Change the Story (May 14, 2017)

It’s time to change the story. Whether we are watching the nightly news, reading our twitter feed, or enjoying a popular novel, the stories we have been telling ourselves recently and for many years have not lead us where we want to go.

Why does it matter what story we tell? Stories shape our expectations—If you thought you were in a horror movie you would know never to go into a dark place alone. But if you are in children’s fantasy novel, that dark wardrobe might be the start of an amazing adventure. If we expect something to happen, and we see a path that leads in that direction, it seems natural and right to follow it.

Stories shape our attitudes. We could look at, for example, the Rich Housewives of Atlanta and say “I will never be wealthy and famous like them, my life is unimportant. I lost the great lottery when I was born because I’ll never experience that.” Or I could look at the exact same life and notice that I have a roof over my head, and food to eat, and a community of people who care for one another. I could remember that even Americans at the bottom end of our unbalanced economy live better than 68% of the world’s population[i] and we could be filled with gratitude for our amazing good fortune, and spend our lives trying to share the amazing gifts we have received. I’ve looked for that story on cable- I haven’t found it. The stories we tell give meaning to our experience.

One of the most important stories of our time is the story we are telling about Global Climate Disruption. Per Espen Stoknes, a Norwegian Economist and Psychologist, has taken on the question- if Climate Change is such a big deal, why aren’t we doing more about it? He came to a number of very interesting conclusions, using research from a wide range of disciplines. One of the findings that spoke loudly to me is that when we tell ourselves over and over that the apocalypse is coming, it leaves us feeling too powerless to act. He writes “climate messages have been unpalatable because they – in their apocalypse form – evoke fear, guilt and helplessness…. Any story that tells me that my identity and lifestyle are wrong and destructive will be subconsciously resisted.” [Stoknes, p. 149] “When Climate change is framed as an encroaching disaster that can only be addressed by loss, cost and sacrifice, it creates a wish to avoid the topic. We’re predictably averse to losses. With a lack of practical solutions, helpless grows and the fear message backfires. We’ve heard that “the end is nigh” so many times, it no longer really registers” [p. 82] We tell a story that “it’s all going to hell” hoping that will spur us to action. But instead of driving us to work harder, we are paralyzed by despair.

David Korten, author, activist and former professor of the Harvard Business School, identifies 3 basic stories that he believes underlie 21st century American life.[ii] He talks about the “distant patriarch” story- in which a God far off in heaven is running the show and is “Creation’s sole source of agency and meaning.” This is the story folks are living inside of when they say “we don’t need to worry about Global warming- God will take care of us.”



Then there’s the “Grand Machine” story, which Korten says comes from the lineage of science; the world is just one big machine, driven by its own mechanisms and random chance, without purpose or meaning. We humans are driven by evolutionary self-interest to pursue profit and financial security for ourselves and our genetic line. “Economists urged us to turn to money as our ultimate measure of value and look to markets as our moral compass.” If you live inside this story, it’s hard to imagine any future for ourselves other than the inevitable depletion of the earth’s resources for our personal profit.



Then there is the “Mystical Unity” story; all that we experience is only an illusion, all that is real is our one-ness with the divine. If you live inside this story, you have no obligation to work to turn back climate change, because our world is only an illusion. A life of meditation and prayer is the only sensible choice.



I do agree with Korten that these 3 stories are powerful in our times, but I think Unitarian Universalists have always found gaps those stories. We’ve long challenged the Distant Patriarch story, arguing since our earliest days that humans have free will and what we do matters. As a religion born out of the enlightenment, we often fall under the sway of the great machine story, but we tell a different version. If the machine has no intrinsic meaning, it is up to us to provide our own, to create together a meaning that leads not to competative wealth acquisition, but to the greatest good for all. We challenge the Mystic Unity story as well- while we believe deeply in the underlying oneness of all things, still we have always rolled up our sleeves to be part of co-creating a world of opportunity and justice. Because of that very oneness we hear the suffering of others and want to help. Our hymnal is full of songs inspiring us to “roll up our sleeves.”



I do agree that and one thing all 3 of these stories have in common is that they don’t show us how humans can participate in steering our world in a positive direction through this unprecedented crisis. “The old stories do not fit anymore, and the new stories are not yet fully formed.” Says teacher and author Llyn Roberts.


I believe part of the reason we are gathered here each Sunday (in addition to the great spread you guys always put on after the service) is because we are hungry for a different story to be part of, and we find that here. I believe this is one of our most important jobs as a faith tradition, and as this very particular beloved community. Here are some important aspects of our Unitarian Universalist story:

1. Reality is important. We honor not only the data from the scientific community, but the data we observe in the world around us every day. We notice the creeks flooding more often than they used to, and strange periods of drought in the summer. We bring in our scientist friends to help us understand what we are seeing. Any story we tell has to harmonize with the facts, and when we get new data that doesn’t fit with our story, it is the story that has to change.

2. UUs believe that we are all part of something larger than ourselves. Our story is a big story, from the flaring forth of the big bang, through the evolution of life on our planet, and we have a responsibility to the future generations not only of humans but of all life here, knowing that the story continues long after we are gone.

3. For a long time the UU story has told about the importance of each and every person. The struggle we are part of is not for the victory of one, or even of a few, but a world where every person has basic human rights and an freedom to grow, change and express themselves. Now, as we stand on the verge of changing our first principle from “every person” to “ever being” we honor how our story is changing, must change, to include not just humans but the great web of life of which we are a part. In the story we are weaving today, we see that from the great wolf, to the bacteria in your gut, to the trees of the rain forests, living beings play crucial roles in the health of our world that we had failed to imagine.

4. In our UU story, we believe that what we do matters. What you do and I do, and what we do together matters. Whether or not we believe in god, we are not passive observers of this unfolding story, but each of us can make a difference in what our world is becoming. Our story is a web to be woven one strand at a time- and each strand will shape the cloth in a unique and important way.

5. In this story, there is not one big boss battle to fight, not one evil king to destroy. We are not trying to win the contest of who has the most. Our story does not culminate in a great battle for victory, but an ongoing search for meaning. Ours is the ongoing story of life unfolding.

6. In our story, there are goals more important than money or success, or even safety. Ours is an ongoing quest for less tangible trophies, like love and justice, beauty and truth.

7. When folks all around us are telling the story of how we are all going to hell, UUs have always agreed with what psychologists are proving today- that fear and despair are not the best motivators to change our lives toward the good. As the founder of American Universalism, John Murray, once said “Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.” Our story is not about the fiery pits of hell, but about the heaven we are building together here on earth.

8. In our ever unfolding story, I there is always a place for listening. The hubris of humans has led to much destruction and far-reaching unintended consequences. Let ours be a story where we listen, not only to one another, but to people who are different than us, and to beings who are different from us. Remember the old stories where the youngest son goes out into the world to seek his fortune, and though he is neither as strong nor handsome as his older brothers, he listens to the ants an the birds and so has all the wisdom he needs for a happy ending? There is much wisdom we will need to face this crossroads in our story, and fortunately we have only begun to learn from one another and from our living earth. Let us listen, with our eyes and hearts and spirits and rational minds too.

Korten calls his new story “the living Universe story” he says “I am an intelligent, self-directing participant in a conscious, interconnected self-organizing cosmos on a journey of self-discovery toward ever-greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility” or as we like to say it “the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part.” This world we share is not an inert machine, but life seeking life -- life growing and changing and learning, and dying and healing. We are deeply embedded in that web- when a hurricane sweeps the eastern seaboard and wipes out homes and businesses, when the harvest comes and the first delicious strawberries of spring delight our senses and feed our bodies. When we clear-cut a forest, and the weeds and brambles rush in like scar tissue protecting the wounded earth. We are part of the fabric of life, infused with the spirit of life that flowed long before humans evolved.

Once upon a time, there was a tribe of seekers who loved each other, and loved the world. By listening to the rivers and the rains and the maple trees in their valley, they knew that a great change was coming. “What can we do?” they wondered. They remembered that this was not the first time a great turning had changed the face of the world, they remembered that the universe had had many forms before this one. This was not the first time the living beings of earth had to transform themselves or face extinction. The seekers wanted to help turn the path of change in a direction of abundant life, so they told the stories of all they knew that had come before, and of the new problems that had never been faced before. They talked, and they cried, and they sometimes raised their voices in anger.

“Shhh” one of them said- “listen…” After a time a voice said “I’ve been listening to the air and the storms, and I feel called to do something to slow climate disruption. Everything I do from heating my apartment to driving my car to cooking my dinner uses fossil fuels. Let’s start a campaign to help us be more aware of the ways in which we contribute to carbon pollution and find a way to offset our carbon footprint .” Another voice answered “I’ve been listening to my neighbors who can’t afford their high heating bills, what if we took those carbon offsets and helped local families create more energy efficient homes.”

And then there was more listening.

“I hear the land where we bury our trash calling out to me, it is calling me to recycle” and so she put a recycling bin and a compost bin in the kitchen. “I hear the worry of people who can’t find work to feed their families” said one man, “so I want to figure out how to create jobs in our community” “You know”, said the first woman, “if only we had curbside composting, it would make it so much easier for all our friends and neighbors to compost, and that would help keep the soil healthy and create new jobs too.” Others who were listening felt full of the spirit of life and formed a task force to create green jobs in a brand new curbside recycling venture.

One woman heard the despair of people in jail for minor offenses, and heard that not everyone was being treated equally. Others felt moved by her story and carpooled over to the city hall and created a citizen watch group to create fairness in the justice system.

“Well I don’t hear anything yet” said one woman “so I will water the garden. Maybe the garden has something to tell me, so I will listen while I work. And I will make sure we keep always a place for listening in our community.”

And this little community kept listening, and doing, and listening again: listening to the voices of suffering, listening to the return of birds in the spring, listening to the rush of storm water rushing over the banks of the river. Whenever they weren’t sure what their part of the story was, they listened. And though sometimes they felt alone in their work, they never were. The soil did its part, turning the compost into nutrients into life, and the sun shone down on the solar panels and the tomato plants. Some of their neighbors saw what they did and it made them think about their own stories. And all over the world there were other groups of folks, listening and responding. The story they were part of was so big, we could never tell it all here, but for seven generations each spring the earth awoke, and the people listened, and the spirit of life called them to a vision of hope for the whole living world.

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[i] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/01/astonishing-numbers-americas-poor-still-live-better-than-most-of-the-rest-of-humanity/#dc3a1bc54ef0

[ii] http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/a-new-story-for-a-new-economy

Altruism and Evoltution (April, 24, 2016)

Every year on the weekend of Darwin’s birthday, congregations around the world join in talking about the Theory of Evolution. We take time to talk about evolution because, despite the fact that it is backed up with centuries of verifiable scientific research, evolution is under increasing attack in our schools and in our public discourse. We also celebrate evolution Sunday because the science of our physical reality is not just for “experts” with advanced degrees -- the story of your body, your eco-system is a story every one of us should know in order to understand ourselves and the world in which we live. This is particularly important for Unitarian Universalists who list as one of our sources: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science.”

I’ve preached about evolution here each year, and this year I want to tell you a love story. Not a story of romantic love, but the love of other living beings that binds us to one another. I know Vampire bats don’t seem that romantic on the surface, but the precious gift they give one another is eminently more practical, and more precious than a heart shaped box of chocolates. These creatures out of our nightmares, who suck the blood of large mammals, such as cattle, are actually one of the most selfless animals we know of. Researcher Jerry Wilkinson, chair of biology at the University of Maryland-College Park, noticed back in 1977 that if a bat is not able to find food, say because of illness, or lack of large mammals or because a researcher has put her in a cage, that other bats in her group will share their dinner with her by regurgitating into her mouth. [i] So, just like humans, bats can choose to give their own food to help another hungry being.

Bats are not alone in their altruism. Vervet monkeys cry out to warn their neighbors of a predator, even though they increase their own personal risk by letting predators know exactly where they are with that cry. [ii] There are even stories of altruism in Bacteria, like our nemesis e coli. Scientists have found examples of special drug-resistant bacteria sharing something called “indole” (\ˈin-ˌdōl\ ) with neighboring bacteria who aren’t drug resistant and so can’t produce Indole on their own. (Indole is the compound that helps bacteria fight off antibiotics). These altruistic super-bacteria share, even though it weakens their own capacity to reproduce when they give away this precious resource. [iii]

The Vampire Bat, the Vervet Monkey, the e coli bacteria are all engaged in Altruism. When we talk about human altruism we use the term pretty loosely, to mean anything from pulling a fellow subway rider off the track in front of an oncoming train, to bringing a put of soup to a neighbor who has the flu. But in evolutionary biology, there is a very precise definition:

“An organism is said to behave altruistically when its behavior benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring. So by behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the number that other organisms are likely to produce.”[iv]

Since the earliest days of Evolutionary Theory, altruism has stumped scientists. If what propels evolution is the competition for limited resources, altruism seems to throw a monkey wrench into the theory. Even Darwin was troubled by this. About 13 years after he published his seminal book on Evolution called “On the Origin of Species” Darwin wrote in his book The Descent of Man: “he who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature” (p.163). Darwin wondered if sometimes a behavior that was risky for the individual (like a Vervet Monkey) could provide an advantage to the larger group of which he was a part: “a tribe including many members who...were always ready to give aid to each other and sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection” (p.166). [v]

Later scientists, dissatisfied with this explanation, began to realize that the individuals who were the beneficiaries of altruism tended to be the relatives of the altruist. So even though I might end my own life before reproducing, if my close kin survived to reproduce, like sisters and brothers who share 50% of our genes, I would still be genetically successful. A fellow called George Price even worked out an equation to show the mathematical relationship between genetic benefit and closeness of relationship (because cousins, for example, are not as beneficial to preserving your gene pool as your siblings)[vi]

Then in 1984 Wilkinson challenged the link between kinship and altruism with his research about Vampire Bats. Over the course of the study he tracked which bats helped one another, and found that if you were a hungry bat, the neighbor bat who was most likely to help you was a bat you had helped in the past. It’s a remarkable, though relatively unique, example of altruism among unrelated neighbors. In a really wonderful “Radiolab” program on the topic, Wilkinson extrapolated that maybe 40,000 years or so ago something happened to all the large mammals in the area where the bats lived. There was a crisis in the bat food supply, and bats evolved this altruistic behavior so that they could survive as a species.

Scientists and philosophers argue that if there is any potential benefit to you, such as the survival of your gene line, that results from your helping act- then your helping act is not true altruism. They argue that maybe “true” altruism doesn’t really exist. But I disagree. The fact that altruism is a tool we have evolved to help us survive is a hopeful thing. We’ve so often wondered if human nature isn’t, at its core, “red in tooth and claw.” We worry that the true nature of life is a fight to the death. But the fact that we are hard-wired to help one another, and that in helping one another we help ourselves, shows that altruism is part of our nature. Altruism is a part of our survival story and part of our biology.

Professor Abigail Marsh has spent her career studying altruism in humans. What makes someone help another person at a cost or risk to themselves? In a recent study at Georgetown Marsh tested 19 altruistic people, the kind of person who would, for example, give a kidney to a stranger, and found everything she tested looked pretty normal except for the amygdala- the part of the brain that helps process emotional reactions. She found this part was “significantly larger” in the altruists she studied than in the regular population.[vii] She concluded that “The results of brain scans and behavioral testing suggest that these donors have some structural and functional brain differences that may make them more sensitive, on average, to other people's distress,”[viii] So Marsh’s research suggests that we help one another because we empathetically feel their pain, their distress, and we act to alleviate that distress as we would our own.

In his Ted Talk Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard extends this idea further[ix]. He reminds us that empathy is a normal part of being a mammal, an extension of the instinctive mammalian drive to care for our young. (Mammals are, by definition, those animals that nurse their young after birth instead of, say, laying eggs in the mud and leaving our young to fend for themselves once they hatch). Richard suggests that the problems facing us now- such as economic inequality and global climate change, will require altruism- will require people working for the good of future generations sometimes at the expense of our own present gain. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge some of these problems in our world that you think would altruism would be part of the solution. Go ahead and call our from your seat. ….. Richard wonders if our natural mammalian empathy could be expanded wider and wider to call forth such altruism.

I was amazed to learn recently that Lichen (you know those crusty flowery plants that grow on the bark of trees or rocks?) are a mutualistic symbiosis. That means lichen are actually two totally different life forms, algae and fungus, living together as one organism. Both the algae and fungus can live alone, and in fact it stumped scientists for a long time what might make them come together as lichen. As Biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass:

“when researchers put the two together in the laboratory and provide them with ideal conditions for both alga and fungus, they gave each other the cold shoulder and proceeded to live separate lives, in the same culture dish, like the most platonic of roommates. The scientists were puzzled and began to tinker with the habitat, altering one factor and then another, but still no lichen. It was only when they severely curtailed the resources, when they created harsh and stressful conditions, that the two would turn toward each other and begin to cooperate… When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the lichens.”

I thought back to those bats, 40,000 years ago, when some hypothetical catastrophe caused a crisis for their species, and in response they evolved the altruistic behavior that allowed them to survive. Life-saving changes are possible when we need them most. And I argue that this is one of those critical moments in the history of life on this planet. Richard notes that while it may take 50,000 years to make an evolutionary biological change, personal change and societal evolution can happen much faster. He reminds us that there is hard scientific data showing that structural changes[x] happen in our brains when we practice altruistic love, or loving kindness. Richard has thousands of hours of meditation practice in his life as a monk, but such structural changes are possible with as little as 4 weeks practicing loving kindness meditation just 20 minutes a day.

Mammals evolved empathy so that we would be hard-wired to care deeply about our offspring and others in our family group. And we know that for some extraordinary altruists that same empathy and compassion can extend all the way across the continent to a stranger who needs a kidney, or a refugee from a war far away. Could we extend that altruism to the next 7 generations of children yet to be born? Could we take Richard’s challenge to cultivate our own loving kindness as individuals and as a society? Could we extend our circle of loving kindness beyond our own kin, our own friends, to hold all of life itself?

When you are discouraged about human nature, remember that altruism is just as natural as competition. It is an important adaptation that has evolved in us, and helped us survive. It is not only part of our nature, but part of the nature of Vampire bats, Vervet monkeys, and even e coli. Giving selflessly is not only the sappy stuff of love stories; it is part of the scientific story of how we survive together.

Endnotes
[i] http://www.radiolab.org/story/105440-blood-buddies/
[ii] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
[iii] http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/09/02/hints-of-altruism-among-bacteria
[iv] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
[v] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/#AltLevSel
[vi] http://www.radiolab.org/story/103983-equation-good/
[vii] http://www.npr.org/2014/11/23/366052779/why-people-take-risks-to-help-others-altruisms-roots-in-the-brain
[viii] http://www.georgetown.edu/news/abigail-marsh-brain-altruism-study.html
[ix] http://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_how_to_let_altruism_be_your_guide#t-895224
[x] http://phys.org/news/2008-03-compassion-meditation-brain.html

First Things First (January 13, 2013)

Do you ever have one of those days where as it comes to a close you wonder, “where has the day gone? I worked so hard all day, why does it seem like nothing got done?”  Other days, especially in the dark of winter, it is common to become so overwhelmed by life that we can hardly do anything at all.  Our lives push and pull at us, flowing in their own meandering way and we wonder – is this the life I meant to live?  Perhaps this is why these lyrics by David Byrne of the Talking Heads have spoken to so many of us:

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Life is the eternal balancing of our intentions and plans with life’s  surprises and powerful forces beyond our control—forces as large as a tidal wave, as small as a newborn that won’t nap. And whether you find yourself in a shotgun shack or behind the wheel of a large automobile, our intentions do matter.

When I was just starting my first full time ministry and also becoming a new mom, I realized that time management was going to be really important. I took a seminar called “First things First” from the folks at Franklin Covey. Stephen Covey died this summer, and I wanted to recognize him because he was one of the first teachers of time management who included values and principles in his teaching about how to get things done. Covey noticed that we often fall into doing whatever  is most urgent. We can easily spend our days greasing the squeakiest wheel. Instead, we can live the life we intend to live, we can choose to do what is really important to us and to our world.  The first question, then, is what comes first in your life?

We will start by asking, when you imagine your life, who do you want to be? Maybe you imagine “I always wanted to live an ethical life” or “I want to have a lot of good friends” or “I want to always be learning new things.” Our vision of our life shows us what is important to us, what our values are. Values are not just the  noble things, they are everything that comes into play when we make decisions --when we have to choose one thing over another.  Good food is a value. Beauty, art, fun, logic, silence, freedom of thought, responsibility, fame, wealth.   From the noble, to the selfish to the silly, what we value shapes our life. Take a moment or two now to silently make a list for yourself of the things you value, from the sublime to the ordinary.  [pause for reflection]

Now the problem with that list, is that not everything we love, if pursued with great consistency and strength of will, helps us become a better, more spiritually satisfied people. If “good food” is at the top of your list, and pursued with a singleness of purpose, we all know that is not going to turn out well. But if we approach a passion for good food with principle, it can absolutely be part of a well- rounded, ethical, enjoyable life.  Fortunately, we already have a very nice list of  principles right at the beginning of our hymnal- our UU principles. Unitarian Universalists believe in each person’s capacity to know what is right- to use their conscience to create a life of meaning for themselves and to live with justice, equity and compassion towards a goal of peace liberty and justice for all. So let’s take another moment, and consider how our principles might be lived out in those values you listed a moment ago [pause].

To help us round out our sense of what is important, Covey explains that one of the most important things for us to do every year, every week, is what he calls “Sharpening the saw” He reminds us that we are more effective in our work, more effective in being the people we want to be, if we consistently take time to care for our priary tool- our self. He divides the self into 4 areas: Mental, (our capacity to learn new things and grow throughout our lives) spiritual (our sense of direction and purpose, our sense of inner peace, our sense of being part of something larger than ourselves), physical (which includes not only care of our body, but all our physical needs, like our home and our finances) and social (the depth and health of all our relationships, that web of which we are a part).  Covey also lifts up what  he calls “the fire within” which is our sense of passion and aliveness. So let’s take a moment now to think about each of those 5 areas of our life, and to ask: what parts of our saw are keen, and which parts have grown dull?  Mental… Spiritual… Physical… Social… the fire within…

[pause]

Covey noticed that while our relationships are very important to the quality of our life and work, we don’t always give growing and tending our relationships the time they need. We have to be very intentional to make sure our relationships are given a place of prominence  in the coming year. So now I’d like you to think about  up to 6 roles we have in our life, say “sister” or “mom” or “counselor” or “science student” or “church member” and for each role thing about what would be the most important thing you could do. It might be concrete, like “help my daughter with her math homework” or more abstract like “be more fully present when I am hanging out with my friends.” And remember the importance of the “fire within” if the thing you come up with first makes you want to take a nap, try again, what would not only feed your relationships but would kindle that inner fire [pause]

Covey suggests that whereas most time management plans are based on the clock, what we really is a compass. All those things you’ve got written on your paper or listed in your mind right now, those are your compass. But as much as I love lists, I know that what you need in the middle of a confusing day is not a list, but something much simpler.  I would like for us to hone all these values, principles and relationships into a compass for this coming year. So we must ask ourselves, of all those important things, which is the most important thing? I submit to you that while we can do many things over the course of our lives, on any given day we can only have 1 or at most 2 most important things. Look over all those things, and decide, what is the most important thing or 2 for this coming year? Hopefully it will something that is in line with the principles and values you cherish, and deepens your relationships with yourself or others. Most importantly it should make you feel excited, it should give you energy. [pause]

I’m going to bring our time of reflection to a close, but maybe you aren’t ready yet.  Maybe it will take a few days of thinking and pondering, but whenever you are ready to commit to a single intention, it can become like a touch stone that you carry around with you throughout the year. You don’t have to have a plan for exactly how you will manifest this intention, but you can meditate on it, and keep an eye out for it as you go through your days. You might even pick an object that reminds you of this intention and put it in your pocket, or on your nightstand to serve as a reminder. When I came to the realization that I wanted to make environmental justice a touch stone in my life,  I had no idea what that could look like.  I was amazed that once I clarified my intention, once I started looking for it, being open to it, opportunities were all around me. If I had never clarified my intention, I never would have noticed all those opportunities.

Once you have clarified your intentions, your priorities now, finally, you can put first things first -- I mean literally first.  That way, no matter how the days flow by, whatever you claim for yourself as the most important will get your first, best energy. My trainer told us about an executive who decided that before he answered his e-mail, before he took any calls he would make $40,000 in sales, and then could begin his day.  

One of the most important things in my life is preaching for you and for my congregation in Athens. So on my sermon writing days, when I am freshly showered I take a cup of steaming hot coffee up to my study to write. I try not to open my e-mail or Facebook or even to look at that pile of assorted nonsense on my desk until I have done a real chunk of writing. Some days this is hard because there are so many other things, also important, clamoring for attention. One day last month I had 3 things to do before I drove down to Athens to teach a class in the evening.  One was a sermon, the other was to prepare for my class that night, and the third was to run some packages to the post office. I REALLY wanted to dash out and mail those packages, because I was humming with that sense of Holiday Urgency that is so infectous, but I remembered the importance of putting first things first, and so I got my sermon and my class prep done before heading out to do my errands. And Just as I was finishing up I got a call from the school nurse “You might want to come get your son” she said “he doesn’t feel too well.” Now… my son was first. So up I leapt, with  time enough to get my son at the school, fix him some hot tea, get him tucked in. I called his dad came home from work and watch over him and went to teach my class.  

As we enter 2013, some would say a whole new era, I encourage you to take time to figure out what things are most important to you: what things will bring your life into balance, will manifest your values and principles, will kindle your inner light, will bring you into right relationship with yourself and with the world. And then, put your mind, spirit, physical resources and relationships behind it. Put the first things first, and then no matter what else may come, your life will be grounded in that which is really important. Plant your intentions like seeds, tend them like a farmer, and may your garden grow.

Loyalty (November 11, 2012)

As this year’s strident political debates have swirled around us, I have often wondered –why is it that liberals and conservatives have come to such different conclusions about what is important? Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has surveyed tens of thousands of persons and found a reliable difference in which values were more important to folks who identified as liberals, and which were most important to those who self identified as conservatives. Of 5 foundational moral values  the  values of Compassion and fairness were considered most important by liberals, while conservatives felt that the other three values -- respect for authority, loyalty and purity were just as important.[i] I was fascinated when I saw Haidt interviewed by Bill Moyers recently, because his research gives a valuable insight into why liberals and conservatives have so much trouble understanding one another, so much trouble seeing the world through one another’s eyes.

As a self-identified liberal, it didn’t rock my sense of who I am too much to see compassion and fairness elevated over respect for authority and purity. But seeing Loyalty there as conservative value and not a liberal one… that bothered me. It made me wonder… could we Unitarian Universalists, both liberal and conservative, get behind loyalty as a value? The psychologists who designed the test describe the value this way “Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's ‘one for all, and all for one’."

This week the citizens of 3 states, gay marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington state. , voted to recognize same-sex marriage. UUs have long been leaders in this movement through the Standing ont eh Side of Love campaign and efforts since 1984 when the General Assembly passed a Business Resolution affirming the practice of UUA clergy performing Services of Union between same-gender couples, and requesting that the Department of Ministerial and Congregational Services develop and distribute supporting materials.[ii] And in 1996 we passed  Resolution of Immediate Witness in Support of the Right to Marry for Same-Sex Couples. Which reads in part: “BE IT finally resolved that the 1996 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association urges the member congregations to proclaim the worth of marriage between any two committed persons and to make this position known in their home communities.”[iii]

When Unitarian Universalism comes out year after year as a very public voice for marriage equality, I think most folks look at their message first and foremost as a pro-equality movement, but I also want to lift up that this is a pro-marriage movement, a pro-loyalty movement. If we didn’t believe in marriage, why would we embrace this particular inequality? Ours is not a religious tradition that says everyone must be married, but I do think it is important to name loyalty as a religious value, and to stand on the side of commitment and loyalty.

 The 2009 Census showed marriages are now at an all time low.  Only 52 percent of adults 18 and over reported themselves as married, compared with 57 percent in 2000.[iv]  This reduction in marriages is both folks who have never been married and folks who are divorced or widowed.

Initially when divorce became more possible in our culture, I know there were some women and men for whom this was literally  life saving. Folks trapped in abusive or oppressive relationships could see no way out. The option of never marrying is a blessing for new generations of men and women who would have been forced into un-wanted marriage out of social convention. But I propose that the pendulum has now swung too far to the other direction. Today the media often portrays marriage and romance much like any other consumer activity, shopping around for the best sweater or TV set, and relying on the return policy if the sweater no longer fits, or if the TV needs un upgrade.

I know that in this room there are folks who don’t buy into that cultural image of marriage as one more consumer good for sale in the marketplace. There are folks here who have been married for decades, who live loyalty day by day, who have stood by their partners through mental or physical illness, through disputes over the dishes, through conflicting career aspirations, through nights with colicky babies, or arguments about whether to have children.My premarital counseling professor once told us that some of his couples wanted to promise to stay together “for as long as we both shall love” instead of “for as long as we both shall live.” He would refuse – “That’s not really a marriage” he said. Because there is something about knowing that a union is a forever promise, that it doesn’t come with a gift receipt so you can return your partner if they don’t do their share of the dishes, or if a newer fancier model comes along later. Such a promise changes fundamentally the nature of the relationship-- to covenant “for richer for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.” Such a promise is a foundation you can build your lives on.

I think as a denomination, we have been reluctant to speak too strongly about the value of marriage in particular, because we know there are folks who build their lives on a different foundation. They chose not to be in a life partnership, and instead have strong bonds with friends, with parents or siblings, with extended family. There are folks for whom heartbreak has crumbled those very foundations they used to depend on, and those whose lives are more solitary. But I think it is the job of your beloved community to value connection, and to stand by those connections. 

The biblical story of Ruth and Naomi is a wonderful illustration of how loyalty can take unexpected forms. Some of you will remember that in this story Naomi’s husband dies, and not long after her two adult sons. She says to her two recently widowed daughters-in-law

⁸ “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9 May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.

One daughter in law, Oprah, chooses to go back to her mother’s household, (remember this was a matriarchal lineage) but the other, Ruth says to her

¹⁶ “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. ¹⁷ Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.” ¹⁸ When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

Ruth is elevated throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition as a standard-bearer for Loyalty.  Legally, she owed nothing to her Mother in law, but she made this vow of loyalty, and as the story reveals, is true to her vow.

Certainly loyalty has a shadow side, which is betrayal and abuse. For years religious leaders have told women or men trapped in abusive relationships that this is their cross to bear. That they must remain true to their promises and “try to work things out.” Untold damage and harm has been done with such admonitions. I attended a clergy training about domestic abuse over at the Guthrie medical center, and one of my evangelical colleagues stood to respond to this traditional dialogue and said “A woman who leaves an abusive relationship is not breaking her covenant. The man broke the covenant when he abused her.” The shadow side of loyalty is that it sometimes compels us into staying in an abusive situation past the time when the covenant is broken. Sometimes the most loyal thing we can do is name the truth, is uphold the boundaries of our covenant. If we are in an abusive marriage,  it is not un-loyal to leave. If we see democracy erode in our great democratic nation, it is not un-loyal to speak up and say “we can be better than this, I know we can.”

I went to the website “yourmorals.org” and took the survey, and one of the questions stuck out to me: “should you give help to a member of your family even if they do something wrong?” I like to think that I would. I believe that there must be some network, some community looking out for each and every person, even those who commit grievous errors. Now, let’s be clear that one must also put up boundaries. This is not disloyal. One should think carefully about giving money to a cousin you know is a heroine addict. We must keep our children protected from relatives or friends who have transgressed sexual boundaries. Keeping those boundaries is part of loyalty.

Here’s a question that often pits liberals against conservatives: “should you be loyal to your country even if you think it has done something wrong?” Remember the old rallying cry: “America: love it or leave it?” I want to challenge that old chestnut and say that this is not really loyalty. I think real loyalty sounds more like “America: love it… or work to make it a great country for all.” I want folks who think critically about government to reclaim the word “loyal.” Do you believe that those folks out shivering in the cold in an Occupy tent city are disloyal? I don’t believe they are. I think it takes a tremendous amount of loyalty to speak truth. And I have to say the same thing about those standing on tired cold feet at Tea Party protests. To me it is more loyal to stage a protest than to just give up on the democratic process and stop voting, stop paying attention, stop caring. To me political loyalty is not a passive thing, but an active one. We show our loyalty by showing up, by paying attention, and by hanging in there on good days and on bad.

After I realized that I was never going to be a professional opera singer and before I knew that I wanted to be a minister, I went to work for a company called Clendenin Brothers Inc. They made non-ferrous fasteners, and had been doing so since the 1865, because a port town like Baltimore needs rivets for ship-building and repair. Almost everyone in the front office had started in one of two jobs- the switchboard operator (my job) was the entry level job in the accounting department, and from there folks  advanced to biller, then to accounts receivable, then payables. The Sales intern usually became a sales person, and in fact the head of sales had been the sales intern almost 50 years back. I didn’t understand the politics as well in the factory, which was right there in the same building, but I knew that many of those who worked in the factory had been with the company for a long time. The company was loyal to its employees. If you were hired at Clendenin Brothers and worked hard, you could spend your life there, and each year the boss would stand in the loading dock handing out Christmas Turkeys and Hams.

When I spilled soda on the switchboard, a mistake that cost the company over $1000, I wasn’t fired, I got a very serious talking to by my boss, the comptroller. I confess I made a number of mistakes on that job, and each time, quietly, patiently, my boss and I talked about what changes I could make so that those mistakes wouldn’t happen again. Hardly anyone ever got fired, and hardly anyone ever quit.

One of my jobs as the switchboard operator was to interface with the vending machine guy. Being the kind of entrepreneurial young woman I was, when we received a proposal for a new vending machine contract, I presented it to my boss. I had heard enough complaints at the front desk about moldy food in the machines that I thought it was time to make a change. My boss said, “We have to think really carefully about this. We never leave a vendor lightly. Try to work it out with the current guy first, then we’ll talk about it.” This was a company that was loyal to its employees, to its vendors and to its customers. And I know that at least the employees in the front office were very loyal in return.

Is loyalty a Unitarian Universalist value? And if it is, do we believe that Unitarian Universalism is something we could trust with our loyalty? This, I think, is a question we struggle with mightily. Because so many of us grew up in other faith traditions, we often speak most loudly about the importance of “Our chosen faith” …of choosing. We value so highly the wisdom of diverse religious traditions that in my Athens Congregation we just spent 18 months teaching our teens about those neighboring faiths, and visiting those traditions as they gather in worship. But we have to be careful not to let loyalty to this faith become the null curriculum, that is, what we teach by what we leave out. Instead, let us fearlessly say to our children, if it is our truth, this is a good faith, and one that will walk with you all your life as you search for meaning and try to live lives that are compassionate and just.

Let us not forget to tell our children that if they choose to commit to this Unitarian Universalist tradition, it will be there for them in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.  When we speak of “our chosen faith”, I encourage us to think of choosing in the same way that we may choose to enter into a marriage, rather than the way we choose a new TV at the electronics store. Because when you new get your TV home that first day and you’ve figured out the remote, that is about the best that relationship is ever going to be. But when you enter into relationship with a faith tradition, with a particular beloved community, that relationship has the potential to get deeper and richer and closer year after year as life itself changes and grows. Perhaps loyalty is like putting down roots- which takes time. The deeper the roots, the more the tree is able to weather storm and drought, the more channels of communication and sharing are open between and among the trees and other life forms in a grove.

As Olympia Brown, the first Ordained woman preacher in America, preached to her Racine congregation in 1920:

 “Stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful.”

Loyalty takes many forms: loyalty to country, to a partner, to friends, to family, to employer or employee. Loyalty sometimes runs in the face of  the cultural patterning that we should always crave something better, something more, as if the next friend, the next partner, the next job will be better than what we have now. When we claim Loyalty as an important value we are remembering that some things grow slowly with time and commitment, and that these things are of profound and satisfying value, even when they are hard, even when exciting new things sparkle in the distance. Loyalty is about giving relationships time to put down roots, to spread their branches, and to blossom and bear fruit

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[i] http://billmoyers.com/content/what-do-your-morals-say-about-your-politics/

[ii] http://www.uua.org/statements/statements/19935.shtml

[iii] http://www.uua.org/statements/statements/14251.shtml

[iv] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/25/united-states-divorce-rat_n_935938.html