Ministry can be spiritually, emotionally, and even physically taxing.  So, how do clergy keep at it for so long?  What helps them stay fresh, alert, and focused on mission?  Recently, I asked a Facebook group of Unitarian Universalist ministers to share their “ministry mantras,” using no more than 8 words.  A ministry mantra might be something a pastor says inwardly, as a reminder; or, it could be a line they use often in ministry, with others.  It could be a guiding principle or belief.  Whatever it is, it’s a short line that helps keep focus, purpose, and perspective.  Their answers are moving, funny, wise, and helpful.  I hope you enjoy them as much I did.  Here they are:

• I’d rather deal with that person than be him.
• It’s all just information. (Translation: see the reality in front of me and choose my response to it, rather than exerting myself to reframe it the way I wish it were.)
• It isn’t better in the UCC.
• No one purifies another. (from The Dhammapada)
• Small things often.
• Breathe and allow
• “Good information to have.”
• Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
• It’s not (really) about me.
• Assume Good Will most of the time.
• This has happened before and will happen again.
• There’s always another degree to get.
• “Let me get back to you on that.”
• Change is Constant.
• “Thank you for sharing.”
• Breathe deeply, speak slowly, love the people
• Show up. Pay attention. Tell truth. Let go.
• Authenticity trumps perfection
• Not too long till retirement.
• You gotta love the people.
• Don’t take it (other people’s bad behaviors) personally
• Let go of the tasks and love the people
• Change is inevitable; progress is optional.
• Lead with empathy, follow with curiosity.
• In times of trouble, spend more time with God.
• Duck feathers. (It means let things roll off your back).
• This too shall pass.
• Ministry is impossible, start there.
• You can’t save them.
• More love, less control.
• Meeting deadlines is a way of showing respect.
• These are my people and I love them.
• Prepare for every meeting, no matter how small.
• Always remember how lucky you are.
• By your stumbling, the world is perfected.
• God, please give me the right words.
• They’re not out to get me—today, anyway.
• Don’t resist the resistance—feed the health.
• Nothing a half-hour meditation wouldn’t solve.
• Less muscle, more love.
• “Your words, not mine.”
• This is not about me.
• We’re building the ark before the rain.
• We are the luckiest people in the world.
• Always in beta mode. Try something new.
• Don’t be the hero of your own story. (A preaching mantra)
• Only solve real problems. Don’t build boats for ducks.
• There’s got to be more to ministry than just hating the people. (from The Simpsons)
• It’s all an experiment.
• Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
• I’m not running for Jesus. (from The Simpsons)
• This is the business we have chosen. (from The Godfather II)
• House of the Holy/Home of the Human
• If I stay grounded and centered, then….
• Who’s NOT the savior: you aren’t.
• Never call them jerks (to their faces).
• Be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves. (Matthew 10:16)
• This, too, shall pass.
• When in doubt, love.
• Always choose love.
• Be a broken record (until they start saying the same thing).
• You WILL fail. Go.
• One needs to love one’s people.
• It’s not about me, it’s a larger system operating, often an anxious system.
• Whatever it takes.
• Bless their hearts.
• The system is the system.
• Trust God’s love.
• It is what it is.
• They are who they are.
• “We do not negotiate with terrorists.”
• Remember why you love them. Because you do.
• Make Jesus visible in the world.
• She/he/ze is beautiful and worthy.
• Toward a better self and a better tomorrow.
• Per/her/his gifts are better used elsewhere.
• Just doing the work of the Lord.
• The church is not your boss. Pray. Sing.
• When in doubt, use puppets.
• It’s not about what you know; it’s about who you are.
• Forgive them; for they know not what they do.
• Sometimes, being a non-anxious presence makes me anxious.
• Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
• Ministry comes in many forms.
• Comfort the afflicted; afflict the comfortable.
• If it’s difficult out here, imagine what it’s like to be inside that person.
• From Byron Katie’s “The Work”: “Is it true?” “How do I react when I believe that thought?” “Who would I be without that thought?” And then to reflect on the “turnaround”—the opposite of that thought.
• They need to be loved.
• Be the non-anxious presence.
• Good to good people, good to bad people. (from The Tao te Ching)
• God, guide/help me to do the next right thing.
• God don’t make no junk.
• What can you do TODAY?
• Always in beta.
• It’s all just information.
• Dear God, help me not be an a$$hole. (from Anne Lamott)
• Action is the antidote to despair. (Joan Baez)
• The interruptions are the work.
• Not feeling great about your ministry? Go visiting.
• May I minister to these people in Your love.
• “It’s interesting that you think you’re more stubborn than me.”
• You are the minister. This is what you do.
• Just finish one thing today.
• Effort, not outcome.
• The interruptions are the work.
• I never lost sleep worrying. If there’s something that I can do about it, I get up and do it. And if there’s not—might as well sleep.
• Speed of church.
• Size is no barrier to being a caring community.
• When all else fails, lower your expectations. (Gloria Vanderbilt)
• Feel the fear, and do it anyway. (Susan Jeffers)
• Power means not having to respond.
• “What you think of me is none of my business.”
• “What does my anger have to do with you?”
• When I breathe in, I breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I breathe out love.
• Don’t let the crazies make you crazy.
• Never underestimate the capacity of the liberal heart to bleed for the wrong object.
• Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
• Chaos is the disguise life’s changes wear as they move toward order.
• When I am kind to myself, I am kinder to everyone around me.
• Let go or be dragged.
• Never fight with a pig. The pig likes it, and you only get dirty.
• We teach best what we most need to learn. (Richard Bach)
• Just keep swimmin’. Just keep swimmin’. (Dori)
• Here not to make friends, but to usher in the kingdom of God….
• Live well; love openly; laugh much; leave gracefully.
• Nothing human surprises me. (Terrence)
• We exist for two reasons: to change lives and to change the world.
• Hmmmmmm…..
• To grow our souls, to build a beloved community, and to serve the world.
• [When church members are messing up] Help them (the wayward members) to succeed.
• Don’t give sunshine to weeds.
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (Voltaire)
• I wonder what will happen today? (Pema Chodron)
• You become what you resist.
• You can’t teach a dolphin to type.
• A minister is not always right, and humility does matter.
• You could be wrong.
• There are always more than two options.
• How might we re-frame that?
• Remember, everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
• If you are too busy to be kind, you are too busy.
• This, too, shall pass.
• All things in moderation—including moderation.
• If you give a mouse a cookie….
• We are a religious/spiritual community, not a therapeutic community…
• It’s just church.
• Don’t process in the pulpit.
• Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em cry. Make ‘em feel religious.
• OK, [name]. You wanted to be a minister.  Here it is: do the ministry.
• They come from central casting.
• May I offer something they need.
• Preach from your scars, not from your wounds. (Bolz-Weber)
• God help me.
• God, how may I help—right here, right now?
• “Say more…..”
• This is the work, these are the people.
• We’re here to further a mission, not to make everyone happy.
• Doing the best I can with what I’ve got.
• With love and consultation, clarify responsibility, authority, accountability.
• When things get intense, it’s time to double my spiritual practice.
• God, you put me here. What do you want me to do?
• Where you are, God has drawn a circle on a map. (Hafiz)
• Give it to G-d.
• Let’s experiment!
• Walk slowly. Bow often. (Mary Oliver)
• Ministry: going where you can’t possible know what you’re doing.
• The opposite of love isn’t hate: it’s efficiency.
• It’s because I’m the Mint’ster. (Leaves out the “I”)
• All in over our heads.
• When things work out, to the tune of “Mystery, Mystery…”: Victory, victory, sometimes I get to say victory!
• The main thing is to find the main thing (and to keep the main thing the main thing. That’s the main thing.)
• The purpose of the church is to keep the saints from killing each other.
• We see the world not as it is, but as we are.
• Worship, fellowship, education, service.
• Connect, grow, serve, reach, worship.
• Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.
• It’s all good.
• Let it go, let it go, let it go. (Sung to tune of “Let it Snow”)
• Live loving; love living.
• You can’t replace the Bible with bylaws.
• If you’re going to preach socialism, you have to dress like a banker. (John Haynes Holmes)
• Not my circus. Not my monkeys. (Let go of outcomes and responsibility for solutions)
• It’s an aff-gee (AFGE: Another Freaking Growth Experience).
• Deeds, not creeds.
• Lord have mercy.
• “Bless Your Heart.”

Another election has come and gone. Some people, presumably, are delighted, while others are filled with gloom. OK, it was mostly gloom on my Facebook page. Maybe you worked really hard on behalf of a candidate you truly believed in, and that candidate didn’t win. Maybe the one who did win is the worst kind of corrupt imbecile, totally in debt to the moneyed interests. Maybe you feel like the country is going to hell in a hand basket, and we are all at the mercy of people who think that Ebola is washing our shores on a wave of Black people and climate change is a hoax invented by scientists who want to further their careers.

It could be that we are doomed, and if your plans for this week should happen to include an adult beverage or a childhood comfort food, well I wouldn’t blame you.

But eventually we always come round to the question of what now. Now that the election is over and we get a break from the ads. Now we know just how vehemently we might disagree with our neighbors or family members. Now that the whole cycle of hope and possibility and things not ever living up to their potential starts over again. Now what?

The same thing as always. Sorry, but I don’t have a better answer. Now we make dinner and pet the cat and read the kids a story and decide what to wear to work tomorrow. Now we look for a job that will pay the bills or an apartment that won’t break the bank or a date who won’t turn out to be a complete waste of time. Now we call our friends to comfort them or be comforted. Now we wait to hear back from the doctor or we wait to hear whether there will be an indictment from Ferguson. We visit the rest home, we take the children to soccer or to dance, we cry or look at videos of cats.

Maybe we remember other elections that swept us up in a tide of hope or despair, and we remember how after those elections we kept on doing what we do. I’m in no way saying that elections don’t matter, or that it’s not worth being deeply engaged in the political process. The government sets policy, and those policies affect really important things like who gets deported, who gets health care, whether people can manage to live on minimum wage, what efforts are made to combat climate change, what kinds of transportation we have access to, whether there is funding for research, what is supported and not supported in our schools, and on and on and on.

Politics matters. Having a voice matters. Speaking up for your hopes matters. But it doesn’t necessarily matter in the way that we would like. Paying attention and voting and making calls and writing letters and campaigning door to door doesn’t always result in the person or policy we support winning. And, sadly, even if they do win it rarely means that everything is rosy and the world is organized the way we would organize it.

Whether we get what we want is not what defines our efforts. We are called to care, and to love and to work for justice. Whether or not things go our way at any given moment. I used to serve a church in the same neighborhood as Wrigley Field in Chicago. Although I am not, myself, a baseball fan, I learned a lot from my Cub-loving congregants. The Cubs lose. Everyone knows that. Historically, currently, the Cubs are just not what you would call a winning team. Which doesn’t stop the fans from rooting for their beloved Cubbies, year in and year out.

You love what you love, and you go out and yell on its behalf, following the statistics or the players or whatever markers of success or defeat you might have. You show up and cheer. When your team wins you get a parade. But when your team loses you have the opportunity to gather with your friends and mourn the losses and plot how next year will be better.

Or maybe two years from now, when elections roll around in 2016.

(photo by D.Vandiver)

Today is the day, friends. The day to VOTE.

This is the day when we get a chance to be citizens and constituents, rather than just consumers. Today is the day this nation decides party control over the House and Senate, decides who will address the looming issues of raising the minimum wage, immigration reform, equal pay, and – let us not forget – going back to war.

In New Orleans, many judicial races will be decided today – criminal court, domestic court, juvenile court… Today we elect the people who will decide who goes to jail, who gets custody in a domestic violence case, whether or not your child gets a second chance… Beloveds, in a state that incarcerates more people per capita than any other state in the country, this election matters.

Wherever you live, it is the local elections that will most immediately shape your community. What happens in Washington, DC certainly impacts us, but rarely as intimately as local policy and enforcement.

If you are young – please vote! If you are an elder – please vote! If you are in the sandwich generation – please vote!

If you can vote, please vote.
If you voted early, well done!
If you, like me, plan to vote today – don’t forget!
Vote today.

There are 2,867,473 registered voters in the state of Louisiana. Almost 2.9 million possible voters! Let’s see what it looks like when we all show up to choose the people who will make the decisions that shape our schools and our families, our courts and our country.

With gratitude to everyone who can vote today and grief for all of those denied the right to vote through the gutting of the Voters’ Rights Act and other egregious practices, I wish each of you well. May this election day end with leaders elected who care about you, your families, and our planet.

Go forth in peace and vote!

PS: In Orleans Parish, mark your calendar to vote on Dec. 6th, too! The state legislature has tried to do an end run around the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and give away its money and control to the Recovery School District (RSD) through a millage vote that doesn’t even list the RSD in the summary that will appear on the ballot. It is slick, my friends, and it is as wrong as having to work on Mardi Gras day. Mark your calendars for Dec. 6th and vote NO on the grand theft masquerading as an education millage.

As of this writing, Maine nurse Kaci Hickox is under house arrest for her resistance to what she considers a fear-based, anti-scientific, and politically-motivated quarantine.

In 2012, the US military experienced a odd occurrence: for the first time in US history during time of war, more active duty troops died as a result of suicide than combat.

Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhiseng disappeared in 2009. He reappeared recently, in prison, with no charges against him, and no release date.

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, risked torture, imprisonment, and death fighting in the courts for the rights of women and children in Iran.

All these stepped out of line. They disobeyed their governments. Some disobeyed the dictates or their religions. Most are disliked by a majority of their fellow citizens. Some of them chose death rather than a life of guilt and shame.

Why do people do things that sometimes get them killed; sometimes imprisoned; sometimes demoted or fired or exposed to the scorn of millions of their fellow citizens?

What drives all of this crazy, counter-intuitive, behavior?

Conscience. And the mental punishment inflicted by conscience, guilt.

Conscience. The feeling that some actions cannot be condoned, no matter how “legal” they are.

The feeling that enables we human beings to take actions for the good of others rather than ourselves.

The Great Leap into Sapiens

Why do human beings have a conscience? Isn’t a conscience merely a drag on getting ahead?

Henry David Thoreau said in his handbook for rebellion, Civil Disobedience: “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

Despite the fact that Thoreau’s thoughts have become the template for those acting on conscience, notice that word “machine.” Thoreau saw conscience as an individual attribute against a deterministic mass. But it isn’t always, is it? Sometimes, as in the case of Edward Snowden, the machine is ambiguous.

We still don’t know why homo sapiens sapiens—the “wise man,” as scientists have (perhaps over-confidently) called our species—began to have a conscience. My vote for best hypothesis goes to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

Dunbar theorizes that human language developed as a result of the need to socially interact in larger groups. Neanderthal, for example—also known as homo sapiens neanderthalensis—traveled in very small bands—and were for the most part inbred. They didn’t use a whole lot a gray matter figuring out what other people were thinking or trying to get along with an extended group.

They didn’t use their words much, and so didn’t have a need for a great many. They probably didn’t have much of a conscience, either.

Navigating the deep and often stormy waters of multiple relationships, however, required a good many words and concepts. And this may be why the children of homo sapiens sapiens—the “wise man”—developed complex language. It was a matter of talking about it or dying. It was also a matter of considering multiple goods in the gray shades that human existence swims in.

Emotions are in the gut. But it takes gray matter and complex language to make the complex decisions a Solomon or an Edward Snowden have to make.

The Critical Mind

Philosopher Peter Singer says there are two types of conscience—the traditional and the critical. This goes some way into an important distinction. Most people have that traditional form of conscience. It’s the stuff of traditional religions. It’s the level of confidence in others that allows us to work in offices and live in communities. Almost all human beings have it.

The people who get the Nobel Peace Prize are of the critical variety. A Malala or Shirin Ebadi. They have considered the arguments of the majority. They have heard the arguments of traditional religion. And they have decided to act for a greater good.

The right thing to do isn’t always clear. Human governments aren’t faceless machines of conformity, as Thoreau appears to have thought. The individual isn’t always correct. (The deluded decision-making of Timothy McVeigh demonstrates that point.) Yet, homo sapiens sapiens gets wiser only though the actions of brave individuals risking themselves and thinking way outside the box.

It is that accumulation of brave thinkers that may, someday, made us truly wise.

Imagine the laid-back life of a zombie.

First of all, you’re dead. So. No more taxes! That’s for sure. And monthly bills will bother you no more.

Besides no more worries about death and taxes, look at how focused you are: your meaning and purpose have boiled down to searching for brains to eat. Admirable focus.

And zombies have lot’s of friends.

Being un-dead has its moments. You’re well beyond all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Your only worry is getting shot in the head.

Director George A Romero, who directed “Night of the Living Dead,” is credited with having created the contemporary zombie. He has this to say: “I just took some of the mysterioso stuff of voodoo out of it, and made them the neighbors. Neighbors are frightening enough when they’re alive.”

I have a suspicion this goes a long way toward explaining the huge popularity of zombies. Perhaps they represent all the danger we see in others and in ourselves.

Chip and Dan Heath, marketing gurus, have come up with the term “Maslow’s Basement.” Their argument is that most marketing depends upon the bottom end of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “hierarch of needs” pyramid. In that model, there are three principles that motivate people to buy a product: fear, greed, or lust. These are base desires, Maslow’s Basement.

I suppose the high end of Maslow’s hierarchy, such things as morality, creativity, and spontaneity, as Maslow’s attic. (Zombies definitely live in the basement.)

Research shows that people report that other people are motivated by fear, greed and lust. But people self-report that their actions are motivated by empathy and compassion. In other words, we fear their neighbors, just as director George A. Romero claims.

The counter-intuitive fact may be that the self-reporting is correct. Meaning that all of us—including our neighbors—are more influenced by compassion and empathy than by Maslow’s Basement motivators of fear, greed, or lust.

We may be selling our species short! Perhaps our default mode is NOT to dwell in Maslow’s Basement. Perhaps our neighbors are not potential zombies.

Perhaps we all, as Oscar Wilde said, despite having our feet in the gutter, are looking at the stars.

The zombie apocalypse will not be televised. Because it’s not coming. Because most of us are inclined to treat our neighbors . . . not as zombies but as ourselves.