In order to become a safe community, we have to do something that feels unsafe. We have to acknowledge that women and children and men too are physically and sexually assaulted every day. For too long churches full of caring, well-meaning people have been silent to the reality of this abuse.
Feeling safe- feeling that people will respect your boundaries, your choices, your body, your freedom – feeling safe is important everywhere. But when a violation of that safety happens in your faith community, as too many people have told us is the case, then community becomes unsafe, religion becomes unsafe. Even our relationship with the divine can be broken, sometimes beyond repair. Too many survivors have sought help from their church or from their minister and are sent back into an abusive situations counseling patience, counseling forgiveness, calling it a “cross to bear.” But the suffering of an abused woman or man or child cannot be compared to the suffering of Jesus. As Marie Fortune, who was a pioneer in equipping faith communities to address sexual and domestic violence, writes in her book Keeping the Faith, Guidance for Christian Women Facing Abuse: “the suffering of being abused in one’s family is very different. It has no good purpose. It never brings forth a greater good. It is not God’s will for our lives. To accept it as purposeful, as your cross to bear, as God’s will for you, is to allow yourself to be a victim. You don not deserve abused at the hands of a member of your family.” [p. 20] or I might add, a member of your community.
So let’s be really clear. Unitarian Universalists believe that human sexuality is part of what it means to be human. We believe that there are as many ways of expressing it as there are people. And we believe deeply in the freedom of the individual to consent and to say “yes” but just as important is the freedom to say “no.” We know that if the power differential is too great, consent is not really possible. For example a child cannot truly consent to sexual acts with an adult. We know this not just in theory, but because men and women have come forward telling us how such interactions have affected them the rest of their lives. Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, former head of St. Luke's Institute, a treatment center for clergy said in an interview that “the abuse of minors, of course, is especially abhorrent and awful, but there are more cases of sexual exploitation of adults in all the churches, and that gets less air time …”[i] We know that ministers have a special role, whether they serve congregations or as hospital chaplains, and so something that might have been within the bounds of a healthy relationship between consenting adults, in the context of clergy and congregant can be coercive and harmful. We know this because after generations when people kept such things secret, were afraid to come forward, were silenced or shamed when they did come forward, we are finally hearing their stories and hearing what the cost was to their spirits, and to whole congregations. That is why in the UU Minister’s code of conduct it says clearly: “I will not engage in sexual contact, sexualized behavior or a sexual relationship with any person I serve as a minister. “[ii] Unfortunately, when their minister is accused of abuse Joe Trull, Professor of Christian Ethics at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, says congregations usually “circle the wagons to defend the accused minister, blame the victim, or even blame the minister's wife.[iii]”
It is time for churches to become part of the solution. We began creating a safe congregations policy for this church not because we were in the middle of a crisis, but precisely because we want to prevent a crisis. Congregations which have suspected clergy or staff misconduct, congregations where a registered sex offender ask permission to attend worship, or congregations who suspected that a child in their community was being abused those congregations that had a policy and procedure in place felt more empowered to handle the situation in a way that felt safer for everyone.
We have to start by speaking the truth. As Rebecca Parker, who was the minister of a small church before becoming the president of SKSM, and was a survivor of sexual abuse as a child, described so beautifully in our opening reading, truth is important to safety and it is important to healing after abuse.
First, we need to make this a place where people can say the truth of where your boundaries are. We get messages from a very young age that it is more important to follow societal norms than to feel safe. We tell a reluctant child “don’t be rude- hug your aunty” and we get versions of that message all our lives. Sometimes women and men end up participating in sexual acts when they don’t really feel comfortable because there is a sense of expectation, because they want to go with the flow. Or as we have seen in these clergy sexual abuse cases, and cases of employees or interns coerced into sexual relations with their supervisors, sometimes we create a culture where it feels impossible to say no. Some of you have probably heard in the news about a blog for women in the film industry in which they detail the sexual harassment they face daily in their industry[iv] Sometimes our cultural norms make speaking out to protect safe boundaries a herculean feat.
I’d like to try something, and I want you to know before I even describe this exercise that you will have an option to opt out. What I’m going to suggest is that you pick a partner, someone sitting nearby you that you might know or not know. I want you to start out about10 feet apart, and then I want whomever is older to stand still and whomever younger will walk towards their partner. The person standing still- their job is to raise their hand when their partner gets to the boundary of their personal space. And the job of the person walking is to respect that and stop.
Now take a moment to talk to your partner about how it felt to be the person whose job it was to say stop, and how it felt to be the person who was told to stop
[pause for conversation]
Now lets all come back together
Does anyone want to share with the whole group their feelings about that exercise?
[pause for conversation]
Now a word for those folks who decided to “pass.” When I was in seminary, students loved to create innovative worship where congregants would be asked to make eye contact, or hug, or dance. I had a theology professor who always sat those things out. It was critically important, he felt, that we always have the freedom to opt out of community activities that don’t feel right to us. Is there anyone who decided to pass who wants to tell us how that felt?
[pause for conversation]
This is part of being a “safer congregation” I think -- that we can express our boundaries to one another. It needs to be culturally normative in this congregation that it is okay to say no to one another, to be able to say “here is where my boundary is.” If we can practice on the easy things, maybe it will be possible to express our boundaries when it is really difficult to do so.
Next, to be a safer congregation, our goal is to be a community where we feel safe telling someone when our boundaries have been violated. So, for example, if that exercise didn’t feel safe to you, and it didn’t feel safe to say something to everyone in the middle of the service, I would hope you could come talk to me later, or talk to the Committee on Ministry. This is what we were trying to express in the lesson for all ages earlier. And that is why there are three members of our Safe Congregations Team. You can talk to your minister, of course, but if that doesn’t feel safe, you can talk to a different member of the team- Elaine or Katie. Of course if you experience or witness “seriously harmful, abusive or harassing behavior toward any UUCAS member, friend or visitor, and you feel the behavior cannot be successfully diffused, you are asked to call 911 or the local police department, requesting immediate assistance.”
This brings us to the third way we that speaking the truth can create the safer community we desire. We must be advocates for those who have been abused. Especially for those who have been silenced. I want to tell you about a remarkable program that was born in India. It is called “bell bajao” which is Hindi for “ring the bell.” It is a public awareness program designed to encourage men and boys in particular to “do something” when they hear or witness or suspect abuse. The message is remarkably simple- just ring the bell. I’d like to share one of these videos with you:
What I love about that video, is that the man who rings the bell is clearly nervous, he’s not an expert. He’s not an official. But just by ringing the bell he is able to interrupt the abuse he suspects. What he does requires courage, but is something any of us can do. We do need to ask “why didn’t he notify the police as his next step?” but we know that there are many places not only around the world but also in the US where police consider abuse a private matter, and will not only fail to prosecute, but will fail to protect and will even blame the victim. I believe our justice system has made great strides responding to domestic and sexual abuse in just one generation in this country, and that is why we encourage you if you see a “seriously harmful, abusive or harassing behavior” to follow up “ringing the bell” with calling authorities you trust.
Think back to the reports we heard about Penn State case. Part of what is so horrifying about that whole story, is not only that the abuse happened, but that so few had the courage to say something. [v] What could have been different if any of the many people who knew or suspected what was happening had just done what that video suggests--just let coach Sandusky know that he was being observed- making a difference in the life of a child. Think of the compound of wound on wound- to not only be assaulted but to know that people knew and would not help you. And if any of those people who knew or suspected what was going on had gone to the police- they could have made the difference in the life of many.
Finally, as Rebecca Parker suggested in her reading, as a community of faith we encourage people to speak the truth of their experience -- both survivors and those who have hurt them. When Survivors speak the truth of their experience, they facilitate not only their own healing but the healing of others. I believe it is also important for perpetrators to speak the truth. At this moment in our culture we demonize perpetrators of sexual abuse like no other kind of person. And truly there are people who have committed horrible devastating acts. But when our laws create a situation in which it is impossible for convicted sex offenders to find housing, to find jobs, to be part of community, is that really better than having a community that knows the person and can hold them accountable for their actions? Rev. Debora Haffner, director of the Religious Institute which provides guidance to congregations and people of faith around these issues, told us that 87% of sexual offenders will not reoffend after prison or treatment. She says the person who comes to church after treatment and tells you is not the primary threat to our congregations. The primary threat are those folks who still live and act in a cloak of secrecy. I believe our current process of responding to sexual abuse leaves the work of restorative justice unfinished. An act of sexual abuse or violence is not just an infraction of the law, but an injury to a person, and to the web of relationships. Jennifer Llewellyn, Viscount Bennett Professor of Law at Dalhousie and an international expert in restorative justice tells us [vi] “Restorative justice is an idea that says, at its core, justice has to be about repairing or addressing the harm caused to social relationships when wrongdoing happens.” I think “restorative justice” is a big enough topic for another sermon, but in the words of Rebecca Parker, “we told the truth about our lives because telling the truth restored us to the human community. It brought us back from the dead. ... It made us free.”
To be a safe congregation, this must be a place where we speak the truth. Where we learn to articulate our own boundaries, and support others who express their boundaries because this is how we will help prevent abuse, and how we will help in healing from abuse. In our Lesson for all ages this morning each of us was asked to think of someone to tell if something bad happened to us. I hope that each us will also aspire to be “someone to tell” so that whenever a child or a woman or a man in our community feels unsafe, that this will be a safe place to speak our truth.
Endnotes
[i] http://www.adultsabusedbyclergy.org/UnsafeInAnyDenomination.html
[ii] http://www.uuma.org/default.asp?page=guidelines#Ethical Standards
[iii] http://www.adultsabusedbyclergy.org/UnsafeInAnyDenomination.htmlhttp://www.adultsabusedbyclergy.org/UnsafeInAnyDenomination.html
[iv] http://shitpeoplesaytowomendirectors.tumblr.com/ read more about it here: http://laist.com/2015/05/28/sht_people_say_to_women_directors.php
[v] http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline
[vi] http://www.restorativejustice.org/RJOB/what-is-restorative-justice
Monday, June 1, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
Not So Simple (May 10, 2015)
Reading- Solving for pattern by Wendell Berry
Perhaps it is not until health is set down as the aim that we come in sight of the third kind of solution: that which causes a ramifying series of solutions – as when meat animals are fed on the farm where the feed is raised, and where the feed is raised to be fed to the animals that are on the farm. Even so rudimentary a description implies a concern for pattern, for quality, which necessarily complicates the concern for production. The farmer has put plants and animals into a relationship of mutual dependence, and must perforce be concerned for balance or symmetry, a reciprocating connection in the pattern of the farm that is biological, not industrial, and that involves solutions to problems of fertility, soil husbandry, economics, sanitation - the whole complex of problems whose proper solutions add up to health: the health of the soil, of plants and animals, of farm and farmer, of farm family and farm community, all involved in the same inter-nested, interlocking pattern – or pattern of patterns.
A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained. It acts destructively upon those patterns, most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them. A bad solution solves for a single purpose or goal, such as increased production. And it is typical of such solutions that they achieve stupendous increases in production at exorbitant biological and social costs. A good solution is good because it is in harmony with those larger patterns – and this harmony will, I think, be found to have a nature of analogy. A bad solution acts within the larger pattern the way a disease or addiction acts within the body. A good solution acts within the larger pattern the way a healthy organ acts within the body.
Sermon- Not So Simple
A couple of years back our congregation and the UU congregation up in Syracuse were getting ready to swap pulpits. Their minister, Jean, asked if I would preach about Fracking, because she knew we in Bradford County were in the thick of it, and because Elaine and Frank and I had presented a workshop on the issues of Natural Gas Development at the Social Justice conference the year before. Since we are the only congregation in the St. Lawrence District in Pennsylvania, we still are the only congregation where fracking is a reality in our lives. “Sure” I said, and started thinking about it.
What could I say to the Syracuse UUs about Fracking, knowing that a sermon is not a workshop. It is not enough just to present the mechanics of fracking, the chemistry and economics. A sermon is supposed to be a call to ethical action. But my time serving this congregation had not shown me a clear call to action, but instead shown me that the lived reality of fracking is overwhelmingly complex.
Many of the members of this congregation have faced the ethical dilemma of what to do when the landsman comes to your door to talk with you about leasing the mineral rights to your land. And it is clear to me from listening to your stories, listening to how you grappled with the ethical issues, that there is more than one ethical position. Some folks have decided not to lease their mineral rights, believing that the environmental impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing are not worth it for the money to be made, nor for the energy to be produced. Other folks, knowing how many of us use natural gas, for example, to heat our homes- my home is heated with natural gas- don’t want to succumb to the “Not in My Backyard” thinking, leaving some other community to take the risks and bear the cost of extracting natural gas. If we are going to use Natural gas here, they reason, we should be willing to allow it to be extracted here. Still others consider the economic impact of natural Gas extraction on the region. This is not a wealthy area by any means. Bradford county is 48th out of 67 counties in PA for per capita income, and Tioga County is 57th[i] This area has always made most of its wealth from farming and resource extraction, and since the family farm has struggled so mightily in these past generations, many people hope these mineral rights leases will literally help people keep their farms or homes, would provide some economic relief. There’s a barn I pass on my way into Ithaca from points East. Maybe you’ve seen it? It is caving in you can practically see it falling apart and it has a big sign hanging on the side saying “Coming soon Natural Gas and My New Barn.” Moreover, we have met some really great people who came to town because of jobs in the gas industry, doing the best they can to support themselves and their families at a time when the minimum wage in Pennsylvania still lingers at $7.25 per hour.
For a while on my drive down here from Ithaca, I began my drive in a sea of “No fracking” signs which quite abruptly would change to a sea of “Friends of Natural Gas” or “Frack here, frack now” signs. A perfect illustration of how this incredibly complex issue has become deeply polarized. It has strained the web of relationships between neighbors, between family members. I realized recently that I haven’t spoken from the pulpit about this issue in years is because we don’t want to bring that polarization into our beloved community. You can feel the social danger of expressing certain ideas.
These past Wednesday afternoons a group of us have been talking about our distinctive UU theology. And one of the aspects of our “soteriology” that is, our theory of what saves us and what we need to be saved from, is that instead of anticipating an ultimate battle between good and evil, we know we are part of a complex web of life. As we work together to build the beloved community, it is not a gated community, but must include environmental activists, gas company executives, landowners, all the people who heat their homes in the winter, and all the beings who need water to live. In the same way Universalists long ago rejected the notion that some persons were predestined to go to heaven and others to suffer forever in hell, I would like to reframe the debate over natural gas from a battle that one side must win and another side must lose, into something more like that “tangled bank” we talked about on Evolution Sunday. If we are going to move in a life-giving direction with this tangled web of issues and problems, there is not just one final solution, but many big and little decisions that allow people to be warm in the winter, to have jobs that pay a living wage, and that preserve our beautiful agricultural land and the water we all need to survive.
This image some of you will remember from a sermon I did recently. Here is the circle that shows what we need. The circle that shows what we don’t need, and this intersecting circle showing what is possible right now. I think most of us would agree, for example, that we need energy to heat our homes and to run this industrialized world we have created. Most of us would agree that we need sources of energy that will not contribute to global climate change. But as we heard in our opening reading, we have to be careful not to create solutions that in turn create new problems. Wendell Berry tells us there are three kinds of solutions. He uses these with agricultural metaphors, but I will apply them to the whole web of issues around how we make and use energy
To quote Berry: “There is, first, the solution that causes a ramifying[ii] series of new problems, the only limiting criterion being, apparently, that the new problems should arise beyond the purview of the expertise that produced the solution.” I think a great example of this is the controversy over on Lake Seneca. Crestwood, a company based out of Texas, is planning to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industrial storage facility and a methane expansion facility, and plans to store methane, propane, and butane in unlined, depleted salt caverns “that were never engineered to store anything, on the shores of Seneca Lake”.[iii] So if the problem that we are trying to solve is where to store LPG, we have set up the discussion so that issues like the effects of leaks on water or air or agricultural soil or other industries like tourism are “beyond the purview” of the engineers and staff of the gas companies. Other problems caused with this technology are seen as separate problems requiring separate solutions.
Quoting Berry again: “The second kind of solution is that which immediately worsens the problem it is intended to solve, causing a hellish symbiosis in which problem and solution reciprocally enlarge one another” Some folks, including our president, have proposed Natural Gas as a “clean energy.” We know, for example, that Natural Gas “emits 50 percent less carbon dioxide than coal when you burn it.”[iv] The complexity comes from the fact that when Natural Gas is mined, Methane escapes into the atmosphere, and Methane “ unburned, is around 70 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.”[v] If we are using natural gas to reduce greenhouse gases, this is a solution that makes that problem worse.
In the same light, it seems like stopping all natural gas production tomorrow around the world would also be a solution that makes things worse. So many people would be suddenly out of work. People who now heat with natural gas would have to quickly have their heating systems converted, and those who couldn’t afford the conversion, the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, would suffer
But says Berry, there is a third kind of solution, those “which causes a ramifying series of solutions” . In his essay Berry uses for his example example a farmer who solved the problem of a grain shortage on his farm by selling off part of his heard, by using more of the herd’s manure to increase fertility, by breeding programs that selected for cows that could eat roughage, and then by reduced the percentage of grain in the feed ration. By solving the problem of a feed shortage, in this way, he ended up with a healthier farm.
We need to have the courage to figure out what we REALLY need. To even imagine what we really need. We are afraid that there is no solution that reduces the acceleration of global climate change, while keeping our water clean, and providing jobs for everyone. When our vision is too narrow, we miss important pieces of the big picture. We all know that humans and most other living beings on teh planet need water to survive. But it’s easy to forget, living in an area that is one of the greatest sources of fresh water in the world. [vi] It’s easy to forget that many living beings right now on the planet are suffering from a shortage of drinking water. It’s hard to imagine that fresh drinkable water which is so freely available to us, it’s hard to really comprehend and that it could ever be a scarce resource, and that it could become scarce by our own actions.
Did you know that in China governmental reports show 60% of their fresh water has become polluted, and others suggest the government is underreporting the problem, so it may even be worse?[vii] Half of China’s population lacks safe drinking water. Nearly two thirds of China’s rural population---more than 500 million people---use water contaminated by human and industrial waste.[viii] Now, did you know that it takes roughly 4.4 million gallons of water to frack one well?[ix] These millions of gallons of water are mixed with a chemical cocktail that so far we haven’t figured out how to remove from the water after fracking is over, and so is permanently removed from the water cycle and stored as toxic waste. I suggest to you that a true solution to our energy problems does not create a new water problem to be solved. We must have the courage to imagine and to say out loud that the energy we really need is energy that does not jeopardize the water we need to live.
When the complex issues around producing safe, clean energy are reduced to whether Natural Gas development is Good or Evil, it becomes impossible to have public conversations that will make a huge difference in our children’s lives and their grandchildren’s lives.
Right now in Bradford County, Hydraulic Fracturing is a reality. It is providing fuel, and jobs to our community and other communities around the world. While the state of New York is under a moratorium. The choice is no longer “to frack or not to frack,” but a series of ramifying choices for those of us who live in both states. Remember those methane emissions I talked about earlier? A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) concluded that “There is a need for the natural gas industry and science community to help obtain better emissions data and for increased efforts to reduce methane leakage in order to minimize the climate footprint of natural gas.” This seems like a really important issue- gathering data to track and reduce methane leakage would make the difference between natural gas being cleaner than coal, or being just as dirty as coal. In fact there are new EPA regulations that went into effect on January of 2015 that require many wells to capture some of that Methane. As an example of Solutions that lead to other solutions, the EPA projects that not only would the “new rule would reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds by 190,000 to 290,000 tons per year and toxic air pollutants by 12,000 to 20,000 tons a year…. [through a process] known as “green completions,” at the same time the industry would save $11 million to $19 million a year because drillers would be able to capture and sell the methane that is now burned off, or flared.[x]
I never did preach that sermon in Syracuse. I chickened out and decided to preach on something less controversial- the Doctrine of Discovery and whether European-Americans even have the right to live on the lands we now claim. What would I tell that congregation in Syracuse today? I would tell them there is no simple answer, we must be constantly looking for solutions that increase the health of the whole. As Berry says “Good solutions exist only in proof... Problems must be solved in work and in place, with particular knowledge, fidelity, and care, by people who will suffer the consequences of their mistakes.” Berry is suggesting that good solutions are created by people who know a place, work a place, and will suffer if the place suffers. That’s us. Whether our land is leased or not. It’s up to us to monitor our local creeks (as several volunteers in this congregation and in our community are doing) and know how the water in this very place is healthy or sick. It’s up to us to ask for good data on the emissions, and to ask our DEP to create and enforce standards that make sure our solutions are good not only for energy production, but for our health. I would probably tell the Syracuse congregation that good solutions may be different in their community than in ours. I would tell them not to settle for Solutions “which causes a ramifying series of problems,” but to keep looking for solutions “which causes a ramifying series of solutions.” Even if they don’t seem possible right now, we must keep looking for solutions together. Not necessarily a simple solution, but one in harmony with “the inter-nested, interlocking patterns of health”, the interconnected web of life of which we are a part.
Endnotes
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pennsylvania_counties_by_per_capita_income
[ii] Ramifying-“ present participle: ramifying - form branches or offshoots; spread or branch out”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ramify
[iii] http://gasfreeseneca.com/?page_id=142
[iv] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/is-natural-gas-clean/
[v] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/17/6435
[vi] http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/freshwater-map/
[vii] http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/chinas-looming-water-shortage/, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/19/content_18942169.htm
[viii] http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html
[ix] http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/03/12/how-much-water-it-takes-to-frack-a-well/
[x] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/science/earth/epa-caps-emissions-at-gas-and-oil-wells.html?_r=1&ref=energy-environment
Perhaps it is not until health is set down as the aim that we come in sight of the third kind of solution: that which causes a ramifying series of solutions – as when meat animals are fed on the farm where the feed is raised, and where the feed is raised to be fed to the animals that are on the farm. Even so rudimentary a description implies a concern for pattern, for quality, which necessarily complicates the concern for production. The farmer has put plants and animals into a relationship of mutual dependence, and must perforce be concerned for balance or symmetry, a reciprocating connection in the pattern of the farm that is biological, not industrial, and that involves solutions to problems of fertility, soil husbandry, economics, sanitation - the whole complex of problems whose proper solutions add up to health: the health of the soil, of plants and animals, of farm and farmer, of farm family and farm community, all involved in the same inter-nested, interlocking pattern – or pattern of patterns.
A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained. It acts destructively upon those patterns, most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them. A bad solution solves for a single purpose or goal, such as increased production. And it is typical of such solutions that they achieve stupendous increases in production at exorbitant biological and social costs. A good solution is good because it is in harmony with those larger patterns – and this harmony will, I think, be found to have a nature of analogy. A bad solution acts within the larger pattern the way a disease or addiction acts within the body. A good solution acts within the larger pattern the way a healthy organ acts within the body.
Sermon- Not So Simple
A couple of years back our congregation and the UU congregation up in Syracuse were getting ready to swap pulpits. Their minister, Jean, asked if I would preach about Fracking, because she knew we in Bradford County were in the thick of it, and because Elaine and Frank and I had presented a workshop on the issues of Natural Gas Development at the Social Justice conference the year before. Since we are the only congregation in the St. Lawrence District in Pennsylvania, we still are the only congregation where fracking is a reality in our lives. “Sure” I said, and started thinking about it.
What could I say to the Syracuse UUs about Fracking, knowing that a sermon is not a workshop. It is not enough just to present the mechanics of fracking, the chemistry and economics. A sermon is supposed to be a call to ethical action. But my time serving this congregation had not shown me a clear call to action, but instead shown me that the lived reality of fracking is overwhelmingly complex.
Many of the members of this congregation have faced the ethical dilemma of what to do when the landsman comes to your door to talk with you about leasing the mineral rights to your land. And it is clear to me from listening to your stories, listening to how you grappled with the ethical issues, that there is more than one ethical position. Some folks have decided not to lease their mineral rights, believing that the environmental impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing are not worth it for the money to be made, nor for the energy to be produced. Other folks, knowing how many of us use natural gas, for example, to heat our homes- my home is heated with natural gas- don’t want to succumb to the “Not in My Backyard” thinking, leaving some other community to take the risks and bear the cost of extracting natural gas. If we are going to use Natural gas here, they reason, we should be willing to allow it to be extracted here. Still others consider the economic impact of natural Gas extraction on the region. This is not a wealthy area by any means. Bradford county is 48th out of 67 counties in PA for per capita income, and Tioga County is 57th[i] This area has always made most of its wealth from farming and resource extraction, and since the family farm has struggled so mightily in these past generations, many people hope these mineral rights leases will literally help people keep their farms or homes, would provide some economic relief. There’s a barn I pass on my way into Ithaca from points East. Maybe you’ve seen it? It is caving in you can practically see it falling apart and it has a big sign hanging on the side saying “Coming soon Natural Gas and My New Barn.” Moreover, we have met some really great people who came to town because of jobs in the gas industry, doing the best they can to support themselves and their families at a time when the minimum wage in Pennsylvania still lingers at $7.25 per hour.
For a while on my drive down here from Ithaca, I began my drive in a sea of “No fracking” signs which quite abruptly would change to a sea of “Friends of Natural Gas” or “Frack here, frack now” signs. A perfect illustration of how this incredibly complex issue has become deeply polarized. It has strained the web of relationships between neighbors, between family members. I realized recently that I haven’t spoken from the pulpit about this issue in years is because we don’t want to bring that polarization into our beloved community. You can feel the social danger of expressing certain ideas.
These past Wednesday afternoons a group of us have been talking about our distinctive UU theology. And one of the aspects of our “soteriology” that is, our theory of what saves us and what we need to be saved from, is that instead of anticipating an ultimate battle between good and evil, we know we are part of a complex web of life. As we work together to build the beloved community, it is not a gated community, but must include environmental activists, gas company executives, landowners, all the people who heat their homes in the winter, and all the beings who need water to live. In the same way Universalists long ago rejected the notion that some persons were predestined to go to heaven and others to suffer forever in hell, I would like to reframe the debate over natural gas from a battle that one side must win and another side must lose, into something more like that “tangled bank” we talked about on Evolution Sunday. If we are going to move in a life-giving direction with this tangled web of issues and problems, there is not just one final solution, but many big and little decisions that allow people to be warm in the winter, to have jobs that pay a living wage, and that preserve our beautiful agricultural land and the water we all need to survive.
This image some of you will remember from a sermon I did recently. Here is the circle that shows what we need. The circle that shows what we don’t need, and this intersecting circle showing what is possible right now. I think most of us would agree, for example, that we need energy to heat our homes and to run this industrialized world we have created. Most of us would agree that we need sources of energy that will not contribute to global climate change. But as we heard in our opening reading, we have to be careful not to create solutions that in turn create new problems. Wendell Berry tells us there are three kinds of solutions. He uses these with agricultural metaphors, but I will apply them to the whole web of issues around how we make and use energy
To quote Berry: “There is, first, the solution that causes a ramifying[ii] series of new problems, the only limiting criterion being, apparently, that the new problems should arise beyond the purview of the expertise that produced the solution.” I think a great example of this is the controversy over on Lake Seneca. Crestwood, a company based out of Texas, is planning to build a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industrial storage facility and a methane expansion facility, and plans to store methane, propane, and butane in unlined, depleted salt caverns “that were never engineered to store anything, on the shores of Seneca Lake”.[iii] So if the problem that we are trying to solve is where to store LPG, we have set up the discussion so that issues like the effects of leaks on water or air or agricultural soil or other industries like tourism are “beyond the purview” of the engineers and staff of the gas companies. Other problems caused with this technology are seen as separate problems requiring separate solutions.
Quoting Berry again: “The second kind of solution is that which immediately worsens the problem it is intended to solve, causing a hellish symbiosis in which problem and solution reciprocally enlarge one another” Some folks, including our president, have proposed Natural Gas as a “clean energy.” We know, for example, that Natural Gas “emits 50 percent less carbon dioxide than coal when you burn it.”[iv] The complexity comes from the fact that when Natural Gas is mined, Methane escapes into the atmosphere, and Methane “ unburned, is around 70 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.”[v] If we are using natural gas to reduce greenhouse gases, this is a solution that makes that problem worse.
In the same light, it seems like stopping all natural gas production tomorrow around the world would also be a solution that makes things worse. So many people would be suddenly out of work. People who now heat with natural gas would have to quickly have their heating systems converted, and those who couldn’t afford the conversion, the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, would suffer
But says Berry, there is a third kind of solution, those “which causes a ramifying series of solutions” . In his essay Berry uses for his example example a farmer who solved the problem of a grain shortage on his farm by selling off part of his heard, by using more of the herd’s manure to increase fertility, by breeding programs that selected for cows that could eat roughage, and then by reduced the percentage of grain in the feed ration. By solving the problem of a feed shortage, in this way, he ended up with a healthier farm.
We need to have the courage to figure out what we REALLY need. To even imagine what we really need. We are afraid that there is no solution that reduces the acceleration of global climate change, while keeping our water clean, and providing jobs for everyone. When our vision is too narrow, we miss important pieces of the big picture. We all know that humans and most other living beings on teh planet need water to survive. But it’s easy to forget, living in an area that is one of the greatest sources of fresh water in the world. [vi] It’s easy to forget that many living beings right now on the planet are suffering from a shortage of drinking water. It’s hard to imagine that fresh drinkable water which is so freely available to us, it’s hard to really comprehend and that it could ever be a scarce resource, and that it could become scarce by our own actions.
Did you know that in China governmental reports show 60% of their fresh water has become polluted, and others suggest the government is underreporting the problem, so it may even be worse?[vii] Half of China’s population lacks safe drinking water. Nearly two thirds of China’s rural population---more than 500 million people---use water contaminated by human and industrial waste.[viii] Now, did you know that it takes roughly 4.4 million gallons of water to frack one well?[ix] These millions of gallons of water are mixed with a chemical cocktail that so far we haven’t figured out how to remove from the water after fracking is over, and so is permanently removed from the water cycle and stored as toxic waste. I suggest to you that a true solution to our energy problems does not create a new water problem to be solved. We must have the courage to imagine and to say out loud that the energy we really need is energy that does not jeopardize the water we need to live.
When the complex issues around producing safe, clean energy are reduced to whether Natural Gas development is Good or Evil, it becomes impossible to have public conversations that will make a huge difference in our children’s lives and their grandchildren’s lives.
Right now in Bradford County, Hydraulic Fracturing is a reality. It is providing fuel, and jobs to our community and other communities around the world. While the state of New York is under a moratorium. The choice is no longer “to frack or not to frack,” but a series of ramifying choices for those of us who live in both states. Remember those methane emissions I talked about earlier? A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) concluded that “There is a need for the natural gas industry and science community to help obtain better emissions data and for increased efforts to reduce methane leakage in order to minimize the climate footprint of natural gas.” This seems like a really important issue- gathering data to track and reduce methane leakage would make the difference between natural gas being cleaner than coal, or being just as dirty as coal. In fact there are new EPA regulations that went into effect on January of 2015 that require many wells to capture some of that Methane. As an example of Solutions that lead to other solutions, the EPA projects that not only would the “new rule would reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds by 190,000 to 290,000 tons per year and toxic air pollutants by 12,000 to 20,000 tons a year…. [through a process] known as “green completions,” at the same time the industry would save $11 million to $19 million a year because drillers would be able to capture and sell the methane that is now burned off, or flared.[x]
I never did preach that sermon in Syracuse. I chickened out and decided to preach on something less controversial- the Doctrine of Discovery and whether European-Americans even have the right to live on the lands we now claim. What would I tell that congregation in Syracuse today? I would tell them there is no simple answer, we must be constantly looking for solutions that increase the health of the whole. As Berry says “Good solutions exist only in proof... Problems must be solved in work and in place, with particular knowledge, fidelity, and care, by people who will suffer the consequences of their mistakes.” Berry is suggesting that good solutions are created by people who know a place, work a place, and will suffer if the place suffers. That’s us. Whether our land is leased or not. It’s up to us to monitor our local creeks (as several volunteers in this congregation and in our community are doing) and know how the water in this very place is healthy or sick. It’s up to us to ask for good data on the emissions, and to ask our DEP to create and enforce standards that make sure our solutions are good not only for energy production, but for our health. I would probably tell the Syracuse congregation that good solutions may be different in their community than in ours. I would tell them not to settle for Solutions “which causes a ramifying series of problems,” but to keep looking for solutions “which causes a ramifying series of solutions.” Even if they don’t seem possible right now, we must keep looking for solutions together. Not necessarily a simple solution, but one in harmony with “the inter-nested, interlocking patterns of health”, the interconnected web of life of which we are a part.
Endnotes
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pennsylvania_counties_by_per_capita_income
[ii] Ramifying-“ present participle: ramifying - form branches or offshoots; spread or branch out”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ramify
[iii] http://gasfreeseneca.com/?page_id=142
[iv] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/is-natural-gas-clean/
[v] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/17/6435
[vi] http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/freshwater-map/
[vii] http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/chinas-looming-water-shortage/, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/19/content_18942169.htm
[viii] http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html
[ix] http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/03/12/how-much-water-it-takes-to-frack-a-well/
[x] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/science/earth/epa-caps-emissions-at-gas-and-oil-wells.html?_r=1&ref=energy-environment
Monday, April 27, 2015
Telling Our Story (April 26, 2015)
Twice now a group of us gathered upstairs on a winter’s evening to tell one another the part of our history that we ourselves remember. The first time we gathered to tell this story our earliest recollections were back to the time of the great flood of 1972, but this past fall our telling of our memories began around the time of the purchase of this building. The minister at that time was Rev. Harry Thor. He had served as the minister of the Binghamton Church (1963-1980), and came to serve The Sheshequin church part time in his retirement. He served our congregation for 17 years from 1989-1996.
The story of this congregation in the 1990s can’t be told without Bob and Nell Allen. Both Bob and Nell were raised UU. He was an orthopedic surgeon at Guthrie, and served as president of this congregation for 15 years, and the Allens were a driving force in the purchase of this building. Bob and John McDonald build the chalice stain glass window using tiles from an old window. Don Riker commissioned the plaque below it. Perhaps you’ve noticed a crack in one pane. Bob said it was a “crack of humility.”
Bob was also a pilot, and when the plane he was flying crashed, killing him, the whole community was crushed. I’m told that his parking spot at the hospital was filled with flowers. Memorial services were held at Redeemer and at UUCAS. A year after his death the members of the congregation took a trip to the crash site to plant bulbs Imagine what a difficult time that must have been- to mourn the death of Bob Allen, longtime church pillar, just as our minister of 17 years retired.
After Harry Thor’s retirement a student minister, Janelle Curlin-Taylor came to be our intern. This was a tumultuous time for the church, and when Janelle left the church was in a time of conflict.
We entered a period with no paid minister, and strong lay leaders emerged. Nell Allen served as president and church administrator for man y years. In 1999 we started the “Earth Day Fair” in our parking lot to bring the values of sustainability to the larger community, which became an annual event.
Lee Richards, a student minister, served this congregation from 1999 to 2002. During this time our nursery was a lively, welcome place, Lee mentioned once from the pulpit “the sound of a happy child” in the nursery. When the Sayre and Keystone theaters had declined to host the Vagina Monologues, feeling it was too controversial, We were also proud to bring the Vagina Monologues to UUCAS. All of the participants actively promoted the events and sold tickets to friends. We were sold out and used the social room for overflows. Over 110 attended. The director, Barbara Coyle, and cast received a standing ovation. We were afraid of backlash from protestors and requested protection from the Athens Police Dept. They were stationed outside. Fortunately, we did not have any protestors.
In 2002 Lee declined to renew his contract after his third year. Conflicts lingered in the congregation.
During all these ups and downs we have had the incredible good luck of having dedicated, talented keyboard players at this church. Even when ministers came and went, we had a familiar face at the keyboard leading us in music. Marion Jones played from 1973 until 2002 when Katie Replogle took over, and Katie has been our church pianist ever since.
In January 2003 we hired Rev. Justin (Jace) Kahn, a trained Interim minister, who brought a great deal of healing to the church. Our ties to the district and to the UUA were strengthened. We became a fair share congregation and a leading giver to the UUSC. In 2003 we made Rev. John Trowbridge (who served this church for 21 years! from 1964-1985) our Minister Emeritus. By the time Jace completed his 2 year interim ministry, we were in a much stronger, healthier place.
In 2005 the church was delighted to call The Rev. Ann Marie Alderman to be our first settled minister since Harry Thor. She encouraged us become a “Welcoming Congregation” by to do the inner and outer work necessary to truly welcome the GLBT community. For a couple of our members this was too much of a challenge, and a few folks left, but for the majority who stayed, this was a powerful transformation and “welcoming congregation” became an important part of our sense of identity.
When Ann Marie told us she had accepted a full time position at another church, there was great sadness. We had worked so hard to bring her here, and had just gotten started in a healthy and energetic relationship. The time after her departure called on all the strength of our lay leaders. It was Genevieve and Marion who started calling this the “little church that could” and posted this moto in the social hall. IN 2007 we also brought the women’s a Capella Group Olympia’s daughters to perform. I don’t thing we PLANNED to do it in honor of Elaine Lovegreen’s birthday, but is sure was nice of them to sing to her.
During that year of lay leadership, I had been invited to preach once a month while you were in your search. When the church was not able to find a match through the search process, they asked me if I would come preach for another year, or maybe be a consulting minister. I said what I really wanted was to be your minister, to be called and settled. So even though I’d been preaching here for a year, we diligently followed the official process from start to finish with interviews and packets and finally a congregational vote to call me as your minister in 2008.
These past 7 years have been a busy time for us. After a yearlong congregation wide process to discern a way to reach out to the larger community, we decided on “Feed a Friend” where we would grow our own fresh organic produce to donate to local food banks. When Project Grow launched in 2011 under the leadership of Destiny Kinal, it was clear that the missions of the two initiatives were closely aligned, and we ended Feed a Friend, and put our energy into collaborating with and supporting Project Grow. In 2008 we also launched our first ever Coming of Age program in collaboration with the Big Flats fellowship, and offered a second collaborative program 2 years later.
When we first learned about Hydro-Fracking many of us were confused and puzzled by it, especially those of us who were being offered mineral leases. We held our first community forum on the topic which grew into the “Community Shale Network” hosting about a dozen forums over 4 years. We were proud to provide information to the community about this controversial topic without any rancor.
In 2011 a flood immobilized the Valley. The rains came down hard on Thursday, and by the time the streets were clear on Saturday we had to pass through a National Guard checkpoint on the way to the church to assess and repair the damage. Volunteers filled the parking lot sanitizing and drying the contents of our basement. Sunday we worshiped without power, without potable water. At coffee hour, Diane and Maggie wondered how we could be of more help to our neighbors. We held an emergency board meeting, and decided to open our building to folks who just needed to use a restroom, or a clean place to rest. The next day we began serving a hot lunch and all were welcome to join us in the social hall. Other volunteers delivered sandwiches to people who didn’t want to leave their work salvaging their homes or businesses. For weeks we fed and cared for our neighbors until the crowds died down, and our work helping repair the damage of the flood continued in other ways.
In 2014 you offered the first sabbatical this congregation had ever given a minister. During that time you showed you were still the “little church that could.” You taught a class on Ethics. You brought in a trainer from Dickenson College to teach you how do water testing to monitor our local creeks. And it was during this time that it became legal in Pennsylvania for same gender couples to marry. Our members received the 1st and 3rd licenses in the county, and celebrated these unions with great joy. Our building once again rings with the voices of children.
That leads us to today. This story which began many generations ago is ours to tell. What our founders called “the Universal Salvation of the human race from the bondage of sin and corruption.” We might say “We are Standing on the Side of Love” The love, that fire that has burned in the heart of this congregation for 200 years is ours to tend.
The story of this congregation in the 1990s can’t be told without Bob and Nell Allen. Both Bob and Nell were raised UU. He was an orthopedic surgeon at Guthrie, and served as president of this congregation for 15 years, and the Allens were a driving force in the purchase of this building. Bob and John McDonald build the chalice stain glass window using tiles from an old window. Don Riker commissioned the plaque below it. Perhaps you’ve noticed a crack in one pane. Bob said it was a “crack of humility.”
Bob was also a pilot, and when the plane he was flying crashed, killing him, the whole community was crushed. I’m told that his parking spot at the hospital was filled with flowers. Memorial services were held at Redeemer and at UUCAS. A year after his death the members of the congregation took a trip to the crash site to plant bulbs Imagine what a difficult time that must have been- to mourn the death of Bob Allen, longtime church pillar, just as our minister of 17 years retired.
After Harry Thor’s retirement a student minister, Janelle Curlin-Taylor came to be our intern. This was a tumultuous time for the church, and when Janelle left the church was in a time of conflict.
We entered a period with no paid minister, and strong lay leaders emerged. Nell Allen served as president and church administrator for man y years. In 1999 we started the “Earth Day Fair” in our parking lot to bring the values of sustainability to the larger community, which became an annual event.
Lee Richards, a student minister, served this congregation from 1999 to 2002. During this time our nursery was a lively, welcome place, Lee mentioned once from the pulpit “the sound of a happy child” in the nursery. When the Sayre and Keystone theaters had declined to host the Vagina Monologues, feeling it was too controversial, We were also proud to bring the Vagina Monologues to UUCAS. All of the participants actively promoted the events and sold tickets to friends. We were sold out and used the social room for overflows. Over 110 attended. The director, Barbara Coyle, and cast received a standing ovation. We were afraid of backlash from protestors and requested protection from the Athens Police Dept. They were stationed outside. Fortunately, we did not have any protestors.
In 2002 Lee declined to renew his contract after his third year. Conflicts lingered in the congregation.
During all these ups and downs we have had the incredible good luck of having dedicated, talented keyboard players at this church. Even when ministers came and went, we had a familiar face at the keyboard leading us in music. Marion Jones played from 1973 until 2002 when Katie Replogle took over, and Katie has been our church pianist ever since.
In January 2003 we hired Rev. Justin (Jace) Kahn, a trained Interim minister, who brought a great deal of healing to the church. Our ties to the district and to the UUA were strengthened. We became a fair share congregation and a leading giver to the UUSC. In 2003 we made Rev. John Trowbridge (who served this church for 21 years! from 1964-1985) our Minister Emeritus. By the time Jace completed his 2 year interim ministry, we were in a much stronger, healthier place.
In 2005 the church was delighted to call The Rev. Ann Marie Alderman to be our first settled minister since Harry Thor. She encouraged us become a “Welcoming Congregation” by to do the inner and outer work necessary to truly welcome the GLBT community. For a couple of our members this was too much of a challenge, and a few folks left, but for the majority who stayed, this was a powerful transformation and “welcoming congregation” became an important part of our sense of identity.
When Ann Marie told us she had accepted a full time position at another church, there was great sadness. We had worked so hard to bring her here, and had just gotten started in a healthy and energetic relationship. The time after her departure called on all the strength of our lay leaders. It was Genevieve and Marion who started calling this the “little church that could” and posted this moto in the social hall. IN 2007 we also brought the women’s a Capella Group Olympia’s daughters to perform. I don’t thing we PLANNED to do it in honor of Elaine Lovegreen’s birthday, but is sure was nice of them to sing to her.
During that year of lay leadership, I had been invited to preach once a month while you were in your search. When the church was not able to find a match through the search process, they asked me if I would come preach for another year, or maybe be a consulting minister. I said what I really wanted was to be your minister, to be called and settled. So even though I’d been preaching here for a year, we diligently followed the official process from start to finish with interviews and packets and finally a congregational vote to call me as your minister in 2008.
These past 7 years have been a busy time for us. After a yearlong congregation wide process to discern a way to reach out to the larger community, we decided on “Feed a Friend” where we would grow our own fresh organic produce to donate to local food banks. When Project Grow launched in 2011 under the leadership of Destiny Kinal, it was clear that the missions of the two initiatives were closely aligned, and we ended Feed a Friend, and put our energy into collaborating with and supporting Project Grow. In 2008 we also launched our first ever Coming of Age program in collaboration with the Big Flats fellowship, and offered a second collaborative program 2 years later.
When we first learned about Hydro-Fracking many of us were confused and puzzled by it, especially those of us who were being offered mineral leases. We held our first community forum on the topic which grew into the “Community Shale Network” hosting about a dozen forums over 4 years. We were proud to provide information to the community about this controversial topic without any rancor.
In 2011 a flood immobilized the Valley. The rains came down hard on Thursday, and by the time the streets were clear on Saturday we had to pass through a National Guard checkpoint on the way to the church to assess and repair the damage. Volunteers filled the parking lot sanitizing and drying the contents of our basement. Sunday we worshiped without power, without potable water. At coffee hour, Diane and Maggie wondered how we could be of more help to our neighbors. We held an emergency board meeting, and decided to open our building to folks who just needed to use a restroom, or a clean place to rest. The next day we began serving a hot lunch and all were welcome to join us in the social hall. Other volunteers delivered sandwiches to people who didn’t want to leave their work salvaging their homes or businesses. For weeks we fed and cared for our neighbors until the crowds died down, and our work helping repair the damage of the flood continued in other ways.
In 2014 you offered the first sabbatical this congregation had ever given a minister. During that time you showed you were still the “little church that could.” You taught a class on Ethics. You brought in a trainer from Dickenson College to teach you how do water testing to monitor our local creeks. And it was during this time that it became legal in Pennsylvania for same gender couples to marry. Our members received the 1st and 3rd licenses in the county, and celebrated these unions with great joy. Our building once again rings with the voices of children.
That leads us to today. This story which began many generations ago is ours to tell. What our founders called “the Universal Salvation of the human race from the bondage of sin and corruption.” We might say “We are Standing on the Side of Love” The love, that fire that has burned in the heart of this congregation for 200 years is ours to tend.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Dreams Big and Small (April 12, 2015)
Consider the North star, also called the Pole Star or “ Polaris.” Our friends at “Earthsky” point out that it appears to hold “nearly still in our sky while the entire northern sky moves around it. That’s because it’s located [near] the north celestial pole, the point around which the entire northern sky turns.” A clear vision is like a pole star, holding steady and guiding us no matter where we may travel, no matter how the seas may change.
When I was in seminary all my teachers made sure we understood that it was important to create a vision statement with your congregation. I’ve been through this a few times now, and it always seems to involve butcher paper, and colorful magic markers, and possibly sticky dots. And when, a couple of months later, I couldn’t even remember the vision we had described that day, I always assumed that a better, more sophisticated process would be more successful if we tried again. We read books and expert opinions and started anew with a fresh pad of easel paper.
I think the misunderstanding I had, we had, was that vision was something that that we could create in a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon if we just had the right process. What I now believe is that a true vision is already there, and needs only to be uncovered, given language, shared.
When Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he was proceeding along with his prepared remarks when Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” At that moment, he put his notes down and could describe, just out of his heart, to the dream that was already guiding him. He put into words the vision that had guided him to that point. When he said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” he gave voice to a longing that was already in the hearts and minds of the people listening to them that day. It is still in our hearts and minds this Sunday morning, still guiding us forward when we hear about the racial bias people of color experience in this world today. We hear those news stories about the way children of color are treated, and hold those stories up to Dr. King’s vision, and we can see we still have a long way to go.
Being able to imagine the future, to dream the future, is important to who we are as humans. Our dreams, large and small, provide a guiding star for our travels so we can know where we are headed, even when we don’t know exactly how to get there. Creating a vision is not something you need to read a book or attend a webinar to know how to do; it is something we are already doing every day. Here is the most mundane example I can think of: you are sitting in the living room and it comes to you “I want cheesy fries.” That’s it. That’s your vision. Sometimes the vision is easily implementable- you already have some frozen French fries in the freezer, and some cheese in the fridge, all you have to do is go into the kitchen and start cooking. Other times, the vision seems impossible- it’s already late at night, and you don’t have any of the ingredients. But if you can hang onto that vision, say, the next time you are at the grocery store, or the next time you are out to eat, that vision can still someday become reality. See- visioning is easy.
In the past couple of years our congregation has given birth to a number of new programs, like trivia night, or the meditation group, or the vegan potluck. Each started out as a vision. The first time each of us came to this church we had a vision that drew us here. Maybe the picture in our mind was of a place where we could meet new people, where we could find community. Maybe the vision was of yourself speaking what was in your heart, and other people truly listening. Or maybe you were frustrated and saddened by the state of the world, and imagined here at this church you could meet other people who were concerned, and together we could do something. I know you had a vision because you would never have come that first time without some hope for what you would find here.
One of the hardest parts of visioning is daring to have a dream when you can’t see a path that takes you there. When Marcia lead her visioning workshop a couple of years back, she told us it was important to give shape to your vision without regard for how you might get there. If we only allow ourselves to imagine what seems practical and possible, we might not even be able to imagine what we really need and want. Last month I attended a UU Clergy conference out in California, where I had the great fortune of participating in a week long workshop with Joanna Macy and the “Movement Generation.” Our facilitator drew for us 3 circles like this. This, they said is the circle that represents what we really need. And in this circle is what we don’t need. And this circle linking the two, this is what is politically possible. So a lot of our social justice work is about this middle circle here- the politically possible. We lobby for what we think is possible and needed, and lobby against what is possible and not needed. But, they said, we can’t be afraid to dream what we really need that is NOT possible right now. Consider Marriage Equality. How many of you thought 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that same-gender couples would be able to be legally married in the state of Pennsylvania? But we dreamed that dream anyway, and it came true. It’s hard to dream something that seems impossible; it’s scary because we know we might be disappointed. But what is possible changes as the times change. If we have dared to dream, we will be ready when the time is right.
Visioning is not about “how.” Even the congregational leadership manuals are clear about this. “How” is the sphere of plans and strategies. Some strategies fail, some succeed. When we confuse strategy for vision, when we confused the path for the guiding star, we sometimes end up losing our way.
When Eric and I moved from California to Ithaca, we were following a vision with 3 important parts. We wondered if it would be possible to live within walking distance of anything worth walking to- something only the wealthy can afford in the Bay Area. Eric wanted to own his own business, and we wanted a good school system for Nick. But when we arrived here with our u-haul and the clock started ticking on our 2 month sublet, we became more and more constrained by what was actually possible. The only houses in the neighborhood where we had hoped to settle were in really bad shape and would require a lot of work. (we are not handy people). We found a lovely house a few miles out of town with 3 acres and a pond, but it wasn’t in walking distance from anything. Panicked at the thought of having no place to live when our sublet ended we almost gave up on our dream, but then we asked ourselves “what is at the core if this vision.” We let go of our attachment to a particular neighborhood, and got back to our vision: a good school for nick, and a pedestrian friendly neighborhood. When we let go of “how” to achieve our dream, and got back to the essence of our vision, we found our lovely little home just 3 blocks from the downtown, in an excellent elementary school district we’d never heard of that was just as good as the one we had been so fixated on. Now I’ll admit it was hard to let go of the fact that our home doesn’t have off-street parking, and the back yard is about the size of the social hall, but when we guided our choices by that pole star we were able to build new life in Ithaca that manifested our vision. (In a poetic twist of fate, that house on 3 acres with a pond was bought by our friends, whose vision was to raise their own livestock and grow their own produce, a vision for which that home was perfect.)
A compelling vision can help us change what we didn’t even know we could change. Philosophy professor, Tad Dunne, notes that the stories our society tells us, the stories we tell ourselves can limit our vision of who we are and what is possible. They can even limit the “field of possible desires” [i]
When I was in seminary all my teachers made sure we understood that it was important to create a vision statement with your congregation. I’ve been through this a few times now, and it always seems to involve butcher paper, and colorful magic markers, and possibly sticky dots. And when, a couple of months later, I couldn’t even remember the vision we had described that day, I always assumed that a better, more sophisticated process would be more successful if we tried again. We read books and expert opinions and started anew with a fresh pad of easel paper.
I think the misunderstanding I had, we had, was that vision was something that that we could create in a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon if we just had the right process. What I now believe is that a true vision is already there, and needs only to be uncovered, given language, shared.
When Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he was proceeding along with his prepared remarks when Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” At that moment, he put his notes down and could describe, just out of his heart, to the dream that was already guiding him. He put into words the vision that had guided him to that point. When he said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” he gave voice to a longing that was already in the hearts and minds of the people listening to them that day. It is still in our hearts and minds this Sunday morning, still guiding us forward when we hear about the racial bias people of color experience in this world today. We hear those news stories about the way children of color are treated, and hold those stories up to Dr. King’s vision, and we can see we still have a long way to go.
Being able to imagine the future, to dream the future, is important to who we are as humans. Our dreams, large and small, provide a guiding star for our travels so we can know where we are headed, even when we don’t know exactly how to get there. Creating a vision is not something you need to read a book or attend a webinar to know how to do; it is something we are already doing every day. Here is the most mundane example I can think of: you are sitting in the living room and it comes to you “I want cheesy fries.” That’s it. That’s your vision. Sometimes the vision is easily implementable- you already have some frozen French fries in the freezer, and some cheese in the fridge, all you have to do is go into the kitchen and start cooking. Other times, the vision seems impossible- it’s already late at night, and you don’t have any of the ingredients. But if you can hang onto that vision, say, the next time you are at the grocery store, or the next time you are out to eat, that vision can still someday become reality. See- visioning is easy.
In the past couple of years our congregation has given birth to a number of new programs, like trivia night, or the meditation group, or the vegan potluck. Each started out as a vision. The first time each of us came to this church we had a vision that drew us here. Maybe the picture in our mind was of a place where we could meet new people, where we could find community. Maybe the vision was of yourself speaking what was in your heart, and other people truly listening. Or maybe you were frustrated and saddened by the state of the world, and imagined here at this church you could meet other people who were concerned, and together we could do something. I know you had a vision because you would never have come that first time without some hope for what you would find here.
One of the hardest parts of visioning is daring to have a dream when you can’t see a path that takes you there. When Marcia lead her visioning workshop a couple of years back, she told us it was important to give shape to your vision without regard for how you might get there. If we only allow ourselves to imagine what seems practical and possible, we might not even be able to imagine what we really need and want. Last month I attended a UU Clergy conference out in California, where I had the great fortune of participating in a week long workshop with Joanna Macy and the “Movement Generation.” Our facilitator drew for us 3 circles like this. This, they said is the circle that represents what we really need. And in this circle is what we don’t need. And this circle linking the two, this is what is politically possible. So a lot of our social justice work is about this middle circle here- the politically possible. We lobby for what we think is possible and needed, and lobby against what is possible and not needed. But, they said, we can’t be afraid to dream what we really need that is NOT possible right now. Consider Marriage Equality. How many of you thought 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that same-gender couples would be able to be legally married in the state of Pennsylvania? But we dreamed that dream anyway, and it came true. It’s hard to dream something that seems impossible; it’s scary because we know we might be disappointed. But what is possible changes as the times change. If we have dared to dream, we will be ready when the time is right.
Visioning is not about “how.” Even the congregational leadership manuals are clear about this. “How” is the sphere of plans and strategies. Some strategies fail, some succeed. When we confuse strategy for vision, when we confused the path for the guiding star, we sometimes end up losing our way.
When Eric and I moved from California to Ithaca, we were following a vision with 3 important parts. We wondered if it would be possible to live within walking distance of anything worth walking to- something only the wealthy can afford in the Bay Area. Eric wanted to own his own business, and we wanted a good school system for Nick. But when we arrived here with our u-haul and the clock started ticking on our 2 month sublet, we became more and more constrained by what was actually possible. The only houses in the neighborhood where we had hoped to settle were in really bad shape and would require a lot of work. (we are not handy people). We found a lovely house a few miles out of town with 3 acres and a pond, but it wasn’t in walking distance from anything. Panicked at the thought of having no place to live when our sublet ended we almost gave up on our dream, but then we asked ourselves “what is at the core if this vision.” We let go of our attachment to a particular neighborhood, and got back to our vision: a good school for nick, and a pedestrian friendly neighborhood. When we let go of “how” to achieve our dream, and got back to the essence of our vision, we found our lovely little home just 3 blocks from the downtown, in an excellent elementary school district we’d never heard of that was just as good as the one we had been so fixated on. Now I’ll admit it was hard to let go of the fact that our home doesn’t have off-street parking, and the back yard is about the size of the social hall, but when we guided our choices by that pole star we were able to build new life in Ithaca that manifested our vision. (In a poetic twist of fate, that house on 3 acres with a pond was bought by our friends, whose vision was to raise their own livestock and grow their own produce, a vision for which that home was perfect.)
A compelling vision can help us change what we didn’t even know we could change. Philosophy professor, Tad Dunne, notes that the stories our society tells us, the stories we tell ourselves can limit our vision of who we are and what is possible. They can even limit the “field of possible desires” [i]
[Ruffing p. 115] Whereas if we “can imagine an alternative pattern or possibility, [we] can often create a new story that is more adequate than the original.” [Ruffing p. 116] So when our vision is limited, our imaginations, desires and actions may also be limited. [Ruffing p. 115]
For example, if we can’t imagine two women or two men being married or having children, we won’t even desire it, and we certainly won’t do anything to make that vision come true. If Dr. Martin Luther King had not put that vision so eloquently put that vision into words in 1963, perhaps the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 would never have happened. Long before Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, a vision of that day had been cast, had been shared, had been nurtured.
A vision is an image that “suggests possible plot lines” [Ruffing p 96]. When the images we see on TV or in the news are not big enough for the future we really need, we must imagine an alternative. Some of you will remember I told a story here a few weeks ago called “girls can be anything.” My mom gave me that book when I was little because she wanted me to be able to imagine myself as a doctor, a pilot, even the president. That author knew that before a woman could be president of the united states, we would first have to be able to imagine it. Whether or not it is possible right now, it is something we really need and want, and so we hold that vision for the future.
Our dreams also help us when things fall apart. Times are changing so fast right now, it’s easy to be buffeted about by the swiftly changing waters of our times. Church itself is changing radically. Whereas in the 1950s just about everyone went to church, we are told, today more and more folks have never even been to church. More and more people can’t imagine why you would go to church, when there are so many other things to do on a Sunday morning. At the UU Minister’s retreat a couple of weeks back a room full of ministers and religious educators spoke about what church would be like in the 21st century. Some parts of church life that have always worked are just not working anymore. We wondered how technology might change our church experience. We talked a lot about discerning what is at the core of who we are, what is at the core of our future together, and what we might have to let go of to make room for the reality of this unique time and place in history. Our presenter Karen Bellavance-Grace impressed on us the importance of “dreaming UU into the future.” If, she said, we want our beloved tradition to have a future, we must dream it now, together.
So I want to share with you a vision I have had for our movement; it has been growing in me for sometime. (I shared this vision with our Board back in the fall). I see this church as the beating heart of Universalism. We in this beloved community embody Universalist love, a love that holds each and every person, that holds each and every living being, as the early Universalists believed that God’s love embraces each and every one of us. We are the heart of Unitarian Universalism, right here in this sanctuary. Our love is like a hearth-fire where we come to warm ourselves, a fire that we tend and feed, a fire have kept burning for over 200 years. This world needs the luminous fire of our love. And we are not alone, this world is dotted with fires like ours.
But when I imagine that life-giving, restoring, inspiring, renewing warmth, it breaks my heart to imagine folks just out of site, wandering in the cold and dark. So part of my vision is that we are constantly reaching out for people who need the warmth our fire, whether they just need to be warmed for a moment during a cold, lonely time, or whether they choose to stay and become fire tenders themselves. This vision is simple enough that no matter what change the future holds, we will remember to keep the fire burning, to keep that fire at the heart of everything we do.
Dreaming the future -- casting and holding a vision of what we really need, this is important. If it is a vision you truly care about, then just having the courage to hold it in your mind, and to share it with others creates a bigger possible future for everyone. It’s hard to hold onto a vision when we don’t know how we can get there, but remember there was a time when no one could have imagined a female preacher. Remember there was a time when we thought marriage equality would never come to America. So hold on to your vision like a north star, guiding us into that future.
For example, if we can’t imagine two women or two men being married or having children, we won’t even desire it, and we certainly won’t do anything to make that vision come true. If Dr. Martin Luther King had not put that vision so eloquently put that vision into words in 1963, perhaps the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 would never have happened. Long before Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, a vision of that day had been cast, had been shared, had been nurtured.
A vision is an image that “suggests possible plot lines” [Ruffing p 96]. When the images we see on TV or in the news are not big enough for the future we really need, we must imagine an alternative. Some of you will remember I told a story here a few weeks ago called “girls can be anything.” My mom gave me that book when I was little because she wanted me to be able to imagine myself as a doctor, a pilot, even the president. That author knew that before a woman could be president of the united states, we would first have to be able to imagine it. Whether or not it is possible right now, it is something we really need and want, and so we hold that vision for the future.
Our dreams also help us when things fall apart. Times are changing so fast right now, it’s easy to be buffeted about by the swiftly changing waters of our times. Church itself is changing radically. Whereas in the 1950s just about everyone went to church, we are told, today more and more folks have never even been to church. More and more people can’t imagine why you would go to church, when there are so many other things to do on a Sunday morning. At the UU Minister’s retreat a couple of weeks back a room full of ministers and religious educators spoke about what church would be like in the 21st century. Some parts of church life that have always worked are just not working anymore. We wondered how technology might change our church experience. We talked a lot about discerning what is at the core of who we are, what is at the core of our future together, and what we might have to let go of to make room for the reality of this unique time and place in history. Our presenter Karen Bellavance-Grace impressed on us the importance of “dreaming UU into the future.” If, she said, we want our beloved tradition to have a future, we must dream it now, together.
So I want to share with you a vision I have had for our movement; it has been growing in me for sometime. (I shared this vision with our Board back in the fall). I see this church as the beating heart of Universalism. We in this beloved community embody Universalist love, a love that holds each and every person, that holds each and every living being, as the early Universalists believed that God’s love embraces each and every one of us. We are the heart of Unitarian Universalism, right here in this sanctuary. Our love is like a hearth-fire where we come to warm ourselves, a fire that we tend and feed, a fire have kept burning for over 200 years. This world needs the luminous fire of our love. And we are not alone, this world is dotted with fires like ours.
But when I imagine that life-giving, restoring, inspiring, renewing warmth, it breaks my heart to imagine folks just out of site, wandering in the cold and dark. So part of my vision is that we are constantly reaching out for people who need the warmth our fire, whether they just need to be warmed for a moment during a cold, lonely time, or whether they choose to stay and become fire tenders themselves. This vision is simple enough that no matter what change the future holds, we will remember to keep the fire burning, to keep that fire at the heart of everything we do.
Dreaming the future -- casting and holding a vision of what we really need, this is important. If it is a vision you truly care about, then just having the courage to hold it in your mind, and to share it with others creates a bigger possible future for everyone. It’s hard to hold onto a vision when we don’t know how we can get there, but remember there was a time when no one could have imagined a female preacher. Remember there was a time when we thought marriage equality would never come to America. So hold on to your vision like a north star, guiding us into that future.
Monday, March 23, 2015
When Faiths Meet (March 22, 2015)
Reading- from Rev. Rebecca Parker's Introduction for 2015 Starr King President Lecture
I had been raised in a liberal Methodist home and was devoted to the sense we had of the purpose of liberal Christianity. That purpose was formed for my parents in the early fifties in the aftermath of the horror and the tragedy of the Shoah. For my parents’ generation the revelation of the magnitude of the human capacity to destroy human life and human culture out of racial and religious hatred, out of a search for some kind of pure identity and its preservation was the life shaping shock and sorrow. And my parents, perhaps like some of you… my parents made a decision as young adults to devote their life to fulfilling the cry “never again.” Never again let there be such war. Never again let there be an enactment of human hatred. Never again such exploitation of human life and destruction of human life and attempted destruction of religious culture.
…”Never again”, they felt, could be advance through the life of progressive religious communities. I inherited that life, that belief that in covenanted life with one another centered in devotion to the holy and engaged in on caring not only for one another and all the generations but the communities of the world. There was hope for peace and justice and compassion in the world .
I carried that with me. .. But I found myself as a young Progressive Christian restless with the experience of life within an exclusively Christian sphere. it seemed wrong to me as a Christian of conscience that after the Shoah, after the holocaust, that Christians would presume to worship in exclusive Christian communities. I thought the only way you could be a Christian after the holocaust was to enter into multi-religious community. To be in a place …where people of Christian and Jewish heritage could be together in some way. And UU enticed me as such a place-- A place beyond the religious violence of the holocaust. Within my work … at Starr King, the joy of being in a multi-religious community, the challenge of it and the importance of it has been the heartbeat of the work. And it has opened to me experiences beyond my wildest dreams, of entering into and learning from the religious practices of others...
Sermon
As a child growing up in a Unitarian Universalist church, we took it for granted that a basic religious literacy, not only of our faith tradition, but of our neighbor’s faith traditions was an important part of religious education. But it was not until I heard Rebecca parker tell this story at GA that I really got a sense of why this it was important. Growing up in a community which encouraged multi-religious dialogue, I didn’t understand what an important gift it is to our children and to our world.
A couple of weeks ago I saw on a news story about a day when the Texas Council on American-Islamic Relations visited their state capitol, much like some of us and UUs from around the state are going to do on May 12 to meet our legislators and let them know what issues are important to us. Other folks had taken the day off work to drive to the Texas state capitol to shout hate slogans at their Muslim neighbors. They held placards that said things like “Go Home and take Obama with you” one protester rushed the podium and grabbed the microphone from the speaker.[i] One of the state representatives, Molly White, made news with her Facebook post saying that she had left instructions with her staff “to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws. We will see how long they stay in my office.”[ii] This story, while not as dramatic as the massive anti-Islamic protests in Germany[iii], shows the depth of our ignorance. It didn’t dawn on Representative White that these visitors were her constituents, were American Citizens. She imagined that all of them were in some way connected to terrorist groups, and felt somehow exempt from the laws of their own country.
After 9-11 it occurred to many of us in a blinding flash of the obvious that we were profoundly ignorant of Muslim culture, theology and history. At the Graduate Theological Union where I prepared for the ministry there were centers for Buddhist, Jewish and just about every flavor of main stream protestant and catholic traditions, but when my seminary offered an elective class on Islam, some of the other seminaries forbid their students from attending, lest it be a bad influence on their students in their ministerial formation. In the whole of my 3 years of coursework preparing for the UU ministry, there was only a single unit in a survey of “world religions” class to provide all we would need to know about Islam.
According to a 2010 Pew study, %23 of the world’s population is Muslim. But what we see in the media represents a very narrow and fringe perspective on that ¼ of all the people on earth.[iv][v] Our ignorance of Islam and its people leads western cultures to view this incredibly diverse population with a monochromatic paintbrush of fear and anger. In a climate where Islam is painted as a boogyman hiding in our collective unconscious closet, the role of UUs and all those who remember the horror of the holocaust is to remember that part of “never again” is an inter-religious dialogue and relationships of care for one another.
When I ask people who grew up Unitarian Universalist what they remember about Sunday School, I often hear about an experience called “Neighboring Faiths” which I personally count as one of the coolest things I did at my own UU church. The idea is that we would study a variety of religious traditions, and make a visit to their places of worship. I remember visiting a Greek Orthodox church, a reform synagogue, and a fundamentalist Christian church. I remember how empowering it was to go into a completely new religious community, like the Greek Orthodox church, prepared by our teachers and surround by other kids my age. We were greeted by a leader in the church who welcomed us, showed us to our special spot in the balcony, and could answer questions like “can we take communion?” His answer, “anyone who has been baptized can take communion here” left us with even more questions like “does a UU dedication count as a baptism for purposes of taking communion? We decided it probably didn’t.
We have learned some lessons over these decades of multi-religious dialogue. The first is that sometimes when we engage in this important conversation with our neighbors, we lose our grounding in our own faith tradition. A lay leader in one of our Midwest churches told a story about a youth in his church who asked in all earnestness “do you teach us about the world’s religions because you expect us to leave the UU church?” Another religious educator told me that whenever her students studied the Jewish and Christian traditions their UU kids became confused. Were they Christian? Were they Jewish? This raises some important questions for us so as we try to engage religious diversity with integrity: What is our intention in studying and participating in these faiths? What is our role? What ethical precepts shall guide our engagement? I'd like to look at these questions this morning to see if there are any central principles that can guide our way.
If you turn in your hymnal to the page where our principles are listed. You will see that “the living tradition we share draws from many sources.” These sources were adopted after a decades long struggle to articulate who we are and where we came from. Remember, both Unitarianism and Universalism were born out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. But while most of the Universalists still self-identified as Christian at the time the Unitarians and Universalists were considering merging in the 1950s, many of the Unitarians were humanists. Add to that all dauntingly diverse theological perspectives of our membership, and you can imagine why it would take almost 20 years after our merger to arrive at those 6 sources which finally felt large enough to hold our plurality.
These 6 sources reflect our openness to the ideas we encounter at the religious crossroads. They reflect our willingness to be changed and moved by what we find at the crossroads. That’s why we call it a living tradition because change and growth are an innate part of our identity as a religious movement. In exploring these sources, we begin to understand our own roots, both historic and contemporary. Some root systems go down deep, like the Acacia tree, others reach out along the surface, connecting neighbor to neighbor, like the redwood. These sources show organic our connections to our ancestors and to our neighbors.
As we study these sources – when we open the Upanishads or visit a Catholic Mass how might we understand our role. The role of sociologist or cultural anthropologist is a popular model for UUs, but this has some limitations. If we use ONLY the objective gaze of evaluation, we miss the chance to let any of the religion into our own hearts or spirits. The role of religious consumer is common in our contemporary culture. I could go online to buy the scriptures or ritual objects from a great variety of traditions. Right now my grocery store sells all the consumer goods you could want to celebrate Passover - but I want something different. I come to this church because I believe that the spiritual journey is both safer and more powerful when practiced within a community of people who inspire and watch out for one another. If we participate in religion only as a consumer, we loose the grounding and context being part of religious community provides. The Kabalistic tradition so popular with celebrities right now is an ancient aspect of Judaism that was hidden for centuries, taught only to initiates who had proven themselves ready. Now its sacred symbols are sold at teen accessory stores along with the mala beads used by Hindus and Buddhists for their prayer practice. As part of our “free and responsible search” I believe we have an ethical responsibility to the traditions which feed our spiritual life, a responsibility that goes beyond what is expected of us as “consumers.”
Let's take that communion question my Sunday School faced at the Greek Orthodox church. I nervously asked the same question at a Catholic Mass I attended with my roommate in college. She replied "Oh, no. Even if you are Catholic you can't take communion unless you've been confessed,” and sure enough as I looked around I saw almost 30% of the congregation remain in their seats as others formed lines in the aisle to receive the host. But later that year, when I attend a Presbyterian service with a friend in her tiny old white-steepled church, she looked amazed that I would even ask. "How could we turn anyone away from God's table" she responded, and so as the basket of rough cubed bread passed hand to hand, I took a piece and ate. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am not going to tell you whether or not you may take communion in a particular tradition. I can only encourage you to act with integrity. Does the gesture feel false and empty? Then please don't sacrifice your personal integrity. But if you are invited to participate in a ritual that is sacred to your friend or neighbor, and you want to be in communion with that community in that moment, I encourage you to accept that gift in the spirit it was offered.
Perhaps the most important questions are asked and answered in our own hearts at the front door of the synagogue or mosque. Am I prepared to enter a sacred space that is not my own? Can I, with integrity, align myself with this worshipping body for this time? Can I help them hold a sacred space? Can I honor and respect their sanctuary while being true to my own core? Christianity is an evangelizing faith, and so it seems natural for many Christian communities to share their sacred texts (as the Gideons do) and to invite their neighbors to hear the words they hope will bring salvation to a newcomer. Not all traditions feel the same about their sacred rituals and traditions. Some Native Americans, for example, feel that religion is tied to a particular place, to a particular community; it belongs to the people and the land they share. And so when European-Americans borrow a chant or a symbol, it can feel like appropriation, it can feel like one more act in the imperialism that destroyed the very cultures we now turn into objects of consumerism. And so when we study Christianity we might be bolder than when we study indigenous traditions. We look for ways to learn from our neighbor’s faiths without opening old and unhealed wounds.
As the vilification of Islam began to gain momentum in this country in recent years, Dr. Conde Frasier, a professor at Claremont Theological Seminary, a Christian School, asked a Muslim friend to talk to her about Islam. She wanted to have something real, personal and deep to inform her thinking about her Neighbor's faith. After several conversations, her friend invited her to worship. And so after receiving instruction in the Moslem way of prayer Dr. Frasier covered her head, entered the mosque, kneeled on her prayer mat, and prayed to Allah. She reports that she did experience something of Allah that day. Dr. Frasier remains a Christian, but I have to imagine that she now has a much deeper experience and knowledge of Islam that brings her closer to her Muslim neighbors, and gives her a new understanding each time Islam is in the news, each time she is in the classroom teaching. She also experienced something that enriched her own religious life.
One of the concerns people have about exploring the world's religious diversity is that it can be done in a very shallow way. It takes patience and intention to get beneath the surface, where most of the gifts of a religious tradition lie. The Celebration of Easter without the struggle of Lent loses it’s power. If you were here last Sunday you may remember Don Bisson’s words: “Suffering, death and resurrection is one mystery. Whenever you try and separate these mysteries, you miss the mysteries.” Think how different Dr. Frasier's experience would have been the first time she joined her friend in prayer if she had done so without all the study and preparation. When I heard Dr. Frasier tell her story during the Fahs lecture at General Assembly this summer, I was moved by her courage, and by the clear respect she showed to her friend, and to the ancient tradition she encountered. Keeping her example in mind, I offer respect, humility and integrity as the primary ethics of our sojourns in other traditions.
More and more I like to take the role of guest. For example, I love the traditional lighting of the menorah to honor the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. Sure I can buy a menorah and candles on my way to the checkout at my local grocery store, but I believe that without the depth of tradition behind that ritual, without the grounding in community, the ritual loses most of its depth, content and meaning. That is why I prefer to invite someone raised in or otherwise grounded in the Jewish tradition to light the candles that celebrate Hanukah, so that I can participate with humility in an observance as their guest.
When Parker spoke those words at General Assembly, they were as introductory remarks for a panel on “Multi-religiosity.” This strange phrase is trying to express something new that the word “interfaith” does not. It is trying to articulate something that has been present in our UU contraptions for decades. That, for example, if you were raised Catholic and now attend a UU church, you don’t lose all those formative experiences that shaped you growing up in the Catholic tradition. When Marcia blew the Shofar for us to celebrate the New Year this past fall, it was because that tradition still had meaning and power for her as one who grew up Jewish, even though now she is a member of a UU congregation. Priestess Lady Hawk is coming to lead us in a Beltaine ritual next month, and she is also the president of the UU congregation in Towanda. We don’t always have to leave our own sanctuary to be guests in a new faith, If we open our hearts and minds we find a richness of experience right here in our own beloved community.
I had been raised in a liberal Methodist home and was devoted to the sense we had of the purpose of liberal Christianity. That purpose was formed for my parents in the early fifties in the aftermath of the horror and the tragedy of the Shoah. For my parents’ generation the revelation of the magnitude of the human capacity to destroy human life and human culture out of racial and religious hatred, out of a search for some kind of pure identity and its preservation was the life shaping shock and sorrow. And my parents, perhaps like some of you… my parents made a decision as young adults to devote their life to fulfilling the cry “never again.” Never again let there be such war. Never again let there be an enactment of human hatred. Never again such exploitation of human life and destruction of human life and attempted destruction of religious culture.
…”Never again”, they felt, could be advance through the life of progressive religious communities. I inherited that life, that belief that in covenanted life with one another centered in devotion to the holy and engaged in on caring not only for one another and all the generations but the communities of the world. There was hope for peace and justice and compassion in the world .
I carried that with me. .. But I found myself as a young Progressive Christian restless with the experience of life within an exclusively Christian sphere. it seemed wrong to me as a Christian of conscience that after the Shoah, after the holocaust, that Christians would presume to worship in exclusive Christian communities. I thought the only way you could be a Christian after the holocaust was to enter into multi-religious community. To be in a place …where people of Christian and Jewish heritage could be together in some way. And UU enticed me as such a place-- A place beyond the religious violence of the holocaust. Within my work … at Starr King, the joy of being in a multi-religious community, the challenge of it and the importance of it has been the heartbeat of the work. And it has opened to me experiences beyond my wildest dreams, of entering into and learning from the religious practices of others...
Sermon
As a child growing up in a Unitarian Universalist church, we took it for granted that a basic religious literacy, not only of our faith tradition, but of our neighbor’s faith traditions was an important part of religious education. But it was not until I heard Rebecca parker tell this story at GA that I really got a sense of why this it was important. Growing up in a community which encouraged multi-religious dialogue, I didn’t understand what an important gift it is to our children and to our world.
A couple of weeks ago I saw on a news story about a day when the Texas Council on American-Islamic Relations visited their state capitol, much like some of us and UUs from around the state are going to do on May 12 to meet our legislators and let them know what issues are important to us. Other folks had taken the day off work to drive to the Texas state capitol to shout hate slogans at their Muslim neighbors. They held placards that said things like “Go Home and take Obama with you” one protester rushed the podium and grabbed the microphone from the speaker.[i] One of the state representatives, Molly White, made news with her Facebook post saying that she had left instructions with her staff “to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws. We will see how long they stay in my office.”[ii] This story, while not as dramatic as the massive anti-Islamic protests in Germany[iii], shows the depth of our ignorance. It didn’t dawn on Representative White that these visitors were her constituents, were American Citizens. She imagined that all of them were in some way connected to terrorist groups, and felt somehow exempt from the laws of their own country.
After 9-11 it occurred to many of us in a blinding flash of the obvious that we were profoundly ignorant of Muslim culture, theology and history. At the Graduate Theological Union where I prepared for the ministry there were centers for Buddhist, Jewish and just about every flavor of main stream protestant and catholic traditions, but when my seminary offered an elective class on Islam, some of the other seminaries forbid their students from attending, lest it be a bad influence on their students in their ministerial formation. In the whole of my 3 years of coursework preparing for the UU ministry, there was only a single unit in a survey of “world religions” class to provide all we would need to know about Islam.
According to a 2010 Pew study, %23 of the world’s population is Muslim. But what we see in the media represents a very narrow and fringe perspective on that ¼ of all the people on earth.[iv][v] Our ignorance of Islam and its people leads western cultures to view this incredibly diverse population with a monochromatic paintbrush of fear and anger. In a climate where Islam is painted as a boogyman hiding in our collective unconscious closet, the role of UUs and all those who remember the horror of the holocaust is to remember that part of “never again” is an inter-religious dialogue and relationships of care for one another.
When I ask people who grew up Unitarian Universalist what they remember about Sunday School, I often hear about an experience called “Neighboring Faiths” which I personally count as one of the coolest things I did at my own UU church. The idea is that we would study a variety of religious traditions, and make a visit to their places of worship. I remember visiting a Greek Orthodox church, a reform synagogue, and a fundamentalist Christian church. I remember how empowering it was to go into a completely new religious community, like the Greek Orthodox church, prepared by our teachers and surround by other kids my age. We were greeted by a leader in the church who welcomed us, showed us to our special spot in the balcony, and could answer questions like “can we take communion?” His answer, “anyone who has been baptized can take communion here” left us with even more questions like “does a UU dedication count as a baptism for purposes of taking communion? We decided it probably didn’t.
We have learned some lessons over these decades of multi-religious dialogue. The first is that sometimes when we engage in this important conversation with our neighbors, we lose our grounding in our own faith tradition. A lay leader in one of our Midwest churches told a story about a youth in his church who asked in all earnestness “do you teach us about the world’s religions because you expect us to leave the UU church?” Another religious educator told me that whenever her students studied the Jewish and Christian traditions their UU kids became confused. Were they Christian? Were they Jewish? This raises some important questions for us so as we try to engage religious diversity with integrity: What is our intention in studying and participating in these faiths? What is our role? What ethical precepts shall guide our engagement? I'd like to look at these questions this morning to see if there are any central principles that can guide our way.
If you turn in your hymnal to the page where our principles are listed. You will see that “the living tradition we share draws from many sources.” These sources were adopted after a decades long struggle to articulate who we are and where we came from. Remember, both Unitarianism and Universalism were born out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. But while most of the Universalists still self-identified as Christian at the time the Unitarians and Universalists were considering merging in the 1950s, many of the Unitarians were humanists. Add to that all dauntingly diverse theological perspectives of our membership, and you can imagine why it would take almost 20 years after our merger to arrive at those 6 sources which finally felt large enough to hold our plurality.
These 6 sources reflect our openness to the ideas we encounter at the religious crossroads. They reflect our willingness to be changed and moved by what we find at the crossroads. That’s why we call it a living tradition because change and growth are an innate part of our identity as a religious movement. In exploring these sources, we begin to understand our own roots, both historic and contemporary. Some root systems go down deep, like the Acacia tree, others reach out along the surface, connecting neighbor to neighbor, like the redwood. These sources show organic our connections to our ancestors and to our neighbors.
As we study these sources – when we open the Upanishads or visit a Catholic Mass how might we understand our role. The role of sociologist or cultural anthropologist is a popular model for UUs, but this has some limitations. If we use ONLY the objective gaze of evaluation, we miss the chance to let any of the religion into our own hearts or spirits. The role of religious consumer is common in our contemporary culture. I could go online to buy the scriptures or ritual objects from a great variety of traditions. Right now my grocery store sells all the consumer goods you could want to celebrate Passover - but I want something different. I come to this church because I believe that the spiritual journey is both safer and more powerful when practiced within a community of people who inspire and watch out for one another. If we participate in religion only as a consumer, we loose the grounding and context being part of religious community provides. The Kabalistic tradition so popular with celebrities right now is an ancient aspect of Judaism that was hidden for centuries, taught only to initiates who had proven themselves ready. Now its sacred symbols are sold at teen accessory stores along with the mala beads used by Hindus and Buddhists for their prayer practice. As part of our “free and responsible search” I believe we have an ethical responsibility to the traditions which feed our spiritual life, a responsibility that goes beyond what is expected of us as “consumers.”
Let's take that communion question my Sunday School faced at the Greek Orthodox church. I nervously asked the same question at a Catholic Mass I attended with my roommate in college. She replied "Oh, no. Even if you are Catholic you can't take communion unless you've been confessed,” and sure enough as I looked around I saw almost 30% of the congregation remain in their seats as others formed lines in the aisle to receive the host. But later that year, when I attend a Presbyterian service with a friend in her tiny old white-steepled church, she looked amazed that I would even ask. "How could we turn anyone away from God's table" she responded, and so as the basket of rough cubed bread passed hand to hand, I took a piece and ate. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am not going to tell you whether or not you may take communion in a particular tradition. I can only encourage you to act with integrity. Does the gesture feel false and empty? Then please don't sacrifice your personal integrity. But if you are invited to participate in a ritual that is sacred to your friend or neighbor, and you want to be in communion with that community in that moment, I encourage you to accept that gift in the spirit it was offered.
Perhaps the most important questions are asked and answered in our own hearts at the front door of the synagogue or mosque. Am I prepared to enter a sacred space that is not my own? Can I, with integrity, align myself with this worshipping body for this time? Can I help them hold a sacred space? Can I honor and respect their sanctuary while being true to my own core? Christianity is an evangelizing faith, and so it seems natural for many Christian communities to share their sacred texts (as the Gideons do) and to invite their neighbors to hear the words they hope will bring salvation to a newcomer. Not all traditions feel the same about their sacred rituals and traditions. Some Native Americans, for example, feel that religion is tied to a particular place, to a particular community; it belongs to the people and the land they share. And so when European-Americans borrow a chant or a symbol, it can feel like appropriation, it can feel like one more act in the imperialism that destroyed the very cultures we now turn into objects of consumerism. And so when we study Christianity we might be bolder than when we study indigenous traditions. We look for ways to learn from our neighbor’s faiths without opening old and unhealed wounds.
As the vilification of Islam began to gain momentum in this country in recent years, Dr. Conde Frasier, a professor at Claremont Theological Seminary, a Christian School, asked a Muslim friend to talk to her about Islam. She wanted to have something real, personal and deep to inform her thinking about her Neighbor's faith. After several conversations, her friend invited her to worship. And so after receiving instruction in the Moslem way of prayer Dr. Frasier covered her head, entered the mosque, kneeled on her prayer mat, and prayed to Allah. She reports that she did experience something of Allah that day. Dr. Frasier remains a Christian, but I have to imagine that she now has a much deeper experience and knowledge of Islam that brings her closer to her Muslim neighbors, and gives her a new understanding each time Islam is in the news, each time she is in the classroom teaching. She also experienced something that enriched her own religious life.
One of the concerns people have about exploring the world's religious diversity is that it can be done in a very shallow way. It takes patience and intention to get beneath the surface, where most of the gifts of a religious tradition lie. The Celebration of Easter without the struggle of Lent loses it’s power. If you were here last Sunday you may remember Don Bisson’s words: “Suffering, death and resurrection is one mystery. Whenever you try and separate these mysteries, you miss the mysteries.” Think how different Dr. Frasier's experience would have been the first time she joined her friend in prayer if she had done so without all the study and preparation. When I heard Dr. Frasier tell her story during the Fahs lecture at General Assembly this summer, I was moved by her courage, and by the clear respect she showed to her friend, and to the ancient tradition she encountered. Keeping her example in mind, I offer respect, humility and integrity as the primary ethics of our sojourns in other traditions.
More and more I like to take the role of guest. For example, I love the traditional lighting of the menorah to honor the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. Sure I can buy a menorah and candles on my way to the checkout at my local grocery store, but I believe that without the depth of tradition behind that ritual, without the grounding in community, the ritual loses most of its depth, content and meaning. That is why I prefer to invite someone raised in or otherwise grounded in the Jewish tradition to light the candles that celebrate Hanukah, so that I can participate with humility in an observance as their guest.
When Parker spoke those words at General Assembly, they were as introductory remarks for a panel on “Multi-religiosity.” This strange phrase is trying to express something new that the word “interfaith” does not. It is trying to articulate something that has been present in our UU contraptions for decades. That, for example, if you were raised Catholic and now attend a UU church, you don’t lose all those formative experiences that shaped you growing up in the Catholic tradition. When Marcia blew the Shofar for us to celebrate the New Year this past fall, it was because that tradition still had meaning and power for her as one who grew up Jewish, even though now she is a member of a UU congregation. Priestess Lady Hawk is coming to lead us in a Beltaine ritual next month, and she is also the president of the UU congregation in Towanda. We don’t always have to leave our own sanctuary to be guests in a new faith, If we open our hearts and minds we find a richness of experience right here in our own beloved community.
This is and will continue to be a complex issue. But imagining ourselves as guests in a friend or neighbor’s home might provide a central organizing metaphor for our explorations. We treat their space and treasures with respect. We observe the house rules, just as some of my friends like me to take my shoes off when I visit, and others like me to leave them on. We listen from a place of shared humanity. And we humbly remember there are dynamics, history, wounds and gifts present of which we are not aware. We take only what we are given, and offer our gratitude in return.
When we next hear the anger and fear of religious bigotry in the news, remember, as Rebecca parker reflected, “ I thought the only way you could be a Christian after the holocaust was to enter into multi-religious community.” Likewise, as UUs, whenever we are reaching out to our neighbors, or reaching deep into our roots and sources, this act is part of what it means to say “never again.” Moreover, it is a practice which helps us connect to the sources of our own religious wellspring. There is much we don't know about our neighbor’s faiths, so much they have to teach us about ourselves, about our roots, and about the world. As humble and respectful guests we undertake this journey, grounded in this our religious home, centered in the wisdom that lies in every human heart.
Endnotes
[i] http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/texas-protests-mark-disheartening-week-pluralism
[ii] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/texas-gop-rep-explains-why-she-asked-muslims-declare-allegiance
[iii] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/06/photos-anti-islam-protests-meet-backlash-in-germany/
[iv] http://www.livescience.com/25110-negative-messages-muslims-media.html
[v] http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2012/01/23056/media-coverage-of-islam-and-muslims-in-western-countries/
Monday, March 16, 2015
Why We Suffer (March 15, 2015)
Each one of us has experienced loss. Each one of us has experienced pain. And on those blessed days we ourselves are free from suffering, we have only to look out at the world with a compassionate heart to know that suffering is always present. I suspect that this is one of the main reasons people lose their faith: when confronted with the reality of suffering it all seems meaningless. When we come to church on Sunday morning we want to be renewed in hope and gratitude and compassion, but if our religious tradition cannot accompany us to the depths of life, it will not be deep enough support us when we need it most.
We are atheists, agnostics and theists together here today, but our common ground is the physical world in which we live. Walking in a path through the woods, or even just through my own back yard I observe that no living being seems to be exempt from pain and loss. All forms of life know death. All forms of life seem to experience destruction and decay. When we drove through Yellowstone park for the first time, we were amazed to see acre after acre that burned during the great fire of 1988. Decades later the charred remains of trees were the dominant feature of that landscape. 248 fires that burned that summer; hHundreds of thousands of acres burned, as the fire raged on for months. The first fires began in July, but it wasn’t until November that the snows had cooled all the fires enough for rangers to assess the damage, to tally the destruction to buildings, to count those elk, deer, moose, bear and bison who had died in the blaze.
As the fires raged, so did the political debate about how they could have been prevented, about how we could keep this from happening ever again. Maybe, some argued, if we had allowed more fires in the park in earlier times there would have been less fuel this one summer of drought. Of the 7 major fires that did 95% of the damage, 3 were caused by human hands. So in a very pragmatic way, we know why suffering happens: some is caused purposefully, some by human accident, but the great majority is simply the interaction of natural forces in an apparently impersonal, inevitable way. That is to say, loss is part of life. Pain is part of life. Decay is part of life. Even the sudden, violent force of a great fire, a blizzard, or a tsunami are part of life.
By the time we drove through the park in 2007, a new generation of trees and undergrowth and elk had rushed to fill in the scarred landscape. While the charred remains of the burned trees still stood starkly against the sky, an abundance of new growth crowded in dramatically illustrating the way that pain and loss are always followed by new growth, by new life. For those of us whose faith is grounded in the natural world, this is the meaning of suffering; each life that ends feeds the new life that follows. As Wendell Berry writes so elegantly “They die into each other’s life, and live into each other’s death…what they take in they change, but they change it always into a form necessary for its use by a living body of another kind. And this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures.” [The Unsetting of America p. 85-86] This is why pagan traditions that grew up in a climate like ours, (where a cold dark winter is followed by a riotous growth of new life in the spring and summer) celebrate the spring equinox as a holiday of rebirth. The earth reminds us with her very body that dark is followed by light, that what seems to be an end is followed by a new beginning.
The question of suffering is more challenging question for those of us who believe in not only the immanent presence of the holy dwelling in all living things, but believe in a transcendent God, a personal God who cares about each being. Why would such a god allow suffering? It is easy to imagine that it has something to do with us. It’s a popular theological idea that suffering happens when someone has been bad, that suffering is a sign of God’s displeasure. Being free from suffering, therefor, has something to do with being good, with being faithful. I think the reason we make this leap is more psychological than theological; it allows us to look the other way when we see suffering because “they probably deserve it.” when we see someone suffering we want to assure ourselves that this will never happen to us- if we are good enough, careful enough. When we ourselves are suffering we want to believe that there is something we can do to end it, to control it. But our Universalist tradition does not believe that a loving god would have punished all the inhabitants of those Yellowstone forests for some wrong they had done. When that Tsunami hit Japan in 2011, we do not believe it was the providential hand of God intervening to smite. It was a natural disaster which swept away innocent and guilty, careful and reckless, lonely and loved.
As one who was not raised in the Christian tradition, I have always wondered about the centrality of the cross in contemporary Christian Theology. But slowly I am beginning to understand something about that symbol. In Christian Theology Jesus was the incarnation of God. Christ is God manifest in the world, in flesh like ours. Christ’s suffering, which Catholics ritualize in the stations of the cross during lent, tells a story not about a god who punishes the bad with suffering, and protects the good, but of suffering coming even to one who was closest to God. The story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus depicts a God who took on the suffering of humans, and suffered with us in this world.
There has been a great debate throughout Christian history about whether or not Jesus truly suffered on the cross. Some feel that because of his divine nature Jesus escaped suffering, that perhaps even as a man he was so holy that he experienced only his closeness to God. To me that reduces the power of the story. A loving God, a caring God is not one who is exempt from the suffering all living beings share. A loving God is one who knows our suffering, and who suffers with us.
When we lay in a hospital bed scared and in pain in a hospital, when facing foreclosure on our family home, or when reeling from a betrayal by someone we loved and trusted, it is natural to feel that God has abandoned us. The story of the crucifixion offers a different perspective- that God is never separate from any part of this living world we share, even when it suffers.
As we noticed in the great forest ravaged by fire, new life follows suffering. Jungian Spiritual Director Don Bisson asserts “Suffering, death and resurrection is one mystery. Whenever you try and separate these mysteries, you miss the mysteries.” We know this cold long winter will someday turn into spring. In the Christian story, the crucifixion is followed by resurrection. What we don’t get to know is “why.” Science and our observation of nature show us “why” in a causal sense- we know what forces lead to a Tsunami, investigators discovered how those fires in Yellowstone were started. But theologically, this suffering will always be a mystery. We can imagine an alternate history, an alternate universe in which there are no deadly forces of nature, in which humans never betray or do violence to one another. Saying “suffering is a mystery” can sound like a cop-out. But I know that when I hear about a tragedy, my mind immediately protects itself from the reality of suffering by imagining I can defend myself from it: I take comfort in the fact that I live too far from the ocean for a tsunami to ever threaten my home, I lock my door, I buy homeowners insurance. We want to protect ourselves from the truth that suffering comes to all living beings, and we cannot control or predict it. This is what I mean when I say “suffering is a mystery.” It is easier to hold on to the idea that if I am only good enough, suffering will pass me by. But if we look at the lives of those we elevate as living truly good lives- Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, these are not lives free from suffering. These are folks who responded to suffering with transformative goodness.
Part of the question “Why do we suffer” is “how do we respond to suffering?” I believe the first thing we are called to do is to “stay awake” as Jesus asked his followers to do in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is really hard, whether it is our own suffering, or the suffering of others. But as Jungian psychology suggests, there is an enormous psychic cost to trying to escape our suffering. I imagine each of us in this room has events in our past that we’d rather not think about, memories too painful to examine. And so our psyches provide us with the useful coping mechanism of being able to repress, ignore, turn away from those memories. But I hope that each one of us has also had the experience of looking with courage at some painful memory, or dynamic in our life and found that when we did the energy for transformation, for new life was released. Some healing and growth and is only possible when we can stay awake to that pain. Not clinging to pain, not pushing it away, but just being able to stay awake in the presence of it.
Buddhist Activist Joanna Macy has devoted her life’s work to the belief that staying awake to suffering is necessary to the healing of the world. She writes “[pain] is inseparable from the currents of matter, energy, and information that flows through us and sustain us as interconnected open systems. We are not closed off from the world, but integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When the body is traumatized, we sense that trauma, too. When it falters and sickens, we feel its pain. Whether we pay attention to it or not.”
This is what it means to be part of the interconnected web of life. When the mangrove trees are cut down to make room for shrimp farming, the coastline suffers. When the prairie dog is exterminated, dozens of other species suffer, even the soil suffers. Many Unitarian Universalists have had profound spiritual experiences in nature, feeling the beauty and peace of an old growth forest, feeling deeply connected in a numinous moment. But that very connection to nature opens us up to profound pain as well, when we see that forest ravaged by fire, or clear-cut by human hands.
Macy continues: “That pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. As in all organisms, pain has a purpose;’ it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action.” [Coming Back to Life p. 27]
For those of us who believe the divine is not separate from the world, that the spirit of life is present in every tree, every cricket, every human being, we know that God is part of the body of the earth as we are part of the body of the earth. This calls us to deepen our connection to the web of which we are a part, and to witness, to speak out, to call one another to action when we are aware of the suffering in any part of the web. That complicated recycling and composting system we’ve got in the other room- that is part of our response to the suffering of the earth. When this congregation hosted a water testing program so that we could test local creeks for changes on toxicity, that is part of our religious response to the suffering of the earth. When Maggie and Chris and Katie went down to Selma last weekend, it was because they wanted to witness to the suffering caused by racism that is also a part of this web of life.
One reason we start each service with Joys and Concerns, is because we know this beloved community must be able to hold our good news with sympathetic joy, and to hold our suffering with compassion. This is not always easy. When I hear about the death of someone in your family, maybe I am flooded with memories of the death of someone close to me. When I hear about your upcoming surgery, maybe I am frightened over my own health. When I hear about your pain, maybe I am struck by my helplessness to take your pain away. The very word “Compassion” comes from the root words meaning “to suffer together.” The more we are able to stay awake to our own suffering, the more we are able to be present to the suffering of others. Even when we can’t fix it or take it away, acknowledging the reality of suffering in the world helps us grow in our compassion for one another.
During this time of year when our Christian neighbors are celebrating Lent, let us not turn away from suffering. Even there in those hurting places the divine is present. Now when the muddy earth is just beginning to emerge under the melting snowpack of a long hard winter, remember that the spirit of life cannot be separated from the body of the earth, any more than we can. It can be found both in the joy and in the sorrow. And there even in the deepest suffering is the promise of growth and new life.
Monday, March 2, 2015
The Platinum Rule (March 1, 2015)
I bet everyone has a story like this one my friend Teresa shared on Facebook. She wrote:
I made a special dinner for two friends who helped me move into an apartment. VERY special - lobster! My Jewish friend let me know he appreciated the thought....and we laughed through the entire dinner (he ate peanut butter)
All of us learned the “Golden Rule” at a young age, a rule that appears in different traditions all over the world, and in the Christian tradition is spoken by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” [Mat 7:12]. But I think we have found the flaw in this golden rule. My favorite celebratory meal- lobster, might be a religious taboo to my guest. This is why the facilitator at our Intercultural Competancy training Beth Zemsky, suggested a platinum Rule: “do unto others as they would do/have done unto themselves”
As Unitarian Universalists, we value diversity in our congregations and in our world. But sometimes we don’t notice diversity when it is right in front of us -- much of the diversity in this congregation is invisible. This diversity can be seen not primarily in the color of our skin, or in the languages we speak, but it is real. We stumble across it in moments of miscommunication, or uncomfortable silences. Let’s go back to the example of our dietary diversity, because it is visible, and because we have really worked hard to raise our consciousness around that. Last night the Valley Vegan Supper Club had its 3rd gathering. I suspect part of the reason the supper club has been such a success, is because it balances out all the times vegans have attended potlucks in the valley and could pretty much only eat the dish they brought themselves.
Families and organizations that are not used to diverse dietary needs usually roll out their famous house specialty in honor of all their guests. But once you have seen one of your guests sit with an empty plate in front of them, you start to ask before they arrive “I’m making up the shopping list for your visit, any foods you like to avoid?” I recently visited some long lost relatives and was SO grateful they asked me that question, because as a guest it feels awkward to make demands on the folks who are already providing you with a place to stay and food to eat. Part of being a really skillful host, making guests feel at home, is not just to open your home to them, but to make them feel a little like they are in their own home. Take my friend Theresa --one time you serve lobster to your kosher friend is a hilarious miss-step. But if your friend has to watch you eat lobster while they make themselves a peanut butter sandwich every time they come to visit, it is going to be hard to follow the hostly injunction to “make yourself feel at home.”
Each and every one of us is different, but sometimes it only becomes visible because things don't work smoothly, or don't seem right. Things that never have to be looked at or spoken of suddenly don't work, and we don't know why. When “the way we do things around here” doesn’t seem to be working, that's how you know you are encountering difference.
I was attending a conference recently at a center that purported to have wifi, but maybe too many people were trying to use it or something, because I never got it to work. This was no problem for my friends with Smart phones, but for me it meant I couldn’t check my e-mail or go online for the duration of the conference. I ran into a colleague in the hallway who said “you haven’t answered that e-mail I sent you. Can you read it and get back to me today?” I started blankly at her and finally sputtered “I don’t have access to e-mail here, I think you are just going to have to ask me your question now.” My colleague assumed we had access to the same technology, until her attempt to communicate failed, and we had to figure it out.
Technology is an easily visible example of how our differences sometimes keep us apart. You can’t open the minutes from the meeting, because you don’t have the right software. You can’t participate in the webinar because the website won’t open on your computer. You try to attend the meeting by skype but it crashes your computer and you spend the whole meeting trying to just get your computer to function again. Sometimes you power through and make it work, or find some kind of work-around, but sometimes navigating those differences is hard enough that you just don't participate. As far as I can tell, dealing with our very real technological diversity here at UUCAS is something we put a lot of care into. We still print out and stick our newsletter in the U S mail to our members who are not online. We learned how to use Skype for people who couldn’t make it to meetings in person, and have a conference call line for folks who can’t use Skype. Whereas Golden Rule invites us to say “I love having a paperless office, so I’m going to make sure everyone gets a digital copy of the minutes before the meeting” the Platinum rule invites us to ask “Can everyone open this document? Does anyone need me to print out a hard copy?” My colleagues have asked “how can you be a minister without a smart phone? Without being able to answer e-mail everywhere you go?” But I never feel like I let you down by not having a smart phone, because our community understands technological diversity.
So there are two reason for us to think beyond the golden rule to a platinum rule. The first is practical- folks might not be able to participate if our community if it is not accessible to them. The other is more emotional. My dear friend said her mother-in-law never quite “got it” that she was a vegetarian. She would make the whole traditional thanksgiving turkey dinner, and figured the Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes were plenty of food for her vegetarian daughter-in-law. Year after year this continued, and it started to really hurt their relationship; my friend felt un-heard, unwelcomed by her mother-in-law. They stay home on thanksgiving now.
Because we are different and unique, each one of us, there is sometimes a gap between our “intent” and our “impact” on those around us. The “intent” of the host in our first story, was to offer the most generous, special celebratory meal she could think of- lobster. It sounds like her guest had a good sense of humor, and the impact was that he was able to appreciate her intent- to be generous, even as he watched them eating lobster while eating a peanut butter sandwich himself. But what if it had hurt his feelings? What if this was just the most recent in a long line of peanut butter sandwiches and he felt excluded and misunderstood? Just because someone doesn’t mean to hit you in the face with their carry-on luggage as they board the plane doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Because we are so different and unique, churches are full of such mis-alignments of intent and impact. A newcomer to our congregation in Palo Alto who was confined to a wheelchair after a horrible accident could no longer attend the Buddhist fellowship of which he had been part of for many years because there were 25 steps leading up to the front door. His Buddhist congregation had not intended to exclude him, but the impact of their architecture was to exclude him completely. But we were not always as welcoming as we hoped to be either. As the 2nd Iraq war was threatening to begin, my congregation was very active in the peace movement, expressing our collective desire to avert another war. A military family pulled me aside one day and asked if they were truly welcome. Some of our anti-war rhetoric made them feel like Unitarian Universalists didn’t care about our Service Men and Women. My heart broke to hear it. It had never occurred to the peace activists, myself included, that our actions for peace would make one of our own families feel unwelcome.
How we handle these gaps between intent and impact will make a big difference in how welcoming we really are as a congregation. The tools for handling these gaps are the same whether we unthinkingly put “just a little bit” of flour in the diner we made for our gluten-intolerant friend, or used the wrong pro-noun for a transgender member, or made one of a million other faux pas that have the unintended impact of making people feel unwelcome. Comedian Hari Kondabolu told this story as during one of his shows:
I was at a party last week and this guy came up to me and he was like:I’m assuming that party guest hadn’t intended to offend, he was probably just expressing his curiosity. But the impact on our comedian was quite different from what he intended.
"Hey Man, where are you from"
So I told him- "Queens NY"
"No, I mean, where are you really from"
Which for those of you who don’t know, that’s code for “No, I mean, why aren’t you white? I noticed your skin was a different color from mine”
I was offended, clearly
So what do you do when you realize you’ve asked the stupid question, or when you realize your guest is kosher and you have served him a lobster? First, you state your intention “I had intended to show you my gratitude by serving the most fancy thing I could think of." Second, try to slow down your “knee jerk” defense response. It would be easy to think to yourself “they have no right to be upset, I did the best I could!” but if you can just silence that impulse for a moment, they you can give them a chance to share the impact on them. I asked some of my vegan friends to tell me about their dinner-guest challenges. Most of them replied with some variation on the theme of “I’m used to it. The important thing is to spend time with friends.” But we have to be ready for someone to say “There are no alternative protein sources at this retreat center and I’m literally starting to have trouble functioning!”
Now here’s the tricky part. Our friend may reply with more anger here than really this situation alone deserves. Let’s take your transgender neighbor whom you called by his former name just this one time. If he responds with anger, remember that anger comes from not just this moment, but from every other person who calls him by the wrong name, uses the wrong pronouns, refuses to see him as he really is. Our mistake was relatively small, but it touched a nerve where he has a deep wellspring of hurt. What a gift you could give to just listen. Probably the first time someone asked Hari where he was from, “really” from, it wasn’t that big a deal, but as it happens again and again, compounded with all the other cultural obstacles people of color face in this country, it touches a very sore place.
While our friends are sharing the impact, we are listening empathically, trying to understand now they feel, rather than arguing or explaining or excusing ourselves. Then both parties can share information and be open to new information. If you can stay in this conversation and really listen, the next time your friend comes to dinner you will understand a little better what makes him feel truly at home. Maybe he has some favorite recipes that will become your favorite too. This is the most profound gift and the most profound challenge of being truly welcoming; if, when we encounter difference, we stick with it through the embarrassing fails, through the emotions and the tough conversations, it will change us. We will grow not only in our hospitality, but in our deeper and wider understanding of this world we share.
This congregation is more diverse then we might guess at first glance- economically, politically. We are different ages, different sexual orientations. It is especially impressive how diverse we are theologically, considering we are all one faith community. We are Theists, and atheists, we are Jewish and Christian and pagan. Some of us grew up in a faith community, and for some of us this is our very first faith community. As Universalists, we like to focus on what we all have in common, our inherent worth and dignity, our humanity. But as part of a free and responsible search for truth and meeting we will encounter our differences to. Be proud that not everyone in this congregation voted the same in the last presidential election. Be proud that last year a 2nd amendment rights activist and a die-hard pacifist both spoke about gun violence from this same pulpit. I know that it is hard to say something when you think it is not the majority opinion of the community. But in this world where your search engine gives you the information it thinks you want to hear, where even the news channels are partisan, coming to a church where you might hear something you don’t believe is important for the healing of the world. I encourage each of you to be brave and say the true thing that is in your heart. And just as important, if you hear someone say something that is the absolute opposite of what you believe, to say “I have never thought about things that way. Help me understand.”
This is what it really means to “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” – to affirm not only the common ground among us, but our differences too. In the words of Rebecca Parker, “Love seeks to know the other as other and to preserve and protect the just-so-ness, the "otherness" of the other.” The Golden rule helps us remember that all of us have the same basic needs for food and shelter and safety, to love and be loved. But in this world of tremendous diversity, and among the diversity of this our beloved community let’s also remember the Platinum Rule: “do unto others as they would do unto themselves.”
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