Remain Curious
Sermon | September 20, 2020 |Rev. Julie Lombard
Elizabeth Gilbert is well known for her bestselling memoir, Eat Pray Love.” The story was borne of a moment of total collapse in her life. Since becoming a global celebrity, she has reflected deeply on the gift and challenge of creativity. Gilbert defines creativity, in life as in art, as choosing the path of curiosity over the path of fear.
She says, ‘it’s not to be confused with the more familiar trope, to follow your passion. Curiosity is our friend that teaches us how to become ourselves. And it’s a gentle and forgiving friend, she says. It’s a very constant friend. Passion is not so constant, it’s less gentle, not always forgiving, and sometimes, unavailable. And so, when we live in a world that has come to fetishize passion, there’s a great deal of pressure around that.”1https://onbeing.org/programs/elizabeth-gilbert-choosing-curiosity-over-fear-may2018/ 8/13/2020
Krista Tippett invited Elizabeth Gilbert to talk about how she chooses to look at life with curiosity over fear on the radio show called ‘On Being’. The interview astounded me.
Tippett admits that she resisted interviewing Gilbert because she was more interested in watching the evolution of Gilbert into, through, and beyond that initial mindset found in Eat Pray Love. Tippett watched how Gilbert’s process changed and how she articulated what she was learning about life after her first novel. Tippett believes that so much of that coalesces around the idea of what it means to be creative and she appreciates Gilbert’s attempt to demystify all that.
When Gilbert is asked: what did you say is your definition of creative living? She offers, “Creative living is choosing the path of curiosity over the path of fear, which is pretty straightforward.” What you are not hearing is how she laughed as she said this. I’d like to think she is laughing like Jack Kornfield imagined the Buddha laughing in today’s reading.
Gilbert says, “Maybe it’s the mystical things that we need to demystify the most, in order to lay claim and to not keep thinking of them as something that only belongs to a very special class of people. The more mystical and precious that we make creativity and spirituality, the more people get left out of it. And I think that’s a pity and a loss, and sometimes, even a tragedy. It should be that all are invited, or else what are we even doing here?”
I think Gilbert is asking us -how do we remain curious? Jack Kornfield, author of our reading about the beauty of the beginner’s mind, wonders what might we learn from the ‘I don’t know mind?’
As Unitarian Universalists, we pride ourselves on seeking truth and remaining open to life’s big questions. We are a unique tradition because we do not have to all believe the same things because we understand that our diversity makes us stronger. But let’s face it, UU’s are uncomfortable with the ‘don’t know mind.’
We prefer the ‘let me tell you what I do know’ mind more than using the beginner’s mind. This is our weakness- our plethora of knowledge or what we mistake for knowledge can sometimes prevent us from starting out on a new paths simply because we already believe we know where the path will lead us.
Are we that person in the movie theatre that starts to gasp or tenses up before the rest of the theatre even knows what’s going to happen? Are we the passenger that uses an imaginary brake because we do not trust the driver to stop?
Once Unitarians like T. S. Eliot believed that “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Once we had this ability to greet something new with joy and curiosity. Maybe we never lost it, maybe we still have it hidden within.
Gilbert thinks we are living in a culture that’s addicted to the good part, the exciting part, the fun part, the reward and that the thing we think is fascinating is mostly boring. For example- marriage, she asks, “Can there be anything more fascinating than joining two souls together in union and to spend a life entwined?” She adds, “90 percent [of married life] is boring; then there’s the reason why there’s that thing that happens, where suddenly, you’re like, ‘We never would have done this had we not stayed through everything.’ Same with raising children and then there’s the moment where you realize, ‘Oh, my God, this is a spark of creation that I’m working with, and this is magic, and this is life seen through new eyes.’”
Gilbert thinks creativity is the same, where 90 percent of the work is quite tedious and it’s just a matter if we can stick through those parts — she urges us to not rush through the experiences of life that have the most possibility of transforming us, but stay with it until the moment of transformation comes and then through that, get to the other side — then, very interesting things will start to happen within very boring frameworks.”
She admits that transformation can feel messy and awful, even like failure. Gilbert thinks that trust is a big piece of curiosity and she’s learned to give herself all the credit in the world simply for being in motion. She asks herself, “Did you do something today toward this thing? Then you’re good.
Was it great?
No.
Was it fun?
No.
But did you do it?
Did you keep the ball rolling?
Did you keep another step on that path? Then you’re fine.”
In real life, the 90 percent of our boring lives, we get little affirmation. Many of us are far beyond those High School years where the cheerleaders on the sidelines were cheering us on. Often, our only cheerleaders are the faces we see in the mirror and the few standing beside us. In that short list, the one common denominator is you. You are always present to tell yourself, all is well, you are fine. Keep at it. We need to be the one to offer ourselves and others the love and affirmation when facing fears or feeling less curious or creative.
My mindfulness teacher taught me to give myself an A+ purely for the sake of doing the mindfulness practice. If I got distracted and had to redirect myself back, A+. If I got frightened while on the path, A+, even noticed that I was on a path, A+.
What is the path that you are on? What is the path that we are on together? What about it makes you excited or frightened? How might you transform your fears into curiosity?
When Dr. Larry Dossey writes about where creativity comes from, he claims his online dictionary says that “create” means to bring into existence something that is new, something that did not exist before. He thinks we imagine creators as solitary individuals struggling against great odds, trying mightily to craft new inventions, music, or art that is novel, fresh, unique. We assume that prior training and skills are crucial in the creative process. 2https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/creativity_b_4440941.html 8/13/2020
Where does the wisdom come from that makes creativity possible?
Baron Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, the German physicist, thought deeply about creativity in science. He said, “We find the often disturbing and happy experience: ‘It is not I; I have not done this.’ Still, in a certain way it is I — yet not the ego … but … a more comprehensive self.”
He proposed that the comprehensive self is a domain of consciousness that is nonlocal or infinite in space and time. It has been called many names — the Source, the Absolute, God, Goddess, Allah, the Universe, his favorite term is the One Mind.
It’s an ancient idea, this universal consciousness. The premise surfaced dramatically in our faith tradition during the nineteenth century in the philosophy of transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
There is one mind common to all individual men … What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
Emerson called it the Over-soul. Tapping into the Source is the goal of many creative individuals. As John Briggs says in his book about creativity called, Fire in the Crucible:
For the creative genius, the ancient perception that it is possible to invoke an identity between the universal and particular, between the personal and the vast impersonal, the part and the whole, is pervasive. It burgeon at all levels of the creative process and dominates creative vision. [In their] many moods and meanings, [creative individuals are involved in] a search for wholeness and a personal/universal identity…
Dr. Dossey thinks those who treasure uniqueness, individuality, and ownership are not thrilled with the wholeness scenario. The problem is that, if all minds are in contact and share information, who gets credit? If ideas cannot be assigned to specific persons, what then of originality and individual achievement?
Artist Paul Klee saw that the whole speaks through the part, saying, “[The artist’s] position is humble. He is merely a channel.” Psychologist Erich Fromm sanctioned Klee’s view. Fromm said that the creator:
… has to give up holding on to himself as a thing and begin to experience himself only in the process of creative response; paradoxically enough, if he can experience himself in the process, he loses himself. He transcends the boundaries of his own person, and at the very moment when he feels ‘I am’ he also feels ‘I am you,’ I am one with the whole world.
Could it be that by exploring creativity we might have an opportunity to go beyond the ‘I am’ and experience ‘I am one with the whole world?’ How will we endure the 90 percent boredom of the journey ahead? I am curious, how will things turn out? I am certain that I am grateful to be here in this time and space with you.
May we together define creativity, in our lives and beyond, as choosing the path of curiosity over fear. And as we do, may we find the wholeness that will transform us for the betterment of all. Blessed be. Amen.
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