It Is What It Is (September 21, 2014)

Reading:
Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgment. Remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. ..

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and others. These values undermine fanaticism and ignorance. After all, the universe is mostly dark dotted by islands of light. 

Learning the age of the earth, or the distance to the stars, or how life evolved, what difference does it make? Well, part of it depends on how big a universe you want to live in. Some of us like it small. That's fine. Understandable. But I like it big. And when I take all of this into my own heart and my mind, and when I have that feeling I want to know that it's real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality. I want to know what's in those dark places, and what happened before the big bang. I want to know what lies beyond the cosmic horizon and how life began. Are there other places in the cosmos where matter and energy have become alive and aware? I want to know my ancestors, all of them. I want to be a good strong link in the chain of generations. If we come to know and love nature as it really is then we will surely be remembered by our descendants as good strong links in the chain of life, and our children will continue this sacred searching, seeing for us as we have seen for those that came before. Discovering wonders yet undreamed of, in the cosmos.
 [Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey- episode 13 "Unafraid of the Dark"]

Sermon
This year our whole family has been watching the remake of Carl Sagan’s classic show “Cosmos” this time narrated by Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the very last minutes of the very last episode he said two things that I think sum up the key to Unitarian Theology. The first shows a faith in truth and a faith in process:

“Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. Follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

We believe that religious truth is not something we receive from an authority. Nor do we subscribe to that popular refrain “Unitarians can believe whatever they want.” Instead we believe in observation and experiment, in following the evidence wherever it leads. The root of this faith in evidence and observation is the well-spring of our tradition - and deGrasse Tyson puts it so beautifully: “… it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality.” Our imagination is nothing compared to nature’s awesome reality. 

This is a fall full of weddings. I have the incredible privilege of marrying two couples in this congregation who have been together for decades, and a young couple I recently met who have been together for just a couple of years. New couples are full of visions of an imagined future, whereas couples who have already spent a lifetime together are not entering into marriage in the abstract, they are committing to and, celebrating a very particular relationship.

When I was a young married woman, I often felt self-conscious that my marriage didn’t look like marriages in the movies. Older married women would fill my mind with should: “he should do this” “if he loved you he would do that” “a healthy marriage is like this.” But as years passed, and against all expectations my partner Eric and I stayed together, I realized my fundamental mistake. We as UUs believe that each and every person is unique and special. Well how on earth could you put together two absolutely unique people and create a marriage that looks just like, well, any marriage you have ever seen before? Our marriage was so much happier when I finally let go of what I imagined a marriage “should” be and just enjoyed the very really marriage I was living each day.

Like our handsome prince Ronald [from the Paper Bag Princess], we have to decide if the princess of our dreams is the one who will risk life and limb and come to our rescue with her courage and quick wits, or whether she is the princess that looks like the one we have imagined.

In her introduction to the Starr King Presidents lecture this past June at General Assembly, Rebecca Parker carefully proposed that:

“Love seeks to know the other as "other." Not as an extension of oneself, not as a reflection or as utilitarian presence to be there for one's use but as an other of sacred worth in the other's own rights. From the other's own perspectives, the other's own practices and values. Love seeks to know the other as other and to preserve and protect the just-so-ness, the "otherness" of the other."

This is something Prince Ronald has not yet figured out, but I have a strong suspicion that any partnership that can last for 31 years is made up of two people who understands their partner to be “an other of sacred worth in the other’s own rights.”

This is part of what makes the early days of a relationship so challenging. Not just a romantic relationship, but with friends, co-workers, neighbors. Because we are constantly creating in our imaginations the person we expect them to be. “A good neighbor does this” “ A friend would do that” or on the other side of things “What else would you expect from that kind of person”. And so when your princess shows up in a paper bag, when your friend forgets your birthday, when your son drops out of art school to become a football player, this is a powerful moment. This is the moment when you know you are witnessing the other as other- not just as the person you expect them to be. 

Let’s face it those expectations are powerful. Every day each of us does something because “it’s expected of us.” So when you experience someone exercising their freedom to be who they truly are, that moment can be disappointing, can be frustrating, but, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says “Our imagination’s nothing compared to nature’s awesome reality.” We may have to grieve the loss of the beautiful, spotless princess, but if we can let go of that imaginary being, we give and receive the gift of being present reality. The reality of, for example, a roommate who doesn’t wash the dishes the way I would. A partner who doesn’t show love the way I do. A friend who doesn’t grieve the way I expect. Here is the other-- defying and frustrating our expectations. The challenge is, can we lay aside which “might” have been, what “should” have been, and give our attention, our presence to what IS. 

Unitarian Universalist have preached tolerance of the other for many decades, but I am proposing something further. Love, as Rebecca Parker says, seeks to know the other as other. This is where the alchemy of love occurs, the magic of love- when something totally UN-expected happens, something I would never have come up with myself. This is the moment when we realize our relationship with our partner, our child, our friend is “real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head.” There are, in fact, strains of theology that propose that this whole reality that we perceive is “all in our own heads, just a dream” and maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not, but the moment your grandson says that surprising, jaw-droppingly unique thing, you know that at least this is a dream you share with another.

When I was young I looked everywhere for the God I had read about in the Old Testament-- the God of burning bushes and parting waters, who offered commandments on the mountaintop. I never did meet this God. But remember what God says to Moses in the story of the burning bush, when Moses asks “who shall I say has sent me?” God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ [exodus 3.14] What could that mean for our free and responsible search?

One of the new authors I have been introduced to on my sabbatical is Thomas Hart --a Catholic Theology professor and a Family and Marriage Counselor. He writes:

“Coping well with reality is coping well with God. Escaping reality into a separate realm, however spiritual the motive, runs the risk of missing the real encounter with God, and the kinds of growth that come from that encounter.” [p. 34]

Hart is suggesting that if we are only looking for God in burning bushes and parted waters, maybe we are missing something. I know that we here today are a very theologically diverse group. And so I offer to the theists and the agnostics this proposition- to try to know God as God is, instead of what we expect God to be. 

Those expectations come from many places, from scriptures, from an old Sunday School teacher, from television. Sometimes those expectations come from past experiences -- times in our life when we had a felt sense of the divine, or sought God and found nothing. We found god hiking on a mountaintop one awe filled day, but when we return to that very spot it feels empty. We create a very small place for God to exist in our own imaginations, one with clear rules and expectations that God so often disappoints. What if our spiritual expectations are coming between us and what Is? Because God is most certainly “other” – can we allow God to be God? To be other? " Not as an extension of oneself, not as a reflection or as utilitarian presence to be there for one's use but as an other of sacred worth in the other's own rights.”?

In my own personal theology I believe that God is indwelling in everything that is. There is no place in this amazing universe of ours where God is not. Whether you are looking through a telescope, or a microscope or into the face of your roommate or neighbor, the divine is not separable from what you see.

Now I want to assure the atheists in our community that I didn’t forget you. The words of deGrasse Tyson are not only the principles of scientific exploration, but can be guidance for spiritual exploration as well:

“Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. ... Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgment. Remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. .. Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and others. These values undermine fanaticism and ignorance.”

When a scientist comes across something in their experiment and observation that defies their hypothesis, I imagine this must be very discouraging. When you realize that the person you married is never going to take ballroom dance classes with you, or even pick up her socks off the floor, this can fill us with anger and grief. But when we can begin to let go of what we hoped would be, when we can grieve and release what we expected to be, we can finally begin to see what is real, to come closer to the truth of the other, of our world. 

Jesuit Theologian Walter Burghardt describes contemplation as “A long loving look at the real” and this is how I see our UU spiritual journey, whether we are theist, atheist or agnostic. This is where our shared mission to “grow spiritually” begins. I want to draw special attention to that word “love.” Rebecca Parker used it, Neil deGrasse Tyson used it too when he suggested “we come to know and love nature as it really is.” Remember back to a time when someone in your life looked at you with love… remember how that made you feel…Now remember a time when someone looked at you with disappointment, looked at you as if you had failed a test you didn’t even know you were taking. Love matters. It shapes how we respond to all we encounter. While reality is constantly growing and changing and evolving, let us be careful that our dreams of what might be doesn’t keep us from looking with love at what it already is.

Let’s open our hearts and minds to the world around us as it really is. Let’s take time to appreciate it and love it, not as we want it to be, as we expect it to be, but as it is unfolding in this moment. Reality does not exist in the abstract. By definition reality exists in you, as you really are in this moment, in me, as I am in this very moment, and in the sometimes surprising and even maddeningly unpredictable moment that emerges between us. “I want to know that it's real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality”

Meeting the Shadow (August 17, 2014)

Reading- from A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin

The Island of Gont… is a land famous for wizards. …many a Gontishman has gone forth to serve the Lords of the Archipelago in their cities as wizard or mage, or, looking for adventure, to wander working magic from isle to isle of all Earthsea. Of these some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day become both dragonlord and Archmage. His life is told in the Deed of Ged and in many songs, but this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.

 He was born in a lonely village called Ten Alders, high on the mountain … The name he bore as a child, Duny, was given to him by his mother, and that and his life were all she could give him, for she died before he was a year old. His father, the bronze-smith of the village, was a grim unspeaking man, and since Duny’s six brothers were older than he by many years, there was no one to bring the child up in tenderness. He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall quick boy, loud and proud and full of temper. With the few other children of the village he herded goats on the steep meadows above the river-springs…There was not much work to be got out of Duny. He was always off and away; roaming deep in the forest, swimming in the pools of the River Ar … or climbing by cliff and scarp to the heights above the forest, from which he could see the sea, ...

A sister of his dead mother lived in the village. She had done what was needful for him as a baby, but she had business of her own and once he could look after himself at all she paid no more heed to him. But one day when the boy was seven years old, untaught and knowing nothing of the arts and powers that are in the world, he heard his aunt crying out words to a goat which had humped up onto the thatch of a hut and would not come down; but it came jumping when she cried a certain rhyme to it. Next day herding the longhaired…, Duny shouted to them the words he had heard, not knowing their use or meaning or what kinds of words they were: North hierth malk man Hiolk han merth han!

 He yelled the rhyme aloud, and the goats came to him. They came very quickly, all of them together, not making any sound. They looked at him out of the dark slot in their yellow eyes.

 Duny laughed and shouted it out again, the rhyme that gave him power over the goats. They came closer, crowding and pushing round him. All at once he felt afraid of their thick, ridged horns and their strange eyes and their strange silence. He tried to get free of them and to run away. The goats ran with him keeping in a knot around him, and so they came charging down into the village at last, all the goats going huddled together as if a rope were pulled tight round them, and the boy in the midst of them weeping and bellowing. Villagers ran from their houses to swear at the goats and laugh at the boy. Among them came the boy’s aunt, who did not laugh. She said a word to the goats, and the beasts began to bleat and browse and wander, freed from the spell.

 “Come with me” she said to Duny. She took him into her hut where she lived alone. …. It was low and dusky, windowless, fragrant with herbs that hung drying from the crosspole of the roof, ... There his aunt sat cross-legged by the firepit, and looking sidelong at the boy through the tangles of her black hair she asked him what he had said to the goats, and if he knew what the rhyme was. When she found that he knew nothing, and yet had spellbound the goats to come to him and follow him, they she saw that he must have in him the makings of power. ..This was Duny’s first step on the way he was to follow all his life, the way of magery, the way that led him at last to hunt a shadow over land and sea to the lightless coasts of the death’s kingdom.

 Reading- Romancing the Shadow

… the shadow, is us, yet is not us. Hidden from our awareness, the shadow is not a part of our conscious self-image. So it seems to appear abruptly, out of nowhere, in a range of behaviors from off-color jokes to devastating abuses. When it emerges, it feels like an unwanted visitor, leaving us ashamed, even mortified. For instance, when a man who views himself as a responsible husband and provider is suddenly taken over by a dream of freedom and independence, his shadow is speaking. When a woman with a health-conscious lifestyle craves ice cream and feels compelled to binge in the dark of night, her shadow is acting out. When a normally kind mother belittles her child, her shadow is showing…

In each of these instances, the individual’s persona, the mask show to the world, is split off from the shadow, the face hidden from the world. The deeper this rift and the more unconscious the shadow, the more we experience it as a stranger, an Other, an alien invader. Therefore, we cannot face it in ourselves or tolerate it in others.” [P. 4]

We suggest that you relate to the shadow as a mystery, rather than as a problem to be solved or an illness to be cured. When the Other arrives, honor that part of yourself as a guest. You may discover that it comes bearing gifts. You may discover that shadow-work is, indeed, soul work.

When shadow-work is neglected, the soul feels dry, brittle, like an empty vessel. Then, people suffer depression rather than embark on a fruitful descent. When shadow-work is denied, the soul feels banished, exiled from its habitats in the wilds of nature … or in the sacred objects of art. Then, people suffer anxiety and loneliness, cut off from a sense of place, the mystery of the Beloved, or the beauty of things.

But when Shadow-work is attended to, the soul feels round, full, sated. When shadow-work is invited into a life, the soul feels welcomed, alive in the gardens, aroused in passion, awake in sacred things.” P. 9

Sermon- Meeting the Shadow

I am so happy to be able to introduce you to one of my all-time favorite Authors, Ursula LeGuin. Have any of you read her books or stories before? I recently re-read The Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, and realized it is a perfect parable about the Jungian Shadow archetype which I had been studying in my Spiritual Directors Training program. So in celebration of summer reading, I propose that we use a fantasy of wizards and magic to lead us deeper into our own souls.

 As we heard in the opening story, Duny did not receive a lot of attention as a child. His mother died in his infancy, his aunt kept her distance. His father was stern and abusive. Each of us is raised in a unique family system that nurtures some parts of us and discourages others. For our own survival we become the person we have to be to gain attention and approval in that family, in school, in society. Even in the most loving, healthy family, there will be parts of our self that we disown, that we “repress” as the Jungian’s say, in order to fit in.

When Duny reaches the limits of what his Aunt can teach, he goes to study with a local Mage called Ogion who performs the ritual of coming of age, giving him his true name, Ged. He is frustrated with his studies because while Ogion is trying to teach him about patience and restraint, Ged wants to learn showy spells of great power. After about a year of study, his teacher offers Ged a choice:

“If you wish, I will send you to Roke Island, where all high arts are taught. Any craft you undertake to learn you will learn, for your power is great. Greater even than your pride, I hope. I would keep you here with me, for what I have is what you lack, but I will not keep you against your will.” [ 24]Ged chooses the Isle of Roke , because much as he loves and respects his teacher, “other cravings were in him that would not be stilled, the wish for glory, the will to act.”

So Ged boards a boat bound for Roke, and once there an upperclassman is assigned to give him a tour.

… he was met by a tall youth who greeted him very courteously, bowing his head. “I am called Jasper, Enwit’s son of the Domain of Eolg on Havnor Isle. I am at your service today, to show you about the Great House and answer your questions as I can. How shall I call you, Sir?”

Now it seemed to Ged, a mountain villager who had never been among the sons of rich merchants and noblemen, that this fellow was scoffing at him with his “service” and his” Sir” and his bowing and scraping. He answered shortly, “Sparrowhawk, they call me.” [p. 37]

Has this ever happened to you? You meet someone who immediately dislike, before you really even know them? This is a perfect example of projection. A new person we meet is like a blank screen on which we project our own shadows. The next time you are among new people, notice- whom do you imagine would be fun to get to know? Who rubs you the wrong way in just the first few moments of sharing a room? Since I started thinking about my shadow this past year, I have taken to really noticing these strong, unfounded reactions, positive or negative. I even have a little list I am making in my journal to see if I notice any patterns.

We project on all kinds of things all day long. When you are watching the news or scrolling through your Facebook feed, notice what are the issues that really push your buttons, that fill you with righteous indignation? (Not that sometimes our indignation isn’t justified- as Jeremy Taylor says, just because something is a projection doesn’t mean it isn’t true, and just because something is true doesn’t mean it isn’t a projection)

I’ll give you an example for Unitarian Universalism. What are we as a people knee-jerk intolerant of? Religious intolerance! Oh that makes our blood boil. But as soon as we focus our righteous indignation on “them” this is a clue that we are dealing with our own shadow. As soon as we identify an external group, or person to wag our fingers at, what we are really doing is projecting our own shadow. Like the strange monster Ged saw lurking in the corner, we identify it as “whole-ly other.” As Dr. Zweib explained: “the more unconscious the shadow, the more we experience it as a stranger, an Other, an alien invader. Therefore, we cannot face it in ourselves or tolerate it in others.”

For example, I have heard many good UUs talk about evangelicals as embodying the opposite of all that is good and noble about UU. In making this kind of gross generalization, we are projecting our shadow on them, instead looking at our own complex attitudes and unexamined behaviors about tolerance and intolerance. Our shadow stalks us, each one of us, as individuals, as families, as organizations, as cultures. 

This is what happened when Jasper’s first words to Ged awoke something of Ged’s own shadow. Over the next few years of Ged’s studies, it becomes apparent that Ged has a natural talent and a drive to learn. He yearns for power and devotes himself whole heartedly to acquiring it. But Jasper, an older boy further along in his studies, is unimpressed. 

Standing there with rage in his heart, looking after Jasper, Ged swore to himself to outdo his rival ... He would prove himself, and humiliate Jasper. He would not let the fellow stand there looking down at him, graceful, disdainful, hateful.
 Ged did not stop to think why Jasper might hate him. He only knew why he hated Jasper. The other prentices had son learned they could seldom match themselves against Ged either in sport or in earnest, … Jasper alone neither praised him nor avoided him, but simply looked down at him, smiling slightly. And therefore Jasper stood alone as his rival, who must be put to shame. [p. 45]

The animosity grows between them, and one day when Ged is 15 Jasper challenges him during an argument about who is more powerful to “Summon up a spirit from the dead.” To everyone’s shock and fear, Ged complies.

 “In a great slow gesture he stretched out his arms, the gesture of welcome that opens an invocation. He began to speak.

He had read the runs of this Spell of Summoning in Orion’s book, two years and more ago, and never since had seen them. .. But now he understood what had read, speaking it aloud word after word, and he saw the markings of how the spell must be woven with the sound of the voice and the motion of body and hand…

The shapeless mass of darkness he had lifted split apart. …, and a pale spindle of light gleamed between his opened arms, a faint oval reaching from the ground up to the height of his raised hands. ..

Then the sallow oval between Ged’s arms great bright. It widened and spread…, a ripping open of the fabric of the world .Through it blazed a terrible brightness. And through that bright misshapen breach clambered something like a clot of black shadow, quick and hideous, and it leaped straight out at Ged’s face.

Staggering back under the weight of the thing, Ged gave a short, hoarse scream. .. Ged fell, struggling and writing, while the bright rip in the world’s darkness above him widened and stretched. ..

The intolerable brightness faded, and slowly the torn edges of the world closed together. Nearly a voice was speaking as softly as a tree whispers or a fountain plays. [p. 60]

This was the voice of the Archmage Nemmerle. The effort of closing this rift and saving Ged’s life is too much for him, and he dies from the effort. Ged, however, lays in the infirmary for many weeks, and wakes weakened, ashamed, and with “Deep, ragged, and evil wounds” on his face and through and shoulder.”

Ged is humbled and the course of his life has changed forever. Not even his great and powerful teachers are sure of the nature of the thing he has loosed into the world. Ged stays at the school for several more years regaining his strength, protected from this nameless thing by the powerful magic of the place, until he decides it is time for him to go out in the world and make his way.

 His teacher, Gensher of Way, says to him “You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of … good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin? ... Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you; you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast.” [p. 66]

So Ged sets out on his own, leaving the protection of the island, and always his shadow chases him, coming closer and closer. Finally when the thing is almost on him, Ged changes himself into a hawk and flies home to Gont, to his first teacher. He almost forgets himself, is almost unrecognizable to his teacher, but with his teacher’s help comes back to himself.

This again parallels the meeting of the shadow in our own lives. It is usually in young adulthood, or perhaps in midlife, when the structures that protected us in childhood begin to chafe, or limit the expression of our souls.

We flee this stranger, this monster but still it pursues us. It sneaks up on us at the strangest times. As Zweig says in their classic book about how ordinary people can recognize and work with their shadow: “When a woman with a health-conscious lifestyle craves ice cream and feels compelled to binge in the dark of night, her shadow is acting out. When a normally kind mother belittles her child, her shadow is showing.” And like Ged sometimes we transform ourselves into a form that is not our true form to hide from our shadow, to survive in the world.

 It is Ogion that finally suggests a solution not only for Ged’s dilemma, but for ours as well.

“There is no safe place,” Ogion said gently. “Do not transform yourself again, Ged. The shadow seeks to destroy your true being. It nearly did so, driving you into hawk’s being. No, where you should go, I do not know. Yet I have an idea of what you should do. It is a hard thing to say to you.”

Ged’s silence demanded truth, and Ogion said at last, “you must turn around.”

“Turn around?”

"If you go ahead, if you keep running, wherever you run you will meet anger and evil, for it drives you, it chooses the way you go. You must choose. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunger.”…

 “You returned to Gont, you returned to me, Ged. Now turn clear round, and seek the very source, and that which lies before the source. There lies your hope of strength.”…

“If I turn,” Ged said after some time had gone by, “if as you say I hunt the hunter, I think the hunt will not be long. All its desire is to meet me face to face.”… [p. 127]

This is the nature of shadow work. This is what I am asking you to consider today, that instead of running from our shadow, avoiding our shadow, externalizing our shadow, we turn around and meet it. And as Ged and Ogion acknowledge, this is not a process without risks. But continuing to hide from our shadow has risks as well. As Ged’s teacher tells him on Roke: “the thing you loosed would find you at once, and enter into you, and possess you. ..”

If we don’t turn and meet our shadow, it has tremendous power over us. Whether it lashes out in a harsh word, or in addiction, or our repression of it keeps us trapped in a muted life, a life where we miss some part of our true self, some depth of our soul, or our relationships, because we do not turn and face it. 

Let’s also notice that Ged wisely sought the help of a teacher, one who cared about him and knew him. Remember that if you ever feel lost or afraid in trying to meet your shadow work.

So Ged and his friend sail off deeper and deeper into the unknown seas, far past land, and finally Ged meets this monster who has haunted him since he was a boy.

In silence, man and shadow met face to face, and stopped.

Aloud and clearly, breaking that old silence, Ged spoke the shadow’s name in the same moment the shadow spoke without lips or tongue, saying the same word: “Ged.” And the two voices were one voice.

Ged reached out his hands, dropping his staff, and took hold of his shadow, of the black self that reached out to him. Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one.” [p. 179 ]

  “look,” [says Ged returning] “it is done. It is over.” He laughed “The wound is healed,” he said, “I am whole, I am free.” Then he bent over and hid his face in his arms, weeping like a boy. [p. 181]

For Jung and those who follow him, the work of a lifetime is to come to know your shadow, to meet it, and then to integrate it into yourself, because the self is partial and incomplete. The shadow, it is said, carries the gift. As Zweig says:

“When the Other arrives, honor that part of yourself as a guest. You may discover that it comes bearing gifts. You may discover that shadow-work is, indeed, soul work.” 

This is my offering to you this morning, as you go about your ordinary life, devoid of dragons and enchanted islands: the next time you experience something either in yourself or in the world as “totally other” as so completely “not- you” that it effects your emotions, pay attention. Just notice what you feel. Maybe that stranger can point you towards your shadow. See if you can catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of your eye. It may bring strong feelings- that means you are close! So be kind to yourself, don’t judge, just breathe into whatever you are noticing. The more we become conscious of the inner forces that drive us, the more deeply we will know ourselves. The shadow which first appears in terrifying intensity may someday reveal a gift that will enrich our lives.

This was true for Ged. It was because he turned to meet his shadow and said it’s true name that he gained the wisdom , the restraint and the power to become the Archmage and to defeated an even greater evil- the shadow of the whole culture of Earthsea. But those stories, as they say, are for another book, for another day.

The Inward Journey (June 8, 2014)

Over my sabbatical I spent some time almost every day reading the collected works of the great 13th century Sufi Mystic Rumi who wrote these words:

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?
A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you. (p. 260)

Rumi is proposing the very ancient, but still radical idea that the inward journey is more valuablethan anything else.

Certainly it was this instinct that lead Prince Siddhartha to give up his comfortable life, his wealth, literally his “power over an entire nation”. We told the story of Siddhartha on the day we bridged our High School seniors.. The story of how he was raised in luxury, heir to the throne, and protected from human suffering his whole life, until finally he demanded to be taken out of the palace and face the realities of life. When confronted with the sources of suffering—greed, illness, poverty and death, he renouncing everything, and went to learn meditation. Really, it’s the classic mid-life crisis, a man established in life, with wife and family, a career set out for him. All his physical needs met. But the luxuries of life were no longer enough. All the power he could want was no longer enough. And so a growing sense of dissatisfaction draws him to ask “what else is there?” All his privilege could not make him feel whole, feel satisfied. His luck was that he could understand with certainty that wealth does not ease this inner dissatisfaction. Many of us go our whole lives thinking “If only I had more money I would feel satisfied. If only I could get that promotion I would feel satisfied. If only I had a partner and a family I would feel satisfied.” 

So leaving behind everything except the simple robes he wore as he left the palace, he wanders for a while until he finds a teacher who introduces him to meditation. This is the first step in the inward journey, learning to quiet the mind --to stop doing for a little bit of time, to slow down the racing thoughts and be still. For most of us, this is hard. At the end of a long busy day, the body finally comes to rest and the mind spins and spins. We try to sleep and the mind is so active that we can’t sleep despite how tired we are.

One of the requirements of the spiritual direction training program I have been part of this year is to pray or meditate 20 minutes a day. I will be honest with you, until the start of my sabbatical, I was kind of pretending I hadn’t seen that requirement. I am not good at sitting still. If I sit down to watch “Cosmos” with my family I need a pile of laundry to fold, or at least some knitting to keep me there for the duration of the program. Besides, I do yoga almost every day, that’s the same thing right? And where was I going to find 20 more minutes a day to do anything? But once the sabbatical started I had no excuse. I found a seated posture that didn’t make my back hurt and turned my attention to my breath. I started paying attention to, well, my attention in yoga as well. Constantly bringing my mind back from its wanderings. At first I used to be hard on myself for the uncontrolled antics of my mind, but a yoga teacher had said “think of the mind as a little puppy, and gently lead it back.”

 I was amazed at the variation from day to day how long it would take for the mind to “release its contents” and finally settle into something like stillness. After a couple of months it became easier to really be present during yoga; I was amazed that for so many years I had let my mind wander wherever it wanted during my practice. Then just one day back to work after sabbatical I noticed during yoga that I was more present at a meeting I had just scheduled for July than I was in that moment. I took a deep breath and gently lead my mind back like a beloved puppy. Some days it’s harder than others, but there is a value to whatever stillness can be found that tends to reduce anxiety, to reduce our attachment to doing and thinking so we can just be. But this is not the end of the journey.

Siddhartha left his meditation teacher once he had learned the basics of meditation, because he had not yet found the cause and cure for suffering. He had not yet found the enlightenment he was looking for. The quieting of the chatter of the mind is just the doorway to the inward journey, because now we are alone with our Self. We are free now to look at the material from our life that begins to emerge and ask for our attention. Loneliness. Anger. Fear. All the old wounds that were never fully healed, that we never have time to look at in the busy stream of doing and planning. If you took up meditation to find peace, this layer of material is going to make you wonder what went wrong. When these inward electrical storms arise, meditation is not peaceful, prayer is not peaceful. Many people feel some kind of taboo about bringing their anger, fear, loneliness to prayer or meditation. But in fact our spiritual practice is the BEST place to be present with these things. Otherwise our spiritual life stays shallow. The Jungians call this “shadow material” and believe that the goal of human development is to become more and more conscious of our self so that, for example, that hurtful thing that bully said on the playground all those years ago doesn’t unconsciously cloud my interactions with my community today. When this material arises is a great time to talk to your spiritual director. The job of spiritual directors is not to fix this discomfort as it arises, but simply tobe present with the directee and whatever is emerging. The teachers in my training program mentioned many have found comfort “praying the psalms” at such times because the Psalms are filled with all the emotions that real people bring to prayer. Like the words of Psalm 22:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.

About this time in my own process, surrounded by Catholic religious brothers and sisters, and protestant clergy I thought “I am completely out of my depth here. I was born and raised UU, I don’t really know what it means to “Pray with the psalms” and moreover, I have a complicated relationship to the Judeo Christian scriptures.” A helpful classmate asked what helpful answers I might find in my own religious tradition. I muttered something about thinking that over and went off to be alone.

Beloved community, I think this is one of the critical questions facing our religious movement today; how does our tradition support us on the inward journey.  And we are not alone in facing it. I asked my husband the other day who went to 12 years of catholic school and 4 years of Jesuit college if he ever received any instruction in prayer, and he said he had only been taught the words of the spoken prayers of his childhood tradition. All these protestant clergy are taking part in this spiritual direction training program because they are not finding the teachings they and their congregations need in their own tradition. In point of fact teaching about the inward journey has been “underground” for centuries. Thomas Keating, a Cistercian Abbot, writes that around the end of the 16th century there was a clamping down on “affective prayer” [p. 23] that is, prayer that explores these emotions as they arise. He says that for centuries “Contemplation was an extraordinary grace reserved to the few” [p. 21] In the twentieth century things began to change. Says Keating, “The idea of laypeople pursuing the spiritual path is not something new. It just hasn’t been popular in the past thousand years. In the spiritual traditions of the world religions, both East and West, there has been a tendency to isolate seekers…” [p. 28] from laypeople raising families, holding down jobs. In not only Christianity but also in Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, teachings about the inward journey were reserved for a few initiates, and not made available to people like us. Both the traditions of Spiritual Direction and Contemplative prayer returned to public view in the Catholic tradition after Vatican 2 [ p. 33] with the realization that laypeople were hungry for teachings to support them on the spiritual journey, and that if their own tradition would not help them, people would turn elsewhere. Keating believes “We need to refresh ourselves at this deep level everyday. Just as we need exercise, food, rest, and sleep, so also we need moments of interior silence because they bring the deepest kind of refreshment.” [P. 35]

 Back to Siddhartha. Our story tells us that he began practicing with a group of ascetics- folks who “practiced hardships to conquer their desires, sensations and fears.” With them he denied himself food, sleep, and exposed himself to the harsh elements meditating for days on end. He became so frail from these hardships that he was near death, yet still he did not find what he was seeking. Sometimes when we are too hard on ourselves, too focused on our own “goodness” the discipline, the goodness itself becomes the object of our focus, becomes a detour from the true end of our journey. Gautama thought about the luxuries of his early life, and the hardships of this ascetic practice. He realized that there was a middle way. 

When Gautama left behind this harsh practice and hobbled to a river to bathe, a village girl, Sujata, brought him a bowl of sweetened rice and he was renewed by her kindness, reminding us of the importance of compassion on the inward journey. Both Buddhism and Hinduism have the virtue of “Ahimsa” or “non-harming.” We hold ahimsa not only for others but also for the self both on the inward and outward journeys. As the 8th century Buddhist teacher Saraha puts it “He who clings to the void and neglects compassion does not reach the highest stage. But he who practices only compassion does not gain release from the toils of existence.” [cited in Ram Das “Be here now” p. 95]

Finally Gautama takes his seat under the Bodhi tree and determines not to rise until he has found enlightenment. He focuses on the space between his thoughts to experience for himself the ultimate nature of reality. There Gautama faced Mara, the shadow material all of us face deep in ourselves. He faced his desire to return to his wife and child, the temptation to become king, his self-doubt until finally he found the place deep in his own interior that was free from suffering-- because there is something more permanent, more enduring, more valuable than any of those things. In different traditions people call this different things, the ground of being, the river of pure awareness, Christians say there lies union with God. In general the religious traditions agree that the closer you get to this ultimate reality, the less useful words are. Silence is the best way to reach this place, and perhaps the best way to express it as words begin to fail. That day Gautama found this state he called enlightenment and became Buddha.

Then the Buddha realized that others would need a path out of suffering. He understood that he must become a teacher and spend the rest of his life helping others on their journey. As Buddha’s story illustrates, the inward path leads back out into the world. Compassion leads one who has found a place without suffering to alleviate the suffering of others.

I know that Unitarian Universalists are traveling this inward journey. The drive to know for ourselves what is at the heart of this life is part of our mission. The question is – are we prepared to support one another, as our UU principles call us, to “encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations”? What tools, what skills, what attention do we offer one another in support? I believe there are maps for this journey so that we do not have to enter this way blindly and alone, maps like the one the Buddha taught to all who asked. And I believe more and more in the value of having companions on the journey, the value of someone like a spiritual director who listens and offers guidance, and the value of a community to hold one another in covenant. But some part of this journey we can only take in the quiet of our own hearts. As Rumi says:

A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.

The Deep Way (January 19, 2014)

I am not sure you can become a Unitarian Universalist minister without knowing at least a few poems by Mary Oliver. When I was in seminary, we used her poetry in worship again and again because it seemed to speak right to our desire to live in the world in a deep way.

One poem we often heard in chapel was “The Summer Day” which ends:

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

On first hearing it spoke directly to my most urgent questions about what I was called to do with my life. What better life could I choose than being the minister of a church like this one? “To Serve Lovingly, live ethically and grow spiritually."

And so these past 15 years I have poured myself out into the shared ministry of our faith. I have tried my hand at just about every aspect of church life- I have been a church secretary, a church musician, a youth group leader, a Sunday school teacher. As a minister I’ve washed dishes and visited members in the hospital. I’ve weeded the garden and officiated at weddings. I’ve organized political action and led discussions of biblical criticism. And through it all I learned the hard way that it's not more meetings, more spreadsheets, more programs, or even more skillful preaching that lead to spiritual growth. As some of you dedicated volunteers know, it is possible to spend all of your spare energy serving your church, your community, your principles until you are all used up. If we are only serving lovingly and living ethically without growing spiritually, the quality of our presence, the spark of life we bring to one another sputters and goes out. 

When I shared Mary Oliver’s poem from the pulpit a few months back, I was startled to find a whole new way of looking at this question “What will I do with my one wild and precious life.” There’s nothing in that poem about the work of building up our world, instead she writes:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

What Mary Oliver has chosen to do with her one wild and precious life is "to be idle and blessed."  

I want to acknowledge right now that this is profoundly counter-cultural. As I mentioned in my sermon on “emptiness” last month, we have come to value the worth of our lives by our productivity, by how much we do and the profit therein. But when we seek healing for the broken parts of our world, I don’t feel like we are a few over-time shifts away from repair. I don’t feel, as I walk through the mall, that we are a few more sales away from repairing the environmental damage to our planet, or one more iPad upgrade away from mending the broken hearts in our community.

For millennia, religious community has offered something different than the status quo. The great Unitarian religious educator Sofia Fahs wrote:

"The religious way is the deep way, the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles of the heart of every phenomenon. The religious way is the way that touches universal relationships; that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feelings of kinship." [ii]

I think this is a great explanation of what we mean by “spiritual growth” in our mission statement. We are growing high, wide and deep. We are looking for the intangibles at the heart of everything.

Like everything of importance in our lives, this deep way takes time and attention. Spirituality doesn’t just happen. Okay, sometimes it does. Sometimes you find yourself gazing at a sunset from the peak of a mountain, or at the hospital bed of a beloved who is suffering and something deep comes to your heart and soul un-bidden. But most days we choose, consciously or unconsciously, whether to take the deep way or to skim along the surface of life.

I submit to you that it is possible to do each and every one of the long list of action items that make up church life without growing a jot. This happens not only when we are “going through the motions” instead of bringing our full self to a task, but it also happens when we confuse the purpose of our task with religious purpose. We can create worship that is excellently prepared, but still does not help us touch the ineffable. We can have meetings that complete every task on the agenda, but that still do not satisfy the longing in the soul. For this is the other part of what I am proposing; it is also possible to do each and every one of that long list of action items that make up church life in a deep way, in a religious way. You get this- this is part of what I love about you- you know the difference between what is important and what is merely urgent. I see you looking for the heart of our shared life together in this beloved community. I see you looking for the deep way.

My seminary professors Bob Kimball and Til Evans used to talk a lot about this-- about that special thing that can happen between people when they are really truly present with one another, something deep and real. We don’t have complete control over when and how this will happen but, as Bob used to say, we can do things that “increase the odds” that such moments will occur. This, they felt, was the essence of the religious life, the essence of ministry. Sometimes, as a clergy person, I forget that it matters more HOW we are at a meeting, than WHAT we accomplish. I notice that the busier I am, the more things on my to-do list, the easier it is to forget. My attention strays from the needs of the soul to the needs of the agenda. That is part of the reason that ministers take a study leave in the summer and a sabbatical every few years--creating a space that “increases the odds” of authentic, real, presence.

And of course, ministers are no different than any other person when it comes to the need for deep, authentic, relationship. It’s not just ministers and academics (and I hear now researchers at Google take sabbaticals). Everyone needs the time and the space to connect to the deepest wellsprings of life. Every soul needs space and time to develop. Every spirit needs room to grow. That is to say, as a Universalist, I believe that no one comes into this world cut off from their one-ness. We are all part of this amazing unity that is life, though sometimes it’s easier to remember that than other times. I believe therefore, I take the Universalist leap, that true religion must be accessible to each and every person. The religious life, life on the deepest level is by this definition something that every living being is connected to. Living a religious life is about our attempt to renew that connection to our one-ness with all that is.

I believe with Fahs that “The religious way is the deep way.” So I hypothesize that to find the “heart of every intangible thing” you go deeper and deeper until you reach the point where everything actually is one. Go so deep that there is not even the distinction of “this is a religious life and that is not” or “this is me but that is not me.” Seeking such a level of being is, to my mind, the essence of both the Unitarian tradition — the one-ness of God, and the Universalist tradition — the one-ness of our common plight.

Many people have asked what I will be doing on my sabbatical, and the training I will be doing in Spiritual Direction is just part of the answer. A better answer is that I want to go deep. Recently I mentioned to some friends that in addition to taking a leave from my usual work here in this congregation, I will be taking a break from all the committees on which I volunteer in the community as well. They were amazed-- Darcey without committee meetings? My partner Eric said “I don’t think I’ve ever known you when you didn’t have committee meetings.” A friend said “I’m looking forward to getting to know what you are like when you have no committee meetings.” I replied “me too!” What will this look like? I’m not totally sure. If I’ve learned nothing else about trying to follow the deep way it is that the first step is letting go of expectations, letting go of attachment to the outcome.

The spiritual adventure can look many different ways, it can take many different forms. It can look sometimes like sitting in meditation, and other times like weeding a garden or being fully present in conversation with a toddler. It takes patience and a persistent curiosity to penetrate beyond the surface of things to the deep well-spring at the source of life. 

Raised as we have all been in a culture that measures our value by our productivity, I must reassure myself that restoring, nurturing, lighting my soul with this in mind is not insular and selfish, but is one of the critical pieces of co-creating a religious community like ours, and co-creating our world through these troubled times. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes in her “Letter to a Young Activist”:

“...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. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these — to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both — are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. 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.”[iii]

 If we believe that a soul who is “fully lit” is important to our world, then we must give whatever time and attention is necessary to “shine like gold in dark times.” As far as I know I am the only person in this congregation who is headed off on sabbatical this spring (and I am deeply deeply grateful to you for this gift of time to re-ignite my own soul) but I invite each of you, as you are willing and able, to follow the deep way, the religious way. While washing the dishes, while meeting in committee. I invite you to taking time for contemplation or to fall down in the grass-- to be idle and blessed. To “see what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles of the heart of every phenomenon.”

Endnotes:
[i] http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2012/06/in-honor-of-the-solstice-mary-olivers-the-summer-day.html
[ii] Sophia Lyon Fahs, Today's Children and Yesterday's Heritage, from Cornerstones, p.5. [iii] http://mavenproductions.com/index.php/services/dr-clarissa-pinkola-estes/dr-clarissa-pinkola-estes-letter-to-a-young-activist-during-trou/ 

Boundaries, Membranes and Walls (January 5, 2014)

Part 1

In the beginning, okay not really the beginning, but 4 billion years ago when the earth had cooled enough for rocks to harden and for water to settle into oceans, life first emerged on earth. How amazing! We can’t really know exactly what happened in those early days of life on earth. All scientists can do is create theories based on the geological evidence that we do have and the life that survives today. We know that due to the tremendous creativity of life, many forms of being emerged and only a fraction thereof survive. Today, in honor of Evolution Weekend, we honor this incredible journey we share with all living things.

First, as the story goes, simple organic molecules began to emerge, chains of simple nucleotides. While scientists haven’t been able to exactly replicate conditions on the early earth, back in the 1950s a scientist called Stanley Miller showed that when electric sparks were discharged into water containing the building block elements, organic molecules would emerge. [i] Then RNA evolved – chains of nucleotides that could reproduce its own patterns and pass these patterns on to offspring. Now the base molecules of life could learn and remember and grow. Those patterns that were most successful in the conditions of that early earth would continue to reproduce themselves. Other patterns that were less effective at surviving or replicating would fade into extinction.

One of the patterns that emerged was to for the genetic material to be enclosed in a cell membrane made up of chains of hydrocarbons- they were similar to modern bacteria. This was so effective that it quickly outpaced the “naked” molecules- those without membranes. This is successful because without a membrane to keep the enzymes you produce for yourself, those enzymes will tend to get co-opted by your neighbors- as if all the neighboring molecules are parasites. A cell with a membrane, on the other hand, can keep its enzymes all for itself. Having a membrane also meant that the contents of the cell could be different from the outside environment- helping these complex molecules remain stable. [ii]

I know on a cold week like this one you have thought a lot about how to stay warm. The thing is it’s much easier to STAY warm than to GET warm. We all know the difference between a well-sealed house on a cold day. Imagine if we opened the doors and windows right now- all the heat we’ve generated here inside would vanish in a few minutes. This was the evolutionary benefit that made those first cells so successful. But we have to open the doors to let in everyone who wants to come to services. So we need not walls, but permeable membranes.

We call those early forms “proto-cells” because they were so much simpler than many of the cells that make up living beings today. These early cells continued to evolve, becoming more complex like the ones in your body today. It took 2 billion years for those proto-cells to involve into new more complex cells, we call eukaryotic because they have all their genetic material separated from the cytoplasm by yet another membrane around the nucleus- this is called the nuclear envelope. (Karyon is the root word meaning “nut” or “kernel”) All the cells in your body today are eukaryotic, and so each has at least 2 membranes.

These cell membranes are not impermeable barriers; they have the job not only of keeping things out but also of letting things in . And the important job of knowing the difference. [iii]

 About 700 million years ago the first multi-cellular beings evolved. The first multi-celled organisms looked something like modern algae, or worms or jellyfish. There are several theories of how this happened, but the most prevalent says that and first they were just a loose affiliation of identical cells, that over many generations began to divide up the work of the colony, and those cells began to evolve in a way that optimized their form to optimize their job. Your human body has about 200 different kinds of cells! These multi-celled organisms developed membranes of their own. Your body has 5 types of membrane- the most obvious being the skin- the “cutaneous” membrane.[iv]

As we heard in our opening reading from the “Journey of the Universe” these membranes, whether the most primitive or the most sophisticated, these are where “the capacity for discernment resides.” Pretty amazing, to think of your tiny little microscopic cells being capable of discernment, and realizing that this is a quality they share with ancestors 4 billion years ago.

Part 2

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall” writes the poet Robert Frost. I feel this too. As a person who is looking for the religious life, the deep life, I am constantly challenging myself to break down walls in my own heart and mind. I want to be more patient, more giving, more generous. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” they seem almost contrary to our UU values of openness, service, growth. But I have learned the hard way that as for those early proto-cells, good membranes are life-promoting, are crucial for our health and for the integrity of self.

Endocrinologist Hans Selye, who made his name studying biological stress, quipped:

“At first sight, it is odd that the laws governing life’s responses at such different levels as a cell, a whole person, or even a nation should be so essentially similar”

So I propose that some of those same principles that apply to cell membranes are true for the human being, and for the human community- that to be healthy each of us need permeable membranes. Or, that in community, as Robert Frost says “Good walls make good neighbors.”

Now of course a membrane is not a wall- it is much more sophisticated. A membrane does more than just keep cows in and keep neighbors out. The most healthy successful boundaries are a delicate balance of strong and permeable. Finding this balance is a perennial struggle for individual and society alike. The tension between liberal and conservative religions, between liberal and conservative politics is often said to be the tension between love and the law. Liberals tend to lean heavily on the idea that “love is all you need” and conservatives tend to lean on the idea that tougher laws, tougher punishments create safety and justice. In reality, the evolution of life on this planet shows that an organism without any membrane is quickly out-survived by one with a membrane. And on the other side of the polarity, a being surrounded by an impermeable membrane will suffocate and die. The question is not really whether open is better than closed, but what is the delicate balance that keeps us most healthy and life-giving.

Let’s review the jobs of a membrane and see how we can use this living text to inform our daily lives.

The first job of a membrane is to keep things out. When you shower, for example, some of the water is absorbed by the top layers of the skin (your cutaneous membrane) but doesn’t penetrate into the body. There is a lot of controversy right now about which chemicals do penetrate through the skin into the body. But big things, like marbles, or cookie crumbs, or most if not all the water in your shower stay outside your membrane all-together, or don’t get any deeper than the outer layer of the membranes. But skin is not an impermeable wall. Some things do get through – like oleoresins of certain plants (like poison ivy and poison oak), or the salts of heavy metals such as lead,[v]

In our bodies different kinds of membranes are more or less permeable. Remember when everyone was unsure how people contracted HIV and aids? People were afraid to hug or even shake hands with people who were infected. Later we learned that the skin is a good barrier against transmission, but mucus membranes are not. This is why people contacted aids from infected dentists or sex partners.

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out”

Sometimes liberals err on the side of making their boundaries too permeable. We are a hopeful people and want to believe that we can trust everyone. But the ability to say “no” to what is unhealthy for us is part of being a loving community. I love marbles as much as the next person, but I’m glad my skin keeps them outside my body. Being able to say “no” to things in the environment is critically important to survival. I can lock my door and choose who to let into my house. I can say no to physical and sexual abuse. I can choose to spend time with healthy people who help me be a whole person, and limit the time I spend with people who make me feel less than whole. I can even choose what issues and concerns I am going to let in and make my own, and which I am going to keep outside of myself. And I can change from day to day, year to year, what I let in and what I keep out.

The next job of boundaries is to take things in. We have to breathe. We have to eat. But we need to exclude poison and disease in the food we eat and the air we breathe. On the human scale, we also need information, we need relationships. Sometimes we err on the side of boundaries that are too rigid and we don’t take in enough from outside to allow us to thrive. It’s not hard to find examples in the news of people who simply will not allow new ideas into their minds, and so operate within a paradigm that denies them some of the information they need to effectively live in the real world. Okay, we all do this from time to time. We resist new ideas, ideas that are radically different from how we believe the world to be. But healthy systems tend to let in new ideas pretty freely. Our boundaries are the mechanism through which we discern what ideas will nourish us and which will make us sick.

Let’s extend this idea to relationships. On one end of the spectrum are people who close themselves off to friends and family, isolating themselves with rigid impermeable boundaries. At the other extreme are people who will let anyone into their lives, even people who will use or abuse them. Having good boundaries is about discernment- is this idea food, or is it poison? Is this relationship one that will help me grow and thrive, or one that will eat away at me?

The third job of boundaries is to excrete. After we take something in, we integrate the parts we need and excrete the rest. The word Excrete comes from the root cernere, which means “to separate.” It reminds me of the story of the two monks:

Once there were two monks traveling when they arrived at a river. At the river they discovered a woman struggling to get across. Without a second thought, the older of the two monks asked the woman if she needed help, then swiftly picked her up and carried her across to the other bank.

It should be understood that for monks, especially in ancient times, any contact with the opposite sex would be strongly frowned upon, if not forbidden. The actions of the older monk greatly troubled the younger monk, who allowed his feelings to fester for several miles while they continued their journey.

Finally, the younger monk confronted the older monk, "How could you have done such a thing? We are not even supposed to be in a woman's presence, but you touched her, carried her even!"

The older monk calmly replied, "I put that woman down miles ago, back at the river. But you are still carrying her."[vi]

In this story, the young monk’s boundaries are so rigid they do not allow him to help a woman in need, the older monk has boundaries that are permeable enough to allow him to transgress a taboo when it is the compassionate thing to do, and then to let go of the experience when it is time.

Even with our good friends, our favorite books or TV shows, healthy boundaries allow us to take in what we can use, and separate that which is not useful, or which is toxic, and to let go of it. With a family, within a community, things happen which makes us mad, or ashamed, or sad. If we allow it to sit inside us and festers it can make us sick. But healthy boundaries allow us to let things go that are no longer useful to us.

The final thought about boundaries. Apparently “the surface of the plasma membrane carries markers that allow cells to recognize one another, which …plays a role in the “self” versus “non-self” distinction of the immune response. “[vii] So boundaries help us tell the difference between “self” and “non-self.” When you are part of a group, sometimes we get overwhelmed or seduced by the dynamics of the group. This is the teenager who does something she would normally never do because “everyone was doing it.” This is the employee who does not notice that the demands of his work conflict with his ethics because it is “just the way things are done.” This is the family member who gets sucked into a holiday conflict that doesn’t really involve him. Systems Theory folks agree, the most important way to have healthy systems is to have strong individuals with have a strong sense of self. The teenager who says “hey guys, I don’t think that’s a good idea” not only protects herself, but may in fact help the group a reconsider a risky decision. The family member who says “That’s between Bob and Susan, I’m not getting involved” will not only reduce his own holiday stress, but may help the whole family become less anxious. Remember, even on the cellular level having a membrane means that the contents of the cell could be different from the outside environment. Good boundaries are like permeable membranes, they allow us to be in a chaotic environment and remain stable. They allow us to change and grow without disintegrating.

Throughout my life I have wondered “is love really all you need?” Now I think the answer is “love and boundaries are all you need.” Having boundaries is not contrary to love, they are part of being a good person and leading a generous, loving, compassionate, life. Every living thing on earth has at least one membrane allowing it to be who it is in a chaotic world. To be good neighbors we need not “good walls” but semi-permeable boundaries that support wholeness, and that allow us to let in all we need to thrive and grow and evolve.

---

[i] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/

[ii] http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2bDetailsoforigin.shtml

[iii] <https://www.boundless.com/biology/structure-and-function-of-plasma-membranes/components-and-structure/introduction/>

[iv] http://www.livestrong.com/article/209913-basic-types-of-membranes/

[v] http://faculty.etsu.edu/forsman/integument.htm

[vi] http://www.examiner.com/article/buddhist-parables-a-story-of-two-monks

[vii] <https://www.boundless.com/biology/structure-and-function-of-plasma-membranes/components-and-structure/introduction/>

 

 

Emptying (December 15, 2013)

I was at a committee meeting here at the church just this week, and each person, during the check-in, mentioned how busy they were; they felt scattered, overwhelmed by all that was on their plates. It’s not an unusual thing to hear at check-in, especially not during this time of year. Many of us have holiday traditions that require preparation, on top of the usual business of repairing the furnace, putting snow tires on the car, doctor’s visits, meeting deadlines at work, or volunteer projects we give our time to. If you are in school there are probably some kind of end-of-semester projects or tests.

On top of these very real demands on our time, there are the ones that come at us through the media. The whole world seems to have a lot of things I need to do right away, most of them at the mall. Economists and reporters call this “The holiday shopping season” because it accounts for between 20 percent and 40 percent of typical retailers' total annual sales.[i] This time of year I get a staggering number of e-mails from retailers insisting that I “Shop now and save” alerting me to “One day only special offers” to “get them now before they are gone. My inbox is also full of e-mail from non-profits who are needing end-of-year donations or end of congressional season action, whose subject lines all end with exclamation points.

Let’s interrupt that. This season, this “dark of winter” is a time of emptying and letting go. The trees have dropped their leaves, and now we have a wide open view of the sky. In the Christian tradition Advent is a time of emptiness, a time of waiting. A time of “emptying ourselves of ourselves” [ii] A time to remember that there is a value not only in the many things we choose to do each day, and the many things we never get around to and possibly feel guilt or regret that we just couldn’t cram them into our already full lives, but there is also value in empty spaces and places. As the Buddhist saying goes “Don’t just do something, sit there!”

 Some of you were part of our fall adult RE offering “Spirit of Life” in which we provided a period of time for each person to share, and if they didn’t to use all their time, we would just sit in silence until the bell rang. The first session it was really weird. We kind of looked at each other, or at the floor, not sure what to do-- not sure how to be in those empty gaps. But over the 5 weeks we met together, we grew comfortable with those silences. We noticed how special it was to share silent times with one another, and then to share from that deep place of contemplation.

When I attended the first intensive retreat at the Linwood Center [this is part of the training to become a spiritual director in which I am enrolled for this next year] they told us that our training was to be contemplative in focus- that contemplation “is rediscovering your true self, your real identity, which has been buried and forgotten in the depths of our unconscious. Contemplation “ moves us out of a personal point of view, away from ego through the True Self.” But a Contemplative way of being in the world is different than the usual way of things in our culture. As a culture we believe very strongly that work, productivity, profit are the measures of our worth as persons. So contemplation is, therefor, countercultural. In our very first session our teacher Don talked about the barriers that come between us and contemplation. I want to lift four of those up for us today:

1) “Doing over being- This is want we were talking about before. Our culture is centered around “productivity, achievement, honor and success. Being for itself has diminished in value. Busyness leaves no gaps.”

2) “Noise- There is a constant background of noise so silence is more and more foreign, strange and disturbing”

3) “Technological imperialism- Technology has quickened our expectations creating an inability to wait” we have come to “seek immediate gratification.”

4) “Excessive restlessness-“ it is like there is a “hungry wolf inside who” consumes “whatever space exists.” We are uncomfortable with gaps and in-between spaces, so the restless wolf gobbles them up.

I recognized myself in this list. 

So the whole retreat was set up with these principles in mind. We ate breakfast in silence each morning. There was a kind of quiet that permeated the place. The schedule, though our seminar times overflowed with useful information and discussion about the practicalities of spiritual direction, had surprisingly large gaps in it. Breaks between sessions or activities would often be an hour or two long. Gaps were left in worship, in lecture, just moments of silence where we would just… wait, for whatever might come.

By the second day, what had seemed to be awkwardly long pauses now seemed very full to me, very important and precious. By the fifth day I felt a clarity about what I wanted and needed for my life, but also an open-ness to whatever might come. I felt both full and empty, still and peaceful, and with a renewed energy for life. All that business, all that chatter of the mind, tends to keep us from reaching the depth of things. When we are too full of doing it ruffles the surface of the water, and it makes it hard to see down into the depths. It keeps us from noticing our true nature, it keeps us from what we really need. This kind of emptying the mind and heart that we practiced at Linwood allowed the wisdom of that “still small voice” to emerge, a voice too quiet to be heard above the daily bustle. 

By emptying we also make space for the “other,” the unexpected. I remember one afternoon many years ago I was headed down to the marina to enjoy an afternoon off. I had intentionally kept this time unscheduled- leaving space for whatever might arise. As I neared the marina, I saw a car stopped in the middle of the street. The driver had jumped out to help a small dog who had wandered into the middle of this busy 4 lane road. I pulled over to see if my help was needed. In fact, this fellow was late for whatever was next in his day, and was very grateful when I offered to take the dog in my own car, my afternoon suddenly given an unexpected purpose. 

Emptying also allows us to learn and change and grow. Like the scholar in our story this morning, if our cup is too full, there is no room for any new ideas about the universe to enter in. Each of us has learned many things on our journey thus far, whether from academic journals or in the laboratory of life. Paradoxically, the more experience and knowledge we have amassed, the easier it is to forget that there are infinitely complex variables at work in the world. That each person is radically different, that each moment is fresh and new. In reaching for what we expect, we often forget to make room for all that is unexpected, all that is undiscovered. Sometimes someone dear to me will say “You’re not listening to me!” and I will realize that I am making assumptions about that they are saying, where they are coming from. (Has this ever happened to you? That you feel like no matter what you say, the person you are talking to has already heard what they want to hear, and you are talking to a brick wall?) If I can remember to empty my cup, to stop and say – “okay, try again. I’m really listening this time” I empty my cup of some of my preconceptions and try to hear something new, a deeper communication, a deeper relationship is possible. To truly be in conversation, we have to empty ourselves first, so there is room to hear something new.

A few years back I had the great gift of hearing author Thomas Moore speak at a minister’s convocation. He spoke about the “emptiness parables” in the Gospel of Thomas like [97] in which:

“Jesus says: "The Kingdom of the Father is like a woman who takes a vessel of flour and sets out on a long road. The handle of the vessel broke: the flour spilled out on the road behind her without her knowing it and stopping it. When she arrived at the house she put the vessel down and found it was empty." [iii]

He said the Gospel of Thomas is full of such parables about emptiness, and how at this time in his life, emptying was his core practice because “what you don’t know leads you to God.” What did he mean by that? Well, partly what we’ve been saying, that we can’t hear the deepest wisest parts of ourselves when our lives and minds are too cluttered. He also meant that we can’t really listen for something other than our own selves if we don’t make room first. And in his view, God is by definition “other” than us. When we are seeking for God, we are seeking for something that satisfies, that soothes, that endures beyond our experience of daily-ness, otherwise we would not be seeking. Whether we believe in a Transcendent God, or are instead seeking our truest deepest Self, he and many other wise religious scholars and practitioners advise us to begin our search at the edge of what we don’t know. Once we have decided we Know the Truth, we have constructed a false idol, because God, the Self, the universe is an ever changing, living, growing process. Once we pin it down, we have lost something crucial. Moore said that Zen, the emptying process of Zen Buddhism , is about not making an idol of anything. 

Then he said “life will empty you out all the time” through losing a job, through divorce and that “that emptiness really creates soul.”

Wow. That was not what I was thinking of as emptying. But he is saying that when we get into our familiar grooves, our habits of mind, we begin to feel comfortable that our teacup full. We think we know all we need to know to make sense of the universe. We see what we expect to see. It is sometimes through loss, through these often painful losses, when our cup spills, cracks, that we realize how much we don’t know. Now there is room for something new to enter in. Sometimes even a painful loss opens our eyes to some important new truth.

As we wait in this darkest time of year, let us allow something deeper, something more important than “the holiday shopping season.” Let us be grateful for the gaps and in-between times instead of rushing to fill them up. Let this be a time of emptying our hearts and minds -- a time of listening. May we find here a return to our deepest, truest self. And always the possibility that something new may enter in.

 Endnotes

[i] http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/12/13/2013-holiday-shopping-season-10-surprising-statistics/ 10 Surprising Stats About the 2013 Holiday Shopping Season by Selena Maranjian Dec 13th 2013 5:00AM

 [ii] http://www.catholic.org/clife/advent/story.php?id=53354 “Prepare the Way for the Lord: Why We Celebrate Advent” By Deacon Keith Fournier 12/2/2013

 [iii] http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas97.html 

Language of Reverence: Queer (November 17, 2013)

Story for All Ages

I think most of you probably know a story about a family of ducks, where all of the children were yellow and fluffy, except one which was sort of a subdued earth tone with a long skinny neck. He was not very attractive by duck standards, so they called him … yell it out if you know?

Well, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if those ducks had gone to the kind of church where the children’s teacher might have heard the mean things they were saying to that different looking duck, and said:

“you don’t have to be yellow to be beautiful,
a long skinny neck is just as beautiful as a short thick one.

But more importantly, Dave, the one you call the ugly duckling, is caring, and funny, and helps take care of the lake he lives in. His outsides don’t really tell you much about who he is.”

And even though all of you are yellow and fluffy,
that doesn’t mean you are all the same inside.

Why don’t we each share something that makes us different and special.”

And maybe then the ducks would have understood
how important it is that each person is unique,

The moral of my story was best said by one of my professors, Elis Farajaje-Jones "None of us is just like everybody else. We don’t have to be like everybody else to be guaranteed the right to safe and whole existences. We want to create a world where everyone is able to discover and define and live by who they are, who they are becoming, with the option to change several times throughout the course of their lives. "

Sermon
Maybe a decade ago I used the word “Queer” in a public meeting to describe myself. One of the members of my congregation came to me afterwards and admonished me “NEVER use the word queer about yourself- you don’t have to put yourself down like that.”

Her comment shocked me into remembering that for many people “Queer” is a sticky word. But for me it is just right. As a bisexual woman married to a man, I have always felt that both the words “gay” and “straight” didn’t fit right; either word felt a little dishonest. I’m also not crazy about the word “bisexual” – not only does it sound kind of clinical, but it doesn’t sound like you can be monogamous when you’ve got the prefix for “2” right in the word there.

When one of my seminary professors, who name was then Elias Farajaje-Jones, delivered the Sophia Fahs Lecture in 2000 (the lecture is named after the famous UU religious educator) I had just made the choice to enter into the Ministry of Religious education, which many people perceive as kind of a marginal sort of ministry that involves mostly cutting out construction paper shapes and lining up magic markers. When Elias delivered his lecture “Queer(y)ing Religious Education: Teaching the R(evolutionary S9ub)V(ersions)! Or Relax!... It’s Just Religious Ed” it was like some walls I had in my mind came crumbling down. I suddenly knew that I was a queer person doing a queer ministry. I knew that the ministry of Religious Education is not tame and marginal to our movement, but radical, revolutionary and at the core of religious formation as Unitarian Universalists.

So what do I mean by “Queer” in this expanded context? First, queer means “non-normative.” We have been raised to believe that some things are “normal” and other things are “not normal.” We get the message every day that being straight is normal, being white is normal, being able-bodied is normal, being middle-class is normal. (Or if you watch a lot of tv it starts to seem like being rich is normal). Living in this valley we start to get the impression that being Christian is normal, being politically conservative is normal. When I use the word “queer” I mean anything that defies those norms.

When the Gay and Lesbian rights movement started here in the US, those brave activists were fighting to add “Gay” to the possible categories that a person could be. So we had “Gay” and “straight” – expanding the number of norms to 2. It’s even in our Hymnal [sing] “we are Gay and Straight together” Then the Bisexual folks came along and said “Actually…” Our thinking has evolved as we realized that not only is straight not “normal” but there is no “normal” way to be gay. Being a person who identifies as bisexual, I don’t want my own third box, I want to queer all those norms. I want to have room to be whoever it is I really am. Dr. Farajaje said that day: “Heterosexual identity exists only by virtue of defining itself as the norm over against queer deviation. But if there really is no norm, then there aren’t really any deviations. We’re all then just a big mix of possibilities of desire just waiting to happen!” [p. 29]

I am reminded of a song by that great singer-songwriter Ani Difranco:

when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong

We were all taught at a young age to assume that if there is 3 of one thing it is “normal” and whatever is different “does not belong”. What I am trying to suggest that not only can the pear take pride in being “queer” but that oranges are not normative.

My fruit analogy is breaking down quickly, so let’s look at Race for example. Scientists tell us that race is not biological, but an intellectual construct. In American we often talk about race by dividing it into two neat categories “White” and “People of Color” even though we know that, for example, Irish immigrants used to be considered non-white and are now considered white. We know that President Obama is of mixed race, he is often referred to as the first Black president. What if we changed the way we thought about race to acknowledge that there is no such thing as “racial purity” -that we are all racially queer? It was only in the year 2000 that the US Census allowed people to check more than one box under “race”, that people didn’t have to choose one part of themselves and discard the rest.

Moreover, Dr. Farajaje is proposing, with many others in cultural theory, that gender, sexuality, race, class, whether we are temporarily able bodied, “These things are inseparable for us; we cannot and will not pull these apart without doing irreparable violence to our very bodies, souls, and minds.” [p. 26] He calls this “Intersexionality.” All the parts of who we are intersect. In our adult RE class last spring I invited all the participants to write down 5 identity words for themselves. People wrote things like “White, gay, mother, UU, able-bodied, male” Many of us struggled with the exercise- how do you know which 5 to pick? No matter what words you pick you are leaving out part of yourself.

Each of those words describes a whole multiplicity of ways of being. For example, how many of you self-identify as “white”? Now look around at all the different ways there are of being “white” --what Dr. Farajaje might call “multiplicities of whiteness”. Or let’s take another one- If you are willing to out yourself as identifying “temporarily able-bodied” please raise your hand. Look how many different bodies this describes! There are multiplicities of being temporarily able-bodied.

By looking at the world, at one another, in this complex, intersexional, holistic way, I propose that we are doing something radical. We are interrupting that conversation about “which one is different and does not belong” We are interrupting norms, we are breaking walls and boxes. Scholars in the field of cultural studies love to use words like “interrupting” or “interrogating” which to me is describes the moment in the Wizard of Oz when Toto pulls the curtain back and we see the “wise and powerful Oz” as he really is- an ordinary man from Kansas who got lost. These boxes, these walls, these definitions of who we are and what is normal are not divinely given, which becomes clear as we pull back the curtain to see how they work and where they come from. This we can call “Queering” the conversation, because we are creating that space not defined by walls and boxes.

This is a dangerous act. Today we honored transgender people who have been victims of violence. Gender theorists believe this violence arises because our culture finds it so threatening that anyone lives outside the two-box gender system- male and female. We also honored those who took their own lives because it was too painful not to be able to fit easily into the two boxes our society defines… to painful to live in a culture which asks “Which one is different and does not belong.” I call us to interrupt this conversation, to “queer” this conversation by saying “everyone is different, and everyone belongs!”

That is why Queering the conversation is also healing. Back when I was doing the internship every UU minister has to do in a hospital, I worked in the outpatient Cancer center. A kind, wise, circumspect woman I had the privilege of talking with told me: “my doctors don’t treat me, they treat people like me, that is --people with cancer.” It is hard to heal when people don’t see you, they just see a box. When her treatment wasn’t working like it should, when she had unusual side effects, or when she wanted treatment alternatives, she was constantly banging up against the walls of that box “Cancer patient.” I suspect every one of us has some part of our self that does not fit neatly into boxes-- some part of ourselves that does not look like the images we see on TV or in the movies. This leads us to feel “broken” or “incomplete” or “damaged” or “abnormal.” By radically acknowledging all that we are, we become whole just as we are. By radically affirming that each and every one of us belongs, our communities are made whole.

For me, reframing myself from “not-really straight and not-really gay” to someone who was perfectly and completely queer filled me with a sense of pride and belonging. To hear that my non-normative call to the Ministry of Religious Education was still at the heart of ministry, to hear that I was not giving up my radical, questioning revolutionary self to in taking on “religious Educator” as part of my identity was so healing and affirming. This reframing helped me realize that I didn’t have to throw away the box called “religious Educator” to enter a box called “parish minister” when I came to this congregation, because religious education is not just something that happens upstairs with children, if we let it out of its box, it is happening right here, right now.

When I was in the process of applying to seminary, I sent away for the catalogs for the 3 uu seminaries. I looked over the high gloss brochure from Harvard and noticed that there was a page about their “women’s studies” department. I read the brochure from Starr King and I noticed that women and queer people didn’t have their own department, they were right there in the body of the catalog. As Dr. Farajaje, who joined the Starr King faculty when I was in my last year at the school, writes about his approach to teaching “Each class that I teach, whether it be liberating the Bible for UUs , African Religious in Diaspora, or the Divine Feminine in Russian Orthodox religious thought is taught in a way that calls us to continually and simultaneously consider issues of race, class, gender, embodiment, environmental issues, cultural representations, sexualities etc. These are not treated as peripheral considerations.”

We often wonder “what is UU?” Members of every congregation I’ve ever served have come to me and said “Can I really be UU because I am … in the armed forces, republican, Christian, a person of color, transgender, Jewish, pagan, atheist, undecided?” “Do I fit in this UU Box?”

This, I believe, is part of our calling as Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century. Let this church be a place where you don’t have to leave your sexual orientation at the door, you don’t have to leave your financial situation at home, you don’t have to leave your body at home. Theology, spirituality is not something that hovers above the body, but I believe it is deeply embedded, imminent in everything that we are. We are all part of one interdependent web of life. From the very first days of Universalism we were rejecting the two-box system (the elect and the rest of us who were damned) We reject the two box system of heaven and hell. We reject the two box system of God and the Devil. Back in 1805, the great Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou suggested:

Is [God] not perfectly joined to his creation? Do we not live, move and have our being in God? …to take the smallest creature from him, … you have left something less than infinity.” (Treatise on Atonement p. 81-82)

We believe in a God who can hold all our queerness, all our multiplicities.

Our Unitarian Tradition has always been one that looks behind the curtain, to see who is defining the parameters, who is making the boxes into which we are asked to fit. Our Unitarian Tradition challenges us to open our minds beyond the conventional ways of looking at things. Our Universalist Tradition challenges us to open our hearts to hold every being in the oneness of the divine.

This is why I propose to your with great pride, that ours is a queer theology. Or perhaps that in this ambitious tradition we stand in, we are “queering” theology. We are “queering” church. We have talked about many words over this past year that constitute for us a “Language of Reverence.” I humbly suggest that we add “queer” to this list, because it honors something special about the radically inclusive place we strive to occupy among religious communities, and because it honors the wholeness of each and every one of us; all that we are, and all that we bring.