Slide 7: (Water with Boats) Sermon: What Would Maisie Do?
May my words bring hope and my thoughts bring meaning, and may it all be acceptable in Your sight, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
For the past two summers, I have given sermons about climate change and what we could do to reverse this trend. I spoke about taking first steps and about walking in forests to experience the beauty and quiet of God’s creation.
As Walt Whitman, (1819-1892), an American poet who lived in the 1800’s, wrote:
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Here, at St Matthew’s, we have taken a few first steps, including installing heat pumps, which allowed us to decommission one of our natural gas boilers. But many more steps are needed before we have a net-zero building.
My suggestion to spend time in the forest is not possible this summer due to the ban to keep out of the woods because of the lack of rain and consequent drought conditions, both as a result of our changing climate. Such curtailments of our activities give rise to anxiety.
We have reason to be anxious about climate change. In 2018, the challenge goal was to keep warming to 1.5 degrees C, In 2023 the IPCC report stated that the challenge was still there.
In 2025, the potential scenarios for climate change are:
I think that all of us would like to live in a world where we avoid collapse.
Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher, who coined the term solastalgia in 2003 to describe the distress people feel when their home environment changes negatively due to forces like climate change or large-scale mining, stated in 2007, We are now living at a time with worldwide increases in ecosystem distress syndromes and in human distress syndromes. There is an expanding taxonomy for this human distress: eco-anxiety, psychospiritual pain, and acute chronic fear or stress. It is clear that human health is dependent upon planetary health.
As we see and live through ecosystem distress, whether in the form of drought, forest fires, increased number and strength of storms with their paths of destruction and floods, human responses range from denial, skepticism, and fight, flight, freeze, or fright survival.
Trauma responses worsen with increased crises and lead to feelings of despair, cynicism, anxiety, and meaninglessness which cause people to turn away from meaningful action.
What can we do about this anxiety? How can we alleviate it in order to do and act in ways to mitigate the effects of climate change and to eventually reverse this process?
What would Maisie do?
I am sure some of you know Maisie, but many may be wondering ‘who is Maisie?’
I met Maisie two summers ago when my sister with whom I was visiting in BC handed me a novel written by Jacqueline Winspear, entitled Maisie Dobbs. She gave it to me to read on the train from Vancouver to Toronto as I made my way home to Nova Scotia.
Maisie, the protagonist, is a psychologist and investigator, working in London at her own detective agency. I soon learned that this was the first novel in a series featuring Maisie. I have now read 16 books in this series and am currently reading the 17th. There is also a nonfiction book by the same author entitled What Would Maisie Do?
In the course of reading these novels which take place from pre-World War I- Britain to the battles of World War II, I have learned much about the history through all these years both about conditions in Britain and in Europe with the rise of fascism. But, also, I have learned about the methods used by Maisie to help her discover the truths about the cases she works on.
She had a longtime mentor, Dr Maurice Blanche, whose teachings with her began when she was a teenager and who continued to offer her advice until his death. His words still resonate with her as she endeavours to solve a murder, or work with Scotland Yard or the Foreign Service on more dangerous assignments.
Maurice Blanche has helped Maisie’s intellectual and professional growth, helping her to use her innate gifts of intuition and insight to forge a life and purpose she might not have imagined. Many of us may have had the good fortune of having similar people in our lives.
Jacqueline Winspear’s books offer advice and ways of living that are also spoken of in Bible passages and theological writings including those of the Benedictine order. It is interesting to bring these streams of thought together.
So, what Would Maisie Do?
Allow yourself the gift of silence.
Whenever Maisie had reached a point in her investigation where she could not see her way forward, she would spend time in a quiet space. Maurice had taught her that silencing the mind was a greater task than stilling the body. Christianity and other religions also see the value of meditation to clear the mind of noise.
Several years ago, I travelled to my cottage at the beginning of Summer to write a workbook on climate change. I was excited to have this time and space to do so. On my first morning, I opened my computer to write and found there were a lot of voices in my head. I was surprised but realized that my mind had been trying to work despite this noise for a long time. After spending two days in the quiet with walks on the beach, swims, and no other interruptions, the noise dissipated and I was able to write.
Sometimes measures like a retreat are necessary, to still the noise our thoughts make. And then we can hear the still small voice within. A voice we do not need to strain to hear but simply can gather ourselves into the silence. And we learn how simply sweet that inner voice can be.
Without the chance to go off on silent retreats, we can try to create an escape from the exterior noise and the constant hum that muffles the small voice within.
When you encounter a problem or a difficult question, don’t fret about it at home but take yourself to a place with a view. For in moving the body, we also move the mind. Any problem is easier solved during and after a long walk. All the negative feelings break down and the problem can be approached with a more positive attitude.
Answers may not necessarily come, but the act of moving, of going to another place, and shifting your body and your vision will impact your responses to the questions that seem unanswerable. There is power in landscape.
We can do this too, by sitting quietly, by closing our eyes to the world until we dip into the well of silence to access the counsel of our inner knowing.
We can quiet our inner dialogue, our negative thoughts , such as, “I’ll look stupid/silly/ill-informed/unprofessional”.
Once the noise in the mind is silenced - or wound down - it is possible to be more attuned to the wisdom we hold inside: the “knowing” about what is best for us in a given situation.
One teaching of St Benedict is to listen deeply to the wisdom already held inside, which is the result of all we have learned and come to know across the years of our lives.
A paradox of our time is that the easier technology makes our lives, the worse our problems. Technology is based on higher education, and higher education has lost almost all interest in teaching wisdom. Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom isn’t about facts and data, it is a shift away from objective knowledge toward self-awareness.
‘Self’ might not even be a helpful term, despite age-old references to a higher self, identified with enlightenment. It is more helpful to say that the pursuit of wisdom is about waking up.
Waking up is a metaphor for the conscious life, and the conscious life is what wisdom leads to. In one way or another, allowing our unconsciousness to go unexamined has caused the greatest and longest suffering in human history.
Humans are a species of consciousness whose special trait is self-awareness. Being self-aware, we have the capacity to access the very source of awareness.
A society driven by consumerism, celebrity worship, video games, and social media gossip, and indifference to massive social problems feels like it could never find wisdom. Yet, we are the most fortunate society to wake up in, simply because higher consciousness is open to anyone. This is the greatest opportunity, to see that waking up is possible and to hasten toward it as quickly as we can.
As James Dewar (1842-1923). A Scottish Physicist, who lived in the 1800’s and early 1900’s wrote:
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
The worst aspect of being unconscious or asleep, is self-limitation. We go around with core beliefs about how insignificant a single individual is, how risky it would be to step out of the norm. The wise in every generation have asserted the opposite, that the source of consciousness makes human potential infinite. We can think an infinite amount of new thoughts and say things never before said. There is no arbitrary limit on any trait that makes us human: intelligence, creativity, insight, love, discovery, curiosity, invention, and spiritual experiences of every kind.
Waking up allows us to escape all stories and to live free of self-limiting mental constructs, or as William Blake, an 18th century English poet, called them, ‘mind-forged manacies’ and false beliefs. For example the us-versus them thinking leads to stories about racism and nationalism that have caused their barbarous results. The real purpose of waking up is about consciousness.
Anyone who wants to wake up is fortunate to be alive now as modern society is open to ready communication about every topic. Consider the power of conversation which is more than communicating together, it means the “act of living with” others and as such suggests the process of learning in community.
Share your thoughts and feelings in a safe environment. Another Rule of St Benedict is to listen and attend to the ear of your heart. He asks us to listen to others with our hearts, paying attention to them, bringing the very best of ourselves to the act of listening, respectful of their humanity. For what is the heart, if not the place where love resides. With grace and compassion, move forward, for even on the most solitary pilgrimage, we are not alone.
The power of a question lies not in the answer, but in the process we go through to arrive at our answer - in what we learn along the way; the attention we pay to our responses, to the conclusions we draw as we come to our summing-up.
For questions that do not need an instant answer, take your time, ask for time. See all the threads and perhaps learn something of yourself and your world along the way. Allow the questions to linger, to go below the surface, to touch the wisdom you hold inside. The tangles presented in life often require close attention to patience and time to find clarity.
People are also expert at keeping secrets from themselves, at going along to get along, at valuing social conformity and fitting in. These habits unravel when self-awareness awakens.
Given that so much of human anguish is caused by less-than-accurate communication, it is worth considering the impatience of distinction. Not
exercising distinction in our listening, we are also setting ourselves up for disappointment. Kindness is the most important thing. Never let fears get in the way, because fear can lead to irrational reasoning and we can make dreadful mistakes.
Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me”. These words are the first line of a hymn that was part of my Baptist upbringing and later my tenure as organist in a Baptist church.
Although its melody and words are dated, the words have always had an impact on me with a message that offers wisdom:
“Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth You have for me”.
Truth is at the heart of Maisie’s work as she delves deep to discover the truth about an event, a person and herself.
Truth is crucial to human beings living in community with one another.
Truth does come out eventually.
Truth has a certain buoyancy - it makes its way to the surface, in time.
Let us consider the connection between tobacco and lung cancer, or the link between plastics and high toxicity levels in our oceans; or our burning forests and the use of fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, humans have the capability of ignoring truth. As Winston Churchill said, “Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.
However, whenever you have a problem you cannot solve and cannot find the way forward, whenever a question troubles you, do as Maisie did: find a quiet space to think and find your inner voice and wisdom. Share this wisdom with others and engage in conversation so that the community can find solutions. When this process leads to a clearer path, take action and do something positive.
Have mercy on me, O God
according to your steadfast love.
You desire truth in the inward being,
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
Create in me a clean heart O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
O Lord, open my lips
and my mouth will declare your praise.
With God beside us and with wisdom in our hearts, let us hope and advocate for better, healthier ways of living.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.