These past 10 days Jewish people around the world have been celebrating the Days of Awe- the period from Rosh Hashana (the new year) to Yom Kippur (The day of Atonement) During this time observant Jews are engaged in a process of worship, fasting, prayer, and tzedakah (performing righteous deeds and giving money to charitable causes). It is also a custom, as Paul mentioned last week, to ask forgiveness form anyone you have wronged. The great Maimonides said that when we hear the sound of the shofar during this time of year it’s call says, “Awake, you sleepers, from your slumber…examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator.”
The focus of all these customs is the process of teshuvah, or repentance, whereby a Jew persons recognize their sins, asks for forgiveness, and resolves not to repeat their errors. This is not something one is expected to do in a single hour of worship, it is, in some traditions, a 40 day process culmination on Yom Kippur, which is a day devoted entirely to fasting and repentance.
We Unitarian Universalists do not have a ritual of our own for atonement, and I think this is sometimes problematic for us. We tend to question authority, and generally we feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that we need to ask God for forgiveness. But I think we kind of throw out the baby with the bathwater here, because surely none of us believe we have never done anything that needs to be forgiven. So this is a crucial question for us- a practical question not a hypothetical one, how do we ask for and receive forgiveness if we are atheist or agnostic, or just have one of those theological constricts of the divine that are more egalitarian? I recognized that same question in the song by the great country singer Lucinda Williams:
I would burn the soles of my feet
Burn the palms of both my hands
If I could learn and be complete
If I could walk righteously again
'Cause I want to get right with God
Yes, you know you got to get right with God
I think this is a basic human yearning regardless of our spiritual tradition or theology. Whether or not we believe in God, how do we get right?
So I turn to our Jewish neighbors, as one of the sources of our own tradition: “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves” and “Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;” I turn to this tradition to see what wisdom they can offer our yearning to get right. I see a lot of wisdom in the ritual and tradition of the days of atonement, because I have found in my own life that setting aside time for intentional reflection, and engaging in ritual acts have the power to transform our hearts, and maybe the power to help us “get right” with ourselves and with the community of beings of which we are a part.
One tradition in particular is very moving to me. It is the tradition of Tashlikh which in the Hebrew means "casting off" and has been practiced since the 13th century. It is usually performed on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, but we are not too late this year, because it can be said up until Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, or this year September 29 on the solar calendar. In this ritual people throw pieces of bred into a body of flowing water to “cast off” all their sins from the previous year. The name "Tashlikh" and the practice itself are derived from the Biblical passage (Micah 7:18-20) recited at the ceremony: "You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."
18 [God] does not retain his anger for ever,
because he delights in showing clemency.
19 He will again have compassion upon us;
he will tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our* sins
into the depths of the sea.
Now I know I have to stop here and talk about the word sin. [I know, it’s the first sermon of the year and already I’ve mentioned God and Sin] As far as I’m concerned sin is just a really old fashioned word for any of those things that I’ve done that I regret, that I feel I need to seek forgiveness for, anything that keeps me from being right with myself or with the community of all beings. But I know a lot of people, probably some of the folks in this room, were really wounded by the word sin. Over the centuries it has been used like a weapon to make people feel judged, unworthy, cut off from God if they believe in God, and cut off from other people. I’m pretty sure doing science was considered a sin at some point, so was playing cards, or using birth control. So if you don’t want to use the word “sin” I don’t blame you. Unitarian Universalists believe that no persons is inherently sinful. We’re just human. Even if we try hard to create a world of justice and compassion, at some point we are going to do something that falls short of the person we want to be.
So instead of “sin” we might say “imperfections” I bet every one here could come up with a quick list of those things. I’ll tell you a couple of mine- I still eat conventionally farmed meat sometimes even though I know it’s not ethically produced. I didn’t vote in the primaries. I was more than half an hour late for the Shale Network meeting because I didn’t heed the detour signs. Everyone has this list of things they know they have fallen short. Some of those imperfections we are able to cast off pretty easily, but some really weigh on us; we know we are not acting as our highest self calls us to be, and we long to “get right.” I don’t mind using the word sin because it leaves the same bad taste in my mouth as the actions I live to regret, like saying an unkind word in anger to someone I love. I want to reclaim that theological language from those who wield it like a weapon. But I know that word is never going to feel right to many of you, so please feel free to use language that feels like a better descriptor to you.
But one way or another we will have an incomplete world view if we don’t have a way to talk about the theological idea of “sin” (whether or not we use that word) and we don’t know how to talk about “repentance” that is to say- how to get right once we have gone wrong. Without those ideas, I am going to have an impossible job of dealing with my human imperfections. I might just stick my fingers in my ears and sing “lalala” because knowing you are not right with yourself and your community feels bad, but if there is no way to talk about it, and nothing you can do to fix it, that’s even worse. Then it feels like that badness is part of me, and always will be. But if I could let go of all those things? If I could put down the weight of all my failings and screw-ups from the past year and start fresh
“If I could learn and be complete
If I could walk righteously again”…
We need to create a language and a process in our UU tradition to come face to face with our humanness, to own our imperfections and to get right with the community of beings. Let’s take a moment in mediation now to honor our human-ness, and our desire to get right.
Now Imagine if our congregation stood up and walked to the river and you had in your hands or pockets some bread crumbs each one representing some failing, some regret, imperfection, or disconnection in your own life. Feel the crumbs in your pocket, and then one at a time, you scatter a crumb for each one into the river that flows by our Sheshequin church. What crumbs would you wash away this year?
[pause in meditation]
Then you shake out your pockets to make sure you got every last bit (in some traditions folks observing the ritual actually immerse their whole bodies lest any crumbs be left, so imagine that if you choose, immersing yourself in the river and washing away every last crumb in the rushing water. [pause] Then you turn back to shore, walking with your community back to this sactuary.
As you return from this imaginary journey, notice if there is unfinished work for you to do. Are there people you want to apologize to? [pause] Are there actions you want to change in your life?
Though our mediation is over, this process of letting go, of getting right is a process that Jewish tradition allows days or even weeks to unfold. If you feel so moved, you might want to continue this work, maybe repeating the ritual we just visualized with real crumbs and living water. Participating in a ritual like this one is a way of putting more of yourself into a psychological process that you have chosen. Your intention to let go penetrates more deeply when those ideas are put into your mind but also your body. Many Jewish congregations hold a tashlich service formally together, but a ritual of letting go can also be quite simple and private. I encourage you to take a few quiet moments in these coming days and think about the things you would like to cast off, and maybe walk to a creek or river near you with a piece of bread. Cast your crumbs on the running water to help the process of letting go, of starting the new year with a clean slate, and of getting right with your self and with the community of all beings.
Resrouces:
“The High Holidays” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Rosh_Hashanah/High_Holidays.shtml
“Tashlikh: A Rosh Hashanah ritual for the whole family.” By Lesli Koppelman Ross http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Rosh_Hashanah/In_the_Community/Tashlikh.shtml
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Water is Life (August 8, 2010)
Who owns the water? It sounds like a rhetorical question, doesn’t it. Like “Who owns the air?” or “How can you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” But as a culture that takes private property seriously, people know what I mean when I say that I own a little piece of land, of earth, on the south side of Ithaca. It means that I can say who comes and who goes, I can dig it up and move it around. I can plant herbs and harvest them, and no one will challenge me about whose herbs they are. So what about the rain that falls on my land? What about the wells that provide drinking water to residents of the city of Ithaca?
The water system is one of the most profound ways that we are connected one to another as living beings on this planet. We learned as children the science of the water cycle, that the water from the glaciers melts and runs down into creeks, and then rivers, into Marshes and lakes and oceans. We know that all water exposed to air evaporates and becomes the moisture in our air, clouds, rainfall, frost and the snow that melts in the spring to feed our creeks. You look at a weather map and see the great sweeps that air makes, carrying the water that evaporated off the Great Lakes, and off of my back eastward toward the Atlantic ocean. And so water is a profound metaphor for inter-connection. This is one of the reasons our annual water communion is so powerful. Once again this fall we will each pour our own portion of water into a common bowl as we regather in our sanctuary in Athens. And once those waters mingle, the nutrients, the organisms, the toxins that were brought by each become part of the whole.
I first became concerned about water justice when I was volunteering with The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry in California which has embraced Water as one of their key for the past few years. They adopted a set of 7 principles to guide their work that I think will be helpful in organizing our thinking about this crucial set of issues.. The first is this:
• Water is essential for life, and holds spiritual meaning for many.
Every living being in our biosphere needs water, is in some part made of water. It is written in the Koran "We have made of water everything living." Water is such a fundamental building block of life, that every religious tradition that endeavors to sorts the world into its most essential elements includes water among them. It’s a powerful part of story, ritual and archetype in all cultures whether island or desert peoples.
Is water sacred to Unitarian Universalists? We might as well ask ourselves “is life sacred?” because water is the source and substance and sustenance of all life as we know it. Surely we must treat with reverence anything that sustains life, treat with respect that which when withheld causes life to wither and die. This year we have decided to include some earth science in our children’s Religious Education program. When our children here at church have a lesson about their local watershed, we should be ready to explain what is sacred about water, why we would spend time at church thinking about it, because water is so completely ordinary. But I believe that the ordinary everyday life is sacred, and worthy of our awe and our respect. I want our children to experience the joy and wonder of water, whether that comes from unlocking its scientific mysteries , or by running under a sprinkler. And I want them to respect water, because it cannot be separated from life -- our lives and the lives of the other beings who share this biosphere with us. I know of nothing more sacred than life.
A Second principle of water justice is that:
• Access to clean water for basic human needs is a fundamental human right and is essential for human health and dignity.
Just a couple weeks ago, on July 28, 2010, the United Nations adopted a nonbinding resolution that recognizes the human right to water and sanitation. The resolution “declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” Proponents of water rights were very careful to not allow the phrase “access to water” into the resolution, because that could imply that as long as water is for sale in your area the government has done it’s job. Instead they pushed for water itself as a human right.
The resolution passed by a vote of 122 to 0 with 41 countries, including the United States, abstaining. In a recent interview after the passage of the UN Resolution, Maude Barlow, director of the Council of Canadians, a citizen’s organization which has been a long time supporter of the right to water, spoke about the politics around those 41 abstentions this way: “…really, what you’re seeing is a split between those countries that see water as a public trust, although that wasn’t in the language of the legislation, but that see water as a public trust and a human right and that should belong to all, as opposed to those who are going to move to a market model. And I think that’s the truth behind what happened.”
Which leads us to our third principle:
• Water is a public trust and part of the global commons; it should not be treated as a commodity.
Are there some things so basic to life that they should be governed by different rules than those of private property? Like air? Like sunshine? Like water? Like our genetic code? I believe there are. The phrase that is used to describe this idea is “reclaiming the commons.” has argued that water isn’t a private good and shouldn’t be in any trade agreement.”
The idea of a commons arose in counterpoint as an increasing number of countries are moving towards water privatization, including New Zealand and Australia. In the United States a number of local communities fight the drawing down of their aquifers by water bottling companies like Nestle. according to The Economist (August 27, 2008) “Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Danone consume almost 575 billion liters of water a year, enough to satisfy the daily water needs of every person on the planet,” Across the globe the world Bank makes water privatization a condition of loans and debit relief, and encourages sale of public water utilities to private corporations rather than helping fund public utilities. Between 2000 and 2003, 94% of World Bank loans for water and sanitation required recipients to sign contracts with private companies. As of 2006, Three European corporations: Veola, Suez and RW Thames controled over 70 percent of private water systems worldwide. Water has been removed from the “essential services” category and made a commodity available for profit.
This is what happened in Chualar, an agricultural community in Monterey County. There the California American Water Company (owned by RW Thames, one of those giants I mentioned before) bought the town’s water system in 2001. Local residents had been paying a flat rate of $21, but then bills jumped as high as $400 a month. Rebecca Trujilo, a local resident, reported that “All of a sudden we got a bill for over $100. Now our wages are pretty low. We earn $280, or at most $300 a week. If we have t o pay a bill of $280, will that’s a week during which we can’t eat, we won’t have money to buy food” Community members rallied, and presented community demands to the California Public Utilities Commission. As a result of this mobilization, Cal-Am went back to a flat rate, and CPUC supervised the private utility more closely with local community advocates.
Each time you or I buy bottled water, we are passively supporting water privatization. And if we’re buying it in the little sport-sized bottles we are paying more per gallon than we pay for gas. Companies like Nestle and Coke a Cola are buying public water rights (that’s my water and your water). They are within their rights as private property owners to overdraw the ground water, emptying local wells which provide drinking water to local residents, and then selling our water back to us at seriously inflated prices, in plastic bottles that some say will make us sick if we re-use them.
So what’s a thirsty citizen to do? Go back to your tap. That’s what most bottled water is anyway- tap water. Reconnect yourself to the water that comes out your faucet- each time you bottle your own you are making a political statement. It’s your right as a being on this earth to have access to clean drinking water. Do you have confidence in your tap water? A few minutes on-line at the EPA website could help. Find out where it comes from. If you don’t like what you find out, remember your right to have a vote and a voice- assert and reclaim that right.
This leads us to a third of the basic principles of water justice that :
• All people, including those in low-income and marginalized communities, must have meaningful input into water management decisions in their own communities.
Currently water is governed in very different ways across the country. In some states they are governed by “Special Districts” which are often controlled by real-estate developers and corporations. In some districts called “landowner districts” property owners are entitled a number of votes based on the number of acres they own. This means that while we all need water to survive, we can only participate in the democratic process if we own land, and our vote counts more depending on how much land we own. So next to the loud voices of industrial agriculture and developers, homeowners speak in a whisper and renters have no voice at all.
Here in Bradford County, I know that decisions about our water are made by the Susquehanna River Commission, and the Conservation Commission, but I’m going to admit my ignorance about where the water that flows out our taps at the Athens church comes from, and which public agency is responsible. So I hereby issue a challenge to you all here- the first person who can explain the source of and governance over the water that ends up in our church building gets a dozen homemade cookies. I will also award a cookie to anyone who can tell me the story of the water that comes out of the tap at your own home.
That will help us better ensure justice for our families and our neighbors, as Thomas Jefferson said “An Informed citizenry is the Bulwark of democracy” But what other beings who need water to survive? They also have no voice unless we give them one. There is a movement afoot to give rights to local ecosystems. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, was founded right here in Pennsylvania, and is helping local governments all over the country pass laws granting rights to Mother Nature. In 2006 Tamaqua in Schuylkill County was the first in the nation to pass such an ordinance. Executive Director Thomas Linzey put it this way: "What we're advocating is a wholesale paradigm change: that Nature is not just property. We're saying natural communities have an inherent right to exist and flourish.”
This leads me to a 4th guiding principle that:
• The health, integrity, and stability of ecosystems must be respected and preserved.
Do we believe that other beings have rights? I do. I believe that water is not only a right for humans but for all beings. We have lived long enough with our 7th principle to know that the decisions we make about the path of a river effect more lives than our human lives. We also know that Our fate is inexorably intertwined with the other beings with whom we share this eco-system, but our laws do not reflect this reality.
For example, the California Water Code’s definition of “reasonable and beneficial use” acknowledges no intrinsic worth to such beings as the Salmon of the Klamath river. Hydroelectric dams along the river block salmon from 350 miles of spawning habitat. The once abundant Klamath salmon runs have now been reduced to less than 10% of their historic size. Some species, such as Coho salmon, are now in such low numbers in the Klamath River that they are listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). As the health of the salmon population is threatened, so is the health and viability of the Karuk tribe of Northern California who have lived in and with the Klamath Basin for thousands of years.
A fifth of the basic principles of the Legislative Ministry’s water justice work is that :
• Public control and regulatory oversight are necessary to ensure the public's interest is protected.
Let’s go back to the water that falls on my yard. That doesn’t have anything to do with you, does it? It’s my land! But of course, all the water in this watershed, and in fact on the planet, is interconnected. This leads to 2 different kinds of concerns. First, anyone can put a well on their private property- ‘cause, hey, it’s my land. But the groundwater doesn’t pay attention to property lines. When we pump groundwater to sell for bottled water or to turn into fracking fluid, it can lead to an “overdraft” of groundwater- meaning that more water is pumped out of the ground than is replenished by rainfall or runoff.
Second, what you do to the water on your property doesn’t stay on your property. There are many examples of this, but one that has so many of us worried right now is what happens to the water used in hydrofracking. I just don’t feel confident that when known carcinogens and endocrine disrupters are pumped into the ground in the hydrofracking fluids that they will stay where we put them. Many of us in the congregation went to see Gasland over at the Elmira Theater and were shocked by film footage of folks lighting their water on fire. Apparently just a few days ago the cap blew off a water well in Monroe Township, and subsequent tests found methane in 3 wells at the private residence less than a mile away from a natural gas drilling pad. The DEP has investigated, and Chesapeake Energy is taking remedial action.
This is why we need to keep working to close the Halliburton Loophole by keeping the pressure on our federal legislators to pass legislation such as H.R. 2766/S. 1215 “The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009 which has been stuck in committee for over a year. We have a right to clean, drinkable water, and need oversight to make sure our watershed stays pure.
The last of the UULM guidelines is this:
• Water conservation, responsible use, and stewardship should be a top priority for all.
This summer my son and I have taken every chance we could get to swim in the gorge at Treman State Park- it’s a favorite place of his. Last week as we were swimming there a worried look came over his face: “Mom, is the water from the Gulf Spill going to get in this water?” “No, honey” I assured him “That is very far away from us, it’s in a different watershed” (I didn’t want to worry him too much by talking about how water from the gulf would certainly evaporate and join the weather systems that move around the planet) “But let’s work to keep this and all the other creeks and lakes near us safe and clean” I replied.
Water is not a commodity, it is the very substance of life, it is sacred, and it is precious. We study our watershed, our water cycle knowing it offers as much wisdom about sustaining life as a sacred text. Let us make sure that justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Endnotes:
1. For a discussion of some water rights in Pennsylvania see: “FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Public Rights in Pennsylvania Waters” by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat commission http://www.fish.state.pa.us/water/public/faq_public_waters.htm
2. The Koran (21:30)
3. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/ga10967.doc.htm “General Assembly Adopts Resolution Recognizing Access to Clean Water, Sanitation as Human Right”
4. Democracy Now July 29, 2010 “In Historic Vote, UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right” http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_access
5. Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, California, “UULM-CA Water Justice Guiding Principles”
http://www.uulmca.org/programs/water.html
6. http://www.emagazine.com/view/?5067
7. UUSC,Right to Water.” http://www.uusc.org/pdf/WATERfs_v3B_WEB.pdf
8. The Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Thirsty for Justice: A people’s Blueprint for California Water p. 50
9. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/ca.htm
10. Ibid p. 47
11. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_513236.html Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “Ecosystem rights move forward in Washington County” by Mike Cronin, June 19, 2007. More about CELDF can be found at http://www.celdf.org/index.php
12. THE PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS “THE STRUGGLE TO SAVE SALMON IN THE KLAMATH BASIN“ http://www.pcffa.org/klamath.htm
13. Ibid p. 22
14. Thirsty for Justice p. 48
15. http://thedailyreview.com/news/methane-found-in-well-water-in-monroe-twp-1.942868 “Methane found in well water in Monroe Twp.” The Daily Review. BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN.August 12, 2010
The water system is one of the most profound ways that we are connected one to another as living beings on this planet. We learned as children the science of the water cycle, that the water from the glaciers melts and runs down into creeks, and then rivers, into Marshes and lakes and oceans. We know that all water exposed to air evaporates and becomes the moisture in our air, clouds, rainfall, frost and the snow that melts in the spring to feed our creeks. You look at a weather map and see the great sweeps that air makes, carrying the water that evaporated off the Great Lakes, and off of my back eastward toward the Atlantic ocean. And so water is a profound metaphor for inter-connection. This is one of the reasons our annual water communion is so powerful. Once again this fall we will each pour our own portion of water into a common bowl as we regather in our sanctuary in Athens. And once those waters mingle, the nutrients, the organisms, the toxins that were brought by each become part of the whole.
I first became concerned about water justice when I was volunteering with The Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry in California which has embraced Water as one of their key for the past few years. They adopted a set of 7 principles to guide their work that I think will be helpful in organizing our thinking about this crucial set of issues.. The first is this:
• Water is essential for life, and holds spiritual meaning for many.
Every living being in our biosphere needs water, is in some part made of water. It is written in the Koran "We have made of water everything living." Water is such a fundamental building block of life, that every religious tradition that endeavors to sorts the world into its most essential elements includes water among them. It’s a powerful part of story, ritual and archetype in all cultures whether island or desert peoples.
Is water sacred to Unitarian Universalists? We might as well ask ourselves “is life sacred?” because water is the source and substance and sustenance of all life as we know it. Surely we must treat with reverence anything that sustains life, treat with respect that which when withheld causes life to wither and die. This year we have decided to include some earth science in our children’s Religious Education program. When our children here at church have a lesson about their local watershed, we should be ready to explain what is sacred about water, why we would spend time at church thinking about it, because water is so completely ordinary. But I believe that the ordinary everyday life is sacred, and worthy of our awe and our respect. I want our children to experience the joy and wonder of water, whether that comes from unlocking its scientific mysteries , or by running under a sprinkler. And I want them to respect water, because it cannot be separated from life -- our lives and the lives of the other beings who share this biosphere with us. I know of nothing more sacred than life.
A Second principle of water justice is that:
• Access to clean water for basic human needs is a fundamental human right and is essential for human health and dignity.
Just a couple weeks ago, on July 28, 2010, the United Nations adopted a nonbinding resolution that recognizes the human right to water and sanitation. The resolution “declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.” Proponents of water rights were very careful to not allow the phrase “access to water” into the resolution, because that could imply that as long as water is for sale in your area the government has done it’s job. Instead they pushed for water itself as a human right.
The resolution passed by a vote of 122 to 0 with 41 countries, including the United States, abstaining. In a recent interview after the passage of the UN Resolution, Maude Barlow, director of the Council of Canadians, a citizen’s organization which has been a long time supporter of the right to water, spoke about the politics around those 41 abstentions this way: “…really, what you’re seeing is a split between those countries that see water as a public trust, although that wasn’t in the language of the legislation, but that see water as a public trust and a human right and that should belong to all, as opposed to those who are going to move to a market model. And I think that’s the truth behind what happened.”
Which leads us to our third principle:
• Water is a public trust and part of the global commons; it should not be treated as a commodity.
Are there some things so basic to life that they should be governed by different rules than those of private property? Like air? Like sunshine? Like water? Like our genetic code? I believe there are. The phrase that is used to describe this idea is “reclaiming the commons.” has argued that water isn’t a private good and shouldn’t be in any trade agreement.”
The idea of a commons arose in counterpoint as an increasing number of countries are moving towards water privatization, including New Zealand and Australia. In the United States a number of local communities fight the drawing down of their aquifers by water bottling companies like Nestle. according to The Economist (August 27, 2008) “Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Danone consume almost 575 billion liters of water a year, enough to satisfy the daily water needs of every person on the planet,” Across the globe the world Bank makes water privatization a condition of loans and debit relief, and encourages sale of public water utilities to private corporations rather than helping fund public utilities. Between 2000 and 2003, 94% of World Bank loans for water and sanitation required recipients to sign contracts with private companies. As of 2006, Three European corporations: Veola, Suez and RW Thames controled over 70 percent of private water systems worldwide. Water has been removed from the “essential services” category and made a commodity available for profit.
This is what happened in Chualar, an agricultural community in Monterey County. There the California American Water Company (owned by RW Thames, one of those giants I mentioned before) bought the town’s water system in 2001. Local residents had been paying a flat rate of $21, but then bills jumped as high as $400 a month. Rebecca Trujilo, a local resident, reported that “All of a sudden we got a bill for over $100. Now our wages are pretty low. We earn $280, or at most $300 a week. If we have t o pay a bill of $280, will that’s a week during which we can’t eat, we won’t have money to buy food” Community members rallied, and presented community demands to the California Public Utilities Commission. As a result of this mobilization, Cal-Am went back to a flat rate, and CPUC supervised the private utility more closely with local community advocates.
Each time you or I buy bottled water, we are passively supporting water privatization. And if we’re buying it in the little sport-sized bottles we are paying more per gallon than we pay for gas. Companies like Nestle and Coke a Cola are buying public water rights (that’s my water and your water). They are within their rights as private property owners to overdraw the ground water, emptying local wells which provide drinking water to local residents, and then selling our water back to us at seriously inflated prices, in plastic bottles that some say will make us sick if we re-use them.
So what’s a thirsty citizen to do? Go back to your tap. That’s what most bottled water is anyway- tap water. Reconnect yourself to the water that comes out your faucet- each time you bottle your own you are making a political statement. It’s your right as a being on this earth to have access to clean drinking water. Do you have confidence in your tap water? A few minutes on-line at the EPA website could help. Find out where it comes from. If you don’t like what you find out, remember your right to have a vote and a voice- assert and reclaim that right.
This leads us to a third of the basic principles of water justice that :
• All people, including those in low-income and marginalized communities, must have meaningful input into water management decisions in their own communities.
Currently water is governed in very different ways across the country. In some states they are governed by “Special Districts” which are often controlled by real-estate developers and corporations. In some districts called “landowner districts” property owners are entitled a number of votes based on the number of acres they own. This means that while we all need water to survive, we can only participate in the democratic process if we own land, and our vote counts more depending on how much land we own. So next to the loud voices of industrial agriculture and developers, homeowners speak in a whisper and renters have no voice at all.
Here in Bradford County, I know that decisions about our water are made by the Susquehanna River Commission, and the Conservation Commission, but I’m going to admit my ignorance about where the water that flows out our taps at the Athens church comes from, and which public agency is responsible. So I hereby issue a challenge to you all here- the first person who can explain the source of and governance over the water that ends up in our church building gets a dozen homemade cookies. I will also award a cookie to anyone who can tell me the story of the water that comes out of the tap at your own home.
That will help us better ensure justice for our families and our neighbors, as Thomas Jefferson said “An Informed citizenry is the Bulwark of democracy” But what other beings who need water to survive? They also have no voice unless we give them one. There is a movement afoot to give rights to local ecosystems. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, was founded right here in Pennsylvania, and is helping local governments all over the country pass laws granting rights to Mother Nature. In 2006 Tamaqua in Schuylkill County was the first in the nation to pass such an ordinance. Executive Director Thomas Linzey put it this way: "What we're advocating is a wholesale paradigm change: that Nature is not just property. We're saying natural communities have an inherent right to exist and flourish.”
This leads me to a 4th guiding principle that:
• The health, integrity, and stability of ecosystems must be respected and preserved.
Do we believe that other beings have rights? I do. I believe that water is not only a right for humans but for all beings. We have lived long enough with our 7th principle to know that the decisions we make about the path of a river effect more lives than our human lives. We also know that Our fate is inexorably intertwined with the other beings with whom we share this eco-system, but our laws do not reflect this reality.
For example, the California Water Code’s definition of “reasonable and beneficial use” acknowledges no intrinsic worth to such beings as the Salmon of the Klamath river. Hydroelectric dams along the river block salmon from 350 miles of spawning habitat. The once abundant Klamath salmon runs have now been reduced to less than 10% of their historic size. Some species, such as Coho salmon, are now in such low numbers in the Klamath River that they are listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). As the health of the salmon population is threatened, so is the health and viability of the Karuk tribe of Northern California who have lived in and with the Klamath Basin for thousands of years.
A fifth of the basic principles of the Legislative Ministry’s water justice work is that :
• Public control and regulatory oversight are necessary to ensure the public's interest is protected.
Let’s go back to the water that falls on my yard. That doesn’t have anything to do with you, does it? It’s my land! But of course, all the water in this watershed, and in fact on the planet, is interconnected. This leads to 2 different kinds of concerns. First, anyone can put a well on their private property- ‘cause, hey, it’s my land. But the groundwater doesn’t pay attention to property lines. When we pump groundwater to sell for bottled water or to turn into fracking fluid, it can lead to an “overdraft” of groundwater- meaning that more water is pumped out of the ground than is replenished by rainfall or runoff.
Second, what you do to the water on your property doesn’t stay on your property. There are many examples of this, but one that has so many of us worried right now is what happens to the water used in hydrofracking. I just don’t feel confident that when known carcinogens and endocrine disrupters are pumped into the ground in the hydrofracking fluids that they will stay where we put them. Many of us in the congregation went to see Gasland over at the Elmira Theater and were shocked by film footage of folks lighting their water on fire. Apparently just a few days ago the cap blew off a water well in Monroe Township, and subsequent tests found methane in 3 wells at the private residence less than a mile away from a natural gas drilling pad. The DEP has investigated, and Chesapeake Energy is taking remedial action.
This is why we need to keep working to close the Halliburton Loophole by keeping the pressure on our federal legislators to pass legislation such as H.R. 2766/S. 1215 “The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009 which has been stuck in committee for over a year. We have a right to clean, drinkable water, and need oversight to make sure our watershed stays pure.
The last of the UULM guidelines is this:
• Water conservation, responsible use, and stewardship should be a top priority for all.
This summer my son and I have taken every chance we could get to swim in the gorge at Treman State Park- it’s a favorite place of his. Last week as we were swimming there a worried look came over his face: “Mom, is the water from the Gulf Spill going to get in this water?” “No, honey” I assured him “That is very far away from us, it’s in a different watershed” (I didn’t want to worry him too much by talking about how water from the gulf would certainly evaporate and join the weather systems that move around the planet) “But let’s work to keep this and all the other creeks and lakes near us safe and clean” I replied.
Water is not a commodity, it is the very substance of life, it is sacred, and it is precious. We study our watershed, our water cycle knowing it offers as much wisdom about sustaining life as a sacred text. Let us make sure that justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Endnotes:
1. For a discussion of some water rights in Pennsylvania see: “FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Public Rights in Pennsylvania Waters” by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat commission http://www.fish.state.pa.us/water/public/faq_public_waters.htm
2. The Koran (21:30)
3. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/ga10967.doc.htm “General Assembly Adopts Resolution Recognizing Access to Clean Water, Sanitation as Human Right”
4. Democracy Now July 29, 2010 “In Historic Vote, UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right” http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2010/7/29/in_historic_vote_un_declares_access
5. Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, California, “UULM-CA Water Justice Guiding Principles”
http://www.uulmca.org/programs/water.html
6. http://www.emagazine.com/view/?5067
7. UUSC,Right to Water.” http://www.uusc.org/pdf/WATERfs_v3B_WEB.pdf
8. The Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Thirsty for Justice: A people’s Blueprint for California Water p. 50
9. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/ca.htm
10. Ibid p. 47
11. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_513236.html Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “Ecosystem rights move forward in Washington County” by Mike Cronin, June 19, 2007. More about CELDF can be found at http://www.celdf.org/index.php
12. THE PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS “THE STRUGGLE TO SAVE SALMON IN THE KLAMATH BASIN“ http://www.pcffa.org/klamath.htm
13. Ibid p. 22
14. Thirsty for Justice p. 48
15. http://thedailyreview.com/news/methane-found-in-well-water-in-monroe-twp-1.942868 “Methane found in well water in Monroe Twp.” The Daily Review. BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN.August 12, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Forgiveness (June 6, 2010)
We are all human. WE all make mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes cause inconvenience, discomfort or even pain to the people around us. Most of us carry around in our psyches our mistakes, and the injury others have done us, often for years and years. I know sometimes I will suddenly remember something that happened years ago, and will be filled with fresh emotion that belies how long ago it happened and how relatively small the event was in the whole of my life. Not only do our religious traditions ask us to forgive these errors and injuries, or as it says in the Lord’s Prayer “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But doctors and scientists are now telling us that holding on to these errors and injuries can create physical illness and can delay recovery of illness and injury. In fact a recent study by the mayo clinic showed that people who focused on a personal grudge had elevated blood pressure and heart rates, as well as increased muscle tension and feelings of being less in control. When asked to imagine forgiving the person who had hurt them, the participants said they felt more positive and relaxed and thus, the changes dissipated. Moreover, forgiveness is the key to creating beloved community and long lasting deep relationships; you can’t be friends with someone for 20 years without forgiving often. But it’s not simple to let go of those old hurts, so today we want to take some time to think about forgiveness and the process by which it happens.
In her article “Moving Toward Forgiveness” Presbyterian Pastor and author Marjorie Thompson defines forgiveness this way. “To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who as wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be. It represents a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution, however fair such punishment might seem.” In forgiving, she assures us, we are not resigning ourselves to martyrdom, and we are not trying to excuse unjust behavior. We commonly hear the phrase “forgive and forget” but the two are not the same. To forgive and to heal we don’t need to forget the injury happened. Sometimes the experience that came along with the injury has brought us important knowledge and wisdom. What we want to let go of is not the memory of the event, but “its power to hold us trapped in continual replay of the event, with all the resentment each remembrance makes fresh.”
So let’s take a moment right now to think of a moment in your life to think of some time when you were hurt through another’s actions or inaction. Something that still makes your blood boil when you think of it, but I’d like to recommend that it be something not too fresh, something you’ve had time to live with for a while. [pause].
You may be surprised that there are a number of folks out there writing about forgiveness, from all different fields, and they have come to some agreement about how forgiveness works. I’m going to use the language of Robert Enright of the Forgiveness Institute today. The first step, which Enright calls the Uncovering Phase, is to take an honest close look at your feelings. Sometimes we forgive without doing this uncovering – we say “it’s okay, don’t worry about it” while our foot is still throbbing from being slammed in a door. Then we get home and realize that it’s getting all big and swollen, and our new shoes are ruined, and we may still be upset and resentful days later every time our foot hurts when we try to walk on it. So the Uncovering phase is where we really take an honest look at the “cognitive, psychological and spiritual impact of the injury.” Forgiving is not denying that any hurt happened, on the contrary, true forgiveness happens in response to our honest assessment of our feelings.
So take a moment with the injury you have chosen, to examine how it has impacted you. [pause] This process can take a while to really explore. If you are uncovering that time your friend slammed the door on your foot, probably a few minutes is all you need to really process it, but if it is a deeper injury, a more complex injury, it may take some time to really do all the uncovering you need to do to fully forgive. Maybe you want to plan to take some time later today or tomorrow to work more on this.
The next phase, Enright calls the Decision Phase, “in which the injured party has a change of heart and is willing to commit to forgiving the offender.” This is crucial. If we are not really sure we want to forgive someone, we are going to do a half-hearted job of it, and will find ourselves harboring those same resentments in years to come. Bring to mind the image you are working with today. Do you really want to forgive this injury? Are you really ready to forgive this? Is the relief of setting down the resentment worth giving up any desire for revenge or judgment?” [pause]
If decide that you are ready, the next step is the “Work Phase… Accepting and bearing the pain of the injury as well as reframing one’s perspective on the offender as to have greater empathy and compassion for the offender.” This is hard. That’s why it’s called the work phase. Often when we are wronged, we think of the person who wronged us as completely evil. In psychological terms this is called “splitting” because we are disowning our own capacity to do harm. We all have make mistakes like slamming the door on someone’s foot, or breaking someone’s favorite glass. We all have failed to live up to promises, I would even go so far as to say we all have in us the capacity to do violence. Because we are Universalists, we don’t believe that the world people is divided into good people and bad people, just people. As we do our work on forgiving, we are moving from “that person is evil” to “that person is human, and did something that caused me a great deal of pain.” This “work” phase is not a single act. In a way it is creating a new habit so that, when I think about my sore foot, I give up wanting vengeance on the person who hurt it, and letting go of judgment. Every time I think of that injury during this phase it is an act of will to say “I am choosing to forgive this injury, because it is not good for me to carry it around any more. I need to let this go more than I want vengeance.”
You know that you are done your work when you have that memory, and your blood doesn’t boil. You might feel sad, you can remember the hurt, but you don’t feel ready to go into battle against the person or who hurt you. See if you can recall any hurts from your past that are no longer charged when you think of them. Often, for example, when we become adults we are able to forgive some of our childhood wounds, because we realize adults are just people who make mistakes and bad choices or self interested choices, and we watch ourselves as adults making similar mistakes. This enables us to forgive our own parents and to let go of our judgments about some of the parts of our childhood that didn’t suit us.
The Final stage is the Outcome or Deepening Phase, “in which the injured person finds deeper meaning for self and others in the suffering associated with the injury; realized that one is not alone; and awareness of decreased negative feelings and of internal emotional release.” Another way to think of this is “learning something the hard way.” The wounds you bear have made you who you are today, but don’t keep you from being in community, and don’t keep you from having a whole and meaningful life.
I want to offer an example from my own life in hopes that this will help our discussion be more concrete and real. When I gave birth to my son, I had prepared for a home birth. I had done everything my midwife had suggested, taken the classes, read the books, done the exercises and felt I had really done my work getting ready. But the baby wouldn’t come, and eventually I was transferred to the hospital. As I checked into the hospital, frightened and exhausted, the doctors treated me like a delinquent and irresponsible child for having my prenatal care with a midwife instead of a doctor. I was seen mostly by student doctors, since I didn’t have an OB at the hospital, and midwives are not allowed to provide care in California hospitals, and it seemed that these students had not gotten to their unit on bedside manner. Finally, our whole birth plan went out the window, and I was wheeled to the surgery unit for a C-Section. Let me assure you I was filled with anger, sadness, and a sense of betrayal after that experience. I was angry at the hospitals, the doctors, the American OB system, my midwife and myself. It took years of work to let go of all that resentment, and forgive myself for not giving my son a natural childbirth. One day after a couple of years of working through all my issues, a thought went off like a light bulb: “Healthy baby, healthy mom.” What could be more important than that? Today when I think of how the doctors treated me, I take a deep breath and let it go. I don’t want to carry that resentment with me any more. I no longer think of the hospital staff as “evil” instead I can remind myself that they kept me and my son alive. Truth be told, whenever I hear the birth stories of my friends who had natural childbirth, I still feel a little sad that I will never experience that, and I still think the American Obstetrics industry and the laws that support it need to be changed, but that sadness, that hunger for societal change is just a part of my honest relationship with my past, part of letting go. Because that event undermined so many things I thought I knew, because it undermined even my theology, it took the help of with the help of friends, a few “art as meditation” classes and my spiritual director to weave myself back together into a whole person. But it finally did heal, and the marks it made on me, like the scar I have from the surgery I had that day, are part of the person I am today one a little wiser about how the world works.
Really, as injuries go, a hospital transfer during a home birth is dwarfed by some of the injuries our brothers and sisters have suffered. No one would blame a person whose loved one had been killed for holding that resentment, that desire for vengeance for the rest of their life. But some who have experienced grievous wrongs find the strength and wisdom to forgive even the unforgivable. When I hear of a mother or father whose child was killed standing outside the penitentiary where the one who committed that grievous crime waits on death row, and what the parents are calling for is to spare the perpetrator’s life, it is an amazing testimony about our power to forgive even the unforgivable.
And since we are all human, we all need forgiveness. So I want to ask you to set aside this injury you are working on forgiving, and search in your heart for something you need forgiveness for. [Pause]
Homer Ashby, a professor of Pastoral Care, hypothesizes in his article “Being Forgiven” that the steps for being forgiven are the same as those for forgiving. In the uncovering phase, we become aware of the mental, emotional and spiritual impacts of what we have done. We acknowledge that because of something we did, someone else was injured. A lot of us skip this step, because if we think we have done something that might have hurt someone else, it doesn’t feel good to think too much about it. But doing this uncovering might help us make the hard decision to seek forgiveness, and to enter the work phase. The work phase for seeking forgiveness, though, is where the main difference lies. Prof Ashby suggests that the work “might include a confession to oneself, to the person offended, or to a transcendent other to whom the offender feels a moral duty. Now, we have to be careful to make this a true apology. If we say “I’m sorry that you felt hurt by what I said” that’s not an apology, that’s an indictment of the other person’s sensitivity or psychology. A true apology is for our contribution “I am sorry that I said something that hurt you.”
Part of our work will include putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, understanding how they feel and grieving with them if that is appropriate. Making amends is also an important part of this work- whether that means trying to “right the wrong that was done.” or changing your behavior so that we know we will not hurt that person, or other people, in that same way again. Taken all together, Ashby calls this “expressing repentance” – apology, confession, understanding the other’s pain, making amends, and changing behavior.
Here’s another important difference between forgiving and being forgiven- the person we have injured needs to decide for themselves when and if they are ready to forgive. Or as Ashby says “The offender must be willing to wait patiently for the gift of forgiveness to be given.” If you have done your work- by apologizing, empathizing, making amends, and changing your behavior, the choice is then up to the injured person. We have to live with the possibility that “we may never receive forgiveness from the person we offended.”
The final step is to receive forgiveness. If the person we offended offers words, a hug, a gesture of forgiveness, we must receive it graciously to bring closure to this cycle, which has the power to bring healing to both parties. The isolation of each is ended, and we feel that we are not alone.
Now sometimes, it would do more harm than good to seek forgiveness in person. Some wounds are so deep, that it would only open old wounds for the offender to approach the offended to ask forgiveness. And sometimes the person you’ve offended has died or is no longer in your life. In all of these cases, you can still seek forgiveness, but the process is internal, and so can be more difficult, because it is often harder to forgive ourselves than others. For people who believe in a higher power, they can ask for forgiveness in prayer or meditation. But for folks who are atheists, I think it can be really helpful to talk it out with someone you trust. Someone who can hold you accountable, help you make sure you are doing your work and not looking for cheep forgiveness, and help you let go.
In this month’s world magazine we heard a story from the childhood of the Rev. Patrick O’Neil : after being pushed into a snow bank by older kids, a neighbor came out to dry him off and offer a cup of cocoa and this advice “Patrick, you are angry at those boys for what they did to you. And it is natural for you to feel that way. But now – you must let it go. This day has other things to give you.” Many years later Patrick learned from his mother that the neighbor and her husband were both survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. With such a history she had a right to be bitter her whole life, but she made a different choice. She had found the deeper meaning to her life, and so had wisdom to offer this little neighbor child. This then is why we forgive, because when we lay down our hurts, our wounds, our mistakes, we can give more of ourselves to life, to community, to our relationships and to all that this day holds for us.
In her article “Moving Toward Forgiveness” Presbyterian Pastor and author Marjorie Thompson defines forgiveness this way. “To forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who as wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be. It represents a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution, however fair such punishment might seem.” In forgiving, she assures us, we are not resigning ourselves to martyrdom, and we are not trying to excuse unjust behavior. We commonly hear the phrase “forgive and forget” but the two are not the same. To forgive and to heal we don’t need to forget the injury happened. Sometimes the experience that came along with the injury has brought us important knowledge and wisdom. What we want to let go of is not the memory of the event, but “its power to hold us trapped in continual replay of the event, with all the resentment each remembrance makes fresh.”
So let’s take a moment right now to think of a moment in your life to think of some time when you were hurt through another’s actions or inaction. Something that still makes your blood boil when you think of it, but I’d like to recommend that it be something not too fresh, something you’ve had time to live with for a while. [pause].
You may be surprised that there are a number of folks out there writing about forgiveness, from all different fields, and they have come to some agreement about how forgiveness works. I’m going to use the language of Robert Enright of the Forgiveness Institute today. The first step, which Enright calls the Uncovering Phase, is to take an honest close look at your feelings. Sometimes we forgive without doing this uncovering – we say “it’s okay, don’t worry about it” while our foot is still throbbing from being slammed in a door. Then we get home and realize that it’s getting all big and swollen, and our new shoes are ruined, and we may still be upset and resentful days later every time our foot hurts when we try to walk on it. So the Uncovering phase is where we really take an honest look at the “cognitive, psychological and spiritual impact of the injury.” Forgiving is not denying that any hurt happened, on the contrary, true forgiveness happens in response to our honest assessment of our feelings.
So take a moment with the injury you have chosen, to examine how it has impacted you. [pause] This process can take a while to really explore. If you are uncovering that time your friend slammed the door on your foot, probably a few minutes is all you need to really process it, but if it is a deeper injury, a more complex injury, it may take some time to really do all the uncovering you need to do to fully forgive. Maybe you want to plan to take some time later today or tomorrow to work more on this.
The next phase, Enright calls the Decision Phase, “in which the injured party has a change of heart and is willing to commit to forgiving the offender.” This is crucial. If we are not really sure we want to forgive someone, we are going to do a half-hearted job of it, and will find ourselves harboring those same resentments in years to come. Bring to mind the image you are working with today. Do you really want to forgive this injury? Are you really ready to forgive this? Is the relief of setting down the resentment worth giving up any desire for revenge or judgment?” [pause]
If decide that you are ready, the next step is the “Work Phase… Accepting and bearing the pain of the injury as well as reframing one’s perspective on the offender as to have greater empathy and compassion for the offender.” This is hard. That’s why it’s called the work phase. Often when we are wronged, we think of the person who wronged us as completely evil. In psychological terms this is called “splitting” because we are disowning our own capacity to do harm. We all have make mistakes like slamming the door on someone’s foot, or breaking someone’s favorite glass. We all have failed to live up to promises, I would even go so far as to say we all have in us the capacity to do violence. Because we are Universalists, we don’t believe that the world people is divided into good people and bad people, just people. As we do our work on forgiving, we are moving from “that person is evil” to “that person is human, and did something that caused me a great deal of pain.” This “work” phase is not a single act. In a way it is creating a new habit so that, when I think about my sore foot, I give up wanting vengeance on the person who hurt it, and letting go of judgment. Every time I think of that injury during this phase it is an act of will to say “I am choosing to forgive this injury, because it is not good for me to carry it around any more. I need to let this go more than I want vengeance.”
You know that you are done your work when you have that memory, and your blood doesn’t boil. You might feel sad, you can remember the hurt, but you don’t feel ready to go into battle against the person or who hurt you. See if you can recall any hurts from your past that are no longer charged when you think of them. Often, for example, when we become adults we are able to forgive some of our childhood wounds, because we realize adults are just people who make mistakes and bad choices or self interested choices, and we watch ourselves as adults making similar mistakes. This enables us to forgive our own parents and to let go of our judgments about some of the parts of our childhood that didn’t suit us.
The Final stage is the Outcome or Deepening Phase, “in which the injured person finds deeper meaning for self and others in the suffering associated with the injury; realized that one is not alone; and awareness of decreased negative feelings and of internal emotional release.” Another way to think of this is “learning something the hard way.” The wounds you bear have made you who you are today, but don’t keep you from being in community, and don’t keep you from having a whole and meaningful life.
I want to offer an example from my own life in hopes that this will help our discussion be more concrete and real. When I gave birth to my son, I had prepared for a home birth. I had done everything my midwife had suggested, taken the classes, read the books, done the exercises and felt I had really done my work getting ready. But the baby wouldn’t come, and eventually I was transferred to the hospital. As I checked into the hospital, frightened and exhausted, the doctors treated me like a delinquent and irresponsible child for having my prenatal care with a midwife instead of a doctor. I was seen mostly by student doctors, since I didn’t have an OB at the hospital, and midwives are not allowed to provide care in California hospitals, and it seemed that these students had not gotten to their unit on bedside manner. Finally, our whole birth plan went out the window, and I was wheeled to the surgery unit for a C-Section. Let me assure you I was filled with anger, sadness, and a sense of betrayal after that experience. I was angry at the hospitals, the doctors, the American OB system, my midwife and myself. It took years of work to let go of all that resentment, and forgive myself for not giving my son a natural childbirth. One day after a couple of years of working through all my issues, a thought went off like a light bulb: “Healthy baby, healthy mom.” What could be more important than that? Today when I think of how the doctors treated me, I take a deep breath and let it go. I don’t want to carry that resentment with me any more. I no longer think of the hospital staff as “evil” instead I can remind myself that they kept me and my son alive. Truth be told, whenever I hear the birth stories of my friends who had natural childbirth, I still feel a little sad that I will never experience that, and I still think the American Obstetrics industry and the laws that support it need to be changed, but that sadness, that hunger for societal change is just a part of my honest relationship with my past, part of letting go. Because that event undermined so many things I thought I knew, because it undermined even my theology, it took the help of with the help of friends, a few “art as meditation” classes and my spiritual director to weave myself back together into a whole person. But it finally did heal, and the marks it made on me, like the scar I have from the surgery I had that day, are part of the person I am today one a little wiser about how the world works.
Really, as injuries go, a hospital transfer during a home birth is dwarfed by some of the injuries our brothers and sisters have suffered. No one would blame a person whose loved one had been killed for holding that resentment, that desire for vengeance for the rest of their life. But some who have experienced grievous wrongs find the strength and wisdom to forgive even the unforgivable. When I hear of a mother or father whose child was killed standing outside the penitentiary where the one who committed that grievous crime waits on death row, and what the parents are calling for is to spare the perpetrator’s life, it is an amazing testimony about our power to forgive even the unforgivable.
And since we are all human, we all need forgiveness. So I want to ask you to set aside this injury you are working on forgiving, and search in your heart for something you need forgiveness for. [Pause]
Homer Ashby, a professor of Pastoral Care, hypothesizes in his article “Being Forgiven” that the steps for being forgiven are the same as those for forgiving. In the uncovering phase, we become aware of the mental, emotional and spiritual impacts of what we have done. We acknowledge that because of something we did, someone else was injured. A lot of us skip this step, because if we think we have done something that might have hurt someone else, it doesn’t feel good to think too much about it. But doing this uncovering might help us make the hard decision to seek forgiveness, and to enter the work phase. The work phase for seeking forgiveness, though, is where the main difference lies. Prof Ashby suggests that the work “might include a confession to oneself, to the person offended, or to a transcendent other to whom the offender feels a moral duty. Now, we have to be careful to make this a true apology. If we say “I’m sorry that you felt hurt by what I said” that’s not an apology, that’s an indictment of the other person’s sensitivity or psychology. A true apology is for our contribution “I am sorry that I said something that hurt you.”
Part of our work will include putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, understanding how they feel and grieving with them if that is appropriate. Making amends is also an important part of this work- whether that means trying to “right the wrong that was done.” or changing your behavior so that we know we will not hurt that person, or other people, in that same way again. Taken all together, Ashby calls this “expressing repentance” – apology, confession, understanding the other’s pain, making amends, and changing behavior.
Here’s another important difference between forgiving and being forgiven- the person we have injured needs to decide for themselves when and if they are ready to forgive. Or as Ashby says “The offender must be willing to wait patiently for the gift of forgiveness to be given.” If you have done your work- by apologizing, empathizing, making amends, and changing your behavior, the choice is then up to the injured person. We have to live with the possibility that “we may never receive forgiveness from the person we offended.”
The final step is to receive forgiveness. If the person we offended offers words, a hug, a gesture of forgiveness, we must receive it graciously to bring closure to this cycle, which has the power to bring healing to both parties. The isolation of each is ended, and we feel that we are not alone.
Now sometimes, it would do more harm than good to seek forgiveness in person. Some wounds are so deep, that it would only open old wounds for the offender to approach the offended to ask forgiveness. And sometimes the person you’ve offended has died or is no longer in your life. In all of these cases, you can still seek forgiveness, but the process is internal, and so can be more difficult, because it is often harder to forgive ourselves than others. For people who believe in a higher power, they can ask for forgiveness in prayer or meditation. But for folks who are atheists, I think it can be really helpful to talk it out with someone you trust. Someone who can hold you accountable, help you make sure you are doing your work and not looking for cheep forgiveness, and help you let go.
In this month’s world magazine we heard a story from the childhood of the Rev. Patrick O’Neil : after being pushed into a snow bank by older kids, a neighbor came out to dry him off and offer a cup of cocoa and this advice “Patrick, you are angry at those boys for what they did to you. And it is natural for you to feel that way. But now – you must let it go. This day has other things to give you.” Many years later Patrick learned from his mother that the neighbor and her husband were both survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. With such a history she had a right to be bitter her whole life, but she made a different choice. She had found the deeper meaning to her life, and so had wisdom to offer this little neighbor child. This then is why we forgive, because when we lay down our hurts, our wounds, our mistakes, we can give more of ourselves to life, to community, to our relationships and to all that this day holds for us.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Walking with Thoreau (May 16, 2010)
Reading:
“In the distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day.”
Thoreau’s Journal, January 7 1857
Walking with Thoreau
There is some debate about whether or not Henry David Thoreau was a Unitarian. Sure, he was baptized in the 1817 in the First Parish Concord, which BECAME a Unitarian church with much ado and scandal while Thoreau was growing up. And yes, he did go to Harvard, which was at the time home of the Unitarian Divinity School. And he certainly did fraternize with a number of Unitarians- Margaret Fuller (whom you will hear about next week from Chris) was a Unitarian, as were many of the Transcendentalists. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian Minister, took Thoreau under his wing as the younger man floundered upon leaving college. He introduced him to other like minded folks, and encouraged publication of his writings in the magazine Margaret Fuller edited – The Dial. In fact, it was on Emerson’s land that Thoreau began his most famous project- 2 years, 2 months and 2 days of simple living in the “second-growth forest” just outside Concords Mass. It was called Walden.
But whether or not Thoreau claimed us as his people, the question we ask ourselves this morning is did his thinking, his writing, his living help us become the religious tradition we are today? Do they challenge and inspire us in our living? If so, then I believe we can claim him as a forefather of our movement.
Thoreau’s life asks the question: is it possible to live more simply? The children’s story we heard this morning is based on an argument between Thoreau and his friend which Thoreau wrote about in his book “Walden: or Life in the Woods.” It challenges us to think of the services in our lives that we pay for, and asks “isn’t a day walking to Fitchburg better spent than a day earning the money to take the train to Fitchburg?” Throughout Walden, Thoreau keeps this kind of accounting- illustrating how cheaply and simply one can eat, dress, even build a cabin to live in. Critics remind us, however, that it was on his friend Emerson’s land, 14 acres, that Thoreau lived those 2 years, which begs the question- how simply can folks live who do not have their own land, nor a friend with 14 acres? Moreover, who among us has the skills to build our own cabin, to grow our own food, make our own furniture? But still, through his experiment Thoreau has issued the challenge to all of us: “what do we really NEED to live?” What is essential, and what is dispensable? This is a question that many Americans are asking themselves right now. All those folks who pay for takeout because they don’t have time to cook their own meals, who buy new things because they don’t have time to mend the old, whose demanding jobs create a life where there is not time for much else. Thoreau’s example asks us to examine our lives and see if the time saved by convenience is worth the time spent earning wages to pay for those conveniences. Thoreau wrote in Walden that: "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." [39]
Now this Valley tends to be a little outside the main stream on this one I believe. Simple living is not such a hard sell here as it is in other parts of the country. Perhaps it’s because just aren’t that many high paying high-demand jobs here to go around, or perhaps it’s because this county still has family farms where people know how to do things themselves. Or maybe folks choose to stay here or to come to this area because they want a simpler life. Whatever the reason, when someone says over coffee hour that they are planting potatoes or putting up strawberries, or even building their own home, we think it’s cool. Through his writings like Walden Thoreau affirms the higher good of choosing such a life, lest we become dispirited, or feel that we have fallen behind the Joneses. I was getting grumpy the other day about having only one car- and all the choreography that entails - until my partner reminded me that we CHOSE to have only one car- and to live in a town where walking is possible ON PURPOSE, because it allows us to live our values in a way we were unable to do in the community where we lived before. Sure it’s easier to move into a house that’s already been built than to build a cabin in the woods with your own hands, but in Walden Thoreau holds up a vision of the importance and beauty of attempting such work ourselves. He writes “Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sin when they are so engaged?” [Walden p. 36] His writing reminds us why we make choices toward simpler living, and his example is a challenge to ask of our own lives “Why ride to Fitchburg when you can walk?”
A second challenge we find in Thoreau’s writing and living is this: Is it possible to live a live a life more connected to nature, to the wildness of things?
In his essay Walking Thoreau writes, “I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a sing day without acquiring some rust… I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together.” [p. 9]. As we heard in our opening reading, walking for Thoreau is a moral and a religious pursuit. This he shares with the many Unitarian Universalists who have reported over the last century, that if they had ever felt anything that might be called a “spiritual” experience, it had happened hiking the side of a mountain, or on a brisk morning on the shore of the ocean, or just in a patch of sunlight in an ordinary grassy place. To Thoreau we are rejecting our religious imperative when we forget to just head out walking and lose ourselves among the trees. He feels some pity, and even disdain, for those of us stuck behind a desk in an afternoon.
I picked up that essay in the first place because I’ve recently become a fan of walking myself. There is something so empowering about walking. If you don’t have the money for a train, if your car runs out of gas, just putting one foot in front of the other can take you anywhere in this whole wide continent. Of course walking has about the lowest ecological footprint possible, and I find that I know a place so much better when I walk it than when I drive it. And there is some other intangible benefit- some kind of peace or grounding that comes to one on the best walks; a number of religious traditions honor walking as a spiritual practice. Thoreau reminds us that reconnecting with nature does not require any fancy gear, or an eco-travel vacation in Brazil, just getting up from behind the desk and putting one foot in front of the other, and seeing where your walk takes you, seeing what the out-of-doors is up to these days.
Thoreau also challenges us as a society- he challenges us to value wildness, in the land and in ourselves. It was kind of creepy to notice the change to this country since the time of Thoreau’s writing. He asks for example: “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?” [p. 11] For him, a real walk is one where all evidence of civilization disappears from view. He writes with frightening foresight: “At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off… and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.” [p. 16]
I wonder if he really knew such a day would come- when so many in this country could only walk in a garden or mall, when the walker has little freedom, little access to wildness. Thoreau saw this as a potential loss to our humanity, and Contemporary journalist Richard Louv has done some important thinking about the real consequences of living without access to what he calls “natural, self-organizing places.” In particular, he wants to know what will happen to children who grow up in a society where there are no wild places? A 2003 Cornell Study finds that “life’s stressful events appear not to cause as much psychological distress in children who live in high-nature conditions compared with children who live in low-nature conditions” [Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods, p. 49]
Terry Hartig, a Swedish researcher, has worked on various studies showing that Nature can “help people recover from ‘normal psychological wear and tear’ [as well as improving our] capacity to pay attention” In one study Hartig’s subjects did 40 minutes worth of tasks designed to wear out their direct-attention. Afterward one group was asked to walk in a local nature preserve, another walked in an urban area, and the final group sat quietly reading and listening to music. “After this period those who had walked in the nature preserve performed better than other participants on a standard proof-reading task. They also reported more positive emotions and less anger.” [Louv, p. 103]
Thoreau is as poetic in his emphatic praise of the virtues of the natural world as Louv is careful and scientific. Both challenge us to value wildness as individuals and as a society. They challenge us to preserve wild places for our children and for ourselves, before they are all deforested or landscaped and turned into soccer fields. “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?”
Finally, Thoreau challenges us to be truly present, awake and alive. To Thoreau going for a walk- REALLY going for a walk involves being present in the moment. He writes “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is – I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” [Walking, p. 11] What a beautiful reminder to be present in our lives, to be present with whatever critters and plants and breezes we find on our path. Again Thoreau has a sense of moral imperative that we remember to be present with the natural world, and that it is worthy of our attention.
For myself, I am grateful to claim Thoreau as a prophet and guide on this journey. His ideals are woven throughout my own sense of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. His life is a challenge to us to remember how little of the things we buy we really need, and how deeply we need an afternoon outside. His story asks us to honor and advocate the wild places, so that our children and grandchildren can sometimes walk until society fades from view. As we journey with Thoreau, may we remember to be present in body and spirit. Shake off the village and return to our senses. “…dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”
“In the distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day.”
Thoreau’s Journal, January 7 1857
Walking with Thoreau
There is some debate about whether or not Henry David Thoreau was a Unitarian. Sure, he was baptized in the 1817 in the First Parish Concord, which BECAME a Unitarian church with much ado and scandal while Thoreau was growing up. And yes, he did go to Harvard, which was at the time home of the Unitarian Divinity School. And he certainly did fraternize with a number of Unitarians- Margaret Fuller (whom you will hear about next week from Chris) was a Unitarian, as were many of the Transcendentalists. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian Minister, took Thoreau under his wing as the younger man floundered upon leaving college. He introduced him to other like minded folks, and encouraged publication of his writings in the magazine Margaret Fuller edited – The Dial. In fact, it was on Emerson’s land that Thoreau began his most famous project- 2 years, 2 months and 2 days of simple living in the “second-growth forest” just outside Concords Mass. It was called Walden.
But whether or not Thoreau claimed us as his people, the question we ask ourselves this morning is did his thinking, his writing, his living help us become the religious tradition we are today? Do they challenge and inspire us in our living? If so, then I believe we can claim him as a forefather of our movement.
Thoreau’s life asks the question: is it possible to live more simply? The children’s story we heard this morning is based on an argument between Thoreau and his friend which Thoreau wrote about in his book “Walden: or Life in the Woods.” It challenges us to think of the services in our lives that we pay for, and asks “isn’t a day walking to Fitchburg better spent than a day earning the money to take the train to Fitchburg?” Throughout Walden, Thoreau keeps this kind of accounting- illustrating how cheaply and simply one can eat, dress, even build a cabin to live in. Critics remind us, however, that it was on his friend Emerson’s land, 14 acres, that Thoreau lived those 2 years, which begs the question- how simply can folks live who do not have their own land, nor a friend with 14 acres? Moreover, who among us has the skills to build our own cabin, to grow our own food, make our own furniture? But still, through his experiment Thoreau has issued the challenge to all of us: “what do we really NEED to live?” What is essential, and what is dispensable? This is a question that many Americans are asking themselves right now. All those folks who pay for takeout because they don’t have time to cook their own meals, who buy new things because they don’t have time to mend the old, whose demanding jobs create a life where there is not time for much else. Thoreau’s example asks us to examine our lives and see if the time saved by convenience is worth the time spent earning wages to pay for those conveniences. Thoreau wrote in Walden that: "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." [39]
Now this Valley tends to be a little outside the main stream on this one I believe. Simple living is not such a hard sell here as it is in other parts of the country. Perhaps it’s because just aren’t that many high paying high-demand jobs here to go around, or perhaps it’s because this county still has family farms where people know how to do things themselves. Or maybe folks choose to stay here or to come to this area because they want a simpler life. Whatever the reason, when someone says over coffee hour that they are planting potatoes or putting up strawberries, or even building their own home, we think it’s cool. Through his writings like Walden Thoreau affirms the higher good of choosing such a life, lest we become dispirited, or feel that we have fallen behind the Joneses. I was getting grumpy the other day about having only one car- and all the choreography that entails - until my partner reminded me that we CHOSE to have only one car- and to live in a town where walking is possible ON PURPOSE, because it allows us to live our values in a way we were unable to do in the community where we lived before. Sure it’s easier to move into a house that’s already been built than to build a cabin in the woods with your own hands, but in Walden Thoreau holds up a vision of the importance and beauty of attempting such work ourselves. He writes “Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sin when they are so engaged?” [Walden p. 36] His writing reminds us why we make choices toward simpler living, and his example is a challenge to ask of our own lives “Why ride to Fitchburg when you can walk?”
A second challenge we find in Thoreau’s writing and living is this: Is it possible to live a live a life more connected to nature, to the wildness of things?
In his essay Walking Thoreau writes, “I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a sing day without acquiring some rust… I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together.” [p. 9]. As we heard in our opening reading, walking for Thoreau is a moral and a religious pursuit. This he shares with the many Unitarian Universalists who have reported over the last century, that if they had ever felt anything that might be called a “spiritual” experience, it had happened hiking the side of a mountain, or on a brisk morning on the shore of the ocean, or just in a patch of sunlight in an ordinary grassy place. To Thoreau we are rejecting our religious imperative when we forget to just head out walking and lose ourselves among the trees. He feels some pity, and even disdain, for those of us stuck behind a desk in an afternoon.
I picked up that essay in the first place because I’ve recently become a fan of walking myself. There is something so empowering about walking. If you don’t have the money for a train, if your car runs out of gas, just putting one foot in front of the other can take you anywhere in this whole wide continent. Of course walking has about the lowest ecological footprint possible, and I find that I know a place so much better when I walk it than when I drive it. And there is some other intangible benefit- some kind of peace or grounding that comes to one on the best walks; a number of religious traditions honor walking as a spiritual practice. Thoreau reminds us that reconnecting with nature does not require any fancy gear, or an eco-travel vacation in Brazil, just getting up from behind the desk and putting one foot in front of the other, and seeing where your walk takes you, seeing what the out-of-doors is up to these days.
Thoreau also challenges us as a society- he challenges us to value wildness, in the land and in ourselves. It was kind of creepy to notice the change to this country since the time of Thoreau’s writing. He asks for example: “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?” [p. 11] For him, a real walk is one where all evidence of civilization disappears from view. He writes with frightening foresight: “At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off… and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.” [p. 16]
I wonder if he really knew such a day would come- when so many in this country could only walk in a garden or mall, when the walker has little freedom, little access to wildness. Thoreau saw this as a potential loss to our humanity, and Contemporary journalist Richard Louv has done some important thinking about the real consequences of living without access to what he calls “natural, self-organizing places.” In particular, he wants to know what will happen to children who grow up in a society where there are no wild places? A 2003 Cornell Study finds that “life’s stressful events appear not to cause as much psychological distress in children who live in high-nature conditions compared with children who live in low-nature conditions” [Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods, p. 49]
Terry Hartig, a Swedish researcher, has worked on various studies showing that Nature can “help people recover from ‘normal psychological wear and tear’ [as well as improving our] capacity to pay attention” In one study Hartig’s subjects did 40 minutes worth of tasks designed to wear out their direct-attention. Afterward one group was asked to walk in a local nature preserve, another walked in an urban area, and the final group sat quietly reading and listening to music. “After this period those who had walked in the nature preserve performed better than other participants on a standard proof-reading task. They also reported more positive emotions and less anger.” [Louv, p. 103]
Thoreau is as poetic in his emphatic praise of the virtues of the natural world as Louv is careful and scientific. Both challenge us to value wildness as individuals and as a society. They challenge us to preserve wild places for our children and for ourselves, before they are all deforested or landscaped and turned into soccer fields. “What would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?”
Finally, Thoreau challenges us to be truly present, awake and alive. To Thoreau going for a walk- REALLY going for a walk involves being present in the moment. He writes “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is – I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” [Walking, p. 11] What a beautiful reminder to be present in our lives, to be present with whatever critters and plants and breezes we find on our path. Again Thoreau has a sense of moral imperative that we remember to be present with the natural world, and that it is worthy of our attention.
For myself, I am grateful to claim Thoreau as a prophet and guide on this journey. His ideals are woven throughout my own sense of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. His life is a challenge to us to remember how little of the things we buy we really need, and how deeply we need an afternoon outside. His story asks us to honor and advocate the wild places, so that our children and grandchildren can sometimes walk until society fades from view. As we journey with Thoreau, may we remember to be present in body and spirit. Shake off the village and return to our senses. “…dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”
Monday, April 19, 2010
Finding Abundance in Scarcity (April 18, 2010)
Among my collection of beloved children’s books is one by Barbara Shook Hazen that helps me explain the economic downturn to children. It was written in the 1970s during the recession when so many were unemployed. The book is called “Tight Times” The boy explains that “Tight times are why we eat Mr. Bulk instead of cereals in little boxes. I like little boxes better. Daddy said tight times are why we went to the sprinkler last summer instead of the lake. I like the lake better.”
Economists say that we are living in tight times right now- this is the first time since Barbara Hazen wrote her children’s story that unemployment figures have gone over 10%. We’re no where near the 34% unemployment of the Great Depression, but everyone is feeling the effects of the tightest times in a generation.
When I went back to California I heard that unemployment there is up over 10%, my one friend has been laid off 3 times in 3 years. Another said that although being laid off was discouraging, she is using the time to focus on her 2 young sons and pause and consider the big picture in this next part of her life.
Living in tight times calls for us to stretch ourselves in 2 ways. The first is to be prudent and use our resources carefully. I noticed that during the tech bubble of the early part of the decade, what folks thought of as “ordinary everyday expenses” expanded with the bubble. People around the country thought the economy would keep growing forever, and grew their spending and borrowing as if it would. The fear and loss of this economic crash has taught us some hard lessons. Americans are saving more than they have in decades and recent changes to the credit industry mean that folks are using their credit cards less often I couldn’t find any hard data on this- but I bet more families are paying more careful attention to their finances than they were 5 years ago. I bet everyone in this room has a example of something they have done to tighten up their budgets during this recession. [A pause as people are invited to share aloud their experiences]
As the wise Ben Franklin said: Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Speaking for my own family, we have learned to cut back a little at a time. There were things we thought we couldn’t live without, but it turns out we can live without them just fine. Other things we really need we’ve found new ways to get. Learning to cut back is easier when so many of us are in the same boat. Reporters started doing stories on such topics as “how to save 30% on your grocery bill” NPR ran a series “how to make dinner for a family of 4 for under $10. Suddenly it’s become social okay to talk about cutting back and saving money. It’s okay to say no to something because of the price. Many folks have taken the opportunity to enter into a period of “fiscal fitness,” through a practice of voluntary simplicity, and others through unrelenting necessity. Either way, I don’t think those of us who have lived through this crash will ever look at money the same way again.
But sometimes these new habits make me feel kind of miserly. I like being fiscally fit, but I don’t want to just say “no” to everything all the time. So the other important lesson of “tight times” is how to continue to be generous and to live abundantly. Just because our economy has shrunk does not mean that the gifts of life on this earth are any less abundant. We know for example, that folks go hungry in this world. WE might think from this fact that there is not enough food to go around. But those who study hunger , like the World Hunger Education Service, say that the food crisis is not one of production- there is enough food on the planet right now to feed everyone. In fact down in Florida they are plowing under their strawberry crops they are so abundant. No, hunger comes not from scarcity of food, but from poverty. Douglas Boucher, author of The Paradox of Plenty writes that: “We see now that [combating world hunger] is not simply a matter of whether food is available in the market; people must have the money to buy it. In a world economy in which food is a commodity, poverty will lead to starvation no matter how productive agriculture becomes.” (p. 77 quoted in Ellen Davis) So making sure there is abundant food for everyone requires us to be creative when conventional ways are not doing the trick.
Some of you will remember back in January I talked about the return of African farmers and eaters to native plants. They are moving from Western crops like Corn and Soy to things that grow abundantly in their ecosystem, like spider plant, African nightshade and vegetable amaranth.
So the second discipline of living in tight times is noticing abundance wherever we find it. This week, for example, the tulips up in Ithaca are mad with joy at this particular balance of sun and wet and cool. It looks to me like there are about twice as many in my garden this year as last. In fact, nature is the perfect model for abundance. Says green designer William McDonough:
“Nature is nothing if not extravagant. Four billion years of natural design, forged in the cradle of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity of life on earth. Responding to unique local conditions, ants have evolved into nearly ten thousand species, several hundred of which can be found in the crown of a single Amazonian tree. Fruit trees produce thousands of blossoms – an astonishing abundance of blossoms – so that another tree might germinate, take root, and grow. Birds, too, seem to have a taste for the extravagant; who could say the wood duck’s plumage is restrained?” (Sustainable Planet, p. 13)
Even during tight times, we can find wonderful examples of abundance and generosity if we are looking. I heard a story on the radio the other day that guy who is giving away $10 to a complete stranger every day for a year even though he himself was recently is laid off. He calls it “A year of Giving”
So let’s take a moment of silence to think about some places in your life where you have observed abundance recently. [A pause as people are invited to share aloud their experiences]
So scarcity is real, and though it is painful, it helps us be fiscally smart and strong. And abundance is real, and helps us live vital joyful lives. In these times we are called to marry the two together, to create a life both prudent and abundant. I experienced this in my recent trip to California. My partner and I had saved up some frequent flier miles back when we used to do more traveling, and planned a trip to see our old friends. As we got ready for our visit I worried aloud to my partner: How could we enjoy this rare and special visit on a budget? How could we keep from feeling miserly and ungenerous? He said “We’ll buy groceries and we’ll cook for our hosts” and so we did. Almost every night whatever friends were gathered would bustle around the kitchen taking our time over a home cooked meal. (My goodness Eric has a way with a dry rub when he puts his mind to it, my friend learned an amazing mole sauce when he was in Mexico, and I managed to fake a Strawberry pie one night in honor of the early strawberry season in California). We’d hang out until past our proper bedtimes talking or making music, until finally everyone collapsed on some combination of beds, air mattresses and sofas. It was one of the best vacations ever, and it sure didn’t feel like tight times.
One of the days it was raining pretty steadily outside, yet all the kids were out in it undeterred. A bunch of the younger kids were playing princesses under the awning, but Nick was nowhere in sight. I finally saw him, about 10 yards up the hill rain streaming off the hood of his raincoat. He was standing next to a tiny lemon tree, and had dared to pick a lemon, peel it, and taste it. When he caught my eye, he showed me the lemon, bit into the exposed flesh, and made the puckery face mouthing “Sour!” before taking another bight. The tiny tree had a hundred or so ripe lemons weighing down its branches, and I told Nick he could pick as many as he liked. This he did, returning to the house only when he was thoroughly drenched and he had filled every pocket of his rain coat. None of the adults had seen past the rain to the bountiful harvest that lay just outside the door. This story reminds me of groups such as Village Harvest which arose for just such a purpose. It seems like everyone has fruit trees in their yards in California, and yet most of the fruit is never harvested. This group of volunteers goes neighborhood to neighborhood, and with the homeowner’s permission, will harvest their fruit trees, give the resident all the fruit they want, and take the rest to a food pantry.
I think that finding abundance in scarcity is one of the gifts of UUCAS. We run a pretty tight ship when it comes to our operating fund, and yet there is a sense of abundance and generosity in our community. The abundance of good conversation at our recent neighborhood desserts, the abundance of good food and shared talent last night at the our Open Mic night. Even in tight times we receive a profusion of gifts from one another.
Four our pledge drive year, when times are tight, we wanted to try a new kind of challenge. We wanted a challenge goal that everyone could help with, a goal where every gift matters. This year we want to challenge ourselves to increase the total numbers of people who make a pledge by 10%. We know that this is a diverse community, and that our gifts come in all shapes and sizes. So we are asking that everyone make that pledge, that promise, for whatever amount feels good to you this year. We need regular pledgers to keep pledging, and folks who have never pledged before to make their first pledge. Having a pledge drive that is more inclusive, that more people participate in is a goal we can feel proud of. This year we celebrate an abundance of gifts, in all sizes and shapes.
We can think of ourselves like the neighbors who come together to harvest fruit which might otherwise go unappreciated and un-tasted. We could see this as a calling of our community, to notice the abundant fruit right in our back yards, to help one another harvest and share. This year, let us find abundance in scarcity, noticing with gratitude the rain storm that quenches the land when it is thirsty, the tulips that fill the eye with color and joy, and the gift of the lemon tree hiding in our own back yards.
May it be so.
Resources:
* http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101777066
* 32 percent of consumers said they were using credit cards less often than they did a year ago http://www.credit.com/news/personal-finance/2010-01-24/americans-less-inclined-to-use-credit-cards-despite-economic-improvements.html
* "The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food." http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
* http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/09/pm-year-of-giving/
* Other interesting programs include: Fallen Fruit, Harvest Sacremento, and and Neighborhood Fruit (NF)
Economists say that we are living in tight times right now- this is the first time since Barbara Hazen wrote her children’s story that unemployment figures have gone over 10%. We’re no where near the 34% unemployment of the Great Depression, but everyone is feeling the effects of the tightest times in a generation.
When I went back to California I heard that unemployment there is up over 10%, my one friend has been laid off 3 times in 3 years. Another said that although being laid off was discouraging, she is using the time to focus on her 2 young sons and pause and consider the big picture in this next part of her life.
Living in tight times calls for us to stretch ourselves in 2 ways. The first is to be prudent and use our resources carefully. I noticed that during the tech bubble of the early part of the decade, what folks thought of as “ordinary everyday expenses” expanded with the bubble. People around the country thought the economy would keep growing forever, and grew their spending and borrowing as if it would. The fear and loss of this economic crash has taught us some hard lessons. Americans are saving more than they have in decades and recent changes to the credit industry mean that folks are using their credit cards less often I couldn’t find any hard data on this- but I bet more families are paying more careful attention to their finances than they were 5 years ago. I bet everyone in this room has a example of something they have done to tighten up their budgets during this recession. [A pause as people are invited to share aloud their experiences]
As the wise Ben Franklin said: Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Speaking for my own family, we have learned to cut back a little at a time. There were things we thought we couldn’t live without, but it turns out we can live without them just fine. Other things we really need we’ve found new ways to get. Learning to cut back is easier when so many of us are in the same boat. Reporters started doing stories on such topics as “how to save 30% on your grocery bill” NPR ran a series “how to make dinner for a family of 4 for under $10. Suddenly it’s become social okay to talk about cutting back and saving money. It’s okay to say no to something because of the price. Many folks have taken the opportunity to enter into a period of “fiscal fitness,” through a practice of voluntary simplicity, and others through unrelenting necessity. Either way, I don’t think those of us who have lived through this crash will ever look at money the same way again.
But sometimes these new habits make me feel kind of miserly. I like being fiscally fit, but I don’t want to just say “no” to everything all the time. So the other important lesson of “tight times” is how to continue to be generous and to live abundantly. Just because our economy has shrunk does not mean that the gifts of life on this earth are any less abundant. We know for example, that folks go hungry in this world. WE might think from this fact that there is not enough food to go around. But those who study hunger , like the World Hunger Education Service, say that the food crisis is not one of production- there is enough food on the planet right now to feed everyone. In fact down in Florida they are plowing under their strawberry crops they are so abundant. No, hunger comes not from scarcity of food, but from poverty. Douglas Boucher, author of The Paradox of Plenty writes that: “We see now that [combating world hunger] is not simply a matter of whether food is available in the market; people must have the money to buy it. In a world economy in which food is a commodity, poverty will lead to starvation no matter how productive agriculture becomes.” (p. 77 quoted in Ellen Davis) So making sure there is abundant food for everyone requires us to be creative when conventional ways are not doing the trick.
Some of you will remember back in January I talked about the return of African farmers and eaters to native plants. They are moving from Western crops like Corn and Soy to things that grow abundantly in their ecosystem, like spider plant, African nightshade and vegetable amaranth.
So the second discipline of living in tight times is noticing abundance wherever we find it. This week, for example, the tulips up in Ithaca are mad with joy at this particular balance of sun and wet and cool. It looks to me like there are about twice as many in my garden this year as last. In fact, nature is the perfect model for abundance. Says green designer William McDonough:
“Nature is nothing if not extravagant. Four billion years of natural design, forged in the cradle of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity of life on earth. Responding to unique local conditions, ants have evolved into nearly ten thousand species, several hundred of which can be found in the crown of a single Amazonian tree. Fruit trees produce thousands of blossoms – an astonishing abundance of blossoms – so that another tree might germinate, take root, and grow. Birds, too, seem to have a taste for the extravagant; who could say the wood duck’s plumage is restrained?” (Sustainable Planet, p. 13)
Even during tight times, we can find wonderful examples of abundance and generosity if we are looking. I heard a story on the radio the other day that guy who is giving away $10 to a complete stranger every day for a year even though he himself was recently is laid off. He calls it “A year of Giving”
So let’s take a moment of silence to think about some places in your life where you have observed abundance recently. [A pause as people are invited to share aloud their experiences]
So scarcity is real, and though it is painful, it helps us be fiscally smart and strong. And abundance is real, and helps us live vital joyful lives. In these times we are called to marry the two together, to create a life both prudent and abundant. I experienced this in my recent trip to California. My partner and I had saved up some frequent flier miles back when we used to do more traveling, and planned a trip to see our old friends. As we got ready for our visit I worried aloud to my partner: How could we enjoy this rare and special visit on a budget? How could we keep from feeling miserly and ungenerous? He said “We’ll buy groceries and we’ll cook for our hosts” and so we did. Almost every night whatever friends were gathered would bustle around the kitchen taking our time over a home cooked meal. (My goodness Eric has a way with a dry rub when he puts his mind to it, my friend learned an amazing mole sauce when he was in Mexico, and I managed to fake a Strawberry pie one night in honor of the early strawberry season in California). We’d hang out until past our proper bedtimes talking or making music, until finally everyone collapsed on some combination of beds, air mattresses and sofas. It was one of the best vacations ever, and it sure didn’t feel like tight times.
One of the days it was raining pretty steadily outside, yet all the kids were out in it undeterred. A bunch of the younger kids were playing princesses under the awning, but Nick was nowhere in sight. I finally saw him, about 10 yards up the hill rain streaming off the hood of his raincoat. He was standing next to a tiny lemon tree, and had dared to pick a lemon, peel it, and taste it. When he caught my eye, he showed me the lemon, bit into the exposed flesh, and made the puckery face mouthing “Sour!” before taking another bight. The tiny tree had a hundred or so ripe lemons weighing down its branches, and I told Nick he could pick as many as he liked. This he did, returning to the house only when he was thoroughly drenched and he had filled every pocket of his rain coat. None of the adults had seen past the rain to the bountiful harvest that lay just outside the door. This story reminds me of groups such as Village Harvest which arose for just such a purpose. It seems like everyone has fruit trees in their yards in California, and yet most of the fruit is never harvested. This group of volunteers goes neighborhood to neighborhood, and with the homeowner’s permission, will harvest their fruit trees, give the resident all the fruit they want, and take the rest to a food pantry.
I think that finding abundance in scarcity is one of the gifts of UUCAS. We run a pretty tight ship when it comes to our operating fund, and yet there is a sense of abundance and generosity in our community. The abundance of good conversation at our recent neighborhood desserts, the abundance of good food and shared talent last night at the our Open Mic night. Even in tight times we receive a profusion of gifts from one another.
Four our pledge drive year, when times are tight, we wanted to try a new kind of challenge. We wanted a challenge goal that everyone could help with, a goal where every gift matters. This year we want to challenge ourselves to increase the total numbers of people who make a pledge by 10%. We know that this is a diverse community, and that our gifts come in all shapes and sizes. So we are asking that everyone make that pledge, that promise, for whatever amount feels good to you this year. We need regular pledgers to keep pledging, and folks who have never pledged before to make their first pledge. Having a pledge drive that is more inclusive, that more people participate in is a goal we can feel proud of. This year we celebrate an abundance of gifts, in all sizes and shapes.
We can think of ourselves like the neighbors who come together to harvest fruit which might otherwise go unappreciated and un-tasted. We could see this as a calling of our community, to notice the abundant fruit right in our back yards, to help one another harvest and share. This year, let us find abundance in scarcity, noticing with gratitude the rain storm that quenches the land when it is thirsty, the tulips that fill the eye with color and joy, and the gift of the lemon tree hiding in our own back yards.
May it be so.
Resources:
* http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101777066
* 32 percent of consumers said they were using credit cards less often than they did a year ago http://www.credit.com/news/personal-finance/2010-01-24/americans-less-inclined-to-use-credit-cards-despite-economic-improvements.html
* "The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food." http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
* http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/09/pm-year-of-giving/
* Other interesting programs include: Fallen Fruit, Harvest Sacremento, and and Neighborhood Fruit (NF)
Monday, April 12, 2010
How are we Saved? (March 28, 2010)
A couple of years back we were driving down a rural road and saw a church whose changeable letter sign said “Walmart is not the only saving place." I thought that was awesome. I made a guess, based on the stereotypes I’ve got in my head, that this was probably a conservative church. In my imagination, this was probably one of those churches where all the members have a copy of “Left Behind” on their bookshelves somewhere. But that sign resonated truth to me on another level. Because I believe that our church is a saving place, and yet I don’t have any designs on being raptured. So lest you feel “Left Behind” I want to give you the saving news of Universalism this morning.
When we hear the question “are you saved?” We might well ask “saved from what?” The answer, in most cases, is “hell.” First I want to point out that not all the religious traditions answer this question the same way. When I invited the 2 ladies from the Jehovah’s into my house for coffee and indoctrination, they explained that in their tradition there are 3 sorts of folks- the elect who rule with Jesus in Heaven, the righteous, who live on earth during 1000 years of peace, and the wicked, who are destroyed and miss out on that 1000 years of peace on earth. Now I’d been studying Buddhism for a while there in Seminary, and what Buddhists want to be saved from is the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. It occurred to me that what was salvation to them was pretty close to the punishment for the wicked the Witnesses wanted to be saved from.
So some are concerned about being saved from eternal damnation, others are concerned about being saved from death, others want to be saved from the never-ending cycle. The study of this question- the study of salvation is called “soteriology” which means to “preserve”- so another way to look at salvation is to ask “what needs to be, or can be preserved.” The root of the word “salvation” is the same root as a salve- a balm that sooths and heals. So another way to look at salvation is “what saves and heals us?”
Our Unitarian Universalist tradition has some thoughts on this as well. The earliest Universalists believed that there was surely a heaven and a hell, and our souls needed be saved from hell. But in the second generation of American Universalists there was a fellow called Hosea Ballou who didn’t believe in hell. He believed that what we had to be saved from was sin. And let me reassure my contemporary audience that what he meant by “sin” is the same stuff we would be appalled by now-a-days: Murder, theft, cheating, so don’t get distracted by that old fashioned word) He wrote in his landmark work of Universalist Theology Treatise on Atonement ”why [should I] fear sin?” “Answer: Because it will make me miserable if I commit it. There is no priest that I can apply to, who can prevent my suffering, if I am a sinner. If I fear a prison or a gallows, or a punishment in the future world, I may flatter myself some way may be provided by which I may escape them; but if I fear sin itself, I know, if I am a sinner, I must endure that evil.” So he is saying that the down side to sin is not hell or even jail, but that sinning feels bad- it takes you out of right relationship with your world, with your community. He also says that “There is no necessity of promising a reward in a future state for the practice of duty in the present. All that is wanting for his purpose is to understand and to be persuaded that righteousness brings an ample reward, in the present life.” Sin is it’s own punishment, and righteousness is its own reward.
Ballou believed that ultimately we are all going to be reunited with God when we die, that we all return to a metaphysical unity. He believed that when you die, no matter who you are, you return to the primordial one-ness. You are gong home- but home is not a heaven with pearly gates. Some of the more conservative Universalists thought this was ridiculous. Said one such, the Rev. Charles Hudson in an essay hew rote criticizing the “ultra Universalists” like Ballou: “You represent the soul of man as an emanation from the deity, and contend that this future happy life consists in returning to the fountain from whence he came.” And what did Rev. Hudson think was wrong with this? he writes “This opinion was not only embraced by those ancient heretics, the Gnostics, but is the popular opinion of infidels to this day.” Good company as far as I’m concerned.
So Ballou doesn’t feel we need to be saved from hell in the afterlife, but from hell on earth, the hell that we create for one another. According to Ballou, the goal of religion, the goal of a good life is no longer to save souls from hell, but to save life. To save ourselves and all the people in the world, since they are all our brothers and sisters, from the forces that deny life in this world. In the early 20th century, Clarence Skinner spoke of this as a “Universal Brotherhood”
(as a side note, did you all know that the Athens Universalist church was called “The church of the Universal Brotherhood? So named in 1871!) Skinner was a prominent Universalist thinker and activist who wrote in 1915 that “…Universalism inspires…faith not only because it teaches the divine origin of all men, but likewise because of its belief in the common destiny of humanity in all times and in all stations of life.” (Robinson p. 172)
A few years back I was feeling very jaded about my religious tradition. It happens to the best of us. Sure UU raised me from when I was younger than the youngest of the kids in our RE program, gave me an ethical framework, a life’s work. But what had they done for me lately? I talked to my colleague Sheri Prud’homme about the fact that I was having trouble getting excited about my UU tradition, and asked what was it that made her passionate about her faith? Her explanation boiled down to the idea that with Universalism “We’re all in the same boat.” Whatever salvation there may be, it is for everyone. Sheri believed this was important, that it was a precious part of who we are.
At our UU history class last Thursday, I read from the church record in 1878 which reads in part: “Our partialist friends in the surrounding community ,becoming much disturbed and alarmed by the spiritual condition of their ‘awful neighbors’ in the Valley, occasionally send a “Screaming Moses” to warn us of the wrath to come.” I love this story. First, I love that the opposite of a “Universalist” is a “partialist” those who believe that only part of humanity will be saved. And of course the partialists are concerned and alarmed by other points of view, because when part is saved, the rest are damned. When part is holy, the rest are unholy. Part is right and the other part is wrong. How much destruction has been done in this world by those who understood themselves to be good, to those whom they understand as bad? Think about our political discourse right now- one must be completely right and the other completely wrong. One is a force of democracy, and the other a force of fascism. One must be victorious and the other must be destroyed. And yet we are all in one boat: if we tear this country apart it will hurt us all. If we waste and poison the earth, it will hurt all living things.
In the late 20th century we enlarged our conception of the “universal brotherhood” as we began to think in terms of the interconnected web of life of which we are all apart. The social sciences taught us how violence begets violence, and recently proved that there is a relationship between happiness and proximity to other happy people. We understand now that nitrates used in American farming effect coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean. Our sense of what it means to be a Universalist has expanded. We used to sing “God’s love embraces the whole human race.” [#298] now we sing “Respect the water, land and air which gave all creatures birth; protect the lives of all that share the glory of the earth.” [#175] Who will be saved? Either all are saved or none are saved. The kingdom of heaven is not a gated community.
Still we have to ask; how can we be saved? Our friend Clarence Skinner writes “The idea of Universal Brotherhood is the great social dynamic of the twentieth century. Sometimes it is dynamite. It fires our hopes, builds our dreams, unfolds before us the messianic vision of an imminent Kingdom of heaven on earth.” Skinner believed that we could transform the word through our faith in human dignity. By the end of the 19th century, Universalists no longer about talked how to get to heaven but how to “progressively establish kingdom of God” here on Earth. (This idea can be found in the affirmation this congregation said every Sunday through most of the 20th century.)
Universalists wanted to save souls not from hell, but to save souls from the forces in this world that crush and diminish the spirit of life in each one of us. The Unitarian preacher and writer William Ellery Channing talked about the “capacities of the soul” and felt the purpose of life was to grow those capacities, of mind, creativity, love, justice, reason and many others. Folks who live in oppression, in crushing poverty, in fear of violence never get the chance to develop the powers of the soul; their life, their creativity is lost. This is how the 19th and early 20th century social activists wanted to build the kingdom of god, by creating a just world where not only was life saved from violence and death, but saved for something- saved for a full, rich, and deep life- that every soul might have a chance to grow. How will we be saved? We will save each other.
Building a Kingdom of God, or as a seminary buddy called it, a Kin-dom of god, one where we are all kin, is not something one of us can do on our own. It is not something one group can impose on another. Building a peaceable kin-dom is something that can only happen through our interactions, our relationships with one another. Our relatedness is not optional. We are deeply embedded in this web, in a “network of mutuality.” Says EcoFeminist Theologian Ivone Gebara “relatedness is the primary reality; It is constitutive of all beings. It is more elementary than awareness of differences or than autonomy, individuality or freedom. It is the foundational reality of all that is or can exist. It is the underlying fabric that is continually brought forth within the vital process in which we are immersed.” Or to put it another way “the interconnected web of which we are all part.” We build a peaceable kin-dom in the context of this relatedness, this web. Or if “relatedness” is too cumbersome a word, how about love? Contemporary UU theologian Rev. Rebecca parker says “Love generates life, from the moment of conception to the moment when we remember with gratitude and tenderness those who have died. And in the darkest night, when our hearts are breaking, love embraces us even when we cannot embrace ourselves. Love sages us and redirects us toward generosity.” (p. 14)
Well this leads us to our final question- when will we be saved? In the “left behind” books, we are waiting for a final battle between good and evil that we are inexorably heading towards. And this sense of “being saved later” follows us over into our UU theology sometimes. We will be saved when all people are treated justly and equitably, when science has a cure for the world’s diseases, when our fight is finally won. Parker had the audacity to ask “what if the apocalypse has already happened?” She calls our minds to all the destruction and violence of the 20th century and proposes that “In the aftermath of Apocalypse, the religious enterprise can be imagined as a kind of salvage work, recognizing the resources that sustain and restore life- resources that are ready at hand, not in some distant promise land.” (p. 22)
Parker finds in our UU theology a “realized eschatology” which I preached about last spring. Some of you will remember this idea that the end times are here and now- that when we say “the kingdom of god is nigh” we don’t mean “the end is coming” we mean, it is right here, it’s all around us.
So the time for salvation is now. The place for salvation is here in this neighborhood, this earth, this body. Who is to be saved? All of us. We all need saving, and we all have the capacity to be preserved, protected and salved. And what we are saving is love, this beautiful web of life- not just to allow life to survive, but to allow the profound beauty and vibrancy of all beings to flourish and grow. And how can we be saved? Through relationship. By connecting and re-connecting to one another and with the web of life of which we are all a part. If anyone asks you “are you saved?” feel free to answer “yes, I am. We all are.”
When we hear the question “are you saved?” We might well ask “saved from what?” The answer, in most cases, is “hell.” First I want to point out that not all the religious traditions answer this question the same way. When I invited the 2 ladies from the Jehovah’s into my house for coffee and indoctrination, they explained that in their tradition there are 3 sorts of folks- the elect who rule with Jesus in Heaven, the righteous, who live on earth during 1000 years of peace, and the wicked, who are destroyed and miss out on that 1000 years of peace on earth. Now I’d been studying Buddhism for a while there in Seminary, and what Buddhists want to be saved from is the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. It occurred to me that what was salvation to them was pretty close to the punishment for the wicked the Witnesses wanted to be saved from.
So some are concerned about being saved from eternal damnation, others are concerned about being saved from death, others want to be saved from the never-ending cycle. The study of this question- the study of salvation is called “soteriology” which means to “preserve”- so another way to look at salvation is to ask “what needs to be, or can be preserved.” The root of the word “salvation” is the same root as a salve- a balm that sooths and heals. So another way to look at salvation is “what saves and heals us?”
Our Unitarian Universalist tradition has some thoughts on this as well. The earliest Universalists believed that there was surely a heaven and a hell, and our souls needed be saved from hell. But in the second generation of American Universalists there was a fellow called Hosea Ballou who didn’t believe in hell. He believed that what we had to be saved from was sin. And let me reassure my contemporary audience that what he meant by “sin” is the same stuff we would be appalled by now-a-days: Murder, theft, cheating, so don’t get distracted by that old fashioned word) He wrote in his landmark work of Universalist Theology Treatise on Atonement ”why [should I] fear sin?” “Answer: Because it will make me miserable if I commit it. There is no priest that I can apply to, who can prevent my suffering, if I am a sinner. If I fear a prison or a gallows, or a punishment in the future world, I may flatter myself some way may be provided by which I may escape them; but if I fear sin itself, I know, if I am a sinner, I must endure that evil.” So he is saying that the down side to sin is not hell or even jail, but that sinning feels bad- it takes you out of right relationship with your world, with your community. He also says that “There is no necessity of promising a reward in a future state for the practice of duty in the present. All that is wanting for his purpose is to understand and to be persuaded that righteousness brings an ample reward, in the present life.” Sin is it’s own punishment, and righteousness is its own reward.
Ballou believed that ultimately we are all going to be reunited with God when we die, that we all return to a metaphysical unity. He believed that when you die, no matter who you are, you return to the primordial one-ness. You are gong home- but home is not a heaven with pearly gates. Some of the more conservative Universalists thought this was ridiculous. Said one such, the Rev. Charles Hudson in an essay hew rote criticizing the “ultra Universalists” like Ballou: “You represent the soul of man as an emanation from the deity, and contend that this future happy life consists in returning to the fountain from whence he came.” And what did Rev. Hudson think was wrong with this? he writes “This opinion was not only embraced by those ancient heretics, the Gnostics, but is the popular opinion of infidels to this day.” Good company as far as I’m concerned.
So Ballou doesn’t feel we need to be saved from hell in the afterlife, but from hell on earth, the hell that we create for one another. According to Ballou, the goal of religion, the goal of a good life is no longer to save souls from hell, but to save life. To save ourselves and all the people in the world, since they are all our brothers and sisters, from the forces that deny life in this world. In the early 20th century, Clarence Skinner spoke of this as a “Universal Brotherhood”
(as a side note, did you all know that the Athens Universalist church was called “The church of the Universal Brotherhood? So named in 1871!) Skinner was a prominent Universalist thinker and activist who wrote in 1915 that “…Universalism inspires…faith not only because it teaches the divine origin of all men, but likewise because of its belief in the common destiny of humanity in all times and in all stations of life.” (Robinson p. 172)
A few years back I was feeling very jaded about my religious tradition. It happens to the best of us. Sure UU raised me from when I was younger than the youngest of the kids in our RE program, gave me an ethical framework, a life’s work. But what had they done for me lately? I talked to my colleague Sheri Prud’homme about the fact that I was having trouble getting excited about my UU tradition, and asked what was it that made her passionate about her faith? Her explanation boiled down to the idea that with Universalism “We’re all in the same boat.” Whatever salvation there may be, it is for everyone. Sheri believed this was important, that it was a precious part of who we are.
At our UU history class last Thursday, I read from the church record in 1878 which reads in part: “Our partialist friends in the surrounding community ,becoming much disturbed and alarmed by the spiritual condition of their ‘awful neighbors’ in the Valley, occasionally send a “Screaming Moses” to warn us of the wrath to come.” I love this story. First, I love that the opposite of a “Universalist” is a “partialist” those who believe that only part of humanity will be saved. And of course the partialists are concerned and alarmed by other points of view, because when part is saved, the rest are damned. When part is holy, the rest are unholy. Part is right and the other part is wrong. How much destruction has been done in this world by those who understood themselves to be good, to those whom they understand as bad? Think about our political discourse right now- one must be completely right and the other completely wrong. One is a force of democracy, and the other a force of fascism. One must be victorious and the other must be destroyed. And yet we are all in one boat: if we tear this country apart it will hurt us all. If we waste and poison the earth, it will hurt all living things.
In the late 20th century we enlarged our conception of the “universal brotherhood” as we began to think in terms of the interconnected web of life of which we are all apart. The social sciences taught us how violence begets violence, and recently proved that there is a relationship between happiness and proximity to other happy people. We understand now that nitrates used in American farming effect coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean. Our sense of what it means to be a Universalist has expanded. We used to sing “God’s love embraces the whole human race.” [#298] now we sing “Respect the water, land and air which gave all creatures birth; protect the lives of all that share the glory of the earth.” [#175] Who will be saved? Either all are saved or none are saved. The kingdom of heaven is not a gated community.
Still we have to ask; how can we be saved? Our friend Clarence Skinner writes “The idea of Universal Brotherhood is the great social dynamic of the twentieth century. Sometimes it is dynamite. It fires our hopes, builds our dreams, unfolds before us the messianic vision of an imminent Kingdom of heaven on earth.” Skinner believed that we could transform the word through our faith in human dignity. By the end of the 19th century, Universalists no longer about talked how to get to heaven but how to “progressively establish kingdom of God” here on Earth. (This idea can be found in the affirmation this congregation said every Sunday through most of the 20th century.)
Universalists wanted to save souls not from hell, but to save souls from the forces in this world that crush and diminish the spirit of life in each one of us. The Unitarian preacher and writer William Ellery Channing talked about the “capacities of the soul” and felt the purpose of life was to grow those capacities, of mind, creativity, love, justice, reason and many others. Folks who live in oppression, in crushing poverty, in fear of violence never get the chance to develop the powers of the soul; their life, their creativity is lost. This is how the 19th and early 20th century social activists wanted to build the kingdom of god, by creating a just world where not only was life saved from violence and death, but saved for something- saved for a full, rich, and deep life- that every soul might have a chance to grow. How will we be saved? We will save each other.
Building a Kingdom of God, or as a seminary buddy called it, a Kin-dom of god, one where we are all kin, is not something one of us can do on our own. It is not something one group can impose on another. Building a peaceable kin-dom is something that can only happen through our interactions, our relationships with one another. Our relatedness is not optional. We are deeply embedded in this web, in a “network of mutuality.” Says EcoFeminist Theologian Ivone Gebara “relatedness is the primary reality; It is constitutive of all beings. It is more elementary than awareness of differences or than autonomy, individuality or freedom. It is the foundational reality of all that is or can exist. It is the underlying fabric that is continually brought forth within the vital process in which we are immersed.” Or to put it another way “the interconnected web of which we are all part.” We build a peaceable kin-dom in the context of this relatedness, this web. Or if “relatedness” is too cumbersome a word, how about love? Contemporary UU theologian Rev. Rebecca parker says “Love generates life, from the moment of conception to the moment when we remember with gratitude and tenderness those who have died. And in the darkest night, when our hearts are breaking, love embraces us even when we cannot embrace ourselves. Love sages us and redirects us toward generosity.” (p. 14)
Well this leads us to our final question- when will we be saved? In the “left behind” books, we are waiting for a final battle between good and evil that we are inexorably heading towards. And this sense of “being saved later” follows us over into our UU theology sometimes. We will be saved when all people are treated justly and equitably, when science has a cure for the world’s diseases, when our fight is finally won. Parker had the audacity to ask “what if the apocalypse has already happened?” She calls our minds to all the destruction and violence of the 20th century and proposes that “In the aftermath of Apocalypse, the religious enterprise can be imagined as a kind of salvage work, recognizing the resources that sustain and restore life- resources that are ready at hand, not in some distant promise land.” (p. 22)
Parker finds in our UU theology a “realized eschatology” which I preached about last spring. Some of you will remember this idea that the end times are here and now- that when we say “the kingdom of god is nigh” we don’t mean “the end is coming” we mean, it is right here, it’s all around us.
So the time for salvation is now. The place for salvation is here in this neighborhood, this earth, this body. Who is to be saved? All of us. We all need saving, and we all have the capacity to be preserved, protected and salved. And what we are saving is love, this beautiful web of life- not just to allow life to survive, but to allow the profound beauty and vibrancy of all beings to flourish and grow. And how can we be saved? Through relationship. By connecting and re-connecting to one another and with the web of life of which we are all a part. If anyone asks you “are you saved?” feel free to answer “yes, I am. We all are.”
Monday, March 22, 2010
Paganism and U (March 21, 2010)
I feel pretty confident that if you had asked the members of this church at their centennial celebration whether the children’s lesson one Sunday a hundred years hence would involve casting a circle in celebration of the Spring Equinox they would have looked at you like you had lobsters crawling out of your ears. A lot has changed in just one generation.
In our tradition, Paganism traces its roots back to the feminist movement. A growing feminist awareness illuminated the fact that the imagery of Woman in our denomination was actually rather conservative, that our history and tradition were full of “unexamined patriarchal norms”. Back in 1977, the UUA General Assembly responded by passing the “Women and Religion” Resolution. calling “all individual UUs and UU organizations to examine and put aside sexist assumptions, attitudes, and language and to explore and eliminate religious roots of sexism in myths, traditions and beliefs.”
After the passage of the Women and Religion resolution, the Continental Women and Religion Committee was formed, and sponsored a Feminist Theology Convocation, for UUs from across the country in 1980. It was at this convocation that UUs celebrated their first Water communion, now a standard ingathering service in many UU churches. It also at this event was the earliest known organized UU Pagan worship, along with much discussion about the Goddess traditions and Wicca.
An Adult Religions Education curriculum called “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” (whose title comes from a reference to the Goddess in Hebrew scriptures) was introduced in 1986, which deconstructed the role of patriarchy in western religion, and sought out female images of God both in the Judeo Christian tradition and in ancient religions from around the world. UUs around the country, including me, were transformed by the realization that God did not have to be male. Finding our own tradition stingy when it came to images of women in sacred text and story, we turned to ancient stories in which the feminine played a more dynamic role.
UUs drawn to the Neo Pagan tradition began organizing. What would later be the “Coven of UU Pagans” or “CUUPS” began organizing at the 1985 GA. Two years later in 1987 Margot Adler (a Beacon Press Author) gave a keynote speech called "A Pagan Spiritual View" at the General Assembly, bringing the dialogue into the mainstream consciousness of our movement. The following year (1988) at the GA in Palm Springs CUUPs received UUA independent affiliate status.
During the same time, there was a movement to manifest more fully our 7th principle, “respect for the interconnected web of life of which we are all a part.” In 1989 the “7th principle project” was formed, and in 1991 they created a “Green Sanctuary Handbook” which laid out a process by which congregations could incorporate environmental sustainability into the life of their community. [The 7th principle project changed it's name in recent years to "UU Ministry for the Earth."]
In 1993, when the silver hymnal “Sing the Living Tradition” was published, the changing face of our UU theology was represented. If you look in the index you will find both hymns and readings under the topics, under "Earth, “God, Goddess and Spirit” and Pagan."
In 1995 A Sixth Source became adopted by the General Assembly in Spokane, Washington after 6 years of work by proponents. It reads: "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." I was at the GA that year, and the debate was lively. Proponents wanted to bring earth-centered religion to the same institutional level as the other religious roots of Unitarian Universalism. The general argument against seemed to be fear that the addition of this source would change our identity too radically. I remember several speakers offered the argument that “isn’t this covered by the 7th principle already?” I was not sure how I felt about it at the time. But now I see that it is really quite powerful to say that along with our Judeo Christian tradition, along with humanism and science, along with the major world religions, we affirm as sources of our faith those traditions that are based not on the written word, but on the rhythms and cycles of nature. This includes the wisdom of the Iroquois who lived on this land long before the Europeans arrived, the wisdom of the Japanese Shinto tradition, or the contemporary American Neo-Pagan tradition. Most communities around the world historically have had local religions traditions based in their local ecosystems and these indigenous, populist religions were often marginalized by government sanctioned and centralized traditions. Not only are these traditions more earth-centered than the major world’s religions, but they also tend to be more inclusive of women and female imagery.
That summer the Youth Caucus of the GA stood in those long lines waiting for a turn at the microphone to come out in favor of the amendment to our sources. In fact, the youth were already using several pagan chants in worship, and if you stayed up until 10:00 at night to see the youth worship at GA, you would witness a style called “circle worship” where there is de-centralized leadership, and no sermons. It probably looks a lot more like Pagan ritual than like a UU Sunday morning service. UUA president John Burehns said later that “whatever the Youth Caucus officially supports always seems to pass.” And pass it did, in the only major amendment to our principles and purposes in the last 25 years.
My own acquaintance with neo-paganism followed a similar path as that of our UU tradition. After studying a feminist hermeneutic of the Hebrew scriptures in College, and signing up for Cakes for the Queen of Heaven at a local UU church, I began to free myself from those cartoon images of a male god with a long white beard, a God which had never reached me in a deep way. I too grew up in the UU Youth movement, accustomed to circle worship and ritual. I also tend to be a kinesthetic learner, so I was drawn to a ritual tradition which allows one to interact with objects and motion instead of just words on a page. I also was feeling a call to live in greater harmony with the earth, and a spirituality that would support more sustainable living, and so was attracted to the work of Starhawk who co-founded the reclaiming tradition of Wicca.
Starhawk was a professor at “Holy Names” College, which had open enrollment with my seminary Starr King School. She was living and teaching in the Bay Area while I was there, and has an understanding of the world that resonates well with a UU sensibility. She believes that paganism calls her to action on behalf of the earth, and in fact her career has turned more and more towards teaching permaculture and earth activism. She writes a blog about her activism, which is full of stories about using grounding techniques (like the one we did in our ritual this morning) at a protest of international farm policy or doing ritual on the front lines of a protest the treatment of Palestinians as an occupied people. This is my kind of witch. She co-wrote a beautiful and handy book called “Circle Round” which gives practical advice on doing ritual with children. The first time I sat down to use it to create a ritual with the kids at my church, encountered a description of a winter solstice ritual in which the children could bring all their favorite stuffed animals and action figures to the altar and set them around an image of the sun “in joy and amazement at the birth of the year.” (p. 97). Plastic dinosaurs on a solstice altar? This spoke to me in a deep way. It resonated with my growing sense that everyday things were sacred, and that I wanted worship and spiritual practices to reflected the sacred in the every day, and that was ritual was not something that could only be done by certified professionals using approved gear on Sunday mornings.
As we started our Paganism 101 class here a the church, I was a little nervous. Sure I’d been reading everything StarHawk had written for years, had made altars in my home and office had created rituals in celebration of the 8 Wiccan Sabbaths, but I felt I lacked the authority of an established tradition. Also, I lacked gear. I didn’t have an athame or a pentacle. As I prepared each moth for our class, I urgently set out to find altar cloths in the right colors, the right objects to use in worship. Finally I confessed at one class that I usually use objects from my own life which are special to me when I do ritual. Mary, who has done a lot more reading about these things then me, and has followed traditional proscriptions more closely, said “oh, you’re a kitchen witch.” And I felt much better. It turns out there are about as many kinds of Pagans and Witches as there are Christians. Some folks like High ritual, and follow tradition closely, and some folks use eclectic ritual. Some traditions have intense periods of training and initiation. Other traditions are more open and democratic.
As our little Pagan group here at the church began to meet, we learned about the broader context of Neo-Paganism. We learned about the archeological ambiguity of goddess worship through history, and read articles which suggested that there is very little proof that today’s pagans are in a direct lineage from pre-Christian pagans. We were challenged to ask ourselves- do these traditions and rituals mean less to us if we cannot prove through archeology and scholarship their direct link to ancient times? Can rituals that were created in the last generation or 2 have real power?
When I read articles and rituals of various pagan traditions, sometimes it feels very foreign to me. But when I was reading Starhawk’s most recent book “Earth Spirit” I wonder “what is the difference between what she is saying and Unitarian Universalism?” her belief system was so like mine. Then I realized- it is the practice that is different. The practice and goals of worship are different from our usual Sunday morning worship. Almost all pagan worship shares some elements with our ritual this morning. There is centering and grounding- preparing your mind to be fully present. Then the circle is cast, which is a way of defining the space for the ritual, a way of setting aside the time as special. We usually worship in this room, and so each time we come in the door we know we are here in a time and a place set aside for worship. But pagan rituals are often outside, and can be in a great variety of locations, so by drawing a circle, it helps keep focus and attention on what is happening inside that sacred space.
The 4 directions are called, each direction representing one of the 4 elements common in western ritual. Earth, Air, Fire and Water represent body, emotion, intellect and the ego. The reason the 4 elements are invoked, and present on these 4 altars in a very concrete way, is to represent the different aspects of our lives, of our psyches, of our world. Having all 4 elements present in ritual encourages us to notice which elements are missing or challenging in our lives, and invites us to create a harmonious balance of all the elements. Then the goddess and or gods of the season are invited into worship. Because this is a UU worship, we light a chalice today instead of making those invocations. Some Neo-Pagan traditions are explicitly feminist, like those of Z. Budapest or StarHawk. They focus explicitly on the female aspect of the divine because western religion has been focused on male images of the divine for so long. As Starhawk says “you can’t change the balance on a teeter-totter by standing in the middle.” Those pagans who call both goddess and god are wanting to embody that balance, believing with the Juingians that all people have aspects of male and female in themselves, and we want to encourage balance and harmony between them.
Then, after some good energy has been raised, magic can be done. Now what do I mean by magic? Dion Fortune defines it as "the art of changing consciousness at will." In Spiral Dance Starhawk writes “ A spell in a symbolic act done … in order to cause a desired change. To cast a spell is to project energy through a symbol. But the symbols are too often mistake for the spell. ‘Burn a green candle to attract money,’ we are told. The candle itself, however, does nothing. It is merely a lens, an object of focus, a mnemonic devise, the ‘thing’ that embodies our idea. Props may be useful but it is the mind that works magic.” or as Louise Bunn, the author of our Paganism 101 curriculum says “Magic is the art of manipulating symbols in order to affect a change in consciousness – to achieve results that are substantially psychological in nature.” We did that with our bulbs this morning, using them as a concrete reminder of change we want to see in our lives. Now not every time a pagan casts a circle are they planning to do magic. Some Pagans only do ritual to celebrate Pagans also celebrate the cycles and seasons. They celebrate the cycles of the moon, the cycles of life and the changing of the seasons marked by the 8 Sabbaths.
The pagan calendar focuses on the cycles of the sun. The winter and summer solstice, the fall and spring equinox, and the 4 holidays that celebrate the halfway points between solstice and equinox called the “cross-quarters” Halloween is one such cross-quarter holiday. When I wanted to explore paganism more deeply, the first thing I did was to put all the Sabbaths on my calendar, and make an attempt to have a seasonal altar for each of the 8 holidays, and to observe each even if at was only in a minor way. StarHawk, in her newest book “The Earth Path” recommends a practice I love- just carefully noticing the change of the seasons, and noticing how the seasons vary year to year. So, for example, each of us could take a moment today outside to look, listen, smell, feel all the changes spring equinox has brought this year. This is a wonderful way to celebrate the Sabbath. As a person who comes to paganism through a desire to feel closer to the earth, this has been a powerful practice to me. Each year as the cycle comes round again, I feel like I learn something new about the seasons. We celebrated Spring Equinox with crocuses and bulbs, because this is the reality of this place, this season; there are crocuses splashing color all over our dismal landscape right at this very moment. And now is the time of first planting, so we will plant these Gladiola bulbs which can go into the ground while it is still cold and not be destroyed by a late frost and which we hope will bring color to our church as the seasons change.
After the central celebration of the ritual is finished, pagans ground the extra energy they have raised back into the earth. You can do this by touching the ground to send it back, or some do it by eating and drinking together. Then very carefully you say a respectful goodbye to all those you have invited into your circle, so there is a lovely symmetry to the ritual.
Now it warns on the CUUPS website, that UU pagans are not quite like other pagans. We are, at the heart, Unitarian Universalists. And within this movement, Pagans are a minority tradition. Some UU churches are open to paganism, and some UUs are afraid that Paganism seems superstitious. We are a movement that is so based in reason, so grounded in science and logic, that some have trouble imaging how paganism could harmonize with our tradition. But all our UU congregations have as a source of our living tradition the "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." There are many sources of wisdom that we can call upon in our search for truth and meaning, that we call on to help us lead lives of justice equity and compassion, and we are “grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understating and expand our vision.” May we be open to all the earth centered traditions that offer some new insight or balance in our own lives, or some new inspiration for living in right relationship with our world.
In our tradition, Paganism traces its roots back to the feminist movement. A growing feminist awareness illuminated the fact that the imagery of Woman in our denomination was actually rather conservative, that our history and tradition were full of “unexamined patriarchal norms”. Back in 1977, the UUA General Assembly responded by passing the “Women and Religion” Resolution. calling “all individual UUs and UU organizations to examine and put aside sexist assumptions, attitudes, and language and to explore and eliminate religious roots of sexism in myths, traditions and beliefs.”
After the passage of the Women and Religion resolution, the Continental Women and Religion Committee was formed, and sponsored a Feminist Theology Convocation, for UUs from across the country in 1980. It was at this convocation that UUs celebrated their first Water communion, now a standard ingathering service in many UU churches. It also at this event was the earliest known organized UU Pagan worship, along with much discussion about the Goddess traditions and Wicca.
An Adult Religions Education curriculum called “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” (whose title comes from a reference to the Goddess in Hebrew scriptures) was introduced in 1986, which deconstructed the role of patriarchy in western religion, and sought out female images of God both in the Judeo Christian tradition and in ancient religions from around the world. UUs around the country, including me, were transformed by the realization that God did not have to be male. Finding our own tradition stingy when it came to images of women in sacred text and story, we turned to ancient stories in which the feminine played a more dynamic role.
UUs drawn to the Neo Pagan tradition began organizing. What would later be the “Coven of UU Pagans” or “CUUPS” began organizing at the 1985 GA. Two years later in 1987 Margot Adler (a Beacon Press Author) gave a keynote speech called "A Pagan Spiritual View" at the General Assembly, bringing the dialogue into the mainstream consciousness of our movement. The following year (1988) at the GA in Palm Springs CUUPs received UUA independent affiliate status.
During the same time, there was a movement to manifest more fully our 7th principle, “respect for the interconnected web of life of which we are all a part.” In 1989 the “7th principle project” was formed, and in 1991 they created a “Green Sanctuary Handbook” which laid out a process by which congregations could incorporate environmental sustainability into the life of their community. [The 7th principle project changed it's name in recent years to "UU Ministry for the Earth."]
In 1993, when the silver hymnal “Sing the Living Tradition” was published, the changing face of our UU theology was represented. If you look in the index you will find both hymns and readings under the topics, under "Earth, “God, Goddess and Spirit” and Pagan."
In 1995 A Sixth Source became adopted by the General Assembly in Spokane, Washington after 6 years of work by proponents. It reads: "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." I was at the GA that year, and the debate was lively. Proponents wanted to bring earth-centered religion to the same institutional level as the other religious roots of Unitarian Universalism. The general argument against seemed to be fear that the addition of this source would change our identity too radically. I remember several speakers offered the argument that “isn’t this covered by the 7th principle already?” I was not sure how I felt about it at the time. But now I see that it is really quite powerful to say that along with our Judeo Christian tradition, along with humanism and science, along with the major world religions, we affirm as sources of our faith those traditions that are based not on the written word, but on the rhythms and cycles of nature. This includes the wisdom of the Iroquois who lived on this land long before the Europeans arrived, the wisdom of the Japanese Shinto tradition, or the contemporary American Neo-Pagan tradition. Most communities around the world historically have had local religions traditions based in their local ecosystems and these indigenous, populist religions were often marginalized by government sanctioned and centralized traditions. Not only are these traditions more earth-centered than the major world’s religions, but they also tend to be more inclusive of women and female imagery.
That summer the Youth Caucus of the GA stood in those long lines waiting for a turn at the microphone to come out in favor of the amendment to our sources. In fact, the youth were already using several pagan chants in worship, and if you stayed up until 10:00 at night to see the youth worship at GA, you would witness a style called “circle worship” where there is de-centralized leadership, and no sermons. It probably looks a lot more like Pagan ritual than like a UU Sunday morning service. UUA president John Burehns said later that “whatever the Youth Caucus officially supports always seems to pass.” And pass it did, in the only major amendment to our principles and purposes in the last 25 years.
My own acquaintance with neo-paganism followed a similar path as that of our UU tradition. After studying a feminist hermeneutic of the Hebrew scriptures in College, and signing up for Cakes for the Queen of Heaven at a local UU church, I began to free myself from those cartoon images of a male god with a long white beard, a God which had never reached me in a deep way. I too grew up in the UU Youth movement, accustomed to circle worship and ritual. I also tend to be a kinesthetic learner, so I was drawn to a ritual tradition which allows one to interact with objects and motion instead of just words on a page. I also was feeling a call to live in greater harmony with the earth, and a spirituality that would support more sustainable living, and so was attracted to the work of Starhawk who co-founded the reclaiming tradition of Wicca.
Starhawk was a professor at “Holy Names” College, which had open enrollment with my seminary Starr King School. She was living and teaching in the Bay Area while I was there, and has an understanding of the world that resonates well with a UU sensibility. She believes that paganism calls her to action on behalf of the earth, and in fact her career has turned more and more towards teaching permaculture and earth activism. She writes a blog about her activism, which is full of stories about using grounding techniques (like the one we did in our ritual this morning) at a protest of international farm policy or doing ritual on the front lines of a protest the treatment of Palestinians as an occupied people. This is my kind of witch. She co-wrote a beautiful and handy book called “Circle Round” which gives practical advice on doing ritual with children. The first time I sat down to use it to create a ritual with the kids at my church, encountered a description of a winter solstice ritual in which the children could bring all their favorite stuffed animals and action figures to the altar and set them around an image of the sun “in joy and amazement at the birth of the year.” (p. 97). Plastic dinosaurs on a solstice altar? This spoke to me in a deep way. It resonated with my growing sense that everyday things were sacred, and that I wanted worship and spiritual practices to reflected the sacred in the every day, and that was ritual was not something that could only be done by certified professionals using approved gear on Sunday mornings.
As we started our Paganism 101 class here a the church, I was a little nervous. Sure I’d been reading everything StarHawk had written for years, had made altars in my home and office had created rituals in celebration of the 8 Wiccan Sabbaths, but I felt I lacked the authority of an established tradition. Also, I lacked gear. I didn’t have an athame or a pentacle. As I prepared each moth for our class, I urgently set out to find altar cloths in the right colors, the right objects to use in worship. Finally I confessed at one class that I usually use objects from my own life which are special to me when I do ritual. Mary, who has done a lot more reading about these things then me, and has followed traditional proscriptions more closely, said “oh, you’re a kitchen witch.” And I felt much better. It turns out there are about as many kinds of Pagans and Witches as there are Christians. Some folks like High ritual, and follow tradition closely, and some folks use eclectic ritual. Some traditions have intense periods of training and initiation. Other traditions are more open and democratic.
As our little Pagan group here at the church began to meet, we learned about the broader context of Neo-Paganism. We learned about the archeological ambiguity of goddess worship through history, and read articles which suggested that there is very little proof that today’s pagans are in a direct lineage from pre-Christian pagans. We were challenged to ask ourselves- do these traditions and rituals mean less to us if we cannot prove through archeology and scholarship their direct link to ancient times? Can rituals that were created in the last generation or 2 have real power?
When I read articles and rituals of various pagan traditions, sometimes it feels very foreign to me. But when I was reading Starhawk’s most recent book “Earth Spirit” I wonder “what is the difference between what she is saying and Unitarian Universalism?” her belief system was so like mine. Then I realized- it is the practice that is different. The practice and goals of worship are different from our usual Sunday morning worship. Almost all pagan worship shares some elements with our ritual this morning. There is centering and grounding- preparing your mind to be fully present. Then the circle is cast, which is a way of defining the space for the ritual, a way of setting aside the time as special. We usually worship in this room, and so each time we come in the door we know we are here in a time and a place set aside for worship. But pagan rituals are often outside, and can be in a great variety of locations, so by drawing a circle, it helps keep focus and attention on what is happening inside that sacred space.
The 4 directions are called, each direction representing one of the 4 elements common in western ritual. Earth, Air, Fire and Water represent body, emotion, intellect and the ego. The reason the 4 elements are invoked, and present on these 4 altars in a very concrete way, is to represent the different aspects of our lives, of our psyches, of our world. Having all 4 elements present in ritual encourages us to notice which elements are missing or challenging in our lives, and invites us to create a harmonious balance of all the elements. Then the goddess and or gods of the season are invited into worship. Because this is a UU worship, we light a chalice today instead of making those invocations. Some Neo-Pagan traditions are explicitly feminist, like those of Z. Budapest or StarHawk. They focus explicitly on the female aspect of the divine because western religion has been focused on male images of the divine for so long. As Starhawk says “you can’t change the balance on a teeter-totter by standing in the middle.” Those pagans who call both goddess and god are wanting to embody that balance, believing with the Juingians that all people have aspects of male and female in themselves, and we want to encourage balance and harmony between them.
Then, after some good energy has been raised, magic can be done. Now what do I mean by magic? Dion Fortune defines it as "the art of changing consciousness at will." In Spiral Dance Starhawk writes “ A spell in a symbolic act done … in order to cause a desired change. To cast a spell is to project energy through a symbol. But the symbols are too often mistake for the spell. ‘Burn a green candle to attract money,’ we are told. The candle itself, however, does nothing. It is merely a lens, an object of focus, a mnemonic devise, the ‘thing’ that embodies our idea. Props may be useful but it is the mind that works magic.” or as Louise Bunn, the author of our Paganism 101 curriculum says “Magic is the art of manipulating symbols in order to affect a change in consciousness – to achieve results that are substantially psychological in nature.” We did that with our bulbs this morning, using them as a concrete reminder of change we want to see in our lives. Now not every time a pagan casts a circle are they planning to do magic. Some Pagans only do ritual to celebrate Pagans also celebrate the cycles and seasons. They celebrate the cycles of the moon, the cycles of life and the changing of the seasons marked by the 8 Sabbaths.
The pagan calendar focuses on the cycles of the sun. The winter and summer solstice, the fall and spring equinox, and the 4 holidays that celebrate the halfway points between solstice and equinox called the “cross-quarters” Halloween is one such cross-quarter holiday. When I wanted to explore paganism more deeply, the first thing I did was to put all the Sabbaths on my calendar, and make an attempt to have a seasonal altar for each of the 8 holidays, and to observe each even if at was only in a minor way. StarHawk, in her newest book “The Earth Path” recommends a practice I love- just carefully noticing the change of the seasons, and noticing how the seasons vary year to year. So, for example, each of us could take a moment today outside to look, listen, smell, feel all the changes spring equinox has brought this year. This is a wonderful way to celebrate the Sabbath. As a person who comes to paganism through a desire to feel closer to the earth, this has been a powerful practice to me. Each year as the cycle comes round again, I feel like I learn something new about the seasons. We celebrated Spring Equinox with crocuses and bulbs, because this is the reality of this place, this season; there are crocuses splashing color all over our dismal landscape right at this very moment. And now is the time of first planting, so we will plant these Gladiola bulbs which can go into the ground while it is still cold and not be destroyed by a late frost and which we hope will bring color to our church as the seasons change.
After the central celebration of the ritual is finished, pagans ground the extra energy they have raised back into the earth. You can do this by touching the ground to send it back, or some do it by eating and drinking together. Then very carefully you say a respectful goodbye to all those you have invited into your circle, so there is a lovely symmetry to the ritual.
Now it warns on the CUUPS website, that UU pagans are not quite like other pagans. We are, at the heart, Unitarian Universalists. And within this movement, Pagans are a minority tradition. Some UU churches are open to paganism, and some UUs are afraid that Paganism seems superstitious. We are a movement that is so based in reason, so grounded in science and logic, that some have trouble imaging how paganism could harmonize with our tradition. But all our UU congregations have as a source of our living tradition the "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." There are many sources of wisdom that we can call upon in our search for truth and meaning, that we call on to help us lead lives of justice equity and compassion, and we are “grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understating and expand our vision.” May we be open to all the earth centered traditions that offer some new insight or balance in our own lives, or some new inspiration for living in right relationship with our world.
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