Prayer and Meditation
Preached 8/11/2019 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
Prayer is the theme this month, and many of us have a complicated relationship with prayer. We’ve included in your order of service this morning a copy of the Tree of Contemplative Practices, which was created by Maia Duerr, a Zen Buddhist. On one side, you can see her original tree of Contemplative Practices, and the other side is blank, where you are encouraged to create your own personal tree.
On the original tree, not the blank one, note the variety in prayers and meditations, the way that some of it is movement-based, some is still and silent, and some is creative. I encourage you to take a moment to reflect: What works for you? What comes deeply from the heart? What prayers, actions, acts of stillness or types of creativity feed your compassionate nature?
This is my prayer story: in an area with so much Eastern Orthodox representation, you might already be familiar with the Jesus Prayer, but for those who are not clear, it is, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.” That’s the whole prayer. This prayer is repeated over and over using prayer ropes, quite similar to the Catholic rosary or Buddhist prayer beads.
My mother, Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green, wrote a book on The Jesus Prayer, and she begins it by defining it this way: “This very simple prayer was developed in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine during the early centuries of Christian faith. It is a prayer inspired by St. Paul’s exhortation to “pray constantly” in 1 Thessalonians and its purpose is to tune one’s inner attention to the presence of the Lord.”
If you’re like me, you were on board up until that last word. “Ancient prayer…” sure, sounds good, “tune one’s inner ear” yes, yes, that sounds great… “to the Lord?” No thank you! No patriarchal omnipotent deity for me, thank you!
There are great moments in the book where she explains things like the Greek meaning of nous, n-o-u-s, a receptive, perceptive, intuitive part of the mind, which we don’t quite have a word for in English. And because we don’t have this word, she points out, English Biblical translations are lacking.
Another important piece that is hard for our English-language ears to hear is that bit about mercy. But it’s another poor translation. “Have mercy on me” is absolutely not meant to conjure groveling before a terrifying deity, but rather to express infinitely deep gratitude. No, not gratitude for sparing me from the pits of hell or anything like that, but just general, healthy, spontaneous gratitude. It’s less like, Oh God please don’t hurt me and more like, Thank you. Thank you for making the world so wonderful. Thank you for being wonderful.
At one point, while describing praying for a friend named Tom, “Dear Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on Tom,” she says, “I begin to feel with Tom as I pray. Both Tom and I under the great heartbeat of the universe.” And that is such an example of how powerful language can be when it comes to meditation and prayer. “Lord?” No thanks. “Great heartbeat of the universe?” Absolutely, I am 100% on board with that.
JD Salinger fans may be familiar with the Jesus Prayer through “Franny and Zooey” in which Franny Glass suffers a mental breakdown after reading The Way of the Pilgrim. We are getting a bit into the weeds here, but essentially, the fictional Franny, after reading the very real ancient story of a Russian peasant who goes in search of instruction on how to practically live out the Biblical injunction to “pray constantly,” commits herself so fully to the practice that it causes her to suffer a mental breakdown.
My own relationship to the Jesus Prayer was only slightly less fraught than Salinger’s heroine. As a teen, I worked at the Jesus prayer as if it were homework, for years. And it was only after I had lost my faith in my late 20s (a topic for another sermon!) that I realized that the Jesus Prayer was stuck. Stuck in my mind and heart. I had programmed this mantra into my very breath, and now that I was ready to disavow everything to do with Christianity, this prayer, like a tattoo, would not wash off.
Late at night, in the dark and stillness, I would find my mind and my heart reciting those words, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…” I tried to fight it. I tried to replace it with other mantras. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God”
I went to a spiritual advisor. I made up my own personal mantra. I chanted with Nichiren Buddhists. I chanted with Zen Buddhists. I prayed with Hare Krishnas. If the Hare Krishnas can’t get their songs stuck in your head, you are in trouble!
When I was sad or startled or just sleepy, that damned prayer would return, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”
I have done a lot of study on the historical Jesus. I have come to the personal conclusion that the historical Jesus was no more the Son of God than any of the rest of us are children of God, nor was he a person who would have ever wanted to have been called “Lord.”
I mean no disrespect to anyone’s faith when I say that I personally consider the historical Jesus of Nazareth to be no more than an elevated teacher. I would rather be constantly praying to Siddhartha Guatama, or Martin Luther King Jr or Toni Morrison to be completely honest.
But it’s still there. “Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on. Me.” Somewhere along the line, my inner eye was accidentally opened and I can’t seem to shut it. My inner ear is tuned to this station. It just is. I have to let go and let it be. I’ve learned that the best I can do is just accept what I cannot change. It’s like having chronic hiccups. (Which I had while pregnant. Incredibly irritating but not painful.) Okay, my body is doing this now, and I can’t stop it, so I might as well get used to it: “Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on. Me.”
When I was in the midst of struggling to evict the Jesus Prayer from my entire self, I turned to my spiritual advisor, a UU minister who is also a Pagan Priestess, and she introduced me to Metta meditation. You’ve already heard Bruce Cady talk about his experience with this gorgeous practice, and I read everything I could find in English on the subject, especially the works of Bhante Gunaratana. His book, “Loving-Kindness in Plain English” contains several wonderful examples of loving-kindness meditations.
I’m going to circle back to this and lead us through one of them at the end of this sermon in a few minutes. But before I do that, I’d like to talk about another book I read in preparation for this sermon: McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Professor and Buddhist Ronald Purser.
McMindfulness as a term was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher, and psychotherapist who described a “feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long-term sustenance.” According to noted Psychologist and Psychoanalyst Dr. Jeremy Safran, the term McMindfulness refers to “the marketing of mindfulness practice as a commodity that is sold like any other commodity in our brand culture. “ He goes on to clarify that, as opposed to regular mindfulness practice which is rooted in tradition and spirituality, “McMindfulness is the marketing of a constructed dream; an idealized lifestyle; an identity makeover.”
The author of McMindfulness, Prof. Ronald Purser, informs us that mindfulness is currently a $4 Billion-dollar industry “propped up by media hype and slick marketing by the movement’s elites.” Who are these so-called elites? Prof. Purser quickly connects the McMindfulness industry with neoliberalism (which is a moral-economic stance wherein the almighty dollar always wins and that could easily just be called Trump-ism).
He calls out Google for its “Search Inside Yourself” program and divulges gossipy tidbits about Goldman Sachs CEOs and corporate seminars where mindfulness is invoked as a stand-in for navel-gazing individualism and moral flexibility. Recontexted mindfulness in a corporate culture can, and is currently being used to excuse horrific environmental and human rights violations.
In Prof Purser’s words, “radical acceptance without judgment can easily be turned into “Don’t fight the man” - at Google, he pays pretty well, and that helps soothe stress.”
Prof Purser hits the nail on the head when he quotes another book, “Selling Spirituality,” saying, “psycho-physical techniques described in terms of “personal development” seek to pacify feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level rather than seeking to challenge the social, political, and economic inequalities that cause such distress.”
It’s simple math: The goal of individual personal fulfillment plus radical acceptance equals the perfect neoliberal (Trump economics) society. This is McMindfulness. This is NOT okay.
Prof Purser has an easy fix, and I think that we see it right here in this sanctuary right now: Compassion.
Compassion is the antidote to McMindfulness, it is the antidote to Trumpian economics, compassion is the panacea, as the Beatles said, “All You Need is Love.” Let’s look at the Tree of Contemplative Practices again. Note that even on the blank tree, the roots are always Communion, Connection, and Awareness.
This is anti-McMindfulness. Communion and Connection are a remedy for Isolation and Individualism. Awareness is the remedy to passivity and numbness. As you continue to contemplate the Tree of Contemplative Practices, let’s move into a truly compassionate, loving meditation now.
(From Bhante Gunaratana’s “Loving-Kindness in Plain English” p 124 & 125.)
Preached 8/11/2019 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
Prayer is the theme this month, and many of us have a complicated relationship with prayer. We’ve included in your order of service this morning a copy of the Tree of Contemplative Practices, which was created by Maia Duerr, a Zen Buddhist. On one side, you can see her original tree of Contemplative Practices, and the other side is blank, where you are encouraged to create your own personal tree.
On the original tree, not the blank one, note the variety in prayers and meditations, the way that some of it is movement-based, some is still and silent, and some is creative. I encourage you to take a moment to reflect: What works for you? What comes deeply from the heart? What prayers, actions, acts of stillness or types of creativity feed your compassionate nature?
This is my prayer story: in an area with so much Eastern Orthodox representation, you might already be familiar with the Jesus Prayer, but for those who are not clear, it is, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.” That’s the whole prayer. This prayer is repeated over and over using prayer ropes, quite similar to the Catholic rosary or Buddhist prayer beads.
My mother, Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green, wrote a book on The Jesus Prayer, and she begins it by defining it this way: “This very simple prayer was developed in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine during the early centuries of Christian faith. It is a prayer inspired by St. Paul’s exhortation to “pray constantly” in 1 Thessalonians and its purpose is to tune one’s inner attention to the presence of the Lord.”
If you’re like me, you were on board up until that last word. “Ancient prayer…” sure, sounds good, “tune one’s inner ear” yes, yes, that sounds great… “to the Lord?” No thank you! No patriarchal omnipotent deity for me, thank you!
There are great moments in the book where she explains things like the Greek meaning of nous, n-o-u-s, a receptive, perceptive, intuitive part of the mind, which we don’t quite have a word for in English. And because we don’t have this word, she points out, English Biblical translations are lacking.
Another important piece that is hard for our English-language ears to hear is that bit about mercy. But it’s another poor translation. “Have mercy on me” is absolutely not meant to conjure groveling before a terrifying deity, but rather to express infinitely deep gratitude. No, not gratitude for sparing me from the pits of hell or anything like that, but just general, healthy, spontaneous gratitude. It’s less like, Oh God please don’t hurt me and more like, Thank you. Thank you for making the world so wonderful. Thank you for being wonderful.
At one point, while describing praying for a friend named Tom, “Dear Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on Tom,” she says, “I begin to feel with Tom as I pray. Both Tom and I under the great heartbeat of the universe.” And that is such an example of how powerful language can be when it comes to meditation and prayer. “Lord?” No thanks. “Great heartbeat of the universe?” Absolutely, I am 100% on board with that.
JD Salinger fans may be familiar with the Jesus Prayer through “Franny and Zooey” in which Franny Glass suffers a mental breakdown after reading The Way of the Pilgrim. We are getting a bit into the weeds here, but essentially, the fictional Franny, after reading the very real ancient story of a Russian peasant who goes in search of instruction on how to practically live out the Biblical injunction to “pray constantly,” commits herself so fully to the practice that it causes her to suffer a mental breakdown.
My own relationship to the Jesus Prayer was only slightly less fraught than Salinger’s heroine. As a teen, I worked at the Jesus prayer as if it were homework, for years. And it was only after I had lost my faith in my late 20s (a topic for another sermon!) that I realized that the Jesus Prayer was stuck. Stuck in my mind and heart. I had programmed this mantra into my very breath, and now that I was ready to disavow everything to do with Christianity, this prayer, like a tattoo, would not wash off.
Late at night, in the dark and stillness, I would find my mind and my heart reciting those words, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…” I tried to fight it. I tried to replace it with other mantras. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God”
I went to a spiritual advisor. I made up my own personal mantra. I chanted with Nichiren Buddhists. I chanted with Zen Buddhists. I prayed with Hare Krishnas. If the Hare Krishnas can’t get their songs stuck in your head, you are in trouble!
When I was sad or startled or just sleepy, that damned prayer would return, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”
I have done a lot of study on the historical Jesus. I have come to the personal conclusion that the historical Jesus was no more the Son of God than any of the rest of us are children of God, nor was he a person who would have ever wanted to have been called “Lord.”
I mean no disrespect to anyone’s faith when I say that I personally consider the historical Jesus of Nazareth to be no more than an elevated teacher. I would rather be constantly praying to Siddhartha Guatama, or Martin Luther King Jr or Toni Morrison to be completely honest.
But it’s still there. “Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on. Me.” Somewhere along the line, my inner eye was accidentally opened and I can’t seem to shut it. My inner ear is tuned to this station. It just is. I have to let go and let it be. I’ve learned that the best I can do is just accept what I cannot change. It’s like having chronic hiccups. (Which I had while pregnant. Incredibly irritating but not painful.) Okay, my body is doing this now, and I can’t stop it, so I might as well get used to it: “Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on. Me.”
When I was in the midst of struggling to evict the Jesus Prayer from my entire self, I turned to my spiritual advisor, a UU minister who is also a Pagan Priestess, and she introduced me to Metta meditation. You’ve already heard Bruce Cady talk about his experience with this gorgeous practice, and I read everything I could find in English on the subject, especially the works of Bhante Gunaratana. His book, “Loving-Kindness in Plain English” contains several wonderful examples of loving-kindness meditations.
I’m going to circle back to this and lead us through one of them at the end of this sermon in a few minutes. But before I do that, I’d like to talk about another book I read in preparation for this sermon: McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Professor and Buddhist Ronald Purser.
McMindfulness as a term was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher, and psychotherapist who described a “feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long-term sustenance.” According to noted Psychologist and Psychoanalyst Dr. Jeremy Safran, the term McMindfulness refers to “the marketing of mindfulness practice as a commodity that is sold like any other commodity in our brand culture. “ He goes on to clarify that, as opposed to regular mindfulness practice which is rooted in tradition and spirituality, “McMindfulness is the marketing of a constructed dream; an idealized lifestyle; an identity makeover.”
The author of McMindfulness, Prof. Ronald Purser, informs us that mindfulness is currently a $4 Billion-dollar industry “propped up by media hype and slick marketing by the movement’s elites.” Who are these so-called elites? Prof. Purser quickly connects the McMindfulness industry with neoliberalism (which is a moral-economic stance wherein the almighty dollar always wins and that could easily just be called Trump-ism).
He calls out Google for its “Search Inside Yourself” program and divulges gossipy tidbits about Goldman Sachs CEOs and corporate seminars where mindfulness is invoked as a stand-in for navel-gazing individualism and moral flexibility. Recontexted mindfulness in a corporate culture can, and is currently being used to excuse horrific environmental and human rights violations.
In Prof Purser’s words, “radical acceptance without judgment can easily be turned into “Don’t fight the man” - at Google, he pays pretty well, and that helps soothe stress.”
Prof Purser hits the nail on the head when he quotes another book, “Selling Spirituality,” saying, “psycho-physical techniques described in terms of “personal development” seek to pacify feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level rather than seeking to challenge the social, political, and economic inequalities that cause such distress.”
It’s simple math: The goal of individual personal fulfillment plus radical acceptance equals the perfect neoliberal (Trump economics) society. This is McMindfulness. This is NOT okay.
Prof Purser has an easy fix, and I think that we see it right here in this sanctuary right now: Compassion.
Compassion is the antidote to McMindfulness, it is the antidote to Trumpian economics, compassion is the panacea, as the Beatles said, “All You Need is Love.” Let’s look at the Tree of Contemplative Practices again. Note that even on the blank tree, the roots are always Communion, Connection, and Awareness.
This is anti-McMindfulness. Communion and Connection are a remedy for Isolation and Individualism. Awareness is the remedy to passivity and numbness. As you continue to contemplate the Tree of Contemplative Practices, let’s move into a truly compassionate, loving meditation now.
(From Bhante Gunaratana’s “Loving-Kindness in Plain English” p 124 & 125.)