Who Do You Choose To Be?

August 21, 2022

READING ~ Wheatley, Margaret J.. Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

“I know it is possible to experience grace and joy in the midst of tragedy and loss.
I know it is possible to create islands of sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas.”

READING ~ Wheatley, Margaret J.. Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity . Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

“Now it is too late. We cannot solve these global issues globally. We can see them clearly. We can understand their root causes. We have evidence of solutions that would have solved them. But we refused to compromise, to collaborate, to persevere in resolving them as an intelligent, creative species living on one precious planet.”

SERMON

One question.

In this time of chaos, violence and global systemic collapse, who do you choose to be?

Three things.

First, we can no longer prevent the impending systemic global collapse. All systems and organisms or organizations have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are in the end stage.

Second, Faith is the confidence that love without reward is valuable.

And third, whatever the problem, community is the answer.

That is all. Thank you.

If you are curious, stick with me for a bit and I will elaborate and perhaps offer some meaningful reflections for your week.

Alright, if you remember these three things and focus your attention, your energy, and your work in alignment with these truths, you will be well on your way to becoming what Margaret Wheatley calls a Warrior for the Human Spirit.

It is a choice. It may very well be a calling. It will most certainly be the work of your heart.

Although I am not overly fond of the word “warrior” because of its association with war, I accept Margaret Wheatley’s explanation. Her use of the term warrior is based on the ancient Tibetan Buddhist prophecy of the Shambhala Warrior.

A 1,200-year-old Tibetan Buddhist prophecy of ’The Shambhala Warrior’ tells of the rising of regular people who wish to bring about great change and healing through the powers of Compassion and Insight.

But, here, let me paraphrase Joanna Macy’s telling of the prophecy of Shambhala.

"There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers have arisen. Although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and technologies that lay waste the world. It is now, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.

"You cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. But you cannot recognize a Shambhala warrior by sight, for there is no uniform or insignia, there are no banners. And there are no barricades from which to threaten the enemy, for the Shambhala warriors have no land of their own. Always they move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.

"Now comes the time when great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors, moral and physical courage. For they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power and dismantle the weapons. To remove these weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go into the corridors of power where the decisions are made.

"The Shambhala warriors know they can do this because the weapons are manomaya, mind-made. This is very important to remember, Joanna. These weapons are made by the human mind. So they can be unmade by the human mind! The Shambhala warriors know that the dangers that threaten life on Earth do not come from evil deities or extraterrestrial powers. They arise from our own choices and relationships. So, now, the Shambhala warriors must go into training.

"How do they train?" I asked.

"They train in the use of two weapons."

"The weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary. We need this first one," he said, lifting his right hand, "because it provides us the fuel, it moves us out to act on behalf of other beings. But by itself it can burn us out. So we need the second as well, which is insight into the dependent co-arising of all things. It lets us see that the battle is not between good people and bad people, for the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. We realize that we are interconnected, as in a web, and that each act with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see.

"But insight alone," he said, "can seem too cool to keep us going. So we need as well the heat of compassion, our openness to the world's pain. Both weapons or tools are necessary to the Shambhala warrior."

-- Joanna Macy

And, there is this part of the prophecy ….

When the people need protection, when the human spirit needs protection, the warriors arise.

We are living in a time when the people, the human spirit, need protection - - - May the warriors arise. These rising protectors are, in Margaret Wheatley’s explanation, Warriors for the Human Spirit and their only weapons – or tools, or skills – are compassion and insight. They are peaceful warriors, vowing to never use aggression or fear to accomplish their ends.

What is happening in our world? Why would we suggest that the Shambhala Prophecy from 1,200 years ago is speaking to us now?

First Thing.

We can no longer prevent the impending systemic global collapse of Western civilization as we have known it.

All systems and organisms or organizations have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are in the end stage of our own civilization.

This is a hard thing to accept, to even contemplate. Yes, of course, we know that things have a lifespan. Plants, animals, people. These are measurable in days to decades. We’ve seen this cycle …. lots.

Stars too have a lifespan. The expected lifespan of our star, the sun, is another 5 to 8 billion years. It will die. The time frame is so remote that we don’t think about it.

But, global systems and our Western Civilization? All of it? Now?

This is a terribly hard reality to face. In fact, we simply don’t believe it – or don’t want to believe it.

Margaret Wheatley has spent a years studying the history of civilizations, following those who have made it their life’s work to understand these things. She relies on the work of Sir John Glubb because, as she says, “I was continually stunned with his descriptions of the specific human behaviors our species always exhibits through the rise and fall of civilizations.”

Glubb studied thirteen empires in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and from Assyria in 859 BCE to modern Britain in 1950. The pattern of the decline and fall of these superpowers was startlingly clear. It didn’t matter where they were or what technology they had or how they exercised power. They all declined in the same stages and it always took ten generations, about 250 years.

Western civilization is right now exhibiting signs of the final stage of a civilization called the Age of Decadence. Of this age, Sir John Glubb writes:

“Frivolity, aesthetician, hedonism, cynicism, pessimism, narcissism, consumerism, materialism, nihilism, fatalism, fanaticism, and other negative behaviors and attitudes suffuse the population. Politics is increasingly corrupt, life increasingly unjust. A cabal of insiders accrues wealth and power at the expense of the citizenry, fostering a fatal opposition of interests between haves and have nots. The majority lives for bread and circuses; worships celebrities instead of divinities.”

Declining nations have celebrity cultures: athletes, singers, actors.

Wheatley, Margaret J., Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (p. 303). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This description of the end of a civilization – every civilization – is terrifying since it sounds so very familiar to us in this very moment.

And that is precisely Wheatley’s point. We must face reality. We are nearing the end. Not today or tomorrow. Maybe not within our lifetime. The hard fact, however, is that we cannot stop this decline, we can only choose who to be and how to live in the presence of decline.

And yet …… and yet …… there may also be something very liberating in facing this hard truth. Ok, we cannot save the world. OK, our efforts to reverse the trend toward destruction will not accomplish what we want. What now? Despair? Join the hedonists – eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die? Well, no.

Second thing. Faith is the confidence that love without reward is valuable.

We cannot save the world – I know, it’s hard to give up our idealism and our struggle to turn the world around, but let’s face it for a minute.

What we’ve been asking world leaders to do is to fund the process of their own demise as powerful and/or wealthy rulers. The powerful have never in all of human history gone along with such a scheme. Wheatley reminds us that the powerful have created this mess and though they recognize the messiness, they still maintain power. She says,

The powerful always defend the status quo because it is the source of their power and privilege. Any change that benefits others would destroy their position. And their position is all they care about defending.

Wheatley, Margaret J.. Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (p. 10). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

And, this is especially true in a declining civilization. Back to our question – Who do you choose to be? - even in this stage of inevitable decline?

I invite you to consider this answer: Choose to be faithful. Not faithful to failing systems, or leaders who do not serve us and cannot save us, or even religions that have ceased to serve others.

Choose to be faithful to the core value, the core truth, the sure knowledge that this is the essence of who we human beings are; faithful to that which we cannot give up and still live meaningful lives.

I’m talking about having faith in the energizing force of all that we know – and that energizing force can be called LOVE, simply Love. Love abides. Love abides. It doesn't seek rewards. It doesn’t make demands. It serves. And it shows up – no matter what.

So, the second thing. Faith is the confidence that love without reward is valuable.

We practice love because it is valuable to do so.

We do the work of love because it is the right thing to do – regardless of the outcome.

Our Buddhist teachers and friends will encourage us to relinquish any attachment to the outcome of our efforts and to steadfastly pursue our practice, our faith – LOVE – because that is the work of our hearts.

Here we come right back to becoming Warriors for the Human Spirit.

With compassion and insight, we pursue our practice of love.

We may suffer insults and setbacks, but we persevere.

When we practice our own right action, meaningful action, good work, we lift the spirits of all.

Let me, again, share from Margaret Wheatley …

The Faith and Confidence of Warriors. We have unshakable confidence that people can be kinder, gentler, and wiser than our current society tells us we are. We rely on human goodness and offer this faith as a gift to others. We offer ourselves not as activists to change the world, but as compassionate presences and trustworthy companions to those suffering in this world. We embody compassion without ambition. Our confidence, dignity, and wakefulness radiate out to others as a beacon of who we humans are. Our confidence is not conditioned by success or failure, by praise or blame. It arises naturally as we see clearly into the nature of things. …

We rely on joy arising, knowing it is never dependent on external circumstances but comes from working together as good human beings. We encounter life’s challenges with a sense of humor, knowing that lightness and play increase our capacity to deal with suffering.

Wheatley, Margaret J., Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (p. 266). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In essence, through our practice of love, we create islands of sanity, places of safety and refuge.

An island of sanity can be a group or a community. It can also be an interior space bounded by our integrity: we know who we are, what we value, and what we stand for.

We create islands of sanity by seeing the dignity and worth in each person, using our spiritual skills of compassion and insight.

We create islands of sanity by treating people as the precious beings they are.

We create islands of sanity by doing right work, the work of our hearts – regardless of our inability to save the world and by following the advice of Teddy Roosevelt, “Do what you can with what you have and who you are.” In other words, do the work because it is good, not to be praised, realizing that we cannot NOT do this work.

Third thing. Whatever the problem, community is the answer.

And, My Dear Spiritual Companions, we do all that we do together.

There are so many people in the world who are companions in kind of work that builds beloved community, that relieves suffering, that serves without need for reward. As human beings, we want to find value and meaning in what we do, in how we live, in who we are. We do this together.

Our UUA President, Susan Frederick-Gray has said time and time again, this is no time for a casual faith and this is no time to go it alone. We are cursed and blessed to live in these interesting times.

We choose each other. We choose to bless the world, even as it disappoints and betrays us because there is also enormous beauty and goodness. We choose service over recognition and compassion for others over the greed of self-interest.

Final words from Meg Wheatley who has inspired me for three decades.

In this time of rising insanity and brutality, work that engages our better human qualities is a gift we can offer to others. This is why we create islands of sanity, so that more of us can experience the gift of doing meaningful work on behalf of others. How wonderful to have the chance to engage together in doing good work, no matter what is going on around us. We are richly blessed.

Wheatley, Margaret J., Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (p. 270). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

May we choose to bless each other and the world.

May we choose the practice of Love and the path of the Warrior for the Human Spirit.

May we do all our meaningful work with joy.

May we lay down the burden of needing to save the world and place our energy in loving what we can touch right here, right now.