The Mystery of Easter

 

Luke 23:55-56, 24 1-11 [New Jerusalem Bible]
Meanwhile the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus were following behind. They took note of the tomb and how the body had been laid.

Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. And on the Sabbath day they rested, as the law required.

On the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn, they went to the tomb with the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, but on entering they could not find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled about this, two men in brilliant clothes suddenly appeared at their side. Terrified, the women bowed their heads to the ground. But the two said to them, ‘why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen. Remember what he told you when he was in Galilee that the son of man was destined to be handed over into the power of sinful men and be crucified, and rise again on the third day. And they remembered his words

And they returned form the tomb and told all this to the Eleven and to all the others. The women were Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. And the other women with them also told the apostles but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them.

Reflection:
This week, Holy week, is the most sacred in the Christian tradition. From Jesus' procession with all his followers into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to the last supper with his disciples, betrayal and arrest on Maundy Thursday, his crucifixion and death on Good Friday, we come to the scripture reading for today. Joseph of Arimathea takes down Jesus’ body from the cross, wraps it in a shroud and puts it in a tomb “hewed in stone.” The women who had traveled all the way from Galilee with Jesus witness.

Then the women prepare the spices and ointments to care for the body of one who is deceased, until, as observant Jews, they rested for the sabbath. Holy Saturday is a day of grieving… all those followers, disciples and friends who had loved Jesus dearly as a man, as a teacher, as a religious leader must have been devastated, each grieving in their own way. The women left to finish their traditional funeral care for the body at the first sign of dawn, but they are met by an empty tomb, confusion. Two angels give them the surprising, mind blowing news, that He was risen.

All these women go to tell the disciples what they have seen, but (and I love this part) “this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them”. It’s neither the first time nor the last that people haven’t believed women.

As we gather this Easter morning, some of us are Christian, others were raised in different traditions or none at all. We come with a diversity of perspectives on this festival day. Historically, while our Universalist congregations tended to be pretty traditional Christians who believe in a loving God, Unitarians have long questioned the divinity of Jesus, and have often sought a religion without miracles. Thomas Jefferson once published a bible where he literally cut out all the miracles with a pair of scissors. Unitarian, transcendentalist Preacher Theodore Parker preached long[i] ago that it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in miracles to be faithful, to lead a good life. Born and raised in that Unitarian tradition, I have long sympathized with Doubting apostle Thomas, we did not believe that Jesus had returned until Thomas put his hands on the wounds Jesus suffered during the crucifixion. But Doubt, my friend Gloria says “is an invitation to look around, to explore.”

I take comfort in the resurrection of the earth in Springtime. This is a resurrection you can feel in the air, hear in the birdsong, and see the grey cold earth matted down under the winter snow and ice show the first signs of color, as spring emerges from “seeming death.” Every year the snow drops, and then the crocuses, and then the green grass, and the buds on the trees, and just yesterday the first daffodils and forsythia blooms. But I, like anyone who has lived in the North East, have learned to be skeptical of that first “fools spring” which, while delightful, is inevitably followed by a snowstorm and bitter cold. Nevertheless, spring does, eventually, come. I have seen it with my own eyes.

But what happened in that Tomb is a mystery. I don’t mean the kind of mystery that some good detective work can solve, I mean the kind of mystery that we will never understand fully. As UUs we don’t always do well with mystery. We love science, and reason, but the life of the spirit brushes up against mystery. There is mystery at the edges of life and death. What happens beyond this life we know. Mystery is sometimes a name for the divine, because how could our human minds comprehend what is beyond us?

As much as we study the world around us, there is so much we don’t know, and I believe there are things we will never know because their very nature is beyond our understanding. If we are going to be present with all of life, especially in the depth of life where our soul is rooted, we are going to come up against mystery.

Those women went to the tomb not seeking a miracle, but to do the hard and sacred work of caring for the body of a loved one who has died. On Easter we sing “alleluia” but I don’t think those women felt “alleluia” when they stood at the tomb, when they saw the body was missing. I imagine that even when the angels spoke to them they felt confused and bewildered. They definitely didn’t feel “alleluia” when they tried to tell the story of this mystery to the apostles and the men didn’t believe their story. On that first Easter Sunday at the empty tomb, those women who cared deeply for Jesus didn’t yet know what we know today, about the thousands of years that Jesus’s teaching and spirit have survived.

When, I wondered, and how did their hearts finally turn to joy? That is a mystery too.

“I have come through too many dark places
To waste any time censoring what is permitted
To bring me joy”

writes the poet Nell Aurelia

We have surely been through some dark places, and we need joy. Joy is part of what we are working for, what we are fighting to protect. Joy is resistance. Not an easy joy, but the joy of birdsong after winter, the joy of resurrection after seeming death. The joy of ordinary people gathering on a Sunday morning, giving and receiving love and care. If joy is available to you today, don’t let cynicism keep it down, The world needs your joy. Not a joy that skips over hard things, but the deep joy of one who has seen the realities of this hard world and, in one mysterious moment, remembers what it is to be full of life.

Today as we sing our alleluias, as we sing the joy of the season, like a bird singing their dawn song in the first rays of sun, I invite you simply to be present to the mystery of life, of death, of resurrection. And today, to open your heart to the joy of this precious life we share.

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[i] https://www.uua.org/lifespan/curricula/river/workshop9/178598.shtml

https://www.sermonindex.net/ebooks/p/parker-theodore-the-transient-and-permanent-in-christianity.pdf

Let My People Go

Passover Plate - image by David Silver 

The first time I was invited to a Passover Seder at my friend’s house, I was surprised to find that it’s not just a meal, it’s a ritual, and a story and a feast that takes the whole evening. The Seder tells the story of the Jewish flight from slavery in Egypt. There are special foods that remind us of the key moments in the Exodus story, (the Charoset which reminds us of the mortar the Hebrew people used while working while enslaved is surprisingly delicious!) The Seder involves 4 glasses of wine, singing and after a lot of waiting, a delicious feast and a scavenger hunt for the kids! As a religious educator, I’ve always been impressed by this traditional ritual that involves the whole family, and storytelling that involves all the senses. I know sometimes in this church we can’t remember what we did last year, so I’m moved by this beautiful practice that has kept the Passover story alive for centuries.

Though there are Jewish Unitarian Universalists, I am not Jewish, but I wanted to take time this morning, as our Jewish neighbors and friends prepare for Passover (which begins at sundown on Wednesday) to remember the story that is important to our UU tradition, and to liberatory theology. For those who are Christian, today is Palm Sunday, and it says in the Christian gospels that the reason that Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was to celebrate Passover. So whatever your beliefs, I hope that by spending some time with this important story, we will find resonances and wisdom that will serve us in our own time.

This is also, I’m sad to say, often a week of anti-Semitic violence and speech[i]. So I invite all of us to be on the lookout for that in the coming days, and bring our UU values of pluralism and love to the conversation, should you hear antisemitism raise its ugly head.

The story of Exodus, found in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim sacred texts, is too long for us to read from the scriptures this morning; it takes 11 weeks to tell, a portion each sabbath, in the Jewish tradition.

But it goes something like this. Centuries ago, the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt. Moses was just a baby at the time when Pharoh decreed that all Jewish infants should be killed. His mother placed him in a basket and set him adrift on the Nile River, where he was rescued by the Pharoh’s daughter. Moses grew up in Pharoh’s household, raised and educated as a prince. But the treatment of the enslaved Jewish people made him so angry he killed an overseer who was beating a Jewish person, so he fled to the hills, where he met his wife and began a family.

Scripture says that during this period “The Israelites, groaning in their slavery, cried out for help from the depths of their slavery and their cry came up to God. God heard their groaning” remembered his covenant and took note. [Exodus 2:23-25]

One day, as Moses was tending his family’s flock, Moses saw a burning bush that was not consumed by the mysterious flames, and God spoke to Moses asking him to lead his people to freedom. So Moses and his brother Aaron go to Pharaoh and tell him that God has commanded him to “let my people go.”Pharaoh refuses, and God visits a series of 10 plagues on Egypt, but “Pharaoh became obstinate, and did not let the people go.”

Finally the last and most terrible plague; to kill the firstborn in every Egyptian household. In preparation, God gives a series of very precise commandments about sacrificing a lamb (religious animal sacrifice was traditional at the time) and how each Hebrew family must mark their door with the blood of the lamb dipped on an herb called hyssop. Any house marked with the blood would be passed over. The scripture says that they must observe this as ritual for all time, “and when our children ask you ‘what does this ritual mean’ you will tell them, it is the Passover sacrifice in honor of Yahweh who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt” [exodus 12:27]

This tragedy finally moves the heart of Pharaoh. When his own son dies, and he at last says the Hebrews can go.

Here I want to pause for a bit, and notice that this is not an easy story. I remember hearing this story as a 2nd grader visiting my friend’s Sunday school, and being horrified by the violence. I mean, there’s a LOT to be disturbed by in this story.

But one part never made sense to me - throughout the story, the scripture says after each plague “God hardened Pharoh’s heart”[ii] Which always bothered me. If God had the power to change someone’s heart, why wouldn’t God soften Pharoh’s heart and give him compassion?

In their book You Only Get What You’re Organized To Take, the authors note that:

“people have wrestled with this moment for centuries. Why must a society suffer for the sins of a few, and why must its ruler become crueler as conditions deteriorate? Why would God make things harder for the very people God claims to love and protect?”

Thank you! That was just what I was wondering!

They continue “We have always thought of this moment in Exodus less as an ethical quandary and more as an accurate depiction driven by deep inequality.” Dan Jones, a Jewish organizer writes “what use would we have for this story if Pharaoh let the Israelites go simply because he saw the error of his ways and not because he was forced to do so? Our long experience tells us that only a society in crisis is a society ripe for transformation.” [p. 191]

Certainly, this version, with the hardened heart could have been written in our own times. For centuries this story has been passed from generation to generation because it resonates with something we recognize in our own experience. We recognize that when the people ask for their freedom, the leaders, the oppressive systems don’t just say “no worries, glad you asked.” As the author says rather “the powerful double-down on deceit and violence.” That story we recognize, as our ancestors recognized before us.

This story has been told by oppressed peoples in every age, (Consider the song "Go Down Moses" from the African American Spiritual Tradition - just one example of how the story has inspired the folks impacted by slavery and racial oppression in the United States). It is one of the foundational stories of liberatory theology, at the core of which is the notion that God wants us to be free, especially those folks, like the enslaved people in the Passover story, who are most oppressed. There is a different story we hear in our times, the story that that we can tell who God has chosen because they are wealthy, they are powerful, their lives are going pretty well. But in this story we find in the scriptures, God is clearly and repeatedly siding with folks at the bottom of the power structure. This is a central idea in liberatory theology, that God sides with folks who are poor, folks at the margins, folks who are struggling, folks in pain. In our UU congregation we are theist, atheist and agnostic, so if you are having trouble with this image of God, consider Liberation theology as an ethical standpoint in which we view the ethics of a society through its impact on the most vulnerable. We UUs believe that we have a responsibility to help create a more compassionate, ethical world. And when we are choosing our actions, we are called to let the needs, the pain of our most vulnerable neighbors guide us. And when we are the most vulnerable, to know our voice, our experience is important and will help guide us to a better world.

Well, after that terrible last plague, Pharoh sends the Jewish people away. They leave the only home they have ever known, taking with them their flocks and herds. Scripture tells us “the people carried off their dough still unleavened, their bowls wrapped in their cloaks, on their shoulders 12:34 “and with the dough which they had brought from Egypt they baked unleavened cakes, because the dough had not risen, since they had been driven out of Egypt without time to linger or to prepare food for themselves.” 12:40 This is the story of the Matzoh you see on Passover tables, and enjoy in delicious matzoh ball soup.

But then, as we are learning to expect, God hardens Pharoh’s heart, and Pharoh sends his troops after the refugees. After all, the Egyptian economy is going to suffer without all that unpaid labor.

There are resonances here for the struggle in our own country, in our own time; even battles we have already fought, human rights we thought were settled law can be taken away by hard-hearted leaders. But we persist. We keep going towards liberation for all.

When the Israelites see the troops coming, the people are of course frightened and discouraged. They say: 14:10-14 “Was it for lack of graves in Egypt that you had to lead us out to die in the desert? What was the point of bringing us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you as much in Egypt? Leave us alone we said, we would rather work for the Egyptians! We prefer to work for the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

That’s so human, isn’t it? We yearn to leave behind a hard reality, but the process of liberation is scary. It is so hard for us to let go of then known, even if it oppresses us. We get discouraged; we lose faith. Liberation is not a sprint; it is a journey.

It is then God parts the red sea for the freed people to cross in safety.

Where do you see yourself in the Exodus story this year at Passover? 
I feel like maybe one of the Hebrew people in the middle of the plagues; the waves of bad things keep happening, but the hearts of our decision makers seem hardened against the cries of the oppressed in our own time. Yet I am still eating leavened bread, waiting for something to shift, for a movement, a moment, when a way opens for us to be free.

So often religion is used to uphold the status quo, but this Exodus story takes the perspective of enslaved people, who then become refugees as they flee oppression.

The book of Deuteronomy, where many of the religious laws are found, points to this story as a reminder of why we must be ethical and compassionate in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable. The book of Deuteronomy repeats “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt” as it instructs us that we “must not infringe the rights of the foreigner or the orphan” and that we always leave for hungry people.[iii] Even when we are comfortable, and our plates are full, this story serves as a reminder that it has been otherwise, and it may be again.

I invite you to carry this Passover story with you in the coming days, to notice where it resonates for you this year in our own time as peoples longing to be free encounter oppression. I invite you to remember that, as it says in the scriptures, God sees those who suffer, God hears our cries, and God will be with us on the road to freedom. And for the Humanists among us, we see one another’s cry, we see one another when suffer, and together we make the journey to freedom .

End Notes
[i] https://religionnews.com/2020/04/03/palm-sunday-the-most-anti-semitic-time-of-the-christian-calendar/

[ii] Exodus 7:13 ("...heart was hardened, and he would not listen..."), Exodus 9:12 ("But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart..."), and Exodus 8:32 ("Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also...").

[iii] Exodus 24:18 and 24:22, 15:15, and 16:12 

Finding our Place in the Social Change Ecosystem

Every week as we share our concerns I hear folks say “I’m worried about the state of the world, and I wish there was more I could do.” The problems are so big, and we are so small in comparison … I know I feel that way. But remember, we are all part of the interconnected web of life. We do nothing alone.

Last year, when the new administration took office, social media was filled with posts about what we MUST do, as if, for example, calling your representatives daily was the only way to be a good citizen committed to social change. When this diagram appeared in my feed, I felt a sigh of relief. I’ll be honest  -- I hate talking to strangers on the phone, and it didn’t seem like those hundreds of postcards my neighbors and I had sent were having any impact we could see. But some things that didn’t look anything like protesting or lobbying did seem to make an impact- remember when the Athens congregation opened the church the day after the election for our neighbors to share lunch and their feelings? Even though I joined on Zoom I could FEEL the power of that. My friends and I shared news about the boycotts and spending blackouts we would participate in, and some of those boycotts have made a difference too. 

Around this time last year I organized a couple of neighborhood trash pickups (we live in downtown Ithaca, and so when the winter snows melt, it reveals months of litter. Yuck) because I had this sense that we were going to need to strengthen our local communities, to build capacity for what we could do together. During that first trash pickup a neighbor called out to us, on that almost pleasant early spring day, and asked what we were up to. I looked and realized we had strayed a bit far from the sidewalk into her yard. She wasn’t concerned about that -- she was excited that we were out picking up trash in the neighborhood. We introduced ourselves, and by the end of our talk had added her and her housemate to our neighborhood text message group where we alert each other to emergencies and ask to borrow a cup of sugar. Later that summer, when the city repaved our road for the first time in 40 years, she organized a block party and invited the mayor, who (we were amazed) came an did a ribbon cutting on our little block. There we met even more neighbors, and the Mayor listened politely to my concerns about the increasing number of vacant houses in our neighborhood. It didn’t change what was happening in Washington, but that trash pickup has strengthened our neighborhood connections and our capacity to respond.

In this year’s UUA common read, Depa Iyer, a long time part of social change groups, goes deeper that framework that I saw on social media, describing the many ways we can pitch in. I’ll go through them pretty quickly  and I invite each of you to consider as we list these, are there any that you often play in the groups you are a part of? Are there roles you are drawn to or would be interested in trying in the future? 

Front line responders- “we address community crisis by assembling and organizing resources, networks and messages.”

Right now in Ithaca, a building that houses at risk people was condemned because broken windows in the only exit stairwell made it unsafe. The front line responders include those who immediately jumped in to find out what folks who’d suddenly had to leave their homes needed, from diapers to pet food. They are organizing donations, tracking the responses of the landlord and the timeline of the city and helping coordinate a way forward.

Visionaries “We imagine and generate our boldest possibilities, hopes and dreams and remind us of our direction”

This vision could be as simple as “what if the Valley had it’s own pride celebration?”

Builders: “We develop, organize and implement ideas, practices, people and resources in service to a collective vision”

That’s all the folks who said- great idea, how can I help? They set up tables, planned menus cooked the food, built a mailing list.

Disrupters “we take uncomfortable and risky actions to shake up the status quo, to raise awareness, and to build power”

Like the folks blowing whistles and putting themselves in front of ICE agents in their neighborhood, or folks asking hard questions in the city council meeting.

Caregivers “we nurture and nourish the people around us by creating and sustaining a community of care, joy and connection.”

The folks who host our social hour are caregivers. The folks who reach out to members and friends when they are hurting are caregivers.

Experimenters: We innovate, pioneer and invent we take risks and course correct as needed.

The folks who helped us pivot to zoom worship during covid, and then helped create the systems we use for multi platform worship are experimenters

Weavers: we see the through-lines of connectivity between people, places organizations, ideas and movements.

Those of us who help connect with our partner congregations, and other partner organizations in our community are weavers.

Storytellers: We craft and share our community stories, cultures, experiences histories and possibilities through art, music, media and movement

Like the author of our children’s story this morning

Healers: We recognize and tend to the generational and current traumas caused by oppressive systems, institutions, polices and practices.

When we hold our Transgender Day of Remembrance service, we are taking the role of healers

Guides: We teach, counsel, and advise, using our gifts of well-earned discernment and wisdom.

Anytime you use the wisdom you have gained through your own experience to support people in that role today you are being a guide.

I invite you to take a moment to reflect- did any of these roles resonated with you? Are there roles you have played? Roles you would like to learn?

Now at the center what connects all those roles is our values. That’s what brings us together, and what guides the work we do. In our UU tradition we have 6 values with love at the center And I would argue that because we live in a world that is not always guided by these values, whenever we come together around our values, we are social change makers. And whether you are the person who makes the coffee, or makes worship, brings lasagna to a person recovering form surgery, the one who helps us share a vision for a better world, the one who keeps us connected, or the one everyone calls when there is a crisis and they aren’t sure what to do -- making the world a better place takes all of us. Just as this valley needs the river and the maple trees, the bird, the insects, the fish, mushrooms, the good bacteria in the soil and us too.

As in any ecosystem, we try to keep things in balance. If you have a group with too many builders and not enough visionaries and disrupters, you end up getting stuck in your ways and forgetting where you are going, or not noticing when you have lost your way. A group without any experimenters will definitely not be able to keep up with changing times, and a group with only visionaries will never get where they are going. It’s good to think from time to time about the balance of our ecosystem, and notice what is missing.

Sometimes folks who have been doing a role for a while need step back and take a different role. This helps to avoid burnout, but also makes space to invite new voices, and welcome new people into roles they might be ready to try.

Our churches also have a role within the larger eco-systems of our communities.

Unitarian Universalists have often been disrupters since our very beginning, sharing our heretical ideas that God loves everyone, or that black lives matter. During the flood of 2011 The Athens congregation was a front-line responder going from house to house asking what neighbors needed. When we offer our community meal we are being a caregiver and weaver. Each week when we gather for worship we are storytellers, and when we provide infrastructure for one of our community partners, like the Endless Mountain Pride, we are builders.

The good news this morning is that whatever your skills, your experience, there is a place for you in the ecosystem of this congregation, and in the larger movement woven together of many smaller ecosystems working to create a more just, compassionate, sustainable world. Together we and all our human and more than human neighbors co-create the world we long to see, with love at the center.

From Hand to Hand: how "women's work" helped shape our modern ideas

Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, I want to tell you a story about how women, and “woman’s work” played an important role in the history of our faith tradition. Not just our own Unitarian Universalist tradition, but many of the radical movements that were part of the protestant reformation. I first heard this story from my colleague Rev. Barbara Meyers 20 years ago, and am so grateful she was able to send me a copy of her paper on which much of this reflection is largely based.

If you look down at whatever you are wearing today, you can see that most of it is probably made of thread or yarn, whether it was woven on a loom or knit with knitting needles, most clothing starts out as thread. And to make thread, (back before polyester was invented) you take the plant materials, like cotton or linen, or the wool that comes from the hair of a sheep. The fibers are cleaned and prepared, and then someone needs to spin all those fibers into thread. Before the spinning wheel was invented, this was done by hand with a spindle. You can imagine if every thread in your clothing had to be spun by hand with a spindle, most people would not have very much clothing, and it would be passed carefully from one person to another.

It might take a 40 hour week just to spin the thread for a pair of pants[i] It took about 4-20 people spinning to provide thread for one weaver, so one of the first ways society moved from feudalism to early capitalism, was to set up systems to move raw fiber through spinning and weaving to finished cloth. Now in some areas, the whole process was done in one community, but in the verlag system we are talking about today different communities would specialize in different parts of the process. Growing and spinning the fibers would be done in the country, and the thread brought to weavers in the city. Mercantilists convinced women and girls to do this spinning at home as one of the first “cottage industries” Spinning brought a little money to women, who had few other ways of making money, and it gave a bit of freedom to unmarried women, hence the term “spinster.” (Not a living wage, mind you, spinners never made enough to move out of poverty).

Women began gathering in community to spin together, since it’s nice to spin and talk at the same time, in fact this is how communities like the Beguines began, as communities of unmarried women who spun to provide their own living. And so it was natural that ideas spread among the women spinning together.

This system also required someone to go among small farms to pick up wool (this was literally called “wool gathering[ii]”) and to go from spinner to spinner pickup up the completed thread and then take the thread to the weavers in the city. And all along the way news and ideas were passed as well.

Barbara took this map, showing the trade roots of the textile trade in the 1600s, and circled the cities where these radical ideas were popping up.[iii] The ideas were certainly passed in conversation as wool and thread and money changed hands, but also now that the new-fangled printing press had increased literacy among women and made it possible to publish tracts (like pamphlets) these also could be passed on from person to person. In the days before Facebook, before television, before radio, this fed a hunger of rural folks for fresh new ideas and news of the world. Since many of these ideas were heretical, and some were outlawed, a quiet, private way to pass on the ideas was necessary for them to survive.

What kind of radical ideas? Well even though Universalism itself didn’t form until the mid-18th century, the idea of universal salvation was one such idea. A group called the Familia Caritatis or “Family of Love” believed in Universal Salvation back in the 16th century, and they were unitarian- that is they didn’t believe in the trinity. They didn’t believe folks should be put to death for their beliefs, Scholar Mike Betrand writes “the Family's emphasis on tolerance in matters of belief strikes a modern chord, also their insistence on the necessity for every person to find their own way to God in an ongoing, lifelong process… Much Family doctrine has a curiously modern feel — principled tolerance for all faiths, cultivation of the Christ within, the necessity to love all one's neighbors, the allegorical nature of scripture (and no less powerful for that).”[iv] The Lollards were another such movement, driven underground in the 1400s, Barbara tells us “The Lollards were fiercely anti-authoritarian, anti-aristocratic, and rejected the ruling class and its law.” The Levelers believed in democracy, and expanding the vote. The Diggers believed regular people should have the right to own and farm their own land. The Friends, or Quakers, were a later movement born in the 1600s but influenced by some of these radical sects, Meyers writes: “The Friend’s beliefs stress the guidance of the Holy Spirit, … and have a long tradition of actively working for peace and opposing war. They have also supported the equal gifts of women to preach and witness for their faith.”

I love to think of those spinners long ago, women who did not have many of the rights we modern women have today -- the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to speak in church, the right to choose whether or not they would have children. How proud I am to know that ordinary women bravely played a role in passing on the ideas that mean so much to us today, ideas about each and every person having worth and dignity, opposing war and valuing peace, anti-authoritarian ideas, a belief that even ordinary people needed a say in their governance, and belief that the land belonged to everyone, and not just the ruling class. These are indeed dangerous ideas that lead to things like democracy, and women’s suffrage, and female preachers, and Universalism. I’m proud that these women, who had most likely been taught that they should not think for themselves, should not have their own ideas, discerned for themselves was true and passed on that wisdom to others..

I think fondly also of the women in our own congregation who knit and crocheted the pocket hugs we shared today, who had quilting bees and made bandages for the war effort, who passed on the teachings of universal love, and a social gospel that respected the most vulnerable, in keeping with the teachings of Jesus and the wisdom traditions of the world.

Rev. Meyer writes: “It goes without saying that complete and accurate records of what were underground religious activities do not exist; heretics needed to be circumspect and not draw attention to themselves. As Christopher Hill says, ‘A successful underground leaves no traces.’ Thus, many important events and trends were doubtless not recorded and remain lost to us.” Just as we have no records of the Cortland Congregation’s role in the underground railroad, but we remember how our congregation bravely lived our values and faith even when it was dangerous to do so. Perhaps it was because they were so quiet and unassuming that their mission was successful.

It’s heartening to consider that the small, quiet things we do have their own power to change the world for the better, to tilt the moral arc of the universe towards love and justice.

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[i] https://herhalfofhistory.com/2025/08/14/15-4-the-spindle-the-spinning-wheel-and-the-spinning-jenny/

[ii] https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/power/WoolTrade.pdf

[iii] such ideas were also spread by traveling pedlers, and the leather trade.

[iv] https://nonagon.org/ExLibris/sites/default/files/pdf/English-Family-of-Love.pdf

The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality

Fox speaks at the Techno Cosimic Mass at UCS 2005

When I went on my very first sabbatical, I commuted from my home in Santa Clara to the University of Creation Spirituality (UCS) in Oakland for a semester-long sabbatical certificate program. The school was founded by Matthew Fox, a priest who had been expelled from the Dominican order for his radical teachings, things that seem pretty normal to a Unitarian Universalist, like calling God Mother, like believing we were born in original blessing rather than original sin, like incorporating earth centered teachings, like inclusion of LGBTQ siblings. I chose UCS for my sabbatical because I was growing in a sense of calling as an environmentalist, and I wanted a spiritual grounding that would help me grown an earth centered theology and practice that would inspire and inform environmental activism.

The first night of the semester, Fox spoke to all the students – we all fit in one room, it couldn’t have been more than a few dozen of us, about the idea of “awe” based education. He quoted Heschel “awe is the beginning of wisdom” and called awe “a passionate encounter with what is.” Awe also stood for “Ancestral Wisdom Education” an education that would include wisdom beyond the human - “Stars are our ancestors too” he said.

When I signed up for my classes, the former nuns who ran the program explained that “art as meditation” was required, and that every weekend intensive had both an academic and an art as meditation component. We began each morning with worship, would have a seminar on the topic, then art as meditation in the afternoon before returning to our academic topic. My first class was about the Universe story, and that is where I first encountered the Cosmic Walk we shared a couple of weeks ago.

From Fox himself I took a class on Meister Eckhart a Dominican priest who lived in the 1200s in Germany who was tried for heresy at the end of his life. It was in the writings of Eckhart that Fox found roots of the 4 paths of Creation Spirituality, an alternative to the traditional 3 fold path of the Christian spiritual journey, Purgation, Illumination, and Union[i].

The first path is the Via Positiva. This is the path of awe, the path where, in Fox’s words “… God is experienced through ecstasy, joy, wonder, and delight”[ii] If you have ever stood by the crashing waves of an ocean, or under the vast sky and been filled with awe and wonder, this is the Via Positiva. We encounter the sacred through being present to the blessing of the world around us.

Fox writes, in a recent Daily Meditation: "Our hearts are rendered large by the Via Positiva, the love of life and existence that we imbibe. ‘Joy expands the heart,’ says Thomas Aquinas.
Suffering also expands the heart. As Buddhist scholar and activist Joanna Macy used to say, “when your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.”[iii]

This is the second path, the Via Negativa. In his Essential Writings, Fox says “The divine is to be met in the depths of darkness as well as in the light. ... “Daring the dark” means entering nothingness and letting it be nothingness while it works its mystery on us. “Daring the dark” also means allowing pain to be pain and learning from it.”[iv] This is, obviously, a challenging path. It contradicts a common notion that if we are on the spiritual path things should feel good, and that if things hurt, if we experience loss or pain we must have done something wrong. But heartbreak is it’s own sacred path “when your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.”

The 3rd path is the via Creativa. In his Essential Writings, Matthew says, “Beauty, and our role in co-creating it, lies at the heart of the spiritual journey.” we are “co-creators and fellow artists with God.” This is why art as meditation was always part of the curriculum at UCS, the Via Creativa is a spiritual practice of bringing something from the depths of our being out into the world.

Fox wrote in one of his daily meditations: “The Via Creativa is so often born of the Via Negativa, suffering precedes birthing just as an emptying precedes a filling. Or as Meister Eckhart put it, ‘I once had a dream, though a man I was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness. And out of this Nothingness God was born.’”[v]

My son Nick was 4 years old at the time of this sabbatical. It was one of the reasons I had chosen to stay close to home. That spring I was able to be present as my sister gave birth to her first child. So when Fox spoke in class about this idea, that the via negative leads to the creative like labor leading to birth, I had feelings. Nick’s birth had not gone as planned, and I felt the hospital had treated me as a second-class citizen because I was a home-birth transfer. Being with my sister in the hospital as she bravely labored and delivered her daughter had brought all that material up again, and it was fresh for me in class that day Fox used Birth as a metaphor for this spiritual process. I had to raise my hand and say what was in my heart. Fox said something in reply about “women say it’s all worth it when they hold their child for the first time”, but even today, 24 years later, while I rejoice that my now-grown child made it safely in to the is world, there are aspects of that labor and delivery story that still cause discomfort when they come to mind. It’s not okay how hospitals treat laboring women sometimes. It occurred to me that perhaps I should not look to a celibate man translating the teachings of another celibate man about how meaning happens around labor and birth, but I was hungry to make meaning of that difficult experience.

As I sit with that memory now, and read Fox’s words again “daring the dark … means allowing pain to be pain.” Perhaps you’ve experienced something like this too- a challenging experience, with death, with loss, with betrayal, perhaps you know how it doesn’t satisfy the soul when folks say “it’s all for the best” or “ it will turn out fine in the end.” The Via Negativa allows space to be present with the pain itself, unredeemed by what might come later. Pain is not an absence of God, though it may be an absence of the delights of the via positive, it must be met on its own terms for the soul to be satisfied.

The fourth path, the Via Transformativa is a prayerful way of saying “no” to what we cannot embrace. It is the prophetic path. Fox wrote in a blog post last month: “To protest is to pray; to resist is to pray; to say “No!” in the most creative and effective ways possible is to pray. It is to say “thank you” for the earth and air and soil and sunshine we have by defending it. Our “No!” comes from a very deep place. It calls for courage and bravery and community sharing from which we get ever more strength and courage to take on powers that be, and speak truth to power.” [vi] I consider now, that while I will never feel warm and fuzzy about my time in the hospital, my experience of giving birth to my son did lead me to be a fierce advocate for other women. My experience of trying to raise an infant with my partner Eric made me a fierce advocate for other parents.

Fox writes: “All four paths constitute a radical response to life and, taken together, are the response we give on encountering the “Ground of being”[vii] [Ground of being is theology speak for the aspect of the divine that is the foundation, the ground of all that is]. Consider through the lens of the 4 paths of Creation Spirituality the difficult times we are living through today. Hard things are happening in this country right now to our democracy, to the most vulnerable people. When we humans suffer and struggle, I believe the sacred is there with is in the struggle, in the pain. I believe the divine knows our pain, and in the Christian tradition from which Fox speaks, this is why God came to earth in the form of Jesus, and is some part of the meaning of his suffering on the cross. The betrayal and humiliation of Good Friday.

And amid this destruction and pain, I believe there is truly the potential for something new to be born. Indeed something will have to be created to fill the spaces created by the smash and burn approach of this administration, just as new growth comes in after a wildfire. The outpouring of love and support of neighbor in Minneapolis is inspiring, and uplifting, and a model of how we humans can be together in community, but I would never say it is worth the life and death of Renee Good , of Alex Pretti, of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, of families torn apart. We travel the Via Negativa when we grieve that heartbreak, and perhaps our hearts become larger, more courageous because of it.

Sometimes that suffering leads us to the Via Transformativa, the feeling that we must transform the world, and that the divine is surely there in the process of transforming the world towards justice and compassion.

As Unitarian Universalists, we believe there are many paths one can walk with the Spirit of Life, many paths that bring us closer to the ground of our own being, and closer to that which is larger than ourselves. I offer these 4 paths of Creation Spirituality today to enlarge our sense that whenever and however we respond whole-heartedly to the joys and sorrows of life, there is a prayerful path for us too. Whatever this week may hold for you, the yes of delight and gratitude, the no of emptiness or pain, the yes of creation, the no of resisting injustice, be assured the spirit of life is with you there, in the community of all creation.

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[i] https://fathersofmercy.com/three-ways-of-the-interior-life-three-stages-of-the-spiritual-life/

[ii] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2023/07/25/a-journey-through-the-four-paths-of-creation-spirituality/

[iii] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2026/02/13/why-meditate-on-sainthood-in-a-time-of-ice-epstein-files-the-rest/

[iv] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2023/08/06/week-of-7-31-8-5-2023/

[v] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2020/03/19/beyond-kali-via-negativa-yielding-to-the-via-creativa-transformativa/

[vi] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2026/01/13/resilience-resistance-interfering-practicing-our-no-as-a-prayer/

[vii] https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2026/01/13/resilience-resistance-interfering-practicing-our-no-as-a-prayer/

It's All Rocks

I love picking up rocks whenever I see something beautiful or unusual. Does anyone else like picking up rocks?

Lake Ontario has great rocks- every time I go I find new rocks I’ve never seen before.

Last time I found this funny rock… Which I guess is not really a rock. I think it’s actually a piece of sidewalk or something made by humans. 

You can see big chunks and the stuff in between, which seems to include some kind of sand or other ground up rocks. 

When I first picked up one of these up I threw it back in the lake- that’s not a real rock I thought. But the more I spent the day staring at rocks, the more I realized – isn’t that kind of what a lot of these rocks are?


Take these rocks for example, 

They’ve got big bits and small bits in-between. Lots of the rocks in Lake Ontario were made over millions of years of rocks being smashed and crushed into smaller bits, and then over millions of years, those tiny rocks being smushed until they became a brand new rock, made up of all those bits of very old rocks.

And in those old rocks are bits of plants, bits of minerals that are sometimes part of humans and fish and plants and birds, and when we die, the minerals go back into the earth, and over millions of years, some of them become part of rocks.


In fact, there is a very special place in the Sahara[i], an ancient lake bed, now dry, made up of minerals from dead microscopic beings full of phosphorus.

And when this dust gets taken up in the wind, it travels all the way to the Amazon rain forest, where it feeds the plants that are the lungs of the world. It turns out that without the dust from a dry lake bed thousands of miles away, the Amazon would not be as beautiful and lush and full of life as it is today.

Those rocks, that sandy, even a dusty lake bed are like a savings account of minerals that have been part of many different beings in many different forms.

It’s amazing to realize that even our sidewalks and streets and walls will someday become part of the massive rocks underground, or part of the sand on beaches, or first one and then the other[ii]. 

And just as the rocks we find on the beach today are like a savings account, someday all the things we see, all the things we are will go back into that rock savings account to support new forms and new life for millennia into the future.

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[i] "This trans-continental journey of dust is important because of what is in the dust, Yu said. Specifically the dust picked up from the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient lake bed where rock minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant proteins and growth, which the Amazon rain forest depends on in order to flourish."
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazons-plants/

[ii] My geologist friend Mo says this era is called the “Anthropocene” which refers to this time period in which humans directly impact the geologic record. She adds "You can imagine a time millions of years from now when the robots are studying the sedimentary strata and they find the first appearance of a coke bottle - that’s the beginning of the Anthropocene."

Deep Time and Meeting the Moment

Joanna Macy, Buddhist activist and teacher, was first called to activism trying to help people understand the impacts of nuclear waste, but found that the ways we were talking and thinking about the environment were not moving people to the kind of action that could help us make changes on the scale we need. She called this change of course “the great turning” and spent her life helping people imagine and live into this necessary change. She died this past summer. I had the privilege of studying with her on my very first sabbatical back in Oakland California.

She encouraged us to expand our sense of time. She pointed out that while historically humans have thought in terms of cycles of seasons, years and generations, but today our sense of time has shrunk -- we think in fractions of a second, and our long-term thinking ends with quarterly profits. It’s hard to see the big picture from that small space of 3 months. We can’t really see how it is with the trees, with the fish, with the air when our sense of time is shallow and immediate.

Joanna told us about her trip to Australia to experience Deep Time with the Aboriginal peoples who live there, she told us about the importance of the Haudenosaunee practice of considering, in every important decision, its impact out to 7 generations; what will my actions mean for my grandchildren’s great grandchildren?

When take the perspective of deep time, which we will spend some time with next week as we celebrate the Cosmic Walk, we see our place in a much larger picture. We remember that life evolves over millennia. We see how we are part of a web of life much older than we are. This larger seeing brings more wisdom and compassion to our decisions.

Joanna loved to use ritual and imagination in her work. In her book Active Hope, she shares a practice called "A Letter to the Future" one of hte practices she offered in the seminar I took with her all those years ago She found that when she invited people to view the struggles of today from the perspective of 7 generations in the future, people’s thinking shifted and expanded as we approach the struggles of our own time.

I don’t know about you, but on any given day when I’m trying to balance the needs of family and work and daily life, it’s hard to think much past what to make for dinner, and dealing with all the notifications on my phone. But dealing with something as big and important as Climate change, takes a different kind of thinking.

Macy encourages us not only to remember those 7 generations in the future, encouraging us to work on their behalf, but also to remember the many generations of ancestors encouraging us, and all the gifts and resources they leave as their legacy.

Consider of the story for all ages, how one almond tree planted by her great grandmother gave Talia gifts her whole life long. The abundance we have today comes largely from those who came before. Our congregations are vital and active because of 7 generations of Unitarian Universalists who came before, who built these buildings, this tradition, these roots. Our UU ancestors gave what they could, and stewarded those gifts carefully to pass on to us. We are because they were.

But it is not just human ancestors who prepared our way. I want to tell you about the pin cherry, a tree that is giving me hope recently. The pin cherry is a tree with small cherries that birds love. The tree, like many others, relies on birds to enjoy the fruit and then to poop out the seeds as they fly. The seeds then wait in the soil until conditions to grow are ideal. For most trees the seeds are viable for about 10-15 years, but pin cherry seeds are viable for 100 years. Imagine that! if you were to see a pin cherry in the wood, it might have grown from a seed dropped by a bird before women won the right to vote! Now this I found especially poignant, what the pin cherry seeds are waiting for is a catastrophe- they are waiting for a wood to be clear cut, or a fire to clear space. then the little pin cherry leads the way for the forest to heal, to regenerate.[i] I get hope thinking of the seeds planted long ago for just such a time as this, a time when structures of our society are tumbling down. I believe there are seeds already germinating, planted by our human and non-human ancestors, that have been waiting for such a time as this.

Joanna also told us that while some changes happen gradually, there are tipping point moments, when things gather speed. She told us, back in 2005, that things we had always depended on, like the gulf stream, could be disrupted in a way that would impact weather in far of parts of the earth. This extreme cold of this weekend, for example, happened because the polar vortex and polar jet stream have been disrupted, a sudden dramatic change. [ii]

I’ve just come for the UUMA institute for learning ministry, where because our UUA president Sofia was being arrested at the Capitol for gathering with other religious leaders to pray and demand an end to funding for ICE, we instead had a training on Mass Coordinate nonviolent action.

We learned that political scientists have looked at patterns in history when a authoritarian leader emerges in a democracy. They say there is a window of about 18 months that are critical, that if 3.5% of the population becomes engaged, like really engaged, the country can return to democracy. Otherwise the decline towards fascism proceeds in a predictable way. This is the kind of time we are in- the autocratic breakthrough window.[iii]

How can we look at this turning point through the perspective of 7 generations? First we look back, to remember our ancestors. We are 9 or 10 generations away from the founding of our democracy, which sparked democracy in other countries around the world.

We look back with gratitude to the founders who fought so that we could live in a democracy, could be freed from tyranny and monarchy. When I imagine 7 generations into the future, of the children who will grow up in the world we are creating today I feel a sense of urgency, but this feels to me different from the false sense of urgency our culture sells us day by day, of urgent quotas at work, of “act now before it’s gone” sales, of a never ending stream of 30 second videos. In fact, because of the quick flickering of our attention, we might miss this critical turning point. Now is the time when we can do something about fascism. These next 4-6 months, political scientists say will be critical.

The generations past, those who struggled to regain democracy, show us that it is possible, but that the turning can only happen if many of us are involved day by day.

Minneapolis is showing us how this is done. Rev. Jo VonRue, our UU minister up in Syracuse, shared a reflection on her time in Minneapolis, writing:

“The mutual aid, the mutual support, the mutual networks in Minneapolis are incredible. San Pablo Lutheran Church, where most of the congregation does not speak English, welcomed us. They told us they pack food boxes monthly. Once a month they have free acupuncture and reiki for community members who need healing. They sneak them into the church. They have medics on site who also provide security and patrol neighborhoods.

While 200 clergy were sitting in this sanctuary, the priest said, “Oh, by the way, my folks just decided they want to feed you lunch.” For 200 people, they made soup for us. These people who are literally under siege made soup for us.

One of our Jewish colleagues was late that morning because she was taking breast milk to a woman caring for a baby. The baby’s mother was snatched out of the NICU. They don’t know where she is.

These people have the most extensive mutual aid support networks. They’re getting food to people. They have telemedicine appointments for people who absolutely cannot leave their house. People pick up prescriptions and drive them to homes. They help with childcare. They educate children who can’t leave the house. They help with transportation, moving people in secret cars, under blankets in the back.
We patrolled neighborhoods, just clergy singing on sidewalks. People were opening their window shades and waving to us. They were calling out their doors: “Thank you.” They were thanking us for walking on the street, for just being there to keep them safe. Cars patrolling would pull over and ask if we needed snacks or hand warmers.

When you ask them if this is organized, they say no. Well, kind of. They have so many Signal chats. When somebody is out patrolling and sees ICE, they call in to the dispatcher. There’s a dispatcher 24/7 on Signal. They have a log of license plates. They check to see if they can identify it as an ICE vehicle. If confirmed, a signal goes out to everybody about exactly where ICE is located. People start following them. The community comes out. People blow whistles and tell their neighbors:
ICE is here. Do not come out. Do not risk your life.

The people I met in Minneapolis are not superheroes. They are just people. They are people who decided that their values demand action. They figured out how to organize with each other. They figured out how to spot ICE vehicles. They figured out how to alert entire neighborhoods. They are feeding their neighbors and keeping them safe every single minute of every single day. 

They did what needed to be done because there is no other choice.”

This, say political scientists, is not an anomaly, the behavior of our government a is right out of the authoritarian playbook, a pattern we can see if we look back. The resistance in Minneapolis is what our ancestors have shown us is exactly what it takes to fight back; for us to refuse to comply with authoritarian practices, for us to interrupt and slow down authoritarian actions. For us to hold the line on the liberties and rights we will not allow to be taken from us. And always for us to build the alternative structures that support one another, that provide the care, the protection, the nurture every person needs.

I hope that 3000 ice agents are never deployed to our cities. But how might we be ready if they did? How can we strengthen and extend the networks of mutuality and care that we already have? Every person has gifts they can contribute to the great turning- not everyone needs to stand on a corner with a whistle; we need those who provide medical care, who cook lunch, who deliver milk. I even heard of carpenters who show up to repair doors kicked in by ICE. As Jo said these are not superheroes, these are just ordinary people doing what needs to be done.

When you imagine looking at this moment in history with the eyes of those who will follow 7 generations hence, what seems important for us to do as individuals and as a community? When the grandchildren of our grandchildren remember us, what story would you like them to tell of our time here today? What got us started? And what kept us going? Where did we find the strength to continue working so hard, despite all the obstacles and discouragements? And what joy and love did we find caring for one another, shaping a world for the generations to follow? 

 

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[i] https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSNFyigjSf0/

[ii] https://www.fastcompany.com/91484333/polar-vortex-2026-disruption-extreme-cold-weather-explained

[iii] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10665684.2025.2580185#d1e103