I was taught in seminary to do ministry with sacred texts in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Our theological and ethical musings are of no consequence if they cannot be applied to what is happening outside the walls of our congregations, if they do not speak to people’s lives.
As the Affordable Care Act comes into effect this month, I’d been wanting to do an in depth exploration of how our Unitarian Universalist values support the struggle for universal health care.
And then I had a baby.
And so it was in between diaper changes, that I heard NPR coverage of the botched rollout of the ACA, of website crashes and governors of some of the poorest states refusing to expand Medicaid as originally called for.
In between feedings, I caught glimpses of newspaper editorials decrying coverage gaps and lower-than-anticipated-enrollment.
As the health care debate raged on, I set up payment plans for our own hospital bills and accepted the care of family and friends who brought food and loving hands to help. I argued with my insurance company about covering portions of my prenatal care, and I applied to enroll my daughter in Connecticut’s HUSKY (Medicaid) program.
And as the pundits went at it, one of my best friends continued her battle with cancer, and another was in a horrific accident that left him in a coma with a devastating brain injury.
Over the past few months, I have seen more early morning light than ever before. As I sit up in the pre-dawn hours feeding my newborn babe, heartsick for my friends, I wrap myself in a prayer shawl, sky blue.
As my heart holds the exquisite joy of new life and the devastation of illness and loss, I sink into the softness of the shawl and the love of friends and the love of God, and I pray for healing, for wholeness, for peace.
I pray that my spouse and I might find the strength and the will to care well for the tiny person entrusted simply by her birth into our care. And, knowing full well that we cannot protect her from harm or shelter her from hurt all the days of her life, I pray that we might have the courage to be a part of creating the kind of world we would like for her to live in. I share all of this, because I have found that the topic of health care quickly becomes deeply personal. It is crucial that we move beyond facts and figures and media sound bytes, that we reflect on how we are cared for, how we care for others and what kind of society we want to create together.
When it comes to equitable health care, I start with our connectedness, our interdependence.
King wrote these words we read this morning from his cell in a Birmingham jail, calling on white clergy to join the struggle for civil rights : “We are,” he said, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” This is a spiritual understanding of human relations that compels us to care for each other – all of us, even those we might not first see as our neighbors.
Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed writes: “The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered amid the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice.” Understanding ourselves as connected, each to all, we know that stranger and friend alike are our neighbors, and that love and compassion are the foundation of the vision we share with King – and with so many others – a vision of a society in which all are provided for and cared for equally.
People of faith do not need to know once-and-for-all how to fix the brokenness of our health care system. We do need to continually lift up the vision of a society grounded in love of neighbor, rooted in compassion for all, and transformed by care.
We do need to hold together the joy of new life and the devastation of illness and loss, and to celebrate the wondrous love that binds us together. We do need to pray for healing, for wholeness, for peace.
I pray that as a nation, we might have the will to care for each other well.
And I pray that each of us might have the courage to be a part of building the society we dream of.
The ACA gives us a tiny nudge us toward that goal. We have a long way yet to go.
(Today, I preached at the ordination of a new minister in my denomination, Unitarian Universalism. Her name is Rev. Lara Campbell, and I shared the pulpit with Rev. Michael Tino. Here is my half of the sermon.)
“Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message,” wrote Olympia Brown, the first woman to be ordained by a denomination—the Universalists, in 1863. And we know that she did not demand immediate results, she who worked for women’s right to vote from girlhood and finally was able to cast a ballot in 1920 at age 85.
I think of Olympia Brown, loving this faith despite the widespread discouragement she had to face in order to be ordained and the challenges she faced in ministry her whole life. I think of Egbert Ethelred Brown and Lewis McGee and so many other groundbreaking ministers of color who fought, against resistance and sabotage, for the right to lead Unitarian and Universalist congregations, who stood by this faith. And I think of all the people who still struggle to be able to devote their gifts to this faith, for a variety of reasons.
We do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, their lives say. Their ministries say. Their legacies say. Their legacies are very much with me tonight as I preach, for the first time, wearing a stole given to me after the death of one of my mentors, Rev. Gordon McKeeman, who died in December. Gordon, a stalwart Universalist, who devoted his life to this faith, is now here with us, lending strength and companionship, reminding me that he has entrusted me with leadership, reminding us that he entrusted his life to Universalism and ministry.
I think of these people and I think of all the bold, visionary Unitarian Universalist ministers, ordained and not ordained, right now, some of you sitting right here, who have dreams of new applications for our faith, who believe that our faith calls us to stand with those lofty ideals of equity, justice, lovingkindness, in this miraculous yet devastating world. Who imagine ministries with unusual new shapes and contexts and methods, all of which seek to bring more love into the world.
I think of ministries beginning in coffee shops—Beloved Café, envisioned by seminarians at Starr King School for the Ministry—and yoga classes—Create Meaning, out in Denver—and in the streets—Faithful Fools, which has been inventing street ministry for decades now—and AWAKE ministry in Annapolis, and the Sanctuary in Washington DC—all bold, visionary new shapes for our future. And each week, with the Church of the Larger Fellowship, we live into these new shapes as we try new ways to find each other, to care for each other, to care for our word from all across the globe.
And deep within me, I say, yes! I am so grateful that you stand by this faith! All of you! All of us! I am grateful that so many work for it and sacrifice for it! I am grateful that all of us are here today, attesting to its value, when we could be doing so many other things on a Sunday afternoon!
But then, right there with the yes, something in me whispers, but…just a little whisper that says, but.. yes, but… but I wish you, and I, didn’t have to dream our dreams alone so much of the time, wish some of our best and brightest lay and ordained ministers weren’t still fighting for support the way that Olympia Brown and others have had to fight for support. I wish each vision could be surrounded by others who supported vision and faith, that we could find ways to reach out better beyond our individual enterprises and make common cause, collaborate with one another, build something bigger than our congregations.
In this era of union-busting, I am longing for a Spiritual Union. I want spiritual collective bargaining. I love Unitarian Universalism, and I love the way that our congregations are self-determining and unique, but I believe in those old songs that I was raised on, about how “The Union makes us strong.” I take to heart those words in our hymnal from Dr. Martin Luther King, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” And I say, when do we realize that we are that garment, instead of behaving as if our purpose on the planet is to pull apart the threads?
What might we do if we embodied a place of spiritual union with one another? When I say we, I don’t mean only Unitarian Universalists, I mean all of us who believe that people are worthy to be entrusted with carrying and sharing love so deep it will not let us go? What if that name that’s been assigned to us when we wear bright yellow shirts that say Love on them, The Love People, was really our identity? What if we cast fear aside, if we dared to believe that humanity, collectively, is worthy to be entrusted with the message that there is power of love so big that it can’t be held by any one set of religious metaphors and beliefs?
And who might we entrust with our faith? Who might we trust as prophetic voices in our wider faith, a faith not bound by traditional buildings or denominational stakes in the ground? How might we live into spiritual union with the people whose leadership we need in order to challenge and take down the notion of the saved and the damned, the chosen and the unchosen, the deserving and the undeserving, which dominates the US and so many other countries as much now as it did when John Calvin’s concept of predestination, that some are born saved and some are born damned, was widely believed to be true?
Where might we find union and create more love with other people, of every faith and no faith, who dare to proclaim that all people have inherent worth and dignity? Where are the voices saying, YES, African American youth and other youth of color, you are worthy to be trusted! Youth of color, queer youth, youth in general—you are worthy to be trusted! You are the people we need to have as union stewards in our spiritual union.
Where are the voices insisting, YES, people on public assistance, you are worthy to be trusted! More spiritual union stewards, whose leadership we need. Where are those whose witness proclaims, YES, immigrants without all your legal documents in order, you are worthy to be trusted! We need you as leaders in our spiritual union.
What might we do? Who might we dare to be? We have seen some of this in our work for marriage equality, immigration rights, voting rights, in our anti-racism work, as we join other religions and organizations and people to work together, but what if we had real spiritual union?
Whatever configurations our ministries with one another and the world take, whatever architecture we use for buildings, whatever technologies we employ, our own sense of Unitarian Universalism’s worthiness must be a part of the structure. But the time for clinging to small identities is over. The world is far too small now, we are too closely connected to even imagine that we do not have neighbors on every side who care about what we care about.
It’s scary. It means letting go of so many structures and identities that we have confused with worthiness—structures of privilege, or comfort. It means swimming in the ocean rather than in the small pond which our relational faith can become. But love will save us, again and again, when we are afraid, when we are confused, when we make mistakes, when we can’t get our bearings.
We are worthy to be trusted, not because Unitarian Universalists are the chosen people. Worthy, instead, because we have devoted ourselves to faith in a force–call it truth or God, life or love–a force much bigger than we are ourselves—which will not let us go, and which will not be confined or defined.
We have been entrusted with a great faith, and that faith whispers, shouts and sings, You are worthy! Worthy to wear the mantle of this great faith.
The little towns in their squares
light up, as do the scattered
lights of farmyards in the tilting,
fuzzy squares they’re locked in.
I balance a Chilian red
on a bumpy flight out to
one of those squares.
The West is red too,
after we bump to a
cruising altitude through
clouds threatening snow.
I’ve been here before,
but not in this sundown;
in these clouds;
drinking this wine;
in the lines of this poem.
Somewhere out there
I’ve been on the last
cool ride in the back
of a truck at evening,
watching a huge moon rise
and knowing this, too,
would be a last.
We knew that time would pass;
we knew we, too, would pass;
we knew that the land
would not forget us
because it never heard
our cries anyway.
We knew it, but
the terrible wrench
of knowing it
again and again—
the land proved careful
about showing us that,
or perhaps even we
might have rebelled.
Perhaps even we
might have blown out
our little lights
in the squares
and called it a night
with no tomorrow.
Land, what would you
have done without
our fierce burning?
What would we have done,
without our fierce burning?
For now, there is the red.
Then, the darkness,
but for the burning.
[More king cakes than you can imagine and only two weeks into Epiphany, I am still tugging on the promise of this season, even as I find myself tugging on clothes that seem strangely tighter…]
Kathleen Norris notes the irony that King Herod “appears in the Christian liturgical year when the gospel is read on the Epiphany, a feast of light…Because of his fear, [Herod] can only pretend to see the light that the Magi have offered him” (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, 1998).
Perhaps because of our fear, we can only pretend to see the light Universalism offers us. Here is our epiphany. We are loved, each and every one of us, every single atom and molecule. We are loved – not for what we do or believe, but for the divine light that shines in each of us.
We are all children of the same star dust and no distinctions we create can defile our original blessing. In a culture built on hierarchy and scarcity, it is a faithful act indeed to trust that everyone is held equitably in a compassionate heart of love. The scarcity of divine love is a dangerous myth, a tool to control and coerce.
Our work in this world, beloveds, is to proclaim the message of epiphany. We are loved, not for who we are, but because we are. We do not have to prove ourselves worthy of love any more than we should need to prove ourselves worthy of water. Just as we need water to be healthy human beings, so too do we need the knowledge that we – every single one of us, no exceptions, not even the most evil creature you can think of, every single one of us is held with compassion greater than we can imagine. It is a grace we cannot earn and we cannot lose.
Our faith has long valued acts over beliefs, and as a social justice organizer, I often celebrate this fact. But there is one belief that I pray will soak into the marrow of our bones, into our synapse and our blood. No one is left out of the mystery, no one is denied a strand of the interdependent web of all existence. We are all beloved.
May this season bring you sweetness – and the courage to live as a beloved among beloveds.
I recently asked a friend, via e-mail, what her daily routine was like. It was delightful to get a sense of her day in an hour-by-hour play-by-play sort of way. I could tell from her rough daily itinerary where she lived (and that she and her family are enjoying the warm southern-California winter weather) and what her priorities are (her children, family, spiritual practice, personal health). I loved learning about how she wove into her family’s life some semblance of structure combined with the breathing room that allows for playfulness and ease.
I found it inspiring to read about her day-to-day, and it made me want all of us to share, post, and exchange our daily routines. It also made me want to ponder my own more intentionally. As parents of a toddler, much of my and my partner’s lives right now are focused on curating routine. So many of the parenting gurus say: routine, routine, routine — that’s what cultivates a feeling of calm and confidence, of the kid being able to anticipate what’s coming next and start to get herself prepared for getting out the door, back into the stroller or carseat, ready for dinner or bedtime. So lately I’ve had this primarily logistical, linear appreciation of routine — a leads to b, b leads to c, and so on, until the day is done and we collapse into sleep.
Through my friend’s-and-my simple e-mail exchange I realized (again) how significant our daily routines also are in terms of our spiritual health. In this new year one of my personal goals has been just to get to bed before midnight. Perhaps that doesn’t sound that ambitious, but after our kid’s bedtime is the time when we have to do the dishes and the laundry, pay bills, catch up on whatever online, get some work done, clean up, plan for the next day, relax a little bit, and, oh yeah, talk to each other. It’s easy for me to end up staying up later and later if I don’t set an intention. And that is how I aim to think of these routines — as intentions, efforts to bring some semblance of structure, of a container that can hold the over-fullness of our lives.
The routine of our day is also, I re-realize now, like a recipe. I love cooking, love following the clear outline of a recipe. Too often the to-do list that starts churning in my brain as soon as I’m blearily waking up is an unachievable, endless and random list of tasks. The beauty of intentionally outlining a daily routine is that it also lifts up the importance of things that wouldn’t make that to-do list, but are actually the most essential elements of the recipe: get up. Wake up the home (open the shades & curtains, turn on lights, bring in the newspaper). Wake up the body (bathe, shower, get dressed, have breakfast). And so on.
Many teachings emphasize beginning any spiritual practice by training our hearts and minds. Some days the simplest practice for me is to chop vegetables, clean up — my own take on the oldest teachings of “chop wood, carry water.” I end the day turning off all the lamps, the computer, the wireless, silently saying goodnight to the home. This is the end of what this day held. There is a peaceful closure to this one-minute act — it is the garnish on the day that was.
Separate from all the tasks of our lives, our days hold rituals, routines, and structure to them. Articulated, these routines have a kind of beauty, the simple clarity of a recipe. I write our family’s daily routine up and post it on the fridge. Wake up the home. Begin the day… And right there, when I read those first words, I feel a greater sense of possibility and spaciousness. Life is not an endless series of tasks unless we let it be only that.
And you? How is it with your day?
A few weeks ago, I decided that this is the year that I am going to smash a few windows. I wrote all about it in this post here. I wrote about my struggles with comparisons and image and perfectionism, about all the ways that I let fear and doubt and what others might think hold me back, about the ways that I am trying to carve out a new way to define what is means to be balanced and successful and happy.
And I wrote about how it has become painfully clear to me that I am not the only one who suffers from this Frosted Window Syndrome, from this disease of dis-ease that thrives on Comparisons and Never-Enoughs and Gotta-Haves and the Pursuit of Perfection and the Quest to “Have It All.” I wrote about how it absolutely breaks my heart that so many people are fighting this never-ending battle to feel like they Measure Up, that so many people feel like they can’t Keep Up and that they are Not Enough.
I wrote about how I planned to smash some of those windows.
When I wrote all those things, it felt good to publicly commit to putting an end to the madness with plans to quit the Comparison Game, to quiet the Voices, to see what is Real and True, and to focus on what really matters.
It felt good…as a goal, an abstract, an intention.
And then, I was handed a hammer and put to the test. It was as if Something or Someone seemed to be saying, “Here you go. Let’s see if you really meant everything you just wrote. Let’s see if you can really smash some windows.”
Because not more than an hour after I hit “publish” on that post, a few windows started to frost up. Within mere minutes, I had two more rejections of my manuscript, I parted ways with my agent, and I suddenly found myself facing rather grim prospects of ever finding a publisher. I won’t get into the specifics of it all, except to say that the rejections were largely due to the fact that I am a Unitarian Universalist (astonishing, right?!?) and to say that none of it was all that surprising. Hurtful, yes. Surprising, not so much.
But while none of this was a huge surprise, the simple truth is that rejection hurts, even when it is anticipated. Setbacks are disappointing, even when they are expected. Closing doors echo very loudly, even if I am the one closing them.
And it is easy to say that we’re going to smash Frosted Windows and focus on what is Real and True when life is moving along smoothly and when things are working in our favor. It is quite another thing to smash those windows when the cold and the dark and the questions and the frustrations seem like they might be more than we can handle. It is one thing to say that we will focus on what really matters when the Voices are quiet; it is quite another thing to focus on what is Real and True when we aren’t quite sure of what that is, exactly.
As the events transpired, and I read the disappointing and hurtful words – words that were closing so many doors that I had optimistically held open for so long , words that called my faith into question – I found myself face-to-face with the frosted window of rejection and disappointment and (maybe even a little discrimination), with its cold and dark stare whispering you’re not enough, you’ll never make it.
For a moment, I was absolutely terrified that I might not have the strength to wipe away the muck and grime, let alone smash any windows. I feared that, despite my best intentions to focus on what is Real and True, I was still trapped by the hazy blur of false hopes and comparisons and put-downs. I worried that I just don’t have what it takes.
I re-read the email that was closing so many doors, absorbing the enormity of the information. My stomach lurched and tears sprang to my eyes.
But they did not fall. In fact, I found myself surprisingly relieved, almost uplifted. I knew that should feel disappointed and that I should be angry, but, honestly, I just wasn’t. Because, amidst all the hurt, I knew that I had been given an invaluable gift of a hammer and a very timely opportunity to use it.
You see, when I started writing and working on my first manuscript, I told myself that I was doing it because I wanted to share my ideas, educate others about Unitarian Universalism, explore spirituality in a new light, and fulfill a dream. (The idea of a flexible career with a pajamas-and-yoga-pants dress code didn’t hurt either.) But, if I am being really honest with myself, my goal of writing a published book was significantly blurred by a (conscious or subconscious) quest for popularity, recognition, approval, acclaim, and financial success. And because of those frosty distortions, I often lost sight of what lay beyond the Frosted Window – connection, support, purpose, fulfillment.
Over the past two years, as I have shared my words and thoughts and fears and dreams, slowly I have scraped away the frosty haze of false hopes and misguided intentions and slowly I have begun to see what Real and what is True.
So when I received the disappointing news and was confronted with that all-too-familiar feeling of rejection, I knew that I should be upset that what I hoped for was slipping through my fingers yet again. But I just wasn’t. Because I knew that what would be left behind were the things that really matter.
Don’t get me wrong, I would still love to find a publisher for my manuscripts and I am not giving up on my dream of one day being a published author, but after using the hammer to get rid of the frosted haze that had been blocking my view, there is much less anxiety and desperation to it all. Without the blurred view, it is far easier to see that I already have what really matters – faith, love, support, fulfillment. And with shards of cloudy glass around my feet, it is far easier to see that when it comes to writing and spiritual community (and, I suppose, life in general) that this right here – the sharing and connecting – is what really matters.
There’s an old Zen story that does like this:
Once there was a great warrior. He had never been defeated, and he continued to win every confrontation into old age. He was known far and wide as the only warrior who had never suffered a defeat.
This of course was a challenge to younger warriors, and one day a young man appeared to challenge the old warrior. He, too, had never suffered defeat. His technique had become famous: he allowed his opponent to make the first move, then exploited that move and always won the day.
Despite the concern of his students, the old warrior consented to join in combat with the young man.
On the day of the battle, the young man walked up to the old warrior and spat in his face. The old man did not move. Then the young man began to hurl insults. This had no affect either. Then the young warrior began to throw dirt and stones at the old warrior. The old warrior stood, impassive.
Finally, exhausted by all his effort, the young warrior bowed to the old warrior, admitting defeat.
After the young man had left, the disciples of the old warrior gathered around him. “Teacher! I would have split that young man’s skull open! How could you allow him to hurl such insults at you?”
The old warrior replied, “Consider this: if someone offers a gift and you will not receive it, to whom does that gift belong?”
Nonviolent resistance embraces the techniques of both the old and the young Zen warrior. Like the old teacher, nonviolence does not accept the gift of violence or insults. Like the young warrior, nonviolence provokes a first response, then watches the opponent to see what the first move will be.
On April 12th, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for parading without a license. There wasn’t a great deal of reading material in the jail, but one of the people arrested with King had been allowed to keep a newspaper he had in his pocket. That newspaper contained an editorial written by eight Euro-American Alabama clergy titled “A Call for Unity.”
The editorial began with the premise that, yes, African Americans deserved equality, but—that said—that said equality should be allowed to happen slowly—in the fullness, shall we say, of time. Without hubbub and marches.
King had heard this argument many times—just calm down and let the South change, slowly but surely. He had heard it from Euro-American centrists; he had heard it from within the African American leadership itself.
King began writing a response immediately. He used the bottom of his shoe for a desk. He wrote first on the margins of the newspaper; then on toilet paper; then on scraps provided for him by an African American trusty in the jail.
What he wrote is one of the great documents in US history, up there with the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. What he wrote is an argument based on the Unitarian thought of Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, “Civil Disobedience.”
MLK knew that violence was the nature of racism. But it is also a basic human response to threat. In his letter King says this:
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps:
collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist;
negotiation;
self purification;
and direct action.
We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.
Besides the moral high ground of nonviolence, King also knew that his cause itself stood for a higher order of morality. In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau had asserted, “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”
King was asking for that plank back. He saw the higher moral order, as did Thoreau and Tolstoy and Gandhi before him. Rather than getting the plank back, the Civil Rights movement got a small concession: I’ll let you hold onto my plank once in a a while, when you’re going down for the third time.
This is the unfinished business of what King started. And the continuing challenge to those who strive for a higher moral order. Still, today, I must restore the plank that I wrestled from a drowning human being. And there are many, many of those.
King’s letter is there still to remind us: “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”
And,
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Much talk is made of gentrification, but I want to take a moment and lift up the shadow side of all the cool new coffee houses and increased property taxes – dispossession. New Orleanians who managed to return post-flood are finding themselves pushed out of the city by the incredible post-2005 rent & tax increases and city liens on properties.
Now this city is in the process of being dispossessed of it primary cultural expression – music. On Friday, January 17th, a Sound Ordinance will be brought before the City Council. One that requires lowering the decibel levels (on a tuba?!?!?! a trumpet?!?!?).
There is a pattern in this nation of white people being drawn to the soul and spirit of culturally vivacious places – and then beginning to institute laws and ordinances that strangle the life out of the culture that first attracted them.
Beloveds, let us break that pattern in New Orleans.
Bring an anti-racist analysis to the proposed sound ordinance and see how long it lasts. Same with the second line permits. Same with anything that on the surface looks “reasonable” and almost always privileges the dominant narrative, those with institutional power.
Institutional racism is persistently constructing our reality – and dehumanizing every one of us. Let us work creatively to resist the cultural genocide taking place in New Orleans and in other areas of dispossession in these United States of America.
A very simple thing happened the other day. Someone bought me the 20 cent stamp I needed to mail my father’s birthday card. But it wowed me. You see, I had included in the same envelope a card from my spouse and myself and one I had made from my two-month-old daughter to her grandfather. I was feeling proud of myself for being almost a week ahead of time this year. I had even managed to find a stamp!
With hope that this would be the year that I could get cards to Dad in time for his birthday, I hurried between feedings to our local drug store where they have a postal counter, trying to make it before the mailman arrive to pick up the days mail. About half-way there, I realized I didn’t have any cash on me, not even a quarter. If my letter was overweight, I wasn’t sure when I would get free again to run what would have been such a simple errand pre-baby, but in my new-mom state, was still a feat!
The mailman’s truck was in front of the drug store and the mailman was inside patiently waiting for an elderly woman to complete her transaction at the counter so he could take her package. He graciously accepted the other letters I had to mail (baby announcements, stamped and ready to go). And then waited (still patiently) for the clerk to weigh my Dad’s cards. The verdict: “You need $.20.” Normally, this would not be a big deal. Normally, I would simply mail the cards priority mail the next day, but this time, I felt majorly defeated.
I realize now that mailing the birthday cards had become a marker of what I can accomplish as a new mother. I had just accepted a part-time job beginning in February, and I was (and am) nervous about being able to do – not “it all,” but just some – enough to keep my head above water, to serve the congregation who has hired me well, care for my baby, and not miss too much of her magic along the way. If I could get those cards in the mail to Dad on time, I would be a successful person, even with baby!
But I couldn’t. “I can’t do it then,” I said to the clerk and the mailman. “I don’t have any cash, not even a quarter.” I turned to walk away.
Then in a fluid motion, before I could even see what was happening, the mailman reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter and gave it to the clerk who, equally fast, put the extra stamp on the letter, gave it to the mailman, collected the quarter and put it in his drawer.
I was left standing there, an unconscious “wow” escaping my lips, only mildly embarrassed, grateful, and awed by what may well have been more an act of efficiency rather than kindness, but a simple act nonetheless that reminded me to accept the grace that is offered, the help that is extended, and to do so humbly, with gratitude and, yes, awe.
As winter draws close around us here in the northern hemisphere, I find myself drawn ever more to the flame of candles. A couple of years ago, I spent the month of January in Oslo, Norway. Though the climate in Oslo is similar to my home in northern New York, the days are significantly shorter. I noticed when I first arrived that when night fell, houses across the landscape extravagantly twinkled with lights in every window. The ski Jump at Holmenkollen, spectacular in the daytime, was brightly lit at night, shining across the valley to my lodgings on the opposite hills. At a friend’s house for dinner, I noticed that she lit many candles throughout the house, and particularly at the dinner table. She welcomed me into her home with the light of candles, despite the darkness of the night.
I have thought about this from time to time since returning to my home. I recalled that when our son was deployed to Iraq in 2003-4, we kept a candle lamp lit in the window the whole time he was gone. We wanted him to know we were waiting to welcome him home … and home he did come. Could it have been our candle that drew him through that dark experience?
As Unitarian-Universalists we light a flame to begin our meeting times together. At the close of the service, we pledge to carry that flame into our lives. The flame of a candle welcomes us in, and then sends us forth with the warmth of community, fire of commitment.
But what about the candle? I recently read a poem called “The Careless Candle” by John E. Wood which closed with the following words:
A candle must give itself away. In the giving, the spending,
the spreading, the sending, it finds itself.
A candle is but a symbol. It gives us light and warmth for a time, but eventually it is extinguished. It then becomes our task to be the candle for others in our lives.
How have I been a candle today?? How have I given light and warmth to others? Who has been a candle to me?
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Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.