St. Mychal Judge Church (Dallas, TX)
The Liberal Catholic Church

A Power greater than ourselves (wisdom)

A homily delivered August, 2004
St Clement of Alexandria; Frisco, TX
Rev. Wynn Wagner

James 3:13
Luke 2:40

Listen to the epistle: where there is envy, there is confusion. Wisdom from above is meek. When wisdom comes from ourselves (and there is that kind of wisdom), there is no peace, no mercy.

For the next few moments, I am going to be talking about one of the 12-Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The aspect that I'm going to use has nothing to do with addiction. It is important to everyone: drunk or not.

What I want to discuss today is one aspect of Step Two. AA's second step says, "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Let's forget the word "sanity" for a moment. Whether you are sane or not is not the issue. The issue is that there is a Power in the universe that is greater than ourselves.

We can get our chests puffed out and swagger with bravado, but at some point that is just an old guy behind a curtain like in The Wizard of Oz. As long as we insist on being self-contained, our wisdom is limited.

But I am here to tell you that there is a Power greater than myself. I suspect there is a Power greater than you, too... but you will have to work that out for yourself.

I am here to tell you that this Power can do some amazing things... things that I would not have come up with on my own. And there's the rub. If this Power is truly greater than me, I am not able to predict everything that the Power is going to do. If I am willing to let this Power call the shots, then I won't know (in advance) what all those shots are. If the result is Nil until I let go absolutely, what I am really doing is handing over the keys to my own kingdom to an unpredictable energy. And that is scary. What if this Power decides to make me stop liking chocolate? What if this Power puts me in harm's way? What if I don't like something this Power does? All those things are possible because this Power is greater than my own personal understanding.

What it boils down to is my willingness to accept the unknown. And to someone with an engineer's mind, I don't want to put my entire life in the hands of something that I can't predict. It's a foreign concept... a hostile concept. My head doesn't want to relinquish control. One time when I worked through the idea of a Power greater than myself, I got scared. I felt it was a slippery slope, taking me **into** insanity, not rescuing me from it. Then an idea popped up that going from insanity to sanity was like crossing a river. It feels the same whether you are crossing left-to-right or right-to-left. Turning my will over to an unknowable Power was a frightening experience. Fundamental personal change is interpreted in our minds as going insane... as losing control... and losing predictability. Turning my life over to something I could not engineer was the biggest leap of faith that I ever mustered.

Yet wisdom from within myself doesn't produce peace... doesn't produce mercy. Wisdom from without is scary. We often don't want real change: we just want to engineer for ourselves a more efficient neurosis.

Wisdom from that Power greater than myself is stunning. She is amazing. But it is like what the Genie said in Disney's ALADDIN movie. When the Genie first popped out of the lamp, he said, "Enormous cosmic Powers, little bitty living space."

The Wisdom of Sophia -- the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit -- has contradictions. Enormous healing Power, but completely meek. As a Power, it has a lot of volts but no amps. It has a lot of juice but no force. The Wisdom of the Holy Spirit can be chased off easily. A tiny change in your willingness is all it takes. If you aren't willing to stop liking chocolate or to go insane (if need be) or whatever this Power dreams up, the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit vanishes.

Lao-tzu said, "Great wisdom resembles foolishness."

And from Maya Angelou--

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.

Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.

I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Read by the author on 01/19/1993, at the Inauguration of President Clinton.