“The Bucket List”

By Rev. Marcia Sietstra

July 13, 2008 Spirit of Peace UCC

Some of you undoubtedly recognize the title of my sermon as the title of a recent movie starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. In it, two guys meet when they are roommates in the hospital, both have cancer, and both find out they have less than a year to live. So they create a “bucket list,” that is, a list of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”

Morgan Freeman’s character is a dignified, well-read black man; Jack Nicholson’s character is a crass, greedy billionaire. Together they take off globe-trotting to finish everything on their bucket list—racecar driving, sky diving, going on African safari, visiting the pyramids, ascending a peak in the Himalayas. Their goals lack spiritual depth, I admit it, but I laughed anyway. I was glad they eventually figured out that goals like even goals like “laughing till we cry” or to “witnessing something majestic,” are not as spiritually gratifying as experiences like reconnecting with one’s wife or meeting the grandchild you have never known.

A lot of movie reviewers gave this movie mixed or bad reviews. Ebert said it treats dying of cancer as if it were a laff riot. Reviewers know that you rarely get the chance to do what matters most to you, between the diagnosis and the dying.

Now, the fact that you are here today suggests that you are interested in what really matters in life. My hunch is that you already have or seek a spiritual connection. Perhaps you have already figured out the purpose of your life; perhaps not. Maybe you already have a bucket list written out, or you are actively trying to plan what it is that you want most to do in the years you have left—whether it’s apt to be sixty more years or six.

Last week I read an article in the Harvard magazine about an extraordinarily successful financial planner named George Kinder, described as a keen mathematician, an entrepreneurial moneyman, and cited by the financial industry press as one of the most influential planners in the country.[i] I rarely read articles about rich financial consultants, but what caught my eye is that he meditates for a couple of hours every day and is devoted to Greek philosophy. And he is the founder of a movement within the financial services field called “life planning.” Note that I said “life planning,” not “financial planning,” though that is his specialty. Here’s an example of the kind of work he does…

At a recent workshop George Kinder spoke of a former client who wanted “more than anything” to buy an investment property in Massachusetts, on the North Shore. It was a great property and if he could earn enough extra money during the next decade to develop the property, it could bring a huge return on his investment. But Kinder posed his usual three questions to the client first, which must be answered one at a time, in strict order.

#1. Assume you’ve got all the money you need. What would you do with it and how would you live?

#2. You just found out you have only five to ten years to live. How will you live those years?

The property the client wanted to buy figured into both of his answers. I presume he said that if he had all the money he needed, he would buy the building, and with five to ten years to build, he’d work at developing it for maximum profit.

But then Kinder asked the last question, which is really a set of questions:

#3. You’ve just found out you have 24 hours to live. What did you miss? Who did you not get to be? What did you not get to do? The man thought hard, the article says, and the property disappeared from his list of desires. What he really wanted, he said, was “an authentic, better relationship with his six-year-old son.”

Now we’ve heard this kind of story before—on their deathbed no one says they wish they had spent more time at the office, they regret time not spent with their kids—that kind of story. But here’s the twist that I appreciated in this illustration. George Kinder responded to the client, “How would it be if, from a financial viewpoint, I got you five extra hours a week to spend with your son? Would that do it?” Would that be the best financial outcome? Kinder explained to the audience that it would have taken the client at least five hours a week, probably more, in order to fund the cash flow for the property which would have taken him further away from where he really wants to be as a person and a father—which is closer to his son. The client agreed, in the end, that he preferred financial advice that produced time with his family rather than a 20% return on his investment. It seems to me this kind of “financial planning” gives us a much more significant return on what we value most in life.

We could all use a session with the Kinder Institute of Life Planning now and then, whether we have any money to invest or not. Kinder explains that he asks himself the three foundational questions three or four times a year, those times, he says, “when I am going through a transition of sorts, when life hits me with some blow that has thrown me and I need to find out what’s significant, what’s bedrock.”

It’s that third question in particular that captures our imagination: When your life is nearly over, what will you have missed? It will not likely be anything like Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman’s bucket list; it is more likely you will regret having missed doing more of that which makes you feel most connected with the sacred energy of life—sometimes called the transcendent, sometimes simply called love. It is what brings you “bliss,” to use Joseph Campbell’s term.

Joseph Campbell, who was one of the foremost experts on the world’s religions and mythologies, said, Follow your bliss, for there it is that you will connect with something too big for words, that which makes you feel most alive. Have you asked yourself lately what it is that makes you feel most alive? When it is that you feel deep down joy? Where? It may happen when you listen to inspiring music. It may be at the ocean’s shore.

But we most often experience our bliss in connection with others, within relationships, because we were made for something more than “getting and spending.” We were made for love. Jesus knew it; he taught it. He lived it. Everything else was secondary for him. With that on my mind, I read this week’s lectionary text about the seeds falling on various kinds of soil, and this parable took on new meaning. Jesus knew that in life, the birds and the weeds and the scorching hot days can overwhelm seeds, just as the demands of daily life and the heat of stress can overwhelm our relationships with each other and with the Spirit. As verse 22 says, the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the spiritual impulse. It is by paying attention and by intentional care that we water and nurture the seeds of our best self.

Summer is a good time to pause and think about such things. I can recommend two good books to help you do that: The first is Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Strengths Finder 2.0 is a short, intensely practical tool to evaluate your strengths, and help you figure out what kind of work gives you the most joy and satisfaction and life. I think it helps us discover what makes us feel most alive in our jobs.

The second book is Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo. Breakfast with Buddha is a fun story narrated by a food critic who drives across country to North Dakota to sell the family farm after his parents are killed by a pickup truck at a rural intersection, I believe just a mile from home. Our narrator stops to pick up his eccentric sister, but she cons him into giving a ride cross-country to her Buddhist monk guru instead. Along the way, as they stop in diners and fine restaurants from New York to North Dakota, our narrator describes the culinary adventures with the monk, who is vegetarian, and more importantly, our narrator begins to reflect on what the Buddha teaches him. He realizes how easy it is to cruise along in the comfortable vehicle of old habits and thought patterns. And as the trip unfolds, our narrator begins writing long letters to his children and wife, and we see the growing awareness of new insights into what is the intention of his life. We see him begin a bucket list.

Summer is a good time to ask yourself if you are cruising along in old habits and assumptions. Is it time to pause and revise your plan? Do you need to begin by writing a bucket list? Or by asking, what is my bliss? What experiences form the sacred moments of your life? How can you increase them? Will it take an investment of time?

God bless you in your life planning. Amen.