“Counting It All Joy”
9. Follow Your Love
Mark 1:14-20
First Presbyterian
The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
August 19, 2007
I long have loved the poem I am
about to read to you and, in many ways, though nothing meaningful in life can be
reduced to a simple formula, I see in it a recipe for joy.
The poem was written by a Scottish poet named Ian Crichton Smith and, if
it is easier for you to read along with me than to listen, I have had the poem
printed on the back of the bulletin. It
is called “Children, Follow the Dwarfs.”
Children, follow the dwarfs and the giants and the wolves
into the Wood of Unknowing, into the leaves
where the terrible granny perches and sings to herself
past the tumultuous seasons high on her shelf.
Do not go with the Man with the Smiling Face
nor yet with the Lady with the Flowery Dress…
Avoid the Man with the Book, the Speech Maker
and the Rinsoed Boy who is forever clean.
Keep clear of the Scholar and the domestic Dog
and, rather than Sunny Smoothness, choose the Fog.
Follow your love, the butterfly where it spins
over the wall, the hedge, the road, the fence,
And love the Disordered Man who sings like a river,
whose form is Love, and whose country is Forever. (1)
The
poem is to me testimony to the truth that seldom can joy be found on the
well-traveled highways of life.
“Follow the dwarfs and
the giants and the wolves into the Wood of Unknowing…”
“Rather than Sunny Smoothness, choose the Fog.”
Seldom
can joy be found amid an orderly and conventional life.
“Do not go with the Man with the Smiling Face nor yet with the Lady
with the Flowery Dress.”
“Avoid the Man with the Book, the Speech Maker, and the Rinsoed Boy who
is forever clean.”
Seldom
can joy be found without daring to embrace risks in our lives that may or might
or possibly could cost us everything.
“Follow your love, the butterfly where it spins over the wall, the
hedge, the road, the fence…”
“And love the Disordered man who sings like a river, whose form
is Love, whose country is Forever.”
All
of these things are so because joy does not loiter or linger on the surface of
life but arises out of its depths. “Out
of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord,
hear my voice,” the psalmist prayed (Psalm 130:1).
Biblically
speaking, a cursory life is a cursed life, because superficiality is the
antithesis of joy. Joy is born in
the womb of our deep engagement with the world, in the crucible of our mourning
what is not right and just, in the chalice of our anguish both personal and
public, and in the goblet of our hope that suffuses all situations,
circumstances, and events because “nothing can separate us from the love of
God…in whom we live and move and have our very being.”
Joy is a “knowing” in the deepest part of our soul even after the
symphony of suffering has played its sorrowful songs in us that we belong to
life and love and God in ways that will not, not ever, never let us go, and
thereby experiencing the freedom to live our lives in ways that would make no
sense otherwise…living them prophetically, poetically, justly, and
generously… pouring them out in order that we may love this world and help to
bring goodness into it.
I
have been asked if we can come by joy in any other way and my answer is that I
do not think so. “Weeping may tarry for a night,” the psalmist says, “but
joy comes in the morning.” Before
the joy, the weeping, drinking from the cup of tears. If
there is another path to joy, one that sidesteps the devastations,
disappointments, and dark places of life, why did Jesus, that “Disordered
Man whose life sings for us like a river,” that man whose life was
declared null and void and out of order by the authorities and powers of his
day, why did he take the path he took?
Why, instead of “Sunny Smoothness” did he choose “the Fog”?
Because,
I think, Jesus knew that “Sunny Smoothness” is not the way of life, not
exclusively and not all of the time. Else
he would not have said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are
those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
“Blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for
they will be filled.” Also,
the fog, like the Wood of Unknowing in the poem, suggests that the certainty
that is a part of “Sunny Smoothness” that some people seem to prefer as
their path in life must yield instead to faith and trust, to mystery and
creativity. The more doctrinal,
dogmatic, and certain our religions become, the more they push away from
engaging and trusting God. When that
happens, the heart of religion becomes for us a matter of what we believe rather
than a guide to becoming more truly and fully human.
So, the poet rightly counsels us, saying:
“Children,
follow the dwarfs and the giants and the wolves into the Wood of Unknowing, into
the leaves
where
the terrible granny sings…”
We
do not have time within the context of this sermon to say much about the
“terrible granny” except that she represents within the stories of many
ancient, indigenous cultures the Baba Yaga, an old hag of a woman, a crone, a
witch in the sense of the word before it was interpreted negatively, the word witch
deriving from an old word wit meaning wise.
(If you prefer, when I say “Baba Yaga” think of Lady Wisdom of the
Bible who is the feminine persona of God and who is patterned, in many ways,
after the “Baba Yaga” if a bit more polished.)
The Baba Yaga is wild and untamable, formidable and demanding, but to
those who dare to approach her and to engage her and to submit themselves to
her, she helps us to become Yaga-ish ourselves…that is, strong with both the
wisdom of the universe as well as our own inner knowing…a bit wild and
untamable ourselves so that we do not shrink from our own unique truth or
nature…she helps us to move toward the healing of whatever has broken our
hearts or sundered our souls…she assists us in unleashing the latent and
lovely creativity buried within us so that we may blossom and flower and
flourish.
But,
in order to be put together in a way that brings freedom to our lives, the
freedom of becoming more and more a human being fully alive, we have to be
willing to risk being undone in ways that may well be uncomfortable for us and
for those around us who count on us to continue playing the roles they need us
to play in their lives and sticking to the scripts that social expectations and
conventions provide us. We have to
be willing to eschew the Man with the Smiling Face and the Lady with
the Flowery Dress whose niceties encourage us to go along with the way
things are in order to get along and not to make waves.
We have to be willing to forego the Man with the (Answer) Book and
the Speech Maker who think they know what is best for us and everyone
else.
Rather,
follow your love. Follow
your love. Follow your love.
Like the butterfly as it spins over the wall, the hedge, the road, the
fence. One of
Is
that not what Jesus did in the desert before he began his public ministry, when
he struggled with his temptations, when he realized and then determined to
follow his love no matter where it would lead him and no matter the cost?
And that is what he did to the end. And
I imagine something like that happened in the lives of the disciples of whom we
have read today whom Jesus called and who left the lives they had built to
follow him.
The
purpose of religion is not to make us more religious.
It is to help us to become more human, to free us to become more fully
ourselves, more fully alive after the manner of Jesus but in our own distinct
ways…to live with courage and candor and creativity and compassion…and in
that way to be filled with joy and to bring joy to the world…as Jesus, “the
Disordered Man who sings like a river, whose form is Love, whose country is
Forever,” did…as have many others across the centuries who have dared to
step away from the madding crowd to follow their love that, if it is really
their love, bestows grace not only on their own lives but also the life of the
world. Will you do that?
Will you dare to follow your love wherever it leads?
Children, follow the dwarfs and the giants and the wolves
into the Wood of Unknowing, into the leaves
where the terrible granny perches and sings to herself
past
the tumultuous seasons high on her shelf.
Do not go with the Man with the Smiling Face
nor yet with the Lady with the Flowery Dress…
Avoid the Man with the Book, the Speech Maker
and the Rinsoed Boy who is forever clean.
Keep clear of the Scholar and the domestic Dog
and, rather than Sunny Smoothness, choose the Fog.
Follow your love, the butterfly where it spins
over the wall, the hedge, the road, the fence,
And love the Disordered Man who sings like a river
whose form is Love, and whose country is Forever.
Amen.
(1)
Ian Crichton Smith, Collected Poems.
© Copyright First Presbyterian Church 2007