Companions on the journey
“May beauty and passion and compassion be our companions. May we be fully alive. Amen.” ~Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie (Healing Places, 9/14/2014)
Keep the faith, beloveds.
Keep showing up.
Keep paying attention.
Keep speaking your truth.
Because we have changed,
the world is changed.
And you are not alone…
#blacklivesmatter
#FergusonOctober
#MoralMonday
#Not1More
#RaiseTheWage
#ClimateJustice
#bethechange
When in doubt, choose the side of Compassion
The Thursday following the fundamentalist disruption of worship service at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, a Pro-Woman, Pro-LBGTQ, Pro-Religious Freedom rally was planned for City Hall. It may not surprise you that the Unitarian Universalists showed up. Dozens of Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts, signs, and stoles were vividly on display. A small but exceedingly vocal counter-rally was staged on the hill above the rally by some who had apparently raced back to New Orleans from Baton Rouge for this very purpose. Even with the bullhorn, it was difficult to hear what was being said at the rally over the yelling of the anti-choice protesters.
And so a group of people, mostly UUs, turned toward the hill, forming a sound barrier between the those speaking their truth in the center of the safe circle and those screaming their truth from the hill, and began to sing (to the tune of Siyahamba, a South African freedom song,) We are standing on the side love, we are standing on the side of love. The singing continued until everyone had had a chance to speak their truth in the Pro-woman, Pro-LBGTQ, Pro-Religious Freedom space.
As the rally drew to a close, everyone not on the hill joined hands, forming a gigantic circle, and sang together: We are standing on the side love, we are standing on the side of love. Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger blessed us all, sending us off with the wisdom to “Go Now in Peace.”
The police were on alert and surrounded the park – subtly…We were allowed to protest injustice in peace. Our right to do so was affirmed by the community and by the powers that be.
Friends, that’s a privilege we have not extended to #Ferguson or the many communities of color protesting the extrajudicial killings of children and young adults. Please, before you say “they just need to calm down,” consider the humane and human need to protest injustice. May you tender the communities’ outrage with mercy, with compassion, perhaps even, with love and holy curiosity.
May you withhold your judgment. In times of grief, there is no room for our shoulda, woulda, coulda…. only room for compassion.
If you cannot find your compassion in this time, please still yourself until you can. And if you wonder where it went, spend some time thinking about how systems of oppression steal the humanity of the oppressor as well as the oppressed. If you cannot find compassion for the human grief of others, you may have lost touch with your own humanity. Beloveds, it is worth the work of undoing oppression to reclaim it.
Spiritual but not Superstitious (Mystical Without the Mumbling)
“Spirituality” is emotion. Sometimes the spiritual emotion springs from a consciously adopted attitude toward the world we see around us. Sometimes it hits us unexpectedly. A “spiritual experience” can be anything from the warm-fuzzy feeling we get singing a song we love to the inexpressible “mystical” experience of feeling one with all that is.
Both great feelings. But not mysterious. Psychologist Daniel Khaneman in his groundbreaking book Thinking, Fast and Slow outlines how the head/heart and body/soul distinction actually functions. Fast thinking, which Khaneman calls System One, is our fight or flight selves. The visceral reaction. Slow thinking, System Two, is our reason and problem-solving abilities. We don’t think about System One. System Two takes discipline.
As we learn more about these systems, we see more clearly what techniques and technologies best trigger responses. For example, when the rhythm of the music reaches about 120 beats per minute—the average heart rate for mild exertion—we feel like dancin’.
For my money the most insightful writer on the subject of spirituality and mysticism is Jiddu Krishnamurti. Born into British-occupied India, a young Krishnamurti was taken under the wing of the Theosophists and trained in that mystical tradition. The Theosophists thought Krishnamurti would be the great “World Teacher” that they predicted would come to earth.
Krishnamurti eventually renounced Theosophy but did indeed become a great teacher, a synthesizer of spiritual and religious thinking from all over the world.
One of Krishnamurti’s gifts was a keen BS detector. Therefore, when Krishnamurti talks about spirituality and mysticism, I listen.
His key insight goes like this: “It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact.”
Listening without preconception; without judgment; without the interference of ego; listening in order to hear, to experience—right now, with as little of the usual interference as possible. Unmediated experience. This listening pushes System Two down into System One.
This sort of listening requires presence in the moment. It requires us to be in the place of the breath and that mental space that is at once maximum concentration and maximum surrender. This experience may be achieved by various techniques, from mediation to fasting to merely looking up at the stars.
From the Centering Prayer of Christianity to Buddhist zazen to the various yogas, human beings have developed techniques for getting to this space. Since these techniques are designed to dampen System Two and trigger System One, they feel visceral, spiritual.
Woo Without the Woo Woo
“Mysticism” is a technique aimed at achieving a “mystical experience.” Again, this experience is a feature of brain function and has little to do with specific religious or philosophical practices, except insofar as all religions aim for the experience and have techniques for achieving it.
Some traditions are overt about it—Sufism, for example. Shamanistic practice. Transcendentalism.
Take, for instance this passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden:
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
The transcendental experience is being awake in the here and now.
It’s All About the Flow
Since spiritual and mystical experiences are a feature of brain chemistry, not specific religions, atheists and agnostics have no particular reason to poo-poo the idea. As a matter of fact, mystical experience doesn’t need a religious component at all, as demonstrated by the work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who introduced the notion of “flow” experience. Csikszentmihalyi found “flow” in experiences as diverse as sports and video gaming. He lists the elements likely to bring on flow experiences:
1. intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. merging of action and awareness
3. a loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. a distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time
is altered
6. experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as
autotelic experience
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
A flow experience sounds like a “mystical” experience, doesn’t it? Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Sounds “spiritual.”
There’s nothing mysterious about mystical experience. You can put yourself in the way of the flow experience by following very simple (and secular!) procedures.
The Extraordinary Is All About the Ordinary
I’m a writer. I’ve been writing for years. I learned early-on that if I was going to get writing done, I had to do it every day. As part of my daily routine. So, I get up early every morning, make coffee, and sit down to write. And write. And write. Writing is my spiritual practice.
Sometimes, everything clicks and I go into the flow experience. The mystical experience. Sometimes not.
Since I was trained in writing by Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, I took up Buddhist meditation as a daily practice too. This was part of the “mindfulness” that the writers who became Buddhists in the 1950s thought contributed to honest and deep writing. They passed that on to me.
Over the years, I have discovered that meditation and writing have the same effect: They bring my mind into the present moment. Remember Thoreau’s words:
I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment.
When we are not living in the present moment, we are living in memory or fantasy. We are out of touch with what is. We are kicked back and using System Two. And we are a long way from a spiritual experience!
There’s nothing mysterious about the mystical. Spirituality is a feeling. We don’t have to buy what particular religions are selling to access these feelings. It’s all in our heads.
Reps of God: Christian Triumphalism and the DIY Future of Unitarian Universalism
LITE
The future of Unitarian Universalism does not lie in Christianity Lite any more than the future of Anheuser-Busch lies in Bud Light.
Oh, wait: Anheuser-Busch doesn’t have a future: it was bought out . . . by a European corporation that makes tasty beer.
In our consumerist religious landscape, the mainstream Christian denominations are scrambling to survive. I don’t doubt that they will do a fine job of brewing the new Christianity. A much better job than can Unitarian Universalism, except in very specific locations and boutiques.
Yes, as in beer, so in religion: the future for a small movement such as Unitarian Universalism lies not with Lite but with Hevy. The Godzilla of brewers, InBev, and the Presbyterians and United Church of Christ, and United Methodists et alia will do a fine job with the Lite. I think the future of Unitarian Universalism lies in micro-breweries. Boutique congregations, each with a recipe of their own.
Hevy
Keeping the church doors open after the Boomers are dead is the question. I’m not trying to be a controversialist. Like many ministers, I’m betting millions of dollars of other people’s money on a way to keep the church doors open into the future.
How?
A new book by Thomas Moore points to a possible way. In A Religion of One’s Own: A guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World, Moore makes a strong case for do-it-yourself (DIY) religion.
Aren’t Unitarian Universalist congregations uniquely suited to facilitate DIY?
We do well to draw a sharp line between the subjectivity of religious experience and the objectivity of a congregational, corporate life together. Where I get my personal religious jolt is up to me—Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, paganism, pantheism, atheism, all of the above . . . Up to me. DIY. Where I find my meaning is up to me.
Where I go for my religious, corporate, home is up to us.
For those who will be following Moore’s advice on DIY religion, one of the best homes is a Unitarian Universalist congregation . . . If . . . we can awaken to how big the tent must be.
This is the wisdom of the idea of covenant embedded so deeply in Unitarian tradition. “We need not think alike to live alike,” is the sentiment, even if no one famous ever actually said it.
Treating others as we would have them treat us—or, better, treating others as they would wish to be treated—isn’t so easy. The challenge is subjective: how the heck do we know how someone wishes to be treated?
Well, there is that thing called compassion.
In the Unitarian Universalist tradition we say that everyone has “inherent worth and dignity.” I would propose that this is how we treat our neighbor (and fellow congregants): as if that person has inherent worth and dignity. Then, we may go a step further and learn what that worthy and dignified person wants and needs.
But . . . What if I know better? I mean, really—what if I know darn well that I know better than my neighbor what my neighbor needs?
Party Foul! What you or me or anyone knows is always and only our subjectivity. Where you get your religious jolt. How you do your DIY religion.
You don’t know about your neighbor in the pew until you ask.
Furthermore, words matter. For example, for many people the word “family” does not have a warm and fuzzy feel to it. We do well to use care when we call a congregation a family.
And, no, “Amazing Grace” did not “save a wretch like me.” The apparatus that produced “Amazing Grace” enslaved my forebears for generations. And Jesus? His incarnation as “the body of Christ” in the church has been cruel to many of us. Not warm and fuzzy at all.
That’s two for instances. There are more . . . . More instances of oppression and exclusion.
Monarchy, Malarky
Unitarian minister John Dietrich, the founder of religious humanism, believed that a democratic society would create a democratic religion. After all, evidence suggests that religions reproduce in their structures and theologies the political and social structures in which they develop.
To see this, we only need go so far as a comparison of Judaism and Christianity. As anyone familiar with the Hebrew book of Judges or 1 Samuel knows, the ancient Hebrew tribes were highly suspicious of monarchy. Hebrew tradition reveals that mistrust, even though the Hebrews flirted with monarchy in the time of King David and the subsequent temple at Jerusalem. (Speaking of disasters!)
Christianity, the child of Judaism, early fell in thrall to the structures and attitudes of the Roman empire. The bowing and hierarchy that is so much a part of European monarchy and much of Christian worship is foreign to the Jewish tradition. And it feels less and less OK to many of us living in liberal democracies.
John Dietrich, and other humanists of the 1930s, thought that the monarchical model of the Christian tradition would disappear in the democratic age.
And it has, to a great extent. If it hadn’t, there wouldn’t be any DIY religion.
The only religion that will ever make sense to you—when you’re not going along to get along—is that one that you have arrived at by choice, in your own thoughts and your own integrity.
Religious experience is subjective. Personal. Forcing it on others is a party foul and a Golden Rule violation.
The Short Shelf Life of European Christianity
Reflect on this: of the people in the United States today, how many had Christianity forced upon their forebears?
Answer: Nearly everyone who lived outside of the Mediterranean basin in the 300-500s CE.
Reflect on this: how many of those who became Christian outside of the Mediterranean basin had a choice in the matter?
Did the British? Did the Irish or Welsh? Did the Germans or Norwegians or Poles or Swedes or Swiss or . . . ?
Nope. Most of the population in Europe had no choice. The choice was made for them by the ruling elites.
How about the Africans brought forcibly into the Western Hemisphere?
Nope.
The native peoples of the Western Hemisphere?
Nope. No choice.
For millions upon millions of people, Christianity was not a choice. Should we wonder then that so many of their children abandon an imposed religion as soon as secular governments and social expectations allow?
For most of us living in the Western Hemisphere, Christianity is an overlay, not a deep tradition. A Mediterranean imposition, not a value system that matches the flora and fauna and mores that most of us were born into.
Malcolm X taught this, but his words have not been heeded.
Pagans in the UU movement have been pointing this out for some time. In my congregation, the Jews, Hindus, pagans, and Muslims and atheists and others and more cry out . . . when will we be free?
When will we build that land, that inclusive place that is actually inclusive, the includes not just Christians but others?
Despite Liberation Theology, the Social Gospel, and the Emergent Church, Christian ritual and theology is the theology and ritual of oppression for many of us.
Yes, those lively spirituals subvert the dominant paradigm and reveal the ugly truth of oppression. But isn’t it time we sing a new freedom song? Isn’t it time we subvert the most dominant of paradigms—Christianity itself?
And then there is the inclusion of Christians too.
Think hevy. Think micro-brew. And DIY.
What if Unitarian Universalist congregations were actually, truly, a big tent where all are welcome, not just the Christians? Not just the humanists?
Can I have an “ameen”?
Some of us will not worship any prophet or any god, no matter what the cost. Where might we find a home?
How about a really big tent for the future?
Photo credit: The copyright on this image is owned by Simon Johnston and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
The Journey is Essential
On the verge of two weeks of study leave, I offer this ancestor wisdom to the world:
Journey with peace, courage, mercy, compassion, and love beloveds. And may our dreams be realized…
Keep the Faith
This morning I tended to my garden and that of an elder neighbor. Walking back into my home for a second cup of coffee, I realized that I felt more like a grounded, alive human being than I have in a while. In the past few weeks, the phone has rung repeatedly, bearing news of grief and sorrow or rage at yet another systemic injustice personally harming a beloved. So many people and so many places suffering all at once… And so I have remembered to return to the garden, to keep faith with the source of life, as I continue to live and minister in this beautiful, wounded world.
I hold this sustaing wisdom from Rebecca Parker (Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now) in my heart and I share it with you today.
To keep faith with the source of life, knowing that we are not our own and that Earth made us; to keep faith with the community of resistance, never forgetting that life can be saved from that which threatens it by even small bands of people choosing to put into practice an alternative way of life; and to seek and even deeper awareness of that which springs up inwardly in us. Even when are our hearts are broken by our own failure or the failure of others, even when we have done all we can and life is still broken, there is a universal love that has never broken faith with us and never will.
You are not alone, beloved. Keep the faith. And keep in touch…
Salvation Hits the Couch
Buddhism had been known in the United States since the mid-Nineteenth Century, but really came into its own with the return of Pacific War vets who had spent some time in Japan. (The creation of Red China insured that Chinese Buddhism would not be generally available to the Western World for some time.) One of the aspects of Buddhism that attracted post-War interest is that it is based more in psychology than in theology. Buddhism—at least in the Zen form that came back with those vets—is about practice, not theory. The practice is learning to watch one’s own thoughts and the realization that these thoughts can be changed.
Zen Buddhism might have remained just another exotic thing that came back from the war, something like samurai swords, if not for what was already beginning to happen in Western thought—the suspicion that religion and psychology are more or less the same thing, working the same ground. Monotheist religions can give you salvation; psychology can give you . . . self-actualization. And this idea was coming from different directions at the same time—not only humanists were making the argument. Reformed Rabbis agreed. As did many mainline priests and preachers. And then there was the capitalist angle taken by Norman Vincent Peale with his bestselling ideas about positive thinking.
Take for example the work of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a survivor of not one but four of the Nazi death camps. Frankl said, “We give suffering a meaning by our response to it.” Yep: that’s Buddhism. Frankl condemned what in the death camps had been called “give-up-itis.” In the death camps, Frankl realized that those who had the best chance of survival were those who found meaning in the suffering and kept on going. Furthermore, Frankl didn’t push a particular path to meaning. The meaning is personal. Again, a bit like the difference between duty and responsibility—a personal choice made without being pointed in a particular direction by outside authority.
Buddhism had long drawn a distinction between suffering and pain. Pain is what happens to you—it can’t be avoided. Wounds happen. But suffering is what you think about the pain. “This is happening to me because . . .” “This always happens to me because . . .” “You are doing this to me because . . .” All of that is negative meaning making. Those are ways of catching a bad case of give-up-itis.
“Salvation” is a hackneyed word. Better to ask, “What will save me?” “What is the source of my suffering and what can give it meaning?”
It’s a truism in looking at prospective seminary students to wonder if they are recent converts to Twelve Step programs. Or newly divorced. Or have recently encountered some other trauma. Are these people signing on to be Karl Jung’s “Wounded Healers.” I’m certainly not saying that’s a bad thing. It’s a natural human thing: Here is my wound; here is my suffering; where is the meaning? Then: How can I help others who have been through what I’ve been through and worse?
And here’s the biggest paradox of it all: just as meaning and responsibility are choices arrived at from individual lives, they are about sharing. Sharing with other human beings.
Isn’t it amazing that—no matter what may happen to us—we can be confident that there are people who will take care of us? This is confidence in the human spirit. It is a religion (if you will) not of victimhood and suffering but of creativity and compassion.
![By Vicki Nunn (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/uucollective/files/2014/05/Lounge_70s.jpg)
Too Much Noise
In the stillness and the quiet
The house is still and quiet. The only sounds are the low gurgle of the fish tank filter and my fingers tapping on the computer keys. The soft light of morning is just creeping over the pine trees out my back window and the streets are blanketed in just enough darkness that the cars outside my front window drive with their lights on.
In a few minutes, the house will be a flurry of activity. The boys will stumble down the stairs with messy hair and hungry stomachs. The dogs will need to go out. Cereal will be poured. Showers will be turned on. Coffee will be brewed, the dishwasher unloaded.
But for now, for a few more moments, the house is still and quiet.
As a child, I could never understand why my mom didn’t like the television and the radio on when we were at home. “Too much noise,” she would tell me.
Too much noise?, I pondered incredulously. How is that possible?
But now, now I get it.
There is just too much noise.
Noise on the television, noise in our workplaces, noise outside our car windows. Noise in the media and magazines, noise on Facebook and Instagram. Noise coming from internal pressures to do more and be more. Noise telling us to do this or be that. Noise complaining about this issue or that problem. Too much noise filling up space in our heads and blocking out sounds in our hearts.
Too.Much.Noise.
Lately I find myself craving less noise, and more sounds. More laughter and listening to the voices that really count. More music. More meditation, prayer and reflection, more awareness and gratitude, more stillness and quiet.
Clumsy feet are thundering down the stairs now; the morning frenzy is about to begin. Maybe you are already in the midst of your own frenzy.
We can never completely block out the noise, of course, nor do I think that we should. But maybe we could all use a little less noise? And a little more sound?
So here’s my wish for the day: May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference between the noise and the sounds. May we learn to hear our own strong and true voice inside, and may we have the courage to listen to it. And may we all have a few moments of stillness and quiet.
How do you quiet the noise?
*****
Note: This post originally appeared on the author’s website.
Rest Easy
The high April winds blowing damage across the US this week also blew something into town that my lungs are treating as poison. This morning I face the day with more empathy and exhaustion than I have known in a while.
To everyone who struggles with their own health through the quiet hours, may you feel the love and support of your community.
To everyone who serves babies, elders, or the ill through the night, may you know that your efforts matter.
To everyone who sleeps through the night, may you remember to have compassion for those who do not.
Be well, beloveds. Rest easy when you can and know, when you cannot, that you are not alone.
Simple Prayer, Profound Meditation
please… please.. please…please.
I whispered the words softly, quietly.
As I stood in the bridal waiting room at the back of the church, ten years ago, ready to step out to a church filled with family and friends where my soon-to-be-husband was standing at the altar, I breathed those simple words.
Please. Please. Please.
I chanted the words silently, but strongly.
The words were half prayer, holding a sea of emotions, hopes, and fears. Not a prayer for divine intervention, but rather an appeal for serenity, strength, and mindfulness. As one of the most basic religious exercises, prayer has been shown to improve calmness, by strengthening brain regions that foster compassion and by calming brain regions linked to fear and anger.
And the words were also half mantra meditation, helping to calm my mind – my monkey mind, as Buddhists call it. Derived from the Sanskit work for “mind tool,” mantra meditation involves chanting a single word or phrase in order to focus the mind. Eventually the mind focuses more on the rhythm of the words, and less on the words themselves.
Please.
Please don’t let me trip walking down the aisle.
Please don’t let me break into uncontrollable sobbing.
Please let my husband feel as sure about this day as I am.
Please.
Please let this be more than just the wedding I dreamed of, but also the marriage that we both deserve.
Please make us family.
Please give me strength.
Please give us strength.
Please.
Please…such a simple word, but a profound word. As I chanted that simple word in sighs and whispers, the clouds of nervousness, anxiety, and worry parted. The rays of strength, confidence, hopefulness, and faith shone down.
Please…the holiest of prayers because what follows can contain the depths of our heart. The Spirit knows what follows that little word please. The Divine knows the unspoken that lies hidden in sighs and tears and deep breaths, even if we don’t.
Please...my favorite prayer, my truest prayer.
And thank you. The only response that ever seems appropriate for all that the Spirit bestows.
**********
How do you pray? What is your favorite prayer?
**********
This post originally appeared on the author’s website here.