-milennium interpretation of the Book of Genesis, when we were told that God's instruction that mankind should "have dominion over every living thing that moves upon the earth" meant that we could use up our natural resources with reckless abandon. The authors of The Secret tell us that we can have whatever we want, from a prime parking space at the mall to a multi-million dollar mansion, if we do but two simple things: ask for it and believe that it will happen. The book actually refers to the Universe as a "cosmic catalogue" from which you can order whatever you want. And just like placing an order from Amazon.com, you can believe that it will be delivered to you just as certainly as FedEx will bring you your blender. The Secret equates the Universe with a genie in a bottle, purporting to teach us just the right way to rub the magic lamp to coax him to come out. It is the "power of positive thinking" run amok.

The Secret does two things (at least) that are, I think, equally destructive. First, it fails to distinguish between moral and immoral choices. According to the authors' theory, every request - if properly made and properly believed - will be answered without regard to its impact. Whether I ask for a shiny new car or for my obnoxious colleague at work to be hit by bus, as long as I ask and I believe, both wishes will be granted as equally deserving. And what is worse to this even, is that it places the blame for bad things - disease, poverty, crime - squarely on the shoulders of the victims. The Secret tells us that the so-called Law of Attraction empowers us to attract good things to us and that, conversely, we are responsible, through our negative thinking, for attracting the bad things that happen. I could go on about the dangers and shortcomings of The Secret, but I think you get the idea.

Thus, one path we can take in an abundant Universe is to claim as much of it as we want for ourselves. But there is, as they say, a better way. Consider how you feel when your needs are met, or you trust that they will be. What is it that you do then? Do you go around looking for more for yourself? Or do you look around for something to do for others? In an abundant universe, we trust that we will be cared for and we open ourselves up to the needs of others. On this path, abundance engenders generosity. When we live within a theology of abundance, we fear not for ourselves, but for others. We seek not to better ourselves but to lift up those who have less. Listen to the words of Parker Palmer, who writes:

The quality of our active lives depends heavily on whether we assume a world of scarcity or a world of abundance. Do we inhabit a universe where the basic things that people need - from food and shelter to a sense of competence and being loved - are ample in nature? Or is this a universe where such goods are in short supply, available only to those who have the power to beat everybody else to the store? The nature of our actions will be heavily conditioned by the way we answer these bedrock questions. In a universe of scarcity, only people who know the art of competing, even of making war, will be able to survive. But in a universe of abundance, acts of … generosity become not only possible, but fruitful as well. ^[1]

Palmer tells us that if we believe that our time is limited, our money is limited, our love is limited, we will hoard these treasures for our own keeping. But if we live with a faith in the abundance of the world, it opens us up to the possibilities of becoming generous, big-hearted people, whose lives are expanded and deepened through our acts of generosity. Think of the Grinch at the moment he realized that Christmas wasn't about the decorations and the presents. Through our belief in an abundant universe and our commitment to share our bounty with others, our hearts, like his, can grow three sizes or more.

I would like to return now to Tony Rasch, and his statement that he lives in a "generous universe." Notice that he doesn't say "abundant" universe. But "generous." Tony has, I think, taken the concept of abundance a step further than many are willing to go. The universe itself, he claims, does not just contain everything that we need. The universe offers itself to us, it shares that abundance with us, in active relationship with us. "Here," says the world, "take some of this." As if in some great cosmic outpouring, all that is is offered up to us, without us even asking, a gift that we need only open ourselves to recognizing and receiving. Unlike the system of The Secret, where we must instruct the universe in what it is that we desire, Tony's view of the world is that the universe provides just what we need, just when we need it. "Doors open for me, as they open for all of us. I walk through, keep going, and more doors will open."

To claim that the universe is not just abundant but generous feels a bit dangerous, doesn't it? Because it implies that the universe is active in our lives, a partner in our journey. If we believe that we are offered gifts by a generous world, doesn't that imply the existence of a giver? To say that we are walking through a generous universe is a statement of faith. Faith in the mutuality of the relationship between ourselves and the world. Faith that we are not entirely in control of the outcomes in our lives. Faith that there is something beyond that which we can experience with our senses that participates with us in the business of living. In writing about the early part of his life, when his father died and his grandmother moved him to a foreign country, and about where and how his healing began, Christian theologian Frederick Buechner reflects on this kind of faith when he writes:

Which of us can look at our own religion or lack of it without seeing in it the elements of wish-fulfillment? Which of us can look back at our own lives without seeing in them the role of blind chance and dumb luck? But faith, says the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,' and looking back at those distant years I choose not to deny, either, the compelling sense of an unseen giver and a series of hidden gifts as not only another part of their reality, but the deepest part of all." ^[2]

"I feel like I live in a generous universe." What a great place to be. It sounds to me that, through his travels, Tony Rasch has discovered a secret that many of us search for our entire lives. He has entered into a relationship with life, with all that is around him, that we yearn for. It is a relationship of mutuality. It is a relationship of interdependence. It is a relationship of giving and receiving, where sometimes we don't know to whom or what we're contributing or whence things come. It is thus a relationship of mystery, a relationship of faith.

As you move through your daily lives, days soft and serene as a summer morning, or as fiery and tempestuous as a late-day thunderstorm, I invite you to remember Tony Rasch. Remember how he has traveled through life, simply and slowly, noticing the miracles and mileposts he encounters along the way. Keep your eyes open to the gifts that are offered to you, unbidden and perhaps undeserved. May you be open to the generosity of the universe, and may you return it in full measure. And in so doing, may you discover the true secret of your own happiness.

Blessed Be and Amen.

Closing Words:

Brian Swimme in his book The Universe Is A Green Dragon:

"Our deepest desire is to share our riches, and this desire is rooted in the dynamics of the cosmos. Take supernovas as your models. When they had filled themselves with riches, they exploded in a vast cosmic celebration of their work. What would you have done? Would you have had the courage to flood the universe with your riches? Or would you have talked yourself out of it by pleading that you were too shy? Or hoarded your riches by insisting that they were yours and others did not deserve them because they did not work for them? Remember the supernova's extravagant generosity and celebration of being."

^[1] The Active Life, p.37
^[2] The Sacred Journey, p.56

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