“Living Beyond Regret” August 18, 2019 Dr. Roger Ray
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.Marcus Aurelius
In the east, the two most well-known teachers were also contemporaries, Lao Tzu, who is believed to be the author of the Tao Te Ching, and Confucius, the supposed author of many fake Facebook memes.
With apologies to all women everywhere, I will add a sixth man to this list of seminal ancient thinkers, the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. These six men, all of whom, other than Socrates, were quite prolific, and their recorded wisdom shaped much of human civilization, could sit just in the chairs of our front row here. They all lived long enough to reflect on their own lives and the meaning of life itself.
In William Martin’s rather embarrassingly free interpretation of the Tao Te Ching he writes (The Sage’s Tao Te Ching by William Martin, p. 1)
Growing older either reveals or hides
The mystery of existence.
If you are becoming a sage
You will grow in trust and contentment.
You will discover the light
Of life’s deepest truths.
If you are merely growing older,
You will become trapped by fears and frustrations.
You will see only the darkness
Of infirmity and death.
The great task of the sage
Is learning to see in the darkness
And not be afraid.
The occasion for this sermon is, admittedly, a bit self-centered. I turned 63 this past week. I am now older than my father was when he retired and though I have no personal retirement plans at this time, it is clear that, as a man in my mid-60’s, that time is drawing near.
When Confucius reached the age of 70, he reflected on his life, saying: At fifteen I was committed to learning. At thirty I took my rightful position. At forty, I was no longer totally perplexed. At fifty, I began to understand the unfurling of my true nature. At sixty, I was in harmony with contradictions and ambivalence. At seventy, at long last, I may follow my heart’s desire without going astray.
In our youth-oriented culture, it is helpful to realize that wisdom does not come until late in life, if, in fact, it comes at all. As our joints begin to fail us and our strength ebbs, it is possible to think only morbidly about growing older and closer to death but the wisdom of the ancients calls us not to despise aging but to use it, to dive into it, as we are freed from the impulsive appetites of our youth, it is possible for us to become more reflective and to find not only a deeper understanding but a deeper way of being.
Soren Kierkegaard said that we live our lives like a ship’s captain who sets sail with sealed orders. That is, we may have a plan for career and family, as well as fortune, but life rarely follows our plans. I want for all of us to live beyond our regrets, but we would hardly be honest if we did not acknowledge that we have regrets.
The religious beliefs that made me want to go to seminary evaporated in the clear bright light of an academic study of faith. Actually being a minister was nothing like what I thought it would be. For that matter, being married was nothing like what I thought it would be. I regret that never managed to create a mutually meaningful marriage relationship. I regret that I was not a more cautious and wise chooser, and I regret that I was not more sophisticated in my relationship problem solving skills.
There are some years of my life that I would love to have been able to do over, to make different choices, to be more patient, more personally disclosive, more careful in my choices of friends and associations.
However, as Ben Franklin famously said, “We only learn when we are uncomfortable.” My experience of marriage was a 16-year long toothache but without that abysmal marriage, I would not have been able to adopt my favorite person in all of the world. Whatever price was paid to become Valerie’s father, it was a bargain, and I would do it all again.
The end of my career in the denomination of my birth revealed the hypocrisy and hubris of organized religion and laid bare some of the most base motivations of false friends and associates, but as traumatic as 2007 was for me, my daughter, and a whole lot of other people, it was that very trauma that set me free to become who I am. It set in motion the creation of this church and allowed me to give full-throated voice to a progressive vision of faith that has drawn an audience of thousands of seekers who also want to meaningfully live a life of faith beyond the crude superstitions of antiquity, and the corruption of organized religion.
One of the most important metaphors of the resurrection narratives in the gospels, especially in John, is that when the dead body of Jesus was brought back to life, that he still had his scars. There was still a spear wound in his side, and holes in his hands from the nails. There are things that don’t heal, wounds too deep to go away, but they become a part of us . . . they become our teachers.
Unlike many of my religious peers, I vehemently disagree with the baseless claim that everything happens for a reason. I do not believe that God is a supernatural puppet master who is in control of the events of human history. I believe that the universe is capricious and chaotic, and that most stuff happens, while following the observable laws of nature, just because it happens. The human factor can help or hurt that capricious unfolding of events in life but, as the bumper sticker of a generation ago boldly proclaimed, “stuff happens.”
But those bad things can convince you that you are a victim . . . that you are unlucky . . . mistreated . . . those things can make you afraid, joyless, and yet, ironically afraid of dying. Or those things can become like Socrates to you, the philosophical gadfly that pushes you towards deeper understanding, towards maturity, wisdom, and insight.
There is tremendous pressure in the world towards mediocrity, conformity, towards sameness, and compliance. There are a thousand wonderful quotes from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, but I chose this one to be our wisdom lesson today: The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.Because, while a certain amount of social conformity, cooperation, compliance, might be expected from young people who are just starting out in life, who have to learn in school how to put in your time, how to wait for your turn. We teach little kids in public school how to stand obediently in line. But, folks, I’m starting to think that the whole point of getting old is to figure out how to get out of line.
I understand that there are people who found themselves in a job that was not personally meaningful to them . . . they traded the hours of their days for money to pay for a house, and car, and food, and when they could, they retired.
I get that, but still, I wonder, retire to do what? Is it just to stop going to work? Is it to play golf, sit in a rocker, yell at the neighborhood kids to get off of your lawn? Lao Tzu, Confucius, Marcus Aurelias, and to a large extent, Plato and Aristotle, don’t talk to us about going old gracefully and quietly getting out of the way. They encourage us to become people of substance, to pursue wisdom, and once it is attained, to use it to make the world better. The sage, the gentleman or woman, the philosopher, are not supposed to attain to wisdom in order to bottle it up.
I get why people allow themselves to wonder aloud about whether Biden, Sanders, Warren, or Trump might be too old to be president. Age can slow down mental functions and senility, or dementia can be aspects of aging but, come on, Trump was slow and demented when he was 30 years old. Biden was sticking his foot in his mouth 30 years ago. And, conversely, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the Harvard educated, combat veteran, is really really smart and extraordinarily well spoken. And, when I was finishing my doctorate at Vanderbilt, he was still riding on his big-wheel in his family drive way.
If he were to become America’s first openly gay president, I would be thrilled about that, but I would be a lot more thrilled if that happened in 2028 rather than 2020. I don’t pick green tomatoes to let them ripen on my kitchen counter. I let em stay on the vine until they are ready to meet some lettuce and mayo. You can be very smart in your 30’s but who was the youngest wise person you ever knew?
I have to acknowledge an exception. Martin Luther King, Jr. was just 35 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and he was only 39 when he was murdered. If Gandhi had died at the age of 39, we would never have heard of him. If Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu, or Confucius died at 39, we would have never heard of them. If Marcus Aurelius had died at 39, you could have found his name on a list of emperors and you wouldn’t know anything else about him.
Movie stars, athletes, and models might peak when they are in their 20’s or early 30’s but not sages, statesmen, or philosophers. I miss the days when I ran in mini-marathons and then when to an All-You-Can eat Chinese buffet like it was a personal challenge. But every age of life has its virtues. It has taken you your whole life to get this smart. For those of us who get a discount on our movie tickets and McDonalds coffee, now is the time to use your wisdom to its fullest effect.
