Instead of pouring in more better stop while you can
making it sharper won’t make it last longer
rooms full of treasure can never be made safe
when your work is done retire this is the way of Heaven
This poem expresses ancient wisdom from a Chinese text called the Tao Te Ching, and it is a foundational document in the practice of Taoism. I picture Taoist thought as the negative space in much of Chinese painting — a recognition of the background needed so that the foreground stands out.
When I do Morning Prayer, in addition to Christian texts, I often include readings from other traditions, such as the poems of Rumi, or stories from the Sufis. I often read these poems from the Tao Te Ching — but they can be rather impersonal. So I’ll balance this quote with a couplet from the Old Testament Book of Sirach. It is advice given to a venerated elder who is presiding at a festive celebration. So this morning I am assuming the role of your local venerated elder.
Speak, you who are older for it is your right
But with accurate knowledge and do not interrupt the music
I have arranged that this day shall be the last time I preach and celebrate here — and a Taoist might observe that this is a “propitious” time to retire. The church observed the feast of St. Alban just this last Monday — June 22nd.
Forty years ago, on July first, 1986, was my first official day as your Rector. As it happened, I was also forty years old at that time.
Thirty years ago, I met a parishioner here named Joni, who became my wife — and she has wedding photos she would like to share with you at the reception.
Twenty years ago I stepped down as your Rector to begin serving as an interim pastor. I was 60, and after a long pastorate, it was time for a major change.
I did agree to return on a volunteer basis as the church dealt with Covid, and continued to serve once a month for in-person services. But I’m eighty now and today concludes forty years of my service here.
So — what next? I’m pretty excited for your future. Your numbers did decrease during Covid, but you have proved very resourceful. Other churches closed, and even our flagship Episcopal seminary in Berkeley has been revisioned for the digital age. Its buildings are repurposed. But you are still here! You serve the community with much-needed childcare, and you support the arts with Calliope, and a range of musicians here.
As for me, it’s no secret that I have become possessed by the benign spirit of the Muses. Every day I am either working on stained glass projects, or at least thinking about my current and my next projects. I post motivational quotes in my shop. Here are a couple of them. Richard Diebenkorn tells me: “Art is not delivered like the morning paper — it must be stolen from Mount Olympus!” Or Picasso: “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” Or from a Japanese artist group: “Fracture is simply the revenge of the material for being extracted from the earth.” Glass is mostly sand that has been tortured into a molten state and then annealed and sliced up. If not treated with respect, the glass will fight back.
My shop can resemble a monastic cell, but with music and a dart board. From the letter to the Romans: “God calls into existence things that do not exist.” We share in God’s creative actions when we create new things. From the Angelic Doctor Thomas Aquinas: “God is an artist, and the universe is God’s work of art.” Some of our parishioners have visited a hermitage on the Big Sur coast. The founder of that order of monks, St. Romuald, wrote this, which I see every day in my shop: “Sit in your cell as in Paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman looking for fish.”
When this church undertook a capital funds drive and remodeled the church. you brought in this well-crafted table to serve as your altar. So — do you remember what happened to the big seven-foot altar that was here before? Well, I’ve got it! now Your old altar has become my work-bench. It’s ergonomic, and I store supplies and tools in the spaces that used to hold the communion kneelers.
In his book, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce makes a connection between what the artist does and what the priest does in celebrating the Eucharist: The artist “transmutes the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everlasting life.” I suggest that all of us are artists of our own lives.
Each of us has to take the daily details of our ordinary days, with all their limitations and potential, and create something out of them — not just anything, but something we are proud of, worthy of divinity. Each one of us has a divine spark within — which is why we gather here — to remember our divine calling and to recharge us on our spiritual quests.
Well, I have just exceeded my two-page limit for my sermons. Time to wrap it up.
First, a repeat of that gentle poetic nudge from the Tao Te Ching:
Instead of pouring in more better stop while you can
making it sharper won’t make it last longer
rooms full of treasure can never be made safe
when your work is done retire this is the way of Heaven
when your work is done retire this is the way of Heaven
So far, so good — reasonable and balanced words, a little cool and impersonal.
Now, that sage advice from the wisdom of Sirach — for that venerated elder:
Speak, you who are older for it is your right
But with accurate knowledge and do not interrupt the music