"Sermon Series: Part I -- Show Up"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
  February 23, 2003

Meditation/Reading: Selections from To Become a Human Being: The Message of Tadodaho Chief Leon Shenandoah by Steve Wall, with accompanying flute by Jerry Price

The Creator made everything equal.
"Human Beings" are the same to the Creator as every other living thing.
But He gave "Human Beings" the responsibility to watch out for the rest of His creation.
That makes us the guardians.
Look what we've done.
Instead of being the guardians, some people have learned how to destroy because of greed.
The animals and fish and the birds don't do that; they just go on with their duties.
So we've got to help change people's minds so that they will protect the land,
so that their seventh generation from now will have some place to live.

Only people know good and bad.
Animals and birds know only the good.
They know their duties and do them.
They don't even question.
They don't have to spend time thinking about it.
There's nothing for them to worry about, the Creator promised to take care of them.
The Instructions say that men and women are equal, too.
They've got to learn that one is not above the other.
It takes both to create the children who are coming from behind us.

We have to take care of the children.
The Creator gave us that duty.
Everybody is responsible for them.
They are not supposed to suffer.
If even one child in the world is going hungry,
We’re supposed to feed them.
If anyone of the children is going without clothes
or has no place to sleep or is not looked after,
we're not doing what the Creator told us to do.
All the children are important.
One is not more important than another no matter where they live in the world.
Someday the ones who live long enough to grow up will take over.
It's better that they use the good mind in making the decisions for the coming generations.
If they weren't taken care of, how can they do that?

The Creator is not a he or a she. It's just the Creator.
Sometimes I say He, but the Creator's not either. The Creator is both and neither.
It's hard to understand, but it's so simple.
Simple things confuse most people but not "Human Beings."
"Human Beings" are more than just people.
Being a "Human Being" is being close to the Creator.
When a "Human Being" is close to the Creator, then they just know things.
It's called "the knowing."
"Human Beings" don't know all things. Each one is given a different ability.
Some know some things. Others know other things.
But no one knows it all. That's why we need each other.
When we come together we can know more things.
That's what participating in the ceremonies is all about.
When we are together in the circle, we are one.
As one we can be more in "the knowing."
In the circle we get closer to the Creator, and those different abilities unite for the good of us all. That's when everything becomes possible.
We know that nothing is impossible with the Creator.
The Creator gave us His abilities and He spread them around among us.
That was so that each one of us would use our ability for good.

But He also wanted us to realize
that we had to come together in the circle
so that we could sense just how powerful the Creator is.
When we're in that circle and living with it in our hearts everyday,
great things happen that can't easily be explained.
He gave us the circle so that we can benefit from being one with Him and one with each other.

We are all teachers. None of us asked for the job.
Maybe some did, and if they did, they didn't know what they were asking for.
Anyway, whether some asked for it and the rest of us didn't, we're all teachers.
Somebody is always watching.
That person will follow in your path for awhile.
Our lives should always be lived in a way that you would want that person to live.
If you don't live it right, that person won't either.
So you can't blame anybody for what they do if you weren't a good teacher.
Follow the Creator's way and you'll always be a good teacher
whether you know you're one or not.
You are! Take my word for it.
Maybe you think nobody's watching
and you don't have to be a good teacher.
It's better you don't ask if anybody's watching.
That way you'll not be disappointed if nobody's paying you any attention.
It's best to just go on and act like you're being watched if it makes you feel any better.
There's got to be something about you that's worth watching.
But the important thing is that however you live your life, it's between you and the Creator.
I don't want to just be thinking about whether anybody is watching me or not.
 I want to be living in a way that the Creator will be happy with me.

Sermon “A Sermon Series: Part 1 – Show Up”

About five years ago now Alex, my husband, and I attended a conference in Boston for psychotherapists and Buddhists. There were many topics that grabbed our attention such as family Zen Koan, which is a Zen mystery that requires study. But the topic that stuck with us was by a speaker who talked about the four great rules of life: show up, pay attention, speak the truth and let go of the outcome. These four have changed our lives. I spoke about this in the sermon I did for candidating week, that week last April where we -- you and I -- decided to share a ministry together. Since then many people have asked me about those four. “What was that middle one?” they will say. Or “I have such a hard time with that last one.” So I have decided to do a series, a sermon for each one. Show up, pay attention, speak the truth and let go of the outcome. This morning I will tackle show up.

In some ways this is the hardest one to write a whole sermon about. It seems so simple. Just show up. And yet maybe the reason I have had the hardest time coming up with words to write about this one is that I really have a hard time showing up. I am often running late and trying to cram too many events into a 24-hour day. Sometimes I don’t even show up, instead I am calling to apologize once again. It really doesn’t take much effort to show up and the pay off is great. Showing up may mean we make the numbers that impress the media in the case of a peace march or we make the difference in someone’s life just by being there. Or we show up just because someday we won’t be able to. To show up is really the first of the great rules. Until we show up we can’t pay attention, or speak the truth.

 I think of the volley ball games that my thirteen year old has been playing lately. I have been able to show up to a few of them and it has had tremendous effect on our relationship. I have been distracted when I go, trying to keep my three year old, from jumping off the bleachers, but I have shown up. I have seen her make some great serves and some not so great ones. I have seen her support her teammates and be supported by them. I know some of the faces to go with the names in the stories she tells and I know how wonderfully together she looks out there on the court waiting for the ball. She has seen me in the stands rooting for her. We have been able to talk about the games and how much she is coming to love the sport. Would it have been life changing if I hadn’t shown up? I doubt it. But in the world of daughter and mother, where we have so little time together, it is a gift to both of us when I show up.

It is important to show up. But trying to navigate what to show up to -- and how -- is tough. For me it has become about time and priorities.

Time being the first of these, I have tried to take a look at how I think of time. The ancient native peoples of the world have a different understanding of time. Time for them is only the present moment. What has happened is still happening and what will happen is happening in this moment. There is neither before or next. There is no tomorrow and no yesterday. There is planning for the cycles of life but that is long-term planning not worry about tomorrow in the midst of today.

For native peoples, life is very much the here and now. It may have been easier for them to show up. For if I think of time, as about here and now, it’s easier for me to show up in the present. If I am worrying about where I should be tomorrow I often miss the places I should be today. “Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope,” is how the saying goes. If I think of where I need to be today, then tomorrow will often take care of itself. Showing up requires I am aware of the present moment.

If, like the native people, I think of every moment continuing on forever I am certainly more inclined to be aware of where I want to show up. Nietzsche called it the eternal return. It’s usually Alex who manages to work Friedrich Nietzsche into his sermons, that being his dissertation topic, but today it’s me. Nietzsche wrote: "The question in each and every thing, 'do you want this once more and innumerable times more?'...how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate confirmation and seal?"[1] In other words is this what you would like to have go on into eternity? How well disposed, how certain do we have to be, to know that we want a particular moment to have the ultimate confirmation and seal of continuing forever? Nietzsche would say there is no choice, in that all that is goes on forever. The choice for us lies in deciding what moments we will have, where we will show up and therefore what we chose to go on into eternity. What is most important?
When we think of these moments continuing forever we are called to think what really matters. The inspirational speaker, Steven Covey, has a wonderful exercise that you may have heard about. He asks folks to fit as many rocks, stones, pebbles, gravel and sand as they can into a container. After individuals have had a chance to try their hand he calls the group together and points out that the people who were able to get the most in their pails were the ones who put the biggest pieces in first. He then draws the analogy into our lives: if we put in the biggest and most important pieces first we will have more room. Of course with stones it is easy to see what the biggest pieces are. In our lives when asked most of us would say that our families are the biggest, most significant and important pieces. Then if we look at our calendars we see that our jobs, caring for the house and being generally busy take up much more time then our families.

Author and psychiatrist W. Beran Wolfe, wrote: "If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his child, growing double dahlias or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that had rolled under the radiator, striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of each day."[2] It is not just that our lives are crowded with calls to show up, it is often that those calls are conflicting that brings us unhappiness. We haven’t taken time to prioritize.

So to take the advice of many sages: prioritize, prioritize prioritize. Which reminds me of the joke where a guy reviews his priorities, and finds: 3 unimportant tasks, 10 mildly important tasks, and 87 very important tasks! It’s particularly funny to me because this happens to me every day, but I keep trying and thus I manage to show up more and more often at the places that really matter. Because, in part, I remember that each moment continues forever and I want the ones that really count to be where I spend my time.

Let me put a plug in here for church. I know at least in this moment I am speaking to the choir, so to speak, because you all have shown up today. But for the benefit of those who didn’t and are reading this sermon later, and as a pat on the back for all of you, showing up at church matters. A community is about those that are gathered and you can’t gather without showing up. Showing up no matter what the sermon, or the weather, or the duties you have, makes church one of those big stones. And it pays off. Simply by showing up you build the community. Simply showing up with your family strengthens your family. Simply by showing up you see people and hear about their lives. Simply by showing up you make this community count in your life and in the life of others. So thanks for showing up toady! Maybe showing up today for you was hard.

Showing up when it’s hard takes a special effort. Showing up when the pay off isn’t so obvious and the act itself makes us uncomfortable takes commitment. We don’t always want to be there at the bed side of a sick friend or relative. We don’t know what to say at a funeral or memorial service. We don’t want to hear our friend complain about the same problem one more time. But show up we do, and really that’s all that’s required. We don’t need to have the magic words, we don’t need to have the perfect smile, and we don’t need to have the all-fixing advice. All we need to do is show up. Simple, yet hard and for those to whom we are attending so profound. Once you have been on the other side of the memorial service that people make an effort to attend you know how important it is to just be there. I don’t know how many times I have heard a grieving family say, “I was so delighted to see so many people cared and came.” Or the friend who says, “I was so glad she came I just needed some one to listen.” Just showing up matters, never sell it short.

Sometimes, however, we are forced to show up and that can be miserable; called to court, called to the hospital, called to the morgue, called to account for our wrongs or called into any uncomfortable part of life. The showing up is not always grand and the pain can be acute. In those moments all we can do is show up. Showing up takes our full strength. All we can do is simply be there and nothing more. It is a comfort to me to be aware in those moments that this too shall pass. My requirement to show up will end. Like the eternal return, it will continue on in time but move further and further from me. In those moments I try to remember that soon I will be blessed with another moment and another call to show up and this one will be over. In those moments of super human strength we become aware of what a great effort showing up can be. We can’t avoid showing up in those moments. We are forced into the experiences, but they are not happy and the pain is real. In these cases, by not showing up we only delay and perhaps increase the number of times we need to show up. For instance not showing up in court will likely guarantee many returns of the same experience. So show up we do and luckily the next moment is waiting behind the door. These awful times do require we show up, but thankfully in time they move out of our immediate and present awareness.

The losses we experience in life make the showing up we do very precious. I know that I don’t show up as often as I would like with my granddad. He just lives a few miles away in Monroe and each year I promise myself to make that effort to be there once a month. I almost never make it and I know I will regret it someday when he is gone. Showing up is important in part because there will come a time when we won’t be able to.

In the words of Mary Oliver:
Every year, everything I have learned
in my lifetime leads back to this:
The fires and the black river of loss,
Whose other side is salvation,
Whose meaning none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
You must be able to do these things:
To love what is mortal;
To hold it against your bones
Knowing your own life depends on it;
And when the time comes to let it go,
To let it go.
To see crocuses blooming, to hear a child’s exclamation at a new discovery.
To look into another person’s face and see there beauty.
To stand in the middle of a springtime hail storm and to be started awake by the shower of cold.
To stand in sunshine and feel the warmth through our body.
To witness to the suffering in the world and to be connected to that suffering, and but also to be connected to the healing that happens everyday in the world.
To be present with all that is and to know that it is enough.
To be present with all that is and to know that this is life.
To know that it is life in its fullest.[3]

In order to see the crocuses blooming, we have to show up. In order to hear the child’s cry, we have to show up. To witness suffering, we have to show up. In order to experience the healing, we have to show up. To be present with all that is and to know that it is enough, we have to show up. To be present with all that is and to know that this is life, we have to show up. To know that it is life in its fullest, we have to show up. Let us together remember to show up.