The Day After Newtown: Finding Our Way
And so we wake up the morning after, and it wasn’t a dream. The children are still dead, the teachers beside them. It is another day, a gray one, where people and animals must be fed and life will go on no matter how we feel.
Many of us took the occasion, yesterday, to find one another and weep. The people of Newtown wept. The President wept. Many of us watched them online and wept along with them. Many of us gathered, with our families, or friends, or in churches, or online, to weep together.
And today the weeping will continue. But along with weeping, those of us who are not in the center of the tragedy will begin, together, to grope our way along in the darkness and imagine what we might do besides weep. Some will begin researching gun control organizations and join them. Some will call for a March on Washington. Some will argue endlessly on facebook about whether gun control would have helped. Some will call for us, instead or as well, to address the issues of mental illness more aggressively. Some will simply be with their own families, grief sharpening their gratitude for all they have.
Of everything that I heard yesterday, and of everything that was cited by others last night in the three hour online time of mourning that my congregation held on our Livestream channel, the #1 cited words of comfort came not from Scripture or Shakespeare, but from Mr. Rogers. These four words, people lifted up over and over: Look for the helpers. Look for the helpers.
The full context of Fred Rogers quote is this: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
And so, yesterday, many of us were awed by the thousands of people who surrounded the scene of the tragedy to help. We spoke with reverence of the courageous teachers who never stopped helping through the whole event. We spoke of first responders and politicians and counselors who helped and will help.
Today, as we wrestle with complex emotions and struggle to imagine what we might do ourselves, how we might go on, I suggest that we use Fred Rogers’ words as our compass. As we are about to take an action, as we are choosing what to do or not do, say or not say, we can ask ourselves, “Does this help? Am I a helper? If someone is looking for the helpers, will they see this? Will my action give hope to children who are looking for it?”
We may have different ideas about what exactly will help. But we have some pretty good hunches. Some things we’ll all agree on. Listening to each other as we process the event will help. Giving a child the most precious gift of all: our full attention, floor or lap time, will help. Engaging in activities which strengthen our connection to our neighbors and our local community will help.
And I believe that strategic and focused action to limit the carrying and use of weapons will help. Better options and care for people with mental illness will help. Some of us, me included, will put some of our helping energy in this direction.
However we are called to help, may we be bold about it. May we allow our commitments, our action, to be visible. May we claim our power to act, to care, to change the world. As we move out into our day, our week, and 2013, may we be part of the healing.
YOU GOT PEOPLE
You Got People
This Public Service Announcement brought to you by a Unitarian Universalist minister who has just been creatively reminded by the universe of this important truth.
Beloveds, in the crush of this season of holidays, remember that YOU GOT PEOPLE.
Contrary to the images of loneliness and unworthiness being projected onto us during this commercialized season – you are intimately and ultimately connected to all of creation.
Whether you buy or receive holiday gifts, send cards, light menorahs, kinaras, or bonfires – during the longest nights of the year and during the longest days and every time in between, you are not alone.
The myth of our culture is one of worth based on stuff and perfection.
The myth of our culture says you have to earn grace.
The myth of our culture is deeply isolating and numbing.
These are not life affirming myths.
These are not myths to live by.
Sister Joan Chittister declares that “The paradox is that to be human is to be imperfect but it is exactly our imperfection that is our claim to the best of the human condition. We are not a sorry lot. We have one another. We are not expected to be self-sufficient. It is precisely our vulnerability that entitles us to love and guarantees us a hearing from the rest of the human race.”
In this season of need and greed remember:
You are enough.
You belong.
You are not alone.
You got people.
Ready for Christmas
‘Tis the season. The standard greeting these days seems to be, “So, are you ready for Christmas?” Frankly, this is a question that flummoxes me every time. Honestly, I really have not the faintest idea how one is supposed to answer. Am I ready for Christmas? What does that even mean?
Have I decorated the house? No. To be perfectly frank, I haven’t even mopped the floor in some weeks. I have not hung lights. So far, there is no tree. In my house these things are usually accomplished somewhere in the vicinity of Christmas Eve. In my defense I will say that trees are much cheaper then, and my daughter has come to understand Christmas Eve as the traditional time to decorate a tree.
Have I baked cookies for my co-workers? That’s an easy one. I work online. My co-workers, wonderful as they are, live across the country. They don’t expect cookies. But then, neither do my neighbors. OK, neither do my friends and family. Sometimes it’s best to set low expectations.
Have I bought presents for all and sundry? Um…not so much. Some day very soon I will think about what incredibly thoughtful items might be purchased for my nieces and nephew that Amazon can gift wrap and mail for me. Shopping for my 14-year-old daughter is best done by gift card. We agreed that the lovely hand-made mask my wife dearly wanted would be her Christmas present, but it’s already hanging on the wall. The rest of my family doesn’t really exchange presents. Can I just say that anything involving a shopping mall is NOT my idea of a jolly holiday?
I guess by all prevailing standards the clear answer is that no, I am not in the least ready for Christmas.
Unless you mean: Am I ready to wish wes-hael—be whole—to those around me in the traditional wassail greeting of the season?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to embrace the dark of the year, but also keep an eye on the lights that shine in the early night?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to consider what it means to imagine God in the form of a powerless baby?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to follow a star, or whatever might beckon me toward the surprising, the miraculous, the new?
In that case, I’m still not sure, but I suspect—I hope—that the answer is yes.
Impatiently Waiting to Patiently Wait
It’s December 8 already; one third of the way through the Advent calendar that I still haven’t dug out of the basement closet and put up. We did manage to put up the tree, and even decorate it this year, Thanksgiving being so early and all. (Last year we opted for the naked look).
Noooooo, my soul moans, don’t let these precious days slide by unnoticed! I always have this fantasy of spending December sipping tea and sitting on the couch with loved ones, admiring the lights of the Christmas tree, maybe while listening to some of our favorite music. And it always turns out that I’m just proud to remember to water our tree as I run by.
I don’t know why it took me this long to realize it, but it’s suddenly become clear to me that if I am going to get any waiting done this month, I’m going to have to plan for it.
Time was, waiting just happened. When I was a kid, my sibs and I allocated the rotation of December days, jostling for which little cardboard doors of that sparkly advent calendar were ours to open. (Since we used the same advent calendar every year, some of the doors were torn off…so if you got those days assigned to you, you had to just pretend to open a door. Obviously none of us wanted those days.) Time was, perusing the Sears or Penney’s catalogue, both to make my list and then to fantasize about what Santa might bring me, took up a number of hours each week. Time was, the days leading up to Christmas felt like an enormous mountain to climb, and it seemed like we would never get there!
Now the days feel more like a landslide behind me which I am trying to outrun as I scoot down that mountain as fast as I can. Donnnn’tttt loookkkkk baaaacccckkkkkkkkkk!!!!!
So, it occurs to me belatedly, if I really want to do it, I need to put waiting on my calendar. Now for me, the word “waiting” and the word “impatient” seem to be grafted onto the same tree trunk. Often, when I am waiting, I am wishing away that time, not fully there at all. If I’m not crabby, it’s because I’m distracting myself, playing Scrabble on my iPhone in the long check out line, or talking on the phone while I sit outside my kid’s school. That’s not what I need to calendarize. I have plenty of that! There should be a different word for this intention to cultivate patient waiting.
Years ago, my office bought a new phone answering system, and for some reason the wait between punching in the extension you wanted and getting that person on the phone was insanely long. Probably two full minutes. No matter what kind of music we tried putting on it, people were inevitably crabby when they finally got to us. Finally, someone had the wise idea to change our answering machine. When you called, you got this message:
“After you push in your party’s extension, please enjoy an extended time of silence to meditate and pray.” And then, rather than playing music, it was completely quiet. After that, the voices that spoke from our answering machine ceased being frustrated and angry, and instead, greeted us with words like, “Wow! I’m going to start calling here every day just to enjoy that quiet!” or “I wish that had lasted a little longer!” (Someone from the Washington Post business section even got wind of it, and put a little blurb in about us entitled, “Just pray someone answers.”) It was all about creating space just for waiting.
For me, I think, that space is most accessible early in the morning, before anyone wants anything from me, and late at night, after anyone wants anything from me. It will be dark during both of those time periods. And the house will be quiet. But the trick is, I have to turn my mind toward intentionally waiting. Not making my day’s to do list in the morning or thinking with regret of everything I didn’t accomplish at night’s end. Just sitting in a place of anticipation, expectation, even longing.
My favorite line in a Christmas carol is “Let every heart prepare Him room.” That’s what I want to do during my daily times of waiting: prepare the room, just as I do when a guest I love is coming to stay with me. I clean, I put on fresh sheets and sometimes even put out fresh flowers. Which is to say that I won’t be tweeing, emailing, calling, texting, IMing, skyping, zooming, or otherwise pinging you during those times.
I want to be offline, but thoroughly plugged in. (I’ll let you know how it goes.)
The Christmas List
We’ve reached the season of the Christmas list. Children far and near are making careful notes as to what exactly they would like Santa to bring them. While these lists contain an amusing variety including the improbable (a pony!), the impossible (a griffin!) and the heartbreaking (a military parent home for Christmas) as well as your standard covetous and grasping, that is not the kind of Christmas list I’m thinking of. No, I’m considering the other side of the equation.
Santa, we’re told, is “making a list, checking it twice.” Santa is “gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” Does this strike you as just the tiniest bit creepy? Talk about Big Brother. Really, what defines someone as naughty or nice? Anyone I’ve ever met is some combination – mostly nice, but with regular lapses. Does Santa have some sort of computer algorithm that assigns a point value to acts, naughty or nice, and then spits out a conclusion on the balance?
What I really wonder, I guess, is whether anyone really ever gets a lump of coal. Are we ever judged that inadequate, that naughty? Would a “right jolly old elf” ever decide that a person is so bad that they don’t even deserve an orange at the bottom of their stocking?
Don’t we all, in the end, receive a shower of gifts, without regard to our naughty/nice quotient? Trees and mountains, air and sunshine, birds, oceans, sunsets, rain, wildflowers, fat bumblebees—doesn’t it all come to us in an overflowing profusion, far beyond what we can measure, let alone fit under a Christmas tree?
What if there is no list, and no one is checking to see if we measure up? What if the whole scheme rests, not on the threat of punishment, but rather on the premise that we long to give back as we are given to, that we find our joy in returning to the world as beautiful a reflection of what we are given as we can muster?
I’ll say it. I don’t believe in Santa—not the one with the twice-checked list at any rate. I am, however, a steadfast fan of the reindeer, who are so in love with the idea of delivering gifts that they are, against all reason, able to fly.
On Abundance
“We are the people of abundance, people who have known suffering and will know suffering. We are the people of abundance, people who have known love and offer our love as a blessing to our world.” ~ Naomi King
We are a people of abundance. We know struggle in abundance and strength in abundance. For every story we know about “not enough,” we know an answering story of “lots.” Not enough time? Lots of meaningful work to do. Not enough money? Lots of sustaining relationships.
Since the Flood of 2005 in New Orleans, I have an abundance of friendships that grew out of people coming here to stand in solidarity with and bear witness to our struggle. Now these beloveds are woven into the fabric of my life and I walk with them through the joys and struggles of their lives – adoptions, divorces, cancer, new vocations, the death of parents, the building of treehouses – they are now a part of my life and my life is more abundant.
Abundance is not inherently good or bad – it simply is. We celebrate when joy is abundant, we mourn when grief is abundant. When it is time to sit down and write, I sometimes have an abundance of reasons to keep getting up and doing something else. When it is time to sit down and write, I sometimes have an abundance of words pouring from my fingertips.
To our dominant culture framed by a scarcity narrative, I offer this truth of abundance. When we see that our days are replete with abundance, we are less afraid. When we are less afraid, we connect more. The more connections we see in our lives, the more abundance we notice. Sometime the abundance will wear us out. Sometimes it will fill us up.
Live lived from the narrative of abundance is not easy. It is, however, a more loving way to move through the world than a life lived from scarcity. Come – choose to err on the side of love and generosity. We are a people of abundance.
Do What You Would Ususally Do Wednesday
We have, at last, come off of a whole string of days officially or unofficially designated to tell us what to do with our money. There was Black Friday, when we were supposed to go shopping; and Buy Local Saturday when we were supposed to spend more money, but this time with local merchants and independent retailers. Then came Cyber Monday, when we were supposed to buy stuff online. Followed by Giving Tuesday, when we were supposed to redeem ourselves for all that socially-irresponsible spending by giving money to good causes.
Honestly, I have no idea who determines these things. Who designated Cyber Monday or Giving Tuesday or any of the rest, and how did these things somehow become folded into the Holiday Season? What exactly defines the Holiday Season, anyway? Does it run from Thanksgiving to Christmas? New Year’s? If you celebrate Chanukah and not Christmas, does the Holiday Season end with the completion of Chanukah (the evening of the 16th this year) or do you have to say in a festive mood until the last of the eggnog is consumed at New Year’s?
I have no idea. On the theory that whoever designates these things has no special authority (and really, aside from the Supreme Court, who does?), I would like to designate today, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, as Do What You Would Usually Do Wednesday. If you need something, go out and buy it. Otherwise don’t. Unless, you know, it’s really calling to you and you can afford it and it’s genuinely going to make your life better, in which case, what the heck, go for it. If you can get what you need from a local merchant, that would be great. But if you just don’t have the time or energy to go out into the world and you can find what you need online, believe me, I understand. And hey, today would be a great day to contribute to the welfare of others, or to the arts or to any organization that you think is doing wonderful work in the world.
But, you know, tomorrow would be just as good. Setting up an automatic withdrawal from your checking account would be even better. Face it, how you spend your money just isn’t a holiday. It isn’t something that deserves a special moment set aside from ordinary time. Which is not to say that how you spend your money isn’t a religious practice. It certainly is. Jesus, for instance, had far more to say about how people should spend their money than he did about far more contentious topics like homosexuality and divorce. Judaism and Islam have plenty to say about money, particularly about giving it to people in need. Money is one of the major ways that we express our values, which is to say, how we express what we think is right and good, which is to say, our religion.
How we spend our money matters. But it doesn’t need a holiday, a special, set-apart time. Far better that we make our financial choices daily, mindfully, choosing over and over again to invest in those things that matter most to us: the health and safety of our families, the pleasures that leaven our lives, opportunities for learning and growth, care for those who are in need. Today, Do What You Would Usually Do Wednesday, please spend your money exactly the way you ordinarily would. Unless you aren’t satisfied that your financial habits reflect your deepest values. In which case you should look forward to Do a Little Better Thursday, which is coming right up tomorrow.
Spiritual Lessons from the Passenger’s Seat
Though she took the book learning part of Drivers Ed this summer, my 16 year old did not get her temporary license until last Monday. That’s because on Tuesday, we were leaving for a 1500 mile roadtrip for a family Thanksgiving, and it seemed like an ideal time to teach her to drive.
When I say “ideal time,” let me qualify that. To me, the “ideal” time to drive with her would have been after she had also taken the behind the wheel drivers’ ed class where the person in the passenger seat, a trained instructor, also has a brake pedal. But, oddly, that’s not how they do it anymore. They want the parents to teach the kids to drive, before the professional teacher ever gets into a car with them. While I find that bizarre and wrong, that massive group of people without 16 year olds seems to find it logical for some reason.
So, we headed off into the sunset, driving from Minnesota to northern Ohio. And then back. Safe and sound. With the sixteen year old driving at least 600 of the 1500 miles! And here’s what I learned, which I share thinking maybe it has application beyond this particular situation!
1. There is no time when beginning will feel safe, but make it as safe as you can. If you wait for safety, your kids will grow old and retire before you ever step aside and allow them to drive. But think through what will feel the safest to you. For me, it was a three lane highway in rural Wisconsin.
2. Start by imitating someone else. We drove around on a few country roads to experience starting and stopping, and then I said, “Just get in the right lane. No passing. Just follow whatever car is in front of you and go the speed limit.” That business of following someone else at first, even if they are the slowest, clunkiest, trailer on the road, is still a good way to begin.
3. Plan in advance how you’ll stop if you need to. Besides staying in the right lane, I knew that we would only switch drivers in wayside rests. No intown driving, no cloverleaves or complicated off-ramps. Just pulling over to a big parking lot on the side of the road.
4. Only do the one thing. In this case, it was driving. At first, we had no radio, no conversation about anything but driving, no eating. In the passenger’s seat, I did not answer phone calls or even look at maps. It was all driving, all the time, for both of us, until that was very comfortable and easy.
5. Consider challenging situations that might arise before they do, when life is calm. Talk about what to watch for in other drivers, to know when they might do something unpredictable. What to do if bad weather hits. What if a flat tire occurs.
6. Verbalizing things that you do intuitively will impress you with the complexity of what you know. In driving, as in other parts of life, there are hundreds of automatic decisions made. As we drive for years on end, we aren’t even conscious of many of them. I found it interesting and fun to speak out loud about things such as whether or not I trust another driver or when to pull back or when to push forward on the road.
7. Despite good planning, life will surprise you. We had planned for me to be back at the wheel long before Chicago, when we assumed the driving would get rough. But suddenly, on a country road that looked as if it would be clear and easy, bad fog came up simultaneously with road construction. There was nothing to do but live through it until there was a safe place to pull off.
8. Handling the unexpected situations well will give you confidence. After fog and road construction, I was more willing to say perhaps it would be OK to think about passing other cars, since that was much easier than what we had already lived through!
9. Take time to enjoy and appreciate progress. I probably told my 16 year old thirty or forty times what a great job I thought she was doing. And I meant it. But I could see that hearing my appreciation built her confidence and she was not annoyed by my repetition.
10. Plan to build on what you’ve learned. Now that we’re home from a highway trip, we’ll begin learning how to drive in town, which involves a whole different set of lessons. But the confidence from the road trip will spill into the local driving and make it easier.
A Different Thanksgiving
Somehow the Thanksgiving plans turned out different than we expected. Like most folks in the US, my images of Thanksgiving include big tables groaning with food surrounded by family and friends. That’s not just a Norman Rockwell fantasy for me. My family both gets along well and cooks well, and Thanksgiving dinner is always a pleasure.
So when my parents announced, months ago, that they would be heading to the opposite coast to spend the holiday with my East Coast siblings, we knew that the holiday would look different, and we talked about friends that we might invite to celebrate the holiday. We would have different faces, but the same effect of feasting and conviviality. And then we kind of never quite figured out who to ask. And then my wife went in for an emergency appendectomy. And so, there we were, a few days out from Thanksgiving, with no real plans.
But hey, we could manage. We’d have a special celebration with just our little family—my slowly-recuperating wife, my daughter and I. Go see a movie. Have some easy-going family time. Choose a couple of favorite Thanksgiving dishes to make and just hang out.
Perhaps this would be a good moment to mention that my daughter is 14. My images of family time and hanging out together don’t usually come out the way I have in mind. Eventually the image of the family gathered around the groaning board devolved into a plan for my daughter to watch the final Twilight movie at the same time and in the same theater that my wife and I watch The Life of Pi. Not quite what I had in mind.
But, you know, it’s OK. Really, gratitude means a lot more in the real world of plans that fall apart than in that all-too-rare perfect world in which everything comes out the way it’s supposed to. I am grateful for my family, even if it’s next to impossible to get the eye-rolling teen to occupy the same space as her less-than-cool mothers for any period of time. I am grateful for my comfortable home, which will not get the thorough cleaning it so desperately needs, since no one is coming over. I am grateful to have enough to eat, even if we end up with In n’ Out Burgers rather than turkey and stuffing for Thanksgiving this year.
I am grateful to be here, in this particular place, at this particular time, which is as full as devastation and war and suffering as any other time, and as full of heroes and incredible blessings. However our Thanksgiving Day turns out, I will take a few moments for gratitude. May I remember to do that all of the subsequent days, whether they turn out the way I imagined or not.
Grateful, even so
The universe, she is laughing at me.
This is my third attempt to write a blog about gratitude.
The first two times got eaten my by computer. I saved them wrong. I know, you think, what are the odds? That’s why I think the universe is having a good laugh.
The first time, I sat in a meditative space and wrote the blog with deep joy. Writing it took me someplace I hadn’t intended to go, and by the time I was through, I had my plan in place for this week of Thanksgiving, as overloaded with tasks as it is: Just focus on being grateful. Don’t worry about anything else. Stuff will get done or it won’t, but my only job is to be grateful.
The second time, writing the blog was a little less inspiring to me, but it was better written. You would have like it. I talked about all of the things I have learned about moving from a place of joy, from a place of gratitude. I said that I don’t believe that stress, or just doing things to do them, is truly necessary for getting things done.
And now here I am grinding this third attempt out, because it is due today and if I don’t write it I will have blown my deadline. Doing just what draft 2 said I didn’t need to do! Draft 2 did acknowledge that yes, there are times, when deadlines or urgency compel us to move from a place of necessity. But even then, said my draft 2 calmer and wiser self, we can be grateful.
So here’s the challenge of the third draft: Can I be grateful even when I am frustrated by my own ineptitude, frustrated by needless and stupid mistakes? And here’s what I see: Yep, even then. I’m still grateful for the chance to speak here, for the opportunity to express myself, for the knowledge that people will take a moment to read what I have written, despite my obvious imperfection. But I also see that gratitude is not always a slow, ponderous, let’s take a moment and breathe deep and be grateful, kind of process. This time other deadlines—places to be, people to feed, other tasks to get done, nip at my heels and call me to move quickly. This time I am grateful on the fly!
So, in this Thanksgiving week that has taken me by surprise, arriving sooner than I expected, and without my readiness, this is indeed my intention: to stay in gratitude, even when I’m not in a state of deep cosmic focus. To let gratitude be there with my to do list that seems to grow instead of shrinking, with all of life’s distractions, with my frustrations, my mistakes, my obligations, my unmet deadlines, with people who annoy me, traffic jams, relatives with different ideas about the perfect Thanksgiving meal, a computer that eats documents when a not-too-bright person is at the helm.
I’ll let gratitude be the spice that makes the soup delicious, even if the main ingredients are beans and rice. I’ll let gratitude be the bow on the package, even if the package is wrapped in old newspaper. I’ll let gratitude be the cherry on top, even if it is on top of a plate of leftovers. I’ll trust that gratitude is there, holding together all that feels like it is falling apart.
And so, during this hectic week, I invite you to be there, in all of the chaos, however you do or don’t celebrate on Thursday, whether you are angry and lonely or mellow and blissful, to remember that gratitude is always there for us to rest in. We can breathe it, sleep in it, eat it with the turkey or tofurkey.
Whatever you do, or don’t do, this week, may gratitude whisper in your ear, arise from your heart, and flow out from all that you do and who you are. Even, or especially, when you screw up, when you feel you’ve got too little too late, when you want to throw a little tiny tantrum. Especially then.
(And please, Gods and Goddesses, may I save this document correctly!)
