Unitarian Universalist
Meeting of
“‘All’s Right With
the World’ – Really?”
Rev. Kathy Duhon
I first met this Robert Browning poem when I was only 11 years old, in 1969, and it has been following me around ever since. I didn’t deliberately memorize it, and I usually only have an approximate sense of all the words, but I still know the poem, and it comes to me at times, demanding attention, as it did this summer. Poetry can be a good companion.
This reminds me of a spiritual practice I know of, taught by a wonderful old Unitarian Universalist minister, Harry Scholefield, who died not too long ago. You simply memorize poetry, or other meaningful words, and then meditate upon them in quiet stillness. Part of the idea is that you will then have vast reservoirs of meaningful words that can come to you when you need them, with comfort and challenge and sustenance. For many, prayers or spiritual songs serve this purpose. We are neither an oral society, nor a literary one, nor very religious, and have largely given up the practice of remembering bodies of words, but it is a good thing to do.
Back
to the Browning poem – it came to me when we were hiking this summer in
I felt wholeness in those mountains this summer, even with my freshly broken arm. All’s right with the world when you’re relaxed, living simply in beauty, and with someone you love. But what about that part, “God’s in His Heaven”? Is there a causal relationship implied? In other words, because God is in heaven, because the Creator of all this wonder exists, then, is that why all is right with the world? Or is it visa versa: because all is right with the world, demonstrated in the beauty Browning describes, then is one reminded or awakened to the Holy One? Whenever Creation rocks you with its beauty, you feel the wholeness and rightness and wellness of it all. Perhaps, no cause and effect is implied, but only the surety that rightness and holiness, experienced in the here and now, with glimpses of the sacred beyond, go together as a blessing.
I began to wonder, though, why the expression is of God as remote, far off, in heaven. This understanding of God as being away, a Creator finished with Creation, is not one I particularly resonate with, though it is a common understanding of the Divine, something of an assumption for many, as underlying in the view of reality as that the sun will rise each day, and that we will age. Maybe when the world is wonderful/marvelous, we are especially struck by the something more, the Creator-Beyond nature of the sacred, or maybe, our understanding of God is settled and Beyond when the world is going along hunky-dory-like. Or, when the world is wonderful, there is not such a need for God to be present and loving. God can be a lofty concept out there, a “ground of being”, “a universal meaning”, Truth, or, God can even not be, since all is right with the world.
What if all is not right with the world? I’m not just talking about when the weather is nasty out. What if the world is dark and so filled with pain – physical, emotional, spiritual pain – that we cannot quite bring ourselves to believe that “all will be well and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well”? We may be feeling anger, betrayal, loneliness, anxiety. We may experience deep loss, or have the sense of being a total loser. When life spins out of whack, and one loses even the false sense of control, when the world is not right, well and whole, but wrong, broken and sick, then a distant God is not much help, nor is a universal concept. Two other ways of considering the experience of the Holy may help – the God or the sacred between and among, and the God or the spirit within.
I have a very particular sense of God in this congregation, and not just because many doubt and some are atheists. I feel the Holy, the Divine, in the Between – the loving, caring, support, and communion that is here among us. This is Love with a capital L, whether we name it God, or the Holy, or not. And for some, when all is not right with the world, there is a loving God, a caring God who is with us and for us.
Karl Marx said that “religion is the opium of the people”, which many have taken to be an out and out critique of religion and God as offering a false consolation, a dangerous, addictive pleasantness that does not adequately deal with our pain and suffering, but only masks it, only perpetuates the darkness. There’s definitely some truth in that, but I once knew a Marxist who said that this quote was taken out of context. So I was not so surprised when I found this other Karl Marx quote, “Religion is the groaning of oppressed creation, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of situations where there is no spirit.” He doesn’t sound like he is condemning religion, but embracing its good possibilities. Without using the word God, Marx has captured the essence of what many theists believe about God when the world is in pain – God hears our groans with a heart of compassion and answers by renewing our spirits. What Marx says captures the experience that theists are trying to explain with God-language, but he says it poetically, and universally, so that it applies equally well to the experience of religion without God: “Religion is the groaning of oppressed creation, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of situations where there is no spirit.”
Jesus called for the Kingdom of, community of,
God, speaking about it in many stories and teachings. When they asked him about this
When all is not right with the world, which is all the time, since we only get glimpses of glory, God is here, Love is here. And that is all the time. This world is hurting, and also, this world is whole, both, had we but eyes to see and ears to hear. And God is in it all. Love is the greatest power in the world.
The third way to understand God or the experience of the sacred, besides as Beyond and Among, is to speak of the God Within, the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of Life, which is the spark that keeps us going, seeking and embracing the wholeness, rightness and wellness that is true of our world, and known from within. As we heard from the Rev. Kendyl Gibbons for our chalice lighting, “In every life, the human spirit wrestles to build anew Creation’s shining palace. Hope cannot be held in shallow vessels; It only dwells in a deep and flaming chalice.” The wrestling effort of the human spirit to experience the deep holy power within is how we prepare to notice that “all’s right with the world”. Heaven is within, among, and beyond. The key is to seek and love and open our eyes and ears and minds and hearts. Blessed Be.