Tornados, Typhoons, and Straw Dogs: Giving Thanks With Some Thinking
Thanksgiving American style. The day declared a national holiday for the purpose of giving thanks. Despite the best efforts of those of a theocratic bent, who or what to thank remains open to interpretation.
My thanks goes to the universe that just keeps cranking out good things. As the fifth chapter of the Daodejing puts it,
The space between
sky and earth is empty,
like a bellows, moving
and moving, and
out comes more.
That’s something to be thankful for. Yet problems begin when all of that “more” between earth and sky begins to get divvied up. And, Thanksgiving being a national holiday, I can’t help thinking of the portion of the universe’s “more” taken by this particular nation and how that “more” is divvied up within our borders. It its harsh realism the Daodejing says,
The universe is neither
“good” nor “evil” outside
of human standards.
The universe treats all things
like so many straw dogs.
Recent survivors of various weather-related calamities might agree with that. Then there are these next lines:
Earthly rulers treat people
like so many straw dogs.
Well, maybe in the China of 400 BCE rulers treated people like so many straw dogs, but here in the US . . . Oh, wait. There was that government shutdown. There is that sequestration. There is that surveillance. Those drones. Oh, and then there’s work on Thanksgiving. And Black Friday. Rising poverty. Rising hunger. Straw dogs.
For Daoists, the answer is clear: the universe itself has no morality—it is neither good nor evil, and governments almost inevitably act in self-interest without regard to the greater good. It’s not what we learn in school, but evidence indicates another story.
I lost my childhood faith for the “big guy in the sky” when I began to suspect the moral calculus of the universe. When I began to suspect that “good” and “evil” are thoughts only in the human mind.
Does “god,” or does “god” not, decide who gets the cookies? And what is the basis for that judgement? Nation of birth? Social class? Skin tone? Religious affiliation?
Is it a moral act to thank such of deity for choosing me? Or my nation? My social class? My skin tone?
It’s not that I’m not thankful. But I’m not thankful to a deity that would put one child in Switzerland and another in Somalia. Such a deity does not deserve thanks, however mysterious “his” ways might be. And a deity that merely reflects the workings of the bellows of the universe? What’s the point?
Government? Yes, I grew up with those cardboard Pilgrims with their very white faces taped to the classroom windows. I understand what I was supposed to take away. Am I thankful to a government that protects the rapacious while ignoring the basic humanity of most of its citizens? Not so much.
Where might the thanks go? To luck? To fortune? To randomness? To that bellows that just keeps pumping?
Perhaps, finally, all we can do is watch and try as hard as we may to resist cynicism and complicity with the powers of what we human beings view as evil.
Here’s the advice to the Daoist:
Take care of what
is within yourself;
the outside will never
stop moving
and moving.
Thankfulness in the face of what we human beings call good and evil must serve as a reminder to think through who and what is dividing up the blessings. Yes, tornados and typhoons sweep away both the good and the bad. The universe treats us all like so many straw dogs. We find ourselves enmeshed in systems of oppression. Our choice is our work against those systems, and how we treat each other.
Songs that Save Us
Emma’s Revolution came to New Orleans and offered a workshop focused on singing and songwriting for social justice last weekend. I am still reeling a bit from process. Yesterday I caught myself humming a song and wondered “whose song am I singing?” With a flash of wonder, I realized that it was mine.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how shut up/shut down the songs within me have been.
We are endlessly adaptable, us human beings. We can adapt to racism, to endless war, to drone strikes and wire taps, to fracking and mountain top mining…We can adapt to deformed seafood and boil water alerts, to a school to prison pipeline and senior citizens choosing between heat or healthcare.
“That’s just the way it is,” we say. We forget that we have the power to resist. We forget that there are unsung songs within us. We forget that adaptability is essential for survival, but there’s more to life than surviving.
We must refuse to adapt to that which dehumanizes us, destroys our habitats and our hearts. We who would be whole and holy – who would thrive together as beloved community – must remember the songs within us. Remember the songs within us and sing them out loud together.
How Sisyphus Got It Right
I have participated in National Novel Writing Month three times now. I have never reached the goal of 50,000 words. Last year I came close, with 42,000. This year I’m not even close, having written only a bit over 10,000. The handy-dandy stats machine on the NaNoWriMo website tells me I’m averaging 760 words a day. The average needs to be more like 1500.
I could, if I chose, feel inadequate—I’m clearly failing at the goals. Yet, I intend to soldier on, in the very teeth of failure.
It occurs to me this has been my approach to life. And it’s not a bad one, come to that. I’m a minister, and I do a lot of funerals. Few are the lives that have an onward and upward plot arch. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen any.
Each day, each week, people in my congregation work to bury the dead, comfort the grieving, visit the shut-ins, feed the hungry, house the homeless, and fix the systemic evils of our social system. Oh, and prepare for the next Sunday service, which comes along with surprising regularity. Each printed order of service is a victory over chaos.
As senior minister, I shake off all the mistakes we make along the way and try to figure out how we can manage to do better next time. My 
congregation never makes that 50,000 word count either. Sometimes we don’t break 10,000. But we soldier on, in the teeth of failure.
Keepin’ on keepin’ on is not a glitzy sort of spiritual practice. There’s no sizzle, as the cliche goes. Yet the mother with Alzheimer’s, the brother with brain cancer, the child who refuses to get it, all those need love and support. And typhoon victims need cash. And the order of service left out several names last week that will need to be included this week, with apology. Life is a victory over chaos.
So, today, I intend to crack that 11,000 word mark on my novel, after the memorial service at one pm. At that rate, the handy-dandy stats machine tells me, I’ll be done by January 3rd. How many orders of service will come and go by then? How many joys and sorrows?
January 3rd isn’t such a bad day to finish the first draft of my novel. Keepin’ on keepin’ on isn’t a sexy sort of spiritual practice, but it works. It works.
Anything I can do, We can do better…
“We think that honesty and living in truth are better ways to live than propaganda and denial and comforting stories.” –Tom Schade, “Religious Community is Not Enough: Unitarian Universalism’s purpose is much bigger than gathering with like-minded people for mutual support,” UU World Winter 2013.
Earlier this year the Board members of the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal voted unanimously to attend an Undoing Racism training offered by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. While most of the members of the Board consider themselves anti-racist, we are stretching into what it would take to intentionally shape the Center to be an anti-racist institution. A primarily interpersonal understanding of racism limits our collective ability to address institutional, internalized, and ideological racism. With support from the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, the entire Board registered for the November Regional Training in New Orleans.
Beloveds, it is not enough to send off one or two of a congregation’s more social justice-y members to a training and consider the work of anti-racism done. It isn’t even enough to go through a congregation-wide training – once. This system of inequity, so deeply in the bones of our country’s constitution that you can take white people out of leadership and have the system continue to provide a preferential option for whites, requires a diligent commitment to undo.
One white member of the Center’s Board was attending this training for the “umpteenth time” since beginning to attend in the 1980’s and was clear that she would keep coming back. What has been done to us as a nation is a powerful, hypnotic thing. It lets me think, as a white woman, “I worked hard for what I have” and not even begin to reflect on how hard my neighbors of color have worked to have not even half as much.
It is hard to express my gratitude to the members of the Center’s Board for showing up for the training, day after day, for an exercise in living in truth, unpacking and confronting propaganda and denial. And doing it together. While I have attended multiple-trainings as an individual, this is the first one I have attended as an intentional member of a collective – and I experienced this training profoundly differently than the ones before. Instead of getting stuck on my own abilities (and lack thereof), I was able to think about the resources and structures of the organization I was a part of – and this has sent me back into the world with energy and hope.
The strongly individualistic (white) values of this nation will not serve us in the task of undoing the structures of oppression. Dismantling systems of oppression is collective work, friends. Find your collective. It is not enough to be a lone crusader in the work of undoing racism. This position only enforces the structure of isolation, designed to prevent collective organizing. If this is your position, look around. You are not alone. All of our lives are diminished by the structures of racism.
Organize, beloveds. The work will not be done perfectly, but together, we can begin to heal that which is profoundly broken.
The Language of Faith
Source: Google Images Creative Commons
Last Sunday, while out to lunch with my husband and two young kids, we passed the time waiting for our food by playing Mad Libs. As you might remember, Mad Libs is a word game where one player asks another player to provide a particular kind of word – noun, verb, adjective, etc. – to fill in the blanks of a story. After the words are provided, randomly and without context, the other player reads the funny and often nonsensical story aloud.
If you have ever played Mad Libs, you know just how important grammar and semantics are to the art of storytelling. You also realize just how important words and context are to communication and understanding.
Words are, obviously, incredibly powerful tools. We use words to communicate, to connect, to explain, to inform, and to educate. But words have significant limitations, as well. Unfortunately, all too often words are used as a weapon instead of a tool. We use words to restrict instead of expand, to assume instead of discover.
Ironically, we often try to use language to define those things that are undefinable. We try to explain the inexplicable with rational, but overly simplistic, definitions. We fit people into our prepackaged labels –believer, nonbeliever, Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, humanist, idealist, pacifist, liberal, or conservative – and we try to make sense of this crazy, nonsensical, Mad Libs-like world with assumptions and categories.
But when it comes to the Big Questions, to matters of the Heart and the Spirit, there are no definitions. There are no labels. There are no prepackaged boxes.
Quite simply, language fails us when it comes to matters of the Spirit. God (I use the word “God” knowing that the word itself has its own limitations) comes in many names and is experienced in many ways. God and all things Spiritual, by their very nature, are unknowable and personal; they are felt with the heart and cannot always be adequately explained with words.
But, being the intelligent humans that we are, we try to explain that which is deeply felt with words, explanations, and sound bites. And, as a result, any inherent commonality to our human spirit gets lost, the beautiful complexity of differences gets diluted. The words – and labels – that we use become more important than the ideas.
So much division and dissention is created and exacerbated by the labels and linguistic limitations that we put on matters of faith and spiritual belief – concepts that are, quite frankly, too big to fit into any label or verbal representation.
Perhaps, we need to focus less on the words of faith and more on the language of faith. Perhaps we need to stop getting lost in the semantics of God and, instead, learn the languages of God – ones that are spoken and heard in a number of ways.
Music has always been my language of God. I love to sing (off-key) and can clumsily tap away a few songs on the piano, but I am far from what you would call “musical.” Yet music has always been a profoundly moving spiritual experience for me. Whether I’m swaying to a church choir singing “Amazing Grace,” listening to Bon Iver on my iPod, singing along to Bob Dylan in the car, or dancing like crazy with my kids in the kitchen, few things have the power to move me like music. Music creates an internal communication with the Spirit that washes my soul clean, as if I have stepped into a warm shower with the lyrics and melody rinsing away the grit and grime of everyday life.
Spiritual language can be found in any number of ways. My grandpa spoke the language of God through his generous hospitality. It was nearly impossible not to feel like THE most important person in the world when he greeted you. Others feel the language of God through the earth and nature. Gardening, for my paternal grandma, was so much more than a household chore, it was a spiritual practice unto itself. With her fingernails soiled and her hands calloused, as she tended and cultivated, she spoke a spiritual language that only her soul understood, that only her Spirit could appreciate.
Some people speak God’s language through art or poetry, photography or painting, teaching children or caring for animals, caring for the sick or sharing a meal with friends. Shauna Neiquist wrote in Bread and Wine, “When the table is full, heavy with platters, wine glasses scattered, napkins twisted and crumpled, folks askew, dessert plates scattered with crumbs and icing, candles burning low – it’s in those moments that I feel a deep sense of God’s presence and happiness. I feel honored to create a place around my table, a place for laughing and crying, for being seen and heard, for telling stories and creating memories.”
Let’s face it, we live in a chaotic world, where the unimaginable meets the incomprehensive, and devastating realities mix with everyday miracles. We want to make sense of it all. Of course, we do. In our well-intentioned, but misguided, attempts to explain, understand, and communicate, we look to definitions and labels. We rely on assumptions and suppositions, and we look to linguistic placeholders to meet the expansive scope of faith, God, and the Spirit.
We try to define the indefinable.
But maybe if we spend a little less time focusing on definitions of God and labels of faith, and instead focused on feeling the complex languages of God, maybe then we could gain a better understanding of each other and ourselves.
Run Away! Run Away! Fear and the Problem of Progressivism
Let’s face it, progressives just don’t do fear well. Conservatives go to town with death panels and black helicopters, while progressives build arguments. It’s true in religion; it’s true in politics: progressives live in Reasonville while conservatives scare the hell into people.
Take, for example, Pascal’s Wager, one of the enduring arguments concerning the god concept. Blaise Pascal was a Seventeenth Century French mathematician whose work led directly to probability theory, game theory, and calculus.
Pascal understood that none of the proofs of god held up to logic, so he decided to go in a new direction, employing the nascent field of game theory. What he created is called Pascal’s Wager.
It goes like this:
Like it or not, we are playing a game that is like flipping a coin, heads or tails: either there is a God or there is not a God.
Reason can’t help us in this game–there is no evidence for or against the existence of God.
Each of us must bet: heads or tails. (That’s the logic part.)
Now, argued Pascal, if there is a God and you act as if there is—ding, ding!—you win. Eternal bliss.
Option two: If there is no God but you act as if there is—ding, ding!—you don’t lose anything. You, too, get bliss forevermore.
Option three: If there is a God and you act as if there is not—sad, scary music!—you lose: eternal damnation.
Therefore, the best bet is to act as if there is a God. That’s a great conservative argument.
Now, the biggest hole in Pascal’s logic is explained by the anthropic principle: how likely is it that Pascal, or you, were born in the place and the time that had the formula for “god” just right? Pascal’s unstated assumption is that there is only one type of god possible, the god of Seventeenth Century French Roman Catholicism. Pascal assumed, for example, that the earlier form of Christianity based on Arius is incorrect, and that the Mayan gods, or the Polynesian gods, aren’t capable of rewarding us with eternal bliss or eternal damnation. And so on.
Yet, despite its weakness, versions Pascal’s Wager crop up all the time. Because its real power lies in fear. Our gut tells us losing that particular coin flip would be very bad news indeed.
Pascal’s Wager shows the fault line between progressives and conservatives. Progressives see a problem; we educate ourselves about the problem; we see ways of fixing the problem; then, we think everybody should be convinced by our chain of reasoning. It baffles us that anyone would oppose such a logical position.
Our opponents think that our well-reasoned position will be bad for business. Or that it violates some old social norm or scriptural text. And so, they use the favorite tool in the conservative toolbox: fear.
Let’s face it: fear sells. Logic . . . not so much. We throw up our hands: “Why can’t people just be logical?” Well—we must remind ourselves—because we didn’t evolve that way.
Logic is not our first response to a stimulus. Fight or flight is our first response to a stimulus. Only later does logic become available to us.
Classic example: you’re walking in some tall weeds, you look down, and you see something that looks like a snake.
You get a rush of adrenaline; the hair on your arms stands up; you jump out of the way.
So, you didn’t get bitten by the snake. But, on second look, it turns out that the “snake” was a stick or a piece of rope.
Evolution has wired us to protect ourselves from snakes. We can logic our way out if it, but only with effort. With reason. If you don’t believe me, ask first or second graders living in a city what they’re afraid of. (This has been researched.) You’ll hear about snakes. And lions. And rhinoceroses. And dragons. It’s unlikely the kids will mention cars; or guns; or viruses, things that are ACTUALLY dangerous. They certainly won’t mention high-fructose corn syrup, which will kill far more of them than even firearms, with the resultant Type II Diabetes.
Fact is, we are not wired to fear what is actually dangerous, because our lives are not as they were in our evolution. Fear has served us well as a species. Fear saves us from snakes. But snakes are not the most dangerous things in our environment any more. And so we sit on hold on the telephone, adrenaline rushing and hair bristling, ready for fight or flight, and all we accomplish is messing up our digestion.
Our brains did not evolve to cope with the world we now live in. Neither did our governments. Governments work best in short-term, fight-or-flight situations. Yet, thinking fast and scared doesn’t solve problems such as global climate change.
We have two very good systems for addressing the realities and the dangers of the world. The problem lies in knowing when to use which . . .
Did Pascal believe his own wager? Hard to say. He did know, however, that a concrete example and a real fear is convincing.
Messy & Beloved? Yes.
Beloved Community is ever on my mind lately, both who we are and who we can be. My meditations are guiding me toward increasing clarity about my vision of Beloved Community – it cannot be a state of perfection. Because humans are essential elements in Beloved Community, it is/will be cluttered and messy if it is to be realized.
In my favorite writing book, author Anne Lamott describes clutter and mess as something that shows us “that life is being lived… Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.”
Dear ones – We can make some messes. I look at the news and at my calendar and I am clear – messes abound.
So we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, of the promise of Beloved Community.
Let us understand that we are loved and beloved now – right now – not just when we finally get it all together – but always, every day. Let this knowledge rest deep in our bones and allow us to love each other the way the Rev. Dr. King called us to – “love in action, agapic love not discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess.”
Letting go of the perfect, we find love-for ourselves and for each other. Messy, yes. And real.
_______________________
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, 1994.
“An Experiment in Love,” 1958.
A Garden Prayer
That shrimp plant
so determined to be seen
poking through the ginger and the fig
like a four year old
waving skinny arms and red cheeks
to those towering above
That shrimp plant
grown from cuttings of a friend
who no longer lives in this country
from a house
that has since burned down
That shrimp plant
breaks at its knobby knees and elbows
when the wind blows too hard
drops to the ground
and grows again
Universe
today I pray
please
please grant us the resilience
of that shrimp plant
Who does your heart break for?
Last month I had the joy of participating in the first Life on Fire un-conference (https://www.facebook.com/LifeOnFireTribe).
I was drawn to the gathering by the questions being asked, as well as by the beloveds who were convening us.
• Do you want to transform the world into the beloved community?
• Do you want to live a committed life that takes you to third places, abandoned places, and secular places?
• Do you believe in radical integrity?
• Do you want to live as if you are who you say you are?
• Do you know who your heart breaks for?
Do you know who your heart breaks for?
I know who my heart breaks for. My heart breaks for the neighbor who has nothing and the neighbor who lives in fear that what he has will be taken from him.
My heart breaks for the creatures of the disappearing wetlands and for the communities destroyed because the wetlands are no longer there to protect them.
My heart breaks for the transgender woman who has no shelter to accept her in New Orleans as a woman “because she hasn’t had the operation yet” and for the shelter director whose compassion has been destroyed by the unceasing need that shows up on her doorstep every day.
My heart breaks for everyone dehumanized and treated as less than by the evil of oppression, and for those so blinded by their own hate that they do not realize they have given up their own humanity in the process of denying it to others.
Who does your heart break for, beloveds?
When we find what breaks our hearts open, we can begin to live with a sense of purpose, with a mission, as a compassionate community of faith.
Together
Beloveds, I believe that we are all in this together – and together, we can shift a culture that is dehumanizing us all –
- A culture that prioritizes paper with imaginary value over oxygen, clean water, livable communities,
- A culture that tells some of us we are better than others, tells some of us we are inferior,
- A dominant culture that sacrifices the many for the few and lays the blame for the destruction squarely upon those who are being destroyed…
- A dominant culture that resists even being named, but which much be named to be changed…
Singer activist Ani DiFranco sang in 1995 (Not a Pretty Girl)
I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I’ve got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
Sometimes I am an angry white woman. And sometimes, I am afraid. I am angry that children are not eating this week because human beings elected to govern the resources of this nation have decided that ideology is more important than people. I am afraid of how much harm is being done, how many lives without safety nets are crashing to the ground even as I write these words today.
And always, always, I am grateful to be a part of a faith on fire – on fire for love, mercy, and justice, a faith that walks the talk, not perfectly, but with a broken open heart of commitment. A faith that says it is okay to be angry and afraid and keep going, keep going… beloveds, let us turn toward each other in this vulnerable moment in our nation’s history.
Let us change the story together.