Our History Together (April 17, 2016)

Delivered on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Towanda Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Across the Unitarian Universalist world today the rallying cry is “better together.” This is a radical idea in a culture that values individualism and competition . Businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan notes that ours is a culture more likely to foster a sense of competition than cooperation. The cultural ethos tells us that the best way to maximize profit, the way to maximize productivity is for all of us to compete. But, Heffernan says “in fact it leads to a catastrophic loss of productivity and creativity”[i]

Whether or not an ethos of competition and rugged individualism makes sense in the business world (and Heffernan argues that it does not) it certainly doesn’t make sense for churches, especially churches in the Universalist tradition where we believe in “Boundless Universal Love for the entire human race, without exception, and for each one in particular”[ii] And so folks around the UU world are imagining a new way of being together, imagining congregations entering into partnerships, into collaborations. How wonderful to remember that for the Universalists here on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River, collaboration is part of the legacy our ancestors bequeathed to us; it is part of our DNA.

But as historians of TUUF and UUCAS have been reading through all those old scrapbooks and news clippings preparing for this anniversary, we noticed that a history of collaboration is not how church histories are usually told. For example, the Sheshequin congregation includes in their church history a list of all their ministers for the last half century. It was not until I came across a search packet from the 1980s put together by the North Branch Association that I realized that every minister listed in the UUCAS history had actually been called by the North Branch association, and had served Towanda, Sheshequin and standing stone together in a yoked ministry. So this is the story I want to share with you today- not of any one congregation, but of the way our stories interweave.

Some of you will remember Universalism first came to this area back in the 1790s when Rev. Murray began preaching here. According to a local history, he was “known as disseminating the heretical doctrine of the Universal Salvation of the human race from the bondage of sin and corruption… it was decided that these innovations must be no longer tolerated. “

So 2 local ministers, Rev. Park and Joseph Kinney were dispatched to convince him of the importance of “endless suffering of the wicked” and “baptism as saving ordinance.” Murray welcomed them into his home, and as the story goes, after arguing with Murray for 3 days, came home converted. Park and his congregation founded The Universalist society of Sheshequin in 1808–the second Universalist church in Pennsylvania

In 1842 we organized the North Branch Association. At that time there were Universalist churches in Litchfield, Springfield, Troy, Orwell Hill, Sylvania, Monroeton and Mansfield (Sheshequin was called the “mother church”). North Branch churches shared ministers and helped each other financially.
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The Towanda Society seems to have begun meeting in 1844 but did not formally organize until 1866 when they became incorporated under the name of the First Universalist Society of Towanda. And it is this anniversary we celebrate today.

In 1876 J. G. Porter was called as the first minister. That same year, Building project began. When the building was completed early in 1877. Dedication ceremonies with distinguished speakers from Philadelphia, PA, Newark, N.J. and Brooklyn, N.Y. extended over three days. (I like to think today’s celebration is in keeping with that tradition.)

The earliest story I found of collaboration between the churches dates back to 1882 when it is written that “The trustees of the [Sheshequin] society have entered into a contract with Rev. V. Brunning to preach once in two weeks, and are to raise the sum of $150. He is to alternate with Litchfield, preaching in Athens every Sunday morning. He draws out a good congregation and things look encouraging. His sermons are practical and to the point and there are but a few that the coat will not fit.

But by 1884 The Sheshequin society was struggling. The Historian writes “The society is dead and has not enough vitality left to get up a respectable funeral. Sunday School closed with the Christmas exercises, and has not reopened, nor has the church been used for divine service since that time… the church edifice is of but little use except as a relic of the good old days when our fathers were wont to worship in spirit and in truth.”

That’s a sad and scary moment in the life of a congregation, when you realize that you have not even the energy and resources to hold Sunday services. But what follows is the most hopeful story of our shared history. In 1895 our historian writes “There has been quite an awakening from the Rip Van Winkle sleep of the Society, and some young blood has been added, which it is hoped will redound to its good. .. Rev. G B Russell of Athens and Rev. Leonidas Polk of Towanda, held a series of meetings during the winter which resulted in increasing membership and interest. Twenty nine persons were baptized and received into full membership in January.

1896 “Our prospects are favorable for success. We have an attendance of 50 to 75. ... Financially we are quite poor but with much zeal… Children’s Day was observed today with appropriate ceremonies. The church was handsomely decorated with evergreens and flowers. The Sunday School numbers 70 on the roll with 50 average attendance.

When the Sheshequin congregation was lifeless and lacked the vitality to revive itself, the Athens and Towanda congregations pitched in and helped their sister congregation back to life.

As the 20th century began NBA continued to meet and area churches continued to collaborate and share resources. From 1925-1945 Rev. JD Herrick served both the Sheshequin, Athens and Towanda congregations. At a celebration to mark 10 years of ministry he commented on “unhandy train schedules” and “the good and bad effects of the Great Depression on Church Work.”

Then just 2 years after Herrick retired, the Athens congregation voted in 1947 to sell their church building to Christian Scientists for $2000, and the money in the treasury was divided between Towanda and Sheshequin. The Athens congregation persisted even without their own building for more than a decade. In 1951there were still 25 members on Membership list, and they held their meetings in Sheshequin building later in the day. Sadly in 1960 Church of Universal Brotherhood (the Athens congregation) dissolved.

So what was happening in 1960? For those of you familiar with UU history, you will recognize that year as a time of great transition - the merging of the Unitarian and Universalist denominations. What I didn’t realize was that our little cluster of congregations had such a dramatic role to play. The North Branch scrapbook contains news clippings from local papers, as early as 1959, reporting the Universalists of this area “overwhelmingly voted against a proposed merger of the universalist and Unitarian churches in a plebiscite at the 3 churches of the association Sunday.” And when the merger passed despite their opposition, the minister of the NBA, Rev. Harry Means, was a founding leader of a new organization called the “Committee for Continuing Christina Universalist Churches”. Means said he “takes issue with the Universalist Church of America over the latter’s extreme liberal views in which it has abandoned traditional Universalism” The debate about merger literally split the churches in two. In 1962 Rev. Means left his pastorate, and I’m told much of the congregation followed him when he went. In 1962, after he had left his NBA ministry Rev. Means formed a quarterly publication called “the Christian Universalist” to give voice to the conservative Universalists who felt displaced by the UU merger. The editor of the magazine, John Schofield writes: “we believe in the existence of God; and we feel so firmly on this issue we can hold no fellowship with those who deny him.”

So the congregations who remain along the North Branch are made up of people who were not willing to let religious diversity tear us apart. We are people who believe in the importance of welcoming theists and atheists, Christians and humanists, Jews and Pagans sitting down together and supporting one another amid our diversity



The departure of Rev. Means and the tearing apart of his congregations must have been a sad and difficult time for everyone. Our history shows us that not only do we flourish when we come together and support one another, but also that when we let go of those bonds that connect us, we all lose some life-giving vitality.

Rev John Trowbridge became the minister of the North Branch in, 1964 and so began a great renaissance of Universalism in this area. Trowbridge was beloved by all 3 congregations, and both Towanda and Athens still hang his paintings on their church walls. Trowbridge served the NBA for 21 years. It was a time of great collaboration.

When you look at the orders of service and newsletters of the time, you can see how close this yoked ministry brought the churches. In 1954 the NBA offered a summer camp for Junior high school students. We find in the archives form 1962 mention of the “Union Youth Group off the Universalist Churches of Bradford County”, and a joint youth choir.

The churches often held what they called “union services” where all the Universalist congregations of the North Branch Association (NBA) would worship together as one. They also shared services over the Easter and Christmas Holidays. For example, in 1964 Christmas Eve services were held at Towanda and Standing Stone, with a service Christmas day at Sheshequin. Throughout these years, the same order of service was used for all 3 churches, with a pencil drawing of all 3 steeples arrayed like a family portrait.

When Trowbridge left, he was, as you would imagine, difficult to replace.

There was a gap between ministers, before they called the Rev. Susan Van Dreser in 1985. The record from the time only reports that “the yoked ministry between Towanda and Sheshequin did not work well.” That was the last time we shared a minister together, and it also seems to have begun a period of decreased collaboration between the congregations. Perhaps some conflict among the congregations lead us to go our own individualistic ways, and so we weren’t there for one another in the years that followed.

In 2004 TUUF closed its doors, agreeing to dissolve and handed over its assets to the PUC. But PUC in 2009 revived the congregation with help of members of UUCAS (Brian and Benno, Paul and Ginna), some old members (like Marsha and Rick and Peg) and some new folks (like Jean and Crow)

In 2013 the Committee on Ministry of the Athens congregation noticed how out of touch we felt with our nearest neighbor. We began the practice of ministers and board presidents meeting semi-annually to build bridges and develop relationships. These meetings lead to a “covenant of reciprocity” which simply agreed that in times of flood or fire or medical emergency, we would open our buildings to one another, and share speakers.

Just this past month, representatives of congregations from the St. Lawrence district met for a historic vote and our keynote speaker Rev. Sue Phillips asked us to consider what it meant for congregations to be in covenant with one another. We are emerging from a time when ruggedly individual congregations have focused on their own needs and worries, and Rev. Phillips challenged us to take more seriously our covenant with one another. At this moment she challenges us ask ourselves, what exactly is our covenant with our neighboring congregations? What does it mean to be a neighbor, to be sister and brother churches?

I believe that we stand on the threshold of a new age of collaboration. Collaboration not only with NBA (which now includes Brooklyn) but also Ithaca and Binghamton (here today) and all those other congregations that sent their wishes.

Just last year several of the Athens Ukulele group helped the Ithaca congregation celebrate their 150th anniversary last year in the Ithaca Fest Parade. And today we are so honored to have with us Stephanie Ortolano, organist for the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, to share this special day with us.

Just as our congregations had one “union youth group” back in the 1950s and 60s, Our youth just got back from a weekend long Coming of Age Retreat and Vigil held jointly by Big Flats, Athens and Ithaca congregations. The joint program started back in 2008. The Athens planning team had wistfully wondered about offering a joint coming of age program, but it was a teen from Big Flats, Lydia, who noticed the Coming of Age event in our order of service and bravely asked if she and her friend from Big Flats could participate, and we have worked together ever since. Many small churches can’t offer a program for their teens, but with our two congregations together, we are able to offer something powerful and real.

Collaboration is not always easy. It took 7 years of partnership with Big Flats and a year of planning and working together with the Ithaca and Binghamton churches to create this year’s shared program, and to build the relationships you need to make such a program successful. It takes time to develop relationships. It takes time to just sit and talk and get to know one another as we learn how we will communicate, as we learn what each has to give, and where we are struggling and need support.

I am so grateful for all of you who took the time today to travel from Ithaca, from Lycoming, from Binghamton, form Athens. I am grateful not only because a celebration like this one is so much more festive when you have friends to share it with, but because each time we gather across congregations, we strengthen our connections. Because I believe over these next 150 years we will need one another. And over these next 150 years Unitarian Universalism will need us. As we spoke together in our chalice lighting words this morning:

“We need one another in the our of success,
when we look for someone to share our triumphs
We need one another one another in the hour of defeat,
when with encouragement we might endure and stand again.”

And when, in the next year or the next decade, you have a success you need to share, or when you need encouragement, I hope you will turn to The Towanda Universalist Unitarian Fellowship to share in your joys and sorrows, as you have shared this moment with us.

Endnotes
[i] http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/443411154/the-meaning-of-work
[ii] found on the back of the copy of an NBA order of service- quoted from Geurge De VBenneville, Univerwsalist Forefather

Born Again

Spring is a difficult season. I know that seems counter- intuitive, but as winter recedes, as the ground thaws and the first green tips of tulips poke through,
it occurs to me that growing a leaf must be hard work. I have watched the first of this year’s tulip leaves emerge and be frozen again and again. The tops of their leaves are brown and misshapen. Spring is hard even for the tulips- especially if you have deer who have been hungry all winter.


It occurs to me that growing a leaf must be hard work. I have watched the first of this year’s leaves emerge and be frozen again and again. The tops of their leaves are brown and misshapen. Spring is hard even for the tulips- especially if you have deer.

During this season the earth-based traditions here in the northern hemisphere celebrate Ostara- the spring equinox which happened in March. It is the earth herself who suggests tulips and bunnies and chicks as symbols of the season. These are the signs that the cycle of the year is turning, the cycle of life is turning. The bare brown and grey earth is dotted with spots of color- of purple and yellow and green. If you or your neighbors have chickens, this is the season when a new generation begins its life, the fluffy yellow chicks as perfect a symbol of hope for the future as any.

In the Christian Tradition today is Easter. We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the most joyful and important holiday in the Christian tradition. But there is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. There is no risen Christ without the wounds. The spiritual journey is not one of ceaseless peace and joy, but about the challenging process of transformation.

The religious symbols of the season carry within them important spiritual lessons for our own journeys. Consider the babies you have known and loved. Consider teething. Most babies are grumpy as their new teeth push their way through the gums. Some even have fevers, refuse to eat or drink, or have trouble sleeping. As the parent of a small child I got used to this pattern- the increasing discomfort and frustration leading to the breaking through of a new tooth. Then I noticed this didn’t just happen for new teeth. Some kids, when they are learning to walk or learning to talk, become quite wretched, until suddenly one day they take those first steps. It occurred to me that this never really ends, though the cycles of growth do slow down. All through childhood and the teen years I see the young people I love cycle through difficult times followed by periods of synthesis and mastery when some new physical or mental milestone is reached. And though we have less tangible results to show as adults, I propose that the same cycle continues. The symptoms may still include irritability and frustration, but they also may include a sense of meaninglessness, an inability to imagine yourself in the future, a sense of ending and loss, a feeling of soul-deep tiredness.

The Episcopalian Theologian Matthew Fox called this the “via negativa’ or “the path of negation”. This is the spiritual path of letting go. Sometimes we find ourselves on the Via Negativa because what gave our life meaning before no longer gives it meaning. Sometimes we come to it through very real losses and struggles in the physical world. Our faith, our beliefs are shaken to the core. Many people use words like “dry” or “dark” or “barren” to describe this kind of experience. Sometimes it feels like God has gone missing, but if you believe in God, though we know intellectually that actually there is no place where god is not. On the via negativa we feel like someone has turned out all the streetlights on the road we are traveling, we can’t see the terrain, and we feel very alone.

But in the same way that Tulips could never compete with the tangle of June growth in my garden, after the harsh winter the tulips and crocuses have the garden all to themselves; like the winter, the Via Negativa creates space for something new to grow. Fox calls that new growth the “Via Creativa” or the “Way of Creativity.” This is a time of rebirth, a time when out of the grey landscape the tulips emerge, when out of the tomb, Christ appeared to those who followed him.

As you can see, we are deep in the realm of metaphor here. In the natural world there is no such thing as rebirth that I’m aware of. Tulips are not really born and born again, they are dormant and growing. When we talk about the rebirth of spring we are talking about trees coming out of their winter dormancy, and new generations of birds and mammals giving new life to their genetic line. Nicodemus was quite correct when he asks: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?”(John 3:1-21)

So what does it mean to be reborn? Psychologist Carl Jung talks about it in terms of an “ego-death” some part of who we think we are must be destroyed or released in order for our true self to emerge. Therefore, says UU dream expert Jeremy Taylor, when we have a dream where we are afraid of dying, what our subconscious is warning us about is not a threat of physical death, but the real threat to our ego- the person we think we are. Jeremy would say such dreams are good news- they point to an important transformation that is possible for us. We get so caught up in who we have to be to get and keep a job, who our families expect us to be, maybe even who our church expects us to be, that our deepest truest self lies asleep within us. And when it begins to wake up it can be as scary as a bear waking from hibernation in springtime.

As we heard in our opening reading, many shamanistic traditions have a similar understanding of what it means to be reborn. When a shaman experiences this death of self- this loss of ego, which can be quite scary and painful, “The person is returned to spirit as a reminder that we are more than just body and mind. Who we are beyond our skin is spirit. The dismembered person experiences a state of unity with source.” [p. 138]

When our Christian friends and neighbors talk about being “born again” this is not an idea that is uniquely theirs. When Jesus says “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again[b] he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Unitarian Universalists believe that this kind of spiritual rebirth is possible whether or not we identify as Christians. In his journal, Emerson, who was a transcendentalist and Unitarian Preacher, writes: "In the instant you leave far behind all human relations, wife, mother and child, and live only with the savages-water, air, light, carbon, lime, and granite. Nature grows over me. Frogs pipe; waters far off tinkle; dry leaves hiss; grass bends and rustles, and I have died out of the human world and come to feel a strange, cold, aqueous, terraqueous, aerial, ethereal sympathy and existence. I sow the sun and moon for seeds."

Have you ever experienced anything like this? One member of a congregation I served long ago told me about the first time he saw a living cell under a microscope. The experience was ecstatic and he was overwhelmed by emotion. It changed something about how he saw the world. I think of this as a quintessential born-again Unitarian experience. As Ingerman said in our opening reading: , it typically happens spontaneously. An initiation such as this cannot be planned and has no safety net.” We can choose to open our minds and hearts to this kind of spiritual transformation, but it is not something we can replicate predictably. We can choose to be open to the spirit of life, but deep change of this kind usually comes as something of a surprise.

But I believe that being reborn is not something that happens once an dramatic fashion, instead this is happening to us constantly, like the toddler teething. Perhaps your life is going smoothly like a train on a track. The habits and rhythms of your life are dependable, maybe even satisfying, or maybe there is a hunger for something more. But then arises a feeling of crisis. It could be purely emotional and spiritual- a mid-life crisis, say, a feeling that a job or partnership is no longer a good fit. Or perhaps it is a crisis that comes from the outside- a round of layoffs at work, a car accident, a scary diagnosis, a betrayal. Often our first thought is “what did I do wrong?” We have this idea that as our parents and teachers rewarded us with a gold star when we did well, and gave us detention or grounded us when we didn’t, perhaps this crisis is a punishment for something we did wrong. When our comfortable familiar patterns of life are threatened, we kick and fight, and resist the change. Even Jesus cried out on the cross: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? [Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34 ]

Consider a baby in the womb, it has known nothing its whole existence but a snug warm home where all its needs are taken care of. And then the contractions begin and the water breaks and life can never be the same again. It is commonly agreed that the labor and birth process is difficult and uncomfortable work for both mother and child. And there is no safe alternative- My grandmother tells of women in her village in Estonia who never went into labor, and of the tragic outcome for both mother and child. The difficult, painful process of labor leads to life, everyone of us here in this room made it through that process. If you happen to find yourself in a room of women telling the story of how their children entered the world, you will find that each and every one was absolutely unique. And so are the many spiritual and psychological rebirths that we experience over a lifetime.

I use this metaphor with caution, because birth is sometimes smooth and joyous, and sometimes scary and dangerous. As a woman who carried my child for 10 months and then finally gave birth only with medical intervention, I called Matthew Fox on this- during a seminar one afternoon. The formulation so commonly find in theologies of birth and rebirth is that the birth of the new child is worth the pain and risk to the mother. But that is not my theology. I would never say that to a woman who struggled in childbirth, and I would never say to you that your painful divorce, or cancer was ultimately a fair price to pay for what growth follows. The rebirth of tulips in the spring does not necessarily balance out the harsh winter that makes way for it. The one is not the price to be paid for the other. The marshmallow candy-ization of Easter covers over Easter’s real gift; during those darkest hours when it seems that all we love is falling away from us, the Easter story offers us hope. (It is a hopeful thing that we are never fully formed)

This is one of the reasons for religious community- because we need support in the pains of rebirth, in the struggle of transformation. And we need hope when we feel like all we know and love is dying. As the women experienced with birth have traditionally gathered to support the laboring woman, so we support one another when we are in transition, encouraging us to push when it is time to push, to rest when it is time to rest, and to reassure one another with the knowledge in our own bodies and spirits that even where it seems the struggle will never end, new life can come of this too.

Practice and All is Coming (March 6, 2016)

I grew up in a music school- that is to say our home was filled most afternoons and evenings with music teachers and students playing scales and etudes. A couple of times a year our living room was transformed into a recital hall for those students to show off what they had learned, and to practice performing.

Over those 16 years I studied music at the Hegvik School of Music I would occasionally ask my mom if I could quit. We argued the various merits of learning to play an instrument, but ultimately she believed there were benefits to studying music beyond the music itself. One of those was being able to stand up in front of people confidently, and the other was learning how to practice.

As a child growing up in a house full of music students, I heard examples every day of the most common misunderstanding beginners have about practicing (one I often made myself). Folks think “If I want to learn to play this piece fast, I should practice it fast” What we don’t realize at first, is that what we are actually doing by practicing this way training our fingers to stumble and trip [Katie practices scales faster and faster until they are sloppy] but if you slow it down until every note is just the way you want it, [Katie plays it slowly and carefully] your body and mind are creating neural pathways to play it just the way you want it. Another mistake beginners make is that they want to play the piece the whole way through over and over, mistakes and all. Again, by doing that we are training those mistakes into the brain and the muscles. At some point you just have to stop and do the thing in little bits and pieces until body and mind really understand, then and only then do you put it back together in bigger and bigger pieces until is second nature.  Music students learn as they move from being beginners to intermediate players is that if you practice the piece without beauty, without tone, without feeling, that is how you perform it. 

If we practice joylessly, the music we make will be joyless. If you hate practicing, it’s time to make a change. It’s so much easier to sit down and practice a piece you love than one that doesn’t speak to you. Sometimes it’s more fun to collaborate with friends, when our solo practice has lost its vitality. Sometimes you just have to practice goofing around, improving spontaneously, making silly sounds. If we want Joy and creativity in our music, we must practice bringing joy and creativity into your music. This is the opposite of what so many young musicians learn- they somehow learn that playing music should be difficult joyless work, and no wonder they quit.

Perhaps the most important lesson is not to get attached to your mistakes. I would so often hear moans and groans from the lesson rooms (and have myself slammed my fingers down on the keys of the piano in frustration) [Katie demonstrates] Practice is specifically TIME to make mistakes. We must learn compassion for ourselves and patience while we practice; we need a safe space to make ugly sounds, to play things imperfection as we begin to smooth and polish and shape. Make all the possible mistakes in the practice room and you won’t make them on the concert stage. After many years of practice you being to trust the process- you know that this repetition and careful mindfulness will lead to transformation.

Knowing how to practice is useful in unexpected parts of our lives. I remember when we got a brand new video game called “Spyro” and all my friends took a turn playing it. Most of my friends, when it was their turn at the controller, raced forward toward their goal until they plunged accidentally off a cliff and had to start over with a new life. When my friend Akire, who had studied classical cello for many years, took the controller, she pulled over to a meaningless clearing and started running in circles and making little jumps into the air. “What are you doing!” we all cried impatiently “there’s nothing over there!” “I’m practicing” she replied. Her strategy was to learn to jump and glide in a safe area where death would not be the consequence of messing up.

In fact the skills you learn practicing apply to just about every part of your life. This is never clearer than watching a toddler practice walking, or obsessively opening and closing doors, or putting things into a box and then dumping them out and starting it over. It takes hours of repetition to develop skills that now seem second nature to us- walking, talking, closing and opening doors, putting keys in your pocket and taking them out again later when you need them. This is why we do fire drills- so that in the moment of an actual emergency the procedure is second nature. I went to a master class many years ago with the great singer Leontine Price, and when a student asked if she thought about technique while she performed, she told the packed house that the time for thinking about technique is in the practice room. When you perform you just think about the music you are making and the character you’re playing. 

Spiritual Practice is no different in this respect than any other kind of practice. You want to play that song you heard on the radio at your first guitar lesson, but learning a new skill takes time and patience. Some days it will not seem like much is happening but things we repeat day after day have a way of sinking down deep into our muscles and spirits. There are many stories among healers and ministers of visiting an elder who has lost much or all of her memory. She doesn’t recognize family or friends, but when the old hymns of her childhood are sung, or the rosary beads placed in her hands, something old and deep wakes up. Her fingers start to move on the rosary, she nods or even sings along with the hymns. What we practice most we know in a deep way, our bodies remember even when our minds are distracted or diminished. 

There was a funny headline in the satirical paper the Onion the other day: “Man Who Downloaded $2.99 Meditation App Prepares To Enter Lotus Plane Of Eternal Serenity.” [i] This could have described me at my first meditation class. I, like many other new meditators, was constantly frustrated by my early attempts. I wanted to power through to enlightenment the same way I had, as a beginning flute student, wanted to power through to the end of the piece, without taking time in the difficult spots so they could become smooth and clear. I chose forms of meditation that were very challenging for me right off, rather than choosing forms that were enjoyable, so I dreaded my spiritual practice rather than looking forward to it. I was so miserable in my meditation practice at one point that I took a class called “Removing Obstacles to Meditation” which was full of other people who were also having trouble meditating. The best advice the teacher gave in that class was “encourage yourself” -- it turns out beating yourself up for your perceived failings in your spiritual practice is not actually helpful. It’s important to be compassionate with yourself as you practice.
Then I discovered yoga, which I looked forward to and dreamed about and no matter how much I practiced I wanted more. I took a break from meditation that lasted almost a decade. I realized that meditation was just one of many spiritual practices. Sure the Buddha realized enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi Tree, but meditation is not temperamentally or developmentally appropriate for everyone. 

Perhaps it was because of all those years practicing music that I took so readily to practicing yoga. I knew but learned again the power of repetition. As I entered a pose called “Down Dog’ the other day, I considered that if I have been practicing yoga for about 12 years at least 3 times a week, and took Down Dog about 10 times each class, I had been in the pose about 20,000 times. When you do something 20,000 times, not only do you learn it more deeply, it changes you. Not everyone is going to be able to twist themselves into all of those yoga pretzels you see in photos, but everyone will change and grow with Practice. As we saw in the opening video, “Practice, and all is coming.” 

An old yoga teacher of mine called this “slow surgery” because the capacity it has to change muscles and joints and connective tissue is that powerful. This is why form and alignment are so important in yoga. Yes, if you practice carefully you can become more flexible and strong. But if you don’t practice mindfully you can easily blow out a shoulder or acquire an array of injuries.
Think of all the things you have done 20,000 times so far in this life. That probably includes brushing your teeth, which is why the humans alive today have better teeth than any humans who have ever lived before. It also probably includes sitting at a computer- which is why we have problems like carpel tunnel syndrome that millennia of humans have never had in this magnitude before. 

Even if you don’t practice ukulele, or meditation, or yoga, you are practicing something. You already have a spiritual practice right now, whether you think of it that way or not. The question is- what are you practicing? Some people who might not realize they have a spiritual practice, have shown kindness, or shared a warm smile 20,000 times. It now comes so easily to them they don’t even have to consciously choose to be kind; it arises naturally out of habit. Some folks notice the natural world around them on their daily run or their walk to work, or watch the slow growth of a tree through the kitchen window while they sip their coffee. They know just by looking at the fresh green shoots whether spring is early, or what tree is fighting off parasites. One spring when the birds and the butterflies come back in reduced numbers, they notice the change and wonder what is wrong – they have become that in tune with their eco-system through years of practice. 

But the power of repetition goes the other way as well. For 7 years on my long commute up and down the congested highway 101 I practiced impatience and petty anger at the other drivers. Those 3,000 impatient, angry commutes surely left their mark on me as surely as any yoga class. Be careful what you are practicing, because it shapes you. One of the things we practice in this congregation is compassion for one another. We practice this not only in our outreach and caring for one another when we are sick or troubled, but even in the everyday decisions our board makes, or in simple acts of kindness during coffee hour. This is my eighth year with UUCAS, and I believe I have slowly grown in compassion over these 8 years we have practiced together. 

Our worship theme for March is re-birth, in honor of the slowly emerging spring, and the Easter Season. Practice is one of the ways we form and re-reform ourselves. The theological term for this is “co-creation” because we never do anything alone; our world shapes us just as surely as we shape it. Much of what we are is a gift of biology or circumstance, but with the raw clay of that gift, what we practice, and how we practice each day shapes us. 

Practice is the patient expression of our intentions. In the same way that devout practitioners in Hinduism, Buddhism or Catholicism use a rosary to help them stay connected as they repeat prayers to the divine, so can our repetitions of scales, downward dogs or compassionate acts help us stay connected to ourselves and to our intentions to grow and bloom. Depending on our intention, the action itself becomes a prayer. In fact many UUs understand their work helping others, or working for Social Justice as their Spiritual Practice, as their prayer. Every life is filled with repetition. All those thousands of repetitions of simple things -- flossing, walking to the corner store, practicing scales, practicing equanimity and compassion in traffic -- when taken all together have power. Like the drops of water that wear away a stone, we are shaping ourselves every moment with the simple repetition of our daily lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. Let us choose carefully what we practice, because that is what we are becoming. Let us have faith in the slow, patient change that comes with practice, as Guruji advises “practice, Practice, practice and all is coming.”

Endnotes
[i] http://www.theonion.com/article/man-who-downloaded-299-meditation-app-prepares-ent-52384

another illustrative video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsbwAjrQTh4

Altruism and Evolution (February 14, 2016)

This week the week of Darwin’s birthday, we join congregations around the world in talking about the Theory of Evolution, because it helps us understand how we, and every other species with which we share this earth, came to be. We take time to talk about evolution because, despite the fact that it is backed up with centuries of verifiable scientific research, evolution is under increasing attack in our schools and in our public discourse. We also celebrate evolution Sunday because the science of our physical reality is not just for “experts” with advanced degrees -- the story of your body, your eco-system is a story every one of us should know in order to understand ourselves and the world in which we live. That’s why we list as one of our sources: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science.”

Today is also Valentine’s Day, so I wanted to tell you a love story. Not a story of romantic love, but the love of other living beings that binds us to one another. I know Vampire bats don’t seem that romantic on the surface, but the precious gift they give one another is eminently more practical, and more precious than a heart shaped box of chocolates. These creatures out of our nightmares, who suck the blood of large mammals, such as cattle, are actually one of the most selfless animals we know of. Researcher Jerry Wilkinson, chair of biology at the University of Maryland-College Park, discovered in 1977 that if a bat is not able to find food, say because of illness or lack of large mammals or because a researcher has put her in a cage, that other bats in her group will share their dinner with her by regurgitating into her mouth. [i] So, just like humans, bats can choose to give their own food to help another hungry being.

Bats are not alone in their altruism. The Vervet monkeys cry out to warn their neighbors of a predator, even though they increase their own personal risk by revealing their position with that cry. [ii] There are even stories of altruism in Bacteria, like our nemesis e coli. Scientists have found examples of special drug-resistant bacteria sharing something called “indole” (\ˈin-ˌdōl\ ) with its neighboring bacteria who aren’t drug resistant and so can’t produce Indole on their own. ( Indole is the compound that helps bacteria fight off antibiotics). These altruistic super-bacteria share even though it weakens their own reproductive capacity when they give away this precious resource. [iii]

The Vampire Bat, the Vervet Monkey, the e coli bacteria are all engaged in Altruism. When we talk about human altruism we use the term pretty loosely, to mean anything from pulling a fellow subway rider off the track in front of an oncoming train, to bring a put of soup to a neighbor who has the flu. But in evolutionary biology, there is a very precise definition. “An organism is said to behave altruistically when its behavior benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring. So by behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the number that other organisms are likely to produce.”[iv]

Since the earliest days of our thinking about evolution, altruism has stumped scientists. If what propels evolution is the competition for limited resources, altruism seems to throw a monkey wrench into the theory. Even Darwin was troubled by this. About 13 years after he first published “ON the Origin of Species” Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man,: “he who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature” (p.163). Darwin began to wonder if sometimes a behavior that was risky for the individual could provide an advantage to the larger group of which he was a part: “a tribe including many members who...were always ready to give aid to each other and sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection” (p.166). [v]

Later scientists, dissatisfied with this explanation, began to realize that the individuals who were the beneficiaries of altruism tended to be the kin of the altruist. So even though I might end my own life before reproducing, if my close kin survived to reproduce, like sisters and brothers who share 50% of our genes, I would still have been genetically successful. A fellow called George Price even worked out an equation to show the mathematical relationship between genetic benefit and closeness of relationship (because cousins, for example, are not as beneficial to preserving your gene pool as your siblings)[vi]

Then in 1984 Wilkinson challenged the link between kinship and altruism with his research into the Vampire Bats. Over the course of the study he tracked which bats helped one another, and found that if you were a hungry bat, the neighbor bat who was most likely to help you was a bat you had helped in the past. It’s a remarkable, though relatively unique, example of altruism among unrelated neighbors. In a really wonderful “Radiolab” program on the topic, Wilkinson extrapolated that maybe 40,000 years or so ago something happened to all the large mammals in the area where the bats lived. There was a crisis in the bat food supply, and bats evolved this altruistic behavior so that they could survive as a species.

Scientists and philosophers argue that if there is any potential benefit to you, say the survival of your gene line, that results from your helping act- then this is not true altruism. They argue that perhaps true altruism does not really exist. But I disagree. The fact that altruism is a tool we have evolved help us survive is a hopeful thing. We have so often wondered if human nature isn’t, at its core, “red in tooth and claw.” We worry that the true nature of life is a fight to the death. But the fact that we are hard wired to help one another, and that in helping one another we help ourselves, shows that altruism, is part of our nature. Altruism is a piece of our survival story and built-in to who we really are.

Professor Abigail Marsh has spent her career studying altruism in humans. What makes people help another person at some cost or risk to themselves? In a recent study at Georgetown Marsh tested 19 altruistic people, the kind of person who would, for example, give a kidney to a stranger, and found everything she tested looked pretty normal except for the amygdala- the part of the brain that helps process emotional reactions. She found this part was “significantly larger” in the altruists she studied than in the regular population.[vii] She concluded that “The results of brain scans and behavioral testing suggest that these donors have some structural and functional brain differences that may make them more sensitive, on average, to other people's distress,”[viii] So Marsh’s research suggests that we help one another because we empathetically read their pain, their distress, and we act to alleviate that distress as we would our own.

In his Ted Talk Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard extends this idea further[ix]. He reminds us that empathy is a normal part of being a mammal, an extention of the instinctive mammalian drive to care for our young. ( Mammels are, by definition, those animals that nurse their young after birth instead of, say, laying eggs in the mud and leaving our young to fend for themselves once they hatch). Richard suggests that the problems facing us now- such as economic inequality and global climate change, will require altruism- will require people working for the good of future generations sometimes at the expense of our own present gain. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge some of these problems in our world that you think would altruism would be part of the solution. Go ahead and call our from your seat. ….. Richard wonders if our natural mammalian empathy could be expanded wider and wider to call forth such altruism.

I was amazed to learn recently that Lichen ( you know those crusty flowery plants that grow on the bark of trees or rocks?) are a mutualistic symbiosis. That means lichen are actually two totally different life forms, algae and fungus, living together as one organism. Both the algae and fungus can live alone, and in fact it stumped scientists for a long time what might make them come together as lichen. As Biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass:

“when researchers put the two together in the laboratory and provide them with ideal conditions for both alga and fungus, they gave each other the cold shoulder and proceeded to live separate lives, in the same culture dish, like the most platonic of roommates. The scientists were puzzled and began to tinker with the habitat, altering one factor and then another, but still no lichen. It was only when they severely curtailed the resources, when they created harsh and stressful conditions, that the two would turn toward each other and begin to cooperate… When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the lichens.”

I thought back to those bats, 40,000 years ago, when some hypothetical catastrophe caused a crisis for their species, and in response they evolved the altruistic behavior that allowed them to survive. Life-saving changes are possible when we need them most. And I argue that this is one of those critical moments in the history of life on this planet. Richard notes that while it may take 50,000 years to make an evolutionary biological change, personal change and societal evolution can happen much faster. He reminds us that there is hard scientific data showing that structural changes[x] happen in our brains when we practice altruistic love, or loving kindness. Richard has thousands of hours of meditation practice in his life as a monk, but such structural changes are possible with as little as 4 weeks practicing loving kindness meditation just 20 minutes a day.

Mammals evolved empathy so that we would be hard-wired to care deeply about our offspring and others in our family group. And we know that for some extraordinary altruists that same empathy and compassion can extend all the way across the continent to a stranger who needs a kidney, or a refugee from a war far away. Could we extend that altruism to the next 7 generations of children yet to be born? Could we take Richard’s challenge to cultivate our own loving kindness as individuals and as a society? Could we extend our circle of loving kindness beyond our own kin, our own friends, to hold all of life itself?

When you are discouraged about human nature, remember that altruism is just as natural as competition. It is an important adaptation that is in our hard wiring. It is not only part of our nature, but part of the nature of Vampire bats, Vervet monkeys, and even e coli. Giving selflessly is not only the sappy stuff of Valentine’s Day stories; it is part of the scientific story of how we survive together.

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[i] http://www.radiolab.org/story/105440-blood-buddies/

[ii] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

[iii] http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/09/02/hints-of-altruism-among-bacteria

[iv] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

[v] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/#AltLevSel

[vi] http://www.radiolab.org/story/103983-equation-good/

[vii] http://www.npr.org/2014/11/23/366052779/why-people-take-risks-to-help-others-altruisms-roots-in-the-brain

[viii] http://www.georgetown.edu/news/abigail-marsh-brain-altruism-study.html

[ix] http://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_how_to_let_altruism_be_your_guide#t-895224

[x] http://phys.org/news/2008-03-compassion-meditation-brain.html