Living in Interstitial Times

This week it snowed for the first time in Ithaca, in Cortland. Perhaps, like me, you spent some time hustling to get the last summer things into the basement, to locate the snow shovels and the car scrapers. What plants that can overwinter indoors are safely indoors. On my porch the petunias who somehow escaped the freeze are still blooming, along with begonias who weren’t so lucky. This change of seasons is an interstitial time -- a time of in between, of no longer this but not yet that. That’s what Interstitial means, the space between, or if we go back to the roots of the word it means literally, “between standing”.

Some of you will remember 5 years ago, this congregation was gathering online. After months of the Covid social distancing, we started our church year with high hopes of meeting together again in person, when a new, stronger wave of the virus emerged. And back to Zoom we went. We were right in the messy, uncertain, middle of the Covid shut down; we had set off from the place of normal-ness, and had been traveling through the in-between for months, and were no closer to the shore. It seemed like everything was up in the air, remember? It seemed like the ground was crumbling under our feet. The essence of an interstitial time. We wandered in the wilderness of uncertainty. We wondered if we would survive, if the church would survive, if UU would survive.

Today, we know some of how that turned out. We know that as a church we did survive, and have new members and visitors and energy, and sense of purpose.

We have changed in important ways- who could have imagined before Covid we would have multi-church multi-platform worship, with new friends from Athens to Cortland from Corning to South Carolina that we first met on zoom.

Some things changed and cannot change back – the loved ones who died or moved away. The churches who were not so lucky and closed their doors forever.

Other things we missed are back, pretty much just like before - like potlucks and Ukelele group and Organ crawls.

But just as we felt we were getting our feet under ourselves, the ground began to shake again. The new supreme court ended Roe v Wade, the inauguration last year began a series of orders dismantling structures we thought we could count on. Laws we thought applied to everyone seem now as flimsy as the paper they were printed on. Like the East wing of the white house, now a pile of rubble, some things will never be the same again.

I remind you of all this to help us notice a pattern, what happens during interstitial times, what it feels like -- this time of between standing. I imagine having one foot up in the air, ready to step forward. There’s a precariousness to it.

As Siobhan MacMahon writes in her poem "Mapping a New Reality":

When words shape-shift
beneath your feet,
spelling another reality...

Have you had that feeling recently, like things are shapeshifting under our feet? I want, first of all to just affirm that this is not because you are not doing enough self care, this is because all of us together are in a liminal time, and each of us feels it in our own way. Liminal times are challenging by their very nature. In stable times, we can rely on our routines and habits, those years of experience and practice, of muscle memory and following a good plan, but when things are in flux, everything takes more energy, more discernment. When the ground shakes during interstitial times it wakes us up. Like missing a step on a staircase, it gives us a jolt. Interstitial times need us awake and paying attention. 

The poet’s idea not to trust the old maps, is a good one. The landscape is changing, and we can’t just do what we’ve always done and expect everything to be okay. The seasonal change of autumnal colors remind us it’s time to prepare for winter. That first freeze will remind us the hard way if we haven’t had our furnace serviced, or brought in the last of the zucchini. Fortunately, the change of seasons is dependable if disorienting. We put away our map for summer, and take out he one for fall, and then winter.

Just so, among the old dusty maps, there stories and guidance, compass and sextant to help us navigate times like these. Andy reminded me of the story of Jesus in the wilderness, during that in-between time before he started his public ministry. The Christian Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. It is then when Jesus is at his most vulnerable, the devil appeared to him and suggested he turn the stones into bread. He tempted Jesus 3 times, and each time Jesus declined. [Matthew 4:1-11] During that in-between time in the desert the choices Jesus made were important. Imagine how things could have ended differently, if Jesus had said yes to even one of the tempter’s questions, a lot of history would not be what it is.

Biblical scholars tell us that 40 day time it is supposed to remind us of the 40 years that the Jewish people wandered in the desert, after they had escaped slavery in Egypt and before they found their land of milk and honey. After the people had been traveling for a year or so, they complained, “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, 6 but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” [Numbers 11:5-6]

These old stories remind us that the people have moved through wilderness times before, that they are not easy, but that what we do makes a difference. (Remember the golden calf?) This is a time when it is particularly important to let our values and principles, our faith and love guide us.

When there is no clear path before us, when the landscape is changing, we must learn to rely on our own inner compass, as individuals and as a community. 

MacMahon writes:

you must leave

Behind The broken compasses,
burn The man-made maps
and head for home,

Following the knowing
in your bones, the aching
of your heart,

By Home, I don’t think she is suggesting we head home to hide under our covers, she means that spiritual home where we live in alignment with our values, that spiritual home that our aching heart longs for, not only for ourselves, but for all beings.

I saw follow your hearts this last week. When SNAP benefits were cut and people were desperate and hungry, we heard people step up at joys and concerns to talk about concrete actions they were taking by raising funds, advocating or making meal kits. Spontaneous heartfelt ethical responses to an unfolding emergency in our community. Then after service at Cortland, our congregation hosted community members from Feed our Neighbors and Mutual Aid, and hosted our first every community conversation about how we want to respond to food insecurity in Cortland creatively across widely different perspectives. There was some fresh energy because of the SNAP crisis, but the conversation was about a long-term solution to holes in the safety net. By following the knowing in our bones, something new began to emerge.

Because while there was a stable system in place before the government shut down, things were not okay. People were still hungry. This SNAP shutdown moved our hearts and spirits, and asks us to look with fresh eyes at a system that was already broken.

That is why a time like this, an interstitial time, is a powerful time. When things are in flux, there is a possibility for movement, for change that is not possible when everything is stable. In their book You Only Get What You’re Organized To Take, Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back  call this a “Kairos moment.” We talked about Kairos time last week, how it’s a sacred time, a deep time, a powerful time. It’s a time when careful discernment and action are critical. They write, “Positive change is not chronological and it is never promised. It is a choice that must be made; an action that must be taken” [p. 192]

Because this is a time when progress is not the only possibility, the instability also lends itself to the kind of wealth and power grabs we’ve been seeing this year. It is a time of possibility and danger. Fortunately, we have been preparing for such a time as this. Consider that moment in the spring of 2020 when the Black Lives Mater movement caught fire. Our congregation had been working for years addressing racism, studying, creating community dialogue, building networks, and when the Black Lies Matter movement swept though our nation, we were ready to do our part. In his book “The long Haul” Horton writes “We cannot create movements, so if we want to be part of a movement when it comes, we have to get ourselves into a position” [p. 139] by creating connections with organizations, with our neighbors, with those whose voices need to be heard. Horton is using the word “movement”, to refer to those powerful moments when the passion to act sweeps through a critical mass of people, and change that had seemed impossible, begins to take form. We can’t make a movement happen, but we can be ready by studying, strategizing. By building networks and community organizations we prepare for such a time as this.

I think you feel it. I think it is for this that the energy in our congregations is up, not just our congregations, but in many communities of faith and community organizations across the country. As we sat in that social hall after church last week, a young woman I’d never met who described herself as Baptist said she was there because Jesus literally told us to feed the poor. Mic drop. We feel in our bones that now is a Kairos moment, and what we do now matters. For those who believe it may feel like a call from Spirit.

These are times to follow the “knowing in your bones, the aching in your heart” These are times to prepare and to act when the moment is right, when the movement towards love and justice rises around you. What we do now makes a great deal of difference.

These times are interstitial times, unsteady, uncertain. So much we know and count on seems to be in flux. When we are between standing, one foot up in the air ready to step forward, we must step – we cannot hover there forever. We move one foot at a time, if the trusted roads have crumbled. Finding and testing each foothold as we move into an emerging world we create as we walk. 

At Your Own Pace

Path through St. Francis' Woods

Last year I had the great good fortune of a sabbatical from my work here in this congregation. I chose a Pilgrimage to Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis and St. Clare, as the focus of my sabbatical, so when I left you all in February I began to prepare. I made travel plans, got a few books on St. Francis and St. Clare, installed Duo Lingo on my phone, and started preparing to walk up and down those steep streets of a mountain city. At that time, I thought of myself as a pretty good walker -- after all I walked the dogs every day, walked to yoga, and to other places downtown, but all of that is pretty flat. I remembered my time in Seminary in the Berkeley Hills, how excruciating it was to walk from town back up to my school, Starr King. I remembered girl scout hiking trips from my childhood, how I was always the last kid, hopelessly behind, so I got to work.

The first nice day I put my walking shoes on, and headed up that steep hill near my house. It wasn’t as hard as I thought- it turns out going up and down the stairs of our home doing chores is not a bad prep for walking hills. I walked until I started to feel tired, and headed home. I felt pretty good, and proud of myself. But soon I learned that now that I’m in my 50s, my recovery time is a lot longer than I had expected. Not just sore muscles but sleepless nights, and a flare up of my connective tissue issues. Ugh. It turned out the main challenge was not going to be walking faster and farther, but learning my own limits, and learning how to recover when I met my limits.

If you hang out with school aged children you will see in them how good it can feel to run and skip and move at full speed, especially after being cooped up in school or church for a while. I know on the first brisk days of fall, I feel just like the busy squirrels scampering about. But often as adults when we are going fast it is because we are trying to meet our obligations, our expectations that we should be able to get more productivity into a shorter amount of time. In our culture, there is a general presumption that faster is better. More is better.

This is inextricably linked with capitalism; the ever-growing economy requires that we produce and consume more and more. Our society acts as if the needs and the wisdom of the human body are less important than meeting measurable economic goals. But why, why should the actual sustainable capacity of the human body be irrelevant in our human society? Back in 2013 Labor Religion Coalition hosted delegates from Haiti on a labor tour of New York, the Haitian garment workers told us they had spoken to a room of fashion industry folks in NYC. One worker told them how the quotas that were set for the workers in his factory were so difficult to meet that many folks had to stay after work without pay to meet their quotes. A fashion industry exec replied “but those quotas are industry standard set by an advisory panel in Europe.” In our society, the innate capacities of our body are not even part of the conversation. The body’s limits are to be overcome, not heeded.

This emphasis on speed, on meeting productivity goals is also linked with ableism, the idea that our worth is based on how well we meet these externally set speeds and capacities. It is counter cultural and an act of resistance to listen to the beat of your own inner rhythm, and dance to that beat.

Ever since the industrial revolution, we have increasingly let our clocks the pace of our society. Psychology professor Anne-Laure Sellier speaks of a difference between “clock time” and “event time”. We are on clock time when we are taking a timed test or when we need to catch an 11:15 train. Event time, she explains, is when you just garden until you are done gardening. You walk until you are done walking. Her research has found that things we do on event time are more satisfying. [i] She said on Ted Radio Hour:

“You and I go hiking. We get to the top of that mountain. The view is incredible. We experience awe. The event time you …. [takes] it in. You go, wow. Wow. You just take it in, right? The clock time, me, goes like, wow. OK. All right, time to go now. And we find that consistently. We found it repeatedly across emotions, across samples, that the more you rely on the clock, the less you're able to savor. That obviously is extremely sad for well-being.”

And I believe that.

AND, what some of us are having to learn as we age, or as we otherwise face the limitations of our body or mind, is that sometimes our body is done before we have finished gardening, before we see the end of the concert, before we climb that big hill.

In yoga class our teacher often invites us to notice what feels good in our body today, even if that’s different than what we could do yesterday. I’ll tell you that is a hard skill to master. It’s hard to get go of habits and expectations about what I SHOULD be able to do. It can be sad to realize that something you’ve been able to do for years is just not going to happen today, or that the cost of pushing through might not be worth going over that next hill, or getting that last plant in the ground. When we listen to our inner wisdom, we can consciously make choices about how hard, how far, how fast we go.

This is a skill that takes time to develop. The first time a yoga teacher encouraged us to “listen to your body” I thought that was hard science fiction- what would that even mean? Sometimes it seems like all my body says is “ouch!” But like with any relationship, the more we listen, the more we begin to understand over time.

For example, I have noticed that often when I start out on a walk, I take a pretty brisk pace. I wonder why that is? Perhaps it’s the pent up energy of sitting at my desk all day? Or just habit? Is that the pace that is best for me today? I’m learning to get curious, to notice and ask myself “why?” Does this feel right for this moment? Or is there another pace that would feel more aligned with who and how I am today?

Our first big walk in Assisi was to be down the side of the steep hill, all the way to the flats, to San Damiano, where St. Francis had his vision of rebuilding the church, and later built a cloister for the sisters of St. Clare.

It was fun and exciting, to be outside the city walls for the first time, enjoying the wonderful view from the side of the hill, and approaching San Damiano on foot, as pilgrims have since Francis’s day. It was a beautiful sacred place.

Soon it was time for the return- up that same steep hill. I was so enchanted by the place, I was one of the last to regather with the group. A few of the most athletic in our group waved to me- they were going to take a path that was shorter but steeper, did I want to join them? I thought about what I had learned about myself, and said, probably not. The tour had rented a van for folks who knew they couldn’t make the climb. Friendly faces waved out of the van, did I want to join them for a ride? Hmmm. No, I can do this, I thought. I joined the group that was taking the middle way, and we walked and talked the long way back up into the city and to the hospitality mission where we were staying. We stopped and waiting for one another, and though it was hard, and though I was sore the next couple of days, I think that was the right choice for me.

Each day as we headed out to a new sacred site, one teacher would take the lead with the speedy folks, one teacher would watch out for folks at the end to make sure no one got lost, and a group with limited mobility would take a taxi and beat us there. I saw with my own eyes how precious it was to be able to go at one’s own pace, to go quickly when you are feeling strong and spry, to be more conservative when you are feeling challenged. On any given outing a walking companion might apologize for going slow, or for stopping, and resting, and I would reassure them of the importance of going at one’s own pace, not only for the health of the body, but for the spirit.

I came to remember all those times growing up when I was last, and others were urging me to hurry. Was it because of my short legs? I was often the smallest kid in class. Was it because I was more of an indoor kid and didn’t get as much exercise? Maybe. But I also noticed that even when I was able to keep up physically, I longed to linger. To just sit for one more moment in the cloister where Clare and her sisters had prayed each day, to linger over the art on the walls, or a flower we don’t have back home.

In religious circles we talk about Chronos time and Kairos time. Chronos time is clock time. Kairos time is deep time, sacred time. Think back to a time you experienced awe or wonder. Or maybe a time when you were in a flow state. When we think back to one of those times some would call sacred, many report a sense that time stood still, or that the moment seemed to expand. This is Kairos time. I am starting to suspect that when body, mind and spirit are able to follow our own pace, it is more possible to enter that Kairos time, those sacred moments of connection with our deepest wisest self, and with that which is larger than ourselves.

When I got home from Assisi, I was proud of how far I’d walked, up and down all those hills. I wanted to keep up the pace, but when I headed out for my first walk back home, I realized my body was worn out. I had pushed myself to do all those exciting things, and now was time to refill the tank, to let the tired muscles rest and repair. “You are walking less than usual at this time” my phone “helpfully” nudged. It was a bit insidious, I realized, how much I wanted to see my daily step count and go up and up, how hard it was to let them come down. One of my friends had gotten a program called visible designed for folks with chronic illnesses, which offers very different advice, such as “your body is out of balance, you may want to plan a quieter day today.” I had to remind myself that “walking less than usual at this time of day” was my goal, and if my phone wasn’t going to give me a badge or a bell for it, I was going to have to give it to myself. 

 

I began to wonder, why did I want to keep those numbers up, was it just because they look nice on my phone? I didn’t have any plans to go to a mountain village any time soon. I thought this as I walked through the wildflower preserve near my house. The whole reason I had done all that preparation was because I wanted to be able to see the beautiful things I wanted to see. And here I was, walking along 6 mile creek, listening to the birds. The right pace for me at that moment would be a pace where I could enjoy the beautiful nature around me. And maybe even fall a bit into Kairos time,

I found a meme that expressed this perfectly:

“If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together, if you want to go not very far and not very fast go with botanists.”

I asked my friend the geologists how her colleagues walk. She said some geologists, usually tall young people, walk briskly to cover a lot of ground. She says she walks slower so she doesn’t miss all the cool rocks.

There’s nothing wrong with going fast. Think how fun it is to do the Chicken dance at a wedding -- faster and faster until everyone is laughing. All of the different speeds our bodies are capable of are beautiful and have a place the fullness of life.

One of the challenges and blessings of living in community is that we each naturally dance to different rhythms. Not only when we take a hike together, or work in the garden, but when we help with social hour, or serve on a committee, or share our thoughts. One of our UU values is Pluralism, and it is good that some of us zoom and skip on ahead, others slow and steady follow behind, and some sit in stillness. My wish for this community is that each finds their place in our shared dance of community life, moving in a larger pattern of balance and wholeness. And my wish for each of you this morning, is that amid all the rushing and the ponderous waiting our lives demand, you will find times to go at your own pace, to learn and relearn what your own natural pace is in each moment. May you dance to your own rhythm, in time within your soul.

Path from Assisi to the Rocca Maggiore

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[i] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5576402

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5576402/the-art-of-choosing-what-to-do

Masking and Unmasking

 Did you see any good Masks this Halloween? This time of year, our culture invites us to put on a mask if we choose- the mask of a superhero, a scary monster, or just a simple fabric mask like Catwoman or Zorro wore, that hides our identity and makes us look mysterious.  It’s fun to wear a mask, but soon they get itchy or heavy or sweaty, and it’s nice to take them off too.

I bet you saw some N95 masks too, masks we wear to protect ourselves and others from respiratory illness. 

To live in this world, we all wear masks sometimes. One kind of mask is what Jung calls the persona, we dress and act and talk in certain ways depending on our role. So for example, when in my minister persona I try not to curse in the pulpit, I change out of my sweatpants and put on my Sunday preaching clothes. We call this kind of masking “being professional” and we generally appreciate it when our barista, hairdresser, surgeon, teacher, lawyer, delivery person put on the conventions of their role while they are doing their job.

Sometimes we mask to be polite- like when our friend makes a special gift for us that we think is ugly or we know we’ll never use, we may try not to let our disappointment show on our face, and focus on our gratitude that our friend took that time to make something just for us.

Another kind of masking happens when we feel we are in grief, or depressed, or feeling emotions too private to share, we might say “I’m fine” when someone asks, because we just don’t feel like talking about it.

We all make choices every day about what we share, and what we keep private.

The insidious nature of masking comes when we are asked, encouraged, forced to mask our diversity, to be more like the dominant culture.

For some folks in our community, we may feel we have to mask the truth of who we are, because it might be dangerous to reveal our true selves. Queer folks, for example, have often had to hide the truth of who we are not only because you could lose your job, your housing, your family if they knew the truth, but in some times and places being queer was against the law. Those of us who are Trans, nonbinary and gender fluid have often spent lifetimes dressing up as the gender they were assigned at birth. And this has a cost, it’s hard on the spirit to act day in and day out in a way that does not come naturally to us. Many folks find it exhausting to have to keep that mask in place, to worry it might slip.

Those of us who are neurodivergent are talking about how they learned “masking” form a very young age. Changing very intimate and core aspects of how they are in the world to help them fit in socially, get through school, hold a job.

I asked My son, who is on the autism spectrum, what masking was like and he said: “Growing up autistic feels like you're on stage during a play when nobody gave you a script or asked your consent to participate. If you get your lines wrong, everyone gets mad at you as if you're supposed to know what you're doing. Doesn't matter who's on stage or who's in the audience, you're always performing unless no one else is in the room. “

“And what is the cost of masking?” I asked “Is it exhaustion?”
Yes, he said, that but more, the cost is “Difficulty in developing your own identity”
Sometimes masking has a heavy cost.

I remember a time in our own congregation when Miss Lindsey, our religious educator, was talking about how we can offer accommodations so kids in our program can be themselves and be successful in religious education, (and by “successful” I mean using any pedagogical means necessary to help kids understand that no one is excluded from God’s love no matter who they are. By “successful” I mean helping children and teens clarify their own values and beliefs so they can grow spiritually, live ethically and serve lovingly.)

One of our volunteer teachers was confused. Back when her kids, now full grown, were in school a goal of education was to help everyone fit, as much as they could, into the standard shape, to pass, as much as possible, as “normal.” And it is true that being able to act “normal” opens a lot of doors, but it can make us think that our value as living beings has to do with being able to achieve the mystical state of normalcy. So this was a pretty radical shift, from focusing on teaching kids how to pass, to mask, to build up that plaster shell, to focusing on the golden buddha within.

Beth Radulski , who was diagnosed with Autusm in her 20s writes:

“This medical model understanding assumes disability is created primarily by a medical disorder in the body or brain. That struggles autistic people or ADHD-ers face with social life, employment, or schooling are because their brain doesn’t work the way it “should”.

The neurodiversity movement asks us to rethink this. It challenges us to ask how society can change to better include neurominorities (rather than seeing neurominorities as a problem needing to be “fixed”).”[i]

We are part of a cultural shift where all of us, neurotypical and neurodiverse, are invited to ask “what kinds of spaces could we create that support the range of neurodiverse people to use their gifts and to flourish and co-create a just, abundant world?”

This is a very UU idea, though sometimes we have been slow to see all the ways it applies. How can we, as a UU congregation, continuously challenge ourselves to make this a community where people can notice their true selves? How can we make a community where we feel safe to peek out from behind our masks?

What I love about the story of the Golden Buddha is, first, that the plaster coating, that mask, probably saved that statue. Perhaps we can think of our masks as clever works of art, designed to put others at ease, to express the self we want to show, and to keep us safe.

And when the thick plaster coating was cracked, what was revealed was pure gold -- such a great metaphor for the true self each of us has inside that is so precious. Our true self is so much more valuable than that plaster coating, no matter how clever or carefully decorated. That golden buddha inside can represent the Self, the part of us that is connected to wisdom, and to the divine in all things. According to Jungian psychology, we spend the first half of life building up our ego and our persona, the mask that helps us function in society, and the second half of life loosening our grasp on those outward showings, and turning our attention to the self within.

This is not purely a self-centered pursuit,

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes[ii] Writes:

“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. ... Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.”

This week as we go forth out into the world, I invite you to notice how you mask, to notice how it serves you, and when it restrains you. I encourage you to risk letting it slip a bit, in spaces where it feels right to do so. I invite you to think about the masks our society asks us to wear, and be curious about the true self that may be hiding within each and every person you meet. And always I encourage you to return to the golden Buddha within, to let it shine.




[i] https://theconversation.com/what-are-masking-and-camouflaging-in-the-context-of-autism-and-adhd-193446

[ii] https://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=548 Clarissa Pinkola Estes “You Were Made For This”

Constellations

Vega and Lyra Constellation by Giuseppe Donatiello

This has been a hard year for a lot of folks in a lot of ways. But in spite of that, perhaps because of it, our churches have come alive. Something is stirring in the hearts of long time members who maybe were asking themselves – why do we keep doing it? Does it even matter? But as they watched the news, and heard the stories in their community they remembered- it does matter. It matters a lot. We thought of the people most vulnerable to the lawless whims of our federal government, and got our aching bones out of bed to be here, with you. And some of our members and friends, old and new, woke up in fear, and some of those folks got their fearful bones out of bed to come be with you. And brand new folks, something stirred in their hearts, and they came to visit for the first time ( I hope we’ll hear those stories as we get to know them, of why they got up and took the risk on coming to visit a new community.) But among all of us, something is stirring..

Why? Because we are a community of people trying to live our values. Trying to keep love at the center. We don’t always get it right, but we keep trying. We’ve been doing it for over 100 years.

Our congregation in Cortland, was part of the underground railroad, and though that was long ago, I believe we still have that in our DNA, -- the will to come together, small as we are, and care for the most vulnerable in hard, scary times.

But the troubles of this world are so big, it’s easy to feel small and alone. I went on sabbatical not long after the inauguration last year, and I will tell you my heart did not feel focused on rest and renewal the way it usually does when I go on sabbatical. One reason you go on sabbatical is in part so you can step back and see the big picture, so you can glimpse a vision of the new direction ahead. What vision could guide our ministry through these scary times?

And so I reached out to my local interfaith clergy group, my neighbors, my friends and mentors. I signed up for a webinar by the Kairos Center on “survival organizing”, which turned out to be just the inspiration I needed. Shailly Barnes (who works with Kairos and the poor people’s campaign) showed us this map of Ohio during the time of the underground railroad, and said:

“…in that map we see a bunch of individual dots and each one of those represents a home, a school, a church, a community taking up this every day responsibility of meeting concrete material needs of people seeking freedom. And when they were connected from point a to b to c, they become something greater than the individual acts of protest and resistance, what they end up becoming is a vast network of projects of Survival, and that really was what the underground railroad was doing. This network of projects of survival, following the first act of enslaved people and themselves and …creating [that flow] from south to north, and that in turn provide the motive force for the abolitionist movement. In other words that movement is anchored in the survival activity, taking place to each of these dots, and when they are connected ... they can power and fuel movement that eventually changes society.”

As she described those tiny dots, I thought of us. I thought of Cortland, yes, -- not only been one of those dots on the underground railroad, but that for over 200 years, even today, what they do best are those projects of survival- of feeding the community, sewing bandages for soldiers during the wars, being a place of gathering in critical times.

Then I thought of Athens, how they fed folks during the great flood of 2009, and now how they are a primary hub of LGBTQAI+ activism in our very red valley.

Or consider Binghamton’s partnership with “beloved community” a group who offers community meals especially for unhoused people. How Binghamton UU joined in partnership with them to provide a commercial grade kitchen and supplies, and volunteers for prepping and serving hundreds of people.

I began to understand that these are not separate things- meeting survival needs and acts of protest and resistance. When we feed one anther, when we take care of those basic every day needs for the most vulnerable, it’s important, not just in the moment but in building movements that create lasting change, the way the underground railroad served as a motive force for the Abolitionist movement which ultimately ended slavery.

What we do in our tiny dots matters, has mattered in historically critical moments, AND it is the connection of those dots that creates movement, creates flow of energy and resources and connection.

That’s us! I thought. We may be small but we are the ones who know our neighbors. We know our communities in a way only those who live and seve there can. Each time we offer food or our space, or use our networks to amplify important voices, we shine like stars.

And look, we are part of a vast constellation -- a vast network. The same kind of network that overturned hundreds of years of slavery. Here, I thought, is an image to guide us forward.

The next part of the webinar was little 3 minute presentations by dozens of organizers from all over our region. One after another a savvy organizer with feet in their community, would tell us about the amazing, life saving, oppression challenging work they were doing in this great diversity of organizations and communities. The tears just started rolling down my cheeks – we are not alone (I felt it in my heart, in my bones). And we, all of us here, are exactly where we need to be to do our part now, just as we have been for generations.

The work we do as individual congregations is important, but when we connect into a constellation, a network, this is how the movement happens.

Maybe 100,000 people followed the underground railroad to freedom, and they needed each of those tiniest of places to connect to the vast network. As you consider today's problems, remember your heritage, remember that being one of those life giving, connecting points is something we already know how to do, it’s in our congregational DNA.

These are such hard times, and there are huge forces of change at work in our world, but this is how we will survive, and this is how we will create beauty and joy and places where love wins. We will reach out our hands to the people we are able to reach, and trust that they will reach out their hands beyond our own reach.

How grateful I am to have a place in this constellation with all of you.

Growing Spiritually

 

When I was in my 20s and heading off to seminary, I had this idea that the spiritual journey was like climbing a mountain to enlightenment. I knew very few people were said to reach enlightenment, but this was the goal. Thinking back on it now it seems like a sort of like the Olympics of spirituality. Many would compete, few would get to the top.

Eventually I remembered that I’m a universalist. Why would a loving God set up a survivor style obstacle between humans and the divine? And while it does seem that some unique people like St. Francis or St Clare or Desmond Tutu or the Dali Lama do come to a special spiritual wisdom, I postulated that a God who loves everyone would also have something like those lovely paved paths at a good state park that is accessible to everyone. A loving God would make a way for everyone.

In our church mission statement, we talk about “growing spiritually.” What I like about this phrase is that we all grow -- it’s something that happens naturally without us thinking too hard about it. Sometimes we have growing pains, sometimes it’s disorienting, but growth is the most natural thing in the world. What does it mean to grow spiritually, and what does it mean to grow spiritually as a UU? I used to think the goal was to grow into someone else, someone better, but in midlife I finally understand the goal is to grow into ourselves, to be the only person we can be, to serve the web of life with our unique gifts and capacities.

A yoga teacher in a big studio I visited out in California once said “keep practicing and eventually you’ll be pain free.” It was a good class, I was enjoying it, but that made me pause- To me being pain free is not really a spiritual goal. It’s a desire for probably every living being, but I’m very skeptical of any teacher or practice that promises the goal is to be pain free. I had studied Buddhism in seminary with a real Theravada monk, saffron robes and all, and he introduced me to the Buddhist teaching that pain is inevitable, it’s part of being alive. But how we interact with the pain, how we approach the pain, the choices we make- concerns much of Buddhist philosophy.

Sadly, we are in a time right now when there is a lot of pain in the world, and in our own lives. If we believed that the goal of spiritual growth was to become pain free, I for one would be failing right now.

Consider the story of St. Francis we heard last week, he was a veteran and a POW, and never fully healed physically from that time, but that experience was a wake up call for him, a catalyst that began a tremendous period of spiritual growth. For Francis spiritual growth looked like a desire to follow God more closely, specifically following the example of Jesus. There was no one else around him on the path he felt called to, so he had to forge a new path in his Catholic tradition. For him it that growth started with prayer and wondering and deep listening, and leaving material things behind.

Or consider the poet Mary Oliver, whose poems have inspired so many of us. She felt called to spend a lot of time in nature, noticing carefully, listening, until she began to feel a sense of mutuality among the living things. In this way she began to heal her childhood trauma.

I think of spiritual growth not as one path we all need to follow to a common goal, but more like how a plant grows. Compare the white cedar tree that grows only a few inches a year, with the goal of becoming straight and strong and tall, with the pumpkin vine growing across my friend’s front yard, which I swear grows inches a day sometimes. Zebras have kind of a dangerous childhood, so they are ready to walk a few minutes after birth. For humans it can take a year or longer. Fish of course never walk at all. Well, most fish…Unitarian Universalists honor the diversity of nature, and the diversity of humans. Pluralism is one of our 7 values. Each spiritual journey is as unique as the humans who make them.

In general plants of all species grow towards the sun, and in general we humans row in relationship -- to the divine, to ourselves, to the web of life which includes our human communities. This is the definition I would offer you today- spiritual growth is growing in relationship to the divine, to ourselves, to the web of life. And while we are always growing, by setting our intention and being mindful we can guide that growth toward whatever is sacred, towards what is larger than ourself, and towards our own deepest truest self.

In our poem today, Molly Remer says:

Be too awake
for there are lakes of longing
within you
and you know how to swim.

When I was being trained as a spiritual director our teacher often suggested we “let desire lead” – which kind of blew my mind. This kind of blew my mind, but it has turned out to be good advice. I believe there is something in us, like the desire of the zebra to get up and walk so soon after being born, there is something innate in us that points the way towards spiritual growth. Or as the Buddha says in our story [The Party, traditional retold by Sarah Conover] ”is there not a jewel within that you should attend to?”

So there’s a kind of growth that is part of our innate nature, but there is also the way we grow in response to the world around us.

Plants offer such wonderful images of that. In my back yard there is limited sun, and so all the plants lean and stretch and bend towards it. Clover in a yard that is regularly mowed will bloom at a shorter height than clover in a meadow. We grow one way in response to the presence of a caring, loving friend or community, we grow another way in response to a toxic workplace or the loss of a friend.

I think of the events in my own life that have helped me grow more loving, for example. The kind loving people who taught me something new about love by their example. Or the hard things that broke my spirit, and were healed by love. Of the experiences in my own life that taught me sometimes I could even be that loving presence to someone else who was hurting or broken.

This kind of learning lasts our whole lives. I can’t believe I had never known until last week that throughout our lives our bones deconstruct themselves so they can reconstruct themselves. So even once you stop getting taller, your bones continue to remodel themselves your whole life.[i] According to the Cleveland clinic website: “… if a bone is cracked, damaged or broken, osteocytes trigger a reaction that attracts osteoclasts to dissolve the area around the break (to resorb damaged bone tissue) and osteoblasts to lay down new bone tissue, so it can begin to heal.” I think spiritual growth can be like that too. Life wears us down, sometimes with little microscopic damages, other times bigger blows to body or spirit. Both body and spirit grow to repair and heal us. Not all new growth happens in response to damage, sometimes it’s because you started weightlifting, or walking or dancing more, and the bones grow harder to support you. Some practices we choose make body and or spirit stronger! This is just to say, you are never done growing spiritually -- your spirit, your soul continues to grow in response to what you meet and what you do and what you experience in life.

Both poems I chose for today are expressions of the poets attending the jewel within. Both describe a solitary journey, an individual journey. But one important thing about the spiritual journey is that we don’t have to do it alone. In fact, if we are growing in relationship we CAN'T do it alone- relationship requires the participation of another. I remember being little and making the visit to Gramma and Grampa. How happy she was to see us! Sometimes she would burst into tears she was so happy (we lived a long way away) I love this as an image of the divine, not like a remote God who lives on a mountain top that only the elite can climb, but one who loves us and is glad for time we spend coming closer.

Or I think of my 2 little dogs at he end of the day when I come home from being out, or stand up from my desk after a long day of work -- how delighted they are to have my attention, to just sit on the sofa together and get their ears scritchled. This is a natural response when we turn our attention towards those we care about, who know us deeply. As we spend time on our relationship to the divine, to our self, to the web of life, the relationship blooms and grows.

I think this is why so many folks experience a sense of connection to the sacred in nature. Because looking out over that meadow, or mountain or lake, we see the aliveness of everything, we feel our connectedness to the web of life. And the more time we spend tending that relationship, whether it is sitting on the front porch watching the bird feeder, or picking trash out of the creek, or harvesting the first pumpkin of the year, the web of life meets us, reminds us that it is there all the time holding and feeding us, and being fed by us.

The poet Danush Lameris writes:

Now, all I know is that I want
to get closer to it—to the rocky slope, the orange petals
of the nasturtium adorning the fence, the wind’s sudden breath.
Close enough that I can almost feel, at night, the slight pressure
of the stars against my skin.

One has to set aside “elaborate plots, its complicated pleasures” not to cut ourselves off from the web of life, but to listen more carefully, to get closer to, that which holds us in a much larger embrace.

As Unitarian Universalists we tend to believe that much of spiritual growth is driven by our innate longing coming awake, our inner sense of integrity, our conscience, our sense of connection, of beauty and delight, of compassion, of love. Part of growing spiritually is learning to develop our capacity to listen, and to discern.

But I want to assure you there are guides and teachers, with guidance a bit more clear and specific than the wind, or the stars. As UUs in modern times we have tended to focus on living lives of integrity, of serving justice and growing love. These are good nourishment for our spirits, as we hone that inner sense of integrity, as we notice where we are uniquely called to help, to nurture, to speak up, to protect, to care, to build. And in the acting and the doing, in the discerning, we are held by community, and we learn from community. Just as how on a mountain top we might glimpse a view that brings us awe and wonder and a sense of coming home to ourselves, sometimes in community we feel love grow, we feel compassion and tenderness, we feel truth being spoken, and this too nourishes our spirit and helps us grow, and sometimes this too brings us awe and wonder. So congregational life helps us on this outward, extroverted path of spiritual growth.

There is also a more introverted path, attention to the jewel within. Part of the reason I became a spiritual director was because I felt a desire for more intention and more guidance on my inward journey. My own spiritual directors never drew me a map, but helped me notice how I was growing, especially when some big disorienting change was happening in my life and in my spirit. They have helped me listen for that inward guidance telling me which way to grow, discerning if I was growing towards the sun, towards love, towards spirit, towards connection. Since we are all unique, it can often help to have some individual guidance or companionship. If you ever have a question about your own spiritual path, your own spiritual growth, as your minister I’m here to talk with you about that, or to help you find the right teachers and guides that are the best fit for you. Your community can be one of those guides. In the Buddhist tradition the Sangha, the religious community, is an invaluable jewel. A community supports us when we feel lost, and provides collective wisdom and encouragement when we go astray.

Now if all of that feels kind of a lot, I guess it is. One of the hard things about being a UU is that supporting a diversity of paths, a diversity of beliefs is complex. So, in closing I’ll make it simple:

You are already growing spiritually, have been growing spiritually your whole life. And in fact that’s a great question to ponder, or maybe discuss with a friend- how have you already grown?

We are all growing to become who we uniquely are in service to life.

We are growing in connection to the divine, to ourselves and to the web of life.

We don’t do it alone, we have many guides and teachers, sometimes in unexpected places.

And if you ever get confused and lose your way, head towards love.




[i] https://www.osteoporosis.foundation/health-professionals/about-osteoporosis/bone-biology

Making Peace: St. Francis and the Sultan

painting by Giotto "Trial by Fire"

Story: St. Francis and the Sultan [i]

This is a true story, from long ago.

If you have ever heard of St. Francis, maybe you have heard that St. Francis loved peace. But maybe you didn’t know that Francis of Assisi was a veteran. When he was around 19 or 20 he went to fight the neighboring city of Perugia, and was captured and was a prisoner of war for a year!

That experience of war, and his imprisonment changed him. This traumatic experience made him question his life, and started his quest for meaning that set him on a holy path.

Now this time 800years ago was the time of the crusades, when the pope was sending soldiers to the middle east to reclaim Jerusalem for Christianity. In 1217 the 5th crusade began, and at this time Francis was in his 30s, this was after Francis had started his Franciscan order, those brothers who lived together simply, taking a vow of poverty and praying together.

We don’t know what inspired Francis, Some say Francis was moved by the treatment he saw of Jewish and Muslim people that got nasty as the war rhetoric turned violent against non-Christians, but Francis decided he wanted to do something to help spread god’s peace, and he wanted to do it the way Jesus might have done it. He decided if he could just go to Egypt and talk to the enemies, he could convert them to Christianity and end the war. He asked for permission from his Cardinal (Ugolino) to go, and off he went with brother Illuminato.

One of the amazing things about this journey is that the Franciscan brothers had promised never to ride a horse, or to carry a backpack or a purse. So Francis and Illuminato would have had to walk all the way to where the boats were that sailed to Damietta in Egypt. 

Cardinal Pelagius is in charge of the siege there. The plan is if they can conquer Damietta at the mouth of the Nile, they can have a clear path to Jerusalem. The Crusaders are roundly defeated in battle. The sultan offers a fair peace treaty, which would give the Christians access to their holy sites. This cardinal is actually very strongly in favor of the war, and when Francis and Illuminato show up asking to try to bring peace, at first he is not excited about letting Francis go, but he knows, and Francis knows, that walking across enemy lines to talk to the enemy is dangerous, especially since people have been saying what people always say about their enemy- that they are non believers, that they are not really humans, that they are cruel beasts[ii]. Both The cardinal and Francis know that if he goes, he might be killed, but Francis is a very devout man, willing to lay down his life for peace, and for God, so the Cardinal lets him go.

Sure enough Francis is arrested by the guards, and some say beaten. But he is brought before Sultan Malik al-Kamil.

Now what the usual retellings of this story don’t mention, is that the sultan was a wise man, a devout man. So when Francis comes before him asking that the Sultan and his followers to convert to Christianity, the Sultan declines, but does invite Francs to stay for a couple of weeks. It seems that both men are affected by the visit. Francis watches these devout men pray 5 times a day, sees they are not monsters, but people.

When Francis returns to cardinal Pelagius, the cardinal is unmoved by what Francis has learned. He still refuses the treaty. Like some people in our own time he wants to see the enemy destroyed utterly. The city of Damietta, a city of 80,000 people eventually succumb to disease and starvation, the Sultan is forced to retreat. Only a handful of people from that city survive.

Now the Crusaders march on to Cairo. They see an easy path to the city, but what they don’t know, not being from around there, is that this is the flood bed of the Nile. The sultan cleverly releases the drainage channels, and suddenly the crusaders are marching in mud, and camping in mud. They are bogged down, and disease and hunger begin to set in. Now I wonder, what would you do, if the enemy who had caused the death of a whole city, of 80000 people, that same army was totally exposed, and might die just as those innocent civilians had died of disease and starvation?...Well the sultan, despite his generals encouraging him to strike now while the enemy was desperate and vulnerable, ordered thousands of bushels of bread for the soldiers, and [barley] for the horses delivered to his enemy each day.

The crusading army’s hearts were changed, and they turned and went home. This was the moment the ended the 5th crusade.

The sultan continued to rule for another 20 years, and all that time had fair policies for Christians and the Christian holy sites in his land.

So this is the story of 2 wise, brave people who stood up for peace, Francis of Assisi who traveled all the way to Egypt at peril of his own life to share Jesus’s teachings of peace, and the Sultan who ended the 5th crusade with lifesaving generosity and mercy for his enemy.


Reflection
In the basilica St. Francis in Assisi, walls are covered with huge frescoes telling the life story of St. Francis. There is one fresco that tells the story of Francis’ trip to the sultan. The traditional story, [the version I offer here is from Timothy Verdon The story of St. Francis of Assisi in 28 Scenes] begins like the one I told you before, that Francis traveled to Egypt to convert the Muslims, knowing he risked his own life, and Sultan Melek-al Kame “listened to him willingly and strongly urged him to remain with him, but hesitated to accept Francis’s invitation to be converted with all his subjects.” The painting of this meeting with the sultan centers on a version of the story told by Bonaventure in the 1260s. In this version:

“Francis then asked him to have a fire lit, ‘the biggest possible’ saying: I together with your priests will enter the fire, and in that way at least seeing the evidence you will be able to recognize which faith should be considered most certain and most holy’ but the sultan replied, ‘I do not believe that any of my priests has the desire to expose himself to the fire, and face torture to defend his faith.’ And Bonaventure adds “that the sultan in fact ‘had seen one of his priests, famous and of an advanced age, disappear as soon as heard the words of the challenge.’ At that point Francis offered to enter the fire alone if the sultan promised to convert should the saint emerged unharmed.” [p. 32-33]

This is the moment captured in Giotto’s painting. This is the version of the story we would know if we grew up going to church with paintings of that tale.

It is only in recent decades, as Christian historians and scholars have entered into dialogue with Muslim historians and scholars, that we begin to understand the story has 2 sides.

Verdan tells us “in this fresco, Giotto splits the composition from top to bottom, with the sultan and his court on the right and Francis on the left. At the root of the insurmountable distance between these two worlds is … money because while Francis is prepared to give his life, the sultan offers only “many precious gifts”

But Paul Moses, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and now professor of journalism, in his 2009 book “The Saint and the Sultan[i]” (made into a movie “the sultan and the saint[ii]” a few years later) brought to a western audience a fuller story- that the sultan himself was a devout man, a wise man and because of that, spared Francis’s life, though it was not a popular decision. Says Dr. Todd m. Johnson

Professor of global Christianity and mission “He was the same age as Francis and was known as a mystic, a man of culture, and a lover of religious poetry. He studied medicine and surrounded himself with scholars—astronomers, doctors, and Sufis—whom he frequently consulted.” The sultan entered into this encounter with Francis, and ultimately it was through the sultan’s generosity and mercy that the 5th crusade came to an end. The Muslim scholars knew about the sultan [Malik al-Kamil] but we never thought to ask. Christians of that time could only imagine him as a monstrous enemy, miraculously tamed by Brother Francis.

Isn’t it funny how we can be so oblivious sometimes about the other perspectives in a story we think we know?

Another thing the old stories don’t tell us is that Francis himself was changed by his meeting. Modern scholars look at a famous prayer that he wrote on retreat at La Verna, I’ll share just a portion of that:

You alone are holy, Lord, the only God;
and Your deeds are wonderful.
You are strong. You are great.
You are the Most High…

You are love. You are wisdom.
You are humility. You are patience…

You are joy and gladness.
You are justice and moderation.
You are all our riches. You are enough for us.

You are beauty. You are gentleness.
You are our protector. You are our courage.
You are our guardian and defender.
You are our haven and our hope…[iii]

In Islam, learning and meditating on the 100 names of god is a traditional spiritual practice. Notice now much Francis’s praises are similar to the Muslim 100 names of god, here is just a bit of that, see if you notice Francis’s inspiration. 

“He is Allah (God), the Creator, the Originator. The Fashioner; to Him belong the most beautiful names: whatever is in the heavens and on earth, do declare His praises and Glory. And He is the Exalted in Might, The Wise. (Quran 59:24)

Here are a few of those 100 names: 

· The Most Gracious
· The Most Merciful
· The King, The Sovereign
· The Most Holy
· The Peace and Blessing
· The Guardian, The Preserver
· The Utterly Just
· The Subtly Kind
· The Strong
· The Wise
· the Defender
· The Loving, The Kind One
· The Patient, The Timeless [iv] Scholars suggest the devotion practices of the Muslims he met inspired his own writing, his own practice.

Scholars also note that when Francis wrote his “order” for the Franciscans, in chapter 16 it specifically mentions guidelines for being among non-believers, which was a radical idea at the time:

“therefore any brother who, by divine inspiration, desires to go among the Saracens [Saracen is an old timely word for people who lived in Arabia] and other nonbelievers should go with the permission of his minister… as for the brothers who go, they can live spiritually among [ the Saracens and nonbelievers] in two ways. One way is not to engage in arguments or disputes, but to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake…” the other is “to proclaim the word of God when they see that it pleases the lord, so they may believe…” [v] 

This is what Francis himself had done; many accounts tell that the reason Francis was admitted to the sultan’s presence, and able to remain was in part because he was respectful and didn’t disparage their faith, did not argue or dispute.

And this I think is the core of my message to us today. We live in times when sides are entrenched – one side against one another, and violence is increasingly common way to interact with folks “on the other side” folks who are “non believers” in what you may hold dear. This story of Francis and the sultan might be a touchstone for us. Perhaps we might feel called to go among folks who believe differently than us. The story shows us that there is a sacred something that can happen when 2 or more people willingly come together to meet without argument or dispute. There may be times ahead when we may summon the bravery to try to bring peace to places that seem dangerous to us, to be inspired be the example of Francis. Or perhaps we may be inspired by the example of the Sultan, who received Francis, and be open to the surprise that someone from the enemy camp may have wisdom, compassion and mercy, may be looking for a way to reduce suffering, to stop the warring. Not everyone is called to that path, but we who stand in the Universalist tradition may find ourselves to be so called.

Consider also the scholars and journalists who finally after many centuries came together with their incomplete pieces of the story, to make a deeper, more complex understanding of that famous moment 800 years ago. Perhaps there are stories we need to hear from people we haven’t thought to ask.

“Why did Francis undertake such risk?” asks professor Johnson
Remarkably, this encounter was rooted in Francis’ vision of universal human fraternity, what we might call today the imago Dei—the fact that every human is made in the image of God and therefore worthy of honor and respect.”[vi]

That sounds a lot like what we Universalists believe. We believe that there are not 2 kinds of people, good and evil, saved and damned, but just imperfect human people who sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad things. And often get caught up in oppressive systems that do great harm. And so we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person[vii].

Our divided world needs our Universalist faith, May we be inspired to bravely seek out and nurture sacred connection between beings. And perhaps the story of St. Francis and the sultan will help us stay open to the possibility that out there among the “non believers” could be a St. Francis, A sultan Malik al-Kamil who could transform our own hearts and help us create peace.

modern icon by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM

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[i] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6726087-the-saint-and-the-sultan?

[ii] https://www.sultanandthesaintfilm.com/

[iii] St. Francis wrote "The Praises of God" in September 1224 on Mount La Verna, also called Parchment to Brother Leo

 [iv] https://www.pro-quo.com/99-names-of-god-islam.html

[v] From Francis and Clare the complete work p. 121 from the earlier order chapter 16

[vi] https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/damietta-francis-and-the-sultan/

[vii] https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles

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[i] Sources:

Film- the sultan and the saint: https://www.sultanandthesaintfilm.com/about-the-film/

https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/damietta-francis-and-the-sultan/

here’s a cool resource worth diving into: https://ofm.org/uploads/SGME_Dialogo_Francesco_Sultano_2019_EN.pdf

[ii] https://ofm.org/uploads/SGME_Dialogo_Francesco_Sultano_2019_EN.pdf p. 29 citing de

Vitry as related in the Historia occidentalis