Living in Interstitial Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MacMahon writes:

you must leave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Your Own Pace

Path through St. Francis' Woods

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I believe that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

I found a meme that expressed this perfectly:

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

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

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

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

Path from Assisi to the Rocca Maggiore

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

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

Masking and Unmasking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not purely a self-centered pursuit,

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes[ii] Writes:

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

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




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

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