RevElations

Let It Be A Dance

2010-10-27T16:56:00.000-06:00

I met him first on February 26, 1984. He could have been a painter. He studied at Pomona College in California with Millard Sheets, father of Rev. Carolyn Owen-Towle. Then he studied with the famous cubist painter Fernand Léger at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1949. Years later, someone recounted, he was walking though his house pointing to some of his paintings and muttering, “Van Gogh.” But in 1984, he simply said, “sunflowers/ time and time again/ I need to spend an hour/ with my sunflower friend/ sunflowers/ light the way/ put a touch of color/ in the long dark day.”

I met him again on November 6, 1993. Then, he read from a poem he had written called, With Birth To Look Forward To. He asked us to imagine that we came into the world old and got younger each year, thus puting death behind us at the very beginning. And so he briefly traced the rewinding of his life until, “suddenly/ my father comes back to life/ and once again/ I take him for granted/ I begin to shrink/ until sinking to my knees/ I roll over in my crib/ and wave good-bye to my feet/ stripped of all identity/ toothless and bald again/ I slip back inside my mother/ to dissolve in the absolute darkness/ of never having been.”

Of course that’s not the way it happened. In 1999, he was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. He pursued both traditional and non-traditional treatments. He used poetry to engage people living with cancer. In keeping with the arc of life, he once more illustrated his ability to, as he said, “do selfish things that benefit others.” That he was made the Poet Laureate of Prostate Cancer by the National Prostate Cancer Coalition in 2005, is evidence of his embodied, confessional poetry.

Its always been all about him, but the introspection of his poetry, which is both crass and sublime, mundane as well as transcendent, is bone jarring and heart rending.

Its always been about him, except when he shared his poetry with 60 men in Thousand Oaks California who were all members of a prostate cancer survivor group. Usually the speakers talked about the practical problems of coping with their disease, but not him. Instead, he read his poem Poor Devil, which reprises old western movies when the sentry is found dead with an arrow in his back. And whoever finds him always delivers the classic line, “Poor devil, he never knew what hit him.” Except all of these men knew what hit them, or did they? So he read, “‘Poor devil’/ never used an opening/ to tell loved ones he loved them/ never seized the opportunity/ to give praise for the sunrise/ or drink in a sunset/ moment after moment/ passing him by/ while he marched through his life/ staring straight ahead/ believing in tomorrow/ ‘Poor devil!’/ how much fuller/ richer and pleasing life becomes/ when you are lucky enough/ to see the arrow coming.”

Returning from Paris he worked as a carpenter and a printer, He wrote lyrics for musicals at Carmel’s Forest Theater, which is where he met Billie Barbara, his wife of 56 years. He wrote songs for the next ten years, of which some 78 were recorded including Turn the Key by pop artist Jerry Wallace and Teenage Preacher by Lord Luther, which cracked the top 100. But this didn’t satisfy. He began to find his true voice when he heard Bob Dylan, Pete Seger and Leonard Cohen. A career as a folk singer beckoned, although he couldn’t remember his own lyrics. Eventually he left the music behind, but the lyrics remained. He had found his true calling as a poet. Then he was ordained as a specialized Unitarian Universalist minister in 1972. His was a specialized case since he had flunked out of several colleges because of dyslexia and a hearing impairment, and had never attended a seminary. He became our “troubadour preacher,” and had the distinction of performing in more than 500 Unitarian Universalist churches, including First Universalist, as well as countless college campuses.

Its always been about him, except for the song that he wrote for Barbara Brussell, a friend of one of his daughters. Barbara was a high school dance student who was seriously injured in a car accident involving a drunk driver that killed her teacher and two of her classmates. Her knee was so badly damaged that it was doubtful that she would ever walk again, let alone dance. He visited her in the hospital and bet her that within a year she would come dancing up the road to his home in Big Sur to a song that he would write. The song he wrote within a few days was Let It Be A Dance. A year later, she came dancing, limping, but dancing up the road as he played his guitar and sang, “Let it be a dance we do./ May I have this dance with you?/ Through the good times/ And the bad times, too,/ Let it be a dance.”

It was included in our hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, which was published in 1993. Masten was pleased to have this song included, but he did not appreciate the poetic license that someone took in changing one of the words in the song. In the third verse he wrote, “share the laughter, bare the pain,” as in reveal the pain. This was changed to “bear the pain,” as in carry the pain. When Ric Masten performed in the church I served in Pittsburgh, he asked everyone to pencil in the correct word in our brand new hymnals, writing “b-a-r-e” in place of “b-e-a-r.”

In his last book of poetry entitled, Going Out Dancing, he wrote a poem called, A Word for Survival. The word for survival, coined by another cancer survivor, is “spiritude,” an engaging combination of attitude and spirit. UU minister Stephen Edington, who wrote a biography about our poet laureate, calls it “a trusting attitude towards life guided by the spirit.” But knowing a little bit about Ric Masten, who died on May 9, 2008 surrounded by his family, I think that the “spiritude” that he embodied was spirit with an attitude (of which we could all use a little).

Ric, thanks for the spiritude, for the poetry, and for the dance! (July 2008)

Learning to Whisper

2010-10-27T16:29:00.001-06:00

Our daughter, LinsiAn, loves animals, especially horses. For the last four summers she spent a week or more at Girl Scout camps with horses. Slowly, she is becoming an accomplished rider.

Some time ago. I heard a story about Grant Golliher, a horse whisperer who uses the Bible to inform his work. While I was not persuaded by the theological basis for his work, I did appreciate his personal transformation. Before he met Ray Hunt, a horse whisperer, 27 years ago, Golliher “broke” horses in the worst sense of that word. Based on what he learned from Hunt, he became a horse whisperer and has shared that gift with others.

On a trip to the library, I suggested a book to LinsiAn about horses, Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan. It’s a coming-of-age story about an eleven year old girl named Maya, a horse named, Artemisia, and her foal, Klee. LinsiAn loved the book.

This collage of images reminded me of the 1998 film The Horse Whisperer directed by and starring Robert Redford, which is based on the book of the same name by George Evans. It is a story about a horse whisperer, Tom Booker, a man of immense patience, who helps heal a girl, Grace, her horse, Pilgrim, both of whom were terribly injured in a riding accident, and Grace’s mother, Annie, a high-powered magazine editor, whose life and marriage are not working.

Dan M. “Buck” Brannaman, also a student of Ray Hunt, is a horse whisperer. He was the primary inspiration for Evan’s novel and served as the technical advisor for the film. Brannaman has said that, “Abused horses are like abused children. They trust no one and expect the worst. But patience, leadership, compassion and firmness can help them overcome their pasts.” Brannaman knows what he’s talking about, having experienced abuse at the hands of his father after his mother died. He had the good fortune to end-up with foster parents Forrest and Betsy Shirley, who lived on a ranch near Bozeman, Montana. They had raised four children of their own and provided a home for some period of time for 17 other foster boys. They offered Brannaman positive discipline, leadership, and direction along with love, empathy, and support. In a sense, they, too, taught him how to be a horse whisperer. In his work, Brannaman helps people who have problems with their horses, and, more importantly, helps horses who have problems with their people.

The philosophy of horse whispering is to work with the horse's nature, using it to understand how horses think and communicate in order to work confidently and responsively with them, and create a bond so that the horse and rider can achieve a true union. It requires creating an environment in which the horse feels safe and secure. It requires a profound respect for the horse. It requires paying attention to countless non-verbal cues. It requires firmness, but also an abiding gentleness: whispering and all the compassion and intimacy that the word implies.

And all this brings me to the obvious conclusion: children are like horses. The point is never to break them, but to tame them in a way that preserves their essential, precious, and unique nature. This is the goal of good parenting and the goal of all who work with children in education, recreation, and other endeavors. Our children need to be companioned by people who are like horse whisperers. Shh! Please whisper.

First Principle

2010-10-27T15:49:00.001-06:00

Let’s get radical, which means let’s go to the root, the tap root of our faith. Radical is also associated with revolutionary and we have been revolutionary from the beginning. When Francis David said in the mid-16th century, “We do not need to think alike, to love alike,” it was revolutionary. In those few words, he turned the approach to Christian faith on its head because he rejected right belief (orthodoxy) in place of right practice (orthopraxy). He felt that it was more important to be like-hearted than like-minded. David was attempting to follow the religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus. Of course, he was imprisoned as a heretic and died in a cell at the fortress at Deva. He believed that the truth of his faith would prevail, and it has in us.

The first Unitarian Universalist principle, “respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” is also a radical statement, one with which many would disagree. Consequently, it is not practiced by those who restrict the idea of inherent worth and dignity to a chosen group whether circumscribed by family, tribe, ethnicity, religion, or nation. It is not hard to imagine how the world would be transformed if everyone lived this principle. It is, in a sense, the Namaste principle: The god in me greets the god in you. (For the world god feel free to substitute holy, sacred, love, etc.) In a sense this even transforms the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you because the others are you.

Gandhi said, “Be the change in the world you wish to see.” To affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person is to be in profound opposition to the concepts of original sin and human depravity. To affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person is to understand that our essential value as human beings is not earned. It is also that part of our humanity, which cannot be forfeited, except in the extreme. In fact, this worth and dignity are what makes us human.

Kurt Vonnegut suggested that dignity is something that we give each other. He believed that if we don’t give it to one another, there is no way we can obtain it. Carl Jung added, “It is impossible to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of another if you have not done that for yourself.” They are both correct. Our worth and dignity must be affirmed by others. At the same time, our recognition of the inherent worth and dignity in another requires an awareness of our own inherent worth and dignity. Obviously, we can do things that destroy the worth and dignity that inheres in an individual. This is what evil represents, the loss of a basic humanity. The purpose of religion, the purpose of society is to nurture the inherent worth and dignity of each person.

An Election Day Sermon

2010-10-27T15:43:00.001-06:00

It began in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 and continued until 1884. The tradition spread to Connecticut in 1674, to Vermont in 1778, and to New Hampshire in 1784. It was called Election Day, although there were no elections on that day. Instead, public officials were installed in their offices in a manner similar to our contemporary Inauguration Day. It was one of the few public holidays in pre-revolutionary America. Stores and schools closed and the day was marked with parades, picnics, and an Election Day sermon delivered to the officials by a distinguished minister. In Massachusetts, the Election Day sermon was initially delivered in May in Boston’s First Church and after 1658, in the Boston Town House. According to Harry Stout in The New England Soul, the audience consisted of the “magistrates who represented the oligarchy, the deputies who represented the democracy, and the ministers who represented the theocracy.” Once Massachusetts became a commonwealth, the sermon was delivered to the governor and members of the legislature.

You may remember the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, who admitted that he was the father of Hester Prynne’s daughter, Pearl. This admission came after Dimmesdale delivered the Election Day sermon in Boston, which was regarded as the most eloquent sermon that he ever preached. (Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody, a Unitarian, were married in 1842 by Unitarian Minister James Freeman Clarke. Her sister, Elizabeth Peabody, called Unitarianism “terra firma.”)

Typically, “New England election sermons,” writes David Hall, “observed the customary Calvinistic tenets: government is initiated by God; the fallen nature of man requires constraints; rulers must be limited and should meet moral qualifications; and law takes precedence over arbitrary opinion.”

Over the years, a few Unitarian and Universalist ministers were invited to deliver the Election Day sermon in Boston. Jonathan Mayhew, minister of the West Church of Boston from 1746 to 1766, delivered the Election Day sermon in 1754. Considered a precursor to the Unitarians, Mayhew said to the newly installed officials, “By wise and good laws, and by proper conduct in other respects, the rulers of a people lay a foundation... not only for the welfare of the present generation, but for the prosperity of those who are to come after.” The concern was not only the immediate welfare of people, but the long term consequences of actions. A century after Mayhew, Unitarian minister James Freeman Clarke said that the difference between “a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks of the next election, and a statesman thinks of the next generation.” Our current state of affairs makes it clear that we desperately need statesmen.

Samuel West was another liberal minister considered a precursor to the Unitarians. An ardent patriot, West gave the election day sermon in Boston in 1776. In that sermon, he proclaimed that the colonies were already independent and constituted a new nation. “Any people, when cruelly oppressed,” West argued, “has the right to throw the yoke, and be free.” New England clergy, through the Election Day sermon, played an influential role in the run-up to the American Revolution by providing a theological justification for declaring independence from England.

Universalist ministers chosen to give the Election Day sermon in Massachusetts included Paul Dean in 1831 and Alonzo Ames Miner in 1884. Miner, a leader in the temperance movement, used the sermon to attack the use of alcoholic beverages and the traffic in liquor.

Perhaps most notable was the Election Day sermon delivered by Unitarian minster William Ellery Channing in 1830, entitled Spiritual Freedom. He argued that “civil and political liberty” were of little value if individuals did not possess an inner freedom of the spirit. Channing was concerned that Americans tended to put an “idolatrous trust” in free institutions, believing that they can, by a kind of magic, “secure our rights; however we enslave ourselves to evil passions.” In moving rhetoric, Channing declared, “I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, … which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come.... I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect… I call that mind free, which is not passively framed by outward circumstance, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles…. I call that mind free, which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on old virtue, which does not enslave itself to precise rules…. I call that mind free, which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged with others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.”

My Election Day sermon is simple. Vote!

Everything is Holy Now

2010-10-27T15:27:00.000-06:00

Peter Mayer, a Minnesota singer and songwriter, performed at General Assembly. He is a Unitarian Universalist and is perhaps best known for his wonderful song, Blue Boat Home, but I have been totally enraptured by his song, Everything is Holy Now” (click for a You Tube video), which he performed in worship at GA. My wife, Carol, purchased a CD with that song on it and we listened to it driving from Minnesota to Pittsburgh and then back to Denver.

The song is biographical in the sense that Mayer grew up in the Catholic Church. He studied theology and music in college and attended two years at a seminary before he decided that the priesthood wasn’t for him. The song begins with the following lyrics:
“When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow”

And then for Mayer everything changed. Those changes likely brought him to Unitarian Universalism, but they also reflect a spiritual maturity that informs how he sees and relates to the world. The lyrics continue
“Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now.”

He goes back to the past again:
“When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still."

And back to now:
“But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle.”

He clearly would have been at home among our Transcendentalist forbearers who turned to nature to look for divinity. And so he continues:
“Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all.”

And this presents all of us with a challenge daily.
"So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one.”

Of course, he is not talking about miracles that defy the laws of the universe. He is talking about the miraculous nature of the universe flowing out of the Big Bang and continuing on this planet through the equally amazing and miraculous process of evolution. For him as for Emerson (and me), everything is a miracle.
“When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it.”

Mayer pulls a Platonic influence into the song, acknowledging the philosopher’s belief that the material world was somehow a poor copy of the non-material world of forms, which possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. And so Mayer sings,
“It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now.”

In the end, Mayer reforms religious language just like Emerson, Thoreau, and those other Transcendentalists.
“Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done.”

It is interesting to read the impact of his music in parts of the Christian community. Some are repelled and others are enamored. Of course as Mayer says himself, “As a songwriter I enjoy leaving room for people to find their own kind of faith reflected in my songs. I often do try to focus on what people have in common—religious beliefs, shared citizenry of the world. [I want my songs to] bridge those barriers, so [my songs don’t] favor one theology.”

“This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now.”

Indeed!

Change is Good! You Go First!

2010-10-27T15:02:00.001-06:00

I cannot make pie crust. My mother has told me and shown me how countless times and I still can’t do it. The simple ingredients simply do not coalesce as required to actually assume a coherent, pie-like shape under the rolling pin. None-the-less, I did learn how to make bread. It wasn’t easy and, in the end the recipes failed me, but I learned how. The problem for me was always how much flour to use, which depended on the flour and humidity and other things over which I had no control. Measuring the amount of flour that I was supposed to use was a necessary place to begin. In the end, however, it became for me both a matter of feel as I kneaded the dough and what the surface of the dough looked like after some serious kneading.

I use the image of making bread, because it is, for me, an image of transformation. It involves second order change, which is qualitatively different than first order change.

Much of what we do in life involves either no change; we really do like our routines and habits, or first order change, which involves a logical extension between past and current practices. It is doing more or less of what we are already doing. First order change is reversible, which means it’s relatively easy to change our mind and abandon the project. New learning is not required and the story of what we are doing remains essentially unchanged.

Second order change is deciding or being forced to do something in a radically different way than you have done it before. It typically involves a new way of seeing things. It might begin informally, but it does require new learning and the creation of a new story to explain and to make sense of things. And it involves transformation, which is to say profound, qualitative changes in who you are and what you do, changes that make a discernible difference. Real second order change is irreversible because the avenues to returning to the old way are no longer viable options. This is to say that we won’t go back even if we could because the old story no longer works for us.

To speak of bread as a symbol of transformation is to speak literally and metaphorically. Master Baker Peter Reinhart talked about the series transformations that occur that result in bread. Wheat is grown, harvested and converted into flour. Flour is combined with water, salt and yeast and becomes alive as the bread rises. The bread is baked and becomes for us the staff of life, a necessary food staple to sustain human life, to sustain our life as we partake of the bread.

Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies said that “the purpose of life is to grow a soul.” To say this is to suggest that at birth there are many ways in which we can express our humanity as we grow and some of these involve the essence of who we are.

It seems to me that we come to religious community with a deep yearning for more: more meaning, more purpose, and more connection. We come with a holy discontent and the desire for transformation. Using the journey metaphor, we come in search of a path and fellow-pilgrims to accompany us on the journey. Unitarian Universalist minister Michael Schuler writes that people come to our churches because, “They have become frustrated with a life that feels shallower, more tedious, and less intrinsically meaningful than it should.” They want “a fresh perspective, a renewed sense of purpose, and the possibility of greater daily gladness.”

The container for this work is at hand. It is this religious community. The invitation is simple: take up the soul work that calls to you. Proceed with diligence, commitment, and compassion and you will be amazed at the growth that will eventually occur. As Richard Holloway said, the trick is “to change elegantly rather than awkwardly when the time is ripe.”

Alive in the Mystery

2010-10-27T14:56:00.001-06:00

Our religious tradition draws on six religious sources. The first is, “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which move us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.” Religion begins with experience, not with words. Annie Dillard writes, “At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.” Dillard knew what our forebears, the Transcendentalists, knew: nature itself is a scripture to be read, studied, and understood. The cathedral that provided them with the most profound inspiration was the world of nature. In his essay, Nature, Emerson wrote, “Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.” This last phrase, “glad to the brink of fear,” is a way of describing the powerful impact of awe when we are seized by an experience. It can be awe-full or awful, the intersection of excitement and dread. His focus is on that experience, which is all that he needs.

The word miracle comes from a Latin root that means “to wonder at.” Or, as a Pennsylvania Dutch idiom explains, “It wonders me.” Look at the beauty, complexity, grandeur, and mystery of the world. Does it wonder you? Does it evoke a sense of “transcending mystery?” Thinking back to my childhood, I remember what wondered some of my friends. For Billy Heme, the youngest child on our street, it was, as he so aptly and raptly called them, wiggle worms. When I came home from the hospital when I was eight because of a bike accident in which I broke my collar bone, he gave me a small container of earth worms as a welcome home gift. Priceless! For Eddie Wagner, who we called Little Eddie because he had the same first name as his father, it was the crayfish in the spring driven creek beside his house. We would spend hours on a Saturday wading through the water, overturning rocks, and trying to catch these marvelous creatures. For my sister, it may have been ladybugs or the dandelion bouquets that she picked for our mother. For me, many wonders: buckeyes, osage oranges, cicadas, butterflies, lightning bugs, Japanese beetles, full moons, thunderstorms, rainbows, and much more. Alive in the mystery.

Rachel Carson wrote, “If a child is to keep alive his [or her] inborn sense of wonder... [the child]…needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with [the child]…the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” As a child, I was fortunate to have adults who companioned in me a sense of mystery through gardening, fishing, and reverence for nature. I have worked to do the same with my daughters. When we lived in Pittsburgh, I would take LinsiAn for walks around our neighborhood to take in the beauty of flowers and trees and the slow procession of the seasons. This past year, LinsiAn, MerriLyn, and I began taking walks along a trail near our home that runs alongside a creek that is lined with cottonwood trees. We were all mesmerized by the clouds of cottony, silky white fibers strewn along the path as the trees sent forth the tiny brown seeds that bore the promise of more trees. Alive in the mystery.

Someone said, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” This is an invitation to life, each day, an invitation to explore mystery, consider possibility, and create meaning and purpose. The truth is that each of us is a puzzle, each a mystery to our self and to others, as they are to us. This means that our opportunities for growth are lifelong and profound. We swing on the pendulum of life as Don Vaughn-Foerster suggests, alternating between seeking to penetrate the ultimate mystery of life and simply trying to live this day well. Our religious tradition invites us to experience the mystery of life, to ask questions. Some of our best questions are those that will never yield to answers, but they keep the quest for life alive in us. This is why Einstein said, “Never lose a holy curiosity,” for with a holy curiosity you will always find yourself alive in the mystery.

Come, Yet Again, Come

2010-10-27T14:47:00.000-06:00

So why get out of the bed and come to church?

Come because life is a puzzle that often eludes our desperate search for a solution or at least some understanding. And we are a puzzle to our self and others. As Norman Maclean observed in the book, A River Runs Through It, “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.” This is a place to sort out the pieces, to make some sense of the emerging pattern, making it possible to fill in the spaces with missing pieces.

Come because there is still within you, regardless of your age or life experience, an acorn that yearns to become an oak tree, or a drop of water that could become a river, then a waterfall, then an ocean of possibility, or a flower that is about to bloom. There is always the challenge of becoming more nearly yourself, of completing your life before death ends it. There is a Hasidic tale intended to remind us of what is at stake here. “Before his death Rabbi Zusya said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”

Come simply out of need, realizing that you are not self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived. George Odell wrote, “We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs. We need one another in the hour defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again. We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey. All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.” You need to know that here you will find gentle hands and hearts. You need to know that your gentle hands and heart are needed to create and sustain the beloved community.

Albert Schweitzer said, “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.” Come because the flame of your being needs to be rekindled through music and silence and poetry. Or you might come willing to be the one to rekindle the light of another person.

Come out of despair in. We will offer you comfort, hope, and a song: “Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving/ Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again come.”

Come out of a sense of profound reverence. This is the practice of Namaste: “the God in me greets the God in you.” This is an awareness of the need to cultivate desire, desire for Life, for the holy, for God or for the Goddess, for whatever you consider most precious and profound. Coming here on a Sunday morning could be and perhaps should be a spiritual practice that you do for the good of your soul. Unitarian minister, A. Powell Davies said that, “The purpose of life is to grow a soul.” The Quakers would ask, “How is it with thy soul?” Let us risk asking that question. Let us risk finding answers worthy of our desire.

Come because you are trying to make sense of those things that make it impossible for you to sleep through the night. I am reminded of Paul Simon’s song, The Obvious Child. “Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself/ How it's strange that some rooms are like cages/ Sonny's yearbook from high school/ Is down from the shelf/ And he idly thumbs through the pages/ Some have died/ Some have fled from themselves/ Or struggled from here to get there/ Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls/ Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair.” Now we become real. Now we admit to sorrow and regret, the profound need for forgiveness, especially self-forgiveness; the need for healing, even the need for salvation by which I mean wholeness. Now we accept our mistakes and failures, willing to have them teach us as we choose authenticity over artifice, depth over convenience.

Come because you finally accept the premise, as I have, that life is a hire wire act without a net. There is no way forward but forward and you must risk who you are, which means risking everything, in the service of who you might become. Mary Oliver wrote, “When it's over, I want to say: all my life/ I was a bride married to amazement./ I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms./ When it's over, I don't want to wonder/ if I have made of my life something particular, and real./ I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,/ or full of argument./ I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Come without expectation, but willing to place yourself in a sanctuary of possibility. You might come because you are intent on creating the Beloved Community, one worthy of your commitment, knowing that your presence is essential to that undertaking. You might come out of a sense of holy discontent demanding that together we fulfill the incredible promise of our faith. You might even come with a sense of urgency knowing that it is the only way to make a difference in whatever time you have remaining.

What if it all means Hallelujah?

2010-10-27T14:36:00.001-06:00

Our religious tradition was powerfully transformed by the work of the 19th century German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher who placed experience at the center of the religious life. The fruit of experience is meaning, which is more a felt response to life than something that we can explain in words or defend with reason. T.S. Eliot cautioned that people too often, "...had the experience but missed the meaning." We miss the meaning if we fail to reflect on our experience, to let it speak to us. Parker Palmer writes, "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."

What does it mean? Nothing! Everything! Many things! Only this one thing! What does it mean? This song. That poem. The canvass hanging in the museum. The piece of art on the refrigerator door created by a five-year old. The first kiss. The death of a loved one. The wild flowers in the field beside the road. The architect's dream captured in a building. The bouquet of flowers on the table and the meal that we share made with many ingredients including love. That snow-capped mountain in the distance or the aspen grove through which we have been driving.

What does it mean that increasingly, when I have the occasion to say the pledge of allegiance, I am moved to tears? I could try to explain why that happens, but such an explanation would trivialize the experience and its meaning.

What does it mean? What do you mean? What does our life together mean? These questions yield answers in reflection, in conversation, in listening to the stories that others tell, stories in which you see reflected some of the meanings of your own life. These questions yield answers in the silence, in sanctuary, in worship, and in the dark of night.

Here in the search for truth, we find that we are with others who are like-minded. Here in the search for meaning, we find that we are with others who are like-hearted. Here, in the search, the beloved community is born: a resource for meaning-making, a companion on life's journey.

To bring this reflection to a close, I find myself returning to popular culture generally, and the movie, Shrek (2001), specifically. In that movie the song, Hallelujah, written by Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen in 1984 is a tribute to the love affair between Shrek and Princess Fiona. It was performed by Welsh musician John Cale.

Cale's version begins with this verse: "Now I've heard there was a secret chord/ That David played, and it pleased the Lord/ But you don't really care for music, do you?/ It goes like this/ The fourth, the fifth/ The minor fall, the major lift/ The baffled king composing Hallelujah/ Hallelujah/ Hallelujah/ Hallelujah/ Hallelujah." (This link is to a YouTube version that I partiularly like: Hallejuah).

What does my marriage mean? Hallelujah!
What do my daughters mean? Hallelujah!
What does this church mean? Hallelujah!
What does my life mean? Hallelujah!
What does being alive mean? Hallelujah!
What about finding and traveling a pathway to meaning? Hallelujah!

But the song is not simply one of joy and praise. Cohen also writes, "And even though/ It all went wrong/ I'll stand before the Lord of Song/ With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah" If I understand this verse correctly then I must also ask, "What do the times that my heart has broken mean?" Hallelujah!

Spiritual Memoir

2010-10-27T13:58:00.000-06:00

Poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “The world is made up of stories, not atoms.” Catherine Ann Jones added, “Without story, we do not exist. The power of story is how we discover who we are.” Finally, James Carroll observed, “The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative is holy…. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us.”

What is the story of your life? It is an important question because, to paraphrase Søren Kierkegaard, we live our lives forward, but can only understand them backward. There are two spiritual practices that allow us to write about, reflect on, and ultimately own our own life in a profound way. One involves journal writing, the other is spiritual memoir.

Henry David Thoreau began journaling on October 22, 1837 at the suggestion of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau’s first entry recounted the conversation with Emerson: “‘What are you doing now?’ he asked. ‘Do you keep a journal?’ So I make my first entry today.” Thoreau’s journaling continued for 25-years comprising more than 7,000 manuscript pages and two million words. It started as a record of experiences, observations, and ideas, became a writer’s notebook involving introspection and composition, and evolved into the foundational work of his life. His journal was the source of much of his published writing. Thoreau wrote faithfully, often 15 pages a day, and thus owned his life in a way that few people do. We need not be as prolific as Thoreau to reflect profoundly on our life. While a diary is a description of one’s experiences, a journal is also a reflection on those experiences in an attempt to make meaning of experience.

Philip Zaleski defines spiritual writing as “poetry or prose that deals with the bedrock of human existence—why we are here, where we are going and how we can comport ourselves with dignity along the way.” Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew outlines three characteristics of spiritual memoir. 1.) “the writer of spiritual memoir works to uncover, probe, and honor what is sacred within his or her own life story; …2.) writing itself becomes a means for spiritual growth. … and 3.) The writer works to tell his or her story in such a way that the experience of the sacred is made available….”

Our spiritual memoir can begin with the creation of a timeline that attempts to uncover the depth of our life and the formative experiences that have shaped us. These include the homes we lived in, the people who influenced us, the places we went that were filled with meaning, peak experiences that continue to resonate, as well as the crises encountered and the losses that remain healed or unhealed. It also includes the “ah-hahs”—those precious glimpses of wisdom. As these dimensions of the timeline of our life are fleshed out, themes that characterize different phases of our lives begin to emerge. And for each theme there is at least one story, a signature if you will, that illustrates the theme. Recollecting these stories and sharing them deepens our understanding of our own life. And with each retelling, there can be small shifts in understanding simply because our perspective is enlarged.

It is impossible to begin our spiritual memoir at the beginning of our own life because, in truth, we were born into the middle of a story that was already in progress, one greatly influenced by our parents to be sure, but also by previous generations and historical circumstance.

What is your story? If you don't tell it, who can?

John's Garden

2010-10-27T10:49:00.000-06:00

The annual ritual of transforming pumpkins into jack 'o lanterns is upon us. For our congregation, this ritual has become more precious. We are part of an interfaith group of 12 congregations (i.e., Jewish, Episcopal, United Methodist, Roman Catholic, Disciples of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist) that work with Habitat for Humanity of Denver. Known as the Habitat Interfaith Alliance, their mission "is to utilize the energy and commitment of their faith communities to build homes for families in need, while building a foundation for interfaith trust, communication and understanding." We just completed our eighth home, and now begin raising the $85,000 necessary to build the next one. It all begins with our annual pumpkin patch fundraiser where pumpkins eventually become nails, shingles, windows, plywood, wallboard and all of the other materials necessary to build a home.

Knowing how much my daughters will enjoy the creative process of transforming a pumpkin into a jack 'o lantern, as so many children do, I wanted to share Peter Mayer's delightful song, John's Garden. The You Tube link to John's Garden

Farmer John wandered back
And when he reached the pumpkin patch, began to speak.
He said, "The weather's getting colder,
Summer's over and it's almost Halloween.
That's the day, the reason you were raised
When everything about your life will change.

You will have eyes to see, and for that night, you'll be
A bright lamp burning in the darkness.
But remember that candle shines for only the briefest time
In a jack-o-lantern's heart."

The pumpkins held a meeting then;
Some were very apprehensive and afraid.
"Could this really happen to us?
What could be the meaning?" is what they were saying.
"This is home, it's all we've ever known."
Then one bold, outspoken pumpkin spoke.

He said,
"I don't need eyes to see, it sounds like a lie to me,
I like it just fine here in John's garden.
And remember that candle shines for only the briefest time
In a jack-o-lantern's heart."

There is much to ask and to ponder in the pumpkin patch
When imposing old October shows up at last.

Then a pumpkin from the farther end
Who had been silent up till then
Over the commotion, said
"What would you rather have my friends,
A chance to shine, or die here on the vine?
The better way seems very plain to me.

You will have eyes to see, and for that night, you'll be
A bright lamp burning in the darkness.
And maybe that candle shines for only the briefest time
In a jack-o-lantern's heart,
Oh, but one goblin's smile should make it all well worth while,
You know you might even see the starlight.
And knowing that time is brief, makes it that much more sweet
When you have a jack-o-lantern's heart."

What is True for You?

2010-10-14T08:48:00.001-06:00

In his meditation manual, Noisy Stones, Unitarian Universalist minister Robbie Walsh writes, “A friend asked me to try my hand at rewriting the Ten Commandments. She wanted something to tape to the door of the fridge. I only came up with nine. But then I spent much less time on this than it took Moses to climb the mountain.” Following are his proposed commandments:

1. You shall not worship the finite and conditional as if it were the ultimate.
2. You shall keep to a rhythm of work and rest in the spirit of the Sabbath.
3. You shall keep your promises.
4. You shall tell the truth.
5. You shall try to make amends for the things you break.
6. You shall honor the people who give and sustain life.
7. You shall honor the earth.
8. You shall grant to others the same rights to life, liberty, and property that you claim for yourself.
9. You shall be kind.

Walsh’s commandments are a gentle reminder that we must seek our own sources of authority as we struggle both to know what is true and how to live our lives. These sources of authority include reason, intuition, personal experience, the natural world, science, our religious heritage, and revelation. We use them individually or in combination to discover truth (with a small “t”), for we are understandably cautious of capital “T” Truth that insists that we end our quest(ioning). As theologian Paul Tillich correctly observed, all too often “the passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.” Sometimes it is necessary to take the position that undisputed authority has no weight and that the dispute is the scale by which authority is weighed.

The integrity of our search for truth is critical. Paul Tillich advised, “Don't give in too quickly to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Don't be seduced into a truth which is not your own....” This can require the willingness to live with a certain amount of uncertainty and ambiguity until we arrive at our own truths. We need, however, to persist in our truth seeking, to find what is true for ourselves, and to live our lives out of that truth. The process is ongoing.

Some of our truths will last a lifetime, while others will be left behind as markers of our own evolution. This winnowing process occurs as we balance commitment to our truths with a willingness to revise our thoughts and actions based on new information and experience. Such a balance helps us from becoming dogmatic about our truth. One method of truth-testing is to seriously consider the truth statements of others that we do not believe to be true. Niels Bohr suggested that such serious consideration may result in paradox. He writes, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

What is true for you? What are the insights out of which you live your life? What commandments would you create to transform your truth into ethical action? And does all of this result in life lived with conviction rather than consistency? In his essay, Self-Reliance, Emerson reminded us, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. …Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.” Emerson also believed that the truth that is unchanging might not be the truth.

Let Us Remember the Mothers

2010-05-03T09:59:00.001-06:00

Let us remember the mothers of small children. May they get some sleep.

Let us remember the mothers who carpool. May they know when to tune in and tune out.

Let us remember the mothers of teenagers. May they have the patience, wisdom, forbearance, and humor that each day requires.

Let us remember the mothers of grown children. May they take pleasure in the work they have done, and if they are blessed with grandchildren, may they delight a lot and spoil a little.

Let us remember those who are about to have children. May this journey bring them great joy.

Let us remember the mothers who have adopted a child. May each be a blessing to the other.

Let us remember the women who have no children, for how could mothers do without their friendship?

Let us remember the mothers who have lost a child and the children that have lost a mother. May we offer them our deepest sympathy for this forever grief.

Let us remember the mothers whose children are not as other children. May they remember that “what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one sees rightly.”

Let us remember the grandmothers and great-grandmothers. May their gift of love traverse the generations.

Hope - Sketch #2

2010-04-27T16:58:00.002-06:00

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

2010-04-22T10:20:00.000-06:00

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

2010-04-21T17:23:00.003-06:00

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

2010-04-19T09:18:00.003-06:00

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

2010-04-09T12:13:00.000-06:00

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

2010-04-07T09:22:00.003-06:00

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

2010-04-02T08:11:00.001-06:00

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

2010-04-01T10:29:00.002-06:00

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.

To Be Born Again

2010-03-31T09:05:00.000-06:00

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

2010-03-29T09:15:00.003-06:00

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

2010-03-26T12:45:00.003-06:00

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

2010-03-25T11:54:00.002-06:00

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

2010-03-24T12:12:00.002-06:00

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

2010-03-23T09:18:00.002-06:00

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

2010-03-22T09:49:00.003-06:00

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?

2010-03-19T14:13:00.003-06:00

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?

2010-03-18T09:27:00.003-06:00

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!

2010-03-17T10:19:00.005-06:00

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?

2010-03-16T11:33:00.001-06:00

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

2010-03-15T10:05:00.002-06:00

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

2010-03-08T08:44:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:43:00.004-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:30:00.002-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:28:00.001-07:00

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?

2010-03-03T09:26:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:25:00.002-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:24:00.002-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:03:00.002-07:00

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

2010-03-03T09:00:00.004-07:00

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

2010-03-03T08:59:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-03T08:58:00.002-07:00

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.