Change
January 2017
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. —Bertolt Brecht
Articles
Transitions, Expected and Unexpected
Reading #655 in our hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, is entitled, “Change Alone is Unchanging.” It’s attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraklietos, also known as the weeping philosopher. Read more »
Making Change
Did you know that prisoners now make up more than 20% of the CLF’s membership? Read more »
Moving with Change
Being religiously savvy Unitarian Universalists, most of you probably know that one of the core teachings of Buddhism is impermanence. Read more »
From Your Minister
Here’s how I wish change happened: Change says to The Universe, Hey, I’d like to happen now! And The Universe replies, with ease and joy, That’s terrific! Happen, then! Read more »
REsources for Living
I can’t claim that I’m a big fan of change. I like comfort. I like knowing what to expect. Read more »
Help Wanted:
CLF Pen Pals for some of the 725 CLF members in prisons who are new to Unitarian Universalism. Read more »
Did You Know?
…that you can sign up for CLF online classes to stretch your mind and spirit? Read more »
Wave Driven by Wave
As wave is driven by wave… And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead… Read more »
Change
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. —Bertolt Brecht Read more »
Breathe: A Poem
Breathe, said the wind.
How can I breathe at a time like this,
when the air is full of the smoke
of burning tires, burning lives?
Just breathe, the wind insisted.
Easy for you to say, if the weight of injustice
is not wrapped around your throat,
cutting off all air.
I need you to breathe.
I need you to breathe.
Don’t tell me to be calm
when there are so many reasons
to be angry, so much cause for despair!
I didn’t say to be calm, said the wind,
I said to breathe.
We’re going to need a lot of air
to make this hurricane together.
by Lynn Ungar
12/4/14
www.lynnungar.com
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/uucollective/2014/12/breathe-a-poem/#ixzz3MkFuxZzd
In The Waiting Time
I really do not like waiting. I will put something back on a shelf rather than wait in a long check-out line. I will shop online, choose a different restaurant, come back later, or change my plans altogether to avoid a line.
I hate waiting for a bus too. Why stand and wait when I can start walking now? Usually, the bus passes me as I am chugging along down the street. It does not phase me. At least I didn’t wait, I tell myself. A funny logic, I know.
I remember as a child waiting for special days, like birthdays and Christmas, and feeling as though time was moving as slow as molasses. As a teenager, I would count down days until I could visit out-of-town friends or go to summer camp: month after next, week after next, day after the day after tomorrow. It felt like time crawled until finally it was … today! And somehow, the long-awaited day had arrived.
I am waiting now like I have never waited in my life. Expecting the child that I have carried for the past nine months to come into the world, I cannot make this magical event happen on my timeline. I cannot just set off walking. I cannot make a different choice or come back later.
My spouse and I have waited, counting months and weeks and days, watching my body change, following our baby’s development step by step: organs and fingernails and eyelashes. We have moved from flutters to kicks to rolls, reveling in bulges that are feet and elbows, imagining what they might look like on the outside.
The leaves are changing here in New England and falling, one by one, covering the ground, shuffling under my feet as I walk, slowly now, talking to the baby: We are ready for you. Come ahead. The days grow shorter and the ground grows colder, prepping for dormancy, for a winter of waiting. Our waiting time is now. We wait for life to emerge.
Enjoy the wait, they say. While it’s still just the two of you. While you and baby are one. Pregnancy is to be savored, they say. Well, mine has been complicated, often hard to savor, and at this point I am rather uncomfortable. But there is wisdom in their words.
And so I am practicing something that does not come naturally: enjoying the wait. I am practicing savoring each day, each moment that my babe and I are joined in this most intimate way that will never be again. I am practicing breathing deeply, being present, watching the leaves fall, waiting for our lives to change irrevocably, for our hearts to be transformed in ways we cannot imagine. Waiting becomes the practice itself.
We are over a month from the beginning of Advent, yet I have never understood the season as well as I do now: patience and reflection. Calmly, quietly preparing body, heart, and soul for the miracle that will be.
The People’s Work
In The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice, Rev. Richard Gilbert lays out a Unitarian Universalist interpretation of worship. He wrote:
The church is a worshipping community, a religious community that deliberately and regularly gathers together to celebrate life in all its dimensions. Worship understood as the celebration of life is the most generally accepted definition in Unitarian Universalist circles today. Worship derives from the Anglo-Saxon weorthscipe, pointing to and celebrating that which is of worth. Religion is derived from the Latin religare and means to bind together. The form of this religious worship is called a liturgy from the Greek words laos (people) and ergos (work), literally, “the people’s work.” All this leads to an understanding of worship as a binding together or coming together of people to fashion ceremonies pointing to what they regard as of worth.
A primary point of coalescence in Unitarian Universalism is our emphasis on the value of inclusion. From the first principle to the last, we covenant to affirm the worth and interdependence of all existence. Institutionally as an Association of Congregations, we are working to name and undo systemic exclusions that we have been educated into not seeing. Those at the margins can see the growing edges of an organization most clearly. Our faith calls us to trust this naming and bring these insights into the center of our institutions, welcoming even challenging visions.
One named challenge is time of worship. This is not a criticism of Sunday worship, but rather, a critique noticing “who is not at the table” as well as, “who is there but not getting fed.” Sunday morning service is deeply embedded in the Protestant tradition from which Unitarian Universalism emerged. It matters that we examine this practice with anti-racist/anti-oppressive/multicultural lens, unpacking the assumptions and exclusions that come with simply following this tradition. Certainly, no single time will work for everyone. But having only one day and time for worship each week excludes many from being a part of an inclusive religious community with a life affirming faith.
Similarly, having only one way of worship, (the “sermon sandwich” Protestant-style service, which with a few modifications can be traced to the 17th century), can be seen as an exclusionary practice through AR/AO/MC lens. Not only does it privilege a particular canon, it is extraordinarily challenging for many youth and elders of multiple identities to engage meaningfully in the service. It is said that how a society treats the youngest and the eldest tells us about the state of its soul. As a faith, we are morally called to serve the youngest and the eldest with as much attention as we give to everyone in between. The integrity of our “collective soul” depends upon it.
Social change agents tell us that people fear not change but LOSS. What could be lost when all are included? Comfort. Security. A sense of control, maybe. What could be gained? Our very humanity and the embodiment of our faith.
Come beloveds, let us do the people’s work together…
Smoke Signals
The drama of the selection of the new pope has captivated the world, and why wouldn’t it? They’ve just selected the first non-European pope in 1300 years. There is the question of how the new pope will deal with the sexual molestation scandals that have rocked the Church. There is, of course, the reality that the new pope will have the ability to shape doctrine for millions of people around the world. But I have to confess that what has captivated my attention is the smoke.
Smoke signals. The conclave of cardinals uses smoke signals to update the world on how the whole voting thing is going. Now, I get why sending up columns of black or white smoke was a sensible form of communication 1000 years ago, but really? Smoke signals? This is 2013. You couldn’t use Twitter? (#stillnopope, #gotone) When is an embrace of the ancient and arcane a lovely part of the grand pageantry and a way to honor a rich history, and when is it just silly?
Of course, churches with a considerably smaller store of history and tradition run up against the same problem of whether and how to allow the modern world into church life. Do we stick with the old, beloved hymns, or do we introduce more contemporary music? Do we need to pay to send the newsletter out on paper, or can we just email it to everyone? Will putting in a screen for multi-media presentations destroy the look of the sanctuary? Do we offer online small groups in place of gatherings in the church basement?
It’s hard to let go of the way things have always been done. And change is not always for the best. Churches have an important role as conservators of language and ritual that have served the human soul across the centuries. There is a depth to the Lord’s Prayer, the words of Jesus repeated across the world and across 2000 years, that is just not likely to be present in the words that your minister pulled out of thin air (aka The Holy Spirit) on Sunday morning. To paraphrase 19th century Unitarian Theodore Parker, some pieces of tradition are transient, while others are permanent.
Of course, in some instances it doesn’t much matter. The Vatican can keep sending up smoke signals for another 1000 years, by which time humans will no doubt have developed instantaneous transmission of information directly into the chip implanted in your brain, and no one will be the worse for it. But what about adherence to the policy of an all-male, celibate priesthood? In the immortal words of Dr. Phil, “How’s that workin’ for ya?” What about clinging to a prejudice against homosexuality, based on the assumptions of a bygone era? Sometimes the failure to recognize what is a transient holdover from an long-ago society carries a devastating cost, both to the institution and to individuals.
In the days to come, we’ll find out what Pope Francis I thinks is permanent and what is transient within the Roman Catholic Church. But all of us will still have to go on deciding for ourselves what in our own lives is precious and must be preserved, and what we must let go of in order to make room for new growth.
Happy New Year!
The New Year is, of course, traditionally the time for making resolutions. Consequently, January 2nd is traditionally the day when we start breaking those resolutions. Strangely, it turns out that more often than not, we are very much the same people at the start of a new year that we were at the end of the last one. Writing a new number at the top of our checks seems to provide strangely little in the way of deep motivation to give up all of our faults and failings. And really, isn’t it all too easy to find time to ineffectually meditate on all the things in life that we should do better? I don’t really need a sign from the calendar to tell me that I should be more organized, that I shouldn’t lose patience with my teenager, that I should stop eating sweets, etc., etc. I can turn to a wide variety of magazines and websites for advice on being thinner, working more effectively, parenting with greater wisdom and generally being a new and improved model of who I am. I confess to being something of a sucker for those internet lists of the 10 foods to eat or avoid, 9 ways to communicate better with your child, 8 ways to spice up your relationship, 7 ways to look younger, and so on through the partridge in the pear tree.
If good advice and good intentions really made us better, we’d all be pretty much perfect by now. No dice. So I guess it’s a bit ironic that I want to offer you a bit of advice. For what it’s worth. Here goes: Who and what you are is basically fine. And you’re never going to be perfect. How do I know? Because if you are reading this there’s a pretty good chance that you’re a human being. And so the odds are astronomically high that you are both good and imperfect like the rest of us. I’m not saying that you can’t or won’t change—I see people change all the time, sometimes even for the better.
I just don’t think that what makes people change very often includes the many kinds of self-loathing that we are invited to take down from the shelf on New Year’s Eve. Really, has standing in front of the mirror and staring at your saggy bits ever bumped you into a lifestyle of healthy eating and vigorous exercise? So how, then, do we change?
Years ago I heard a speech given by a successful mayor, in which he talked about finding “pockets of health,” and building on those, to the point that the whole city was transformed. You might find a pocket of health in a school that is truly serving its students, a thriving shopping district or a neighborhood where community thrives because people can walk to what they need. By learning from what worked, and encouraging those pockets of health to grow, gradually the city became healthier and healthier.
I don’t know the first thing about government or city planning, but that makes sense to me. Rather than beating ourselves up about everything we do badly, why not focus on growing the things that are good? A few years ago I made my best New Year’s resolution ever. It included only two words: “More dancing!” (OK, two words and a bit of punctuation. The exclamation point was part of the resolution.)
Some years before, my wife and I had started contra dancing, and loved the music and the energy and the community and the feel of moving our bodies through space. The whole experience was pleasurable. It was also good exercise, and not particularly expensive. It was, in short, a pocket of health in our lives. All we needed was more. And so we resolved that when the opportunity to dance came up, we would take it. We started going to dance weekends, and traveling farther afield than our local dance.
And so we met more people who became our good friends. We brought home CDs of music that made us smile. We developed the aerobic capacity to dance for hours on end because we simply didn’t want to stop. We felt more and more competent on the dance floor, enjoying a sense of mastery (of an admittedly simple form). The pocket of health grew.
It didn’t make us perfect. I’m still disorganized, and I still lose my temper with the eye-rolling teenager. But it made life better. More fun. More connected. More energized. More…soulful.
So that’s my advice for the New Year. Think about what feels like a pocket of health in your life—something that gives you deep pleasure. Maybe it’s playing with your grandchildren or walking in the hills or reading science fiction or keeping a journal or growing flowers or snuggling your cat or bouncing on a trampoline or cooking Thai food or singing jazz standards or any of the wonderful range of things that people do because they want to do them. And when you know what that joyful , healthful thing is, resolve to do it some more. Give it your attention. Honor and preserve the time that you devote to it. Allow it to grow. Celebrate that you are tending to your soul, and allow that pocket of health to leave you open to encouraging the growth of the souls around you.
Going to the Movies
“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of the mind.” the DHAMMAPADA
This summer, I decided to use contemporary movies as the “texts” for the worship services at my congregation. Partly, this was because I hadn’t been to any movies for several months and this gave me an excuse to go to the movies in these hot summer months. But more than that it is because of the importance of stories, and movies are our contemporary shared stories.
Since humans have had consciousness and language, we have been telling stories. We all have stories; in some ways, we are stories. They are our memories; they are our dreams. Stories are how we share what is important and meaningful to us. They are how we tell each other who we are. Indeed, stories are how we tell ourselves who we are.
Some stories intrigue or entertain us and other stories distress or bore us. The first human stories were told, heard, remembered and re-told. Then the stories were written and collected. Some of those stories became sacred through re-telling. They gave communities identity and meaning. The stories explained the world, life and death. Some of those story collections came to be called scriptures which is a word that means writings. People still think about and learn from these old stories. We still tell, remember, write and read stories. But now a primary way of telling and receiving stories is through television and movies. We think about, talk about and learn from what we watch as well as what we hear. Film can be powerful and emotional. So, I decided this summer to talk about current movies, to see what we can learn from these films. What are the messages in these contemporary stories?
Of course, there can be many messages even in one movie, and as we watch a film, our own experience influences the message we receive. One theme that I experienced in the three movies that I have seen so far may well be part of every movie. The movies are The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Kid With A Bike and The Intouchables. In many ways, these are three quite different films, but all three show how we are transformed in relationships, especially in caring relationships. The movies’ stories are about love, courage and transformation, and because they are stories about life, they are also stories about loss and acceptance.
Authentic, open hearted and mutual relationships allow us to accept our sorrows and our joys and to become more of our own true selves. Even brief encounters if honest and open to the other can change us, and movies, too, have the potential to change us. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the brothers who made The Kid With A Bike, said of their films, “The moral imagination or the capacity to put oneself in the place of another. That’s a little bit of what our films demand of the spectator.” When we are our best selves, that “capacity to put oneself in the place of another” is the gift we give each other.
May your stories be heard and may you be open to others’ stories.
A Moving Experience
My ministry in Philadelphia has led me to have two homes: a house in Central Pennsylvania with my husband and an apartment in Philadelphia near the church. This week, my husband came to Philadelphia to help me to move to another apartment. As with many things in my life, this moving experience has led me to reflect and to pay attention. It is a good change, but all change has consequences.
Neither apartment is large, but the new one is big enough to have a separate office space and to host small groups. I say this so that you will know that this move was not like changing houses. Still, there were boxes of books and papers, boxes of dishes and kitchen equipment, and the basic furniture. We are no longer young, so for the first time in our adult lives, we hired some men to help us move the furniture. They looked at the furniture and said, “Oh, this is easy it’s just furniture!” It would not have been easy for us. Moving reminded me of my need for help and my appreciation for that help, both volunteer and paid. Change often means that we need help. I am grateful for community. I am grateful for caring relationships.
Rick and I moved all the boxes and all my clothing. Did I mention that the new apartment is a second floor walk-up? There are actually four flights of stairs. Most of the time, this is nothing, and I prefer having stairs so that some exercise is built into my days. Did I mention that it was the hottest day of the year so far? The morning after we carried all these boxes, I wasn’t sure I could move my body at all that day. At first, walking across the room seemed out of the question! I could and did! Moving led me to pay attention to my body and to be gentle with myself about my physical limits. Change means that we do different things. I am grateful for what I am able to do.
How could it be that I had so much stuff in a one bedroom apartment in two years of being in Philadelphia? Do I really need all that stuff? The answer, of course, is no, I don’t really need all that stuff. Some of it I gave away before the move, and some of it, I am sorting and giving away after the move. Figuring out how to use things or where to put things in a new place helps me to see what I have. There is an inertia, a not seeing, that comes from having things in the same place. Moving overcomes that inertia. Moving reminds me of my desire to live simply. We have not changed houses for 18 years. I think now would be a good time to simplify. What is in o ur house simply because of inertia and not because we are using it or will use it? What is in my life simply because of inertia? Change allows us to see things in a new way. I am grateful to see new possibilities.
Another reminder in this move came from my cat, Annie. Annie was terrified by this move. Of course, she could not understand what was happening. When she arrived at the new apartment, she ran to a dark place and hid. She only emerged wide-eyed and jumpy when I opened a can of cat food. Annie saw where I put the food and took a bite. She ran to her hiding place again. She came out crying. I petted her and showed her the litter box. She hid again until we went to bed when she started crying, only stopping when she was held and comforted. Her reactions remind me that change can be distressing especially when we do not understand what is happening. By morning, Annie was fine. She stopped crying. She knew that her needs would still be met. Food, litter box and her people were all available. She found the windows for entertainment. She slept comfortably. Annie reminded me that we all need comfort. We may need time to become comfortable with change. We can accept change more easily when we understand what is happening. I am grateful for the comfort of caring relationships. I am grateful for understanding. I am grateful for awareness.
May we all be aware of gratitude.
Summer Solstice
It’s always felt a little strange to me that summer begins at the solstice, the longest day of the year. Shouldn’t the longest day mark the middle of summer, the high point from which we begin the long slide toward winter? And yet, from here the days get warmer, if not longer, the grass drier, the trees dustier. Our children have not yet begun to get bored (with any luck), and (with any luck) we are moving toward times of vacation and respite, not looking back on them.
Somehow the summer solstice manages to be both a beginning and a mid-point, the start of the line and the apex of the curve. But isn’t that just the way of things? Don’t beginnings, middles and ends turn out to be far more muddled than we ever imagined? The loss of a job feels like the world is crashing to an end, but turns out to be the seed of a new career. The beginning of high school turns out to be the end of childhood. The middle part of our lives is already arriving when we feel like we’re just starting to catch on to what it means to be married or a parent or a person with a career.
And, of course, the endings, middles and beginnings all overlap. We become passionate about a new hobby at the same time that we are comfortably in the middle of a career path, or we welcome a new baby as a parent is coming to the end of their own life. Only in the calendar to we have the chance to neatly mark the seasons, to declare when exactly one thing starts and the other leaves off.
In fact, what the calendar does is merely to assign names and numbers to the fact that change is part of the natural order. The seasons will move along in their predictable courses, but on any given day the weather will probably be hotter or colder, calmer or stormier than you might have expected. Making patterns is what we do in hindsight. Living is what we do in the moment, dealing with the elements of each day as it comes along.
But the choices we make in each moment are what build the patterns, what allow us to look back and say “That was the summer of my life.” The poet Marge Piercy writes:
We start where we find
ourselves, at this time and place.
Which is always the crossing of roads
that began beyond the earth's curve
but whose destination we can now alter.
May this summer solstice find you on a road toward your heart’s desire.
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I suppose, given the state of the economy and the global mood of anxiety, that it isn’t too surprising that recent essays about the New Year lack the themes of big possibilities and hope that used to be standard fare for the season. Read more →
