the state of whoa

Okay, I'm going to try to get us out of here early today. I know some of you want to drive up to Atlanta to hear the Jubilee Singers Of The Dancing Holy Spirit. That reminds me, I want to preach some Sunday soon on King David dancing in the streets. Now there's a story!

Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 6:5. Will someone stand up and read that?

"Woe is me! for I am undone."

Thank you, Brother Endelrod.

Have you ever had everything put together nicely, running along so smoothly, everything just humming, and then, blam!, it all falls or flies apart, blown into smithereens, and you are left sitting in the ashes of the aftermath, wondering what the hell and why in heaven's name? Congratulations, you have just become undone.

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley," said Mister Burns, in his To A Mouse. He captures the undone feeling well in his opening lines: "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie."

Being undone is a state we hate. And even though we don't want to hear it, it is a state to be valued.

"Yeah, yeah," you might say, "you preachers are always putting a positive spin on things. If you stepped in dog poop, you'd praise God for reminding you to watch your step! We Americans worship progress, no offense intended, preacher. And having things fall apart, being undone as you say, is not progress."

Well, I beg to differ. Life goes on in a certain rhythm. For things to fall together, they have to fall apart.

Sometimes we need some woe, some whoa! We start galloping away in enthusiastic disregard for anything but our own singular vision of What Should Be. As a result, as someone has said, we should all over ourselves. A woeful state, any way you look at it.

When we get that way, the universe in its wonderfulness allows us to become undone. A fresh start opens.

We may sit for a while in our ashes and scrape our wounds with pot shards (like Job), but if we have any grit at all, we eventually get up and go on, totally undone.

Some of my Zen friends say that emptiness is a highly creative place to be. The ancient Chinese referred to this zone of emptiness out of which all arises as wu or wu chi. The Japanese call it ku. Combining the two, I call it wu chi ku. When we are in the undone place, we can dance the wu chi ku.

Wups! Looks like I am headed toward the King David sermon!

Please stand up and we will sing the song of the undone: Just As I Am, Without One Plea. Just the first and last verse and then you are outta here!