A Prayer in Stormy Weather
Like many people in North America, today I am watching the weather maps anxiously, wondering if the people I love in various places will be safe and sound. Though I am personally far from any swirling images, I wonder whether people I know, and those I have never met, will have a warm place to sleep and food to eat.
Extreme weather is such a clear reminder that we’re not in charge. Sure, people can and do buy batteries, generators, milk and bread, if they can afford to. People go vote early and take in their lawn furniture. People move to a home in a safer place if they have the opportunity to. They adjust their schedules, confer with their neighbors, stay close to pronouncements from public officials. But underneath all of this activity, what is fundamentally clear in these times is that people are not in charge of our planet.
Knowing that we’re not in charge is scary, as are these major weather systems. And yet there is fundamentally something positive about it as well. Someone tweeted today that Hurricane Sandy is saying, “Ignore global climate change in the debates, will you?” The truth behind that humor is that global climate change doesn’t care whether or not it is mentioned. It is on its own trajectory, as all weather is.
So, I pray that everyone is safe this week, that all have food to eat and a place to stay dry. I pray that houses and freeways, libraries and airports are not damaged. I pray that these storms pass over and quickly become nothing but a distant memory of another calamity that did not befall us.
But I also pray that the alertness we are all feeling, the clarity that we’re not in charge, the realization that we need to look out for everyone and hope that they will also look out for us, stays in place whether Hurricane Sandy blows by or hits land. These are life-affirming pieces of awareness, most vivid in times of crisis but useful every day of our lives.
For those of us in the U.S., it feels particularly important, in these last days before the election, to realize how much we are all in it together. Whatever the slogans of parties and candidates may be, in times like this, we all need each other to make it through—the practices of various parts of various levels of government, the generosity of business and churches and civic organizations, the ingenuity and initiative of indviduals.
May we all be safe, and may we all remember how much we need one another in these times, and in all times.
What God Intends
Let’s be fair, here. I’m sure that Richard Mourdock did not in any way mean to defend rape when he said that he thinks that God intends for babies to be born who are conceived through rape. I would hope that no one could believe in a God who intends for women to be raped. But I’m sure there are brave women who have borne their rapist’s baby, whether that rapist is a husband, boyfriend or stranger, and who regard their child as something precious that managed to grow from a terrible beginning. Such is the amazing resilience that can come to the human heart, and wouldn’t God be present in that beautiful redemption?
But let’s get real here for a moment. One could certainly imagine a God who could redeem even something as terrible as rape through the love of an innocent child. But when did it become the government’s job to determine on God’s behalf that this is the necessary outcome? For every woman who has chosen to keep and love a child conceived through rape there are probably many more who choose a morning after pill or abortion to end a pregnancy that they never wanted, and which would be an intolerable life-long symbol of a great violation. Why would you assume that God is not in that decision as well? Why wouldn’t God be there at the side of a woman as she struggles to reclaim her life and her strength and her ability to move forward in the world? Is God not in that woman’s choice to restore her own integrity and wholeness as she understands it?
I won’t presume to speak for God, but I will tell you what I think. When a woman is raped, God’s body is torn as her body is torn. When a fetus is aborted, some piece of God’s potential is lost. But God’s potential is infinite, and a woman reclaiming her life is no less a part of God’s potential. Indeed, every moment when every person chooses life, whatever that might mean to that person at the time, is a part of the potential of God unfolding.
It isn’t the job of politicians to decide which bits of potential God finds most precious. It is the job of each us, day by day and minute by minute, to decide what will constitute life more abundant for ourselves and the world we inhabit, and to act as the body of God in living out that choice. The role of the government is to support those decisions or get out of the way.
We Do Not Fear People Whose Stories We Know…
Back before the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon was attacked by plane, before there was a US Department of Homeland Security, way back when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was known as the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service,) – a lifetime ago and yet still less than fifteen years have passed – I served as a Legal Tech for an immigration law firm in Washington, DC. I was a twenty-something white woman, with southern working class roots and a damned fine Midwestern liberal arts college education, figuring out if I wanted to go to law school.
In addition to filing forms at the law firm, I was a narrative gatekeeper. In search of asylum, an HIV-waiver, a work visa? Sit down in that chair and tell your story to me, in all its intimate and gory details. My job was to take your story and craft a narrative that would compel government officials to consider your case favorably (or at all, in some cases).
It was extraordinary work. I met families from Iran, the Philippines, Malaysia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the United Kingdom, Sri Lanka – from all over the world. Each had an extraordinary story – some that were exciting, some that made my stomach turn, some that broke my heart open. After just a few months of working with the firm, I added Tums® to my requested office supply list and I went through them by the bottle.
I was angry that any human being had to share the excruciating details of their torture and their trauma to a recent college graduate and pray that she told their story well enough for an officer or a judge to grant them grace. I was angry at how much harm was inflicted by my country on people who had already suffered much harm in their country. Soon I figured out that I did not want to grow up to be a lawyer. I did not want to risk growing immune to the power of these stories or becoming complicit in the process. What I wanted to do was work for systems change.
Many years later down the winding road of my life, I found myself standing in an ICE office for hours. I was bonding an immigrant – the friend of a friend of a friend, ripped away from his family and hauled out to detention in rural Louisiana.
Memories of dozens of stories from the cases I had worked on flooded over me as I waited in the reception space during the long stretches between each step of the ICE process.
I remembered the proud father terrified that his extremely Westernized daughter would be stoned to death if deport to their home country.
I remembered the gay man who had seen his friends killed for daring to hold hands and who had fled his homeland in fear of his own life.
I remembered the woman raped by an elder of her church and denied the letter of good standing that would have allowed her to become a citizen.
I remembered the sweet faced Latino youth who was infected with HIV while in detention in the US and then denied status because he was HIV-positive.
I remembered their stories and the stories of so many others who struggled to create a better life for themselves and their families here in these United States.
Because I know their stories, immigration will always be a moral issue for me. Because I know their stories, I will not buy into the dehumanizing stereotypes being peddled to me and my fellow patriots. Because I know their stories, I will stand – in an ICE office, in the pulpit, in the voting booth, in the interwebs – on the side of love. I invite you to stand on the side of love, too.
Fireworks
Truth be told, I don’t feel like writing a blog this morning. I just feel like watching Katy Perry and an 11 year old autistic girl named Jodi DiPiazza perform Perry’s song, “Fireworks,” over and over. Having watched it about eight times now—and forced everyone who has been near my Iphone or computer to do the same these past couple of days—I still get weepy each time and feel as if I’ve seen a glimpse of The Holy. (And yes, thanks for asking, I did donate money, too.)
The people I’ve forced to watch it include my own Very Sophisticated Sixteen-Year-Old, who, when instructed, “Come and watch this and cry with me!” sneered when I put it on: “Katy Perry? Seriously, you think Katy Perry could make me cry?” –having listened to Katy Perry Years Ago and all!—but then pleaded ‘something in my eye’ midway through the video. I was glad, because I had posted the link on my facebook page with the words, “Call 911 if this doesn’t make you cry. Your heart is not beating anymore.” Whew. #Notatotalfailureasamother.
I love knowing that all over the country, people of every political persuasion are weeping to this video. I think watching it helps us to remember why we’re on the planet, and who we are as a people, and that it’s not about dueling ideologies. It’s about helping each other ‘ignite the light and let it shine’—helping each other to flourish, to shine brightly as fireworks, no matter who we are.
“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind?” Jodi sings to us, and those of us who did not learn the lyrics Years Ago are knocked over by the message and the messenger and how completely they merge. The crowd roars delight, and we see this amazing, brave, child receive the cheers completely in her body and take a deeper breath from the transmission.
“Boom, Boom, Boom, Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon” we watch Katy singing to Jodi, describing the beauty right before her eyes, love pouring off of her whole body right into that child, overflowing, and pouring into us as well.
And, how much do we need that message ourselves right now? Dealing with her autism, Jodi and her family have clearly overcome obstacles most of us can only imagine. But which of us hasn’t felt “like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?”
How much does this country need to believe, as we wade through the rubble of what’s left of our common life together, “If you only knew what the future holds/ after a hurricane comes a rainbow”?
This song’s power has been making me think that we’ve got the communications thing all screwed up. It is with humility as a preacher/ writer that I say music is exponentially more powerful than words. No spoken message could have millions of us watching this video over and over, drinking in its energy as if we have been wandering in the desert for too long and stumbled onto an oasis.
Just thinking: Maybe instead of, or in addition to, political ‘debates,’ which are increasingly less about policy and more about posturing anyway, we should have “sing offs” before the elections. Let artists and musicians sing out their dreams of who we could be, and let the people decide which candidate is more likely to take us there.
But for now, we have Katy and Jodi to help us remember. And I’m grateful for that! (Want to watch with me now?)
Love Is the Spirit of This Church
“Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law.” So begins a well-beloved passage adapted from the words of the Rev. James Vila Blake, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Evanston, Illinois. These words are often spoken in the life of our faith. Several of the congregations I’ve served spoke them communally every week as part of their worship.
When we say certain words or phrases over and over again, there are several possible effects. One is that our brains tune out the repeated stimulus. I suspect most schoolchildren have this kind of relationship with the Pledge of Allegiance. But another effect of saying things repeatedly is that they become deeply engrained into who we are. Are the words of this statement engraved into the souls of those who speak them?
“Love is the spirit of this church.” This is a powerful statement. If it is true, and we all hope that on some level it is true, it obliges us not only to walk together in love, but to think deeply about what it means for us to love.
Too many churches embrace the fallacy that caring and inclusion mean the absence of conflict. This is a horribly destructive falsehood, because it stifles the creative and transformative confrontation of conflict. Caring and inclusion mean that conflict is addressed in a caring and inclusive way. An environment in which the tacit agreement is that we will avoid saying or doing anything somebody might disagree with is not one of caring and inclusion. If we assert, explicitly or implicitly, that controversy is not welcome, that disagreement is against the rules, what we are really saying is that we don’t actually trust each other. Dissent and disagreement, when they are expressed respectfully, are an expression of trust. We are saying to that other person: I trust you; I trust that you will take these remarks in the spirit of good will in which they were intended; I trust that you will engage in this dialogue with me in a respectful and thoughtful way.
Most churches aren’t real enthusiastic about dealing with conflict, and frankly, while it’s not healthy to be conflict-avoidant, some folks make a fetish of conflict — they relish fussin’ ’n’ fightin’ so much that that’s the only way they know how to be in relationship with others. It’s not impossible to find Unitarian Universalist congregations that fit that bill, though of course it ain’t just us. Every human group has its conflicts, whether it’s a family or a factory workforce or a town council or a church. Crises are a part of the nature of things, and crises create conflict. Such conflict can be addressed in any number of ways, but where there is a crisis, there will be a conflict. Stasis is not the nature of the universe; things change, things move, and predicaments arise, and with them, conflicts. Conflict is a part of life. The question is not whether or not we have to deal with conflicts, but how we respond to them, and how we may respond to the inevitable conflicts of the future.
“Love is the spirit of this church” means that we are going to disagree, and that we stay at the table even when the going gets tough. “Love is the spirit of this church” means that we are going to trust one another with our differences of opinion. “Love is the spirit of this church” means that we are going to be honest with one another and with ourselves — even when doing so is uncomfortable, especially when doing so is uncomfortable. It’s important to understand the thorny and complex meanings of “love is the spirit of this church,” but just as important is understanding what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that we place stability and appeasement and familiarity over courage and honesty and a sense of adventure. It doesn’t mean that we think our interpersonal connections are so fragile that anything that could disrupt their perceived stasis needs to be avoided, especially since that perception of stasis is itself an illusion. Relationships are alive, and all living things grow and change. “Love is the spirit of this church” means that we as a faith community have to have the courage to grow and change together. And it does take courage, it does take courage to do that.
What Isn’t Said
You know what I find most fascinating about this week’s presidential debate? What they didn’t talk about. There was a lengthy back and forth about energy policy and who would drill where and who would get the most oil out of US public lands, but no mention whatsoever about climate change. There was some discussion of clean energy technologies in terms of jobs and economics, but never in terms of the urgent issue of climate.
How is it that what is perhaps that largest issue of our time and for generations to come, an issue that affects all beings of this planet, an issue that we could actually do something about if we had the collective will, never manages to even make it to the floor? I think the answer is pretty clear. It isn’t a winning topic. People don’t want to know that the earth is changing, and that we will have to change to deal with that rapidly altering world. Either they deny the reality so that they don’t have to deal with it, or they plug their ears and go “La la la la la” so as to avoid the topic.
When in doubt, our natural inclination is to step around the topics that we don’t want to deal with. For a certain period of time we can manage to pretend not to notice Dad’s drinking, the cracks forming in the roof, Aunt Ellen’s diminishing mental capacity. Of course, as with climate change, dealing early and effectively with major problems diminishes the damage. But that requires the courage to step forward and take away the car keys or call the long-term care facility or give up things that we want now in order to pay to fix the roof in the not-so-distant future. And those things are hard.
So we just let it slide for another day. Perhaps it is too much to expect our politicians to exhibit moral courage when they know the voters won’t reward it. Perhaps it is the role of leaders to, you know, lead—to use the bully pulpit to remind people of what needs to be done and to offer a plan on how to do it. I don’t know.
What I do know is this: the best chance that any of us will have rests in a nation of truth-tellers. I don’t have a problem with fantasy. Fantasy is good. Each of us should carry a dream of what exactly we would like our lives and our world to look like. But you can’t just dwell in the fantasy world. Reality will, inevitably bite you in the end. Far better to start with a clear-eyed look at the world as it is, dangers, flaws and all, and figure out what next step might tilt the real world in the direction of the dream.
Maybe one person turning to their neighbor to ask why the emperor isn’t wearing clothes won’t be enough to stop the parade. But if enough of us dare to speak enough of the time, telling the truth of our lives and the truth of our world, then there might just be hope for us after all.
The Connection of Church and State
I am a big fan of the separation of church and state. I do not believe that it is appropriate for the government to privilege any religion, or impose any set of religious beliefs on its citizens. I don’t think that anyone’s religious views should be allowed to determine who may or may not get married. I don’t think that anyone’s religious views should be allowed to determine laws around abortion or access to contraception. I don’t think that we need to set aside time in schools to pray, and I don’t think that “under God” should ever have been inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. There is no reason at all to teach “creation science” in biology class, as if any science were involved in the religious stance that all the overwhelming evidence for evolution should be set aside because the Bible says something different. It is not the place of a free, democratic government to impose the religion of some set of people on other people who may not share those views.
On the other hand, I’m absolutely in favor of people making political choices based on their religious views. How would you not? If your religion matters to your life at all, surely it has to inform your decisions about what laws and which individuals will work for the things that matter to you. If you follow the one who said “ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me….Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” then surely you will vote for the candidate who seems the most likely to provide for the poor, care for the ill and have compassion for the immigrant and those in prison.
If you call yourself religious, it is your job not only to hold a core set of values that you understand to be at the heart of your religion, but also to go out and practice and advocate for those values in the world.
As a Unitarian Universalist, I would say that freedom is a central value among my religious peeps. But it’s not at the very center. At the core, the value we hold most dear is ever and always love. That’s why you see UUs in bright yellow t-shirts that read “Standing on the Side of Love” at rallies in favor of marriage equality and compassion for immigrant families. Love is where it’s at for us. When I vote, it’s on the basis of the practical application of the principle of love. Love for our neighbors, love for citizens of the wider world, love for the planet which we share with so many non-human beings. I am Voting on the Side of Love.
What values are at the very heart of your religious life? Where do you see those values taking shape in the political sphere? How will you vote for the heart of your religion?
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In 1492…
In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue…
So began the ditty that most of us (children in U.S. schools) learned about Christopher Columbus, who (we were taught) “discovered” America. I remember making little replicas of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria out of walnut shells, play dough, and toothpicks. This was great fun because we had to perfect our walnut cracking strategy to get an intact hull, and then got to eat the nuts. And who didn’t like to play with play dough? I remember stories of bravery on the high seas, storms, and hardship, which had special meaning to me because my father was a naval officer, often at sea (as I would also be in adulthood). It was also novel, and seemed somehow grown-up to learn as a first or second grader that the Pilgrims weren’t the first Europeans to make it to the “New World,” as we had been taught as early as we can remember eating Thanksgiving dinner at the kid’s table (and for which we also made walnut boats, but usually with adult help in the cracking).
I don’t remember when I learned that even Columbus wasn’t the first European to land in North America (presuming the Bahamas are considered North American soil. I’ve been there, and it’s very different, but close enough, and seemed to suit Columbus just fine). Tales of Vikings landing in Newfoundland centuries earlier were much more exciting. Those horned helmets rocked!
The other thing I remember about these stories is my grandfather’s delight is telling us every Thanksgiving that most “American” ancestors came over on the Mayflower, but our ancestors met it! Although I am mostly of European descent, I have Cherokee ancestors on both sides of my family, recent enough that it is apparent in the facial features of most of my family. Had I chosen to affiliate with a tribe, I could have received access to special scholarships for college.
And so, even though I received the same education as other children in the U.S., I always questioned the idea of discovery. At best, to discover something is to be the first person to realize its existence or witness it first hand (I’ll concede to being anthropocentric here). Columbus, the Vikings, and the Pilgrims no more discovered this continent than I discovered the joy of cracking a perfect walnut.
Anthropologists still don’t have indisputable evidence of when humans first migrated from East Asia to North America. It could have been anywhere from 40,000 to 16,500 years ago. That changes our little song altogether…
In the year… oh never mind.
Heres the thing. The victors always get to write history. And so the history of North America has been told for generations from a Eurocentric perspective. My ancestors met the Europeans (who were also my ancestors), and whether or not there really were instances of friendship and cooperation as all such stories include, they were over the ensuing decades, slaughtered and corralled. I grew up mostly in South Carolina, where nearly 50% of my high school classmates were of African descent. Their history was told for centuries from the master’s perspective, at least until Alex Haley wrote Roots and we all later watched the mini-series in amazement.
Here’s the other thing. As societies and the individuals in them, we mature, we learn, we grow. As we do, we can “put aside childish things,” as Paul writes in I Corinthians. One of the tenets of Unitarian Universalism, articulated best (but not discovered) by minister and theologian, James Luther Adams, is that revelation is not sealed. There is always something new to learn. We can even re-learn, as I did in childhood about my ancestors.
I read another blog this morning that talked about the misguided nature of political correctness and white guilt. The blogger suggested taking a “balanced” approach of recognizing the bad, but not throwing out the good. I sometimes (but not often) wish life were that simple. And so, it is time to lay to rest our celebrations of Christopher Columbus’s discovery. He and others will remain in the history books. Their travels indeed shaped the course of humanity, but our study should be from a more holistic, mature perspective.
As Maya Angelou writes in her poem, On the Pulse of Morning:
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Thoughts on Death and Lasagna
Last night, as I lay dozing on the couch, I awakened with a start at 10:30 and jumped up. It was time, I suddenly knew, to make a pan of lasagna for a family where a death was imminent. Right now. Not in the morning, as I had planned. Now.
As I went into the kitchen to layer the ingredients into the pan, a sense of peace and well being came over with me. I knew without a doubt that the dying woman, who had been in a coma for almost a week, had passed out of her body. And I felt clear, though I had no memory of a dream or any message from her, that she had instructed me to make this food as a symbol of my ongoing care for her twelve year old daughter.
This morning I learned that the woman had indeed died last night, at 10:31 PM.
When I took the lasagna over today, I told this child, who is still trying to absorb the fact that one of her parents is not on the planet anymore, about being instructed to make lasagna, and the sense of peace that I had felt as I made it. I told her that I thought as her Mom’s spirit left the earth, she visited people to tell them to be sure to care for her beloved daughter after she was gone. The twelve year old told me that she, too, had been awoken from a sound sleep, but not by her Mom’s spirit. It was the telephone, she said, looking a little embarrassed about how pedestrian that sounded.
Later, at home, when I was doing some mundane chores, it suddenly occurred to me that this child might be really angry about my experience. So I called and left a voice message and said,
“You know, it occurs to me that you could be really mad that your Mom’s spirit visited me to say goodbye, but didn’t visit you. I need to tell you that every time this has happened to me, and it has happened a number of times when people are dying, it has been someone telling me to care for their loved ones who are still alive. It has never been someone I am particularly close to. When my parents died, and when the two closest friends that I’ve lost died, they didn’t contact me in any way.
But what I do have with the ones close to me, who have died, is a clear sense that they are with me at particular times. I dream that we are together. I feel them around me. I have seen their spirits in birds or in butterflies. I think they didn’t say goodbye because they weren’t leaving me. I think they knew we would be in touch later.”
This experience last night made me think of the times I have experienced contact in the moment of death. At the graveside of one young man who died from AIDS in the early 90’s, a chain smoker, I learned that a number of people’s smoke alarms had gone off at the moment of his death. I didn’t actually have a smoke alarm at the time, but his death caused me to wake up as if someone had grabbed me by the throat—DEMANDING that I care for his partner, submerging me in the hellacious grief of his partner’s heart and mind and spirit for a moment so that I experienced a sense of complete freefall, no connective tissue, utter disorientation, as if it were my own. OK, OK, I sputtered. I get it, I get it! I will help your beloved go through the motions of life until he is alive again! And immediately that grip loosened and a sense of peace came over me.
When I’ve talked about these experiences with other ministers, they generally nod their heads matter-of-factly. Yes, they say, and tell me of their own experiences that mirror my own.
I know a lot of folks will dismiss all this as hogwash. I probably would too, if it hadn’t been my lived experience. Honestly, I don’t pretend to understand it a bit. But for me it’s a reminder that, as much as we try to act as if things make logical sense, we are surrounded by mysteries we can’t begin to comprehend.
And, ultimately, whether we feel connected to the dead or believe we walk only with the living, it all comes down to making lasagna for one another when the going gets tough.
Endurance
“The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.”
Dean Acheson (attrib.)
We are accustomed to regard a person’s circumstances when we consider his or her level of suffering. Certainly certain conditions are more conducive to despair than others. Inmates in a concentration camp, survivors of a cataclysmic tsunami or a person trapped in a horribly abusive relationship can hardly be blamed for succumbing to hopelessness and nihilism. However, the reality is that regardless of circumstances, there are three things that can make human life unbearable:
A sense of aloneness. James Joyce noted, “It relieves us to see or hear our own distress expressed by another person.” The sense that someone else understands what we are experiencing can be enormously encouraging and liberating for us. Conversely, the feeling that no one understands what we’re going through, that no one cares, that no one will help us, is universally regarded as one of the most horrible and terrifying experiences a person can endure. Our species is hard-wired to seek support and caring from others.
A sense of meaninglessness. We need to feel that our lives matter, that our personal energies and abilities are dedicated toward something that has a constructive purpose. We also are constantly seeking to understand our suffering in some context that will give it meaning. It never surprises me that so many people believe that a benevolent deity is responsible for their pain; it gives many comfort to think that their otherwise meaningless anguish is part of a benign cosmic purpose, however mysterious or incomprehensible to us it may be.
A sense of hopelessness. When my wife and I were expecting our first child, we met an obstetric nurse who remarked, “One of the things that makes pain bearable is knowing when it is going to end.” (This may be a good thing to contemplate during contractions.) The feeling that things will never get better, that misery is the permanent state of the universe, is not endurable to the human psyche. People who struggle with suicidality often report these kinds of feelings.
We are religious for many reasons; among these is our need to overcome these three horrors. We come together in religious communities so that we may escape the sense of aloneness, and that we might help others to know they are not alone. We come together in religious communities to make meaning out of life, even life’s most dreadful miseries. We come together in religious communities to find hope, and to try to give others hope.
May God give us the wisdom and the strength to seek others, to find meaning, and to live in hope. May God guide us that we may help others to know that they are not alone, for we are with them; that life has meaning, because we love; and that there is hope for all of us.