Finding Your Rhythm

 This summer I had the great good fortune of attending a week long “Labyrinth summer school” out in Petaluma California. The first part of our week was lead by Dr. Lauren Artres, who helped bring the labyrinth into modern usage, and she advised us to walk the labyrinth at our “natural pace.”

What is your “natural pace?” That takes some discernment, doesn’t it? Not just to walk the pace of the person in front of you. Not to walk the pace that seems like a dignified labyrinth walking pace, but to listen for an inner rhythm, and to match your steps to that inner pace.

A few weeks after that training I was introducing an 8 year old to a labyrinth I had set up on our friends’ land. She was already familiar labyrinths because there was one at her Montessori school. So I asked her what she knew. She said you have to be very slow. I nodded my head, not wanting to undermine her teachers. “Yes, a lot of people do walk labyrinths slowly. I like to encourage people to walk at their own pace. Even if that’s running. She looked at me uncertainly, and then took off-- running the labyrinth. Her mom went next, running a circuit behind. I waited a beat and then entered the labyrinth at a brisk walk, not even trying to keep up. We all emerged from the labyrinth with big smiles on our faces.

When I was growing up my mom had on her wall a poster with the famous quote by Henry David Thoreau: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” I grew up believing that it was okay to be “out of step” with society around you, to be an alternate or dissenting voice. It was only recently that I thought of this quote in a very literal and physical way. That there is an inner rhythm to our bodies, minds and hearts. That inner rhythm has its own wisdom and integrity.

I find it actually quite a relief to be able to do something at my own pace, but we rarely get the chance. When I was a little kid everyone wanted me to go faster. Apparently I was given to daydreaming and lollygagging. Also I had very short legs. I was constantly trying to keep up; in any group of kids on a walk or outing, I was almost always last, and sometimes despaired I would lose the group altogether.

In this culture there is an unquestioned assumption that faster is better. As a minister in Silicon Valley I believed that doing many things quickly and efficiently was the prime virtue. I rushed to keep up with work and with parenting. and noticed myself rushing my little son just as I was rushed as a child.

Then one day I got pulled over for speeding on the way to pick my son up from daycare. At first, of course, I felt defensive and guilty and angry and ashamed. Then I thought of an exercise Ram Dass mentioned in one of his talks- the practice of treating anyone you meet as if they were the Buddha. This officer - Buddha, was saying to me “slow down, you are going too fast. It’s not safe. In fact you are going so fast it’s against the law.” In a way it was a relief- what if I slowed down to the actual legal speed limit? Who could judge me for obeying the law?

It wasn’t until I started my training as a spiritual director that our teachers mentioned that going too fast can be an obstacle to contemplation. “We have to wait for our souls to catch up” they said. That’s certainly been my experience. When I’ve been moving fast and can finally slow down, it takes a while for all of me to “arrive.” I feel like a calmer, more centered, more competent person when I slow down to the pace that is right for me. There’s not one right speed for everyone- to be honest, even at these contemplative retreats, when we all rise from class together and walk down the hall to lunch it’s all I can do not to jog around the slower folks.

And yet when it comes to some of the mental and emotional aspects of our contemplative program, I felt I was constantly rushing to keep up. When a presenter says “set an intention” I think I am always the last one in the room to find my intention. It’s not unusual for a presenter to ask us to “allow a word or image to come to mind” and then move on to the next step while my mind is still a blank. More than once I’ve had to leave the room and go sit in silence away from the pressure of the now mounting instructions to allows something to come to mind at its own pace. Some parts of me are slow, some are quick. It takes my soul, it would seem, a long time to catch up.

Sometimes going slowly feels just right, and sometimes moving quickly feels just right. When I lived in Silicon Valley when I studied a vigorous form of yoga and learned to match one breath to each movement. I LOVED it. It was yoga that matched the brisk pace of my life, and taught me to breath into it. The movements were swift and challenging, but the breath was slow. Our teacher would often encourage us to do a sequence at our own pace “your breath, your body” he would say, encouraging us to match our movement to the natural pace of our breath. When I was younger and always in a hurry I used to get so impatient in the slow classes because I felt like I was missing something- we could be doing so much more! But at this moment in my life I appreciate both. I am lucky to live near a studio with lots of different yoga teachers, some fast, some slow. A vigorous quick class raises my heart rate and makes me feel confident and powerful. But I also appreciate a slow, thoughtful class where we focus on each little part of the poses, or maybe just lay down on the floor and relax.

As a species we have a tremendous range of speeds we can accomplish, and as individuals we each have a range of what is comfortable for us. But in our society we are rarely given a chance to find a pace that “feels natural.” We are rarely encouraged to know what pace works for you, and allow your body mind and heart to naturally settle into that pace. One part of the search for our true and wise Self can be listening for that drummer playing our own beat.

In school, at work or in traffic we are often required to ignore our natural rhythm, especially if it does “not keep pace with our companions.”  Listening for and then trying to match our own internal rhythm is not something we get a lot of support to do in this culture. It is more common to ask our bodies, hearts and minds to meet targets and goals defined by some societal standard. It’s easy to make a schedule of what we “should” be able to accomplish in a day, how quickly we “should” run a mile, how long it “should” take for us to learn long division, or to grieve the loss of someone we care about. And when we can’t keep up with these expectations, we struggle. When external norms and expectations clash with the reality of my own biology, I try to let the body, heart and spirit lead, knowing there are consequences for ignoring that inner wisdom.

When the mind is racing ahead of body and soul, a simple breath practice can bring them together. Let’s take a moment now to just notice your breath, without changing it. Just notice the inhale and the exhale. If you feel it want to change, just let the breath change to its “natural rhythm.” There is not a single tempo for each person, it is constantly changing, so the practice is to listen carefully as often as we can, to notice the inner rhythm of body and spirit, to follow it when we can. When some task or cultural expectation asks us to keep up or slow down, we can notice  how that affects us.

When we take on this kind of practice we affirm that each body has some natural rhythms that are right for you. And that going at your own pace has a value. That value is not only physical and emotional health, but a kind of integrity, a kind of integration and rightness that you feel when you are free to find your own rhythm. Getting to know your own rhythm is part of getting to know your true self. When we walk the labyrinth alone at our natural pace it grounds us in who we are, body mind and spirit.

If we walk the labyrinth with other people where everyone is following their natural pace we will sometimes need to pass, we will sometimes bunch up, we will sometimes need to step to the side and let someone pass us. When you walk the labyrinth as a group those who go last will have to wait their turn, and those who went first will have to wait till all the others are done. That’s community. We have folks who run on ahead to prepare the way, and folks who bring up the rear to make sure no one is left behind. Like a musical ensemble, we learn to listen not only to the beat of our own drummer, but to how that rhythm fits into the beats around us.

Noticing how our own rhythm fits into the larger whole is challenging sometimes, but it is also an important way of coming to know ourselves. It’s also a way to feel the pulse of the community, and to feel when it is out of sync, when it is leaving folks behind. This is one reason that being part of a congregation is a valuable spiritual practice.

Our society is going so fast right now that many folks cannot keep up. I’ve preached about the targets and quotas set by garment manufacturers, or at the Amazon warehouse, or set in the medical industry for physicians. I’ve preached about the impacts on workers who are physically unable to meet these quotas or the cost to their bodies when they do. Our society teaches us that “faster is better” but when I look at the world around me, I think there is plenty of evidence that this is simply not true. How often do we rush things into production without thorough testing and vetting, only later seeing the damage done to the ecosystem, or even to our own health?  There are plenty of times to move fast. It’s perfectly legal to go 65 on the interstate in some places. We really want our first responders to move quickly when we need them. We certainly wish relief aid to Puerto Rico had moved more quickly. But when the next smartphone will be released? Is that worth asking bodies to sacrifice themselves?

Other living beings don’t grow and live at our pace. Think about the slow lives of trees, or moss. We need those beings for the health of our local ecosystems and our global climate, but we fail to take them into account in our industrial time tables. What if we thought of our work not as a race to the finish line, but more like a group walking the labyrinth, each at their own pace?

Every living being has their natural pace, and it changes over the course of a day, over the course of a lifetime. I encourage you to make this part of your own spiritual practice- moving at a pace, at a rhythm that synchronizes with your deepest self, and with the selves around you. Not only will this support you on your own journey, but each time you arrive at your own pace, each time you march to the beat of your drummer and encourage others to listen for their own, you help shape the rhythm of our lives together towards health, toward sustainability and towards justice. May you listen for your own natural rhythm, as it speeds up, as it slows down. May you have opportunities to follow that rhythm and to notice when it does not match the beat of your companions. May we honor the diversity of the rhythms all around us, younger and older, hearty and frail, fast as a humming bird and slow as a great oak. Let our practice be to listen for our own rhythm among many and the beauty of their coming together.

Finding Our Way

I’m honored to be joining you this weekend as you celebrate the installation of Rev. Erin as your minister. One of the things I love most about being a minister in this area is how the UU ministers care for one another and for our congregations. Occasions like this installation are important because they remind us we are part of something larger than ourselves, and that our ministry just a small piece of the great web of Unitarian Universalism, and that we are never alone.

I grew up UU, and have been a ministry for twenty plus years, so over the decades, I’ve been to a lot of installations and General Assemblies, and every kind of UU gatherings. And one thing you can count on when you go to big gatherings of Unitarian Universalists, there is always buzz about the future of our movement. Together we try to cast a vision of who we are becoming, of who we are called to be. One of my favorite presenters at such events is Galen Guengerich who serves the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. They have over 1000 members and a whole team of ministers and staff. Whenever Galen gives a workshop at GA it is going to be cutting edge. There might be a full jazz ensemble providing meditative interludes. There is certainly a high tech AV system, so that when he wants to references something from popular culture, he pushes some magic button and there is perfect cinema quality music and sound, seamlessly integrated into his presentation.

Sometimes at these national events where large abundantly-staffed congregations take the lead, it’s easy to feel left behind. We are told that if we are not skillful about our online presence, we won’t appeal to a younger populous, that if we don’t use sophisticated technology, and current popular music in our worship, the millennial generation won’t feel at home. We begin to wonder if our low-tech churches are relics of a time past. 

When I was a very little girl participating in the town Easter egg hunt for the first time I found the whole experience kind of overwhelming and confusing. After what seemed endless waiting in my little Easter dress, basket in hand, the hunt suddenly began. After 5 minutes of chaos all the eggs were gone and I returned to my mom, probably crying, holding my basket with only one egg, Mom told me this story, which has been almost archetypal for me ever since. She said “When that crowd of children headed left, you headed right. There you were alone with dozens of eggs, but when you looked up and saw where the other kids were, you left the eggs and followed the crowd. Of course by the time you got there, all the eggs were gone, and when you came back to where you started, all those eggs were gone too. If you had just stayed where you were, you would have a basket full of eggs right now.”

I have been mulling over that story ever since. When I realize that I have been separated from the crowd, I try to ask not “how can I get back into the crowd?” but “where are the eggs around me, right now, that only I can reach?” This morning’s sermon is not a challenge to keep up with the crowd, to have high resolution visuals in your sanctuary or to design an App for the congregation. You already receive plenty of encouragement from our culture to move in that direction.

The congregations I serve have a lot in common with the UU Church of Utica; congregations born out of the Universalist movement in the 1800s -- small congregations with part-time ministers. For the past 11 years I’ve been the half-time settled minister for the UU Church of Athens and Sheshequin, and just last year I started at the UU church in Cortland as a 1/8 time minister. But you, your minister is ¾ time! And I’m told also have a church secretary and a music director! It’s easy to worry that our churches don’t have enough members, enough staff, enough money to make a difference, but small churches have some important gifts that our world needs right now.

The most special gift of the small church is relational-ity. Anyone who has ever gone to a large church knows that sometimes you can get lost in the crowd. But there is no chance of getting lost in the crowd in a small church, we know each other and we know each other’s lives. No newcomer or visitor ever goes unnoticed. When I begin to get discouraged that our website is out of date, and we don’t even have a church Instagram account, I am reminded that people of every age will always want a place in the physical world where they can be with people they know and trust, and where they can meet new people in a web of community. Social Scientists tell us that we Americans are the loneliest we have ever been. Small churches are a healing balm for that loneliness.

When my son was a preacher’s kid out in California, there were Sunday school classes with an age appropriate curriculum for every age, and a flock of other preschoolers for him to play with on Sunday mornings. But for much of the time my son was growing up in the Athens church he was the only youth his cohort in our one room school house. I had a lot of sadness that he didn’t have church friends his own age, but the gift of a family size church is that, like with a large extended family, everyone knew Nick. I would see the much younger kids following him around like ducklings some Sundays, or talking to his friend the retired physicist about life the universe and everything. More than once, over these past 12 years, he stood up during Joys and concerns and talked about how grateful he was for that loving community.

Our small size also makes us nimble. Because we are nimble we are able to respond as the moment unfolds to the needs and gifts of our community. In 2011 a flood immobilized the Penn York Valley, where the Athens congregation is located. The rains came down hard on Thursday, and by the time the streets were clear on Saturday we had to pass through a National Guard checkpoint on the way to the church to assess and repair the damage. Volunteers filled the parking lot sanitizing and drying the contents of our basement. Sunday we worshiped without power, without potable water. At coffee hour, two members wondered how we could be of more help to our neighbors. We held an emergency board meeting, and decided to open our building to folks who just needed to use a bathroom, or a clean place of refuge. The next day we began serving a hot lunch and invited the community to join us in the social hall. Other volunteers delivered sandwiches to people who didn’t want to leave their work salvaging homes or businesses. For weeks we fed and cared for our neighbors until the crowds died down, and our work helping repair the damage of the flood continued in other ways. And once the mud had cleared, we held a public forum on what it might mean to live between 2 rivers in a time of climate change.

If the ministry possible for you here in Utica was a field of eggs ready to gather, there are, in fact, more eggs than you could ever gather in –even with all 108 members of your congregation, your very talented new minister, your staff and all your friends working diligently together. So which eggs will we gather? The Anglo Saxon tradition says that each of us has a Wyrd, formed in our unique intersection of nature and nurture, of time and place. Our Wyrd, like that thread in the poem by William Stafford, is hard for others to see. Sometimes it’s hard even for us to see in the chaotic web of culture and life. It can be particularly elusive when we are looking for the thread binding together a community full of so many diverse needs and gifts. So how do we discern our Wyrd, our own unique path?

Let’s start with our unique Universalist history and theology. That’s what makes us different from the Food bank of Central NY, or the United Way. The good news of Universalism is that there is a love big enough to hold us all. You find that in our first principle- the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This simple idea is actually quite radical at our moment in history. It is as radical now as it was at the founding of Universalism, as radical as it was when this church was founded in the 1800s. We live at a time when American society puts up walls to keep people out, and shows us 100 different ways that some lives have worth and others don’t. We live in a society where being on the right side is prized over compassion, over love. But Universalism sides with love, we have always sided with love. We believe in a love that embraces all life. That is the thread I hold tightly when I’m afraid of getting lost.

When I say love I think immediately of my son. He’s easy to love. I love him not only when he is smart and kind and funny. I loved him when he puked up on me, when he was angry, and frustrated, when he couldn’t tell me what he needed. I loved him when he was older and could tell me that what I wanted for him was not what he wanted for himself. I try to explain to him that while I am so proud of that honor he got in school, there is a love for him when he’s failing school, when he’s not kind, when he’s not funny. This is a Universalist love. A love big enough for each and every person with all their gifts and faults. Even when we screw up. It is a radical kind of love. I believe our Universalist theology suggests that such a love is possible, and challenges us to manifest it in the world day by day.

Easier said than done. It is hard to be loving in our hectic, divisive world. It’s hard to be loving when we ourselves are hurting. That’s why we come together in our UU congregations -- to remind each other of love, not only with our words and our worship, but by practicing and to demonstrating love. Over these next years of your shared ministry together, whenever you feel lost remember that the business of the church is not business, it’s love. Yes, the heat needs to come on in the winter, Yes we strive to have worship every Sunday, but no work of the church is more important than how we care for one another.

This is good news for small churches like us, because whether or not you have a jazz ensemble, or a high tech AV system, you already have everything you need. You have each other. We are following this thread each time we sit in a circle and speak our truth with love. Each time we stay at the table when it’s uncomfortable. Each time we say sorry when we make mistakes. Each time we call back hurtful words. There are a thousand ways, small and large, that we show our love to each other and to the larger world. Each time we manifest our love, we are preaching the good news of our Universalist faith, that there is a love large enough to hold us all.

I believe that far from living in a time when these old Universalist churches are a historic remnant, our communities ago are filled with ministry that is calling out to us- filled with Easter eggs, if you will. The need for our Universalist tradition and for our beloved communities is so great, that an equally great discernment is needed. We have to be willing let go of everything we “should be doing” --all those ideas we hear at conferences, the ministries we witness at other churches, in order to hear our own destiny. Just as each and every person has inherent worth and dignity, I believe that each of our congregations has their own gifts, their own worth, their own path to follow. All Souls has their own powerful ministry in NYC, and you have a totally unique ministry here in Utica. Sometimes we need the courage to take our eyes off the crowd, to follow the thread of ministry right here where we are. It is easy to see all those eggs across the field, the ones about to be scooped up by other kids, and worry about them. Instead look around you- you are surrounded by Easter eggs. You have this beloved community. You have a minister who cares for you. You have a community that needs your ministry. I challenge you to let Love be the thread you follow, and have faith that if you let love lead, there will be eggs wherever you go.

Hospitality

I hope that each of you has, at some point in your life, experienced skillful hospitality; that you have been welcomed by a host or hostess who knows how to make us feel truly at home, easing our awkward transition to a new situation. Hospitality is a Mitzvah, that is to say a religious commandment not only in Judaism from which tradition we get the word “Mitzvah” but in many of the world’s religions. We offer hospitality because it is the right thing to do, the caring thing to do. But I would like to suggest that it is also a spiritual practice, one that works on those who practice it. Today we want to consider the question, “if one took on hospitality as a spiritual practice, how might it change the one who practices, and how might it change the world?”

In this past year I have served as your minister, you have shown me that hospitality is one of the strengths of this congregation. Could we host and feed 30 people for a workshop on congregational preparedness? No problem. Not only did we put together a feast for all the UUs overflowing our social hall, but the cooks put careful thought into how to make sure there were plenty of delicious choices for vegetarians, folks who needed to avoid gluten, people allergic to nightshades, and guests who just really hate onions. Everyone who attended felt welcomed and nourished by your hospitality.

Could we host the first ever interfaith pride service in our town? Of course we would! For a number of years this congregation has been working to become a “Welcoming Congregation.” (This is the phrase used by the Unitarian Universalist Association to refer to a congregation who has intentionally opened their doors to Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender persons.) I’m sure being officially recognized as “welcoming” seemed unnecessary to many members of this congregation- Unitarian Universalists were one of the first denominations to ordain openly Gay and Lesbian clergy, and have long been at the forefront of the movement to widen this circle of inclusivity. I wasn’t here when you all began your work, But I know that in the first welcoming congregation I ever served things were not so simple. Many of those who joined in discussion groups and classes, and scanned the church for heterosexism, found that the issues were more complex than they had imagined. For example, we begin to notice hetero-presumptive language in talking about relationships. We realize that unless we publicly speak our intention to be inclusive, say by hanging a rainbow flag out front, folks would have no reason to assume that our church was any safer than those who publicly condemn same sex relationships. We realized that we each had to root out our own internalized homophobia, so that it would truly be a safe place for our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered members to speak their stories. Being a “Welcoming Congregation” takes commitment and self awareness and hospitality.

I am proud to say that just last week the Director of LGBTQ and Multicultural Programs at the UUA sent us a letter congratulating us as the newest Welcoming congregation in the UUA. I am proud of our work together, and on our commitment to being welcoming. He also let us know that although he will be sending us to beautiful color posters in honor of this accomplishment, this achievement is not like a merit badge; we are invited to continue our work as a welcoming congregation and to renew it each year, through worship, learning and acts of advocacy in the larger community. I will be bringing these commitments to the board next week, and together we will consider how to keep welcoming in the coming year.

Hospitality, loving radical hospitality, is a living thing -- an awareness, a way of being in the world. And because you are so good at it, I think this is a great place for us to focus our loving attention. It is easy for a caring and close-knit community to focus on meeting the needs of folks already in the community and to not be aware of the needs of folks just outside our door. For example, when folks came to that Congregational preparedness workshop, they literally didn’t know how to get in the building. We, who have made it inside, all know that there is a side entrance that we use on most occasions, but to a newcomer, if the front doors are locked, it’s not clear that you are welcome. All we need to do to fix that is make a little sign to let folks know what to do if the doors are locked. An easy fix that just requires us expanding our awareness.

When we hosted in the Interfaith Pride service, however, my eyes were opened to some other ways in which we aren’t welcoming. Yes, we prepared a lovely worship, and spread out a warm and charming feast downstairs in the social hall afterwards. We opened our home, we opened our hearts. But it wasn’t until I invited colleagues up to the microphone to speak (please use the one at the pulpit, I said, it’s much better) that I realized how hard it is to get up these stairs to the pulpit. I mean, I myself had joked about how one of these days I was going to look out the wrong part of my glasses and tumble off the side of the stairs here, but it never occurred to me to think, how does that affect our guests? Guest speakers walked all the way around the wall using the railing, and then hung on this chair here for balance while waiting to speak. My eyes and ears opened, I watched folks nervously navigate the steps down to the social hall after the service, and then heard other guests say “the ones in front of the church are the most difficult.” I bravely asked if there was anything we could do to help short of installing a lift. “A railing” they said “would help a lot.” I noticed as folks walked out the back door newcomers stopped at the threshold of that vestibule, and realized that it’s quite a dark spot there, and folks who can’t see well were confused about whether it was safe to step into, or whether there would be a drop. A light in that spot could make us more welcoming to visitors of all ages and abilities.

Being honored as a Welcoming congregation is not the end of our journey to be welcoming, but perhaps a deputizing to becoming more welcoming still. In the same way that Miss Manners advises us to occasionally spend one night in our guest bed to feel for ourselves the kind of sleep our friends might experience in our homes, we look around our world community with the eyes of a good host, wondering what we could do to make others feel at ease.

What makes this challenging, is that in assuming the role of host, we must view the world through the eyes of others; we must anticipate needs that are not necessarily our own. How do we create a welcoming space for all? This becomes most difficult when we realize that there are many subtle cultural factors which can make a community seem hospitable or hostile. It is one thing to hang a rainbow flag, but if we’re not willing to learn each other’s pronouns, how welcoming are we? If radical hospitality is not a central value of our culture as a community, then these are merely superficial gestures. We may find ourselves in communities which are both figuratively and literally gated.

How could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change the world? Imagine how this radical hospitality would impact our social and political policies if, for example, we considered immigrants to our country to be guests, and ourselves to be their hosts, to welcome them as the family did in our children's story. Imagine if we challenged ourselves to broadly apply our call to “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free.” Imagine the impact on the walls of “race” or “class” of religious and political difference if we approached them with radical hospitality.

I use the phrase radical hospitality first because I want us to be radical about the extent of hospitality, extending it to affirm the worth and dignity of each and every person. But I also use the word “radical” because I believe such hospitality is radical in its capacity to change us and the world. When we welcome someone new into our lives, into our congregaton, into our country or community, that meeting is a powerful place where we learn both about the world and ourselves. When we open ourselves to the stranger, to the unknown we open ourselves to learning and transformation. By approaching the limits of what is known and comfortable, our universe expands and perhaps our spirits expand as well.

How could a deep and skillful practice of hospitality change the individual who practices it? In his book “The World’s Religions” Huston Smith describes a noble quality of chun tzu. He writes

“Fully adequate, poised, the chun tzu has toward life as a whole the approach of an ideal hostess who is so at home in her surroundings that she is completely realized, and, being so, can turn full attention to putting others at ease…the chun tzu carries these qualities of the ideal host with him through life generally. Armed with a self-respect that generates respect for others, he approaches them wondering not, “What can I get from them” but “What can I do to accommodate them?”

If we engage the world with the quality of chun tzu, a feeling of always being at home, where might that practice lead? In order to risk extending ourselves, we must first know that we are at home in this world. I believe this logic is reversible as well; if we can act as a host wherever we go, perhaps it will remind us that this world is in fact our home.

When I was starting my internship at the Mount Diablo UU Church, I nervous about the many things I would be doing for the first time, but I was most terrified of the coffee hour. Oh the agony of standing on the patio trying not to look uncomfortable, hoping someone would talk with me. I decided, nonetheless, that this was my job now. People expected their minister to make them feel welcome, to play the host. I realized that it was important that I take the risk that visitors might leave saying “boy they would not leave us alone!” rather than wondering why no one had approached them, why they felt more lonely after coming to church than before. And so that first day on the patio I screwed up my courage, deputized myself with the nametag reading “Darcey Laine, Intern Minister” and challenged myself to engage as many strangers as I could. I tried to imagine who might welcome that extra effort. Certainly newcomers deserved a warm welcome. Obviously those who had shared some pain or joy during “caring and sharing” might want a chance to talk further. The children and youth of the congregation needed to feel that the ministers of the congregation are their ministers too. And the list went on. Before long there were so many people I wanted to connect with, that I had hardly gotten started each week before the patio cleared out and I was left to turn out the lights and lock the doors. I understood that hospitality is one of the primary gifts of a church community, one member to another. And by stepping boldly into the web of relationships as a host, I felt I truly belonged.

Hospitality is not identical to love, because it pays attention to the boundaries between individuals, between peoples. We treat the other with dignity, humble in the awareness that there is much we do not know about one another, yet when we extend ourselves to put another at ease, we act from a position of personal power. We welcome courageously and with skill those who knock at our door.

Today when coffee hour beings, I have my nametag labeling me as “Reverend Laine”, deputizing me officially to act as host for this community. But it is not because I’m a minister of this Church that I have the right and the responsibility to be a host, but because I’m a member of this community. I hereby deputize all of you to be a host at our social hour, and out in the world. Think of your nametag be your deputy’s badge - a symbol of your job as greeter, host, vice-president for east coast introductions and friendliness to strangers. Let this deputy’s badge remind us of one of the oldest and most important religious practices- remembering this world is your home, and so making one another feel welcome in this world.

Lessons from Moss

Why Moss?
In our part of the world, summer draws us outside with a certain urgency. The longer and darker the winter, the greater is our hunger to get into the lake, to hike in the woods, or just sit on our porch watching the birds and the wind in the trees. What we feel in our bones, that spending time in nature is good for body mind and spirit, is increasingly backed up by scientific research.

To turn this natural instinct into a spiritual practice, all we have to do is pay attention. This practice is not complex, just look, and listen, and be. Let your attention be drawn in whatever direction offers delight or curiosity. The more I do this practice, the more nature reveals its beauty, its complexity, its intelligence. Each summer as I take my spiritual practice outside, I grow in confidence that no matter where in the living world I turn my attention, if I am patient, I will find something fascinating and surprising.

Lately my attention has been drawn to that subtle bit of green fuzz that seems to glow when it rains, that coats the branches of the older trees in my neighborhood. The more I looked, the more fascinating it became. Someone asked to see photos from my sabbatical, and I realized 70% of my photos from this past spring are of different species of moss from wherever I traveled. Wherever I go, I am curious to see what moss lives there, and how it is doing. When we love something, when we are moved by it, it is only natural that we want it to flourish.

Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote the interconnected web of life of which we are a part. The more we listen and watch, the clearer those connections become, and the concrete and specific ways we can help heal that web. Recently I heard the first job of being an ally as “listening and amplifying.” It occurs to me that this is something the natural world desperately needs from us right now. The more we listen to the web of life, the better our chance of acting in harmony with what our local and global eco-systems need to survive and flourish. It doesn’t have to be moss- I am coming to believe that anywhere in the web of life we take the time to notice the complexities and gifts of another, we will be amazed, and will receive gifts of new wisdom.

Note- this worship service is almost entirely built on the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss. She's my hero. Read her books. Take her workshops. 

Small is beautiful
Moss is easy to overlook because it is so small. You have to get pretty close to even notice that, moss is not just one thing. Moss is a phylum name[i] for thousands of different species. That’s right, that green fuzz you see on your trees, sidewalk and roof could be one of 15,000 difference species. My appreciation of moss grew immensely when I read “Gathering Moss” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director at the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. A lot of today’s service is in her words, because not only has she spent much of her life studying moss, but she uses words so beautifully. Mosses are so small because they don’t have the vascular tissue, like trees, to help them stand up. Even the tallest moss can’t grow more than a few centimeters. But it is precisely because moss is so small that it can grow where no other species can grow. as Kimmerer describes “between the cracks of the sidewalk, on the branches of an oak, on the back of a beetle, or on the ledge of a cliff, mosses can fill in the empty spaces left between the big plants.” [p. 15]

Another gift of being small is that moss can live in a unique micro environment called the boundary layer where the air is quiet, and warmth and water vapor create a humid zone to which mosses are specially adapted. Kimmerer compares this boundary layer to a “floating greenhouse hovering just above the rock surface.” Because moss is so small, it doesn’t need a big rainstorm to survive, it can live on dew, even in a desert like environment (p. 20).

As I read that, I immediately thought of us. Our little church is the perfect size for this little community. It must be or it wouldn’t have lasted over 200 years. Small churches are nimble, intimate and authentic in a way big churches can’t be. If mega churches or businesses are the giant trees that rely on their specialized infrastructure to grow tall, little churches like us fit snugly into all kinds of diverse environments all over the world. Moss teaches us that small is beautiful.

We are better together
I always thought the patches of moss I saw were one plant, like a bush, or a tree. But really, each centimeter of moss is a tiny forest. Tetraphis moss, for example lives as 50-300 plants in a single centimeter. Says Kimmerer:

“Moss plants almost never occur singly, but in colonies packed as dense as an August cornfield. The nearness of others with shoots and leaves intertwined creates a porous network of leaf and space which holds water like a sponge. The more tightly packed the shoots, the greater the water holding capacity. A dense turf of a drought-tolerant moss may exceed three hundred stems per square inch. Separated from the rest of a clump, an individual moss shoot dries immediately.” [p. 38]

Holding water against the pull of the sun, and welcoming it back again is a communal; activity. No moss can do it alone. It requires the interweaving of shoots and branches, standing together to create a place for water.” [p. 43] 

Moss teaches us that we are better together.

Stability in an Unstable world
Did you know that some moss is gender-fluid?
Kimmerer tells us that “Tetraphis is unique in having specialized means of both sexual and asexual reproduction… Most mosses have the ability to clone themselves from broken off leaves or other torn fragments. These bits of debris can grow into new adults that are genetically identical to the parents, an advantage in a constant environment. The clones remain near the parents and have little ability to venture into new territory. Cloning by dismemberment may be effective but it is a decidedly crude and random way to send genes into the future. Tetraphis, however, is the aristocrat of asexual reproduction, possessed of a beautifully sculpted design for cloning itself. When I kneel to look closely at the patches of Tetraphis on the old stumps, I see that the surface of the colonies is sprinkled with what look like tiny green cups. These are gemmae cups, formed a the ends of the upright shoots, … Each gemma is poised to establish itself as new plant, cloned from its parents. It rests in the nest, waiting, Waiting for an event that will propel it away from its parent, where there’s room to grow and start its own parents.” [p. 73-74]

When rain falls into the gemmae cup, the gemmae are propelled away up to 15 centimeters, “more likely to land in the same neighborhood as their parents. As clonal propagules, the gemmae carry a combination of genes that has already proven successful on this stump.” p. 74

“There are other patches of Tetraphis on the very same stump which are the cinnamon color of old redwood. They take their rusty tint from the dense swath of sporophytes which rise from the green shoots… When the capsule is ripe, millions of spores will be released into the breeze. The product of sex, the spores will carry the shuffled genes far form their parents. While these spores have the advantage of variety and distance, their success rate is exceedingly small” -- one plant for every 800,000 spores. Whereas the gemmae success rate is 1 in 10. When population is low, Tetraphis produces the little bowls of gemmae to keep doing what is working. When things get too crowded, it makes spores that help them spread to hew homes. “Tetraphis is a sequential hermaphrodite, changing its gender from female to male as the colony gets crowded.” [p. 78]

And sometimes – disaster happens. Big chunks of the rotting logs that Tetraphis inhabit just fall off like landslides on a mountain. A fresh new space opens up, and in the next rains, the “little green eggs splash into the gaps” In Kimmerer’s words, “in the aftermath of disturbance the seeds were sown for the next wave of Tetraphis.” [p. 80] “Tetraphis… achieves stability in an unstable habitat by freely switching between reproductive strategies.” [p. 80] “In this changeable habitat, natural selection flavors flexibility.” [p. 81]

Moss teaches us that to find stability in an unstable world, we are capable of great flexibility.

Be ready for abundance
Moss loves water, but has special ways of surviving when water is scarce. In Kimmerer’s words “Profound changes in the shape of the mosses occur as water is pulled back to the atmosphere. Some mosses begin to fold their leaves or roll them inward. This reduces the exposed surface area of the leaf and helps the plant cling to the last bits of surface water. Nearly all mosses change their shape and color when they dry out… Some leaves wrinkle, some spiral and twist their leaves around the stem, a sheltering cloak against the dry wind. ..Crisp, dry and contorted, the mosses are transformed form soft fronds to brittle blackish tufts… like a ship being readied for dry dock the essential functions are carefully shut down and packed away. The cell membrane undergoes a change that allows it to shrink and collapse without sustaining irreparable damage. Most importantly the enzymes of cell repair are synthesized and stored for future access. Held in the shrunken membrane, these lifeboat enzymes can restore the cell to full vigor with the rains return… Only twenty minutes after wetting, the moss can go from dehydration to full vigor.” [p. 42]

“When the first drops begin to fall, … the water finds its way through the capillary spaces and soaks deeply into every cell. Within seconds the eager cells grow turgid and contorted stems spread towards the sky, leaves outstretched to meet the rain…branch by delicate branch unfolding to recreate the symmetry of overlapping fronds. As each stem uncurls its tender center is exposed and all along the midline are tiny capsules, bursting with spores. Ready for rain, they release their daughters upon the updrafts of rising musts.” [p. 43]

We all go through dry times: times of loss, times of heartbreak. The leaves and stems of our hearts and spirits curl in protectively. Moss reminds us to be ready for rain, to be ready to unfold and allow the waters of life in as quickly as we can. To hold every drop of life we can in those moments of abundance.

Everyone has a role to play in healing the world
When the Benson Iron Mines left the Adirondacks, the mine “closed and left behind hundreds of acres of sandy waste, a Sahara in the midst of the wet green Adirondacks.” The beautiful rich hummus that plants need to grow is now buried under the sterile sand “mine tailings” left from the mining process. Benson dodged its responsibility, and left this land an “orphan mine.”

Kimmerer tells us of her visit to the orphan mine with her student Aimee: “I walk up the tailings slope, slipping backwards in the loose sand, like walking on a beach. .. The sand can’t hold water so any rains percolate quickly, leaving it dry again. Without vegetation, there’s no organic matter to soak up water or build the foundation of a nutrient cycle. Without the shade of trees, the surface temperature can reach extremes—I’ve measured it at 127 degrees Fahrenheit, more than enough to wither a tender seedling. The slope is littered with spent shotgun cartridges, and cans shot full of holes….

“On the other side of the pile, there is a place where the land is healing itself. .. Here are clumps of bright hawkweed and clover and scattered evening primroses rooted in the tailings, they would be weeds in other situations, but their presence here is welcome…. Most of this slope is a carpet of Polytrichum moss… I admire its tenacity in enduring this place where others would wither away in the span of a single day. In last year’s field season, Aimee found that the wildflowers were almost never rooted in bare tailings, they almost always occurred in the beds of Polytrichum.” [p. 46-47] So Aimee has made this her thesis- to find out exactly how and why moss seems to help.

Her experiment involved planting seeds in three places: directly in the mine tailings, in a shag carpet that mimicked some of the characteristics of moss, and in patches of moss. In the harsh unprotected land of the orphan mine, only in the moss could the seeds find a hospitable place to begin life. The super-power of moss is how it traps and holds the ingredients for life- water, nutrients, and the seedlings of wildflowers and Aspen trees- the possibility of a fresh start. Kimmerer writes “out of the carpet of living moss came a crowd of seedlings, the next step in binding up the wounds of the land, life attracting life.” [p. 50]

In an amazing parallel, moss also has healing properties for humans, and was used as bandages by native peoples for thousands of years. During World War I moss was used in Great Brittan to pack the wounds of soldiers because of its absorbent and antibacterial acidity.[ii]

And in case the healing properties of moss seem irrelevant to our most pressing worries, the peat bogs that grow that very moss that bandaged soldiers still serve as carbon sinks, helping store thousands of years of carbon and slowing global warming. “Peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial carbon store; the area covered by near natural peatland worldwide (>3 million km2) sequesters 0.37 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year – storing more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined.”[iii]

Unitarian Universalists affirm the Interconnected web of life of which we are a part, but sometimes that web is overshadowed by our values of independence and individuality. We look at the destruction of an orphan mine, or the threat of global climate change, and we think “what can I do? This is too big for me to fix!” Moss reminds us that we are never alone. The web of life is huge, and deep, and miraculous and we have barely begun to understand it. It is absolutely true that I cannot fix climate change by myself. We need the moss, and the trees, and the coral reefs, and we need one another. Like the moss, our contribution as individuals might be small, but we are not alone. We are part of a huge and complex web of life yearning for life. Moss teaches us that we all have a role to play in healing the world.

So this summer as you sit on your porch or walk out in the world, notice our little moss cousins in their amazing diversity- whether you are deep in a nature preserve, or on a city street, moss has probably found its way there, let it be your teacher.

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[i] https://moss-musings.blogspot.com/2011/09/moss-names-and-taxonomy.html

[ii] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humble-moss-helped-heal-wounds-thousands-WWI-180963081/

[iii] https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/peatlands-and-climate-change