Sermon by Judith Liro 02.05.2012
The Throat chakra is about finding authentic voice, being able to speak our truth yet it is also about listening and therefore about communication and the authentic community that comes from truthful speaking and deep listening. Brenda Davies writes, “The throat chakra bridges the feeling self and the intellectual self and also encompasses such things as wit and the ability to improvise, and these will be enhanced by its development. There’s a lovely lightness as the throat chakra opens. You become less likely to take yourself seriously, more spontaneous and willing to play, to be childlike and ‘give it a try’ while being able to snap into your power and command attention and leadership in an instant when necessary…. As we open our throat chakra and put our original unique expression into sound, we simultaneously take into our own world all those who hear us.”
As I’ve focused on this chakra this week I’ve had the sense that this is a chakra where we are doing a lot of our growing individually and as a community. I’ve felt excited about the potential for further growth here as well as seeing why we have experienced awkwardness and stuckness, currently as well as the past. It seems clear, to me anyway, that we have communication challenges internally and externally. This chakra also is at the fore as we’ve worked on the grant getting our Hildegard voice into the world through the website, Women and Fair Trade, Chant for Peace, Virgen of Guadalupe celebration and now the booksigning with its panel of three progressive voices. I’ve been encouraged to consider our throat chakras opening personally and collectively and what this could mean for our life together and for our offering of healing to the world. The threads that weave between personal issues and development and communal ones are amazing to consider. It’s like we are evolving together—personally, as community and the wider world.
In our reading about the throat chakra we heard about finding our unique voice and expressing our truth, having the courage to do that without regard to the response of others. I think finding our voice is also about being liberated from our false self that constricts our authenticity in particular ways. Let’s acknowledge how hard it is to break free internally and externally. We are often socialized to fit in while this chakra with its call to express our unique truth, may mean being different. For some their false self is about defining themselves against the norm and always being in opposition. Whether our particular pattern is conforming or opposing, the throat chakra is about stepping away from these false patterns to discover what is authentic within a whole spectrum of possibilities. It involves listening deeply and expressing what is true for now. In this freedom we experience great diversity—agreement and disagreement cease to be so important—as we hear each other into what is authentic. There is also a dynamic quality with evolving truth. I remember hearing that a dysfunctional family has roles that have become very rigid while a healthy family dynamic includes great variety. I believe healthy throat chakra would mean that sometimes individuals are in agreement and sometimes standing alone; sometimes certain, other times uncertain. I guess what I am getting at is finding our voice involves freedom and experimentation. In feminist theologian Nelle Morton’s phrase we hear each other into authentic speech. That involves basic trust, being vulnerable to explore the freshness of our voice as it changes and grows. Sometimes we put each other in boxes, remember something that was said as if that moment were frozen and represented eternal truth.
Whenever we are developing this implies awkwardness, failing and falling. Think about babies learning to walk—how wobbly, how many falls to sit down harmlessly or other times of getting hurt. And yet usually they get up and keep trying. It’s pretty amazing to consider the whole learning process of trial and error moving toward the goal of walking as metaphor for developing in other ways. As adults it seems so much harder. A failure in communication that involves being hurt can all too often turn into a stuck place that goes on for a lengthy period of time or never gets resolved. Brenda Davies mentions that a developed throat chakra means that we don’t take ourselves so seriously, that we can be playful and more childlike. Along with courage I think humility and patience are bare bones necessities for communication and community. It seems like we could move light years if we could just lighten up. And yet it rarely feels that way when we are struggling to move through stuck places. Maybe it doesn’t feel easy for those babies either! When I try to speak my truth in a situation that is ‘developmental’ for me, I experience considerable stress. I look at the situation and see no reason why a particular conversation should be such a challenge. But it is. It’s hard to tell if it is because of creating change on a different level such as the church and the world or if the personal barriers that are being surmounted make it feel like I’m moving a mountain. Perhaps the opening of the throat chakra allows us to see ourselves and each other with more understanding. What seems easy for me may be one of those mountain moving moments for someone else.
“If communication can begin with a smile, continue with love and civility, be leavened with a little humor when appropriate and enhanced with empathy and compassion, we can hardly fail,” Brenda writes. I am noticing how the chakras are interconnected with each other. The goal of creating authentic community with the opened throat chakra requires the opened heart chakra and opened solar plexus. Perhaps stuck places reveal a need for healing and development in other chakras too.
Let’s take a moment to look at the gospel reading from Mark. It’s interesting that it begins with Jesus healing Simon’s mother-in-law who is ill with a fever. He takes her by the hand, helps her up and she goes about her work. Perhaps conflict in this community and other situations of failed communication can be like a fever. It may stop our work and we may find heat rising with frustration, blaming and judging. What if Jesus could take us by the hand and we could return to our work. It sounds like liberation to be able to move on, finding fruitfulness instead of illness in the circumstances of our lives. Sometimes when I read this the mother-in-law seems without voice and going about her work might mean she’s serving others in a conforming way. This may not do the story justice, however, as mother-in-laws are known for speaking their truth even when it unsettles the household. If we see this figure with an open throat chakra, she can have lightness about her, a mature honesty that graces the household. The sparse detail allows us to fill in the picture to our liking.
In the next paragraph Jesus is casting out demons and healing the sick. In my view a constructive way to think about demons, it to imagine them as parts of our false self—persistent needy energies based in the past clamoring for attention that keep us imprisoned. Being freed from personal and communal demons means we break free from dysfunctional patterns, developing new, healthier approaches. Perhaps Jesus can set us free in personal ways so that we have newfound courage and humor, that we can find a way of communication that is fruitful and flexible,. Maybe we can learn how to heal wounded and stuck places in ourselves, with others and in the world.
Please note the balanced approach in this gospel of inward—going off for silence and prayer and the wildness of nature—and the outward—proclaiming the good news, taking one’s truth into the world. We too need silence, wildness and prayer to know our own truth. In community, here and elsewhere, this truth can grow further in the supportive, loving presence of others. Proclaiming the good news is certainly a 5th chakra moment for Jesus as it is for us when we are ready to venture out with our own proclamation, our own truth to share. Isaiah reminds us that there is divine power moving energetically as these chakras open. “God gives strength to the weary and empowers the powerless. Those who wait for Yahweh find renewed power: they soar on eagels’ wings, they run and don’t get weary, they walk and never tire.” These are solar plexus energies that rise up and give us all that is needed at the throat chakra when it is time for proclamation, for moving out on our own courageous journeys.
What about healing the throat chakra? We’ve already mentioned circles of listening and speaking where it is safe enough to fail and there is forgiveness and gentleness. Sound, singing, chanting. When we gather each week we are healing the throat chakra and strengthening community by speaking and listening, and especially by singing together. Consider bringing more singing, sound and chanting into your life at home. Some of you know that I have a practice of singing each morning that I call my Morning Song. Coming back from sabbatical I am finding chanting the psalms as a nurturing practice. Perhaps you can share your own ways of healing the throat chakra. I have to say that my own practices came before I had given much thought to this chakra. But seeing how they have emerged in my life, I believe it confirms that this is a growing edge for me.
For our healing meditation today, I’d like us to try some toning…
To read the 1st reading selection go to: A Reading from The 7 Healing Chakras by Brenda Davies
