What About Scorpions?

Photo credit Chris Parker

Story 1   - Zen traditional
As two monks were washing their bowls by the river, one monk reached into the river to save a drowning scorpion. Just as he placed it on land, the scorpion stung him and fell back into the river. The monk once again scooped the scorpion out, and the scorpion again stung the monk and fell back into the river. As the monk saved the scorpion a third time, the second monk cried out, "Why are you saving that scorpion when you get every time?" The second monk replied, "It is the nature of a scorpion to sting; it is the nature of a monk to be compassionate."

Story 2 - Aesop’s Fables
A Farmer walked through his field one cold winter morning. On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. The Farmer knew how deadly the Snake could be, and yet he picked it up and put it in his bosom to warm it back to life.
The Snake soon revived, and when it had enough strength, bit the man who had been so kind to it. The bite was deadly and the Farmer felt that he must die. As he drew his last breath, he said to those standing around:
Learn from my fate not to take pity on a scoundrel.


Reflection - What About Scorpions?
There is a paradox in our Universalist heritage and values. The word universalist comes from the idea of universal salvation -- that God loves everyone, and all return to the divine source when they die. It was a refreshing point of view at the time of the birth of our faith tradition, a time when many preachers spent all their time preaching hellfire and damnation.

Modern Unitarian Universalists don’t tend to worry much about the salvation of our souls after we die, we tend to focus more on how to live a good life while we are still alive, a life that spreads our arms wide to include all people. You can see this in the new UU value statement: “Equity: We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” You can hear this is not too different from the UU principle “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” 

Last week I preached about how each and every one of us belongs, just as we are. Each and every one of us is connected to the holy right now.

But what about scorpions, for example? What about all the different kinds of living beings that don’t have our best interests at heart? What about the corona virus? What about people who do harm to us or to others? The idea that each and every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion seems a bit naïve when we think about some of the things going on in the world today. If this faith is going to serve our spirits and our communities in times like these, we need a faith that acknowledges that not everyone has our best interest at heart.

We’d better start with Evil. What do we believe about evil? UUs tend to believe, by looking at the news, by looking back at history, that humans are capable of evil acts. What makes an act evil? [pause] The point of our scorpion story is that the scorpion was not being cruel to the monk, he was just being a scorpion. I wouldn’t call that evil. But when we think about the great Rwandan genocide, when we try to fathom the holocaust the word “evil” seems like a clear eyed naming of those terrible and terrifying events. Evil acts were committed by individuals, and by the collective. My theology professor, Rebecca Parker, suggested that maybe UUs believe this; we don’t believe that some people are evil and others good, we believe that both systems and individuals are capable of evil, and as ethical people we must resist, both the potential within ourselves and in the larger world. Think of the systemic racism that the civil rights movement rose up to oppose, and which we still struggle with today. We’ve talked a lot about racism in this congregation, because we long to live in a world free from racism, and we have noticed that even with our best intentions, we sometimes accidentally do racist things, because it is baked into our culture and our history, not because we ourselves are evil.

I believe most of the obstacles we face in our lives are not due to evil. Consider for example the guy taking up too much space in the grocery story aisle. That’s not evil, that’s just annoying, perhaps thoughtless. When I began studying Buddhism in seminary, our teacher encouraged us to notice the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening in our daily life. Did that car cut me off in traffic because he’s a jerk? Or maybe he’s late to pick his daughter up at daycare, or just didn’t see me and come to think of it, I have also cut people off in traffic for similar reasons.

Consider bees. If you’ve ever been stung by a bee, you know it’s no fun, especially if you are allergic. You might also have noticed that some stings hurt a lot more than others. There’s a meme going around dividing pollinators into friends and enemies. This led to a wonderful discussion and backlash series of memes like this one: [meme shows the image of 3 yellow and black striped pollinators. The first caption says"Friend who make wax and lots of hone. The second says "friend who is extra fuzzy and really loves flowers" the third says "Friend who pollinates and eats pests but needs more personal space"] I think this is important- a wasp is not our enemy, it is a friend to the environment, if not to us personally, who will sting you if you get in their business.

So I’m not trying to say you have to love wasps, or hang out with them, but we can acknowledge the complexity that they both help with pest control in a way we actually really like and need, and they do have a weapon that we are right to watch out for.

Consider scorpions. Everyone agrees their sting, while not deadly to humans, is painful. But scorpions have their role to play too- they eat insects and other pests, and feed cute animals that make us say “aw” like meerkats, mongooses and owls. Again, you don’t have to like scorpions, and if you pick one up you probably will get stung like that Monk, (so be smart) but they do have their job to play in the ecosystem.

In the book of Matthew 10:16 from the Christian Scriptures, Jesus says to his disciples: “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise (or cunning) as serpents and innocent as doves.” Jesus councils Wisdom- I think this is good advice. I like that analogy of sheep and wolves. He doesn’t say “slay the wolves” or “the wolves are your enemy” he just notices this is the kind of relationship where one must pay attention, be careful. Be cunning. Be wise.

But then, and this is important too; be innocent (or harmless) as doves. This reminds me of the non-violent approach of Ghandi, of the American civil rights movement. The fact that those movements were able to make real changes shows the wisdom, shows the cunning. But that they were able to achieve it without resorting to violence reminds me of the doves- those people, those movements could retain their integrity, their values while in the struggle. That they didn’t let the struggle change them.

There was a study recently about the effectiveness of nonviolent protests.[i] One study said “53% of major nonviolent campaigns were successful as opposed to only 26% of violent campaigns being successful” and while there has been some debate about these numbers among researchers, it does seem clear that non-violent moments are more likely to lead to non-violent outcomes. That makes sense. “non-violent resistance is approximately 10 times more likely to lead to democratization than violent resistance.” As Martin Luther King preached in his sermon “Loving Your Enemies” -- “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

This new value statement is a challenging one: “Equity: We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” That seems pretty easy we think about the people in this room, but the challenge begins when faced with the person cutting us off in traffic, or taking our parking place … when their flourishing and our flourishing require the same parking space? This value encourages us to turn the temperature down by remembering there is a good chance that the person blocking the shopping aisle is not evil, but just a tired person, like us, trying to get home. A lot of disagreements are just part of what it is to be a community, balancing different people with different needs.

When we divide the world into enemies and friends, good and evil, we do great damage not only to individuals, but to our society. Remember, wolves were considered enemies because they occasionally took a sheep or other livestock from a farm, and so were completely eradicated from many eco-systems, which turned out to be profoundly damaging to those communities.

That’s enough of a challenge on a good day, but what about those who abuse others? Those who are cruel? What about people making executive orders right now that directly threaten our lives, our flourishing? What about those who take more resources than they need, leaving others in poverty? This is where we must be wise as serpents. It’s sweet that the farmer in the story wanted to save that snake, but he was not very wise, and it cost him his life.

It would be easy to say “everyone who doesn’t go to this church, everyone who doesn’t believe like we do is evil” but a lot of us have been on the other side of that, been judged for being different, for being liberal, or queer, or trans, or neurodivergent. At the heart of our Universalist heritage and faith, we challenge ourselves to draw the circle wide, even though we know there are folks out there who are not committed to our flourishing.

When facing scorpions, snakes, wolves, it’s important to have boundaries. Effective boundaries. When we faced the Covid Pandemic, we had to make some new boundaries fast. We used distance and quarantine, and we learned that the N-95 mask is a really good boundary against respiratory viruses. A family counselor explained in a video about interpersonal boundaries “you need to be nice to me” is not a boundary. That’s a request. A boundary is “if you can’t speak kindly to me I’m leaving the room” and then you do it. Think of the boundaries the Civil rights movement set up- that bus boycott for example. They set up a clear line of what they thought was fair, and what they were willing to do if the unfairness continued.

Hate is not an effective boundary. In fact, hate riles up our amygdala and actually reduces how cunning we can be, how wise we can be. Instead of declaring we hate scorpions, we could do a bit of research and learn that if you pick them up with tweezers or forceps right behind their bulb, their tail can’t reach us to sting us. One Youtuber I watched uses a carry cup to move her scorpions. A carry cup is a more effective boundary than hate. We have a waiting room on zoom worship because it’s an effective boundary against zoom bombers. We have a safe congregations policy that we share with all newcomers, because that helps us keep a boundary about sexual misconduct, because we know the sad truth that in the past churches have not had good enough boundaries about that and people have been deeply harmed. DEI is a boundary against institutional racism and bias. The Environmental protection agency defends boundaries for our environment. It is a scary time to see these boundaries being threatened, being dismantled.

What we have in the country right is too much hate and not enough effective boundaries. This is why we feel so unsafe. This is why Unitarian Universalism focuses so much on social justice- because we see with our own eyes, feel with our own bodies the impacts of injustice. Love without justice perpetuates a world where only some can flourish. In this time of broken covenants, broken laws, broken boundaries, we are called to be part of the resisting, the turning towards what is life giving for our communities and our world.

Each value in our new UU value statement has a covenant, what are we going to do about it? Our covenant around Equity says: We covenant to use our time, wisdom, attention, and money to build and sustain fully accessible and inclusive communities.

Buddhist Activist Joanna Macy says[ii] there are 3 kinds of activism that help with this turning. The first is “Holding actions in defense of life on earth. These activities may be the most visible dimension of the great turning. They include all the political, legislative, and legal work required to slow down the destruction, as well as direct actions – blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience and other forms of refusal.” The second is analysis of structural causes and creation of alternative institutions” – this is part of the wiliness. We need to figure out -- what is really happening here? (no easy task these days) We need folks to pay attention and think it through. And then we build the world we want to see.

The third, says Macy is “shift in perceptions of reality, both cognitively and spiritually.” This is why we gather on Sunday to remind each other of our values, and to figure out, together, how on earth we are going to live those values in this chaotic time. I saw this wonderful meme the other day from Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize willing chemist “when a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.” Let’s be one of those small islands of coherence. This is a kind of boundary, not from the outside, but from within. Our strength of intention, of remembering what is important, what we value, who we are… is a protection from the forces of chaos who would wash us off our moorings.

I know I’d like to live in a world where all of us can “flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” But I know we have a diversity of ideas about how to live out this value. Some of you have told me you are (justifiably) wary that this value could allow those who would be cruel to flourish at the expense of others. You are right to be concerned- we must be wily as serpents. Universalism must be a grown up faith that acknowledges cruelty, evil and harm, and defends the flourishing of the most vulnerable. The challenge of Universalism, is to co-creates a loving world. I practice standing in the truth of love not only because I want to live in a loving world, but because I want to be a loving person. That’s something worth defending, with our integrity, with our actions. To defend our right to love and be loving, let us be "smart as serpents." We need to learn the difference between a bee and a wasp, We may want to learn how to pick up a scorpion safely, and when to let a snake lay. We need to learn what makes an effective boundary to protect us from those who would do us harm. And as we grow in wisdom, we get to choose how we respond with integrity from our own core values, because as Universalists, it is in our nature to care.

---

[i] https://ls.wisc.edu/news/the-enduring-power-of-nonviolent-protest

https://www.visionofhumanity.org/the-power-of-peaceful-protests/

[ii] in Coming Back to Life” practice to reconnect our lives, our word p. 17-19

Loving Our Own Bones

from Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole  by Julia Watts Belser

"I was born with cerebral palsy, and When I walked as a child, my heel used to strike ground in its own distinctive rhythm. My gait was subject to scrutiny and no small disapproval.

Everyone wanted to fix it. I was a very compliant child: I tried to “walk right.”. I stretched the stiff anchor of my heel cord. I practiced over and over the motion of heel before toe. But as I did my exercises night after night, I also remember this : I remember listening to the off-beat of my limp and loving the sound of my own step. The way my foot struck ground, the distinctive rhythm of my walk? They were my signature, something that was purely my own.

This was the first spiritual insight I trace to disability experience, this decision to cherish something about myself that other people didn’t value. Maybe you know this insight too. Maybe you know what it’s like to say yes to yourself, even in the face of disapproval or disdain. As a kid who couldn’t walk right, now as a woman who rolls through the world, as someone whose heart never learned to conform—I trace my own truest sense of self to the decision to embrace those quirky qualities of soul that some folks wished to eradicate, to do everything I could to make sure they survived." [p. 3]

I wonder if you have ever said “yes” to yourself like that. Have you ever loved some part of you that others were trying to change? Have you ever loved a part of yourself that other people looked at with scrutiny and disapproval? 

I love that tender image of young Julia enjoying the sound of her own steps. It seems like a kind of grace, how she felt that authentic love arising from her own deepest wisest self, when everyone around her was asking her to change. I can think of several times in my life when I have been wrestling with some part of myself that was different from other people, and what a relief when I learned to love it anyway. As I have grown older, I came to believe this is one of our major tasks, to gradually understand and love who we are.

As a little girl I got made fun of a lot for being the smallest person in my class. I remember tearful bedside conversations where my parents really encouraged me to love being short, to be proud of it, and I have.

Some things are harder to love. Julia Watts Belser says “Sometimes my disability is painful. Sometimes it frustrates me. But there are also parts of disability that fill my heart with joy. There are wonderful things about being disabled, little secret things that non-disabled people never know. If you want to know who I am, you’ve got to know my disability. It is a core part of who I am.”

Could we love those parts of ourselves that are painful? That are frustrating? Could we really love our whole self?

This month we’ve joined with Rev. Aileen’s congregation in Virginia to discuss the book “Loving Our Own bones: Disability wisdom and the spiritual subversiveness of knowing ourselves whole.” by Julia Watts Belser, who is a rabbi, and a professor of both Jewish studies and Disability studies at Georgetown University. When we were discussing this passage, one participant said “the world is always trying to fix you. You are always trying to explain you can’t be fixed.”

This seems really important to me … how can we be present with the person before us, just as they are, without needing them to be different, be fixed?

For example, I know a lot of folks who struggle with depression. And because I have struggled with depression myself, I know how frustrating it is when as soon as folks learn you are depressed, they jump right away to fix it- “have you tried this? have you tried that?” “Yes, and about 100 other things you’ve never even heard of.” I bet anyone who has a chronic illness or disability has experienced this. Yet I know I have also been on the other end of that conversation at some time – when a friend is struggling, we want to help! We live in a culture with so many medical miracles, surely we are all one doctor’s visit and a pill away from being pain free, right? But the message our good hearted suggestion gives is “come back when you are fixed” as if the actual hurting, unique human person we are is only the shadow of some better, more productive, more pain free person we might become. All of us deserve to be loved now, all of us deserve to be seen now. All life is holy, now.

In seminary prof Parker used to say “we are all broken” and I think by this she meant; it is normal to be broken, it is normal not to be perfect.

Rabbi Belser talks about the idea of the normal person our society is built around. I’d like to call him Norm. He is (to quote Erving Goffman) “a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports”

I would add- someone who has never had their heart broken, doesn’t know what it is to be excluded, can sit at a desk for 8 hours without pain, remembers words, can read the tiniest print, understand conversations in a crowded room, easily makes transitions form one space to another, and never needs help. He definitely never struggles with depression or anxiety. He is, in short, a myth. But a myth we’ve built our culture around. A myth that impacts how we see ourselves, and how the world does or does not make space for us. We call this Ableism.

Belser writes: “What defines the good body, the proper mind? It’s capacity to produce. Ableism operates, in part, by turning our ability to work into an assessment of our worth. It sets up accomplishment as a litmus test for human value.” I’m sure you’ve felt this – that how fast we go, how much we do is how we are judged, how we judge ourselves. But why? I was watching a discouraging video about what happens to all the stuff we return to online shopping. There were just giant piles of unwanted things headed, in large part, for landfill. Why are we pushing ourselves to work so hard to make more things than we need, to be delivered faster than we can use them up? Why do we put this strain on our bodies and minds and our earth?

What if we started from a different orientation, noticing and following the pace our bodies set, our earth sets.

Perhaps, like me, you learned something about this when we were locked down for the pandemic. Do you remember those early days? How our hearts and minds were so overwhelmed that everything seemed to slow down? When the ministers gathered, we all noticed how tired we were, how we just couldn’t keep up the pace we expected from ourselves. We noticed that doing new things takes more energy, being overwhelmed takes energy, grief takes energy. Being anxious is exhausting. Simple things just took longer. As a church we did less, and less again as we tried to match our activities to the capacity of our bodies. Many of us slowed down because our bodies insisted it be so.

Some of that has stuck with me, I’m glad to say, but I am blessed with the kind of job where I get to make choices about what I do, when I do it, and how fast I do it. I notice I am kinder, stronger, more peaceful, and make better decisions when I match the pace my body sets. When did we decided there was some other standard all bodies should meet? That we should all be able to keep up with this mythical Norm guy?

Belser continues: “This logic hits hardest against disabled folks who cannot press their body-minds into the narrow confines of the capitalist workday or hustle their way through the gig economy. Let me be clear: some of us could work, if we could bust through ablest stigma and get a callback or land an interview, or secure the right accommodations, or find an employer who’s willing to be flexible. But some of our bodies and minds aren’t built for work, aren’t made to labor. Some of us need to rest; some of us contend with pain; some of us know that all the support in the world isn’t going to put a paycheck within reach. Ableist assumption turn those realties into a referendum on our worth….In a world that fetishizes productivity, disabled people get scapegoated as shirkers and scroungers, as lazy and worthless, as people who fail because we can’t or won’t work. But it isn’t just disabled folks who face judgement if we’re not working hard enough. Ableism doesn’t demand a diagnosis or ask for a doctor’s note. It’s ready to sweep up any body that seems to be faltering, any mind that might not measure up. ..[ p. 52]

Ableism effects us all, by assuming there is one way all bodies should be. Unitarian Universalists reject this idea. We are living into the idea that all bodies are worthy, lovable, just as they are. We challenge ourselves to cherish our diverse minds too! Norm is definitely neurotypical, but we are coming to understand and appreciate Neurodivergence, in ourselves and others.

And so we try to build a world, we try to build communities that welcome all bodies, all minds. This is why we have large print hymnals, and we try to remember to speak into the microphone. This is why we meet on zoom and we meet in person. This is why the Athens church turned the mail room into a wheelchair accessible bathroom, this is why the Cortland church is applying for grants to help with a building constructed before the ADA was even an idea. The work of making a community that truly welcomes everyone will never end- that ongoing process, that aspiration will always be part of who we are.

I’ve joked before that UUs believe “If there is a God, They love everyone” and I mean, now. Right now! No matter how discouraged you are today, how grumpy, brokenhearted, on a waiting list for an appointment for the specialist who is finally going to help with that part of you that is hurting or weak.

You are not a problem to be solved. And though there are real problems in the world that we strive to solve, as individuals and as a community, our faith encourages us to notice the presence of the sacred right now, in this imperfect moment, with these imperfect people. I believe that every life, every moment is connected to the sacred, is woven into the divine fabric that is life. Even when we are having trouble being grateful for our lives, even when we are having trouble loving ourselves.

I think this is one of the most challenging and most important parts of our faith tradition. To love ourselves whole, and to extend that love to all the bodies, and all the minds in their great diversity.