Here's the sermon.  I titled it,"The Labyrinth, the Minotaur and the moment."  Please, give me your comments.  All feedback is appreciated.           

            We live in a Universe of Choice.  In our glorious world of free will anything is possible.  Multiple roads lay before us, with a myriad of other paths branching from each one.

            Even as we sit here, in this room, at this time, our minds are free to wander.  Where will I go after the service?  I’d better make that reservation for GA.  Is it Mother’s Day already—I’d better get a card.  Hmmm…what’s that bird doing outside?

            So much to ponder, so little time.  Our minds are built for use and we do use them.  When we approach a problem we consider this possibility, and that, and sometimes come up with more problems than when we started out.  In our mental chess game we calculate each move and the next move and the next.  We even ponder the possibility of what would have happened if we had done something differently, which is insidiously maddening and frustratingly pointless.  We act as if any problem can be solved if we just think hard enough or approach it the right way.  Life is a soufflé which can be made perfect with a teaspoon of logic, a cup of reason, and a pinch of common sense.

            Or is it?  I sit before my piano, ready to play a piece by Haydn that I’ve been practicing for months.  The metronome is on, the sheet music is open, and I begin to play the notes.  The rhythm is there, the G-chord in the left hand comes in perfect time with the G-Major arpeggio in the right.  The sound is there, the notes are all there, and the idea is there.  But until I relax into the piece, until I quiet my mind and stop thinking about the notes and start feeling instead of counting the rhythm, I’m just making noise, not music.

            I can bring forth an evocative melody or touching harmony only when I’m at the razor’s edge of conscious and unconscious thought.  If I think too much my playing becomes lumbering, leaden, and timid.  If I think too little it becomes wild and disjointed.  Erato, the muse of music insists on balance.  Music happens when my mind is equally engaged and disengaged, playing from a place of immediacy, and immersed in the moment.

            So much of what we do benefits from letting go of the intellect.  At church meetings we brainstorm ideas, without fear of criticism or judgment.  We go on retreats or vacations to refresh our views.  Sometimes we only see the solution to a problem after we walk away.  Ideas come to us when we least expect them, when our minds are clear and uncluttered.  When listening to music, appreciating art, or immersing oneself in nature, the reward of an unfettered mind can be unimaginable bliss.

            That is why there is a legion of calming techniques; Yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, breathing, a hot bath, exercise, prayer beads, the rosary, a walk around the block.

            A few miles north of this Church is a labyrinth.  As you approach the labyrinth it appears deceptively peaceful.  It’s a sixty foot diameter circle of crushed white limestone with grey spacers defining a path.  In the center of the labyrinth is an open circle, around the circle winds a path that doubles in on itself, switches back, winds around and eventually, after you have walked over every inch of the circle, winds up at an open center about ten feet in diameter.

            At the outset of a labyrinthine journey the walker is presented with a simple choice.  To enter or not to enter.  Once one enters the labyrinth the path is dictated by the spacers.  There are no choices to make, no multiple paths.  The only direction is forward.  Only the pace is left for the walker to determine. 

            As I approached the labyrinth I thought, “This will be nice and relaxing.”  I assumed my troubles would melt away with each step until I reached the blissful, peaceful center.  But then I thought of the Minotaur.

            The Minotaur of Greek myth was a monster, a half-bull, half-man who was locked in the giant, inescapable labyrinth of King Minos of Crete.  Each year seven youth and maidens were presented to King Minos as tribute by Athens.  The youth and maidens were sent into the labyrinth for the Minotaur to feast upon.  The hero Theseus ended the carnage when he entered the labyrinth, slew the Minotaur, and lead the intended victims to safety.

            “There’s can’t be a Minotaur in this labyrinth,” I told myself.  It’s flat and the spacers are two inches high.  If there’s a Minotaur I would have seen it by now.  And I don’t think liability laws would abide the church keeping a Minotaur in its labyrinth. 

            Oh, but there was a Minotaur in that labyrinth and it chased me with every step I took.   It was the Minotaur of anger and fear and self doubt that I brought with me.  As I took each step in the only direction that I could, I found my thoughts focused more and more on those thoughts that I needed to shed.  Each step became heavier and heavier as I identifies what was weighing me down.  I was angry at my husband for devoting too much time to work and to his own interests.  We had fought about it, and I doubted that I was strong enough to deal with my feelings.

            I had expected the center of the labyrinth to be a place of unalloyed bliss, but instead I found only struggle.  For when I reached the center there was no longer a path to guide me.  I felt a chill as I passed the threshold into the center.  I was alone with my thoughts—and my Minotaur—with nowhere to go but out of there.  For the path doesn’t continue on.  It ends in the center and the only way to exit is the way you came in.  And that is the second decision you make in the labyrinth—when to leave.

            I found that I couldn’t bring myself to leave the center until I had left my burden behind.  I stood in bright center grappling with my anger and doubt and fears.  I was angry at my husband and I was angry at my own selfishness.  The Minatour's horns of doubt slashed at me.  I was afraid that my husband was happier when he wasn't with me.  The beast's sharp teeth ripped at my spirit.  How could I go on?  I saw wild rage in the glare of the Minatour's eyes and I realized this isn't me.  This anger, this self pity, this fear were emotions I brought on myself.  They didn't come from outside of me.  It was time to let go.  It was time to give up the struggle.  I had reconciled with myself.  The Minatour had vanished.  It was time to exit.

            I wanted to run out of the center as fast as I could and leave my emotional baggage lying in the grey limestone dust.  And here’s the brilliance of the labyrinth.  I couldn’t.  I had to walk the labyrinth’s convoluted path in order to exit. 

            I was relieved that the path immediately led me to the very outside circle.  I wanted to be as far from the center as possible.  But the path eventually wound back towards the center, and I felt more and more upset with each step I took closer to that place of pain and struggle.  Finally the path passed right next to the center.  One foot away.  It was almost unbearable.  I did not want to be there.

            Mercifully, one need just follow the path and eventually it winds away from the center, runs towards the rim, flirts with the center again, doubles back, and then exits the labyrinth.  I charged out the exit, weary and relieved.  Like Theseus, I had entered, struggled, and returned.  In so doing I had reclaimed peace.

            I have walked the labyrinth several other times.  Each journey is different.  Sometimes I struggle.  Sometimes I find joy and quiet in the center.  But each time I exit the labyrinth different than when I entered.  My mind is lighter, emptier if you will, and I’m more in touch with myself and my surroundings.  I’m quite literally in a spiritual state of mind.

            The transcendentalists of the early nineteenth century broke with religious tradition to posit that what we take as religious sensations come from within ourselves.  In 1821 Sampson Reed, a divinity student at Harvard College delivered a masters thesis titled “Oration on Genius.”  His heretical point of view was, quoting Dr. Eugene Taylor, “That God or whatever we take to be divine, comes to us not through what is above or outside, but through our innards—through our spiritual interiors; through what is highest and most holy in ourselves.”

            I touch the divine when I play a piano passage fluidly and effortlessly.  I know that the feeling comes from inside me, not from the wood and wire of the piano or from some celestial muse.  I am transported by the simplicity and repetition of the labyrinth.  The sensation flows from inside of me, a constellation of ideas and feelings given shape by the crushed limestone and stone spacers of the maze.     

            But what of the sensation of touching the divine when what touches us seems to emanate from something that actually is above or outside of us.  What of the bliss that comes from listening to the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or from pondering the wonderful and mysterious boxes by artist Joseph Cornell, or the symbol laden canvasses of Anselm Kiefer or Pablo Picasso?  What of the awe inspired by the Grand Canyon, or Niagara Falls, or the first robin of the spring?

            An overwhelming aesthetic ecstasy comes when we are in the presence of something so sublime, so perfect that literally nothing exists but that moment of beauty.  We are transported because we are open to be transported.  The redwood or the rainbow or the perfect G-chord is only a vehicle on which we can choose to ride to bliss, or not.

            Last week my fifteen year old daughter Ashley and I visited the Anderson Japanese Garden in Rockford.  It is spectacular, a magical place of peaceful paths, stones and flowers arranged in perfect harmony, and a landscape that is a delight for the mind, the eye, and the senses.

            As soon as I entered the garden I was transported.  The garden is not only breathtakingly beautiful, it is perfect.  Everything is in its right place.  A complex and colorful planting compliments a nearby simple green lawn and shrub.  A bench at the edge of a pond is framed by an overhanging willow that both shelters and defines the space with a thousand green lines.  The serene tea house is steps away from a roaring waterfall.  A path and stream meet and diverge like shy lovers.  A cistern shaped like a Japanese coin in an out-of –the way corner mesmerized me with the sound and motion of water dripping from a bamboo pipe.  On the coin was the inscription, “At this moment I am content.”

            As I floated blissfully through the garden my daughter, who brought her camera, was somewhere else entirely.  She was focused on surveying the garden in a four by three ratio, analyzing each image to find the best possible photograph.  While I waxed rhapsodically about the perfect placement of a rock she climbed on the rocks to get a better picture.  Same place, same time, same inspiration, but with different results.  What we see as divine comes to us from inside, not out.

            After our first time through the garden I suggested to Ashley that she put away the camera and that we take a second pass through.  No composing of pictures, no stalking the image, just enjoying the landscape, the moment, and whatever we could discover.  Ashley reported that the two experiences were qualitatively different, but equally pleasurable.  With the camera in hand Ashley’s mind was active.  She was judging, categorizing, and prioritizing in the process of creating art.  Without the camera her eyes were open to the larger picture.  She could see the interplay between disparate elements and she noticed things that would not otherwise fit into a photograph.  She found the act of being inside the creation to be significantly more peaceful.  Bliss doesn’t just happen.  One must be open and receptive to it.

            In his groundbreaking book, “The varieties of Religious Experience,” William James wrote, “Even the least mystical of you must by this time be convinced of the existence of mystical moments as states of consciousness of an entirely specific quality, and for the deep impression which they make on those who have them.  A Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. R. M. Bucke, gives to the more distinctly characterized of these phenomena the name of cosmic consciousness.  ‘Cosmic consciousness in its more striking instances is not,’ Dr. Bucke says, ‘simply an expansion or extension of the self-conscious mind with which we are all familiar, but the superaddition of a function as distinct from any possesses by the average man as self-consciousness is distinct from any function possessed by one of the higher animals.’”

            And this from “The Inner Game of Music” by Barry Green, “In everything we do there are two games being played: the outer game, where we overcome obstacles ourselves to reach an outer goal…and an inner game in which we overcome internal obstacles such as self doubt and fear.”

            The Minotaur is real and he is everywhere.  He followed me in the labyrinth and he sits next to me on the piano bench.  At the Symphony he waits for the most arrestingly beautiful passage to whisper in my ear, “What about that project at work you’ve been putting off?”  The Minotaur feasts on my doubts and fears.  His purpose is to distract me from living in the moment and from giving my attention to what is most important right now.

            Call it relaxed concentration or call it ecstasy.  Some may think of it as an uncluttered mind, as a mystical state, or as cosmic consciousness.  Whatever our conception of the unfettered mind, we can all benefit from recognizing and aspiring to live at the razor’s edge of the conscious and unconscious.  It’s always there, right between thinking and being.

            At this moment I am content.             

I'm in full research mode for my sermon, which I hope to have written before I deliver it on May 13. Last weekend I walked a labyrinth. Tomorrow my daughter and I will visit the Anderson Japanese garden in Rockford. I've been practicing piano twice daily. My research books include James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience," ""Zen in the Art of Archery," "The Tao of Pooh," and "The Inner Game of Music." I emerge from each research session a bit wobbly, unstable as a boxer who took too many blows to the head. This subject is quite literally mind blowing.

The sermon will be titled, "The Labyrinth, the Minotaur, and the Moment: an inquiry into repose." The central thesis is that any activity can be enhanced by quieting the conscious mind, tapping into the unconscious, and freeing the self from fears, doubts, and stress. Music is best performed at the razor's edge of conscious and unconscious. We have to read the notes and count the time, but natural, fluid, evocative music comes from a place where we let go and let the music flow through. Successful group brainstorming happens when everyone is comfortable with saying whatever comes to mind, with no prejudgment or criticism. Creating art, hitting a tennis ball, relating to a significant other are all enhanced by banishing the Minotaur of doubt and fear from our personal labyrinth and by focusing on the moment.

What could be easier?  What could be more obvious?  Don't we all want a life full of joy, creativity, personal growth, extacy?  Or are we more comfortable with a life lived with plans or regrets, working at the behest of others, never satisfied, always wanting more?  The dominant media tells us that we're not thin enough, or pretty enough, or smart enough.  Our parents tell us that we need to work hard, be a good girl, be resposible, and support ourselves.  Our spouses, friends, and family don't want us to change.  It is quite easy to live Thoreau's "Life of quiet desperation."  A freer, more flexible and present oriented life may conflict with the life everyone else has in mind for us.  The path of bliss is a steep and rocky road indeed.  

I'll end the sermon with suggestions for moving into the moment.  Plant a garden, say a rosary, rub a prayer rock, walk.  Walk around the block, walk a path, walk a labyrinth, but walk.  Stay focused on the here and now.  The sound of birds, the rustle of the wind, the smell of lilacs.  Avoid unnecessary activities that push thoughts toward the fretful future, the regretted past, or the impoverished present.  Eschew driving, except as necessary.  Silence the television and its insistant, "Buy it now," voices.  Banish yourself from the mall, the most soul-sucking place on the planet.  And when you do have to work, drive, shop, or watch, do it purposefully with an awareness that this is not real life.  This is just what we do to survive.  Real life, blissful ecstatic life, is not simply a vacation from the daily grind.  Real life may blind us in a moment of brilliant epiphany, it may overwhelm us with sublime beauty, or it may terrify us with its import and grandeur.  Always remain open to awe.