The Yin and Yang of Rivers By Harmon Maher
When the bow of the kayak edges into the current there is a moment of accelerated heart beat, of anticipation. Who knows what the river will bring? As the paddle enters the water a sense of beginning develops, and in that moment one can be keenly aware of being alive. At least that is often my experience. Religion and spirituality are about many things, and in part it is about what speaks to you, where one finds insight and inspiration. Rivers and mountains speak to me in particular – not surprising for a geologist. Sacred texts can also speak to me, especially when they are so ably translated as they have been by Reverand Frank, and I thank him for that. But sacred texts do not speak nearly as powerfully to me as do rivers and mountains, or beaches, or the people I know, or many things outside the confines of a book or these walls. Sacred texts are old, venerable, full of accumulated wisdom, but arguably the world around is older, more venerable, and full of larger wisdom. A primary spiritual inspiration is the world we live in, where at moments a direct connection to something indescribably larger can be made, can be felt.
For me the experience of religion and spirituality comes first as a feeling and not any rational realization - it is an emotional state, perhaps akin to being in love. Words capture only a ghost of what love or what being at peace with the world around you is like. Words can simply help rationalize something deeper, or may be window dressing applied to what emerges from deeper within. Dichotomies surround us, and the one hinted at here can be framed as the emotional versus the rational. The plethora of dichotomies that shape our world is why the symbol of Yin and Yang is my favorite religious symbol. The emotional and the rationale are for us humans one of those Yins and Yangs, inseparable parts of a whole. Balance is important - a mix works well for reasons that escapes me, but which a rational look at past experience indicates this is so. An unemotional, rational look at questions such as how we should live life, can be sterile, can produce evil. Evil and good are yet another one of those essential dichotomies that speak to the 1
Yin and Yang in which we are embedded. Simplistically, what is good is what makes the world more as desired, and evil is what makes the world less that way. Emotions guide us in what is desired, and the rationality is useful in trying to make it so. There is much, much more to this partnership between the emotional and the rational, which the science of psychology elucidates, but just as negative and positive charges are essential to the very atoms and compounds that make us up, this dual nature seems essential to us.
Some of you know that I am a scientist, and may find my emphasis on the emotional here a bit surprising, but I would argue that emotion, creativity and much else associated with the non-rational side is deeply interwoven into the scientific enterprise. There is some sort of emotional calculus – we have multiple ways of processing input. In any case, for me the core of spirituality and religion often emerges from the emotional realm – at its heart it is a feeling, and then rationality is applied and feedback between the two occurs. Conflict can occur. You know you should, but you don’t want to or you know you shouldn’t, but you want to. Outcomes don’t seem so great when one emotions always override rationality or vice versa It is a built in struggle, an essential tension.
I wish to share with you three simple moments, when I have felt a sense of greater whole, of some transcendent connection, moments that radiate to influence the other moments of my life. These are not moments when I speak in tongues, but for someone else they could be. The first one that comes to mind may be surprising and occurred in Grand Central Station in New York City, while waiting for a train, watching the steady stream of people walking by, focused on their faces. Having time to contemplate that around you, without purpose, is a luxury. The sheer diversity, the array of faces that made up this particular current of humanity flowing was particularly rich. Chins, noses, eyebrows and eyes, hair, skin texture and tone – a medley of form and color that I knew about rationally, abstractly, but which I now felt, was witness to. The sensory cascade continued, accentuated by different accessories, facial expressions, and voices and languages. The river of people triggered something unexpected. 2
There can be an uncontrolled physical response, during these moments of connection or transcendence, an adrenaline rush – the body and mind rewarding each other for the moment, locked in an embrace. Music has triggered this response in me, sometimes in this very building. A very brave act of revelation and sharing last week, also in this building, triggered that reaction.
The flow of people at Grand Central Station made me think of genetic plasticity. In this way we are akin to dogs. Yes, I am comparing humans to dogs, and I apologize to dog lovers for the comparison. Dogs and humans have coevolved, and for some of us it is a symbiotic relationship. Not all species display such incredible variation – many are much more uniform in appearance than humans and dogs. Grand Central Station also reminded me of Vigelund Park in Oslo, Norway, where there is a carved granite obelisk 17 meters high and composed of the old and the young, male and female, the weak and the strong, the angry and the happy, all intertwined, touching and linked to each other in stone. Vigelund Park includes a large array of bronze and granite sculptures that purposefully celebrates the cycle of life and how we as individuals contribute to that diversity as we change with age. It can instill a state of mild rapture, at least in some. This is Norway and so you don’t want to get too carried away with any rapturing. The river of people in Grand Central also made me wonder how others do not see that for any difference between one person and another, there are people between the two to bridge that difference – that it is a continuum of over 6 billion individuals, and divisions are truly arbitrary. In the moment Grand Central Station and Vigelund Park can be sacred places.
The next moment of connection I would like to share is perhaps a predictable one, one that is shared with many. I have been fortunate enough to be present at the birth of all of my children. In my humble opinion it, is a very messy, bloody and grueling entrance most of us have into the world. The first time I saw the head of a newborn I remember thinking – that can’t be right, this is bad. Once I realized that no once else was
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alarmed, this morphed into being astonished at how severely an infants head can be deformed without damaging it. I can’t help but digress - those who believe in intelligent design would do well to witness natural human birth from start to finish. I suspect many women involved would say that there must be a better design. Of course we will never know, because no one is possibly insane enough to give a woman going through childbirth a questionnaire on how to more intelligently design said event. Emotions run high. Renewed respect and deep concern for your partner wells up, at least for the spouse not giving birth. There is a moment to come in all of this, perhaps when you first hold your newborn, this person you will come to know, when something deep inside happens. A feeling of incredible ferocity, a moment where there is no doubt about that fundamental question - how to live your life – you will live it so that this person grows into all that they can be. There is momentary and extraordinary clarity. You bound to another and transcend yourself. It doesn’t matter that this reaction is mediated by chemicals, shaped by evolution – you feel it, are swept along. I have always marveled at the strength of that bonding, and no words could have prepared me for it.
The third moment of connection I would like to share is a bit of a strange one and occurred on Sheep Mountain Table in South Dakota, which is part both of the Pine Ridge Native American Reservation and of Big Badlands National Park. Few visit this remote part of the Park. It is also considered sacred ground to the Sioux. Driving several miles on a dirt road through badlands to get there helps to sever the connection with the familiar. Sheep Mountain is a grassy table land some ten miles long and up to a mile wide surrounded mostly by cliffs of intricate badlands that have been carved by ephemeral and infrequent rains into colorfully banded strata which contain an array of exotic fossils from now extinct creatures. It is an island in the sky and at times, a place of worship for some, every bit as much as this beautiful building is a church for us. To the west, the Black Hills can be seen in the far distance and in between there are only a few, traces of barely visible dirt roads that speak to the human – otherwise it is almost pure nature. It is simply beautiful. That often used word – beautiful – often emerges from within unbidden. There can be a connection between what people find spiritual 4
and what they find beautiful. If I had to pick a sacred spot in the world, this would be high on the list to consider, and I have been fortunate enough to visit a number of candidate locations. Many National Parks include a high density of sacred spots, for good reason. Some of you may be remdinded of John Muir, the crazy Scotsman, who apparently wandered through Yosemite and elsewhere for days on end with nothing much beyond a blanket roll, and some bread and cheese, in a state of perpetual spiritual ecstasy, and who saw in nature salvation, and who played a role in establishing our National Parks. If I had a muse to guide me I might choose either John Muir or Edward Abbey. John Muir’s writing is a bit flowery and Edward Abbey is a bit crusty, too much of a curmudgeon at times, but I essentially agree with what he says about how to live life. Nature provides primal inspiration. This day on Sheep Mountain Table I was alone, and walked the several miles to the south end, which has particularly deep and intricate canyons and intriguing geology. The sky was blue and the wind was strong. On the start of my return hike to the car a prairie dog joined me. He or she, I don’t know which, would stay consistently perhaps 10 meters in front of me. If I stopped the prairie dog would stop and wait for me, looking at me. To gauge a reaction I started to talk to my companion, and this rodent seemed to be paying attention when I spoke. This continued for perhaps two miles - a good long time we traveled together. There was no prairie dog town in sight, and it struck me this was most peculiar behavior for a prairie dog. Perhaps I was affording protection from predators by my mere presence, but that is a pretty high level of intelligence for a prairie dog to utilize me in that way, not to mention that most prairie dogs avoid humans when they can. I usually think of prairie dogs as home bodies, and not prone to walk abouts, especially with two-legged strangers. Who knows why my companion joined me for this walk, but for the moment another species on earth had chosen to connect with me, and I thought that, just like with people, there are some real characters in the population of prairie dogs, and I had just met an unusual one. So I was alone that day, but not alone, and definitely not lonely.
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These moments of connectedness, of experiencing the sublime, the beautiful, are why that act of slipping into the water with a kayak is a moment I relish. Our family has 11 kayaks, and just recently acquired a rigid hull inflatable boat known as Zodiac. That is about 2.2 boats per person. I am fortunate that Lynn, my wife, also likes to paddle. Rivers have a yin and yang all their own and are good for connecting. There is the challenge of paddling upstream, and the comfort of floating downstream; slow and peaceful inner bends and swifter outer bends; the safety of the boat and the danger of snags where you can get pinned and die; the abundance of life linked to the riparian river corridor and the stench of a rotting carcass of some unfortunate creature that died, times you can float leisurely and times you must paddle hard and focus on reading the river. Rivers give life and take life, are loved and feared. Rivers connect the mountains to the seas. Rivers erode and tear down the earth, and then deposit the detritus to build deltas, marshes and beaches. If you have a boat a river is a highway, if you have a wagon a river is a barrier that must be forded, or ferried across. River dichotomies, the yin and yang, from trivial to profound, everywhere.
Hiking can provide some of that same connection to nature, and climbing through the grey mist and emerging into the sunlight to look down upon the clouds is an occasion to be savored. Such moments are necessarily fleeting, for the sublime needs the mundane to exist, not to mention that one must descend before the sun sets. Hiking can be well worth the effort when seeking to connect, but when paddling on water one is more detached from the comfortable, from the familiar. The kayak is a mere wisp of a boat that can flip easily and one is unavoidably close to and aware of the water. That which disconnects you with the familiar can also help connect you to something larger.
Some of you may be disappointed that I did not address the nature of god, or whether there is a god or the hereafter today, and others may be quite happy I did not do so. I actually wrote two other sermons that play with such questions, but feel they do not really have much to offer you. On these questions I am agnostic - and sad to say, nothing has become clearer along these lines as I have grown older and learned more. That may be in 6
part due some lack of trying. When I was in my teens and leaving the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, I made a bargain with myself that I would not think about such questions seriously until I was closer to death, likely in my fifties, which seemed far away as a teen. Here I am, and I think I want to stretch that bargain until I am well into my nineties, and perhaps, if I never make it to considering such vexing questions I have this feeling, so much the better. I can’t recommend this for you, but it has worked well for me.
As I grow older, I find myself more astonished, not less, how diverse, rich and beautiful our world is, including the very flawed human race, including all the pain and all the injustice. Life, with all its challenges, is an incomprehensible cosmic gift worth living, worth fostering, worth preserving, worth worshipping in one’s own way. Unitarians celebrate life in many ways, and from what I have seen they do it particularly well. That is why these moments of connection are important, they are a spring that feeds a river of caring about the world and people, and the desire to sustain it, and to heal it when necessary. May the moment be with you.
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