You can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need. – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
This week I’ve done a lot of things I never thought I’d do. Just yesterday in class I sang a Bob Dylan song, a capella. Today I’m quoting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Who knows what tomorrow might bring.
And that’s what I want to talk about this evening. Not knowing what tomorrow brings.
Our world is sort of in bad shape right now. Well, depending on where you are, our world is in really bad shape. The people of Haiti are on our minds frequently these days, and as well they should be. They are in real trouble there. And there are the folks in New Orleans, who still haven’t had ample chance to recover from their disaster. There are many people who are suffering because of humanity’s inability to interface well with Nature. Places where Nature has just not conformed to our will. And where we have failed to subdue Nature, sometimes we suffer.
You can’t always get what you want.
And if you try sometime you find, you get what you need.
Notice the lyric does not say “And if you try some time, you find, you get what you want.” Nope, you get what you need.
Who among us can say that they, at all times, know what they need?
I am not prepared to stand here and count myself among them. Often times I’m not even sure what I want.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess to you that I’ve never heard the Rolling Stones version of that song I quoted earlier. I know only the version from the television show, Glee. Also, I’ve never heard Bob Dylan sing “I Believe in You,” the song I used in class just yesterday. I know only Sinead O’Connor’s version. I’ve never had a lot of exposure to either the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan, just enough to know that it isn’t really the sort of music I enjoy, and yet here I am this week, betraying my Motown roots. I’m sure Diana Ross is furious. And yet, both songs express something that I deeply needed this week. Not what I wanted, but what I needed.
As part of my own spiritual journey and practice, I have been working very diligently at remaining open to Possibility. And by that I mean the capital P possibility. I’ve been working very hard to embrace the things that Life, also with a capital letter, has to offer. Largely I blame my dear friend and colleague Pam Rumancik for this, as she spent our first two years in seminary saying to me “It’ll be what it needs to be, Joe.” At first I used to grumble under my breath, because I needed to know what it needed to be. I didn’t need to wait for it, whatever it was, to be. I had a deep seeded need to help it become whatever it was going to become.
Eventually, like water over a stone, Pam wore me down and I began to embrace the wisdom of what she offered me. It was hard at first, and like all new skills, I was very clumsy at first, and often impatient for results.
What I’ve cultivated now, instead of my impatience, is an awareness to the Universe around me. From Luang Por Sumedho
Awareness is your refuge:
Awareness of the changingness of feelings,
of attitudes, of moods, or material change,
and emotional change:
Stay with that, because it’s a refuge that is indestructible.
It’s not something that changes.
It’s a refuge you can trust in.
This refuge is not something you can create.
It is not a creation. It’s not an ideal.
It’s very practical and very simple, but easily overlooked or nor noticed.
When you’re mindful,
you’re beginning to notice,
it’s like this.
If you concentrate only on what you think you want, you may be missing what it is that you really need.
We live in a world where our desires are constantly manipulated by corporations whose very existence depends on our deciding that we need or deserve the product they’re selling. And often, and perhaps not surprisingly, things are not really what they seem.
We’ve all seen a cute little car commercial with a zippy little car, or a grand dame of luxury, right? They’re not really selling you that car. They’re tying to sell you happiness.
Just like when you were a kid, they tried to sell you happiness in the form of a slinky that walked down stairs, alone or in pairs.
The slinky and the car are really only the means by which you get the opportunity to gain or achieve this happiness.
Except of course, that’s a lie.
Happiness can’t be bought, and since it can’t be bought, they can’t charge you interest on it, or raise market share. So they fool us into thinking that we want that Bose stereo system with the iPod dock for our study. Because music brings joy, joy brings happiness. See how easy the formula is?
Except of course, happiness can’t be bought.
The accessories to happiness, however might be a different matter.
But as nice as the Bose system might sound, and look, I don’t need it. I just want it.
So, what does one need? That of course, is a highly individualized answer. What does one really need? Can you search within yourself and identify that which you really need, and not just desire?
Those people in Haiti? They need shelter, they need food.
None of us needs an iPod system. Though, obviously, some of us want one very much.
I’m not advocating a life with a stark, monastic quality without comforts. What I’m suggesting is a little more attention be paid to what we need, and not what we want.
And what we need is often a lot less about material items than we’re pressed into buying.
Spend some time this week thinking about what you absolutely need. Listen for the answer that comes from within. Honestly, sit with yourself, and with integrity, ask yourself if this is what you need. If you don’t spend time with yourself examining your values, you may never know the difference between what you need and what you want.
There is no guarantee that you’ll get what you need, according to Mick and Keith, but sometimes you just might.
And the rest of the time, you’ll have to figure out how to make do.
Now making do isn’t always fun. I’m not blind to that. It means stretching what you have, doing as my parents used to say “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” But there is something to be gained in this experience of not having everything that you need. If you take to heart what my friend Pam says “It’ll be what it needs to be,” you just might find that you what you thought you needed, you didn’t.
And that, friends, is a form of spiritual growth.
The Reverend Kate Braestrup, Chaplain for the State of Maine's Warden Service is a minister who came to her own ministry largely through grieving her late husband who was a State Trooper and seminarian. She tells this beginning of a story in her memoir;
Around three in the afternoon, as my kids are trooping into the kitchen, dumping their backpacks in the mudroom, describing their school days, the telephone rings.
"Your Holiness!" Lieutenant Trisdale roars: "We've got a situation up here by Masquinogy Pond we could use your help with.
What Kate wanted to be was a minister's wife. She wanted her husband to finish seminary, and to continue her own writing career.
This, of course, isn't what happened. And while searching for what she needed to grieve her husband, Kate discovered her own call to ministry.
You may think that you need one thing, and maybe you’re wrong. Instead of a new romance, you may need to deepen your friendship with someone close to you already. Instead of needing a night on the town, perhaps you need an evening in, a pot luck with friends.
Open yourself up to the possibilities the Universe can offer you. Spend some time with your soul and ask questions. Make room for the Grace of the Spirit of Life. This’ll take some work, of course, and sometimes when you’re scrabbling around to make sense of your life you might not feel like investing your energy in this.
But this is important spiritual work, friends, but your life will be the richer for it.
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you’ll find, you get what you need.
Blessings for your journey.
Amen.
