It is only natural that in the wake of the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, the world of social media is awash with solutions, things that we should have done to prevent this tragedy, things that we urgently need to do to prevent more such tragedies, things that will make us safe. Some of these suggestions strike me as downright bizarre, such as the idea that we need to arm teachers so that they can protect their classrooms. Hmm…guns in the classroom—what could possibly go wrong? Some of these suggestions are, to my mind, flat-out offensive, such as the claim that this tragedy happened because we have taken God out of the schools, and that “God will ‘bless the USA’ when we put him back in it.” Really? God allowed innocent children to die out of a fit of pique over the lack of prayer in school? Who would believe in such a God?
Other suggestions make more sense to me: that we should limit the sale of assault weapons, or require gun owners to carry liability insurance, or that we control the sale of ammunition. Still other people are arguing for better mental health care, to which I can only say “about time.”
Unfortunately, the more I think about it (and like much of the country I’ve been thinking about it obsessively for days), the less I think that any of these solutions—including the ones I like—are going to really make us safe. By all means, let’s have sensible laws limiting weapons. But no, we’re not going to get all the dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. Or people who were never dangerous until the moment that they snapped. Absolutely, let’s give people better access to mental health care. But even if we could assure compliance with medication and therapy not every illness responds will to treatment. And we will never be able to know for sure the difference between someone who is dangerous and someone who is merely volatile.
And really, if you get down to it, even if we were able to prevent every shooting spree, that’s hardly a guarantee of safety. No amount of control over people’s behavior could prevent the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, or Katrina before that. As someone who lives pretty much on top of a fault line in California I know that a devastating earthquake in the area where I live is basically inevitable – a matter of when, not if. While I in no way agree with people like Adam Lanza’s mother who prepare for cataclysm by stockpiling weapons, given the ever-increasing effects of climate change, I would say that expecting disaster is not unrealistic.
The question is what we plan to do about it. We could prepare our children for the possibility of school shootings by sending them to school with a gun (as one parent is bizarrely said to have done). Or we could teach them to be kind to loners and misfits, to report or stand up to bullies, to tell an adult when another child seems depressed or distraught. We could deal with crime in our neighborhoods by arming ourselves. Or we could get to know our neighbors, and keep an eye on one other’s houses so that we are prepared to call the police if something seems amiss. We could stockpile food and weapons so that in a local or national emergency we are prepared to defend ourselves against all comers, prepared to go it alone. Or we could support increased money for the government emergency services that we are sure to increasingly need. And we can get together to fill sandbags when it seems like the floodwaters are coming, or find ways to share electricity with those who are without power after the storm comes, or offer shelter to those who have lost their homes.
This is what people did for Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina. In the aftermath of 9/11 people poured into New York to search the rubble or support the first responders. When a section of freeway collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake folks in that “dangerous” neighborhood converged to help the injured and look for people who might be trapped. This is what we do. This is who we are.
The conservative entertainment complex and the NRA make a lot of money selling fear, and solutions to fear that involve scapegoating, isolation and the capacity to inflict damage before someone gets to you. And yes, that gut-level defensive reaction is who we are, too.
But we get to choose what we act on. We get to choose what we practice, so that when the time of crisis comes our habitual ways of being come to the fore. What makes us safe is the ongoing work of caring for the vulnerable; loving our neighbors; living, like the lilies of the field, in the beauty of the moment rather than in the fear of what might come. We will never be safe. Safety just isn’t part of this package we call life. But we can harbor one another, creating all the safety we can muster in this dangerous world.
Tomorrow morning in the congregation I serve, we will open our worship for all ages with these words:
There are a lot of good and beautiful things in our world.
There are a lot of scary things in our world.
Sometimes we feel great joy and a lot of hope. Sometimes we are brokenhearted and afraid.
We are here in our church this morning because there are a lot of good and beautiful things here. Here, we are surrounded by people that care. Here, we love, and we are loved.
It’s okay to be afraid sometimes. It’s normal to feel pain or anger when something terrible happens. Everybody feels those things sometimes. It’s a part of life.
When those times come, think of places like this. Think of people like the kind people that are here.
We know we don’t have all the answers. Here, we can at least share our questions. And here, we can share a lot more than that: we can share our thoughts and ideas, we can share our pain and our hope. Here, we can remember that we are not alone.
We are here in our church this morning because there are a lot of good and beautiful things here. We’re also here to learn how to bring good and beautiful things into the world.
And so we wake up the morning after, and it wasn’t a dream. The children are still dead, the teachers beside them. It is another day, a gray one, where people and animals must be fed and life will go on no matter how we feel.
Many of us took the occasion, yesterday, to find one another and weep. The people of Newtown wept. The President wept. Many of us watched them online and wept along with them. Many of us gathered, with our families, or friends, or in churches, or online, to weep together.
And today the weeping will continue. But along with weeping, those of us who are not in the center of the tragedy will begin, together, to grope our way along in the darkness and imagine what we might do besides weep. Some will begin researching gun control organizations and join them. Some will call for a March on Washington. Some will argue endlessly on facebook about whether gun control would have helped. Some will call for us, instead or as well, to address the issues of mental illness more aggressively. Some will simply be with their own families, grief sharpening their gratitude for all they have.
Of everything that I heard yesterday, and of everything that was cited by others last night in the three hour online time of mourning that my congregation held on our Livestream channel, the #1 cited words of comfort came not from Scripture or Shakespeare, but from Mr. Rogers. These four words, people lifted up over and over: Look for the helpers. Look for the helpers.
The full context of Fred Rogers quote is this: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
And so, yesterday, many of us were awed by the thousands of people who surrounded the scene of the tragedy to help. We spoke with reverence of the courageous teachers who never stopped helping through the whole event. We spoke of first responders and politicians and counselors who helped and will help.
Today, as we wrestle with complex emotions and struggle to imagine what we might do ourselves, how we might go on, I suggest that we use Fred Rogers’ words as our compass. As we are about to take an action, as we are choosing what to do or not do, say or not say, we can ask ourselves, “Does this help? Am I a helper? If someone is looking for the helpers, will they see this? Will my action give hope to children who are looking for it?”
We may have different ideas about what exactly will help. But we have some pretty good hunches. Some things we’ll all agree on. Listening to each other as we process the event will help. Giving a child the most precious gift of all: our full attention, floor or lap time, will help. Engaging in activities which strengthen our connection to our neighbors and our local community will help.
And I believe that strategic and focused action to limit the carrying and use of weapons will help. Better options and care for people with mental illness will help. Some of us, me included, will put some of our helping energy in this direction.
However we are called to help, may we be bold about it. May we allow our commitments, our action, to be visible. May we claim our power to act, to care, to change the world. As we move out into our day, our week, and 2013, may we be part of the healing.
OK, so what if we accepted that “guns don’t kill people, people do”? Just for the record, I don’t happen to accept that premise, since guns kill people a whole lot more efficiently than, say, knives or fists, but never mind. Let’s just take it as a starting place.
Isn’t it just possible that our culture of guns encourages people to kill people? Mightn’t the fact that it is legal in many states to carry concealed weapons to the grocery store or to church create an expectation that we NEED guns wherever we go? Might it be possible that memes like the picture going around Facebook of a gun holstered under a steering wheel as an anti-carjacking device teach us that the solution to being hurt or scared or offended or threatened is respond with lethal force?
Perhaps people do feel more secure carrying guns about, but it is a security based on the assumption that the solution to fear of violence is to escalate the violence. Maybe the guns themselves aren’t the root of the problem. Maybe the guns are the effect of an assumption that the way to feel safe is to become more dangerous ourselves. Maybe the ever more rampant violence is bred by a culture that says that if you have been offended, if you are hurting, then the solution is to make those who offended you pay.
What if we didn’t have the guns to back us up in that belief? What if we all had to admit that there are situations in which we are powerless or terrified or ill-treated, and there is, ultimately, nothing we can do about it? What if we had to accept that life is dangerous in more ways than we can count, and that pain and, ultimately, death is inevitable? Might we then come to a little more compassion for our fellow human beings who all share this lot in life? Might we learn to address our pain in ways that are more constructive—or at least less damaging to those around us? Might we try to find solutions to some of the systemic problems that drive people toward desperation? Might we, just as a “for instance,” learn to teach our young men that striking back is not an available option, let alone one that our culture admires?
Isn’t it time that churches started taking seriously Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek, and consider what that might mean for our society? God knows it’s time for some leadership to come from somewhere.
You Got People
This Public Service Announcement brought to you by a Unitarian Universalist minister who has just been creatively reminded by the universe of this important truth.
Beloveds, in the crush of this season of holidays, remember that YOU GOT PEOPLE.
Contrary to the images of loneliness and unworthiness being projected onto us during this commercialized season – you are intimately and ultimately connected to all of creation.
Whether you buy or receive holiday gifts, send cards, light menorahs, kinaras, or bonfires – during the longest nights of the year and during the longest days and every time in between, you are not alone.
The myth of our culture is one of worth based on stuff and perfection.
The myth of our culture says you have to earn grace.
The myth of our culture is deeply isolating and numbing.
These are not life affirming myths.
These are not myths to live by.
Sister Joan Chittister declares that “The paradox is that to be human is to be imperfect but it is exactly our imperfection that is our claim to the best of the human condition. We are not a sorry lot. We have one another. We are not expected to be self-sufficient. It is precisely our vulnerability that entitles us to love and guarantees us a hearing from the rest of the human race.”
In this season of need and greed remember:
You are enough.
You belong.
You are not alone.
You got people.
‘Tis the season. The standard greeting these days seems to be, “So, are you ready for Christmas?” Frankly, this is a question that flummoxes me every time. Honestly, I really have not the faintest idea how one is supposed to answer. Am I ready for Christmas? What does that even mean?
Have I decorated the house? No. To be perfectly frank, I haven’t even mopped the floor in some weeks. I have not hung lights. So far, there is no tree. In my house these things are usually accomplished somewhere in the vicinity of Christmas Eve. In my defense I will say that trees are much cheaper then, and my daughter has come to understand Christmas Eve as the traditional time to decorate a tree.
Have I baked cookies for my co-workers? That’s an easy one. I work online. My co-workers, wonderful as they are, live across the country. They don’t expect cookies. But then, neither do my neighbors. OK, neither do my friends and family. Sometimes it’s best to set low expectations.
Have I bought presents for all and sundry? Um…not so much. Some day very soon I will think about what incredibly thoughtful items might be purchased for my nieces and nephew that Amazon can gift wrap and mail for me. Shopping for my 14-year-old daughter is best done by gift card. We agreed that the lovely hand-made mask my wife dearly wanted would be her Christmas present, but it’s already hanging on the wall. The rest of my family doesn’t really exchange presents. Can I just say that anything involving a shopping mall is NOT my idea of a jolly holiday?
I guess by all prevailing standards the clear answer is that no, I am not in the least ready for Christmas.
Unless you mean: Am I ready to wish wes-hael—be whole—to those around me in the traditional wassail greeting of the season?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to embrace the dark of the year, but also keep an eye on the lights that shine in the early night?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to consider what it means to imagine God in the form of a powerless baby?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to follow a star, or whatever might beckon me toward the surprising, the miraculous, the new?
In that case, I’m still not sure, but I suspect—I hope—that the answer is yes.
It’s December 8 already; one third of the way through the Advent calendar that I still haven’t dug out of the basement closet and put up. We did manage to put up the tree, and even decorate it this year, Thanksgiving being so early and all. (Last year we opted for the naked look).
Noooooo, my soul moans, don’t let these precious days slide by unnoticed! I always have this fantasy of spending December sipping tea and sitting on the couch with loved ones, admiring the lights of the Christmas tree, maybe while listening to some of our favorite music. And it always turns out that I’m just proud to remember to water our tree as I run by.
I don’t know why it took me this long to realize it, but it’s suddenly become clear to me that if I am going to get any waiting done this month, I’m going to have to plan for it.
Time was, waiting just happened. When I was a kid, my sibs and I allocated the rotation of December days, jostling for which little cardboard doors of that sparkly advent calendar were ours to open. (Since we used the same advent calendar every year, some of the doors were torn off…so if you got those days assigned to you, you had to just pretend to open a door. Obviously none of us wanted those days.) Time was, perusing the Sears or Penney’s catalogue, both to make my list and then to fantasize about what Santa might bring me, took up a number of hours each week. Time was, the days leading up to Christmas felt like an enormous mountain to climb, and it seemed like we would never get there!
Now the days feel more like a landslide behind me which I am trying to outrun as I scoot down that mountain as fast as I can. Donnnn’tttt loookkkkk baaaacccckkkkkkkkkk!!!!!
So, it occurs to me belatedly, if I really want to do it, I need to put waiting on my calendar. Now for me, the word “waiting” and the word “impatient” seem to be grafted onto the same tree trunk. Often, when I am waiting, I am wishing away that time, not fully there at all. If I’m not crabby, it’s because I’m distracting myself, playing Scrabble on my iPhone in the long check out line, or talking on the phone while I sit outside my kid’s school. That’s not what I need to calendarize. I have plenty of that! There should be a different word for this intention to cultivate patient waiting.
Years ago, my office bought a new phone answering system, and for some reason the wait between punching in the extension you wanted and getting that person on the phone was insanely long. Probably two full minutes. No matter what kind of music we tried putting on it, people were inevitably crabby when they finally got to us. Finally, someone had the wise idea to change our answering machine. When you called, you got this message:
“After you push in your party’s extension, please enjoy an extended time of silence to meditate and pray.” And then, rather than playing music, it was completely quiet. After that, the voices that spoke from our answering machine ceased being frustrated and angry, and instead, greeted us with words like, “Wow! I’m going to start calling here every day just to enjoy that quiet!” or “I wish that had lasted a little longer!” (Someone from the Washington Post business section even got wind of it, and put a little blurb in about us entitled, “Just pray someone answers.”) It was all about creating space just for waiting.
For me, I think, that space is most accessible early in the morning, before anyone wants anything from me, and late at night, after anyone wants anything from me. It will be dark during both of those time periods. And the house will be quiet. But the trick is, I have to turn my mind toward intentionally waiting. Not making my day’s to do list in the morning or thinking with regret of everything I didn’t accomplish at night’s end. Just sitting in a place of anticipation, expectation, even longing.
My favorite line in a Christmas carol is “Let every heart prepare Him room.” That’s what I want to do during my daily times of waiting: prepare the room, just as I do when a guest I love is coming to stay with me. I clean, I put on fresh sheets and sometimes even put out fresh flowers. Which is to say that I won’t be tweeing, emailing, calling, texting, IMing, skyping, zooming, or otherwise pinging you during those times.
I want to be offline, but thoroughly plugged in. (I’ll let you know how it goes.)
We’ve reached the season of the Christmas list. Children far and near are making careful notes as to what exactly they would like Santa to bring them. While these lists contain an amusing variety including the improbable (a pony!), the impossible (a griffin!) and the heartbreaking (a military parent home for Christmas) as well as your standard covetous and grasping, that is not the kind of Christmas list I’m thinking of. No, I’m considering the other side of the equation.
Santa, we’re told, is “making a list, checking it twice.” Santa is “gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” Does this strike you as just the tiniest bit creepy? Talk about Big Brother. Really, what defines someone as naughty or nice? Anyone I’ve ever met is some combination – mostly nice, but with regular lapses. Does Santa have some sort of computer algorithm that assigns a point value to acts, naughty or nice, and then spits out a conclusion on the balance?
What I really wonder, I guess, is whether anyone really ever gets a lump of coal. Are we ever judged that inadequate, that naughty? Would a “right jolly old elf” ever decide that a person is so bad that they don’t even deserve an orange at the bottom of their stocking?
Don’t we all, in the end, receive a shower of gifts, without regard to our naughty/nice quotient? Trees and mountains, air and sunshine, birds, oceans, sunsets, rain, wildflowers, fat bumblebees—doesn’t it all come to us in an overflowing profusion, far beyond what we can measure, let alone fit under a Christmas tree?
What if there is no list, and no one is checking to see if we measure up? What if the whole scheme rests, not on the threat of punishment, but rather on the premise that we long to give back as we are given to, that we find our joy in returning to the world as beautiful a reflection of what we are given as we can muster?
I’ll say it. I don’t believe in Santa—not the one with the twice-checked list at any rate. I am, however, a steadfast fan of the reindeer, who are so in love with the idea of delivering gifts that they are, against all reason, able to fly.
“We are the people of abundance, people who have known suffering and will know suffering. We are the people of abundance, people who have known love and offer our love as a blessing to our world.” ~ Naomi King
We are a people of abundance. We know struggle in abundance and strength in abundance. For every story we know about “not enough,” we know an answering story of “lots.” Not enough time? Lots of meaningful work to do. Not enough money? Lots of sustaining relationships.
Since the Flood of 2005 in New Orleans, I have an abundance of friendships that grew out of people coming here to stand in solidarity with and bear witness to our struggle. Now these beloveds are woven into the fabric of my life and I walk with them through the joys and struggles of their lives – adoptions, divorces, cancer, new vocations, the death of parents, the building of treehouses – they are now a part of my life and my life is more abundant.
Abundance is not inherently good or bad – it simply is. We celebrate when joy is abundant, we mourn when grief is abundant. When it is time to sit down and write, I sometimes have an abundance of reasons to keep getting up and doing something else. When it is time to sit down and write, I sometimes have an abundance of words pouring from my fingertips.
To our dominant culture framed by a scarcity narrative, I offer this truth of abundance. When we see that our days are replete with abundance, we are less afraid. When we are less afraid, we connect more. The more connections we see in our lives, the more abundance we notice. Sometime the abundance will wear us out. Sometimes it will fill us up.
Live lived from the narrative of abundance is not easy. It is, however, a more loving way to move through the world than a life lived from scarcity. Come – choose to err on the side of love and generosity. We are a people of abundance.
We have, at last, come off of a whole string of days officially or unofficially designated to tell us what to do with our money. There was Black Friday, when we were supposed to go shopping; and Buy Local Saturday when we were supposed to spend more money, but this time with local merchants and independent retailers. Then came Cyber Monday, when we were supposed to buy stuff online. Followed by Giving Tuesday, when we were supposed to redeem ourselves for all that socially-irresponsible spending by giving money to good causes.
Honestly, I have no idea who determines these things. Who designated Cyber Monday or Giving Tuesday or any of the rest, and how did these things somehow become folded into the Holiday Season? What exactly defines the Holiday Season, anyway? Does it run from Thanksgiving to Christmas? New Year’s? If you celebrate Chanukah and not Christmas, does the Holiday Season end with the completion of Chanukah (the evening of the 16th this year) or do you have to say in a festive mood until the last of the eggnog is consumed at New Year’s?
I have no idea. On the theory that whoever designates these things has no special authority (and really, aside from the Supreme Court, who does?), I would like to designate today, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, as Do What You Would Usually Do Wednesday. If you need something, go out and buy it. Otherwise don’t. Unless, you know, it’s really calling to you and you can afford it and it’s genuinely going to make your life better, in which case, what the heck, go for it. If you can get what you need from a local merchant, that would be great. But if you just don’t have the time or energy to go out into the world and you can find what you need online, believe me, I understand. And hey, today would be a great day to contribute to the welfare of others, or to the arts or to any organization that you think is doing wonderful work in the world.
But, you know, tomorrow would be just as good. Setting up an automatic withdrawal from your checking account would be even better. Face it, how you spend your money just isn’t a holiday. It isn’t something that deserves a special moment set aside from ordinary time. Which is not to say that how you spend your money isn’t a religious practice. It certainly is. Jesus, for instance, had far more to say about how people should spend their money than he did about far more contentious topics like homosexuality and divorce. Judaism and Islam have plenty to say about money, particularly about giving it to people in need. Money is one of the major ways that we express our values, which is to say, how we express what we think is right and good, which is to say, our religion.
How we spend our money matters. But it doesn’t need a holiday, a special, set-apart time. Far better that we make our financial choices daily, mindfully, choosing over and over again to invest in those things that matter most to us: the health and safety of our families, the pleasures that leaven our lives, opportunities for learning and growth, care for those who are in need. Today, Do What You Would Usually Do Wednesday, please spend your money exactly the way you ordinarily would. Unless you aren’t satisfied that your financial habits reflect your deepest values. In which case you should look forward to Do a Little Better Thursday, which is coming right up tomorrow.
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Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.