This blog post, and the excerpts of a sermon on which this blog post is based, are both inspired by a song, “Help Somebody,” by Susan Werner.
“I got plenty and then some….what do I do?” I can not get this song out of my head, once it’s in there…and because of this refrain, I don’t mind that at all. I love the question and the reframe that this song poses when it pops up yet again in my mind, even—especially—in the midst of running around feeling overly busy, this song reminds me: “I got plenty and then some / what do I do?”
The messages, mantras, and recurring thoughts that we get stuck in our head are, I believe, far more impactful than we realize. They matter. Remember last week when the media was obsessing about Ebola, three cases of Ebola in the United States? I’m as impressionable as anyone and a little too much Ebola coverage in my face and I was obsessing about washing my hands even more than I already do and not sneezing on anybody. Which is, you know, courteous, but as far as Ebola in our town goes, it’s not a rational response. It would be far more productive and useful to send a check to the Red Cross, which has groups actively engaged right now in education and disease prevention efforts in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia.
…I’ve actually just learned that there is now a new disease that has been identified and defined—have you heard about this? It was reported on by CNN starting last Tuesday, and it’s spreading rapidly throughout the United States. It’s defined as “an airborne disease that spreads through conversation, entering your brain through your ears. It’s called Fearbola. Fearbola is so contagious that some victims have contracted it simply by seeing images and videos about Ebola.”
In all seriousness, our spirits are often irrational. We can overreact to anything both positively and negatively, generously and fearfully. I believe that we each and all hold the potential for heaven and hell within us, that all our congregations, communities, cities, institutions and countries have the potential to create either heaven or hell for one another on any given day. You have seen heaven created in the ways that families are held in love and tender communal celebration during a wedding or upon the birth of a new baby; you have seen hell created in the lives of children and their families at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
I’ve heard Susan Werner sing her song in a way that says “I think I’m in heaven—right now, I’m in heaven; what do I do? I go out and help somebody get to heaven, too.” What if heaven is to love and be loved, to have enough of what we most need in the way of food and shelter, access to books and walking trails through woods with golden-leaf-covered pathways? Would you know if you were already in heaven, right now, in this world? If you focused all your energy, all your attention, all of your heart and mind on all that you have plenty of in your life, on being amazed that you have been this blessed, lived this long, loved and been loved this much, known this many amazing and unique people, had that many filling and wonderful meals—how would that reframe lift your spirit into a place of marveling, celebrating, of wonderment, of, quite possibly, enlightenment?
And then, once the vast majority of us appreciate the plenty that our lives have been blessed with, then what? Plenty and then…what?
We each have something to offer, but it’s so easy to forget that. As a congregant quoted by Rev. Rebecca Parker shared so eloquently, “I am a person who has something to give. I am a person who has received abundantly from life. I am a person whose presence matters in the world, and I am a person whose life has meaning because I am connected to and care about many things larger than myself.” Our perspective on whether or not we have enough impacts everything else that we experience, perceive, think, and feel.
…
Sometimes I feel like the need for perspective is what feeds our interest in the news and that in turn encourages the news to be so hyperbolic. We all know that if we want to be reminded that “it could be worse, for someone, somewhere,” we just have to turn on or look to the news! Our minds are naturally competitive, always comparing and contrasting with others. Our hearts long for perspective, hunger for the message that who and what we are is enough. Our spirits rally and resound with the teaching that what we have and experience in our lives is tremendous. What shall we do with all this beauty?
We have plenty and then…some.
We have plenty and then…what?
The Dalai Lama teaches that “the very purpose of religion is to control yourself. He guides us to ask ourselves, each day, as individuals and as a society: what are we doing about our anger? About our attachment, our hatred, our pride, our jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.” This is the purpose of spiritual practice. In Unitarian Universalist terms, I would say that this is cultivating the practice of self-awareness. Or we could call it: inquiry. What is our outlook on the world on any given day? What is the refrain that is running through your mind? Writer Byron Katie teaches an incredibly simple and powerful practice of questioning our own thoughts, asking ourselves “is that true?” about each thought that we find repeating itself over-and-over in our minds. “Is that true?”–what I’m thinking about myself or another person, the thought that is driving feelings of anger or frustration, sadness or desperation, reaction or judgment. Is that thought I’m thinking actually true? And what if the opposite were true, can I really imagine and inhabit that possibility? Is it really true that there’s not enough time or not enough money or that it’s all his or her fault or that he or she would never agree to something we want to do? Is that true? If I question that thought, if I maybe even let it go, what happens then? Katie teaches that heaven is when we are thinking: “This is wonderful. I could stay here forever.” And just like that, with the opposite thought of “this is not quite perfect,” we can find ourselves in the quagmire of hell, and lose all perspective on the plenty with which we have been blessed.
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What do you, what do we, not even realize that we have an abundance of in our lives? How might we look around and within ourselves and take one more step forward into this world with a greater sense of splendor, of plenty, overflowing in our hearts? What do we do with all this beauty?
Let us commit, and recommit, each day, to being self-aware, to questioning our own thoughts, to asking ourselves, “really? is that true?” to deliberately choosing what stories we tell and re-tell. Let us keep fresh before [us] the moments of [our] High Resolve, that in good times or in tempests, [we] may not forget that to which [our lives are] committed.” Let us find ways to calm our fearful human natures and reach out in love. Let us resolve to let our lights of hope and kindness shine brightly. Let us turn towards one another, open to new possibilities, new ideas, new ways of being together celebrating the plenty we have found in our lives. May it be so.
Imagine the laid-back life of a zombie.
First of all, you’re dead. So. No more taxes! That’s for sure. And monthly bills will bother you no more.
Besides no more worries about death and taxes, look at how focused you are: your meaning and purpose have boiled down to searching for brains to eat. Admirable focus.
And zombies have lot’s of friends.
Being un-dead has its moments. You’re well beyond all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Your only worry is getting shot in the head.
Director George A Romero, who directed “Night of the Living Dead,” is credited with having created the contemporary zombie. He has this to say: “I just took some of the mysterioso stuff of voodoo out of it, and made them the neighbors. Neighbors are frightening enough when they’re alive.”
I have a suspicion this goes a long way toward explaining the huge popularity of zombies. Perhaps they represent all the danger we see in others and in ourselves.
Chip and Dan Heath, marketing gurus, have come up with the term “Maslow’s Basement.” Their argument is that most marketing depends upon the bottom end of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “hierarch of needs” pyramid. In that model, there are three principles that motivate people to buy a product: fear, greed, or lust. These are base desires, Maslow’s Basement.
I suppose the high end of Maslow’s hierarchy, such things as morality, creativity, and spontaneity, as Maslow’s attic. (Zombies definitely live in the basement.)
Research shows that people report that other people are motivated by fear, greed and lust. But people self-report that their actions are motivated by empathy and compassion. In other words, we fear their neighbors, just as director George A. Romero claims.
The counter-intuitive fact may be that the self-reporting is correct. Meaning that all of us—including our neighbors—are more influenced by compassion and empathy than by Maslow’s Basement motivators of fear, greed, or lust.
We may be selling our species short! Perhaps our default mode is NOT to dwell in Maslow’s Basement. Perhaps our neighbors are not potential zombies.
Perhaps we all, as Oscar Wilde said, despite having our feet in the gutter, are looking at the stars.
The zombie apocalypse will not be televised. Because it’s not coming. Because most of us are inclined to treat our neighbors . . . not as zombies but as ourselves.
Tonight we stood together around candles that marked the spot where his body was found this morning. Tonight we poured out our stories and our songs, our prayers and our tears. Tonight we reminded each other that we are loved and loving, that our lives have value and are valued by each other. Tonight we said good-bye to a good friend and a committed organizer.
So tomorrow, when you read in the paper or hear in the news that another black teenage boy was found shot to death in the 9th Ward of New Orleans, stop. Please stop and send love to his family, to his friends, to the community that cared for him, cares for him still.
Please stop and let your heart be broken, broken open at least a little bit, with compassion for a child who was loved, will always be loved, and for those who love him. Mark the passing of a dear soul light who shined brightly in this world and made it a better place.
If you pray, pray for us, pray with us.
Grieve with us. Mourn with us.
And then – organize.
Organize with us to heal this world, to change it into a place where 15 year olds are not killed by guns — are not killed at all. Make George proud.
Twenty inches isn’t all that high. It’s less than two feet. My daughter was 20 and ½ inches long when she was born. But when you are staring at a black box twenty inches high and you’re supposed to jump on top of it and land on your feet and you’ve never done anything like that in your entire life, it feels impossible.
It feels like if you were actually able to get on top of the box, you would immediately fall backwards, crack your head, become a spectacle.
I will never forget the triumph I felt when I jumped onto the 20 inch box at my gym for the first time. I was so afraid of falling that I asked another woman to stand behind me. I didn’t need her. My arms went back behind me, my legs bent strong, and I was up! I stood tall on that box and felt like I could do anything in the world.
That feeling came rushing back the other when I watched another woman, new to the gym, conquer the box. She had been eyeing it during the whole class, doing her jumps on a lower step. I could tell she wanted to try the higher box but was afraid to do so, just as I had been. At the end of class, she practiced on the step one more time and then, determined, stood in front of the box. She took a deep breath. Her arms went back, her legs bent strong and she was up! She threw her arms up in delight, let out a yell, and we all cheered.
We knew the feeling: fears faced, doubt banished, power coursing through a body we are learning to trust, to delight in, to love.
Twenty inches is higher than we think.
A child falls down and begins screaming. It’s common. You did it as a child. I did it.
What happens next?
For me, my parents said, “Get up off the floor! Boys don’t cry!”
When this happens at an upscale pre-school nearby, I’m more likely to hear, “You feel sad!” Or, “That’s frustrating, isn’t it?” Or, “You’re so angry!”
What’s the difference between the two parental responses?
Fact is, any time I cried as a child, I got the same response: “Boys don’t cry.”
Consequently, I learned to suppress my emotions rather than expressing them.
That child outside the pre-school, on the other hand, is being taught the difference between anger and sadness and frustration and fear and embarrassment. That child is developing a palate of emotions with nuance. That child is developing “emotional intelligence.”
Kids treated as I was learn that emotions need to be suppressed. We learn “men don’t do that.” We learn “women are hysterical.”
And so the cliches go, ‘round and around.
And so does the drinking and drugs and physical violence and abuse that come as a consequence of the suppression of emotion.
Now, allow me to add that my parents were preparing me for the world that they lived in: working class people learn to be very careful about emotion. You can’t let the boss see your emotion.
My father was in the Boiler Makers Union. You don’t cry among your fellow Boiler Makers. And you don’t get angry when the boss yells at you.
We were also farmers, and farmers in traditional communities aren’t allowed to get angry either. You can’t show anger when the bank won’t give you a loan . . . and on and on. It’s a life of oppression and suppression in which a show of emotion can be interpreted as dangerous.
That’s the world I was prepared for. Everyone has a story.
We call the result “stable.” But at what cost to both the individual and society?
Professor George Rowan did a study called “A Multicultural Investigation of Masculinity Ideology and Alexithymia.” It wasn’t a best seller, but the study tells us what we already have intuited: In many social groups, men are afraid to express emotion, especially in the presence of other men.
“Alexitymia” describes the result of this suppression: an inability to describe emotions; an inability to sustain social connections; and an inability to sustain interpersonal relationships.
The result is a socially-created sociopath. The result is a dangerous person created by the desire to live up to the social definition of masculinity.
That pretty well describes the men in my extended family.
Think for a moment about how many—and different—lives you lead. Partner. Friend. Manager. Co-worker. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy . . .
We learn to use different vocabularies in these different niches. We learn to express our emotions differently. In addition, as the dad of two children in the GLBTQ alphabet soup, I know that the gender binary is an inconvenient fiction. Men aren’t from Mars and women from Venus. We come from many planets.
Yes, there are differences in the emotional lives—and the ability to articulate—that can be called gender difference. Still, we have an obligation to try to use our words, no matter what planet we’re from.
The Twentieth Century writer Anais Nin started writing when she was eleven. She continued, obsessively writing of her inner life, for more than sixty years. She said this:
I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown . . . I create a myth and a legend, a lie, a fairy tale, a magical world, and one that collapses every day . . .
It isn’t that Nin had some super-complex emotional life. Or that she was mentally ill. Rather, she had the tenacity to pursue her many selves to the essence of the self. Much like the Buddha. And, like the Buddha, she discovered there isn’t one.
There is no constant self. The evidence is right before our eyes. And right behind them too. What we have instead is an ocean of sensation and reaction. We have emotions, some fleeting, some stable enough to be called moods. These add up to what we call a self. Yet it’s a fiction.
The dangerous and damaging idea behind this insistence on a stable self is what has been called “soul” in the Western tradition. That tradition tells us that the soul is incarnated. Lives in the flesh for a time. Then goes somewhere forever, still constituted as the self that lived on earth. In some traditions the soul is rewarded with heaven or hell. In others the soul blissfully resides . . . well, somewhere.
Such an idea is a dangerous illusion. The only constant is change. And the self and the soul it creates are stories we tell ourselves.
When we figure that out, the Buddha said we are enlightened. Anais Nin put it this way: “I see myself and my life each day differently. What can I say? The facts lie.”
“May beauty and passion and compassion be our companions. May we be fully alive. Amen.” ~Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie (Healing Places, 9/14/2014)
Keep the faith, beloveds.
Keep showing up.
Keep paying attention.
Keep speaking your truth.
Because we have changed,
the world is changed.
And you are not alone…
#blacklivesmatter
#FergusonOctober
#MoralMonday
#Not1More
#RaiseTheWage
#ClimateJustice
#bethechange
Who do you let in? These days we have lots of options for who and what we listen to. We can opt to experience constant input at every moment, via the television, radio, internet, cable, social media, on our phones, in our cars, even–yes, I confess, I’ve done it more than once–glancing at things online on our phone in the bathroom.
What I notice is that there is so much input that I have to tune most of it out in order to focus on my life–my kid, my work, the tasks that I need to accomplish on any given day–and then a week or two can sometimes go by and I’ll find myself wondering “what’s going on in the world?” There is so much input and channels of communication that we are initially overwhelmed, so we screen out what we take in–and then feel actually more disconnected than connected.
Have you experienced this? I am regularly trying to take myself off of e-mail lists, but I must also be adding myself to new lists that are of interest to me, because somehow I seem to be getting plenty of e-mail, and it’s not all spam. It’s still not as personal or individual as I would like it to be. Do you scan through your e-mail inbox, as I do, looking for that occasional e-mail message that’s actually individually written to me specifically, Heather, the human being, from another human being, not an automatically generated “Dear Heather” robo-email?
I wonder if it’s why more and more people are turning to texting; at least for me, the robots have not taken over my cell phone inbox yet (please, don’t spread the word about this!) My sister sends a “how are you?” text now-and-then, and I love that (see, Jenna, I do get & read them!) Texting is doable for me while standing in the grocery store aisle or hanging out at the playground with my kiddo. A little bit of texting. But what about the larger world? Our local paper here in Hartford, Connecticut, barely seems to cover national and international news, at least not in a way that really catches my sustained interest and engages in in-depth analysis. While writing this blog post I was reminded of a site I haven’t visited in ages, but would like to go to much more often: Common Dreams.org. Here I can find a little bit more of the broad view–not only what’s been happening this week, but what it means in the context of our larger human endeavor as people on a shared planet.
I genuinely have this question a lot these days: what are the forms of input that you are finding meaningful, useful, reliable, and helpful, for you, in terms of sorting through all the white noise? With so many ways to connect, which ways are the ones that enable us, as human beings, to actually be more connected?
Recently we have had a front row seat to observe low-level panic and smoldering fear. The headlines have been shrill:
“Ebola Spread to the US Inevitable.”
“Why America is Not Ready for an Ebola Outbreak.”
“My Daughter’s Ebola Scare.”
Polls show that forty-percent of Americans believe there will be an Ebola outbreak in the next twelve months, and twenty-five percent believe their family is in immediate danger. (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/08/26/3475698/americans-ebola-myths/)
Now, it’s probably a tip-off that the magazine with the vague but scary cover story “Ebola Spread to the US Inevitable” is called “Business Insider,” not “Physician Insider.” Furthermore, Ebola spreading to the US—inevitable in our interconnected world—does not mean that the scenes from Liberia will be repeated here.
But what’s a poor media source to do? It’s hard to catch our media-saturated, jaded eyes, and it’s all about “eyes on screens.” We all know “if it bleeds, it leads.” Fear sells.
Then there are the conspiracy theories, such as the emerging one that Al-Qaeda is spreading Ebola. I don’t doubt there will be—if there hasn’t already been—a headline such as “Biological Attack on US Soil Inevitable!” And I’m sure “ISIS” will be next on the conspiracy list.
I have provided a link to a great video that underlines how we misplace our fears.
The meme that toasters are much deadlier than sharks began at an aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa. The numbers are clear: 791 people killed by toasters worldwide, nine by sharks. But I suspect no one reading this will harpoon your toaster.
Fact is, far more people are killed by their toasters than by sharks. And far more Americans are crushed by their television sets than are killed by terrorists. Yet we fear sharks and terrorists. We fear Ebola but not Diabetes.
Baseless panic can change the way we live. Take, for example, Halloween. Once, Halloween was a community event. Kids ran around the neighborhood in the dark collecting homemade cookies and candy apples.
Then reports spread that people were putting razor blades in apples. Hospitals opened their doors offering to x-ray apples. Then reports went around that people were poisoning apples. And soon churches began to sponsor neighborhood Halloween parties so that kids wouldn’t have to go out in the dark.
Fact is, there has never been a single instance of a razor blade in an apple. There HAVE been two instances of poisoned apples given to kids at Halloween. In both cases it was a parent trying to kill their child and disguise the murder by pretending the poison came from Trick-or-Treating.
Fear.
Speaking of Halloween, how ‘bout those haunted houses?
Novelist Neil Gaimon says,
Fear is a wonderful thing, in small doses. You ride the ghost train into the darkness, knowing that eventually the doors will open and you will step out into the daylight once again. It’s always reassuring to know that you’re still here, still safe. That nothing strange has happened, not really. It’s good to be a child again, for a little while, and to fear—not governments, not regulations, not infidelities or accountants or distant wars, but ghosts and such things that don’t exist, and even if they do, can do nothing to hurt us.
An interesting insight from a writer who creates fear in small doses for a living. Could it be that haunted houses and scary rides function as relief valves? We don’t have to worry about terrorists when we are in a haunted house. Or looking for a ghost. (Though I’m quite sure some haunted houses will feature scary terrorists this Halloween season.)
It’s more comfortable to fear a shark than a toaster, isn’t it?
But what about Ebola? Like razor blades in Halloween apples, Ebola feels tangible, doesn’t it? Blood. Death. Something we can really sink our fear into.
As we’ve seen, it’s difficult to get a large number of people worked up about global climate change. Psychologists argue that the reason lies in how our brains picture danger. We can picture a tornado, so we are afraid of it, but when asked whether tornados or asthma kills more people, most people say tornadoes. That’s far from true.
I used to live near the Gulf coast and spent a lot of time on the beach. There are sharks out there. People do get bit. But getting an arm or leg torn off or getting swallowed just doesn’t happen. Even people who spend time in the water where sharks live are three hundred times more likely to be killed by a deer than a shark. But Jaws feels more scary than Bambi.
I like what entrepreneur Seth Godin has to say about fear: “Worry is not preparation, and anxiety doesn’t make you better . . . We dance with the Resistance, we don’t make it go away. You cannot make it go away—you cannot make the voice go away, you cannot make the fear go away, because it’s built in. What you can do is when it shows up, you say ‘Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. Let’s dance about this.’
Godin is getting at an important truth: Courage is not the opposite of fear. Courage is what you are able to do despite the fear.
Fear sells. Reason is slow and difficult. Chances are there will be frightened people attacking Liberians. It’s time for some courage and wisdom.
This morning
Sitting with the grief of more painful news
I pick up my pen
And begin moving at the speed of gratitude
For a community that holds each other
in sorrow and in rage
For the light that wakes us and nourishes creation
For the dark that heals us and rests the world
Today I commit to moving at the speed of gratitude
And find my heart has grown larger
Love more possible
Grace more abundant
At this speed.
…
Beloveds, may you too find the gift of moving at the speed of gratitude.
Whoever it was that said grief comes in waves
knew what it is to stand in my kitchen
on a glorious late-September afternoon
at the beginning of apple season.
My hand spins the food mill round and round.
Rich, warm sauce drips into the bowl.
And I weep.
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