Run for Your Life!
I have always been fairly athletic, and I enjoy playing a good game that gets my blood pumping. But I loathe exercise. I’ll run all day long if I’m on a court or a playing field, but ask me to run to get or stay in shape and I’ll kindly decline. I’ve tried several times in my life to become a runner, hoping to experience that “runner’s high” that I’ve heard so much about. In fact, when the running craze first hit the East Coast in the early ’70’s, I was among the first to buy a pair of bright blue Nike’s with the yellow swoosh on the side and take to the roads. I lasted about three weeks before pain and boredom overcame me. Two to three weeks seemed to be my limit every time I tried to get on the running bandwagon.
Then early this summer my daughter called and told me she had started the “Couch to 5k” program, and that I should try it too. I was skeptical, but she was persistent. “It’ll be fun,” she said. “Right,” I replied. “Like pulling fingernails is fun.” Eventually, she wore me down and I decided I’d give it a try. “C25k” (as we in the know call it) is an interval training program that starts off with lots of walking and a little running. By the end of nine weeks, you’re not walking at all, and you’re running the full 3+ miles.
I’m proud to say that I have stuck with the program and am now a “C25k” graduate, and that I’ve kept up my running since completing the program. My daughter and I have started looking for a 5K race we can enter together to celebrate our accomplishment.
But the truth is that I still find running really boring. I run a 3 mile loop around town that keeps me mostly on residential streets and a couple of busier roads. I was told that running on pavement is easier on your joints and muscles than running on the concrete sidewalks. So, when it’s not too narrow or busy, I opt to run in the road (always facing oncoming traffic as I was taught in grade school). I watch the oncoming cars carefully, to be sure that they see me and keep a safe distance. When a car gives me a wide berth, I usually give a little wave to acknowledge the driver’s awareness and kindness.
Lately, I’ve developed this little interchange between drivers and me into a kind of spiritual practice. For the past several runs, I’ve begun to say a small prayer or blessing for each passing motorist. As I wave, I say “May you know peace” or “Know that you’re loved.” I wish health, happiness, peace, love, passion, success, and joy to the occupants of the cars that pass me by. For those drivers who either aren’t watching or don’t care to give me some space, I pray for their attentiveness, their alertness, and their foresight as I hop up onto the curb.
In offering these small blessings to strangers who pass me by, I find that I, too, am blessed. As I pray for these things for others, I am reminded of the joy, peace, love, passion and successes I find in my own life. I experience the blessings of good health, of the air that I breathe in, of the incredible machine my body is. I notice the gifts of the sky, the trees, the wind and the sun.
May you know peace today. May you know that you are loved. May you feel joy. And may you find, in some small way, the opportunity to wish that for others as you go about your day.
Love,
Peter
It Could Have Been Otherwise
We spent the Fourth of July like many others do. We got together with family and friends, we had a cookout with way too much food, and we set off some fireworks once it got dark. The family fireworks are always a highlight of the day, and we all anticipated a great show this year. What we didn’t bargain for was the near-disaster they turned into.
As dusk fell the men (family tradition dictates that it’s always the men who prepare and set off the fireworks) brought out boxes and boxes of pyrotechnics (all legal, here in New Hampshire). We sorted through the stash, prepared the fuses, and decided what order we’d shoot them off. The rest of the family, including children, enjoyed blueberry pie and ice cream on the deck overlooking the “launch site.” The first several displays went off without a hitch. And they were met with appropriate “oooh’s” and “aaah’s” from the friendly crowd. As we try to do every year, we started off small, building up to the “big stuff” toward the end.
About halfway through our show, we had a little glitch. As rockets went soaring skyward, a couple, for unknown reasons, shot off to the side. One came buzzing by those of us standing near the pile of un-ignited fireworks. We laughed it off as an abberation and kept going, bringing out the “big guns” as we neared the end of our show. Then, right in the middle of one of the biggest displays we had, the entire thing blew up. It was a massive explosion that sent red-hot rockets sizzling in every direction. Including several that aimed right at the crowd. People dove for cover and ran in every direction. Once the smoke cleared, we took a headcount. Everyone was accounted for and safe. No one was injured by the blast. Never, in all the years of setting off family fireworks, had we had such a close call. (It wasn’t until the next day that we learned that another family suffered a similar malfunction that seriously injured several small children.)
Fortunately, my wife and daughter missed this whole incident. They had decided to drive our grandson home before the show began. But they had a close call of their own. As they rounded a bend in the road, my daughter noticed a large shadow looming off to the left. She slammed on her brakes just as a bull moose, standing as tall as her SUV, loped across the road right in front of them. Her quick reactions averted a disaster that could have led to their serious injury or worse.
After the smoke cleared from the fireworks malfunction and we found out everyone was all right, and later when I heard of my daughter and wife’s close call with the moose, I breathed a sigh of relief and uttered a silent “thank you” to the Universe that our family was intact, safe and sound. In both cases, it could so easily have been otherwise.
Close calls and near misses remind us of how precious, and how precarious, our lives are. And gratitude is the appropriate response to these reminders. It doesn’t matter to whom or what you pray your prayer of thanksgiving, or that you even call it a prayer at all. Whether or not you believe that it is “God’s will” that you or a loved one avoided tipping over into the abyss, or that it was fate, or plain, old dumb luck, we can’t help but give thanks that we and our loved ones are here to greet another sunrise.
The writer Jane Kenyon expresses this sentiment in her poem “Otherwise.”
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birchwood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
On the Fourth of July it could so easily have been otherwise. Someday it will be so, for me and mine, and for you and yours. For all the days until it is, let us experience and express our gratitude.
Peace,
Peter
Fear and Love at Tent City
There is a protest at Tent City tonight, the place where Sherriff Joe Arpaio holds thousands of immigrants in his self described ‘concentration camp.’ Where there is never any relief from the Arizona heat, where humiliation is a daily occurrence.
I’m with my people, in our bright yellow Standing on The Side of Love shirts that match the school buses that take us there, Unitarian Universalists in Phoenix for our annual convention. There are hundreds of us going, a couple of thousand maybe, mostly white, middle class, documented. And yet I am afraid.
I’m afraid because I’ve heard there will be counter-protestors, militia folks maybe, perhaps with the weapons which are legal to carry in Arizona. I’m afraid because it’s so hot, because I’m not exactly Olympics material in my physical fitness, because I am taking a teenaged child whose safety means everything to me.
And then, as we sit in worship and prayer, preparing to go, speakers from the local Latino community speak. A young woman describes her decision to commit civil disobedience, to be arrested by Sherriff Joe Arpaio, because she is tired of living in fear, of her whole community living in daily fear of being rounded up for real or imagined infractions and thrown into the Tent City, as they have been for the past 20 years. A young man describes arriving in the United States at age one, and now facing deportation –leaving the only country he’s ever known to be sent to one which is foreign to him.
And I begin to feel embarrassed by my fear. Not ashamed, not guilty, just embarrassed. As if I am a kid who grabbed too many cookies off the plate. And I think, this fear that binds us all, this fear of being arrested and humiliated and tortured in our own country: How does that hold us back? How does that diminish us? The young woman who chose to be arrested says, Yes, she was afraid, but she’s been afraid all her life. This arrest, in a way, freed her. I think of the words of the poet Audre Lorde, in her essay which is desert-island-essential to me, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action:
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
As we get into our bright yellow school bus, a minister offers a prayer for our journey. I say to the driver, Are we holding our departure up because we are standing up praying? And she looks up with some annoyance and says, “No! I am praying!” As I begin to lead the crowd off the bus, she says, “Thank you so much for doing this. My husband is in there.”
At Tent City, I don’t see any counter protestors, with or without weapons. I see a small gaggle of brave locals, who have come to thank us for being there. One woman I speak with tells me that her inability to pay for a traffic infraction landed her there for ten days. She describes the endless heat, the lack of adequate drinking water, the horrible food. She says then, tears in her eyes, “My girlfriend is in for a year.”
Another man holds a sign charging Joe Arpaio with homicide. I ask him how many people have died at Tent City. He says at least five. I ask him if his church stands up to speak out about this. He replies sadly, “I am still Catholic but I do not go to church anymore. Most of us don’t. There was one priest who spoke out for us but they got rid of him.”
As I get back on the bus to go back to air conditioned comfort, a shower and clean pajamas, his words stay with me most. I wish that I could have responded, in Arizona or in my own home state of Minnesota, “You would be welcome in my church!” I know that the Phoenix UU church is doing fantastic work to be welcoming, to stand tall as an advocate for justice for immigrants. And yet I know that, while we stand on the side of love, sometimes we stand too far off to the side, in our fear, in our privilege, buffered, unwilling to disrupt our comfort. I offer a silent prayer and wake up this morning with his words still piercing my heart.
(Photos by Jie Wronski-Riley)
Making Room for Silence
In his poem “Keeping Quiet” Pablo Neruda begins with this:
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
As I read it, I am thinking: The well is dry.
Have you had those times in your own life?
Those times when try as you might to find restoration within
there is nothing there
only parched, dry, places, yearning for a drop of something to
make it to the next moment.
It feels crusty doesn’t it?
The incessant rush of activity that pushes from behind
or pulls at us, tugging without ceasing.
“Without ceasing.”
Often, during our morning check-in, my spiritual companion
will set her intention for the day to “pray without ceasing”
borrowing from Annie Dillard.
I have often thought of that prayer as one with words,
whether they are spoken out loud or remain caught in my throat,
swirling in my mind, dancing in my heart…they were always words.
But. Dillard isn’t talking about words.
In fact, she says: “the silence is all there is”
she says “pray to the silence.”
And I think: move right into the silence. Parched and wanting respite from
a life of constant motion.
Recently, I read something that caught my attention:
“Cornelia is ninety-four years old. She is a beloved founding member
of the board of Bread for the Journey.
Every afternoon she rests – if she can, so busy is her daily
schedule of appointments – because when she rests things fall away,
she says, and come clearer.”
Every afternoon, in the midst of her busy daily schedule, she rests.
She pauses
She restores
She, in the silence, makes room for stresses to fall away.
For life to grow clearer.
That…working and resting every day is a recipe for
nourishing the soul…
Is a kind of praying without ceasing.
Using the hands and heart;
welcoming the stillness,
the silence.
Neruda, says it this way as he closes his poem:
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Sex and War: Thoughts on Memorial Day Weekend
For Sunday, May 27th, I titled the worship service at the Church of the Restoration, “Sex and War: Love and Hope.” My title mostly came from a 2008 book by Malcolm Potts and Tom Hayden, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World. It’s a very interesting book, but not what I am thinking about this afternoon. When I arrived at the church today, the lovely man who changes the lettering on our sign had put these words, “Sex and War or Love and Hope.”
The sign startled me. It just wasn’t at all how I thought about the relationships between these four things. Now, like many ministers, I am the kind of person who when surprised by something just starts thinking about it. Some of my family members say (kindly, usually) I think too much about strange things! One of my colleagues recently bemoaned the fact that anything can become a story for a sermon or a blog. We observe ourselves and we observe our own thinking. My friend would like to just be in the experience, and there is certainly something to appreciate about being in the moment, in the flow. In fact, much of spiritual practice is designed to help us to be “in this very moment.” Still, there is also much to appreciate about observing ourselves, especially observing ourselves without judgment but with curiosity.
When something startles us, when two unusual things come together in our minds, we can be opened to creativity, new ways of seeing things or new questions. So, when I saw the sign, I thought, “What was he thinking when he put the word “or” on the sign?” Very briefly, I wondered if I should ask him to change it but thought, “No, it’s kind of provocative that way. What will passersby think that it means?”
I thought that the wording seemed to put a negative implication toward sex. Now, this might be true of some ministers and some churches, but is not at all true for this minister. I think sex is a vital, essential part of life and indeed can not only be deeply loving but also deeply spiritual. Well that thought lead me to think about the relationship between war and love and hope. It seems to me that it is complicated.
I have known loving warriors. I live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania which is the home of the Army War College; colonels come to Carlisle for a year of study. The Carlisle Barracks also houses the Peace Operations Training Institute whose mission is to study peace and humanitarian relief any time, any place. Their mission is in part, “We are committed to bringing essential, practical knowledge to military personnel, police and civilians working toward peace worldwide.”
(www. http://www.peaceopstraining.org/e-learning/cotipso/partner_course/725)
I learned by listening to the colonels. Those colonels who study peace and war are not usually leaders who want to go to war. All of those who go to war often go with love in their hearts: love of family, friends and country. Combat veterans tell us that their actions are motivated by love for their comrades, the “band of brothers, and now sisters,” who are right there beside them. We who stay behind love those who go. We all hope and pray for their safety. We all hope and pray for peace.
Now, my prayer is that there be no more war; my hope that we will all learn to live in peace. My basic stance is that of non-violence and pacifism. I never want people to go to war because they have been intentionally deceived or for corporate profits. But may we never forget the worth and dignity of all, the love and courage of those who go to war and of those who stay behind.
All these thoughts came from seeing the word “or” on our sign, and as it happens, he used that word because we don’t have a colon.
May love, hope and wisdom guide and sustain you.
Rev. Kathy Ellis
Safe Harbor
Press power on the remote control, television on
and every moment of viewing we are confronted with images that shame us into wanting to reject parts of our being
turn our bodies and ourselves into slimmer, younger, lighter, leaner
smarter, whiter, wealthier, straighter versions of our selves.
Magazines tell us what not to wear
along with 7 surprising things that turn guys off
And what men want during the NFL halftime.
Messages crafted to ensure we remember that
who we are – at our core – is not good enough.
//
Would you harbor me?
Would I harbor you?
Asks the Sweet Honey in the Rock song and:
Would you harbor you?
Would I harbor me?
How much time do we spend attempting to do the impossible?
How much energy…how many of our resources do we expend running away
From our bodies
From our identities
Our histories
Our stories…from our very own selves?
How much time, energy, and resources do we spend
not loving our bodies
fearing ourselves because who we are, is not
who we see reflected back at us in “normative” socio-cultural stories and images?
Because we’re actively being conditioned to cling to a mythical norm?
A while back on National Coming Out Day
I decided to feed my facebook obsession
by checking out the page
Wiping Out Homophobia on Facebook
There, in the photo album, I found photo after photo of
same-sex couples laughing, smiling, holding each other
women, men – people – marrying, playing, loving and…
I also found this note from Paul…growing up in a world
in which his identity is continuously questioned and made wrong.
A world in which some who proclaim to speak on behalf of God
advocate death or caging LGBT individuals until we die off
Paul writes:
“I have to tell you that for the past few weeks, I have been pretty low and had pretty dark thoughts about my life and what to do. I had been bullied at school and things got so bad that I thought about doing something really bad.
Well, I talked to you and you told me to join local groups and online groups to get support from people in my age group who know what I was going through.
Well, I joined an LGBT group in the next town and about 8 online. I now have some great new friends in real life and some online who I’ll never met but who I talk to a lot.
I know this is what everyone says, but I don’t feel so alone now, I am not like the only one. …I just thought I’d keep you up to date as you were all so kind to me. Thanks to K. and L. for talking me round and to everyone who said positive things, they really did help.”
This broke my heart…and in some small way, it offered some hope.
In a culture that is slow to extend
safe harbor for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
children, youth, adults – elders…
In a culture that supports heterosexism & homophobia
In a culture that promotes messages of same-sex deviance often enough,
many – especially youth – begin to
internalize that message.
Believe that message.
Begin to question their, my, your, our inherent worth and dignity
It is easy to feel other-ed. To understand others and sometimes oneself as strange, deviant…
It would be effortless to create a list of all the ways we – who are
queer – have contributed to society…have enhanced the world.
It would be easy to catalogue the gifts of all the LGBT “strangers” among us.
And. Here’s the power of affirming the inherent worth and dignity:
It’s inherent. It matters what we do, sure. And, it matters more that
we simply are.
We…any one of us…shouldn’t need to be any more special to be accepted. To be loved.
To be equal.
We only need to be here. To show up. To love…
That’s the nugget of wisdom in the first principle: inherent worth simply “is.”
To love ourselves is the equivalent of a tiny revolution
To love all those unchangeable innate beautiful truths that
make us who we are
and the imperfect pieces and parts that we argue with
That we shove away
That we suppress
That we pretend we feel okay about…
when we embrace all of those parts
and come to see them as holy
it is the equivalent of a tiny revolution.
In her book: All About Love: New Visions,
bell hooks writes:
“When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness,
then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat.
When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear –
against alienation and separation.
The choice to love is a choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other.”
When we’re taught that safety lies in sameness
when we’re taught that the only safe community is
a community of people who look like, dress like, think like we do
When we’re taught that only certain body types belong in the public sphere
When we’re taught that only people of certain heights or gender identity
or educational background or sexual orientation are capable of leadership
then we begin to fear everything in ourselves
and subsequently in others – that fail to fit what we’ve been
carefully taught.
We begin to fear everything that differs from the constructed “norm.”
And. What we fear, we seek to destroy.
But, when we – as individuals, as social systems with power,
as a community –
choose to love…move against fear…and connect
with difference, with that which appears to be strange – then
we make room for the Holy to thrive in and amongst us.
The tiny revolution in Paul’s story was just that.
A community that willingly created room for him – holy and inherently worthy –
to show up
Willing to extended safe harbor.
I want it to be true that we can create such harbors for
ourselves and for others.
Holy Curiosity
In the story of the Little Prince,
there is a compelling scene in which he
arrives on a new planet and encounters a businessman.
We know it’s a businessman because he is counting
he is too busy counting to lift his head in response
to the Little Prince’s greeting.
He is behind his desk working on a huge ledger,
counting, much like this:
“Three and two make five. Five and seven make twelve. Twelve and three make fifteen. Fifteen and seven make twenty-two. Twenty-two and six make twenty-eight. Twenty-six and five make thirty-one. Phew! Then that makes five-hundred-and-one-million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one.”
When he takes a breath, the Little Prince asks:
“Five hundred million what?”
It is such a simple question isn’t it?
But, the man, the one counting only responds
to the Little Prince in this way:
“Eh? Are you still there? Five-hundred-and-one million
I can’t stop…I have so much to do! I am concerned with matters of consequence.
I don’t amuse myself with balderdash. Two and five make seven…”
Matters of consequence.
There is he was, behind his desk counting without pause
counting a thing of beauty whose name he could not remember
“The little glittering objects in the sky” he called them.
Stars!
He was counting and recounting stars, gathering them up
by the millions, owning them, banking them in hopes of one day
being rich from selling them.
He was tending to matters of consequence.
The businessman in this story is by no means unique!
When invited into a moment of human connection
When invited to ponder the little glittering…the stars,
to notice and grow playfully curious about them
He declined. He would lose track of counting.
He would have to stop, break away from his ledger, look up
…take in and behold the “little glittering objects in the sky.”
The stuff of dreams…
To take them in would mean opening himself up to
learning more…
He declined because the matters of consequence to which
he was attending were far too important and could not wait.
All questions were interruptions…
All moments of being invited to engage were “balderdash”
he had no use for the person before him seeking
to be in relationship
So it is with all of us sometimes.
We are drawn into important tasks and forget
the whole world around us ready for our curious gaze.
What if we attended to each other….
To those ordinary encounters and conversations with
intrigue?
What if instead of clinging to certainty
we paused and made room for holy curiosity?
The poet Rumi writes:
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all, he says.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.
Every moment, every interruption, has something to offer
something to teach…
The beauty is in being able to greet each new or familiar arrival
with a learning mind rather than a knowing mind.
And, forgive ourselves when we are not able to…
What if you had one moment today in which you were
gently interrupted from “tending to matters of
consequence” or in which you encountered the unfamiliar
What if you paused and viewed that moment as a guest?
An unexpected visitor from whom you had much to learn.
What questions would you ask?
How would you listen?
How would you choose to be?
~ Rev Alicia R. Forde