Being and Doing, Work and Spiritual Practice
Last week I attended an interesting conference called Wisdom 2.0, about the convergence of technology and spirituality. To say it was interesting is an understatement: For this Midwesterner, listening to folks from the tech industry was fascinating, and the collection of spiritual teachers and industry leaders was artful. (You can watch what happened at Wisdom2summit.com.)
We heard from the folks who started up or lead massively successful technological companies—Google, Twitter, some new ones I hadn’t heard of—talk about how spirituality, and particularly mindfulness meditation, yoga, and service projects are part of their corporate environments. I was inspired.
I was also a little disoriented, and a little uneasy. With all of the talk of spiritual path, of wisdom, there was no talk at all about spiritual community. While we understood that some of the spiritual speakers came out of, and indeed dedicated their lives to, sustaining spiritual community, the talks seemed to suggest that wisdom was something attained by individuals who were devoted to meditation. The only spiritual community lifted up, in fact, was the workplace. Apparently on the job meditation and yoga cuts down on absenteeism and lifts productivity, while also providing health benefits for practitioners.
Pardon me if I don’t think workplaces really qualify as spiritual community. I say this as someone whose own workplace is a church, where I am a minister. Even this church does not qualify as spiritual community for me or the rest of the staff, though our work is spiritual in nature, and involves creating spiritual community for others. Every minister and religious professional knows that we must, ultimately, find somewhere else to ground ourselves and be able to embody the full mess we are, rather than believing our church is there to fulfill our needs. I’m not saying that being with the people in my church is not joyful, rewarding, deeply nurturing. But it’s not where I show up with all of my own stuff to work out. To believe otherwise is a recipe for misery for all of us.
And it’s not that spiritual communities don’t also need to raise money, either. We may be non-profits but we do need to be sustainable. So it’s not as if the concept of bringing in money is dirty or evil or wrong. I’m just a zealot for clear missions, and I think that the mission of for-profit companies is to succeed financially and the mission of congregations is to minister to a broken world. When congregations become centrally focused on raising money, they are not true to mission. And when corporations become centrally focused on the spiritual practice of their employees—well, I don’t think they ever really will.
When I realized that the workplace was being touted as the place to meditate and do spiritual practice, and when I kept hearing business leaders exclaim how this time was good for profits and the bottom line, part of me was afraid. As I write this blog, I’m waiting for some help from an airline which has let me down yet again with bad service. This airline used to be a different company—one dedicated to amazing customer service and care. After a hostile takeover, those same employees who used to do contortions to please the customers must look us in the eye and say there’s nothing they can do to help us. With or without hostile takeovers, I fear this could happen to any company as management discovers anew what actually helps the bottom line, and decides that it’s not spiritual practice after all. Far better to be part of a community which doesn’t care if you are a vice president or a mailroom clerk; they know you only as someone with a compelling spiritual practice. Far better, I believe, to belong to a spiritual community with the sole mission of being a spiritual community.
I loved the conference and learned a great deal. And I suspect I’ll go back next year. Next year, though, I’ll be more intentional and proactive about sorting through the folks present to find others who, like me, are interested in developing spiritual community with the bottom line of spiritual awakening, service, and joy.
High Resolve
“Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.” ~ Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman
Carnival has passed. Mardi Gras is over for another year. We are now well into Lent. In the coastal south, even faith communities that do not celebrate Lent, the time of reflection and repentance before the celebration of sacrifice and resurrection, become attuned to the lenten rituals their Christian neighbors.
In her article Lenten Disciplines, Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger wrote:
While Lent does not have the same meaning in a Unitarian Universalist setting that it does in an orthodox Christian context, it is not meaningless. Each and everyone of us is called (by God, the Spirit, our Higher Power, our Better Nature) to be our very best self, a self we often fall short of, sometimes even intentionally. “Giving up something for Lent” does not have to mean that we sacrifice something we love and enjoy (like chocolate, for example) but can be a healthy spiritual discipline leading to our betterment, to our reaching closer to that wholeness we all seek.
Whether or not you religiously observe the season of Lent, as Unitarian Universalists we are always called to a healthy spiritual discipline that heals the brokenness of our lives and our world.
In this time of contemplation, we are invited to re-center ourselves and our spiritual communities. We are invited to ask:
What’s in our heart?
What’s our vision, our passion?
What brings us joy?
Where are our strongest relationships?
What promises do we keep?
How are we called to nurture and heal our world?
“In the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar,” may we be mindful of our moments of High Resolve that we may not forget that to which our lives are committed.
Blessed be, beloveds.
Paying Attention Again
“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake. . . .Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Henry David Thoreau
Last June, I posted about paying attention, and I am writing about it again today. Have you heard the sayings that psychotherapists and ministers share what they need to hear and to learn? I know that when I am awake and paying attention life is better. I am more alive. Often, I send my consciousness into the future. I worry about my to do list or think about what we might do next year. Sometimes I let my mind be so busy that I forget to eat. I might drop things or have small accidents. My husband and daughter like to tease me about the time that I spilled coffee on our kitchen ceiling! When I do pay attention to this very moment, I am more present and more alive. With awareness, I can make conscious choices and feel more peaceful.
In my congregation on Sunday, we each meditated with a small river stone. I asked folks to really observe the stone, to see its colors, and to feel its textures and its weight. I asked them to truly pay attention to the small and simple stone. Then I asked them to allow the stone to share its wisdom or to send them a message. I asked them to remember that the stone is part of the holiness of the universe, part of the interdependent web of existence just as we are.
Then I asked them to call a word or phrase from the stone into the room. Here is what they said:
Slow down
Hope
Worn by water
Balance
Peace
Rest
Energy
Friend
Faith
Lasting
Exquisite
Smooth and easy
Solid
Antiquity
Character
Warm
Refuge
Just right
From slowing down and paying attention to a simple object, people became aware of beauty and strength. Through that focus, some of them noticed what they needed in their own lives. There is nothing magical in this. It is simply slowing down and paying attention.
May you be awake and aware in your life.
Happy New Year!
The New Year is, of course, traditionally the time for making resolutions. Consequently, January 2nd is traditionally the day when we start breaking those resolutions. Strangely, it turns out that more often than not, we are very much the same people at the start of a new year that we were at the end of the last one. Writing a new number at the top of our checks seems to provide strangely little in the way of deep motivation to give up all of our faults and failings. And really, isn’t it all too easy to find time to ineffectually meditate on all the things in life that we should do better? I don’t really need a sign from the calendar to tell me that I should be more organized, that I shouldn’t lose patience with my teenager, that I should stop eating sweets, etc., etc. I can turn to a wide variety of magazines and websites for advice on being thinner, working more effectively, parenting with greater wisdom and generally being a new and improved model of who I am. I confess to being something of a sucker for those internet lists of the 10 foods to eat or avoid, 9 ways to communicate better with your child, 8 ways to spice up your relationship, 7 ways to look younger, and so on through the partridge in the pear tree.
If good advice and good intentions really made us better, we’d all be pretty much perfect by now. No dice. So I guess it’s a bit ironic that I want to offer you a bit of advice. For what it’s worth. Here goes: Who and what you are is basically fine. And you’re never going to be perfect. How do I know? Because if you are reading this there’s a pretty good chance that you’re a human being. And so the odds are astronomically high that you are both good and imperfect like the rest of us. I’m not saying that you can’t or won’t change—I see people change all the time, sometimes even for the better.
I just don’t think that what makes people change very often includes the many kinds of self-loathing that we are invited to take down from the shelf on New Year’s Eve. Really, has standing in front of the mirror and staring at your saggy bits ever bumped you into a lifestyle of healthy eating and vigorous exercise? So how, then, do we change?
Years ago I heard a speech given by a successful mayor, in which he talked about finding “pockets of health,” and building on those, to the point that the whole city was transformed. You might find a pocket of health in a school that is truly serving its students, a thriving shopping district or a neighborhood where community thrives because people can walk to what they need. By learning from what worked, and encouraging those pockets of health to grow, gradually the city became healthier and healthier.
I don’t know the first thing about government or city planning, but that makes sense to me. Rather than beating ourselves up about everything we do badly, why not focus on growing the things that are good? A few years ago I made my best New Year’s resolution ever. It included only two words: “More dancing!” (OK, two words and a bit of punctuation. The exclamation point was part of the resolution.)
Some years before, my wife and I had started contra dancing, and loved the music and the energy and the community and the feel of moving our bodies through space. The whole experience was pleasurable. It was also good exercise, and not particularly expensive. It was, in short, a pocket of health in our lives. All we needed was more. And so we resolved that when the opportunity to dance came up, we would take it. We started going to dance weekends, and traveling farther afield than our local dance.
And so we met more people who became our good friends. We brought home CDs of music that made us smile. We developed the aerobic capacity to dance for hours on end because we simply didn’t want to stop. We felt more and more competent on the dance floor, enjoying a sense of mastery (of an admittedly simple form). The pocket of health grew.
It didn’t make us perfect. I’m still disorganized, and I still lose my temper with the eye-rolling teenager. But it made life better. More fun. More connected. More energized. More…soulful.
So that’s my advice for the New Year. Think about what feels like a pocket of health in your life—something that gives you deep pleasure. Maybe it’s playing with your grandchildren or walking in the hills or reading science fiction or keeping a journal or growing flowers or snuggling your cat or bouncing on a trampoline or cooking Thai food or singing jazz standards or any of the wonderful range of things that people do because they want to do them. And when you know what that joyful , healthful thing is, resolve to do it some more. Give it your attention. Honor and preserve the time that you devote to it. Allow it to grow. Celebrate that you are tending to your soul, and allow that pocket of health to leave you open to encouraging the growth of the souls around you.
What a Day for a Daydream!
It turns out I’m not as good at daydreaming as I used to be. When I was about nine, my mother would have to physically rouse me from my bed, not because I was sleeping, but because I was spending happy hours imagining my life as Mrs. Paul McCartney.
My fantasies involved boats, castles, me on stage at Beatles concerts—that is, ‘me’ bearing no physical resemblance to any adult I might ever grow up and become. I was devastated when, one day, somehow, I let my dream slip out and my older brother said scornfully, “Why would Paul McCartney marry a nine year old in Akron, Ohio?”
After that I got more realistic. I moved on to George Harrison, the youngest Beatle. Perhaps that first ‘realistic’ decision was the beginning of the demise of my fantasizing prowess.
Because these days, it turns out, I’m no good at daydreaming at all. Over the years I’ve gotten much better at planning, and actually executing plans. I’ve moved across country, switched jobs, launched projects, had a wedding, adopted a kid—done all kinds of other things that took hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny acts and choices, promptly scratched off my to-do list. But somewhere in there, daydreaming fell off the table.
I didn’t know how bad I’d gotten at it until my spiritual teacher gave me an assignment this week. Take time each day, she said. Stare into space. Daydream. Imagine what would be most fulfilling, delicious, inspiring, to do and to be. It doesn’t matter if you’ll never do it, if no one ever could. Just see what you imagine! Find your young self, see through her eyes!
What once would have been a breeze is now really hard. Back then, along with being tall and willowy and beautiful, and marrying a Beatle, I had every intention of being super-wealthy, being a famous writer, traveling to the most exotic places. Now my rational mind jumps right in. Super-wealthy? I say? You want to be part of the one percent? And instead of enjoying, even for a moment, some delicious luxury vacation, or even the philanthropist I might become, I am fuming about the ‘fiscal cliff’ and drafting imaginary letters to Congress. Word by word.
I think what my spiritual teacher is pointing me to (though she is a bit cryptic and never says why she gives me the particular assignments she does) is to find joy in the longing itself. To allow the imagining to take on a life of its own, but primarily to allow that quality of desire and longing to truly take root in me, until I remember what my young self knew—that we are made to dream, as well as to act.
So, here’s what I’ll do, needing structure to help me out. I’m piling up all of the magazines, random bits of ribbon or paper and 2012 calendars in the house, which I would otherwise be recycling as I clean up the holiday wreckage. I picture looking through all of the materials with one focus—to find items which evoke longing in me, which provoke desire, even if I’m not sure exactly why!
After I gather up images, words, whatever I want—ribbons, sheets of color, fabrics, who knows? I’ll piece them together to see how they fit, to see what shapes they make.
And then, at the end of the day, I’ll have—I don’t know what!!! A jumbled mess? A picture of young Paul McCartney, back when he was cuter than a puppy? What I hope to have is a little bit of a snapshot about what longing feels like in me, so that I can begin to recognize its voice when it whispers in my ear. So that I can become a respectful vessel for my heart’s deepest longings. So I get better at this again.
On New Years’ Day, I plan to go through my usual practice, with friends, of making gratitude boards for the year that’s over, and a vision board for the year that’s coming—same process of cutting and pasting, but with a very different focus as I look through my materials. This time, celebrating 2012 and envisioning things I actually hope and plan to do in 2013.
I’m going to be really curious to see what effect, if any, my extra session of fantasizing has on the visioning process. The fun thing about creative experiments is that you can never guess their results!
However you see in 2013, however you imagine it and live it, may it be full of blessings for you and yours. See you next year!
Love & Grief: Two Sides of the Same Coin
One night as the on-call hospital chaplain, I witnessed the end of three marriages, each representing over 50 years of love and struggle, as death claimed the husbands. The depth of grief of each wife haunted me for days. Was this the price of great love? Such great pain? This is what I have to look forward to after years of joy with my beloved?
I found myself restlessly meditating, pacing and praying, trying to unpack the promise of pain. In a sudden flash of insight, I realized that grief and love are two sides of the same coin – AND this is not cause for despair.
Life is about spending that coin. Loving with all my heart, grieving what is lost along the way, and loving more.
I learned to find gifts in sorrow, learning in the bad times. Hope.
I do not grieve what I do not love. Great grief is a sign of great love – and great love is a gift beyond compare. When my parents die, if they die before I do, I will mourn deeply, painfully, for years. Just the thought of not being able to call my mom and dad is enough for tears to spring to my eyes some days. But I have stood with children who do not mourn the loss of their parents, who mourn more for the lack of love they felt as a child than for the grief of their parents’ death. So I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that love is the gift. I would far rather mourn the loss of a great love, than have no love to grieve.
This really is hope for me. Not that loss is inevitable, no – but that if I love with all my being, the grief will be sharp and deep and clean. The pain will be intense and there will ever be an ache – but an ache of life well loved, not the ache of regrets nor of despair. I look to the beautiful and the sweet, because it will always lift me towards hope. The price of love is steep, but it is nothing compared to the life sucking numbness of not loving, not caring, not trying.
The great deception is that there is safety – that we can protect ourselves or our loved ones from harm. The truth is that life is mystery, change is constant, control is a figment of the human imagination. When I can be present to the truth that nothing is promised – all life is gift, then despair has a harder time getting a grip in my psyche. Each involuntary and thoughtless breath is amazing, is unearned and unearnable. Grace, by another name.
Years ago, I read the words of Anne Lamott, “I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” “Ah,” said my soul. “Yes!” My source of hope lies in that mystery. I trust the universe to be endlessly creative, to be rife with paradox, to seek generativity. Life will! In the most inconceivable places and times and situations, life insists most creatively and assertively. And death will too. Two sides of the same coin, much like love and grief.
And so, I live holding all that I love lightly and tightly.
Lightly enough that it may take its own path, tightly enough that it never doubts my love.
It is a spiritual practice.
It is a daily struggle.
It is a daily joy.
Voting as Spiritual Practice, as a Neighborly Act…
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
~ Wendell Berry ~
On this eve of a national election, so many conversations begin with “well, depending on who wins the election, …” In our representative democracy, a lot does depend on who wins elections.
Because of how the presidential election is decided, via the electoral college, it can feel as if your vote doesn’t count, especially if you tend to vote the opposite slate from the majority of voters in your state. I have heard more than a few people wonder out loud if they will even vote this year “since their vote won’t count anyway.”
What is imperative to remember during these bouts of feeling disenfranchised is that your local votes also change the world. It matters who sits on the city council seat, who becomes judge, whether that change to the city charter or the state constitution becomes law. It matters in daily life to real people.
Detention policies, educational opportunities, the right to marry – all of this is decided by voting at the local level. The roots of change have always been local. So read up about the local issues. Discuss them with your peers. And then vote, if you can, my friends. Think of it as a spiritual practice: Read, Reflect, Act.
Our votes matter very much to our neighbors and our selves. May this weekend be a time of spiritual practice for you as you prepare to vote for the sake of your local community next week.
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?)
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.
That’s What Bearing Witness Is…
Let go of what you know
and honor what exists
Son, that’s what bearing witness is
Daughter, that’s what bearing witness is
~ David Shannon Bazan, Bearing Witness
Less than 15 miles away from the city of New Orleans as the crow flies – or 25 miles if you drive along the every curving Mississippi River – there is a parish (county) called Plaquemines. From the town of Braithwaite to White Ditch, water flowed in over top the river levee just over a month ago. Hurricane Isaac slowly swirled across southeastern Louisiana on the 7 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Flood of 2005. When the city of New Orleans stayed dry and the power was restored within a week, most of us breathed a sigh of relief and tried to pick up where we had left off – beginning new school years and new jobs, or simply a new season, transitioning from summer to autumn.
On the long stretch of road along the east bank of the Mississippi River, it was another week before the water drained away. Still today the houses, tombs, and trees washed over the road are being cleared away. You have to see it to believe it. And few people have seen it. It’s a rural commuter community downriver. New Orleans did not flood. Next news story.
Driving along highway 39 with Rev. Tyrone Edwards, I was reminded again of the importance of bearing witness. It restores us to our humanity, to our connection with all that is. It is certainly spiritual practice.
I knew from talking on the phone to partners in the area that the situation on the ground was intense. In addition to houses, cemeteries, and trees uprooted and washed around, dead animals and rotten fruit had to be cleared off of the roads before people could return home – or at least return to where their home had been. It was so hard to imagine that only a half hour outside of my (fairly) functional city, there was utter devastation for hundreds of families, homes, farms, and an ecosystem. I had to travel there, to bear witness to what exists.
So it is with many things, the importance of this journey to bear witness – white people doing the hard work of letting go of what white people “know” to acknowledge and begin to undo the racism that exists, men letting go of their conditioning of superiority to honor the truth of women’s long struggle within sexism, heterosexuals realizing that there are other ways to love, cis-gendered people recognizing that trans-gendered people are living their own truths…when we are willing to let go of what we know and honor what exists, we bear witness to some extraordinary truths.
On Thursday, I journeyed over a bridge, through a tunnel, and on a ferry to bear witness to a community bearing the consequences brought about by forces beyond their control – coastal erosion, chemical spills, underfunded engineering, climate change… As the ferry pulled away, taking me back to the city, a brilliant rainbow arced over the flooded gas station where I had met Rev. Tyrone Edwards earlier in the day. While there is no Genesis promise that Plaquemines Parish will not be flooded again, the rainbow is still a symbol of promise. We can offer the promise of bearing witness to each other – letting go of what we know and honoring what exists. This is what bearing witness is, beloveds. May we find the courage every day to make the journey.