Waiting

 Waiting is hard. If you celebrated Christmas as a child, perhaps you remember the agonizing wait for Christmas morning. I remember having trouble going to sleep the night before and waking throughout the night wondering “is it here yet?”. When my son was little we used to have a pact about what was the earliest he could wake us up Christmas morning.

Now that we are adults our Christmas celebration is more subdued. We still honor our Christmas morning tradition, but it’s often light out by the time we get up, we make coffee, start the cinnamon rolls, and then begin the discussion about when we should wake our 20 year old son.

We made a decision a few years back, when my son had grown too old for the intense Christmas magic of early childhood, to scale back, to do less for the holidays. It was a relief to let go of many of the stressful expectations and preparations. The first year I tried doing less in the build up for Christmas I noticed that feeling of “getting ready,” of nervous anticipation was still there. I realized that the feeling came not from the ambitious deadlines I set myself, the stressful preparations of gifts and cooking and cleaning and preparing worship, but that there was a feeling waiting that was just there, even once the preparations were done. It occurred to me that maybe the waiting I felt is instinctive,. As they say in the fictional world of Game of Thrones: “Winter is coming”

I feel like this “waiting” aspect of advent resonates with the larger cultural moment we are in, waiting and waiting and, waiting for an end to the pandemic. Perhaps the advent tradition has some wisdom to offer about how to navigate this less joyful waiting we have been doing.

What is waiting anyway? Really, if you had to explain it to someone, how would you explain it? There are so many kinds of waiting, Jan Richardson listed many of them in her beautiful Blessing for Waiting. Clearly the quality of waiting for Christmas morning is quite different from, for example, waiting for test results.

Part of what makes waiting so uncomfortable is that it splits our attention. We can’t keep our attention fully in the present moment, because there is something in the future we need to pay attention to. If I’m waiting for cookies to come out of the oven, I need to pay attention to the timer or I might have burned cookies. If I’m waiting for a bus, I need to pay attention or I might miss it.

Waiting also implies that some part of what I’m waiting for is out of my hands. Once the cookies are in the oven there’s nothing I can do except wait. If we are waiting for a child to be born, if we are waiting for the return of the sun, we don’t control the timetable, So waiting is kind of a “yin” activity, a passive, receptive activity which is hard for us active busy folks.

But we do have choices we can make while we are waiting. Generally I deal with the discomfort of waiting by filling up my time with work. My husband uses the other technique, getting everything ready early and then setting everything down to wait. What’s your technique? How do you manage the waiting process?

If you are the kind of person who likes to fill waiting time with activity, you can choose to stay busy to help the time pass. Some folks prefer a more contemplative approach- if the cookies are important, you might wait in attentive stillness- you don’t want to get distracted with other tasks and miss the perfect moment to take them out. Part of the reason my husband is never late for anything is that he doesn’t fill the waiting time with distracting activity, and is always ready by the door with his shoes and coat on well before it is time to leave.

The advent tradition encourages us to use the waiting time to prepare our spirits for the coming of Christmas, to prepare our hearts for new life. Father Bob, from the Eastern Point Retreat House I often visit, sent this Advent reflection:

“What we may want to pay attention to on this Advent journey, is the interior movement of the Spirit within; that desires to bring us closer to God as we go about our “busyness.”. We may also want to pay attention to the interior movements of the Spirit that may surprise us with joy in the midst of the pain and suffering that we see all around us.” - Robert Vereecke, SJ

In the Catholic tradition, advent is a time of contemplative preparation, taking time to notice those “movements of the spirit.” Just as a baker who is carefully watching the cookies in their transformation is likely to notice when they are at precisely the right done-ness, if we take time to notice the interior movements of spirit, Advent will be a more spirit-centered season. This quiet approach to preparation is different from just “doing nothing” because of that intention, attention and awareness. As Father Bob says Advent is “the invitation to be “awake, vigilant, attentive” to God’s working in the world?”

Another way we can prepare is more active, more exterior. I know in my own life that when I am anxious, doing something physical like cooking or washing dishes can really help ground me. Preparing for Christmas by decorating and baking and connecting with friends and families will not make it come any faster, but it definitely increases the odds that there will be cookies, and lights, and a feeling of connection when it finally comes. This more embodied approach to preparation also benefits from our attention and intention. I suspect all of us have experienced a “too busy” advent season, in which the acts of preparation, the expectations of having certain things in place so overwhelm that we just end up agitated with burnt cookies or a burned out spirit. If we choose to engage in those active, external acts of preparation, we might do them with the clear intention of creating a holiday celebration more in line with our values, in line with what our hearts need this year.

But of course, part of what makes waiting hard is that there are no guarantees about what will happen. My friend found out this past Thanksgiving after her turkey had been in the oven 2 hours already that her oven was broken. The thanksgiving dinner they were waiting for turned out very different than they had anticipated.

Back in March of 2020 I imagined our lives would be constrained by Covid for just a few weeks. But we waited as the virus spread and spread. This summer I was sure we were through the other side, I celebrated this summer with hugs of relief; my friends and I were vaccinated and the Covid numbers were the lowest they had been and I wanted to celebrate the milestone. And then Delta, and now Omacron, and the heartbreaking losses we have felt. How all this will turn out no one knows. It’s so much harder to wait when you don’t know how much longer the wait will be, or even what you are waiting for.

Maybe there are better times ahead, maybe worse, probably some of each. This is called a liminal” or “interstitial” place- an in-between place like being in the waiting room at the hospital, the bus stop as the scheduled time passes and there is no bus in sight.

For Christians observing advent, the tradition focuses on the coming of the savior foretold in the books of the prophets. One of the readings in the lectionary this past week was from the book of Isiah,

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song. …

Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,
Say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not! …

Streams will burst forth in the desert,
and rivers in the steppe.
The burning sands will become pools,
and the thirsty ground, springs of water;
sorrow and mourning will flee. [from I Is 35]

Each day in advent, the lectionary is full of scripture reminding Christians about the promise that is fulfilled on Christmas.

This season offers a promise for all of us, Christian or not, in the Nativity story. Mary the pregnant mother waiting for new life. Telling the story of that miraculous birth reminds us that life finds a way. That even in these discouraging times, life finds a way, and new life emerges. Mary and Joseph set out to Bethlehem as the gospel of Luke says “being great with child” or the more modern translations “soon to give birth.” Advent is a gestational time, waiting for something new to be born. Even now expectant parents are getting ready to welcome new life into the world, new, miraculous, utterly unique persons, babies of untold potential.

Waiting for even the most planned for, most anticipated baby has complexity to it. Even if everything goes perfectly, at the end of the process the new parents’ life will be changed forever as they welcome a new being into the world. Even if everything goes exactly according to plan, there will be pain and hard work and sleepless nights.

And we all know, and try not to think too hard about, that it doesn’t always go perfectly, some pregnancies end in loss and sadness. But life itself continues, entering the world again and again. Even in this time of loss and grief and uncertainty, new life makes its way into the world every day.

There’s a lot we can’t control, so much that is out of our hands, but we do have choices about how we use this time. Think about it- advent takes a whole month, and depending on how fast kids unwrap the presents, the Christmas morning present ritual kids pine for can be over in 15 minutes. How can we best inhabit this in-between-time? How can we use this liminal time to prepare ourselves for whatever is coming? Whether that is quieting ourselves so we can watch those subtle inner movements of the spirit, or doing the embodied work of putting our values in action, of preparing the things that we want to have ready when the future finally arrives?

Consider that all this time we have been “waiting to go back to church” we have never stopped going to church, and in fact we have created something new we could never have imagined. Whatever the future may hold, we now have the tools to gather in a meaningful way even if we can’t be in the same space. We have new friends, and all the relationships we have strengthened during this time. We have losses too, and part of the preparation for whatever is coming is that we must grieve those losses, so that when good times come again, our hearts are ready.

What does your heart need in this time of waiting- this month of advent as the nights grow longer and longer and we wait for the promised light to return, as we wait for the Christmas miracle of birth? What does your heart need in this longer time of waiting-- waiting for Covid to pass, waiting for heaviness of grief and loss to pass, waiting for the promise of new life to be fulfilled?

Last year as I was decorating for Christmas I pulled out literally every decoration I had and put them up until our dining room looked like a shop window, and any remaining decorations I donated to families who needed a little Christmas. This year as I was decorating for Christmas, I left whole tubs of the decorations in the closet. A sprig or 2 of holly from my garden on a plane wreath felt uniquely right to honor this unique year. What feels just right to you as you prepare your home, your hearts your spirits? What old or new rituals or practices would you like to include?

My spiritual director, Janet Corso, says that Advent is “a time of deepening interiority, awaiting birth - a time of active waiting, simplicity, nesting, preparing, quiet expectation, surrendering in preparation for receiving.” Together we wait, and prepare, open to new life in all its forms. Trusting in the promise of life always giving birth to life.

 

 

Why Dreidels?

 Each year as we approach the winter holiday season, Unitarian Universalists have their own ritual, which is asking ourselves “What do we celebrate and why do we celebrate it?” How do we authentically live out our common UU tradition, and our diversity of heritage and belief? Over many years of this annual reflection, we in the Athens congregation came to the conclusion that we wanted to find a way to honor Hanukkah for a few reasons.

First, because members of our congregation are Jewish, and asked us to. The simple act of lighting a menorah and telling a story in our shared worship has served as a reminder that who we are in this congregation and who we are as UUs includes those of us who are Jewish.

One year as we discussed this question, Marcia asked us specifically to honor Hanukkah in our morning worship, despite the fact that usually the Hanukkah candles are only lit at night, because one of her own neighbors had said he didn’t think anyone Jewish lived in the valley, where the Athens congregation is located. So we honor Hanukkah to proudly embody our religious diversity here in our congregations and in our larger communities.

We remember Hanukkah to remind ourselves of the relationship of UU and Judaism.  In 1980 a group called Unitarian Universalists for Jewish Awareness (UUJA)  was founded, committed to supporting Unitarian Universalist Jewish multi-religiosity. They offer resources to: “those who have come to Unitarian Universalism from Judaism” UUs like Rev. Joanna Lubkin who offered our Hanukkah blessing this morning, and Rev. Lynn Ungar whose beautiful poetry inspired us today and on many other occasions, who are living out what it means to be both UU and Jewish.[i] Our UU community is committed to supporting “interfaith/multi-religious individuals and families.” I know that many of you have shared with us that you were raised in another tradition, be it Jewish or Catholic, Buddhist, Methodist or Hindu. Some of us choose to leave behind those other traditions, but some of us authentically feel those formative traditions are still part of who we are. We strive to make our UU communities a place where such “multireligiousity” can be supported and explored.

It is because we are a multireligious community that we find ourselves asking year after year “what do we celebrate and why do we celebrate it?” A touchstone phrase I find helpful in this inquiry is “not about us without us.” Not being Jewish myself, as I prepared this service, I went to visit the UUJA site, and I checked in again with our Jewish members and friends, and asked if they had any concerns, preferences, or guidance they were willing to offer for this service today. Marcia wrote back and offered this reminder: “Chanukah is so not an important holiday. It is barely celebrated in Israel. Of course, there is the lighting of the menorah. Chanukah is only celebrated as it is in this country because of its proximity to Christmas. Jewish kids need something special this time of year. It is almost like a secular Jewish tradition, instead of a real Jewish holiday.”

Jeff offered this reflection: “The story of Hanukah appears in the Book of Maccabees, which is not in the Old Testament. Nor the New Testament. It's in the apocrypha. This was considered a minor holiday, and not really the big deal that modern times have made it out to be. It was illegal to be Jewish during the reign of the Greeks in Israel. So when folks gathered to study the Torah, they would have someone on lookout and when the cops came by, he would warn the scholars. They would put their Torah away, and take out the dreidel… The scholars would act like they were gambling -- small change ("gelt"), nuts, anything one could use as "chips". That is why gifts are given for the eight days. But these gifts are supposed to be (if we were following the tradition) something small that can be gambled - coins, nuts, M&Ms, etc. Giving a video game console is NOT in the spirit of Hanukah (or some other expensive gift) The idea of giving expensive gifts, I believe, was co-opted by Christians, to "include" Jews in the Christmas holiday.”

Indeed, many of my Jewish friends and family over the years have expressed frustration with the way their Christian and UU neighbors conflate Hanukkah and Christmas as if they are equivalent, and our society promotes that idea in many subtle and not so subtle ways. So one reason we mark Hanukkah today is to promote religious literacy, to give us a slightly deeper understanding of the holiday, including misunderstandings about it. It’s a reminder, for those of us who are not Jewish, to be respectful about what this season means to those of us who are Jewish. So, for example, making a big deal out of Hanukkah if you are not Jewish can be a micro-aggression, since traditionally it is a minor holiday. If we are not Jewish, we de-center ourselves, let our Jewish friends and neighbors take the lead, and respect their wishes. If your Jewish friends have a different take on the holiday, listen to that too. It’s not about getting it “right” and doing it one way forever, it’s about relationship. Jewish UUs have all kinds of ideas and feelings about this holiday, and about their relationship of Judaism and UU, So as part of our UU practice we listen with open minds and hearts, and learn, and grow.

Marcia sent me an article by Rabbi David Golinkin which told me something surprising about the dreidel tradition:

“The dreidel game originally had nothing to do with Hanukkah; it has been played by various people in various languages for many centuries.
In England and Ireland there is a game called totum or teetotum that is especially popular at Christmastime. In English, this game is first mentioned as “totum” ca. 1500-1520. The name comes from the Latin “totum,” which means “all.” By 1720, the game was called T- totum or teetotum, and by 1801 the four letters already represented four words in English: T = Take all; H = Half; P = Put down; and N = Nothing.
Our Eastern European game of dreidel (including the letters nun, gimmel, hey, shin) is directly based on the German equivalent of the totum game... In German, the spinning top was called a “torrel” or “trundl,” and in Yiddish it was called a “dreidel,” …
Thus the dreidel game represents an irony of Jewish history. In order to celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah, which celebrates our victory over cultural assimilation, we play the dreidel game, which is an excellent example of cultural assimilation!”[ii]

So this year for us the dreidel can be a symbol of that cultural mixing that happens whenever we live in community together, and that tension of loyalty to our heritage and that natural sharing and growing that happens in community.

Finally, we honor Hanukkah because Judaism is one of the sources of wisdom for our UU faith. Without appropriating the holiday if we are not Jewish, we can still see the important religious values and symbols in the story of this holiday. The holiday, and the traditions and stories which surround it can have many meanings, but this year I am drawn to the importance of Hanukkah as a story of religious freedom. Of the courage it takes to practice your own faith when you are a minority, when you are encountering oppression. The story of Hanukkah reminds us to be grateful that we are able to practice our UU faith openly today, and reminds us of our commitment to fight for religious freedom for everyone so that our children and their children can practice their faith. As John Sigismund, the Unitarian King of Transylvania, wrote in his edict of tolerance back in 1586, if people are not free to practice their own faith “no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied”… “ for faith is the gift of God, this comes from hearing, which hearing is by the word of God.” — Edict of Torda

Today I want to encourage those of us who have always been able to worship freely, have always had the freedom to claim our religious identity and heritage to notice that privilege, and imagine what it would be like to live without it. There are many interpretations and stories about the origin of the dreidel, but this year I am resonating with that 19th-century rabbinic story “that Jews played with the dreidel in order to fool the Greeks if they were caught studying Torah, which had been outlawed”[iii].

Let the dreidel from your goodie bag be a touchstone for these ideas- for religious freedom, for respect and gratitude for the ancient faith tradition that is Judaism, for the way our traditions transform us and are transformed by us in community, and (for those of us who are not Jewish) for navigating how we respectfully engage with one another’s traditions. To quote Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Jewish philosopher and theologian “We need, in the 21st century, a global Chanukah: a festival of freedom for all the world’s faiths. For though my faith is not yours and your faith is not mine, if we are each free to light our own flame, together we can banish some of the darkness of the world.”[iv]


Notes:

Even the spelling of  "Hanukah" is different from source to source, since it is a transliteration of a Hebrew word. I have included here whatever original spelling was used in my source material. 

 [i] Another moving testimony about being multi faith is here: https://www.uuworld.org/articles/orthodox-jewish-wisdom-religious-liberals

[ii] "The Surprising Origin of the Dreidel The well-known Hanukkah symbol has Christmastime roots."
By Rabbi David Golinkin https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-origin-of-the-dreidel/

[iii] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-origin-of-the-dreidel/

[iv] https://rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CandC-Chanukah-5.pdf
"Why Chanukah is the Perfect Festival for Religious Freedom", The Washington Post
(7 December 2015).

Serving Lovingly

When we imagine “growing spiritually” it is easy to think of that Instagram kind of spirituality- yoga, meditation, hot tea, massage -- There is a whole industry out there that wants us to believe that spiritual growth is about each individual seeker feeling peaceful and healthy and actualized. I confess, as someone who does yoga and meditates, this is an easy temptation to fall into. And while I do think I’m a better mom and a better minister and a better friend when I am calm and mindful and healthy, the past year has proven to me that my own happiness and health are not the best guideposts for our spiritual journey - no human I know is happy and healthy all the time. And more importantly, if my goal is only my own actualization, I am constrained by the smallness of my own life. What is the use of growing spiritually? Why does it matter?

Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is our sacrament,
and service is our prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve others in community,
To the end that all souls shall grow
Into harmony with creation,
Thus we do covenant with one another.

This is one version of a covenant read by many Unitarian Universalist churches all over the country. Notice that it says “Service is our prayer.” I think this is more than poetic, I think service really can be a form of spiritual practice.

Way back in the 1500s, Spanish Carmelite Nun, mystic and teacher Theresa of Avilla wrote lots of advice for her nuns, and though she lived in a very different time, the advice she gave them can still help us today on our modern spiritual journey:

“11. When I see people very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practise, covering their faces and afraid to move or think lest they should lose any slight tenderness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union with God since they think it consists in such things as these. No, sisters, no; our Lord expects works from us. If you see a sick sister whom you can relieve, never fear losing your devotion; compassionate her; if she is in pain, feel for it as if it were your own and, when there is need, fast so that she may eat, not so much for her sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you. This is the true union of our will with the will of God.”[From "Interior Castle]

In other words, if you are not able to attain a certain spiritual feeling in your practices, that’s okay. Those feelings are not the goal of the spiritual journey. Better to focus on compassion for others than achieving spiritual bliss. Even if your compassion for others brings up feelings that make you feel less than holy. Throughout the preceding passage she counsels us that the best way to be sure of our love of God is through our love of neighbor. And the best way to ground that love, to practice that love is through works of service and charity for others. In works of compassion, we unite our will with the will of the divine.

For the Atheists and agnostics in the group today, don’t worry -- science leads us to the same conclusion as the mystics. Research has shown that acts of helping others improve our own mental health and the good of society. For what do we grow spiritually? So that we can better serve, and we serve so that we can grow.

Part of what makes service so helpful on both the spiritual and ethical journeys, is that it encourages us to de-center ourselves. As my friend said, while we exchanged story after story about her own goals and needs constantly interrupted by the demands of her preschool daughter- “It’s not all about me.” I was also parenting a young child and I laughed with the shock of recognition, because while logically I had always known that was true, there’s nothing like showing up to work with tiny handprints on your shirt after a sleepless night, only to leave work early when the daycare calls to say your child has a fever, to really teach you in a deeper way that “it’s not all about me.”

It’s easy to do our work in a way that is, actually, all about me. We think we know what’s best for someone else, how to fix them, and if we “succeed” in fixing them it strengthens our ego- it makes us feel good about our image of ourselves. Unfortunately, building up the ego is not actually good for our spiritual growth, and in fact it’s often not good for the person we are trying to help. Your board has been studying “aspects of white supremacy culture” and one of them is paternalism- where privileged people enter a situation with persons of less privilege and give folks what we think they need, sometimes including strict rules or requirements. Our history is full of terrible examples of this, think Native boardinghouses, think colonialism.

The antidote to this is decentering ourselves. As we enter a situation where we see suffering, because we are moved and want to serve, we ask the folks right there “what do you need?”- trusting that the people who are most effected know better than anyone what they need in their own lives. We are not there to lead, but to support, to amplify, to serve. Our UUSC uses this model- we have grassroots partners around the world, and we trust their wisdom of their local situation, and their network of connections, and we go in with money and technical support for their grassroots work.

We are a congregation committed to anti-racism work, and decentering is critical here. When we reached out to Mothers helping Mothers in Elmira, we didn’t say “here’s a program we want to offer in your community” we said “please tell us what you are doing and how we can help” If we want to work to end anti-black racism, we have to center the ideas and needs of black people who are directly experiencing that racism, rooted in their direct experience and knowing and network. If we want to support disability rights, we center folks who are disabled by our environment, and ask what they need to participate fully. When we serve others, we are not the star of the story; our goal is not to be like Sandra Bullock in “the Blind Side;”  in decentering ourselves we become a supporting character.

When we take on an attitude of service, decentering ourselves, it not only makes us better allies, better at supporting others, but it is also an important part of growing spiritually. Jung says that the journey in the second half of life is about loosening the grasp of ego, realizing that it’s not all about us, and that we are deeply connected to one another and to something greater than ourselves.

Now there is a paradox here that I have been struggling with recently. As a white cis middle-class woman, I know that my work for justice needs to involve decentering myself. But, I also know that women over 50 are often invisibilized in our society. Consider the stereotypical mom, who selflessly gives up her own agenda for her children’s success- whether or not we have ever parented, this is an archetype we all have to deal with. In our youth obsessed culture, it’s easy for the experiences of older folks to be overlooked. It’s easy for people who do the quiet supportive work of service and care to be overlooked. It occurred to me that if we don’t center ourselves no one else will. So this is a challenge of serving lovingly- How do we decenter ourselves and advocate for ourselves at the same time? How do we be of service knowing that no matter how much we pour out our own personal life essence, there will still be hunger, and racism, and suffering?

The spiritual traditions offer us 2 pieces of wisdom about that. First, non-attachment to outcome. The practice of Karma Yoga in the Hindu tradition is about service, yes, about doing our work that makes the world go, yes, but it is about doing that work in a way that is not attached to outcome. Last fall I spent an evening in parking lot of the United Methodist Church where a community group  was handing out dinners, the food pantry was giving out food staples, and Project Grow was giving out tomato seedlings to anyone who wanted to grow their own fresh organic tomatoes. We ran out of dinners early, but because we had been rationing our seedlings too tightly, we did not give away as many tomato plants as we had hoped. Non-attachment to outcome looks like this- letting go, with some sadness, of the fact that other hungry people could were not fed, and let go, with hope and trust, of what happens to all those seedlings, adopted or not, once they left our hands. I do my part and let go- it’s not all about me.

The other wisdom of so many spiritual traditions is that we are not alone. Today’s message is not a call to do more; many of you have told us how you feel exhausted and burnt out, how you feel you have no more to give. I feed the person in front of me, I work to disrupt racism in the spaces where I live. I listen to the troubles of a friend, I serve as I am able, and trust that other people are doing the same, and that we are all woven together in a web of connection that holds us when we rest, and when we ourselves are in need. This is the moral of “Chickens to the Rescue” – the wisdom the chickens know - that the need is endless, and so they take their day of rest, hoping, trusting, that the other farm animals, and of course the farm family, will take their turn to serve.

“Live ethically, serve lovingly and grow spiritually.” The more I think about these 3 ideas the more I see that they balance each other like the 3 legs of a stool. Growing Spiritually help us become our best selves, and grow in connection to that which is greater than us. Living ethically helps us understand and discern who and what we serve, and helps us develop the integrity that is an important part of spiritual growth. Service embodies and grounds our ethics and our spiritual growth. It is where the rubber meets the road. Let us serve in a way that reminds us “it’s not all about us” – when we are serving we are not the hero of the story, we are the supporting characters helping the stars to shine. Service doesn’t have to be big Nobel prize winning acts, because it is the “small acts of great kindness” that support us in our ordinary lives, day in and day out. Let us serve in a way that is not attached to outcomes- a practice that helps our souls learn that we are not in control, and that we are part of something bigger. And let our practice include laying down our work whenever it is time to rest and renew and grow. We serve so that we can live and grow, and we grow and live so that we can serve.

 

Living Ethically

Events of the past 2 years have caused me to feel… adrift. Things I thought I could count on, things I didn’t even know could change have changed. What does it all mean? What can we believe in? What matters? One particularly challenging day I was asking myself those questions and I realized- living ethically seems to matter. What a relief it is to hear about the actions of ethical people on the news, to deal with people living ethically in my own life, and to use ethical principles to guide my own actions in this quixotic world. Over the course of my life my views about whether or not there is a god and other metaphysical questions have changed, but In the Unitarian Universalist church I grew up in, it was clear that no matter what else you believe, what we humans choose to do… matters.

We see what happens when folks abandon ethics and instead seek only personal power, wealth or comfort. Acting from an ethical core seems to matter. It matters to me- I know I feel like I am standing on solid ground when I try to live ethically. And I believe that it makes a difference in society that there are people who deal ethically with one another, even on days when it feels like we are the only ones. No matter how lost we feel, we can, in the words of Anna from Frozen 2, “do the next right thing.” In case you don’t have small children in your life, this song comes at a low and desperate time for our heroine who decides to:

“Just do the next right thing
Take a step, step again
It is all that I can to do
The next right thing

I won't look too far ahead
It's too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath
This next step
This next choice is one that I can make”

A lot of folks have found themselves feeling hopeless and desperate, and this children’s song has resonated with this moment we are living in now. It’s increasingly clear that we are not going to wake up one day and find ourselves in the world we were living in February of 2020. Some things are lost, and some are irrevocably changed. Still, we can do “the next right thing.” By living ethically we reduce our footprint, our harm in the world, and also shape the society we are building together in our rapidly changing world. If we want a society where people tell the truth, and deal honestly and fairly and compassionately with one another, the best we can do is live ethically ourselves, to “be the change you want to see in the world.” Living Ethically is part of our mission as a congregation, because we believe that our ethical action matters, it matters to our own sense of integrity, and it matters to community.

The trouble is that our choices are very rarely perfect, and we have all had to make many imperfect choices since Covid spread to our communities. I was looking for an example that we could all relate to, and I thought about our choice to mostly be online since March of 2020. We made the choice originally, (can you remember back that far?) because we wanted to slow the spread, to “flatten the curve” as we said then. To make sure that everyone who needed hospital care could have it. In spring of 2020 the UUA recommended that we worship online until May of 2021 to protect the most vulnerable- the folks who are immune compromised, those without access to medical care, those essential workers who were exposed daily. That was not an easy choice. We love being together in person. We miss hugs, we miss ordinary conversation over a cup of coffee. We miss singing loudly together. We know that some of our members don’t have good computer or internet access, and we know that some folks have such zoom fatigue that our online services are draining. Month after month your board of trustees agonizes over this choice- knowing that there were people who had been vital members of our congregation whom we are no longer able to support with worship or fellowship. We know how lonely this time has been for many- and wonder what ministry we can offer to people who need us in this lonely difficult time? So we did other things like our phone tree calls, and small outdoor gatherings, and gift bags, and we started putting a letter in the mail each month so folks would know we were thinking of them. But any choice we made involved giving up hard things, and risk and loss. There was no perfect choice, only hard compromise with reality.

But, as Lynn Ungar says in her poem:

… you have to choose.
It’s all we have—that little rudder
that we employ in the midst
of all the eddies and rapids,
the current that pulls us
inexorably toward the sea. 

The fact that you are swept along
by the river is no excuse.
Watch where you are going.
Lean in toward what you love.
When in doubt, tell the truth.

Ethics are “that little rudder” – the choices we make even when there is no good choice. The boards of both churches revisit their decisions every month, and were working hard toward a hybrid worship, and were beginning to gather in person when the delta variant set us back. We knew many of us were vaccinated and that the risk to ourselves had gone down, but what about our children? Delta had much more serious consequences for children than previous variants. At the same time we heard the frustration and longing of folks who wanted to come back together in person. Your boards talked and wrestled and struggled, and finally decided that the UU thing to do was to protect the most vulnerable and to involve data and science in our decisions- that is why we use the “covid act now” website each week to decide. We saw communities across the country decided they were “done with Covid” before Covid was done with them. So we decided to use the data instead of community social pressure to decide.

This week in Bradford County (where the Athens Sanctuary is) the ICU is 94% full, in the “critical” range, the most full hospitals have ever been in our county. And cases are as high as they’ve been all year, as high as last spring, and so here we are on Zoom, our sanctuaries empty again this week. We could have done otherwise- there was no one right choice here, it was a choice among hard things. Other people, other churches have made other choices. 2 ethical people using conscience as their guide can make 2 different choices.

In his book “The Righteous Mind” Jonathan Haidt lays out research that shows that as much as we think we make our decisions based on data or reasoning, our decisions are actually based on a kind of moral intuition, which I suppose is the same as a conscience. Intuition is a form of cognition that helps us make the million decisions we must make every day as quickly as we need to make them. Haidt tested folks of different economic classes from different parts of the world and found that our consciences do not tell us all the same thing. Even within our UU congregations, different people are making different choices about when and where to mask, whether to get vaccinated or get boosters and when, whether to worship indoors and when. Haidt shows that even when we are all following our conscience closely, we come to different decisions.

In my experience the folks, like you, who show up at worship week after week are already committed to an ethical life. I trust that each of us is doing the best we can to follow our conscience and make ethical choices. My job as your minister is not to convince you to follow your conscience and live an ethical life, I suspect you are doing a pretty good job of that already. Our job here as a community already committed to ethical living is to support and encourage one another in making those impossible decisions in confusing times. To grow as ethical beings we don’t need to become more perfect, more strict in our ethics, I believe we need to become more humble, more compassionate, and we practice living our humble compassionate ethics all our lives. As the story "Birdsnest" taught us this morning- “The 3-year-old knows it, but the 80 year old still finds it very difficult to do.”

To live ethically requires humility, knowing that there is almost never a perfect choice, and yet choosing what we feel to be right, nevertheless. Humility is our antidote for judgementalism. I think when we look at the news, when we see angry people storming school-board meetings to share their views about mask mandates with that righteous judgementalism, we can see the harm that kind of righteous anger does to our communities, to our families, to our society. Such scenes teach us the importance of not letting the ethics that are guiding our own boat become rigid, become judgements on others. As the Christian scriptures advise “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s[a] eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? “ [Matthew 7:3]

We are imperfect, all of us. Most of our lives we live in morally grey territory- all beings eat other beings to live. All of us who walk step on other beings. Every time we speak, we risk saying something that will later turn out to have been untrue, or hurtful. Living ethically as Unitarian Universalists is not about once and for all adopting a moral code and resting into the righteousness of that code, Living ethically requires humility and empathy for others.

Humility is also an antidote for identifying too strongly with our surface goodness, “I recycle so I’m good”. If I believe that I must be perfectly good, I put myself in an impossible position. How could I admit to myself that I ever made imperfect choices? How could I grow if I couldn’t be present with the reality of my own imperfection? How could I do the hard inner work of, for example, addressing my role in systemic racism, without first being humble, without first admitting that there was room for me to grow?

Knowing that we are imperfect, can we hold that imperfection with compassion? To go back to our example, we know our choice not to worship in person is imperfect, we know people are lonely, we know humans need to be together in person for their mental health. And if we hold our own imperfect selves with compassion, can we extend that compassion and empathy to others? Yes, other churches are meeting in person right now, in the same towns where we are on zoom. I bet their leaders also agonized with their decisions. My Facebook feed is filled with ministers agonizing about their congregation’s decisions about whether and how they come together in person. We may disagree with their decision, but we are all different, our consciences tell us different things.

Let us not fall into the habit, as have so many religious groups, of believing that part of living ethically is policing others. This creates a rigidity and combativeness that has become destructive in our time. As Haidt says in his book ‘The Righteous Mind”

“No matter how good our logic, it’s not going to change the minds of our opponents if they are in combat mode too. If you really want to change someone’s mind on moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person’s way – deeply and intuitively – you might even find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide”. [Haidt p. 58]

In Sunday school we used to say as we lit the chalice “we are UU, people with Open minds, helping hands and loving hearts.” As we commit ourselves and recommit ourselves to living ethically, let us do so with open minds and loving hearts, with Humility, empathy, and compassion, our own UU way. In this time of hard choices, we know that striving to live ethically helps ground us in our own spiritual journey and shapes the future we are all growing into together. Living Ethically means being present with the reality of what is and doing the "next right thing"

Remembrance

I grew up in a Humanist congregation, and though I saw that many cultures have traditions of relating to those who have died, I thought you had to be form a certain religious tradition or culture to have such a relationship, and didn't think that included humanists, or agnostics. It dawned on me recently that no matter what we believe, no matter what we do or don’t do, we all have a relationship with those who have died. Whether we bring flowers to their graveside and tell them about our lives, or stoically release the things that remind us of them, whether we believe their spirits are hovering about, or their molecules are repurposed into new life and only memories of them remain. When someone we love dies our relationship with their dear physical presence ends, but our relationship to their memories, their absence, their spirit (if you are so inclined), is something that changes and grows, and is as unique and evolving as our relationship to their living embodied presence had been.

my grandmother, Marie Simon

Our culture, our family traditions, inform how we think about and conduct these relationships. Perhaps in your family you were taught not to speak of the dead, lest it disturb and sadden people. My mother-in-law takes flowers once a year to all the beloved dead in the cemeteries near her. Some traditions teach that the dead can still hear and counsel and comfort us. Others believe that our relationship with the departed is like a phone call once one caller has been disconnected- when we speak with them we are really just speaking with ourselves.

I once went to hear the great teacher Ram Dass speak, and he told us that though his guru had died he spoke with him often. “But that’s all in your imagination” someone responded “yes” replied Ram Dass., as if to say that our imagination is a perfectly valid realm in with to connect to those who have departed.

Unitarian Universalism is agnostic about what happens when we die. Our beliefs are diverse and highly individual. But we all experience loss, we all experience the death of beings who are important to us, and the gift of those relationships, the power of that caring, that love, does not end with their death. I encourage you to notice how you are relating to those loved ones who have died, and allow yourself the space and creativity to shape that relationship as you need. Though we believe many different things about death and what comes after, we offer one another a space today to honor those relationships, to feel whatever feelings emerge, whatever memories in the compassionate embrace of community.

I offer these questions for your reflection:

• Who are the loved ones you are remembering today?
• How do those beloved dead continue to be a presence in your life?
• Are there any ways you would like to be more intentional about your relationship to those who have died?

Whose Land?

Should a land acknowledgement be part of our worship and other gatherings? We know that the land where each of us is joining in worship this morning was home to other people before us. We know, for example, that the plots of land where the Athens and Sheshequin church buildings are now, were home to indigenous communities before Europeans arrived. We’ve done a terrible job of remembering and telling that history. Even our historian Katie hard time finding a clear history of the people whose home this was before European disease and violence displaced them. We think they may be the Andaste, the Carantouan, the Susquehannock and the Haudenosaunee. The history we do find of the Valley often vilifies the peoples from whom we took the land. In fact, there is a historical marker near the Sheshequin church commemorating Sullivan’s march - a campaign of great violence and devastation to remove great the Haudenosaunee people from that land. Any land acknowledgement of the Athens and Sheshequin congregation to acknowledge, as the essay "Land Acknowledgments Meant to Honor Indigenous People Too Often Do The Opposite  – Erasing American Indians and Sanitizing History instead"  suggests “acknowledge the violent trauma of land being stolen from Indigenous people – the death, dispossession and displacement of countless individuals and much collective suffering.”

It’s common for people in Bradford County to talk of the native peoples as if they are a story from history. Yet we know that Indigenous people are part of the communities of the valley and the endless mountains, and still practice ceremony and pass on their tradition, but they don’t do so in a public way. What would it look like to create a land acknowledgement “carefully constructed in partnership with the dispossessed”?

On the land where the Cortland Church now stands, we can easily look on a map and see that this is part of the Haudenosaunee territory. The Confederacy has a present day governance and public presence reminding us that the Haudenosaunee are not a people of the past but of the present. The Haudenosaunee confederacy includes several nations, and the land of Cortland is specifically part of the homeland of the Onondaga nation who brought a land rights case against the state of NY in federal court in 2005 offering this statement:

“The Onondaga People wish to bring about a healing between themselves and all others who live in this region that has been the homeland of the Onondaga Nation since the dawn of time. The Nation and its people have a unique spiritual, cultural, and historic relationship with the land, which is embodied in Gayanashagowa, the Great Law of Peace. This relationship goes far beyond federal and state legal concepts of ownership, possession or legal rights. The people are one with the land, and consider themselves stewards of it. It is the duty of the Nation’s leaders to work for a healing of this land, to protect it, and to pass it on to future generations. The Onondaga Nation brings this action on behalf of its people in the hope that it may hasten the process of reconciliation and bring lasting justice, peace, and respect among all who inhabit the area.”

Though the old cobblestone church is one of the oldest buildings still in existence in the county, this illustrates an erasure of that older history. A land acknowledgement given from this spot where I’m standing, would have to acknowledge that this spot is part of an active land rights case.

So today, we are not yet ready to put forward a sentence or even a paragraph of land acknowledgement. Today we acknowledge that each of us, right now, stands or sits on ambiguous territory, with a troubling history, and a complicated future. Today I invite us to rethink our responsibility to the land, our responsibility to one another, and to the indigenous communities and individuals who are our neighbors today. Today we acknowledge with humility all that we don’t know, and listen for the voices of those with more wisdom, voices we may not have heard, as we join with the Onondaga elders in hoping to “hasten the process of reconciliation and bring lasting justice, peace, and respect among all who inhabit the area.”

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Whose Tree?

The tree that shades my front porch is not on my property. Well, it’s in that weird netherworld between sidewalk and street that is planted by the city forester. It’s a little Japanese Lilac, and since I hung my bird feeder there, it is a veritable community center of squirrels and several species of birds. It’s too small for anyone to make their home there, but from my seat on the front porch I can watch the birds and squirrels make their way between that tree and mine, and the other trees and shrubs in the neighborhood where they find food and shelter and perch. 

Across the street is a big old tree that might possibly have been there since our neighborhood was built in the late 1800s. In the winter when the leaves are gone I can see at least 2 nests, and in the spring I notice families of squirrels, blue jays and cardinals that seem to nest there, in an uneasy understanding about whose territory the tree is. The debates about this seem to heat up when one or the other family has babies. My neighbor Leah owns the property where that big heritage tree grows, but of course from her home all she can see is the trunk, so I tell her sometimes about the goings on in her tree.
 

This summer I woke one morning to the sound of chain saws and saw that several large branches had been cut from my little tree. A little detective work showed that based on the piles of branches along my block, this was probably the work of the city arborist, trimming trees for the year. The animals were noticeably absent for a while but did start to return. Apparently, they took down one of the main squirrel highways, because it took the squirrels the longest to make their way back, and there was some fresh territory dispute when they did. 

The whole process made me sad an anxious for not only “my” trees, but trees everywhere. A tree that has been home to generations of small mammals and birds, not to mention moss and fungus and cicadas, a tree that grew for centuries can be cut down in a half day’s work based on a decision made by someone who spends a few moments evaluating the trees. Someone who might not know about the squirrels who make their nests there. The birds who return to that tree when it is time to have children.

Now I’ve asked some naturalist friends, and they assure me that the city forester in Ithaca is a good woman who loves trees and knows her work. The city of Ithaca has a forestry plan and an interactive map of the city, which is how I learned that big heritage tree is a Skyline Honeylocust. It’s a designated “tree city” which I appreciate every day. But no matter how much I love them, no matter how much they feel like “my” trees, there is nothing I can do to protect these trees if the city decides it is time for them to go. The squirrels and birds have no standing in such a decision. There is no one who speaks for them in city council meetings. 

In our conversation today about who owns the land, I invite us to expand our thinking beyond which humans own which plot of land, lines drawn on a map filed with the government, argued in the courts. I also want us to consider all the non-human animals, the great trees, and small beings who have lived in those places for generations. Is it not their land also? And who has the standing to protect them, when they need protecting? Like in our story today, who speaks for wolf, and squirrel, and blue Jay and Honeylocust Tree?

 

 

More Love

You are here today because you know something about love. I don’t mean you are necessarily feeling loving right this moment, you could be having a terrible grumpy morning, and if you are my condolences, and I’m so glad you are here. But even if you are not feeling loving right now, you are here because when you hear about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, when you heard about a faith tradition rooted in the idea that if there is a God, the are loving, and that love includes everyone, some part of you said “ah, yes” or at least “tell me more.” You are here because at some point in your life you felt a steady love that held you unconditionally. Maybe that was your parents, or a friend, maybe it was a community like this one, or maybe it was an ineffable sense of something larger than yourself. When you asked “even me, in all my imperfection?” and you heard the answer “yes, even you.”

Our UU foreparents came to a Universalist theology because of that “aha” sense that resonated with something they knew deep inside. The story of Hosea Ballou is apocryphal, though he did use that example of the muddy child in his sermons. For him the love we have for even a muddy child was the kind of love he believed was available to all of us. George de Benneville, another Universalist foreparent, was raised to believe in that he was sinful, that God only had a few special favorites, and the rest of us were pre-judged and damned to an eternity of torment. He had an experience when he was a young man of noticing his own arrogance and “hardheartedness toward the wellbeing of others.” He felt terrible about this, and the ministers of his faith told him this must be because he was predetermined to be damned. For 15 months he was miserable and inconsolable, until humble and heartbroken he knelt in prayer, and had a vision of the divine wiping away all his sin, all his unworthiness[i]. Remembering this experience, de Benneville wrote: “[Jesus] ] loved me before I was born. Oh, what grace! He loved me in my fallen estate when I was wholly lost. Oh, what mercy! He even loved me when I was altogether unworthy, and freely too. Oh, what love... Hallelujah! Amen."” It was after this experience that de Benneville’s heart was converted to Universalism. He knew in his heart that not only he but all people were loved by God, even in their unworthiness. It was not through logic, through work of the mind that de Benneville came to his conversation, but through direct experience of unconditional love. 

Now that's a lot of God talk, all in a row. And we UUs are Theists, Atheists and Agnostics. Love is accessible to all of us. UU Theologian Thandeka speaks of something called Love beyond belief, which she says is at the heart of our UU faith: “Love Beyond Belief is the actual experience of feeling connected to all of life at once: feeling awe, wonder, and love of life itself. The access point to this state of consciousness isn’t thinking; it’s feeling. In this interior domain of human experience, one feels enlivening compassion, care, love, and resonance with all of life.”

Love is both extremely simple, and profoundly challenging. I’m not talking here about affection, or attraction. It’s okay not to like everyone, not to want to hang out with everyone. But I’m talking here about something deeper than those things- a love that lays like a bedrock under everything else. Because I’ve been with my partner 30+ years, I know that even when we are getting on each other’s last nerve, there is something deeper, often unspoken, that is there on good days and on bad. As our lives have ebbed and flowed and changed, as we have gone through good patches and difficult patches, I began to realize that even though it was subtle, and sometimes hard to see, I could count on that layer of our relationship that did not change, that was longer lasting than the changing tides of affection and the daily challenges of having a household together. I invite you to consider -- where in your life you have seen that or felt a love that is deeper than affection, So dependable that it may sometimes be too quiet and still to draw our attention. Even when it is unnoticed it is there.

Today’s story is a simple example, that a parent could love us even if we covered ourselves in mud, or other gross and sticky things, because their love is deeper than the surface, and they could love us even if they were annoyed or disappointed in us. That is the unconditional love that is at the core of our Universalist faith tradition.

In normal times, when I ask what church is, we make a long list of all the aspects of our community. But in these challenging times, we can’t hold so many things; we need something simple to hang on to. When you really dig down to the bedrock of our tradition, we are not our programs or events, we are not our historic buildings, At the core of our Universalist tradition is unconditional love. Love is the bedrock of our faith. As it says in the Christian scriptures I Corinthians “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

Our main job, both as a Universalist community and as individual persons is to remember love, whenever we can, whenever it is available to be remembered or experienced. And to remind one another when we have forgotten. We remind each other not by a logical argument, but by being love. By embodying and manifesting love, by grounding our actions, our choices, our words in that bedrock of love that underlays and supports everything, that is deeper than the suffering and struggle of this moment.

What does it look like to live out that love ? That means something different for each of us. In the bok “love languages” by Gary Chapman, he listed 5 ways people tend to show their love in their primary relationship: acts of service, gift-giving, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation. His point was to help families understand that we all show love in different ways, and to help us receive those manifestations of love that may be unfamiliar to us. How you manifest your love in the world will be as unique as you are.

I think about the chalice circle that has been running at this congregation for years; no matter how we start the meeting, by the end there is this palpable feeling of being held lovingly by the group – even over zoom. There is something powerful, something transformative about just being in connection with love. When we remember our connection to love, that feeling can be contagious.

Grounding our life in love doesn’t always feel good- being open to love opens us up to the feelings of grief for those who we have lost, or those who have broken our trust. There is an almost instinctive motion of the heart when we have been hurt to close down, to put up walls and protect that tender place. But it was from such a tender humble place that George de Beneville opened his heart, was met by that numinous experience of unconditional love. Remembering love begins with opening our hearts to feel love, to know love, wherever it is available. We know there are some folks in the world who have been so wounded that they have lost touch with love, maybe they have no memory of love at all. Part of our calling is to hold a loving space for them, so it is available when and if they are ready to receive that.

Matt Kahn offers a powerful meditation in his book "Whatever Arises Love That" which I’ve found very helpful:

When I’m sad, I deserve more love, not less.
When I’m angry I deserve more love, not less.
When I’m frustrated, I deserve more love, not less.
Whenever I’m hurt, heartbroken, ashamed, or feeling guilty, I deserve more love, not less.
Even when I’m embarrassed by my actions, I deserve more love, not less.
Equally so, when I’m proud of myself I deserve more love, not less.
No matter how I feel, I deserve more love, not less.
Despite what I think I deserve more love, not less.
No matter the past that I’ve survived I deserve more love, not less.
No matter what remains up ahead I deserve more love, not less.
On my worst day I deserve more love, not less.
Even when life seems cruel and confusing I deserve more love, not less.
When no one is here to give me what I need I deserve more love, not less.
In remembering the greatest way I can serve the world I deserve more love, not less.
No matter what I’m able to accept, whomever I cannot forgive, or whatever I’m unable to love for whatever reason, I deserve more love, not less.

What a relief to know that even when we are too brokenhearted, to angry too cloaked in our own protection to feel love, this just means we need more love, not less. The universe offers love to us even then. God loves us even then, I find it helpful to say to myself lately when I am at my most grumpy and feel the most unlovable, “when I am grumpy and unlovable, I need more love, not less”

Dear Ones, this simple and profound work is so important right now. And you are really good at it. Sundays we gather on zoom and patiently wait for each other to mute or unmute, lose their pages, lose their zoom windows, and yet we experience some meaningful connection. We understand that we’re not going to find perfection here on Sunday morning, but we can help each other remember love. The world is in transition for sure, who knows what we are becoming as a country, as a community. In this time of heightened fear and animosity, we who can remember love are called to do so, and to remind others that love is real, and that it is also something we can build our future on together. If we want a world that is loving, then love must be our foundation. This is our most important work as inheritors of the Universalist tradition- to follow love like a north star, to hold it like a child in our arms, like a life preserver, like a prayer. To know that no matter how unworthy or troubled we feel we can fall down upon that deep foundational love it and it will hold us all.

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[i] https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/movesus/workshop1/282448.shtml

Growing Spiritually

 

Every time I see my little cousins, it is easy to see that they have grown. They are not only taller, but their faces change, their movements grow in confidence and skill. They grow not only in body, but also in their understanding of the world. Think of the child who is always asking why. By the time they go through our coming-of-age program as teenagers, they have been introduced to life’s big questions- why are we here, what happens after we die, why do bad things happen, what do I value. They have hopefully internalized a circle of meaning for themselves. And while the growth of our bodies slows down considerably after childhood, the mind, heart and spirit continue to develop our whole lives. We who are adults are also growing spiritually, even though it’s not so visible.

Like the hermit crab in his shell, the circles of meaning, the words and images we used to make sense of the world and our place in it, even the spiritual practices we do may need to be replaced with something roomier to hold our ever-growing selves. Life, being life, is more complex and changeable than the theological circle we drew in adolescence can hold, and it no longer fits. Maybe this is because we were filled up with so much new experience that the circle has to get bigger to hold it all. But often, it is some heartbreak, some betrayal, that fractures our circle of meaning, The meaning that served us in good times, in simple times, now feels insufficient to meet the realities of life.

That’s what happened to me. At 13 after carefully writing my credo for “coming of Age” I thought I had graduated from theology, but the experiences I had as a young adult showed cracks in that theological circle, and huge unresolved theological questions drew me to seminary. In seminary those cracks turned into gateways into new realms of understanding. It was as if I had been swimming in the kiddie pool- the theological education I had in junior high school was not supposed to get us through the daunting challenges of adulthood. Peering out through those cracks in my circle of meaning, I could see vast oceans to explore, and because I was in a learning community, I knew I was not alone with my questions- humans had been navigating them for centuries, and our religious traditions were full of helpful charts and maps.

While I was in seminary my theological circle cracked and regrew so many times if I had been a hermit crab I would have needed a beach full of shells. But let me be clear- I wasn’t growing spiritually because I was at school- you don’t have to go to seminary to grow, it is natural and all of us are doing it all the time. I went to seminary because I urgently needed a bigger shell, and I grew spiritually because I threw myself heart and soul into that transformation.

The problem with the hermit crab metaphor is twofold. First, the hermit crab does not grow their own shell, they borrow one from another animal. Our spiritual growth is deeply our own, and we Unitarian Universalists believe we don’t have to take on someone else’s shell, we have the option of growing our own. Second, we don’t have to throw out the old shell in order to grow. Perhaps we are more like the pine tree. The bark of a tree is a protective coating, and pine trees “build up really thick outer bark and their exterior layers can be decades old. This means the outer layers originated at a time when the trees were still young and slim, and as the trees age and increase in girth, the outer layers crack way down into the youngest layer of bark that… fits the girth of the tree as it is now” [i] maybe you feel more like a pine tree than a hermit crab- all that bark built up for decades is still helpful and protective, but the cracks allow a “just right” layer of bark that fits the tree as it is now.

When our theological circle cracks, when it gets too small, which naturally happens to everyone over and over, we have a choices to make. We can’t choose to stay exactly as we are forever, because the nature of life is constant change and and growth and transformation. As long as we are alive, we are growing. But we can choose how to respond to that change. One common instinctive response is to lock things down- to get hyper-vigilant and grip our lives tightly in hopes we can stop the change. Another common response is to numb ourselves to the discomfort of change, (I suspect everyone has some ways they like to numb themselves, from binge-watching mindless shows, a pretty mild form of numbing, to more serious addictions that cause inevitable harm to our bodies and spirits.) The third way we can handle change is to bring our full self to it; to start looking for a new shell if we like the hermit crab metaphor or growing from the inside out like the pine tree. When I reach the growing edge of my spirit I tend to do a bit of all 3 things. Even when I realize what is happening, and open myself to the process of growth, I’m still going to feel resistance to the change, and sometimes I’m going to need a break to numb out for a while. The important thing to remember, is that your spirit knows how to grow. It’s as natural as a toddler learning to balance. But we have the freedom to choose how we approach it.

I wanted to give you some clear vision of spiritual growth, but it is utterly unique to each person in each moment. It’s good to have mentors and role models, just as we see children eagerly watching and imitating those slightly older, but the goal is not to become like someone else, the goal is to become more fully ourselves. We see the Dali Lama speaking with peace and equanimity and compassion, and think- “if I grow spiritually I will be peaceful and full of the bliss of my divine nature all the time”. Some part of me imagined that if I really worked hard at spiritual growth I would eventually graduate and the road would be smooth and I would never experience pain again. Bad things might happen, but I would float above them, undisturbed by the suffering of life. That’s not been my experience however, and probably even the Dali Lama has bad days.

So if Spiritual Growth doesn’t make us perfectly peaceful, how can we spot spiritual growth when it begins to emerge? It will be more subtle than signs of material growth. It will probably not make us richer, or more famous, or more successful. My spiritual director offered me this list to help guide the way: where are we noticing increasing freedom, acceptance, compassion, and engagement? Freedom was a surprise to me, I always associated feeling free with breaking the rules. And in truth we do have to break rules and expectations to grow in spiritual freedom. I can’t tell you how many ideas I had to overcome about what a good minister should be before I could realize what kind of minister I am. I keep my code of ethics very seriously, so I’m not talking about breaking those rules, but all the unspoken conditioning about what I should be, what I can be needed to break open. When I loosened my grasp on ideas about what I should be and follow the spirit where it leads, I feel more freedom. When I choose the path that increases the sense of freedom, the path thing that comes naturally to me, the path that takes me toward my own growing edge, not only do I grow my own spirit, but you often tell me later that it spoke to you more powerfully than when I do things the usual old boring minister way. I encourage each of you to notice, when have you grown in freedom to be yourself?

Acceptance is a hard one. It is hard to accept that which is unpleasant, to accept a world that doesn’t live up to our vision. It’s especially tricky for us as UUs because we believe in working for justice, we believe that we have a role to play in making the world a better place or all. Acceptance in this case doesn’t mean giving up on a more compassionate world, but it starts with that long loving look at the real --this is the reality of my life right now, and whether I will work to change it or not, here is where I am, where we are. Are there times in your life when you have grown in acceptance?

The sages from many traditions agree that one of the best signs of spiritual growth is compassion. Perhaps after that sad event in our own lives we notice that we have more compassion for others who have gone through something similar. What practices or experiences in your life have led you to grow in compassion?

Engagement is an immediate way to discern an opening for spiritual growth. When I look at my to do list in the morning, I often ask “which of these things give me energy when I consider them, which make me feel tired?” I follow that alive kind of energy as much as I can. I ask the same thing in my spiritual practices sometimes. If I feel bored or resistant to sit on my meditation cushion, which does happen for sure, I might ask, is there another practice that feels right for today, that gives me the energy to practice? The energy often feels inspired and good, but sometimes there is energy around something hard. Some piece of grief will nudge me and ask for my attention. When I remember the importance of spiritual growth, I turn and face the hard thing, and give myself the freedom to put my work down and have a cry, or sit with anger or frustration, because that’s where the energy is. Where is there energy, where is there engagement in your life right now?

My theological circle was showing some cracks as my son left for college and I turned 50, but all that has happened since 2020- the pandemic, awakening consciousness about racial injustice and the suffering of the world -- really smashed it up a bit. I was discouraged- I mean, I spent so much time in seminary building that adult circle of meaning, and now it was crumbling again. I can tell that I am not alone in this, that many folks are left wondering “why” and “I thought life was like this, but really it’s like this.” It’s enough to make you question the very foundations of what we believe about life and about ourselves. One thing I like about the garden metaphor in that lovely poem by Marge Piercy is that every gardener knows the harvest is just one point in the cycle of growth and is not discouraged when the whole thing starts over again every spring. Thankfully the cycle of growth never ends.

It can be scary to have the world crumbling around you, and your theological circle crumbling inside as well. It feels uncomfortable to be in a shell that’s too small. It feels terrible when our shell breaks, and it can be scary looking for a new shell that is the right size for us. And like we would offer a toddler who is teething, I recommend compassion for those moments. Centering prayer teacher Thomas Keating advises; when our attention strays, just gently bring it back, because any energy we give to chastising ourselves, or figuring out what went wrong, just takes us further and further from where we wanted to be.

We UUs affirm that we are always growing spiritually, and we also covenant to encourage one another in that growth. One of the simplest ways we do this is by coming together in community for worship, to remember a bigger view of the world, to know that we are not alone on the journey, to hold hope for one another when we have lost hope. Another powerful way we can encourage one another is just to listen, in small groups and one to one conversations. We listen deeply and compassionately, to truly hear each unique person on each unique path, to hold one another in love even when we are confused, to help us remember that we are always growing spiritually, and to help us discern a way forward on our growing edge. I imagine myself at a crossroads wondering which way to turn, and some kindly companion asks: Which way makes you feel more free? Which way helps you grow in compassion? Which way feels like new life?

I suspect there isn’t a person on this planet who hasn’t had some challenging times in the past year. Each of us will choose whether we will bring our loving attention to our spirits during those hard moments of change, to allow and encourage our own spiritual growth and those of our companions. The same is true when we receive something amazing, something confounding-ly wonderful.We can choose how we engage with life, good and bad. Is our goal to get back to normal as quickly as possible? Or are we open to transformation? Quickly or slowly, we are all growing all the time. Let us encourage one another in that growth, and help one another to remember that “after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes” Again and again




[i] P. 63 The Hidden life of trees by peter wohlleben