Being an Ally

I’m proud to be a Unitarian Universalist- one of the first denominations to openly welcome LGBTQ members and ordain openly LGBTQ ministers. I’m proud to be a member of this welcoming congregation. I’m proud that over a quarter of our membership in this rural congregation is queer. I’m proud of how far we’ve come on the journey to be anti-oppressive, but I’m also aware that people have been hurt along the way. I’m aware that there are many times when someone spoke or lived their truth in our congregations, and did not feel welcomed or heard. A recent TRUUsT survey shows 72% of trans UUs "do not feel as though their congregation is completely inclusive of them.” As our congregational contact Rev. Evin Carvill Ziemer points out “Unsurprisingly, the number is higher for people of color, young adults, and non-binary people; and higher levels of marginalization are experienced by “people of color, non-binary people, and disabled folks.”[i] Our work to truly affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person is far from done. As we celebrate Pride this year it is important not only to honor how far we’ve come, but to re-dedicate ourselves to the work.

I’m using the word ally today for that work, bearing in mind Becky Cory’s thoughtful explanation of why we must use that word with caution. Today I want to use that word to include everyone in this room: gay, straight and pansexual. Gender queer and cisgender. All people have multiple interlocking privileges and oppressions. And each of us has opportunities to “create new ways of being with ourselves and with others”[ii]

Recently the ministers of this area attended a workshop lead by CB Beale, a UU religious educator, who shared some really helpful insights about how we can be effective allies, and helped shape what I want to share with you today. First, they asked those of us who want to be allies to create a braver space. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to be an ally. It’s particularly uncomfortable when we realize that that we are part of systems of oppression. It’s particularly uncomfortable when we realize our inadvertent actions or words have hurt someone. We might even feel shame, and shame feels yucky. A very common response to that discomfort is to turn away. If we allow shame to keep us from looking at the things we need to look at to create a more equal world for all, then it becomes a tool of oppression. But if we think if shame as showing us where the work is, then it can be a tool for change. Beal calls us, whenever we feel discomfort, whenever we feel shame, to be brave.

Another part of being an ally is to allow one another to bear witness. To allow one another to--as we feel safe, as we feel ready -- tell our stories. And we who are allies will listen, really listen. We are not always very good at this. Because if someone tells us a difficult story, we want to fix it, we might even minimize it, or compare it to our own life story. Allies learn not to say: “I’m sure she didn’t mean it” or “that was just one bad apple.” Allies learn to just listen. If someone shares an experience that was hurtful, we learn to simply say “I’m sorry that happened to you. It sounds like that was really hurtful.”

Even when someone says “your words hurt me” we don’t explain, we don’t excuse, we don’t make it about our own discomfort, we just listen, and apologize for harm we have caused. When someone bears witness, we must always remember that intent is not impact. As people in community we bump against one another all the time. If I accidentally drop my water bottle on someone’s foot, even though I had no intention to hurt them, it still hurts. Similar actions can have very different impacts, depending on who experiences those actions. If I dropped my water bottle on the foot of someone who’d just had their cast removed, the impact is larger, more hurtful.

I get people’s names wrong all the time. I call my son by my dog’s name, and my husband by my son’s name. It’s awkward, but they know what I mean and it doesn’t hurt them. When I get the name or pronoun wrong of a transgender friend it has a completely different impact. As Rev. Sean Parker Denison mentioned in their recent article in the UU World Magazine the hurt of having to “ask my mother again, after 22 years, to call me by my name and use my correct pronoun.” Many transgender folks have experienced repeated pain of parents, bosses, relatives intentionally using the wrong names or pronouns out of a refusal to honor their identity. The impact is heartbreaking and exhausting. Being an ally means owning and being responsible for that impact.

My whole life people have called me by my wrong name, and spelled my name wrong. The first time I ever appeared in the local newspaper I was listed as “Marcy.” The fact that I can brush that off, the fact that there is no lingering bruising from that is because of my cisgender white privilege. So if a genderqueer friend bears witness to the pain of their grandfather stubbornly refusing to call them by their true name, I should not tell them that story about being called Marcy. It’s not the same. When a friend bears witness to their own experience, CB encouraged us not to compare, but simply listen, and open our hearts and minds to understanding and growing.

When someone has the courage to bear witness to the impact our actions had on them, we need to be brave enough to listen. Not to make excuses. Brave enough to learn and change. Dennison continues:

“As I look out at the world and wonder about Unitarian Universalism’s place in it, I am more and more convinced that we must stop excusing ourselves from the world- and life-changing work of justice by claiming that we don’t know what to do because we are beginners. There is no excuse for refusing to learn, when there are teachers all around us. The person saying, “Hey, call me by my name and, yes, my pronoun is they,” is your teacher. The person saying, “It’s not good enough to quote all white men in your sermon,” is your teacher. The person saying, “I can’t get into your building and, when I do, you ignore me,” is your teacher. The person saying, “It’s not about your comfort,” is your teacher. The teachers and the lessons have been here for decades. It’s time to learn.”[iii]

One of the most important things we who would be allies need to learn is de-centering ourselves.

“’Centering’ is a concept that speaks to whose worldview is most affirmed and whose voices are loudest; whose perspective is treated as “normal,” and thus at the center, and whose perspective is treated as “different,” and thus at the margins.”

This definition comes from the transforming hearts collective in response to an article that appeared in the UU world while I was on sabbatical. The article was written by a Cisgender UU woman about her own experience of relating to her daughter’s transgender friends. The article caused an impassioned response from the UU Transgender community. As UU Alex Kapitan wrote in response “an article written by a cis person, that centers cis people and cis perspectives, about trans people, is not incremental progress—it’s harm.”[iv] Because people of privilege are used to being at the center, it didn’t even occur to the author or to the editor that the perspectives of cis people are less relevant than the perspectives of trans people when writing about trans people.

CB Beal wrote in a powerful response to the article: “In this case, the assumption is that the “default” reader is a cis person who struggles to understand and interact respectfully with trans people, just like the author. This assumption renders trans people invisible or further pushed to the margins. It’s not that cis people can’t ever talk or write about trans people, it’s about how they do so—and whether they are adding to and uplifting a conversation started by trans people or displacing the voices and agency of trans people.”[v]

This important practice of centering and de-centering is a critical part of being an ally no matter what kind of oppression we are talking about. Consider the penguins in our children’s story today. Some of us have been at the center of the huddle for so long, that it just seems “normal” to us. We don’t know that while we are warm, there are others on the margins who are cold and need their turn in the center. In the case of the UU World article, being in the center means getting to have your voice heard. De-centering means inviting in those whose voices have been silenced, allowing them a platform in the main magazine of our UU denomination, while those of us who have many opportunities to be heard and respected are quiet and listen.

Whenever oppressive behavior is called out in our community, it is going to make some folks uncomfortable. But remember we are called to create a braver space. If anything you’ve heard today made you feel uncomfortable I encourage you to welcome that feeling! It that shows us where the work is. It means that you are in the right place right now, thinking about the right things. Of course it’s going to be uncomfortable dismantling structures of oppression. Being an ally means staying in the struggle, because we know it is our struggle. Being an ally means lifting up the voices and perspectives of those who spent too long in the cold, of shuffling them to the center, of celebrating their wisdom and gifts, of accepting their leadership and perspectives, and supporting them in the way they ask to be supported.

Whether we are Gay or straight, cisgender or genderqueer, white people or people of color, temporarily able bodied or disabled, all of us experience a complex web of privileges and oppressions. We need to know when to step to the center and bear our truth, and when to de-center ourselves. We need to know how to listen, how to hear things that make us uncomfortable, And we need to let ourselves be changed by what we hear.

Endnotes
[i] https://www.uua.org/central-east/blog/better-together/one-trans-uus-story?fbclid=IwAR1RWLcwBHL5oTY0mVQi-fJGbioy-Tg3bwqc8T_cGi0VD2cwglKQDg2UaV8

[ii] https://www.racetalk.ca/2009/11/whats-wrong-with-being-an-ally/

[iii] “It’s time to learn: There is no excuse for refusing to learn, when there are teachers all around us.” by Sean Parker Dennison. UU World. 6/1/2019 https://www.uuworld.org/articles/time-learn

[iv] https://rootsgrowthetree.com/2019/03/06/what-it-takes-to-de-center-privilege/

[v] https://www.transformingheartscollective.org/stories/2019/3/8/tips-for-talking-about-the-uu-world-article

Fusion Pride

Photo Credit John Delorey

This month we celebrate the 50th anniversary Stonewall riots in Manhattan, June 28, 1969  -  a “tipping point” for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.  The first pride marches were held the following year in Los Angeles, in Chicago, and a big week long celebration in New York City.  But these marches took on a unique character. The parades became a critique of heteronormative and 'straight' culture.  These parades became a place where gay culture was normalized, out of the closet and into the streets. 

I’d grown up on the east coast, where folks hardly ever talked about such things, so when I moved to the Bay Area to attend seminary, my first semester I took a class called “LGBT Spiritualties” where I learned that people like me, who are attracted to both men and women, are called “bisexual.” (the “B” in LGBT). A friend who identified as Bi asked if I wanted to go to the San Francisco Pride Parade. Now I had attended the modest pride events in Baltimore but I’d heard about the massive Pride Parades in San Francisco, talked about with almost mythological reverence. I asked “are bi people allowed to go to that?” Yes! she said confidently. In fact, Brenda Howard, known as the "Mother of Pride", was Bi. As LGBT rights activist Tom Limoncelli put it, "The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them 'A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.'"

My friend and I arrived in time for the start of the parade, but since we hadn’t gotten up at the crack of dawn to put out chairs and claim our spot, it was hard for me, short as I am, to find a spot where I could see. We finally found a spot where we could see over the heads of parade viewers through the chain-link fence as this magnificent display of LGBT pride marched by. I realized the section we were standing behind was reserved for folks in wheelchairs and their partners. As the tears began to roll down my face, what moved me the most was not only the bravery of folks publicly outing themselves with such joy and flair in solidarity at a time when many lost jobs, family , friends by coming out of the closet, what also moved me was that of COURSE there was a section for folks in wheelchairs. This was THAT kind of movement, And as we wandered the events after the parade and found the tables set aside for bi-activists, I knew there was a place for me too.

When I heard the story of the 504 disability rights sit-in recently, I felt a wave of that same emotion sweep through me, so I want to tell you a bit of that story today. In 1973, just 4 years after the Stonewall riots, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act first acknowledged that Americans with disabilities experienced discrimination, and the first federal civil rights protections for persons with disabilities became law. Unfortunately, the Department of Health, Education Welfare failed to issue the regulations that would have put this new law into action. Years dragged by and the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD) formed to demand action. “Over months and years, they cultivated relationships with groups such as the Black Panther Party, Glide Memorial Church, the Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade, Delancey Street, the United Farm Workers.” After many years of asking politely, the ACCD decided to stage a series of sit ins during the spring of 1977. The largest and longest sit in was in San Francisco.

In her article recounting her personal experience of those days “ Short History of the 504 Sit In” one of the organizers Kitty Cone reports that:

“In the Bay Area, a broad cross-disability coalition, the Emergency 504 Coalition, began building for a rally on April 5th, knowing we’d sit in afterwards. We set up committees to take on different tasks such as rally speakers, media, fund-raising, medics, monitors, publicity, and outreach.

The outreach committee was very successful in garnering broad community support: from churches, unions, civil rights organizations, gay groups, elected politicians, radical parties and others.

The work of that committee proved to be invaluable once we were inside the building. Those organizations built support rallies outside the building and the breath of the support made it more difficult to move against us. The International Association of Machinists facilitated our sending a delegation to Washington. Politicians sent mattresses and a shower hose to attach to the sink. Glide Memorial Church and the Black Panther party sent many delicious meals that nourished us between days of coffee and doughnuts.”

According to disability activist Corbett Joan O'Toole, in her book “Faded Scars: My Queer Disability History” One member of the Black Panther Party remarked “’We support you because you're asking America to change, to treat you like human beings, like you belong… We always support people fighting for their rights.’[9] When FBI agents tried to prevent them from delivering food, the Panthers held their ground. After that, the Panthers provided hot meals each day until the end of the occupation and never asked for money.” You know it’s a broad coalition when the Black Panthers, Labor Unions, the Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade, and the Salvation Army are all working together.

One key thing for us to remember, especially those of us who identify as temporarily able-bodied, those of us who are learning to understand and recognize privilege, and those of us learning what it means to be an ally, was that this coalition which came together to support the sit-in was not a paternalistic effort, but true allies supporting Disability activists who were defining their own agenda. In Kitty Cone’s words

“For the first time we had concrete federal civil rights protection. We had shown ourselves and the country through network TV that we, the most hidden, impoverished, pitied group of people in the nation were capable of waging a deadly serious struggle that brought about profound social change. The sit in was a truly transforming experience the likes of which most of us had never seen before or ever saw again. Those of us with disabilities were imbued with a new sense of pride, strength, community and confidence. For the first time, many of us felt proud of who we were. And we understood that our isolation and segregation stemmed from societal policy, not from some personal defects on our part and our experiences with segregation and discrimination were not just our own personal problems.
Without 504 — its coverage and example and the disability civil rights principles contained in the regulations we fought so hard for, and the empowerment of tens of thousands of disability activists through 504 trainings, and activities and mobilizations — there might well be no Americans with Disabilities Act, that finally brought us up to parity with federal civil rights laws covering gender and race.”[iv]

Now almost 50 years after the Stonewall Riots, 40 years from the 504 sit-ins, it is time for us to come together again. Rev. William Barber, leader of the modern Poor Peoples Campaign, is calling us to this same kind of broad coalition. Rather than factions fighting for a slice of the pie, he calls us to recognize core moral issues that could bring us together. It is a time when we are called to find new ways to come together as one. Where intersectionality reminds us that not all queer people are able-bodied, not all queer people are white, Fusion politics asks us to come together with people who might seem very different from us, as different as the Gay Men’s Butterfly brigade and the Salvation Army, United Farm Workers and US senators. That kind of fusion is embodied in the process by which the “Gay Liberation” movement became LGBTQIA+; even though the needs of each identity are not identical, we come together to work for change.

Today we celebrate LGBTQIA+ pride. There is so much to be proud of in this 50 year civil rights movement we used to call Gay Liberation. The Pride Parades flow by showing us the incredible diversity of what it means to be human, what it means to love. We celebrate Pride today, a reminder to be proud of ourselves and one another, as diverse as the colors of the rainbow flag. This year, let the pride celebrations also remind us how deeply we are connected to one another. Let us recommit ourselves to show up, to speak our truth with love across an interconnected web of justice. There is a place for every one of is in this web.

What is Money For?

Money is hard thing for people of conscience to talk about. We believe each and every person has worth and dignity, and we value economic diversity in our midst. But society treats us differently based on how much money we have. Even in our beloved community, we are afraid of being judged for being rich, we are afraid of being judged if we are poor. Our church needs to be a place where we can simultaneously embrace diversity and actively address social concerns while creating a caring community. We can’t actively address social concerns if we are afraid to talk about money; Money is a part of the fabric of our society.

Money was invented as tool to help facilitate the trade of a dozen eggs for a jar of jam. But it has become something very abstract. You only have to listen to an expert explain how mortgages are bundled and about hedge funds, to see how far we’ve come from eggs and jam. Our sense of money, and the resources it represents, has become ungrounded. So it is up to us ground it. As individuals and as a faith community we need to figure out what money is for.

Everyone makes choices about how they will spend their money, some are big choices like what rent you will pay for your new apartment, or whether to own a car, or to have children. Other choices are made on a daily basis- can I afford the free range eggs? Do I need a new sweater? Folks who are struggling financially have to make impossible choices, like whether to pay rent on time or pay the electric bill or go see the doctor. Folks who make more than a living wage have a lot more freedom in what they will do with their money.

There’s a funny thing that happens when we realize that choices are being made, and that we have made different choices than our friends. We question our choices. Maybe I am afraid that you are judging me for making the choice I made. Maybe we are confounded by the choices our neighbors make. So sometimes we don’t admit to ourselves that choices are being made. A friend told me recently “I had to get unlimited data- I didn’t have a choice” and I thought to myself “that might be the best choice, the only sensible choice, but it is still a choice.” Sometimes we didn’t make the important choices consciously, we let them just kind of happen. Maybe we didn’t realize that we were making the choice to pile up debit so we could eat lunch out. Many Americans didn’t realized that their choice to go to a certain college was a choice to take on loans they might not be able to pay. But as a community of seekers, I hope this can be a place where we can think about these things. That we can think about our values, and how we put those values into action in our lives. Because whether we are aware of it or not, our money helps us express our values in the community, and indeed helps shape our community, for good or for ill.

Back in 2009 when the market crashed, many of our family budgets changed, my family and I started to look again at many of the choices we were making, and realized there were choices where we hadn’t seen choices before. Whenever our income changes, it changes how we express our values, it changes the choices we make. And so it has the potential to change our self-understanding. For folks whose sense of self has gotten tangled up with who they are as a consumer, (and that’s most of us here in America) this can be a frightening, confusing time. If you are used to working, and are suddenly out of work, or under employed, we suddenly realize how much of our sense of our self was tied up with the work we do, and the resources we bring home. We received the messages of our culture that “you are what you buy” or “the value of your work is reflected in how much you make” that we might not even notice. So it is up to us as a community of faith to remember that we are not workers, we are not consumers, we are not rich or poor, we are much more than that. We are miracles of evolution and biology, we are living souls, unique and precious.

This congregation has seen budgets go up and down over the last 200 years. These past few years have been a tight time for our congregation, but you have responded with great thoughtfulness and care. You have given more of yourselves and been very prudent to meet these financial challenges. The core of who you are as a congregation is strong. As individuals, as a congregation, as a nation, whenever our economic health is shaken, we are called to strengthen the other layers of our being. Our relationships with one another, our support for our eco-system, our integrity, our compassion, our agency as change makers in this society, our love of beauty. Whenver money is tight, it is a moment when we have an opportunity to learn how much more to ourselves as individuals than that part of us which is bound up with money, And it is also time for us to strengthen our values, to know that our values, our ethics, our integrity need not be weakened by this weakened economy.

For example: when the recession hit our family, I had gotten into certain habits in the grocery store. I tried to buy paper products made from recycled paper. I tried to buy free-range chicken, and cage-free eggs. But now that we are trying to make our grocery dollars go farther- I must have stood there in the poultry aisle for 20 minutes. I made the hard choice that I was going to buy the conventional chicken for $2.50 a pound instead of the free range chicken for $10 a pound. But I also affirmed that I would support local farmers whenever I can, buying eggs laid in Thompkins county, with preference to those laid in my friends back yard by chickens I have met personally. Was that the only choice I could have made? No. I could have given up my yoga classes and still have purchased the free range chicken. I could give up eating meat. My choices was not perfect- I don’t deceive myself that I made the only possible choice. You might have made a different choice. And that might be part of why we don’t talk about these things.

By looking at our financial choices, we learn something about what our values really are. Part of the Coming of Age program I’ve done with 8th-10th graders over the past 20 years involves values clarification. We found some questions you can ask yourself to help clarify what your values are:

• Is this something that's important to you?
• Do you feel good about this being important to you?
• Would you feel good if people you respect knew that this was important to you?
• Have you ever done anything that indicates that this is important to you?
• Is this something you would stand by even if others made fun of you for it?
• Does this fit in with your vision of who you are?

My story about agonizing in the poultry aisle shows me a few things about myself and my values: Yoga is important to me, Animal rights are important to me, and the environment is important to me. Take a moment right now to list some of your core values…

Now think of your checkbook register or your bank statement. What appears there? How closely does it match that list of values? Our work as people of faith is to create as much coherence and integrity as possible between what we value and how we live. Notice how personal those choices are. I can’t tell you what your values are, or how to do the complicated calculus of how to weigh those choices in the grocery store. But sometimes by talking together we get the courage to make tough choices, or new information, or a new perspective that helps us choose. When I was talking to a friend about my own hard choices, she pointed me to the Union of Concerned Scientists list of the 10 most important things we can do to save the planet. They put buying organic produce right there at the top. So my family is recommitting to our CSA this year, knowing that will mean we will have less money to spend on other things, because that is a choice that is possible for us and is in line with our family’s values.

I want to assure you that to be an ethical person doesn’t mean you have to live an ascetic life with no money for things you enjoy. Sometimes what we see looking at our checkbook is that certain expenses that don’t appear on our list of values appear there with surprising regularity. Columnist Dayana Yochim writes for the “Motley Fool” series “Fiscal fitness 2009” and confesses:

“I spend $1.62 many mornings just to get my fix from the Subway soda fountain. I do so even knowing that I could save $1.37 a day -- $27.40 a month -- by buying a can out of our 25-cent pop machine at work. It may seem like a wasteful expenditure to most, but a fountain soda -- particularly from a machine calibrated to deliver that perfect mix of carbonation and syrup -- is my guilty pleasure. And I'm not going to give it up anytime soon.”

So instead she budgeted for it, and cut out $30 a month of other things that just didn't bring her the same joy as that fountain soda. It reminded me that joy, play, fun, taste are values too. This is important because one of the things that goes wrong when people budget, is that they make a budget so ascetic that it sends them screaming into the marketplace to assuage their feeling of deprivation. A wise friend once said “My parents raised me to believe I could have it all, they just didn’t tell me I couldn’t have it all at once.” Maybe this month I make a special gift to the food bank, and next month I take my Husband out to dinner. I don’t feel guilty at all when I go see a favorite band play. ‘Supporting Local Music” is a proud member of my list of top 10 values, and I’m willing to give up other things to do it.

Of course there are other ways to express our values that don’t require a lot of money. If “good food” is a value, we are lucky to be part of a religious community with some awesome cooks! A potluck here is as good as eating at many restaurants. One of the top 10 ways you can save the world is to fly less and drive less- and that doesn’t cost anything. We remember that saving the environment is not at its core about being able to buy the latest eco-chic product. When we “reduce, reuse, recycle” it is good for the planet and for our checkbook.

 No matter what our financial circumstances, each of us can make a difference in the world. Our story this morning about the magic pomegranate is a beautiful story from the Jewish tradition about how we each have something special to give, and much as the gifts of all three brothers were needed to save the princess, each of us is called to find and cultivate our gifts, and all of our gifts are needed as we come together to create a community of compassion and integrity.

It reminds me of another story taken from the Christian scriptures:

It begins when Jesus “sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury, for they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.” [Mark 12:41-44] [1]

Whether rich, poor, or somewhere in between, we have the opportunity to contribute the way this widow did, with a felt generosity that will ripple into the way she lives her life. This is the conversation we can have together; what does it mean to use the money we have earned or saved in a way that reflects our values. This is why as a community of faith, we are called to see beyond the hard numbers to the heart, the soul of each gift. Said the treasurer of a congregation I worked with years ago: "nobody else knows what goes on in your home and your heart."

The occasion of our stewardship campaign gives us the opportunity to look at generosity and stewardship on the level of the soul and heart. This is particularly important in a culture that respects wealth and commerce above all.

We must be fundamentally about something different in our sanctuary here. We must value the giver more than the gift. Our principles teach us to honor a diversity of gifts that mirror an economically diverse and inclusive community.

I like the fact that my translation of the story of the widow says she gave “her whole living” which invites us to see the wholeness of the gift. It calls to mind the people in this congregation who give hours each week to see our books are balanced. The volunteers who create worship services. I am moved by each volunteer who leads our young children downstairs on a Sunday morning to help them on their own search in this world, and those who start the coffee or bring a pot of stew for our social hour. “Her whole living” reminds me of the people who carry the values of this church out into their jobs, their parenting, their gardening.

No matter how big or small your purse, money is only one of many tools for creating a life of integrity and generosity. But it is a powerful tool in our society. So let us use it consciously as an expression of our deepest values, let it speak saying what we mean for it to say. Let it speak the wholeness of our living.

Thank you for giving life to this place, and thank you for the gifts that only you can give.

---

[1] this story also appears in Luke 21:1-4

Don't Panic*

It occurred to me about 48 hours into my 8 day silent retreat that I had probably made a mistake. My father had died just 2 weeks before, and here I was on my first ever silent retreat, in a place I’d never been, with a spiritual director I’d never met, surrounded by strangers, in a religious tradition that was not my own. I felt very far from home.

My general approach on the spiritual journey is to try to meet whatever arises with love. When I first heard my dad had died, and a wave of grief arose, I was able to meet it with love, watch it move through me and eventually ebb. I could be present to that feeling with compassion for myself, and just observe it as it came and went. But 2 days into my retreat, I just couldn’t find that loving feeling. I tried all my usual practices and approaches. Finally I remembered a suggestion from a podcast I listen to a lot called “bliss and grit;” sometimes on the spiritual journey you meet anxiety, and anxiety needs to be addressed separately from the regular search for clarity and meaning. Anxiety arises when our amygdala, the part of our brain evolved to help us locate threats and fight or flee, has been activated. What does it feel like your amygdala is firing? It can feel physical- heart beating, blood pressure increasing, muscles tensed. More subtle is the effect on our thinking- it can feel like your mind is running in circles trying to find the solution to an unsolvable problem. It can feel like there is no space for clarity and objectivity. It can feel like a knot that gets tighter the more you fuss with it. Emotions like sadness or happiness on their own have a natural ebb and flow, even when they are big, even when they are painful. But anxiety seems to grow and take over once it gets turned on.

An anxious mind wants to find a tiger to run from. Reason and logic will not convince your amygdala that there is no tiger, because once anxiety and fear are triggered, real physical effects on the body are also triggered. So when anxiety rises, it’s not just the mind that needs to be convinced, we need to remind the body what it feels like to be safe. The two best ways to do this I know are to breathe and to ground.

I’m going to offer you a few techniques for this today. Let me assure you that everything I offer today is totally optional. If you have a history of trauma or PTSD in your life, please do whatever you need to do to feel safe, and let me know later if you need a referral to a professional who works with trauma. Today while we all (hopefully) feel like we are in a relatively safe space I invite you to practice and experiment. I invite you to notice if any of these practices resonate with you, and take whatever is useful, so that the next time we feel triggered we might remember them.

First we turn to the breath. Just notice your breath, in, and out. Don’t try to change it, just notice, in and out.

Now see if you can allow the breath to slow down. To receive a deeper breath.

If you like you can put your hand on your belly and feel it rise and fall. Gently.

Now let’s try grounding. When we get triggered it is often because we are worried about the future, or because we are replaying something difficult that happened in the past. So the advice from people who work with anxiety is to arrive in the present. If we notice our minds spinning in the future or the past, we can ground ourselves in the present moment. We can simply say, silently to ourselves, our name, and where and when we are. I’m Darcey Laine, it is Sunday May 12 and I’m at church.

then we begin to notice what is around is

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can touch
• 3 things you can hear
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

Check back in with your breath- in, and out.

Just notice. How does it feel now?
Breathe in and out.

Another grounding technique I really like is to notice all the parts of the body that are resting on the ground; the souls of the feet on the floor, the back of the thighs on the chair. Feel the support of the floor, of the chair. Really give your weight to those surfaces. Allow them to hold you.

If you are in a private place when doing this, you can just lay down, and feel the floor, or your bed holding you, supporting you.

Notice your breath. In and out. Notice the way those surfaces support the breath...

So there I was, on the retreat that was a probably a big mistake, breathing and grounding. I had many days left in my retreat, I was far from home, so what was I going to do about it? “This is hard, I need help!” I declared. I realized I had brought with me some expectations of what a brave spiritual warrior would do, and maybe it was time to let them go. I decided I was going to use every crutch I knew. First I got out my colored pencils and made a sign that said “breathe and ground” and put it up in my room where I could see it. I was going to stop reading my scary Buddhist book about non-being and sit under a blanket reading my nice science fiction novel with a mug of warm peppermint tea. I was going to do whatever I needed to do to restore a baseline sense of safety in my own mind and body, even if I felt a bit foolish doing it. Fortunately in this retreat center, almost every arm chair had a blanket folded over the back of the chair as if I was not the first person to face some difficult things in that sanctuary. One particularly cozy nook was a sun-room with a beautiful view of the sunrise, and a particularly cozy wool blanket.

As I sat in the sun-room looking at a beautiful statue of Mary holding a small child, I remembered what it was like to hold my son when he was that age, how precious he was to me. Maybe I needed to call on that mothering energy that comforted us when we were small and is still available to us our whole lives. The energy of compassion. The energy of love. This compassionate energy is so helpful as we meet what arises. This compassionate energy is available to us when whenever we realize that we are not really in control of our lives. We need compassion to meet the places in ourselves that feel weak, that feel powerless, To ask for help and then be open to receiving it. That was the promise I made to myself as I folded the blanket and headed off to breakfast, that I would be open to help, because I didn’t want to do this alone. As I walked to the cafeteria, a woman I had sat with at dinner gestured me aside- she had a quart of fresh organic strawberries, and offered them to me. My first thought was to decline- she only had a quart to get her through the whole week, but as a symbol to myself that I was going to accept help from everywhere and anywhere it came, I took the strawberry, and I felt loved.

When the soul grows, when it is in transition, it is like a caterpillar in the chrysalis. It is like a crab casting off the old shell and emerging soft and vulnerable in its soft new shell. To be that open and vulnerable, a sense of fundamental trust is a prerequisite. The soul grows best when held with compassion, and is reminded that it is never alone. Here I was in a warm, dry place whose entire mission was to be a safe place for the work of the soul. It was up to me to receive that, to allow that.

Easier said than done. So let’s try something else together. Return to your breath. In and out. Feel yourself in this time and place

feel yourself held by the chair and the floor

Remember, the main job of this building and this community is to hold you, to hold us, and to give us space to grow spiritually.

Now I invite you to call to mind someone or something who is easy to love. Maybe you are lucky enough to have a brand new grand-baby. Who is easy for you to love? A cat? Your faithful dog? a dear friend? Call to mind any time in your life when you have felt love for someone- and see if you can remember the texture of that feeling.

[pause]

Could you meet yourself from that place when you are hurting? Could you allow some of that tenderness and compassion for yourself?

[pause]

Sometimes the answer to that question is going to be “no.”
Sometimes we are too angry, too hurt, too frightened to remember that kind of tenderness.
That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Go back to the breath, in and out. Just breathe and ground.
Whatever feeling is arising, just meet that with the breath, in and out.

[pause]

Let’s try something else.

Hold your fists in front of you. clench them as hard as you can.
Now allow them to open.Shake your hands out a little bit if they still feel clenched.

To open a clenched fist you are allowing the muscles to soften, just a little bit. Could you soften just that much around whatever difficult thing you are holding?

When I was on the retreat, each time I could soften even a minuscule amount I imagined giving myself a gold star. Then I was judging myself that that was dorky, so I decided to give myself a gold star for allowing myself to be dorky. Eventually I marched myself down to the art cabinet and chose a nice gold pen and drew myself a whole bunch of gold stars- which was so dorky that I started cracking myself up. Eventually I was laughing so hard I had to go outside so I wouldn’t disrupt the other silent retreatants. It turns out it’s hard to be anxious when you are laughing that hard. That day of breathing and grounding and finally meeting myself with compassion, that was an important turning point for me.

But I wanted to remember and make a map of my path out of anxiety so that when I get stuck in that place again, I would have an escape route. So I encourage you now to consider- when you are anxious, what helps you find a doorway out of that constricted space? What simple instructions would you give yourself?

My map is pretty simple

Breathe

Ground

and breathe and ground

until we can

Meet whatever arises with compassion

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*This title comes from the great Science Fiction classic The  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which features a fictional electronic travel encyclopedia by the same name with the words "Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."