What the Soul Wants

Photo of the author playing Cunégonde in a High School Production of Candide

Here is a story from my own life, that some of you have heard before. It is one of the stories that I still use as a touchstone today when trying to discern my path.

When I was a little girl, I wanted more than anything to get a chance to be in a musical, like the young performers in “Annie” that was so popular at the time. Singing and dancing were sources of great joy to me. I spent hours singing or dancing along with the soundtracks to musicals, and later to pop songs and operas. I was part of the drama club in high school, and those experiences, that community provided many of my best friendships and favorite experiences. When it was time to go to college, I decided to go for it- to pursue my greatest joy. The program I chose was not what I expected -- 400 young singers all grinding through a factory- like obstacle course of a program. Only grad students, special ones at that, got to be part of the opera program that had appealed to me when I chose the school.

I worked hard- really hard. My friends and I spent most of the day every day in our practice rooms. I was unhappy. I became depressed. But it was hard to know… perhaps this was just what it took to become a singer. Perhaps grinding it out and persevering would help me achieve my dreams.

One bright spot my freshman year was a class called “Women in Ancient Israel – a feminist hermeneutic of the Hebrew scriptures.” This blew my mind. I had never been in a room full of other feminist before, and I had no idea feminism had anything to say about scriptures. The research we did was challenging and engaging. At the end of the semester the professor encouraged me to submit my paper to a competition- so affirming! I wrote in my journal” I wonder if it means anything that my favorite class is “Women in Ancient Israel”

Where music had felt like a great flood of creativity and energy before, now it felt like one of those places where the creek finally fizzles out into a shallow dry place. I grew increasingly depressed, but still I persisted. I went on to graduate school, where I still never had the chance to sing any of the music I loved in the practice room, much less get on stage with the opera. Finally I had a big memory freeze during a voice jury. My advisor encouraged me to take a year off and rethink. It was devastating. But also…

What a relief it would be to finally stop pushing against the wall, to stop dragging myself down this dry path, to stop practicing every day. There was a lightness when I thought of this decision. A cascade of decisions followed- not only would I leave school, but I would stop practicing. I would just see who I was without the disciple of practicing every day. For a year I was going to just be a normal young adult- get an office job, have fun on the weekends. It quickly became clear that this was the right choice.

But after a couple years of working in office jobs, it was clear this wasn’t right either. I had gotten a decent entry level job at a company with principled values (even if I didn’t agree with all of them) and a path for advancement. I was okay at it, but my spirit was restless. I began a period of thoughtful discernment, and the light began to slowly dawn that I would like to try being a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Here's what is important to me about that story- that experience of how it feels to be trudging down that dwindling dry path. To me, this is what it sounds like when the universe is saying “you can do that if you want, you are free to choose, but that’s not where the energy of creation is flowing.”

Another touchstone moment is that voice jury where my memory failed. It was crushing, that outcome, that moment, but now I see it as one of those turning points that released me from something when I couldn’t release myself.

I think of that restless feeling I had working in that office, that suggested something more was possible.

I remember how the energy moved in me during my feminist hermeneutic class in college, I remember how it felt similar as I thought about going to seminary, how the way opened like a crack in stone through which water trickles, and opened out into a flowing stream as I moved along it. There was a sense of invitation, of a way opening as I traveled it.

I kind of thought once I had made that big decision to enter the ministry, I was done with discernment. Here’s something else I learned; discernment is not just about the big choices, this career or that one, this place to live or that one. We make big and little decisions all the time in life, for as long as we live. Even though I feel so clear ministry is the right path for me, each day I must discern step by step the path I make by walking.

I also learned that Discernment is not just about moving towards what feels good, or easy. For example, part of ministry is being with people who are struggling, being with our challenges as a community and as a world. But I notice a kind of way I feel when we know that something is the right thing to do, even when it is hard? For me there is a feeling of deep resonance, maybe it’s that voice of the genuine speaking. I sense that staying on the hard path will matter, that it will connect me to something sacred, to the deep parts of myself, to the person I most want to be.

There are lots of ways to make decisions. You can write up a pro and con list, and total them up. You can follow the crowd, the path of least resistance. Ask for advice, or experiment. Some decisions can be made quickly, lightly. If you are getting takeout and decide to choose the restaurant with the fastest service, that’s a perfectly good choice, quickly made. But some choices deserve the time and attention it takes to hear the voice of our own soul.

For me, that is a voice that is sometimes slow to speak- it requires quiet, and patience and deep listening. What do we mean by the soul? Hard to say. Perhaps it is the voice of the genuine, as Thurman suggests in his  commencement address at Spelman College. Perhaps it is the “deep wanna” that Sr. Dougherty mentions in her book Discernment: A Path to Spiritual Awakening. I imagine the soul as a place where all of ourself comes together -- heart, mind, body—and where we connect with that which is greater than ourselves, be that the web of life, community, or the divine. These parts of ourselves don’t always agree. Like any group trying to make a decision together, you can go follow the loudest most insistent voice- I’m hungry let’s eat! But one way to think of discernment is taking the time to hear from each part of our self, and for those parts to come to some harmonious consensus.

The danger in sharing my story, is that others will apply that model to themselves. For example, I have a friend who says she is “addicted to drama” and so for her, sometimes events sweep her up in a compelling way, even though when she can really check in with her soul, she notices these seemingly important events were just a distraction. That metaphor I use about the flow of energy that is helpful to me might send her down the wrong path.

So let’s take a moment here and invite each of us to consider Thurman’s question “How does the sound of the genuine come through to you?” to discern, “when in my life have made a choice by listening to the deep wisdom of my own soul? As I remember such a time, what did it feel like, what has discernment looked like for me in my own story?”

I wonder what questions are important to your soul right now? Some big questions that came up for me as I approached the 25th anniversary of my ordination, which we celebrated last night. I am no longer the 28 year old who was ordained back in California-- who am I now? Does what I do matter? How does it matter?

I’ve found that even finding the right question requires discernment. Sometimes being able to frame the question so it feels just right opens the door to an answer, to a new path. Sometimes the question starts out as a wordless restlessness in my spirit, I don’t know what it’s about, but I begin by asking “What do I want? What do I really want?” I ask and ask, until the inquiry feels complete.

We are very theologically diverse here. Those of us who have a prayer practice, or who are prayer curious, we might invite the divine into our discernment, might bring the question into our prayer practice.

For those of us who are atheists, or for whom that doesn’t feel authentic, we can pose our question to our own souls, or our own Psyche, our own deep wisdom

I invite you to take another pause to ask ourselves “what is it my soul wants now?” or whatever question feels like your question of this moment.

Discernment is not just a single choice once made, it is a way of involving our deepest self, or connecting to what is larger than ourselves, as we find our way through our life’s journey. If we want to have a soul-oriented life, it will necessarily involve taking time to listen to the soul. And like any rich deep practice it takes time to hone and develop. At this time when so much is changing, I encourage each of us to ask what it is our soul most wants, and to bring the quality of discernment to questions big and small along our journeys.

 

Holding Hope

"The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself. "

What a powerful challenge Berry offers. He was only 73 when he wrote that poem, back in 2007.

"It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good"

And elders know deeply the reality that lives end, ours and those we love.

And if we’ve learned nothing else, we’ve learned that you can’t count on the future being how you imagined it.

When he wrote that poem, Berry was worried about a lot of the things that worry us- about war, about corruption, and especially about the earth:

“Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned.”

Ugh. And it’s not better now, 16 years later.
It’s hard to hope, he says, but “young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?”

I want to just pause for a moment, and let that question linger in the air to see if any answers bubble up in you before I offer some thoughts.

I’ve been reading Why the World Doesn’t End by Michael Meade, (68 when he wrote it in 2012) who looks at the many times throughout history when it FELT like the world was ending -- apocalyptic times. Meade invites us return to the deep old wisdom that has always gotten us through times like these. “something ancient and enduring must be touched for things to be made anew and fashioned again. It is the ancient way of the world to make itself anew from the enduring threads that have been woven and rewoven many times before.” (p. 82)

I find this reassuring, to know that humans have been through times that shook our foundations before, but somehow here we are now, despite and because of the past. Hopeful that we are connected by ancient, enduring threads to those other times of resilience and survival. These ancient enduring threads are often hidden among the weaving of daily life, but when things fall apart, we can see they have been there the whole time.

Meade feels, like Berry, that we who are older have an important role to play here. He writes:

“This world has always been at risk, and at times the only safety comes when the right risks are taken for the benefit of everyone. The traditional role of elders included remembering what was most important about life and how to hold ends and beginnings together when times become hard. … Having survived the troubles of their own lives and having grown deeper and wiser, they knew both how to survive and how to find genuine vision where others could only see disaster. Being "old enough to know better" they would know that life renews itself in surprising ways and that the greatest dilemmas can serve to awaken the deepest resources of the human soul. [p. 24 -25]”

Like the grandmother in today’s story,
My Grandmother's Journey, all elders know that life can be hard, and how hard it can be, but they also have seen seasons come and go. They know what endures. Meade continues:

“There is a deep human instinct to turn to those who are older for guidance when faced with obstacles or danger. Yet part of the problem in modern cultures is that those who are older often feel as lost as young people just starting out on the roads of life. When a culture falls apart it happens in two places at once: where its youth are rejected and not fully invited into life and where its elders are forgotten and forget what is important about life. Modern cultures tend to produce a mass of "olders” who live longer and longer, but a lack of genuine elders who know what to live for. ... Everyone born grows older but elders are made, not born.”

Wow, I feel that too. A lack of guidance for becoming an elder, a lack of societal recognition that elders are critically important to the health and hopefulness of society. And I was looking! This rang so true to me, that we all have a choice as we transition into the later stages of our lives, we can allow our culture to show us we are becoming invisible and powerless, . Or we can claim, and grow into this important role. I have been asking myself ever since I turned 50, “what is the meaning and purpose of this next chapter of my life”? So Meade’s idea was heartening to me. Perhaps I could help with “remembering what was most important about life and how to hold ends and beginnings together when times become hard.”

Perhaps for ourselves we wouldn’t do it. But the other generations need us:

“The lack of meaningfu1 elders leaves youth less protected, more isolated, and more exposed to extreme conditions, tragic deaths and wasted lives than they would normally be. Youth are at greater risk when the "olders" fail to act as elders and neglect to risk fulling living their own stories.”

And I have seen for myself the cynicism and lack of hope among Generation Z- my son’s generation. He tells me that it seems like the problems of our day only get worse: gun violence, climate change, racism, the growing wave of violence and restriction against our trans siblings.

The CDC report earlier this year said that 60% of female and non binary high school students report “persistent sadness and hopelessness” in 2021. 

The young ask the old to hope, and what will we tell them?

A superficial hope will not do; [Meade p. 57] “there are those who are overly hopeful even when tragedies occur and loss demands a deeper response. ..there is an insistence on “positivity” an avoidance of supposedly negative feelings, and a lack of the gravitas natural to the human soul and to life on earth. Some insist that “every cloud has a silver lining,” even when some clouds are lined with acid rain”

So where does real hope come from? The kind of hope that would help us get from one day to the next, the kind of hope that would help us do what had to be done? Berry suggest it comes from places, our places. And place to him means not a dot on the map, but the complex and sacred web of relationships that include the land, all the critters and beings who live on and with the land.

When I was a young minister, we often had visioning sessions that started with a blank sheet of paper, if the sky was the limit what would we wish for.

But in truth nothing starts with a blank sheet of paper -- every inch of our world is ancient and full of a unique community of life. We have so often damaged the web by imagining we can brush it aside to make space for our new vision.

So Berry suggests a grounded hope, one that literally emerges from our relationship with the land, with our ecosystem and our web of relationships. From our direct, embodied knowledge of our neighborhood and our neighbors in it. This is a solid grounding for hope, a future made by the intimate collaboration of this soil, these plants, trees, rivers, birds neighbors.

“Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.”

Greta Thunberg writes in No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

“Adults keep saying: "We owe it to the young people to give them hope."
But I don't want your hope. …I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”

Ouch!

The hope we need for our times is grounded in action. Showing up, walking our talk, so it isn’t just pie in the sky. Perhaps we worry that we aren’t as strong as we used to be, can’t march or lift or push as we used to. But I remember how heartening it is to just have someone at your side, willing to roll up their sleeves and do what they can. It reminds us that we are not alone. To me, this is a great source of hope. The youngers need to know the olders haven’t abandoned them, are still showing up, still lending a hand however they can, and this is what our olders need too- to know that their lives have fresh meaning, are important in building our future together,

Part of our work in learning to be Elders, the path to becoming elders is to listen. We must Listen to “the voices that rise up …from your own heart” We have to tend our own light, shine our own light, because “When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens.” Then we must “…Be still and listen to the voices that belong / to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.” When we listen deeply ourselves and to our places, we see how people in other places are like us in our place. And it shows us “invariably the need for care / toward other people, other creatures, in other places / as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.”

The young ask the old to hope, and what will we tell them?

Berry suggests we cultivate a local, practical hope, that if we listen, if we pay attention, if we share our own inner light, it will matter to this place, and this place matters.

Meade holds out the ancient and enduring threads “that have been woven and rewoven many times before”, We who are older have a long view- we have seen things fall apart and come together, beginnings and endings. Our own stories have hope to offer, and the stories and wisdom of the ancestors. Generation after Generation, the teaching is the same -- we who are here in this time of great tension and change, must call forth in ourselves, we must grow the new thing that we are becoming, that our world is becoming, that our place is becoming, even this very moment, in this very place, in our hearts and minds and bodies. This is what gives me hope.

 

The Two Row Wampum and the Dish with One Spoon

The Two Row Wampum*
Last spring several members of our congregations went out to the Cayuga Share Farm to listen and learn from some of the Tribal chiefs and clan mothers. They referred again and again to the Two Row Wampum, a treaty between the Haudenosaunee ancestors and the white settler ancestors. They asked us that the spirit of our relationship begin with this treaty, a treaty which has been broken again and again by our US government, and by us settlers, and even by the churches, even the Unitarian Universalist  church. Because the key to the treaty is sovereignty- that the ship and the canoe peacefully coexist along side one another. We settlers know some of the history of the violence, the genocide that was part of the way we broke the peace of that treaty, though the more the chiefs talked about our shared history, the more I understood how thin my knowledge was.

The reason the two row was called again and again, was to affirm this agreement “The boats will travel side by side down the river of life. Each nation will respect the ways of each other and will not interfere with the other.” In part we remembered the Two Row because we had come together because of the active interference by the US Government Bureau of Indian affairs by choosing Clint Halftown as their representative, in violation of tradition and sovereignty. But we also remembered the 2 row so that it could guide how we were together. Many allies had gathered there that day because of the displacement and injustices in recent months, but the allies had a certain way of doing things, “Let’s hurry and fix this now” was the spirit of the allies. One of the clan mothers responded “this is urgent, so we must go slowly.” “Let’s call the press” said the settler allies. But the clan mothers asked that we respect their right to control their own narrative. They mentioned there were several Facebook pages, Kickstarters and websites that had been created by allies around the current struggle with Halftown, without consulting the clan mothers or the chiefs. They wanted the allies to be allies, to enter into relationship, to know one another, to ask for direction and confirmation before taking it upon ourselves to save or fix or “take charge.”

So this week as many of us prepare to celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving, and a national day of mourning[i]

I invite us to remember the Two Row Wampum treaty, the canoe and the ship side by side. And consider- how we might live into that treaty today:

“In one row is a ship with our White Brothers’ ways; in the other a canoe with our ways. Each will travel down the river of life side by side. Neither will attempt to steer the other’s vessel.” “Together we will travel in Friendship and in Peace Forever; as long as the grass is green, as long as the water runs downhill, as long as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and as long as our Mother Earth will last.”

*A summary of the treaty is here from the Onondoga Nation



The Dish With One Spoon**

I’m a huge fan of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer[i] who is a professor up at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York and founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She wrote that book Braiding Sweetgrass, that spoke right to my heart and spirit. As a botanist, she loves and notices and understands plants, and helps weave the connections between western science and traditional knowledge. I have often preached on things I learned from her writings and talks. So when I saw she was giving a talk at Cornell last month I was dropped everything to join by zoom. Most if this reflection today is an amplification of her words and ideas from that day.[ii]

It was there that I learned about the treaty of the Dish With One Spoon. She taught us that the treaty, which binds together both her nation the Potawatomi, and those people on the lands here where we live - the Haudenoshonee, was a way we could imagine living together with the land- one land, one bowl shared by all of us, feeding all of us.

She noticed that in our western thinking the land was a resource to be used, material to be extracted for commodities. She described another way of understanding the land, the way she grew up with- nature as relatives, as family. Land as the source of identity, as sustainer, as connection to our ancestors, as library, teacher, pharmacy, home… as moral responsibility.

How we think about the land makes a big difference in the health of our ecosystems. We know and have often lamented here in worship the biodiversity that is being lost, the great extinction going on all over the world right now. Kimmerer mentioned that on land under the care of Indigenous people, biodiversity is not crashing. How we think matters, has real impact on our world.

I had been wondering what the Two Row Wampum called me, in the ship, to do. And Kimmerer had some clear ideas- to work for justice, yes, but justice for who? Not just which group of 2 legged should have how much power, but justice for the land, for all the beings. Kimmerer invited us to be part of the rights of nature movement, growing in countries, cities and towns all over the world to extend legal protections to rivers, mountains, ecosystems acknowledging their right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.”[iii]

The Two Row invites us to work together to make sure first nations peoples have places to practice their traditional ways, to honor their relationship to land, to care for and be grounded in their sacred places. The Two Row Wampum also calls us to gather in meaningful consultation about the great environmental problems and a vision of the future that concerns all of us in the canoe and on the ship.

Kimmerer suggested that what all of us can do is to change our minds- the slow work of changing how we see the land, how we see our siblings of all species, our other than human relatives. This harmonizes with our Unitarian Universalist 7th principle which challenges us to Respect “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” It is one small thing we can do to honor the Two Row Wampum.

This Thanksgiving as we gather in gratitude for the bountiful Autumn harvest, let’s remember the bowl with one spoon, how the land feeds us all. And whether we celebrate with a big table of relatives, or a simple quiet meal, let us remember all the relations with whom we share this web of life. Let us live well in our place and love the land who is our relative. Let us receive her gifts in gratitude, and give back in reciprocity.

** a helpful article about this treaty is here: "The Two Row Times: A paper serving the dish with one spoon territory – Great Lakes Region. September 4, 2013 "

 

End notes:

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[i] https://www.esf.edu/faculty/kimmerer/index.php

[ii] https://cals.cornell.edu/land-justice-engaging-indigenous-knowledge-land-care

[iii] https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature/

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[i] https://blog.nativehope.org/what-does-thanksgiving-mean-to-native-americans