A Story Ends, a New Story Begins

A story is a kind of map, shared from person to person, whether written down in a book, or remembered by heart. A story can take complex ideas, abstract ideas, amorphous feelings and changes that defy communicating, and give them a form we can remember, we can walk around inside of and see from different perspectives. A story helps us see a cohesive shape of things out of a blizzard of moments and facts and data and feelings. Religious traditions are full of stories for this reason- they give meaning and shape to our often confusing reality. Personally, I love to read fantasy and sci-fi novels, but different kinds of stories speak more clearly to some than others. I know some baseball fans look at a box score and it tells them the story of a game.

Psychologist Carl Jung posited that the stories we share help us talk about our collective experience. The really big stories shared by many people speak to many of us at the same time. When we say, for example, “Moses leading the people in the wilderness”, with just those few words millions of people around the world who have been steeped in Jewish and Christian traditions can touch into that story in their imaginations and recall the arc of the flight from slavery to the promised land. When I say “down the rabbit hole” generations of people remember Alice tumbling from the reality of 19th century England into the bewildering and fantastical wonderland.

Over the past few years, I have often felt as if I was traveling without a map. I felt as if I had come to the edge of the map I had been using and gotten to the vague part where old map makers used to write “here be the dragons.” I’ve had dreams of driving down a dark road with no light, no map, no GPS. Even the stories that I had used to guide my way when I was caught in the weeds and couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead were no longer helpful, I couldn’t find myself in those stories anymore.
 

Remember the fairy tales that all used to end the same way; “and they all lived happily ever after?” Often this happens when the young princess is married, or when the 3rd son completes the quest and becomes ruler of the kingdom. As mature adults we know that while finding your life partner and getting married can be a happy day, full of promise and possibility, no marriage is smooth sailing “ever after.” While being given a great career opportunity is also a happy occasion, full of promise and possibility, no leadership job, whether in a fairy tale or fantasy novel or history book is without conflict and challenge.

In my own story, my parents had recently divorced with much drama before my wedding day, so I knew that marriage did not guarantee any kind of happy ever after, But there was a time in my life when I completed the long arduous training for the ministry, became a minister and became a parent, and that did feel like a happy end of one story and the beginning of the next, full of promise and possibility. I was also part of the larger story which said that women could not be ministers, certainly could not be ministers and mothers at the same time, A story going back to Olympia Brown, first universalist woman minister in the 1800s, to 100 years of women working for women’s suffrage, a story that continues today as women still don’t receive equal pay. The simple story about becoming a minister and mother has been shaping my life for many years, a story I stepped into as a young woman, but as I approached 50 had come complete.

After much discernment, I realized that this moment in my own life -- approaching 50, closing our music store, of seeing my only child leave the nest for college, the death of my father, even celebrating 20 years in the ministry, came together in what felt like the end of a big story, as big as that moment in my 20s when the story of ministry and motherhood began. It felt like finishing a big thick novel, complete with sense of disorientation and loss that when you put down the story you have lived inside of for so long.

I felt this sense of disorientation in the larger world as well, in this time marked by Covid, but not just Covid, this time when our fears about climate change have turned into nightmares of fire and flood. In this time when the foundations of democracy seem to be sliding out from under our feet. In this time when so much is in flux people of conscience are demanding the long overdue end to racial oppression.

This summer I read a novel called “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern, which spoke to that part of my soul that felt like it was driving down a dark with no map. Our hero walks from his ordinary life, in which he is a grad student, into a sort of wonderland, where things are increasingly fantastical. As he moves deeper and deeper into the story, he understands that this story has been going on for a long time, hundreds of years, and is now crumbling and ending. He is sad to have arrived in this story when it is just a remnant of what it once was, but, it turns out, he is here for the very end, the story needs him in order to end. The very nature of reality crumbles and swirls as he moves deeper and deeper, He spends quite a long time walking through shadows and shifting phantasms towards, he’s not quite sure what, until the whole story, not just one story, but a whole universe of interwoven stories, a whole reality that meant so much to so many, built with love and care and story and art by generations, all of it is drowned in, of all things, a sea of honey. What we the readers, and what our hero do not know, is that even as one story is ending, the seed of a new story is already there, waiting for the old story to end, and the new story to begin.

Aha! I felt, “yes, that is where I am in my story, where we are in our story right now!” so many stories we have loved and inhabited for centuries (and lifetimes and years, big stories and little stories) are ending, the nature of reality seems unstable, because we are at the end of a very large story, at the end of an age. Doubtless seeds of the new story are here among us, right now. But we are between stories, and that is a confusing and frustrating, but also sacred and sometimes beautiful place to be. This transition from the old stories to the new ones might take quite a long time. There are parts of the new story that only our children and grandchildren will see come into being.

Pausing in the midst of unraveling my work of many hours

Imagine that you are the old woman in the story Weaving the World, come back from stirring your soup to find the tangled wreck of years of weaving on the floor? How would you feel? What would you do?  I imagine I would feel angry, I would feel bereft and brokenhearted. I would probably call some friends who would understand. I know when something I have knit is ruined, I can’t just get right back to work, I have to pause and grieve what I’ve lost, all those hours, and gather some energy before I can begin again.

What would it mean to live for a while in that story of being in between an ending and a beginning? It might allow us to let go of the status quo. This is not the time to invest in getting things back to where they were in February of 2020. Too much has already changed. It is time to invest in the new story not the old. In this place it’s okay to set down our packs and weep when we need to. It’s easy to say “let go of the status quo” but so many comforting, normal, sometimes beloved things, sometimes oppressive and toxic things are part of the status quo, but if we understand that we are in a time of great change, we must set down the old story, piece by piece as we are able, and grieve what needs to be grieved, release what needs to be released. Like the old woman in the story, we pause to honor, grieve, release all that has unraveled before we begin again.

In this place may feel adrift, but that is normal for people of in-between times, like Moses and the Israelites in the desert, like Frodo and Samwise on their long journey. It is time to set up tents, and not build palaces. In a transitional time we build flexible structures that can change as the world changes, as our stories change.

Whenever we are unsure, we let love guide us. The stories of our collective conscious agree, Love guides where we need to go, which is to our hearts desire. In the wisdom stories we see that he love we show for others on our journey matters, the connections we make are never made in vain.

We are dreaming this new story together, in the collective unconscious not only of our small community, but all the imaginations all over the world. The reason humans evolved our capacity for imagination is so that we could begin to understand something we have never experienced. Let us imagine together a future where we live in harmony with the web of life, a future where those now at the margins of our society are welcomed to the center, let us dream new structures that are anti-racist and anti-oppressive -- a liberatory future.

How many decades did the suffragettes tell the story of a time when women could vote, could own property, could be educated before that came to pass, How long did enslaved Americans dream of being free, and still we dream of a time when all are truly equal under the law. When people are wandering in the confusion of this in-between time, let us be among those holding up a lantern, shining the light of consciousness, truth, justice on the path ahead, because whatever seeds are planted in first pages of a story grows in the pages that follow.

I spent last week at a conference of Unitarian Universalist ministers, and what we all knew, as we arrived from our very different contexts all over the country, was that so many stories, individual and collective, are ending, have been ending. And one of those old stories is the story of organized religion as we know it, and the story of Unitarian Universalism. If you look at the box scores of organized religions, you will see they tell a story of steady decline for decades now. Ministers and lay leaders have wrung our hands since I was in seminary about how to get back to the status quo, back to the time some of our members remember being children in the Cortland congregation and you had to get to church early if you wanted a seat. The stories we told each other all through that conference arose from our shared experience of life in our congregations, of life in this time of Covid, all wove into a larger story that there is no going back to the status quo. We can grieve that, we can cherish and love the way church used to be, but that is not where hope lies.

The world has deep spiritual needs right now. The world needs spiritual community, the world needs liberation from oppressive structures, the world needs a way forward into a new story, and if our faith, if our congregations are going to meet those needs, they will have to change. Hope lies in the truth that we are changing. Look around- look at this strange new sanctuary we have created together because it met a deep need in our own hearts. If we can grow something this strange and new and useful and meaningful, I have hope that we can build something together that will have a useful role in the story ahead.

The story “Weaving the world,” which was offered at our closing worship for the conference, did for me what stories do best; it took all the statistics, all the anecdotes, all the complex feelings and events and created a simple shape, a story shape that could hold it all. Friends, things have been unraveling, there is no denying that. We have been grieving that unraveling these past 2 years, and longer. I don’t quite know where we are in the story, are we still in the unraveling? Are we, like the old woman, sitting with the “tangle of undone threads? Is it time to pick up the loose threads and begin to weave again? I’m not quite sure. I suspect the unraveling will continue for some time, and I suspect the new weaving has already begun. But this story reminds us that even the most heartbreaking and complete unraveling is rewoven into something new by the spirit of life.

The hope I offer you today is that when a story ends a new story begins. In between may be a tangled mess of loose threads, or a period of wandering in the wilderness, but I have faith that among these tangles a new story has already begun, a huge story, big enough to hold us all.

Finding Your Own Spiritual Practice

I believe that our capacity to connect with the spirit of life is innate, we all have it, it’s part of being human, being alive. It’s not something that only monks do, it’s something that everyone does often without even knowing it.

Before I offer my own thoughts, I’d like to take a moment of silent reflection to invite you to consider-

• When do you feel like you are fully yourself?
• When do you feel inspired?
• What makes you come alive?
• What gets you through hard times?

Take a moment now if you like and pause in quiet reflection, or journal...

I hope that some images or memories came to you; If not, don’t worry about it, perhaps something will come to you as we go, or sometime later in the week.

Unitarian Universalism has are no proscribed practices we all do, no special prayers for certain times of day or times of life. The gift of this is that we are free to follow our own spirit, our own path, to know the divine in our own unique way. Our faith tradition offers us the freedom to explore, and the trust that each of us can discern what is right for our own spirits. Unitarian Universalism (UU) draws from many sources, and the first of these is “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life”

In our search for a spiritual practice that is just right for us, we begin with our own direct experience. We start with what we already know about ourselves- things that inspire us, support us, ground us and make us come alive, all these are food for our spirits. Like doing the dishes in Eileen Moeller’s beautiful poem, or like going among the trees for Wendell Berry. I know that I feel different when I have been feeding my spirit and when I have been letting it languish, when I give it good nourishing food, and when I feed it junk. Food for the spirit, at its most basic, is anything that allow us to be present to our whole self, and to that which is larger than ourselves, that which connects us to the web of life, that which is sacred, and for theists, to God. Any answers that came to you during your reflection, are clues to how you naturally connect with your deeper self, your inner wholeness, and touching into a greater wholeness. Sometimes such moments have a deep sense of rightness, of “yes.”

Just as our body gives us signals of hunger and thirst, our spirits give us hints of longing. Let’s take a moment now and consider if there are things you have been longing for- this includes both the deep yearning of our hearts and also fancies, whimsies. Our spirits are both serious and playful. [pause] So I invite you to ask your deepest self, or to ask the divine if that is your way, “what is my spirit hungry for, what will bring me into deeper alignment with my true self, and with that which is greater than myself?” Notice anything that comes to mind no matter how trivial, or seemingly irrelevant.

[I invite you to pause in a moment of reflection]

In looking for our own spiritual practice, we begin by just asking this question and then listening for an answer. This discernment may start out kind of general and clumsy, and will get more subtle with time.

Our UU theology points toward a wholeness of all that is, so it doesn’t have to be something traditionally sacred. If you start listening in to yourself you might hear that you are tired. Your body is part of the sacred web of life, and if you are tired a nap might be just the thing you need for wholeness. If you feel restless, get up and start moving, But stay tuned- think of it like your GPS on a road trip- “get moving” might be just the first invitation, like how your GPS says “start going south on Fayette street” with others to follow. When you listen in to yourself, you might get lots of information- your body probably has some things to offer- maybe you are tired, or need to adjust your posture in your chair, Sometimes it’s hard to sort out all the answers- that’s the crux of it. And that’s why it takes practice, and why it often benefits from some quiet time without distractions, As Wendell Berry Suggests in his Sabbaths Poem:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

If you would like to find your spiritual practice, this is how it begins, just take some piece of time to let your stirrings become quiet, to ask, to listen and then to follow that inner longing.

After much practice, I’ve gotten better at letting my stirring become quiet so I can hear that voice of my deeper self. Sometimes I hear a longing for something familiar- I often get a clear longing to get up and move, and often follow that to the yoga mat. Last spring when it was finally warm enough to sit outside, sitting on my porch watching the birds was just what my spirit was longing for most days. But recently I kept yearning for a certain color of orange. I tried out different colored pencils until I found the right one, I looked for that shade of orange in the world and noticed and enjoyed it whenever I found it.  I didn’t realize the color orange could feed my spirit, but apparently it can. The next step, once we have followed the longing out into the garden, or to a certain color we are yearning for, to that unique thing that calls just to you, just notice how that feels, notice how your spirit responds to what you have offered it. This is the practice- just spend some time in listening, trying things out and noticing.

A second way to find your own spiritual practice is to go back to those things that have fed you in the past. Gardening, walks, doing the dishes, painting, watching the birds. [anything that came up in chat] Approach it with intentionality- the purpose is not to complete a painting, for example, but to be in dialogue with your deepest self. Sometimes when we go back to an activity that has worked in the past we get that same feeling of “yes” How lovely- your soul asks for good food and you give it good food. We call our spirit back like an old friend.

Joy Harjo writes in her poem "For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering Earth in its Human Feet:

“call you spirit back. It may be caught in corners and
creases of shame, judgement and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return
In pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be
Happy to be found after being lost for so long”

Sometimes when we are hurting or grieving or in pain or in a challenging transition, that return when we are in pieces in tatters, is hard. That doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong, it just means that something challenging is happening for you and it needs some support. As Harjo writes “Speak to it as you would a beloved child.” The basic discernment is the same if, say, you are out on the walk that normally feeds you and a wave of grief comes over you. You ask with great compassion, what is the invitation here? How can this be a movement towards wholeness, towards connection? Perhaps the walk which is so supportive to your spirit was just the right container for the grieving your heart has needed to do.

But it could also mean that your spirit needs something different today. I remember in the spring of 2020, when we were new to spending so much time indoors, so much time at the zoom screen, I would get to the yoga mat after a long day on zoom and just could not get comfortable, I was restless, and felt frustrated and trapped and was overwhelmed with all the feelings we were going through then. I turned off the gentle yoga music the teacher had suggested and put on some really aggressive music by a feminist punk band, deciding to lean into those feelings, to help them move. I did a yoga practice that matched my inner turmoil, and by the end of practice, as I lay exhausted on the mat, I knew that had been just what my spirit needed.

Back when our lives were noisy and the house was full of activity, coming and going, the quiet on my meditation cushion always felt like a relief. These days, when I have been home alone for many hours, after little Trey died and Nick went back to school and Eric back to the office, it comes time for meditation but something in me says “Ugh, I already spent the whole day sitting quiet and still, What my spirit needs most for wholeness is connection.” For a while I had been delighting in the practice of making colorful mandalas, an outlet for my creativity in a life that was otherwise well established in routine. Lately I seem to have no energy for that. I am pouring every ounce of creativity into ministry. What really feels like a drink of water to my thirsty spirit right now is the slow familiar poses of a quiet yoga class, breathing in and breathing out in a virtual yoga community.

This is part of the exploration and discernment. When you think about doing a practice and something in you says “ugh” that inner resistance can be a source of self knowledge and energy. Ask yourself “why ugh?” and see if an answer comes. Sometimes sticking with the practice where you feel resistance can help lead to wholeness, can help you be present to something challenging but important. Most days, even those quiet days at home alone, I still do the same meditation practice I started during my sabbatical training to become a Spiritual Director; I can see the difference it has made in my life to sit in silence and focus on the spaciousness between thoughts, I can see how on the challenging days it really helps me reground myself and come back to myself. But some days I choose a different path. The needs of our spirit change over time, the spirit of life is a dynamic living force, and all living things change and grow.

Once you have chosen a practice, maybe just for today, or maybe you want to try it for a longer time , the core of a practice is the return. You forget, you get distracted, you get lured away by the rhythms of frantic consumer culture, or old patterns of worry and fretting, but what makes a spiritual practice different from a spiritual experience is that you call yourself back to it each time you get distracted, each time you forget your intention.

Spiritual Director Sandra Lommasson says “every gift has a shadow and every shadow has a gift.” The shadow side of our UU way, is that sometimes we feel adrift, and unsupported in our spiritual practices. Without proscribed prayers and formal practices we get the impression that we have to go this inward path alone, but this is not so. Sometimes this kind of listening and exploring I’ve been describing is hard, the path unclear. That’s one reason I talk to my spiritual director every month, so she can help me discern my path when I feel lost, so she can help me see the big picture when I am caught in the weeds. We also have the experiences and wisdom of others who have come before us on the spiritual journey. There are thousands of years of wisdom in cultures all around the world available to us to support us, the other 5 sources of our Unitarian Universalist tradition.

It can be helpful to memorize a rote prayer, a formal practice passed down through the spiritual tradition. A memorized prayer or practice that we turn to again and again can be a relief, an anchor. When our nervous system is overwhelmed even basic discernment about what to eat for dinner is hard- I know if I wait too long to eat dinner, I look in a full fridge and say “there’s no good food in the house to eat” So I have some small prayers and practices that I hold on to in times of anxiety or need that are comforting, that are grounding, that call my spirit home. Being UU doesn’t mean we can’t use rote words or actions, it just means that my choices are between me, my spirit, and my connects me to that which is larger than myself. The ultimate authority about spirituality must be spirit, and not your minister, or the UUA.

Take a moment right now and notice all you are connected to, the sounds of your neighborhood, of nature. Notice the beautiful faces of your community in zoom this morning. Going to worship is a spiritual practice, a communal rather than individual practice. For me this weekly church service has become an anchor- it reminds me I am not alone and connects me to something larger. Being in a group together creates a container that makes it easier to hold certain joys and worries and questions. Be on the lookout for practices that enlarge your sense of connection and remind you that you are not alone, that support is available to you on this path.

I believe that we are all on a spiritual journey, and that we were never meant to do it alone. Even though we practice sometimes in solitude, so we can hear our own voice, our own Self, we need the support of community, the wisdom of tradition.

Because we are woven in a web of interconnection with nature, with one another and with spirit, anything we do with intention, with attention, can be a spiritual practice. This week I encourage you to take some time, in these shared moments right now, and perhaps also some time this afternoon, to remember what you already do that calls you home to your deepest self, to the Spirit of life, and to the love that never lets us go. In a spirit of exploration, listen for the longings of your spirit -- both earnest and playful. Offer an invitation to your deepest self and see if you hear an invitation in return. The spiritual journey is one you have already been on for a long time, finding your own spiritual practice is as simple as giving your spirit a little nourishment, a little support when it is in need, and a little play and exploration as the spirit moves.