Unitarian Universalist Meeting of
“Longing of the Heart”
Rev. Kathy Duhon
A few years ago, a man named David Whyte was kayaking in the
the blades flash
lifting
veils of spray as the bow rears
terrified
then falls
with
five miles to go
of
open ocean
the
eyes pierce the horizon
the
kayak pulls round
like
a pony held by unseen reins
shying
out of the ocean
and
the spark behind fear
recognized
as life
leaps
into flame
*
Always this energy smoulders inside
when
it is unlit
the
body fills with dense smoke
David Whyte
came to a place where fear could not touch him and only the longing of his
heart to live remained, giving him the fiery vitality to do so. He was surprised, though, at that last line of
the poem when it came to him. It says
that when we refuse to open to our energetic nature, our being that longs to be
vitally alive, it is as though we are filled with smoke. He noticed that we become numb, asphyxiating
on resentment, complaint, fear and more.
If we didn’t ever feel that acrid smoke, however, Whyte
reminds us, we would be truly despairing, for the smouldering
at least reminds us that our fuel is there within.
The longing of the heart is a fire
that brings storm-tossed poets home, and stirs up the rest of us to live in the
fullness of love.
You probably have noticed that many
of the elements of this service are from one man, the Rev. Paul N. Carnes. He had been the President of the Unitarian
Universalist Association, and he died several years ago. I never knew him, but we had a
connection. My intern minister, Jerry
Goddard, gave me a precious book by Paul Carnes called Longing of the Heart, from which many pieces have come today for
this service.
The “longing of the heart” is a
wonderful phrase and captures so well what is at the center of our religion. We don’t tend to be the calm, quiet ones, nor the orderly church-goers, nor the pious pray-ers. We don’t have
as many answers as we have questions – we are seekers, we long for peace and
justice, faith, hope and love, and transforming joy. We may believe in God, but our center is not
in God, nor in our congregations, nor in ourselves. Our center is perhaps not a place, not an
object, not a belief, not a practice; instead, our center is a way of
being. We are the people who open our
hearts to longing, and follow the path of love.
Simple stuff – I don’t believe it’s any more complicated than that.
The longing of the heart is not
longing by itself, not desire. This
heart longing is more like the burning vitality that today’s poet spoke about –
focused, full of energy, and at one with the world. Similarly, when George Bernard Shaw wrote of
his joy in life in being used up for a purpose, he said, “Life is no ‘brief
candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid
torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as
brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
The longing of the heart is expressed
at this time of year quite well. Some of
it isn’t longing of the heart, exactly, as some of us are just longing
for the gifts, and for the special food and drink, and for the fun, fun, fun. Ah, but we also long for the hope and beauty
of the season, the spirituality of candles and singing, and the joy of being together
in the heart with loved ones.
All the holy days of this coming
season have longing built into them – the Hebrew people longed for their temple
to be rebuilt after its destruction, and they longed for the temple flame to be
kindled, and so came the miracle of the 8 days of Hanukkah burning bright. The longing of our ancestors in
Earth-centered traditions was for the sun to return, and begins in this
darkness, and underlies many of our Advent traditions. Advent is itself a time of longing, both to
return to the simple birth of the Babe whose life brought the world Christianity,
and for the coming of the beloved community of peace and joy.
The opposite of the longing of the
heart is not a neutral state, not a calmness, but fearfulness and despair. Fearfulness keeps the heart smouldering, not opening itself enough to the vitality of
living fully with love. William Sloane
Coffin said, “Nothing scares me like scared people; for while love seeks the
truth, fear seeks safety, the safety so frequently found in dogmatic certainty,
in pitiless intolerance.” Fearfulness
keeps a distance, does not allow the heart to express its longing.
The other opposite of the longing of
the heart is despair. Despair douses
even the smoke of our vital selves and does not let the candles of hope burn. A longing heart may be initially sad,
frustrated, even angry, but these feelings are in the cause of love. Despair, on the other hand, is the damping
down of such feelings, threatening the vital connection to life itself. When despair is destroying our lives, we need
to listen to our hearts and return to longing, to love, to joy.
The longing of the heart is fervent,
but not frenetic. Prayer is filled with
longing that is calm, that is gentle, that is
clear. The prayer Jesus taught, reworded
by a taxicab driver, as told to one of our ministers, clearly states the heart’s
longing with these words, “Holy spirit who art with and among us, Be with us as
we would be with you, Give us this day our daily bread, Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Thank you for the blessing of life, I pray I
may be worthy of it.”
Our grace note about waiting is a
meditation of the heart by UU minister Peter Fleck. The longing of the heart, for him, involves a
stillness that he recognizes in the psalms.
Be still. Wait with longing, but
not desire, not noisiness, not preoccupation.
This is a good reminder for these days, when waiting in line and waiting
for the holidays can consume us. When we
wait in hope and patience, with the longing of the heart, we will be ready.
Rabindranath
Tagore wrote “Let me not pray to be sheltered from
dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer
it. Let me not crave in anxious fear to
be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.”
We do well to remember that the longing
of our hearts is a central and essential truth about our beings. The longing of the heart demands that we love
life so much that we love ourselves and others, and the greater than us, the
All in All. Each of us faces our own
storms, each of us chooses our own way, blazing through the vital energy which
comes from deep within, and far beyond, and is shared among us all. May all be abundantly blessed with the
longing of the heart.
Amen.