Yes, Sweetie, Your Mama’s An Atheist…Minister. It Happens. Now, About This Sunday…
Last September, we moved to the “Little Rome” section of Northeast Washington, D.C. I expected it to feel a little more “holy” this Holy Week (perhaps “holier-than-me”?) but it’s actually felt pretty ordinary, quiet, and not very springy yet. Here and there I see some crocuses insisting on coming up through fall’s accumulated leaves, and in well-sun-warmed yards there are daffodils. For me this is what the adult version of the Easter Egg Hunt has become—the search in my northern hemisphere surroundings for evidence of the certainty of eventual spring. Yes, the wind is blustery and I’m still wearing my winter coat when I go out, but spring is on its way.
In contrast, God is something I’ve never been certain about. For all of my life I’ve identified as Unitarian Universalist, which meant to me as a young person that I was encouraged and open to appreciating and respecting many different experiences and interpretations of God. From my mid-20’s on, when I really grappled with the meaning of the word, I identified as agnostic, as not-knowing. But when “rubber met the road” (by which I mean, preaching, Sunday-after-Sunday) during my six years of solo parish ministry in Central Oregon, I quickly came to wrestle directly with and articulate my own atheism. It was important for me as a minister to feel rooted in and clear about what my beliefs were. My best sermons were the ones when I was able to begin with laughter, then plunge down into the depths of something true and real and hard, and rise up again to connect with others, with community, with the love that I believe keeps us human and mostly humane.
There are a gazillion great posts out there worth reading this week and weekend—reflections on Passover, on Good Friday, on Resurrection, on the growing number of “Nones”—people who choose not to affiliate with any religious institution. When I have a chance these days to read something other than Sandra Boynton with actual undivided attention, I’m enjoying reading Chris Stedman’s book Faitheist. I also commend to you this excellent reprise of Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock’s book Saving Paradise. I hope you take some time to read widely and thoughtfully this weekend, and to be conscious of what traditions you might be choosing to engage in, and why.
For us, in our home, my partner, colleague and co-Mama is heading to New Orleans tomorrow to co-lead a week-long service trip engaged in continued rebuilding-from-Hurricane Katrina efforts there. Easter Sunday church services will be crowded and are right in the middle of morning nap-time right now, so we will probably stay mellow at home, maybe make pancakes, and tune into the Church of the Larger Fellowship services online. Because it’s one of my favorite Easter traditions and Mama C will be gone on Sunday, we had our First-Ever Family Easter Egg Hunt this morning. Our Little Bean reached for each plastic egg and brought it immediately to her mouth of course, simultaneously squeezing it with all her might, causing the shiny purple chocolate kisses to tumble out onto the floor and into my hands, happy to receive them. Spring is sprung. Let’s go outside and run around on the resilient, determined grass. That’s a ritual I can revel in.
Holy Week Return
Holy Week marked off
from other weeks. Holy
Week when William Blake
returns to wail again down
owned streets,
owned parks,
owned river banks.
Holy Week when Blake sings
over the rattle of chains
forged in the mind; laughs
at the best excuses of the
“wise guardians of the poor.”
On Holy Week–marked off
to remember false
arrest; false imprisonment;
to remember courts, execution–
Blake comes back wailing
at crumbling concrete;
at muddy pits where
high-rises are seeded;
moans again at
sidewalks owned;
parks owned;
underpasses owned–
what ever will change?–
mourns the chains
forged in the mind;
chains forged in money.
Blake wails at the wise
guardians again;
morns the incarcerated,
the executed
who will rise
and die again
in the streets,
and again. Blake,
in Holy Week,
returns again to
prophesy in
the streets owned
by the guardians.
Kept from the poor.
Owned. Controlled.
Chartered.
Longing for the Weeds
Hard to believe we’re turning towards April in Minnesota, where I live. Out my window, I only see snow and dead leaves on the plants still standing from last year’s garden.
I pawed through the snow this morning to see if I might find anything living at all—often the first thing I find is an aggressive weed called Creeping Charlie. In the summer, I am all about pulling up Creeping Charlie and removing it as much as I can. In the spring, though, I greet it as one would the bloom of a precious orchid. I squeal, my eyes sometimes tear up, I then pull off a piece, lift it up to my face, and sniff. AAAAH, I say out loud, standing on my sidewalk, and I wave it in the face of friend, family or stranger who happen to be near.
Some plants have pungent smells: Herbs, or geraniums, or roses. Creeping Charlie in spring smells just like life. Even as I write about it, I feel myself yearning to see it, to smell it, to touch it. Knowing that by July it will, once again, be just an annoying weed, taking up space where I want something beautiful to flower.
It’s been a long and cold winter here in Minnesota, and in many parts of the country—I’m just back from Boston, where I had hoped to see a few yellow daffodils blooming and instead saw white (and grungy) snow. I got out of town this winter, and headed to warmer climates as much as I could, but not long enough to keep me from getting a little edgy, irritable, surly even.
So, along about now, many of us start threatening to get out of Dodge, to live someplace that doesn’t make us so cranky. This time, perhaps, I am serious…but then I start remembering all the reasons I truly love it here. And I paw through the snow a little more.
All of this is to say, today is the day that I’ll plant my seedlings in the basement under grow lights. In the tiny section of the world I can control, I’ll begin greening up the world a bit, going down each morning to see my new babies poke their little heads up from the dirt, begin to get the shape of the leaves they will eventually become.
I think there’s a reason that seeds are such a universal symbol of hope. Every religion uses the metaphor of the seed to talk about possibility, growth, potential. In the seeds I plant today is my hope, and my affirmation, that once again, the snow will melt, the flowers will bloom, the herbs will be delicious, the roses will sweeten the air. But before that, blessed be the Creeping Charlie…
Suprised by Joy: the Gift of Forgiveness
“Forgiveness can begin the moment we accept that the past cannot be changed.” These words, copied by a friend from a radio show, name one of the biggest hurdles on the path to forgiveness of self and others.
Playing past events over in my mind like bad movies, some of them horror shows, I find myself wondering how different life would be if – if — if the levees around New Orleans had been built and maintained adequately, if planes had not sprayed the fields with DDT while my papa and his siblings were hoeing weeds, if I had been more mindful about what I said that time—and that other time. What if the past was different? What if?
The five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross are useful parallels to the stages of forgiveness, especially when harm has actively been done to us or by us-
- Shock and Denial that something like this could even happen.
- Anger that it has happened.
- Bargaining (here’s where we find the “what if” mental movies).
- Depression when we begin to move into the present moment and experience the harm that has been done.
- Acceptance – the moment when we accept that the past, indeed, is past and cannot be changed. We must now try to live in a world where what happened and all its consequences are what we in New Orleans call the “new norm.” Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. That is not the case. Acceptance is about recognizing and acknowledging that this new reality is, in fact, reality.
Life as we knew it has been forever changed and, really, no kidding, no bad joke, we must re-adjust. New Orleans was flooded. My papa and all of his siblings are dead, all having suffered from some form of cancer. I cannot unspeak careless, harmful words once spoken, no matter how much I wish I could.
Dutch-born Catholic priest Henri Nouwen tells us that “It is freeing to become aware that we do not have to be victims of our past and can learn new ways of responding.” Forgiveness, he says, “… sets us free without wanting anything in return.” Forgiveness, strangely, perhaps counter-intuitively, is largely an internal process, one that allows us to release the poison of pain and anger that makes us unhappy and unhealthy.
Nations, institutions, families, ourselves – the need for forgiveness, to forgive and to be forgiven, looms large for many of us. To accept, truly accept that the past cannot be changed, opens the door to the possibility of forgiveness.
Bill Chadwick of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, speaks skillfully about the internal nature of forgiveness. His 21 year old son Michael was killed as a passenger in a car crash where the driver at fault survived. Bill relates:
It was some months later that it hit me: until I could forgive the driver, I would not get the closure I was looking for. Forgiving is different from removing responsibility. The driver was still responsible for Michael’s death, but I had to forgive him before I could let the incident go. No amount of punishment could ever even the score. I had to be willing to forgive without the score being even. And this process of forgiveness did not really involve the driver—it involved me. It was a process that I had to go through; I had to change, no matter what he did. … This is what I learned: that the closure we seek comes in forgiving. And this closure is really up to us, because the power to forgive lies not outside us, but within our souls.
Once we accept that the past does not change, we can make a choice about how we live in the present. “There are times,” Sister Joan Chittister observes, “to let a thing go. There is a time to put a thing down, however unresolved, however baffling, however wrong, however unjust it may be. There are some things in life that cannot be changed, however intent we are to change them. There is a time to let surrender take over so that the past does not consume the present, so that new life can come, so that joy has a chance to surprise us again.”
As we enter a new season, may we choose to live in the present, accepting that the past will not change. May we forgive and know forgiveness. May joy have a chance to surprise us once again.
Ordinary Time
Though March is not the season of Ordinary Time according to the Roman Catholic calendar, we are embracing Ordinary Time in this one Unitarian Universalist household, right now. (One of many aspects of Unitarian Universalist “culture” that I enjoy is that it often seems as though “rules were made to…be discussed.”) It was been a long, full, amazing, intense year of celebrations and events in our lives, this past year. In this strange but it-worked-for-us order, we went on our honeymoon (February 2012), got married (May), wrapped up 2 amazing jobs (July), had a baby (August), moved across the country (September), started a new job (August/September), unpacked, celebrated winter holidays, unpacked some more (ongoing), discovered we’d moved to Washington, D.C. (I’m seriously just noticing this lately, but let’s say February 2013) and my partner Cathy got ordained (March). Whew. We are thrilled to now be entering what we like to call “The Year of Uneventfulness.”
I also like to think of these days we’re settling into as “Ordinary Time,” and I love the term. I’ve been mulling it over for the past week. A friend asked me the other day about Life With Baby, she asked “Does it feel like it’s flying by?” My first response was still to recall the first four months, during which I sometimes had days that felt interminable–far from “flying by.” I remember clearly the days when Robin would only fall asleep during the daytime in my lap, and so I’d just sit in the blue cushioned rocker by the window for hours. And hours. I tried not to count the hours because I do believe that “a watched pot never boils” and counting the hours until Cathy would get home from work only made the day seem longer. Anyway those days did not fly by.
But now that Robin is seven-and-a-half months? Yes, it’s starting to fly by. And I appreciate the question, because it made me realize that yes, I’d be quite happy to “freeze-frame” for a while what our lives are like, right now. It feels, dare I say, like we sort of know what we’re doing, the three of us, like we all recognize each other and sort of know how to handle each other. Robin is consistently sitting happily (and stably) by herself and now regularly enjoys playing by herself with something simple like a string or a single toy–sometimes for as long as 15 or 20 minutes, studying it, mouthing it, passing it from hand-to-hand, and so on. I call that “working on her project.” Who knows what she’s already picked up from her Mamas–we like to work on our projects.
And we certainly have no shortage of projects (does anyone, these days?). But there is something so absolutely calming about realizing that these are all just the ordinary projects of life. We have lots to do–laundry, dishes, cleaning up, cooking, prep work for upcoming events and trips, appointments and errands, forms and bills, taxes and still more unpacking and sorting. But finally it is Ordinary Time. These are the tasks of living. We are so lucky to have all that we have, the components of our lives that we could so easily take for granted–each other, our lively kid, two cantankerous cats, an apartment we like in a neighborhood we love, our health, meaningful work, supportive families, our eclectic and ever-growing communities of friends. Ordinary Time means appreciating What Is, appreciating all this ordinary extraordinaryness.
The Spring Equinox has just passed; Passover and Easter are coming up. Taxes are due soon. Cherry Blossom Season is kicking off in Washington. These are all significant dates on the calendar–your own calendar may have lots of other important dates on it. And, at the same time, what I wish for all of us are more uneventful, ordinary days. Days that end with a deep breath of gratitude. Days that end with a sense of simple satisfaction. Life is an ongoing list of things to do, for sure, but as the saying goes, “Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.” May we all savor the life that happens on our ordinary days.
Apophatic Project
How to say she would
run the horse beneath
the low branches of
the Thorny Locust
until she fell off?
How to explain she
planned to build fires
until the most concrete
of bridges fell to embers?
How to say she would
wander across whatever
border until every shape
wore a foreign costume?
How to explain
breaking every tool
she so expertly
wielded, until syllables
stuttered unintelligible
screeds and jokes?
How to say it’s about
burning. About riding
through low branches
until ends become
completions; going
on until she hears
the trees laughing.
A Balancing Act
Happy Spring Equinox! (Unless you happen to live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case I’d like to wish you a delightful Fall Equinox.) The equinox, of course, is the moment of the year when the light and the dark are in perfect balance, with equal parts day and night. Legend has it that on the moment of the spring equinox it is possible to balance an egg on its end. Science would point out that there’s no reason to believe the truth of this legend—it’s not as if gravity is somehow arranged differently on the equinox, but still…the equinox is a time for relating to the whole idea of balance.
Which, Lord knows, we could all use. Most of us are struggling to find the balance between our work life and our home life, the balance between our children’s needs and our own, the balance between activism and acceptance, between being here now and working for a better tomorrow. And those struggles are never going to go away. The only way to find balance is through a constant series of adjustments, tipping the egg ever so slightly this way and that in the vain hope of finding the balance point where everything is right.
It’s never easy, and sometimes it’s heartbreaking. I am thinking of my friend Lisa, who is struggling with finding the balance of when or whether to have her dog put down. Euthanizing a pet is almost always a heart-wrenching decision, and in this case the dog is young, sweet, and seemingly healthy. But the medications which have controlled the dog’s seizures for some time have stopped working, and so at any moment this lovely animal can go from running or playing or snuggling on the couch to cluster seizures that leave her traumatized and cause progressive brain damage. My friend has been diligent in trying to find a solution, and two different vets have agreed that there is none, that the seizures will return, and that they will be fatal, although not for some time down the road. And so Lisa is trying to balance her love for the dog against the burden of 24/7 care for an animal who may be stricken at any time. She is trying to balance the enjoyment the dog gets from every walk, every ride in the car, every scratch behind the ear against the fear and confusion and suffering of seizures that can come at any time. And there isn’t a perfect balance point. There isn’t any way of knowing what exactly is the right thing to do, when exactly is the right time to let go.
Any more than there is a way to know when or whether it is the right time to leave the father of your children, or when or whether it is the right time to tell your young adult child that they have to leave your home, or when or whether to put your frail and fading mother in a nursing home. There is no way to know the right answer, but there is also no way to avoid the decision, since inaction is as much of a choice as action. Doing the right thing, the perfect thing, is as much of a fantasy as balancing an egg.
Which, it turns out, you can do. Any day, not just on the equinox. It takes some patience, and a delicate touch, but it can be done. You start with the determination to balance what seems impossible to balance, and you find a steady base for your balancing act: I don’t want my pet to suffer. My child needs to learn independence. My mother needs care that I can’t give her. And then you lean the egg just the tiniest bit left and right, searching for a sweet spot that will hold: I can give my dog one more perfect day. I can pay for my adult child’s health insurance, and a security deposit on an apartment. I can make sure that mom’s favorite pictures go with her to the home, which will be close enough for me to visit regularly. Never the perfect answer, or at least never an answer that comes with the guarantee that nothing more or better could be done. But an answer, a choice, a balancing place.
The equinox doesn’t offer us the perfect resting spot where we can be assured that all is right. It offers us spring and growth and change. It reminds us that the perfect resolution for an egg is not to balance on its end, but rather to crack open entirely, so that the chick inside can emerge.
What’s (Not) To Worry About?
Well, it’s not the end of the world, by a long stretch. In fact, it’s what I’ve heard is called in the Alcoholics Anonymous community “a bourgeois problem,” or “a luxury problem.” I shall write it down as such in Robin’s Baby Book–another “first.” “First class in D.C. that was filled before we went to sign up.” Parent & Child Learn-To-Swim. It was our (her Mamas’) fault; we thought the staff at the Aquatic Center said that registration was on March 14th, when in fact registration started on March 4th, so the fact that I had diligently marked it on the family calendar and trudged over to the Aquatic Center’s front desk at 7am this morning made no difference: the popular class’s 10 spots were filled, over a week ago now. Luckily, this is one of those things I am able to put in perspective. Oh, well. There will be plenty of other swim classes in Robin’s future. She is so into kicking right now it’s just a matter of figuring out other ways and times to get her into the pool, into the jumper, into the exersaucer. Any day now she’ll crawl. Which gives me some other things to worry about.
As a new, overly-educated parent in the U.S. in the 21st century, there’s indeed a long list of things I worry about. And I genuinely struggle to sort out which ones are worthy of my worry, and which ones to ignore. Getting her into a baby swim class? Not a big deal. But the often-mentioned but poorly documented toxicity of many baby toys troubles me. The high rate of asthma in D.C. combined with the obvious air pollution and rushing streams of exhaust-producing cars concerns me. The increasingly-watered-down regulation of produce, what actually qualifies as “certified organic,” and research I don’t have time to read about genetically-modified-food disturbs me. And lead poisoning completely freaks me out. I’ve read this New York Review of Books article twice and until I get someone to actually screen our apartment for lead contamination, I worry. Don’t you? Did you read this part: “Minuscule amounts of lead can poison a child. The signs of severe lead poisoning—convulsions, pain, coma, etc.—are typically seen when the concentration of blood lead exceeds sixty micrograms per deciliter (a tenth of a liter) of blood. This corresponds to the ingestion of a total amount of lead weighing about the same as six grains of table salt.” Six grains of table salt! A visitor’s shoes could track in that much lead from our D.C. streets in a single afternoon. Of course I worry.
And that’s just it: the list of things I could worry about is endless. A column about parenting that a friend recently shared described part of our role as parents as “constant vigilance.” I’m not excited by this job description; I was already prone to pondering worse-case scenarios, before having a kid. The bumper sticker “If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention” has resonated with me for decades–but, given that I’m quite attentive-by-nature, how do I not spend all my time being outraged? Constant outrage is not the kind of orientation-to-the-world I want to model for our child. So now I can add to the list “worrying about worrying too much.”
Today our marvelous, wonderfully-mellow babysitter spent 15 minutes doing some initial baby-proofing of our apartment while I nursed The Kid to sleep. There are whole chapters of books I have glanced at but haven’t read carefully about the hazards of the home. What is it, exactly, that our baby can do with an exposed electrical outlet or extension cord, like just the kind we’ve had sitting around on the floor right by her play area for months, until today when I finally rolled it up and put it in the closet? What could she do–put her tongue into it? Her fingers? Do I really want to know? These days I’m well aware I don’t get out of my own head often enough to maintain a healthy perspective. Too often I go to bed stewing on something I read in the paper, noticed online, or overheard on the radio. How do you find that balance between worrying (as in: fretting alone) and acting (as in: accepting what is real and doing something about it?) How do we all find some equilibrium between what I call the disease of “agit-itus” and a more grounded, calmer caring that is conscientious but not frantic?
At some point every day or evening, I sing Robin one of my favorite Unitarian Universalist hymns, the very first one in our shared hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition: “May nothing evil cross this door.” I’m aware of its naive simplicity, though. These days, we know that evil is systemic and insidious. It creeps into our lives through prejudice and ignorance, through exactly the kinds of initially well-intentioned efforts that resulted in the lead studies documented above. What we don’t know can hurt us. What we don’t take the time and effort to think about carefully can harm whole communities, whole generations of people.
Several years ago now, my black Womenspirit clerical robe went missing from the rented sanctuary of the church I was serving (relatively minor worry #127: yes, this can happen. Do people steal robes & stoles? It never turned up.). It was just weeks before Easter Sunday. Chaplain and UU colleague Rev. Karen Taliesin sent me her robe on loan, in a box with a few of the beautiful prayer/mantra/poem cards she creates to give out to the families and staff she serves at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital. One of the cards features a short prayer by Reiki founder Mikao Usui, and it surfaced in my life this week. I’ve had it sitting on our home altar. This first line is: “Just for today, do not worry.”
I’ve known some people who “give up worrying for Lent.” As they say in AA, I’ll start with “just for an hour.” Heck, I’ll start with just a paragraph, just a breath! One full and complete breath without worrying. I aspire to a full night’s sleep without the adjectives “interrupted” or “fitful” anywhere nearby. Months ago now, my partner Cathy gave me a little brown notebook that, starting tonight, I’m keeping in the bathroom cabinet. Each night after I floss and brush my teeth (worry #235 about what’s in toothpaste and the epidemic of childhood tooth decay) I’m going to jot in that notebook what worries are rising to the surface of my thoughts, percolating and steaming there like over-brewed coffee. I strive to leave those worries there, at least for the night, scribbled down in the notebook, shut in the cabinet. I’m going to turn off the bathroom light and go to sleep. And we’ll see what the new day holds. We’ll see.
Why I am a Unitarian Universalist
As a good Pentecostal kid, I read the Bible. I read of a God who condemned the oppression of the poor. I read of a Messiah executed for threatening power structures. This is not what I heard from the pulpit. I could not reconcile this dissonance in my mind. I felt alone.
At college I found a small group of humanists who called themselves Unitarian Universalists. They were joyful people whose values of commitment and compassion I admired. I was not alone.
I became a poet. I began to think that all scriptures are part of a vast and beautiful human project to capture compassion and awe. I began to believe that scripture is creative writing. I began to believe that the writers of sacred texts were poets. And, like me, all were bound in understanding by barriers such as time, geography, and language.
I am a Unitarian Universalist because I believe religions are very human attempts to find meaning and purpose. The texts and practices that have accumulated over time are at once sad and glorious, brutal and loving.
We humans, all through time, have been whistling in a graveyard. And writing poetry.
Relationship First
“If words come out of the heart, they will enter the heart, but if they come from the tongue, they will not pass beyond the ears.” Al-Suhra Wardi , Persia, 12th Century
This morning I listened to the Diane Rehm show on my local NPR station; she interviewed Deborah Hicks who has written a book about her work teaching poor Appalachian girls. Toward the end of the show, Diane asked Dr. Hicks what were the lessons of her work. (http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-03-12/deborah-hicks-road-out-teachers-odyssey-poor-america) The first lesson, the author replied, was that relationships come first. She needed to listen to her students and to learn who they were and what was important to them before she could really teach them.
Her simple reply led me into thought. We so often forget that it is always relationships first. We become who we are only through relationships. With healthy authentic relationships, we can grow and flourish. With healthy relationships, we can both laugh and cry; we can both work and play. With honest listening relationships, we can both agree and disagree.
Without authentic relationships, we develop an edge. We may shrivel up, and we are more likely to be afraid or angry. Too often, we let fear or judgment interfere with our relationships and prevent us from living and loving fully. We can let unhealthy relationships damage us; suspicious and angry relationships cause us to doubt ourselves and lose our vitality.
My young adult daughter is recently divorced and in a new relationship. Her new relationship seems to be firmly grounded in honesty, trust and fun. She reported to us that her co-worker and friend of four years told her that she was the happiest that he had ever seen her. I reflected that indeed she is happier than she has been in these last few years. For several years, even when she was happy, she had a tense edge. Now, that edge is gone; she is relaxed and happy. In her marriage, she had been hurt and she was fearful. Her husband blamed her for all problems and liked to tell her what was wrong with her. Her new partner listens to her, shares what he is thinking and feeling, and likes her. They are having fun together.
As it is with teachers and students and in close personal relationships, so it is with congregations. Clergy and congregations can grow and flourish together when we remember that it is always relationships first. It can be hard to enter openly into new trusting relationships. It requires that one likes and trusts oneself enough to truly listen to the other and learn who they are. When clergy enter a new community determined that it y should be the kind of congregation that they want it to be, they are not fully open to authentic relationship. When congregants have decided who the new clergy person is before establishing a relationship, they are also not open to authentic relationship. Communities and clergy may survive but they will not flourish without authentic relationship, without trust.
It is not always easy to enter into new relationships with authenticity and trust. Sometimes when I speak the words from my heart, they come with tears. It is not always easy, but it is always relationships first.
May your words come from your heart and be received by open hearts.
