The Longest Journey
Many Unitarian Universalists have gone on long and meaningful journeys, but none has gone quite as far as Clyde Tombaugh.
Clyde was born 1906, and ever since he was little he wanted to be an astronomer. A hailstorm that destroyed the family’s crop meant that there was no money to send him to college, but he built telescopes and lenses on his own.
The astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto here shown with his homemade 9-inch telescope. Photo circa 1930, Public Domain
People at the famous Lowell Observatory were so impressed with his drawings of Jupiter and Mars that they offered him a job.
While he was working at the Lowell Observatory Clyde Tombaugh explored the sky using photographs taken through a telescope, and through a special procedure discovered that what he suspected was true—there was another planet out beyond Neptune.
Although that planet, Pluto, was later reclassified as a dwarf planet, it was an important discovery about our solar system.
What about the longest journey? Well, Clyde Tombaugh died in 1997, at the age of 90. He was cremated, and some of his ashes went onto the New Horizons spacecraft that made it all the way to Pluto, and recently sent us back stunning pictures of the dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system.
Truly an amazing journey!
On Setting Out and Coming Home
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Matsuo Bashō, the late 17th century Japanese poet, speaks of a strong desire to wander, as if it’s the essence of who he is. In the opening lines of his travel sketch, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, he says: “The gods seemed to have possessed my soul and turned it inside out, and roadside images seemed to invite me from every corner, so that it was impossible for me to stay idle at home.” Read more →
Angel of the Battlefield, Clara Barton
Clara Barton saw with her own eyes that healing took some special care.
Teach participants these sounds and actions. Invite them to listen for your cues to act them out during the story.
1. Gallop a gallop a gallop (slapping hands on legs)
2. Clippity Clop, Clippity Clop (slapping hands on floor)
3. Taking care of you (patting your neighbor on the shoulder)
4. ABCs and 123s (just repeating the words)
“Hang on tight to the mane!” Clara heard her brother call as she galloped bareback across the field. (Gallop a gallop a gallop) Clara was only five years old, but already her older brothers and sisters had taught her to do more than most five-year-olds did—especially in 1826! She was the baby of the family, and she loved learning to read, spell, and do arithmetic. Clara lived with her family on a farm in North Oxford, Massachusetts.
Every Sunday, Clara’s family drove five miles in a horse and carriage to the Universalist church. (Clippity Clop, Clippity Clop) Clara’s father had helped to build that church and Clara never forgot the Universalist teachings she learned there. She learned that God is love, and that all lives are precious gifts that should not be destroyed.
When her family was not with her, Clara was very shy. This worried her parents, so they sent her away to school when she was nine years old. They hoped she would make friends and forget to be shy. But Clara was so homesick she asked to come home.
When Clara was eleven, her brother David fell from the top of their new barn and was badly hurt. The doctor said he might die. “Please,” begged Clara, “let me be David’s nurse! I’ll take very good care of him!” Her parents and the doctor agreed to let Clara try, so she stopped going to school. (Taking care of you) Clara stayed with David day and night. She fed him, gave him his medicine, and changed his bed. This was Clara’s first job as a nurse and she did it cheerfully every day for two years!
When she was seventeen, Clara took her first job outside of home. She taught a class of forty participants, from four years old to thirteen years old—all in one room! (ABCs and 123s)Clara heard that some of the boys liked to make trouble for the teacher, so on the first day at recess, she offered to play baseball with them. They were surprised to see that she could throw a ball just as hard as they could, and run just as fast! The boys felt a deep respect for their new teacher, and Clara never had to spank or hit her students with a ruler the way other teachers did in those days.
Licensed under CC0/Public Domain from WikiPedia.
A few years later, a friend in Bordentown, New Jersey, asked Clara to start a public school.(ABCs and 123s) Some people there didn’t like the idea of public schools that were free, but that didn’t scare Clara away. It just made her feel even more sure that she wanted to start the public school. She offered to open a school for participants of all ages and teach without any pay for three months. The school board agreed to give her an old building. On the first day, only six students came to class. But Clara was so popular and such a good teacher that soon there were six hundred participants coming! The town built a new, eight-room schoolhouse. Clara wanted to be the principal of the new school, but in those days nobody would hire a woman to do that job. Instead, the townspeople
asked Clara to be the “female assistant”. Her pay would be only half the amount of money the town would pay a man to be the principal. Clara felt this was unfair so she gave up teaching and moved to Washington, D.C. to find a new career. (Clippity Clop, Clippity Clop)
Clara was living and working in Washington when the Civil War broke out. She saw that the soldiers who were coming home from the war were hungry and they needed clothes and bandages for their wounds. The government was not able to help so many soldiers. Clara saw what they needed, and she used her own money to buy food and clothes for the soldiers. She wrote to the newspapers and asked them to tell people what the soldiers needed. People gave blankets, medicines, and other supplies. (Taking care of you)
Then news came from the battlefields that medicine and food did not get to the soldiers. Wounded soldiers fell to the ground and lay there without food or water. Many died of thirst or cold because there was no one to take them to the army hospitals. There were no women nurses to help them. In those days people thought that women were not strong enough to take care of soldiers or be near a war! Seeing women on the firing line shocked the soldiers.
But Clara knew she must do exactly what most people thought no woman could do. At first the Army laughed at the idea, but Clara kept right on asking until she got permission to go to the front lines of the battle. With a wagon full of supplies pulled by four mules, she came to a battlefield in Virginia at midnight. (Clippity Clop, Clippity Clop) The army doctor who was in charge was very tired and he had completely run out of supplies. Clara went to work cooking and taking care of the wounded right away. (Taking care of you) She even learned to take bullets out of wounded soldiers with a penknife! Later the army surgeon wrote, “If heaven ever sent out a holy angel, she must be the one!” After that, Clara was known as “The Angel of the Battlefield.”
For fourteen battles, Clara brought supplies and took care of wounded soldiers from both sides, Confederate (South) and Union (North). (Taking care of you) She nursed anybody who needed help, because she still believed what she learned in her Universalist church when she was a child: that every life was precious. She said, “I have no enemies.”
Once, she was kneeling beside an injured man, giving him water, when a bullet tore through the sleeve of her dress. It hit the man and killed him instantly. Another time she barely escaped from a battle by jumping onto a horse and then leaping from the horse onto a moving train! (Gallop a gallop a gallop)
When the war ended, eighty thousand men were missing from the Union armies. Every day, Clara would hear from women and children who wanted help to find their loved ones. President Abraham Lincoln asked Clara to come to the White House to help him work on this problem. Two weeks later, President Lincoln was shot and killed. Clara was working by herself again. With money President Lincoln gave her, and some of her own money, Clara set up an office. She asked prisoners and others who had been in the war about what had happened to the missing people. She wrote down what they told her and kept the information to help find the missing soldiers.
Soon the money ran out and Clara needed to raise more. Since there was no TV or radio in those days, people would buy tickets to hear speeches about what was happening in the country. Clara began to give lectures about what she had seen during the war. It was hard for Clara to speak in front of hundreds of people. She was still shy. “I would rather stand on the battlefield, than speak at a public meeting,” she once said. But large crowds came to hear her wherever she went, and she was able to make enough money to keep her office going. After two years of public speaking, she lost her voice and had to quit.
Clara’s doctor suggested she go to Europe to rest. In Geneva, Switzerland, Clara learned about a new organization called the International Red Cross. This organization was started to help soldiers in battle no matter whose side they were on. (Taking care of you) Clara went back to the United States and talked to the American lawmakers and asked them to join this organization. She wanted them to sign the Geneva Treaty. This treaty was a promise by all the countries who signed it. The promise meant that during a war, doctors and nurses could take care of the sick and wounded soldiers no matter what country they were from. It was not easy, but she finally convinced the lawmakers. In 1882, the United States became a member of the International Association of the Red Cross.
But Clara didn’t stop there. She had an idea. Why should the Red Cross only help people during wars? Why not use the Red Cross to help people in all kinds of disasters like forest fires, floods, and earthquakes? She explained her idea to other countries, and many foreign leaders gave her medals for her work. Clara was president of the American Red Cross for twenty-three years and a Red Cross worker until she was eighty-three!
The next time you take Red Cross swimming lessons, learn Red Cross first aid, or read about the Red Cross coming to the rescue in a disaster, remember Clara. She was a shy but very brave young Universalist girl who grew up to start the American Red Cross!
Meaningful, Challenging, Inspiring Questions
I asked a bunch of Unitarian Universalist ministers to share a question that had been meaningful, challenging, or inspiring to them in their personal spiritual journeys. Here are their responses (not all of them questions!):
Who do I serve?
Where is God in the dark places?
What skills count as spiritual skills?
Where did I serve/fail Love (God) today?
How do I grow God’s kingdom?
Why is forgiving so hard?
How does Spirit call me to serve?
One day at a time.
How is my helping hurting?
What does God want to say through me?
How am I a spiritual being?
Am I living in the present moment?
Why/how is there something rather than nothing?
Don’t forget the Good News!
Self-Noself
What am I afraid of?
What’s the spiritual world like?
What does love require of me?
How long is now?
What am I resisting?
When I pray for you, what shall I pray for?
Where is the life?
How do I love them all?
How do I appreciate the now?
Did I remember: be grateful and thankful today
Perhaps it is I who am wrong?
To whom or what am I responsible?
What is my life purpose now?
What would make this fun?
What is truly trustworthy?
Is this a hill worth dying on?
Leadership is creating space for others to excel.
What is God asking of me next?
Whose voice is missing?
What’s going on underneath?
Whose are you?
(In the voice Sean Connery from “The Untouchables”) What are you prepared to do about it?
Where is the spiritual growth happening here?
Is there an opportunity to laugh or praise here?
What is the top priority right now?
What does That Which Matters Most ask of me?
Where do I belong, and why, and how?
What Time is it?
Return to your breath. You can do this.
What is life-giving?
Is it a full moon?
How do you love those who will never love you? (attributed to Susan Werner)
What is the meaning of “my” life in light of my impending death?
What is getting in the way?
There are days when I quote Socrates: “I drank what?”
Am I honoring my ancestors? (ancestors widely defined)
What does your heart say?
Don’t ever forget that a spiritual life requires.
Haikus of Hope
At the turn of the year, I asked a bunch of Unitarian Universalist ministers to share their hopes and intentions for ministry in 2015. I asked them to answer in the form of haiku. Their answers are below.
The church cries, “Save us!”
I am not the messiah!
We walk together.
Thirsty? Take a drink!
Then we irrigate the desert
From our source of love.
Clarify mission;
City beyond the church doors.
Should we do small groups?
Across the prairie
A Prophetic Sisterhood
We will be reborn.
Post much work and change
‘Twill be completely the same
Only different
Evangelizing;
Southeast Georgia and beyond;
For Justice and Love!
Was planning to post
But this haiku thing is hard
So I will sit and watch
Dying of the year
Remind us of life’s cycles
Stir in us new hope
Our mission statement:
Inspire, educate and serve.
See what we can do.
Look up and not down,
Out, not in, forward not back,
And lend a hand – Hale
Do ministry now,
Build whole church of tomorrow,
And pray together.
Encourage colleagues
to trust transforming powers;
write like hair ablaze.
Inevitable
that’s what change is, they tell us
We choose progress, too
More people will be
Unafraid to be artists
In God’s creation
Wondering again
how we can hold humbleness
in the face of pride.
Love people boldly
into their own bold passions
for peace and justice.
Proclaim a gospel
of ceaseless hope, faith and love
for a broken world.
We will covenant
To be all we can become
For the love of Earth
Take care of myself
Remember my deep calling
Love all the people.
Adapt, ye leaders
from your center bend that arc
justice needs us now
despised ones clasp hands, raising
their faces to smile into the nothing
they’re free from at last
wild blue way awaits
past the horizon cast grey
slip the surly bonds
Praising, receiving
Lovingly living, working
Dreaming and doing
Love the Lord your God
With your heart and mind and your
Neighbor as yourself
look see tell watch hear
see our pain see our beauty
act love – chose love – love
Trim the hedges, find
the order, get the engine
humming, serve the world.
One less soul alone
Deliberate love action
To remove life’s hell
Possibilities
candle lighting candlelight
boldly open doors
Stewardship campaign’s
Purpose is to buy me a
staff to do stuff things
Love unceasingly
My fear will not protect me
Embrace the unknown
The Navy found me
ready and waiting to serve.
Anchors Aweigh, boys!
still seeking platforms
that connect and don’t annoy
dispirit spirits
trying to find a
new way that does not only
serve the overserved.
Figuring it out
bivocational scrambling
glad to have support
let’s have ongoing
conversations about race
and act from best selves
To the volunteers:
“You are doing a great job!”
Keep up the good work.
Try to find the way
Forward and find the new place
And get past the past
Open hearts and minds
From stillness, move to action
In love, struggle on.
Announce, welcome, sing
To everyone you meet:
friendship, oneness, love.
Love. Be curious.
Be 21st century–
no categories
Be brave. Be present.
Shout “love!” from every corner.
Hold hands and jump off.
Twenty Inches
Twenty inches isn’t all that high. It’s less than two feet. My daughter was 20 and ½ inches long when she was born. But when you are staring at a black box twenty inches high and you’re supposed to jump on top of it and land on your feet and you’ve never done anything like that in your entire life, it feels impossible.
It feels like if you were actually able to get on top of the box, you would immediately fall backwards, crack your head, become a spectacle.
I will never forget the triumph I felt when I jumped onto the 20 inch box at my gym for the first time. I was so afraid of falling that I asked another woman to stand behind me. I didn’t need her. My arms went back behind me, my legs bent strong, and I was up! I stood tall on that box and felt like I could do anything in the world.
That feeling came rushing back the other when I watched another woman, new to the gym, conquer the box. She had been eyeing it during the whole class, doing her jumps on a lower step. I could tell she wanted to try the higher box but was afraid to do so, just as I had been. At the end of class, she practiced on the step one more time and then, determined, stood in front of the box. She took a deep breath. Her arms went back, her legs bent strong and she was up! She threw her arms up in delight, let out a yell, and we all cheered.
We knew the feeling: fears faced, doubt banished, power coursing through a body we are learning to trust, to delight in, to love.
Twenty inches is higher than we think.
A Summer Memory
for Maggie and Lewis
As the dimming fall welcomes me back, a summer memory feeds me still.
We have risen with the sun, the smell of toaster waffles,
and the demand that I read to you.
Last night’s bedtime story put me to sleep too soon.
So we clear legos from the couch,
and return to lands of make believe,
armed with a light cotton blanket and coffee.
We move from the cool house through the neglected garden.
I can barely make eye contact with the tomatoes.
They too have somehow forgiven me and volunteered anyway.
Past collaborations must be remembered in their bones.
Onward we go, downhill, picking up speed, encouraged by running dogs.
Today we belong not to schedules, not to chapter books or tomatoes.
We belong to the lake.
We leave clothes and a few dogs on the dock
and launch ourselves into the familiar miracle of warm water.
There we are, lying on a rippling bed,
comparing our ability to inflate our lungs
and see our matching toes.
There we are, bodies almost resting now,
facing illuminated clouds
and shadow puppet tree tops.
There we are, imaginations ever reaching skyward until
floating hands touch by accident
and hold on purpose.
My Grandparents are from Ferguson….
chool in the early 1930’s. My grandfather’s childhood home was in Ferguson which back then was a bedroom community with a train stop leading to downtown St. Louis. After my grandparents married they bought a house close to Ferguson. This is where their four children were raised, my mother, my uncles and aunt.
The houses on the street are all beautiful. However, my guess is that the current residents most likely don’t have much money to maintain these century old homes. Like so many urban stories, most of the white people with the extra money to maintain the neighborhood have moved away. Some families left like my grandparents saying they wanted a safer neighborhood. Some probably left to buy cheap farmland and build their dream home on the ever expanding suburban frontier of West County.
We look at Ferguson today and we see how real and unsettling these questions are. We see how easy it is for most of us white people to just move away from these questions if we want to. But not today. Even if you have never stepped foot in Missouri, for today at least, Ferguson is your messy ancestral home too.
Oops, Oh Well
Turns out there was another school shooting. Yeah, the one in Oregon, not the people who shot the cops in Las Vegas because they didn’t like the government – that was the day before, I think. No, in Portland, Oregon, at a high school, not the university one in Seattle. That’s been a few days ago.
Yeah, it’s a pity, really. The scared kids, the grieving families. It’s a shame. But what are you going to do? I mean, people have a right to have guns. You can’t take that away. It’s in the constitution. I mean, those Cliven Bundy fans who shot the cops and covered their bodies with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags were a militia of sorts, weren’t they? OK, maybe not the most “well ordered militia” in the world, but they had a right to their armed government protest.
And that guy in Seattle, well, sure, it was terrible, but you know he had psychological problems, right? You just can’t fix everything. And if you started taking guns out of the hands of people with psychologi
cal problems, where would it stop? I mean, if I go to a shrink because I’m feeling down, does that mean I should lose my guns? Really, over half of suicides are committed with guns? Yeah, I guess 20,000 a year or so seems like a lot, but what are you going to do? If you took away their guns those people would probably find a way to jump off a bridge or something.
It isn’t fair.
Some idiot is always wanting to take away gun owners’ rights every time a little kid finds a gun and shoots their sister or their friend or their uncle at a picnic. But you know what’s no picnic? A bunch of regulations that say what kind of gun you can have and where you can have it and who is or isn’t allowed to have it. If you want a gun you want it now, not after waiting around for a week while some paper-pusher pokes around in your private business to find out if you’re OK to carry. Why should responsible gun owners have to submit to a bunch of rules and regulations because of a few random events? Thousands of random events? Whatever.
Face it. You know what isn’t cool? The government getting up in your business. You know what is cool? People carrying guns in public. Did you see that picture of the guy carrying an AK-47 around the pharmacy aisle in Target? That’s a bad ass. Nobody is going to mess with anyone while that guy is around. Little children can feel safe when they see that guy with an assault rifle is in the store.
Yeah, I heard about the guy who stopped the shooter at Seattle Pacific University using nothing but pepper spray. Sure, I guess that’s pretty bad-ass in its own way. But then he wrote this pansy-ass letter about praying for everyone involved and how he wasn’t really a hero and how God helped him see that the shooter wasn’t a monster, but a sad and troubled man. What’s with that? Blow away the bad guys, I say. And for that, everyone should have a gun.
Too Much Noise
In the stillness and the quiet
The house is still and quiet. The only sounds are the low gurgle of the fish tank filter and my fingers tapping on the computer keys. The soft light of morning is just creeping over the pine trees out my back window and the streets are blanketed in just enough darkness that the cars outside my front window drive with their lights on.
In a few minutes, the house will be a flurry of activity. The boys will stumble down the stairs with messy hair and hungry stomachs. The dogs will need to go out. Cereal will be poured. Showers will be turned on. Coffee will be brewed, the dishwasher unloaded.
But for now, for a few more moments, the house is still and quiet.
As a child, I could never understand why my mom didn’t like the television and the radio on when we were at home. “Too much noise,” she would tell me.
Too much noise?, I pondered incredulously. How is that possible?
But now, now I get it.
There is just too much noise.
Noise on the television, noise in our workplaces, noise outside our car windows. Noise in the media and magazines, noise on Facebook and Instagram. Noise coming from internal pressures to do more and be more. Noise telling us to do this or be that. Noise complaining about this issue or that problem. Too much noise filling up space in our heads and blocking out sounds in our hearts.
Too.Much.Noise.
Lately I find myself craving less noise, and more sounds. More laughter and listening to the voices that really count. More music. More meditation, prayer and reflection, more awareness and gratitude, more stillness and quiet.
Clumsy feet are thundering down the stairs now; the morning frenzy is about to begin. Maybe you are already in the midst of your own frenzy.
We can never completely block out the noise, of course, nor do I think that we should. But maybe we could all use a little less noise? And a little more sound?
So here’s my wish for the day: May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference between the noise and the sounds. May we learn to hear our own strong and true voice inside, and may we have the courage to listen to it. And may we all have a few moments of stillness and quiet.
How do you quiet the noise?
*****
Note: This post originally appeared on the author’s website.
