Doing It All…A Little Bit.
I am going to have to go back to work eventually. I mean, two women and a baby can’t make ends meet on one part-time income in Washington D.C. forever, even with a lot of family and denominational support. I’ve been aware of this since before R was born, thinking about it, trying to figure out what form, type, schedule, and mode of working would fit me well with our new Lives With Baby. Before R was born, I was a full-time parish minister for 6 years, and for many of those years my ministry was my primary focus. I had a nice life, but I did work some significant portion of every day. I often dealt with e-mail until 11pm at night. I often had evening meetings, I often worked on Saturdays, every book or article that I read or movie that I saw usually fed into the coming Sunday’s sermon. I can’t yet fully imagine going back to full-time ministry and doing it in a totally different way than I did before.
And the character challenge for me is that I have tended to be, thus far in life, a pretty black-or-white person, all-or-nothing, doing something fully or not at all. Having a baby is nothing if not an opportunity for reorganizing one’s life and one’s relationship to work. These past 10 months, I’ve had a few moments here and there to think about what I’d like to be doing, if I could be doing anything at all, and though I’m well aware that it’s not unique, what I’d like to be doing is writing more. So as we start to approach the very significant first birthday of our Little Bean, I find myself wondering if I can learn some new things at even just a quarter of the speed that she does. Can I learn to do a little bit of a variety of things instead of just one thing full-bore? Can I learn to juggle with some semblance of grace some part-time ministry, some continued forays into personal and creative writing, some cooking of new and healthy recipes for myself and my family, some yoga and other exercise, some housecleaning, some keeping up with friends and family, some household & family plans and projects?
It doesn’t look like so much when I write it up as a list like that. It’s at 11pm at night, still, when I long to “call it a day” and there are still a dozen things on the day’s “must-do” list, it’s then that I feel overwhelmed and tired. Usually a good night’s sleep is enough to renew me for another overly-optimistic day, but not always. It’s so easy for me to feel like the best way to cope with the feeling of overwhelm is to do less, do less, do less. That’s been my way of coping for a long time. But what that has meant in the past was cutting out things that matter even more to me now. Like during my first year of ministry, while I was living alone and also juggling two other part-time jobs to make ends meet, I thought it was a revelation at the time to eliminate cooking. “Look at all the time I’ve saved!” I remember exclaiming to a friend—no shopping, no food prep, no dishes to clean up. I ate mostly microwaveable meals and things that don’t require cooking, like cheese-and-crackers. Well. You can imagine the outcome of that—I didn’t feel so great, I gained weight, and, frankly, I enjoy cooking, though it’s taken me years and years to really remember that and make time for it again. My all-or-nothing autopilot way of approaching things has meant eliminating, for stretches of time, lots of other things that nourish me as well—exercise, friendships, trips with family, reading for pleasure, writing creatively, gardening, outdoor activities, and so on.
So as I start to seriously contemplate stepping a toe back into the pool of workers, I want to broach my own take on what I think will help me find, even if elusive and fleeting, that notorious balance of work-family-play. I do and will strive to “do it all”…a little bit. I want to work on practicing contentment with doing things halfway. A little bit of exercise instead of the 8-month yoga-teacher-training class I signed myself up for three years ago now. A little bit of cooking new recipes instead of feeling like I need to cook each of my favorite cookbooks from beginning-to-end Julie-and-Julia style, in order to be thorough. And spending time with our beloved kid does not have to mean never leaving her with a babysitter to give me a break or allow us to go out for a night. It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing in order to be meaningful, rewarding, and worthwhile. Um…right?
Here, In This Flow
The turtles go
out of their water
this time of year,
slow on roadways,
slow to mating
somewhere,
or slow to dates
with car tires.
No, there’s no
enlightenment–
there’s no one
there. (That’s
Buddhism 101
each day teaches.)
No, there’s no
virtue–
there’s no one
there. Only
being.
Lost in this
movement I rub
the cat’s head,
a black cat, a warm,
cloudy morning.
There’ no cat.
There’s no I. There’s
only purring,
this congeries
of movement
to movement–
to car tires,
to this ache
of loss
and fulfillment
in each instant.
There is
this flow
only to be
and savored.
A People of Promise
We are all in this together, beloveds. All of creation is ultimately and intimately relational. Our faith is grounded in and continuously points us toward relationship. Covenants, promises about how we will be in relationship, cannot be made by one’s self. There are no solitary covenants – only communal ones.
It may surprise a few of you to learn that the Principles and Purposes Unitarian Universalists often speak of are part of congregational covenants. We covenant to affirm and promote the Principles and Purposes as member congregations – with other UU congregations. Indeed, in spite of the historically individualistic tendency of liberal religion, our strength has always lain in our relationships.
“None of us,” writes psychotherapist Marilyn Peterson, “can survive alone. Our capacity to trust, therefore, is precious because without it, we are isolated from the human community.” (At Personal Risk, 1992).
During my “year abroad” in California as an intern minister, I learned an important lesson from the ancient redwood trees of Northern California (author unknown).
Huge as they are,
They have very shallow root systems.
Yet they [are] not be blown over by strong winds.
The secret of their stability is
The interweaving of each tree’s roots with
Those that stand by it.
Thus, a vast network of support is formed
Just beneath the surface.
In the wildest storms,
These trees hold each other up.
Redwood roots photo by Impressive Magazine Team
So it is, I believe, with our liberal religious faith, Unitarian Universalism. Because we are an evolutionary faith, described by UU historian Susan Ritchie as “the Protestant Reformation that never stopped,” it is actually unfaithful for us to send down deep roots of certainty. Instead, we are called to send out many roots in a covenantal interweaving of commitment and accountability, becoming stronger through our relationships with each other.
May you find joy in the weaving, dear people of promise.
Into the Summer Daze
photo by Heather Rion Starr
We want summer to be leisurely. We want it to be restful. We want it to involve sandals, long meandering days, the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass, a steady stream of lemonade or ice tea.
We don’t, usually, want it to involve more to-do lists and travel details than the winter holidays. And most of us don’t want it to fly by, though we all acknowledge that it does.
What is just one of your hopes for the summer months? I am asking myself and my family that question these days, as we charge full-bore into a busy summer. I suppose it will fly by, but I am not at all a hot-weather person and I live in Washington D.C., so it’s just fine with me if it at least scoots along pretty quickly. I am looking forward to particular moments of various trips—moments I can already imagine myself wanting to freeze and grasp and hold. And I am also a little overwhelmed by all the details of traveling with a toddler. “It’s an adventure, it’s an adventure, it’s an adventure,” I keep telling myself, but if every day is an adventure, when do we get to relax? In the hubbub of summer activities, when and how will we pause and breathe and do what feels most summery to me: savor our lives, in all their fullness?
Photographs are one way that I savor the beautiful moments—I love taking photos and I love going over them, looking through them again and again, making cards and books from them. I’d like to figure out some other, more familial, interactive ways to pause and savor together as a family and as the groups of families, friends, colleagues and communities that we will be dancing in-and-out of this summer. What do you do to savor the summer?
Our Place in the Alhambra
1.
Go ahead, climb up
the Alhambra brick–
taxis can’t come here,
and the effort it takes
is only as much as
you have in mind.
2.
How often we’ve fallen for
another algorithm for bliss,
the snake oil shill of camphor
shadows. Enough. The book
is there now, a shining blossom,
big as a magnolia bloom.
Blank. To be written. Yes, we
think–at last I’m back to myself.
Climb there too. The beautiful
street vendors are selling
therefores. The dark wine
of place. Buy some. But
carefully pluck the book, its soft
leather bent just enough to say,
yes, climb the brick passages.
3.
It may be when you wake
you’ll believe you’ve had
a stroke, but the sunlight
in its morning patterns will
teach that’s OK as well–
the world goes on without
you, us, and that’s always
been OK as well. A lesson in
belonging. Everyone’s place in
the story of the Alhambra.
Courage
I expect by now you’ve heard the story: seen the pictures of the people bludgeoned by water cannons, the dog in a gas mask, the sufi dervish whirling in the street with deliberate disregard for the danger of his surroundings. It started simply enough. A group of people decided to sit in to protest a public park being razed in order to put in one more shopping mall. A group of people, young and old, decided that they had had enough of their country being sold off to the highest bidder, enough of the rights of the people being stripped away at the pleasure of the powers that be. And so they went to sit in the park. And there they sat as the bulldozers came at them, non-violent protesters in the long and distinguished lineage of Gandhi and King and Tiananmen Square and so many others. And in the long and shameful lineage of the British in India and Bull Connor and the Chinese government in 1989 and so many others, the Turkish government responded with water cannons and pepper spray, with police in riot gear prepared to do whatever it takes to subdue the population.
Who will not be subdued. Who continue to flock to the streets. I understand the courage of those first protesters, the ones who decided to sit down in a park and make their presence felt, who were willing to see what would happen when they demanded that someone take the needs of the people, and not just the corporations, into account. Sometimes you summon up what is inside of you and do the brave thing, walk the talk. But what about all those other people, the ones who joined the protest once they knew about the water cannons and the pepper spray, once the news spread (by word of mouth and social media, since the official media kept a complete blackout) of the injured and the dead? What about them? What does it take to knowingly walk into that kind of danger and chaos?
It takes, I think, an allegiance to a self that is greater than the self that feels the police batons and the pepper spray—a self that is injured not by physical indignities, but rather by moral ones. Call it Soul, if you will, this larger self, or call it Community Consciousness or Human Dignity or Living in the Kingdom of God. Whatever it is, it does not belong to a particular time, or place, or religion. It’s what led Gandhi, the Hindu, and King, the Christian, and the young man (Buddhist?) who faced down a bulldozer in Tiananmen Square to counter violence with persistent love. It’s what holds the Sufi dervish dancing in the streets of Istanbul and Bill McKibben getting arrested on the steps of the White House in protest against the Keystone XL pipeline. Who we are is bigger than who we are.
Not all of us. Not all the time. But enough of us, enough of the time, that it seems possible that love might have a chance against greed, that freedom and justice might sometimes prevail. Not all the time. But maybe enough.
Finding Life in the Land of Death
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If I were trying to develop and deliver a talk about the history of Unitarian Universalist opposition to war and war-making institutions, I could have hammered this out and gone right back to dipping peppermint Jo Jo’s in milk and watching Dr. Who on Netflix. I mean, we are UUs: we don’t blindly obey, we question. We don’t use our hands to hurt, we use our hands to create and heal. We don’t seek and destroy, we search and explore. We only march if we’re carrying tubas or protest signs, and our hair and habits of dress are very far out of regulation. Unitarian is to Military as Peace is to Conflict, as Compassion is to Aggression, as Eros is to Thanatos. But that wasn’t the task my minister gave me.
Dancing into the Heart of God
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Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was born in 1207 in Afghanistan, which was then within the Persian empire. While still a child he fled to Turkey, along with his whole family, when the Mongols invaded their land. Read more →
Annual Meeting
The CLF Annual Meeting will be held on June 27, 2013 at 6:00PM Eastern Time
From Your Minister
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Before rebirth, there has to be birth. I have never given birth, but I have been privileged to witness two human babies, six puppies, three kittens, and a few birds and turtles enter the world. And I suspect all of us have watched documentaries of the same kinds of thing.
