SERMONS

Hands
Rev. Mary Katherine Morn

I used to pay a great deal of attention to my hands. I can remember my piano teacher admonishing me, a child, to avoid unnecessary risk of injury. I spent a lot of time on my hands, those days. Practicing diligently. Performing often. I was a pianist. If you had asked me what I did, this would have been my first answer. My hands meant a lot to me. (It was odd, recently, to hear a member of our congregation’s surprise when he learned that I play the piano. It’s so odd for me to think that this work of my hands is so peripheral to my identity now.)

So, for some reason I was called back recently to the importance of hands. I remember well a sermon I heard a couple of years ago that included the preacher’s beautiful reflection on her mother making bread. It was all about hands. About the strength of them. The dance with the dough. The gentle persuasion that is possible with our hands.

Then I was invited to participate in the building dedication at the other Unitarian Universalist congregation in town. They were planning to use their hands, their hands dipped in paint to be precise, to bless their building. It was really a nice ritual. And I bet finished it looks really great. Young and old put their handprints on a wall in their fellowship room. Symbols of where their hands have brought them, symbols of some commitment about where they are going as a religious community.

The Master once proposed a riddle: "What do the artist and the musician have in common with the mystic?" The Master answered the question himself: "The realization that the finest speech does not come from the tongue." The artist and the musician have learned to speak with their hands.

The title of this sermon is inspired by an older story I’ve heard several times. Some of you probably know it. Two clever boys decided they wanted to make a fool of the village hermit. The hermit was always offering wisdom to the people of the village. It seemed he was never mistaken about things. So the boys planned their fun. One of them found a little bird and held it behind his back. He would ask the teacher if the bird was alive or dead. If the hermit said alive, the boy would snap the bird’s neck and show him a dead bird. If the hermit said dead, the boy would triumphantly present the living creature. So the boys approached the wise hermit with their question. His answer surprised them. "The answer, boys, is in your hands."

So often the answer is in our hands. Its symbolic language, of course. And not. But largely a symbolic way of speaking of the importance of our actions in the world. Our hands serve as the symbols of the work we do, the beauty we create, the love we make. In preparing for this sermon I remembered a book I had only heard about–and that some years ago. It’s Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person, by M. C. Richards. The 25^th anniversary edition came out in 1989. I was thinking that pottery was a good medium through which to consider hands. But what Richards shows is that hands are a good way to consider our spiritual lives.

Richards uses one of the potter’s first tasks as her primary image. Centering the clay on the wheel. It can’t be forced, pushed, or tricked. The hands have to work in concert with the clay and the wheel. They are present for the realization of center, in a sense. The hands draw the center out of the clay. Richards speaks very little of this work, or even of clay. It is merely the way she moves to her primary concern, and that is centering ourselves. Finding the center.

As I read her, I realized that my interest in hands has to do with the way hands are inbetween. They are like a bridge. Their function is largely to connect. Most powerfully we connect through touch. Tender touch of lovers. The healing touch of massage. The casual touch of a new friend’s handshake. And of course the damaging touch of violence. But hands also act as a bridge between our inner work and our outer work.

The work of craft is a great example. Or art. Or music. We move from within, using our hands to create something that speaks beyond what we could speak with only our tongues, without the art. It speaks of something from within. Our hands translate the message. Our hands cultivate the beauty. M.C. Richards suggests that with our hands we connect the divine light within us to the divine light in something else. You may remember the advice of the woodcarver–it is something like, do not force your ideas onto the piece of wood you are working. Let the wood offer itself and its idea for your cultivation. Use your hands to bridge the perceived distance between yourself and the wood. With our hands, in craft or art or music, we bridge the physical and spiritual.

Richards considers herself Potter, Poet, and Teacher. And in all three she is moving toward wholeness. She considers the finished pot a wonderful experience of wholeness. She calls poetry an effort to bring together images or ideas that we usually separate. And in teaching, she seeks to unify experience.

Let me shift some to this idea of centering, which is also intimately related to the idea of wholeness. With the pots, it is taking a piece of clay, using a wheel and your hands to find its center so that pottery is possible. If the clay cannot be centered, it will not be possible to sustain the piece. Strength of form requires centering. It does not require symmetry–but a center must be found or established to sustain the form.

It is true in our own lives as well. Without strength of form, it is difficult to sustain our lives. The strength is not so much about power, not in a traditional sense. The strength that comes from the solid center creates balance. Earlier in the year I preached about balance and concluded that to find balance in our lives we need to find our center. I noted that a circle requires a center to exist. But this morning I am reflecting on the corresponding reality. Finding the center of anything requires a sense of the whole.

This is a different kind of spirituality, I think. When I think of moving in our lives toward the center I think of meditation, prayer, contemplative things. I think of worship. Of hands folded in prayer or palms open in meditation or palms together in worshipful acknowledgement. This kind of spiritual practice is still. Quiet. And I think it is central to our spiritual growth.

A spiritual practice that leads us to a sense of the whole has a different look and feel. Hands holding other hands. Hands with hammer or paintbrush or hoe, or balm. Hands building or creating or planting or writing or healing or in some way connecting. Because only by connecting will we ever gain even the smallest sense of the whole. This kind of spiritual practice is a reaching out. Touching. It is active and engaged. And I think it, too, is central to our spiritual growth.

Our hands act as a bridge between us and others and a bridge between our inner life and our outer life. Our contemplative spirituality and our active spirituality. Phil Cousineau, in his book Handbook for the Soul, explains the way in times past hands have been understood to be symbolic of this bridge:

Earlier I said that to find the center we need a sense of the whole. Notice that I didn’t say we need to see the whole. We will never see the whole of creation, no less our own lives. This is true just as it is true that we will never really see the center. Whatever is there in the center, whatever wholeness surrounds us, all of this ultimately remains a mystery to us. But a sense of wholeness is possible. Just as a sense of what resides at the center is possible. We’ve all had it in passing moments of our lives. The possibility of this sense in my life is why I am a religious person. Why I consider spiritual practice important. In meditation I have sometimes sensed it. In working for justice I have sometimes glimpsed it. In relationship, connection (with myself, with others, and with the universe, God, Spirit of Life) I find this sense is possible.

Last week after I spoke of hands at the service for the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation, a man approached me and said I’d forgotten a very important way some of us use our hands. "I use my hands to read," he told me. "I never take for granted the importance of my hands." He sees with his hands. Of course. The riddle from the master could have made this point as well. "What does a blind person have in common with a mystic? The realization that the clearest vision does not always come from the eyes."

I’m not suggesting those of us with sight should forgo what we see with our eyes. Nor those of us who speak forgo the use of this kind of language. Rather that we remember the power of our hands to see and speak. In Buddhism there is a Boddhisatva named Avalokitesvara. A Boddhisatva is an enlightened one who teaches. Avalokitesvara is sometimes called the "Goddess of Mercy." She is depicted variously, sometimes with many arms and with multiple heads and eyes. She is known for her great compassion and ability to heal. Sometimes her hands are shown with eyes in them. Imagine an eye in the palm of your hand. So that all of your actions would be guided by sight. By seeing what is. In Buddhism, as I’ve often said, seeing, truly seeing is said to lead to understanding. And wherever there is true understanding there is always compassion.

I stretch forth my hand, knowing not what I shall touch… a tender spot, an open wound, warmth, pulsing life, fragile blossoms, a rock, ice. My hand is withdrawn, trembling. I stretch forth my hand, knowing not what I shall touch. . . but hoping. (The Rev. Gordon McKeeman)

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