A Jersey Girl in Kentucky

Practice Makes IMperfect.... Week 15-ish of sabbatical

2012-01-26T10:20:00.000-05:00

Well, I am counting down the weeks LEFT in my sabbatical now. Not altogether with trepidation, because I am actually feeling energized and ready to get back to work. I love almost everything about what I do and the people I do it with, especially the women who are my staff team. Sometimes I just marvel at how our church and I could be so blessed to have such a group of intelligent, compassionate, and courageous women serving us. They are beyond compare.

Replace Terese with Kate! We need a new Staff photo...

It's a bit like getting to what you think might be the halfway point in life, passing the middle of one's sabbatical. I make a bucket list: what had I hoped to accomplish that I haven't yet done? My goals were a bit ambitious. I will not be going to Haiti, not now, but I have made several solid contacts for a future trip. I didn't work on Mountain Top Removal, as I had hoped to. Part way into the time, I realized that the sabbatical needed to be a little more inwardly focused, so I put the service and advocacy dreams on the back burner.

There will always be social justice work to do...

I did renew my primary spiritual practice, which is Buddhist meditation, and, most importantly, found a potential sangha with which to share this important part of my life... there are days when I think that if that were all I had accomplished, it would be enough! I feel very blessed to have found a great teacher and a place to learn and practice not far from home.

This is actually Ireland, not Kentucky.

What happens with a regular meditation practice differs with each individual, of course, but I think it is safe to say that with regular and diligent practice, destructive habit energy is minimized and positive ways of approaching life and its challenges gradually emerge. For me, that means I become less perfectionist and more accepting of imperfection (aka being human), my own as well as others'. I find that I am more tolerant, patient, and content. I notice that many times my thoughts of discouragement, worry, anxiety, or fear can be easily transformed into gratitude and even delight.

Eric, Cyn, Marjorie, Colin & Seth at Mar's HS graduation.

For example, it's not easy living in a small modular home this muddy and rainy winter with FIVE people (during the month Marjorie was home) and two indoor animals. But I have so much to be grateful for. My children love each other unconditionally.

Seth & Marjorie

Seth has so many people who adore and care for him. His life, which may very well have turned out quite differently, is full of people, extended family and caregivers and teachers who cherish him for who he is. I can't say enough about the school he attends, North Washington County Elementary! (If you click here, http://www.washington.kyschools.us/nwes/default.htm, you will see his Principal kissing a pig which is held by the Asst. Principal.) I couldn't have asked for a group of people who are more nurturing, patient, and giving. I feel that my life has come full circle, and my youngest child will be blessed with the same small town, K-8 country school atmosphere that I grew up in. Beyond compare!

Some of the UUCL Worship Associates!

I am also grateful for the amazing Worship Team and all of the Board and Leadership at UUCL who have carried on with such incredible efficiency and perseverance so that I can enjoy this respite. Toni O' Neil! .. and everyone who is working hard to keep the momentum going.

I regularly thank the universe for my good husband, who is really enamored with our Seth, and puts a huge amount of energy into his care, for my daughter Marjorie, who is out there taking life by the horns with courage and grit, and, I must admit most of all, for my sons, who have given me the greatest gift I could ever receive, and one I had almost given up on, their sobriety. I know we are all blessed far beyond anything we deserve. Who needs perfection? Life is very, very good.

Casey with his friends, the incomparable Jennifer & Joan, and the birdhouse he made them for Xmas.

See you all soon!

WEIRD LITTLE WAYS. 14 weeks in...

2012-01-12T10:57:00.001-05:00

By Pema Chodron

WHAT IT IS TO BE HUMAN

"Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether."

(Start Where You Are)
From Shambhala Heart Advice of the Week

I like to organize things. This is what I did with Seth's LEGOS (most handed down from Casey, Colin & Marje). They are organized by size and shape (not color...!!) I guess you could say this is one of my weird little ways. Is it a virtue or a vice? Like SOOOO many things (thinking, for example) it can be an important component of a healthy, balanced life, but it could, if taken too far, overwhelm your life, your time, your family... and be a self-defeating behaviour.

Also, I have learned that it is impossible to organize UUs and/or UU congregations.

What Pema Chodron is talking about is what happens to us when we dedicate some time each day, each week, to meditation and endeavor to live a life of mindful awareness and HONESTY.

She is so right.. it can be PAINFUL and EMBARRASSING.

This is Seth and Eric watching TV and eating popcorn.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying food and nothing wrong with watching a bit of TV. But Buddhism teaches rightly that TV (especially certain programs), addictions, especially alcohol, drugs, and food, and certain kinds of technology are ALL ways that humans escape our true humanity, and hide from our true selves.

Meditation and mindfulness are so helpful when it comes to managing, not necessarily eliminating completely, these sources of shutting down.

So, one goal of a sabbatical is to create the space and the time to be truly uncomfortable, to face and move through the painful realities of your own weird little ways, to become more human.

Below is our Nativity scene as it looked when I put it away (organizing!). Where was Mary going? She looks like she is creeping away from the manger. I can SO identify with this! Mary will NEVER be anything other than Jesus' mum. At 14, all of her dreams were pre-eliminated. I took the picture because it really triggered a strong reaction in me: Get outta there, Mary! Go while you can!

Now everyone who knows me knows how devoted I am to my children. On Feb. 1st, Casey will turn THIRTY and Seth will be seven. I will have been a mom with kids dependent upon me for 30 years straight. Ministry has been such a gift to me, because it has given me a way to be someone else, too, and to serve and give to people beyond my own four children. But sabbatical has been a time to step back from THAT identity, to ask who/what else am I in addition to being a UU minister?

When my days as a parish minister end, will I be just a mom, waiting to be a grandmom? How will I use the gifts and skills that ministry has helped me find? These questions can be answered most cleary and HONESTLY with a regular meditation practice and a TEACHER/Guide.

I have been thinking a great deal about eggs because we are finding about three a day, courtesy of our chickens.

We hatched the chicks and roosters in July from eggs, so what a miraculous and yet simple event it is to see the cycle come full around. Life is such as this. We take on these identities and facades, but as we quiet down in our later years, we come back in some ways to who we always were.

Who I have always been is still within me, improved and burnished, I hope, and cleared of a few of the worst of my flaws, but nonetheless quite clear. I am a reader and a thinker who absolutely loves to study. I am creative and my creativity mostly leads to writing and cooking. I love children and old people. I love stories. I am a collector of history and family photographs. I love to travel and meet new people even though I am by nature extremely shy. I am optimistic, too honest at times, faithful, a caretaker, moody, reclusive, and slightly impulsive. I have a well of joyful expression that likes most of all to dance and cavort outside. I am happiest away from crowds and with easy access to trees and flowers and rocks. I am passionate about honesty and truth-telling. I LOVE to laugh.

Below is a house that I adore, not far from our farm.

If/when we sell our house in Lexington, we will build a house on our farm, and making the plans is a true opportunity to assess what is of value and to prioritize the remaining years of your life.

When I was ordained, I was told by a mentor that ministry is the only job where you are paid to be a human being. Sounds easy? It ain't! To be fully human is very hard, and the work of a lifetime.

Finally, a question that arose: Did I disengage from the congregation in order to conduct this experiment in being human? I would say yes and no. Not a day has passed that I did not think with love, pride, concern, worry, fear, or delight upon members of our church. Yet, when I was called to return rather quickly to my minister-identity in order to help with Nancy's memorial service, I found it a strangely disorienting experience to put that persona back on. It was like trying to find a path back to the main trail when hiking, or like trying to come up from a dream when in a deep sleep. I realized how disengaged I had become, not from the people but from the ROLE. What that tells me is that my return to being human is a success, and I only pray that I can carry its lessons back into my ministerial duties!

SABBATICAL WEEK 12: Halfway... and a New Year's wish.

2012-01-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

- Neil Gaiman

This post WOULD have been up a week ago, had my Internet here at Innisfree not been misbehaving. Turns out, I had moved the lil MIFI gadget because of all of our Christmas decorations and now that I've put it back where it was, all is well. Some things have much simpler solutions than we imagine!

(The egg above is the first one produced by our chickens, you remember the ones that we hatched from eggs last Spring? Doesn't Eric look like a proud papa?)

This is an angel mouse... Seth and I made it and he gave it to his teacher. I try to make all our craft projects out of things we already have around. This was made with bits of paper, old wrapping paper, cardboard cut from cereal and cracker boxes, glue & a bit of glitter. I don't believe in angels, exactly, but I believe in Grace. Tell you why.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the surface of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise. ~ Annie Dillard

Casey, Seth, Marjorie & Eric ~~ Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve bonfire after church service: Innisfree

Casey & Seth, my oldest & youngest, both born on February 1st.

Casey gave (almost) everyone tools. Seth wore his carpentry apron all day!

Duchess has one talent... she can open presents! Casey & Colin.

Colin gave almost everyone POLO clothes/shoes/accessories. Mar gave almost everyone SMITH COLLEGE wear!

My kids. Everyone together on Xmas day, all are clean & sober. Grace of God and the miracle of the AA programs. This is a first in at least ten years. SOOOOOOO blessed, and they have worked so hard. Believe me when I say I never thought it would happen.

This is my cat Vashti, ready to sit near me while I finish out all the reading I have planned for my dwindling sabbatical afternoons! See you all... SOON!

PS. Don't forget to surprise yourself!!

WEEK NINE! Checking in.

2011-12-12T16:52:00.000-05:00

A NJ beach house, long gone, called FLYING FISH... the setting for my novel.

I told you I was writing a novel. DONE!

This is such a crazy idea, writing an entire novel in one month, but thousands of people do it every year. The website is http://www.nanowrimo.org/

When I finished my 50,000 words, on November 30th, and went to the site to confirm my completion, I discovered that the NaNoWriMo people do not trust your word: you have to paste the 50,000 words into a window, after which they verify that you are indeed a WINNER!

I decided to do this for several reasons. I can't travel much during the sabbatical, but I thought writing a piece of fiction would take me away and provide some virtual travel, through time and space.

I wanted to learn more about what it's like to write everyday, to have some discipline about writing, and to understand the creative process by virtue of my own experience. It was challenging, fun, and very rewarding. I actually love the results, and plan to go on and edit them, and send the novel.. somewhere.

NOW... my December plans:

These are going to be MUCH more difficult than writing a novel.

Have you seen the Discovery Channel show about Kentucky's Turtle Man? We actually met him! He's from Lebanon, which is near our Washington County farm.

Seth with Turtle Man....

I have been called "Turtle Mom" because I spend so much time alone, and I've been challenged to come out of my shell. So... I've been making some plans for social interaction. That probably sounds easy to most folks, but for me.. not so much. I actually prefer to be alone! But I have put out some calls and e-mails, and I'm setting up some get-togethers. I really enjoy people, love listening to their stories, and exchanging ideas. But I just have a hard time getting out there, like many of my fellow introverts. I'll let you know how this is going.

Meanwhile, I have been staying in touch with some far away friends, like our Partner Church members in Nyomat. Here's one of our scholarship recipients, a reminder that we'll need to fund that scholarship again soon!

Cseh Edit, daughter of our Partner Church lay President, in her traditional dance costume

Finally, I have returned to a formal meditation practice! I completed a weekend Contemplative retreat at a Buddhist/Christian meditation center not far from here, and I have plans to become more involved. This was a major goal of my sabbatical because, since my knee replacement, I have been unable to sustain the kind of sitting needed for a strong practice. Let me report that my new knees held up just fine, and I was so delighted to be "home" in my beloved Buddhist practice.

The other joy of my sabbatical has been reading! I'll share some of the books I've finished in a future post. Meanwhile.. here's Seth. He's growing and thriving, and I'm off to pick him up now! Love You All!

Week Sex/ I Mean Six... of sabbatical

2011-11-16T17:12:00.000-05:00

I promised I would "check in" via this blog about my sabbatical activities. I have been on leave for six weeks, and I have too little of interest to report!

What am I doing? I am trying to live what I preach: Life one day at a time; practicing presence and awareness; valid and productive introspection; honoring and making space for creativity.

Since November 1st, I've taken part in a project called NaNoWriMo, a great opportunity to write enough words to constitute an entire novel in one month's time. I have a feeling the novel itself will not be anything earth-shattering. But the process has been well worth the time and effort.

I have learned a great deal about motivation, about how imagination works, about how important story is to forming our lives and our sensibilities. Like most, but not all, of my fiction, the novel is heavily, but not entirely, autobiographical. To write it, I have spent many hours attempting to evoke the sensory elements of a place far away, long ago, and indeed, altogether gone from the earth. It's a house I spent a part of each summer in as a child, a house set on the beach at the Jersey shore, a very old and in many ways magical house. In addition to memories that are based upon real events and characters that are modeled after some of the incredibly quirky real people I've known, there are invented characters, imagined events, and a good dose of introspection.

I think what motivated me to visit this particular place and time of life is that the really dreadful MTV series JERSEY SHORE captured the fascination of people from L.A. to Italy, and that those of us who actually grew up at or near the REAL Jersey shore know that it has absolutely nothing to do with a very special and very precious place and way of life. I don't want to romanticize it, either, so even though the place is magical, there is also a healthy dose of suffering, grief, and struggle.

This photo of Long Beach Island is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Meanwhile, the backdrop to my writing and musing has been a scandal that one would have to be far more isolated than I am to avoid -- the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse allegations. Like many people for whom this is an all-too-pertinent issue, including but not limited to fellow clergy and others in the helping professions, parents and grandparents of small children, and survivors of sex abuse, I was at first angry and indignant and self-righteous.

I happen to know a fantastic young couple who attended and dearly love Penn State. I read and considered what they had to say about their alma mater of just a few years ago. I waited until my own thoughts cleared and I could see what lay below the surface of my rage. Everyone condemns the abuse. That's a no-brainer. The controversy is over the actions of those who knew, but did not do, enough.

It is so easy to be critical and judgmental about this. Most people feel certain they would have said more, made sure it was stopped forever, and so on. Others, like David Brooks in this article, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/brooks-lets-all-feel-superior.html?_r=1

called "Let's All Feel Superior," say that people are really good at "self-deception," and explain it as the Bystander effect, which at some level we are all capable of.

I really had to spend close to a week examining my own soul in this regard. I am not finished. There is a member of my own extended (step-relative) family who I know for a fact committed sexual abuse because I was one victim, and I know the others. I have told this person and many others. I can not do anything legally because this person was not an adult at the time (over 40 years ago). But I still worry that I have not done enough. Short of camping on his doorstep with a sign, how can I be sure that his own step-daughter is not a victim now? This keeps me up at night.

However, I think there are many of us who will not accept Brooks' assertions that we are all just feeling superior when we make judgments about others who ignore/minimize/allow abuse. Some of us don't just THINK we would do more, we have; indeed, we have done it at the risk of relationships, our own popularity, and in some cases our own safety.

In fact, I have reported suspected child abuse and endagerment to authorities in four different states. I have told people who would rather not hear it when I know something they need to know. I have preached about my own victimization and named the person responsible from the pulpit. I have told almost everyone in the family who will listen (most have done nothing). I have reported my own family members, including my own adult children, to authorities when their behaviors (thank God, in the case of the son, it was addiction-related, NOT sex abuse of any kind) placed a small child in danger. None of these things have made me more loved, more appreciated, or more self-righteous. But they do give me the right to say, yes, there are people who can not live with themselves unless they do what they know is right.

By the way, in most of these cases... the so-called authorities did little or nothing, the family members called me a liar or worse, and my whistle-blowing made me look like a blowhard. I would, and will, do it again, in a heartbeat. So, after this first week of introspection, I say this: the life and safety of even ONE child trumps everything. Everything. Period.

Occupy Your Life

2011-11-07T17:06:00.000-05:00

Sabbatical Musings/ Week 5.

Seth suggested the witch costume because my nose is, well, witchy..

I wish I had more exciting things to report. As my sabbatical approached, I found that I had made a decision (by not deciding) that I wouldn't do much traveling. The church does not have the funds to support it, nor do I. Since we decided about five years ago to live within our means rather than charge and borrow, that means sabbaticaling (mostly) at home. And home is rural Washington County, less than an hour but in some ways about thirty years from Lexington!Too, I have a son who needs a great deal of care and attention. It's a joy to be able to be more available to him, in a less distracted way. I can see already that it is having an effect upon his security and behavior.

I didn't have to leave tiny Willisburg to see an awesome WofOz family!!

Up until the break began, I still had a few ideas that involved travel: I hoped to make at least a brief trip to Haiti, since I have felt a pull to be of service there ever since the earthquake, and I have had a vague idea about taking the message of mountain top removal out West, where people are not directly affected, but where they need to know the facts and political realities of this devestating practice. Yet here I am in the second month, and I've made no definite plans. It even occured to me that a few years back, I would have gladly traveled to New York City or Oakland, where a clergy presence is definitely needed at the Occupy Movements. I know many UU ministers, including our one-time intern Pallas Stanford, have gone to these places that there may be a UU presence.

My favorite place in the world..

Somehow it seems enough to me to occupy my own life, one day at a time, listening, watching, and wondering about many things: my writing practice (I am participating in something called NaNoWriMo, which has me trying to pen a novel during the month of November!) ; meditation practice, health and well being, building community, living in rural America, sustainability, parenting, and recovery. Some of these will be active pursuits, others matters of observation and experimentation.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I grew these!

It occurs to me that life passes by swiftly and it can be mercilessly challenging. We can so easily miss it, rushing about and trying to get somewhere. What if everyone were to occupy their own life fully, with the kind of intentional awareness that is so difficult to maintain? Would we not be more compassionate, more sensible, more sane?

Local cemetery on Halloween.

Next week, I'll tell you more about the novel, and the dinner party I attended at the home of a true member of the 1%! And believe me, when I say I'm in favor of occupying our own lives, I am in no way disparaging the OWS movements that are happening everywhere... Au contraire! They excite me and give me hope. They are truly the kind of organic, egalitarian change I have preached about for years with my ramblings on Appreciative Inquiry, New Leadership, and so on. It is an exciting time to be alive, scary too... and to see a spirit of solidarity and rage among our young. Rage is sometimes healthy, and guess what? It doesn't have to be mine. May it grow and may it be heard!

Cynthia Doesn't Live Here Anymore.....

2011-10-27T10:30:00.000-04:00

When we take a break from the routine duties of our lives, there is first a blessed sense of freedom. No weighty obligations or responsibilities beyond the usual family and self-care. What bliss!

Then comes the challenge of open-ended time and the real hard work of trying NOT to fill the time with other duties, tasks and busy-ness. We almost all say we want a break, but really those of us who are wont to be productive are likely to find "breaks" as hard to handle as work. For example, I have been accused of being a "travel-Nazi," filling every moment of family vacations with what I think are worthwhile and educational pursuits. My father instilled this ethic in me. I would call it compulsive productivity. Something must be cooked, written, mailed, cleaned, paid, arranged, created, fixed, etc. every day... preferably all of the above. He had a steady supply of 3x5 index cards upon which he wrote lists every night, right up until his final months of life, of things to accomplish the following day.

So it is not without effort that I have gotten through three weeks of unstructured time.

It's the same phenomenon that keeps most people from sticking with a meditation practice... when we empty our schedules, our minds, our environments of clutter, we are faced with.. ourselves.

It's fascinating to observe the urge to fill the time. To notice the feelings of discomfort, alienation, loneliness, and sadness as they arrive. To acknowledge that so much of my life has been structured around the needs and identities of others, and so much of my identity is wrapped up in being "mom" and "minister" that I am filled with anxiety and apprehension when I am alone and free.

What comes to the surface is anger, regret, confusion, fear, sadness, and even despair. But having long years of practice and study in mindfulness and presence, I know I have the tools to weather this period. On the other side of emptiness is peace of mind.

We took a family vacation of sorts this week, driving to Western Mass. to visit Marjorie at college. It was Family weekend. So, my mom identity was back in place. I have four children ages 6-29, and all of them are still very much in my life at present, so it will take some doing to keep returning to that less comfortable space where I look for me and assess my needs, desires, and plans. But that is my goal, to stay with the emptiness and not fill the days and my mind with the the needs of others, just for awhile, so I can find me. In time, I'll be ready to return to the greater community and serve others from a place of clarity and strength.

Seeing/Being

2011-10-17T15:30:00.000-04:00

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was living it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

~Wendell Berry

I do understand what Berry is saying here.

My first set of kids were small when video cameras became widely available, and some parents really did film almost every moment of their poor kids' lives. Even then, way before I understood the Buddhist maxim of "being" here, now, I knew that it was important to put the camera down and just be present.

But I also think that taking photographs can encourage "seeing," by forcing us to look at the world around us, study the juxtaposition of things and people, and choose the colors, shapes, and moments we wish to preserve. It forces us to appreciate the grandeur of nature and impermanence of the beauty and drama we live with.

This week, I have been breathing, looking around me, noticing, and appreciating.

I have been immersed in gratitude for this space and time to do the things I normally can not, to stop and chat with a merchant, to drive slowly, observing the hues and inhaling the scent of fall leaves, to watch people, who are endlessly fascinating.

I wanted to buy a French butter keeper for my friend in New Jersey, since it's her birthday and I will see her this week. But I needed to look up the name of the potter from whom I got mine two years ago. Finally I found her, and drove to her home, and knocked at the door. She pulled out all of the butter keepers and we talked while I chose one. I drove on to Harrodsburg and studied the mailbox quotations on the farms of the Mennonites. I saw four Amish girls in a discount store looking surreptitiously at a Teen magazine. By the time I got a cart and returned they had disappeared. I picked up the magazine and saw that it was all about Selena Gomez, a popular Latina star. Neither of these things are a big deal, but I treasure them because they took time, which I often do not have.

I drove home a different way. I found a corn maze and saw beautiful rolling hills. More leaves.

Sometimes I feel sad that I almost never have time to just be present to life and to all the visual treasures there are to take in. So my meditation for this week is just to see, to be.

Sabbatical~ Week One

2011-10-11T10:16:00.001-04:00

Stay-cation

Many ministers start their sabbaticals with a vacation, or some travel, just to make a break with the compulsive workload and responsibilities of clergy life. Last sabbatical, I traveled to Romania and, later in the fall, to Great Britain with Eric and Marjorie.

Seth(6) has this entire week off from first grade – “Fall Break”—and Casey (29) is still only partially employed, so my inner travel-nazi wants to GO somewhere! I haven’t traveled anywhere with my eldest for over a decade, and I think we both have preserved memories of camping and hiking trips and cross-country journeys from the years before the complexities of divorce, addiction, and economics put an end to any thing remotely like a family getaway.

But a survey of the bank accounts tells me that even a foray into Tennessee, to see fall in the Smokies, or to Cincinnati, where Seth loves the art museum, are not feasible right now. We’ll stay in Washington County. The elements seem to approve of this decision, because each day is more glorious than the last, weather-wise. The colors are more vibrant at Innisfree, our farm, than they have been in the five years we’ve owned it, and the skies are brilliantly clear, the air warm and dry.

After all, what would you wish for on a vacation? Watching the sun rise and set, good food and wine, art and culture, lots of rest, something great to read, companionship, pampering, and maybe some intellectual stimulation…. Almost all of these can be had right at home, or close to home, with a bit of creativity.

I know I am blessed to have this place to live, where it is so peaceful and so far removed from any of the stresses of the city, but I have also noticed that despite having invited dozens of people to visit, both family and friends from far away and colleagues and acquaintances from Kentucky, only a few make the trek. It’s not far, either… 45 minutes’ drive from the start of the Bluegrass Parkway on Versailles Road! I know there were any number of times when I was exhausted beyond belief, but couldn’t bring myself to make the drive out here, even though I knew how much I’d appreciate it once here.

What I am saying is that, often, peace and serenity are very close at hand, but we do not avail ourselves of them. And, I please guilty to this!

So, this first week of sabbatical, I really did take a sabbath in the traditional sense. I refrained from driving, spending money, and from most sources of electronic media.

I noticed that each day, the sunrise happens in a unique way -- sometimes a gentle rosy glow gives way to a brilliant yellow ball that breaks the horizon; sometimes a startlingly red sky announces a hazy brightening. Each day, nature provides an art display. The hues of changing leaves, the clouds that shift from wispy strokes to puffy wads, the dew that glistens on the ripening pumpkin. Who needs the art museum? Wildlife? We spot coyotes, possums, foxes, deer and wild turkey. My husband brings a tiny green tree frog to show us, and my son brings home a snake that he found on the road.

My hammock, a quarter mile from the house, in a breezy hollow under a huge oak tree, and my Adirondack chair, from which I can survey the activities of swooping birds of prey, are as relaxing as any beach chaise. The wine I stopped and bought at a local winery is dry and satisfying. There is work if I want to work, and rest when I need to rest. I have enough reading to last a decade.

My youngest and I make a scarecrow and decorate the porch for Halloween. My oldest son helps me cook, and I discover that the Hubbard squash we've grown makes great "pumpkin" pies, and the local vegetables make a superb ratatouille. The local Amish market yields the world's best homemade "Long-johns," sumptuous cream-filled confections coated with maple icing. On Saturday, we all three go to Gravel Switch, to see the outhouse races at Penn's Store, an event I have wondered about for the twelve years I have been in Kentucky. It's our most expensive outing of the week; we spend ten dollars on admission and another fifteen on bar-b-que, ribs, and funnel cake. Seth gets his picture taken with Turtle Man, a local hero of sorts who is due to appear on Animal Planet this fall.

The week was not perfect. I was grouchy and irritable some of the time. I couldn't wait to enjoy some solitude, and Seth said, "Mommy!" every three minutes. I wondered when Casey would find employment and worried about bills and college tuition. I felt like I was doing way too much housework and I resented it. My battle cry was, "I did not take a sabbatical to be a maid!" But now it's Monday of Week Two. Casey has a full-time job, Seth's back at school, and Week One is over. It was a time of transition, from being Minister to being Mom. Now, what about "me?" Stay tuned.

Civility, Dignity and Being Right

2011-09-01T14:22:00.000-04:00

3rd in a 3 part series on Conflict

From the place where we are right

Flowers will never grow in the spring

The place where we are right’

Is hard and trampled

Like a yard

But doubts and loves

Dig up the world

Like a mole, a plow

And a whisper will be heard in the place

Where the ruined

House once stood

Yehuda Amichai, Israeli poet

You may have heard a story on NPR about how Popular Mechanics has disproven all of the most commonly touted conspiracy theories about 9/11. I read some of the original articles, interested not so much in the particular theories and the quasi-scientific bases, but in the aspects of human nature that would lead one to persist with these claims when all the evidence is against them. I read this:

Healthy skepticism has curdled into paranoia.

Most (of these theories) are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into the public debate. (PM)

I also found it fascinating that the interviewee said that he had never won an argument with a conspiracy theorist. According to him, even though they say they want "proof," when given proof that does not agree with their preordained conclusion, they will just ask for another investigation. What that tells me is that there is no debate, just people who will only listen to what they have already decided is "right."

The two things I would like us to consider today are, “What is the legitimate public debate?”

And what is “the place where we are right?”

I told you in Part One of this series that I love a good argument. I probably should have considered law as a career, but I have this one flaw.. I am too honest. (Of course there are honest lawyers, but I am way TOO honest, for my own good, sometimes!)

To me, civil discussion, disagreement, even friendly argument is the essence of good conversation. And I am all for healthy skepticism! How could I be a UU otherwise?

But the key word is civil. As soon as civility and dignity have left the stage, the show gets ugly. The public debate ends and the mudslinging, name-calling, character assassination, and low blows begin. Then it is no longer a discussion but a tirade or worse, a tantrum.

Civility and dignity.

How do we maintain them without going over into “niceness,” which squelches and silences legitimate differences of opinion?

Hosea Ballou, early Universalist minister who helped articulate that faith said famously, “If we agree in love, then there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good. Let us endeavor to keep the unity of spirit in the bonds of peace.”

1. We must start by leaving behind the “place where we are right.” Rather than trying to “win,” healthy interchange seeks to find out, to learn, to grow and to encounter “the other.” A good way to start is to ask questions. Two important questions when doing systems work are, “Why this issue?” and “Why now?” These questions get at the relationship issues that often underlie the surface or presenting issues.

2. Focus on self. This is different from focusing on what you want. As Karen Armstrong writes, we must “dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world” and at the same time, we must know who we are and where we begin and end. Self-differentiated persons are far less prone to mob mentality and infectious anxiety which often lead to bad behavior. A self-differentiated person is willing to listen, to learn, and to change.

3. Time to think. Time is essential in situations of conflict. Do not allow someone else’s urgency to become yours. Margaret Wheatley writes, “Thinking is the place where intelligent action begins.” Time and space are essential. So is the ability to breathe. Otherwise, your “thinking” will just be obsessing, ruminating, or worse. Says Rumi: Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk, and this is the edge of the roof.

4. Get outside. We all need to be reminded of the web of life, our deep interconnectedness, and our obligation to preserve the world. In the face of the stars, the vastness of space, the complexity of a spider web, the intricate miracle of a flower lie many answers. We become more humble, more fertile with questions, more intrigued and inspired, and we leave that hard, foreboding ground where we are “right.”

Finally, we must learn to listen well and to treat one another with dignity as well as to have dignity ourselves.

“We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world.” (K.Armstrong, Charter for Compassion)

UU minister Ron Robinson writes:

Civility will not become real in our world with rallies, with books, with speeches and sermons. …What is needed now … for the survival of civil society are relationships of persons seeking the deepest freedom in community, where they are reminded again and again that the good life means getting over the preoccupation with self, that life is not about me and my wants but about serving God through serving the least of these who struggle with needs not wants. We must create newer and better communities dedicated to the practice of civility…

AMEN.

POWER, AUTHORITY, SEX & MYSTERY

2011-08-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

a sermon given at the UU Church of Lexington

{Part 2 in a 3 Part series on conflict}

Hall of Philosophy at Chautauqua Institution

“We have not yet learned how to be together. I believe we have been kept apart by three primary Western cultural beliefs: individualism, competition, and mechanistic world view.” (Margaret Wheatley, 164)

Last week, I had the opportunity to spend several days at Chautauqua Institution, in western NY state, a place that was begun in the 1800s as a religious summer camp, but has evolved into an American Utopia where, for ten weeks every summer, a peaceful community flourishes replete with a vast menu of well-known speakers, musicians, resident theatre and visual artists, all sharing their extraordinary gifts with an ever-more religiously and culturally diverse assemblage. There, listening, absorbing some of the best of America’s minds and gifts, I contemplated power, authority, and why conflict persists in human life.

We stayed in one of the classic rooming houses, a rather mildew-y but affordable warren of rooms, porches, and lots of stairs that offered a dank “community kitchen” where you could fix a simple meal. My niece asked me on the first day, Why are there so many rules? Almost every open space on the walls, counters and appliances was plastered with masking tape on which was scrawled the many expectations of community life, from don’t leave scraps in the sink, to please recycle everything to wipe the counters after you finish… The mostly behind-the scenes owner did not welcome us except through notes, and somehow 40-50 guests coexisted for a week very nicely.

“Because people are basically (sinful, her tradition would say) self-centered, and need rules so that they can live in peace.” She shrugged and wandered off.

But I might have said this: A basic principle of responsive leadership is that power and responsibility work together. … That principle guides us in deciding who makes which decisions. If everyone has to make every decision, participation becomes tyranny. Autonomy requires trust, which can only develop over time.

Statues at Chautauqua

There were no smoking signs, but one gentleman sat outside smoking a fragrant cigar each evening until, evidently, a neighbor complained. A new sign appeared. DO NOT smoke anywhere near the house. Please go down by the lake. I thought about the owner. I am sure some guests thought of her as a tyrant, but I did not. We were essentially free there all week, and if we followed the rules of human decency and respect, barely had to read the signs. I saw her as a benevolent leader who chose to clarify the expectations before conflicts arose. Because there were boundaries we were free to do as we pleased. Had we all stayed there all summer, the signs could have come down. But the guest list changed every week.

Autonomy requires trust, which can only develop over time.

Last week, I spoke of thirteen ways of looking at conflict. You may recall that I said I agree with the maxim: You are never upset for the reason you think.

This applies to conflict in families, communities, organizations, and in the world. I see most conflict not as a struggle over things: land, oil, turf, borders, cigar smoke, recyclables…. But over issues of power and authority. Having no shared understanding of the true nature of power, we humans resort to the one we are most familiar with, which I am going to call the old world Newtonian view of power.

This view would tell us that power is control and that it is a limited quantity; if someone has more, others must have less. In a quantum view of power, we accept that not only is chaos a necessary step to order, but that power can be shared, and (like love) can grow as human learn new and exciting ways to interact. In quantum (also known and process or systems thinking) leadership, a better word for power-with, which is very different than power-over, is a dynamic, shifting force that responds to needs at the time. Margaret Wheatley writes in Leadership and the New Science, that we have created trouble for ourselves by confusing control with order. If people are machines, seeking to control us makes sense. I see this everywhere, from child-rearing to educational systems to federal agencies. But if we live with the same forces intrinsic to all other life, then seeking to control through rigid structures is suicide.

Amphitheater from "loft"

During this week, I also attended the Symphony. I chose to sit in the huge 5,000 seat amphitheater, an open air space that has hosted Bill Clinton and Franklin Roosevelt and hundreds more renowned speakers and “leaders” in the “choir” or "loft" area behind the orchestra. Not only could I see each musician’s hands and movements, I could see the face, body, and expressions of the conductor(s). I was fascinated by how they used every iota of their energy to urge, compel, bring up, tone down, pace, energize… you name it. This is leadership! I thought. It may look like absolute control during the time of the presentation, but what is happening is that those who have freely chosen to be involved are delegating power for the time being to one has earned it by her study, experience and performance. Even still, there are many other leaders within the group: first violin, bassoon, etc. What is shared is a common vision. But the maestro does not tell the people what to eat for breakfast or how to train their dogs. She is granted authority. She must always re-earn it through her dedication, reliability, and faithfulness to the mission.

Starhawk calls this “responsive leadership” ( Truth or Dare, 270) and Margaret Wheatley calls it “roving leadership.” (24)

That is how it ought to work in voluntary organizations. Churches, to be specific. Authority is never the same as authoritarianism. The first is given; the second is taken. Clergy are granted some authority because of their extensive study, the covenantal bond they have made, and their individual performances over time. This authority is tenuous at best, especially in what we call congregational polity.. but it is essential to the healthy functioning of the church. This delicate dance is poisoned when individuals, who do not understand the nature of power, project their own histories into the relationship, and bring others along. Until that changes, the masking tape will not come down and the grumbling in the basement will not cease.

This lack of trust born of misunderstanding is a cancer on our free tradition. Part of it comes from wounded individuals, those whom Starhawk calls “King Victim.” To these people, “every disagreement becomes battle, and every battle seems crucial, a life-or-death situation.” (160)

There will always be such people in open organizations. But the group, she says, “has a choice. It can collude or challenge us. It can try to be sympathetic to our unhappy childhood, etc.. or it can be honest. If the group accepts our attacks, it is really confirming our powerlessness. As in other relationships, when we let ourselves be battered, we are doing no true kindness to the batterer; we are saying, “You are too damaged, to powerless, to act like an ordinary, decent human being.” (160)

Now, to sex. Sex and religion are inextricable. Why else is Jesus’ death called the “Passion” and why do people cry out “Oh God!” in moments of ecstasy? Mystery permeates sexuality and this mystery is part of a delicate dance in which trust is easily destroyed and power readily abused. Too often the “power” of a religious leader, self-proclaimed or duly ordained, has been abused to the detriment of the fabric of the community. This can damage trust and authority for decades. But just as people who are wounded by sexual abuse as children learn that their current lover is not the perpetrator, organizations can learn that what happened 35 years ago is in no way connected to their current leader. Silence about this must cease if we are to become whole.

“No one wants to die in an unimportant battle for a minor cause.” (Starhawk)

Our vision is a lofty one that requires a sense of purpose and strong, healthy communities if we are to come within a distant chance of meeting it.

The battles are many and time is short.

These are real battles, not petty squabbles. It is the closest thing to a sin to allow the vision we share and the purpose we proclaim to be undermined by destructive behavior.

MW: If power is the capacity generated by our relationships, then we need to be attending to the quality of those relationships. We would do well to ponder the realization that love is the most potent source of power.

But “love” is a complex term. Paul Tillich wrote more than 50 years ago: Love is the moving power of life. Love is the drive toward the unity of the separated. Love must destroy that which is against love but cannot destroy him who acts against love. Hence, for Tillich, we have Divine intervention, forgiveness, Grace, and Justice. I am convinced that our purpose is to increase the amount of this all-uniting, all-encompassing love on the planet, but that to do so will take great courage, wisdom, and leadership.

Part 3 will be posted later this week.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Conflict

2011-08-22T15:22:00.001-04:00

THIRTEEN WAYS

Let’s face it. People do not visit the Coliseum in Rome just because of the architecture, the antiquity, or the echoes of an ancient empire. Most, if not all people who walk through the ruins want to know, “What about the gladiators?” Did they really fight to the death? Is it true that 10,000 animals were killed on one day?

As a species we are fascinated with conflict and we love competition. You don’t need to look farther than UK BB to observe this. But, as individuals, we understand it and deal with it in myriad ways. At least thirteen, but probably hundreds more

Have you ever tried to read – or write – a story without conflict? (1)Good writers know the conflict can be very subtle, hidden deep within the psyche, but it’s there, somewhere. Otherwise all you have is stream of consciousness or the ramblings of a bore. What is human life without story? Hence… conflict is needed.

There are those who thrive on conflict. Some of them are self-titled anarchists (2) Look at the riots in London. After a few days, people didn’t even know what sparked the initial uprisings. But they were fully engaged in the violence against person and property. When asked, some replied: we are doing it to show that we can. My guess, however, would be that conflict makes them feel alive, vital and engaged. There is all too little in their marginal existence to feed the spirit. So, like the audience for Jerry Springer and WWF, they watch or engage in meaningless conflict for its own sake. That gives them what they sadly lack: a sense of purpose, meaning, joy and engagement with the world. To that extent its not anarchy but pathology (3).

I come from the Philadelphia area. Evidently, people there have gotten in on the British trend by taking part in what are being called “violent flash mobs.” I’m not surprised this took hold in Philadelphia, that erstwhile city of brotherly love. I grew up in a culture where a certain amount of conflict was endemic. Not violence, per se, but disagreement, argument, and expressions of strong emotion. It may have cultural roots in the passionate peoples who settled there or the clashes of immigrant communities. But no one loves a good argument like a New Jersey native. Many of us had to modify our tendencies when we moved South, and discovered that conflict is to be avoided at all costs, including dishonesty and a veneer of politeness. (4)What many Southerners don’t understand is that most Yankees don’t hold grudges for long. We argue and then we go on as friends. It’s these parts where the Hatfields and McCoys kept feuds going for generations!

Some would say there is an evolutionary basis (5)to conflict. Survival of the fittest. I have demonstrated before that there is also a bias in evolution for cooperation. It is probably fair to say that both have their purpose. Some would say, however, that technologically advanced humans have little if any need for conflict; indeed pacifists (6)would counsel that it is only through cooperation and understanding, both individual and collective that we shall save the planet. More and more people are coming to see the truth of that.

But even Gandhi said that principles can sometime trump pacifism.

Rodney King said, in our own West Coast version of the British riots, Why can’t we all just get along? (7)Such a simple question. Yet, so hard to comprehend. And, regardless of whether the reasons are cultural, theological, or biological, it has another part… how can we live so that “getting along” is most likely to occur? What do we need to understand, to do, and how can we do it, before it’s too late?

Scott Peck, in his sequel to The Road Less Traveled, called The Different Drum, asserts that true community (8)is not possible without conflict. All communities evolve through what he calls pseudo-community, then a time of chaos, which is likely to include a degree of conflict, through what he calls emptiness to community. Indeed the number of times we ever experience the miraculous result of this process are precious few. In fact, I am fairly sure that no religious congregation can ever reach and sustain community by his definition. But we can use our experiences of true community to guide us safely through times of chaos and anxiety, knowing that equilibrium will return, that in fact community will be deepened unless people flee back into pseudo-community.

In genuine community there are no sides. … the members have learned to give up cliques and factions. Hey have learned how to listen to each other. Sometimes consensus in community is reached with miraculous rapidity. At other times it is arrived at after lengthy struggle. Just because it is a safe place does not mean community is a place without conflict. It is, however, a place where conflict can be resolved without physical or emotional bloodshed and with wisdom as well as grace. Community is a place where people can fight gracefully. (MSP, 71)

Starhawk would disagree with Peck in at least one particular. For the author of Truth or Dare, community (9) can not be reached in groups that are entirely open. Groups, she says, must have boundaries (not barriers) in order to be truly safe spaces. If no process exists for asking someone to leave a group, what generally happens is that the productive, amiable members all drop out, one by one, the group dissolves, and its tasks remain undone. (150)

Starhawk is an advocate for what she calls creative conflict. Needed for such, besides clear boundaries and a sense of purpose, access to information, trust, and leadership. I’ll talk more about these next week. For now, the goal of creative conflict is to emerge more united, more whole, and more balanced, not to win or destroy the “other.”

The difference between Starhawk’s community and Peck’s is that she is talking about a sustained community where his groups are almost always time-limited.

“Conflict evokes fear,” Starhawk writes. That brings me to a resource I have returned to for at least 20 years, A Course in Miracles. (10)Let me simply read you a few of its maxims which concern conflict:

• “I am never upset for the reason I think.” (WB )

• “I am upset because I see only the past.”

• “I want to see things differently.”

• “I could see peace instead of this.”

• The secret of salvation is this: You are doing this unto yourself. Whatever seems to be the cause of any suffering you feel, this is still true.

• The world but demonstrates an ancient truth: you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them.

The Course in Miracles is a course in Inner Peace. This points to the inner conflicts that feed group and international fights. It teaches 100% personal responsibility for one’s feelings and reactions. It is a course in overcoming fear. When conflict engenders fear, one needs to see things differently. This requires, for most people, a spiritual awakening and a huge change of heart. Sadly, few humans are willing to do the work that is necessary.

The CIM asks, “Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?”

My guess is that a majority of us would have to answer “right.”

Too often the response to conflict of any kind is what Buddhism calls aversion. (11) What the Buddha was really talking about was, again, biology. It is the amygdyla that evokes the Freeze-Flight-Fight responses that are most common in human conflicts. .

But it need not be so.

Two relatively new schools of thought provide exciting tools and contexts for understanding and managing conflict. First is family systems. (12)Employed regularly now in congregations, Murray Bowen’s family systems work has engendered a school of organizational development that goes beyond Peck’s “fighting gracefully.”

In Family Systems we learn that tension aka anxiety arises between two or more individuals as a result of being alive and in contact. Managing, rather than resolving, conflict is key to congregational life. To the extent that members can manage their anxiety (fear), stay in place (fight gracefully), and recognize differences, conflict can be productive and need not be distressing.

One might even say that feeling anxious is not only chronic but an inevitable condition of being alive. (scale of differentiation 1-100%)

Yes, there are methods and techniques to both prevent and minimize destructive conflict. They should be tried as a matter of

course. However, to the extent they fail to address the underlying anxiety within the

relationship, no real change will occur. Effective conflict management will note that

issues are issues to people who are in relationship. Both the content of our disputes

and how we feel toward one another must be considered. Otherwise, the chairs may

move efficiently around the emotional deck while the ship continues on its unhappy

course. It’s akin to saying that the problem of children playing with matches can be

resolved by not having matches around; sooner or later, the kids will discover butane

lighters and burn the house down.

Appreciative Inquiry (13) is both like and unlike Family Systems. “AI” which was originally conceived and formulated for organizational development in the business world, does away with the Newtonian view that still dominates Family Systems. It relies upon chaos theory and quantum science to assert that order lies naturally beyond what may appear to be conflict. But, much like Family Systems and many other schools of conflict management, AI would counsel thinking, taking a larger view (cim: above the battleground), or looking beyond the “things” to the processes that created them.

This view is closest to my own, although I incorporate many facets of those I shared today and others I did touch upon: But, process theology, as well as appreciative inquiry, counsel trust, faith, joy, and patience.

(MW, )

This shift in orientation requires learning to live in a process world. Life demands that I participate with things as they unfold, expect to be surprised, to honor the mystery of it, and to see what emerges. As we learn to live in this process world, we are rewarded with changes in our behavior. I believe we become gentler people. We become more curious about differences, more respectful of one another, more open to life’s surprises. It’s not that we become more hopeful OR pessimistic, but we do become more patient and accepting. I like to believe we change in this way because we are willing to move into the dance. Although it looked frantic from the outside, …. Life is a good partner. Its demands are not unreasonable. A great capacity for change lies in every one of us.” (155)

HAITI: Reflections

2011-07-26T20:53:00.001-04:00

This homily was given by Marie Conger on July 17th 2011.

Bonjour. Mwen content way-oo--- Mwen relay Marie. Mwen visite Haiti en juin et Fuk retourner encore. Mwen rencontrais ampil haitiens: Kek bon et keke mal. Mwen voyait ampil choses kek bon et kek mal. Mwen content entrer ici.
Hello, it’s nice to see you--my name is Marie. I visited Haiti in June and I need to go back again. I met a lot of Haitians both good and bad. I saw a lot of things both good and bad. It’s good to be here.

*As a member of the Haitian Network of the Bluegrass---I was invited to be part of a small group to visit Haiti in June. Our sgroup of 5 planned to work together to distribute clothes, shoes and school supplies. Each of us also had our own personal “mission” and agreed to help each other to realize them.
*Molly and Steve (the HNB Leader and spouse) had a personal project of caring for an orphanage in Port au Prince. They spent the last year sending money every month to build and maintain this facility. They also have a connection to a sweet boy, Jean-Paul, who they brought to this orphanage last year—(his mother was killed in the quake). They would like to adopt him but have met with obstacles so far. --They were anxious to see how the orphanage –and Jean-Paul --was developing.
Molly also continues to aid her uncle and his family in Port de Paix. Pastor Dervil leads a small church on a mountainside outside of Port de Paix. Uncle Dervil is committed to his congregation and is the only member of Molly’s parent’s families to remain in Haiti. Molly and Steve have helped them in many ways over the last 2 years. Port de Paix is where we were to do most of our work.
*Clydia travelled to Haiti a year ago. Her mission since then has been to collect shoes and clothes and raise money for Kreyol Bibles. She also wanted to do VBS for the kids. Clydia is a very fundamental, passionate Christian with a heart of gold.
*Dale is a factory employee and pastor of a Georgetown church who felt called to spread Gods word through Bible study and church services. Dale had never travelled out of the country.
*As many of you already know, my own personal mission included making educational connections, satisfying my Geek-fancophile curiosity about Haitian culture and distributing solar lights.

I’d like to share a highlight video that Bobby Jones edited for me. …………………………………….

Haiti trip 2011

View more presentations from Cynthia Cain

Processing my experience has been very difficult. Was it “successful”? Yes. We accomplished what we as a group, and as individuals, set out to accomplish. It was merely a drop in the bucket, and a leaky bucket at that--- but even that should be enough, right? Not really. My opening statement about meeting both good and bad Haitians and seeing good and bad things, was an intro into what I want to share with you. The contrasts, and opposites, that I witnessed were striking and seem to be what keeps my recounting of the experience conflicted ---and incoherent. I believe what I observed was representative of the best, and worst, of humanity.

*The trip began in Port au Prince where we flew in and out with 100s of other well-intentioned people (from the US and elsewhere). When we arrived, Molly had already been in country for a week and was heartbroken. She had found that the caretaker of the Port au Prince orphanage and school, Pastor Achetul, was a dishonest “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. The children got little benefit from Molly and Steve’s monthly money---but the pastor's church was rebuilding nicely. The school had nothing more than it did last year ----in fact there is no "school" as we would define it; this "school" consists simply of an area of dirt floor with some ragged tarps overhead to provide some small protection from a relentless tropical sun. This "school"-just an area really- sat next to that same church that was rebuilding nicely. Little Jean-Paul had ringworm like the other children and like the other children was barely clothed and was malnourished. Molly had realized before we arrived that she was going to have to take Jean-Paul away and cut all ties with this pastor. We took Jean-Paul with us, the next day, when we headed to Port de Paix.

*Everywhere we went we found that, even this long after the earthquake, the streets are in most places still choked with rubble on top of rubble-much of the debris from the quake has not been removed, but rather just pushed out of the way to allow traffic to get through as best it can. Often it is like negotiating an obstacle course. These streets are filled with both the naked and the extremely clean and well dressed. Our hotel was a beautiful little hide-away in the middle of absolute chaos.

*Port de Paix is a city 90 miles north of PaP. It was hurt very little by the earthquake although they did feel an influx of people fleeing PaP after the quake. PdP is essentially a 3rd (or even 4th world) city----Extremely primitive and far behind the rest of the modern world but in other ways, they are modern---using Cell Phones and Facebook to communicate. The absence of a reliable energy source and the brutal elements keep them so far behind that it is hard to imagine they can ever catch up.

*Molly’s Uncle Duval is the antithesis of the PaP pastor. He is a gentle, honest, god-loving, man. His wife and children were happy to see us and introduced us to his congregation on the mountainside. Our distribution of clothes, shoes and school supplies was met with smiles and gratitude.
I met with our school connection where, almost immediately, I came under a verbal attack from the director, demanding money. It seems the only help wanted is cash—and they see a white American teacher as a source. After a lot of back and forth, the director allowed the teacher to answer my questions about HIS needs as a teacher re: resources and development.
*Supplies were not appreciated at this school where they insisted that they would take them and distribute to the students at a later time (Uncle let us know they would more than likely end up in the black market). We insisted ---either we gave them directly to the children or we took them elsewhere. ---Very unpleasant experience for me but the group said the children were very happy with the supplies.
Conversely a church/school that we dropped in on unexpectedly greeted us with singing, asked us to speak and gratefully encouraged us to put something in EVERY child’s hands.

As a UU, I witnessed the BEST and WORST in religion.
*The faith of many Haitian People is what gives them hope and purpose to survive. Being in that tiny church on the mountainside was a heart-warming experience and I could feel that their love of god sustains them. Seeing the joy on their faces as they received Clydia’s Kreyol Bibles was incredible. They believe.
*In Uncle/Pastor Duval’s church, Dale led his Men’s Bible study and I helped Clydia with Vacation Bible School. The people, and their practices, were so earnest and true---Their reaction to us was so sweet and lovely.
*At our hotel, I was honored to be allowed to slip into a Haitian late-night church service being held in the dining area. There was hymn-singing and praying and then dinner was served at midnight! Up until that point the service was much like an american gospel service might be ---with dancing and singing; a pastor and his deacons leading it. After dinner it started up again and we were asked to join the circle (up to that point, we were on the fringe just observing). Again, I felt honored as we were outsiders and I the only “Blanche”, or “White” in the room. But then things took a turn…if you don’t know it, catholicism is considered the state religion but years ago it was mixed with the old Haitian voudun/voudou practices.

The pastor started speaking in tongues (his deacon translating in Kreyol), the dancing stepped up a notch or two as did the volume. Then two girls supposedly possessed of evil spirits were brought in the circle. They fell on the floor, were anointed with oil, touched by many hands, held down. They screamed, fought their handlers and tried to run away. One of the girls seemed to be free of her demons but the other was not. That was when I left as I was overwhelmed by an uneasy feeling. I looked at Dale who appeared to be feeling the same and we agreed to leave.
I knew that corruption has plagued Haiti forever, but didn’t know how that might be within the church. I couldn’t believe the outright deceit displayed by Pastor Achetul in Port au Prince who slipped when he told Molly when she asked about the daily lives of the orphans “Lets wait til the Americans get here and we’ll set things up to look like the children are studying…”
Finally, as a UU, you can imagine how travelling with 2 American Baptist Pastors would be like. I used it to my advantage by using it to practice patience, tolerance and biting—I mean holding my tongue.

*The cityscapes and countryside revealed just as many contrasts….in my eyes, the city of PaP is beyond repair. Port de Paix is a city that seems to be moving forward – in 3rd world terms—but with no infrastructure, no systems, no real law and order---it is trashy, smelly, noisy, chaotic and ugly. BUT…roads are being widened and improved as new hotels are being built, with their own generators as well as solar panels and wind turbines. But electricity is SO valuable (and gas so expensive) that at our hotel, guests only have it from 8p-6a.
*You might have noticed on the video beautiful countryside and a stunning beach. Some UN workers (who I thought were the good guys but many Haitians see as the bad guys) told us that Nouveau Kiskeya (New Haiti) was a must-see and after the long bumpy drive and getting stuck twice in mud and sand, I believe they were right. It was truly beautiful…everything that Pap and PdP were not: lush, clean, sweet smelling, pristine---the water was clear and the beach was clean. There were manicured gardens and beautiful buildings of tile and concrete. This is a planned community for retired Haitians living abroad and tourists being built on 11,000 acres with 15 miles of beach front---building their own airstrip and port for cruise ships. A NEW Haiti---and like other planned resort areas in the carribean, an economic boon for the country. It all seemed wonderful until I asked about the plans for the workers and those plans didn’t seem as clear or well thought out. Much less space and development is slated for that community ---so as I fast-forwarded…I saw yet another contrast: an overpopulated, undeveloped slum on the outskirts of New Kiskeya.
*So what can I learn from this experience in contrasts? And what might you take from this reflection? I really should not have been surprised by the dualities --- It is by seeing, experiencing and appreciating ugliness that we can see and appreciate beauty. A positive is only positive in the face of a negative. Opposites and dualities create the fabric of the world and we see our lives, and the lives of those around us, in that fabric. It is our experience of these opposites and these dualities which color and move the threads of our lives.
There are always opposites at play in our life and what can we do to achieve peace of mind during this war of opposites and dualities? Peace of mind doesn’t come only as we experience the so called good side of the opposites or dualities. It weathers the storms of life. When what we do not want to happen begins to occur... the magic opposing it begins to work as well.
There is always another sunrise to counter act the sunset. The light will always follow the darkness and the day the night. There is always another hope when all hope has failed us. I’m going to remember this the next time I come to the end of my rope and can see no way out.
I found an appropriate quote by one of our favorite UU Ministers:
“We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action”. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Or take away this: My efforts were a drop in the bucket (but in the words of KY songwriter, Mitch Barrett “What becomes a mighty ocean started as a drop”.) Thanks to those of you who made contributions of money and supplies to the HNB. Many people benefitted. And thanks to all of you who gave money for my purchase of the solar lights. I knew they were special---I’m only now realizing how so.
I’m very pleased to report to you that Molly and I had an epiphany that perhaps these bulbs could not only provide light to the families we worked with but that they might represent a way out of Haiti’s misery---Molly has approached her employer, Sylvania and it’s parent company Seimans about the bulbs and the possibility of building a Haitian community around their production and distribution. Guess what, they love it!! I would love to share more of that story with anyone interested!

Drop in the Bucket. (Mitch Barrett)
It’s a crazy world we live in, Bad news all around
Brothers and sisters, if we’re gonna make a difference
We’re gonna have to stand our ground.
Be a drop in the bucket
And a bucket in the pond
And the pond fills the river
And the river rushes on
And the river swells the river
‘Til the power can’t be stopped
What becomes a mighty ocean
Started as a drop

Comments about the Solar Light Bulbs from Pastor Duval:
Amazing..at church, before, they would take offering for money to buy gas…in generator for evening service—it was never enough—they ended up finishing the service in darkness.
Now they don’t have to buy gas to run generator for light
People would come and bring cell phones to charge off the generator—using gas. Now that’s not an option!
Caused a problem because those who didn’t pay for the gas would use electricity
People are coming to the church and praising god and giving thanks for the missionaries who brought the lights and praying for a return visit. They are so happy that they don’t have to buy gas for their lanterns at home.

Pal franse pa di lespri pou sa.
Speaking French doesn't mean you are smart.
Famn se kajou. plis li vye, plis li bon.
Woman is like mahogany, the older the better.
Men anpil chay pa lou.
Many hands make the load lighter.

Liberal Dads: "Progressive AND Paternal"

2011-06-22T14:11:00.000-04:00

Jonny and Colin

A shared homily given at the UU Church of Lexington 6/19/11:

FROM Eric Huffer, dad to Will (19) and husband to Susan:

I grew up in what might be considered a “traditional” household. My father was the so-called breadwinner, and my mother was the stay-at-home domestic provider. My mother didn’t even drive(her choice). My dad was the manager of a shoe store, and usually left the house about the time the kids were getting up, and came home shortly before it was time for us to get ready for bed. As a result, most of the parental interaction my siblings and I had was with my mother. Dad was the source of special treats or punishment, while my mom was the day to day get things done person. If we had done something wrong during the day, my mom would utilize a version of the famous “wait ‘til your father gets home!” She would claim to be too mad to effectively punish us for fear of losing her temper, and that it was best to wait until my dad could be there to mete out fair punishment. But this was also the man that would take one of us with him every couple of Sundays down to get Spaldings donuts. So, for us kids, he filled this almost god-like role. Coming down from his realm to administer punishment or dole out favors.
So, after growing up in a family that adhered pretty closely to the traditional gender roles if the 50’s and 60’s, you might expect me to tend to fall into those roles as well. That has not been the case. In our household, stereotypical gender roles and characteristics don’t really play out. We look at our relationship as a partnership, where we play off of one another’s strengths and characteristics. I do most of the cooking, mostly because I love it and it feeds my soul, and Susan handles the finances, because she is so much more organized than I am. And unlike the family that I grew up in, I am not the primary “breadwinner”. From the beginning of our marriage, Susan has always made more than me. While we shared in disciplining Will, Susan was definitely better at it, and was the ultimate authority. I’m a cryer, I tear up at sappy commercials or even when speaking about something important to me. Susan is more stoic, rarely crying, and shows her emotions more subtly.
So Will has been raised in a house where men cook, share household responsibilities equally, and cry; and where women are authority figures, and are strong; and where parents are partners.
While this situation is not as uncommon as it might have been when I was a child, it was still not the norm among Will’s friends. He has told me that most of them thought we were weird, and even hippies. When Will was 9, he started telling us he wanted to go to church. I think he was feeling left out when all his friends at school talked about going to church each weekend, and probably feeling a bit of peer pressure. We were a bit perplexed because we were having a hard time imagining what church we could possibly feel comfortable in. We finally decided that, based on what we had heard around, that the UU church would probably least offend us, and we could meet this need that seemed very important to our child. When we did come, we found a community that fit us perfectly. Here was a place full of people like us. A place that promoted and reinforced many of the same values that we tried to live by and were trying to impart to our son.
Many of you know our son, Will, you have seen him grow up here. We feel like he has turned out to be a pretty cool young man, and many of you have complimented us on how we have raised him. I want to state right now that it was all of us that have raised him to become the young man that he is. You have all been such a major part in helping Will develop, just as we are all helping to do the same with the children in our congregation now. Here at UUCL, he has been in a community that celebrated strong women and caring nurturing men; that practiced acceptance of others, and promoted fairness and justice in the world. He has been shaped by this just as much as he has been by what we did at home. For that I want to thank you all.
So, while we are celebrating Father’s Day today, I would like to suggest that all of us here are fathers, and mothers, to the children of our congregation; and we should celebrate thusly.

From Adam Gase, Dad to Lili, Morrigan & Maia and husband to Penny:

How does being a liberal/progressive religious person affect your parenting? How has fathering affected your "spiritual" life?

I started watching baseball with my dad as a way of connecting with him. That failed, but I did learn a lot about baseball. In baseball, it is very important to develop balance, not only athletic balance while throwing a pitch or swinging a bat, but balance in the skills your team has. You can't win every game with a homerun. You must be good in multiple facets.

The same is true in parenting. I balance two very different parenting styles: Red Forman and Bill Cosby. These are representative of the more conservative "strict father" and more progressive "nurturing parent" models. This has actually pushed me to be more progressive, rather than the other way around. As a scientist, I have to remain open-minded about things I do not yet understand or have enough information about. As a parent, I also have to remain open-minded about my approach. Being progressive pushes you to be more balanced, and being more balanced pushes you to be more progressive.

Before I became a parent, it was easy to think, "That's someone else's problem" about a variety of things. Having to care for your children forces you to expand that viewpoint beyond your own head, to encompass others outside of your experience. I think this realization, that other people felt the same about their children as I did about mine, that we aren't that different in our love, but perhaps different in expression, that forced me to be more progressive. We all paint pictures, we just use different colors.

There is a tendency, especially in my largely conservative family, to associate boys with being tough and girls with Barbie dolls and being delicate. I understand the history of this view, but I reject it. First of all, if my girls were delicate, they wouldn't survive ME. I play rough. We have taken martial arts lessons together, we fence and play football in the backyard, we hike, we bike, and we have traveled across the country and back, though not in the Family Truckster. Living with a mother who is not mentally healthy has forced some toughness on my girls. They are not limited to the delicate stereotype. Lili especially has picked up on this mentally, developing a wicked sense of sarcasm. She played baseball when we lived in Pennsylvania in 2008. She threw better than at least five of the boys on her team. She once said to one of her teammates who didn't throw the ball well, "Nice throw, Cody - for a girl." She proved to those boys that she could take it and dish it out. Instantly she had 12 friends. Toughness isn't a non-liberal characteristic. Just ask Rosa Parks.

A certain amount of intelligence is required to dish out good sarcasm, and a certain amount of character is built in learning how to receive sarcasm. These skills are useful when it comes to dealing with peer pressure as a teenager. I have no worries about Lili handling her peers. She's leadership material. She spots opportunities for humor and uses it to teach her friends how to be, not the other way around.

Humor is crucial in parenting. It is crucial in life. Humans are the only animals that laugh. Humor is the only thing that comes from the divine unfiltered. It makes every experiencer feel the same - heavenly. In that moment of vulnerability, it's easier to slip in some wisdom. This is how I operate, and both Lili and Morrigna are picking up that baton. Ghandi said that nonviolence is the weapon of the strong. He forgot to mention humor, probably because he was busy chuckling at this thought.

My spirituality is very connected with being a parent, with embracing the 4 billion year-old heredity of life on this pale blue dot. Joining the drum beat of life, fulfilling a biological destiny. As Robert Heinlein said, "the purpose of a zygote is to make more zygotes." Zygotes are a part of us. The purpose of us, humans, is to welcome more humans aboard to live out their destiny of choice between dark and light. My spirituality has been affected by being a parent in that now I see my role in raising children capable of making this wise decision in the scope of our 15 billion year cosmic history. We can learn to appreciate and love the universe that came to make us, or we can squander our precious resources in meaningless self-destruction.

From Jonny Lifshitz, dad to Dylan, Colin & Owen, and husband to Carrie:

I am Jonny Lifshitz – Dad to three boys, who take after me a little too closely for my wife’s liking. My wife Carrie will tell you that she has 4 boys – few will correct her!
Eight years ago, Carrie had an eldest and only son in daycare, whereas I had a younger brother in daycare. The teachers referred to me as ‘big brother.‘ We would roll and play and build and bump and interact in a deep and meaningful way, even if it was for only 10 or 15 minutes – both at drop-off and pick-up. We came to appreciate that minutes of QUALITY TIME are far more valuable than months of time together. We play hard and then we sleep. [Carrie has enough scrapbooking pages to validate this point.]
Through this quality time, I have formulated a few truisms about childhood and parenting (a.k.a. Mike Brady advice). From here on, I will present a few vignettes to illustrate some of these truisms.
Learn to listen: Listen to children, it’s like listening to yourself
Undoubtedly, parenthood is the best self-reflective mirror. Childhood development is a series of trials and errors, in which children mimic those around them. Each child tries on a personality for a while, if they like the responses and feedback from friends, parents, teachers, they will keep those personality traits. [This is the reason for continuing all those irritating behaviors.]
Given the amount of time around their parents, it’s no wonder that they tend to copy our mannerisms, speech, cynicism, and humor. Just ask any child how to drive a car; the responses are both entertaining and enlightening.
Now, when you observe and listen to your children [much in the same way you would listen to the wind, water, earth and fire], it is really you who you hear.
Owen, 2½: At the dinner table, “let’s do joys and concerns.”
Colin, 5½: Thank you Dad for being the best dad in the whole world.
And then there is Dylan, 8½, who is a bit more to the point:
“Dad, I am doing exactly what you did and saying the same thing you said. Why is it ok for you to do it and not me? It’s just not fair.”
Take out your earbuds, turn off your iPod and listen to yourself.
Gain another’s perspective: Experience the world from their level
It is essential to understand a child’s point of view, from their point of view – it’s different world from 3’. Every once in a while, you have to get on the ground to see what they see, hear what they hear, smell and taste what they taste. You have to be them for a while. In a sense, walk in their shoes. This will allow you to view the world in a whole new way. It will allow you to experience it from their unjaded perspective.
From this level, I could now understand why they were unable to see across the room, find a lost toy on the couch, or avoid a water puddle. From this level, I could now understand why they stop at every crack in the sidewalk, pickup lost coins and find weeds so appealing!
As my perspective changed, it was equally important to change the boys’ perspective. I clearly recall Dylan’s joy when we bought him a stool. Now, he could wash his hands, he could watch dinner being prepared, he could grab things on his own. With a stool in hand, he could change his perspective and be a part of every experience.
Kneel down or stand on a stool. The world is a remarkable place.
Life is a coordinated series of mistakes: People are fallible, but we must learn from our mistakes
The boys love their stories, typically the same ones over and over. More recently, they have become intrigued by the stories my parents tell of me or themselves. Knowing that people [even dad] are fallible, provides our boys with the perspective that things do not always go as planned. More importantly, I believe that these stories allow them to appreciate the experience (maybe even expertise) that their parents have gained as a result of these failures – sometimes minor, sometimes as a lack of foresight and sometimes epic. [Ever tried frying an egg without cracking the shell? It’ll save time, right?]
Through similar stories, the boys have come to know Carrie’s parents, both of whom have passed away. These stories allow experience [some people call them morals] to be taught, learned and transferred between generation – without the messy cleanup. We celebrate their lives – as we did yesterday – by sending helium-filled balloons their way [typically Red Robin helium-filled balloons].
I am sure that I could support the idea of coordinated mistakes with a quote or song lyric, but I won’t. If I am wrong, I hope that I learn from it.
Valuing differences help us grow: Expect the unexpected; relish in their joy
Whether it is a new experience or a different take on an old one, children have the most amazing way of putting the awe in awesome. I won’t be the first or the last to point out the mixed logic in awe-some and awe-ful. For example,
ice cream – awesome
Ice cream in a margarita glass – awe-ful

Bendy straw – awesome
Construction piping straw – awe-ful

Forks – awesome
Toothpicks – awe-ful
When we take the time to appreciate their perspective – that unjaded perspective, wowed by the little things in life – the ordinary becomes extraordinary. In our day-to-day obligations and chores, finding this awe is not necessarily difficult, but often overlooked. Children bring out that awe. As a quick example, my boys are always amazed by different promotional pens I pick up at conferences.
“Dad, did you see how this one works? It has TWO colors.”
Awe is having everything be a bright shiny object, worthy of a reflective thought.

For me (and I will speak for Carrie as well), our boys are our spiritual life. They are pure joy (and pain) and life itself. We know this with absolute certainty, because “those things that boys do” can instantaneously halt that joy.
Dylan – broke his leg in two places getting off a swing at 18 mo
Colin – fell forward on a stick scraping his upper palate on this 3rd birthday
Owen – three weeks ago, fell off a chair, knocking out 1 tooth and loosening 3 more.
In the end, however, love brings it all back together. It is near impossible to explain to the triage nurse in the emergency room that your son needs urgent care when they are asleep in your arms. That same love has allowed all three to recover, or be on the road to recovery, and our family bond.
And then there is sleep… ahhh peace.
As a neuroscientist, I have learned about sleep from countless angles. And let me tell you, the true purpose of sleep has nothing to do with rejuvenation, cellular repair, memory consolidation. It is purely to reset that precious relationship between parent and child.
Children can wear on the patience of even the most stoic people. For those tough days as a parent, as well as those blissful days as a parent, there is nothing like seeing a sleeping child to bring peace to one’s life and the world.
And with that… goodnight room, goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere. Go in peace; Live with joy.

War/... the Art of Peace

2011-06-18T18:28:00.000-04:00

War

Homily - May 29, 2011

Given by Geoff Young at the UU Church of Lexington

In your order of service,
Written at least 600 years ago
Imagine you are a child of 6 or 7 hearing your family sing this carol, fire in fireplace

The Cherry Tree Carol

That was a very different time, people’s minds and hearts were less coarse and jaded.
Look at how courteous they all were to each other. Jesus politely asks the tree; even Joseph, who comes right out there with the human, negative emotions of jealousy, suspicion, and resentment, doesn’t expel Mary from his heart. He doesn’t divorce her.
In this song the universe is a friendly, amazing, miraculous place.
Look at the last verse: The 7-year-old Jesus is saying that reality is totally, totally different from the way it appears on the surface, from the conventional wisdom. Life is a miracle. Every individual human life is a miracle.
When I use the word “peace,” this song is what I mean: there are no limits to the possibilities for love, respect, sharing, joy.

So, a lot of events have happened in 600 years. Science and technology have advanced, so I would suggest we are different people today.

Certain historical events are shocking or traumatic enough to affect our minds.

Before World War I, no one could have imagined the horror of trench warfare. The slaughter went on for 4 years. There were battles where in a few hours tens of thousands of young men were killed or permanently maimed, only to capture a few yards of mud. Many soldiers went insane.

WW1 was supposedly the war to end all wars, but then along came WW2 when even more people died, mostly innocent civilians. Part of WW2 was the Nazi Holocaust. There were firebombings of whole cities full of people. And the event that ended WW2 was the instantaneous incineration of two cities full of people by atomic bombs.

Then humanity was forced to watch in terror as the USSR and the USA built more and more nuclear weapons. Other countries built them too. There was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which is probably the closest the world has ever come to a full-scale nuclear war. Then the War in Vietnam. Then 9-11. Then the whole “War On Terror.” Until finally, today, war without end and seemingly without purpose has become an acceptable idea in our society. There is a book called, “War Made Easy” that asks the question, Why in America is it so easy to start wars and so hard to end them?

I’ve read a lot about this history of traumatic events and thought about it a lot, and I think these events, one after another, have had a cumulative impact on our hearts and minds; the mind of every person on earth who knows about them. I’ll give you a couple personal examples. I was born in 1956, 9 years after WW2 ended. I learned about the Holocaust growing up in Massachusetts in a Jewish family. They taught us about it in Hebrew School and my parents and grandparents talked about it with my brother and me. It wasn’t until years later, decades later, that I realized that my atheism probably came directly from finding out about the Holocaust. If God did nothing to prevent the killing of six million innocent Jews in gas chambers, who were supposedly His Chosen People, then either God doesn’t exist, or that God isn’t worth anything. The Holocaust affected my view of the universe. It put the idea or assumption in my head that the universe is a cold place, not a friendly, supportive, welcoming place. Maybe that’s why songs like the Cherry Tree Carol bring tears to my eyes. Such songs are like a still, small voice that gently pokes at this unconscious assumption I’ve had since I was a child that the universe is a cold, cruel place. Maybe, just maybe, I can throw that unconscious assumption away. Maybe the universe really does have a desire for all of us to live and thrive and love each other.

I learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school. In the early 1960s I remember my parents seriously discussing whether we should build a bomb shelter in the basement of our home. I remember feeling terrified, but in a kind of vague and numb way. I wanted to understand it but couldn’t seem to do it.

For years and years I have wrestled with the question, “If nuclear weapons are so horrible that they could wipe out all human life on earth in a short period of time, why haven’t all of the countries in the world made it their highest, most urgent priority to eliminate all nuclear weapons in a verifiable and permanent way?” Why is the United States government in the process of spending billions of dollars to modernize our arsenal of nuclear weapons instead of working every day to dismantle all of them worldwide? Why don’t millions of people wake up every morning and demand of all the world’s governments: “Human beings made these terrible weapons that threaten our survival; human beings could surely dismantle and outlaw them and keep them from ever being rebuilt; and we demand that you do exactly that.”

Why was there no Peacemaking Subcommittee at this church until I started it about a year ago, and why do only about 3 to 6 people come to our monthly meetings on the last Sunday of every month? Why hasn’t anyone else made a shirt like this that asks the president, any president and all presidents, to end all our wars? Why hasn’t anyone come up to me and asked, “I have 2 or 3 hours a month, Geoff, that I’d like to invest in building peace; could we brainstorm together on how I might use my 2 or 3 hours a month in the most effective and efficient way?” I’m not trying to portray myself as being something great and I’m not trying to guilt-trip anyone; I really want to understand this question. The question of why people do not act, why people seem to be paralyzed over the issue of war and peace, goes far, far beyond the UU Church of Lexington.

Two days ago an idea occurred to me and I looked up on the web the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’ll read you some of them:

Frequently having upsetting thoughts or memories about the traumatic event.
Acting or feeling as though the traumatic event were happening again, sometimes called a "flashback."
Having strong feelings of distress and anxiety when reminded of the traumatic event.
Having physical responses such as experiencing a surge in your heart rate or sweating.
Making an effort to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations about the traumatic event.
Making an effort to avoid places or people that remind you of the traumatic event.
A loss of interest in important, formerly positive, activities.
Feeling distant from others.
Experiencing difficulties having positive feelings, such as joy or love.
Feeling constantly on guard as if danger is lurking around every corner.
Feeling as though your life may be cut short.
Having difficulty concentrating.
Being jumpy or easily startled.
And, feeling more irritable or having outbursts of anger.

I don’t want to minimize the situation of people who are suffering with diagnosed, clinical cases of PTSD, but I would like to suggest that events such as the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 9-11 have given all human beings alive today a subtle, undiagnosable form of PTSD, or at least have given all of us some of those symptoms, to a greater or lesser degree. I include myself too; I spend a lot of time, too much time, avoiding doing things that would move the world closer toward peace and the dismantling of all nuclear weapons. But I’m not asking for your every waking moment, ok? If you have children, I’m not asking you to put them up for adoption in order to devote more time. I’m asking for 2 to 3 hours a month, or less if that proves to be a problem. I don’t want to ask anyone to go beyond where you feel you can safely go. It seems we should be gentle, not harsh, with each other as we work toward peace together.

So what to do?

Albert Einstein wrote: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything except the way we think. Thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive.”

If Einstein was right that the problem is mostly in our minds and the minds of our fellow citizens, we need to start by changing our minds. We need to see what beliefs and emotions are in there, especially the Conventional Wisdom-type assumptions. Beliefs about certain historical events, about the nature of our country, about what our country has been doing in the world, beliefs about human nature, beliefs about where hope might come from and where hope will definitely not be found, beliefs about what we need to do first, and beliefs about what we need to stop doing. I’d like us to question as much of the conventional wisdom as we can, discuss it respectfully, calmly, thoughtfully, and rationally among ourselves, like the good UUs we are, to give each other some slack, not to accuse each other of anything, not to expect the perfect answer because there is no perfection in politics, and just enjoy the good feeling that comes from working on the most meaningful and important campaign in the world with other people of good will.

Imagine you are out hiking with your family or friends and you’re 5 miles from home. But between you and home lies Pine Mountain. A little Kentucky geography: long ridge in southeastern Kentucky without any tunnels. Here are some very different attitudes you could take:

1) It’s impossible. No one has ever crossed this mountain before, and we can’t do it either. We need to give up on the idea of ever seeing our home again. We should look for somewhere else to live.

2) There’s no problem at all. If we picture our home in our minds we can be there in no time. Let’s develop a mission statement that expresses our deep desire to get home. Then somebody notices that no one is walking. Well, we just need to wish harder.

3) We really have to start trudging up this huge mountain before it gets dark. This is really tough, there are fallen trees and boulders across the path, we’re all gonna be really sore and exhausted by the time we get home, I just hate hate hate this.

Or 4) Yes, this is a tall mountain and there will be a lot of challenges along the way, but there are also some beautiful views, there are trees and flowers to look at and birds to listen to. You all are the best company a person could hope to have, and our journey together will be just about as much fun as arriving where we need to go.

Let’s start this long, challenging, worthwhile, and exciting journey by looking into our own minds, seeing what Conventional Wisdom-type, untrue assumptions are in there, seeing what fallen trees and boulders are in there blocking our path, and maybe removing some of those obstacles. Maybe I can help you remove some of your obstacles and you can help me remove mine. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll reach the destination and there will be peace on earth.

MAYDAY! Mayday. Mayday??

2011-05-06T22:36:00.000-04:00

MAY-DAY

For thou, O Spring! canst renovate

All that high God did first create.

Be still his arm and architect,

Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;

Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,

Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,

New-tint the plumage of the birds,

And slough decay from grazing herds,

Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,

Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,

Purge alpine air by towns defiled,

Bring to fair mother fairer child,

Not less renew the heart and brain,

Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,

Make the aged eye sun-clear,

To parting soul bring grandeur near.

Under gentle types, my Spring

Masks the might of Nature's king,

An energy that searches thorough

From Chaos to the dawning morrow;

Into all our human plight,

The soul's pilgrimage and flight;

In city or in solitude,

Step by step, lifts bad to good,

Without halting, without rest,

Lifting Better up to Best;

Planting seeds of knowledge pure,

Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

HOMILY

"Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick," Susan Sontag notes. "Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."

“Mayday” is not an international distress call… but Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! is. It triggers a coordinated response: communications focus upon the vessel in distress, other vessels rush to assist, and humans move swiftly and intentionally.

The key is knowing when to call mayday: too soon, and you create a boy-who-cried-wolf situation; too late, and all may be lost.

“Mayday!” the distress call, comes from the French word venez m'aider. Everywhere humans are crying out, to God, to other humans, to stronger countries… Help us. Help. And all too often, help doesn’t come.

Learned helplessness.

But even when help is at hand, we sometimes wait too long, ignore the smoke in the cabin, the water in the bilge, and the way our plane keeps losing altitude.

Pride and individualism. (the Western UU “sin”)

I spent almost a week in Nyomat, and I had lots of time to think about the world: theirs, ours, and the one we both inhabit. Even before I arrived, Be’la told me there were a lot more problems in the village than before 2008: financial, interpersonal, medical, and spiritual, each of which affects the others. I was somewhat prepared for distress.

But it was Spring, every fruit tree in bloom, red tulips everywhere, the sun was warm every day, and gorgeous breezes swept into open doors of small adobe cottages where the heat was off for the first time in months. It was Easter in our Unitarian homeland, and the sermon was not about the resurrection of the body, or even of the spirit, but the renewal of individual empowerment and hope against hope. The story Be’la used was the myth of Sisyphus/Jesus in the tomb. Someone has to roll away the stone.

In my talk, I told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and the hope of planting seeds. The seeds of personal faith and the seeds of friendship and partnership. We ate heartily, a freshly killed lamb and garden fresh potatoes and cabbage and soup and home cooked bread from wheat grown in the fields. The rooms were not filled with wailing but with laughter, delight in the children, and conviviality. On Monday the Lord of Misrule visits as green boughs are decorated and hung on the gates of all eligible females, and men and boys go from house to house, reciting poems and getting rewards of dyed eggs, chocolate, and palinka. It was May Day~~Beltane disguised as Easter Monday.

There is another May Day: International Workers’ Day. I have never seen any people who work as hard as the Hungarians. Even the very elderly, their backs bent and their ankles swollen, their hands deformed with pain and swelling, work in their gardens, their homes, and in the nearby city from dawn until dusk. When they sit down to talk, they often talk about their families, their ailments, and about the lack of money. They told me that they think Americans believe money is happiness. They see America on MTV and equate our culture with money flowing freely and a surplus of things. It occurred to me that while they are obsessed with money and the poor employment prospects, they do little, collectively, to better things. There is a kind of habit energy that drives them on, and on fueling despair and all too often, suicide, as in the case of Peter, the lay president of our church, who carried a length of rope in his pocket for years, or the father of Joszef, the new president, who took his life after being imprisoned and tortured by the Communists during the collectivization process.

Each of these three May day myths come together because each presents a human need, hope or aspiration:

Celebration, justice and self-realization, and comfort in times of need.

Each of the three roads in Nyomat come together, too. The one the old lady lived on with edit; the one Peter hanged himself on; the one on which Joszef lives, strong-willed and determined to do the Sisyphean task of raising his family out of the perpetual cycle of grief and survival.

At the center of the three roads is the church.

We need one another. This is the function of the church. To remind and encourage one another to be a place of celebration, even misrule, to force us to sing, dance, laugh, play even when we feel least inclined. To be a place where we stand united against injustice, poverty, hunger, want and abuses of all kinds. To be a place of succor and comfort, when we are in despair.

But most importantly, the church is here to remind each human that she is not the center of the universe. Ideally (church as control tower) we will answer when Mayday is called, helping one another and, in the process, ourselves.

Writes Jacques Ellul:

"The church can only be a counter-community. If it is anything other than that, it has already compromised itself."

At the same time as the church is a gathering place and a communal place, it must stand against the status quo, it must always question and challenge the forces that oppress and exploit, and it must uphold the spirit of urgency and the human condition in its palm.

"Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick,"

Health is a process, not a thing or state. It is ongoing, dynamic, and ever changing. Health is a direction, not a destination, a once-and-for-all property.

We move toward health of body, mind and spirit, of institution and economy, of nature and of people, in increments and learning to receive the Grace that is offered even as we endeavor to advance justice, freedom, and joy.

Even now, someone is calling you: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

-

The Beauty of Japan....

2011-03-14T14:45:00.000-04:00

Our services throughout the church year have focused upon the arts and the ways they intersect with what we call "spirit."

This week's topic was Beauty & Spirit. I wanted us to think about human ideas of beauty, not of nature, music, or literature, but of faces and bodies.

Last week, before we had any idea what would transpire in Japan on Friday, March 11, I asked Christopher McKnight to speak about his perspective on the topic. Chris, a hairstylist, stand-up comedian, and one of Lexington's "beautiful people," had lots to say, and he even stayed home from the Lady Gaga concert to prepare his talk! It was so heartfelt and touching. If you missed it, you missed something very, very special. I am loathe to even ask him for a copy, because the courage and intimacy with which he delivered it were key to the message.

So, when it became clear that we could not gather for worship without remembering Japan, and sending up our goodwill and love, I decided to keep the week's topic the same (we also had a guest musician, a fabulous violinist!) but to add a few moments of pensive solidarity.

TOKYO

We spoke into the silence the names of Japanese friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances.

And then I played this slide show, in which I combined images of all the beauty the Japanese have given us: origami, Ikebana, tea ceremony, ink drawings, kimono designs, bonsai, gardens, architecture... so much more, with a single image taken on Friday, of a military rescuer carrying an old Japanese man upon his back from the rubble, an image that, for me, captured all of the hope, the humanity, compassion, and bravery these dreadful tragedies make room for.

If you missed the service and want the full effect, play Bruce Springsteen's song from THE RISING called My City of Ruins along with the images and go through them about one every 7 seconds!

May they help you when the images of destruction threaten to overwhelm you. If there's one thing we can be pretty sure of, it is the endurance, resilience, and creativity of the people of Japan. May it prevail.

Japan

View more presentations from Cynthia Cain.

FOOD, ART & SPIRIT

2011-02-27T14:47:00.001-05:00

February 20, 2011

READING: “The Attack of the Squash People” by Marge Piercy

And thus the people every year

in the valley of humid July

did sacrifice themselves

to the long green phallic god

and eat and eat and eat.

They're coming, they're on us,

the long striped gourds, the silky

babies, the hairy adolescents,

the lumpy vast adults

like the trunks of green elephants.

Recite fifty zucchini recipes!

Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;

sauté with olive oil and cumin,

tomatoes, onion; frittata;

casserole of lamb; baked

topped with cheese; marinated;

stuffed; stewed; driven

through the heart like a stake.

Get rid of old friends: they too

have gardens and full trunks.

Look for newcomers: befriend

them in the post office, unload

on them and run. Stop tourists

in the street. Take truckloads

to Boston. Give to your Red Cross.

Beg on the highway: please

take my zucchini, I have a crippled

mother at home with heartburn.

Sneak out before dawn to drop

them in other people's gardens,

in baby buggies at churchdoors.

Shot, smuggling zucchini into

mailboxes, a federal offense.

With a suave reptilian glitter

you bask among your raspy

fronds sudden and huge as

alligators. You give and give

too much, like summer days

limp with heat, thunderstorms

bursting their bags on our heads,

as we salt and freeze and pickle

for the too little to come.

READING: (from lecture)

Marjorie has read Harry Potter seven times. The books I read more than once, voluntarily, included Heidi by Joanna Spyri. If someone were to ask me, twenty, thirty, forty years later, what Heidi was about, I would say: mountains, goats, a grandfather and a girl, a loft window and a corner cupboard that held fresh baked bread, warm goats’ milk, and homemade cheese and butter. The imagined aroma, texture and flavor of these simple foods have been solidly ensconced in my memory. To me, they represent the warm, nurturing, health-inducing, and pleasure-sharing relationship between the Grandfather and Heidi, a delightful memory to a young girl whose own widowed father, although distant and moody, expressed his affection with home-cooked soups, beaten biscuits, fresh-picked vegetables, and apple dumplings on very special occasions.

Revisiting Heidi after many decades, the hunks of fresh bread, the golden cheese toasted over an open fire on the end of a fork, and the bowls full of fresh goats’ milk were a trigger for the same sensations of childhood safety and nurturance they had engendered long ago. Food, unlike many other fictional elements, is at once universal and decidedly particular. Its description employs all of the senses, from the visual and tactile to scent, taste and even sound. It is something we humans share, covet, work for, long for, take for granted, use and abuse, and die without. Wars are fought over and civilizations built around access to and production of food.

Food is a source of pleasure. Good literature feeds us with imagery and sensory detail. Loving food, like enjoying other sensual pleasures, was frowned upon by our repressive forbears. The Protestant ethic, from which most of us take our ascetcism, advocates hard work and self-control. Catholicism has Lent and fasting; Judaism severe dietary restrictions. Religions are the source of this repression. Pleasure is the enemy of piety. Food and sex are inextricably interwoven.

Mark Morrison-Reed, one of our best known UU ministers and author of Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, spoke of this Puritan ethic at our Institute last week. A central theme was the future of Unitarian Universalism. We don’t believe our own first principle, he said, speaking on an evening panel. We don’t really believe in our own inherent worth and dignity. We push ourselves too hard, we never give ourselves a break, and we are so tied to perfectionism that we fail to just be and to acknowledge our own worth, inherent, without having to always prove something.

His words were simple, but true. His point was that we cannot expect to be compassionate and helpful to the world, and hence to grow and live into our vision of Standing On the Side of Love unless we can love and accept ourselves, just as we are, and be loving to each other within our congregations. He is right.

Isabel Allende opens her book Aphrodite with these words:

I repent of my diets, the delicious dishes rejected out of vanity, as much as I lament the opportunities for making love that I let go by because of pressing tasks or puritanical virtue. Walking through the gardens of memory, I discover that my recollections are associated with the senses.

As with the attack of the squash people, there is in all things, even religion, the danger of too much, of over-indulging. We would be wise to learn what is known as the “French paradox,” whereby, in spite of drinking more and eating more butter and meat than most of us, they do not suffer from heart attacks or raised cholesterol at nearly the same rate. Allende suggests this is due in part to the way they eat: the French eat sitting down, with calm, enjoying each mouthful… one key word defines the French paradox: moderation.

Moderation is very different than deprivation. Think of what we call “fast food.” The very term is an oxymoron. And yet, eating such food is the equivalent of fasting, for it has no history, no character, no soul. It nourishes neither body nor spirit. Real food ties us to the earth, to community, and to our history. As Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement, says, “taste is like an umbilical cord. We all return to our grandmothers, no matter how many detours we take along the way.”

The world of greed and consumerism which dominates so much of life today would have us lose our memory, our ability to discern with our senses, and our self-worth.

And this brings us back to the first of our principles. Say it with me: The inherent worth and dignity of every person. Including me. When we truly believe it for ourselves we will be practicing what we preach.

Rumi & the Arts of Mystical Islam

2011-01-31T13:16:00.000-05:00

'Oh Soul

you worry too much.

You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty.

You have seen your golden wings.

Of anything less'

why do you worry?

You are in truth

the soul, of the soul, of the soul.

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky- to cause a

hundred veils to fall each moment

First to let go of life.

Finally, to take a step without feet~~

RUMI #1

Some commentary on I was a hidden treasure,

and I desired to be known.

Tear down this house.

A hundred thousand new houses can be built

from the transparent yellow carnelian

buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that

is to do the work of demolition,

and then the digging beneath the foundation.

With that value in hand all the new construction

will be done without effort. And anyway, sooner or later,

the house will fall on its own.

The jewel treasure will be uncovered,

but it will not be yours then.

The buried wealth is your pay

for doing the demolition,

the pick and shovel work.

If you wait and just let it happen,

you will bite your hand and say,

I did not do as I knew I should have.

Coleman Barks, who translated a huge amount of Rumi’s poetry, said: “Rumi is a way for Americans to love Islam.”

But Rumi, whose 800th birthday was celebrated widely in 2007, was a Sufi practitioner, and the founder of the Mevlani order of whirling dervishes, whose ecstatic dances were, and still are their meditation, their devotion, an integral part of their religious practice.

Sufis are not part of Islam’s mainstream. They have been executed in Iran.

Sufis are the mystics of Islam. As mystics, they are those who seek the inner light, inner knowledge, and self-enlightenment. In some ways Sufis are to Islam what Transcendentalism is to Unitarianism. If so, Rumi is the Henry David Thoreau.

What is the buried treasure?

It is you, it is what we call the soul, but to reach this soul, you must first demolish. Demolish what? The ego, the artificial and created exterior that is the house. All of that must be torn down.

How? Through honesty with one self. Very hard.

This is consistent with many spiritual practices as well as with psychotherapy. The emptying out, the sloughing off, and the elimination of the many defenses and walls we have constructed precedes the deeper quest for the true self within.

The soul.

The Sufi dervish wears a hat that symbolizes his gravestone. His white skirt and tunic are his shroud. It is said that he dies before his actual death.

Listen…

#2

Since you have left, death draws us in.

A fish quivers on rough sand until its soul leaves.

For those of us still living, the grave

feels like an escape-hole back to the ocean.

This is no small thing, the pulling of a part

back into the whole. Muhammad used to weep

for his native land. To children who do not know

where they are from, Istanbul and Yemen

are similar. They want their nurses.

When I close my mouth, this poetry stops,

but a frog deep in the presence

cannot keep his mouth closed.

He breathes and the sound comes.

A mystic cannot hide his breathing light-burst.

I reach this point, and the pen breaks,

as Sinai once split open

for the generosity it was given.

A frog “Deep in the presence” cannot keep his mouth closed. The passion of the mystic is the immersion in the presence and in the present. In Islam, there are 1001 names of God. The poetry of Rumi is filled with just this sort of passion and near-ecstasy and there is little difference between the images and words dedicated to the beloved human and to the beloved Infinite, the One, Allah.

What if this is what we long for?

What if this ecstatic union is what we are missing?

How can we know?

Practice, almost any legitimate contemplative practice will bring one closer to this passion, this burning flame of devotion. But it requires dedication, persistence.

“Stay here at the flame’s core,” Rumi says.

~~Let the beauty you love be what you do.

There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.~~

But we, humans, are like the humans Rumi spoke of and to over 800 years ago:

#3:

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,

yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

Knock on the inner door. No other.

Sloshing knee-deep in clear streamwater,

you keep wanting a drink from other people's waterbags.

Water is everywhere around you,

but you see only barriers that keep you from water.

A horse is moving beneath the rider's thighs,

yet still he asks, Where is my horse?

Right there, under you. Yes, this is a horse,

but where's the horse? Can't you see? Yes,

I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?

Mad with thirst, he cannot drink from the stream

running so close by his face.

He is like a pearl on the deep bottom

wondering, inside the shell, Where is the ocean?

His mental questionings form the barrier.

His physical eyesight bandages his knowing.

Self-consciousness plugs his ears.

Stay bewildered in God and only that.

It is, Rumi seems to say, our own thinking that is the barrier. The images and preconceptions we have cherished are keeping us from what is literally at hand. Indeed it is true: everything we wish for, peace of mind, equanimity, deep love and compassion, self-esteem, joy, gratitude, all are within us.

Bewildered is a great Rumi-word. It is like being, in the wilderness. Bewildered. It is like the beginner’s mind of Buddhism. Stay bewildered.

~~Today, like every other day, we wake up empty, and scared.

Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument and start to play.~~

Celtic Art, Imbolc & YoUU

2011-01-24T09:24:00.000-05:00

PART I: The essence of ancient celtic art

I am not a Neopagan. Not even close! I am not the least bit attracted to rituals and other pagan-y things. HEY. I'm from NJ, yo. But I can see why some people love it and enjoy it very much. And in my introverted, intellectual way, I actually do have a pagan corner in my soul. So here is my way of honoring a few Pagan traditions!

Let's start with Ireland. Because it is an island, the traditions, art work, and mythology left-over from pre-Christian times are more intact than in other places.

I learned that much of what we think of as "Celtic" actually came much later in Irish history. The earliest Celtic designs appear to have included spirals, simple knots that had no terminus, and what would evolve into the Celtic "cross"

Looks like Sarah Palin might have been in Ireland thousands of years ago:

One does not need to be a PhD or anthropologist to see the ways in which these ancient designs represent parts of the human condition that seems to be universal: the wheel of life; the changing seasons; the turning year, the spirals of time, fortune, and feeling, the notion of eternity and the interweaving of things. Even thousands of years ago, "art" was the way people communicated the ineffable: the things they could not or should not say.

This is a page from the famous BOOK of KELLS, probably the national treasure of Ireland. In its laborious production, I see devotion and discipline. I also discern the way that Christianity appropriated the cultures it was trying to convert in order to make the "sale." Many of the scrolls, patterns, and designs we associated with the Pagan Celts were incorporated into these manuscripts.

Book of Kells c. 800 CE

PART II: Newgrange & the essentials of life

This mound of dirt was mostly undisturbed for thousands of years. It was on a farm owned by a monastery. In the 1800s, a farmer started ordering laborers to dig out the stones, and one of the most intact megaliths in Europe was discovered. Newgrange is a fascinating example of the dreams and beliefs of people of this region five thousand years ago, almost 3,000 years BCE.

Newgrange after renovation. One of the members of the congregation who was there today said she went to Newgrange and that the feeling she had was intensely eerie. I am sure that one could intuit the powerful energies associated with this place by actually being there.

This is the entrance stone.

On the day closest to the winter solstice, the sun enters the window for just a few moments.

The upper opening is the solstice window.

This past Solstice, December 21, 2010.

Construction of the window. Nine Xs are carved into the stone above. Why? We can only guess.

How the sun enters the chamber.

This is the entrance to the passageway before it was renovated.

The carvings on the entrance stone. About 5,000 years old.

To me, it is more important to honor the integrity of this art than to "figure out" what it meant, or to overlay some contemporary practice upon virtually unknowable past.

What is the essence of this design?

What does it suggest to me, today?

PART III: Imbolc and returning to the essential.

IMBOLC is a Pagan festival that was transmogrified into St. Brigid's Day and finally became "Groundhog Day" in the New World. St. Brigid, believed to have been a pagan goddess before she was adapted into a Catholic saint, is associated with regeneration, the return of the sun, fertility, dairy, lambs, & her special day, February 1st, the day half way between the Winter Solstice & Spring Equinox*

It's a special day for our family, because my oldest son Casey & youngest, Seth, were BOTH born on February 1st, 23 years apart.

Casey & Seth, 2009.

I plan to start observing this festival!

It's a good day to clean things out and make way for the new. Here are a few possibilities, beyond your typical spring cleaning:

1. Clean up your computer

2. Cross things off your lists

3. Eliminate people who cause you stress and make you feel bad about yourself from your immediate circle.

4. Clear up misunderstandings.

5. Empty your mind of clutter (meditate)

6. Clean up your diet and your intestinal system!

7. Get rid of one bad habit.

8. Banish aches and pains by moving as much as you are able.

9. Let go of some old resentment.

10. Have at least one space that is 100% clutter free.

I'm sure you have more ideas. Some people don't clean things out because they hate throwing stuff away. I do, too, but not because I am a hoarder! I love order and space. I just hate wasting anything, and I cringe at every item I think I might be sending to a landfill. YOU DO NOT NEED to fill up landfills in order to get cleared out. Here are a few awesome alternatives:

1. garage or yard sale, yours OR someone else's. UUCL MEMBERS; think May 13-14th. GOOD STUFF ONLY! Stay tuned.

2. So many charities & agencies need clothing. Investigate!

3. If you have kids, ask somone with a slightly smaller child if they would like your kid's best stuff.

4. Lots of glass & plastic of higher numbers can be recycled if you take it to a center.

5. ReStore (Habitat) take a lot of furnishings for a great cause. Good place to buy stuff, too.

6. E-bay (I have never used it but I can see why people do) or Craig's List.

7. Freecycle! Best idea ever. People are looking for the oddest things and you feel so GREAT just giving things away. I love that feeling.

8. (I am not good at this,but..) turn it into art or find someone who does!

Imbolc highlights the fact that, if we are in touch with the earth and our surroundings, we instinctively want to slough off the old at this time of year. take advantage when the feeling strikes!

*yes, I realize that I said Spring "Solstice" in my talk but I do know the difference!

Imbolc ="Ewe's Milk"

This is St. Brigid's Cross, fun & easy.

You can find better directions than I gave you, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMj7RJDwp8U

Treasure each sign of the return of the sun.

Live each day with harmony, intention & hope.

Martin & Gilbert: Reflections on Leadership

2011-01-16T15:09:00.000-05:00

Martin Luther King, Jr. in front of his childhood home, Atlanta.

MARTIN and GILBERT

Thoughts on leadership

1/16/11

“Let us remember that space is never empty. If it is filled with harmonious voices, a song arises that is strong and potent. If it is filled with conflict… we don’t want to be there. .. What if we adjust our eyes to the invisible?... For such a little act of faith, space awaits, filled with possibilities.” Margaret Wheatley

My father would have been 102 years old on January 15^th, the same birthday as Martin Luther King Jr, who would have been 82 had he lived. At least for a few years my dad had a national holiday on his birthday. It struck us as very ironic for any number of reasons; one, my dad was racist, not in the Archie Bunker way, but in the subtle elitist way most educated whites born south of the Mason-Dixon line were raised to be. Two, he worked for his entire career for the military, procuring weaponry for an arsenal, while MLK promoted non-violence and finally, not long before he was assassinated, came out against the Vietnam War. I think we shrugged it off as a big funny coincidence and gave it no further thought.

But the two men, Martin and Gilbert, had something in common besides their shared birthday. Both were people who “led” organizations.

Marjorie & Gilbert Cain c. 1960

My dad’s favorite way to start a disciplinary lecture was to remind us that he was the supervisor of six hundred (or maybe it was four hundred) people at Frankford Arsenal. “I have 400 people under me…” he’d begin. And we knew what was coming. Somehow all of those people followed his commands, respected his authority, and trembled in fear at his reprimand. Ergo, so should we. My dad never hit us; in fact I don’t remember any sort of physical punishment from him, ever. And we were rapscallions! With no mother and just our housekeeper to discipline us, we were far from well-behaved, at least until my very strict stepmother came on the scene.

I doubt my father ever did understand why his kind of leadership, what I’ll just call the authoritative style, didn’t work as well at home as it did at the office. He came up in a world where kids unquestioningly recognized the authority of parents, but had children very late in life, so he was trying to rear us in the sixties and early seventies, a very different era.

The late fifties and early sixties were precisely the time into which Dr. King stepped, and during which he exercised a completely new (unless you count Jesus) style of leadership, one that still has echoes today, and which helped change our understanding of life in general, and what it means to be religious in particular.

How so?

It’s hard to talk about leadership without discussing change. True leaders are advocates for change. They welcome change and know it is inevitable. Those who want to control and maintain the status quo are managers, sometimes dictators, but not leaders. Leaders are people who know how to guide, inspire and communicate with their people as they walk together through change.

The new science of leadership tells us that Newtonian models no longer apply. Instead, in an interconnected, participatory, self-organizing universe what matters most is relationships. A certain amount of chaos is necessary for genuine change. Leaders remove obstacles, improve communication, and instill confidence and trust rather than manipulate, direct, make top-down decisions, or dictate. Starbucks and facebook are two highly successful examples of companies that are being run with at least some of these new models. Like entering an amusement park, it’s exciting and scary for erstwhile leaders, and for their followers.

Let’s get back to our birthday twins and isolate a few of these qualities of leadership, to enforce the point:

· Faith/TRUST- King’s entire vision was based upon his Christian Faith augmented by the Gandhian principles of satyagraha which in turn were inspired by the Thoreauvian notion of civil disobedience. Each is rooted in faith that good will prevail over evil, be it through humanistic leanings or theistic beliefs.

It was a faith, not only in God, but in his own destiny—and a belief that in the end, justice would win out. “No lie can live forever,” he said in quoting Thomas Carlyle. “Truth crushed to earth will rise again,” he recalled William Cullen Bryant saying. (Phillips, 301)

As for my father, I never met a person who had less faith and almost no trust. He lived expecting the worst, imminently, finding the negatives in almost every person and situation, and was utterly and permanently disillusioned by the untimely loss of his wife and his only brother. He failed to observe his extensive vegetable gardens and landscaped lawns, where he could have found reassurance that some things do thrive, that Nature has built in regenerative systems, and that miraculous things are as likely to occur as disastrous ones.

Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science;

I believe that Nature offers abundant displays of order and clear lessons for how to achieve it… the world is inherently orderly. It continues to create systems of great scope, capacity, and diversity. And fluctuation and change are essential to the process by which order is created. (19)

· Courage – both King and my dad were courageous but for very different causes. Martin risked his life and ultimately lost it for a cause that was colossal, much larger than his own concerns. He made a conscious decision that a sacrificial ministry was needed to advance civil rights, and he saw that he was the man to go out in front. He was actually humble in many ways. He spoke with and about the common people; he took very little money. His courage was rooted in certainty.

“I have a job to do. If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn’t function. I must face the fact that, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel though, that the cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.” 1965

My father was stoic. He white-knuckled his whole life but was beset by fear and anxiety.

Most of the organizations I experience are impressive fortresses… Fear that is everywhere must come from somewhere… Three centuries ago, the concept of entropy entered our collective consciousness… this is a universe, we feel, that can not be trusted… by sheer force of will, because we are the planet’s intelligence, we will make the world work. We will resist death. (Wheatley, 18-19)

The courage born of faith and especially of love casts out fear. True leaders are fearless.

· Inclusive – It’s possible to criticize King for not giving women a more important role in the movement. Still, given the times and the tradition from which he emerged, he was remarkably open in his leadership. One of the ways we picture Martin is sitting and listening, at retreats, in hotel rooms, in conference. Communicating through letters and speeches. Relationships are key. Listening is key. Toward the end of his life, King spoke out in favor of being even more inclusive, not only of white allies but of GLBT folk and of women, of non-believers and people of non-Christian faiths.

My dad was a loner. He was an engineer. He was always right. He had many, many good qualities: he kept our five acres and our very old house immaculate and pleasant. He had a wry sense of humor that crept out at odd times. He could be spontaneous. He was responsible and honest to a fault. He was a wonderful cook and an artist. He fixed everything that was broken. If he didn’t know how, he learned how. He was a gentle spirit beneath his bluster and high expectations. He was a successful manager – of a large enterprise and of a household -- but not a leader.

The church needs true leadership now more than ever. Think of it as a human body; it has been called the body of Christ. As new medicine is holistic, so is new leadership. We can no longer think in parts. All of the systems that compose this enterprise are intricately connected, so a cancer here, a disease organism there, affects all. Likewise, healing can be as counterintuitive. Traditional Western medicine is a science; healing is an art.

Traditional authoritarian/Newtonian “leadership” is based upon outmoded science. Leadership is an art; based upon new science. What may be needed to fix the financial woes may not be begging & pleading, but vision. What might be required to get the roof done might not be endless meetings, but mentoring by long-time members.. Most of all, instead of asking what’s wrong, we ask over and over what’s right, and where are our strengths? We are learning that the human body has remarkable healing abilities that we have barely begun to understand. We are learning as a people to trust and have faith in our instincts and to listen to our bodies and their wisdom. So it shall be with our organizations as we see more examples of the new leadership take hold.

Two years ago I spoke about how I believed that President Obama exhibited many of the same qualities of leadership I am now describing in Martin Luther King, and how he represented the new appreciative leadership. In spite of the obstacles that have been placed before him, and the heavy burden of politics in our times, I still think he has these basic gifts. They come through when he is at his best, in a crisis, sometimes when we have almost given up: Humor, non-anxious presence, collaborative style, ability to listen, rapport with the people, communication, self-differentiation, ability to be playful. Also, androgyny of spirit as was Jesus. As was MLK.

Yes, the changes in racial justice that began with King and his movement are still underway. But so are the changes in how we lead and follow, how we are going to be with one another, and how we are going to accomplish the tasks of this century, if we are willing to learn, sometimes to lead, sometimes to follow.

NOTES

* For more on King & Obama, read Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton prof. &UU:

http://www.alternet.org/story/145237/barack_obama_and_martin_luther_king_jr._?page=entire

BOOKS mentioned:

Margaret Wheatley, The New Science of Leadership, 2006.

Donald T. Phillips, Martin Luther King, Jr. On Leadership, 1999.

Get Me Outta Here!

2011-01-12T08:28:00.001-05:00

Snow days make me want to run away!

Especially when the kids are underfoot, I can't accomplish anything "productive," and yet it's too cold and there's not really enough snow to make playing outside fun.

If I can't be all alone with a fire in the fireplace and my Kindle, I'd like to be somewhere warm, sunny, and beautiful.

Yesterday, I came across this photograph of the entrance to Manzanita Village. It's a Buddhist-ish retreat center in the high chapparel north of San Diego, where I first met my teacher Caitriona Reed and her partner Michelle. It was here, almost 12 years ago, that I was intoduced to Buddhist meditation & thought.

I moved east that same year, and have only been back to Manzanita Village once, but I find that my heart goes there often.

Here's the entrance to the zendo. Why do I have such vivid sensory recall of the cool walls, the sunlight, the smells and sounds of the fire in the woodstove and the incense burning? I am sure that it's because all of my senses were heightened at that time, doing sitting practice several times a day, and leaving aside all other concerns.

I read this morning that Edwidge Danticant, a Haitian-born writer, has created a children's book about the earthquake last year in which a small boy, trapped for eight days (that is the name of the book, EIGHT DAYS) imagines all of the places and things of his native land that have brought him joy and pleasure, including the farm where he spends summers, the sunshine and rain.

The zendo is an adobe structure that may have been a stop on the mail route through the deserts of SoCal. Perhaps it saw hours and days of bustle, stress, worry, sorrow and even violence in its former life. Yet under Caitriona & Michelle's loving guidance, it has been transformed into a place of peace, solace and wisdom.

To me, that is the essence of what some call the spiritual journey, but I will just call life/awake. We must go back time and again to the source, the place within us that knows peace, forgiveness, and love.

The folks at Manzanita Village built this tiny cottage for individual retreat. It's made of hay bale with a growing roof. If you are going to Southern California, you'd be welcomed warmly. The food is fabulous and the people are genuine. I have been turned off by so many iterations of "spiritual" people who are full of themselves, striving for perfection, or looking for a quick fix. I was so blessed to find Caitriona and Manzanita Village and I can go there, at least in my imagination, any time.

SPIRALS of Life; Spirals of Love

2011-01-09T16:59:00.000-05:00

SPIRALS ~ Rev. Cynthia Cain

Thanks to everyone who came to church & did the spiral dance! These images and others were part of the meditation. I may have said the wrong name of the artist on the paintings.. correct artists and a few other IDs below! Also, several folks spoke to me about spirals after church with much to add: a physician said that all life begins from spirals since the male sperm travels in a spiral pattern.. another member offered that he loves spiral food, especially soft serve ice cream! Here is the original text & some of the images.

1/9/11

Many years ago, I gave a sermon based upon the poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes called The Chambered Nautilus. I suppose you could say that poem was about spirals, as it documents the slow evolution of the nautilus toward freedom. It is a great metaphor crafted by the Unitarian-educated and Calvinist-raised Holmes for the nineteenth century early precursors of Humanism, with its refrain: “Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul, as the swift seasons roll…”

As the first Humanist Manifesto promised: the progress of mankind onward and upward forever.

I am not sure I could even find that old sermon, but if I could I think I would offer it very differently. Human “progress” has not all been positive.

Spirals in human development, as the chambers of the nautilus are meant to suggest, go down as well as up.

Dante's Inferno by Bottecelli

It is fascinating to me that spirals, which are one of if not the earliest form of human created “art,” having been carved as long as 50,000 years ago, are found in virtually every religion and culture. Jung felt that spirals were the most universal archetype, instinctively “known” by the human psyche.

Some believe that humans first incorporated spirals into spiritual activities when they evolved enough to have cognition of mortality; that the turning and returning of spirals represented regeneration, eternity, even rebirth. Further, spirals have been used to suggest community, celebration, and meditative states, as in the spiral dance, the labyrinth walk, and the pre-Christian arts.

Indeed it is almost exclusively the Christian tradition which carries a strong connotation of evil with spirals. (tower of Babel, snake of Eve, Dante’s Inferno)

Tower of Babel by Brueghel

Certainly, in our culture, we have integrated the idea that things and people can spiral downward as well as up. In fact we are more likely to hear of someone spiraling out of control, having a downward spiral, or spiraling toward Hell than we are to hear of the upward version!

But the angels on Jacob’s ladder, depicted as a spiral staircase by William Blake, are going up as well as down. Not everything is headed for the pits.

Why a spiral? Mathematically and geometrically, a spiral represents the way that one circular motion causes and continues a similar and larger or smaller motion. There are innumerable examples of spontaneous spiral formation in biology, astronomy and most sciences. We now know that chaos can be reordered into patterns, including spirals, with outside interference. Indeed this knowledgeis the basis of Appreciative Inquiry, aka the new science of leadership.

Spiral patterns formed by collision of particles in a bubble chamber

The spiral of silence is a phenomenon that was first suggested by a German researcher who wanted to understand the reluctance of the masses to speak out during the Holocaust. Still a new theory, it bears mentioning not because it has been irrefutably proven but because it rings true. The Spiral of Silence is the tendency of humans to refrain from speaking out about injustice and evil because they FEAR ISOLATION. I believe we have witnessed the spiral of silence in our own country many times, but perhaps never so destructively as in the past decade. So few people are telling the truth now about war, terrorism, health care, immigration, civil rights, addiction, prisons, drugs, politics, sexual identity, pollution, food, education, and even religion that those who do speak truth are usually excoriated and punished with isolation if not death. It is very hard to find anyone, even a so-called liberal, who is unafraid to speak the truth.

I believe we shall see that the spiral of silence, in which each of us is complicit if only to a small degree, helped contributed to the unchallenged rhetoric that may have spurred the murders in AZ.

There is an alternative spiral forming slowly but surely. Because of the relative anonymity of the Internet, the near-universal accessibility of information by almost everyone, and the democratic nature of the web, truth can not be hidden or confined so easily. I believe this is a part of what has been called The Great Turning, the shift in consciousness from what Joanna Macy calls the Industrial Growth Society to the Life-sustaining society.

In this ascending spiral, love will replace fear as the motivating force, and will lead to greater acts of courage, truth telling, and love.

Everything we know of is spinning.

Everything is changing.

Spirals are everywhere and we are a part of them.

African Dwelling showing fractal layout with spiral path.

We are a part of this magnificent, terrifying, and inevitable dance. How it changes and whether it will be for survival or destruction is actually dependent in part upon each one of us.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

others by first do no harm or take no more

than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

THE ART of STARTING OVER

2011-01-06T08:36:00.000-05:00

a homily. given at the UU Church of Lexington, KY 1/2/11

AT THE SMITHVILLE METHODIST CHURCH

Stephen Dunn

It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,

but when she came home

with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art

was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends. She liked the songs

they sang when they weren't

twisting and folding paper into dolls.

What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith

in good men was what

we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,

that other sadness.

OK, we said, One week. But when she came home

singing "Jesus loves me,

the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk.

Could we say Jesus

doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible

is a great book certain people use

to make you feel bad? We sent her back

without a word.

It had been so long since we believed, so long

since we needed Jesus

as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was

sufficiently dead,

that our children would think of him like Lincoln

or Thomas Jefferson.

Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief

to a child,

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story

nearly as good.

On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts

all spread out

like appetizers. Then we took our seats

in the church

and the children sang a song about the Ark,

and Hallelujah

and one in which they had to jump up and down

for Jesus.

I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain

about what's comic, what's serious.

Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.

You can't say to your child

"Evolution loves you." The story stinks

of extinction and nothing

exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have

a wonderful story for my child

and she was beaming. All the way home in the car

she sang the songs,

occasionally standing up for Jesus.

There was nothing to do

but drive, ride it out, sing along

in silence.

The father of the poem bemoans having “No story” as good as Jesus’.

The liberal religions have no compelling narrative for what the Christians call redemption, the 12 step folks call recovery, and the Jews call keparem, as in Yom Kippur, Atonement, or tekanah, Healing, as in Tikkun Olam. If it is true, as Goethe says, that “All things are metaphors,” then the secular world is missing something compelling.

The closest we have to a “starting again” is the New Year’s holiday, which has no real story.

It is to the ancient rituals of sacrifice and rebirth what the modern baby shower is to the elaborate customs of preparation for childbirth put on in traditional societies. It is, in a word, impotent.

If all things are metaphor, then the Western “traditions” of excess, imbibing, and mayhem, followed by promises one doesn’t intend to keep, suggest that we mostly want to distract ourselves from the passing of time, and that we have no depth to our commitment to self-awareness or improvement. They are superficial metaphors suggesting shallow if not empty motives.

Still, we need not look far for traditions that offer rich and engaging stories:

Redemption – In the Christian tradition and in many of the world’s religions, a new “life” is purchased by some form of sacrificial act. What was for the ancients animal slaughter has moderated into rituals of fasting, repentance, confession, Communion, and the mystical bestowing of Grace.

These are powerful metaphors which address the human need to be absolved, to repair relationships, to restore order and what we might call equanimity.

Recovery is the word used by the Twelve Step programs to cover the entire collection of metaphors and stories which allow addicts to find sobriety and live with dignity. If you have never studied the 12 step program, you might be surprised to find that, while it uses theistic language and employs a Christian-like program of surrender, confession, contrition, atonement, and even evangelism of a sort, it is uniquely designed and crafted to be accessible to every human psyche. Indeed, it was Carl Jung, who also gave us the collective unconscious, who first told AA’s founder Bill Wilson, as he struggled to fashion the basics of AA, that he had never seen a "man" stay sober who had not undergone an experience of conversion. And he meant religious conversion.

The power in real human lives of recovery is a testament not to Christianity, but to the metaphor it and most faith traditions employ: the idea that humanity is flawed, will fail (“Fall”) but can also be redeemed. It is the ancient metaphor of life after “death,” the spiritual death of addiction.

Sadly, I will say again that we have lost the depth and power of this notion in secular life and, I would argue, in the liberal tradition.

So, with what has it been replaced?

I would argue that a shallow “renewal” has taken the place of redemption. Acquisition, consumerism, grasping, addiction, consumption, and artifice. We (even most who claim to be Christian) have fallen under the spell of unrestrained capitalism and relative excess. It happened gradually, and one day, we woke up to find ourselves gluttonous, greedy, and doomed. We discovered that in our dream of more, we let the Earth get ruined and we lost our souls.

What are the stories of this sorry excuse for redemption?

They are easy to find: turn on the TV. “Biggest Loser,” “What Not to Wear,” Hoarders,” Househunters, Plastic surgery shows, Bridezilla, on & on. All propose to “save,” not by the hard work of contrition and repentance, but by magical cures and more money spent. What used to be Grace has been replaced by some marauding TV host who arrives with a crew that will renovate your house, or by a surgeon who will cut away your flaws and enlarge or reduce your parts.

It is not only the sanctity of life that has been lost (although that loss is cataclysmic) it is also the precious aspects engendered by the redemptive community and/or the recovery movement that we have forgone:

• Hard work & perseverance

• The beauty of simplicity

• Relationships built on mutual love and not manipulation

• The virtues of respect, and dare I say it? Reverence.

So, at this time when thoughts of “new” and beginnings are in our minds, let me suggest a formula by which we can return to a semblance of deep humanity. It’s a scheme that requires no traditional faith, and yet bows to what is likely the most ancient of human beliefs: the earth and those who walk upon it are sacred.

I didn’t invent it, and its stories are already being told. Not so much on TV, since TV is the medium of those who must sell and manufacture more to stay in business, but in increasing numbers of books, websites, and rooms, like this one, where people are beginning to wake up from our collective night mare of centuries.

Coined by the ecology movement, adopted by the EPA, but universal in scope, it has become familiar to most school children.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. What if that were to form the basis of our spiritual program? How might that look? What could our new narrative become?

REDUCE – Simplify! LESS is more.

To recognize earth and humanity’s precious nature, one must slough off the excess that masks it. As a society, we are going to have to wrest the X Box controls from our kids’ hands and sit down to play a guessing game, sing a song, or tell stories.

REUSE – Tried & true. Go back to your sources. Most of us adults have discovered the ways that we heal and renew ourselves. We know intuitively what brings us back to life. Most of us don’t need to purchase anything new or pay anyone else to enlighten us. We have the tools. We know the true teachers. We only need come home.

RECYCLE – share, give back, teach, keep gift going. Here is the place for community. TV and the internet have isolated us from real human contact. To have true community, the place where what used to be called “Grace” happens, we have to show up, participate, volunteer, commit.

The European countries have added layers to this hierarchy of R-R-R. At the top of the pyramid is “prevention,” and below the 3 R’s are the least desirable alternatives of disintegration and disposal. This pyramid, fleshed out with metaphors, narratives, myths, and symbols, could be the new “religion,” the one that takes us forward toward what Joanna Macy calls “The Great Turning.” This turning is a world-wide time of starting anew, of redemption for the world, and it seems clear that we are both enmeshed in the decline that will lead to it, and beginning to see the signs of increasing numbers of people and groups who “know” this must be the way.

Where is "God" in the pyramid?

The Japanese have a concept called mottainai.

It is hard to define in English but it means both shame and regret for wasting that which could be used.

Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel prize winner &professor, visited Japan and has adopted mottainai as a guiding principle. Besides an expression of regret for wastefulness, it means rebuke for being irreverent, disrespectful, and overly acquisitive. We need more of these words and the stories that go with them.

Joseph Campbell, master of myth and story, relates that Schopenhauer, in “On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual,” points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensible factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So, who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you… the whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything structuring everything else. Perhaps the “Higher Power” for those who cannot conceive of an anthropomorphic God is precisely that aspect, that will.

In dreams and in our own narratives, stories abound as do rich and redemptive metaphors. We actually already have what we need for the Art of Starting Over – individually and collectively. We just need to wake up.

ART & ARTIFICE of CHRISTMAS

2010-12-28T07:32:00.000-05:00

a sermon, delivered 12/19/10, at the UU Church of Lexington, KY

UUCL Manger 2009

A “you tube” video has gone “viral” on the internet. If you want to see it, look up “flash mob/Hallelujah chorus.” In it, people who look like normal schmucks eating lunch in a mall food court (it was in Canada, but it could have been Anywhere, NA) begin to stand, one by one and then two by two, and sing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Soon, to the astonishment and delight of the unassuming fellow-diners, a full scale performance is underway. Silas House, a local artist, posted it with the warning: You will cry. Being a non-cryer, I took the dare. It was touching… but, why?

Flash mobs started in 2003, created by an artist who wanted to disrupt and challenge the conventions with which we trudge through our days. By having dozens, even hundreds of people show up at a preordained location (often a store or commercial enterprise, so there will be onlookers) the “mob” surprises, delights, and sometimes shocks those present. The extraordinary breaks into the ordinary. This is art.

Art is not the imitation of life, but the replication and refinement, the interpretation and highlighting of what is beautiful, horrifying, moving, and inspiring. Art takes the events and the materials of “real” life as well as of the artists’ imaginations and makes them accessible to the masses. In literature, music, painting, photography, drama, and film, those who are the artists bring our own lives to us, so that we may cherish them, question them, comprehend them. Art has existed and shall exist as long as there are human minds and human spirits.

Humans have always been afraid. From the dawn of civilization, we feared annihilation. We still do. What now threatens us is the potential for mass destruction by nuclear disaster or natural demise of all we know through climate change and other ecological scenarios. What once triggered apprehension and terror was the winding down of the year, the growing darkness, the fallow fields, the barren storehouses of winter. In either case, humans need comfort, and hope.

Art provides that.

The story of Christmas, told long before the birth of Jesus, is story of light into darkness, life in spite of death, goodness over evil, and plenty instead of want. Told time and again, featuring earlier gods, the birth of the sun (who became the “son”) and his many avatars, it is really the story of how humans continue to find solace, joy and even mirth in spite of a future that is as grim now as ever.

When the flash mob materialized in that food court, I thought, being not only a non-cryer but a long time mall-hater, all that’s needed is for them to start flipping the tables over to symbolize Jesus’ rejection of the greed and materialism he stood against. Instead, they resumed eating, strolling, and chatting. But the symbol of the setting was not lost on me: the mall, with its glitter, bad food, and excess packaging was a perfect place to set art against artifice. Artifice is fake, phony, and tricky ways of suggesting or imitating a phenomenon. When we can’t have art, we accept artifice. But what we long for is art.

Exchange student Anke & Seth w/ family nativity 2008

The Hallelujah chorus is art; so is Chartres cathedral, the Nutcracker ballet, the iconic paintings of Madonna and child, the simple arrangement of greens inside, the scene painted by mother nature of a snow-covered countryside offset by one red cardinal. The tableau, enacted over and over throughout Christendom, of humble shepherds and lowly animals kneeling at the rude birthplace of a still anonymous child, of magi/wise men traveling throughout the night to fulfill a prophecy, of parents posed in adoration of their infant, is art because it enshrines some of the most noble and lasting sentiments of humanity: hope, nurture, equality, charity, generosity, community, perseverance. It brings together animals and humans, the lowest and most exalted trading places, the whole hierarchy turned upside down. It can, if we strip away the layers of theology and dogma that have been overlaid through centuries, still move the human heart.

In the very funny and delightful book, An Atheist’s guide to Christmas, one writer, Emery Emery, tells of how he hated Christmas because it was also his birthday, and it therefore ruined both every year. His grandmother made him a cake shaped like Santa’s face, and he reports: I especially enjoyed the santa cake because I was allowed to take a knife to good ol’ Saint Nick. There was a cathartic quality to it. I don’t remember any Jesus cakes, but that would have been nice as well. Later in the essay, he reports that while relatives were bringing gifts labeled “Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday,” I was sitting quietly next to the tree, attacking the manger with GI Joe, a commonly held practice of mine.

I think too many of us have confused art with artifice at the holiday season. I also think there are too many people attacking the manger, if not with GI Joe (although that is happening as we speak) then with reason, intellect, and cynicism. If your childhood birthdays, holidays, religion or lack thereof was wanting, then disparaging or dismissing the value of others’ beliefs, hopes, and aspirations is not the way to heal.

What almost but not quite made me cry at the You Tube video was the way the people who sang emerged from the ordinary, eating, talking on cell phone, picking up trash. I think within each of us is an artist, waiting to sing, to dance, to help someone, to create something lasting and lovely, to listen, to share, to honor humanity in our own unique way. That is the art of Christmas.. and will last. All else shall fall away, or change. So may it be. Forever, and ever, Hallelujah!

OPEN Letter to Gov. Beshear

2010-12-12T20:37:00.000-05:00

THE INTERFAITH ALLIANCE

OF THE BLUEGRASS

P.O.Box 910336

Lexington KY 40591

An Open Letter to Governor Beshear,

We represent lay and clergy leaders from the Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Baha'i, Quaker, Buddhist, Hindu, and other faith groups practicing in Central Kentucky. As an organization that has been promoting and practicing interfaith engagement and understanding here in the Bluegrass for over ten years, we have serious concerns about the recent announcement of the proposed “Ark Encounter” theme park sponsored by Answers in Genesis.

While we acknowledge their right as a private company to build the Noah’s Ark complex, we do not believe that our Commonwealth government should be giving tax incentives to an avowedly sectarian group, at least part of the purpose of which is to promote one particular brand of religion, namely fostering only one way to read, apply and understand scriptural revelation.

We know that many people still hold many anti-scientific views. However, when the State/Commonwealth presents even the appearance of advancing or promoting one particular version of faith over other faiths, or over none, it does enormous damage to the future of interfaith understanding, respect, and hope for peace that so many have worked so hard to ensure.

Even while there may not be issues of legality or constitutionality presently at stake, the explicit support shown by the Governor, and his announced proposal for huge tax incentives may cross this threshold. We know that members of our congregations and many others who believe in fairness, justice, equity, and the democratic principles upon which this nation was founded will be closely following this saga. We need to make sure that our commonwealth government does not cross this line and what challenges will become necessary to preserve the integrity of our commonwealth's commitment to religious pluralism if it should.

At the very least, this action by Governor Beshear demeans the progressive and egalitarian reputation that our Commonwealth works so hard to create, foster and maintain. Do we really want to sell out to add 900 low-paying jobs that will discriminate against people who believe differently than do they? Do we really think that the increase in seasonal tourism is worth this compromise? Let them build and operate their business, and let them flourish, and pay taxes, just like every other business in this commonwealth. Or, do we want to be a state that honors the rights and the dignity of each individual, respecting all and discriminating against none?

Please consider this protest to Gov. Beshear’s actions by the members of the Interfaith Alliance of the Bluegrass, a statement of support for our commonwealth and a rebuke to all decisions that impose upon the dignity of our citizens on account of their faith traditions.

Respectfully,

The Rev. Cynthia Cain, Unitarian Universalist, Lexington

Rabbi Marc Kline, Temple Adath Israel, Lexington

The Rev. Dr. Mark D. Johnson, Central Baptist Church, Lexington

Representing the Board of Directors of the Interfaith Alliance of the Bluegrass.

Handcrafting a Life: Cultural Creatives

2010-11-01T10:46:00.000-04:00

Today, like every other day, we wake up

empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to

the study and begin reading. Take down a

musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are

hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-Rumi

Of course you are a cultural creative! You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.. you’d be shopping at Target, or something equally nefarious. But, just to be sure, take the test:

12 Questions

Do you love nature, and are you deeply concerned about protecting it?
Are things like global warming, the destruction of the rain forests, overpopulation, ecological irresponsibility and the widespread exploitation of people in poorer countries important to you, and would you like to see us take action to act more responsibly in these areas?
Would you be willing to pay a little more in taxes, or for your consumer goods, if you knew the money would go to clean up the environment and stop global warming?
Do you give a lot of importance to developing and maintaining your personal relationships?
Do you think it's important to try and help other people develop their unique gifts?
Do you believe in equality for women at work, and more women leaders in business and politics?
Are concerns about violence and the abuse of women and children around the world important to you?
Do you think our politics and government spending should put more emphasis on children's education and well being, on rebuilding our neighborhoods and communities, and on creating an ecologically sustainable future?
Are you unhappy with both the left and the right in politics, and do you wish we could find a new way that's not just in the "mushy middle"?
Would you like to be involved in creating a new and better way of life in our country?
Are you uncomfortable with all the emphasis in our culture on success and "making it", on getting and spending, on wealth and luxury goods? Do you feel that it all misses the most important things in life?
Do you like people and places that are exotic and foreign, and like experiencing and learning about other ways of life?

(adapted from Paul Ray)

So.. most of us are CCs! Actually, we were told this at General Assembly 8 or ten years ago, when the theories about CCs first came out in Paul Ray’s book, "Cultural Creatives: How 50 million people are changing the world" Cultural Creatives are differentiated from the Traditionalists (Right); Moderns (consumers);and Corporate interests. They share many issues with but are not synonymous with the “left”. They have been called the “New Progressives,” and are estimated to be as much as 45% of likely voters. Exciting news, but shaky progress!

Think of what has happened since this was announced at “G.A.”

· 9/11

· Iraq

· Tsunami, Katrina & Gulf oil spill.. to name a few eco-disasters

· Worldwide recession

But, also:

· Election of first Black US President

· Health care reform

· Growing green consumer movement

· Mass mobilizations against unrestrained capitalism

· Growing support for Gay marriage, ordination & benefits.

The important message for Unitarian Universalists is that we are far from alone.

Cultural Creatives – A steadily growing population
In 1995, Cultural Creatives were 23.6% of the US adult population, or 44 million adults.
In 1999, Cultural Creatives were 26% of US adult population, or 50 million adults.
In 2008, Cultural Creatives were 34.9% of US adult population, or 80 million adults
[US Adults 18+ years in 2008 = approximately 230 million]
175% growth in 13 years is a little over a 3% per year constant annual population growth rate.
However we have to factor in that the US adult population is growing too. So, the Cultural Creatives’ share of US population went from 23.6% to 33.6%. That is a 42.4% increase in share—about a 2.5% annual growth rate as an increasing share of the US population.*

In fact, it has been suggested that adding about 10% to this demographic would take CCs to the “tipping point.” This may be hard to recognize in Kentucky!

So, what do we do with this information?

I know that the part of the phrase that captured my attention was the word “creatives.” I grew up believing that creative people could draw, or sing, or make up fantastic stories. They were the quirky, off beat but interestingly dressed folks that you looked at with a mixture of envy and anxiety, not knowing for sure what they’d say or do. You weren’t even sure you wanted to be “creative..”!

It took me a long time to understand that creativity takes many forms, including parenting, homemaking, friendship, leadership, and even social justice.

But what are we cultural creatives creating? The biggest challenge to our march toward healing the world may not be the disasters and disillusionments, but our own inaction.

Ken Wilber, one of the thinkers in the forefront of the CCs, argues that:

The big curveball in this wonderfully, transformational, and potential evolutionary tale is that there is no guarantee that Cultural Creatives are capable or willing, even as a majority or possibly because they are majority, to create the breakthrough to (what he calls) second-tier thinking and behavior.
Wilber really flushes out his reasoning behind this difficulty, in his The Theory of Everything, calling the syndrome Boomeritis – a bad case of “pluralism infected with narcissism”.

It may be that what we need most is to create time and space… to think, to reason, and to align our lives with our deepest longings, dreams, and intentions.

Susan Susanka, an architect and author, and a CC, in a book called The Not So Big Life, writes:

A life that’s well composed is one in which there is authenticity all the way through, a life in which the outer appearance and the inner substance match up.

Your life is a lot like the house you live in.

The fact is that when architects design or artists paint or composers compose, it isn’t they who are doing the work. Their role is to collect all the inspiration and all the facts they need to execute the creative act and then simply get out of the way and let the art happen through them.

She compares the process of ‘remodeling” our lives with architecture or home design, telling us that all of the blueprints in the world will not do any good unless we start building. At some point, we must do the work.

She also writes that compartmentalizing is dangerous. A house that is chopped up into small rooms is not useful or attractive. We need to open up walls, add windows, and create space. We must eliminate the clutter that keeps us stuck inside our preconceived notions of life. As important as making space & getting started is making connections.

If you can take these steps, you are far more likely to be able to participate in the creative part of the “cultural creatives” label.

Paul Hawken is an author and speaker, a CC whose latest book is called Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and How No one Saw it Coming.

He says that much of the CC “movement” dates back to Emerson! (“Emerson’s Savants”)When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world

This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and …. the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

He asks us to imagine our bodies, and what is going on inside them:
Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Finally, Hawken makes an argument for wonder and worship, aided by Emerson, our own “CC”: Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

Today, like every other day, we wake up

empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to

the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are

hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. -Rumi

The Arts and Hearts of Transylvania’s Unitarians: Sustainability & Spirit

2010-11-01T09:58:00.002-04:00

I grew up knowing almost nothing about Eastern Europe, but what I did know appeared in my mind’s eye as grim, dark, and dreary.. as if the sun never shone there. I imagined all of the people as sad and the land as cloudy and monotonous.

Imagine my delight to find some of the most beautiful landscapes, folk art, and people I have ever encountered. The Unitarians, our partners and our forebears, are first and foremost Hungarian. That is evident in their music, their eyes and souls, their language, and their handicrafts. Remarkably, because of their isolation and poverty, they have preserved many of the Hungarian traditions even better than has been done in their homeland.

It is no fairytale, even though one often feels as if they have entered a fairytale landscape of thatched roof cottages and ornately carved gingerbread woodwork and snow capped mountains and dark seemingly endless forests. The story of the Romanian people, and, for our purposes, the Hungarian minority in Transylvania is more a night mare, through centuries of invasions, wars, annexation and pillaging. As recently as the last (20^th) century, our Unitarian brethren faced inquisition-like Romanian gendarmes, after Transylvania was taken from Hungary at the end of WWI, prejudice and deprivations, invasion by first German and then Russian troops during WWII, and near extermination of their culture under the brutal dictatorship and Communist regime of Ceausescu. The winds from Chernobyl blew right across their villages. Severe rationing and totalitarian tactics kept every citizen in fear. It has only been 21 years this December since the uprisings that led to the “end” of Communism, but those years have been far from joyful, especially for the Hungarians, proud and noble people who were once the oppressors and are now the oppressed. Even the oldest villagers living today cannot recall a time of complete peace and security. As you may already know, our own lay President took his own life two years ago this month, and just this summer, a Unitarian minister in another village committed suicide after taking the lives of his young children.

These villages have been called a laboratory for sustainable solutions; “the one place in Europe where the life that existed in the 13th century can still be found,” and “today’s ideal of an organic lifestyle — sustainable farming, local food, natural building methods, a close-knit community.”

The importance of maintaining their Hungarian national identity when they were for bidden to speak or write the language, their children’s names were changed to Romanian, and their Bibles were confiscated along with all other Hungarian books and used as toilet paper may be obvious. The designs carved into the wooden funeral posts, gates, and furnishings, and painted onto chairs, boxes, and pottery, hold many secret meanings and symbols. Hungarians were highly educated and cultured; at one time the University in Kolosvar (now Cluj) was considered one of the best in Europe. The café society was demolished, but the pride and patriotism was maintained, not only through the church, but through the arts.

It is true that the best of sustainability is practiced here. Nothing is wasted, and Wendell Berry (who visited Transylvania in the 60s) would be delighted to see that ox- and horse-drawn wagons still do most of the farm work. The food could not be more local. One wonders daily when walking through the village whether the duck or goose squawking under one’s feet will be on the table that evening. Great care and effort goes into the preparation of and serving of meals. But economy alone does not make a sustainable world. We will never save the planet by focusing on material and environmental solutions. As I have often repeated: People are resources, too, and relationships are key to a sustainable world.

In his book, Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan asks a villager what the crowd symbol is here. The answer? “The home, the family seated around the humble table with food on it..” (133). One must provide food for his family, if nothing else, and protect their well-being, if possible.

In each small Hungarian or mostly Hungarian village (where Hungarians coexist with Romanians & Roma) the houses are similar, grouped close together along dusty, sometimes muddy roads, but with back yards that extend for long stretches and contain everything one family needs for subsistence: animals, vegetables, fruit trees, nuts, grapes and plums for wine, even, usually, a cow. The fields are worked communally and the forests are often owned by the church. The cows go up to the grazing lands by day, and each cow returns to her own gate in the evening. We call it the cow parade. It is one of many hundreds of rituals and symbolic as well as utilitarian acts that have provided some measure of security, sanity, and predictability to a people who have suffered almost unimaginably, for decades.

But one of the arguments I have advanced about sustainability as it is being touted in the West is that it will never take hold voluntarily unless people can be helped to understand that the simplest pleasures are virtually free and can be enjoyed more readily when the acquisitive and extraneous lifestyle is eliminated. Flowers on the table, symmetry of design, fabric woven from locally grown hemp, long winter evenings spent doing handiwork, and perhaps most significantly, the art of hospitality, friendship, loyalty, and a simple faith in Universal Love, each of these is a reminder that we can still learn how to live, to preserve, to conserve and to live well. Sustainability must include beauty.

What is beauty? Symmetry, Order, Comfort, Simplicity, Harmony, color, lack of chaos, lack of strife, freedom from want, joy, surprise, integrity, hope, the human spirit. These are the gifts of our Hungarian/Unitarian partners in Transylvania to the West and to the World. May we honor and respect this partnership.

QUOTES: Balkan Ghosts, Robert D. Kaplan

“As always in the Balkans, bare survival provides precious little room for moral choices.”(89)

“… what Stalin had suggested: provide a means to keep the masses occupied, to give them something to do, while reducing them to a subsistence existence in which the human spirit ceased to exist.” (103)

“…traveling in Romania was often like inhabiting the pages of a Dostoevsky novel.” (113)

“Romanian history has been a long and continuing hustle – the making of one desperate deal over the head of another in order to stave off disaster.” (129)

Ceausescu’s destruction of Romania: “the wish fulfillment of a vindictive peasant.” (184)

Page 149-150 Hungarians in Transylvania

Transylvania

2010-11-01T09:58:00.001-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Transylvania

View more presentations from Cynthia Cain.

60th Anniversary UU Church of Lexington

2010-10-25T09:35:00.001-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

60th Anniversary UU Church of Lexington

View more presentations from Cynthia Cain.

Life after "The Help"

2010-08-13T17:38:00.000-04:00

My cousin Fern (second of 4 Marjories) and her family's maid, Mitty in 1983. I am guessing that Fern's relationship with Mitty was much like the children in The Help.

My (great) Aunt Madge (the first of 4 Marjories) for whom Mitty cared until Aunt Madge died around 1980.

HOMILY:

Last week, a member who could not be here approached me. “I was at the tail end of this… we had a Black housekeeper,” she acknowledged.

“So did I,” I told her.

That got me wondering: how many of us could identify directly with the stories told by Kathryn Stockett? I would assume that in Jackson, MS or the deeper South, the numbers would be legion. I know that for me, growing up in NJ but with a mother from the South with old-fashioned values. I was the only person I knew who had what we then called “colored” maid.

Emma Clayton was with us from birth but she became our full-time caregiver after my mother died. I have exactly one picture of her, standing alone by the kitchen sink, wearing her uniform of navy blue skirt and pressed white blouse, apron and sensible shoes. I also have one picture of George, the gardener who worked for us during those times.

As I did my final preparations for today’s homily, my daughter was out with her very best friends. Two of them, her intimates since first grade, are identical twins. They are African American. It’s less than no big deal. My first packet of fifty pages was returned by my mentor on Friday: detailed line edits of two short stories that I read with trepidation and awe at her incisive mind. She’s way younger than I, and she’s African American. Again, not a big deal. But it gives me pause as I contemplate the lessons of The Help.

At age 55, I span with my lifetime the changes that have occurred since people treated their Black employees with a paternalism and sense of propriety that can be called, must be called, demeaning, insulting, even evil. The layers of irony that are stripped away by this rather simple but engaging tale are many, but at their core lies a single startling truth. Women who were allowed into the most intimate places in the homes and lives of white families as their “help” were expected to prepare the food, raise the children, and nurse the sick and dying, but were not allowed to sit at the table, keep their brought-from-home lunches in the same refrigerator, or use the same toilets as the families they worked for. And the most enormous lie at the center of this complex yet common story consists of four words: part of our family.

What this novel reveals is that these women were in no way “part of” the family; nor, in many cases was the love that flowed freely from the children to the Black caregivers necessarily reciprocated. Kathryn Stockett reports that at one appearance in NC, she said that she knew that her own childhood maid loved her. A Black woman in the audience stood up and said, she didn’t love you. You just think she loved you. (Interview with Katie Couric)

In my case, I would never use the word “love” for my relationship with Emma. She was stern, authoritative and yet often warm and sometimes funny. She was trying to keep three very spirited young children whose mother had died suddenly and whose father was preoccupied by his grief and his executive position with the US government from becoming hellions. It’s clear to me now that she took this seriously.

(picture of Emma coming soon; it turned out to be a slide!)

When I think of Emma now, I can remember her far more clearly than I can my own mother, of whom I have dozens of photographs. My overwhelming feeling is shame. Shame that she was summarily let go when my father married my stepmother about three years after my Mother’s death. Shame that we never saw her again. Shame that even as an adult, I did not attempt to find and visit her. I was in my thirties when my Aunt Ruthie was confined to a nursing home and we discovered that Mary, Emma’s oldest daughter who had sometimes filled in for Emma, was a nurse there. She was delighted to see me and to meet my small boys... but she told us that she was so sad because her momma had died just that year. She was sad because she knew that Emma would have loved more than anything to see us. It is not so much, in my case, the way Emma was treated as an employee as the disregard we had for her as a human being and as a huge force in our lives that makes me feel ashamed. Because ashamed is the word Stockett uses when she discusses these things in print and in person, I believe that a healing is now at hand.

As we enter this new church year, we’ll be using literature, poetry, movement, visual arts, crafts, music, drama and film to examine and contemplate the intersection between the spirituality and what I am calling very inclusively “art.” By intersection, I don’t mean places where God is mentioned or where there are explicit references or depictions of churches or established religions. I hope to pull from the arts samples of works that make us more human, more humane, and that heal us, because for me that is spirituality.

There are a few scenes in The Help that take place in the Black church. I actually found those to be some of the most contrived and least effective sections of the novel. (But they will make great film scenes!)

Indeed “God” does not play a large role in The Help. Aibleen’s spiritual practice of writing out her prayers is almost like a Buddhist meditation or a new age journaling practice. What makes the book a fit topic for a discussion of spirituality are these things:

* It tells a truth that must be told. The author repeatedly stresses that while the book is fiction, it is "true." Even today, she has been met with criticism and rejection from her own white community, and some scorn from the Black readers. Nonetheless, the book reveals a truth that is new, in that it has not been made this clear in this engaging a way, by such memorable characters, before. Hard truth and facing truths along with the shame and doubt they engender, is the core of spiritual growth.

* The book is healing. Ultimately, we will all face and come to terms with the truths of our lives. Those which go unspoken cause illness, mental, physical, and societal. Just electing a Black President, UUA President, or having a child whose best friends are Black does not undo the painful and shameful truth that I was born a white female, born with certain privileges, and that I benefitted from a racist system. One of the biggest problems we liberals have is that we don’t want to face our own collusion in systems of injustice and inequality, so we never completely heal.

* And while there is much healing to be done on race, we face a new and massive divide that worsens daily: the immigration issue. Interestingly, Hispanics, who comprise the bulk of undocumented immigrants, are today’s “help.” Working as housekeepers, gardeners and day laborers, they fill many of the roles and are treated with much of the same dehumanizing and demeaning racism that Blacks were (and in some places, still are). What is called “illegal” immigration gives the white majority a basis for blatant and overt racism. I am delighted and humbled to report that UUs have taken a strong lead in protests in AZ, making up the majority of those arrested and traveling long distances to do so, in a gesture that is reminiscent of our response to the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s. Even now, there is debate about whether or not this is right for us. But this is a strength of our people: we have the courage of our convictions. We are people who will stand in solidarity with the marginalized, the victims of injustice, and the downtrodden, no questions asked. There is something very Jesus-like in our witness, and I think Standing on the Side of Love is a perfect place for us.

Noam Chomsky wrote:

There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. ..the credo of any true intellectual has to be, as Christ said, “my kingdom is not of this world.”

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions… Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom… Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted.

Genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive.It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.

Deep discomfort can be the beginning of a new life of the spirit. Indeed, almost nothing else ever has been. To the extent that The Help makes us uncomfortable, it will contribute to our wholeness and humanity. And, since people are far more likely to read and talk about The Help than about Noam Chomsky, that’s a good thing.

BEYOND 28 FLAVORS: Ice Cream Theology

2010-07-23T15:30:00.001-04:00

Part of the joy—and perhaps the lure—of simple living is that you choose to manage only what lies within the scope of your actual capabilities and not to live under the pretext of unlimited assets or "purpose-greed"….. The result of that choice: A life that's possible, and a life that lasts. (Alban Weekly)

There are so many ways go when considering ice cream and theology/philosophy: Diversity, celebration, even sustainability, health, desire, and last but not least, sin.

So, you may be surprised at the one I thought most provocative and UU-worthy: Howard Johnson’s. It’s true, there are those among us right now who have never wandered into an actual Howard Johnson’s restaurant, sat down at the spinning stool by the counter with its three protruding aprons, and gazed with anxious confusion at the ever-growing list of possibilities: the 28 flavors, etched into a mirror that was graced by the trademark logo of Simple Simon and the pie man, the possible combinations of toppings, nuts, and whipped cream for sundaes or banana splits, the anticipation of sweet ecstasy as the sticky communion is fed to you by a smiling counter-girl. If you are among those, you missed an icon.

The similarities between HoJos and churches are many: lots of us went there once a week. Some never went at all. We knew the places by their distinctive architecture, which could merit another homily. The bright orange roofs were ubiquituous, especially along highways, as the mission of the enterprise, "Feeding the public on wheels," became enshrined. Families came together, seeking, and left, satisfied and content. Atop the roofs a dome, and above that, where a cross might be, a weathervane with Simple Simon and his generous pie man. Not that stealthily employed, still most of us were blissfully ignorant to them, were signature subtle messages: the colors that were to evoke a tropical vacation; the original restaurants shaped like colonial style homes, with fake dormers and colonial windows. You were both at home and on vacation, and you could find reliability, predictably, uniformity of service and product: the fried clams and the frankfurters cooked in butter were the holy sepluchres of our youth.

Most of us went out to eat rarely, so HoJos capitalized upon the feeling people had of celebration and sort of sacred time when they did go out by placing its franchises right at freeway exits (Exit 5 in NJ was the one I worked at) yet in reasonable proximity to local communities so that residents could go eat there and “feel” like they were on vacation. It worked, for most of the 20th century. There were hundreds of HoJos, the brand expanded to include motels (motor inns, as they were called) and packaged food.

There was one period during which almost all of the restaurants closed, WWII, when rationing kept people from driving and rationing of food prevented the chain from getting the needed ingredients.

HoJo restaurants started to fold at about the same time that McDonald’s reached mass popularity. People opted for convenience and speed. Families stopped doing things together and very few families were traditional. By the end of the 20th c almost all women worked outside the home. Time became a precious commodity. Electronic pleasures expanded, and people began to worship at the altar of TV, then the Internet, now handheld gadgets, little “churches” they can carry with them.

Those of us who spend our time thinking about these things are concerned.

HoJo’s died for many reasons, and the same will be the fate of the church in the United States unless we learn the lessons of history. We, the church (including all places of worship) are going to have to change as the world around us changes. This is anathema to some… I know. But it is true.

First, how is organized religion different than a Howard Johnsons, and specifically how are we, the UU faith, distinguished?

• Religion ought to have a core that is deeper and more lasting than serving people’s needs.

• Religion must challenge and not merely feed or soothe people.

• Religion asks of us to become co-creators: the core of this faith is found not in the worship experience (what is it today? Fish fry, oh, I don’t like that. Let’s get a new chef!) but in the mystical and somewhat indefinable process by which something happens when folks are thrown into a community and made to get along with others they would normally avoid; challenged to look at themselves and the meanings in their lives, asked to serve the wider community, given the daunting task of maintaining a physical plant that is the meeting ground of the faith. We are co-owners of the enterprise. And while there may be some satisfaction in the weekly dishing out of words and music, the real transformation lies much deeper.

I think we are going to have to get this clear, and remind one another of it, starting today, if not sooner. The church is not a restaurant. The mission of the church must never be to serve the people’s needs (desires) but to reach far beyond them. My goal is to help you create structures that empower you to see, over long time, by faithful attendance and by thoughtful attention, how much more meaning and depth and clarity and yes.. JOY!.. your life has when you are a part of a community.

Now.. Ben & Jerry. I served ice cream with Ben Cohen when he came to one of the first events opposing the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan’s debut at Riverside Church.… B&J’s is not a church either, although it would be a synagogue if it were. But it is a radically innovative idea about how to do business in the kind of economy we are in. Raising up sustainability, Environmental awareness, activism (Greenpeace!) and even Stephen Colbert has made B&J’s very unpopular with some. I am guessing Glenn Beck doesn’t eat it. But the church could learn from them as well. Focus, mission, clarity, boldness and risk-taking… all challenges to today’s religious institutions that made the huge and perhaps near-fatal mistake of getting into the business of self-preservation.

What I am talking about is the church/synagogue gurus label the difference between functional and visionary churches.

Functional is what we have been, what the nay-sayers, the well-poisoners and the voices of doom and gloom want us to believe we still are. Functional churches are characterized by

Consumerism

Segmentation

Passivity

Meaninglessness

Resistance to change

Nonreflective leadership.

Visionary Churches are characterized by:

Sacred purpose

Participatory culture

Meaningful engagement

Innovative disposition

Reflective leadership.

(above from Alban Weekly)

The core distinction of a visionary congregation is that it is always in pursuit of sacredness over consumerism, holism over segmentation, participation over passivity, innovation over routine, meaning over rote interactions, and reflection over inattention. (Alban)

That’s a lot to chew on, and it won’t go down smoothly. To be continued.

gotta get this right!

2010-06-16T07:56:00.002-04:00

SUNDOWN TOWNS

2010-06-13T19:02:00.003-04:00

The following power point introduces "Sundown" Towns.

http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B_ArRlzE0pWuOGM4YjkyNjUtYzEyMi00YTQwLTllZjgtMDAxZjU1N2Q0NmJk&hl=en

Now THIS is an Outrage!!

2010-03-25T13:33:00.000-04:00

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/03/cesarean_births_hit_new_high_i.html

I am back to blogging, and will do my best to keep up. Finally, something made me mad enough to blog about! Mostly, I have been busy with my five year old. Hence, the words "shall try" to keep up.

I had a Cesarean in 1982 (and I still have trouble spelling it!); yes, friends, that was twenty-eight years ago. The result is my very handsome and loveable, if somewhat troubled, son, Casey. The other result is that I have been an advocate for natural birth ever since! Due to a wonderful organization that offered classes for "VBAC" (vaginal birth after Cesarean), I was able to have my second and third children completely naturally. The really amazing one was Colin, born in 1984. He was the first VBAC to be executed in that particular hospital, and I used a lot of stealth methods to make it happen. I am pretty sure I wrote another piece elsewhere on this blog that tells about how I was born that day, too.

The most revolutionary thing I learned in my "hippie childbirth" class, besides how to toss out the breathing methods and subvert the hospital regimens, was that women have given birth for all of human history, naturally and successfully. This is something our bodies know how to do! Yes, there are exceptions in a small percentage of cases where intervention is required, but nowhere near 32%!!

Since then, I've taken my revolutionary battles elsewhere; religion, politics, racial justice, and on and on. But I was appalled this week when I learned that C-section rates have gone up! This NPR blog explains the statistics; be sure to read the notes that follow, about the "cascade of interventions", and the way hospitals and the business of health care interfere with the progress of natural birth.

I wrote a paper in seminary for a class on Ritual, about how the modern hospital technology has replaced what was once an intimate and community function. The upshot is that women have lost their power, the confidence in their own bodies, and their connection to Gaia and God.

One third of US births are now done by Cesarean! Let's all pray that our new beginning in health care, which might just return some authority to the patient/client, will help turn this back around.

Haiti: Theology & Theophany

2010-01-26T11:43:00.000-05:00

I couldn't write the blog for a few weeks.. I was silent in the wake of Haiti. I didn't have words for it; writing about anything else seemed beside the point. This past Sunday, we had a service of solidarity for the people of Haiti. We called the names of just a few of those missing and presumed dead. I piled up 100,000 sunflower seeds on a Vodou altar, which people could touch, take home, feed to the winter birds, or try & plant. And we listened to haitian music and several reflections, of which the following is one:

HAITI: Theology & Theophany

(Song, "For My People in Haiti," Wyclef Jean)

I love this song by Haiti’s most popular contemporary artist, Wyclef Jean. The line, Where is god when we need her? is the question, whether you believe in her, in him, or not. It’s another way of saying, where is Hope? In the song he closed the TV special with, he rapped, “Earthquake. Feel the earth shake. But the soul of the Haitian people it will never break.” Hence, he answers his own question.

Only privileged people, people like us, can afford to even consider a God who is a hands-on God. The vast majority of people of the world know that God is not a being, but a way of being. God is a mystery. Their faith in God is strong because they cannot hide, as we can, or could until September 11, 2001, from horror. Because they cannot hide, they know both suffering and joy.

David Blanchard, a former minister here at UUCL, is now my friend on Facebook. He shared with me yesterday these words from Pema Chodron: "How did I get so lucky to have my heart awakened to others and their suffering?" Indeed!

So today I propose that the only answer to Wyclef’s question is not, “There is no God, fool!” but something far, far, deeper.

In 1955, the year I was born, Paul Tillich wrote The Shaking of the Foundations. In this monumental work of postmodern theology, he begins by quoting the Prophet Jeremiah:

I look out on earth. . . lo, all is chaos; I look at heaven . . . its light is gone; I look out on the mountains . . . they are trembling; and all the hills are swaying! I look out . . . lo, no man is to be seen; all the birds have flown! I look out . . . lo, the sown land lies a desert; and the towns are all razed by the Lord's rage. For thus has the Lord said: The whole land shall be desolate. And for this shall the earth mourn and the heavens above be black. I have purposed it and will not repent. Neither will I turn back from it. At the noise of the horsemen and the archers the land is all in flight, men taking refuge within woods and caves, and climbing upon the rocks. Every city shall be abandoned, And not a man dwell therein. You ruined creature, what will you do! JEREMIAH 4:23-30.

And the Prophet Isaiah:

The foundations of the earth do shake. Earth breaks to pieces, earth is split in pieces, earth shakes to pieces, earth reels like a drunken man, earth rocks like a hammock; under the weight of its transgression earth falls down to rise no more!

Lift up your eyes to heaven and look upon the earth beneath: For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke.

And the earth shall grow old like a robe; the world itself shall crumble. But my righteousness shall be forever,

And my salvation knows no end. ISAIAH 24:18-20

Tillich makes it clear that the prophets of long ago could never have understood God as both omnipotent and omniscient. They were not sheltered, like the people of Haiti are not now and have not for a long time been sheltered, from the “shaking of the foundations.” They did not have the luxury of cynicism or aversion. He writes: We always carry the end with us in our bodies and our souls. And often whole nations and cultures succeed in forgetting the end. But ultimately they fail. Tillich writes that the perfect God of the idealist “is not God at all, and does not exist.”

Instead he turns to the atheist Nietzeche for a better metaphor: “God” is the perpetual Witness. From this God, he says, we cannot flee, for he/she is the Ground of our Being. The Eternal. Reassuringly, he adds, “let us not forget that life is also friendly.” There is a grace in life. Otherwise, we could not go on living. (ch6) With our eyes, we see this Grace in the outpouring of compassion, the will to sustain the gaze, even upon unimaginable suffering, and in the outstretched hands eager to help. Therein we find Purpose, Hope, and meaning.

things and people... COFFEE!

2010-01-08T07:12:00.000-05:00

Dr.Mehmet Oz is the new media health guru. I figured he was Turkish, because of his name.

Being Turkish, how could he not love coffee, right? (Actually, I have been to Turkey, another thing that makes life worth living.. and they usually drink TEA!)But, I digress.

Dr. Oz says that coffee in moderation is good for you! It contains anti-oxidants; in fact, it is our best source of anti-oxidants. He also says to pretty much avoid any white foods (bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, SUGAR, etc) and here's a recipe from his blog that I liked:

But I LOVE me some coffee!!!!

The Magical Breakfast Blaster: Oz and his family love this smoothie for breakfast as a way to deliver nutrients and long-lasting power. The psyllium helps fill you, while the flaxseed contains omega-3 fatty acids that are beneficial to your heart.

½ large banana, peeled and cut

1 scoop (½ cup) soy protein

½ tbsp flaxseed oil

¼ cup frozen blueberries

½ tbsp apple juice concentrate or honey

1 tsp psyllium seed husks

8 oz water

Peel bananas; break into chunks. Combine all ingredients in a blender, with a few cubes of ice if desired. Cover; blend until fairly smooth.

More things... poetry & poets

2010-01-03T15:27:00.000-05:00

I think poets are the heroes and heroines of our time. They are the ones who tell it like it is. By crafting reality, even the bitter and ugly of it,into something lyrical or poignant or vivid, they make us wiser, more alert, and more alive.

I write fiction, when I have time and space, but not poetry. I marvel at good poetry, and at good poets. In some ways they are Christ-like, for they take a lot of suffering upon themselves in order to do their work.

Even though I don't like Garrison Keillor much because he makes fun of Unitarians in a not nice way, I truly admire his taste in poetry and enjoy the way he reads it.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/?refid=3

If you listen to The Writers' Almanac, you know that he reads a good poem each day. I rarely hear it, but I receive it in an email, (just click newsletter on the right side of the page) which I enjoy tremendously, and from the email I can link to a sound recording of GK reading... or just read the poem myself. It is a great joy for me each day!!

Here's one of my favorite poems (I have about a thousand):

FERN HILL by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Things that make life worth living: Katrina Volunteers

2010-01-02T11:12:00.000-05:00

Who could have dreamed of all of the thousands of miracles that would come in the wake of the biggest natural disaster of the decade (in the US)... tens of thousands of lives changed.. not only those who survived and overcame the effects of the disaster, but all of those who were blessed to be a part of the recovery? It continues still! Our church has traveled for three Christmas vacations now to Biloxi, MS, there to work with an agency that was born after Katrina:

http://www.hopecda.org/

We've built homes and much more: made friends, learned oodles about economic racism and environmental disasters and socioeconomics, taken exchange students from all over the world, built community among our own congregants, and shared our work with the congregation through reports, blogs, photographs, and stories. They, in turn, have generously funded our trips! For sure, people are still suffering from Katrina, and some of the roots of disaster have yet to be addressed, but that does not diminish the wellspring of joy and connection that has come from an event of destruction.

Our own church web site has a page on this year's project. 09-10 Volunteers return tonight!

http://www.uucl.org/Biloxi.htm

Things & People That make Life Worth Living: Sasha Obama

2010-01-01T10:43:00.000-05:00

All kids are not cute!

I am a kid-lover, but some children are downright unappealing. That seems to have been the case with many of the first-family children over the decades of my life, possible exception being the Kennedy children. The Obama girls, it goes without saying, are darling! They are adorable not only because they have the genetic good looks of their parents, or the grace and bearing that was probably instilled in them by their grandmother, but in the case of Sasha especially,because she is so damn genuine.

Malia, a bit older, and growing like a tree, has some of the her mother's seriousness and intensity. Sasha is impish and delightful, with that same mischevious glint we sometimes detect in her father. I love her! Just can't get enough of the photos of that girl.

May she remain as spontaneous and natural and wholesome as she is today! May the cruelty and envy faced by all in the spotlight not leave her bitter, but make her stronger and stronger. May she become exactly whatever she is most suited to be: farmer, a politician, an athlete, an inventor or a homemaker!

Things & people that make life worth living #2: Small Banks (like Bank of the Bluegrass)

2009-12-30T17:13:00.001-05:00

I have been telling people about my bank for 5 or 6 years now.. it's very small-- just two offices, and ATMs in the local Shell Stations. It happens to be our church's bank, too; that's how I discovered how incredibly kind, personal, and personable they are. Having tellers know you, light up when they see you, and help you joyfully rather than ignore or shrug off your concerns is a source of delight to me after all these years. Heretofore, we banked with National City, and whenever we got close to being overdrawn, they (like many banks) would deduct the largest debit first, so that rather than one overdraft, we'd have 4 or 5. No one knew us, and no one cared when we split. But I agree with the Huffington Post and others who are advocating this simple method of changing things -- if hundreds of thousands switch to small, local banks, the big ones will care!

Check out the video and the list of banks near you that make the cut!

http://www.moveyourmoney.info/

I also love my bank's Mission Statement. Here it is:

We operate our bank for a fair return to our stockholders. Our plan is to deserve the profit because we deliver a quality personal service our clients deserve and want.

Our guidelines for this service:

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Honesty

Integrity

Confidentiality

Patience - Understanding

Immediate action

Go the extra mile

Kindness

Spirit of friendliness and teamwork

Responsiveness to needs

Knowledge of products

Know our clients by name

Keep a sense of humor

We believe that by carrying out this mission each and every day, we will reach our primary goal: to remain an independent bank.

They don't just say these things.. they do them! Makes living a little more worthwhile.
http://www.bankofthebluegrass.com/

Things & People That Make Life Worth Living: Wendell Berry

2009-12-29T21:51:00.003-05:00

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-dreher_26edi.State.Edition1.21c9278.html

"In Case You Were Wondering..."

2009-12-22T06:10:00.001-05:00

.. about that structure in front of the entrance, it's a manger."

Laughter.

This is the UU Church the week before Christmas. The co-chair of the newly formed UU Christian Fellowship has come to the podium to explain the presence of something new at our church.. a manger built by the UUCF folks who will also help fill it on Christmas Eve with children portraying the Holy family.

Someone, seeing it for the first time, remarked that perhaps it was a guerilla manger, placed there by the orthodox who wish we would come back to the "true" faith and stop including everyone.

What's so funny? for the non-UUs reading this, we are an eclectic faith as far as our beliefs go, incorporating Humanists, Pagans, Buddhists, culturally Jewish as well as liberal Christian members. We celebrate Christmas as the birth of a great teacher and prophet. We also observe Kwaanza, Easter, Winter Solstice, and Yom Kippur. We have our own holidays,including one called the "Flower Communion." In the past, we have had Christmas Pageants, but never a manger! This is new. This is different. This manger is so..permanent, and it asks us to consider more deeply than we may otherwise have done, the centrality of this Holy Day to Western Civilization. Dan could not have said a more perfect thing. His sweetly sardonic comment defused the situation and helped us laugh at ourselves without mocking anyone.

You see, among us are people who have been hurt deeply by traditional religion. As children, their bodies and/or spirits were beaten into submission with threats of Hell and sin. They may be gay or lesbian, and may for a lifetime have suffered Biblical interpretations which make them less than human. Many of them have left traditional religion behind.

The manger is where is belongs, right outside the door of the UU Church. I like it empty, because its symbolism is so piquant. It asks us, in case we are wondering, or even if we weren't wondering, "What is this place? Who is the child that will be born here? Who belongs in this empty creche?"

To me, the manger is in each one of us. It is our heart, waiting for a guest who will bring hope and light. The child is the Christ within, our own spirit of boundless love that waits to born, and born again, year after year, night after night. The miracle is available at any moment, to any one. Just in case you were wondering.....