Hope - Sketch #2

Hope has long been a central virtue of Unitarian Universalism. While at times we have tended, as Unitarian Universalist minister Earl Holt observed, “toward a sometimes unrealistic optimism,” hope is part of our enduring good news. The Universalist minister John Murray said, “Go out into the highways and by-ways of America…. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying and crumbling Calvinism, something of your new vision…. Give them, not Hell, but hope and courage.” If he had been talking about an easy optimism, he would not have linked hope with courage. This linkage is essential because we must contend with the tragedy, suffering, and inhumanity woven through life.

Some people worry about false hope, concerned that what we hope for cannot be realized. Hope, however, is more resilient and durable than that. It is continually tempered, not by the impossible, but as William Sloane Coffin said, “by a passion for the possible.” Vaclav Havel reminds us that hope is “a dimension of the Spirit. It is not outside us but within us.” Do you recall what Emily Dickinson wrote? “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers-- / That perches in the soul-- / And sings the tune without the words-- / And never stops--at all.”

To better appreciate the importance of hope, consider the debilitating effects of hopelessness. When things appear hopeless, despair triumphs as we feel powerless, immobilized by events seemingly beyond our control. Often hopelessness is a consequence of loss, the loss of someone we love through death or the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, the loss of health, even the loss of a dream. It is as if things will never be all right again. At other times, hopelessness overtakes us without any identifiable cause. We experience desolation, a disquiet of the soul, a spiritual dis ease.

In moments like these, hopelessness can color every aspect of our lives and become overwhelming. William F. Lynch offers this good advice: “One of the best safeguards of our hopes...is to be able to mark off areas of hopelessness and to acknowledge them, to face them directly, not with despair but with the creative intent of keeping them from polluting all the areas of possibility.” Still, it is not enough simply to isolate hopelessness; we must also seek to heal our hopelessness.

Healing hopelessness begins with a process of naming. Robert Browning wrote, “Entertaining hope, means recognizing fear.” We might also say, “healing hopelessness, means naming fear.” Naming our fears allows us to confront them in their limited concreteness instead of being paralyzed by them in their unlimited diffuseness. Healing hopelessness thus requires courage. Part of this work is individual. Another part of this work can occur in community. In this, our church is a community of hope, a community of hopers.

Hopelessness is darkness, a kind of Hell. The caring and encouragement of others can help with its healing. Tom Owen Towle writes, “To en courage, literally denotes the act of ‘putting heart’ into a companion. When our days are dreary and crises bedevil us, spiritual kin are there to encourage us, to lift us up and push us forth, reminding us that there is still more affection and comfort for us to experience.”

The novelist Barbara Kingsolver suggests that, “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” Wishing you hope.

Hope - Sketch #1

I don’t know about you, but I find myself, like essayist Scott Russell Sanders, hunting for hope. He began his search following a distressing exchange with his son who said, “Your view of things is totally dark. It bums me out. You make me feel the planet’s dying and people are to blame and nothing can be done about it. There’s no room for hope. Maybe you can get by without hope, but I can’t.”

Now Sanders was not without hope, but obviously the breadth and depth of that hope was not evident to his son, and, quite frankly, it apparently wasn’t sufficient for Sanders. He went hunting for hope; he went on a journey “to gather his own reasons for facing the future with hope.” And he wasn’t willing to settle for platitudes or cheap grace. As he said, “No understanding of hope can be honest unless it reckons with the absence of hope, the dark night of the soul when nothing comforts and nothing reassures. . . If hope is a bright, indomitable bird, despair is the dark ocean over which it flies, against which it sings.” Sanders embraces Emily Dickenson’s image of hope as a bird, (i.e, “Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul,/ And sings the tune without the words,/ And never stops at all.”), but he rightly acknowledges the challenge that hope can face, a challenge as foreboding and immense as a dark ocean. The image of hope as a bird hovering over an immense ocean is fitting. The ocean is the abyss of despair or fear or illness or any other of the countless challenges that we encounter in life. The bird could fall into the ocean at any time, but it also has the ability to soar to incredible heights.

Scott Russell Sanders found hope in the wildness of the natural world and in his desire to restore the wilderness. He found hope in families that provide protection, guidance, affection, and companionship. Sanders writes, “In the struggle between a destructive, reckless, shallow culture and these ancient human needs, I place my faith in the family.” He found hope in beauty and community, in faith and fidelity. Sanders writes, “If we are determined to live in hope . . . we join with others who are making a kindred effort, and thus our work will be multiplied a thousand-fold across the country, a million-fold around the earth…. In order to live in hope, we needn’t believe that everything will turn out well. We need only believe that we are on the right path.”

Hope is a possibility that difficulties can be overcome or at least transformed. It is a decision that empowers and energizes us to grow. Hope is a connection that binds us with the hopeful of the world. It is a desire and a discipline to “be the change that we want to see.” Hope is an internal attitude, a state of mind and heart and soul that more is possible in life. It is a response, a strategy that encourages us to meet the challenges that beset us and the world with creativity. Hope is not passive, but active, demanding that we do what is necessary to deal with whatever gives rise to hopelessness.

Leave A Message

Peter Russell has corrected a philosophical misconception related to telephone “answering” machines. His telephone message states, “This is not an answering machine. This is a questioning machine. You already know the questions. Who are you? and What do you want?” The message continues, “Before you answer, please remember that these are not trivial questions. Many people live a lifetime without ever finding an answer to these two questions.”

A defining difference between conservative and liberal religion involves the way questions and answers are valued. One conserves answers while the other liberates questions. As Elie Wiesel rightly observed, “We tend to lose our humanity when we forget that there are no ultimate answers, only ultimate questions.” The liberal path (guided by a belief in revelation as a continuous process) is strewn with answers that are provisional, tentative, and evolving. There is an essential ongoing dialectic between questions and answers. Each transforms the other. Questions are the means of wresting answers and meaning out of the mystery of life. In religious terms this requires being comfortable with a theology of the unknown. The invitation, as phrased by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, is to both love and live the questions so that we may eventually live into the answers.

Our questions of life grow out of our search for meaning. As Victor Frankl has said, "The human search for meaning is a primary force in life. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by each individual alone...." Within a religious community there is also a collective search for meaning. This takes us back to Peter Russell's two questions, the answers to which will shape our collective life: "Who are we?" (or even more provocatively, "Whose are we?")and "What do we want?"

Sabbath Prayer

Occasionally we reach the end of a week, of a season, or a year and find ourselves overwhelmingly exhausted.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

This is not simply the exhaustion of the body, which sleep might restore, but the exhaustion of the soul.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

How hard to praise life's gifts when we are haunted by such incredible burden. How difficult to recognize joy or possibility, to experience contentment or purpose, to consider self-care a necessity rather than a luxury.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

At times like these sleep becomes an escape from such weariness, but not its cure. At times like these we continue to sleep while we are awake. We call this sleep depression, the physical, emotional and spiritual numbing that masks our pain and suffering at such great cost.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

To reach this state, whether by overwork, stress, fear, doubt or loss, is to also realize that an essential balance in our life has been lost. There is no quick fix to such spiritual dis-ease.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

In times such as these, let us pray for salvation, not for a superficial religiosity, but for the healing and wholeness that is our birthright and our destiny.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

Let us not surrender to despair, but to Life itself.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

Let us enter Sabbath time, that respite of prayer, meditation, and play that can restore our soul.
Be Still...Rest...Shalom.

Be still, that you might become mindful of your sorrow and your joy. Be still, that you might come to know the deepest longings of your heart. Be still that you might become open to the healing possibilities in you and around you.

Rest. Set your burdens aside that this Sabbath time might bring you deep refreshment.

Shalom. In stillness and rest may you come to know a peace that passes understanding.

A Walk

In his poem, The Blessing, poet James Wright wrote, “Suddenly I realize/ That if I stepped out of my body I would break/ Into blossom.” Has life ever seized you in that way? Have you ever had an experience that filled you to overflowing? A good friend of mine tells of driving to Banff, a town near Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. What she saw so overwhelmed her that she parked on the side of the road and wept for the beauty of it. I suspect that if she had stepped out of her body in that moment she would have broken into blossom.

Unfortunately as the world loses its enchantment, we lose our capacity to experience the mysterious. This is the point of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem entitled, A Walk. He writes, “My eyes already touch the sunny hill,/ going far ahead of the road I have begun./ So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;/ it has its inner light, even from a distance—/and changes us, even if we do not reach it,/ into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;/ a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave.../but what we feel is the wind in our faces.”

It is a very simple poem. It's just about a walk up a hill in sunlight. Except, he says, we are grasped by what we cannot grasp. Something grasps us that has an inner light, a reality that is elusive but commanding. Something grasps us and we stop by the side of the road to weep at the breathtaking beauty of the Canadian Rockies. Something grasps us and we know if we step out of our selves, if we move just beyond the boundary of the body, we will break into blossom. I have in mind breaking into a common dandelion, now bright and yellow, now snowy white, a bouquet of seeds about to be dispersed by the wind. These epiphanies, these peak experiences, these moments of grace, change us, Rilke says, into something we already are. Isn't all life change in which each change brings us closer to our true nature? Yet most of the time we miss what is happening. Life or God, you choose the name to call what is most precious and most profound, waves to us, beckoning, but what we feel is the wind on our faces.

We are grasped by what we cannot grasp: by mystery, by love, by the spirit of life itself. Such is the nature of spirituality, but what we feel is the wind in our faces. The Hebrew word for spirit was wind or breath. We can explain the wind, measure its direction and velocity, and relate its intensity to changing weather systems and various atmospheric conditions. We can experience the wind, but we can't control it. We can feel the wind in our faces, but it is much harder for many of us to embrace with our arms or our minds the wonder and mystery of life.

The capacity to value mystery is enhanced by awareness; by a sense of awe, wonder, and gratitude at the reality of being alive and being a witness to existence; by an appreciation of the mystery that extends beyond the boundary of human knowledge (a boundary that is always changing as human knowledge evolves); and by the meaning and purpose that we create or discover, including the way we live in response to that meaning and purpose.

Our lives are not merely a series of questions to be answered or problems to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. The question, then, is “What puts us in contact with mystery?” The answer is Life. Eduardo Galeano writes about a gift given to a child by his parents when he was born: “they gave him a little bottle sealed up tight [and said]: ‘Don’t ever, ever open it. So you’ll learn to love mystery.’”

We can, and often do, take this mystery for granted. Nevertheless, at times something breaks through and we are, for a moment, transfixed, if not transformed. James Hillman reminds us that, “Moments come when we feel outside time, seized by a longing, moved by an image, in touch with invisible voices.” “We realize,” he continues, “that we do not live in one world only.” Or perhaps we realize what it really means to live in this world, to make contact with the mystery of existence, the mystery of being. It may happen when all we intended to do was go for a walk.

Born of Earth's Desiring

There is no question that “desire” has a questionable reputation, one that goes back to Antiquity. In place of desire, Plato argued that we should focus on higher ideals. Spinoza saw natural desires as a form of bondage that we do not freely choose. The archetype for this is the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. His single life focus and desire, “Me want cookie!” must be followed by its satisfaction, “Me eat cookie!” creating a rather narrow existence.

According to Buddhism, desire or craving is based in the belief that if our desires are fulfilled we will achieve lasting happiness or well-being. Given the reality of impermanence, happiness and well-being are always fleeting, which makes our desire or craving even stronger. Frustrated in our pursuit of permanent happiness, we find ourselves trapped in a cycle of desire-happiness-suffering in which suffering comes to predominate. Still, desire is important. William Irvine writes, “Banish desire from the world, and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die.”

A brief discourse on Buddhism on Easter Sunday may seem unconventional, but we will arrive safely at our destination. According to Buddhist psychotherapist Mark Epstein, author of Open to Desire, “Clinging - not desire - is where we get stuck, and it’s possible to embrace desire without clinging by infusing it with awareness.” The geometry of desire includes the individual, the object of desire, and the gap that separates the two. While the size of the gap may vary over time, there will always be a gap between us and what we desire. That is the nature of desire. Rather than clinging to try to close the gap, Epstein suggests that we learn to dwell in the gap so that desire can become a teacher in its own right. This requires desire without expectation. It also requires, as Epstein explains, that we learn how to use desire, rather than being used by it.

Epstein suggests that as we embrace desire as a valuable and precious resource, rather than as the cause of suffering, we face a sizable challenge. Desire is seductive and can end up mastering us if we do not master it, so caution is required. Still, says Epstein, desire, “if harnessed correctly, can awaken and liberate the mind.” He calls desire “the energy that strives for transcendence,” that it is “the foundation for all spiritual pursuits.” As desire becomes an object of meditation, we must ask of each desire that arises in us, “What is its source?” Does this specific desire arise out of life’s longing for itself, or does it arise out of some wound or perceived lack of wholeness within us? The latter is clearly problematic. If desire becomes the master, it can corrode our ability to know truth, see beauty, and feel love.

We find ourselves once again at the intersection of three significant observances in the turning of the year. These three, Passover, Easter, and spring represent a trinity of desire. Passover is a desire for freedom. Easter, mindful of the central teachings of Jesus, is a desire for love, and springtime is a desire for life. We live by desire and we are born of earth’s desiring. At the conjunction of Passover, Easter, and spring the only appropriate prayer of gratitude that we can utter is “Yes!”

Daughters

What arises in you, my daughters,
on this summer day?
If I could still this moment
of joy and hold you
forever in its embrace, I might.
Do you feel stirring in you the need
to hold life against your breast?
Do you feel stirring in you that
which through me
gave birth to you both?
My kittens, purring in my lap,
content with the perfect fullness of this moment,
I know the sound of you
and the smell of you
and the shape of you
in my lap purring.
So you reach out to life's purring,
holding the kitten (as I held you) in the morning light.

The distance between us grows as you grow:
the room between us,
the window between us,
the yard between us.
In time's turning
the fence will come between us
and then
we will be separated by the road and more.

So I set my gaze upon you both
that I might hold in my heart forever
the delight of this day,
as you look toward me
daughters of my being,
as you look away from me,
daughters of my being,
as I place the photograph of this day
in the album that grows in my memory
as your unfolding becomes remembered in still life;

As you are called from me
still will I remember
life purring in you
(gift of me)
seeking
life
still.

Born Again and Again

Ideally, membership in a congregation should affirm us while inviting us into the process of spiritual growth that lies at the heart of conversion. To be affirmed for who we are is to have our own inherent worth acknowledged. It is to experience the reliability of the horizontal dimension of the covenant. To seek a change in the direction of our lives is to open ourselves to the essential, creative, transforming power present in the spiritual community. When conversion becomes implicit rather than explicit, we become less adept at facilitating spiritual change (or spiritual direction) than we need to be. This may be why many people come to Unitarian Universalism with great expectations only to eventually leave wondering, “Is that all there is?”

In contemporary Unitarian Universalism conversion becomes implicit when the emphasis of covenant shifts from the vertical to the horizontal dimension. Our 1985 Principles and Purposes deal mostly with horizontal relationships and obligations because this is the dimension in which we have been able to forge a consensus. Since we cannot agree on the terminus of the vertical dimension, this dimension, through our silence, has been flattened. As this has happened, we have moved in the direction of what Adams called a “kept” religion, one that has taken the transcendent into its possession as a means of domesticating (or annihilating) ultimate commitment. The function of the “kept” God was to do our bidding rather than to command our lives.

Without the vertical dimension, the transforming power necessary for conversion is gone, as is the motivation to convert. In spiritual terms, this motivation involves “the desire for more,” a felt connection with the transcendent, or a hunger for a unitive experience. Regardless of one’s theological persuasion, recovering conversion as a process of spiritual development requires a reconstruction of the vertical dimension. We do not live by bread alone, and whether we are atheist, theist, humanist, Christian, neo-pagan or agnostic, we cannot achieve authentic religious community based on a covenant reduced to only a horizontal dimension. When aspiring to the lowest common denominator effectively eliminates the vertical dimension, we must realize that we have gone too far. The pain that we avoid by ignoring our theological differences is much less than the joy we have foregone or the energy that we have misused. The six sources of our faith associated with the principles eloquently articulate the vertical dimensions that inform our faith, sources that are worthy of our loyalty. Which one or more of these sources command your loyalty?

In “resurrecting” conversion as a valid and valuable process of religious growth in our congregations, we will need to find effective ways of creating, nurturing, and honoring diverse vertical commitments. We will also need to make the process of conversion more explicit in our worship, religious education, and social action. The growing emphasis of Unitarian Universalist identity in our religious education curricula is a significant step in making the implicit explicit. A lot more work is necessary to respond effectively to the needs of those who seek a deeper and broader religious commitment.

As we work on making conversion explicit, we will find that the number of people interested and willing to “convert” will represent a minority. The New England distinction between parish and church is instructive in this regard. The membership (or constituency of members and friends) of a congregation forms its “parish” (not as a geographical designation but as an associational one). The “church” comprises those members who seek to go deeper in their faith, to enter into a gradual and continuous process of conversion. The reason for using this model is not to create two classes of membership within a congregation. It is to remind us that the religious needs of the “parish” are different than those of the “church” and that we need to be intentional about ministering to both sets of needs.