On the day before my 40th birthday, I sat on a beautiful beach on the big island of Hawaii and wept throughout the entire day. Fun, huh? I was reading a book called In the Footsteps of Gandhi. It is filled with stories of people who have followed their heart's path, their path of service. These stories touched something deep inside me.
At the time, I had a big job in a big company with a big corner office. But in that moment, it became clear to me that none of it really mattered to me. I knew that I was supposed to be doing something else…something that had to do with my passion for spiritual growth. That deep, unexpressed part of me just couldn’t stop crying that day.
It has been five years since, and here I am, taking another step in a journey in which I have come to fundamentally redefine what success means to me.
In Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s poem, "The Invitation," she says:
"It doesn’t interest me who you know
Or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
In the center of the fire
With me
And not shrink back."
"I want to know that you will stand in the center of the fire with me, and not shrink back." I can’t think of a better yardstick for what it really means to be a minister than this. Yet for me, these words also capture the single biggest area of both challenge and growth in my ministerial evolution.
As a born optimist and sunny kind of person, I have always wanted to get to the "good part"—the part of the story where everything is OK again. Darkness and difficulty has not interested me. Not only are the fires of life uncomfortable; they to be avoided if at all possible.
Things finally clicked for me one day in our Spiritual Psychology class when our teacher, Megan, spoke of the dangers of spiritual bypass. For those of you who are not familiar with this term, a spiritual bypass is when we take a tarzan-like leap over the jungle floor of pain, suffering and the hard parts of life, and instead we stay dwelling in the branches of light, love and "all-is-well"-ness.
I knew in that moment that spiritual bypass and I were more than casual acquaintances.
I used to think that success was all about staying in the branches… focusing on the good… staying positive. But now that I have made friends with the jungle floor and delved into my own darkness, I have come to understand how essential it is to serve with full integrity as a minister—to be able to stand in the center of fire with people during their struggles without shrinking back…or, worse yet, prematurely starting to sweep up the ashes. Even more, I have realized how important this is for my own integrity and wholeness in all aspects of my life.
So: where do you find yourself? Are you up there in the canopy clinging to the branches, as I was? Or are you willing to get down on the jungle floor and be in the center of the fire?
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This article is the text of Rev. Susan Wayne's Ordination Sermon, offered at the Chaplaincy Institute's Ordination Service on October 24, 2009 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, Kensington, CA.
