The Sound of Creation

A sermon Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
Sunday, SEPT 17, 2006 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading

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And there was a new voice
Which you slowly recognized as your own
That kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world
—Mary Oliver

I’m going to ask you to do something that no self-respecting Unitarian Universalist should ever do, under any circumstance!  I’m going to ask you to suspend your rational mind.  I’m going to ask you to leave reason and logic behind, for just a moment.  (you can pick it back up in a second or two)   But, for just this moment, open your imagination.

Prepare yourself for an incredible journey—
a flight of fancy, if you will.
A little bit of Sunday morning time travel, arms chair style—
back into the distant past—
15 Billion years to be exact.

Let us go back to the beginning.  Not the beginning of this service.  Not the beginning of this day.  Not the beginning of this year.  But to the beginning of all beginnings.  Let us go back…

Imagine it:
even nothingness is not.
There is no air, nor the heavens beyond it.
There is only darkness wrapped in endless darkness.
The Eternal One breaths windlessly.
There is that One then, and there is no other.
There is only silence—absolute silence.

Then, in one astounding instant, the silence is broken. 
A sacred sound explodes into the abyss.
The Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures propels us into that moment: 

At the beginning of the creating
of the heavens and the earth,
when the earth was wild and waste
Darkness over the face of ocean
Rushing-spirit of life hovering
over the face of the waters—
The Holy One said:
Let there be
light!
And there was light.
And it was good.

That’s pretty amazing. The Holy One said: Let there be.  It was so.  Word becomes reality.  In the original Hebrew text of Genesis, only two words were spoken: ya’hi or, which translates simply as the command: “Light!”  15 billion years ago there was a big bang of electro-nuclear force, and light, unfathomable in its brilliance, erupts into the universe.  Evolving life, unfathomable in its brilliance and complexity, erupts into the universe.

Now, there’s something about that story that troubles me.  There’s something about that mythical, symbolic recounting of the first day that I’ve always wondered about.  It’s not terribly weighty.  It’s not deeply theological.  They don’t debate this in the hallowed halls of Harvard Divinity School….But I’ve always wondered…..

What would have happened that first day of creation if God had been having a bad day?

 

And, it is understandable if she was.  After hanging out for God-knows-how-long in all that endless darkness, chances are, the Infinite One was rather bored and probably quite lonely.  I think it is safe for us to conclude that the Author of Creation could have been having a very unheavenly day.  So, perhaps in desperation, perhaps in accidental discovery, perhaps in divine wisdom, the Infinite One speaks the world’s first words: “Let There Be Light.”  But what if her words had matched her mood, which, we have already imagined, was rather blue.  What if the first words had corresponded to the dreary circumstances that surrounded her...void, formlessness, and that endless, endless darkness.    What if God had looked out at all that darkness and said: “I’m going back to bed.”  What if God had looked out at all that emptiness and said “What a dump!”  What if God had looked out at all that gloom and said “I can’t take this anymore!”  But—the story tells us—the Holy One didn’t speak words of despair.  The Eternal One didn’t speak words of judgment.  The Source of Life didn’t speak words of destruction.  The Spirit of Liufe took an honest look at the bleak surroundings and chose to speak words that would forever transform them.  In the midst of the emptiness, in the midst of nothing, God chose to speak words of hope and possibility.  God chose to speak of life. Fact or fiction—the first sounds of creation are clear: the words we speak create the world we will see. 

Yogi Bhajan—one of my spiritual teachers—says:

Words exist in the infinite beginning of each person.  With words you make friends, with words you contract yourself, with words you can become almighty, with words you can become just useless.  Every word you say has a vibration.  So be very careful when you speak a word, because one word spoken can make or mar the destiny of your being.

The Eastern Religious Traditions understood so well this vibrancy of vibrations.  Sacred chant, the outpouring of special sounds, is central to many Eastern experiences of spirituality.  You find it in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.  With their own variations, these great religions taught that taught that certain sounds (mantra) contained a connection to the wisdom and peace within us, and to the Awesome Ineffable Mystery that holds us all.  One Enlightened Master, Guru Nanak, went so far as to base an entire world religion on the vibration of sacred sounds.  The Sikh faith, the fifth-largest World Religion, which Guru Nanak founded in India in the late 1400s and early 1500s, teaches that if we chant the Naam, or the revealed vibrations/names of life, we would create the embodied experience of Wholeness and Unity within our consciousness.  [Ek Oan Kar, Sat Nam, Kartaa Purakh, Nirbhau, Nirvair, Akaal Moorat, Ajuni, Saighang, Gur prasaad, Japa, Adi Sach, Jugadi Sach, Hai Bhi Sach, Nanak Hosi Bhi Sach.]  In short, we wouldn’t just be praying to God, we would literally be creating the experience of the all-embracing God. Chanting the name of the energetic vibration that underlies all of life would literally put us in sync with that universal vibration of oneness. Word becomes reality. That’s heady stuff.  But it is not new to us.  In our secular world, we were introduced to the creative power of word at a very early age.  As our first words came tumbling out over our tongue, we were taught that the amazing gift of language came with responsibilities.  We were introduced to restrictions to help us respect the power of words.  I, for one, will never forget my mother’s mantra: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”  And a mouth washed out with soap became a less subtle reminder. 

Then we got a little older and moved onto the school playground.  There, we may have defiantly chanted: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me,” but many of us felt firsthand the terrible pain that words can inflict.  Words destroy a world; “Fatso, faggot, four eyes, loser, weirdo, wimp” have wiped out many a youthful smile.  Back at home, “You’re worthless,” “You’re no good,” “You disappoint me” have shattered many a childhood.

But if we felt the destructive power of words; we also bore wonderful witness to their creative capabilities.  Perhaps no one reveled in the positive power of words more than the man who spoke dreams: Walt Disney.  Disney showed us, with transporting eloquence, that words can make magic. 

For Cinderella, all it takes is “Salagado la menja ga bo la bibbity boppity boo” to instantly turn a bad hair day into a bouffant and change a torn and tattered house dress into a sparkling sequined ball gown perfect for a waltz with Prince Charming. 

In Bed Knobs and Broomsticks, my peronal Disney favorite, the words “Substitutiary Locomotion” transform a museum of rusty and dusty medieval armor into a crackerjack battalion that—under the command of a sprightly Angela Lansbury—mysteriously marches into combat against Nazi invaders. 

And will we ever forget the most magic of Disney words: “Supercalifragilistic-expialidoscious?”  Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious, if you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious.  Supercalifragilistic-expialidoscious!

When did we we lose the childhood wisdom that knows words can bring life?  When did we give up responsibility for our words? 

When did “Bibbity bobbity boo” become the “expletive” we shout as a rude driver cuts us off at an intersection. 

Why did “Substitutiary Locomotion” become the “curse” we casually toss off behind our bosses back? 

How did “Supercalifragilistic Expialidoscious” become the “unmentionables” we mutter as we watch our kids run havoc through our house and our lives?

When did the sounds of creation become the sources of our own destruction?

When did “United Nations” become “unilateral military action?”
When did “Defense of Freedom” become “preemptive strike?”
When did “innocent women and children” become “collateral damage?”
When did “Geneva Convention” become “secret prison?”
When did “Civil Liberties” become “illegal surveillance?”
When did “Genocide in the Sudan” become “silence and inaction?”
When did “Mother Earth” become “Environmental destruction?”
When did “the pursuit of happiness” become “economic exploitation?”

The sounds of creation are clear.
The words we speak create the world we will see.

Charles Capps speaks great wisdom when he says: “Words are the most powerful thing in the universe...Words are containers.  They contain faith, or fear.”

What do our words contain?  What do our words create?

It is ironic: we bemoan the violence that fills our world.  Rockets destroy villages in Israel.  Bombs flatten neighborhoods in Lebanon.  Bodies are blasted apart in Baghdad. Terrorism redefines the way we all live and move in the world.  Blood flows in the gutters of our inner cities. Globalism crushes the local beneath corporate conglomerates.  Economic inequality rips quality of life from the most vulnerable. 

Does not each one of us hope and pray for an end to this violence in our world and in our nation?

Yet, with the same breath, we curse the person who is rude to us. 
We say petty and spiteful words about someone we do not like.
We spread idle and damaging gossip about people we don’t even know. 
We speak vicious judgment on those who hold religious and political values different from our own. 
We speak cruelly and unmindfully, sometimes to those with whom we most intimately share our lives.

We cry out against the violence in our world, yet we commit violence with our words.  How can we expect the world around us to stop its violence if we cannot bring peace into our own mouths and hearts?  Who among us has not spoken words that have created fear in this world?  Who among us has not spoken words that have spread hatred in this world?  Who among us has not spoken words that have brought destruction to our world?  No one can escape from a word.  Marianne Williamson, noted author and teacher says: “How can we, who fail to speak words of life and love, be surprised when death and destruction visit our world?”

The sounds of creation are clear.
The words we speak create the world we will see.

Look around us.  Look at our world. Look at our personal lives, our emotional lives, our spiritual lives.  Look at the lives of our loved ones, our friends.  Look around us,—perhaps at this very church in the midst of so much change, so much change, newness, loss, gain, and transition.  Look around us—

We may see a life and a world similar to the one that God saw “in the beginning.”  We may see “wild and waste”  We may see chaos.  We may see emptiness.  But we can also see a way out.  We have been given a way out of our darkness.  We have been given a way to summon our light. 

We need only to look again “at the beginning.” 

Irving Layton, in his poem Adam, writes:

I wish we could go back
to the beginning.
Before the human larynx acquired its tinge of querulous dissatisfaction
and mind became a forever open wound
of militant self-serving cynicism and doubt.

I wish we could go back
to the beginning.
There’s only the Holy One and myself
in the cool first evening . . .
discussing fantastic creation,
the moon and the stars,
and the enveloping stillness.

We talk softly and for a long time
and very, very carefully.

My friends, we can’t go back to the beginning.  But we can begin at this moment.  We can make this moment—or any moment we choose—our new beginning.

Vietnamese Zen Teacher Thich Nhat Hahn offers a path, a plan, a possibility to make this moment—or any moment—our new beginning:

“Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech…I vow to cultivate loving speech . . . Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope.  I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain, and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure.  I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or community to break.”

I vow to cultivate loving speech.

My friends, this is our beginning.  Listen.  Listen.  There is silence.  Into this silence comes our word.  What world will we create?

Blessed Be.  Amen.

© Copyright 2006 Rev. Tim Kutzmark