Rev. Tessie Mandeville
October 14, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30030

It has been said that at the exact moment of our death, we’ll lose 21 grams of weight. It’s the weight of a stack of nickels. The weight of a chocolate bar. The weight of a hummingbird. At the exact moment of our death, everyone will lose 21 grams.

This is according to Dr. Douglas MacDougall, a doctor in the early 20 th century, who thought that our souls had a material component to them and therefore could be weighed. He weighed six people of different sizes while they were in the dying process and then he weighed them after they died. He discovered that the body weighs 21 grams less after death; therefore, the soul weighs 21 grams. Subsequent scientific work has said that we should not take his research too seriously because it was not with a large enough number of people and his methods were a little shaky. However, this did not stop Hollywood from making a film in 2003 called 21 Grams that was later nominated for an Academy Award.

The subject of our souls has long captivated humankind. The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being. It is believed in many cultures and religions that the soul is the unification of one's sense of identity. And while some believe the soul to be immaterial, there are others who believe the soul to be material.

Jesus had something to say about souls too. We learn from him that there is nothing more precious than our souls. Jesus teaches this lesson by us asking one of the most important questions that the New Testament contains. It is a question so well known, and so often repeated, that people lose sight of its searching character. Jesus asks, “What will it profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our souls?”

This question has often been used to talk about eternity and what will happen to our souls after we die. Eternity is important but so is the present moment and my understanding of Jesus’ teachings leads me to believe that deep worrying and deep angst about eternity is not what Jesus had in mind. Jesus functioned in the here and now. He healed people in the present moment and didn’t ask them to wait to be healed in eternity. He fed the hungry in the present moment and didn’t ask them to wait for a meal in eternity. I believe Jesus was much more focused on what was right in front of him because that’s where the need was.

And Jesus knew that we need to be concerned about our souls, and our minds, and our bodies, and what happens to them in the day to day experience of living in this world. As author Caroline Myss says, “We cannot make a movement with our bodies that our soul does not record, and we cannot have one dialogue with our soul that our bodies do not absorb. There are no boundaries to this conscious partnership of body, mind, and soul.”

But here’s the thing: when this partnership is working well, then our actions are in alignment with what we believe and who we are. When the partnership is not working well, then our actions are out of alignment with who we are and who we are is out of alignment with our actions. And as many of us have learned, it can be hell on earth when we are living a divided life instead of whole, complete life.

As lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, we know what it’s like to live a divided life. To be one person with one group and another person with another group. To act a certain way in public and at our jobs, and to act differently in private. I’m not saying that there aren’t real reasons for doing this sometimes because of the society we live in; I am simply saying that we know what it’s like to live in fragmented and compartmentalized ways and we know what that does to our souls. One of our main tasks is to journey toward an undivided life. To integrate all of who we are and to bring all of who we are out into the open and into spiritual alignment.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a chiropractor. But if you have then the doctor has probably taken X-rays of your spine. And when you look at those X-rays, you can see that some vertebrae are to the left or to the right of the spine and not in complete alignment. You and the doctor then agree to work together so that you can be brought back into alignment. And if you’ve ever done this type of work, you know how much better you feel when all the parts are where they belong. You’re definitely in a lot less pain. But this takes time and it takes a willingness to make adjustments.

Our bodies need chiropractic adjustments at times and our souls need spiritual chiropractic adjustments at times. We need to find ways to get back in alignment with who we are. We need to rediscover our integrity and wholeness. Because you see that’s what integrity is. It literally means wholeness and completeness. Exercising integrity is not as simple as saying, “This action is right and this action is wrong.” I heard a Unitarian minister say one time, “There are moral absolutes in the Universe; I’m just not absolutely sure what they are.” Most ethical and moral dilemmas are far more complicated and ambiguous than “right” or “wrong”, “good” or bad.” We live in morally complex times and if you don’t believe this is true then I invite you to attend the S.O.W.L. gatherings at Mary Louise and Cathy’s home. They are courageous group of people having morally complex conversations about controversial issues like the separation of church and state, abortion, and euthanasia. Good and loving people can come down on different sides of the issues and still maintain their integrity because integrity for one person may be different than integrity for another person. That’s moral complexity. You can be right and I can be right and we can both have integrity. The mystic Rumi says it this way, “Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.”

Out in that field, I believe, is where we practice aligning and re-aligning our values with our actions and our actions with our values. We practice getting back in alignment with our souls so that we can be whole. Perhaps there’s a spiritual paradox here: It is better to be whole than to be good. The lesbian poet, Mary Oliver says, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Out in that field beyond right doing and wrong doing, we see where we need to make adjustments and we try to make them so that we can be in spiritual alignment. So that we can be whole and undivided. Out in that field is a place of acceptance and non-judgment. Imagine your soul laying down in that kind of field.

Last week we talked about the core value of reconciliation in our relationships with one another. We said that reconciliation is bringing back together that which has been torn apart. This is not only true in our relationships with one another; it’s true in our relationships with ourselves. Don’t we have places inside ourselves that we need to bring back together? Like our sexuality and spirituality. Like what we believe and how we act. Like what we say and what we do.

So maybe out in that field beyond right and wrong we realize that we haven’t kept the promises that we made so we make an adjustment by either keeping the promise or renegotiating a new one, so that our yes can be yes and our no can be no and we can be people of our word.

Maybe out in that field beyond right and wrong we realize that we are doing something that isn’t good for us and we make an adjustment so that we can stop harming ourselves.

Maybe out in that field beyond right and wrong we realize that we are harming others by our actions and we make an adjustment so that we can stop harming others. In any journey toward wholeness we must ask ourselves if what we are doing is causing harm or bringing healing to ourselves and others. And depending on that answer we may have to make an adjustment.

Maybe out in that field we realize that there are times at our jobs when jokes get told that are racist or sexist and we don’t say anything about it. And so we make an adjustment and form an ally-ship with the people who aren’t in the room with us.

Maybe out in that field we realize that integrity is a choice. That wholeness is a choice. Living a life of integrity takes great courage and it rarely comes without a cost. Perhaps the question is not, “How much do our souls weigh?” The bigger question is, “How much does it weigh on our souls when our beliefs are out of alignment with our actions and our actions are out of alignment with who we are?”

The invitation from Jesus, and from the Divine however you name it, is to journey toward wholeness. It is to get ourselves in spiritual alignment so that our beliefs and our actions match one another. The invitation is to live an undivided life. God does not require perfection; God desires wholeness. This is why integrity must be a core value of this beloved community. Because there is nothing more precious than our souls. Blessed be and amen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul

“Our Collective Soul” by Caroline Myss, p. 11, found in Imagine What America Could Be In The 21 st Century, Marianne Williamson, Ed.

To explore the concept of the “undivided life” please see Parker J. Palmer’s newest book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, 2004.

The concept of “spiritual chiropractic” was borrowed from Julia Cameron in an article entitled “Recovering a Sense of Integrity” in The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, 1992

Sermon by Rev. Roger Bertschausen, “How Do We Live With Integrity?” September 21, 1997.

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, found in Dream Works.

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved.