To Be Born Again

The course Remember Universalism into Life by Raymond Nasemann and Elizabeth Strong raises an essential, enduring question: “Can you be a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation and not be a Unitarian Universalist, and not know it?” Most of the people participating in the discussion when I led this course responded, “No.” For me, the answer was and is, “Yes.” Is signing the membership book and entering into a covenant with the congregation sufficient to become a Unitarian Universalist? Is something more required? This raises the issue of conversion.

A “religious problem” that led to the Great Awakening of 1740-43 was an inadequate number of religious conversions. During that period the revival meeting became a means of re-creating a sense of the power and immediacy of the Holy Spirit: An emotional, ecstatic experience produced a conversion and testified to the presence of divine power. Our forbear, Charles Chauncey, thought that the revivalists corrupted religion. He, like the Unitarians to follow, believed in a gradual process of conversion which involved understanding and judgment and will, as well as an emotional and spiritual component.

Ironically, a contemporary religious problem for Unitarian Universalism is the absence of conversion, gradual or otherwise. This is not a new problem as various essays by James Luther Adams attest. In his Berry Street Lecture in 1941, he spoke of the necessity of conversion because religious liberals were “largely an uncommitted and therefore a self-frustrating people.” To solve this lack of an ultimate commitment, he believed, “We need conversion within ourselves. Only by some such revolution can we be seized by a prophetic power.... Only by some such conversion can we be possessed by a love that will not let us go. And when that has taken place, we will know that it is not our wills alone that have acted....”

Conversion in our tradition (correctly understood as a gradual and continuing process) historically involved entering into a covenant. The vertical dimension of this covenant connected the individual to a transcending, ultimate reality, commitment or value. Given our theological diversity, the terminus of the vertical dimension has included God, Goddess, nature, the good, ultimate concern, reverence for life, life force, philosophic truth, and humanity. The horizontal dimension of covenant encompassed the gathered congregation (and defined a relationship with the larger society). These two axes play different roles in the transformation that occurs when a person moves in a new direction spiritually. The vertical terminus may change, or a previously absent (or latent) vertical dimension may emerge. This dimension involves “turning to” that which is transcendent, while the horizontal dimension involves “turning with” the members of the congregation. Conversion may require moving further in a specific direction or a change in a new direction, a change in heart, mind, and soul. Conversion is the process by which one’s identity, will, and action become increasingly informed by the obligations of covenantal relationships and religious depth.

The process of conversion weakens when it becomes more implicit than explicit, or as Tillich would say, more latent than manifest. The absence of an explicit process of conversion in Unitarian Universalism is particularly problematic because we are comprised largely of “come-outers,” people in search of religious commitments more authentic and reliable than the ones with which they were raised. Our initial appeal to the come-outer is our commitment to freedom of belief. This is often translated into an invitation to “come as you are,” with more emphasis on “freedom-from” than on “freedom-for.” But seldom do people join a congregation because they are fully content with “who they are” or with the direction in which they have been traveling. To be a seeker is to be discontent. Conversion is the path of continuing deepening. It is not a result of coercion, but of generous invitation. It is not the imposition of belief, but the challenge and support to build one’s own theology.

Transformation

We end up living on the surface of life pursuing this trinket and that bauble. We forget to go deeper and may end up eventually saying—with so many needs unfulfilled—“Is this all there is?”

Our religious communities exist to meet deep needs involving meaning and significance, care and connection, compassion and justice, forgiveness and courage, and love and longing.

This brings me to two questions: First, what need(s) brought you to church? This is not an easy question to answer, especially if we wonder whether or not the needs in the deepest part of our selves can ever be met. Second, what do you need of your church? To be sure, you want certain things in a church if you are to participate in it and support it. But articulating our needs of the church is to encourage us to collectively look, not so much at the breadth of our programming, but at its depth. It is important to remember what brought us to church so that we stay focused on meeting those needs. As May Sarton wrote in her poem Gestalt at Sixty, “Lovers and friends,/I come to you starved/For all you have to give,/Nourished by the food of solitude,/A good instrument for all you have to tell me,/For all I have to tell you./We talk of first and last things,/Listen to music together,/Climb the long hill to the cemetery/In autumn,/Take another road in spring/Toward new lambs./No one comes to this house/Who is not changed./I meet no one here who does not change me.”

Our congregations have as their work transforming lives. They need to become centers of transformation. To be sure, this involves personal growth, but the religious community also has the task of transforming the world.

Robert Grudin has written, “What we understand best, we understand by renewal—by looking at the same thing again and again in different ways, looking at it internally and externally, walking around it, turning it in our hands, participating in it until some strange abstract spirit of its being rises from the complexity of effort and detail. And what we have best, we have by renewal—by chronic challenges never refused, by danger of loss, by repeated cherishings, and by love remembered.” His words remind me of what it means to participate in religious community over time. The community becomes more meaningful as experience after experience become part of a treasure of connection and memory. And, in the end, we are transformed.

Caterpillar Dreams

Eric Carle tells his story of The Hungry Caterpillar like a magician. We are so captivated by all the hungry little caterpillar is eating, that we think that this is what the story is about. It is not until the last page, that we realize that it is a story about transformation. We attend to the outward action, unable to imagine, just like the caterpillar, that our destiny, if we pay sufficient attention, may be the winged life. And this is the larger reality; it is not a story just about caterpillar transformation, but about the possibility of our own transformation.

Like the hungry little caterpillar, Eve ate the apple and nothing has ever been the same since. She gave birth to human possibility. So, what is it that you hunger for? How will you feed that hunger? And by feeding it, how will you be transformed? Be careful. These are provocative and essential questions, and we get the answers wrong most of the time. We feed the wrong thing in the wrong way, and become addicted to things that betray our humanity. We spend too much time feeding the body and not enough time feeding the soul, forgetting that if we truly feed our souls, how we treat our bodies would profoundly change, as would the way that we live our lives.

It is just a simple children’s story, yet we would be wise to ponder its deeper meanings and higher aspirations. The caterpillar, from the moment it hatches, is on an incredible journey that it cannot imagine and the same can be true for us, or not. The journey is simply this: from no-life to caterpillar-life to cocoon-death to butterfly-transformation.

Once we read The Hungry Caterpillar for the first time, every other reading has us transfixed by butterfly transformation. It is, after all, quite a miracle: incredible beauty and the ability to fly. But ask yourself this, “Which is more miraculous, leaving the cocoon to fly or leaving the egg to enter the world as a caterpillar?” Choose life, and then choose transformation.

As you think about your own life, ask yourself again and again: “In this moment, am I a caterpillar or a butterfly?” And expect that the answer will keep changing. If we compare our life span to that of a caterpillar, we literally have hundreds of lifetimes, with the possibility of being transformed again and again. Transformed into what, you may ask? And there is the mystery. No one knows. A caterpillar looking at a butterfly is oblivious to the fact that the butterfly is the caterpillar’s mirror. Ask yourself in any cycle of time, perhaps a month or a year, is this caterpillar time, cocoon time, or butterfly time?

Now, I have already made the case for the miracle of emerging from a cocoon to become a butterfly, the transformation from being earthbound to flying, as well as the birth from an egg to become a caterpillar, the transformation from no-life to life. Neither of these, per se, requires much of us. They are outcomes of processes that we cannot control. The leap of faith, the act of courage, is to accept the fact that our caterpillar life is ultimately not adequate to our dreams, and to begin spinning the silk thread, building the cocoon, and undertaking the hard work of transformation, which is usually hidden from everyone else’s eyes. Most of the time, we refuse the cocoon life, unwilling to die to our present self in order to be born again, unwilling to rely on faith and patience as tools of transformation.

In addition to the fear that prevents us from creating and entering the cocoon, there is the fear of leaving the cocoon. There is what I would call the existential caterpillar decision: Will we choose to “soar immortal, outlasting the sun and moon, or lie forever unwakened in our blind cocoon?” I hope that we do not remain captive to our fear, afraid of change, but choose to become, as one of our hymns has it, “architects of our faith.” As we learn to negotiate the caterpillar transitions of our lives, we will learn to soar higher and higher in our butterfly aspirations.

The Necessity of Covenant

Covenant is essential to Unitarian Universalist congregations. It is created by the promises that we make with each other, with the world, and the divine. Alice Blair Wesley says we are “promising creatures.” I love that phrase and its double meaning. We are people of great promise and people who make promises. Jewish theologian Martin Buber reminds us that humans are “promise-making, promise-keeping, promise-breaking, promise-renewing.” Without promises it is hard to conceive that we could even imagine a future, let alone bring it into being. Through promises, we create a future, and by the keeping of those promises, we bring the future into the present. If we lived in a utopia with all needs satisfied, all social ills redeemed, and all injustices made right, there would be no need for promises. We do not. There are chasms that separate us from the world we would create. Promises are one of the tools that we use to build bridges to that world. But not all promises are kept, or can be kept. A French writer, Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld, said that, “We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.” Better to perform according to our loves.

Individualism in Unitarian Universalism is either our original sin or our idol, a false God. Without covenant, the needs of the individual will always trump the needs of the religious community. We have mastered individualism, but not individualism in community. Covenant teaches us, as we practice it week-in and week-out, how to be an individual in community. It invites us to surrender some of our individual needs to the greater good of the congregation. Covenant calls us to be in right relationship with each other, and when those relationships become frayed, as they inevitably will, to repair the relationship.

Living in covenant is not easy for we must ask, “What does love require?” Our doctrine of love requires intention and skill, discipline and risk, trust and forgiveness, connection and care, listening and more listening, humility and the presumption of goodwill, compassion and sympathy, valuing diversity and practicing radical hospitality, honesty while speaking the truth in love, as well as the work of justice and spiritual maturity. It requires that we share our stories so we can enter into the depth of each other’s lives and see each other, not with the hard eyes of judgment, but with the soft eyes of respect.

Living in covenant is not easy, but it has the power to transform. We must be willing to practice seventy times seven, to fail seventy times seven, to forgive seventy times seven. Eventually, we will learn how to do it and as more and more of us live in covenant, we will be transformed and transforming.

A covenant is dynamic, inviting those who share in it to new possibilities by taking risks that seek to expand and deepen the beloved community. Preston Moore, a Unitarian Universalist minister, concludes that, “The measure of this openheartedness is the magnitude of the risks accepted, the surprises welcomed,” the successes achieved, and the failures endured. No one intends to fail or let another person down, but sometimes, despite our best efforts, that is precisely what happens. If the covenant cannot endure failure, then we must question its power as well as our commitment to it. Covenant rightly understood and rightly lived takes into account human imperfection and failing, as well as generosity of spirit and our capacity for goodness.

We are a covenantal religion, not creedal. Covenant is the center-point of our congregations, but for too long we ignored this reality. After the Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961, we seemed to lose our way. Again and again there were programs designed to articulate a Unitarian Universalist identity. We grappled with the challenge of what we held in common since we were not gathered around shared belief. We forgot that the glue was covenant. We found ourselves gathering because we were like-minded. Our churches felt like a liberal oasis in an illiberal desert, a desert that we found antithetical to our deepest sensibilities. While we would have rebelled at being told what to believe, we found respite in this like-mindedness.

An aspect of this like-mindedness was a fierce individuality, which we struggled, often unsuccessfully, to balance with the idea and ideal of community. The weak force of community could not achieve equilibrium with the strong force of individuality, and many of our congregations failed to thrive.

Looking back it becomes clear that like-mindedness was never adequate to bind us together. Too often disagreements would emerge, polarities that could not be managed or resolved: theist versus humanist, rational versus spiritual, collective social action as a congregation versus social action by individuals outside of the church. Our congregations cannot thrive if we are only like-minded, for we will always find sources of disagreement. More is needed. Since love is the doctrine of our church, we must become like-hearted in order to flourish.

For Unitarian Universalism, covenant is the alpha and the omega.

Within Native American traditions, the drum is used in ceremonies because the rhythmic beat of the drum symbolizes the heartbeat of the tribe. Covenant is our drum.

The Torah within Judaism is sacred and portions of it are read each week in the Sabbath service. It illuminates the ancient covenant between the people of Israel and Yahweh. Covenant is our Torah.

Islam is built on five pillars which include surrender to Allah, daily prayers, charity, and pilgrimage to Mecca. Covenant is our pillar.

Buddhists pursue enlightenment by committing to the eightfold path, which includes right intent, right action, and right mindfulness. Covenant is our path.

In Taoism, the Tao is the experience of harmony and is often called the “way.” Covenant is our “way.”

Hinduism understands “atman” as being the divine spark within each individual, which is related to Brahman, the godhead. Covenant is atman.

Finally, Unitarian Minister A. Powell Davies said, “The purpose of life is to grow a soul.” The purpose of covenant is to grow the soul of a congregation.

Covenant is a promise to love, to care, to walk together, to work together, to do justice together, to pray together, to learn together, to grow together, to laugh and grieve together, to build the beloved community together.

Covenant Lost

While the concept of covenant goes back to the ancient Israelites, its relevance to Unitarian Universalist churches is rooted in two events. The first was the founding of Unitarianism in 16th century Transylvania when Francis David said, “We do not need to think alike, to love alike,” which recalled the words of Jesus and his call for a radical and transforming love as the basis for the kingdom of God. With those simple, but profound words, David said we will gather as religious communities based on love, not intellectual propositions; on covenant, not creed; on orthopraxy or right practice, not orthodoxy or right belief. The second event was the arrival of the Puritans in America in the 1630s, who organized their free churches around covenant, which we inherited.

The idea of covenant as the organizing principle for a church was and continues to be radical. Unfortunately, it was slowly lost by a series of circumstances as Alice Blair Wesley explains in her 2000-2001 Minns’ Lectures, entitled Our Covenant.

First, as the religious fervor of the Puritans, complete with ecstatic experiences, was not experienced by their children and grandchildren, the radical idea of covenant was replaced with the notion of a Half-way Covenant that did not require an ecstatic experience in order to make their descendants members of the church.

Second, as the idea of covenant got tangled up in New England with the notion of a divine contract, with some predicting the Second Coming of Christ, the idea of covenant began to disappear from liberal religious discourse.

Third, as the significance of what it meant to sign a covenant lost power and clarity over time and in practice, membership in a church became a matter of family connection and not a deliberate and free religious choice.

Fourth, the whole idea of conversion became controversial for liberals.

Fifth, young people no longer accepted the idea that they were of a low spiritual state because they had not experienced the religious hierarchy and persecution to which their parents or grandparents had been subjected to in Europe. The primacy of the need for salvation shifted along with their relationship to the liberal church.

Sixth, the liberal clergy who would become Unitarian ministers stopped forming new churches for some 40 years because they expected settlers to do it. This hiatus of church formation and growth of liberal churches caused the idea of covenant to be further marginalized.

Seventh, Unitarian ministers thought that our faith would grow as conservative churches became more liberal, such that they would embrace Unitarianism.

Eighth, the idea of progress that seized the liberal imagination led, suggests Alice Blair Wesley, lead to a “loss of urgency in the members’ sense of mission” as love itself came “to be taken as just natural, as needing no special communal focus or nurture.”

Ninth, the rise of the non-profit corporations in the early 1800s, in which many Unitarians became very involved, eliminated covenant as an organizing idea and ideal. As Wesley concludes, “Thus it came to be that, over time and with a curious inconsistency, when Unitarians turned their attention from governance of the local church to any good work beyond the walls of the local church, we took for granted the hierarchal structure of a nonprofit corporation, even for gathering new Unitarian churches!”

Tenth, in the 18th century, covenant became linked with “revivalism.” Thus, “19th century liberal churches kept the old, earliest covenants on their books—beautiful, simple promises to walk together in the ways of love, but the covenant was mostly not talked about, until the late 20th century.

We began talking about covenant again in the early to mid-1980s, but it has been a conversation among too few people. As Robert Latham noted in 1985, “We have forgotten that covenant is the keystone of our religious experience. This has resulted in diminishment of meaning in membership, confusion of identity, and distortion in gauging ministry effectiveness.”

Reclaiming covenant is a central task of Unitarian Universalist congregations if we are to be vibrant and powerful religious communities and agents of transformation.

From Covenant to Beloved Community

The problem in our churches is not the inevitable conflicts that emerge over time. The problem is that too many of us too easily forget our covenant and the obligations required if we are to be faithful. In a conflict, it would be far better for us to say to our opponents: “May all of your deepest desires be satisfied.” Such a wish would help remind us of their inherent worth and dignity and the other religious principles that inform our Unitarian Universalist faith.

Living in covenant takes compassion. It takes compassion to look at our own motives and behaviors in a conflict. How can it be that this person, with whom we have worshipped, broken bread, shared joys and sorrows, worked and played, has become the enemy? Objectively, it is beyond comprehension, but some understanding and clarity and reconciliation and forgiveness can emerge if we can look at our own anxiety, our own fear, and our own sense of powerlessness, and understand how we have contributed to the conflict.

Living in covenant takes courage. It takes courage to engage those involved in a conflict and ask or insist that they be accountable to the mutual obligations of our covenant. It takes courage to walk into the middle of a conflict determined to love and minister to all sides for the sake of the individuals involved, and the well-being and integrity of the beloved community. To be in covenant, suggests Tom Owen-Towle, means that we cannot remain spectators on the sidelines during a conflict, believing that we are answerable only for our own personal portion of congregational character.

Living in covenant also takes practice. M. Scott Peck suggests the beloved community emerges among “individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to ‘rejoice together, mourn together,’ and to ‘delight in each other, making others’ conditions their own.’ ”

Too often, pseudo-community, as Peck calls it, masquerades as true community. In pseudo-community, people avoid conflicts, minimize the diversity that exists within the group, and communicate superficially because they rightly lack the trust to express their beliefs and feelings. The Beloved Community is not an accidental creation. It is the result of hard work.

This Time, Fear Struck Out

Hatred is a commodity sold daily to desperate people who somehow believe that hate will justify their existence, that hate will heal the hole in their soul, that hate will provide emotional and spiritual compensation for the manifold ways in which they feel that they have been cheated by life. They believe that somehow their hate will affect those whom they hate, while having no affect on them. To paraphrase the Buddha: Holding on to hatred is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else as it burns your hand.

The other commodity that media personalities like Glen Beck, Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs deal in is fear. In the end, those opposed to health care reform used fear as a bludgeon day-in and day-out to mobilize public opinion, which is why the display of moral courage yesterday by House Democrats was as rare as it was welcome.

On Saturday, March 20, 2010, President Obama met with House Democrats and said: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made…. And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

In his column today, Paul Krugman, who shared the above quote, called the vote oh healthcare “a victory for America’s soul.” He concluded, “In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.”

So what do you believe and why?

So what do you believe and why?

This is an essential question in the religious quest, a question that the Transcendentalists would have taken very seriously. In this regard, I love these words by Charles Stephens, Jr. who wrote, “I wish for you the thrill of knowing who you are, where you stand, and why. Especially why.” In conversation, we may learn what each other believes, but we seldom learn why. And the why makes all the difference.

This dynamic was revealed to me recently in an unexpected way. I was talking to someone about the charter school that I helped to start. This K-8 school, Global Village Academy in Aurora, Colorado, offers an international curriculum and language immersion in Mandarin, Spanish, and French.

The person asked me why I was so passionate about it. I said it was because of my daughters, both adopted from China. I want them to continue to learn Mandarin so that they do not forget the country or the language of their birth. As adults, they may choose to never speak Mandarin again, but I want them to have that choice. I don’t want them to feel excluded when other Chinese-Americans are speaking Mandarin. I want them to have a deep and abiding sense of who they are as Chinese and as Americans, especially when they are discriminated against, as they surely will be. I did this because I wanted them to attend a school that reflected the ethnic and cultural diversity of the America that is being born before our eyes.

These answers were enough to explain my passion, but I then stumbled on something else that hadn’t been obvious to me. I was also doing if for the child that I had been. When my mother and father divorced when I was four, my mother tried to make it on her own, renting a small apartment above a cleaning store. We lived there for a few months, but, in the end, she couldn’t make it work financially. So we moved in with my grandmother and uncle in a tiny five room house.

I grew up in a working class family, held above abject poverty by the fact that all three adults in the family worked. The house was run down and much later it would be condemned and torn down. This was the context in which I attended Crescent Elementary School in Pittsburgh for five years, a school that was over 90% African American. We were all at-risk students. Some of my teachers taught my mother and uncle when they were young.

I don’t remember being a very good student, but each year I did better. Looking back, there is no question that education saved my life. Without the care of those teachers, my life today would have been very different. The same is true for at-risk children today. Without a good school, the challenges are often insurmountable. As radio commentator Paul Harvey was so fond of saying, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

Now you know the why of my passion. Without the why you can’t connect the dots. Without the why you can’t make sense of the what. Still, that doesn’t keep us from assuming that we understand another’s why. But that understanding is our own story, our own reason for why we would do it and not the other person’s reasons. May we have the wisdom to listen to both the what and the why of another person’s life.

What Astonishes You?

Although we will have more snow in Colorado, I have been smitten once again by the promise of springtime. Always I am astonished by its arrival.

What astonishes you? Synonyms for the word offer clues to the intensity of its meaning: amaze, surprise, shock, startle, stun. The word is derived from a Latin root that means “to thunder.” If we take the root meaning literally, it may suggest that to be astonished is to be startled into awareness, to be forcibly awakened from our sleep. We may miss the lightning, looking in the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time, but some seconds later [...one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi] our very being will be shaken by the crack and roll of the sound of thunder.

In various mythologies, thunder is associated with a particular god: Thor in Norse mythology; Jupiter in the Roman pantheon; the African God Obumo; Sucellos, the Celtic God; and Rudra, the Hindu god of nature and the ruler of the Maruts, the storm gods. This association makes sense for the divine is always trying to get our attention, yet we resist. The purpose, I believe, of this season of spring is to get our attention. Elizabeth Bowen wrote, “It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth’s almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights.” What astonishes you?

I remember vividly a springtime thunderstorm when I was eight or nine years old. I stood on my grandmother’s front porch as the clouds rolled in bringing daylight to an abrupt end. This drama had four characters: wind, rain, lightning, and thunder and they each struggled to take the lead role.

With each flash of lightning, I counted how many seconds it took for the sound of the thunder to reach my ears. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, boom. I’ve never again seen it rain as hard. This conspicuous spectacle lasted for over two hours. I watched transfixed, astonished, moved by the beauty of the storm and by its terrifying power. In the aftermath of the storm, the air had a sweet, clean smell, as if the world had been washed clean. Perhaps this was the moment that I first realized that I am perpetually astonished by life itself, this improbable, imponderable gift.

The poet Mary Oliver speaks of her fierce desire to be perpetually astonished. She writes,
“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.”

What astonishes you?

How Can I Keep From Singing!

You may be familiar with the song How Can I Keep from Singing (#108 in Singing the Living Tradition with the title My Life Flows on in Endless Song). Its origin is obscure with words attributed to the Quakers and music to an American Gospel tune. The song entered Unitarian Universalism in 1969 when it was included in Songs of Faith in Man, published by the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. Pete Seeger had sent it to the church for the songbook. He had discovered the song during the Christmas season in 1956 and immediately added it to his repertoire, recording it several times during his career. Seeger learned the song from Doris Plenn, who had learned it from her grandmother, a North Carolina Quaker. It was her grandmother’s favorite song, supposedly written 250 years earlier. Plenn put her mark on the song by writing an additional verse during the McCarthy era to protest the jailing of her friends for their political beliefs. Those words, slightly altered, form the third verse in Singing the Living Tradition.

When the song was published in Sing Out, a folk music magazine founded by Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, the magazine’s editors were only able to find one published version of the song. It had appeared in Ira Sankey’s 1894 collection of Gospel Hymns with a tune written by Sankey. That tune was less compelling than the one Seeger had learned. The author of the text, which reflected 19th century church tradition, was listed as anonymous. It was not until 1998 that the origins of the song were clarified, which involved considerable research on my part to uncover “the rest of the story.”

How Can I Keep from Singing first appeared in an 1869 collection of Sunday School songs, entitled Bright Jewels. The Rev. Robert Lowry had written the music, as popularized by Seeger. The words were not attributed, but Lowry did that with about half of his hymns. Anna Bartlett Warner (1827-1915) had, in fact, written unattributed words to another of Lowry’s hymns in that same collection, One More Day’s Work for Jesus. That hymn was, along with How Can I Keep from Singing, two of some ten hymns for which Lowry had become famous. It is believed that Anna Bartlett Warner, who used the pen name Amy Lothrop, wrote the original words to How Can I Keep from Singing. (The song has also been attributed to her sister, Susan Warner, but with less conviction.) Anna also wrote the words to the well-loved Sunday School song that begins, “Jesus loves me, this I know . . . “

While the bones of Anna’s verses have survived, some words were changed. The phrases “the Lord my Savior” and “Christ is Lord” were replaced with the words “truth” and “love.” Those who were responsible for the revisions are unknown, but the "metaphors" used are interesting. In the end, the song comes to us, not directly from Christian hymnody, but by way of the American folk music tradition. Nonetheless, both the words and the music were always intended to be engaging and energizing. As H. Wiley Hitchcock wrote, “. . . the gospel hymn was a product of the northern urban revivals, organized and attended mostly by whites . . . Gospel hymnodists like . . . Sankey . . . , and the Rev. Robert Lowery cannily adopted the early revival hymn’s infectious pattern of a verse followed by a catchy, and usually thunderous, refrain. . . . The result, at its best, was a kind of religious pop art almost irresistible in its visceral appeal.” This song’s irresistibility is captured in the refrain, “How can I keep from singing!” This is not a question. It is both explanation and exclamation!

Having shared the background of this song, let me suggest that as Unitarian Universalists, knowing our history is important. And this song is becoming part of our history. It is particularly important to know our history when any woman’s voice is lost either by being ignored or, perhaps worse, being labeled anonymous, as was the case with Anna Bartlett Warner.

Biographical Note: Anna’s father was Henry Warner, a wealthy New York City lawyer, who lost most of his fortune in the 1837 depression. The family moved to their summer home (Good Craig) on Constitution Island in the Hudson River. It was there that Anna and her sister Susan began writing books and hymns to earn money. They also conducted Bible classes for cadets at the Military Academy at West Point, which was nearby.

What gift do you choose?

As the vernal equinox approaches, followed by Earth Day in April, I’m reading to my younger daughter the book, Earth Day Birthday, by Pattie Schnetzler. Using the twelve days of Christmas format, she recounts gifts from the world, including eight cranes a dancing. What gift from the earth do you most value? I choose the violets along the edge of the woodland path.

“I choose fresh snow in the early morning (that no one's walked in yet).” Blythe Barnhill

“... the green buds on a tree that are about to burst open with renewed life in springtime.” Jennifer Forker

“The smell of grass, and of freshly turned earth.” Kristin Satterlee

“A rolling river that provides food, tranquility and recreation.” Arthur Fitt

“The sound of Meadowlarks on the fence behind our house.” Rhiannon Gallagher

“I love a misty, foggy, cool day! Aaahhh - they're the best!” Misty Dupuis

“Water, clean and flowing, bringing life.” Ali Hoover

“How to stand in an abundant world and choose one? Today I choose the smell of the earth thawing.” Susan Kinne

“The endless sky buttressed by the snow top mountains that call us into now” Rusty Robison

What gift from the earth do you choose?

Dear Earth

Max Kapp writes, “Often I have felt that I must praise my world for what my eyes have seen these many years and what my heart has loved. And often I have tried to start my lines: ‘Dear Earth,’ I say, and then I pause to look once more. Soon I am bemused and far away in wonder. So I never get beyond ‘Dear Earth.’”

Each week, we offer questions for exploration for the congregation related to the worship service. The following are for the sermon, Dear Earth.

Walt Whitman wrote, “As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles.” Do you consider earth to be a miracle? And yourself, are you a miracle? Why or why not?

In Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote about the child who went into the world each day and became, in succession, each of the things encountered. As a child, how did you connect with nature? What did it mean? What does it still mean?

Annie Dillard writes, that “our original intent… is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover where it is that we have been so startlingly set down.” Do you take time to explore the neighborhood? Why or Why not? If yes, how do you explore nature? How does doing that impact you, nurture you, change you?

Of all of the gifts of the earth, which do you find most amazing? Why?

Do you love the earth at all or enough? How does your love translate into action? How do you work to heal the earth?

What letter would you write to the earth? Would it be a love letter?

Chalice, Chalice, Burning Bright

The Rev. Charles Joy was ordained in 1911 and for the next 29 years served in the Unitarian ministry, both as a parish minister and later as the administrative vice president of the American Unitarian Association. He is one of five Unitarians, including Waitstill and Martha Sharp and Robert and Elisabeth Dexter, who are considered the founding members of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC), all of whom served for a time at the organization’s office in Lisbon, Portugal, the only open port in Europe in the early 1940s and the preferred destination for millions of refugees.

On January 31, 1941, Joy wrote to Robert Dexter, who was by then the Unitarian Service Committee executive director in Boston, “I happen now to have an artist working for me. . . . Recently I asked him to work in his spare time on a symbol of our committee, which could be placed on a seal, and used in our documents. When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important. . . . So Hans Deutsch went to work to design something. . . . “

Joy continued, “I have made it up into a seal, not because I have any idea of forcing this upon the committee without consulting them, but because these things cost very little here, and at least it will serve as a temporary expedient for us to use in our papers until we get something better, assuming that the committee does not like this. Personally, I like it very much. It is simple, chaste, and distinctive. I think it might well become the sign of our work everywhere . . . .”

In describing the design, Joy continued that it was “a chalice with a flame, the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice.... This was in the mind of the artist.”

But there was more in the mind of the artist. In a letter to Joy, Deutsch wrote, “There is something that urges me to tell you... how much I admire your utter self denial [and] readiness to serve, to sacrifice all, your time, your health, your well being, to help, help, help. …I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith—as it is, I feel sure—then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and—what is more—to active, really useful social work. And this religion—with or without a heading—is one to which even a ‘godless’ fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, Yes!”

In April 1941, the USC adopted Deutsch’s flaming chalice symbol as its seal. In 1963 the Unitarian Service Committee merged with the Universalist Service Committee, keeping the symbol of the flaming chalice for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. The flaming chalice first appeared as a symbol for the UUA on the title page of the 1976-77 UUA Directory, and has been in use ever since as a symbol of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Since the early 1980s, the flaming chalice has been adopted by one congregation after another. It is estimated that today over 90% of Unitarian Universalist congregations have adopted this symbol. This adoption was not imposed, rather it spread organically: one congregation after another saying, “Yes!”

In his 1870 poem, Cor Cordium, the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote, “the chalice of love’s fire.”

Charles Joy was prophetic when he said, “I think it might well become the sign of our work everywhere.” And it has!

To Bear (& Bare) the Beams of Love

Duty, and Nothing More
The year is 1885. The place is Frederikshavn, a small village on a fjord on the northeast coast of the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark. The environment is austere: treeless land; chilly mist; rocky shore; harsh winds; cold, forbidding sea; heavy, gray clouds that hang low; and pale, icy green cliffs. The place and the weather are perfectly reflected in the character of the people who live in the village: puritanical, bitter, tormented by remorse, and filled with enmity for anyone outside their circle. It is reflected in their food: pasty, glutinous ale-bread and heavily salted, dried cod fish boiled enough to make it edible, though not palatable, and served in wooden bowls. It is reflected in their religion: a grim, pious Lutheranism. Wendy Wright observes, “The disciples’ moral uprightness has become small-minded pettiness, their close community insular, their luminous vision shriveled down to pious routine, even their ongoing works of charity feed the body but not the soul. Something must enter to release them for the realization of the fullness of life to which their doctrines point but which they merely await.” The founding minister of the church, referred to as the Dean, died years ago. The leadership of the congregation was bequeathed by him to his two daughters, now in their late fifties. Martine, was named after Martin Luther, and Phillipa, after Luther’s friend, Philip Melanchton.

Love Lost
Each woman spurned the love of a suitor when young due to the strong influence of their father who taught that earthly love and marriage were trivial, mere illusions. Yet those long ago decisions are a source of continuing and troubling doubt as they imagine other lives they could have lived. They have lived in the shadow of their father’s austere and joyless faith, renouncing worldly pleasures, tending his flock of parishioners, and using what little money they have to fill the soup-pails and food baskets of the poor. Despite these good works, the number of congregants is dwindling and they are becoming increasingly quarrelsome. The sisters worry that, “their ever-faithful father will look down on his daughters and call them by name as unjust stewards.” They decide, perhaps more out of guilt than love, to celebrate the 100th birthday of their long-deceased father with a simple dinner for his remaining disciples.

Paradise Lost
The year is 1870. The place is Paris. Another woman is living a life filled with considerable joy. Unlike Martine and Phillipa, she has said yes to life, yes with a passion. She loves her husband and son and finds immense satisfaction in her work as head chef at the famous Café Anglais. She is considered “the greatest culinary genius of the age.” It was said that she “had the ability to transform a dinner into a kind of love affair... a love affair that made no distinction between bodily appetite and spiritual appetite.” But in 1870-1871, France went to war against Prussia and its army suffered a devastating defeat. The humiliating terms of the peace treaty resulted in civil unrest and the formation of the Paris Commune, an alternative government intent on resisting the national French government and the Prussian Army. In the end, this civil revolt was horribly crushed and both the woman’s husband and son were killed in the rioting, an uprising in which she took part. She escaped, taking nothing because, in a real sense, there was nothing of value left to take. This is when Babette Hersant came to the home of Martine and Phillipa, offering to work as their maid and cook for nothing.

Prelude to a Feast
These are the two story lines that converge in the 1987 film, Babette’s Feast, directed by Gabriel Axel, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The film is based on a short story by Karen Blixen, who is better known by her pseudonym, Isak Dinesen. (Dinesen's story actually takes place in Berlevaag, Norway, but Axel changed the location to Jutland, Denmark, because it was a more austere setting.) For fourteen years, Babette lives isolated and obscure in that home, fitting in by almost disappearing, such is the magnitude of her loss and grief. Then, in 1885, as the plans for a dinner to observe the 100th anniversary of the birth of the revered minister are being made, Babette wins 10,000 francs in the French national lottery and offers to pay for and prepare a “real French dinner.” The sisters reluctantly agree.

Babette leaves for a few days and returns to Paris where she purchases everything required for the dinner and arranges for it to be shipped to the village. In addition to the food and wine, she lovingly selects the dishes, glassware, silverware, and tablecloth necessary to create the artistic setting that she envisions.

The Devil is in the Details
As the purchases begin to arrive, the anxiety of the sisters regarding their decision increases and they share it with the members of the small congregation. The ingredients are bountiful and extravagant, even exotic. As Babette begins her preparation, the villagers are overwhelmed by things that they have never seen before, and can scarcely imagine. (This is not your great-grandmother’s salted cod and ale-bread.) The sisters fear that partaking of the meal will be a profound sin of sensual luxury, but they can hardly back out now. They believe that the devil is at work and suspect that Babette may be a witch. The sisters call a hasty meeting of the congregation. They reluctantly decide that they will eat the meal, but they promise to take no pleasure in the experience, and will make no mention of the food during the entire dinner.

As is the Divine
The artistry in the preparation and the presentation of the meal is divine. The congregants strive to resist the majesty of the meal and the love that infuses it, fearful that somehow they will lose their spiritual purity, but their refusal hardly matters. What matters is that love is being served, more love than can be consumed or understood. They are profoundly impacted despite their resistance by a depth and breadth of love that they can scarcely fathom. What begins as a celebration of the minister’s 100th birthday becomes a celebration of love and beauty, a spiritual reality far deeper and more profound than the minister ever preached. The meal is a work of art, but, in the end, it is a work of love and the impact on the diners is profound. These quarrelsome congregants are transformed, though they hardly understand what has happened. They leave the sister’s home walking hand-in-hand, stumbling through the deep snow forgiving and blessing each other.

In many reviews of Babette’s Feast, there is a focus on the Christian symbolism of the film. The dinner, as an example, is compared to the last supper. I want to suggest, however, that this feast is the first supper. The theology of the sister’s father was perverse and all who came under its influence were not saved, in the sense of achieving wholeness. They were deceived by practices that were life denying, and it showed in their joyless lives. This meal was, in fact, their first experience of the holy, of the profound gift of love, a glimpse of what spiritual purity might actually feel like and look like.

Not for Love Alone
In the aftermath of the meal, the sisters are concerned that Babette has driven herself back into poverty because all the money she won in the lottery is gone. Babette responds, “I shall never be poor. I am a great artist. A great artist is never poor.” The gift of the feast was not created for love alone. She says, “Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best.”

My question is this: “What if you chose love as your art?” What canvas would you use? What poem or aria would convey the depth and breadth and power of your love? What acts of kindness? What empathy? What sympathy? What compassion?

And the Greatest of These
Paul of Tarsus, the architect of Christianity, gave us some timeless clues about the nature of love in a letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth. He said: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” He concluded by saying, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Lip Service, but No Kisses
Have you experienced that kind of love? Have you bestowed that kind of love on another? I hope your answer is yes, but I expect for many people the answer is either “not enough” or “no.” Our culture pays lip service to the kind of love Paul described. It is not a quid pro quo kind of love. It is unconditional. More to the point, this kind of love is a not a response to the actions of another, it is a quality of being and doing that emanates from us because we are committed to creating beloved community whenever, wherever, and however we can.

The French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard De Chardin wrote in his book, The Phenomenon of Man, “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we will harness …the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, [we]...will have discovered fire.” This is the central task of the beloved community.

Bearing the Beams of Love
The mystical poet William Blake concluded, “...we are put on earth a little space/ That we might learn to bear the beams of love.” Because Blake was a poet of considerable ability, we find ourselves sifting through his metaphors for meaning, which is the task of religion. By beams, Blake is likely asking us to visualize the beams of love as light. Light so powerful that we must learn how to bear it without being blinded. Light that illuminates our existence and shines into the darkest recesses of our being.

But what if we were to visualize beams of love that are more substantial, like the wooden beams out of which a home is constructed? Those beams are heavy and difficult to carry, but we could use them to build a love that was abundant, one that provided shelter for others, a sanctuary. As a line in one our hymns reminds us: “By faith made strong the rafters will/ withstand the battering of the storm (from May Nothing Evil Cross This Door).” The words of the covenant that we say as part of the worship service week-in and week-out begin, “Love is the spirit of this church.” They suggest that we should be using the beams of love to build something here that is truly remarkable, if only we can bear them.

Baring the Beams of Love
Gerald May does his own riff on Blake’s use of the word bear. He suggests that we are to “bear” love in three distinct metaphorical senses:
(i) We are to grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain.
(ii) We are to carry love and spread it around – “as children carry and spread measles and laughter,” he adds, because both are infectious.
(iii) We are to bring love to birth.

All of these are compelling, but I want to consider the meaning that Ric Masten intended in his song, Let It Be A Dance. In the third verse it reads, “Let the sun shine, let it rain, share the laughter, bear the pain….” Masten did not write bear –B-E-A-R. In his original song it read bare—B-A-R-E, the invitation to share your pain. (This unauthorized word change may explain why neither Masten nor his family have never permitted the song to be sung at the UUA’s General Assembly.) What if we were to bare the beams of love for all to see, to reveal how love operates within us and among us? To do so, we must be willing to go deeper in the ways we share with one another.

I don’t know about you, but I am not content with my love; its depth, its breadth, or its power. If love is the spirit of this church, then we must ask, “What does love require?” This question has been a constant companion for me for a while. I want my love to grow, to become a great beam that can be used alongside the love of others to build the beloved community. My contemplation is beginning to question how I respond. As I go through my days and attend to both my experience and corresponding emotions, I notice judgment and ask, “Why not love?” I notice anger or fear and ask, “Why not love?” I notice apathy and indifference and ask, “Why not love?” I notice competition or pride and ask, “Why not love?” Each time I ask the question, love seems the best answer. And slowly, because of an emerging spiritual practice, love is becoming the answer, as well as my response.

What Does Love Require?
I have begun to consider what tools I need to work with this great beam of love that I seek to become. Those tools include empathy, compassion, respect, hospitality, and listening, to name just a few. I also know that a mature and deep love requires resilience, the presumption of good will, forgiveness (at least 70 times 7), and courage. This kind of loving requires daily practice with the sure realization that I will fail. One of our hymns is by the 13th century Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi. As with Ric Masten’s song, someone changed the words, so we sing: “Come, come, whoever you are /Wanderer, Worshiper, Lover of Leaving, /Ours is no caravan of despair … /Come, yet again, Come.” What we don’t sing is an essential line that was omitted—“Though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, Come.” If we are unwilling to fail, then whatever success we do achieve will be largely meaningless. So I am willing to fail at love (to break my vows a thousand times) and to begin again and again—in love.

The kind of love that I have in mind requires the willingness to have my heart broken again and again, not out of some masochistic tendency, but in radical solidarity with the world. The kind of love that I have in mind…. Well, I hope you get the picture. So let me end asking, “What kind of love do you have in mind (and in heart)?”

Redeeming Time

We cannot redeem time like we used to redeem glass bottles, returning them to the store for a few pennies or nickels. To redeem time, is to use the lifetime allotted to us to create a common good, or perhaps, given the state of the world, an uncommon good. We cannot do it by simply dreaming or wishing that somehow things were different or better

We cannot redeem time by attending only to our own needs, or worse yet, like a modern day Ebenezer Scrooge, by being oblivious to all needs, those of the world and its peoples as well as our own.

We can redeem time and the human condition by using, as a people of faith, our freedom and our power both wisely and well, remembering that we are mortal and that our time on earth is finite and precious.

We can redeem time and our own lives by living deeper, more authentic, more creative, more powerful, more compassionate lives.

We can redeem time and the human condition by working to make real our passionate hopes for a just future. May it be said of us that we knew how to keep Life well, through acts of kindness and mercy and justice.

The Words We Use Here

The words we use here
are not the electric kind
the ones that have the power to open a can of beans

But we have words here
that have the power to open closed minds
Words to surface our hidden assumptions
Words to challenge our prejudices
Words to open us to new insights
Words to bless us with moments of clarity

The words that we use here
are not the explosive kind
the ones that are used to
open a pass through the stone mountain.

But we have words here
that have the power to open closed hearts
words to soften a heart of stone
words to heal a broken heart
Words that encourage and forgive and bless
Words that invite and comfort and cajole
Words that uplift and instruct and question

Like a poet with pen set to paper
let us be open to the words
that will say what needs to be said
that will say what needs to be heard
Like a poet with pen set to paper
Let us open our hearts and minds

What if Our Applause was Silence?

What if our applause was silence? Then the noise of our hands would not stop the music as it slowly blends with silence, but would urge it inward and outward and onward, like the wind beneath our wings transporting us to a place which only music and silence and poetry can approach. What if we applauded not with our hands, but with one heartbeat after another, racing to express appreciation for beauty that goes beyond word, beyond thought, beyond sound, beyond beyond? Imagine that your applause is simply the sound of your breathing, part of our communal breathing: shared inspiration. If your applause was silence, then it would resound in every moment, helping to carry this shared experience of worship forward with encouragement, gratitude, wonder, poetry, dance, and more. If your applause were silence, then as you remembered this moment and the next, you would also hear the applause blessing it.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Many of the things that are important, the things that are essential can be found here in this religious community. You can find them hidden in plain sight. They appear to be hidden, for who would expect that that these things, these values would exist here, or anywhere. Are you seeking a community that encourages freedom of belief? Do you long to be accepted as you are and invited to grow? Do you want to be inspired to practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty? Do you yearn for solace and sanctuary, a community of caring to celebrate as you celebrate, to mourn as you mourn? Instead of creeds, do you value deeds that extend compassion and justice? Are you looking for a faith that honors head and heart, reason and reverence? Rather than a stifling uniformity, are you challenged and inspired by diversity? More than simple answers, do you seek thoughtful questions that lead to deeper meaning? More than knowledge, do you seek wisdom? All of this and much more is to be found here— hidden in plain sight; hidden unless you have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that yearns for a religious tradition that can seek as you seek, grow as you grow, and make a difference in you and in the world.

Expectations of Worship

What do you expect?
The answer is important
for often
our expectations shape reality
like prophecies self-fulfilled.

What do you expect of this hour?
Might it include
Moments of joy, words of comfort,
Intriguing questions to ponder,
And possible answers to consider,
Intellectual stimulation and spiritual nurture,
Sweet silence,
And music whether infinitely poignant
or unbearably sublime.
And some further insight into the meaning of life

What do you expect of this church?
Perhaps that it might become a great, good place in your life
and in the lives of others:
An Oasis for the spirit
A Forum for the mind
A Home for the heart and
A Workshop for justice.

What do you expect of life?
Of yourself?
And of others, especially those closest to you?

May we have great expectations
And the boldness to live them into being.

The Days of Our Lives

The days of our lives can be exhilarating or troubling, challenging or boring, joyous or sorrow-filled. The days of our lives can be overflowing or empty, complex or simple, easy or hard.

So many possibilities within the impossibility of life. But for now, let us pause and be content with the next moment, the next breath, the next heartbeat, the next thought.

Better yet, let that thought go, that you might not be pulled forward in the next moment, or the one after that. Instead, like a small feather falling onto a still pond, let yourself rest on the surface, so light that the water refreshes, but does not engulf, so light that you move slowly in response to the breeze, a small ship upon an infinite ocean.

So many possibilities within the impossibility of life, if we but take time out of the busyness to do nothing, no thing.

In this moment of time almost standing still, breathe, now breathe again. This is life flowing into you. Imagine that you heartbeat is an instrument that matches the rhytymn of you moments, minutes, hours, days, years, lifetime. One heartbeat for a lifetime, one heartbeat for a moment. They are really the same if you can slow yourself down enough to rest in the moment, rather than simply rush through it. As the moments slow down, your life increases. As the movements slow down, you can see and hear and savor and contemplate what it means to be alive.

So many possibilities within the impossibility of life. And now just silence, here together, heartbeat calling to heartbeat, so soft and clear and insistent and now

In the moment – In the silence – World without end!

Bringing Down the Towers of Babel

How often it seems that we are surrounded by towers of Babel. Not one, but a multitude: each person, his or her own tower, making not meaning, but noise and static. We despair because there are so many words and so little communication. Although we seem to be speaking the same language, who really listens, who really hears, who really understands, and who really cares?

The art of dialogue, if it ever really existed, has been all but lost. And skill in argument as a reasoned, thoughtful, civil, and enlightening exchange has been replaced by a culture of meanness in which, because winning trumps everything including understanding, we are all diminished.

There is no doubt that the technology with which we communicate has grown exponentially even as our ability to communicate has lost intimacy, imagination, integrity, and impact. In a time long ago, when quill pen dipped in ink, was poised to scratch meaning across the page of a letter, did we pause and consider what we would say and how because we could not easily remove an error or misstatement? Did we pause, knowing that our words had to have a certain depth and luminosity to make sure that they remained alive on the page until they were read by the subject of our attention many days or weeks hence? And in conversation, were we genteel because our words were not a means, but an end because the purpose of the conversation was not to inform, instruct, or declare, but simply to connect, to relate, to share?

How shall we bring down the towers of Babel? How shall we bridge the chasm that separates us each from the other? How shall we overcome this soul-wrenching isolation? Let us undertake a new spiritual discipline. Let us speak as if we mattered. Let us speak as if the person to whom we were speaking mattered. Let our words become benedictions, which simply means “good words:” good words spoken by good hearts. Let our words become meditations in kindness as the purpose of our speaking becomes mutual transformation.

Let us listen not with our ego, but with our heart as we risk being transformed by the words of others. Let our listening become so deep and profound that we hear all that is said as it was intended, and all that remains unsaid. Let our listening become so deep that we abandon judgment in favor of understanding, and seek wisdom over information. Let our listening become so deep that we become multi-lingual, understanding the language of sorrow and joy, of fear and courage, of anger and bliss, of confusion and clarity, knowing that our mastery of the vocabulary of feeling will indeed allow us to listen with empathy and compassion.

May our good words and deep listening replace the towers of Babel with a life-affirming, universal language that gladdens the heart, energizes the spirit, and comforts the soul.

In Silence Renewed

At times the world is too much with us. Its busyness and noise overwhelm us. The static of the world echoes in our mind disrupting any possibility of inner peace. When this happens, as it does all too often, we are urged to seek renewal in silence. Take a moment or several moments and simply stop striving, stop doing, stop thinking. Attend instead to the rhythm of your breathing or the beating of your heart as you seek to slow down. It takes an act of will to find your center-point, to become still, to allow yourself to rest in the silence. In this silence is renewal. This is one of the gifts of prayer, of meditation, this beautiful silence. By itself, silence does not bring renewal, but it creates the conditions out of which renewal emerges. In silence, we can lower our defenses against the world and direct that energy to the process of renewal. In silence, we can rediscover our essence. In silence, we can enter into prayer or meditation and go deeper as we contemplate matters of consequence in place of the trivia of the world. In silence, we replace human doing with human being. In silence, renewed.

A Grace of Being

Sometimes the world is too much with us. Its weight, its gravity pulls us down, constricting possibilities, extinguishing imagination, and mocking hope. In times like these, we need to reach deeper and higher. Going deeper into our selves we seek untapped reserves of courage, we summon strength to persevere, and we recall exemplars, those people in our lives whose example offers us insight and wisdom. Their ability to live well despite adversity suggests that we can do the same. They become our companions and their encouragement literally puts heart into us. If fear and anxiety are not completely vanquished, they at least become manageable, no longer a source of paralysis and despair. In this way, the impossible becomes difficult, and the difficult, possible.

But reaching deeper is not enough; we must also reach higher as we connect with resources beyond our self. Perhaps it is the divine, perhaps it is the spirit of life, or perhaps it is simply the life force that permeates all of creation, ineffable, but real. By whatever name, it offers to us a grace of being in which we are invisibly, but reliably supported. It may simply be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but we find ourselves renewed, energized, and hopeful. The burden of the world shifts enough so that we can begin to act in ways that are beneficial.

Reaching deeper and higher is essential, but it is not sufficient. We must also reach out to those around us. By asking for help, we invite the handclasp, the warm embrace, and the encouraging word. These are reminders that we are not alone, that a circle of caring surrounds us. We accept this care with the full and certain knowledge that at another time we will add our care to the circle. Thus care becomes a renewable resource, a gift that grows by giving, a grace of being by which we are all immeasurably enriched.