THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PETER PANSermon by Rev. Mike Young
(Preached Sept. 24, 1995 at
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu.)
One upon a time a group of Mormon (properly Latter Day Saints) missionaries came down the street on which I lived. Now, fortunately for them, they passed me up. 'Cause I enjoy Mormon missionaries. I really do. I enjoy their enthusiasm and their intensity, and I drive 'em nuts. But it occurred to me, if I were to go out door to door, what would I say? How in heaven's name would I be able, in that quick, resented give-and-take at the door, to stand any chance of communicating the richness of our tradition? I got to thinking about that. That's where this morning's sermon came from. I call it the Gospel According to Peter Pan.
The problem for religions is that they have to have a problem. That's where they all begin. Now, once they have got you accepting THE PROBLEM, they just happen to have A SOLUTION. And a means to the realization of that solution. In Christianity, the problem is that you are alienated from God because you are sinners. In Buddhism, the problem is that there is suffering. You are suffering; the world is suffering; and Buddha has a recipe, a solution for the problem of suffering, just as Christianity has a solution for the problem of sin.
They may well be right ! But for most of us, the fact that you're at a Unitarian Universalist church today suggests to me that PROBABLY that traditional language just doesn't quite speak to you any longer.
This morning I'm going to make some crazy assumptions. I'm going to assume that you are all enlightened beings, because I'm going to give away a lot of secrets this morning. Fortunately, only those of you who are enlightened beings will fully understand me anyway. Isn't that a great Out? "Gee, Mike, I didn't understand what you were saying this morning."
"That's quite all right, you will in time." That's one of the secrets we ministers use.
Let me see if I can say the problem in a slightly different way. We come to consciousness estranged from our own being. We are caught in a double split. We are estranged from our own bodies, from the universe around us. And we are estranged from one another. In order to know, in order for us to really KNOW the universe we've been born into, the culture must inculcate into us an ego -- a point of view. Only from at least ONE point of view, can we begin to experience and to know all of those pieces of the richness of the universe we are plopped into.
Well, it's also for our own protection. Culture MUST inculcate into us an ego. Absent that ego, absent that ability to empathize with another ego, you and I can be rather DANGEROUS animals. And when the socialization process goes haywire and you get an ego without empathy, we can be EXTREMELY dangerous.
The culture gives to us an isolation that alienates us from each other; that alienates us from the world that we're really very much a part of. And yet, in giving us this "curse," gives us also the "gift" of knowledge--the ability to really be able to stand over against and know as you and I are able to know. It gives us the ability to love--to be separate, isolated, over against, and reach across that chasm, and close it. That "curse," that "blessing" is the alienation from God that Christianity talks about when it is turned into egoism. That grasping attempt to fill all the void of my insides with stuff and things and power is the root of the suffering that the Buddha talks of. And the solution is to experience the forbidden. We'll come back to that in a moment.
Now most people make their accommodation with reality, and become adults. They freeze into a permanent identity what might have been merely a useful developmental stage. They are now DANGEROUSLY mature. Lacking both hope and joy, they are depressingly cynical. They are terrified of and hostile toward the world that is their home, their nurturance, their being.
Most of you have heard the story of Peter Pan. So, let me just very quickly sketch for you the opening part of the premise.
This young boy refuses to grow up. He is played in this culture's most familiar version, interestingly enough, by Mary Martin, a girl--an appropriate expression of androgyny. You can identify with the character or the girl playing it. Whether you're male or female, you can still make the identification.
The boy comes to the window to listen to Wendy's bedtime stories. One night the window gets shut and his shadow gets stuck in the closed window. It gets folded up and put in a drawer. He has to come back another night to retrieve it. When he finds his shadow, Wendy sews it back onto his toe again. Wendy and the children are taught to fly, and go off with Peter Pan. And THEN the adventures begin. Off to Never-never land ! With pirates, Indians, and alligators ! The adult world is left behind.
This is an ADULT fantasy, not a child's fantasy. It is our adult fantasy of the innocence of childhood that one is supposed at some point to leave behind, and forever after harken nostalgically back to. But in the original story, Wendy's mother has put the children to bed, and the whole fantasy occurs in her mind. This is an ADULT fantasy--not a child's fantasy. Mother has "grown up." She is trapped and cannot go back to her own childhood fantasy world, so she projects herself back into it through her daughter. But the fantasy world she enters by this means is not a childhood world, but her own wished-for world of NOW. In fantasy she is Wendy, but she is also, and more importantly, Peter Pan. (This makes it doubly appropriate that the role is played by a woman). Trapped in the role of mother and housewife -- of "Adult," she cannot permit herself to conceive of breaking that role open and REALLY entering Never-never land -- of BECOMING Peter Pan. She conceals the wish from herself by projecting it back into the nostalgia for a childhood fantasy world through her daughter.
The Good News--that's what Gospel means, Good News--the Good News of the Gospel According to Peter Pan is that you can BE PETER PAN !
It is a call to stop hiding from your own mental health, stop hiding from your own power, in the fake nostalgia fantasy. Don't just dream it, DO IT !
But, be careful! Hear me carefully. Don't run TO Peter Pan. BE PETER PAN !
Many a mid-life crisis love affair is a version of the Wendy fantasy. The wished-for childlikeness is projected onto the lover. The affair is the fake nostalgic fantasy. Trapped in the role of adult with wife or husband, and unable to be child-like there, one flees to the lover, where one can act out the childlikeness. So when I say, don't just dream it, DO IT, I'm not saying, "Go ahead with the fantasy; act it out; run away with your lover, etc., or whatever the fantasy is that haunts the edges of your dreams." Don't run TO Peter Pan. No; BE Peter Pan!
What is this childlikeness all about?
Jesus says, "Except you become again as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of God." And, in response, one smart-aleck in the audience says, "What? You mean, return, crawl back into the womb and be born again?" And from that little exchange, we have acquired our culture's concept of born-again Christians.
Remember that we humans think analogically. We know by analogy. The only way we can think about something we have NOT experienced is by analogy to something we HAVE. When we try to describe something to someone else that we have experienced but they have not, only by some kind of analogy to something they HAVE experienced can we manage to bridge that gap. This is the way we think.
Jesus is not original in the use of the child analogy. Religious teachers of many cultures and ages have used it. What do they mean? Crawl back into the womb and be born again? Cease being responsible? Start wetting your pants? Pretend that you don't know that your parents have clay feet? Obey the authorities without question? Believe everything you are told from Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to the boogie man and supply-side economics?
No ! To become again as a little child is to forget none of what you learned in becoming an adult. Except for one thing. Forget that it's all real. That's the biggest piece of the lie we told you, we adults, when you were a child. To become again as a little child is to discover that all those rules and roles they taught you are just another Peter Pan "let's pretend" illusion. A very necessary illusion; but an illusion. It isn't real. You really ARE Peter Pan. Not mother, father, housewife, wage earner--none of those. Those are games you can play when appropriate or necessary--egos you can put on. But they are not real. You are Peter Pan.
The Greek god Pan's job in the Olympic pantheon was to poke holes in the pomposity-of the gods whenever they got too big for their britches. And the first thing you experience when you let yourself go, let go of having to be an adult, is PAN-IC ! And that's right where the word comes from. Ohmigod ! the world's falling apart! But, it's NOT. It's falling TOGETHER!
Now, let's come back for a moment to culture's necessity in bringing us to consciousness. That process, necessary though it is, becomes the next problem. A culture that prevents its children from ego development will cripple them. That tends to avoid competitiveness. It tends to avoid ambition. It tends to avoid change, transformation and growth. A culture designed that way would quickly stagnate. Conflict appears to be a necessary part of the challenge that stimulates growth.
I was absolutely hilariously amused by an article in the paper some years ago about Madelyn Murray O'Hair's son who, raised without God, has now become a Christian. Big surprise! I was raised a Christian, and had to become an atheist. Well, non-theist, really; but that's another sermon.
In order to own your own insides, it's almost always necessary to run through that rebellion against the gods of the fathers. That rebellion stage is really a part of the process of owning and empowering ourselves. Jung claimed that full maturity required a return to the religion of one's childhood. It often does, but it's a different religion owned as an adult than the one experienced as a child.
If, for the sake of this morning's argument, you will concede with me that the experience of oneness and the grace and power to live out of that knowledge is religious and personal maturity, then it appears that the isolated ego state is a necessary developmental stage in realizing and experiencing the full power and reality of that oneness. In Christian terms, to experience God REQUIRES sin.
Now, if this is so, then it's inappropriate and indeed self-defeating for saints to run around trying to remake the world in their own image. They turn out to be actually attempting to short-circuit the very process that made their own realization possible. We need a world that creates egotists, in order to have a world that creates saints. Weird ! Either the saints must not be fully successful--the kingdom of God must never arrive--(That seems likely), or the saints must deceive their own children. And this latter is indeed what many a good guru does.
The Zen master does not hand out the information on a syllabus. He could. It exists. I used to have a book in my library that has all of the Koans in the whole sequence for becoming a Zen master. With the answers in the back of the book. I do! It exists! It's a fascinating book. Despite a lot of "it can't be said in words" propaganda, it is not that difficult to verbalize. But instead, the Zen master holds out the prize of egolessness, and then creates experiences for his students that INCREASE ego ! He eggs the student on in precisely the wrong direction. Until the student, in incredible egocentricity, challenges the teacher. Only then, as a fully developed ego, can the student experience the sound of one hand clapping. Only then can the student BE egoless. BE the knowledge rather than just KNOW the knowledge. Only then is BEING and KNOWING one. Werner Erhard and the EST people have at least that part of it right: you have to GET IT!
Fortunately, there is apparently little risk of our world becoming a world of saints. Maybe that's what the devil is for--to keep God from totally succeeding and blowing the whole show.
In the meantime, we need a world that maximizes the individual. Not because fully developed egos are the END, but precisely because they are the necessary MEANS to the end. And we need a world of tolerance--no, MORE than tolerance. We need a world that cherishes and celebrates the difference and uniqueness. Because each person is exactly where he or she needs to be in their own quest.
Oh, we need some rules. The line down the center of the highway that permits us to go in different directions together without bumping into each other--that kind of thing we need. But the whole rules obscession of the status quo is an interim and instrumental developmental stage.
The problem is ego. The solution is to experience the forbidden -- Remember ? I said we'd come back to that. The solution is to experience oneness. And the means to produce it is more ego. Now, that's crazy ! How can I walk up and down the street like the LDS missionaries and attempt to preach that door-to-door?
Religions often confuse people. You see, they always have one set of teachings for the neophytes, for the beginners. And another set of teachings for realized beings. And you get real chaos when you teach them to the wrong groups! Like I'm doing this morning.
If you could effectively teach the Sermon on the Mount to the neophyte masses. Get them to live by it, literally, (and they could only understand it literally without becoming realized beings). Have them give everything away; turn the other cheek; take no thought for the morrow, etc., the culture would come to a stop ! The economy would break down. Garbage would pile up in the streets. People would starve! I mean, try being a wheat farmer without taking any thought for the morrow! No, the Sermon on the Mount is all true! But, it's a teaching for realized beings, not ego-bound neophytes.
In the same way, if you teach the religious teachings meant for those who are just beginning to develop and experience their own egos as if those were the teachings for realized beings; as if the neophyte teaching were the end and goal of religion--you get a lot of guilt, repression, anger and violence. You get egoism run wild. And this is, tragically, exactly what popular Christianity has done.
Fortunately, no one takes the first--the Sermon on the Mount--seriously. The economy is not in danger of collapsing; at least not due to an excess of virtue. But, thousands are taking the second part--the sin and guilt--seriously, and wreaking havoc on the culture.
What, then, is the Gospel According to Peter Pan?
You are God. You ARE the incarnation of the most high. Your consciousness is the universe being and becoming conscious. And being that one is absolutely the most important thing for you to be and to do. Your particular expression and experience of that is unique, unprecedented, and nothing about that experience is trivial or unimportant. And, you are nothing special; for all of that is true of everyone you meet, as well.
You are not alone. You are intimately connected by every molecule and fiber of your body and being to everything else. The whole universe is accessible to you. And in every moment sustains you. It takes the whole universe doing exactly what it is doing for you to be here now. And it takes you, here, now, doing all of the things that you are doing in your life, for the universe to be here now.
It's okay to be who you are. You are exactly where you are supposed to be and are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Not because everything is determined. But precisely because NOTHING is determined. You are blossoming at your own correct rate. You do not OUGHT to change anything. And you CAN change EVERYTHING !
There is no predetermined UP for you to grow. Are you stodgy and conservative? BE stodgy and conservative! It won't last long; you'll get tired of it! Don't like it? CHANGE it!
The Good News is that there is nothing wrong! You are not broken, and don't need fixing. You are not lost. You couldn't be, because you are trailblazing anyway; it's all new territory. No one has ever been exactly where you are before ! To be broken implies a model of how you OUGHT to be that you aren't! But there is none. You are unique! There is nothing to compare yourself to! To be lost implies a goal to reach, but there ISN'T any. No map could possibly guide you to an experience no one has EVER HAD BEFORE.
But the Good News is also that there is help. A lot of help ! All you need. Though your quest is unique and there are no footsteps to follow, there are and have been a great company of questers with whom to share the adventure. Skills and wisdom exist that you may find useful. Others have. And that sharing is part of the quest. Some will not prove useful; or will not be useful now, but may be later. Others will be just what you need. And YOU have some to share as well, that are exactly what another needs. And you may not even know it.
Tinkerbell got the fairy dust from a person who had been carrying it around for years and years and years and didn't know what it was. Now BOTH can fly !
Finally, there is no hostile territory. No enemies to defeat, no battle to be won--there is only the adventure. It is all play, and it is all deadly serious. Every conceivable potential enemy is a quester just like you. You are Peter and you are the pirate. Like you, they are exactly where they're supposed to be. Like you, they are an incarnation of the most high. It is all play. And it is DEADLY serious.
You CAN'T grow UP. There is no UP to grow ! You can only be alive or be dead. There is only one way to be alive, but MANY ways to be dead. One of the ways to be dead is to become an adult -- that living death. That is not growing UP. That is NOT growing. Or, you can remain an infant. Never leave the protected womb of the culture's easy prescribed answers: Do as you are told; think as you are told, and behave yourself ! Don't take risks!
Or, you could discorporate -- you could pull the plug. But what's the hurry? You'll get THERE soon enough. You miss the best parts of the trip taking shortcuts.Death is a part of the quest. You will not escape it. But let it come where it belongs, as the result of living the quest well. Even then, you will still be one with the universe. You will still be connected. It will still be okay. Taken early or late, in rich ripeness or still green; you will have put all the living that would fit into that eternity that is your unique incarnation.
Reach out and touch. Go ahead, take hold of one another's hands.
Oh, Yes. Part of the Gospel of Peter Pan is that there IS resurrection of the dead. If you are an adult, or an infant, or one of the other ten thousand forms of the living dead, YOU CAN BE RESURRECTED TO ALIVENESS. Sometimes all it takes is a touch, or a word, or a smile, from someone who is alive . . . whether they know it or not. You have just been touched.
May YOUR Peter Pan misplace his shadow in YOUR bedroom and -- seeking it -- teach you to fly.
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