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"When Your Mark Is Touched"

Some time ago, I heard of an owner of a small business, who on occasion would write a letter beginning “Dear So and So, you have touched my Plimsoll Mark." Perhaps some of you have heard of the Plimsoll Mark or the Plimsoll Line and of Plimsoll, the man after whom it was named … Samuel Plimsoll. P-l-i-m-s-o-l-l. As a member of the British Parliament in the 1870’s, he had become disturbed with the fairly widespread practice of overloading ships for profit. The merchants of the sea were loading vessels with too much cargo. Far too many of these sea ships sank at sea, taking many lives with them. Samuel Plimsoll secured legislation limiting the loading of all British merchant vessels by requiring the painting of a line along the sides of their hulls to show the limits of submergence allowed by law. Plimsoll became know as the “friend of sailors,” thereby and the “overload limit line” was called Plimsoll’s Mark.

I said earlier that I had heard of a small businessman who sometimes would begin a letter, “You have touched my Plimsoll Mark.” This man was the kind of person to whom many people turned when they wanted something done in the community. There are a few such people in every community, in every church, fellowship, in every organization – the dependable achievers.

But what do they do when “they” cannot take on anymore for awhile? Most people do what they want to do, we say, deep down, or, in time, they appear to. But these people (these achievers) seem to know how to be comfortable with themselves when they say, “No.” The business man to whom I referred did it this way: Having received a request for help on one more community project he would write, “Dear So and So: You have touched my Plimsoll Mark. I cannot take on “more” at this time. With a cargo as valuable as yours, however, I am certain you will find a lighter ship to carry the load.”

When your personal Plimsoll Mark is touched, when your ship is about to sink, it is in your interest and indeed that of those who turn to you to know that you are in danger of becoming overloaded! You cannot, or should not, handle another demand just then. You need time for your own work. You have a right to set priorities. You are entitled (and so are they) to time with family and some time for yourself.

You “will” volunteer (no doubt) or will be asked to do jobs for good beyond your own sphere of responsibilities and personal relationships. But when your Plimsoll Mark is touched, when your ship is in grave danger of this sort (and others could do the job) say, “Thanks, but no.” Now, I’m not talking about volunteer church work – well, actually,I say this knowing that churches need volunteers. We do in “our” church. And many people could say "yes" (in our church life), who don't help enough. I still believe, though, that we will do "best" for any institution, including the church if we only take on things we have energy for.

Suppose you have developed a way of life, however, characterized by “driven-ness” (or “power needs” or the love of being loved, or even of “guilt”). How do you sense when your Mark has been reached then, where your personal overload line is? And how do you come to give up the rewards and the praise you get because of saying “yes” to so many things? How effective is sheer willpower then? In the film of some years ago, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, Peter Sellers’ character in the drama is walking on the beach with his mentor. The teacher, or guru, says, “It is very important for you to find yourself.” The Sellers character replies, “I’m trying to find myself.” “Then,” says the teacher, “only after you have stopped ‘trying’ will you have found yourself.” And that poor character (who wins our sympathy), replies desperately, “I’m trying to stop trying.”

Probably he should have been told to stop trying that, too. It would be pretty hard, wouldn’t it, to try to stop trying to stop trying? I’ve come to believe we will truly take charge of our lives when we give up trying so very hard to be in full charge all the time. As the great Bhagavad Gita says, “We must do our duty; but without attachment to the outcome.” I’ve come to believe we take hold when we can “let go” of “driven-ness” to control.

It is a matter of Trust – of Faith.

This kind of “letting go” comes not from trying so hard to stop overloading or (or over-indulging or trying to forget guilt). It comes from “doing it,” letting go. And that is a release of the spirit.

Let me illustrate “letting go” with a parable I have adapted from one I picked up in the religious literature somewhere. Perhaps you have heard it. It makes the point, and parables, if the Bible is an example, bear repeating.

Once there was a wise old minister, who went to the lake and sat in his boat in the middle of the lake, dozing and waiting for a nibble.

Across the water, after a time, he heard someone chanting from the far shore, singing as he had done so many times himself.

But something was wrong with the chanting. He heard the sound Al-le-lu-YAH, Al-le-lu-YAH, Al-le-lu-YAH.

Well, now, the old preacher blinked himself completely into the present and thought. “Ah, yes, that is a very ancient and honorable and sacred and holy chant. It is indeed miraculous. Chant it, and believe strongly enough, and one could move mountains, could accomplish the impossible! I have not achieved such a power of personal belief myself – but I know, from my tradition, that it is so!”

Still, there was something wrong …

Al-le-lu-YAH, Al-le-lu-YAH, Al-le-lu-YAH ...

The sound came from the other side of the lake – from a little hut there. So our good and elderly pastor up and rowed himself over – way – way – over there to the place from whence the chanting had come.

He got out – walked up to the hut, and saw a young man seated there, chanting.

“I have heard your chanting as I sat in my boat on the lake,” said the venerable minister, “and do commend you on your piety, devotion, and the discipline of your efforts. I do, however, have something to offer you from my experience, my studies, and the long years of my ministry. You are putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable in your chant. You are stressing the last syllable, but if your faith is great enough and if you would do miracles and if you would turn such faith into fact, you must chant with the emphasis on the next-to-the-last syllable, then you might accomplish the impossible. Do it like so: Al-le-LU-yah, Al-le-LU-yah, Al-le-LU-yah. O, I am certain if you chant it as I suggest you will make great and powerful spiritual progress.”

The young fellow thanked the beneficent old parson sincerely, and, as the reverend left the hut, he could hear the young man sing: Al-le-LU-yah, Al-le-LU-yah, Al-le-LU-yah, as directed. Ah, it was lovely!

The old man took hold of the oars, bent his ancient back, pulling the oars against oar locks and the water, and made for his fishing place out in the lake.

Barely halfway there, however, the sound of the chanting from the hut stopped. And when it started again, he heard: Al-le-lu-YAH, Al-le-lu-YAH, Al-le-lu-YAH.

“Oh, my! All wrong again!” he thought.

The old clergyman frowned and thought, sadly: How weak the grasp, how shallow the understanding of the young. It is so hard to break habits and set someone on the path of true wisdom and salvation through diligence and correct spiritual practice!

As he was musing in this way, sighing, with his eyes closed, sitting in his rowboat, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

Startled, he opened his eyes and sat up quickly.

There, standing “on” the water in the middle of the lake beside the boat was the young man from the hut.

“I hate to bother you, sir,” he said, “but, would you be so kind as to teach me the correct way of chanting again? I seem to have forgotten it already.”

The young man who presumably chanted “incorrectly” knew how to “let go.”

His sincerity and authenticity gave him a ‘buoyancy’ that mere correctness of tradition could not give.

The older minister might have done better for himself had he merely repeated to himself the Russian proverb: “Pray to God, but row for the shore.”

He might not walk on water that way, as the little mythic story puts it, but he could have become less meddlesome. And he’d probably get home safely from the lake every time by concentrating on what worked best for him. You can’t change other people, anyway.

Living a life of greater serenity comes from a trust, a knowing of self. And life deep inside oneself is owning that, accepting that, and trusting something there. What you get is not only what you are; what you are (for all the confusion about it) is a gift.

Psychologist and sometime theologian, Sam Keen, author of the book To a Dancing God, dedicated that book to his mother this way:

   For my mother …
   Who taught me by example
   To search out my own truth.
   And nurtured in me
   A strong and tender trust
   Which has survived
   The death of many beliefs.
   

When the personal Plimsoll Mark is touched, we need something like that – a strong and tender trust – something of the spirit which lets us rise to where we ought to be by being in touch with that trust – an existential trust which survives the death of worn-out beliefs.

Let me tell you briefly about another man’s journey: A true story of a man, who, like Sam Keen, experienced the death of many beliefs. This man “loved” religion but had lost the object of devotion and trust. He wanted to pray but could not pray to God, or the only prayer he could utter was Augustine’s: “O, God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.” He felt “religious,” but could not believe in God in any conventional sense. He wanted a way back to faith in life, but how? He felt his ship-of-life was sinking and he believed he could not go on, for meaning had vanished, and courage had died, and serenity had blown away with the winds. He was in danger of foundering at sea.

Or, using his language: He walked, he said, on a tightrope over the abyss – afraid of falling. Then, figuratively, he did fall … gave up … let go … and yet found (somehow) that he was not destroyed thereby.

He was sustained by “what?” He did not know. He would go on, but “how?” He was not sure.

He said, “The reason things – are – the – way – they – are woke up in me (and in the world in which I lived and moved and attempted being) one day; and I could go on again (when I had not been able to do so before.)”

At that point, he called, The-Reason-Things-Are-The–Way-They-Are "God," and his going-on, a being sustained by the mystery of things as they are by the nature of reality; by what the called “in the language of the heart, my God.”

This man discovered that worship, for him, was not in obeisance. Rather, worship was in at-oneness – in unitive experience.

Like a fish that lives and moves and has its being in water does not worship water. It is as one with it.

He was in touch with – of a piece with – a part of – “God,” THE-REASON-THINGS-ARE-THE-WAY-THEY-ARE. And God was transcendent but still close and holy and around him, too, a power to pull him to buoyancy, as it were. The power that keeps the head above the water – or the ship safe at sea (speaking figuratively). In a way, his experience of religion became something like a statement he had read in philosopher George Santayana: “That religion is poetry believed in.” Or (as experienced) it was giving up trying to float with a rigid body like this! To float, one has to let go … to lie back, relax, and trust the water. He could trust some power greater than himself again.

His religion became poetic and existential and believable again. A felt reality, his God no longer lived up in heaven but became the “presence” he sensed with wonder before the white streamers in the heavens – the clouds. His God appeared when he climbed the mountains and found “wonder” moving there (hidden in the mists) and appeared again, at the foot of the mountains. In the lives of men and women, the mystery of it personally felt, related to in oneness. He could believe in life again. For a while, he had become like a person who had traveled so long in the desert, he no longer believed in living trees, or as one lost at sea so long he could not believe in land anymore.

What was one going to do with him? How to help him without forcing a belief upon him – without telling him how he must chant?

It is simple for him, perhaps for us: Let one take him ashore somewhere where there are trees and then for a walk in the woods of autumn, up from the beach along a path where he could no longer deny the leaves beneath his own feet. Then, perhaps, he looks up – himself – to see the fall of all that color from the heavens and, at that point of turning back to the sand, can no longer deny the reality of the trees. The point is, he stops trying to hold faith at a distance. He stops trying to sing the chant “correctly,” and just "sings it” – for joy. I know that man. Henry David Thoreau did it, too. “I say God,” he said, “that may not be the name, but you will know whom I mean.”

There comes a point where one must let go – stop trying to seize destiny and allow the self to be seized by it instead: to know in your heart that living trees “are.” And that which is greater than you are also is, and you can trust it, and go on … in “touch” with it. One of my colleagues asked me one time: If you were asked, "Do you grasp the universe, or is it more nearly true of your experience to say 'I am grasped by the universe more than I grasp it?'" The latter is true of me, I replied. The world grabs me more than I grab it. That, said my friend, is my minimal definition of theism. We get in touch with this reality by intuition, by being grasped.

In Eastern Lands, this “being in touch” would be called enlightenment. Those of you who know some things about The East probably have your own ways of describing enlightenment. This awareness, this deep trust of something basic that becomes your own and that is one with you and you with it. The great Zen philosopher, Daisetz Suzuki, when asked, “How would you characterize that experience, the experience of “Satori,” or Zen enlightenment, said, “It is very much like every day experience only it is about three-quarters of an inch off the ground.” Strange things like that are possible “in experience,” that is, they “feel” that way. You can value people so highly, (respect them so much) they seem to walk a foot or two off the ground.

Zen, with more modesty, puts its “highs” about three-quarters of an inch off the ground. And that’s the way it feels, or close, when in everyday life you know yourself so well, you fit your skin well enough, you know your limitations and strengths and your personal clock well enough to know where your Plimsoll Mark is. And you pay attention to its inner law of your spirit. Wouldn’t we like to be that secure in “accomplishing” and know that experience, too, all the time? I would.

I suspect that, at our best, each one’s personal Plimsoll Mark would run just a little way off the ground. We would be more buoyant persons, that is. Let me tell you something beautiful (I think) here at the end.

One time I was privileged to attend a testimonial occasion for some dear people in Wilmington, Delaware. There was a chaplain of their organization there who delivered some words of honoring. As nearly as I remember it, he said something like this: that he recalled a story from the life of Robert Louis Stevenson, when Stevenson was a child. The boy with his nurse (the two of them) were sitting upstairs, and the boy was looking long and pensively out the window when she asked him, “What are you looking at?” He replied, “I’m looking at a man punching holes in the darkness.” What could it be? She looked, and, sure enough, the lamplighter was going about the street below in the night, lighting the gas lamps, “punching holes in the darkness.” The people being honored (I know) take on loads that might sink another ship. Capacities differ in people. But even they know when to stop.

May each of us find our own places and spaces for doing that too: when to stop and when to start to meet our personal needs and choose “our” ways from an inner supply of trust and energy for punching holes in the darkness. If we are lucky (or, some would say, if we have been touched by a spiritual grace), we may find our personal ships of everyday life just about three-quarters of an inch above the surface of ordinary existence.

I want to end with prayer, after which, without announcement, the final hymn will be No. 159 – Prayer For This House.

Will you join me in the thoughtful and reverent spirit of spoken meditation and prayer: Let us ….

   Infinite Spirit: A compassion we can trust;
   Not in “particular” words does spirituality lie, 
   Not in one way is faith to be expressed, 
   Not in a special chant is the liturgy-of-life completed;
   Not in one belief is truth to be revealed.
   Not all at one time is revelation laid before us;
   Not in some end of time is a final answer known.
   Not when we are too busy, is reward to be assured us;
   Not even when we’re kindest, are we promised peace of mind.
   To all when we shall need it, should fright cleave to the bone;
   And the path ahead spell “danger,” and we feel at loss – alone;
   May some power of the cosmos, some strength within the soul …
   Give us back our way of knowing what it is to come through “whole.”
   And should a call come for our giving
   What alone we have to give,
   And there’s no passing on that duty,
   It is clear, if we’re to live in faith that makes “the human”
   Worth its salt and worth its sod.
   Grant us wisdom and the courage to answer … 
   “Yes, O God …. My God…”
   Amen.
   

Closing

   For all who see God ….
      May God go with you,
   For all who embrace life,
      May life return your affection.
   For all who seek a right path,
      May a way be found,
   And the courage to take it,
      Step by step.
   

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jake wrote

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