Spiritual Drought & Restoration
I have to be mindful of the baskets of flowers that hang below the eaves. Even though it has rained for four days, the eaves have sheltered the flowers from the rain. This means that though the road is washed out and water sits upon the ground with no where to go, even though the dock is below the lake’s surface and the warbler flycatchers have to hunt not in the air but up and down the hemlocks seeking mosquitoes for their chicks, even though I am living in a surfeit of good cold rain, the flowers might die from thirst.
Spiritually, this is also true. How many spiritual leaders and regular religious adherents have I met who are going through a tough spiritual drought while all around them is running lush and wet? When we’re in those spiritually dry times, everyone we meet and the world around us can seem tremendously fresh and full and juicy, making our own thirst worse, somehow crueler.
Watering these hanging baskets by hand, refreshing the water in the dog’s bowl, I stop to pour myself a glass of cold water, knowing that I can ignore my own thirst for a very long time. I’m busy attending the thirst of plants that cannot draw up their own water, or the thirst of a dog who remains puzzled as to why there are no paws-alone working taps in the house, or to the spiritual thirst of a seeker, a stranger, or a friend. That needs doing. I also need to drink a glass of water, too, stopping to refresh my body and stopping to refresh my soul.
I’ve been quieter than usual lately, largely due to the acuity of an illness I live with – and expect to live with for the rest of my life. I’ve been learning my new limitations, adapting to what has emerged as patterns. Adaptation is just what human beings do, and I believe spirituality is our biggest adaptive response. The Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church taught: “religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.” That may be so. I have found that spirituality is my response to the challenges of living. We innovate, we renovate, we create, and these are all forms of adaptation to change, to opportunity, to energy, to possibility. This season of my life has been a wet one, rich with opportunities to grow spiritually, full of change, most of which are not ones I would choose, welcome, or wish for someone else.
Yet, despite all these rainy blessings, I grew thirsty, inattentive to my spirit, my attention absorbed by other changes, by the needs of others, by loss and by the physical difficulty of each day. If one lets a basket of flowers dry out completely, a flood of water will wash off the top of the dry soil. One has to rehydrate the basket slowly, with sips, with gentle attention until the soil is full and spongy again. The same is true with our spirits. When we have gone through a drought or neglected to tend our spirits, we have to return with small, regular sips of life-giving blessings. As we do, our senses come back into balance, and we are more able to serve, more able to struggle well with what is needful, more able to laugh generously and to forgive, more able to fulfill our faithful promises and love this life sparkling in wonder and growing in hope.
Flower Communion
This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of what is known today as the Religious Society of Czech Unitarians. Its first minister, the Rev. Dr. Norbert Fabián Čapek, created a ritual that is celebrated by Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists all over the world, Flower Communion. Čapek described the ceremony in a 1923 letter to Samuel Atkins Eliot II, president of the American Unitarian Association:
We have made a new experiment in symbolizing our Liberty and Brotherhood in a service which was so powerful and impressive that I never experienced anything like it… On that very Sunday…everybody was supposed to bring with him a flower. In the middle of the big hall was a suitable table with a big vase where everybody put his flower…in my sermon I put emphasis on the individual character of each “member-flower,” on our liberty as a foundation of our fellowship. Then I emphasized our common cause, our belonging together as one spiritual community… And when they go home, each is to take one flower just as it comes without making any distinction where it came from and whom it represents, to confess that we accept each other as brothers and sisters without regard to class, race, or other distinction, acknowledging everybody as our friend who is a human and wants to be good.
The marvelous natural beauty of the flowers that are brought to these ceremonies is certainly inspiring, but it is of the utmost importance that we continue to learn the broader and deeper lesson this rite teaches. The idea that we should accept one another, with all our differences, and that we should even celebrate one another’s uniqueness, is a radical notion in any age, but in Europe in the 1920s it was downright dangerous; it became ever more so, of course, in the decades that followed, especially as Czechoslovakia found itself among the first nations to succumb to the opportunistic infection that was Nazism. The Nazis, of course, represent the polar opposite of Čapek’s ideals. Flower Communion is a defiant No! in the face of the brutal racism of Hitler and of the fascists’ craving to erect towering, horrific empires upon pediments of subjugation and terror, and it is a joyous Yes! to diversity, equality, and liberty.
As Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists all over the world celebrate Flower Communion, as so many of us to at this season of the year, we do well to consider what it is that we are saying No! to, and where our joyous Yes! is. Do we continue to defy the forces of intolerance that would seek to deny same-sex couples their civil right to marriage under the illusion of “defending” heterosexual marriages (like mine)? Do we stand together clutching bouquets of righteousness and justice in our hearts as we persevere in demanding compassion for immigrants, for laborers, and for the poor? Do we say Yes! to a future for our planet in which we will coexist with all life harmoniously?
Arrested by the Nazis for the “crime” of listening to foreign radio broadcasts, Čapek spent fourteen weeks at Dachau before being martyred in October of 1942 in the Nazi gas chamber at Schloss Hartheim. He is remembered around the world for how he died, but more so for what died for — and what he lived for.
On Being a Beginner Again
If someone were to ask you whether you’d rather be an expert or a beginner at something (pick any activity that interests you), I’m guessing that you’d probably say “expert.” I know I would. Who wouldn’t want complete mastery of a subject? As someone who just started playing the guitar five years ago, I think it would be a lot more fun to play like Eric Clapton than it is to sit and plunk out the few chords I know. When we gain mastery over a subject, whether it’s playing the guitar or nuclear physics, it frees us up to experiment, to be creative. We’re no longer limited or bound by our abilities. Expertise gives us room to have fun, because we don’t have to work quite so hard. And in our outcome-based society, experts are held in high esteem. They serve as role models for others. They make a difference in other peoples’ lives.
I learned to ski when I was a child, and by the time I was in my twenties I was pretty good at it. I’d call myself an “expert” skier. While there were some steep mountain trails out West that gave me pause, I could negotiate pretty much any terrain, and generally do it with some degree of grace and finesse. Then, a funny thing happened: I got bored. I lost the zest and zeal I had for skiing. Riding up the mountain and skiing down it didn’t give me the same rush, the same satisfaction that it had when I was younger. Now my skis sit idle all winter, and I don’t miss it much. So, perhaps expertise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Now, I’m trying something new: paragliding. And I find myself a beginner once again. Trying to figure out the right way to hook into the harness. Learning the right technique for inflating the wing so that it comes up off the ground and flies directly overhead. Studying the winds and the clouds, and looking at weather in a whole new way. Every aspect of this sport is new and exciting to me. To say nothing of the beautiful views you get, sailing above the countryside.
Am I anxious to join the more experienced pilots, catching thermals and soaring with the hawks and eagles thousands of feet over the mountains? Of course I am. But I’m experimenting with not being too anxious to get good. With staying in this place where the learning curve is steep, and not moving through it too quickly. Of not getting frustrated when I get tangled up in the lines when a gust of wind blows me sideways before I even get airborne, or when my flights last all of three minutes while my friends are surfing the clouds for hours.
Zen Buddhism encourages the use of Shoshin, or “Beginner’s Mind.” With Beginner’s Mind there are limitless possibilities. Creativity, enthusiasm and optimism abound when we have Beginner’s Mind. The very newness of the activity fires our creative juices and we approach it with a sense of wonder and awe. One writer has said, “With Beginner’s Mind, there is boundlessness, limitlessness, an infinite wealth.”
We don’t need to be an actual beginner to have Beginner’s Mind. We can approach even time-tested activities, those in which we’re experts, with Beginner’s Mind. We can enter into any activity with complete openness and curiosity, with a deep desire to learn, with a will to “fall down seven times and get up eight times” as the Buddhists say. It’s easier to have Beginner’s Mind when we’re actual beginners, but we can approach even the most familiar activities with Beginner’s Mind and make them new again.
Whatever way the winds carry you in the weeks ahead, I invite you to take along your Beginner’s Mind, and see where you end up.
Safe Harbor
Press power on the remote control, television on
and every moment of viewing we are confronted with images that shame us into wanting to reject parts of our being
turn our bodies and ourselves into slimmer, younger, lighter, leaner
smarter, whiter, wealthier, straighter versions of our selves.
Magazines tell us what not to wear
along with 7 surprising things that turn guys off
And what men want during the NFL halftime.
Messages crafted to ensure we remember that
who we are – at our core – is not good enough.
//
Would you harbor me?
Would I harbor you?
Asks the Sweet Honey in the Rock song and:
Would you harbor you?
Would I harbor me?
How much time do we spend attempting to do the impossible?
How much energy…how many of our resources do we expend running away
From our bodies
From our identities
Our histories
Our stories…from our very own selves?
How much time, energy, and resources do we spend
not loving our bodies
fearing ourselves because who we are, is not
who we see reflected back at us in “normative” socio-cultural stories and images?
Because we’re actively being conditioned to cling to a mythical norm?
A while back on National Coming Out Day
I decided to feed my facebook obsession
by checking out the page
Wiping Out Homophobia on Facebook
There, in the photo album, I found photo after photo of
same-sex couples laughing, smiling, holding each other
women, men – people – marrying, playing, loving and…
I also found this note from Paul…growing up in a world
in which his identity is continuously questioned and made wrong.
A world in which some who proclaim to speak on behalf of God
advocate death or caging LGBT individuals until we die off
Paul writes:
“I have to tell you that for the past few weeks, I have been pretty low and had pretty dark thoughts about my life and what to do. I had been bullied at school and things got so bad that I thought about doing something really bad.
Well, I talked to you and you told me to join local groups and online groups to get support from people in my age group who know what I was going through.
Well, I joined an LGBT group in the next town and about 8 online. I now have some great new friends in real life and some online who I’ll never met but who I talk to a lot.
I know this is what everyone says, but I don’t feel so alone now, I am not like the only one. …I just thought I’d keep you up to date as you were all so kind to me. Thanks to K. and L. for talking me round and to everyone who said positive things, they really did help.”
This broke my heart…and in some small way, it offered some hope.
In a culture that is slow to extend
safe harbor for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
children, youth, adults – elders…
In a culture that supports heterosexism & homophobia
In a culture that promotes messages of same-sex deviance often enough,
many – especially youth – begin to
internalize that message.
Believe that message.
Begin to question their, my, your, our inherent worth and dignity
It is easy to feel other-ed. To understand others and sometimes oneself as strange, deviant…
It would be effortless to create a list of all the ways we – who are
queer – have contributed to society…have enhanced the world.
It would be easy to catalogue the gifts of all the LGBT “strangers” among us.
And. Here’s the power of affirming the inherent worth and dignity:
It’s inherent. It matters what we do, sure. And, it matters more that
we simply are.
We…any one of us…shouldn’t need to be any more special to be accepted. To be loved.
To be equal.
We only need to be here. To show up. To love…
That’s the nugget of wisdom in the first principle: inherent worth simply “is.”
To love ourselves is the equivalent of a tiny revolution
To love all those unchangeable innate beautiful truths that
make us who we are
and the imperfect pieces and parts that we argue with
That we shove away
That we suppress
That we pretend we feel okay about…
when we embrace all of those parts
and come to see them as holy
it is the equivalent of a tiny revolution.
In her book: All About Love: New Visions,
bell hooks writes:
“When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness,
then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat.
When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear –
against alienation and separation.
The choice to love is a choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other.”
When we’re taught that safety lies in sameness
when we’re taught that the only safe community is
a community of people who look like, dress like, think like we do
When we’re taught that only certain body types belong in the public sphere
When we’re taught that only people of certain heights or gender identity
or educational background or sexual orientation are capable of leadership
then we begin to fear everything in ourselves
and subsequently in others – that fail to fit what we’ve been
carefully taught.
We begin to fear everything that differs from the constructed “norm.”
And. What we fear, we seek to destroy.
But, when we – as individuals, as social systems with power,
as a community –
choose to love…move against fear…and connect
with difference, with that which appears to be strange – then
we make room for the Holy to thrive in and amongst us.
The tiny revolution in Paul’s story was just that.
A community that willingly created room for him – holy and inherently worthy –
to show up
Willing to extended safe harbor.
I want it to be true that we can create such harbors for
ourselves and for others.
The Exquisite Joy of Being Miserable
So I’m listening to Garbage’s Only Happy When It Rains, mindlessly singing along with Shirley Manson. Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me.
I’m sure the song is mocking those Eeyores among us, the Debbie Downers, the ones who feel so good when they “feel so sad.” I mean, haven’t we known those types? The ones who excitedly call us up to tell us about the pitfalls of their newest romance, or are the first to post some sort of horrible national news on Facebook, the people at a party who leave us looking around frantically for an escape. My only comfort is the night gone black .
Of course, the song couldn’t be talking about me, right?
I mean, yeah, I’m a Gen Xer, so my whole generation takes pride in being cynical, dark. No Pollyanna idealistic Boomers here, no sirree. The first we knew of politics was hearing the grownups talking about Watergate. We grew up hearing dire predictions about the environment, about how we would be the first generation less successful than our parents, we were latchkey kids of divorce. I‘m only happy when it’s complicated …
But me? No, I’m hopeful. Optimistic.
Except for when I’m not.
I’m riding high upon a deep depression …
That’s the thing of it, isn’t it? That no one talks about. There is pleasure in being miserable. Feeling sorry for ourselves. I don’t mean a serious depression, from which you can’t seem to extricate yourself. No, I’m talking about those run-of-the-mill blues, ennui, moodiness. Remember the child’s rhyme? Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna eat worms … Sometimes, we just have to wallow in our unhappiness, relishing the exquisite joy of being miserable.
When we can do that, when we can be honest, we are claiming our choice in the whole matter. Buddhists say that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Our society talks disparagingly about pity parties, but I think we all need one every once in a while. Like with all good parties, we need good food, good drink, good entertainment. Bring on the comfort food, the milkshakes, the sappy movies to cry over, whether it’s Steel Magnolias or Field of Dreams.
Ecclesiastes says to everything there is a season, and after the pity party, it’s time to clean up. Wash the dishes, dry the tears, change the soundtrack.
Misery can feel good, but happiness feels better.
Changing Your Wiper Blades
Last week I bought new windshield wipers for my car and I was amazed at how much better I could see! These new wipers were like a miracle – with just a few strokes they swiped the windshield clean, giving me a clear view of the road ahead. For weeks I had been driving with impaired vision without even realizing it. I just assumed that everyone looked out windshields like mine, through streaks and skips and stripes, straining to see in the sun’s glare. It’s hard to say exactly how long my sight had been compromised because it had deteriorated so slowly, over a long period of time. This got me wondering what else in our lives might be performing less than optimally without our noticing.
There is a theory that says if you drop a frog into a boiling pot of water it will immediately hop out, but if you were to put that same frog into a pot of cold water and slowly heat it up, the frog will stay put, not noticing the heat or the danger. Now, I’ve never tested this hypothesis – and I have some serious ethical questions for those who have – but I can see the truth in it. I think it’s natural to become so familiar with something that we don’t notice subtle, but ultimately substantial, changes. We think we’re doing just fine when, before we know it, the water is boiling beneath our feet. If we’re not careful, long-standing relationships can erode as patterns of behavior ingrain themselves, diminishing our view of those around us. Our beliefs and opinions – our faith – formulated in our distant past and clung to with unexamined, habitual resolve, can fall prey to this fate as well. So, what are we to do? How do we avoid a frog’s fate?
It’s mostly up to us to notice when our view is getting cloudy. We all need to change our wiper blades from time to time, and much more frequently than we may think. When we do, we’ll see the road more clearly, with all its attendant dangers and abundant opportunities. Sometimes, if we’re lucky enough, someone – a trusted friend or a family member – may point out that our view has somehow gotten murky. A child comments that we’re bringing too much work home from the office. A hymn at church unexpectedly brings tears to our eyes. Or our partner utters those ominous words: “We need to talk.” Such windshield-wiping moments can be challenging, but they can also show us how beautiful the journey can be when the view is unobstructed. They can remind us of the miracles that happen when we are in relationships with those who see us clearly, even when we’ve lost sight of ourselves.
This day and every day, I wish you peace.
Peter
Still Mulling Over Mitt Scissorhands
Apparently the story of Mitt Romney’s highschool “hijinks” has now moved on from the news cycle, and that’s a relief. But I’m still mulling it over. I find it on my mind and heart as I pray, garden, or wash the dishes.
I suspect that this didn’t change any votes: Those who were for Mitt now add this to their list of misgivings, or they don’t care. Those who were for Obama now feel some added justification. I’m not mulling it over as a voter. I’m still processing it as a mother, as a minister, and as a human being.
I don’t know about other ministers, but I have received a couple of calls from congregants who have found that this stirred up memories for them that they would just as soon forget. Issues of the lack of fairness—if this were a movie, the bully character would be shunned and left behind, not running for president. The hero would have been the guy with the hair, going on to vindicate himself. He is now dead with no story to tell.
The unhappy memories stirred for congregants are not just times when they were bullied, when they felt unsafe because of someone else. I have also heard from people who either participated in bullying or didn’t stop others who turned on a vulnerable person. “Like Lord of the Flies,” one of Mitt’s classmates apparently said. These folks are sometimes suffering more than the bullies. Suddenly, years later, they are ashamed of who they were and what they did, and don’t know what to do about it.
Those of us who minister to, or parent, or care about teenagers know that in our communities we are speaking to potential or real bullies side by side with their intended or actual victims. We know bullying is going on now, every day, in blatant or subtle ways. We know that as much as all the kids nod and tell us the party line we want to hear, they are often protecting each other and us from the whole story. Mitt’s victim apparently never brought this up at home. We hear over and over after bully-induced suicides, “He/ she never mentioned it,” or “It didn’t sound so serious.”
Those of us who love at risk kids know how quickly “hijinks” can turn serious, taking lives as quickly as car accidents or heart attacks.
I guess all of that is why I am still mulling over Mitt’s “pranks.” I wish to see a huge, united, adult community saying with one voice that some things are bigger than political ideology or party affiliation: that respect for others is the center to a good shared life. It would start with Mitt himself, dropping the act of “If I hurt someone…” and acknowledging that he did, badly—both the victim and the ‘friends’ who joined his behavior. It would move out to the rest of the adult community, talking honestly about people we have hurt, making amends to them when we could and making commitments to ourselves not to let it happen on our watch again.
Then maybe our kids could be safe to talk to us honestly about their own situations.
Professionalism and Pluralism in the Military Chaplaincy
In the fall of 2011 I was honored to attend the first ever OutServe Leadership Conference. This was the first time for this organization of LGB persons actively serving in the military to gather publicly, since such public gatherings and recognition was made possible by the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Harass, Don’t Pursue. It was held in Las Vegas, Nevada… and even with the setting it was as professional a military conference I have ever attended… and I have attended more than a few Chaplain Corps Conferences.
It was an honor for me to be able to sign one of the official copies of the Repeal of DADT “Chaplain David Pyle” (see picture, above).
I was attending the conference as an ally, and in my role as a member of The Forum on the Military Chaplaincy. With a fellow UU Military Chaplain, I spoke in a workshop about Professionalism and Pluralism in the Military Chaplaincy, and how LGB service members can engage more conservative Chaplains in dialog about what it means to be an LGB person serving in the military.
More than this, I listened. I had numerous conversations with LGB service members about their experience. Several of those I spoke with were Unitarian Universalists. I heard stories about service members who had been “outed” by their Chaplains. I heard stories about service members feeling they had to care for their own religious needs while deployed, because they did not believe their chaplain would support them. I heard stories about joyously finding that there was one Chaplain at their base who was welcoming and affirming of LGB persons, and building a relationship of trust with that chaplain, after having had hard experiences with other chaplains.
More than all of this, I heard a perception from many that the Chaplain Corps might be wonderful for many service members, but it just was not there for them. They were excluded from the requirement that military chaplains “perform or provide, and care for all”.
As I flew home from the conference, I sat thinking about our Military Chaplain Corps, and the realization that Chaplains had been failing all of these service members for decades. Their distrust of chaplains was an earned distrust… chaplains had wounded many of these young men and women. Chaplains had, often with the best of intentions, said thing to and about these young women and men that were soul-damaging. In hoping to “save”, what had been done was to separate… to make someone feel that they are outside of God’s love, and outside of those whom the Chaplain Corps cares for…
And for that, I am sorry. I cannot apologize for the whole Chaplain Corps, but I can apologize for my complicity in it… I realized that many of these young men and women had never had anyone apologize for the way Chaplains have treated them. And so, for myself and for whatever it might mean, I did apologize… and I committed myself to helping the Chaplain Corps grow into the fullness of no longer treating LGB service members in such shameful ways.
I was flying home to move back into my role as a Parish Minister for a UU Congregation (I went right from the Airport to an event at the church I serve), and it had me thinking about the difference of role I have in these two ministries, and how my faith plays a different part in each of these roles for me.
As a Parish Minister, my Liberal Faith as a Unitarian Universalist Minister is what I wear on my sleeve. I preach the gospel of interdependence and inherent worth. I lead a congregation in social justice actions. I speak the saving grace of universal salvation whenever I am given the opportunity. My faith is a public faith that I present to the world, and encourage the congregation I serve to join me in doing so.
Yet, in military chaplaincy, and indeed in any chaplaincy, my faith plays a very different role. My Liberal Faith as a Unitarian Universalist is the inner strength I need to be with people in the best and the worst moments of their lives. My Liberal faith is what calls me and allows me to be with someone else, focusing on what their faith asks and requires of them in a particular place and time. As a military chaplain, my personal faith is of utmost importance… for me… for how I have the strength to be with someone else in their confusion, pain, loss, grief and hurt. As a military chaplain, I am called to be with them in their religious faith… not to import into the moment my own.
As the plane was landing in Los Angeles, I realized that perhaps the issue among military chaplains is that we do not understand or accept these two very different understandings of ministry. Many of the behaviors that wounded so many of the service members I spoke with this weekend would have been completely appropriate coming from a Parish Minister of a conservative tradition in a civilian setting… but were inappropriate (in my opinion) from someone entrusted with the responsibility and authority of military chaplaincy.
So, when denominations and seminaries teach only the Parish/church model of ministry, how do we inspire ministers who wish to be Military Chaplains to understand and accept this different role for their personal faith? I do not know. Perhaps we need to change the standards of who can become a military chaplain. Perhaps we need to require Clinical Pastoral Education. Perhaps we need to take a look at what denominational endorsers are telling their chaplains their role in the military should be.
All I know is that, as I listened to the stories of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Guardians, and Marines I spoke with, it was apparent to me the cost of not addressing this in our Military Chaplain Corps.
For, as I listened to the stories, I felt ashamed.
Yours in Faith,
Rev. David
