“We think that honesty and living in truth are better ways to live than propaganda and denial and comforting stories.” –Tom Schade, “Religious Community is Not Enough: Unitarian Universalism’s purpose is much bigger than gathering with like-minded people for mutual support,” UU World Winter 2013.

Earlier this year the Board members of the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal voted unanimously to attend an Undoing Racism training offered by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. While most of the members of the Board consider themselves anti-racist, we are stretching into what it would take to intentionally shape the Center to be an anti-racist institution. A primarily interpersonal understanding of racism limits our collective ability to address institutional, internalized, and ideological racism. With support from the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, the entire Board registered for the November Regional Training in New Orleans.

Beloveds, it is not enough to send off one or two of a congregation’s more social justice-y members to a training and consider the work of anti-racism done. It isn’t even enough to go through a congregation-wide training – once. This system of inequity, so deeply in the bones of our country’s constitution that you can take white people out of leadership and have the system continue to provide a preferential option for whites, requires a diligent commitment to undo.

One white member of the Center’s Board was attending this training for the “umpteenth time” since beginning to attend in the 1980’s and was clear that she would keep coming back. What has been done to us as a nation is a powerful, hypnotic thing. It lets me think, as a white woman, “I worked hard for what I have” and not even begin to reflect on how hard my neighbors of color have worked to have not even half as much.

It is hard to express my gratitude to the members of the Center’s Board for showing up for the training, day after day, for an exercise in living in truth, unpacking and confronting propaganda and denial. And doing it together. While I have attended multiple-trainings as an individual, this is the first one I have attended as an intentional member of a collective – and I experienced this training profoundly differently than the ones before. Instead of getting stuck on my own abilities (and lack thereof), I was able to think about the resources and structures of the organization I was a part of – and this has sent me back into the world with energy and hope.

The strongly individualistic (white) values of this nation will not serve us in the task of undoing the structures of oppression. Dismantling systems of oppression is collective work, friends. Find your collective. It is not enough to be a lone crusader in the work of undoing racism. This position only enforces the structure of isolation, designed to prevent collective organizing. If this is your position, look around. You are not alone. All of our lives are diminished by the structures of racism.

Organize, beloveds. The work will not be done perfectly, but together, we can begin to heal that which is profoundly broken.

Let’s face it, progressives just don’t do fear well. Conservatives go to town with death panels and black helicopters, while progressives build arguments. It’s true in religion; it’s true in politics: progressives live in Reasonville while conservatives scare the hell into people.

Take, for example, Pascal’s Wager, one of the enduring arguments concerning the god concept. Blaise Pascal was a Seventeenth Century French mathematician whose work led directly to probability theory, game theory, and calculus.

Pascal understood that none of the proofs of god held up to logic, so he decided to go in a new direction, employing the nascent field of game theory. What he created is called Pascal’s Wager.

It goes like this:

Like it or not, we are playing a game that is like flipping a coin, heads or tails: either there is a God or there is not a God.

Reason can’t help us in this game–there is no evidence for or against the existence of God.

Each of us must bet: heads or tails. (That’s the logic part.)

Now, argued Pascal, if there is a God and you act as if there is—ding, ding!—you win. Eternal bliss.

Option two: If there is no God but you act as if there is—ding, ding!—you don’t lose anything. You, too, get bliss forevermore.

Option three: If there is a God and you act as if there is not—sad, scary music!—you lose: eternal damnation.

Therefore, the best bet is to act as if there is a God. That’s a great conservative argument.

Now, the biggest hole in Pascal’s logic is explained by the anthropic principle: how likely is it that Pascal, or you, were born in the place and the time that had the formula for “god” just right? Pascal’s unstated assumption is that there is only one type of god possible, the god of Seventeenth Century French Roman Catholicism. Pascal assumed, for example, that the earlier form of Christianity based on Arius is incorrect, and that the Mayan gods, or the Polynesian gods, aren’t capable of rewarding us with eternal bliss or eternal damnation. And so on.

Yet, despite its weakness, versions Pascal’s Wager crop up all the time. Because its real power lies in fear. Our gut tells us losing that particular coin flip would be very bad news indeed.

Pascal’s Wager shows the fault line between progressives and conservatives. Progressives see a problem; we educate ourselves about the problem; we see ways of fixing the problem; then, we think everybody should be convinced by our chain of reasoning. It baffles us that anyone would oppose such a logical position.

Our opponents think that our well-reasoned position will be bad for business. Or that it violates some old social norm or scriptural text. And so, they use the favorite tool in the conservative toolbox: fear.

Let’s face it: fear sells. Logic . . . not so much. We throw up our hands: “Why can’t people just be logical?” Well—we must remind ourselves—because we didn’t evolve that way.

Logic is not our first response to a stimulus. Fight or flight is our first response to a stimulus. Only later does logic become available to us.

Classic example: you’re walking in some tall weeds, you look down, and you see something that looks like a snake.

You get a rush of adrenaline; the hair on your arms stands up; you jump out of the way.

So, you didn’t get bitten by the snake. But, on second look, it turns out that the “snake” was a stick or a piece of rope.

Evolution has wired us to protect ourselves from snakes. We can logic our way out if it, but only with effort. With reason. If you don’t believe me, ask first or second graders living in a city what they’re afraid of. (This has been researched.) You’ll hear about snakes. And lions. And rhinoceroses. And dragons.  It’s unlikely the kids will mention cars; or guns; or viruses, things that are ACTUALLY dangerous. They certainly won’t mention high-fructose corn syrup, which will kill far more of them than even firearms, with the resultant Type II Diabetes.

Fact is, we are not wired to fear what is actually dangerous, because our lives are not as they were in our evolution. Fear has served us well as a species. Fear saves us from snakes. But snakes are not the most dangerous things in our environment any more. And so we sit on hold on the telephone, adrenaline rushing and hair bristling, ready for fight or flight, and all we accomplish is messing up our digestion.

Our brains did not evolve to cope with the world we now live in. Neither did our governments. Governments work best in short-term, fight-or-flight situations. Yet, thinking fast and scared doesn’t solve problems such as global climate change.

We have two very good systems for addressing the realities and the dangers of the world. The problem lies in knowing when to use which . . .

Did Pascal believe his own wager? Hard to say. He did know, however, that a concrete example and a real fear is convincing.

I really do not like waiting. I will put something back on a shelf rather than wait in a long check-out line. I will shop online, choose a different restaurant, come back later, or change my plans altogether to avoid a line.

I hate waiting for a bus too. Why stand and wait when I can start walking now? Usually, the bus passes me as I am chugging along down the street. It does not phase me. At least I didn’t wait, I tell myself. A funny logic, I know.

I remember as a child waiting for special days, like birthdays and Christmas, and feeling as though time was moving as slow as molasses. As a teenager, I would count down days until I could visit out-of-town friends or go to summer camp: month after next, week after next, day after the day after tomorrow. It felt like time crawled until finally it was … today! And somehow, the long-awaited day had arrived.

I am waiting now like I have never waited in my life. Expecting the child that I have carried for the past nine months to come into the world, I cannot make this magical event happen on my timeline. I cannot just set off walking. I cannot make a different choice or come back later.

My spouse and I have waited, counting months and weeks and days, watching my body change, following our baby’s development step by step: organs and fingernails and eyelashes. We have moved from flutters to kicks to rolls, reveling in bulges that are feet and elbows, imagining what they might look like on the outside.

The leaves are changing here in New England and falling, one by one, covering the ground, shuffling under my feet as I walk, slowly now, talking to the baby: We are ready for you. Come ahead. The days grow shorter and the ground grows colder, prepping for dormancy, for a winter of waiting. Our waiting time is now. We wait for life to emerge.

Enjoy the wait, they say. While it’s still just the two of you. While you and baby are one. Pregnancy is to be savored, they say. Well, mine has been complicated, often hard to savor, and at this point I am rather uncomfortable. But there is wisdom in their words.

And so I am practicing something that does not come naturally: enjoying the wait. I am practicing savoring each day, each moment that my babe and I are joined in this most intimate way that will never be again. I am practicing breathing deeply, being present, watching the leaves fall, waiting for our lives to change irrevocably, for our hearts to be transformed in ways we cannot imagine. Waiting becomes the practice itself.

We are over a month from the beginning of Advent, yet I have never understood the season as well as I do now: patience and reflection. Calmly, quietly preparing body, heart, and soul for the miracle that will be.

That shrimp plant
so determined to be seen
poking through the ginger and the fig
like a four year old
waving skinny arms and red cheeks
to those towering above

That shrimp plant
grown from cuttings of a friend
who no longer lives in this country
from a house
that has since burned down

That shrimp plant
breaks at its knobby knees and elbows
when the wind blows too hard
drops to the ground
and grows again

Universe
today I pray
please
please grant us the resilience
of that shrimp plant

The echinacea, once vibrant pink, is now black.

A friend told me that the word for aster in Hungarian means, literally, end of summer.

This time of year, as we approach Halloween, The Day of the Dead, and All Saints’ Day, I am often thinking of death. Granted, I am always a little bit morbid—my astrologer sister would say it’s because I’m a Scorpio. (I regret that I was too old to go Goth in my teen years, because I suspect I might have enjoyed that.) But right now, death is often lurking just under my mind’s surface.

My garden is one of the sources of my thoughts, and it is a place where there is plenty of room for such thoughts. This lovely, non-judgmental community of green friends, lets me think about whatever I fancy. And the garden is full of death. Every day I am pulling up or lopping off plants that have given their all—the perennials having given it for this year and likely to return, the annuals having lived their whole life in this one year. Farewell, I say to the enormous squash plant, as I pull it up and hold it by its roots. Farewell, I remember when you were just a seed!

The longer I garden, the more comfort I take in the ritual of going through the entire life cycle each year. I adore picking out seeds in the fall to plant in the spring. My grow light table in the basement has gotten bigger and bigger because having those tiny green babies means so much in March and early April, when the winter here in Minnesota has just gotten so long that I may go berserk if some tiny waft of a spring breeze doesn’t blow through, some tiny green weed doesn’t poke up under the snow. Tucking those seedlings into the May earth has all of the drama of sending my kid off to kindergarten, tucking tiny invisible notes into their invisible lunch boxes as I plant them. And then cheering for them in summer’s fullness as they grow up and begin to live out their life’s purpose—as zinnias’ shiny red petals glow in the sunlight, as basil or cilantro graces my table. And then, Minnesota fall means that all growing, all producing of food or flower, will cease for another long winter.

The more years I participate in this cycle, the more I love the dramatic resurrection stories so many of my plants tell me. Some are, simply, perennials, and I know as I cut them to the ground that they’ll bounce back in the spring, shiny green and new again. Others are busy throwing their seeds around the yard, winking at me and saying I’ll be impressed by their progeny. Other annuals are simply done, with no tales of regret to whisper in my ear as I say good-bye to them. All are amazing role models in giving it all away, in surrender, in generosity.

Some people believe that we’re perennials, that after our deaths, our souls reside eternally in one place or another. Some say we’ll be back, though perhaps in a different form. Whatever is and will be, I live my life as if I’m an annual—acting as if, if some part of me is to survive, it will be in the growth of the seeds I have sown in my lifetime.

With the help of wind, and birds, the exact location of the seeds which grow is unpredictable. Similarly, I don’t know which of the seeds I’ve sown will continue to bear their own seeds and keep growing after I’m gone. Given what I’ve seen in my life so far, my only prediction is that what of me keeps growing after I’m dead will be nothing I would ever predict.

My own mother, dead eleven years, increasingly comes back in memories that make me giggle. She wasn’t excessively funny when she was alive, but the memories of her humor are the ones that keep whispering in my ear now. Silly things she said forty years ago at dinner make me laugh out loud. This time of year she has more to say, I notice, as do other beloved ghosts. The pagans say that this is the time of year when the veil is thinnest between life and death, and in the garden, I feel that thinning all around me.

I don’t believe in a heaven in the sky, where St. Peter welcomes some and turns others away. But this time of year, in my garden, as the crows shout, squirrels scurry around, and geese fly over and honk their farewells, in the sweet grief of letting go and saying goodbye, I touch a tiny bit of heaven on earth.