Roots and Seeds

This is my favorite time of year in my little garden. What has been an unbroken coating of snow and ice becomes a smooth horizontal plane of mud and flattened leaf litter. Even before the last snows have fallen the spring bulbs bravely put up their shoots- as of this morning I can report my snowdrops are in full bloom, and I have 6 clumps of purple crocuses.

Spring is a hopeful time, because we can see with our own eyes that what appeared barren can suddenly be transformed with new life, because those plants which have appeared to die turn out to have been only dormant, and later in the season plants that have indeed died will be replaced by their young.



Many of you have told talked about needing hope, and especially needing hope as we get older. Spring happens because all those plants have a plan for the future. Plants put a lot of resources and intelligent design behind their hopes for the future. Today I would like us to take inspiration from our plant siblings, not only to have hope for a future, but to consider how we choose to invest in our own future, and the future of our the next generations, investing in hope.

These early spring flowers I see in my yard this morning are not emerging from seeds, but from their roots, whether bulbs[i] or rhizomes. The strategy of these plants is to store nourishment and nutrients all year long into their roots, and when the winter comes, the plants die back to the ground, returning maximum resources to the root. Somewhere in that root system is also the plan for how to grow all those above ground parts anew, knowledge of the whole cycle. An because they have stored up resources, and a brilliant plan evolved over many, many cycles, they are ready to burst firth first thing in spring, flowering early, and then spending the rest of the growing season gathering resources for the next cycle.

This is a solid investment, or savings plan. Chances are pretty good that a bulb or rhizome will come back the following year if conditions are normal. Setting aside energy and resources for the future is always a good idea, but it becomes more important we age. We tuck something away for our future selves, for hard winters so we are ready to start growing again with the time is right. I’m sure you can think of a time in your own life when you thought “thank goodness I put this aside for later, for right this moment” whether that was a backup jug of dish soap, or retirement savings.

We do this as a beloved community too- we not only put aside investments for hard times, but our tradition itself is an investment in the future. We know this UU faith, which is over 400 years old, has not only gotten us through this pandemic, but also wars, like the Civil war and the American Revolution, has gotten hundreds of thousands of people through their individual struggles and transitions, and our collective struggles and changes. I had always through of our tradition as a big tree, all those hundreds of years of growth evolving slowly over time a beautiful form that shelters and feeds us. But right now I am thinking about the importance of those roots, how even when a beautiful mature plant is cut way back, is diminished by hard times, it stores the wisdom and nutrients in its roots to spring back when it is time to grow again.

This wisdom is in the ancient Taoist text the Tao Te Ching,

“Though everything is flourishing, each will return to its root,
Returning to the root means stillness, and
Stillness marks the cycle of life.” [Translated by David Hong Cheng, 2000, Chapter 16]

I feel like this is what we have been doing these past 2 years as a congregation, returning to our root, returning to the source of all our wisdom, to nutrients stored up both for hard times and for future growth.

The cycle of flourishing from our root and returning to the root is playing out beautifully all around us right now as we see those tulip an crocus shoots coming up from bare ground. But this method of perpetuating and renewing life has limits- it is preparing to do the exact same thing in the exact same place for as long as that place can sustain it.

But in this dramatically changing world -- climate change, political change, economic change, cultural change --we also prepare our legacy for an unknown and evolving future. This is what seeds are for. For example, many kinds of seeds are spread by birds, and as their migration patterns change with climate change, so they will take with them the seeds of the food they will need in future generations. This is an important time for us to be thinking about our seeds- as individuals, as a community and as a faith tradition. I’m not talking here about biological offspring, but the values and wisdom and traditions that are life affirming, the seeds of a world where each and every being has inherent worth and dignity, where we live in harmony with the interconnected web of life. Some seeds we will plant close to our roots, to perpetuate this local ecosystem of which we are a part, but let us also consider the seeds we scatter far and wide.

Seeds are both a risky and a necessary investment. In Hidden Life of Trees Author Peter Wohlleben theorizes that a beach tree which grows for 400 years will produce a total of about 1.9 million beechnuts, and of those exactly one will grow to be a full-grown tree, which is considered a smashing success. Its genetic wisdom lives on even when its nutrients are returning to the soil. That beech tree will never see it’s successful offspring full grown, that is the point. The tree is investing not in itself, but in its genetic wisdom, in its legacy and the contributions it's offspring will make to future ecosystems. Let us not hold back from planting seeds because not all of them sprout, as Emily Kedar writes:

What good gardener
Would waste the gift of seed
For a sliver of doubt
Wedged inside her mind?

I want dirt
Under my
Fingernails
And all my
Seed packets
Empty.

Let seeds be a metaphor for those million tiny bits of wisdom and caring we plant far and wide, knowing that most of them will never result in even one new member to a UU church, but may help preserve our special wisdom, like universal love, or democracy, or reason and science, for future generations, in times and places where they are most ready to grow and most needed for the evolving ecosystem.

What are the seeds we need to plant now as our legacy?

Consider the legacy of unconditional love- how people who experience love at key moments in their development grow and flourish in certain ways, and when people are not supported in love, say in their childhood, or formative years, or during a trauma or transition, the lack of love also ripples out into their lives.

Consider our interconnected web of life, how when we interact with our ecosystems with respect for non-human life, and for the wisdom for our complex ecosystems, those systems flourish and endure, but when we build and harvest thinking only of our own short term gain, this too ripples out in toxic waters and barren soils and climate change.

Consider Democracy, (our 5th principle) a value so basic I assumed it would flourish forever; we are learning anew now how precious our living democracy is. What seeds can we plant to ensure democracy grows and thrives into the future generations?

A seed needs the blueprint for a grown up plant and for the whole lifecycle of that plant. It also needs the nutrients to get the first sprout started, and it needs a system of propulsion since a sprout literally cannot grow in its parent’s shadow. As we consider the seeds we want to carry our legacies, consider all these things, the enduring wisdom, the nutrients needed for new growth, and how it will be propelled far and near.

Gardeners know that even with all the best care and perfect conditions, not all seeds come up. And of the seeds that sprout, even fewer will grow to be mature plants. We sow seeds, again and again, even when we can’t see them sprout. And we nurture the seeds of our tradition planted by others to shelter and support them into maturity.

If you have some seeds handy, I encourage you to grab them now as a physical reminder and object of blessing and meditation. I invite you now into a time of contemplation- hold your seeds in your hand and ask yourself what seeds you most want to sow, what legacy you want to plant now so it grows and thrives even after you are gone. Your own legacy, and that of our faith tradition. Let’s enter a moment of silence

You might let the question follow you around this week, or this season, this discernment sometimes grows slowly and takes time to become clear. Until you are ready to plant them, set your seed Pack somewhere where you can see it regularly as you ponder this question.

If you are looking for sources of hope in your lives, look around as spring unfolds, noticing that all that flourishing and blossoming happens because all those plants have a plan for the future. Today I would like us to take inspiration from our plant siblings, not only to have hope for a future, but to consider how we choose to invest in our own future, and the future of our the next generations, investing in hope. 

When Your Fire is Burning Low

What do you do when your fire is burning low? This wonderful question emerged in our monthly Soul Matters reflection group, and I imagine it’s one that a lot of us have struggled with, now especially as we come up on 2 years of dealing with Covid, as we hear the heartbreaking news out of Ukraine, as we who live in the North East enter March, which is often a grey and discouraging month, perhaps some of you have low burning fires this morning. At the same time I know some of you are already excited about spring and travel plans, so I don’t want to assume all of our fires are burning alike.

Let’s begin by just noticing, how is your fire this morning? What is the energy like in your body? In your mind? In your spirit? In your heart?

Now, I invite you discern- for what do we need your inner fire? I remember when my son was young he and his friends would have so much energy I couldn’t keep up- they would run and play for hours. I remember one young friend who, after a fun day at church camp, literally fell asleep while sitting at the dinner table, head into her spaghetti – that bright, fast fire had burned all her fuel and she couldn’t even eat dinner.

Those of us who are not children have to tend our fires more carefully. We live in a culture that values more-faster-bigger, as if one could or should burn brightly at all times. We know that this is part of how we got into our global climate crisis- this craving for infinite easy energy. Instead of wanting to burn bright all the time, we can develop the skills to match our flame to our precise needs.

So let’s take a moment of silence to discern- for what are we hoping to use our fire? Not someday, or for the rest of our lives, but for right now, and maybe for the rest of today...

I know that my mind can always imagine endless goals and tasks. So I invite you to be sure to check in with your body, your heart, your inner wisdom as well. Sometimes our inner wisdom has turned down the fire for a reason- perhaps we need to process or grieve something we have been through, and would best do that now, in a time when our fires are low, before starting something new. Perhaps our fires are low because we are out of fuel like my young friend, and need to restore ourselves before our flames leap bright again. Perhaps this is just kind of a boring time, an in between time, and we are saving our fuel for a time when we are going to need it for something special, for something important. Pause and ask yourself, what do I most need my inner fire for in the interest of health and wholeness of myself and the web of life? 

Get back in touch with that feeling of your own fire, your own energy level or motivation right now and compare that to what you are hoping to use it for today. Is the way we feel today a good match? If it’s not a good match, consider this, what would it be like to match your day to your fire, rather than changing your fire to meet the day? If, for example, you are recovering from an illness, or slowing down after a busy week, or just haven’t been quiet and still for a while, what would it be like to imagine a day that matches the energy you have right now?

Did that idea feel like a relief?
Or maybe a “yes but!” asks to be heard. If so that’s great feedback- what is that “yes, but” asking for? Does that “yes but” comes from a place of aliveness, a place of your own inner wisdom? Like- yes, but the sun is shining today and I want to get out into it! Or, Yes but, I miss my friends and want to see them?
Or does it come from a “should” – I should get something done- it’s Sunday. Or I feel lazy when I don’t get anything done? Just notice...

If we have discerned that this is a moment that calls for more fire than we have in our bellies right now, remember that fires need 3 things- fuel, air and heat. Perhaps this metaphor will help us skillfully tend our inner fire.

What fuel are we giving our inner fire? are we getting enough good food? Plenty of water? Plenty of rest? What gives fuel to your fire?
Is there enough fresh air moving in our lives? New ideas? New perspectives? What ways do you bring fresh air to your fire? 

How about our metaphorical heat? In the body we literally build heat by getting up and getting moving, doing activities that warm the muscles. It turns out the same concepts works for our psyches as well- a recent study shows that just getting up out of your chair and doing something, pretty much anything, helps change our spirits. This is called “behavioral activation.” It doesn’t have to be a big action, it can be a small action, like adding small, fast starting kindling to a fire that needs a boost. When I get sluggish in the afternoons but still have work to do, often just a quick walk down to the kitchen to fill my glass, perhaps moving the laundry or watering a plant gets me moving in a helpful way. Sometimes just stirring up the coals of a fire makes old fuel available in a new way, and a burst of fresh flames results.

Fire builders also suggest moving your logs closer together which helps them hang on to their warmth. I often find that when I don’t have enough energy to do the task I believe is important, teaming up with a friend often helps get me started. Lately, whenever I feel like I am not up to a task, I assume my inner wisdom is correct- perhaps I am not up to this task if I do it alone. When my partner and I have a chore that neither of us feels motivated to do, we do it together. It’s why our congregations have done their pledge drives together these past 2 years- the heat from our community helps us retain our own heat.

As Rev. Soto suggests in her poem:

[the invitation] brings us … to a hearth around which
we gather to be nourished, energized, and
warmed and where we get ready to disperse,
enlivened.

When I was young, we used to pile as much wood as possible on our campfires building the biggest, hottest fire we could, but these days we are more circumspect in our approach- when the fire is getting low, we ask “how much longer are we going to stay up tonight? How much longer do we want to tend this fire?” If the party is just getting started, we will add more logs, stir up the coals, make sure air is flowing through and enjoy the new dancing flames we have created. But experience has taught us that a fire without great leaping flames has its own gifts- you can get a nice, even toast on a marshmallow over some mature coals. It can be peaceful and warm just to sit and watch the embers glow. Like the grandparents in Lights Out Shabbat knew, there’s a lot a wise person can do with a couple of candles when all other power is unavailable.

I think that, metaphorically, I have been doing a lot of this lately. My fire is often lower than before the pandemic and if I don’t have any special need for bright hot flames, I remember that embers can produce a reliable steady heat. What could I do by these warm steady embers? R
ev. Rebecca Parker writes:

A chair by the fire,
A window that looks out on bare trees, and a
Cup of tea are all it takes to begin turning the world upside down.
This is prayer:
Seeing the world in all its beauty and need,
Dreaming a world of gratitude and justice.

This can be a beautiful time for dreaming a better future, for study, for introspection, for prayer and meditation for sharing warmth with the hearts of those our loved ones and our community.

Or maybe it’s just time to rest, We learned earlier in our tutorial about "banking your coals" we that by carefully stewarding our embers one can save those coals for later, overnight even, by banking the coals .We can preserve the warmth and some of the fuel of the coals by pushing all our embers together in a tight, small space and covering them with ash so there are no active flames. Perhaps it would help for us to think of ourselves as “baking our coals” on days when we are staying home in this time of covid, in the cold grey wet days of March. Perhaps I can reduce my carbon footprint and preserve other resources while I am resting up and staying close to home, saving fuel and heat for a future time when I want to be ready to leap into action when the need is clear. Our fire teacher tells us that having banked coals is a great way to have a quick start in the morning- just a spark and a fresh log gets your fire going for the new day when you need it most.

However your inner fire is this morning, whether you are burning high with the promise of spring or the passion for justice, or whether you feel like you are just keeping a few embers burning, I wish each of you the wisdom and skill to tend your own unique and precious flame. I wish you enough fuel and air and warmth to fulfill your unique calling, and I offer you the warmth of community, which helps us keep all our embers aglow.

Finding Life in the Second Half of Life

I told my spiritual director that I felt confused and adrift and spiritually ungrounded. My spiritual director said “It sounds like a mid life crisis.” This confused me because I liked my job, I liked my husband, I was very emotional about my son going off to college, but wasn’t that the whole point of raising a child? I had achieved pretty much every modest goal I had set for my adult life. I knew I had many blessings and a life of privilege; how could anyone fail to be grateful for meaningful work, shelter and food, a life partner I get along with? But my spirit was restless and didn’t know what it was looking for.

My discomfort, the Mid-Life books told me, arose because I was not the same person I was before I had my son, before I started into the ministry. The person I was at 50 was not who I thought I would be. Moreover, many of those things that used to bring me excitement and fun just didn’t anymore, like the wellsprings that fed my inspiration had dried up.

Part of the reason I didn’t recognize the life transition I was experiencing is that the stories we tell, especially on movies and TV, are mostly about the first half of life, about the life’s work of our teens and 20s- figuring out who we are, what we are good at, finding work, finding a family, having wild adventures. We don’t have a many models or stories or archetypes for the important crossroads of the second half of life.

In my 20s I had been inspired by the women’s spirituality movement which proposes 3 phases of a woman’s life- Maiden, Mother, Crone. But when my son Nick was out of diapers I wondered “so, am I a crone now?” I read up on the Crone archetype, which is often associated with the wisdom of being near death. That didn’t seem quite right. Yes, growing older does have something to do with getting your affairs in order, and coming to grips with your own mortality, but what then? Where was the life in the second half of life?

Author Elizabeth Davis suggests that between mother and crone is a 4th archetype called “matriarch” – this makes sense to me. I liked this image of someone who is not actively parenting, but still has many years of meaningful work to do.

It’s not surprising that we need new archetypes for our times; our lives are different than they were in the old days when the traditional archetypes were being formed. We need new archetypes still that are not so deeply embedded in a gender binary, and archetypes that aren’t bound to reproduction, since not everyone is called to parenthood. We also need new archetypes and stories for the 2nd half of life which illustrate how people of all genders can be generative, growing, and full of life.

I spent a lot of time in contemplation, looking at my life as it was, and clarified that I did not feel called to a new career, a new marriage, a new home, so how could I find that spark of new life inside the life I was already living? I waited and waited for this next phase of my life to begin, gradually realizing 2 things; first that I was just going to have to grieve some parts of the old life before I could let them go, my father’s death, the empty nest, the closure of our music store, my aching back and arthritic fingers. Second, I realized that I was not getting anywhere sitting around waiting for this next part of my life to begin. I was just going to have to experiment and try things and do something different, anything, it didn’t really matter what. If there was no fresh wellspring of life in the things I was already doing, I was going to and try some things I was not good at, risk making a fool of myself. I fact, the books said, re-integrating the child part of ourselves was crucial for adults in midlife. The middle-aged person might forget how to have fun, how to play and explore, but the inner child knew.

This next chapter started to unfold as I followed openings of aliveness wherever they lead- like the colors of a sunrise- wouldn’t it be something to draw with colors like that? Like, what if small congregations could work together somehow, maybe collaborate in some way? Like, maybe I could get my old bike repaired and join my partner on his bike rides?

This life transition required not a big change in my outward life, but making a choice in my inner life. I remembered that back in my 20s I had committed to always being a life long learner. At this crossroads I could have chosen to be done learning and growing and just coast to the finish line. But when I started approaching the world as a learner, when I started asking new questions, new pathways of energy, life and imagination began to open.

While I was at this crossroads of midlife, my Dad was at a crossroads as well. After living with cancer for a decade, he made the decision to enter hospice care. I had imagined that once you entered hospice there was a steady decline to the end, but not for my dad. Yes, some days when I called, he told me things were hard, that he was discouraged, as his fingers could not play the clarinet any more or even type on the computer. But I’ll never forget those calls when he, a lifelong musician, rediscovered music. “Have you heard the Sibelius viola concerto”? He said “Unbelievable!”. Another call “I’ve been listening to Tchaikovsky again, boy that is really where it’s at” he barely had the words to explain how moving it was to rediscover Tchaikovsky, a composer he knew well. Just a few days before he died, that was discovering new wellsprings of life.

They say that not everyone who grows old becomes an elder, and I am beginning to understand this now. The elders are the ones who face who they are right now in this very moment, and choose life, choose growth. And the joy of it, the hope of it is that this learning and growth lasts our whole lives. Remember. we have a partner in this journey, which is life itself -- always animating us and connecting us to the web of beings. Blessings for each of you that you may find the new life growing under your feet as you journey each turn of the spiral of life

A Story Ends, a New Story Begins

A story is a kind of map, shared from person to person, whether written down in a book, or remembered by heart. A story can take complex ideas, abstract ideas, amorphous feelings and changes that defy communicating, and give them a form we can remember, we can walk around inside of and see from different perspectives. A story helps us see a cohesive shape of things out of a blizzard of moments and facts and data and feelings. Religious traditions are full of stories for this reason- they give meaning and shape to our often confusing reality. Personally, I love to read fantasy and sci-fi novels, but different kinds of stories speak more clearly to some than others. I know some baseball fans look at a box score and it tells them the story of a game.

Psychologist Carl Jung posited that the stories we share help us talk about our collective experience. The really big stories shared by many people speak to many of us at the same time. When we say, for example, “Moses leading the people in the wilderness”, with just those few words millions of people around the world who have been steeped in Jewish and Christian traditions can touch into that story in their imaginations and recall the arc of the flight from slavery to the promised land. When I say “down the rabbit hole” generations of people remember Alice tumbling from the reality of 19th century England into the bewildering and fantastical wonderland.

Over the past few years, I have often felt as if I was traveling without a map. I felt as if I had come to the edge of the map I had been using and gotten to the vague part where old map makers used to write “here be the dragons.” I’ve had dreams of driving down a dark road with no light, no map, no GPS. Even the stories that I had used to guide my way when I was caught in the weeds and couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead were no longer helpful, I couldn’t find myself in those stories anymore.
 

Remember the fairy tales that all used to end the same way; “and they all lived happily ever after?” Often this happens when the young princess is married, or when the 3rd son completes the quest and becomes ruler of the kingdom. As mature adults we know that while finding your life partner and getting married can be a happy day, full of promise and possibility, no marriage is smooth sailing “ever after.” While being given a great career opportunity is also a happy occasion, full of promise and possibility, no leadership job, whether in a fairy tale or fantasy novel or history book is without conflict and challenge.

In my own story, my parents had recently divorced with much drama before my wedding day, so I knew that marriage did not guarantee any kind of happy ever after, But there was a time in my life when I completed the long arduous training for the ministry, became a minister and became a parent, and that did feel like a happy end of one story and the beginning of the next, full of promise and possibility. I was also part of the larger story which said that women could not be ministers, certainly could not be ministers and mothers at the same time, A story going back to Olympia Brown, first universalist woman minister in the 1800s, to 100 years of women working for women’s suffrage, a story that continues today as women still don’t receive equal pay. The simple story about becoming a minister and mother has been shaping my life for many years, a story I stepped into as a young woman, but as I approached 50 had come complete.

After much discernment, I realized that this moment in my own life -- approaching 50, closing our music store, of seeing my only child leave the nest for college, the death of my father, even celebrating 20 years in the ministry, came together in what felt like the end of a big story, as big as that moment in my 20s when the story of ministry and motherhood began. It felt like finishing a big thick novel, complete with sense of disorientation and loss that when you put down the story you have lived inside of for so long.

I felt this sense of disorientation in the larger world as well, in this time marked by Covid, but not just Covid, this time when our fears about climate change have turned into nightmares of fire and flood. In this time when the foundations of democracy seem to be sliding out from under our feet. In this time when so much is in flux people of conscience are demanding the long overdue end to racial oppression.

This summer I read a novel called “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern, which spoke to that part of my soul that felt like it was driving down a dark with no map. Our hero walks from his ordinary life, in which he is a grad student, into a sort of wonderland, where things are increasingly fantastical. As he moves deeper and deeper into the story, he understands that this story has been going on for a long time, hundreds of years, and is now crumbling and ending. He is sad to have arrived in this story when it is just a remnant of what it once was, but, it turns out, he is here for the very end, the story needs him in order to end. The very nature of reality crumbles and swirls as he moves deeper and deeper, He spends quite a long time walking through shadows and shifting phantasms towards, he’s not quite sure what, until the whole story, not just one story, but a whole universe of interwoven stories, a whole reality that meant so much to so many, built with love and care and story and art by generations, all of it is drowned in, of all things, a sea of honey. What we the readers, and what our hero do not know, is that even as one story is ending, the seed of a new story is already there, waiting for the old story to end, and the new story to begin.

Aha! I felt, “yes, that is where I am in my story, where we are in our story right now!” so many stories we have loved and inhabited for centuries (and lifetimes and years, big stories and little stories) are ending, the nature of reality seems unstable, because we are at the end of a very large story, at the end of an age. Doubtless seeds of the new story are here among us, right now. But we are between stories, and that is a confusing and frustrating, but also sacred and sometimes beautiful place to be. This transition from the old stories to the new ones might take quite a long time. There are parts of the new story that only our children and grandchildren will see come into being.

Pausing in the midst of unraveling my work of many hours

Imagine that you are the old woman in the story Weaving the World, come back from stirring your soup to find the tangled wreck of years of weaving on the floor? How would you feel? What would you do?  I imagine I would feel angry, I would feel bereft and brokenhearted. I would probably call some friends who would understand. I know when something I have knit is ruined, I can’t just get right back to work, I have to pause and grieve what I’ve lost, all those hours, and gather some energy before I can begin again.

What would it mean to live for a while in that story of being in between an ending and a beginning? It might allow us to let go of the status quo. This is not the time to invest in getting things back to where they were in February of 2020. Too much has already changed. It is time to invest in the new story not the old. In this place it’s okay to set down our packs and weep when we need to. It’s easy to say “let go of the status quo” but so many comforting, normal, sometimes beloved things, sometimes oppressive and toxic things are part of the status quo, but if we understand that we are in a time of great change, we must set down the old story, piece by piece as we are able, and grieve what needs to be grieved, release what needs to be released. Like the old woman in the story, we pause to honor, grieve, release all that has unraveled before we begin again.

In this place may feel adrift, but that is normal for people of in-between times, like Moses and the Israelites in the desert, like Frodo and Samwise on their long journey. It is time to set up tents, and not build palaces. In a transitional time we build flexible structures that can change as the world changes, as our stories change.

Whenever we are unsure, we let love guide us. The stories of our collective conscious agree, Love guides where we need to go, which is to our hearts desire. In the wisdom stories we see that he love we show for others on our journey matters, the connections we make are never made in vain.

We are dreaming this new story together, in the collective unconscious not only of our small community, but all the imaginations all over the world. The reason humans evolved our capacity for imagination is so that we could begin to understand something we have never experienced. Let us imagine together a future where we live in harmony with the web of life, a future where those now at the margins of our society are welcomed to the center, let us dream new structures that are anti-racist and anti-oppressive -- a liberatory future.

How many decades did the suffragettes tell the story of a time when women could vote, could own property, could be educated before that came to pass, How long did enslaved Americans dream of being free, and still we dream of a time when all are truly equal under the law. When people are wandering in the confusion of this in-between time, let us be among those holding up a lantern, shining the light of consciousness, truth, justice on the path ahead, because whatever seeds are planted in first pages of a story grows in the pages that follow.

I spent last week at a conference of Unitarian Universalist ministers, and what we all knew, as we arrived from our very different contexts all over the country, was that so many stories, individual and collective, are ending, have been ending. And one of those old stories is the story of organized religion as we know it, and the story of Unitarian Universalism. If you look at the box scores of organized religions, you will see they tell a story of steady decline for decades now. Ministers and lay leaders have wrung our hands since I was in seminary about how to get back to the status quo, back to the time some of our members remember being children in the Cortland congregation and you had to get to church early if you wanted a seat. The stories we told each other all through that conference arose from our shared experience of life in our congregations, of life in this time of Covid, all wove into a larger story that there is no going back to the status quo. We can grieve that, we can cherish and love the way church used to be, but that is not where hope lies.

The world has deep spiritual needs right now. The world needs spiritual community, the world needs liberation from oppressive structures, the world needs a way forward into a new story, and if our faith, if our congregations are going to meet those needs, they will have to change. Hope lies in the truth that we are changing. Look around- look at this strange new sanctuary we have created together because it met a deep need in our own hearts. If we can grow something this strange and new and useful and meaningful, I have hope that we can build something together that will have a useful role in the story ahead.

The story “Weaving the world,” which was offered at our closing worship for the conference, did for me what stories do best; it took all the statistics, all the anecdotes, all the complex feelings and events and created a simple shape, a story shape that could hold it all. Friends, things have been unraveling, there is no denying that. We have been grieving that unraveling these past 2 years, and longer. I don’t quite know where we are in the story, are we still in the unraveling? Are we, like the old woman, sitting with the “tangle of undone threads? Is it time to pick up the loose threads and begin to weave again? I’m not quite sure. I suspect the unraveling will continue for some time, and I suspect the new weaving has already begun. But this story reminds us that even the most heartbreaking and complete unraveling is rewoven into something new by the spirit of life.

The hope I offer you today is that when a story ends a new story begins. In between may be a tangled mess of loose threads, or a period of wandering in the wilderness, but I have faith that among these tangles a new story has already begun, a huge story, big enough to hold us all.

Finding Your Own Spiritual Practice

I believe that our capacity to connect with the spirit of life is innate, we all have it, it’s part of being human, being alive. It’s not something that only monks do, it’s something that everyone does often without even knowing it.

Before I offer my own thoughts, I’d like to take a moment of silent reflection to invite you to consider-

• When do you feel like you are fully yourself?
• When do you feel inspired?
• What makes you come alive?
• What gets you through hard times?

Take a moment now if you like and pause in quiet reflection, or journal...

I hope that some images or memories came to you; If not, don’t worry about it, perhaps something will come to you as we go, or sometime later in the week.

Unitarian Universalism has are no proscribed practices we all do, no special prayers for certain times of day or times of life. The gift of this is that we are free to follow our own spirit, our own path, to know the divine in our own unique way. Our faith tradition offers us the freedom to explore, and the trust that each of us can discern what is right for our own spirits. Unitarian Universalism (UU) draws from many sources, and the first of these is “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life”

In our search for a spiritual practice that is just right for us, we begin with our own direct experience. We start with what we already know about ourselves- things that inspire us, support us, ground us and make us come alive, all these are food for our spirits. Like doing the dishes in Eileen Moeller’s beautiful poem, or like going among the trees for Wendell Berry. I know that I feel different when I have been feeding my spirit and when I have been letting it languish, when I give it good nourishing food, and when I feed it junk. Food for the spirit, at its most basic, is anything that allow us to be present to our whole self, and to that which is larger than ourselves, that which connects us to the web of life, that which is sacred, and for theists, to God. Any answers that came to you during your reflection, are clues to how you naturally connect with your deeper self, your inner wholeness, and touching into a greater wholeness. Sometimes such moments have a deep sense of rightness, of “yes.”

Just as our body gives us signals of hunger and thirst, our spirits give us hints of longing. Let’s take a moment now and consider if there are things you have been longing for- this includes both the deep yearning of our hearts and also fancies, whimsies. Our spirits are both serious and playful. [pause] So I invite you to ask your deepest self, or to ask the divine if that is your way, “what is my spirit hungry for, what will bring me into deeper alignment with my true self, and with that which is greater than myself?” Notice anything that comes to mind no matter how trivial, or seemingly irrelevant.

[I invite you to pause in a moment of reflection]

In looking for our own spiritual practice, we begin by just asking this question and then listening for an answer. This discernment may start out kind of general and clumsy, and will get more subtle with time.

Our UU theology points toward a wholeness of all that is, so it doesn’t have to be something traditionally sacred. If you start listening in to yourself you might hear that you are tired. Your body is part of the sacred web of life, and if you are tired a nap might be just the thing you need for wholeness. If you feel restless, get up and start moving, But stay tuned- think of it like your GPS on a road trip- “get moving” might be just the first invitation, like how your GPS says “start going south on Fayette street” with others to follow. When you listen in to yourself, you might get lots of information- your body probably has some things to offer- maybe you are tired, or need to adjust your posture in your chair, Sometimes it’s hard to sort out all the answers- that’s the crux of it. And that’s why it takes practice, and why it often benefits from some quiet time without distractions, As Wendell Berry Suggests in his Sabbaths Poem:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

If you would like to find your spiritual practice, this is how it begins, just take some piece of time to let your stirrings become quiet, to ask, to listen and then to follow that inner longing.

After much practice, I’ve gotten better at letting my stirring become quiet so I can hear that voice of my deeper self. Sometimes I hear a longing for something familiar- I often get a clear longing to get up and move, and often follow that to the yoga mat. Last spring when it was finally warm enough to sit outside, sitting on my porch watching the birds was just what my spirit was longing for most days. But recently I kept yearning for a certain color of orange. I tried out different colored pencils until I found the right one, I looked for that shade of orange in the world and noticed and enjoyed it whenever I found it.  I didn’t realize the color orange could feed my spirit, but apparently it can. The next step, once we have followed the longing out into the garden, or to a certain color we are yearning for, to that unique thing that calls just to you, just notice how that feels, notice how your spirit responds to what you have offered it. This is the practice- just spend some time in listening, trying things out and noticing.

A second way to find your own spiritual practice is to go back to those things that have fed you in the past. Gardening, walks, doing the dishes, painting, watching the birds. [anything that came up in chat] Approach it with intentionality- the purpose is not to complete a painting, for example, but to be in dialogue with your deepest self. Sometimes when we go back to an activity that has worked in the past we get that same feeling of “yes” How lovely- your soul asks for good food and you give it good food. We call our spirit back like an old friend.

Joy Harjo writes in her poem "For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering Earth in its Human Feet:

“call you spirit back. It may be caught in corners and
creases of shame, judgement and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return
In pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be
Happy to be found after being lost for so long”

Sometimes when we are hurting or grieving or in pain or in a challenging transition, that return when we are in pieces in tatters, is hard. That doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong, it just means that something challenging is happening for you and it needs some support. As Harjo writes “Speak to it as you would a beloved child.” The basic discernment is the same if, say, you are out on the walk that normally feeds you and a wave of grief comes over you. You ask with great compassion, what is the invitation here? How can this be a movement towards wholeness, towards connection? Perhaps the walk which is so supportive to your spirit was just the right container for the grieving your heart has needed to do.

But it could also mean that your spirit needs something different today. I remember in the spring of 2020, when we were new to spending so much time indoors, so much time at the zoom screen, I would get to the yoga mat after a long day on zoom and just could not get comfortable, I was restless, and felt frustrated and trapped and was overwhelmed with all the feelings we were going through then. I turned off the gentle yoga music the teacher had suggested and put on some really aggressive music by a feminist punk band, deciding to lean into those feelings, to help them move. I did a yoga practice that matched my inner turmoil, and by the end of practice, as I lay exhausted on the mat, I knew that had been just what my spirit needed.

Back when our lives were noisy and the house was full of activity, coming and going, the quiet on my meditation cushion always felt like a relief. These days, when I have been home alone for many hours, after little Trey died and Nick went back to school and Eric back to the office, it comes time for meditation but something in me says “Ugh, I already spent the whole day sitting quiet and still, What my spirit needs most for wholeness is connection.” For a while I had been delighting in the practice of making colorful mandalas, an outlet for my creativity in a life that was otherwise well established in routine. Lately I seem to have no energy for that. I am pouring every ounce of creativity into ministry. What really feels like a drink of water to my thirsty spirit right now is the slow familiar poses of a quiet yoga class, breathing in and breathing out in a virtual yoga community.

This is part of the exploration and discernment. When you think about doing a practice and something in you says “ugh” that inner resistance can be a source of self knowledge and energy. Ask yourself “why ugh?” and see if an answer comes. Sometimes sticking with the practice where you feel resistance can help lead to wholeness, can help you be present to something challenging but important. Most days, even those quiet days at home alone, I still do the same meditation practice I started during my sabbatical training to become a Spiritual Director; I can see the difference it has made in my life to sit in silence and focus on the spaciousness between thoughts, I can see how on the challenging days it really helps me reground myself and come back to myself. But some days I choose a different path. The needs of our spirit change over time, the spirit of life is a dynamic living force, and all living things change and grow.

Once you have chosen a practice, maybe just for today, or maybe you want to try it for a longer time , the core of a practice is the return. You forget, you get distracted, you get lured away by the rhythms of frantic consumer culture, or old patterns of worry and fretting, but what makes a spiritual practice different from a spiritual experience is that you call yourself back to it each time you get distracted, each time you forget your intention.

Spiritual Director Sandra Lommasson says “every gift has a shadow and every shadow has a gift.” The shadow side of our UU way, is that sometimes we feel adrift, and unsupported in our spiritual practices. Without proscribed prayers and formal practices we get the impression that we have to go this inward path alone, but this is not so. Sometimes this kind of listening and exploring I’ve been describing is hard, the path unclear. That’s one reason I talk to my spiritual director every month, so she can help me discern my path when I feel lost, so she can help me see the big picture when I am caught in the weeds. We also have the experiences and wisdom of others who have come before us on the spiritual journey. There are thousands of years of wisdom in cultures all around the world available to us to support us, the other 5 sources of our Unitarian Universalist tradition.

It can be helpful to memorize a rote prayer, a formal practice passed down through the spiritual tradition. A memorized prayer or practice that we turn to again and again can be a relief, an anchor. When our nervous system is overwhelmed even basic discernment about what to eat for dinner is hard- I know if I wait too long to eat dinner, I look in a full fridge and say “there’s no good food in the house to eat” So I have some small prayers and practices that I hold on to in times of anxiety or need that are comforting, that are grounding, that call my spirit home. Being UU doesn’t mean we can’t use rote words or actions, it just means that my choices are between me, my spirit, and my connects me to that which is larger than myself. The ultimate authority about spirituality must be spirit, and not your minister, or the UUA.

Take a moment right now and notice all you are connected to, the sounds of your neighborhood, of nature. Notice the beautiful faces of your community in zoom this morning. Going to worship is a spiritual practice, a communal rather than individual practice. For me this weekly church service has become an anchor- it reminds me I am not alone and connects me to something larger. Being in a group together creates a container that makes it easier to hold certain joys and worries and questions. Be on the lookout for practices that enlarge your sense of connection and remind you that you are not alone, that support is available to you on this path.

I believe that we are all on a spiritual journey, and that we were never meant to do it alone. Even though we practice sometimes in solitude, so we can hear our own voice, our own Self, we need the support of community, the wisdom of tradition.

Because we are woven in a web of interconnection with nature, with one another and with spirit, anything we do with intention, with attention, can be a spiritual practice. This week I encourage you to take some time, in these shared moments right now, and perhaps also some time this afternoon, to remember what you already do that calls you home to your deepest self, to the Spirit of life, and to the love that never lets us go. In a spirit of exploration, listen for the longings of your spirit -- both earnest and playful. Offer an invitation to your deepest self and see if you hear an invitation in return. The spiritual journey is one you have already been on for a long time, finding your own spiritual practice is as simple as giving your spirit a little nourishment, a little support when it is in need, and a little play and exploration as the spirit moves.

Communities of Care

Back before the pandemic, when we did a lot of things, it was easy to get confused about what church was for- we had a lot of activities and programs and they all seemed important. But as the pandemic has dragged on, many of those activities and programs and committees we thought a church could not function without have fallen away. What we do now pretty much comes down to – we worship together and we care for one another. And a big part of what we do together on Sunday morning is caring for one another.

Even when I show up for a board meeting, someone will ask after my loved ones, medical tests or dogs. We take time in every board meeting to ask after absent friends, folks not on zoom, folks who are grieving or sick. We celebrate with each other joys of all sizes. Many times over the past 2 years I have wondered “how are people without a congregation surviving this?”

For as long as there have been faith congregations, there has been a tradition of caring for one another. I don’t know when it started, but it was clearly part of the early Christian church. The Hebrew scriptures, which are much older, include specific instructions about helping the most vulnerable in ways that show this was commonly part of community life.

We, in both the Athens and Cortland congregations, have cared for our people as long as I have known you, and in a way that shows this is an old and deep habit. Let’s not take that for granted, but celebrate and nurture this aspect of our lives together.

First, I want to celebrate that when we create communities of care, we disrupt consumer culture, we disrupt the for-profit culture. When I put “communities of care” in my search engine, it came up with several pages of fee-based organizations that you can hire to do some of the aspects of caring. And thank goodness for them- thank goodness for nurses and therapists and medical assistants and assisted living and transportation services. We’re not trying ot replace the area agency on aging. But our community of care is a little oasis that removes money from the equation, we offer whatever little bits of support we can to one another because we care. We do it as a gift of love, sometimes for people we hardly know. In our voluntary communities of care we are not consumers and providers, we are co-creators. It is a care based on mutuality.

We have seen that when the big professional structures break down, let’s say after a disaster, that the first people on the scene most times are family, neighbors, friends, strangers who instinctively look around to see who needs help. That capacity to be there for one another gives us freedom from a system where we are numbers, where we are consumers, and reminds us of something beautiful about what it means to be human beings in community. Caring community can help and hold people at the margins- people who maybe don’t have family nearby, people who have fallen through the gaps in the safety net. Our communities are human-sized, we see one another and our needs, we notice people who get lost in big systems.

We co-create a caring community because we hope there will be a community to hold us when we need care, but not with any strict accounting of what we give matching what we get, but in a “pay it forward” kind of way. I remember when I was becoming a parent, we were inundated by gifts and supplies and advice and hot meals, and I am still paying forward out of a deep awe and gratitude for that outpouring of support. When my friends and sisters were becoming parents I released everything that Nick had outgrown, because I trusted the community of parents that if we found ourselves surprised by another child, I could step back into that flow, and the support we needed would be there.

Communities of care also disrupt isolation. I’m sure you’ve heard the studies about an epidemic of loneliness in our society. We were growing lonelier before the pandemic, and research affirms what we already know, that we have grown lonelier during the pandemic. I bet all of us have struggled with loneliness and isolation during these past 2 years. That’s one of the best things about church, and this congregation in particular- anyone of good will can join this community, no matter how unlovable you feel, all you have to do to be welcomed into community is show up with an open heart and mind. And because we are so small, there is pretty much no chance that you will be invisible, we see you, and we welcome you with open hearts.

I think it’s no accident that faith communities are so often caring communities. Not only are faith communities a place where we challenge ourselves to live out our highest values, of which care and love are among the most important, but love and care are also a spiritual path, a spiritual practice. I hope that each of you have experienced the special kind of warmth that Mr. Nick felt as he was knitting that blanket thinking of his friend, as he embodied his caring in a thoughtful and personal way for her. In our physical and emotional acts of caring we have a chance to connect more deeply to the divine that is present in relationship, The place between persona and person is a scared place of connection. The web that binds living beings together is sacred, and when we live into that web, embodying care, sometimes the web reveals itself to us in a beautiful and numinous way.

The spiritual practice of care is also challenging. Relationships are hard because people are different, needs are different. Sometimes people need more than we can give, sometimes what we can give doesn’t help. The spiritual practice of care helps us learn non-attachment to outcomes. We can make soup for our sick neighbor, but perhaps they have no appetite. We find a rehab center with a bed, but only our friend struggling with addiction knows if they are ready for recovery. We drive our neighbor to the doctor, but we can’t find a cure. Sometimes people in pain, in fear, in grief are grumpy or impatient or having trouble seeing the big picture. We care anyway, paying attention to our own limits. We can’t take away another’s pain. We offer, we act, and we let go.

It’s a spiritual practice that does not always feel good but invites us to grow in wisdom. The ocean of need is endless, none of us alone can meet that need, not even when we come together as our little congregation can we satisfy all the need. Instead, we must trust to something larger, to the large web that if we do the little things we can do, other people, other communities will do the same. As the dog rescue volunteer we’ve been working with signs all hear emails “until there are none, save one.”

Our community of care will be as unique as our little communities. It’s okay that we don’t have warehouses of supplies or our own unemployment insurance like the Mormons. The Athens congregation established a Minister’s Discretionary fund where many members have donated generously over the years for short term emergencies- like help with a heating bill, or a rent payment, or that technology you need to keep you connected to your community or to the workforce. We heard in "Singing the Soup"by Meg Barnhouse  how they came, in her congregation, to make soup when the power went out in an ice storm. In the Athens congregation we remember the time we set up our own lunch center after the floods. Just last month the Cortland the tradition of bringing poinsettias to folks in nursing care brought joy and connection to our own members and people we have never met.

In our congregations we don’t have specific pastoral care programs, we have a simple caring circle, where we let one another know about folks who might need our support, and those who are able respond spontaneously with food or rides or a comforting call or card. You don’t have to know one another, you can just say “I heard through he caring circle what you were experiencing. Here’s how I’d like to support you, is that something you would like?” and then listen for the answer.

The greatest challenge of our spiritual practice of caring community is that the more we care, the more we love, the more we open our hearts, we give up the protective numbness of detachment. Our congregation has lost 2 members this winter in death, and if we had not taken them into our hearts, and if we had not opened our hearts to their loved ones, perhaps we would not have felt the pain of their passing. But then we wouldn’t have had our friends who were so dear to us. If you take the challenging spiritual path of love, you will know joy and connection and care, but you will also know loss. And both are profoundly sacred.

Our congregation has been a community of care for a long time, it’s deep in our collective DNA. Today we celebrate and affirm this part of our life together. When we give, when we receive, when we witness acts of care, we remember that there is a love that is greater than any one of us, that we are invited to serve and co-create with our own care, with own hands and hearts.