Staying Home? (October 11, 2015)

At the end of the environmentalist’s presentation, he took questions from the audience. A young voice in the back of the room asked “What’s the most important thing we can do to help the environment?” and the expert answers “Stay Home.”

By this I believe he meant two things- first, travel has a significant carbon footprint, whether we are driving or flying, we need to carefully consider our impact on our eco system.

The second thing he was getting at was that in this highly mobile culture we under-value our commitment to place. There is a cultural expectation that, for example, as we move forward in our education or in our career, this so far outweighs our connection to place, to our web of relationships, that moving away from them is a natural and inevitable thing. Let me give an example from my own life. Although I had spent my whole life in Wayne Pennsylvania, (a town about half an hour outside Philadelphia) I chose a college a 12 hour drive away in Indiana based only on the quality of the music program, I moved again to Baltimore for Grad school, and a couple of years later and I moved to The San Francisco Bay Area for Seminary. In California it seemed like everyone we met was in the same situation- apparently less than half the residents of California had been born there. It was a highly mobile culture to which people migrated from around the world, mostly to work in the booming technology industry. But it turns out this is a nation wide trend- only half of adults 25 and older in this country still reside in the state of their birth[i].

It wasn’t until I became involved with the environmental movement that I realized all this migration might have a negative effect. I learned about native plants of California, which are tolerant of the long dry summers and short rainy winters, and began to notice all the Maple trees, rosebushes and other imports in my neighborhood that required daily watering. Almost every family had installed a sprinkler system to support these imported plants. You see, each family had brought with them the expectations and habits of their home ecosystems. People who moved to California from the North East planted all their favorite plants to make their adopted place feel more like home.  We treated our new home like a blank canvas waiting to be filled.

In my first 5 years in California I moved 6 times- tossed about by the volatile real estate market. Most of those times we moved I never did register to vote. I certainly didn’t know who my local elected officials were, or where my drinking water came from. In each new home I would plant a few plants, and just hope when we left that the new residents would notice them and care for them.

As I finished my seminary training, I realized I was training for a career in which it was expected that I would be willing to move every 3-7 years to whatever part of the country needed a UU minister. Yet everything my UU values were showing me was that both our eco-systems and our human communities needed a loyalty to place. Those of you who garden know that any time you move a plant, this is a stressful and dangerous moment in the life of the plant and disruptive to the garden. You have to be very careful to dig a wide circumference to get as much of the root structure as possible, and we humans who only have metaphorical roots often underestimate how far and deep those plant roots go. Then we must dig a hole for the new plant big enough to make room for all its roots and for new roots to grow. Then we water every day until it is established, because the compromised roots can’t yet do the job all by themselves. Even so , the plant will probably loose leaves or flowers as it uses all its energy to make the transition.

Part of the reason this environmental leader wanted us to “stay home” was so we could develop a sense of place. We would notice the things you only see when you live in a place year after year- that apple trees do great here and lemon trees struggle, that you just can’t plant certain things in the spring until the very last danger of frost is past. Why does that matter? Because the more closely we observe and know our local ecosystem, the better chance that we will act in harmony with that system. We will notice that it's not a blank canvas, but a living system.  When we know where our water comes from, we can keep an eye on it as the volunteers in our local water monitoring project are doing, making sure it stays clean and that if it is contaminated we notice and can do something about it. If we know what ward we are in, and when the city council meets, we can have a conversation with our city council person about the things that are important to us.


When we commit to a particular place, we have a chance to know a place deeply, we put down roots. And just like the deep rooted plants in any eco system, our metaphorical human roots not only provide us better access to the resources we need to live, as trees and plants have better access to water and nutrients when their roots are mature and healthy. But those deep-rooted plants and trees also help hold the eco system together, they prevent a disaster like the dust bowl of the 1930s[ii] and are helping to heal desertification of Africa[iii] So by putting down roots we preserve and protect the places we know and care about.

When we moved to Ithaca, I made a commitment to myself and my partner that we would try to stay in this area at least until Nick graduated from High School. It seemed crazy at the time- we’d never been able to stay any place for 12 years before. But we wanted to try. We wanted to know our trees, our creeks, our neighbors, our city council people in a way that only happens when you “stay home.” And after being in this area for 8 years, I can see both the gifts of growing these connections slowly over time, and also how much more I have to learn, how much deeper roots could be.

But healthy systems need not only those who stay, but those who move -- no community is self-sufficient. Migration is a natural part of life for many species, for many people. A tree cannot migrate, but its seeds can be carried in the bodies of migrating birds as far as those species can travel. Think of those people who move as carrying the seeds of ideas. How many great ideas have come into this community from people who brought those ideas with them.

Migrators are able to follow the availability of food through the seasons. In the same way modern humans follow jobs as our ancestors used to follow the ripening fruits or the animals they hunted for food. Our current political rhetoric ignores the fact that humans have migrated since their birth as a species, to the fill the planet as we see today. [iv] In fact, some of the places where we have erected national borders are right through traditional human migration paths.

Or let’s take the massively controversial issue of migrant farm workers. Anyone who has ever worked on a farm knows that when a crop is ready, there is a surge of work that needs to be done RIGHT NOW or the crop will rot in the fields. No farmer can keep enough hands on staff at their farm all year round to handle that surge. Each year as I look forward to peach season, I pay attention to the sticker on my produce that tells me where it comes from. I notice how my peaches start out in Georgia, then move to Pennsylvania, before our local orchards in Ithaca start bringing them to the farmer’s market. The most natural thing in the world is for workers who pick peaches to follow the fruit as it ripens. Many industries need workers to move  when the work moves.  If there is a shortage of nurses in rural towns, we surely want some nurses to move where the need is greatest.

Sadly, not everyone has the choice to stay. Just this year so many people I care about lost their funding, grants came to an end, jobs disappeared. People who love this place had to sever their roots, their connections and move, often very far away. As we read about the rising ocean waters, or the growing severity of storms -- scientist, economists agree that many of the places where people have grown their roots for years are just not going to support them anymore. It seems very sensible after a storm like Sandy, or these floods in South Carolina,  to say “maybe we shouldn’t rebuild those areas which are just going to be destroyed again.” But realize that when we say that, we are saying that people who have put down deep roots for years, or sometimes for generations, are going to have to cut those life- sustaining roots and move someplace where they have to start again. It occurred to me that “staying home” is not only a virtue, but it is also a privilege which an increasing number of people in this world will be denied by the realities of changing weather, changing economies, and by war.

I no longer feel like I can stand in this pulpit and ask you all to “stay home.” I know that some of you did just that; you live within 10 or 20 or 100 miles of the place where you were born. Others of you have adopted your current home and put down roots here. Some of us have just arrived. We may be loved by this community for a few months or years, and then we may be on our way again a for work or family or even a love of adventure. Both staying and moving is necessary for a healthy society. Most of us have been or will be both movers and stayers at some point in our lives. They are polarities on a continuum that includes us all. So we need an ethic both when we are staying and when we are moving.

In this mobile society, we need an ethic for movers. If you are new to this area, or thinking of moving some place new, I encourage you to develop a sense of place. Before you plant the tree that reminds you of home, spend a year watching the trees around you , the plants, the critters, the weather. Learn where your food comes from and where your waste goes. I encourage you to meet your neighbors. For introverts this is kind of a challenge, but as we discussed last Sunday, just knowing the names and the faces of the people who live to your right, to your left and across the street will enable you to help one another in storm or fire. If you know your neighbors, they can bring back your dog when he digs under the fence (for which I was very grateful) or let in your cat on a cold afternoon (as I do for my neighbor cat who has figured out I have this power). 

I challenge you who are movers to be open to the inner wisdom of a your new place, your new community. I remember at my first minister’s retreat in this area thinking it was strange that they didn’t have a winter meeting like we did in California. I made this suggestion and they all burst out laughing- “you’re not from around here” they said. I surely do understand now, 8 years later, why you schedule any driving adventures in February at your own risk.  

Finally, be open to being changed by your new home but Honor your own traditions and wisdom as well- Consider our children’s story from this morning. The Jewish tradition of honoring the Sabbath was developed during a period of exile and grounds Jewish families around the world in their religion and heritage no matter where they may move or stay.

There are ethics for those who stay as well. First, meet your neighbors. The old tradition of bringing a pie to the neighbors who move in is a good one. It not only makes the new folks feel welcome, but it gives you an excuse to introduce yourself and get to know them a little bit, and help them begin to root in the local network of relationships.

Second, make the local rules and traditions explicit. In communities like this one where some people have lived here for generations, we don’t always realize that what we think is “just the way it’s done” is in fact simply “the way we do things here.” For example, we’ve been doing “check in” so long in this congregation it wasn’t until a brave newcomer asked us to explain the rules that I even realized that there were rules that needed explaining. A master teacher once suggested that the key to classroom management was to clearly explain the rules, rituals and expectations the first day of class, and to revisit those rules any time someone new joined the class. 

Third, be open to being changed by the newcomers- they bring the seeds of new things that may be just what you needed.

Finally, remember that stayers occupy a privileged place. This really hit home when we started hearing reports about the Syrian Refugees. Here are shopkeepers, teachers, doctors, farmers, mothers, fathers, children arriving tired and broken sometimes with only the clothes on their backs. Ripped from their roots, looking for a place to start again. 

When Iceland offered to take in 50 refugees, Icelandic radio reports that “a local children's book author, Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir created a Facebook page asking for people to take refugees into their homes. Over the weekend, 12,000 people out of Iceland's population of just over 300,000 signed up and now Iceland's government says it will consider taking in more Syrians. One woman Wrote:

Dear Eyglo  I can take care of children, I can take them to preschool and to school and everything that is needed. I can offer people food in my house, and I can show them friendship and warmth. I can also pay for airline tickets for one little family, and I can put my knowledge into helping pregnant women.[v]

Wow. What amazing generosity. When I imagine a family of refugees staying in my own home, I am really humbled by her offer. Not all of us are in a position to pay for airline tickets, or invite a family into our homes, but this refugee crisis invites us to reconsider our ethic of place. Whenever people are displaced from their homes through war or hurricane or fire, it is up to those of us who have the privilege of being rooted in community to consider -- what is our moral responsibility? And whenever we ourselves are pulling up roots and moving our home, it is ours to ask, what ethical responsibility do I have to my new home? How do I care for my temporary home so that it can be home for all the beings who will call this place home long after I am gone? Whether we are movers or stayers, we have a responsibility to all the places we live.

Endnotes
[i] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-shows-increase-in-native-population-3163810.php
[ii] http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm
[iii] http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/stopping-desertification-in-africa-with-a-great-green-wall.htm
[iv] http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/human-migration3.htm
[v] http://www.npr.org/2015/09/02/436820838/iceland-considers-taking-in-more-syrian-refugees

How Superman Got it Wrong (September 20, 2015)

For generations Super Man has been the ultimate role model. He’s polite, clean cut, humble, and devotes his life to helping others in their greatest need. And this despite the fact he’s not even from around here, his own planet having been destroyed when he was just a baby. At his best, Super Man is a story that calls each of us to selflessly help friends and strangers when they are in crisis, even when that may mean putting ourselves in unpleasant situations.

There are some who say that history is made by great men -- individuals with talent, character, charisma, who shape our destiny. This is called, not surprisingly “the Great Man Theory. ” The theory was put forward in the 1840s by Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle. This must have been the theory behind history books we read in High school- the names and dates of kings and generals and presidents. But a couple of decades later Herbert Spencer put forward a counter-argument that kind of blew my mind; Spencer said that “great men are the products of their societies, and that their actions would be impossible without the social conditions built before their lifetimes”.[i] 

Let’s take the Super Man story itself . It was originally created in the 1930s by 2 high school students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and over the years the comic book has had 5 different writers, 10 different pencillers, 4 different inkers, and that doesn’t count “the Adventures of superman” series. If it hadn’t touched something important in our collective imaginations, if we hadn’t been buying the comics all those years, Superman would not be who he is today. His story has been told by TV shoes, video games, Broadway musicals and movies, and none of that would have been possible with out “the social conditions built before [his] lifetime.”

Consider the movies -- the 1978 one with Christopher Reeve that I watched when I was a kid, or that “Man of Steel” one that came out just a couple of years ago. If you look these films up online, the title usually appears with the name of the director, or the name of the star. But have you ever sat through movie credits all the way to the end. Like, ALL the way to the end? That’s a LOT of people who work on those movies. No one could create something that big alone.

That’s why I like the Avengers movies that have been coming out lately. Has anyone seen any of these movies? This is a group of Super Heroes from the Marvel Universe -- Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor, black widow, Hawkeye are all recruited by SHEILD to guard us against threats to our safety and liberty. Director Fury quips “there was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, so that when we needed them they could fight the battles that we never could” Naturally these strong-egoed super heroes are unwilling to work together at first, but eventually must put their own egos aside to save humankind. I like the fact that they work as a team -- that collaboration is held up as a value for the modern superhero.

The dark side of the superhero archetype, whether our superheroes are working alone or as a team, is the implication that “they could fight the battles that we never could.” It encourages us to look outside ourselves, outside our community for someone who will come out of nowhere in the nick of time to save us. Because these Avengers films still show us, the ordinary earthlings, mostly running and screaming, and slow to do anything to save ourselves. When the Avengers drop in from above, they immediately yell for all the ordinary people to get out of the way so the super heroes can do their work. 

As my family and I walked out of the theater after seeing Avengers; The age of Ultron this summer, I wondered how all these super hero movies that are so popular right now are effecting our sense of who we are, and what we are called to do in this world. It worries me that it divides the world into Super Heroes, Super Villains, and everyone else who needs to run and hide or else be crushed. 

Consider the footage we see after a natural disaster- outside agencies rushing in from around the world, relief teams pulling a child from the wreckage days after the disaster, when all hope was lost. A recent interview [by I forget who] with a reporter who was deconstructing our media coverage of disasters, noted that part of the reason we see the images that we see is because it takes a while for both the media and the outside agencies to arrive on the scene. By the time the Red Cross or MSNBC arrive, they have missed much of the story.

The people who live near the earthquake or fire are the de facto first responders. The people to your right and to your left are your best hope of help, and you are theirs. They know where the greatest need is, and they know where people disappeared and who is still missing. But, according to this journalist, when the NGO or the national guard comes in, the first thing they do is just what the Avengers do- create a perimeter and require those first responders, now categorized as “victims” to leave “ for their own safety.” 

Then, the reporter continued, when the dust has settled, and the last heroic rescue has been made, and photographed the reporters and emergency responders leave. This reminds me of a scene out of superhero movie too. You know the one, where Superman or Ironman hover in the sky looking down on the wreckage of the great battle in which they saved humanity. The ordinary people, dusty and bloody, stare up at them with teary eyed gratitude “thank you superman” they say, as superman flies off to his fortress of solitude, or his date with Lois Lane. But there in the background we see the rubble of people’s destroyed lives, we know the suffering has not ended, and that the rebuilding has just begun.

Consider the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Now 10 years later, many neighborhoods, schools, jobs have never been restored. The grief residents feel lives with them every day. The story does not end when Superman or even the Avengers stop the super villain, or avert the natural disaster; the work of healing and rebuilding continues for a long time. The work is not particularly glamorous or photo ready for the news media as ordinary people, day by day rebuild the world. As the great Adrienne Rich says:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save;
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those who age after age,
perversely with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

As the Hero in our reading, Michinori Watanabe found, it was ordinary people, you and me, who were there for one another when they needed it most. 

Around the 10th anniversary of Katrina there was a surge of reporting about the hurricane and the recovery effort. It was during that surge that I heard about that fellow Kirk Washington who has done so much over the past 10 years to help his community recover. There were countless other stories of how people really got through those dark days, and how they continue to get through them together. We know now that not all the neighborhoods survived, that not every community came together. As Aldrich found, it is the closeness of our connections, our willingness to reach out to one another that is most important to making it though such catastrophic times. This is part of what we aspire to be as a UU congregation. And I have seen you do it- I have seen you reach out to one another in crisis and tragedy, I have seen you be there for one another. It is that very ordinary kind of heroism by which we are saved.

I propose that this critique of the super hero may emerges naturally from Unitarian Universalist ideals. One of the fundamental ideas of Unitarianism, a movement founded at a time when Calvinist theologians thought of humans as fully depraved , in bondage to sin and subject to God, was the radical idea that humans also have good capacities, including conscience and freedom to act. This has made us a “role up your sleeves” type religion, believing that each human has some part to play in the building and rebuilding of our world. As the great Unitarian Preacher William Ellery Channing wrote:

whenever we think, speak, or act, with moral energy and resolute devotion to duty, be the occasion ever so humble, obscure, familiar; — then the divinity is growing within us, and we are ascending towards our Author. True religion thus blends itself with common life.

Channing was a theist, but the same principle holds for those Unitarians who are Humanists- the use of our powers in freedom is at the heart of what it means to be human and to live a life of meaning.

On the other side of our lineage, it was our Universalist founders who rebelled against the idea that only some special elect were chosen by God, and affirmed that all of us had the potential for salvation. If we extrapolate this into our day to day living, I believe that there are not simply superheroes and supervillains who make history, while the rest of us try to get out from under foot. I know that each of us has the choice, in any given moment, to help, to heal, to save, to protect. We don’t always get it right, of course --we’re human. Sometimes we hurt when we are trying to help, sometimes we miss opportunities, and of course sometimes running and hiding is exactly the right thing to do. 

Imagine us all as one big team of Avengers- every living being on this planet. We are all called to be heroes in ways large and small. And – this is just as important- we need to remember when we swoop into a scene to help, that everyone we are there to help is a hero too. Too often we make the mistake of thinking we know best, we come in from outside the situation with fresh eyes and all our resources, and we actually might undermine the capacities, the needs of the very people we are trying to help. We need to remember that when we come to help, our call is not “everybody back- I’ve got this” but “Tell me what you know. Tell me what you are already doing. Where can I be of use?”

 The next time you are listening to the news, to the stories about NGOs flying in to help distressed populations, remember the thousands of untold stories of neighbors and friends who cared for one another before the relief workers could find them. The next time you are watching a movie about Super Heroes, or a documentary about Great Men from history, remember to fill in all the ordinary people who are part of the scene too, all the neighbors and strangers who helped one another flee and shelter while the Avengers had their great battle, and who together rebuilt their community when the battle was done and the Avengers were off eating shawarma. The most important work of disaster response is done by those who live through that disaster together. The next time some disaster, large or small, strikes your community, think of yourself as a first responder, and use your super or ordinary powers to help save the day.
 

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory

[ii] http://video.bridgeward.com/2015/08/28/burying-vera-smith-ten-years-after-hurricane-katrina/

[iii] http://www.npr.org/2011/07/04/137526401/the-key-to-disaster-survival-friends-and-neighbors

Loving Your Wyrd (June 7, 2015)

I was a weird little kid. I learned this from the kids in my class at school, who were quick to point it out. It’s hard for me to look back now and imagine what they saw that earned me this label. From the inside my child hood was full of daydreaming, reading piles and piles of books. Maybe it was because I told long rambly stories and spouted unusual ideas. To be weird, I knew, was to be an outsider. But I also knew (probably because I went to a UU church, and because of the bolstering talks my mom gave each time I was teased at school) that being weird had something to do with being true to myself. I remember one time a cluster of schoolmates yelling “you’re weird!” at me, and yelling back rebelliously “ I know I am !” “She admits it!” They laughed incredulously to one another.

A couple decades later an old school friend had come to visit. Andy and I talked about the strange twists and turns that had lead us to the lives we were living today. I think part of the reason we were friends in high school was not only because our names were near each other in the alphabetical seating chart, but because, I imagine, as an intellectual and an aspiring writer he must have at some point faced similar accusations of being “weird.” But here we were in adulthood, both of us loving the unconventional lives unfolding before us. He asked “When did you come to love your weird?” It was a beautiful articulation or something I’d never heard spoken before -- the realization that it was the very things that made me “weird” that had blossomed into the life I loved. Reading and pondering may make for a weird kid, but are great qualities for a minister. The weird theories I was always spouting about feminism and kindness to plants and animals now fill a notebook of sermon ideas. My friend now has a very prestigious writing job, and I get the sense his weird has lead him to some really amazing and unexpected places over the years since we were in school together. Both of us are happy, creative adults who managed to integrate our “weirdness” into our cohesive lives. 

Yes, I thought, that’s really the question. When did I stop my unsuccessful efforts to be like everyone else? When did I realize that the unfolding of my own authentic self was my best bet for inner happiness? When did I come to believe that my weirdness was inseparable from my special calling to serve the world?  

When Andy asked ““When did you come to love your weird?” it occurred to me that “weird” had 2 meanings. I had recently been introduced to the Nordic idea of a “Wyrd” which is similar to that of fate or destiny. This word describes the flow by which past actions lead us to our present, the flow by which we shape our future in the present. This was first explained to me with the metaphor of a stream, the way it tends to run in its bed in a certain way, running around this rock or that tree-root. So in the moment when he asked “when did you start to love your ‘weird’?”, I also thought about how by embracing the things that were weird about me, I had also begun to embrace the path which most organically unfolded in front of me, available to me because of my past actions and my particular biology. (Nature and nurture if you will).        

UUs tend to believe strongly in our freedom to make choices, but even a creek has only the freedom to ramble in its bed. The free flowing water shapes its bed over time, but there are limits to its freedom. There is no question that for each of us some things come easy, some things are hard won, and others seem to be unobtainably out of reach. It is tempting to imagine a different fate: “If only I had been born in a different time and different place” or “If only I had chosen that job instead of the other” or “If only I hadn’t had that accident that left me with a limp.” Sometimes we raise our fist to the powers that be in rage and grief asking “Why can’t I be like the other kids at school?! Why isn’t my life like the ones on TV?” 

There are two reasons to love your wyrd. The first is to save your own life. The great 20th century psychologist Carl Jung proposed that the effort of trying to be something we are not is what leads to neurosis. “Behind the neurotic… is concealed his vocation, his destiny; the growth of personality, the full realization of the life will that is born with the individual. It is the man without amor fati who is the neurotic; he truly has missed his vocation.” [Jung collected works v 17 p. 313] Amor Fati means “love of fate.” For the purposes of our conversation today I am going to use the words “Wyrd” and “Fate” interchangeably. Although perhaps he word “fate” evokes the bed in which the stream flows (the reality of your life now in this historical moment) and “Wyrd” evokes the process of flowing over and through that reality. When we don’t embrace our fate, when we try to fit ourselves into some stereotyped role, when we try to keep our path from rambling, it takes a huge amount of psychic energy, and prevents us from growing into our best selves.

And yet as a culture this is exactly what we do. We discourage people from being “weird” -- from truly expressing their unique potential. Our schools prepare them to take standardized tests, and then to fill standardized jobs. We even do it to our streams, cementing them into straight channels. Ostensibly we do this to prevent flooding, but it turns out that a meandering stream or river is better at preventing flash floods and distributing nutrients than even our best engineered channels.

When I headed off to seminary I thought of my spiritual journey as a quest with a single goal-- as something that could be expressed in a single word, like “Minister” or “writer.” But I am beginning to see that my own wyrd is more like the path of a creek, one that unfolds day by day, choice by choice, interaction by interaction. Who knows where our wyrd will meander day by day, and what our impact will be- the unique meandering of your wyrd allows you to give voice to the insight only you could have. To grow the relationship only you could grow. As Wyldstyle said in the movie: “making whatever weird thing pops into our heads.”

This brings us back to our text for the morning- the Lego Movie. Early in the movie our hero Emmet is challenged to show his stuff- to make something, anything. And he comes up with…. The Double Decker Couch “So everyone can watch TV together and be buddies.” His friends are far from supportive: “That is literally the dumbest thing I ever heard.” Even the wise prophet says “That idea is just… the worst.” The Double Decker Couch becomes a running joke, the epitome of a lame idea. But when their ship is blown apart and all seems to be lost, it is the double decker couch, buoyed up by the handy coolers under each seat, that floats to the surface, saving all our heroes’ lives. In the words of Wyldstyle: “it turns out Emmet had great ideas, and even though they seemed weird, or kind of pointless, they came closer than anyone else to saving the universe.”

This is the second reason to love your Wyrd- because the world depends on it. You might expect that the hero of the movie would be special, would have a special destiny. But it turns out this movie is a Universalist movie. As the prophet Vitruvius says:

 “I knew that whoever found the piece could become the special, because the only thing anyone needs to be special is to believe that you can be. I know that sounds like a cat poster, but it’s true…”

Emmet Protests (a good Unitarian Protest): “How can I just decide to believe that I’m special. I’m not”

Vitruvius replies: “Because the world depends on it”

It is not due to some kind of predestination that Emmet is “special,” it is because he embraces his wyrd, because he says yes to his fate that he is able to play his role in saving the universe.
This requires a leap of faith, but I am not asking you to make a leap that is magical or mythological. This leap requires faith in the web of life. We tend to look at the big huge problems the world has today and to ask “how can I solve global warming?” or “What can I do to bring peace to Palestine?” Having the faith to follow your wyrd requires having faith in the rest of us to follow our own. We think of great leaders like Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa, each of whom touched millions of lives, each of whom helped change the world. But not one of them did it alone. When Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech, there at the Lincoln Memorial were 250,000 people, each of whom has a story about how they chose to leave their homes and travel to Washington, to stand in the crowd all day. As he said in that speech “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Think about the tremendous web it took to turn the tide of civil rights. Consider each child who marched with King in the Children’s Crusade. Consider each person who chose to walk to work day after day, month after month instead of taking the bus during the bus boycott. All of these individual streams fed the great river of social change. And the web of our intermingled fates is much wider and more complex than that. Think of the teachers that might have inspired King, or Rosa Parks, or Dorothy Cotton when they were children -- a word of kindness or encouragement at the right moment. We will never completely know how our lives shape the lives of others, how we shape the world even as we are being shaped by it.
 And Universalists believe that each of us has a role to play. Take “80s spaceship guy.” Throughout The Lego Movie, all he wants to do is build a spaceship. He is compelled by some inner desire, some single-minded compelling drive to build a spaceship. Even though time after time people roll their eyes when he offers to build one, finally when it matters most, when the universe is on the line, his wyrd leads him to build that spaceship. I will confess to you that when he finally got to build his dream ship in that scene I just showed you, I burst into tears. There is a deep primal hope in me, faith even, that someday by being truly who we are, by “making the weird stuff only you could make” that we can help make the world a better place. Some of us will be able to see the fruit of our actions-- that pure joy dawning in Spaceship Guy’s face as he leaps into his spaceship to save the day. But most of us will not. Sometimes all we have is that feeling of “rightness” that feeling that right now, right in this moment I am doing what I need to be doing, the only thing I can do, the thing only I can do. Following your wyrd, your fate, just feels right, it feels natural.

 It’s not always easy, in fact that we know it can be hard, and so sometimes we resist our wyrd; we fear we may be called, like Emmet, to jump off the edge of the known universe into the abyss. But most often our fate calls us to be exactly who we are: a caring father, a meticulous accountant, an ethical citizen, a dedicated physical therapist. Maybe this sermon right now is a double decker couch-- weird, or kind of pointless, but if one of you is inspired, encouraged to love your wyrd, then it played a part in the healing of the world. Most often we will never get to build a spaceship, or confront Lord Business face to face, but wherever our wyrd leads, it makes a difference whether we love our fate, or struggle against it.

There are a lot of texts we could have used to illustrate this idea. For example, I almost used the text from Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, which states “It is better to fail in one’s own Dharma, than to succeed in the Dharma of another.” By choosing the Lego Movie I run the risk of implying that this is not a serious idea, not an important idea. I chose the Lego Movie partly because I think it’s a great movie and I thought you’d all enjoy it. But mostly I chose it because we are an intergenerational community, and I wanted to make sure that when we talk about “Each and every person” we Universalists mean each and every person right now as they are today, not someday later when we grow up, or finish school, or get that job, or become some fully developed hero like you read about in history books.

Each and every one of us is living out our fate, our Wyrd right now. And when our Wyrd gets a little weird, we will have a choice to make; we can embrace or deny it. We can go ahead and make the weird and seemingly pointless thing, or we can ignore our inner voice and try to be the person other people expect us to be.

This week as you go back out into the world, I want to encourage you to listen for your special path, like a creek rambling over rocks and through tree roots. I encourage you to notice where your wyrd is leading you even when, or especially when, it is different than where your friends or neighbors are being lead. “All of you have it inside you to be a groundbreaker. And I mean literally, break the ground, tear off the pieces, tear apart the walls. Build things only you could build.” Take the leap of faith that your wyrd is part of a vast web you share with every other being. Follow that call wherever it leads. It is your wyrd to love.

Through a Screen Darkly (May 3, 2015)

 

I was at a family wedding recently, sitting near the back of the chapel, and in front of me was a sea of glowing screens. It seemed like every person in the place was watching the wedding ceremony through a screen. They have become so ubiquitous in our culture, it’s amazing to remember that the iPhone is only a few years old. When my son was born 13 years ago we got our first cell phone “for emergencies.” And our first digital camera. (These were two separate objects of course.) I never suspected then how profoundly this rapidly evolving technology would change our lives. It has changed not only how we communicate with one another, but how we shop, how we play games, how we watch movies, how we listen to music, how we interact with other people in the room with us, and apparently… how we celebrate a wedding ceremony.

When technology is rushing ahead at such a pace, it may take our human-ness a while to catch up. It’s such a relief to have a gps when you are lost, to have a cell phone when you’ve lost your family in a crowd. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to research sermons now that all the information in the world seems to be available at my fingertips. But when I saw that phone commercial we just watched together, I felt like that summed up everything that was troubling me about our personal screens. All those beautiful places, all those wonderful moments...and between the human being and the living world was always a screen. I began to wonder- how can we develop a healthy balanced relationship to our screens? As a faith community, and as individuals, can we develop a response to the cultural messages that the latest phone or tablet or phablet (or whatever) is always necessary, always central to what we need and want? I think there are 3 basic questions that can guide us to a balanced, healthy relationship to our seductively brilliant technology.

The first question we can ask ourselves: “ is my screen coming between me and this moment?” The reason I was so surprised to see all those phones glowing during the wedding was because I believe when we gather in worship we are creating a living moment together that cannot be captured or duplicated. That wedding was an important event in the life of my family, one we all wanted to remember forever. But I wondered, are we losing something of our lived experience in the moment to create a digital record of that experience?

Psychologist Linda Henkel, who researches human memory at Fairfield University in Connecticut, has found what she called a "photo-taking impairment effect." In her study, she asked students to take photos of statues and other artworks at a museum and afterward found that:

"The objects that they had taken photos of — they actually remembered fewer of them, and remembered fewer details about those objects. Like, how was this statue's hands positioned, or what was this statue wearing on its head. They remembered fewer of the details if they took photos of them, rather than if they had just looked at them," 

Henkel concluded “relying on an external memory aid means you subconsciously count on the camera to remember the details for you.”[i]

Psychologist Marion Garry (a professor at Victoria University in Wellington NZ)[ii] has also been studying the impact of the relationship between photography and memory. She is troubled by parents who take thousands of photos of their children (and I assure you I am one of those parents)

"I think the problem is people are giving away being in the moment" …"and their devices are only going to capture so much...I wish they'd put their camera down and just watch what was happening. It's the idea that they think what they are doing is amplifying their memory, and I worry that what they are doing is just giving the memory away. So if they are paying less attention because what they've got to do is take all those photos. They are splitting their attention between what's going on and the act of taking the picture… It seems to me to be a kind of loss." [1:59]

Garry also noticed that having thousands of photos seemed to reduce the occurrence of a parent and child sitting and looking at a single photo together and telling the story together of that shared memory (which, it turns out, is an important skill that is transmitted from parent to child) . Better, she says, is to have just a couple of photos that we share with our children and one another. Often that one photo can be a jumping off point for many shared memories.



The second question is similar- is this screen coming between myself and others? Our cultural expectations vary widely around this. I remember telling a neighbor that I usually put my phone away when I was in meetings so that I could be fully present. He said at his company it was expected that you always have your phone out checking your e-mail and messages in case a customer needed you. Their company culture emphasized the need to multi-task to maximize productivity.

Sometimes screens bring us together, sometimes they keep us apart. I’ve seen young people clustered around a DS screen fully engaged together in a shared experience. On the other hand, I bet we’ve all experienced a time when a friend or family member is starting at their screen and you can’t seem to get their full attention.

A study in the journal of Environment and Medicine looked at this phenomenon which they call “The iPhone Effect: The Quality of In-Person Social Interactions in the Presence of Mobile Devices[iii] During the study a research assistant would observe subjects having a conversation at a coffee shop and “during the course of a 10-min conversation noting whether either participant placed a mobile device on the table or held it in his or her hand.” When the data was gathered together they found that people whose phones stayed out of site during the conversation felt more empathy for one another.

Shalini Misra of Virginia Tech University, who led the study, writes:

“Even without active use, the presence of mobile technologies has the potential to divert individuals from face-to-face exchanges, thereby undermining the character and depth of these connections. Individuals are more likely to miss subtle cues, facial expressions, and changes in the tone of their conversation partner’s voice, and have less eye contact.”[iv]
“If either participant placed a mobile communication device on the table, or held it in their hand, during the course of the 10-minute conversation, the quality of the conversation was rated to be less fulfilling, compared with conversations that took place in the absence of mobile devices,” the researchers report.[v]

The message is clear, while our technology can bring us together in many ways, helping old friends reconnect on Facebook, or grandparents skyping their grandchildren from far away, if we are trying to build relationships, it’s best to leave mobile devices out of site. If the conversation is one you care about, putting your screens away is likely to make the conversation more fulfilling.

Now our third question: “is my screen coming between me and my Self?” This is what Louis CK was getting at in our opening reading. He contends that “you need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something-- that's what the phones are taking away.” Here is this popular comedian saying essentially the same thing on a late night talk show that my classmates and I heard at on the first seminary of Spiritual Director’s training; contemplation is that ability to just be and not do, and then to allow whatever arises to just arise. Sometimes that is profound sadness, or loneliness, or despair, and sometimes it is peace, or delight, or a sense of oneness with all that is. Contemplation requires space and time and patience, and when we fill up all the empty gaps in our life there is no room left to develop the relationship to the deepest parts of ourselves. 

I have this habit- if I am out at dinner with my husband and he gets up to wash his hands, immediately my phone comes out. Sending a quick text to a friend helps it feel less awkward to be alone, and it helps fill up that brief gap in conversation while he is gone. Louis’ monologue hints that there may be something else going on there- why do I want to distract myself from the fact that I’m alone? What if instead I used that brief pause to re-center myself in myself? What if I used that brief gap to just enjoy the environment around me? And if that feels weird-why? Jungian Spiritual Director Don Bisson says “Technology has quickened our expectations creating an inability to wait”. His theory is that because almost everything we seek on our screens happens in an instant, we have become less practiced, less comfortable with waiting. Instead of welcoming moments of quiet introspection, we fend them off with a quick look at Facebook. 

Our screens provide innovative ways to get and share information, to reach out to our friends and family across the world. But I haven’t yet seen them provide a way to ground ourselves in our own center. I have never stood up after an hour spent reading my Facebook newsfeed or surfing the web saying “that was refreshing, now I really feel centered and spiritually grounded.” Instead I usually feel scattered and wonder where the time went. 

All our technological marvels are ultimately just tools. Even the iPhone 6. Like a well sharpened knife, a good tool helps us do our work more effectively. Some of these devices can do an amazing number of things, but no tool can do everything. It is not the job of our i-thingies, or even of the Apple Corporation to discern how and when technology is best used. It is up to you, in dialogue with your family, with your community, with your ecosystem, to create a healthy balance. 

I’m reminded of that passage from 1st Corinthians:[vi] “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Obviously when the apostle Paul wrote this he could never have foreseen a culture full of people viewing the world through their smart phones, but the first century Christians to whom Paul wrote understood that when they looked through their first century glass it was not the same as looking at something face to face. He was reminding his followers that often we see the world in a superficial way, but we are capable seeing the truth more deeply, more fully, “face to face.” This traditional wisdom holds true in our drastically transformed times. The religious way, the deep way encourages us to look at the world face to face, to know as we are known. Remember, the first source of our UU religious tradition is “Direct Experience of that transcending mystery and wonder.” Even the adorable photo of our grandchild that gets 1000 likes on Facebook cannot compare to the experience of holding that little person in our arms. In this age of technological wonders, we must constantly discern: when is this shiny marvelous screen bringing me deeper into connection with myself, with others, and with this moment, and when is it time to put all our screens away, and just be.

Endnote

[i] You can find Henkle’s full study here http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/12/04/0956797613504438.abstract

[ii] Study that we don't remember things that we take notes or photos of as well http://www.npr.org/2014/05/22/314592247/overexposed-camera-phones-could-be-washing-out-our-memorieS 

[iii] The iPhone Effect: The Quality of In-Person Social Interactions in the Presence of Mobile Devices
http://eab.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/31/0013916514539755.abstract

[v] http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/presence-smart-phone-lowers-quality-person-conversations-85805/

[vi] 1 Corinthians 13:12King James Version (KJV)

 

Evolving Together (March 8, 2015)

Reading: From Ask the Beasts by Elizabeth Johnson
A multi-year study by Peter and Rosemary Grant documented how finch beaks differ from short, narrow and shallow to long, wide and deep, the differences in dimensions correlating with the birds’ ability to harvest different types of seeds. In 1977 the [Galapagos] islands experienced a severe drought. Food was so scarce that no birds produced young that year. Only 15 percent of the adults survived to reproduce when the rains finally came. Those that survived had longer, wider, deeper beaks that enabled them to crack the tougher seeds in the seed bank. Their offspring inherited that trait. In 1983 a continuing deluge of rain carpeted the islands with grass, providing an abundance of small soft seeds. Finches with smaller beaks were more able to harvest the available seeds; many produced multiple sets of offspring. After this time the average bird in the population had a shorter, narrower beak, thus reversing the change that had occurred during the drought. As Reznick trenchantly observes, “This reversal is telling because it says that there is not a universal ‘best’ bird. Whether a given feature of an individual gives it an advantage of another depends entirely on the circumstance, be it drought or flood. This is a good illustration of the fact that evolution does not progress in any particular direction, but is rather a response to present conditions in the moment. If conditions change, then so will the selection experienced by populations. If conditions remain constant, it is possible there will be no evolution at all.” [P. 91-92]


Reading: From Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams

In 1950 government agents proposed to get rid of prairie dogs on some parts of the Navaho reservation in order to protect the roots of sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some marginal grazing for sheep.

The Navajo elders objected, insisting, “If you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.”

The amused officials assured the Navajo that there was no correlation between rain and prairie dogs and carried out their plan. The outcome was surprising only to the federal officials. The desert near Chilchinbito, Arizona, became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, unable to accept rain. Hard pan. The result; fierce runoff whenever it rained. What little vegetation remained was carried away by flash floods and a legacy of erosion. [p. 87]

Sermon- Evolving Together

When Darwin developed his theory of evolution, it didn’t come to him in one “aha” moment, but emerged over years of observing the natural world. Just after college he famously spent 5 years on the HMS Beagle as a self-appointed naturalist doing those things many of us did as kids, turning over rocks, watching critters, collecting fossils, catching tadpoles in a jar, or just staring at that natural world around him as the Beagle charted the coast of South America. Now what he did that most of us didn’t do was keep a series of meticulous leather bound diaries of all he saw, and how it all fit together. For twenty some years he observed and wrote and thought until in his 50s he finally published “The Origin of Species.”  

At the time he wrote this book, the prevailing scientific view was that “Each species came about by an independent act of creation.” [Johnson p. 33] That is to say, each individual species was created exactly as it is today by the hand of God. This theory is called “Special Creation.” Darwin proposed the radical new idea that species changed gradually over time without any supernatural intervention. At first Darwin called this theory “Descent with Modification” because common species can be traced back to common ancestors found in the fossil record. As natural variations occur in the species, some of these modifications would be beneficial, some would not. Darwin Wrote “This preservation of favorable variation and the rejection of injurious variation, I call Natural Selection…We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages” [Johnson p.28] This idea shook the foundations of both the religious and scientific establishments which were committed to the “special creation” theory. 

By 2015 the entire scientific community has rallied around Darwin’s “Natural Selection” theory, but the theory of special creation can still be found in churches, and on school boards, and in the houses of Congress. This is why once a year we join with other communities of faith to remind ourselves, to remind the world, that scientific and religious truth are not enemies, but together weave our understanding of the life we share. On Evolution Weekend, we tell true stories written in the body of the world. 

Darwin wrote in the final paragraph of his On the Origin of Species (1859):

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.”

He could have been talking about the story we just heard about the Mangrove tangle, and there are in fact mangroves in some of the places he traveled in his 5 years on the Beagle. Although all those little critters who, in our story, said “I could live here and find food and safety” are in the real world not individuals making a life choice, these are the species whose grandparents and great great grandparents co-evolved with the mangrove trees, and with the bacteria that live there, and the whole tangle of beings who not only live together but change and are changed by one another over thousands of years of living in natural community.

By way of contrast, my front window looks out on a number of trees and bushes full of seeds and berries, but none of the critters in my neighborhood seem at all interested in eating them. That’s because these trees and shrubs were purchased by some landscaper or arborist and planted there as relative strangers to the natural community. My squirrels and juncos and cardinals did not co-evolve with those plants, and so they remain as strangers, and their fruit goes uneaten.
“Evolution is a relational Process” says Elizabeth Johnson, Theologian and author this book Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love. [p. 120] The plants and critters who live in Darwin’s tangled bank, are “dependent on each other in so complex a manner.” As Darwin wrote “… how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life” [p. 121]

These beings shape and are shaped by one another not only un competition for scarce natural resources, like the finches on the Galapagos Islands - evolving their beaks in local niches based on what food was available, and what beak shape they need to better access that food, but consider also clams or crabs or lobsters, with soft vulnerable bodies, who evolved hard shells or carapaces, for protection from their “predators, which followed suit by evolving body parts that pierce, chew, or even saw through these protections.”[i]

 My friend and colleague Scott Prinster offered a more gentle collaborative example as well between “hummingbirds and honeysuckle. The flowers evolve nectar that attracts the birds and fits their dietary needs (hummingbirds need enormous amounts of sugar to fly and keep their bodies from overheating). The flowers have also developed bright colors and unusually ornate shapes to attract the birds, and they bloom during the hummingbirds' breeding season. In return, the hummingbirds pollinate the flowers, which are not as attractive to bees as other kinds of flowers.”

Darwin’s theory is a profoundly relational one.

 Unfortunately, this idea of the “survival of the fittest” which did not even appear in Darwin’s work until the 5th edition of his famous book, has turned our popular understanding of the profoundly relational process of evolution, into a social theory that prizes the strength of the individual. In Darwin’s day, British Political Theorist Herbert Spencer co-opted the theory of descent by modification into a political theory in which there are inevitable winners and losers in human society. “Social Darwinism” holds that “the powerful in society are innately better than the weak; that their success is proof of their superiority.” Often Alfred Lord Tennyson's poetic line “Nature, red in tooth and claw”[ii] is used to suggest the violence of the natural world, to convince us that “only the strong survive.”

But remember, evolution is not about the survival of the individual. It is about the survival of a species, a community of species, of life itself. As Rosemary and Peter Grant’s work with finches points out, there is no single best bird. Instead the many varieties of life’s creative expression, ensure the survival of whatever form is most suited to this time and place in an ever changing world. Survival in nature is not limited to the arms race between predator and prey; sometimes it is cooperation, sharing or altruism that allows life to succeed. Did you know that Vampire bats will feed a starving bat who is not even related to them?[iii] As Elizabeth Johnson puts it: “Rather than existing as independent operators, all organisms live in intricate systems consisting of many such dynamic interchanges. Each ecosystem is unique. Each has intrinsic value … in a particular time and place...” [p. 119]

This misuse of Darwin’s theory not only seems to support the kind of escalating economic inequalities that UU’s around the country have chosen to study and confront together, but it also gives us the wrong picture of our role in the web of life. When we learn evolution in school (if we are lucky enough to live in a school district that allows it) we tend to study a single branch of the tree of life as it grows and branches and thrives or ends. Think of that classic drawing of the progression from ape to Homo Saipan. When we look at evolution this way it’s difficult to see the complex web of relationships by which species- plant, animal, bacterial, evolve together. 

Consider keystone species. This concept was first put forth by zoologist Robert T. Paine In 1969. Like a keystone in an arch, these species, when removed, cause the whole eco-system to collapse. Paine tested this theory by removing certain species from different eco-systems, and leaving other similar eco-systems alone. The systems where he removed the keystone species collapsed. For example, in the system where he removed the sea star from its rocky costal habitat, 7 out of 15 species he measured disappeared. While in the control systems all the species persisted.[iv] The groundhog, from our first reading, is a keystone species. Williams writes “More than 200 species of wildlife have been associated with prairie dog towns, with over 140 species benefiting directly, including bison, pronghorn antelope, burrowing owls, pocket mice, deer mice, ants, black widow spiders, horned larks, and many predators such as rattlesnakes, golden eagles, badgers, bobcats, weasels, foxes, coyotes and especially black-footed ferrets.” When prairie dogs are taken out of their eco-system, 9 vertebrate species disappear or sharply shrink in numbers. We evolve together. We live and die together.

Recently Sen. Lisa Murkowski was interviewed about President Obama’s plans to designate 12 million acres of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness. She responded in part: “There's so much focus on the wildlife, on the polar bear and the critters and the birds. And they are important. Don't get me wrong. But equally important - more important - is the obligation that we have to the people who live there” [v] This is a point many politicians have made over the years when someone tries to protect an eco-system in jeopardy. But I believe this poses a false dichotomy. It ignores how deeply we humans are woven into the web of life, how we too have co-evolved with plants, and animals, and bacteria. We may think we don’t need the groundhog, which ruins our golf courses, and might or might not limit the amount of grass our sheep can graze on, but not even humans can thrive on a hard-pan desert. The political rhetoric pitting Alaskan wildlife against human welfare ignores the complexity of this web of relationships, and the thousands of generations it took for us to weave the web of life as we know it. If we remove keystone species, of we tip an eco-system past the point where it can recover, it will take thousands more generations for a new eco-system to evolve.

I think the story of the Mangrove which found its niche as a genus of tree that can survive in salt-water is beautiful and inspiring. The birds, and crustaceans and sea mammals that shelter there and eat there have evolved together to share that habitat. The ecosystem shelters and feeds them, and they in turn feed it. It’s so elegant; the way mangrove islands protect our coral reefs from the silt runoff from clearcutting, and filter pollutants that run off our roads and farms. The mangrove islands absorb some of the wave strength of storms, protecting our coasts. The mangrove tree and all its living community survived because of the success of their interrelatedness. When we say “survival of the fittest” we are not talking about the kind of “fit” you get at a gym, a;; much strength and power, but living beings who “fit” together like an incredibly complex puzzle.

Perhaps that complexity is why we illustrate the history of our human evolution as one line of hominids marching in procession, without pausing to fill in the whole picture. If we really understood the complexity of each eco-systems that created us, we might wonder about the complexity of the eco-systems we inhabit now : the groundhogs we exterminate to make room for our grazing animals, or the mangrove forests we cut down to make shrimp farms. If we really took the time to understand this interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part[vi], we would be humbled by it I think. Understanding the true complexity of our world is not only a spiritual act of respect and gratitude, but pragmatic act. We provide a more accurate blueprint for our own survival when we see the web than when we imagine that we who are most fit can somehow survive alone.

So if this sermon has inspired you to boycott shrimp that is farmed unsustainably, or if it inspires you to lobby your Fish and Wildlife service to protect the Utah prairie dog from extinction, that’s wonderful. But just as important, I hope you will look with new eyes at the eco-system you live in, at the ones you visit on vacation, at the eco-systems where your food is harvested. To look with humility and awe at their beautiful complexity, and with gratitude for our living community which forms us and shelters us and shaped us just like that tangled bank.

Endnotes

[i] Thanks again to the Rev. Scott Prinster for this

[ii] In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850. The quotation comes in Canto 56 (it is a very long poem)

[iii] Jerry Wilkinson, chair of biology at the University of Maryland-College Park,http://www.radiolab.org/story/105440-blood-buddies/

[iv] http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/keystone-species-extinct.htm

[v] http://www.npr.org/2015/01/27/381783164/sen-murkowski-critical-of-proposed-plan-for-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge

[vi] http://www.uua.org/beliefs/principles/index.shtml

Why We Suffer (April 5, 2015)

Each one of us has experienced loss. Each one of us has experienced pain. And on those blessed days we ourselves are free from suffering, we have only to look out at the world with a compassionate heart to know that suffering is always present. I suspect that this is one of the main reasons people lose their faith: when confronted with the reality of suffering it all seems meaningless. When we come together on Sunday morning we want to be renewed in hope and gratitude and compassion, but if our religious tradition cannot accompany us to the depths of life, it will not be enough to support us when we need it most.

We are atheists, agnostics and theists together here today, but our common ground is the physical world in which we live. Walking in a path through the woods, or even just through my own back yard I observe that no living being seems to be exempt from pain and loss. All forms of life know death. All forms of life seem to experience destruction and decay. When my family and I drove through Yellowstone Park for the first time, we were amazed to see acre after acre that burned during the great fire of 1988. Decades later the charred remains of trees were the dominant feature of that landscape. 248 fires that burned that summer; hundreds of thousands of acres burned. The first fires began in July, but it wasn’t until November that the snows had cooled all the fires enough for rangers to assess the damage, to tally the destruction to buildings, to count those elk, deer, moose, bear and bison who had died in the blaze. 
 
As the fires raged, so did the political debate about how they could have been prevented, about how we could keep this from happening ever again. Maybe, some argued, if we had allowed more forest fires to burn in previous decades there would have been less fuel this one summer of drought. Of the 7 major fires that did 95% of the damage, 3 were caused by human hands. So in a very pragmatic way, we know why suffering happens: some is caused purposefully, some by human accident, but the great majority is simply the interaction of natural forces in an apparently impersonal, inevitable way. That is to say, loss is part of life. Pain is part of life. Decay is part of life. Even the sudden, violent force of a great fire, a blizzard, or a tsunami are part of life. 

By the time we drove through the park in 2007, a new generation of trees and undergrowth and elk had rushed to fill in the scarred landscape. While the charred remains of the burned trees still stood starkly against the sky, an abundance of new growth crowded in dramatically illustrating the way that pain and loss are always followed by new growth, by new life. For those of us whose faith is grounded in the natural world, this is the meaning of suffering; each life that ends feeds the new life that follows. As Wendell Berry writes so elegantly “They die into each other’s life, and live into each other’s death…what they take in they change, but they change it always into a form necessary for its use by a living body of another kind. And this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures.”  [The Unsetting of America p. 85-86] This is why pagan traditions that grew up in a climate like ours, (where a cold dark winter is followed by a riotous growth of new life in the spring and summer) celebrate the spring equinox as a holiday of rebirth. The earth reminds us with her very body that dark is followed by light, and what seems to be an end is followed by a new beginning. 
 
The question of suffering is a more challenging question for those of us who in a transcendent God, a personal God who cares about each being. Why would such a god allow suffering? It is easy to imagine that it has something to do with us. It’s a popular theological idea that suffering happens when someone has been bad, that suffering is a sign of God’s displeasure. Being free from suffering, therefor, has something to do with being good, with being faithful. I think the reason we make this leap is more psychological than theological; it allows us to look the other way when we see suffering because “they probably deserve it.” When we see someone suffering we want to assure ourselves that this will never happen to us- if we are good enough, careful enough. When we ourselves are suffering we want to believe that there is something we can do to end it, to control it. But our Universalist tradition does not support the notion that a loving god would have punished all the inhabitants of those Yellowstone forests for some wrong they had done. When that Tsunami hit Japan in 2011, we do not believe it was the providential hand of God intervening to smite. It was a natural disaster which swept away innocent and guilty, careful and reckless, lonely and loved. 

As one who was not raised in the Christian tradition, I have always wondered about the centrality of the cross in contemporary Christian Theology. But slowly I am beginning to understand something about that symbol. In Christian Theology Jesus was the incarnation of God. Christ is God manifest in the world, in flesh like ours. Christ’s suffering, which Catholics ritualize in the Stations of the Cross during lent, tells a story not about a god who punishes the bad with suffering, and protects the good, but of suffering coming even to one who was closest to God. The story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus depicts a God who took on the suffering of humans, and suffered with us in this world. 

There has been a great debate throughout Christian history about whether or not Jesus truly suffered on the cross. Some feel that because of his divine nature Jesus escaped suffering, or perhaps even as a man he was so holy that he experienced only his closeness to God. To me that reduces the power of the story. A loving God, a caring God is not one who is exempt from the suffering all living beings share. A loving God is one who knows our suffering, and who suffers with us.  

When lying in a hospital bed scared and in pain, when facing foreclosure on our family home, or when reeling from a betrayal by someone we loved and trusted, it is natural to feel that God has abandoned us. The story of the crucifixion offers a different perspective- that God is never separate from any part of this living world we share, even when it suffers. 

As my family and I noticed in the great forest ravaged by fire, new life follows suffering. Jungian Spiritual Director Don Bisson asserts “Suffering, death and resurrection is one mystery. Whenever you try and separate these mysteries, you miss the mysteries.” We know this cold long winter will someday turn into spring. In the Christian story, the crucifixion is followed by resurrection. What we don’t get to know is “why.” Science and our observation of nature show us “why” in a causal sense- we know what forces lead to a Tsunami, investigators discovered how those fires in Yellowstone were started. But theologically, this suffering will always be a mystery. We can imagine an alternate history, an alternate universe in which there are no deadly forces of nature, in which humans never betray or do violence to one another. Saying “suffering is a mystery” can sound like a cop-out. But I know that when I hear about a tragedy, my mind immediately protects itself from the reality of suffering by imagining I can defend myself from it: I take comfort in the fact that I live too far from the ocean for a tsunami to ever threaten my home, I lock my door, I buy homeowners insurance. We want to protect ourselves from the truth that suffering comes to all living beings, and we cannot control or predict it. This is what I mean when I say “suffering is a mystery.” It is easier to hold on to the idea that if I am only good enough, suffering will pass me by. But if we look at the stories of those we elevate as living truly good lives- Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, these are not lives free from suffering. These are folks who responded to suffering with transformative goodness. 

Part of the question “Why do we suffer” is “how do we respond to suffering?” I believe the first thing we are called to do is to “stay awake” as Jesus asked his followers to do in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is really hard, whether it is our own suffering, or the suffering of others. But as Jungian psychology suggests, there is an enormous psychic cost to “falling asleep” to our suffering. I imagine each of us in this room has events in our past that we’d rather not think about, memories too painful to examine. And so our psyches provide us with the useful coping mechanism of being able to repress, ignore, turn away from those memories. But I hope that each one of us has also had an experience of looking with courage at some painful memory, or looking with courage at some unhealthy dynamic in our life and found that when we did the energy for transformation, for new life was released. Certain kinds of healing and growth and are only possible when we can stay awake to that pain. Not clinging to pain, not pushing it away, but just being able to stay awake in the presence of it. 

Buddhist Activist Joanna Macy has devoted her life’s work to the belief that staying awake to suffering is necessary to the healing of the world. She writes “[pain] is inseparable from the currents of matter, energy, and information that flows through us and sustain us as interconnected open systems. We are not closed off from the world, but integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When the body is traumatized, we sense that trauma, too. When it falters and sickens, we feel its pain. Whether we pay attention to it or not.”

This is what it means to be part of the interconnected web of life. When the mangrove trees are cut down to make room for shrimp farming, the coastline suffers. When the prairie dog is exterminated, dozens of other species suffer, even the soil suffers. Many Unitarian Universalists have had profound spiritual experiences in nature, feeling the beauty and peace of an old growth forest, feeling deeply connected in a numinous moment. But that very connection to nature opens us up to profound pain as well, when we see that forest ravaged by fire, or clear-cut by human hands. 

Macy continues: “That pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering world. It is not only natural, it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. As in all organisms, pain has a purpose; it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action.” [Coming Back to Life p. 27]

For those of us who believe the divine is not separate from the world, that the spirit of life is present in every tree, every cricket, every human being, we know that God is part of the body of the earth as we are part of the body of the earth. This calls us to deepen our connection to the web of which we are a part, and to witness, to speak out, to call one another to action when we are aware of the suffering in any part of the web. When this fellowship collects donations for Second Place East, it is because you are aware of the suffering in your community. When Leslie went and got herself arrested trying to protect Seneca Lake from plans to store methane, propane, and butane in unlined, depleted salt caverns it was because she understood how deeply we are all connected to this web of life.

One reason we start each service with Joys and Concerns, is because we know this beloved community must be able to hold our good news with sympathetic joy, and to hold our suffering with compassion. This is not always easy. This morning we have all been deeply affected by the news of a beloved church member's failing health. We hurt for her and for her husband and for one another. Not only do we feel empathy for one another, but the pain and sadness we share today may remind us of other losses in our own lives that we are still grieving. They may remind us of our own fragility, our own mortality. The very word “Compassion” comes from the root words meaning “to suffer together.” The more we are able to stay awake to our own suffering, the more we are able to be present to the suffering of others. Even when we can’t fix it or take it away, acknowledging the reality of suffering in the world helps us grow in our compassion for one another. 

This week our Christian neighbors celebrated holy week, remembering the story of Jesus’s suffering and death. We too know something of suffering, and remember that even there in those hurting places the divine is present. Today Christians celebrate Easter, they celebrate rebirth. Now when the muddy earth is just beginning to emerge under the melting snowpack of a long hard winter, and the first green shoots are finally emerging, we too know something about rebirth. Remember that the spirit of life cannot be separated from the body of the earth, any more than we can. That spirit can be found both in the joy and in the sorrow. And there, even in the deepest suffering, is the promise of growth and new life.

 

It Is What It Is (January 11, 2015)

Reading: Neil deGrasse Tyson 

Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgment. Remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things...

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and others. These values undermine fanaticism and ignorance. After all, the universe is mostly dark dotted by islands of light. 

Learning the age of the earth, or the distance to the stars, or how life evolved, what difference does it make? Well, part of it depends on how big a universe you want to live in. Some of us like it small. That's fine. Understandable. But I like it big. And when I take all of this into my own heart and my mind, and when I have that feeling I want to know that it's real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality. I want to know what's in those dark places, and what happened before the big bang. I want to know what lies beyond the cosmic horizon and how life began. Are there other places in the cosmos where matter and energy have become alive and aware? I want to know my ancestors, all of them. I want to be a good strong link in the chain of generations. If we come to know and love nature as it really is then we will surely be remembered by our descendants as good strong links in the chain of life, and our children will continue this sacred searching, seeing for us as we have seen for those that came before. Discovering wonders yet undreamed of, in the cosmos. [Cosmos a Spacetime Odyssey- episode 13 "Unafraid of the Dark"]


Sermon: It Is What It Is

This year our whole family has been watching the remake of Carl Sagan’s classic show “Cosmos” this time narrated by Astro physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the very last minutes of the very last episode he said two things that I think are key to Unitarian Theology. The first shows a faith in truth and a faith in process: 

“Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. Follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

We believe that religious truth is not something we receive from an authority. Nor do we subscribe to that popular refrain “Unitarians can believe whatever they want.” Instead we believe in observation and experiment, in following the evidence wherever it leads.

This faith in evidence and observation is the well-spring of our tradition - and deGrasse Tyson puts it so beautifully: “… it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality.” Our imagination is nothing compared to nature’s awesome reality. 

Because of the stunning advances in Marriage Equality this year, I had the incredible privilege of marrying two couples in my congregation who have been together for over 30 years, and a young couple I recently met who have been together for just a couple of years. New couples are full of visions of an imagined future, whereas couples who have already spent a lifetime together are not entering into marriage in the abstract, they are committing to and celebrating a very particular relationship.

When I was a young married woman, I often felt self-conscious that my marriage didn’t look like marriages in the movies. Older married women would fill my mind with should: “he should do this” “if he loved you he would do that” “a healthy marriage is like this.” But as years passed, and against all expectations my partner Eric and I stayed together, I realized my fundamental mistake. We as UUs believe that each and every person is unique and special. Well, how on earth could you put together two absolutely unique people and create a marriage that looks just like, well, any marriage you have ever seen before? Our marriage was so much happier when I finally let go of what I imagined a marriage “should” be and just enjoyed the very really marriage I was living each day.

Like our handsome Prince Ronald, we have to decide if the princess of our dreams is the one who will risk life and limb and come to our rescue with her courage and quick wits, or whether she is the one that looks like the princess we have imagined. 

In her introduction to the Starr King Presidents lecture this past June at General Assembly, Rebecca Parker carefully proposed that: 

“Love seeks to know the other as ‘other.’ Not as an extension of oneself, not as a reflection or as utilitarian presence to be there for one's use but as an other of sacred worth in the other's own rights. From the other's own perspectives, the other's own practices and values. Love seeks to know the other as other and to preserve and protect the just-so-ness, the "otherness" of the other.”

This is something Prince Ronald has not yet figured out, but I have a strong suspicion that any partnership that can last for 31 years is made up of two people who understands their partner to be “an other of sacred worth in the other’s own rights.”



Part of what makes the early days of a relationship so challenging is the tension between our expectations and reality. Not just a romantic relationship, but any relationship-- with friends, co-workers, neighbors. Because we unconsciously create a picture of the person we expect them to be. “A good neighbor does this. ” “A friend would do that.” “What else would you expect from that kind of person”. And so when your princess shows up in a paper bag, when your friend forgets your birthday, when your son drops out of art school to become a football player, it is a powerful moment. This is the moment when you know you are witnessing the other as other- not just as the person you expect them to be. 

Let’s face it-- those expectations are powerful. Every day we do something because “it’s expected of us.” When you experience someone defying expectation and exercising their freedom to be who they truly are, that moment can be disappointing, can be frustrating, but, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says “Our imagination’s nothing compared to nature’s awesome reality.” We may have to grieve the loss of the beautiful, spotless princess, but if we can let go of that imaginary being, real love, real friendship are possible. Reality is not always pleasant -- the reality of, for example, a roommate who doesn’t wash the dishes the way I would. A partner who doesn’t show love the way I do. A friend who doesn’t grieve the way I expect. The question is: can we lay aside which “might” have been, what “should” have been, and give our attention, our presence to what IS. 

Unitarian Universalists have preached tolerance of the other for many decades, but I am proposing something further. Love, as Rebecca Parker says, “seeks to know the other as other and to preserve and protect the just-so-ness, the ‘otherness’ of the other.” This is where the alchemy of love occurs, the magic of love. When something totally UN-expected happens, something I would never have come up with myself, in that moment our relationship with our partner, our child, our friend is “real…it's not just something happening inside my own head.” There are, in fact, strains of theology that propose that this whole reality we perceive is “all in our own heads, just a dream” and maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not, but the moment your grandson says that surprising, jaw-droppingly unique thing, you know that at least this is a dream you share with another.

When I was young I looked everywhere for the God I had read about in the Old Testament-- the God of burning bushes and parting waters, who offered commandments on the mountaintop. I never did meet this God. But remember what God says to Moses in the story of the burning bush, when Moses asks “who shall I say has sent me?” God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ [Exodus 3.14] One of the new authors I have been introduced to on my sabbatical is Thomas Hart, a Catholic Theology professor and a Family and Marriage Counselor. He writes:

“Coping well with reality is coping well with God. Escaping reality into a separate realm, however spiritual the motive, runs the risk of missing the real encounter with God, and the kinds of growth that come from that encounter.” [The Art of Christian Listening, p. 34]

Hart is suggesting that if we are only looking for God in burning bushes and parted waters, maybe we are missing something. I know that we here today are a very theologically diverse group. I want to speak first to the theists and the agnostics and offer this proposition- to try to know God as God is, instead of what we expect God to be. 

Those expectations come from many places: from scriptures, from an old Sunday School teacher, from television. Sometimes those expectations come from past experiences -- times in our life when we had a felt sense of the divine, or sought God and found nothing. Maybe wee found god hiking on a mountaintop one awe-filled day, but when we return to that very spot it felt empty. Without realizing it, we create a very small place for God to exist in our own imaginations, one with clear rules and expectations that God often disappoints. Are these spiritual expectations coming between us and what really Is? Because God is most certainly “other.” Can we allow God to be God? To be other "not as an extension of oneself, not as a reflection or as utilitarian presence to be there for one's use but as an other of sacred worth in the other's own rights.”?

In my own personal theology I believe that God is indwelling in everything that is. There is no place in this amazing universe of ours where God is not. Whether you are looking through a telescope, or a microscope or into the face of your roommate or neighbor, the divine is not separable from what you see.

Now I want to assure the atheists in our community that I didn’t forget you. The words of deGrasse Tyson are not only the principles of scientific exploration, but can be guidance for spiritual exploration as well:

“Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. ... Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence reserve judgment. Remember you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. .. Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and others. These values undermine fanaticism and ignorance.”

When a scientist comes across something in their experiment and observation that defies their hypothesis, I imagine this must be very discouraging. When you realize that the person you married is never going to take ballroom dance classes with you, or even pick up her socks off the floor, this can fill us with anger and grief. But when we can begin to let go of what we hoped would be, when we can grieve and release what we expected to be, we can finally begin to see what is real, to come closer to the truth of the other, of our world. 

Jesuit Theologian Walter Burghardt describes contemplation as “A long loving look at the real” and this is how I see our UU spiritual journey, whether we are theist, atheist or agnostic. This is where our “free and responsible search” begins. I want to draw special attention to that word “love.” Rebecca Parker used it, Neil deGrasse Tyson used it too when he suggested “we come to know and love nature as it really is.” Remember back to a time when someone in your life looked at you with love… remember how that made you feel…Now remember a time when someone looked at you with disappointment, looked at you as if you had failed a test you didn’t even know you were taking. Love matters. It shapes how we respond to all we encounter. Reality is constantly growing and changing and evolving. Let us be careful that our dream of what might be doesn’t keep us from looking with love at what it already is.
This morning I challenge each of us open our hearts and minds to the world around us as it really is. Let’s take time to appreciate it and love it, not as we want it to be, as we expect it to be, but as it is unfolding in this moment. Reality does not exist in the abstract. By definition reality exists in you, as you really are in this moment, in me, as I am in this very moment, and in the sometimes surprising and even maddeningly unpredictable moment that emerges between us. “I want to know that it's real. That it's not just something happening inside my own head. Because it matters what's true. And our imagination is nothing compared to nature's awesome reality”