Rev. Joseph Boyd Yesterday I was glad to attend a women’s rally in response to the legislation that was passed in Texas. Being at the rally reminded me of something important in the process of correcting injustice – we cultivate relationship. It’s a very obvious thing, but one that I think deserves to be highlighted. When I first started engaging social justice in my local community, I was purely focused on the injustice, and the need to correct it. Now I still have that focus, but my vision has widened compared to when I first started. Now I notice the small things that are not really small things. I notice when someone takes the time to make a sign, and then hand it out to you to hold. I notice when someone shows you how to use a bullhorn properly. I notice the exchanged looks of gratitude, that there are other people who care too. I appreciate the conversation, which usually begins with the issue that brought us there, but then meanders into checking in and inquiring about each other’s lives.
When I first began to want to be involved in social justice, all of these aspects of a moment were there, but I wasn’t yet then able to appreciate all the ways that relationships were being strengthened and cultivated, in very deep ways. My relationship with myself, my relationship with other people, my relationship to the environment we were in, my relationship to my values, cultivated and strengthened by a power embodied by others who were continually present.
I’m slowly beginning to learn that cultivating relationship is about appreciating these subtle exchanges that really make a life worthwhile. It’s taking that extra minute to listen to someone, or introducing yourself to someone, or saying to a stranger: I’m glad you’re here. It’s being aware of these subtle shifts that are really not so subtle. I was standing in my minister’s study last Sunday, and I was in my robe looking out onto the lawn, and it hit me: I’ve done this before, many times now.
And it may sound funny, but the smells of the room, and the feeling of the church – it all felt like how it felt on a Sunday in September at 10:30 am two years ago, three years ago. I knew the overall feeling in my body, even though my mind never took the time to mark it, until that moment. It was an immersion into a similar moment that I’ve had for a number of years now, and the experience felt open and deep. It may sound strange, but it felt eternal. Eternal as in outside of normal time. The Greeks had a good word for it: Kairos. The Greeks had two ways of understanding time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is the usual way we experience time as a chronological sequence of events. But Kairos is an opportune time, a moment of grace, a time when it is right to do something, a time when transformation takes place. It’s a time when the world seems to conspire to bring about that exact moment, a moment that we are in the center of, always.
My sneaking suspicion and intuition is that we are always living in Kairos, except most of us, including myself, rarely know it. But we get glimpses, certain moments that feel as if the world meets us in this way that is alive and full, and wanting for nothing.
We are cultivating relationships that we’re not always aware of, and those relationships make us who we are. The reading this morning is from Taizan Maezumi Roshi, who lived a full life. During World War 2 he was a young boy in Japan, and American soldiers taught him how to say swear words in English and gave him his first cigarette. Maezumi’s father was a respected Zen Buddhist priest and began young Maezumi’s training to be a priest while he was still a boy. After his father died, Maezumi took a ship bound for America, arriving in Los Angeles. He spoke no English, other than the swear words he learned. He worked as a houseboy, cleaning homes of the wealthy throughout the California valley. This was in the early 1960’s, and there was a Kairos moment.
Due to Alan Watts, DT Suzuki, and the Beatnik movement, there was great interest in Zen Buddhism and Eastern spirituality in general. Maezumi learned English and began teaching American people about the true meaning of Zen. One of those talks was the one we heard this morning on ceremonial action. Maezumi quickly learned that Americans were not big appreciators of ceremonial action, actions that are done in a certain way at a specific time. Americans loved informality, and valued looseness, a way of living that had no clear boundary or intention. A moment that was free to be whatever you wanted it to be and lived the way you wanted to live it. But Maezumi was really smart about this and culturally sensitive. He didn’t try to convince Americans not to be informal, and he repeated that his goal was not to be prescriptive or restrictive in trying to explain Zen or any religious teaching.
But from what he knew as a Japanese person, was that ceremonial action, action carried out with specific attention, had a power that could not be discarded. It was the repeated action done with the same mind, again and again, that had the power to show a person their true life: a Kairos moment.
I think we are in a Kairos moment now. In this time everything seems divided up. And even if this has been the case for a while, it feels very pronounced right now. The stakes constantly feel very high. It seems everything that is being fought over is about life or death, literally. And the divisions between different cultures, even if they live in the same country, seem sometimes irreconcilable. And I have been thinking about this in the context of this month’s theme: Cultivating Relationship. And now I’m noticing about how the most important aspects of cultivating relationship are not perhaps what we think. It is not the big conversation or meeting with someone who behaves and thinks very differently.
It is realizing we are always in relationship, and that the way we live our lives, the way we carry ourselves in our day, has the power to remind us that we are always in relationship or mightily distract us from that fact. We do have a kind of ritual as Americans that is not so healthy when it is followed without question. The ritual that we have is the unspoken understanding that each of us can do whatever we want. This is really wonderful, dynamic, and creative when the ritual of this understanding is working well. But this understanding seems to cause harm when it distracts us from the fact that our whole life is made up of relationships. I don’t think Maezumi Roshi was only speaking to Buddhists or those interested in Zen. That was the context for his talk, but the heart of it I think is true for every religious or humanist orientation, and any culture. The heart of it is that the way we live the most mundane moments of our life have the power to cultivate a sense of relationship or dull that sense of relationship.
We are always in relationship, but the everyday actions of our lives can either cultivate that awareness and appreciation, or dull that awareness to the point that we don’t even notice it.
I think we are in a time when it is wise to consider how we might carry out our living in ways that cultivate the sense of relationship to others and the wonder of this world. Even if we live and spend much of our time alone, it may be even more crucial to act in ways that cultivate a sense that we are in relationship, rather than dull our sense, and feel the isolation that comes from that. How do we do this? I think each of us deep down knows the answer. I don’t think there is a prescription, a certain way you should move, communicate, and be in the world. But I do believe there is a good way for you and a good way for me. I think it is worth asking ourselves: Is this act cultivating my sense of relationship – relationship to my family, my values, my life? Or am I dulling my sense of relationship, distracting myself from it? I think each of us can answer that for ourselves, and it may be illuminating.
I’ve found it personally very easy to be distracted from the sense of relationship. I’ve found and still find it far too easy to get lost in my head, convincing myself I completely understand a given situation. I completely see why this person, these groups of people do x. I’ve found that certainty of any kind is a very powerful distraction from any kind of meaningful sense of relationship. Once I’m certain I think I have any person sized up, any group of people sized up, even if I think I have myself pretty well understood – that certainty closes down the possibility of intimacy. When we are unsure, we are open, and we are better listeners, we’re more curious, and the sense of relationship grows. I fall into the trap of certainty quite easily. I can convince myself I have something figured out. But when I do this, there are consequences. I miss the subtle cues; I miss the little things that are not really little things. And when I do this, I miss my life. I’m not really there for it. I miss the texture, and my life becomes Chronos time: one sequential event after another. And life becomes a habit of just marking time.
But Kairos time usually comes to wake me out of that stupor. I get reminded what my life really is about: relationship, and there’s no end to discovering that. We will never figure out all there is that we are related to, and that open expanse becomes an invitation, an invitation we can follow, cultivating a sense of relationship wherever we are. There are endless ways to cultivate this sense, but I think it begins with wanting to do it: wanting to cultivate a sense of relationship. Wanting to cultivate a sense of relationship with ourselves, cultivating relationship with the time we are alive in, and the great and wonderful people who are in relationship with us. Cultivating a relationship to the seasons, to the earth that is supporting us at this moment. It’s truly endless, and I agree with Maezumi Roshi – it’s about the little things, that are really not little things. It’s about how we sit, how we communicate, the way we eat our food, our chores, our commute, our work.
It’s about how we show up for our loved ones, for strangers. It’s about how we show up for ourselves. I think starting there is good. In religion you’ll often hear the question: Who are you? Who are you, really? This is not just an intellectual question, with no real answer. It has an answer, but I think it’s an endless answer. It’s an answer that appears when we wish to cultivate relationship with ourselves and the whole of life. When we cultivate a relationship to our living that is not just a sequence of events, one after the other, but a fullness, a wonder, an appreciation for ourselves.
I think cultivating this sense of relationship is what we talk about when we talk about peace. I think peace is possible: peace between peoples, peace with ourselves. I think cultivating a sense of relationship is the means and it is the end. Cultivating a sense of relationship is the goal, the fulfillment, and the path. I think we might think that transformation is when we become someone completely different: someone who is kinder, more fearless, more generous, more whatever.
But I think the real transformation begins now, in Kairos time. It begins when we feel the desire to cultivate relationship with who and where we are. The transformation happens in the way we relate to our life. When we relate to our life as something to cultivate relationship with, a whole universe opens, a whole universe of possibilities. We are transformed by the ways we choose to engage our life and all of life. The transformation is not dependent on certain circumstances. The possibility for transformation is here, now, always. It is always here. And each of us has the capacity to realize it. It’s realized in relationship. It’s realized when our daily actions support the cultivation of relationship. It’s realized when we engage our life as if it matters, and as if life matters. It’s realized in noticing in minute detail in our actual living, that it is impossible for us to get away from relationship. No matter what we’ve done, no matter what we think, we are in relationship. Cultivating that sense, moment by moment, is transformation.
