March 19, 2006

Rev. Henry Ticknor
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Shenandoah Valley

When Angels Sing

So far in my lifetime I have seen the northern lights, the great Aurora Borealis, twice; the first time was when I was in my early teens and a second time when I was a senior in college. Both times I found the experience to be fantastic and very moving.

The first time I saw them I was on a camping trip in Maine. It was a fabulously clear summer night and just as we were getting ready for bed someone pointed up at the sky and said, "Look at that."

What we saw was a faint blur of colors racing across the night sky. As I recall the colors were mostly reds and blues that seemed to wash across the stars much like heat lightning washes across the clouds.

The second time I saw the northern lights was in upstate New York where I was going to college. A group of us were headed home from a frat party of some kind when again someone pointed up at the sky and said," Look!"

Again, there was this impression of color filling the night sky. This time, however, the colors were mostly a pale green, tinged with blue, and sometimes they took on a shape not unlike ribbon candy that snaked across the star filled sky.

But perhaps what I remember best was the silence. There was all this light and all this motion and yet there wasn't a sound. I remember thinking that sometimes life deserves a sound track; a little night music to accompany the beauty of the heavens.

But as I look back on these memories , I believe that in a sense there was music--the music of the cosmos in motion. I heard exactly what others have called the music of the spheres. And we, a group of rowdy frat boys, stood silently for sometime watching this fabulous cosmic show until the cold got the better of us and we went back to whatever it was we were doing.

Clearly these two experiences have remained with me and they seem as vivid this morning as when they happened. As I have moved away from them in time, I have decided that for me the deep silence that I was so aware of was the sound of angels singing.

Or consider this story adapted from the writing of Robert Fulghum. He tells of a conversation with a person who was suffering from the mid-winter blahs and as he said "A terminal cold she has had since September."

During the conversation she asks Fulghum if he ever gets depressed and he responds that sometimes he gets so low he needs an extension ladder to get out. Exasperated the caller asks, "Then what do you do?" And here is a part of his response.

"My solace is not religion or yoga or rum or even deep sleep. It's Beethoven. As in Ludwig van. He's my ace in the hole. I put his ninth symphony on the stereo, pull the earphones down tight, and lie down on the floor. The music comes on like the first day of creation.

He goes on to tell how Beethoven knew a lot about depression and unhappiness. That he moved around a lot trying to find just the right place. And, even as a young man, he began to loose his hearing "which is usually bad news for pianists and singers."

Fulghum then says, "By the time Beethoven was forty-eight, he was stone cold deaf. Which makes it even more amazing that he finished his great Ninth Symphony five years later. He never really heard it! He just Thought it."

"So I lie there with my ear phones on, wondering if it ever could have felt to Beethoven like it sounds in my head. The crescendo rises, and my sternum starts to vibrate.

And by the time the final kettledrum drowns out all those big F's, I'm on my feet, singing at the top of my lungs in gibberish German with the mighty choir, and jumping up and down as the legendary Fulghumowski directs the final awesome moments of the END OF THE WORLD AND THE COMING OF GOD AND ALL HIS ANGELS, HALLELUJA, HALELUJA! WWHHOOOO-OOOM-KABOOM--BAM--BAAAA!

Uplifted, exalted, excited, affirmed and overwhelmed am I. MANALIVE! Out of all that sorrow and trouble, out of all that frustration and disappointment, out of all that deep and permanent silence, came all that majesty--that outpouring of JOY and exaltation! He defied his fate with jubilation.

And Fulghum ends with this, "In the midst of oatmeal days, I find within Beethoven's music an irresistible affirmation. In deep spiritual winter, I find myself in the sun of summer."

I'm sure that each one here this morning has had similar experiences.

It may have occurred looking out over the Grand Canyon or while watching a sunrise or sun set over the mountains or over the ocean, or like Fulghum, listening to a symphony or just a simple song.

But whenever or wherever it occurred we came away from the moment with an elevated sense of our connection to the world, to nature and to other human beings. The experience brought us out of our spiritual winter, and if only briefly, we once again experienced the sun of summer.

Some would refer to these extraordinary encounters with nature, or art, or music, or the spoken word as peak experiences.

While others would refer to them as transcendental experiences in that they transcend what we believe is an ordinary encounter with life and become something more--something deeply spiritual, something mystical.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow, writing in his book Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences says that it is quite characteristic in peak-experiences that the whole universe is perceived as an integrated and unified whole.

During a time of peak-experience he says "that there is a tremendous concentration of a kind that does not normally occur. There is the truest and most total kind of visual perception....The peak-experience seems to lift us to greater than normal heights so that we can see and perceive in a higher than usual way...The peak-experience is felt as a self validating, self-justifying moment which...can make life worth living."

According to Maslow peak experiences are those moments lasting from seconds to minutes, during which we feel the highest levels of happiness, harmony and possibility.

They range in degree from everyday pleasures to reported episodes of enhanced consciousness that feel completely different from any normal experiences.

Maslow also finds that the "world seen in the peak-experience is seen as only beautiful, good, desirable, worthwhile etc. and is never experienced as evil or undesirable.

The most frequent emotions associated with peak-experiences are wonder, awe, reverence, humility, surrender, and even worship."

He states that those who have peak-experiences often become "more loving and more accepting, and so become more spontaneous and honest and innocent.

During and after moments of peak experiences they characteristically feel lucky, fortunate, graced. And, finally, he believes that during moments of peak experiences one can gain a sense of the sacred.

And so it was for me when I saw the northern lights. I saw the universe as filled with wonder and I was filled with a sense of reverence for all nature and felt acutely my place on this planet. I sensed the music of the spheres and of eternity and I felt a deep and abiding sense of both peace and exhilaration.

But I confess that I am a romantic and prone to such flights of fancy. What about those of a more rationalistic approach to life? What of those scientists who rely on observable and recordable data to justify their thinking on the higher laws of physics and mathematics and use only empirical data from which to draw their conclusions?

In an interview on a BBC television program, the mathematician Andrew Wiles described the moment when he solved Fermat's Last Theorem--a problem that has exercised the minds of the greatest mathematicians for three centuries.

After working on the problem for seven years in solitude and secrecy, Wiles announced success--only to find a flaw in his reasoning. Another year of tense and demanding work ensued. This is how he described what happened next:

"Then suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I had this incredible revelation.... it was indescribably beautiful; it was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant. I just stared in disbelief for twenty minutes."

Surely this was exactly what Maslow was speaking of in his descriptions of peak-experiences.

But there are critics of this idea of peak-experiences. "Some people regard peak-experiences as pointing the way to what ought to be the norm in a truly healthy, ideal human life," Writes Bruce Charlton, MD.

"By this account, normal everyday life is a disease state during which we function at a lower level--firing on three cylinders, as it were. Everyday life is semi-human, and only during peak experiences are we fully awake, alert, aware, conscious, alive...I do not go along with the idea that peak-experiences are a window onto a transcendental reality (because I do not believe there is such a thing), neither do I consider them to constitute a pathway to a higher 'evolutionary' state."

So, is there room in our beloved Unitarian Universalism, a faith tradition "that counsels us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science" for these mystical moments?

Is there room for experiences which we can not explain objectively? Is the self-awareness that results from such experiences of any greater validity than what might occur in the process of everyday living? I believe there is.

I've recently read a wonderful book titled Gilead. The book presents a long letter written from a seventy-six year old minister to his seven year old son.

That's right I did say seventy-six and seven. In this long and sometimes rambling letter the father tells the story of his life and the people he has known. Throughout the book are wonderful prose descriptions of some of the father's most vivid memories.

In one such account, the author tells of how the father and son had gone off to Kansas to find the grave of the boy's grandfather. They were successful in their attempt and as they were cleaning up the grave site they were witness to a wonderful sight.

Just as a full moon was rising in the east the sun was setting in the west and they were both taken by the quality of the light that resulted from these simultaneous events. This is what the author writes:

"When my father and I were walking along the road in the quiet and the moonlight away from the graveyard where we'd found the old man, my father said, "You know everybody in Kansas saw the same thing we did.'

At the time...I took him to mean the entire state was a witness to our miracle. I took him to mean that the whole state could vouch for the particular blessing my father had brought down by praying there at his father's grave, or the glory that my grandfather had somehow emanated out of his parched repose.

Later I realized my father would have meant that the sun and moon aligned themselves as they did with no special reference to the two of us...

I can't tell you, though, how I felt, walking alongside him that night...what a sweet strength I felt in him, and in myself, and all around us. I am glad I didn't understand, because I have rarely felt joy like that, and assurance.

It was like one of those dreams where you're filled with some extravagant feeling you might never have in life, it doesn't matter what it is, even guilt or dread, and you learn from it what an amazing instrument you are, so to speak, what a power you have to experience beyond anything you might actually need.

Who would have thought that the moon could dazzle and flame like that?"

I think for some it's easy to scoff at those who report having these kinds of peak-experiences. Those of us who are informed by our rational and scientific minds might well question those who believe that there is a deeper, more fundamental state of existence hidden beneath the appearances of everyday living.

No doubt there are those who might question whether there is room in our tradition for such beliefs.

But as a colleague of mine likes to say "Unitarian Universalism is a spacious tradition." Within our faith we have space for many differing beliefs and non-beliefs. We have space for the atheist and the agnostic, just as we have space for the UU Christian. We have space for those who find truth in earth-based spirituality and in the religions of the East.

We have space for scientists and we have space for mystics. We have space for literalists and we have space for poets.

As I said earlier I am something of a romantic. I like to entertain the notion that life cannot always be distilled down to just the basics: to chemistry and physics and biology.

Just as I believe art and music and poetry can help me to transcend my day to day existence I believe that life is more than just DNA; that the universe is more than simple physics and I want to believe that it is important to seek out the answers to the riddles of the Sphinx.

Finally, I want to believe that these peak-experiences--these mystical experiences--that occur unbidden and without planning are meaningful.

They may be interpreted as artistic, or scientific, or religious moments of inspiration or they may be interpreted as providing us with a new lens through which to view the world. In either case, they should not be cast away without considering what they may mean in our lives.

As Robert Fulghum said such experiences may leave us, "Uplifted, exalted, excited, affirmed and overwhelmed..."

Or as I read from Gilead, "It was like when you are filled with some extravagant feeling...it doesn't matter what it is (and) you learn from it what an amazing instrument you are, so to speak, what a power you have to experience beyond anything you might actually need."

The variety of religious experiences is as many as we are people in this room. I think we ought to lift them up, to acknowledge them, to learn from them, and to celebrate them. I think we ought to be open to those moments of clarity when we can hear the angels sing.

Amen and Blessed be