Direct Experience of that Transcending Mysetry and Wonder (May 13, 2012)

Because I am a Universalist, I believe that everyone has the capacity for a spiritual life -- that everyone is on a spiritual journey. In fact, because I am a Universalist, I believe there is no part of our lives that happens outside of our spiritual journey; it is the nature of life. So I preach about washing the dishes, because this is part of our spiritual journey. I preach about social justice, because this is one of the main spiritual practices of Unitarian Universalism. But a longing to know spirit in its distilled form is part of our tradition as well. This Unitarian Universalist faith tradition holds, as the very first source of our living tradition “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” We believe that each person has the capacity to experience directly the forces that create and uphold life, to experience directly that transcending mystery. We don’t ask religious authority to mediate our relationship with the divine. We believe, with the humanist Curtis Reese “that every age must achieve its own faith.”

The Muslim tradition teaches that Mohamad was the last of the prophets and in Judaism it is said to be Malachai. Both traditions hold that with these prophets revelation was sealed. But traditionally Unitarian Universalists don’t believe this. We believe that revelation is ongoing, we, like the younger siblings in a large family, don’t want to settle for a “hand-me-down” revelation. We want to be pioneers and explorers ourselves. We, with the Psalmist, want to “Taste and see” (Psalm 34:8)

But part of the reason we talk about washing the dishes and working for justice as a way of seeking the spiritual life instead of talking about climbing to the proverbial mountain top is that not everyone feels called to climb that mountain. Some folks pursue wisdom and insight through the stories and writings of the great prophets and teachers, others by doing good work in the world. Right at this moment, that’s all I want. A quiet moment of reflection now and again, a thought provoking story, and good work to do. But when I was in seminary I wanted to taste for myself. I felt a deep seated desire to know more. Last month I talked about how those early humanists did not deny the existence of God, but “were in a distinctly anti-metaphysical mood.” Well, this month we are talking about the exact opposite impulse. For me the hunger that drove me to seek direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder was a hunger to know God.

I had spent already a couple of years in graduate school trying to know God through the intellectual search, reading and studying theology and all the other things folks need to know for the ministry. I had spent some time trying (and mostly it seemed like I was failing) to learn to meditate. But at some point I wanted more than to write and think about the divine, I wanted to know for myself. When I was studying in Berkeley, there was then as there are now a group of teachers who lead “Satsang” which means “being in the presence of truth.” One of those teachers talked about this hunger, this craving to experience spiritual truth, and she said that this hunger is the prerequisite for this kind of seeking. Without this hunger, one cannot experience the truth.

I went to see one of my professors- Prof. Yielbanzie Charles Johnson, one of the only professors who talked explicitly about the life of the spirit. He had said often enough in class “If you want to have spirit in your life, you need to invite spirit into your life.” Even so, I felt a little crazy asking him my questions- both about how to invite spirit into my life, and how to ground that search to keep from drifting off into the ether. I was worried that most of the esoteric spiritual practices come from outside our UU tradition, but Yielbanzie reminded me that being deeply present with the natural world is one path that has been part of our UU tradition for generations. Immersing oneself in nature, listening and emptying and being filled in a forest or in a desert like the girl in this morning’s story, these are part of our own heritage.

All of the major religions traditions have seekers of direct experience, they are called mystics. (Some of our best known UU mystics are the transcendentalists.) If you read some of the poetry or writings of mystics from very different traditions you will notice tremendous similarities in what they describe. For example, many traditions suggest that one needs a teacher of some kind, a guide. Many recommend a community of learners. Because if you go on this journey you are specifically seeking something beyond your understanding, you are seeking something powerful. It is good to have people to talk with and keep you company on the way, to keep you on the right path.

I have found that the practice of grounding is critical- right from the start. I often visualize my own body putting down roots into the earth whenever I want to invite the spirit into my life. But this grounding can take many forms. It is important for every person to have their own anchor, and to be conscious of it, especially when coming into encounter with something new. Parts of this anchor might be your sense of right and wrong, your knowledge of who you truly are, your religious tradition, or your connections to the web of community and life all around you.

Most traditions emphasize that one important grounding practice which must be taken up before one goes deeper is living an ethical life. For example, in the 8 limbed path of yoga, the first limb is “Yama” which means ethical living. If you are going on a journey up the spiritual mountain, you don’t want to be carrying a lot of baggage. If you are stealing from your boss and cheating on your wife, this is the very first thing that is going to jump out at you on your journey – the demons of not being right with yourself and with your community.

It is also recommended that one have some kind of spiritual practice, or discipline. When I was at the University of Creation Spirituality on my sabbatical, we would have a seminar each morning, then for 3 hours each afternoon we would have “art as meditation.” During one of our intensives I studied chanting and meditation with Russill Paul who called this the “technology of ecstasy.” He reminded us that this is not a new search; there are helpful guideposts and teachings passed down to us for generations.

One could spend one’s whole life following these practices and noticing different energetic sensations and trance states not usually found in the ordinary experience. But as the Buddha and so many spiritual teachers have pointed out, there are any number of traps and detours on the way to pure experience. For example, I practice Hatha yoga. This is only one part of the 8-limbed path. It would be easy to get trapped in trying to do poses perfectly, or in accomplishing that cool pose on the cover of Yoga Journal, but the actual goal of yoga is “Samadhi” or union with the divine. Any path you take has the risk of sidetracking you from your real journey. For example, I heard a student of meditation explain that after practicing for years he finally reached a state of pure bliss. He rushed to his teacher to share the good news and the teacher gaves them a good whack on the head, because bliss is not the goal- pure awareness is the goal. So when we get off track, our spiritual practice, our teachers, our community can help ground us.

Along with the importance of grounding, I want to lift up the role of the heart in this journey. When I was studying Kundalini yoga, we spent time each class meditating on our heart center --literally on this area in our chest, which is also the location of the heart chakra. We would practice centering our attention there and cultivating a certain kind of feeling, or energy. I’m making both a metaphysical and a humanist point here; the heart is the node of the energetic system where the spiritual and the physical meet. But more importantly, it is the seat of compassion. No matter what kind of journey you are no, no matter where you are your journey, always start with your heart, always ground yourself in compassion --compassion for yourself, and compassion for all living beings. Says the great Christian Mystic Teresa of Avila, “if you are not certain about your relationship with God, stop worrying about it, focus on loving your neighbor, and the God-question will take care of itself.” (quoted in Sally McFague “A Climate for Change” p. 154)

And when you are firmly established in your anchor and your heart, my teacher Yielbanzie advised “ask earnestly, pay attention.” Yielbanzie had suggested that I “look for that thing that may not appear to be obvious… your help may come from where you least expect it.” I took his advice seriously. Instead of looking for confirmation of what I already thought I knew, I changed my focus to those things which surprised me, and realized I was thrilled to know there was still something in the nature of our experience that could surprise me. One fellow traveler said “whenever things get really weird or confusing or difficult, you know that you are really in it- you are right there in the mystery.”

I began a habit of listening to everything as if it was that help coming from some place I wouldn’t expect it. And I kept up my practices- I was at this time keeping a journal of my journey, I was keeping a dream journal and participating in a regular dream group, and I was studying Kundalini yoga, which included some very interesting and exciting things and also sometimes just the mind-numbing process of focusing your attention on a single point until you wanted to climb out of your skin. I spent a number of years devoted to this search. I didn’t have children to care for, and my work was preparing for and then beginning to serve the UU ministry, so this kind of search fit very well with the other factors in my life. I am so blessed to have had that time, a time I think of as my climb up that proverbial mountain.

I never did arrive at the top of the mountain -- just high enough to get above the tree line where the air is clear, and where you have a wide view of everything around you. I came away with a feeling that we were all part of something so much bigger than ourselves, and that we were held in love. I finally had answers to some of the questions I had been asking my whole life, and also just became comfortable simply being in the presence of mystery.

Theology, which had seemed so complicated in my systemic theology text books, started to seem simpler and simpler, and eventually it occurred to me that there is no you and I, there is no other to search for because all are one. How far I had to travel to come home to this very Universalist truth. But, as Gangaji says “to hear it, even to understand it, to memorize it, to hope it’s true is not enough. It has to be discovered Directly.”

When Yielbanzie preached at my ordination, he preached about getting lost, because I had taken so fully to heart this idea that if I wanted to find truth I had to follow the spirit even if it lead to strange places. In particular, he told the story of how our seminary class went to do our final ritual at a nature preserve, and when the whole class followed the sign that said “I took the path less traveled by” I assumed that meant I should take the other path, and went tromping deep into the brush by myself. On that very real journey, as on my spiritual journey I eventually realized that if I was ever going to rejoin the community of persons, I was at some point just going to have to turn around and head back-- that eventually I had to go back down the mountain. Some folks are called to be holy men or women living on the side of the mountain, making camp in the desert, but it became clear to me that I had to ground my spiritual life in the daily fabric of living. The 15th century Sufi poet Kabir writes “Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don’t go off somewhere else!”

And so the spiritual journey must begin and end with Grounding. Just as at the close of a pagan circle one grounds the energy raised in the ritual, so ultimately our knowing, our search for the divine must be grounded in our body- in our very particular time and space. In that spirit, my husband and I bought a house, we had a son, I got a full time job, and I committed myself to building a just world. For me such mundane acts as working in the garden, helping my son with homework, cooking – these are right at the heart of spiritual living. Even though I am no longer blinded with the brightness of the spirit within them, I know from my time on an explicitly spiritual journey, from the insights I gained during that part of my life, I know that these things are infused with spirit. I would go so far as to say they are brimming with God. Whereas before I started an intentionally spiritual journey these things may have seemed boring or beside the point, today they seem infused with meaning and purpose. Even on those days where I feel stressed out or uninspired, that knowing lingers. The simplicity of the vision that grew for me on my journey supports me on my path even in the ordinary time when I can’t even see the mountain from under the grove of trees I call my life.

While I was at Satsang one evening, back in Berkeley so long ago, a middle aged man mentioned that when he was young he had experiences of being overwhelmed with the presence of God, the presence of spirit in his life. He had lived in that feeling for a while, but then it had receded and he, all these years later, missed it very much. The teacher said that this was not uncommon to have an intensity of experience as we first come to know God, but that later in a mature part of the journey, we don’t need to be hit over the head, we can listen for the divine in more quiet everyday places.

Because I am a universalist and I believe that everyone has access to that transcending mystery and wonder, I believe that one does not have to follow complicated or esoteric teachings to reach truth. The Buddhists teach that a simple breathing meditation is both appropriate for beginners and is a practice that leads to enlightenment. One of the central teachings of Gangaji is that we can, in any moment, cut through our normal way of thinking and get to the truth of things. It is fine to follow the esoteric teachings, the scenic route through the realms of spirit, but there is always a direct path, a simple path, because there are no elect, no chosen who have the special skills to achieve union with the divine. We are all on the path. I believe that those who hunger can find the spirit, as Lalla Says:

No ritual, No religion, Is needed. Just cry out one Unobstructed cry.”

Everyone is on a spiritual journey all the time. We cannot escape it. The monk on his meditation cushion, the mystic in her cell, the householder at the sink filled with soapy water. Because God, the spirit, the meaning of life, are fully present in the faces of our neighbors, in the quiet of the forest. They are as close as our own breath moving in and out. But if a hunger comes for more, for knowing more closely, for a direct experience of that transcendent mystery and wonder, treasure that hunger, nurture that hunger, and see what new place it might lead.

Three Gifts of Humanism (April 15, 2012)

Sometimes when I am teaching a class about early Unitarianism and Universalism, and we are reading excerpts from the sermons of our earliest fore-parents who were explicitly Christian and believed in the authority of scripture and the saving power of Jesus, someone asks “so how did we get from there to where we are today?” This is the story of one huge turning point in our movement, the bend around which we traveled to find a clear view of the Unitarian Universalism of today. This is the story of the of modern humanism.

It begins with a minister born in Pennsylvania, in Chambersberg to be exact. John Dietrich grew up and started his career as a minister in the Reformed church, but was tried by his church for heresy and defrocked. And so he did what so many good heretics have done, he converted to Unitarianism and moved to the west coast where he began his career as a Unitarian Minister in Spokane Washington in 1911.

It begins with a Baptist preacher called Curtis Reese who, while he was in seminary, found that the new theories of biblical criticism undermined his fundamentalist upbringing. This new way of looking at the bible cracked open his belief that the bible was the literal unerring truth. He too converted to Unitarianism in 1913 and worked for a more “democratic” religion as opposed to what he thought of as the “autocratic” Christianity.

It begins with Charles Potter, another Baptist preacher, whose colleagues questioned the theology in his preaching. He preached a sermon for the AUA national secretary Lewis Wilson about Jesus, and after hearing the sermon Wislon “Declared him a Unitarian.” Potter also converted to Unitarianism in 1914 and was called to his first Unitarian church in Edmonton Canada, where he was introduced to the ideas of Dietrich, and realized that he was not alone in his crazy ideas. Potter was called on as a witness for the defense in the famous “Scopes” trials.

One of the things you will notice about all these folks, aside from the fact that they were “come-outers” that is to say, folks that left another religion to become Unitarians, is that they all served Unitarianism in the west. Whereas on the East Coast many Unitarians had grown up in our faith and embraced the older UU theologies and practices, Western Unitarianism (which included the mid-west) was a hotbed of new thought populated mostly by other “come-outers.”

In this time of great scientific advance, people wanted a faith that harmonized with the teachings of science, and demanded a higher burden of proof for their beliefs. This is the first gift of Humanism. “Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.” In the words of Reese, folks “who are afraid to face the facts about their own beliefs lest they lose their faith altogether…such people are building their faith upon the sand” (Reese in Robinson p. 150) At a time when the shape of modern life was undermining old beliefs, humanism emerged as a strong place to stand, a faith based on the hard physical laws of reality, rather than metaphysical beliefs which required a leap of faith. We see in the First tenant “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.” And SECOND: “ Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process” These humanists refused to profess anything on which they could not stand firmly, with the aid of modern science and reason. As AUA President Frederick May Eliot (president from 1937-1958) remarked of humanists “He may not believe very much as measured by orthodox standards, but what he does believe he believes with his whole mind” (Frederick May Eliot in Robinson p. 148).

The existence of God is not denied by these earliest humanists- this is a common misunderstanding by folks who use the words “humanist” and “atheist” interchangeably. Instead these humanist tenants show us a faith where religion had a “natural character.” As Curtis Reese wrote in his The Content of Present Day Religious Liberalism: “This is not the denial of the existence of significant and objective worths, but only the removal of the seat of authority from an indefinite something somewhere, to a definite self known to be native to human existence.” (in Parke p. 135)

A debate arose between the (mostly) west coast humanists and the (mostly) east coast opposition. The Humanist - Theist debate raged throughout the 1920s and 1930s and nearly split the denomination apart. One of the leading proponents of Unitarian Christian Theism was William L. Sullivan who was raised Roman Catholic and was ordained as a catholic priest in 1899). It was a 1907 encyclical by Pope Pious X condemning modernism that caused Sullivan to leave the church, feeling like he couldn’t stay within the church and honestly follow its teachings. Despite his love for the Catholic church, he entered the Unitarian Ministry in 1912. He preached here on the east coast, in New York City and in Germantown Pennsylvania, and was an influential defender of theism in 1920s. When Reese spoke of theism as “a monarchic view of religion that placed God in the role of master and humans in the role of slaves” Sullivan responded with by characterizing of Reese’s God as “The Big Democrat whom we are to clap upon the back with an egalitarian ‘Howdy do, Camarado!’”

When these early pioneers of humanism were going to seminary and starting out in their careers, Raymond Bragg was just a small boy, growing up in a Congregationalist family (Congregationalism is one of our closest religions neighbors- in fact we have often teamed up with them on things like women’s suffrage and abolition.) While he was at college he was exposed to Unitarianism, and after graduating applied to Meadville theological school for seminary- one of the 2 Unitarian Universalist seminaries still training our ministers today.

It was Bragg whose name appears at the top of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, because it was he who headed up the effort to create a Manifesto for the budding humanist movement. He commissioned Roy Wood Sellars (another Unitarian who was a professor and prolific writer of philosophy) to create the original draft. Bragg and committee of other Humanists revised and expanded the document. 34 humanists co-signed it, all men (it is assumed that no women were invited to sign) and of those 15 were Unitarian. The document had only 1 Universalist signer- Clinton Lee Scott (who wrote our opening words and our closing words for worship today). The Manifesto was published in the New Humanist, of which Bragg was then an editor.

The manifesto laid out what I offer you today as the second gift of Humanism- the idea that human life, far from being sinful and something to deny in favor of a glorious afterlife, human life is of deep value. The Seventh tenet of the manifesto reads “Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation--all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.” This idea that the sacred and the secular are not distinct was not a new idea. We remember this idea from the transcendentalists who believed that God could be found in nature. In fact many of the transcendentalist ideas opened the way for humanism in the following generations. The eight tenant explains that “Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now.” As Curtis Reese wrote in an address he gave at Harvard divinity in 1920 “He is not willing to accept the promise of a distant estate of doubtful character and location in lieu of concrete worths and measurable values here and now. He believes that whatever the future may hold for him it must be the outcome of his own spiritual achievements.” (in Parke p. 134) No longer is our goal to earn an eternal reward, but to fulfill our human personality- and it is not just the fulfillment of a few intellectuals or historic figures the humanists are pointing to – but of each and every human on the planet. “Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfactions of life.”

Well, if the development of every human personality is the sole purpose of the human enterprise, you can see why a commitment to social justice would be so important. How could we stand by and see our brothers and sisters degraded, starving, or sitting behind a machine in a factory making $9 for 56 hour weeks as was the custom in industry at the time. How could one develop the human personality in such circumstances? Says the manifesto: “Humanism will… endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few” If we believe in progress of the self and of society we must role up our sleeves.

So the third gift of humanism is its commitment to social action and the betterment of all. In this first manifesto we see a shining vision of what life should be for us all: “FOURTEENTH: The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate [does this sound familiar? Still resonates with our political landscape today, doesn’t it?] and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.” Wow. I want to live in that world. I want to work for that world. Moreover, humanists believe that this work we do for the betterment of society helps us to develop ourselves. This work for social justice is the spiritual practice of the humanist. The NINTH tenant of the manifesto reads: “In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.”

This is part of what makes humanism an essentially optimistic way of looking at the world. Humanism puts its faith in a belief that at the core human nature is good and worthy of being “of supreme worth” (Reese in Robinson p. 146), and in a belief in progress both of the individual spirit and of society. But this very optimism evokes a primary critique of humanism. Folks who looked at the atrocities humans have committed in our world, or folks who had experienced great tragedy in their own lives felt that such a faith in humankind was not enough to, as it were, get them through the dark night.

The name of this document is “A humanist manifesto” not “the humanist manifesto” and indeed two more manifestos followed, one in 1973 and one in 2003. The 1973 manifesto explicitly acknowledges that: “Events since [1933] make that earlier statement seem far too optimistic. Nazism has shown the depths of brutality of which humanity is capable. Other totalitarian regimes have suppressed human rights without ending poverty. Science has sometimes brought evil as well as good. Recent decades have shown that inhuman wars can be made in the name of peace.” But if you take a look even at the 2003 manifesto you see that the core tenants are still the same – a religion based in science and in the physical, natural world, an elevation of the role of humanity to provide their own meaning and fulfill their own lives, and a knowing that we are all in this together, and that it is up to us to improve society for everyone.

It was just about 100 years ago that the first Humanist sermons were given in our Unitarian pulpits. Humanism changed our Unitarian and Universalist traditions forever, describing a bend in the road of modern thought. Today in this room we are humanist and Christian, Jewish and Pagan, but these humanist gifts are a legacy for all of us.

References:
David B. Parke, ed. The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings from the History of Liberal Religion. Skinner House Books, 1985.

David Robinson. The Unitarians and the Universalists . Greenwood Press, 1985.

Feed What you Want to Grow (March 11, 2012)

Have you ever had aphids in your garden? Aphids are tiny little light green bugs eat the sap out of a rosebush or a tomato plant. I know when I see them in my garden I tend to panic. They reproduce like crazy- I heard that aphids can actually give birth to female offspring that are already pregnant! Conventional wisdom is to spray everything with insecticide -- to kill them all because if you let even a couple survive they will reproduce quickly and your garden will be covered with aphids again in no time. Moreover, each generation of aphids that survive are increasingly resistant to those insecticides.

Last year about this time I went to a workshop led by writer and Activist Starhawk about the “Principles of True Abundance” she called this the “nuke what annoys you” plan, and said that true abundance comes instead from “feeding what you want to grow.” Pests like aphids have natural enemies. In the case of aphids, one of their enemies is ladybugs. So in theory it is best to leave your aphid problem to the local ladybug population. Here’s the tricky part: predators of all kinds breed more slowly than their prey. They are slower to respond to changes to the ecosystem. This is a good thing, because it keeps predators from completely wiping out their own food sources. But when you spray insecticide all over your garden, you are killing not only most of the aphids, but most of the ladybugs. And because aphids reproduce so much more quickly than ladybugs, they will recover faster.

In this case, in our garden full of aphids, what we want to grow is ladybugs. So if we are thinking long-term, we can plant Marigolds, or dill, or fennel which are favorite foods of ladybugs. Ladybugs overwinter under rocks and in leaf litter, so we feed what we want to grow by letting a layer of fall leaves lay on the garden all winter, instead of “tidying up” as many of us have been taught to do.

Know who else likes to eat aphids? The Chickadee and the titmouse. Birds are some of the best insect eaters there are. If we want to make our garden bird friendly, we can add not only a birdfeeder to help get them through the lean times, but we would also make sure there are dense shrubs and trees to nest in as well as branches to perch on. To make our garden a home for birds we would also need a source of water. Now if you’ve ever been in an airplane, you remember flying over what looks like a quilt – but those quilt blocks are actually huge fields of neat rows of crops. If you drive by such fields they stretch on as far as the eye can see. You don’t see this as much on the roads I take to work, the fields on my commute are not so vast, and usually bordered by wild uncultivated patches of trees and shrubs. But in those big huge fields of mono-crops, there is no place for our bird friends to live and hide and nest. Most conventional fields are sprayed with expensive insecticide which kills all the natural insect predators in the process of killing the aphids and other bugs which would do harm to our crops. The thing is -- this method is not working. Apparently the USDA has been keeping track of the numbers and you can see from their figures that 50 years ago, before our newfangled high-tech farming methods, crop loss to pests and disease was a bout 7 percent per year. Now that we have all these patented insecticides and high tech farming methods, or crop loss has gone up to 14%. This is compelling proof to me that the “nuke what annoys you” approach to pests is not as effective as we might believe.

This idea of “feeding what you want to grow instead of nuking what annoys you” can be extrapolated into our personal lives as well. I believe the usual phrase is “you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.” When I was reading every parenting book I could get my hands on this strategy was called “positive discipline.” This school of thought suggests that instead of focusing on punishing mistakes, we focus on catching our kids doing it right, and making sure they know what “doing it right” looks like. So if you see your child at the sink wet from head to toe and surrounded by a puddle of water, we all know what our first gut instinct would be, but we could also reply “oh, you remembered to wash your hands! Looks like you are doing a very thorough job. Now let me show you how to clean up all that water on the floor.”

I have found over the years that often my son when does something “wrong” he actually was never taught how or doesn’t have the resources to do it “right”. Sometimes a few minutes together at the sink is all a parent and child would need to prevent a hand washing catastrophe.

When it comes to relationships, often the most effective thing we can give them to help them grow is our attention. For example, when we adopted our rescue puppy Trey, he had just about every behavior problem there is. He was so timid and afraid that he spent most of each day curled up in one spot on the sofa. But part of the reason I had chosen to adopt a high needs dog was that my job as your minister allows me to work from home during the day, so I knew I would be around a lot. After that first month Trey could be in the same room with humans, and if I let him go to his special safe spot and cower, he would let me pick him up. Because he was afraid of the stairs, every time I went upstairs to my study to work I would scoop him up from his safe spot and bring him with me so he could spend the time in his bed by my desk, or peaking out the window.

We were supposed to go out of town that first Memorial Day weekend, but because Trey was still very tenuous in his behavioral gains, we decided to stay home and just spend time together as a family. All 3 humans and 2 dogs puttered around the house. I played a little mandolin, mopped the kitchen, and taught my son a new card game. I started to remember that when we spend a day together just hanging out at home, good things happen. Our new dog even forgot himself and took a biscuit out of my hand instead of waiting for me to put it on the floor a safe distance away!

Finally it got to be bedtime, and Trey, who was really feeling like part of the pack, looked wistfully up the stairs after us as we ascended. I decided it was worth a try and carried him up. He went first to his bed by my desk but wasn't sure where to go when I headed to the bedroom. He paced and explored until I decided he was just too excited to sleep, so I carried him back downstairs to hang out with my partner.

Imagine my surprise when I woke some hours later and saw Trey curled up at the foot of our bed. He had climbed the stairs all by himself, and found himself a place to sleep. And that was that. He goes up and down the stairs now whenever he must and sleeps with the rest of the pack. Something huge changed for him that weekend, and I learned once again that good things happen when the family just spends time together. Our relationships grow when we feed them with time and attention.

We often give our attention to troubles and obstacles, to things that annoy us. Instead, feeding what we want to grow means that we give our attention to things that we want to have in our life. Many years back my partner and I were watching the now famous Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell in a series called “The power of Myth”.

Campbell says to Moyer: “I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.”
MOYERS asks: “What happens when you follow your bliss?”
CAMPBELL replies : “You come to bliss.”

I heard that remark at a powerful turning point in my life. I had just dropped out of grad school where I was studying to become an opera singer, and it seemed like the most important thing to do was to get a good job that would bring in a steady income and maybe even health insurance. I should get an office job like normal people, I thought. (whatever that means.) Can you imagine if I had done that? If what I had decided to feed was “being normal” and “getting a paycheck?” Instead I decided to feed that part of me that was curious about why things are the way they are, and what it all means. I fed it by carefully choosing the books I read, the adventures I had, and eventually with 4 years of seminary education. That part of myself that I fed eventually did grow, and became a minister. I am still feeding it, and it is still growing.

A woman came to me long ago for pastoral counseling. She told me that a co-worker was driving her CRAZY. You know how sometimes in your job situation or family, or maybe even here at the fellowship sometimes there will be a person who just rubs you the wrong way? My parishioner came and met with me several times about her conflict with this other woman. I asked her each time “what is good in your life? What are you doing to take care of yourself?” By our 3rd meeting on the topic of her difficult work relationship my parishioner could think of nothing good at all. She fed so much of her energy to this difficult relationship that it had grown and grown until there was room for nothing else in her heart. By counseling this woman I was able to see this tendency more clearly in my own life. When I get obsessed with, for example, how someone else in my house does or doesn’t do the dishes, this is a sign to me that there is probably something in my own life that I am not feeding. Whatever you feed will most likely grow- so be very careful about what you feed.

It’s not too hard to make the leap then to global politics. When Starhawk introduced this concept to us she asked “what if we had responded in this way to the events of 9-11 instead of responding with military might” in what she characterizes as the “nuke what annoys you” response. She asked- “what if instead of pouring resources into armed conflict, what if we had put that same amount of energy and support into our relationships with moderate Muslims and allies in those areas where terrorism had taken root?”

Going back to the garden she explained that in the Permaculture school of design you really want to avoid weeding. Usually the weeds serve some purpose, and if we plant the right plants and feed what we want to grow, the weeds won’t have an opportunity to take over. We asked her, thinking of movements like Occupy Wall street, and about the structures of power that are oppressive to many “don’t you sometimes have to weed?” Yes, she said, sometimes you do. But we must differential between people and structures. Sometimes structures need to be torn down, but there are people within them that we don’t have to demonize. When we weed we make room for new things to grow, and liberate energy and resources. When we tear down, she said, we must be careful of how we use the materials that made up the old structures, like when you tear down an old house.

She told us about the Gaza Freedom March she had attended in Egypt in the first days of 2010. They were supposed to enter Gaza through the Rafah border to meet with human rights groups to “bear witness to the continuing devastation” in Gaza. When they were not allowed to cross the border, they continued their protest in Egypt. There organizers were training grassroots communities in a school of organizing based on Gene Sharp’s work on non-violent struggle. Starhawk points out that when the people of Egypt rose up a year later everyone supposed it was just another protest, but in fact that organizing had been going on for years, starting in the poor neighborhoods and calling others to join them. Different news outlets calculate that somewhere between 500-800 folks died in the Egyptian uprising. But contrast those tragic deaths to these staggering numbers: over 4000 US service men and women and over 100,000 civilians who died in the Iraq war based on the Iraq war logs compiled by the US military.

The idea of “feeding what you want to grow” is that if we feed violence, what will grow is violence. If we feed nonviolent uprising and grassroots organizing, what will grow is non-violent uprising and grassroots uprising. You can see that this is a radical and subversive idea; it is not one adopted widely in our society. But the hope is that if you feed what you want to grow, what grows will be the very thing you wanted. Don’t take my word for it, try it in your life, and see what happens. Try it not just once, but consistently and patiently as you would care for a young child or a seedling in a garden. Notice what you are feeding and what is growing. May ladybugs and nonviolence, love, and harmony flourish in all our gardens.

In the Beginning (Evolution Sunday, February 12, 2012)

It matters what story you tell. In the beginning of the Hebrew scriptures there are, what most contemporary scholars think of as 2 creation stories. In the first one you will recall that God said “let there be light” and there was light. And God said that it was good. My Hebrew scripture teacher in seminary points out that this is an amazing way for the Jewish and Christian sacred texts to begin- with God calling the world into being with words. It gives power to the idea that those holy scriptures are important, that words are important, that words have the power to create and to shape. The second creation story in the bible is the one where God shapes Adam out of the dirt, forms Eve from Adam’s rib, and tells them to “fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28 NRSV).

Now I come from a religious tradition that does not approach the scriptures as the literal word of God; I believe they are filled with poetry and symbol and metaphor. The stories found in the Judeo-Christian scriptures are ancient stories told person to person and occasionally edited and written down by different traditions of religious scholars. These stories have power because they are part of our shared meta-narrative. It doesn’t bother me that in the bible the whole of creation takes only seven days, when science currently estimates it took roughly 13.7 billion years. Here’s what does bother me -- that as a culture we have used this creation story as an excuse to fill the earth and subdue it. Creation stories have power. They tell us where we came from, and what role we have in this universe.

As a culture we have tended to separate the “science and how things work” part of our lives from the “religion and what does it all mean” part of our lives. So even someone who goes into a lab on Monday morning and works all week with hard data might still be living by a creation story that tells us that we are the pinnacle of creation, that it was all created just for us to fill and subdue. What if we didn’t leave science in the lab on Sunday, but brought it to church with us? Brought it right into the heart of the stories we tell one another to make meaning of our shared existence?

Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, and Tomas Berry a Catholic priest and cultural historian took on the daunting task of getting the story that science tells out of our laboratories and graduate level astrophysics classrooms, and into our hearts. They believe that we need a story that is compatible with the latest scientific truths that we can know by heart and tell our children when they ask at bedtime “where did we come from?” Says Swimme, “Every child should be told; you come out of the energy that gave birth to the universe. Its story is your story; its beginnings are your beginnings.” Swimme and Berry first attempted the daunting task of turning science into poetry and story in their ground breaking book the Universe Story and their work has spread. There is now a whole movement of storytellers who are telling stories about who we are and where we came from based on the science of evolution, the evolution of not only species but of the whole universe. Story tellers like Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd have dedicated their lives to telling and retelling the “great story” --the story of the universe. I propose that as UUs, as a people who believe in the power of science to shine a light on life, each of us needs to learn and tell this story. When I say “Adam and eve” a whole flood of stories and images come to our minds, everyone from the great painters of the Italian renaissance to the Simpsons. But when I say “the big bang” or “the Devonian extinction” my mind flashes back to some cramming I did late night before a science exam.

So today I want to tell you a few stories about who we are and where we came from that are rooted in science. This particular way of telling our story comes from Swimme and Berry in their “The Universe Story” and also from Starhawk in her book “The Earth Path.”

The first thing we were, was one. The beginning of our story, and indeed of all that is was the flaring forth from a singularity. As we heard in our children’s story this morning, all the energy that ever was and ever will be came into existence in an area smaller than the point of a pin, although that’s not really the right way of talking about it, since space and time were contained within that tiny singularity. The first thing that ever happened in this universe was emergence, birth, the unfolding and expanding of space. The foundational forces of our universe were a balance of expansion with the gravitational force which maintains a cohesion that allowed a balanced and sustainable unfolding.

The growing universe was in the beginning and to this day continues to be shaped by density waves which are amplifications of the subtle fundamental vibrations or aftershocks from the flaring forth. Within that first fraction of a second after that flaring forth photons were no longer able to leap into and out of being. The cooling universe entered a new level of stability as Neutrons and protons were able to bond and form lasting relationships. Clouds of all these newly formed particles and elements were shaped by the density waves and the first primal stars appear -- formed from cohesion of the first elements helium and hydrogen. When those primal stars died as supernovas releasing all those elements and energy, their death allowed second and third generation stars to come into being for the next 4 billion years. Even as the universe expanded and expanded, the gravitational force drew elements together to form galaxies and stars. Clouds of elements came together into billions of spiral galaxies, one of which what is now the Milky Way Galaxy. It was the death of the supernova Tiamat about 4.6 billion years ago that released nutrients that formed our own sun and planets, as she had, in turn, been born from the death of other stars.

4.45 billion years ago the planets of our solar system were formed from collections of granules and gasses drawn together into 10 bands around our sun. And these bands in turn were drawn together to form planets. Our own bodies are made up, just as our planet is from Carbon, Oxygen and other elements that were ejected around that dying star Tiamat as it collapsed.

As earth formed and cooled, Aries, our first living ancestor emerged in the lightning storms and turbulent chemical interactions of earth’s oceans about 4 billion years ago. Many of this first generation of living cells, prokaryotes, became extinct quite quickly, but others are the ancestors of, for example, the bacteria alive today, because they carried within them DNA, the capacity to remember and pass on the blueprint of life. A mutation in one could be passed on for generations into the future. As they mutated they helped ensure the survival of life on earth. Because as the earth became less turbulent, the heavy mineral compounds which littered our seas and atmosphere provided a feast for our first ancestors feasted were not produced as quickly as the abundant new life could consume them. But life adapted to meet this shortage. Those early single celled organisms mutated to be able to eat the waste of their cousins, and others to eat the compounds from the decaying bodies of other life forms when they died.

But even so, they were eating and reproducing at a rate faster than the earth could produce new compounds. This would have lead to a great extinction, if it were not for Promethio, an ancestor who evolved the ability to photosynthesize 3.9 million years ago, (100 million years after life appeared on earth) to capture photons from the sun and turn them into energy. Some call it the most amazing technological advance in the history of life itself and this advance was made, say Swimme and Berry “Without a brain, without eyes, without hands, without blueprints, without foresight, without reflective consciousness.” (P. 90) and they were, moreover, though their DNA, able to remember and share this technological breakthrough.
All through this time, as the earth was giving birth to the first life, those life forms were changing the earth by what they took in and what they gave off. These earliest ancestors lived in a world where the oceans were brown and the atmosphere “a brownish orange” made mostly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide and methane (2.5 billion years ago).

For example, all those volcanoes threw off great amounts of Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and therefore beings who could transform that Carbon dioxide into their living bodies would flourish. And whereas an atmosphere rich with carbon dioxide helps the earth to maintain heat, with all those little single celled organisms turning Carbon Dioxide into life, the whole temperature of the earth declined, creating the first major ice age about 2.3 billion years ago.

The earliest cells consumed hydrogen, which had been plentiful and air, and which had sustained life for so long. Soon, however, hydrogen was over-consumed by a growing single-celled population. Some mutated into blue-green bacteria and were able to take hydrogen from the seas, sending flinging out a toxic gas into the land and sea and air, fundamentally altering the balance of our biosphere. That toxic gas was called Oxygen, which was like poison to these early beings, breaking down fragile membranes. As the oxygen content became higher and higher, at first those cells who lived in water could survive, but soon oxygen penetrated every part of our biosphere and there was a great catastrophic extinction.

But then life mutated. A Cyano-bacterium we can call Prospero drew prosperity out of catastrophe 2 billion years ago , inventing respiration; the ability to use oxygen for fuel, using it for a kind of controlled combustion, giving it many times more energy than its ancestors. Because there was so much oxygen it prospered. This helped stabilize the balance of oxygen on the planet, but even so the atmosphere approached 21% oxygen, the level at which spontaneous combustion happens.. Imagine -- the early earth had only half a percent of oxygen, and now had 21%! Like the balance between the forces of outward propulusion and gravity whose miraculous balance allows our universe to exist, a special balance of the gasses on our planet allows life as we know it to exist.

But this cycle of mass extinction and innovation continued. The Cambrian extinctions 570 million years ago saw the loss of 80-90 percent of species, yet in the aftermath of that extinction the Eukaryotic cell was born about 2 billion years ago, a cell with a nucleus, like the cells in our own bodies. Our earliest multi-celled ancestors - jelly fish, flat worms - filled the planet 2 billion years ago after the most vast glacial extinction earth has ever seen. Then life invented the shell, giving birth to life forms like trilobites, clams, and snails 550 million years ago, and vertebrates 510 million years ago. The cycle continued as 440 million years ago the Ordovician catastrophe was followed by the evolution of insects and fish with lungs. 370 million years ago the Devonian catastrophe was followed by a novel mutation where Lycopods developed wood cells, becoming the first plants who could defy gravity and stand upright on land and vertebrates came ashore in response to.

The Permian-Triasic episode [245 million years ago] was the greatest of all extinctions. It erased 75-95% of all species living on earth, especially those in the tropics. Coral reefs were wiped out in their place there was only a void for millions of years. This time the earth was very slow to repopulate, in part because that vast treasure trove of memory, the DNA of all those extinct species was gone forever. The great continent Pangea had drifted over the south pole creating a colder drier climate. In a life affirming response, the egg came into being, a less vulnerable way of reproducing evolved first in reptiles, who could migrate further inland now that they didn’t have to reproduce in water. Land animals evolved a way to retain their body heat in a cold climate) – the warm blooded reptiles that we believe were ancestors of the mammals like us to follow. As the Dinosaurs appeared these were the first era of animals to care for their young- to stay with the young after they hatched, and mammals who could nourish young outside the womb.

Placental mammals emerged in the wake of another devastation 114 million years ago [Aptian extinction] Earth grew cold. The mammals who could carry their young inside them- who could experience pregnancy and birth as mammals to day experience it, theses animals had an edge because their young started life outside the womb more developmentally advanced than the young of reptiles and dinosaurs. Many of the animals who now keep us company on this earth came into being: horses, rabbits, bats, whales, primates, lions, flowering plants and songbirds.
But then Antarctica split of from Australia, opening up a passage for currents of cold air, and the first ice began to form in the sea around Antarctica, an the temperature of the whole planet became colder.

The primates and other mammals had began to flourish in a vacuum left by a devastating extinction 67 million years ago which eliminated the dinosaurs and 70% of life on earth. This mass extinction may be the most famous. It is called the Cretaceous-Tertiary event [or K/T boundary] because it created such a clear boundaries between the era of the dinosaurs, and the eras without them the followed. This mass extinction eliminated the diversity of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, mollusks, fauna. There is some debate about what caused the extinction, but whether we believe it was caused by a great asteroid hitting the earth, a time of great volcanic activity, or the movement of tectonic plates, whether the extinction was dramatic and swift or happened over millions of years, we know that the climate changed drastically and could no longer support the old life forms, like the dinosaurs. Twice more the wealth of life and diversity of species swelled and died back, caused by environmental catastrophe caused by major shifts in the earth’s climate.

4 million years ago the first hominids were distinguishing themselves from other primates with a larger brain size and upright posture, though our ancestors still spent a lot of time in the trees. 3.3 million years ago the current ice ages began. 2.6 million years ago the Homo Habilis was the first hominid to make an abundance of stone tools. We can tell that Homo Habilis were hunters because the kind of tools they made -- developed for hunting and cutting apart their food. These were the first of our close relatives. 1 million years ago earth saw the peak of Mammals on our earth. Then during the following ice age many of the large many of the large animals such as the mammoths, the saber tooth tigers, and the mastodons as the glaciers advanced further and further south, shrinking the habitat and food supply for both animal and plant life. About 30,000 years ago the Neanderthals hit an evolutionary dead end. When the glaciers retreated, it was the smaller animals that took their place- the white tailed deer, wood mice and migrating birds; the abrupt climate changed began the most recent period of mass extinction. From that time, about 11,500 years ago, to this day we are part of the most recent mass extinction- including huge reduction in the other “mega fauna” that is- animals larger than ourselves such as elephants, giraffes, and rhinoceros. In fact hundreds and thousands of species have become extinct in our time; many scientists believe this to be from our own human actions- hunting and destroying habitat for perhaps hundreds of thousands of species, particularly in dramatically diverse communities like the rainforest.

As we once again alter the delicate balance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere we risk another dramatic unbalancing of life on our planet- the 6th great extinction. As we look back over billions of years of our story, it may remind us with trepidation of the great extinction when our atmosphere was unbalanced so many billion years ago, or it may remind us of the triumph of Prospero, who turned toxic waste into the stuff of life. This story of extinction and adaptation is a sometimes tragic story, but it is also a story of hope. Hope for life on our planet and for life itself. Life finds a way.

It seems it may be up to we Homo Sapiens to make a change, a breakthrough on the level of respiring oxygen or turning light into energy to restore a new balance to our biosphere. Say Swimme and Berry “While the human cannot make a blade of grass, there is liable not to be a blade of grass unless it is accepted, protected and fostered by the human.” (p. 247)

One thing that has been true of Unitarians since we called ourselves by that name is a value of science and reason. And Science has given us a new story of who we are and where we come from.

We live in the eon of geologic time in which all 5 kingdoms of life have blossomed on earth. We live in a time of war, of competition for resources, of technological achievement. We live in a time of massive species extinction and changes to our biosphere.

A story that helps us understand our place in the order of things must be a big story, a story that reminds us both that we are new- coming as we do after 13 billion years after the first flaring forth, and 4 billion years after the first life appeared on this earth. Our human history is just the latest chapter in a long, long story. The Universe Story also shows us that we are deeply intertwined with all that is. We were there in the very first moments and there in the dramatic end story of the supernova Tiamat, in the triumph of Arius, of Prospero. The story of their tragedies and successes is our story as well. Let us call on all those billions of years of wisdom and memory lest we miss whatever part of the story that will help us shape a bright future for our selves and our biosphere. The collected wisdom in our culture, in our bodies, in our DNA, in our ecosystem is a remarkable inheritance.

Who better than a faith that values science and reason to appreciate such wisdom? Who better than a faith which affirms we are all on the same path, to heed that wisdom in shaping a just and vibrant future. Who better than this very community to be students and teachers of this, our whole story? Who better than the Universalists and the Unitarians to remember that in the beginning all was one?

Habit, Ritual and Addiction: Building a Day (January 22, 2011)

Last summer my son Nick and I took advantage of a clergy scholarship to visit Star Island for the first time. This is a UU conference and retreat center on an island off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. It can be reached only by ferry. Many of the folks we met as we nervously boarded the ferry for the very first time had been making the annual pilgrimage for years. There is a history center on the island where you can see old timey black and white photos showing people engaged in many of the same traditions that still live on there today. One of those traditions is polar bearing at 7:00 am. Now remember this island is pretty far north, and out a few miles into the Atlantic. The ocean water is not warm even on a sunny summer afternoon, but these folks start their day every morning with a walk out to the end of the dock and a dive into the chilly early morning water.

When I first heard of this tradition, I knew it was not for me. Just taking a ferry out to this strange island to spend a week single-mothering it with my son and 200 some total strangers was challenge enough. But one day as I sat at lunch getting to know yet another new person, she told me that she was 80 and had been coming to the island for decades. I noticed around her neck the plastic beads that reward those brave enough to take the plunge. I was amazed. I had imagined a gang of burly 20-something men lining up on the dock for the early morning plunge, but my dining companion said she never missed a morning. It was all the more remarkable since the weather was horrible for almost the whole week. There was drenching rain every day; Nick and I quickly ran out of dry clothes. The winds were so severe that ferries to and from the island were canceled, and staying warm was a challenge even in the middle of the afternoon.

What got me through those rainy days so far from home, what I had to be sure of even before I registered for the program, was yoga. Every afternoon there were several programs to choose from, and I always chose yoga. I had discovered the first day that this was to be a gentle yoga class- the teacher was very specific about that. Some of the women who enjoy the same kind of vigorous yoga that I enjoy left the class to do their own practice, but in an island full of strangers, I needed a yoga community. Even though this was not the same kind of yoga I was used to, what was important to me was to have that yoga discipline to anchor my day. Even on the days when the storm was so intense that rain dripped through the roof onto the yoga mats of the folks in the back row, even on the days when a cold wind whipped through the swinging doors of the room where we were practicing. Even, and this was the hard one, on the beautiful sunny day when sensible people played hooky from their workshops and basked in the sun after days of being locked up inside in the rain, there I was on my yoga mat.

That last weekend of our stay, the sun finally broke. Nick insisted we join the group of singers who gather each morning to walk the whole of the residential part of the island singing a wake-up song at every dorm and cabin. As we gathered, another group of folks sat in the white wooden rocking chairs on the deck enjoying a pre-breakfast cup of coffee and watching the island wake up. The polar bears were also gathering there at the edge of the dock in the glittering early morning sunlight. There were people of all shapes and sizes from elementary aged children to the octogenarian friend I had met at lunch earlier in the week. While I could see the appeal of taking an early morning walk around the island singing, I had this sudden knowing that I MUST polar bear before I left the island or I would always regret it. So the next morning I got up even earlier, left my son abed, wrapped a towel around me and headed out to the dock. It was just as scary and cold and exciting as I’d thought it would be. There was a lovely sense of camaraderie, and after I proudly emerged from the water I reported to the guy in change for my very own plastic beads on a string to show I had been a polar bear at Star Island. I could see why those folks did it even in the cold and the rain. Because you felt like you had DONE something, even before breakfast. No matter what else the day held, you had already had your moment of excitement and camaraderie and you were awake and ready to face the day.

I thought about all the little traditions that made up the Star Island Experience, and how different people needed different things to make up their day- the folks who went door to door singing, the folks who gathered quietly on the deck with their coffee, the kids who massed in the snack bar in the evening, the night owls who walked out to the stone village for coffee house after the rest of us were tucking in for the night. I thought fondly of the morning worship after breakfast, and the procession of the lanterns in the darkness for worship at the close of day.

Here on this island where everything was new and strange to me, where the weather was so extreme that even the staff wasn’t quite sure what to do sometimes, there was something so grounding, so comforting and also strengthening about building those anchors into my day, that kept me from feeling adrift even in the tempestuous storms. Now I don’t know if yoga would have had that same grounding feeling if I had not had my yoga practice as part of my ordinary every day life for so many years. Day in and day out, when I am full of the energy of a spring day, or the excitement of learning a new challenging pose, or when I am grumpy, sleep deprived and even injured, yoga is there like an anchor.

Our everyday life is full of habits and rituals, whether or not we have been intentional about creating them. Your morning commute is probably not something you intentionally chose to be part of your day, but there it is, regular as clock work. Waiting for my son to get off the school bus is not something I have any control over, but there it is, a critical pillar of my day. Even the dogs know it is coming and start to run in little circles and pat me on the knee as that magical time approaches. Committing to dive into icy water every morning is an intentional choice, but many of the rituals and habits that make up our days we stumble onto accidentally. Because I work at home most mornings, I brew a pot of coffee and boil water for oatmeal while I get my son off to school. Then my work day starts with a quiet moment alone in the house, and whether I’m reading up on theology or writing the first sentences of a sermon, that cup of coffee is warm and lovely and helps ease the transition into the day. Recently when the morning was very cold and dark, and I had slept only restlessly the night before, I heard the sound of my alarm clock with despair and disbelief. Then I remembered- there would be that moment of warm coffee and warm oatmeal and quiet, and that gave me the will to get out of bed and begin the day. I didn’t mean to create that ritual, but there it is- a pillar of my day.

Now a couple of years back I was at a professional conference at this super fancy hotel- I had NEVER even been inside a hotel so fancy. It was so fancy that the planning committee hadn’t been able to afford the cost of the morning coffee break, so when we came out of our first event of the morning at 10:00 all the coffee had been cleared away. I just stood there incredulous and pouting in front of the empty space where just an hour before the coffee tureens had been. My anchor was gone! Here I was hundreds of miles from home and without my anchor! I ended up riding the elevator back up to the 10th floor to brew a pot of coffee in my hotel room. I think that was when I knew that my morning coffee wasn’t just a ritual, it was an addiction.

Sometimes the anchor that gets us through a stormy transition, or gets us out of bed in the morning becomes an albatross around our neck. We get in the habit of drinking a nightcap before bed, or a having a cigarette after meals, and we don’t realize until we try to go without how attached we are. Even something as vital and nourishing as food can become an unhealthy crutch. We turn to a favorite comfort food in difficult times, and soon our cardiologist explains that it is endangering our health. A teenager experiments with smoking and spends the rest of her life trying to break the habit.

It is more than the power of habit and the comfort of daily ritual keeping us in an unhealthy rut. The same chemical process by which alcohol, illegal drugs or even certain prescription medications make us feel good traps us. We used to think that recovering from an addiction was merely a matter of will-power but now we know that the chemicals in our body and brain are changed by such addictions and the normal survival mechanisms in the limbic brain are overridden. Our brain tells us that only the thing we are addicted to will provide safety, satiety, security.
Once the very functioning of our brain has been altered, addiction becomes a disease, and requires a medical support. For example I had a roommate who was determined to stop smoking cold turkey. After about 24 hours of misery, he ran for the door like a man possessed- headed to the pharmacy for a patch to help him through the transition. But overcoming the chemical, biological part of addiction is only part of the solution. Because the warm cup of coffee that starts the day, the cigarette break, the drink after work, the snack before bed, these calm and comfort us because they have become anchors in our day. We cannot simply leave an empty hole where those anchors were withdrawn, we have to fill those transitions in our day with something new. We must practice those new anchors daily so that they are strong and comforting when we need them.

A few years back I was going through a very stressful time. I had built a life that was all work and no play, and felt out of balance. Moreover, I had recently lost about 60 pounds and was determined not to use food as a crutch to get me out of this latest difficult time. A friend asked what I enjoyed as a little girl. I thought back to my Elementary school years and remembered that I spent almost all of my free time doing 2 things, reading fiction and dancing. It was at that moment that I developed a substantive Sci-Fi Fantasy habit – oh the joy of curling up with a good book! It got me through some difficult times. It was only a few days ago, however, when I realized one day on the yoga mat, probably during handstands, why I love yoga so much. Yoga is fun. When I was a little girl, I spent most of my free time dancing around my bedroom, and tumbling across the floor. Back when I had no demands on my time and could fill each moment with whatever brought me spontaneous joy, I was doing exactly this. As adults we hardly ever get to dance around in a big open space like I did when I was little, (just stretching out in public will earn you some weird stares) but for that hour and a half in the yoga studio I can stretch myself out in all directions. I can roll on my back and stand on my hands and even laugh with friends who share the sheer joy of such things. By choosing yoga as my practice, as my spiritual discipline, I have built what I enjoy most about being alive right into my day.

As we enter the season of New Year Resolutions, making a resolution like “stop smoking” or “start exercising” or “stop over eating” is noble and good. But the mere fact of decision must be linked with intentionally building a day. My friends who smoke tell me that a cigarette is not just a cigarette, but the whole ritual of taking a pause in the day, of stepping outside, of marking time. We increase the odds of success by taking time to reflect “when is it that I most need a cigarette?” or “when am I most likely to grab an unhealthy stack?” and figure out what you are really needing during that moment. Ask yourself “what could I give myself in those moments that will someday provide the anchor that a cigarette or a handful of potato chips once provided?”

The comfortable flow with which we move within our habits and routines is the same inertial pull that makes changing those habits and routines so challenging. Instead of grooving along the familiar path we can follow without thinking, we are asking ourselves to stay awake in order to remember to turn left instead of right. Moving across the country is a difficult change, but skipping the nightcap, or ice cream or cigarette before bed is even more difficult, because it comes so easily. So be patient with yourself, encourage yourself. And most importantly give the day you are building your attention and love. When you create a beautiful day that you enjoy you are rewarding yourself and asking the part of your brain that releases dopamine to anticipate those new rewards. Is there something lovely you have always coveted for your life? Something healing and life affirming? Then give that to yourself every day as a gift.

At a continuing education training about addiction our presenter tried to impress on us that healing the spirit is a critical part of recovery. He reminded us that the Lord’s prayer beseeches “give us this day our daily bread.” To him that prayerful request is not just about food, but about whatever gives the spirit sustenance. We need to feed our souls every day, and if we don’t have healthy, life-affirming ways of doing it, we run the risk of stumbling into unhealthy, addictive ways of making it through the big and little stresses of daily life.

As Unitarian Universalists we aren’t bound to pray 5 times a day like our Muslim neighbors. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need those anchors for our spirit every single day. What Anchors your day? What comforts you when times are stressful? What makes getting up in the morning possible? Whether it’s a plunge into icy cold water, a ho t cup of coffee, dinner with your family, a walk alone in the evening, offer that anchor to yourself as a promise you can rely on. When we are building our day, we must be intentional about including our daily bread, about shaping a day to feed our soul in good times and in bad.

Washing the Dishes (December 11, 2011)

One summer at the UU church I served in Palo Alto, our RE team decided we would offer a pilot session of SpiritPlay- the UU adaptation of the Montessori-based “Godly Play” developed by one of my heroes Jerome Berryman. What makes SpiritPlay special is that it tries to create a scared space where children can engage directly with religious language. It is based on the radical assumption that all humans are engaging their existential reality no mater what their age. And so after the story each students chooses the work he or she will do. It might be painting, or drawing, or shaping clay, or re-telling the story for themselves.

One of the core concepts behind Montessori is that if children have equipment matched to their size and capabilities, they will really develop a sense of their own capacity. The room is prepared so that the children are empowered to find what they need to do their work. This means there’s a huge amount of preparation need for the first class, but then little changes from week to week except the story. My co-teachers and I were all a little daunted by the amount of prep and set-up required; I had thought the long descriptions of clean-up supplies present in the Montessori classroom to help children take care of their own spills seemed really tedious and complex, and I was willing to let it go. But at the last minute that first morning we made a quick run to the kitchen for buckets and sponges and were back in time for the children to enter.

That first morning the children did more-or-less engage with us in a quiet wondering space. I was touched and delighted every time they were willing to play along. After the story each child went to find their work for the first time, and the two youngest children chose paint. They got out their special paint trays and paints and paper, and in about 2 minutes they were done painting. Oh my, I thought, I hope they will be able to “find their work” today. But before they moved on to their next choice, they needed to clean up after their painting. I showed them where we kept the bins of water and the sponges cut small for individual use. Twenty minutes later when I called everyone back to the circle those two were still cleaning their trays. For those young children, this was clearly the best fun of the whole morning. How delightful to have your own sponge in a bucket marked “trays” to clean off your tray. How fun to have a special bucket marked “hands” to wash your hands in.

Berryman’s pedagogical asumption behind letting each child find their work is that each of us knows somewhere deep inside what our spiritual work is on any given morning. This theory places a radical trust in the spirit’s capacity to be heard, and in our capacity to hear it. And this capacity is not dependant on physical or mental maturity; Berryman is making the radical leap that we are all engaged in our spiritual work our whole lives, not once we get some degree, or go on a meditation retreat with a guru. We don’t always know what our work is, so we set aside time to see what emerges, trusting that this will be the work our spirit needs. And these youngest children figured out that the work of their spirit that day was to wash their paint trays in bins of soapy water with their very own sponge.

I told this story a number of times when folks asked how SpiritPlay was going. I found myself saying “maybe the Buddhists were right- maybe it is all about washing the dishes.” It came out in a kind of glib way, but the idea sank deeper and deeper within me over the following weeks and years. Maybe the spiritual work of washing the dishes is really important and powerful and even compelling. Maybe it really is all about washing the dishes.

[Here there was a reading from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Miracle of Mindfulness "Washing the Dishes to Wash the Dishes" and "The Cup in your Hands"]

I first read Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing about mindfulness maybe a decade before that fateful morning with the paint trays. I was in seminary at the time and I had the frame of mind that I was really living only when I was doing something interesting or fun or exciting- and that the chores I had to do were the cost I paid for my real life. Dishes and other chores were something you should put off doing as long as possible, and then rush through quickly to get back to really living. But in my Intro to Buddhist Meditation class, we were learning that we should always put our attention in to the present moment, no matter what that might involve. Whether we were sitting quietly on a meditation mat, or stuck in traffic, we could practice equanimity, and being fully present in the moment.

Well, I tried- honestly I did. And when you live in the bay area, there are plenty of moments to sit patiently in traffic practicing your equanimity. But still I was missing an important point. I was motivated by the idea that if you really practice being present as often as possible, then when some great moment of spiritual revelation comes, you could be as fully present to that as to the bumper of the car in front of you on the interstate. I would struggle with doing the dishes to do the dishes so that later I could drink tea to drink tea, as it were. And maybe that was my work. I was a student after all, and I am still grateful that I had adventures and did interesting things in my twenties- I’m glad I had passionate ideas about changing the world, and a deep hunger for spiritual awakening and growth.

Then, about the time I was settled in my first full time ministry, my partner and I became parents. I remember one Sunday afternoon standing in the living room after a full day at church, and my family was all watching a football game and relaxing. “Why don’t you sit down and relax?” someone said. I wondered, “why don’t I?” And then I heard the sound of my infant son waking from an all-too-short nap in his room. Now parenting an infant is a very rigorous job. You are never really in control of your own schedule. There is no putting off your work for later- when a baby needs to eat, he needs to eat NOW. Then when you are the parent of a toddler, there is no rushing through things as quickly as possible; it’s not unusual to spend half an hour getting a child into his or her shoes. Toddlers do everything in their own time and are rushed at your peril. So if you are really living only when you are on some grand adventure, or having fun with your friends, or pursuing some scholarly or spiritual insight, then time spent parenting is time when you are not really living.

But the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition challenges us to set aside those assumptions. The time you are stuck in traffic or stuck at the sink with a pile of dishes or pacing the floor with a colicky newborn, this is still your time. This is still living. In fact, for most of us this is the very fabric of our days. What a waste it would be if all our long day of chores and work and helping others were all in preparation for that hour after dinner when all the dishes are done and we can relax with family or with a good book.

Moreover, there is something really satisfying about work done well. There is something almost restful about washing dishes, or sweeping, or pulling weeds because the mind can let go of all its cares and worries, can put aside planning for the future and just sink down deeply into the task at hand. When I sit in front of the computer answering e-mail I usually feel kind of scattered by the time I finish, and finish is such an arbitrary word for it since there is always more to do. But when I set out to wash a load of dishes it has a definite beginning, middle and end, and when I am done I have something aesthetically pleasing to show for my work- a clean kitchen that I can enjoy and use. I may feel tired after doing the dishes or weeding the garden, but my mind is almost always more clear and calm when I am done if I am doing the dishes to do the dishes, than if I am rushing through to get to the next thing on my list.

As pretty much every healing discipline agrees, doing things with our body is good. Being a little tired from activity is a good thing. I used to lace on my running shoes and go for a run first thing out of bed in the morning, but now that I have to get my son to elementary school, after I make my son’s breakfast and lunch and feed the dogs and let them out and set the coffee to perking, I like to do a load of dishes or a load of laundry. It has a very similar effect to going for a run -- I’m awake, I’ve used my body to start the day and I feel ready to go. (I think this is how you know you are in mid-life; when doing a few chores before breakfast seems like a nice way to start the day.)

I want to go beyond a strictly Buddhist concept of mindfulness for a moment and think about work itself. Especially the kind of everyday tasks we do with our hands, with our bodies. The last half century or so has been filled with “labor saving” devices, tools and machines. And yet are folks less busy than they were half a century ago? Do we have more time to go on walks and sit quietly and read a book? I don’t think we do. Our whole society is guided by the idea of doing the dishes to get done as quickly as possible so that we can go watch TV or something. James Bostic, former deputy assistant secretary of agriculture for rural development once said “… just stop for a minute and think about what it means to live in a land where 95 percent of the people can be freed form the drudgery of preparing their own food.” To this Wendell Berry replied in his book “The unsettling of America:”

“In gardening, … one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, and a source of delight. …

The ‘drudgery’ of growing one’s own food, then, is not drudgery at all… It is – in addition to being the appropriate fulfillment of a practical need – a sacrament, as eating is also, by which we enact and understand our oneness with the creation, the conviviality of one body with all bodies…”

“The former deputy assistant secretary cannot see work as a vital connection; he can see it only as a trade of time for money, and so of course he believes in doing as little of it as possible, especially if it involves the use of the body.” [Berry p. 138-9]

I agree with Berry that eating becomes more meaningful when we have prepared the food ourselves. The only time my son has ever eaten certain vegetables is when he harvested them off the vine, or helped cook them up. And so it is with washing the dishes -- to really feel the dish under your hands, the temperature of the water, the smell of the soap. How different each kind of food is to clean off a dish. How different it is to clean a fork than to clean a mug. I tell you I am much more careful when I cook certain foods knowing how hard it is to clean the pan if I scorch it. When we feel the full cycle of food from garden to stove to table, or of a dish from cupboard, to table, to sink, to cupboard again, we know something real about what it means to live in this world. If we only ever experience the cupboard full of clean cups, our knowing is superficial.

It is one of my most deeply held beliefs -- that if anything is sacred, then everything is sacred. Well then, if any work is sacred, washing the dishes is surely sacred. Whatever your work is this week, whether you are called to it by the spirit, or called by the pragmatic needs of living in the world, I challenge you not to rush through it to get back your real life, but to cherish your time washing the dishes, to claim it as your life. Any time you find yourself facing the day’s chores: washing dishes, clearing frost off your windshield, getting a cup of juice for a child, walking to the mailbox. I encourage you to sink down into it, to experience it fully. It is the very fabric of our lives.

Facing Death (November 13, 2011)

I am 4 years old, laying in bed at night, afraid to go to sleep because the inevitability of my non-being has dawned on me. I am afraid to die.

I am 5 years old, lying in bed at night, remembering what we learned in school about volcanoes, about earthquakes. My mother tries to re-assure me: there are no volcanoes in Pennsylvania. I tell her I am afraid of earthquakes. She tells me earthquakes only happen in California. This doesn't help. I am afraid of dying.

I am 24 years old. I am in California, I moved here to attend seminary because I still don't understand how to live knowing that I will die. I had thought that maybe if I spent a few years studying the wisdom of the world religions I might finally understand this mystery; I might finally find some peace. The Bay Bridge has only recently been repaired from the Loma Prieta earthquake when the top level collapsed onto the bottom level, killing those trapped on the bridge at that unlucky moment. I white knuckle my way across the bridge at least once week. I am afraid of death.

I enroll in a Buddhism class without knowing what a good idea this is -- to start my inquiry with a tradition that looks directly in the face of death. I mean this figuratively, but also literally. Our teacher is a Theravadan monk, and our textbooks are not from American Buddhism, but Buddhism as it is practiced Malaysia. In that land when a person dies, the professor Bhanti explains, they are not buried under ground, but laid out to decompose. We read in our text Buddhist Meditation: In theory and practice about the Asubha Bhavana, a meditation on the ten stages of the decay of the body after death. The text explains in great detail the preparations leading up to the meditation, and the many things that should be noted during the meditation on a dead body decaying in the graveyard. I am shocked.

I don't, actually, meditate on a corpse, but I do imagine what it would be like not to jerk my eyes away when I see a squirrel lying on the ground. What if I could just breathe, in and out? What if I could cross the Bay Bridge, knowing that earthquakes do happen here, and that bridges do collapse, and I could just breathe. I encourage myself not to run away from the idea, I don't push it away but I allow it to be present, and then without grasping let it fade. I develop the habit of mind of looking at my fears as unflinchingly as I can. It makes me feel braver.

I take the required systematic theology class, and have the good fortune of studying with Bob Kimball, who is a very wise man and who exposed me to the writings of his teacher, the Theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich says that there is only really one source of anxiety, and that is the anxiety of non-being. “The ontological question, the question of being-itself, arises in something like a “metaphysical shock” – the shock of possible nonbeing.’ (Systematic Theology p. 163) I recognize that metaphysical shock from when I was a little girl with anxiety- induced insomnia. Tillich writes “Finitude in awareness is anxiety…” We attach that anxiety to real things, like earthquakes or volcanoes and they become fears, but really at the root is this anxiety of non-being. “A danger, a pain, an enemy, maybe feared, but fear can be conquered by action. Anxiety cannot, for no finite being can conquer its finitude. Anxiety is always present, although often it is latent” (p. 191) And finally I understand why as I tossed and turned grappling with my own non-being when I was just a little girl my mother couldn't comfort me.

And what is it that does assuage this anxiety? Courage, the “Courage to be." How do we find the courage to be, knowing that our lives are finite? Tillich uses an “ontological argument” which means that if we can conceive it, it must exist; Because we can imagine the courage, it already exists in us.

Tillich writes “In order to experience his finitude, man must look at himself from the point of view of a potential infinity. In order to be aware of moving toward death, man must look out over his finite being as a whole; he must in some way be beyond it.” Tillich’s language is difficult, and I slog through even the smallest reading assignments. But Prof. Kimball is patient, and passionate about the power of Tillich’s work, and I challenge him and challenge him across his desk during our seminar which gathers weekly in a small circle in his office. Some courage begins to grow in me.

I am researching a paper and I read these words by the psychologist Erich Fromm, and copy them into my journal: “The common suffering is… the awareness that life runs out of one’s hand like sand, and that one will die without having lived.” This is it; my greatest fear here in this book. Finally I understand what I have to do. I have to live. I have to live passionately, creatively, vibrantly right now, living a life so full that when it comes time to die it will have been enough.

This is the heart of what I want to talk to you about today. I believe that whenever we realize that we are mortal, whether it is because of something scary the doctor finds during routine tests, or just because the reality of our fragility comes fully to mind, it changes how we see our lives. It changes what seems important and what seems urgent.

So I want to invite you to join me in a moment of meditation. This meditation is by our dear Thich Nhat Hanh meditation from Blooming of the lotus
(Exercise 10 p. 50-51)

When we dare to become present with our own impermanence, what thoughts rise? What is that comes to mind when you allow into your awareness the reality that each of us will die? That you yourself will die?
[pause for meditation]

What things in your life surge to importance when you look at your life from that vantage point? when you look back at your life today, as if there might be no tomorrow for you, what parts of your life are you most proud of? most grateful for?

[pause for meditation]

The next is a more difficult question- when you look back at your life as if from the end, are there things you feel are missing from your life? Lost opportunities or dreams? Some of these lost dreams that come to mind we can only grieve: if we turned away from a path we regret never taking, if we wish we had spent more time with a loved one who is now deceased. It is healing to take time to grieve these losses, these parts of our life that never were. To grieve and let go of that which will not be, even if that takes time and patience, lightens us for whatever is ahead.

The greatest gift of facing the reality of our death is that we can make choices about the time that remains for us. If you learned today that your remaining life had a discreet number of days, what would you do?
Would you reconcile with long lost friends or family?
Would you forgive or ask for forgiveness?
Would you finally live out an old dream- to hike the Appalachian trail, to go back to school and become a nurse?
[pause for meditation]

Now I am Forty-something, and it has been many years since I laid awake at night anxious about my non-being. I do, occasionally, face my own mortality, or more often I face the mortality of people I love so dearly that I know their death will leave a hole, a scar in my spirit.

Our state of mind when we face death is different than our ordinary state of mind. On any given day, our priorities may be to get to the grocery store, to finish a project at work, to finally clean out those gutters, to play bridge with friend. But death gives us a different perspective; it makes us think of life as a whole piece. It helps us clarify our values. Being present with our own mortality sometimes helps us let the dinner dishes sit if it means we can spend time in conversation with our family, it helps us take the time off work to see the sun set over the pacific. We put off raking the leaves to get our will in order, to make sure our family is taken care of after we are gone.

Buddha, the enlightened one, was once stopped on the road and asked by a man, "Sir, are you a god?"
"No." Said the Buddha.
"Are you a demigod then?" asked the man.
"No." replied Buddha.
"Then are you great man?" asked the passerby. "No." replied the Buddha again.
"Then what are you sir." The man final asked.
"I am the one who is awake." Replied Buddha as we went on his way.

The realization of our own death comes to us as a wake-up call. Sometimes it nudges us to be fully present to this very moment, even to our fears, because the more we are present the more we will know that we are really living. When we face death this precious moment, the way it is, fully lived by us is enough. Sometimes our fear tells us that we are afraid of dying un-reconciled, unfulfilled. When we face death we realize how lucky we are to still have time to reconcile, to connect, to fulfill our dreams. Death robs us of complacency, but shows us what it means to live.