REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (5.4MB)
Subscribe: More
Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker: “Born OK the first time.” That’s where we UUs tend to come down. You don’t need to be born again. We don’t hold with the notion of original sin, that babies are born carrying the sin of Adam and Eve’s rebellion. You don’t need to be baptized or washed in the blood of the Lamb or answer an altar call or accept anyone or anything as your personal lord and savior. We’re willing to trust that who you are is OK, at the same time that we hope that as a community we are learning to be ever more responsible, compassionate people.
In My Own Worst Season
Podcast: Download (840.3KB)
Subscribe: More
In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. Read more →
Rebirth
June 2013
“Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” —Judith Minty
Articles
Finding Life in the Land of Death
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. Read more »
Dancing into the Heart of God
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was born in 1207 in Afghanistan, which was then within the Persian empire. Read more »
Annual Meeting
The CLF Annual Meeting will be held on June 27, 2013 at 6:00PM Eastern Time by teleconference and screenshare. That means that CLF members can call in to a conference call number and participate by telephone. Read more »
From Your Minister
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. Read more »
REsources for Living
Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker: “Born OK the first time.” That’s where we UUs tend to come down. You don’t need to be born again. We don’t hold with the notion of original sin, that babies are born carrying the sin of Adam and Eve’s rebellion. Read more »
In My Own Worst Season
In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. Read more »
Rebirth
“Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” —Judith Minty Read more »
Incarceration Nation
Incarceration nation,
where did you put
your young men?
You put them in a plea bargain;
you put them in a felony record;
you put them out of your mind.
Incarceration nation,
your heart is in a prison cell;
your future is in a prison cell;
your conscience is in a prison cell.
Incarceration nation,
where did you put your future?
Where did you put your hope?
Where did you put your justice?
Where did you put your freedom?
Incarceration nation,
where did you put
your young men?
You put them into poverty;
you put them into despair;
you put them into chains.
Incarceration nation,
you took your children;
you took your hope;
you put them in a prison cell;
you put them in a felony record;
you put them out of your mind.
Incarceration nation,
you put yourself
into a prison cell
into fear; into hate;
into racism;
into money’s death spasm;
Incarceration nation,
where did you put
your young men?
They are the universe
aware of itself;
they are consciousness
trapped in money’s death spasm.
Incarceration nation,
why have you
imprisoned yourself?
Role Camera
It will only be five minutes. A favor. Celebrating women in the month of May and need a female minister to represent.
When she asked a few weeks ago, calling in the middle of a rich and full work day, I said yes, okay, sure. I needed practice publicly speaking about ministry, especially as a community minister ordained less than a year ago. An invitation to a brief moment on local TV on a Friday night made sense.
Yesterday, deep in the throes of a summer cold, trying to time the cold medicine for a sneeze and snot-free five minute window, the favor-asker nowhere in sight, I was beginning to rethink that yes. Two hours later, walking out of the studio with a DVD in my hand of a half hour show exploring becoming anti-racist, community connection, incarceration, and goodness only knows what else set to air Sunday night, all I could do was laugh and cough.
Universe, your wicked sense of humor is going to kill me…but what a way to go…
On Keeping Up
I have a half dozen ideas for things I’d like to write about swirling about in my head. Reflections about reflections. Thoughts about thoughts, about how the mind works, about how the mind works when there’s so little time to write or read or have a meandering relaxed conversation with a friend, but there’s lots of time spent washing the same dishes, cooking the same food, reading the same A-B-C book out loud, and singing the same bedtime songs. Contemplations about time, about how a month can seem interminable if a baby is crying all the time, or it can seem like it’s going by so fast if the baby is a delight to be with. About the gradual, subtle, almost-imperceptible-sometimes, beautiful transition from perseverance to savoring, the difference between getting-by, between “keep keeping,” as in Sandra Cisneros’ beautiful piece, and keeping up, living life in each full cascading moment and enjoying it. Ever since we hit 5 months, Life With Baby has been easier for us, more manageable, which doesn’t mean it’s been easy, but it’s been so much better than those first 5 challenging months. And now we are in the halcyon days, the sweet days of amazement at what our child discovers each day, the days that I think we thought having a baby were going to be like, and they may only be a smidgen of what having a baby is actually like, but they are amazing, amazing days.
I’ve been saying to friends and family that the phase we seem to be entering into is “keeping up.” And because it took almost 10 months for us to get to this point of joy, of truly enjoying the moments and not just surviving them, I am embracing this keeping up. Keeping up means that I am managing to completely empty the sink of dishes and now-and-then have an empty dishwasher as well. Keeping up means I am starting to think about what I’d like to cook, and maybe looking up a recipe, more than 5 minutes in advance of needing to eat right now. Keeping up means that we are blessed with the resources, ability, and energy to be feeding our little eater vats of healthy, home-cooked and home-prepared food, and she is loving it: tofu, quinoa, carrots, avocados. Keeping up means that I’m excited and eager to start making more complicated things for her to eat, combinations of things, food patties and to-go food. Keeping up means that there is just the littlest bit more spaciousness in our days, that I feel like I have gotten enough sleep, and that I can think ahead to next week and start to imagine going to a yoga class or to the gym. I have not prioritized exercise as much as I’d hoped to by this 10 month point, but I’m aware of that and working towards it—and that, there, that’s keeping up. “Aware and working towards.” It feels like the clouds of “putting one foot in front of the other” are lifting. The other night (while washing dishes, of course) I noted the distinct and surprising feeling of “being elated,” being elated for no particular reason. I noted it, enjoyed it, and kept washing dishes. Because I am just keeping up.
Benediction for the Wind (on the occasion of a killer tornado)
What better way to
get people praying
than to remind us
of random chance?
What better way than
the cold logic of air
rising, falling, killing
here, not there;
this one, not that.
Where I come from
we name them
by a year: 2011,
1957, 1925, and
remember deaths,
695, 255, 12.
What better way for
the screaming winds
to set us praying
than the cold logic
of random chance?
What better way
to hold sanity and
loved ones close than
to set to praying?
Where I come from
we know the scream
of the green clouds
well; we know to hug
the floor close; where
I come from the wind
teaches us to pray.
Acts of God
People are dead, including children. Whole neighborhoods are utterly destroyed, brought down to foundations and rubble. People are injured, traumatized, bereft. And there is no one to blame. No bomber, no shooter, no mad man or terrorist. Simply an “act of God.”
How I hate that phrase, act of God. As if God would come down from the clouds to smite a town out of, what, spite? Vengeance? God does not cause weather events, not out of a need to punish infidels and homosexuals, and not because he needed to call his children home to be with him. You will not find God in the great wind, any more than Elijah did.
No, you will find God in the people who keep calling to find out if their friends and neighbors are OK, in the parents who struggle to assure their children that they are safe, in those who sit at the side of those who mourn, in the mourners themselves. God is in the search and rescue dogs who are tirelessly moving house by house, searching for the scent of the missing, and in their tired handlers who volunteered and trained for this expert, grueling work. God is in the hospital staff tending the wounded and in the family members who wait and wait, hoping their loved one will be OK. God is in the first responders who are still hoping to find children alive and for those who have to carry still figures from the wreckage. God is in the people around the world sending their prayers and their love out to people they will never meet and the people who send their money to the Red Cross or animal rescue groups because it’s the only way they can think of to help.
And yes, God is in the people who dare to point out that while any given weather event is just weather, however tragic, a pattern of more and more extreme weather—the droughts, heat, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, one after the other—that pattern is not an act of God. That pattern is predicted by scientists who study climate change. Which is not an act of God. It is the consequence of a string of human choices. God is not in the droughts and the floods and the tornadoes. God is in the scientists who keep telling the truth when it seems no one is paying attention. God is in the all the people who are trying to limit their use of fossil fuels, in the companies and schools and churches who have invested in solar panels, in the environmental groups calling for meaningful legislation.
God is not in the wind. God is in all the people who see the suffering that is, and the suffering to come, and who choose compassion and justice and the hope of a better world.
Compassion and Connection
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has graced New Orleans with his presence this weekend. Prayer flags are fluttering from balconies more accustomed to Mardi Gras beads and brass bands are sharing the scene with throat singing…
HH Dalai Lama arrived under the auspices of a conference called “Resilience: Strength Through Compassion and Connection.” Those familiar with his life story (http://www.dalailama.com/biography/a-brief-biography) know that His Holiness embodies this resilience.
As you think about your own life, where to you find stories of resilience? Where are compassion and connection in those stories – in you?
A Bad Day for Theocracy (14 May 2013, marriage equality Minnesota)
A bad day for creeds;
a bad day for stares;
a bad day for blind
obedience to blundering
oracles, as Henry put
it long ago. A bad day
for obedience. A bad
day for “act like us.”
Why not, Ralph asked,
long ago, why not
behold god and nature
face to face with our
own eyes, weaving
our own tales? Long
ago Henry and Ralph
said stop listening
to long ago. So, do
we have a poetry of
insight, a philosophy
without tradition now,
a religion of revelation,
to us, not the masters
inscribing themselves on
ages, not the moldy books?
not the stares of the old,
powerful “it’s always been”?
A bad day for moldy books;
a bad day for fistfuls of musts.
A good day to speak
of Henry and Ralph
erasing themselves
into revelation, to
you, on and on, a good
day to write ourselves.
