Be Kind…
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
This quote, often misattributed to Plato, perhaps originally spoken by Scottish minister, Rev. John Watson, and found in many forms out there on the internet, is one of my favorites in ministry – and in life. Whoever who said it, it is so true. Is it not?
We know not the burdens our neighbor or the stranger in the check-out line carry, just as they know not what we bear. It helps to remember that each and all of us are, at one time or another, and more often than not, fighting some sort of great battle. We would do well to be kind, as we pray that others will be kind to us.
Here in the Northeast, we are desperately awaiting Spring, and we could all use some extra kindness. This week, as our clocks spring forward, may our spirits do the same.
I wish you whispers of Spring and small kindnesses.
Blessings,
Megan
Thank You For…
I had a great time visiting New York City this past weekend. A couple years ago, I would not have expected to enjoy “The City” ever again.
You see, I called New York home for five years. And by the time we prepared to move out of the city, I was pretty overwhelmed by that amazing, infuriating, beautiful, exhausting island.
For the first four years we lived there, I tamped down my frustration, my fear, my overwhelm. But When we made the decision to move out of the city…oooh, it just came flowing out of me.
Rage at people who pushed me on the subway.
Tears.
Yes, Manhattan made me cry.
But we had just decided to move. We weren’t actually moving for another eight months, so I had to do something. I started a list on Facebook. I called it: “Things to like – or even love – about New York City.”
My first item was the evergreen boughs packed around the sidewalk trees on 17th street in the winter. Number 41 was a favorite: I was grateful for the MTA guy on my morning commute at the 14th Street M15 select service bus stop. He was there the entire year I took that bus. Rain, sleet, snow, hundred degree heat. He was so kind – even in the midst of a mass of rather grumpy commuters. He always said “Good Morning.”
The list helped. It made my last year in New York possible, pleasant even. Friends added to it and helped me see the city in ways I simply could not before I started the list. Searching for tiny things that gave me joy became a spiritual practice. Being grateful gave me new way of seeing the world around me.If you live in New York, perhaps you, too, have noticed that the sidewalk at LaGuardia airport sparkles.
A few months after I started my New York City gratitude list, I was called to the Emergency Room of the hospital where I served as a chaplain. I found the patient who had requested a pastorin an isolation room, protecting either him or the rest of us from germs. I donned a mask and entered. He was delighted to see me. I was, to be honest, more than a little nervous.
As we spoke, I learned that this man was HIV positive, that his HIV had developed into AIDS,and that He had come in that day because his pneumonia had reoccurred. He had cancer too, but he didn’t want treatment. He did not even want to know how much of his body was affected. He felt alright, he said. He was homeless and mostly estranged from his family. He needed some new clothes and wondered if I could help. He spoke quickly, frenetically. I wasn’t sure what would come next.
And then he taught me a priceless lesson. He wanted to read something to me, (I don’t even remember now what it was) and he reached into a tattered pocket to pull out a piece of paper.
After he’d retrieved a broken pair of glasses from a different pocket, he paused, closed his eyes and said: “Thank You, God, for the ability to read.”
Thank you, God, for the ability to read.
His prayer made me reexamine the gift that many of us receive in early elementary school and then proceed to take for granted for the rest of our lives. The man in the ER, with so much to be angry, frustrated, despairing about, with a simple prayer of gratitude, had opened my eyes.
The rest of that day the power of that simple thank you washed over me:
Thank you for the ability to walk, to express myself.
Thank you for being able to open this door for someone.
Thank you, God, for the ability to read.
What before was ordinary, with a reminder, became glorious.
I am trying to remember the power of that pause these days. It is a hard time for many of the people we love. I am learning that gratefulness is not always easy, but always lifts the heart and, it is always as simple as a Thank You For…
For what are you grateful today?
The Harvest Comes
On a blazingly sunny January morning, I marched into a sanctuary outside of Denver, Colorado behind three huge paper maché puppets.
They were elaborately fashioned, built on backpacks so they could be carried on the backs of their puppeteers:
A brown skinned grandmother, two white braids and a kerchief, a coat hanger twisted into a pair of wire rimmed glasses on her kind face.
A smiling mama, her cheeks pink and a bright red mouth up turned at the sides
A huge little baby, wrapped in a swaddling blanket, paper maché pacifier in her mouth
Behind the puppets, people carried banners: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. The colors of the rainbow waving: “Welcome, welcome all and all whom you love.”
Behind the banners marched the ministers and religious educators who had come from down the street and across the country, from East and West, North and South, to celebrate the ministry of a young woman, my colleague and dear friend, Kierstin Homblette.
Kierstin, now Rev. Kierstin, is a community minister serving our Unitarian Universalist Association as the Beloved Community Coordinator for the Denver-Boulder Cluster – seven congregations working together to affect social change in the Rocky Mountains.
Rev. Kierstin’s work includes advocating for Immigration Reform – the puppets are carried by Unitarian Universalists and their community partners in rallies and demonstrations to remind supporters and anti-immigration activists and, perhaps most importantly, lawmakers, that Immigration Reform is about families: about babies and mamas (and daddies) and grandmothers.
Rev. Kierstin also works for full equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer people and families. The rainbow banners, with their waving welcome, celebrating the inherent worth and dignity of all people, reminding us that our communities have work to do to ensure that all are equal. And so people are working together to legalize civil unions (as they recently did in Colorado) and marriage (they are still fighting for that) and caring for LGBTQ youth who are at far greater risk of homelessness, and working to safeguard the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people, remembering that we are all worthy of a life without fear, and working together to ensure a life of dignity and protection under the law for all people.
As we sang and danced our way into Kierstin’s ordination, we sang the Zulu words of that now familiar song: Siyahamba, Siyahamba ekukhanyeni kwenkos’ We are marching in the light of God.
Nearly two hours later, after Kierstin had accepted the call to ordination from the seven-area congregations and had been presented with the trappings of ministry: the clerical collar she wears to the state Capitol on lobby visits, the robe, symbol of the educated ministry, and the stole, symbol of the preacher; after we had heard words from Martin Luther King Jr. telling us that the salvation of our society would come as love, and love alone; after we had heard the poet Marge Piercy’s words telling us that harvest comes; after Rev. Alicia Forde remind us in an inspired sermon that we are still far from coordinating the Beloved Community – that vision King had and we share, a community of Freedom and Justice through Love – but that we have the tools we need to do so; after we had laid our hands on Rev. Kierstin and offered her our blessings: Love, Laughter, Peace, Courage, Strength…
After all that and much more, we lifted our voices in song once again.
This time in a gospel hymn. “I need you to survive,” we sang.
I need you, you need me, we’re all a part of God’s body.
Stand with me, we sang, believe in me, we’re all a part of God’s body.
I marched out of that sanctuary feeling more alive, more inspired, and more awake to the joy, the possibilities, and the profound nature of what we are doing together in our congregations and in the world than I have felt in a long time.
There is much planting and tending ahead, but in the end, the harvest does come.
With Blessings on and Gratitude for the ministry of Rev. Kierstin Elizabeth Homblette.
The Seven Of Pentacles
by Marge Piercy
Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
Take Good Care
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.
The Coin That Wowed Me
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.
What’s New This New Year?
“The sun came up and five years gone. Life goes on…” – Brandi Carlile
The older we get, a year becomes a smaller fraction of our life and therefore goes by faster. Or at least this seems to be the case. Brandi Carlile perfectly expresses what I’ve been feeling lately as I watch the days pass so quickly it feels like I’ve barely blinked and the weeks and months and, yes, the years zoom by. Some days I wake to feel the passage of time so intensely, it weighs heavily, and I want to drag my feet to slow the planet’s turning. I’m still doing my best to breathe into each moment, that I might not regret the passage of this time five years down the line.
At the close of each year, we engage in the collective ritual of life review. We read the lists of the top movies, people, books, and events of the past year. We resolve to kick that habit we’ve been meaning to kick for as long as we can remember.
Last year at this time, my spouse and I had learned just before Christmas that the baby I was carrying was not developing; I would miscarry soon after the New Year. I had never been so ready to let go of a year. I said goodbye to 2012 long before January 1st and moved into 2013 with fervor. We were fortunate that a second pregnancy began a short time later and, this year, I write with a seven-week-old baby sleeping next to me. Now, I am reluctant to let go of 2013, a year that held so much grief and loss and so much joy and elation.
This year, our family is attempting a not-so-generic life review or a rote renewal of the resolutions we make each year. Instead, we are looking back on the very specific events of our year-gone-by and reflecting on what we have learned from the experiences we shared. And, knowing that our daughter will make many developmental leaps and milestones in the year ahead, my spouse and I are moving into the New Year with specific developmental goals for ourselves as individuals and as a family. As she becomes more and more herself, we ask ourselves who we want to be in the year ahead.
And you? What was new in your life in 2013? What do you let go of? What are you ready to leave behind and what do you wish to hold on to as we move into the New Year? What newness awaits you in the year ahead?
As much as I’d like to sometimes, we cannot slow the passage of time. But this liminal, in-between time here at the end of one year and the beginning of another provides us the opportunity to ask “What’s new?,” to really take stock of what has been and to turn our eyes towards what will be and who we will become in the year ahead.
Wishing you a New Year filled with blessing and beauty.
December
I grew up on the western edge of the Eastern Standard time zone. That means that the sun went down a little later in our corner of southwestern Ohio. I did not appreciate this fact until I came East to go to college in Connecticut. I called my mother that first fall: “The sun goes down at 4:30pm!” Mom sent me a high-spectrum sun lamp. I wrote my papers under it and staved off the worst of the seasonal depression, without escaping it all together.
I moved back to Connecticut two and half years ago. And I love it here. There is something about the fall sky in Connecticut – the clouds are like none I’ve seen anywhere else. This year, the leaves were more than stunning. We love being close to the shore and delight in sea gulls in seemingly random places: downtown, the grocery store parking lot.
And once again, daylight savings time (that odd misnomer) came this year on November 3rd, and now the sun goes down at 4:30pm. Today, December 9th, the official sunset time is 4:22pm. I’ve begun turning on lights and lighting candles before the sun sets. As the darkness settles, I think of us spinning our way toward the darkest night of the year, the winter solstice. I remember that after December 21st, the days will lengthen and the sky will progressively lighten. The sun will return. And though months of winter remain ahead of us, we will welcome the light and turn our faces toward the sun.
A devoted detester of winter, I married a man who loves the snow, loves the cold, the coziness of winter evenings. He has helped me to change my view of these darkest nights of the year. One of his most beloved albums is “December” by George Winston. It and Handel’s “Messiah” are the sound track of our Decembers. Winston’s calm, quiet piano solos warm the winter air and make one wish for a fresh fall of snow (which we just may get tonight). Through the music, I am reminded of the blessings of darkness. I pray that I may not just wait out these dark days, but embrace them, lean into them, cherish them. I pray that I might write and cook and reflect and love my way through December and find the joy therein as the light fades and then returns.
I wish the same for you.
Listen to George Winston’s “December” on YouTube
In the Need of Prayer
In the past few days, I have asked friends and colleagues to pray for a young man they have never met. One of my dearest friends (we will call him S.) is currently on life support in California after a horrible accident. His wife sits by his side as family and friends from all around the world wait for him to come out of a coma. They are in our thoughts without ceasing; and are the subject of so many prayers.
The irony is that S. is not an especially spiritually-inclined person. I have been thinking about what he would say about all these folks offering prayers on his behalf. I’m sure he would be touched, but he might also be amused or even a little annoyed. S. is fiercely devoted to his Jewish tradition, but holds little credence in the super natural. I’ve found myself talking to him directly, trying to reach him wherever he is. I’ve asked him to fight, to heal, to come back to us. I’ve prayed in English and in Hebrew. I have candles lit 24/7. I’ve pleaded with God to watch over him, to heal him, to bring him back to us. In conversation of sorts with S., I have been reflecting on the nature of prayer and why it feels so crucial to me right now.
Three reflections:
- Ann Ulanov calls prayer “primary speech.” “It is basic and fundamental,” she says, “our ground.” In prayer, she says, “who and what we are speak out of us…To pray is to listen to and hear this self who is speaking.”1 Accessing the deepest parts of ourselves, we ground ourselves in our humanness, open ourselves to our most fundamental being and speak the first language of our hearts. Prayer like this is often silent; it is wordless and timeless, connecting us to what is, was, and will be.
- Anne Lamott tells us that there are three prayers: “Help, Thanks, and Wow.”2 Over the past few days, I have found that often all I can manage is “Help,” repeating it over and over in the pre-dawn darkness as I feed my newborn daughter and pray for the man we call “Uncle.”
- And as our community begins a daily practice of sending thoughts and prayers to S. and his family at the same time, twice each day, I am struck by how prayer, however it is offered, makes it so we are not alone. Over the years, I have become a reluctant believer in the “power of prayer,” without understanding what that power might be. I do know the power of being kept in prayer and of holding others in prayer. I am more than grateful to all those who do not know S. or his family and are praying for them – sending love and thoughts, concentrating energy and imploring the life force or God or Love to surround them with care and compassion, strength and courage, comfort and peace. Deep down, I think S. is probably grateful too.
A Prayer for Today:
Sprit of Life and of Love,
Grant us courage where there is fear,
Compassion where there is division,
Peace where there is chaos.
May we find the strength to love one another fiercely,
Wildly and without abandon.
May we be granted the wisdom to know our hearts
And to speak our truths.
May we watch over each other,
Assuring each other that we are truly not alone,
But loved and cared for beyond measure.
May our hands be your hands, O God,
Our hearts filled to overflowing with your love.
Help us to love one another well,
To face the valleys together,
To climb the hills in tandem,
To ask for what we need,
And to receive abundance.
May we lift our heart voices in prayer:
Imploring help,
Extending gratitude,
Exclaiming awe.
For this life that we share,
Even in its darkest hours,
We give thanks.
Amen
Notes
1. Ulanov, Ann and Barry Ulanov. Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.
2. Lamott, Anne. Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. New York: Penguin Press, 2012.
In The Waiting Time
I really do not like waiting. I will put something back on a shelf rather than wait in a long check-out line. I will shop online, choose a different restaurant, come back later, or change my plans altogether to avoid a line.
I hate waiting for a bus too. Why stand and wait when I can start walking now? Usually, the bus passes me as I am chugging along down the street. It does not phase me. At least I didn’t wait, I tell myself. A funny logic, I know.
I remember as a child waiting for special days, like birthdays and Christmas, and feeling as though time was moving as slow as molasses. As a teenager, I would count down days until I could visit out-of-town friends or go to summer camp: month after next, week after next, day after the day after tomorrow. It felt like time crawled until finally it was … today! And somehow, the long-awaited day had arrived.
I am waiting now like I have never waited in my life. Expecting the child that I have carried for the past nine months to come into the world, I cannot make this magical event happen on my timeline. I cannot just set off walking. I cannot make a different choice or come back later.
My spouse and I have waited, counting months and weeks and days, watching my body change, following our baby’s development step by step: organs and fingernails and eyelashes. We have moved from flutters to kicks to rolls, reveling in bulges that are feet and elbows, imagining what they might look like on the outside.
The leaves are changing here in New England and falling, one by one, covering the ground, shuffling under my feet as I walk, slowly now, talking to the baby: We are ready for you. Come ahead. The days grow shorter and the ground grows colder, prepping for dormancy, for a winter of waiting. Our waiting time is now. We wait for life to emerge.
Enjoy the wait, they say. While it’s still just the two of you. While you and baby are one. Pregnancy is to be savored, they say. Well, mine has been complicated, often hard to savor, and at this point I am rather uncomfortable. But there is wisdom in their words.
And so I am practicing something that does not come naturally: enjoying the wait. I am practicing savoring each day, each moment that my babe and I are joined in this most intimate way that will never be again. I am practicing breathing deeply, being present, watching the leaves fall, waiting for our lives to change irrevocably, for our hearts to be transformed in ways we cannot imagine. Waiting becomes the practice itself.
We are over a month from the beginning of Advent, yet I have never understood the season as well as I do now: patience and reflection. Calmly, quietly preparing body, heart, and soul for the miracle that will be.
A Child in the Hospital
Sleep, my child and peace attend you, all through the night. I who love you shall be near you, all through the night. Soft the drowsy hours are creeping, hill and vale in slumber sleeping , I my loving vigil keeping, all through the night.
—Traditional Welsh Lullaby, Adapted by Alicia Carpenter
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
—Elizabeth Stone
When your child or infant is in the hospital, ill or injured, you may feel like all of life’s “knowns” are turned upside down. Suddenly unmoored, you may be struggling to regain some control over your life as you seek to protect your child. You may be wondering how this could have happened or why?, wondering “What did we do to deserve this?” or “Where is God?”
You did nothing to deserve what is happening to you and your family. Your child did nothing to deserve the suffering he or she might be experiencing now.
