“Search Beyond”
Rev. Dan Schatz
July 14, 2024 

Banjo Paterson was the king of the Australian Bush poets. Now, even if you were unaware that Australian Bush poetry is a thing, you might have heard Paterson most famous work, the unofficial national anthem of Australia, “Waltzing Matilda.” He was the king of the Bush poets for a reason.

In 1895, witnessing the plight of farmers and ranchers facing a devastating drought, Paterson wrote another, less well-known poem. In “Song of the Artesian Water” he paints a picture of suffering squatters caring for “tortured, thirsty cattle” – victims to the severe weather.

We know about drought and extreme weather, in our country, too, especially in this era of climate crisis, but in those days the immediate consequences were even more serious. There were no reservoirs, there was no trucked in water, there wasn’t anything you could do at all. “If we fail to find the water,” Paterson wrote, “then it’s ruin to the squatter, for the drought is on the station and the weather’s getting hotter.”

That left three options:  Give up and leave, pray, or dig.

With no other prospects, they weren’t about to leave. And “we’re tired of prayers and Providence,” he said – they never seemed to make any difference, so the people decided to dig. In that part of Queensland, aquifers lie beneath the stone, often deeper than half a mile underground. So, with a twenty horsepower engine they drilled into barren earth and hard rock, searching for something life giving beyond what they could see. It was a risk – artesian wells are expensive and time consuming, and there was no telling how deep they’d have to go to find water, if any was there to be found. They were squatters, not geologists.

But they were motivated, because their farms depended on it. Their homes depended on it. Their families depended on life giving water. Their own lives depended on what they could find beneath the surface.

It didn’t go well, at least not at first. Early on the shaft started caving in, and then the drill kept jamming up, and as deep as they went, they found nothing. But still, they kept searching, deeper down.

Paterson wrote:

“It’s time they heard us knocking on the roof of Satan’s dwelling
But we’ll find artesian water if we cave the roof of hell in….

But there’s no artesian water and we’ve passed three thousand feet
And the contract price is growing and the boss is nearly beat.
But it must be down beneath us, so it’s down we’ve got to go
Though she’s bumping on the solid rock four thousand feet below….

And it’s down, deeper down,
Oh, we’re going deeper down….”

Nothing. Not a hint of water came from that well, until everything changed.

“But it’s hark, the whistle’s blowing
with a wild, exultant blast
And the boys are madly cheering,
for they’ve struck a flow at last….

It is flowing, ever flowing, in a free, unstinted measure
From the silent hidden places where the old earth hides her treasure….
Where the old earth hides her treasure deeper down.

“And it’s clear away the timber, and it’s let the water run,
How it glimmers in the shadow, how it flashes in the sun!
By the silent belts of timber, by the miles of blazing plain
It is bringing hope and comfort to the thirsty land again….

And it’s down, deeper down –
it is flowing, ever flowing, deeper down.”

Now, I imagine that whatever you expected when you came to the service this morning, it probably wasn’t an Australian Bush poem about an artesian well. Some people might even suggest that my sermon illustrations can be obscure sometimes. One or two might go so far as to call it a stretch. And maybe it is. Maybe it’s this heat, but that poem has been going around in my head for much of the past month.

And it’s down, deeper down,
Oh, we’re going deeper down.

Right now, in this community, in our country, and in our world, we are in need of life giving nourishment. It’s a stressful and anxious time. There has been grief and conflict and violence and fear and we know there is more of all of it to come. We need life giving nourishment.

And the thing is, there are all kinds of people who will tell us they can provide that nourishment without any effort on our part – just accept this slogan or that meme or some set of words, or give your heart to one kind of savior or another. Believe whatever we tell you to believe. Politicians will tell you that, preachers will tell you that (not me), the internet will tell you that every day. You don’t need to go to effort, or think for yourself, or ask questions. Just take what’s on the surface, whether it actually meets your needs or not. And sometimes, maybe life giving truth is there, right on the surface – we can get lucky – but just as often what’s on the surface is superficial at best, and at worst it is arid, punishing, and even killing.

So at the risk of over-using a mining metaphor in this day and age, what I ask of you is to dig deeper. (At least we’re mining for water.) Dig deeper. Don’t go for the easiest answer. Search beyond your first impressions, and don’t let those first impressions, or what somebody else tells you to believe, or what fits best with your biases shape your views of what comes next. Don’t buy into self fulfilling prophecies or the easiest answers. Look deeper. Beware of the tendency to amass data only for the purpose of bolstering your arguments or your current opinions. Even if you do seek widely, if you never allow yourself to be challenged, you’re still on the barren surface. Dig deeper.

And it’s down, deeper down.

When I was in high school I took a course in US government, and I remember my teacher talking about what he called “Damn right issues.” Those are the kinds of issues that get you to say, “Damn right!” without thinking very much. “Gas is too expensive!” “Damn right!” “They’re taking our jobs!” “Damn right!” “They’re evil people!” “Damn right!” Damn right issues are designed to spark emotion and outrage without engaging the mind. And the truth is, I hear a lot of that kind of talk these days, in liberal as well as more conservative circles. I don’t know what led directly to the violence that took place yesterday in Western Pennsylvania, but I fear this kind of dynamic might have played a role.

It’s not just politics. It happens in family conflicts, and in religious disagreements, too. Anytime we are presented with an argument about how change means ruin, or how evil some categories of people are, or that plays only on our fears, it’s worth digging deeper before we accept that argument – even if it comes from someone we love and trust. I’m not saying such things can never be true. It would be foolish, especially in this age, to deny that there are valid reasons for fear. I am saying we need to dig deeper, because more often than not, truth is more complex than the easiest answer – and acting out of fear alone separates us when we need more than ever to remember and embrace our common humanity.

And it’s down, deeper down.
Oh, we’re going deeper down.

I’ve talked about this in terms of argument and opinion, but digging deeply is just as important in our search for spiritual truth. James Luther Adams, that great Unitarian Universalist theologian who I keep quoting this year, said, “An unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident.” He’s right.  “The free person,” he said, “does not live by an unexamined faith….” Having traveled through Germany in 1938 and been personally detained by the SS, Adams knew what he was talking about, and he knew how destructive unexamined faith could become.

And it’s down, deeper down.
Oh, we’re going deeper down.

The digging isn’t always easy, of course, but there is joy in the process. It’s exploration, discovery, excitement. And there are rewards in every step. It’s not like an artesian well, with nothing but barren rock until it all comes out at once, a font of wisdom and truth and insight. Instead, there are little pockets of wisdom here and there along the journey, in almost every place if we’re willing to look carefully. And there is always more to be found.

We don’t have to do it alone. I think we shouldn’t. A big part of the point of a Unitarian Universalist congregation is that we seek better when we are not all alike. We are a community of seekers, united in love, inquiry, integrity and community, diverse in our beliefs and experiences. That means we get to listen to each other and learn from one another. We do not search alone.

Of course, not everything will yield great insights, and there are some things we may need to leave behind. As we dig deeper we may discover that some of our teachers and our forebears were, shall we say, problematic in various ways. I grew up in Washington, DC, and I’ve struggled for years with the inspiration I always found in the words of Thomas Jefferson carved in stone at that beautiful memorial. The place that was so deeply meaningful to me. It still is; he spoke of liberty, and morals, and of the idea that human society had to change through time. And – he claimed ownership of other human beings. He knew it was wrong and did it anyway. That’s a problem – and I find myself wishing he had listened to himself a little more carefully.

I often have the same experience around authors or forebears who turned out to be sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or in other ways problematic, but who also had wisdom. And there are ways to make excuses for them – they were people of their times, you have to consider the context, and all that, but in almost every case, there are other folks from those times who did get it.

Still, I don’t want to lose everything good that those people have to teach me. So I’ve had to learn to come to terms with imperfection. I’ve had to learn that that digging deeply sometimes means sifting through a lot of dirt and rock in order to find that life giving water.

The late author bell hooks described a similar experience in working with the writings of Paulo Freire, the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s work is deeply sexist, and as a feminist scholar, she had to critique it, but at the same time, she said, “I came to Freire thirsty, dying of thirst… and I found in his work a way to quench that thirst. To have work that promotes one’s liberation is such a powerful gift that it does not matter so much if the gift is flawed.”

“Think of the work,” she said, “as water that contains some dirt. Because you are thirsty you are not too proud to extract the dirt and be nourished by the water. For me this is an experience that corresponds very much to the way individuals of privilege respond to the use of water in the First World context. When you are privileged, living in one of the richest countries in the world, you can waste resources. And you can specially justify your disposal of something that you consider impure…. If we approach the drinking of water… from a global perspective we would have to talk about it differently. We would have to consider what the vast majority of the people in the world who are thirsty must do to obtain water. Paulo’s work has been living water for me.”

And it’s down, deeper down,
It is flowing deeper down.

I first read bell hooks’s words almost thirty years ago, and they have never left me. They have helped me deal with difficult people, with family situations, with the disagreements I’ve had from time to time with something that happened at the UUA or at whatever congregation I’m serving. They have helped me through every election.

We don’t have the luxury of purity or perfection. Our need for life giving water is too great. So we search beyond, keeping what is nourishing, acknowledging what is not.

Of course, it can’t always work like that – some things, sometimes are just too toxic to overlook. And that’s fine – we need to do what we need to do for ourselves, especially when we have been wounded in the past. But it is worth our time, if we are able, to search beyond the surface of another human being, or of an organization, or whatever it is, to find the goodness along with the flaws. Because the truth is we are all heirs to flawed teachers and institutions. And – this might be the hard part – so are our children. One day, they too will dig around our imperfections. They might even be doing it today.

And it’s down, deeper down,
It is flowing deeper down.

Or, maybe, higher up. Anne Bowman tells the story of two travelers on their way to Japan by sea. They both stood by the ship’s railing, looking out at the vast and empty ocean, until after awhile one of the travelers turned and walked away, clearly disappointed. The other stayed all day, looking across the sea, and noticed that from time to time the first would come back, look briefly at the ocean, and then turn away again, looking more upset, even angry, with each ocean view.

After this happened a few times, the second traveler asked the first, “Why are you so upset? You look sad, and this is supposed to be a pleasure trip.” The first replied that they had been told at this point in the journey they should be able to see Mount Fuji in the distance, but all day, the ocean had been covered in a thick haze, and it was becoming obvious the haze was not going to lift. The second traveler took the first by the arm, guiding them back to the ship’s rail and said quietly, “Look higher.” Bowman writes, “The traveler, raising his eyes above the haze, saw in all its beauty and majesty, the great mountain peak.”

Dig deeper, but also look higher.

Have you ever been on a walk or a hike and realized after awhile that you’re mostly looking at your feet? When I find myself doing that, and my wife reminds me to look up, I suddenly remember why I’m on that walk to begin with. Because it’s not just about the journey, no matter how often we use that metaphor. And it’s not just about the truths we find as we dig deeper. It’s also about beauty, and hope, and love that lifts us and carries us and reminds us how to live in this world, with all that we have found. It reminds us why the search is so very worthwhile.

Looking higher means looking with the heart as much as the mind – seeking not just scientific truth, but also wonder and morality. It means looking for the good in people, and searching for ways to give our goodness to others. Looking higher means seeking greater integrity, more profound connection, and a meaning filled life.

Dig deeper and look higher.

We need it all – roots and wings. We need it all. We need to search beyond our feet, sometimes digging down, sometimes looking up, always remaining open. It will be a lifelong practice, not always easy, but fulfilling. Dig deeper. Look higher. Search beyond. This will be our life giving water.

Now may the love of truth guide you,
the warmth of love hold you,
and the spirit of peace bless you,
this day and in the days to come. 

– Jane Ellen Mauldin