Spoken Meditation: "To Whom It May Concern", by Richard Gilbert.

"To Whom It May Concern: I address you, whether you hear me or not.
You are more than a great cosmic joke invented by some clever thinker of clever thoughts.
Do not mistake my intentions. I am no believer in eye-to-eye prayer,
Me with my human eye seeking to penetrate your fiery cosmic one.
I expect no eternal ear tuned to the pitiful sound of my voice,
Nor will my words make one iota of difference as to how an indifferent universe treats me.
Yet I would speak to you, unknown one, for this human memo needs an
addressee --
If only one of poetic creation.
First I thank you that I am.
My merely human existence strains my own credulity and baffles my small brain.
Whoever, whatever, dreamt of such a creature?
No, of course not I alone, but all of us suspended here in life
together.
I could not conceive of a more interesting creature to create, not in my wildest dream.
So I thank you, O nameless power, for a feat of imagination unsurpassed.
But still I wonder at this life we are given -- ef not by you, then
by whom or what?
Surely we have received it as a gift, through no virtue or vice of
our own.
I wonder that it deals out comedy and tragedy in such uneven, unplanned doses --
There seems little rhyme or reason -- unless one was not intended?
I leave you with that query, not fully confident of an answer
By celestial return mail.
Then, a question -- how do I deserve this tragi-comic life that is mine --
And how do I justify myself before it? If not to you, then to whom or what?
How do I know if I merit the good or deserve the evil meted out to me?
Can I justify myself to myself? Or does that smack of egoism to
suggest I am a God --
Just another -- "To Whom It May Concern"?
Forgive me my boldness; it is only that I am concerned
Beneath the often senseless routines of day and night.
I am so deeply concerned that I have penned this epistle to the
unknown,
Even if mine are the only eyes to behold it."

The story that Margaret told the children this morning, Chris Raible's letter to a child about prayer, was such a lovely summary of what I want to say to you that it almost feels unnecessary to expand on it. Thankfulness, regret and hope -- these are the three classic kinds of prayer. If you were at the service before our Canvass, you've heard me tell this story about the first kind, but I think it bears repeating. At a UU Ministers Meeting some time ago, we were discussing the various meanings which prayer does or doesn't have for us, and Nick Cardell, a long-time UU minister, told of a time many years earlier when he took his son, then about six years old, camping in the mountains. Early one morning, Nick and his son went out for a walk by the lakeshore. Everything was very quiet; the sun was just coming up. In the stillness, Nick heard his little boy say, "Thank you." "That's all right, son," he said; "I'm enjoying it too." "I wasn't talking to you, Dad," said his son. "Oh," said Nick, startled. "Who were you talking to?" "Do you have to say thank you to someone?" asked the boy. "I was just saying thank you because it's so good."

I hope there have been many times in your life, and will be many more, when you have felt compelled to say thank you, or praise be, or whatever comes spilling out of your heart when the world seems absolutely wonderful to you. (My granddaughter's phrase used to be "Holy Moly!" My own favourite at those times is "Heavenly God!") The experiences which lead us to say thank you are marvellous, and our response can't be contradicted by any logic or by the fact that we don't know to whom, if anyone, we're addressing our thanks.

Not only is joyful thanksgiving involuntary and spontaneous; it also seems to me a wonderfully Good Thing. In the words of Socrates, philosophizing sometime in the 5th century B.C., "It is a comely fashion to be glad; joy is the grace we say to God." In recognizing and acknowledging goodness and beauty, we strengthen them. Expressing our appreciation aligns us with goodness and beauty. Through our thanksgiving, the sum total of goodness is increased, to however small a degree. As we give thanks, to whatever we see as the source of good things, to the highest in the universe, the divine, or the unknown, we take more of that Source into ourselves. Our thanks bring us closer to "Whom It May Concern".

Remember that joke about the priest who said, "Let us pray, and if there are any Unitarians present, let them do whatever it is they do"? I invite you to listen, or meditate, or pray, or just be, now, according to who you are and what you believe, as I read some words adapted from Jewish liturgy:

For cities and towns, factories and farms, flowers and trees, sea and sky --
We give thanks for the world and its beauty.
For family and friends, neighbours and cousins --
We give thanks for friendship and love.
For kind hearts, smiling faces, and helping hands --
We give thanks for those who care.
For wisdom that teaches us how to live --
We give thanks for help in understanding.
And for being one family on earth,
We give thanks, that we are so different, and yet we are so alike.

In the children's time, Chris Raible identified the second kind of prayer as regret. It's often said, with much justification I think, that Unitarians tend to turn a blind eye to the dark side of life. In our very proper reaction against the Calvinist teachings about the total depravity of human beings, in our insistence that we are spiritually healthy, rather than wretched creatures with no health in us, we've perhaps lost sight of all the junk, the dirt and trash in our hearts and lives. It's put so simply and truly in this prayer of an African schoolgirl:
O thou great Chief, light a candle in my heart, that I may see what is therein, and sweep the rubbish from thy dwelling place.

In the process of asserting our human potential, in our eagerness to claim that "I'm Okay, You're Okay" and to overcome the crippling guilt with which many of us have been burdened, we've been uncomfortable with acknowledging that our potential is often unfulfilled and that there may be good reasons for regret and remorse. When we ask ourselves about the appeal of other faiths, one of the answers we might consider is that in those faiths there's a more satisfying response to the sense of inadequacy which we all feel at times: a response which is not denial of that inadequacy but forgiveness of it. In our eagerness to proclaim that we can do it all for ourselves, we may overlook the healing power of an acceptance which is not just me accepting and forgiving myself, but an acceptance and forgiveness by others and by the Power which pervades the universe. Margaret Fuller, one of our great New England Unitarians, exclaimed: "I accept the Universe!" The writer Carlyle responded, "By Gad, she'd better!" Some of us have wondered whether she also sensed the universe's acceptance of her, and if that was part of what she meant.

Consciousness of our flaws and our frailty can be empowering, I think, rather than stunting. Once we acknowledge that we often fail to live up to the best that's in us, we're able to see more clearly just what we're capable of, good and bad. Seeing that we have indeed come short of our potential, short of the goodness which we sense inside and outside ourselves, we can call upon the resources which will strengthen us to reach higher. Knowing our weaknesses, we can affirm (af-firm) our strengths. Yes, this sounds like my words about thanksgiving, and indeed I believe that gratitude and regret are rooted in the same awareness of all that is great and good. We experience beauty and kindness and blessing and we're impelled to give thanks, to appreciate them, to help them appreciate, like an investment. We look at goodness and love and heroism and we're impelled to confess that we're petty and unloving and puny by comparison. We discriminate between what's good and what's bad, and line ourselves up on the right side, knowing that we'll need all the help we can get to stay there. I ask you to listen with that spirit of awareness to these words from Hindu tradition, written by Ramalinga Swami in the 19th century, and specially remarkable for its vivid animal imagery:

Like the bounding stag I have sought sensual pleasures and fallen into the lake.
I am the greatest sinner among sinners, unwilling to part with even a grain of rice to the noisy crow.
Like the fly buzzing about without any rest, I seek. O, Great One, tell me what to do that I may not die, and grant me Thy grace to support me.
Like the bull bearing heavy burdens, I have toiled carrying the load of my own grief.
Not knowing anything, I have roamed like the unclean animal feeding upon the refuse of the streets.
I am lower than the dog, which tires itself out with barking in utter thoughtlessness.
Holy One, what can I do to obtain Thy grace to support me in my distress?
I have taken great pride in regarding my darkness as light and my desire as the great goal.
I have wandered with the monkey of my mind in the darkness of the jungle, mistaking it for my kindred.
I do not know the medicine, the jewel, the mantra, the knowledge, the rule and conduct of life.
I do not know the direction in which to go. How can I enter? Whom can I speak to? What can I do? I know not anything.
I have not abandoned the toils of caste, creed and sect.
I have not abandoned plunging into the mire of theological wrangling.
I do not know the beginning nor the end, nor how to abide in the waveless sea of Thy bliss.
What can I do? I know not.
And from Buddhist spirituality, from the Venerable Thich Nhat Hahn, comes this answering prayer:
Let us pray that we cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.
Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion -- towards ourselves and towards all living creatures.

This, I believe, is the purpose and value of prayers of regret, of expressing our regret to Whom It May Concern -- by doing this, in silence or in words, we're enabled to "fill our hearts with our own compassion", through "evoking the presence of the Great Compassion".
Then there are the prayers of hope, the prayers of asking for things to be better -- not far removed from thankfulness and sorrow, coming out of them in a way. Once I was asked to respond to questions from Church School children, questions like, "What do you think about God, prayer, and so on?" in terms that a nine-year-old could not only understand but could write down without too much difficulty. I recommend this as a very good exercise in clarifying one's thoughts. What do you think about God? in 15 words or less! When asked what I thought about prayer, I gave the answer I'll expand on a bit now: "I think that praying is the same as wishing hard for something. To pray for someone is like wishing them a good day, or a speedy recovery, or a happy birthday. To wish someone well is to pray for them."

A child hears a statement like this in a completely non-judgmental way. For small children, the phrase "wishful thinking" has no negative connotations, but for us grown-ups I guess it does. It suggests a kind of unreality, a distorted view of what's actually happening, as reflected in such sayings as "that's just wishful thinking", or, " you're indulging in wishful thinking". But I believe that wishing and thinking are powerful activities, and that together they constitute prayer, which, as someone said, can move mountains.

We know that somehow or other the mind acts on the body, so that if I, in my mind, decide in a mental process to move my arm, my arm is in fact moved, by something called my "will". We're not much closer to knowing how this happens, how thoughts arise or how they can be translated into physical activity, than human beings were centuries ago, but we know it does happen. Similarly, we know that emotions, or states of mind, can affect states of body -- that if I'm feeling lousy emotionally I'm much more likely to catch a cold, and (conversely) that if I'm sick but have a strong will to recover or strong faith in my doctor, it helps my chances of cure.

Because we mostly accept these connections as fact, without knowing how they come about, we don't have too much trouble with the idea of faith-healers --- at least for other people. Being Unitarian Universalists, the fact that we don't know how it happens may make it a bit more difficult for us to be healed through faith alone -- we like some medicine to help out our rational natures! But we do believe in the power of wishful thinking at the level of our own mind in relation to our own body; we probably accept the idea of prayer as powerful in this way.

It's at another level that it becomes a bit less believable for some people -- the level of interaction between my mind and someone else's body or some situation external to me. The reason it's less believable, I think, is not because it's intrinsically any stranger (we believe lots of very strange things indeed) but because we have somewhat less of an explanation for it. The fact that a family argument can give us a headache or a stomach ulcer is, when you consider it, quite amazing, yet we know from experience that it's so, though we can't explain how it happens. The fact that our good thoughts towards another person can help to cure his stomach ulcer is, considered rationally, not much more extraordinary, but we may not have had enough direct experience, or have seen enough experimental documentation to make us believe that it happens.

What many of us lack to some extent, I think, is awareness of a close connection with others, with other people, with the world as a whole -- what the mystics call cosmic consciousness, and what we Unitarians come close to when we really feel the interdependence of our web of existence. Most of the time that's just theory to us; we think of ourselves as single, separate entities, and for all the fine talk about interdependence and transcendence, we usually think of each self as identical with a particular body, and ending where that body ends -- at the outermost layer of skin, so that everything else is "not me" and can't be affected by my thoughts.

And yet -- we know that at the very least we can communicate with each other through the senses, touch, voice, sight, the written word. Our minds can reach each other in these conscious ways. Is it unthinkable, then, that our minds can reach others directly, and affect them directly and even unconsciously, just as our own mind affects our own body directly, without having to go through the intermediary of the senses? I don't think it's impossible; in fact, I think it's what love and relationship and prayer are all about -- the direct communication of one human being with another. When we pray, we make a conscious effort to establish that link -- and when we try to make that communication, through our purposeful thoughts, we're praying.

You may well ask whether there's any difference between what I'm suggesting and the popular philosophy which used to go under the name "The Power of Positive Thinking". Wishful thinking in my sense doesn't ignore the negatives of life. Positive Thinking proponents usually recommend thinking and acting as if everything were just fine and dandy already. I don't doubt at all that this can have some beneficial effects on one's attitude, but it can also lead to a blinkered way of looking at the world which ignores unpleasant realities and leaves unpleasant situations and unpleasing people to look after themselves. Wishful thinking of the kind I mean, prayer, does something quite different. It sees the reality and the needs and it hopes for change where needed, or sustenance where needed, or comfort where needed, or continuing joy. It uses the power of thought and feeling to go outside the self -- usually, of course, by doing something, not only by thinking and feeling about it. "Pray to God, sailor, but row for the shore"!

So when I lift my glass and say "Cheers", that's prayer, though it may be of a rather weak kind, a ritual comparable to saying a Hail Mary and about as effective. When I say, "I hope you'll feel better soon" (especially if I do something to make the person feel better) that's prayer. When I say, silently or aloud, "May we go in peace", that's prayer, and I believe it's powerful. And I believe we practise it together. Because we're a caring community, who wish well to each other, we make time in our services for the sharing of joys and concerns. We believe that in this sharing something good takes place for the speaker and the listener, that somehow a trouble shared is a trouble halved, and celebration shared is an increase of joy. That, I believe, is the essence of prayer. And I think all the elements of it, thankfulness, regret, and hope, are beautifully summed up in this prayer with which I'll end, from the Tewa Indians of this continent:

O our Mother the Earth! O our Father the Sky!
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you the gifts that you love.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the bright light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
O our Mother the Earth! O our Father the Sky! May we go
in peace. So be it.