UU Intersections

Time....

2011-02-27T01:05:00.002-05:00

Looking at baby pictures tonight, I saw the look in my six year old daughter's eyes. Reflective. sad. uncertain. Something I maybe recognized. "What are you thinking about Camille?" I asked, though I already knew. She answered simply, "Time".

I am also mystified by time. How the cute chubby blue eyed baby in the picture becomes the exquisite existential little girl. How we think our lives span forever, and then in a moment how everything can change. How one moment we are here, and in the next gone.

I hate this time of year...as it brings back the sudden death of my father six years ago. How awful, that Rochester snow, its heavy bleakness. Winter seems to drag on and on, and then starts to drag other lives under it.

Things in the Hudson Valley feel a little lighter, but I am ultimately glad for having known the darkness. For knowing how precious the joy of each moment truly is. I am off to kiss my children on the cheek goodnight, where they are sleeping in their beds. This time when they are young and wild is just too precious, and will not last.

Entangled

2011-02-16T20:44:00.007-05:00

Since Saturday morning, I have been experiencing subtle shifts of consciousness. These changes in mindset have urged me toward a desire to alter the circumstances of my life. Toward the end of Saturday's silent retreat, I became aware that I could let go of the ties which had been binding me to more commitments than I could handle, many of which were depleting my life force. I found myself with a blissful awareness that I was no longer attached, and I could move toward greater freedom. I knew that there were other pieces of my life that wanted attention, that filled me with sustaining energy, and yet the obligations- so wrapped up in a desire to prove my worth- were keeping me from living my true self. And so I started the process of letting go of some of my committee responsibilities, in some cases asking others to take on my tasks.

Almost immediately, I have discovered this to be more difficult than it appears. Not only am I contending with my own conflicted feelings—on the one hand, the relief that comes from creating more spaciousness in my time, and on the other hand- guilt that I am letting someone else down, and fear that I will never achieve a measure of success. Ultimately though it is not my own feelings which are the most difficult contender, but rather the recognition that I am entrenched in a web of expectations. I am entangled in a story, perceived by others through this lens, and finding it difficult to write a new one.

It is still early in the attempt, and I will keep trying. Many of the commitments I am attempting to free myself from are related to my involvement in my UU congregation. The experience of burnout is occurring (for what appears to be the millionth time) in my history there, and I have yet again lost my feeling of connection to this community’s purpose. However, my connection to the community itself is strong, in particular to individuals who I have gotten to know personally in more intimate settings than a committee meeting or Sunday service, in places where I feel more free to expose my pain. I have little trust in congregational polity, but every trust in the power of individuals to respond to needs that arise. The shift in my awareness tells me that I might serve this root of love, and let die the weeds of entangling committee work. And yet, the reality is that even shifting the work requires energy, and I am bound by the roots of each commitment.

In the midst of this push and pull, there are personal stories that have shifted as well. I shared Saturday’s meditation day with friends, and this has made the experience more powerful. During the retreat, I longed to express love to the ones in my midst, but recognized our lives cast in a sea of common experience. There were subtle connections- at lunch, the warm grin of a friend over a shared bowl of soup as we attempted to 'obey the rules' and avert our eyes; and afterwards, the many hands who held me when I twisted my ankle on the cobblestone path. Words were spoken then, and pillows and ice offered, and a kind teacher gave me his attention.

In the silence of that hall, I offered loving-kindness to those around me, and felt supported. And since that day, my conversations with each person who accompanied me there have deepened. We have shared our experiences of meditation- the lingering peace we hold in the midst of violence, the ability to observe our pain and not become it, and the karmic roots which bind us to others in a true deep way. The truth is, I am also entangled in another story, one that has elicited feelings of profound love and affection for friends. And it is perhaps this knowledge that a real sangha exists in my life that I feel less compelled to try to create another bound by minutes and bylaws.

The community that holds me is bound by deep listening, silence, and honest sharing, and while some might identify with a similar religious brand, it is not the religion that binds us, but the practice of our shared connection. In this way, I am filled with the joy of entanglement- with the intertwining complexity of karmic roots winding their way in and around our lives.

Beacon Station

2011-02-11T14:11:00.004-05:00

I am not a morning person. Today, I missed the train to work and had to wait for the next one to arrive nearly a half hour later. I huddled in the frigid cold, cocooned in my winter coat, black hat pulled over my ears. I sat on a bench, immersed in a book of meditations. The first to prod at my self-protective shelter was an acquaintance who approached me to say hello. While I like this friend and have spent time in the past in affectionate conversation with her, I was a little annoyed at my luck that private peace had been disrupted. We were sharing a little morning chit-chat when a woman and her baby approached us. They seemed poorly dressed for the weather, missing hats and gloves, the young child wrapped in a blanket with only a thin sweatshirt for a hood. The woman began to speak Spanish, asking for directions to a subway stop in Brooklyn. My friend did not speak the language well (but better than I do), so responded the best she could, offering her written directions to the station and noticing the child shivering, tucked the blanket closer to her ears.

As luck would have it, the train was running late. My toes were beginning to freeze, so I tucked inside the wind shelter for a bit, changing my work shoes for a pair of battered hiking boots. “You look like you’re getting ready to milk the cows!” my friend joked, noticing the mud still caked on those boots, and I told her about the walk I take from the station and through the woods to the nonprofit center where I work. These days, ice skates would work better than boots, as the world around us of forest and rivers is mostly frozen over. Most days in the winter, I catch a ride to work instead, but this day had decided to brave the slick path.

When the train arrived, all was not well. Five minutes of sitting in seats, when the conductor announced the words ‘mechanical failure’. We would have to disembark and catch another train. For some, including my friend, this meant hopping across the track. The Amtrak would take those NYC bound passengers to Penn Station. For those with shorter, local trips, we would have to wait another 30 minutes for the next train to arrive.

Despite the inconvenience, I think by this time I was beginning to wake up. I called in to work to let our front office assistant know I would be late. I loaned a woman my cell phone who needed to make a call to her grandmother waiting in Peekskill. And on the platform yet again, I watched and listened. People sending text messages and making calls. A man speaking loudly into a headset about ‘customer acquisition’. Beside me on the bench, a scraggly-haired man spoke to another on crutches about the night last winter he’d slept in the station and the vets who tried to take his money. The man on crutches nodded, ‘ain’t that a shame’. He spoke other words that seemed to float around me- ‘chemotherapy’, ‘cancer’- pieces of human story, like ice floes cracking, slowly melting in the river.

When I arrived at Garrison, a well-to-do community on the banks of the Hudson, it was quieter. It is a one mile walk to work, and my boots served me well.

I did not fall, and I was finally awake.

~

I will be travelling to Dharma Drum Retreat Center tomorrow for a day of silent Zen retreat. I will be travelling with two friends- one Jewish, one Catholic- and two high-energy children. Somehow I trust there will be a place for all of us there (my children entrusted to the Little Bodhissattva Progam can abandon the silent rule!). We will meet other dear friends there as well. This will be a new experience for me, to share a space and retreat experience with so many I love, and yet be fully turned inward to my own practice. I cannot speak of what this will be like, for to do so will be to arrive with expectation. I only now think of their faces and send each one care.

And yet, from reflection on this morning’s experience, it seems that we are always in community, wherever we are, whether we realize it or not- and even when we try to resist. Separation is imagined. We are in this together, interconnected. Thawing, awakening, moving along the river.

Beginning Again

2010-11-30T20:00:00.003-05:00

I'm skipping the dishes tonight to attempt to get back into a regular practice of writing. This- the result of visioning on sacred mountain grounds (the old University Settlement campground, and the walk through Beacon streets on the way to catch a train). And that- the result of friends- witnesses, supporters who listened and challenged in the warm attic, amidst artist's sketches and stacks of records, in the sleepy arms of cushions. My conversation last week with these two friends who have journeyed with me throughout this past year (and I don't know what I'd have done without them) brought me to this spiritual assignment: seek, find, create JOY. And Vision.

I am blessed. I have thought of them often this past week, like beams lighting my way and supporting me, even when they are not present. Our bond is such that I think of them and I feel full of light. I think of them, and I see them shining and beautiful; and I think of them loving me without judgment, and I feel complete. This fills me and keeps me going through the week.

I believe that our relationships are a kind of beloved community. I think this is how change happens-- through these loving, trusting, and open relationships. Through learning to listen to one another's stories- especially the rough parts. This is the vision of "Be Present", a process of staying put at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other difference- and, together, freeing the soul.

So, as I return to writing, I come back to this: My two friends who have held me up through monthly meetings (and often more) throughout the year, as I have held them as well. It's a good place to begin when you've been asked by one of them to vision.

Strange, but my vision has led me right back to them. Because it's not really possible to envision my own dream without these connections. You can't create a beloved community on your own. There are countless others- children, family, other friends- in this spiraling interconnected web.

But for now, the story- the moment- begins in the attic.

Pentecost- Flower Communion Celebration

2010-05-24T23:20:00.008-04:00

"Fire of Commitment" by Jason Shelton is a beautiful hymn in 'Singing the Journey'...it was our closing song on Sunday--the first worship service in our new building (pictures below...I'm the gal in the black skirt in front of the mic and passing out flowers to kids...).

It was a beautiful and spirited beginning on Pentecost Sunday. May our beacon shine brightly for generations to come.

Words by Jason Shelton:

From the light of days remembered burns a beacon bright and clear,
Guiding hands and hearts and spirits into faith set free from fear.
When the fire of commitment sets our mind and soul ablaze,
When our hunger and our passion meet to call us on our way,
When we live with deep assurance of the flame that burns within,
Then our promise finds fulfillment and our future can begin.

The Spirit of Revival

2010-05-21T23:35:00.003-04:00

Today's "Action" follows well on the tails of yesterday's post about the UU Congregation of Queens--since that congregation was also the founders of a new event in our district: the UU Revival. They started this tradition a couple years ago of bringing congregations together in our district for a weekend of music, worship, preaching, food, and fellowship. I haven't had the opportunity to attend the annual fall revival in Queens, but I just returned from a night of revival at Fourth Universalist. The idea is that Queens will hold the Fall revivals, and Fourth U will hold the spring ones...

Despite the small turnout, I was inspired by the spirit of this event. I attended with a friend of mine who, one might say, is a little burnt out with committee work and church politics (One might say I am too...!). I enjoyed this night because it reminded me of the spirit of our faith, and it gave us an opportunity to meet others in the district in a common spirit of community--rather than at a meeting or conference. We enjoyed singing together, and our preachers--Rev. Michael Tino and Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt-- were inspiring. Their words reminded of why I am a UU.

It does seem that with revival a seed has been planted that I hope will grow of bringing congregations together in a spirited way. Michael and Rosemary preached about love, and about the spirit of our work being rooted in the joining of spirituality and action; and love being available to all. Gatherings like these have a spirit of openness that invites us in. It is a way of reviving our spirits. And- unlike our district meeting- it doesn't cost alot to attend!

We Shall Not Be Moved

2010-05-21T07:52:00.007-04:00

The commitment that this congregation in my district and its minister are showing to immigration justice caught my attention recently-- I first picked up the flyer announcement for the UU Justice Ministry listed on the homepage of their website at the ARDC conclave last Saturday. They are turning their church hall into a drop-in center for area immigrants...then my own minister shared this video via facebook (UUCQ minister Rev. Ian White Maher is one of the 16 faith and community leaders who were arrested here)...

It is tough for me to accept the attitudes of those who want to close down our borders and oppress people based on suspicion and prejudice; I hear the embedded fear in their rage, but it does not hold weight against the stories of courage that my immigrant students and friends have shared-- of lost family members, of separation, of crossing the desert in the dark of night, with fear and trembling. I am reminded that there are two ways to respond to fear: with violence, or with courage. And I am reminded by the actions of the 16 leaders in the video that there are times standing at the intersections means forming a human chain. We Shall Not Be Moved.

May we find inspiration in our own communities to build and deepen relationship with the people around us-- and to stand in solidarity against oppression.

Intersections in Action: Cooperative Living

2010-05-20T07:29:00.005-04:00

This isn't my movement...it's ours. People everywhere are looking for a different way to move and be religious in the world. It is my intention to begin a series of posts highlighting some of these examples of people becoming the change....beginning with us Unitarian Universalists.

Here's a beautiful example in Boston, Mass...the Lucy Stone Cooperative is an intentional community forming, focused on creating a center for community, spiritual growth, and social change. They are dedicated to living cooperatively, and have already held a Leadership Development Training with Boston-area community organizers for housing justice. It's exciting to see this one happening--and I wish them the best in their work! I hope their idea spreads--would love to see a network of these UU community houses across the country with people of faith living in solidarity and relationship in their work for justice.

Part II to follow...

This week in May...

2010-05-20T00:40:00.003-04:00

May's whirlwind of busyness has tossed out more than I can handle...maybe that's why all the built up tension collapsed into the warm arms of my herbalist womanist friend on Monday. She is closer to her dream of creating a center for healing for women, and each time she tells her story, I am moved deeper into gratitude. She is a healer, and I was vulnerable that night and flooded by tears and revealing all my weakness and desperation...in her presence, and in the presence of my other witness across the way...the artist-teacher with the sleeping baby sprawled across his lap, soaking in love for her tangled hair and brown skin. From this vulnerability, from time that moved at another pace, I was remembering to listen~ uncertain, confused by some things; absolutely certain though of others, like love.

From here, propelled the next day into conversations with contemplative leaders and educators...submerged in the synthetic think tank. Soak in, synthesize, serve.

Bridging Gaps

2010-05-15T21:33:00.007-04:00

Across the river, FBI raids bust through Bloods and Latin King strongholds, in the most violent city in New York State. One of these days I hope that my sister across the river, former Queen City of the Hudson, will reign in peace. On days I feel 200 years old, I am still mourning for a west-drifted church. One of these days, I hope for storefront action and hope. As the promises of possibility drift around the edges of everything but the center.

I spent today at the ARDC conclave in New York...took my first Hudson river ride since moving to Beacon. My first Hudson train ride ever, actually--though I know all the others like the back of my hand...I walked away with insights and inspiration, especially for worship. Most important gift was the insight that the Be Present work my friends and I are already doing is on the right track-- that building deep and lasting relationships, having the conversations beneath the surface across lines of difference IS the heart of anti-oppression and the heart of growing multi-cultural congregations. We have only begun to bring this work, these conversations, into the congregation, though. Finding ways to bridge gaps between communities through shared worship and justice work, to create more solid alliances, might be the next step forward...it's baby steps right now... and maybe sometimes giant leaps? Will we, can we get there? We are sending out prayers for restoration.

Be Present

2010-04-27T11:50:00.002-04:00

Service at my UU congregation on 4/18 was strong and moving....Our speakers, Bob and Clare Holzman, shared their stories of transformation through Be Present, Inc. Others from the local Beacon and Newburgh community were present as well, giving witness and expression to the process. Be Present has had a significant impact on my life, and I am excited to be able to share this with my congregation, and possibly others. I also shared a poem I wrote, inspired by my experiences with Be Present, which may be shared more publicly in the future. Most poignant of all was returning to my seat after reading the poem-- to the loving and accepting hugs of my support group members who were attending the service.

Common Fire

2010-04-27T11:48:00.003-04:00

Common Fire Foundation (2009) from Common Fire Foundation on Vimeo.

Strange Trip

2010-02-07T21:50:00.002-05:00

So far it's been a long strange trip... and I am still trying to make sense of my place in the midst of it. The truth is that last weekend's leadership retreat and sunday service and congregational meeting were an oasis of promise and possibility; and I found my rightful place in the midst of it. The weekend of church activities ended with voices echoing throughout the new sanctuary in a resounding "Spirit of Life"; our eyes gazing together for the first time on its almost finished interior. It was beautiful, and we truly believed together "If we build it, they will come". One woman imagined her own wedding in that sanctuary; another imagined a welcoming sanctuary for ALL couples (with or without NY state's blessing). Gardens and classrooms, like empty cups to be filled with outreach to the community-- and nurturing of our own flock. So much we can do together; that was our promise to one another, our covenant.

This same feeling was there during our leadership retreat, where "collaborative creativity" was the word of the day. And it was there during our congregational meeting-- which was sweet, fun, and hopeful-- Green Sanctuary receiving its long-awaited blessing, and Welcoming programs off to a promising start--at last. The possible transition and the promise to grow, and the commitment to one another was truly present. This same collaborative spirit was present yesterday at the Council meeting too, and all voices were heard.

But what of these other times unmentioned.... these have been rife with conflict and worrying, sadly. There is a deadline by which to raise enough funds to complete the building process, and it is approaching soon. There have been generous offers, and we are all of us scrambling to try our best. And there is tension between members, some who have threatened to leave. And I have found myself at the center of this conflict, and struggling with how best I might use my gifts--and in what areas it is best to just walk away.

Lots to figure out... still treading water. This afternoon I worked with both my girls to create a fantastic kindergarten seahorse project. Dinner was "ad hoc"... but our time together was precious and fun. The playroom I cleaned yesterday morning is back to being a disaster, and I still haven't even begun to look at the school fundraisers (4 requests in one week: Haiti, Jump-Rope for the Heart, MDA Hopathon, AND candy/chocolate school fundraiser!). Not to mention the dentist bill, the taxes I owe, or the daycare increase... gulp. Hmmm... debt is a lot like that playroom--the amount of time it takes to "clean-it-up" is about 50 X as long as the time it takes to mess! Messing can happen in seconds.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter too much. We have a roof over our heads, and my girls are asleep together in a warm room. We have more than enough.

The Impossibility of Separation

2010-01-22T11:54:00.006-05:00

In recent times I've left this blog somewhat abandoned, giving my attention to a new one called "At Home and Present". It seemed that I needed a blank canvas, in order to cocoon into some inner darkness, in order to carve out a comfortable space for my thoughts to find a home. I needed a space, I thought, separate from the public witness of UU Intersections. I needed my own retreat on the hill.

But city Intersections have reminded me yet again that personal spirituality and story can not be separated from the world's inherent tensions. And my life is connected to the lives of those around me. We move, back and forth, and in and out of the personal and political, on the mobius strip of transformation--the transformation of self tangled in a web of struggle with the greater networks of being- church, government, society; and the transformation of these tangled in the web of individual selves.

In a conversation with my husband last night I realized that it is not who we blame-- be it individual or society's oppressive social structures. Rather, it is how we seek to empower and transform each of these. We must begin at both levels-- the individual is inherently an activist of his/her own destiny, but also responsible to the greater whole. And in reverse, wellness and love must be the basis for our structures and institutions, and we must work together to transform them. NO, it is not who we blame. Rather, it is how we choose to work together toward the greater good--to support and transform both the individual as well as the collective.

The question that has been in my mind this past week: What does it mean to be an "ally" to the oppressed? A story I wrote about last week on my "At Home and Present" suddenly became personal yesterday when my husband and I learned that the teenage boy killed in a Newburgh gang-related stabbing was the son of one of his longtime ESOL students. Meanwhile, a service I had thought to prepare on "UU Heroes" and a community conversation I had been working on with others at the UU library on the legacy of MLK have suddenly taken on other forms...

There is something to be said about the power and privilege that many Unitarian Universalists enjoy-- enjoy in spite of class differences among us. Enjoy because we are, for the most part, able to stand from a point of distant intellectual observance. I have been arguing for awhile that we need to stand closer to the center-- closer to the middle of the struggles of the poor and oppressed.

But as I argue for this, I remember once again that where we stand has absolutely nothing to do with heroism, and everything to do with alliance.

I have a bunch of teenage kids in the city of Newburgh to thank for this-- teenagers who are sharing ideas on a new Facebook page called "Newburgh: Stop the Violence". With over 3,000 fans, the page is not free of finger-pointing--much of which seems to come from adults. But, the page creator and other teens have been sharing ideas for possible change and nonviolent action, including organizing speakers and holding a Peace March. Where adults have failed, teens are rising...compelled with a feeling that "it is up to us".

But, the truth is they are not alone. There are allies. If once, in our history, UU clergy could march beside the people of Selma and Montgomery, then I wonder-- to what drum will we march today?

Imagine 2010

2009-12-22T16:47:00.003-05:00

In the midst of these darkest days, we are moving toward light. Imagine 2010.

I do believe that this vision is going to manifest, that all these diverging roads are finally beginning to converge, and that something new is going to be born.

Yes, I am setting my resolution for the new year now....

Imagine 2010

Whatever we can do or dream we can do, let us begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
May we ever be bold, in our living and in our loving.
(Based on the words of Goethe)

More to come...

Board or Bored?

2009-12-08T21:10:00.004-05:00

Actually the work need not--and should not-- be boring. Recently I attended a Leadership Training at Shelter Rock in which Laurel Hallman shared her thoughts as keynote speaker. One thing that stuck with me was this idea that the board of a congregation should hold a vision of the future in its mind-- asking the question: Where do we want to be in 10 years? Our focus should be future and not past. In addition, they should hold the BIG picture; discussions on "who makes the coffee" do not belong on an agenda.

Our board has had to spend some time creating right relations with the congregation, after some past friction. There has been friction between newcomers and oldtimers, between change and tradition, and they have had to focus on mending the present.

Last night I attended my first board meeting as a newly elected trustee. I am one of the "new progressive" voices in the congregation, and yet I probably know more of our history than some long-time members. As our sole Beacon family currently belonging to the congregation, I suppose I might have a special connection.

And I might have a special role to play on this board too, as we celebrate 180 years looking back--and who knows how many more possibilities await looking forward. So far, very exciting!

(PS: I'll continue to write snippets related to UUism and congregational life here on an approximately weekly basis...For a more daily journal on everyday living, please visit http://athomeandpresent.blogspot.com/)

Where I've Been

2009-12-01T21:17:00.002-05:00

I can be found here lately: http://athomeandpresent.blogspot.com/

Just needed to dim the lights for a bit...and take a step back.

2009-09-27T21:52:00.004-04:00

Today's Inspiration is Listening. For it seems that Listening is the only way we move from "me" to "we". I am still processing the words expressed at today's UU Living Room Gathering...I am restored by the promise and possibility of who we are and can be. I recognize that there is deep work that needs to be done at the level of whole congregation leadership, and creativity to be expressed at the level of smaller gatherings.

So today's inspiration is simply a question that is the question of the month in Rochester: What does it mean to be a person--or a family--of deep listening?

I am grateful for the question, the readings, and the spiritual assignments that accompanied this question. But I am mostly grateful for the friends who remind me, and help me to listen...and for the way we are coming to bring our voices together, and to explore questions like these at many levels. I am looking forward to sharing the path.

Simple

2009-09-25T20:58:00.008-04:00

It is fall, the air is beginning to turn, the sky so crisp and clear. After a week of aches, allergies, and Indian Summer, we collapse into Friday night--puppy pile on the couch to watch an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" on our computer screen(TV now relegated to the "children's living room/play room/den" upstairs-a room not yet furnished.)

Life is still tight and constrained in many ways--work, school, bills, deadlines and commitments. But I cherish the simple times with my family. Thursday was Back to School night; tomorrow we'll be making apple pies. So much of our days are paperwork and planned that we can start to believe that that paradigm is life. It's a framework that spills into our free time, and if no one offers us a new one, we get stuck in scheduling our play.

Watching a show like "Little House" I remember-- "'Tis a gift to be simple". Hard work by hand, generosity, sacrifice, community are values a family shares. I wonder if these might also be values that a church can teach, and if there are stories we can tell with our lives. Too often, I feel that the paradigm my congregation offers is simply a mirror of the greater culture-- of busy, busy, busy without really getting to the heart of 'why'. While there are individual examples of simplicity and generosity, this is not modeled in congregational life. There exists this gap between a time fatigued leadership--and a membership that is disengaged. Even on Sunday morning, a consumerist model prevails.

It does not need to be this way; we are at a juncture where things must either change--or break. There are too many who desire more; they desire to be asked for more-- not more time or money, but more of their lives. We are tired of the rat race and want to find a new way to live together, on this earth. A church can provide the model for a new, simpler way of life.

Families need support. We need help to live a simpler way-- not to return to the days of carriages and saddles, but to recreate our lives in the modern era with those "old-fashioned" values of generosity and community support central. We like a little modernity mixed in. But what we long for is support to help us make more time, in a world of DVDs and facebook, falling leaves and apple pie.

Inspiration: Rev. Forrest Church

2009-09-24T22:20:00.005-04:00

Today's Inspiration comes from within the Unitarian Universalist faith.

My husband and I were just debating the merits of Western philosophy (which I really do try to appreciate, but still would rather read poetry!). Then I read on my minister's facebook update that Rev. Forrest Church had passed away, and saw this video he posted.

The meaning of life, expounded upon through libraries of books--comes down to the simplest--and most profound of things. Standing on the edge of life, I suppose, the message shines clearest.

Fare thee well to a leader of our faith whose spirit of courage lives on.

From Marvin to Decora

2009-09-24T11:39:00.008-04:00

Here's an interesting article from The Nation on Hip-Hop and Environmentalism....While it gives credit where deserved to Marvin Gaye, I would have liked to see some specific hip-hop artists mentioned too! Admittedly, I'm not very abreast of much popular music myself...BUT I know of at least one hip-hop group that is representing the environment--and other social issues--on a local level, and across the nation (The ReadNex Poetry Squad's Frontlines Tour even ventured into Appalachia, where they listened to people's stories and helped confront the issues of poverty and mountaintop removal).

I'm also excited to say that one of their members, Decora, will be part of my UU congregation's upcoming Earth Dinner. For this event, Decora is handing the mic over to the teens he's been mentor to in starting the Ashe Urban Farm-- a teen-run community garden in Newburgh.

This is the third year in a row we've organized an Earth Dinner (local-foods potluck with speaker and information tables)--the brain child of an 85-year old activist in my congregation, and a project that I was inspired to take on early in my role as Social Action Committee-Green Sanctuary chair. I am happy to say that others have since joined in the organizing of this anual event (esp. since I have stepped down from chair), and that we are moving from the country to the needs of the city in this year's focus. One of my hopes is to build better bridges between the two--which can sometimes be a wide gap to span.

**If original link to the Nation isn't working, here's an UTNE summary...

Inspiration of the Day: BCC

2009-09-22T23:01:00.004-04:00

Sunday is the day for a small dessert party/UU gathering at my home. It is also the day of 1)Spirit of Beacon Day, 2) Open Studios, 3) Clearwater Annual Meeting at newly revamped Environmental Justice Center...All three of these activities are within walking distance of my home.

There is currently no UU congregation in Beacon, NY. There isn't even one in Newburgh, one of the top 10 largest(and top 5 poorest)cities in New York State. The history of my congregation has migrated west over time, and landed on top of a hill in the middle of what I like to call nowhere. (Oh, I guess we are close to an airport.)

Recently I walked by an Assemblies of God congregation on Beacon Main Street on a Sunday morning, hearing choirs singing joyfully, and felt a moment of church envy. But sigh, geography isn't everything. Theology and political ideology are also an integral consideration, and in this light--I am a UU.

But I have hope in the small group who will be visiting on Sunday. And if the city is alive, I pray that we will be also--inspired by the music, and also by the children.

Here is one of the floats that inspired me today (on facebook, of course) which I look forward to seeing (before desserts!). I have a couple friends who work at the BCC, and they are the ones doing the real work...inspiring hope and creativity in the children.

From the album:
"Wall Photos" by Beacon Community Center
Keep your eyes peeled Sunday for the children of BCC who will be marching in the Spirit of Beacon Parade with a giant turtle that is part of the creation story of the local natives (Lenni Lenape), as well as masks of Grandmother North and Grandfathers East, South and West. There will also be a replica of the Half Moon. Also, be sure to check out BCC's mega bake sale happening along the parade route. Raheema's spicy empanadas will be making a triumphant return this year.

Beyond Frustration

2009-09-22T22:05:00.004-04:00

It is so easy to spend hours in a rant against all the things that are wrong with the world. The only thing that infuriates me more than the people and structures that are causing harm, are the ones who are supposed to be doing right--those who are talking the talk, but maybe are not walking the walk.

But the purpose of this blog is not to point out all the things that are wrong with the world. We have had that conversation over and over and over. We need to acknowledge the pain, but--to paraphrase the words of an amazing lady who has taught me a thing or two about working for peace across the boundaries of race, gender, class--I want to know that other conversation, I want to know that we can get past it. (And, as Lillie P. Allen would say, I'm ready for the PARTY!)

So, I just had an email exchange with another member of my congregation bemoaning our frustration with our UU. We were stuck in the old conversation. (Self-serving, disengaged, and completely uninterested in social action were some of our complaints...) Ouch. It's a conversation I've had with other "burnt-out award winners" ...it is easy for others to point to us and say we are burnt-out because we just try to do too much. But when those among us who care speak to each other and work together for a common cause, we are NOT burnt-out. Actually, we are inspired. More accurately,the sense of burn-out comes because we are emotionally frustrated with our congregation as a whole, because too often we feel our goals and visions are so different from other congregants. As one of my colleagues expressed--there seem to be two groups who just have different ideas of what a congregation should be.

But UU Intersections is the place to acknowledge that pain, but not to remain stuck in my frustration with that other "vision" (yes, the self-serving one...)-- but to move past it. The purpose of this blog is to articulate hope, renewal, the promise of what could be. And to reflect on the ways in which we are called to, and are trying, to live it.

As I read the words that are spoken by our current UUA president, Peter Morales, I am inspired by his vision of multicultural congregations. I am also motivated by Michael Durall's call to congregations to become "the public church" (Durall's recent article in the UUWorld was a personal epiphany for me...while not a new idea, it returned me to my core beliefs and experiences of what church really is all about, and forced me to question just where my energies might be best spent, and who am I to serve?).

I am inspired because the very first step is to have a vision of multiculturalism and of generosity and openness to aspire to. But I fear the reality I have seen, that this is not a vision shared by many UU's I know... or maybe it is one paid lipservice to, but not really worked for or lived. THAT is disheartening--and frustrating.

But in spite of all this frustration, there is more beauty to be beheld and work to be done in the world. And yes, there are at least some of us in the room ready to move beyond, ready to push forward with our vision, and ready to PARTY!!

Living Hospitality

2009-09-21T21:35:00.002-04:00

I am thinking of my long-time friend, Hung, after exchanging a few emails with him today...and then perhaps those paintings I posted by Huong made me think of him again--of the past he inherited (having been born the same year that Huong fled Vietnam...his own travels from there to here came a few years later). I have been thinking of how our lives came from such different places, how they intersected in college, how we shared our homes and our stories with one another. I brought him to my home in Rochester for Christmas once, and another time he took me to a Vietnamese restaurant in New York where he did all the ordering because I couldn't read a thing on the menu! Later, I visited his home in the South Bronx.

It has been a year of connecting with old friends-- facebook has reconnected many of us virtually, and also led to real life reunions. And having a house to share has also encouraged me to open my doors more. We had our first party on Saturday night, welcoming both new friends from this area and old friends--one who I hadn't seen in twelve years.

For Hung it has been about five years..the last time I saw him was at my father's funeral. He drove up from New Jersey to the house in Rochester where he had once spent Christmas. Now I have extended the invite for him to visit us once again at our new home in Beacon, and hope that he will visit.

The ability to give and receive hospitality has brought such amazing people into my life. We have another "party" next week, too...a small gathering of church folks with a special intention...I will write about that more later. But right now I am simply being challenged to live the value of Hospitality and also of Peacemaking--not simply to philosophize about what those words mean, but to LIVE them day to day.

Let's Think Peace

2009-09-21T20:58:00.003-04:00

I was inspired by these paintings today... which came across my facebook status updates...

Let's Think Peace ? YES! Magazine

Shared via AddThis

Starting Again

2009-09-17T23:39:00.007-04:00

Okay, so I do this every few months, after every blogging hiatus-- rewrite the blog description, revise the personal mission statement. Really it is a work in progress.

But this time, things really have changed. Really. Like after three years in Middletown, we've finally moved across the river! Now, we have a house with a yard that we're renting (more space, less commitment works for all...), in a city that we love. Blocks from Mt. Beacon, less than a mile from Main St., and can even see across to the other side of the Hudson River. Life is good.

Other changes too-- I've been given a more respectable job position at work, which has renewed my sense of involvement and purpose with the organization and the people we serve. While there are still holes to be filled, I now feel that I might have some more impact and influence on filling those, that my voice is part of the mix. I've begun to reconnect with the mission and believe in the work I do as an administrator and event planner--of convening diverse groups, and bringing contemplation into areas of need. And while it is not the end of the road in terms of vocational steps, it is a tremendous learning experience, to which I am committed.

On the family front, big changes too. My oldest daughter, Camille, has started full day kindergarten. And my younger daughter, Elisa, is in preschool. New schools for both, and they are adjusting well and loving it! I am also in school now--just one theological philosophy class on Wednesday nights, and it is over an hour commute. But what I like especially is coming into dialogue with other ministry students--overwhelmingly Christian, of various denominations, but also a very diverse group in race and age. I can see real advantages for attending a non-UU seminary in this way, of connecting with those who may have more differences than similarities to my own theology, but who are more like the communities within which I desire to be of service.

Which leads to the biggest change of all. Within the past couple weeks things have changed dramatically in my association with my congregation. I have finally responded to something which has been turning in me for awhile, and stepped down from my roles as co-chair of two committees. Of all the changes in my life, this one has felt the most freeing of all. I will need to process this further, as I know there are several reasons for the change which are worth articulating in deeper exposition. Basically, I came to conclusion that I was not fulfilling my own deepest joy, nor responding to the deepest needs of the world through these leadership roles, that I was burning out and beginning to engage in a negative way, and needed to focus my attention elsewhere and align my innermost beliefs and practices. I am also beginning to consider that my own personal mission and idea of what it means to be church differs profoundly from the general consensus (with a few notable exceptions) in the congregation. But what will emerge from this, I do not know. Right now, the open space in my life is enough.

In this light, I have written a creed of sorts, to inaugurate this next life turning point. It is a rearticulation of my vision, turned and transformed by people and experiences who have entered my life since this blog first got started over two years ago. While I started by using "I" in this statement, it was changed to "we' to acknowledge the underlying voices who have contributed--both known and unknown-- for while their own words might differ, and I do not attempt to speak for them, we have shared our conversations and visions in solidarity. So their voices echo through my own.

We are called...

to honor the sacred in all of life, and to bear witness to hope and joy arising in the midst of suffering. We are rooted in a contemplative and expressive spirituality, and we are called to bring forth these gifts in engagement with the world.

We believe that the work for justice lies in our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with the earth—and we are called to seek connection and understanding across the boundaries of race, gender, class, and generation. We are called to create a truly beloved community.

We believe that we are the change—that peace is a pathway and a process. We are called to stand—in courage and solidarity with others—on the side of love.

Yes, we are called to stand. But we are also called to move—out of ourselves and into those broken places where love is most needed to arise.

We are called into those intersections which break open and transform our lives.

Ordinary Day

2009-06-25T21:56:00.005-04:00

I usually write one status update per day for Facebook...just have gotten into that dissociative habit of naming my actions in the third person. But today my little life was far too ordinary...

Just too ordinary. Sure we're having marital insecurities, we'll be moving in a month or so, and the amount of money I bring home each month is decreasing while our bills are increasing... yeah, that's life.

In other worlds, celebrities have come and gone...Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. His was one of the saddest lives. As I started to read the news releases--especially the unconfirmed reports--I remembered why I don't usually follow the lives of the rich and famous: they are much too depressing. Tonight, I wonder most about his children...

My own children meanwhile laugh in the other room with innocence. They sing and dance to the Hokey Pokey. Books are spread out throughout the room as they read stories (in their own way) to one another. They hug each other and say "I love you". "No, my sister is not an evil step sister," the older one says...though of this she is not always so sure...

At the grocery store, my husband runs into my 4 1/2 year old daughter's best friend. They haven't seen each other in a month or so, since the friend- M- was removed from preschool for behavioral issues and emotional disturbance. When my husband mentions that we will be moving, M's mother has to restrain her. Doctors have diagnosed the 5 year old as bipolar, and she is being treated. But she is also a victim of childhood trauma--a witness to domestic violence. And what is the treatment for that?

Other stories fall on my door step. Swine flu hitting too close to home--the elderly with lives in balance. People I know who have worked hard for 25 years have been laid off and can no longer get a job. Worse-- they are being forced to go without health insurance--and ultimately health care. (I am in the end grateful for my own $200 per month reduction in pay...) And health insurance premiums continue to rise...

This is the brokenness we surround ourselves with in daily life. I don't need the headlines of the paper to tell me about celebrities and their deranged psychology, and the trails of pain left in their wake. I don't need to make a god out of my pain.

Yesterday a perfect, complete rainbow broke through a month of monsoon. Tonight the lightning split across the dark gray sky; my neighbor from upstairs knocks on my door to return a borrowed umbrella.

We are all in this together in these difficult times-- each of us relearning to face and connect to our brokenness. Each us relearning to share our space beneath the sky.

Defender of the Faith

2009-06-24T21:12:00.012-04:00

At lunch today I had a conversation with some coworkers about my decision (and opportunity) to take a seminary class in the fall... Within that conversation, I thought about the successes and the failings of UUism. The people at my table were mainly practitioners outside of traditional organized religion-- looking to shamanism or interfaith gatherings as their found ways to be religious. In my own way, I found myself both defending and critiquing my own faith--and ultimately standing by my commitment to work for change from within UUism.

As a future pursuant of ministry, I have wondered about this often-- about whether it would be better to be more of an entrepreneur, to pursue a route outside of organized religion. I have participated in some great (and some not so great..) interfaith ceremonies, and considered that route... A similar dilemma arose in my own religious background: I was raised in a Catholic church that went its own way after struggling for many years within the establishment. My parents were divided on the issue-- one chose to work for change from within, the other to follow the new church in its abandonment of papal restrictions on women's roles, among other things.

I have struggled with this issue in another way within UUism. It may sound strange--the whole thought of a church that emphasizes such freedom of belief and practice to be anything but free and open. We are very welcoming to people of diverse religious backgrounds and also to gay and lesbian people. Where we fail is in our lack of economic and racial diversity. I actually don't find this all that surprising, given our elitist Unitarian past. To enter into an institution of any kind in many ways bears with it the burden of its past. Change requires a new way of cherishing the bounty of that tradition, while also looking to the wisdom of lessons we have learned along the way to help us change.

As for committing to stay, I guess I have too much hope... I have too much hope that my Unitarian Universalist church CAN transform and realize the rhetoric of diversity that it claims. One of the reasons I believe this is because there is a new generation of people who were raised crossing those lines on a daily basis. So maybe if the older generation doesn't quite realize the importance, the need, or the way this shall be done-- then the younger one will have to lead the way.

On another note, I have to ask myself-- but why bother? Why NOT just try to create something new from without? To answer this, I look at all my Unitarian Universalist sisters and brothers are doing and have done right throughout our history and now in this present. I look to our activist work for GLBT rights now, and to the voices that have emerged from within its walls in the past for women's suffrage, civil rights, etc.. I also look to the wealth of resources we have within-- our religious education programs, for instance.

I look to how speaking together as a church can create greater change than any individual-- or renegade group-- can do alone. To speak together lends power to voice at the level of impact. I believe there are enough within and emerging who can speak together to transform the world-- even as we are transforming our own religion.

I also believe there are many without who have not yet found their home within these walls-- for maybe there are too many walls surrounding our churches to enter.

So really it is up to a new generation of emerging voices-- and to those elders who share the vision-- to break down those walls and widen the circle.

For me, I am committed to working and walking with both--communities within and communities without the UU church. I walk with some pretty powerful people beside me toward that vision of change: change within AND change without.

Networks of Support

2009-06-23T12:57:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I spent my day off in deep discernment and connection. It is very rare that I take any time at all for myself, usually either working, caring for my children, or doing something or other for church. My personal choice of activities probably says a little about how I work through problems-- as I jumped from appointments with my spiritual director, my minister, and--in the evening--with my Be Present support group. In the middle of it all, I spent time with my kids--home from preschool and awakened from naps. And finally, at the end of it all...with my husband.

For him, a day off usually means solitude-- a walk in the woods, or fishing by a quiet lake. I enjoy my quiet time too-- especially that which is used in creative process-- but in times of difficult despair, it is connection with others which heals and helps move me to a new place.

My husband has decided that in order to heal the rifts in our relationship--and more importantly, the rifts in himself--he may need to seek help from other people. It may not be enough to go to the woods; he may need to delve into his own internal woods, with a guide to help him see into that darkness.

He came to the conclusion that he needs to do this-- to work towards healing those internal wounds, to work toward wholeness-- and that he cannot do it alone. He decided that he needs to do this not only because our relationship is at stake, but because it is the only we he can grow in so many aspects of his life.

The story my husband grew up with is that to seek help from others is weakness. And yet it is exactly that story of "manhood" which is threatening both his mental health and our relationship.

I will stand by him as he enters into this brave journey. It is a lesson of living I have learned and hold to-- that to seek the counsel of others emboldens the power within. And to know that we are surrounded by witnessess connects us to circles of life so much greater than ourselves.

The Beginning or The End?

2009-06-20T21:12:00.005-04:00

Transitions are a recurring topic of mine on this UU blog... I suppose spiritual questions seem most poignant in those crossings and life changes, the quest for meaning reaching a screeching crescendo. I also suppose that at 33 I find myself still in a sort of Odyssey stage, even though by all societal definitions I should have settled down by now. This isn't true about everything of course-- there are places and times when home is more present than ever. I am grounded in my children-- just spent the past half hour cooing with my little one, chasing the monsters out of her bedroom, rocking her to sleep. Those moments fill me with a sense of peace and well-being.

I am also more grounded than ever in my sense of purpose and mission--the past four days of work on a conference re-emphasizing my commitment to working to bridge the gaps of difference and build communities across borders; to creating the intersections where diverse peoples can listen and grow from one another; and to restoring the connection between the rich wellsprings of spirit and the trodden pathways of justice in the world. Phew! Challenging for sure-- but I am more than ever ready to live this--and to join in this challenge with others! (To this point, I am meeting with my congregation's minister on Monday to discuss the steps I need to take to get started on the path toward ministry, and to begin taking classes in the fall.)

And so of these things I am sure: Devotion to my children. Devotion to my calling.

As for everything else...

It stands on so much shaky ground, so much of it on the verge of crumbling. And I'm not really sure that it hasn't already been condemned.

I have been asking myself this question over and over and really have no idea where to turn for answers... at what point do you just stop trying? And what if you realize that really you just already have stopped trying and that's the whole problem? AND that all you are really doing anymore is trying to get by with causing and receiving the least amount of pain? I have committed myself to living a life of transparent truth in nearly every aspect of my life... but I am lost for answers when it comes to the relationship with the person I once committed to share a life with. And as I look to the future--our condo now sold--I can't even bring myself to scan the real estate listings for the next landing place. In thinking about this part of the future, I feel nothing but a sense of numb. We have had our very high ups and our very low downs. I don't know what right now is...I could go on and on with all that is wrong, but I am also tired of doing that... Right now I am just lost.

So I thought the past four days' trauma forum would be the culmination of a lot of hard work paid off. I thought it would be the ending of a job, in a sense... but really it feels more like a beginning.

And on the other hand, a few months ago I thought selling the condo and moving would be a beginning to build a life in a new home, to grow roots with my family....

And instead I am finding myself stuck. Absolutely no idea how to begin. And completely impossibly unknowing how to end.

Just Stewing...

2009-06-16T21:33:00.004-04:00

...with this sick feeling in my gut. Classism is something that a lot of people "just don't get".

Maybe it's not exactly "classism" in the sense of outright deliberate discrimination. More likely it is a kind of ignorance, an assumption that the choices, options, and material constructs of one's own life "should be" shared amongst all members of a given culture.

While I won't go into the details of the situation (until I've moved beyond my current work situation...), I can say only this:

Again and again, the reality of those who call the shots is not the reality of all others surrounding. Justice for all requires moving beyond one's own privileged perspective and into the shoes of others. It requires equal parts listening and humility. And it requires bravery to step down and step aside.

I am sick of being told by a friend of mine, "Not all rich people are bad". I'm not sure where she got the idea that I feel this way; the truth is-- I don't. "Bad"-- no. "Blind" on the other hand...

Of course this assessment is not true either. I have a few friends who I have sat with, who were born of prestigious families with extreme wealth, who are struggling to face their histories with courage and awareness. And they are some of the most strident activists for equality and justice I know. But they do not deny facing their own histories-- and that is what makes them "unblind", and makes us able to connect.

Personally, classism is forcing me away from my job. While I believe in the mission statement of my workplace, I do not have much of a voice there, and so feel my commitment lessening. I am not a player at the table of big stakes and decision-making. Rather, the place I feel most compelled to speak my voice is in UU circles, in my congregation, in my district. At work, I am the notetaker... at church I am the speaker--and the listener. Church is the place I feel most able to make a difference.

Well, I have a lot to think about...and very little time to do it this week. I will be at work, helping to lead the way with our biggest event of the year. I will be pouring my heart and soul into it, because I care about what the mission says. And I will be putting aside the thought of "what's next?" until after this weekend is over...

Channels of Peace

2009-06-15T22:15:00.003-04:00

One of these days I'll have the time and energy to devote myself more fully to these nagging thoughts...this sure is NOT the week to do it. But I've got this adult education/ covenant group type lived experience idea brewing in me... and a reading list that keeps growing...

Have barely processed the past few weeks, am in the middle of an intense work and family life week, and can't even begin to understand how anyone has time to worry about life beyond what's right in front of them. I just wish sometimes that I had the space to respond to the events of the world-- but I have no idea where to begin with things like abortion doctor killings and Iranian elections...not a lack of insight, more a lack of time.

These are conflicts beyond my scope of living. Am I apathetic or secluded if I do not respond? Or are the concerns within my grasp, the mundane lived embodiments, the only ones I have the power to bring my heart to?

It was all I could do to bring my heart and soul back to my own congregation, to ride the course of conflict in our midst this past Sunday, and hold my full attention on those who needed it. It was all we could do-- to bend, but not to break, to mend the rifts, and in the end to remain whole and intact. For me to remain a part of this--a part of this body trying to find a way to work together-- while tending my own children, the demands of my own life, seemed all that I could do.

If I am tangled up in mediocrity, it doesn't feel exactly that way. IF a community can move through conflict, and move deeper in love and spirit, and I can be a part of this, and through living fully my leadership roles, help in some small way to steer the boat--then that is enough. And if in doing this, I am responding to a call, then isn't this really what is needed?

I am finding these small calls at work lately as well, and with my friends and family. I wonder sometimes if that is all that I can do-- to be a channel of peace--and if responding to a call isn't the greatest power on earth...even if the only person I am affecting is the one sitting right beside me.

Play

2009-06-11T22:39:00.004-04:00

Off to Lake Champlain tomorrow to camp with friends and family...

Finally learning how to take a break, relax, and PLAY.

Home from worship committee, summer service planning... Am thinking of PLAY as a theme for summer...hmmm...will contemplate more while hiking, boating, eating smores...

Moving Ahead

2009-06-10T22:29:00.005-04:00

We sold our condo today...I think.... Oh, and I got my Americorps award extention--so now I HAVE to spend $2500 on classes within the next year or I lose it (one class at Union will probably cost me that much anyway!) Oh, and my husband picked up a lot more summer hours at work and sold a listing (besides ours), meaning finances are looking better for us than they have in say... ever?

And yet, of all these only the idea of taking a class in the city has me thrilled and excited. I've taken grad classes online before through Starr King, but I can't wait to get back in the classroom (and back in NY). At this point, I have absolutely NO excuses left for not applying to seminary in the fall (to start in 2010). Oh, except fear.

But after having dropped the whole future-thinking, house-hunting a while back, I am left with a sort of blank about what comes next geographically. Beacon seems most logical...but I've never made very good decisions based solely on logic. We thought about Rochester, the cost of living very enticing, and family reasons pulling at my sleeve to come home. The downside of this is that we don't have jobs there...at least that's the excuse I'm giving today. The truth is, after all is said and done, it's more than that: Somewhere along the way I fell in love with the Hudson River.

In any case, I'm happy to have sold the condo. The family that is buying it is exactly the family I wanted to buy it--a single mom and her young daughter. We don't even have to take down the princess castle decorations from the wall! (Princess castles Bah, we read Superman stories tonight!)

But I've got some big decisions to make, and a heart I can't ignore. Or fear.

Reservation Lessons

2009-06-09T21:29:00.010-04:00

This past weekend I went back to the city...this time to meet up with some people I hadn't seen in about seven years. Well, sort of. For J it had been about 5 years since we last met up-- I was eight months pregnant, then, crouching over a pool table in Maryland for old times sake.

On Saturday, there were six of us-- J, who I volunteered with for a year as a teacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and her mom; The one who came before me--now, a UCC minister's wife who lived in Pelham where I once taught SAT classes in the dusty church attic room; The one who came after me--from the rez to spanish harlem; and The one who was born and stayed, Nebraskan keeper of stories, now East coast visitor. On the train ride back to Pelham, I heard the stories of all those I'd known during my stay...

My own stay on Pine Ridge Reservation was brief. But even more than brief, I fear that it was too shallow. There was in that year a loneliness, a longing to connect, and never quite being able to move past something in me. It was as if, in my arrival, I could only absorb the sense of the place, could witness but not fully bridge beyond myself into the lives of the people.

There may have been something inherent in the impossible role volunteers were placed in. I remember the questions of another volunteer who questioned the intention of this work to begin with. Who were we to just pass through? Who were we-- these privileged kids--most of us white-skinned, all college grads--come as teachers to impart our knowledge, create "lasting" bonds, "make a difference"...and leave.

Perhaps that was closer to the reason I couldn't move deeper, though something in me wanted to try. Maybe it was difficult to move beyond that role, and that realization that I wasn't "staying". Perhaps then that was the wall I built, based on this... I had commitments already made, a fiance miles and miles away, a life outside waiting to be lived after my short stop, and more choices than I knew what to do with. I had somewhere else I could go--and did.

There was a time of discernment, a crossing around February of that year when I considered staying on for another year. There was a strong urging to move deeper. I wondered about what it might mean to move from careful observer and teacher, to a deeper level of commitment and solidarity.

Of course, I first needed to confront my own helplessness...

There was a casual conversation in my first month there that I learned my entire senior class were survivors, not only of the usual tragedies, of which there were many, but a particular most poignant one of a fellow classmate's suicide in their freshman year. (most students had been together since kindergarten, and those who made it all the way through would graduate together). I recall the immediate stomach-drop in me as a teacher being asked to "motivate" my students, of not knowing how to enter in to this collective pain.

Helpless. Powerless. And yet, paradoxically, more aware of my own birth-given power and privilege than ever before.

This sense of helplessness repeated again many times....returning very recently, as I learned that one person I had known as a friend had died from alcoholism.

Lives intersect, and then they part. And how can they not be changed? I'm not ever really sure what to do with all that privilege...all that freedom to walk away and choose my life. It's not really a burden I want; I guess it's one I'm learning from though. I think of the volunteer who dared to call things out, as they were, who stayed on for four more years and really learned to walk in solidarity and love with those around him. I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen that way. I can only wonder, if life has it's way, I may have another chance...in other places, in other ways.

These are just rough thoughts I've jotted down here... the whole topic of "Staying" is something in need of more exploring. I place "staying" in parentheses because there is a kind of staying that can last beyond geographical presence...there is an accompaniment and solidarity that actually calls us back to the worlds we left, to be presence and witness to the dis empowered in other ways. While another year on the rez may have moved me deeper into this, then, I think what really matters is how I move and work with this understanding-- right here, right now.

Setting Intention and Discernment

2009-06-08T23:46:00.005-04:00

"What is it that you know that you don't what to know?" That's the question I have been contemplating for the past month or so. A poignant question posed by spiritual leader and visitor to my place of empoyment, Adyashanti...So, I've been working on facing truth head on. That, and letting go of expectations, plans for the future, and goals. Rather than goals, I have been focusing on intentions. I suppose the difference is that a goal is focused on outcome, while an intention is focused on means. (i.e. I may have a "goal" to lose 10 pounds, while my intention is to focus on eating healthy...and we'll see where that will lead...)Non-attachment to outcomes isn't something I've been too comfortable with in the past, and still I find myself "fixating" despite some pretty good attempts to let go.

But focusing on creating intention (rather than on simply letting go) has had some pretty interesting results. Setting the intention to be open to possibility has led me to think outside the box, AND I've been a lot happier. I've stopped researching my future, stopped house hunting and city browsing, stopped worrying the hell out of my finances. And in the meantime I have finally begun to enjoy life...as if I were moving into the unknown and standing still at the same time.

But now, it looks like things might change, and I may have to shift my thinking once again. How do I remain preset to inner truth and the present moment, and still make decisions about the future? Right now we have an offer on our condo, which we have been trying to sell for the past few months. We shall see, if we end up selling the condo--well, then what? Is Beacon still the shining light it once was in my mind? Or has that light faded--like so many others that I have a tendency to mentally exaggerate and fixate upon as if their alternative futures held all the answers to my life's transformation... To trade in goals for intentions is, in a sense, to give up illusions. Illusions that life's answers lie without--rather than within.

So then, what lies ahead is not as important as what lies within. And facing the truth in me seems to be the key to all discernment of movement. There is no future, there is only now, and what is really speaking in me, and what is tugging at my sleeve. And yet, I must use that inner awareness to make decisions about my future. Hmmm...

The next two weeks are not good timing for discernment...they are overly hectic and stressful with too many responsibilities at work and at home, and have put me in survival mode. Not a good time to make decisions.

But the past few weekends that I have set an intention to be open to possibility have led me to new discovery, synchronistic connection, and hope. Is it this inner openness that has led me to the edge of water, or is it the piper who is bidding me drink? I do not know, still dreaming on the edge, still wondering how odd it is that I might need to decide.

Or maybe not, maybe the deal will fall through, and there will only be this present moment once again, this carrying on, this opening to life, this hopeful blooming, this floating along the deep dark sea.

LOVE New Hampshire

2009-06-03T20:59:00.003-04:00

...Yet another reason to LOVE New Hampshire this week...

May New York be soon to follow!

Miles To Go...

2009-06-02T21:29:00.004-04:00

Over the past few weeks, I have noticed a certain wane in energy about me on the church front. Our attention turns from the diligent work of boards and committees...and we find ourselves staring out those windows just a little bit more...The seats are emptier in the days of graduations and weddings, and vacation planning. I am experiencing such weariness myself-- a little less than my usual enthusiasm for leading discussions and worship...a little more loooking to the mountains and reunions with old friends. And others are experiencing it too. In the past few weeks, nearly every call I've made to elicit the help of others in church activities has resulted in the response, "I'm just too busy...it's just the time of year...".

UU's are busy people, and we need our rest. We become a 10-month church in so many places--with ministers taking off in June and July, and lay leaders filling in. And in those congregations which are already lay-led, the summer is a time to take it even easier, lest we end up with burnt out leaders. In my half-and-half congregation, our summer services are more intimate; beyond lay-led services, events consist of picnics and pool parties, and that's about it. Which is not to say there is no power in those. Last summer's services were great--really good times for reflection and spiritual deepening. And the social events are a time of celebrating community.

And yet, this is not all there is. Because much as all of us privileged enough to take a vacation would like to believe that the world stops turning for our travels, the truth is that in summer-- the world still needs us. Individuals are still searching, sometimes even moreso when the world gets hotter. It was the dog days of a heat wave in a Rochester summer when I first stumbled upon my own redeeming UU small group experience. It only takes a few gathered together to create a church-- a place of personal salvation, a balm for the weariness of the soul-- but it takes those few to be fully present.

We are still needed--not only by individuals in search of church, but by a world in need of change. We cannot rest yet, I am reminded, by the news at my doorstep and status updates from essential causes flickering across my Facebook page. One of these is central to my mind right now, as New York State hovers on the brink of marriage equality. To turn the tide, each voice is essential. This Sunday, there are many who will march for that equality throughout our state, in places like Queens and New Paltz. These are the places where our churches are needed-- on the phone with our senators, on the streets to stand on the side of love, and in our pews to embrace the stranger who sits beside.

We're All We've Got

2009-06-01T22:32:00.006-04:00

This past Saturday, I attended the 10th Annual UU Metro NY District Anti-Racism and Diversity Conclave at Community Church in Manhattan. This year's theme was focused on environmental justice, so I was especially compelled to attend. A couple years ago, I was a member of the UU Ministry for Earth committee to create a National Conference on this same theme. Unfortunately, this event did not actualize for financial/budget reasons. So, I was encouraged that my own district was able to focus on this in what was for me a very meaningful and inspiring event.

As an avid note taker, I took away many resources--book titles, web sites, or statistics jotted down for later reference. And I also took away ideas which I plan to implement in the coming year-- ideas to bring attention and solidarity with migrant workers in Immokalee to my congregation's annual Earth Dinner on Labor Day; ideas to really get that community garden my social action committee has discussed into action; ideas for intergenerational services on water rights, privilege and responsibility...

But even more than these, what I take away is deeper recognition of my self. It is the realization of the questions that stir and move me beneath the restless tumble of the day to day. Most of these questions revolve around mission. See, while I was center of the city, my own hilltop congregation was celebrating the goundbreaking of our new church. Throughout the day, then, I pondered -- How can we be truly connected if we are geographically secluded? And is the question to ask--What are we to build? Or is it-- Who are we to serve?

Maybe UUA Moderator, Gini Courter, had the answer, when she described in her sermon the most isolated place on Earth-- Hawaii... And if the answer for the people she visited in Hawaii on how they have learned to welcome such diversity was "Well, we're all we've got" then perhaps that is the answer for my church too: to welcome all those who enter our doors with unconditional hospitality. Who are those guests and strangers? They may be visitors in search of a church...or maybe they are families temporarily homeless, in need of a bed, a warm meal, a home. For this is another dream we have considered with our new building...

I wonder also then if this is really what diversity is: Learning to create a home together on the only earth we've got. It is awareness of our own histories, but in becoming aware, it is not to remain stuck in them, but to honor them and clear the path for the core of our being to emerge... it is then to move beyond to a place of being fully present to another in his/her own history, so that we can help him/her to realize his/her core as well. And there in that place of full presence, there is deep and transformative connection. Well, that is not easy work.. what I am speaking of here is a model for the training I am currently in the process of called "Be Present", founded by Lily Allen. It is not a process for the timid of heart, and I was skeptical at first, too. But Lily is an incredible teacher, and I have had some pretty intense experiences of confronting my own history with race, class, gender--and doing it in a diverse community with others--each of us with our own unique stories opening to that essential self. At the last training I attended, I was the last to speak, and all that my soul wanted to speak was "We are in this together".

Perhaps ironically, it was that community's visioning the future weekend that I missed as well while in the city for the conclave. But I am still a searcher, moving with intent, but holding back from concrete goal. My day in the city held quiet synchronicities, and small connections that assured me I had chosen correctly. Church, Community, Family, Friends will be there when I return.

Mission Statement: My Dream for UUism

2009-05-23T22:37:00.007-04:00

Over the past couple months, I have fiddled with writing a personal mission statement. In light of these efforts, I have long felt that this blog needed a mission statement before I could truly revive it. I have felt this strong need to pinpoint my own purpose within Unitarian Universalism. For while the faith itself means so much to me, and I am unable to abandon it, I am confronted again and again with issues of race, class, age, and culture which compel me to work for change. I have faced these same issues within other organizations, as well, and yet it is within church communities where I feel most strongly the need and the ability to have an impact.

And still, I am uncertain of how to make real headway. I have heard so much talk in the larger UU world of anti-racism efforts and multiculturalism, and yet my own personal experiences (across congregations) are within the framework of that mostly-all-white suburban church on the hill. While many are engaged in social causes, there is still an uncrossed chasm, and either lives do not fully connect, or church culture does not truly change. Issues within my own background make this particularly frustrating...and odd match of personal passion and setting. (Perhaps I am speaking vaguely here, in my attempt to get at the heart of the matter, or draw a conclusion....more specifics will have to follow later...)

Of all this, I am still learning...doing my own anti-racism and community-builiding work in non-UU settings, learning from both good and bad experiences outside of the church, and hoping to bring something back. I am also hoping to connect with others who may share my feelings and mission, in the hopes to help with efforts to make this amazing faith relevant and transformative to the world...in other words, to move our place from the all-seeing, untouchable hilltop...to the main street intersections of ongoing personal and social transformation. This is an ongoing process of personal learning and envisioning. I have touched on some of these issues in past posts, and I hope to concentrate more fully in the future, using this blog as avenue for exploration.

And now to these ends, I share my dream:

I have a dream: that we are moved and transformed, from the limitations of exclusivity and privilege-- to an unveiling of the heart and mind which takes us beyond ourselves and into the world. I dream that we are not just the church that speaks for equality, justice, and diversity, but also the one that lives it in our worship, in our relations, and in our service to others. I dream of a church that has travelled many roads-- from the top of the hill, to the front steps of the neighbor's home, and into the city intersections, amidst the traffic of human lives. And it is there--at these intersections-- that I dream our lives connect, as we are transformed in learning to live in communion with all people and with the earth.

The Religion of Kindness

2009-05-23T22:21:00.006-04:00

Poem and Presentation shared with the UU Congregation of Rock Tavern on February 15, 2009

Kindness
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

The Religion of Kindness
by Terri Dennehy Pahucki

The line that ran out the funeral home door… unending, it seemed, lined with the faces of people I knew and love, some who’d traveled miles to be there, some who I hadn’t seen childhood, and many that I didn’t even recognize—but who had known and loved my father.

That line of people at my father’s wake is the image that comes to mind whenever I hear the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye. “Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things” she says. And in my experience, it was kindness that held me through the worst time in my life.

It is because of that line of people that I offer you this service today—and because of an assignment I received three years ago. As part of a covenant group called Soul Matters at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, we were asked to “think of a time when kindness saved you.” Since that time of reflecting and sharing our stories in small groups, I have returned to thoughts of kindness every February around Valentine’s Day.

Maybe I hadn’t thought of kindness as saving me before… Maybe I had thought of kindness as something trite or cute—nice things to do for people, a common feature of Hallmark cards or maybe the bumper sticker I saw recently-- “Practice Random Acts of Kindness”. Nice message..

And yet, experiencing kindness in a time of sorrow, put it in another light for me personally. During that time, Kindness did more than “get me through”—it restored my spirit and showed me I was not alone. It moved me forward from private despair to the body of shared humanity

--
The author Kate Braestrup, in the book Here if You Need Me tells a similar story of how those acts of kindness—not random, but deliberate--saved her. While in her 30’s, her husband Drew, a state trooper was killed in the car crash. Not 40 minutes after she has heard the news of her husband’s death—she is sitting with her friend Monica when the doorbell rings. Monica rises to answer it, only to be confronted with a man in a black suit, holding a bible in one hand, and a pamphlet in the other-- “Have you heard the Good News?” he says. Monica quickly slams the door in her face.

But moments after that, the doorbell rings again, and it is her neighbor—holding a plate of brownies just hot from the oven. “I just heard”, she says.

As Kate tells the story:

That pan of brownies was, it later turned out, the leading edge of a tsunami of food that came to my children and me, a wave that did not recede for many months after Drew’s death. I didn’t know that my family and I would be fed three meals a day for weeks and weeks. I did not anticipate that neighborhood men would come to drywall the playroom, build bookshelves, mow the lawn, get the oil changed in my car. I did not know that my house would be cleaned and the laundry done, that I would have embraces and listening ears, that I would not be abandoned to do the labor of mourning alone. All I knew was that my neighbor was standing on the front stoop with her brownies and her tears: she was the Good News.
___

Kate Braestrup’s story reminds me not only that acts of kindness can save our lives, but that it is exactly this which is the core of all religion—that kindness really is “the Good News”.

The Dahli Lama has been quoted on more than one occasion as saying—“My religion is kindness”. But Buddhism does not have a monopoly on kindness. There is also the command among Muslims to offer radical hospitality to the stranger, and among Christians to “love your neighbor as yourself.” In fact, kindness may just be the core thread which connects ALL of the major world religions.

Often we speak of this common thread as one of universal love and compassion for all beings. In this light, tiny acts of kindness are the demonstration of that love. And while we may use monumental words like everlasting and eternal to describe the grand feeling of love—to describe kindness is to focus on the details-- speaking only of moments, of particulars that stand out in our memories and in our minds.

And yet--perhaps it is that focus on the moment which makes kindness so difficult to maintain on a daily basis. Death and tragedy might inspire immediate responses of kindness, but what about the day to day? I know that I can be unkind every day-- hurrying through phone calls with people I love rather than listening from the heart—simply because I am impatient and just don’t have the time. And the thoughts I harbor for the driver who just cut me off on my way to work are anything BUT kind.

I think that we can all probably relate to one degree or another—and I don’t think that we are bad people, so why do we forget?

In struggling with this question, I have found myself looking to the children. If there is anything I know about my own children, it is that no matter how rambunctious, unruly, and even vicious they can be—when there is an emotional need, they are truly two of the kindest people I know. In fact, studies with children as young as 18 months have suggested that kindness may be a fundamental part of our human nature.

In one 2006 study, for instance, psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of 18 month old toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books. Sometimes he pretended to struggle with the tasks, and sometimes he deliberately messed up and dropped items on the floor.

What Warneken found was that over and over, whether he dropped clothespins or knocked over his books, each one of the 24 toddlers offered him help—but ONLY if he appeared by his facial expression to need it. One video shows how a baby glanced back and forth between Warneken’s face and the dropped clothespin before quickly crawling over, grabbing the object, and handing it to him.

Also interesting—the toddlers did NOT respond in this way if Warneken threw the pin or book to the floor. In no instance did Warneken offer the babies any praise or thanks, so as not to taint the research.

Warneken attributes the results of his study to toddler’s cognitive ability to understand people’s goals and a pro-social motivation to be part of a community. Both of these characteristics may be even more fully present in adults. And yet, I wonder if children might still possess an advantage--- namely, the ability to be fully present.

From Warneken’s example, kindness involves both seeing and responding to a human need. And it begins by simply taking the time to notice that that need exists.

Too often, we are preoccupied with a thousand concerns, we are overburdened and have little time to take to notice the nuances of human need. In order to be truly kind, we must also be attentive and aware of the present moment. We must take the time to recognize the human in all the people we encounter—whether it is the toll booth ticketer, or our own families. Too often we are unkind, simply because we have not taken the time to look another person in the eye and to see the human being on the other side.

LovingKindness Meditation

I have faced this own dilemma in my own life, moving back and forth between states of ordinary caring for others—and states of obliviousness to the needs around me. Last summer, I received a gift that has proven immensely valuable in helping me to deepen kindness as a spiritual practice. Through my work at the Garrison Institute retreat center, I have had the privilege to learn and practice loving kindness meditation from renowned Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg.

Sharon’s profound meditation makes kindness a spiritual practice of concentration, awareness, and opening of the heart, and it is one I would like to share with you today:

I invite you to close your eyes, and to begin to direct these words toward yourself.
May I be free from harm.
May I be happy.
May I be well
May I be at ease.

Repeat these phrases over and over to yourself.

I now invite you to picture someone close to, someone who you care deeply about
And so you repeat the metta phrases:
May you be free from harm.
May you be happy.
May you be well
May you be at ease
_________________________________________________

The third level of metta practice is to direct loving-kindness towards a neutral person. It may be somewhat difficult to find someone for whom you have not formed an instant liking or disliking. It is also helpful to choose someone you tend to see occasionally, since that will bring them and your changing feelings for them, into clearer focus.

And you direct the metta phrases towards this person.
May…you be free from harm.
May…you be happy.
May…you be well.
May…you be at ease.

Again repeating the phrases over and over.

I now invite you to open your eyes—I am going to invite a few people from our own congregation to speak, and I am going to ask everyone here to offer that person lovingkindness as they speak.

Be kind to one another, hold in your gaze the human vulnerability of each person you encounter, be gentle. Kindness saves us, kindness transforms us—it is a spiritual practice of seeing one another and moving into our fullest humanness, our fullest aliveness.

That it Will be Done

2009-05-12T23:09:00.003-04:00

In preparation for Sunday's service on Meditation, I recalled the following poem from Native American poet, Joy Harjo. I have always been intrigued by these questions of cultural diversity and spiritual convergence... of the power of various perspectives to evoke a universal contemplative experience. It is not all an easy flow. I have witnessed and experienced quite a bit of stumbling, rubbing, and bruising around the edges of cultural difference. Vulnerability, coupled with a lack of awareness and insensitivity, have created wounds. It is not with a flippant heart that I speak of my own year of living on a reservation; nor do I speak with authority, but only with the lessons learned from hindsight.

One of the reasons I have felt compelled to write lately is in relation to those lessons-- and to a story I have on the tip of my tongue which I may be called upon to share in an unlikely venue. It is the story of councils and empty chairs...I'm not sure which form the story will take. I started it as a novella over ten years ago; but time has a way with words...

In any case, I may begin again to tell part of the story this weekend as part of the panel on Meditation (or contemplative practice, which is the broader category under which I place these experiences...).

At the heart there is a common longing, and maybe someday a universal peace.

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circles in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

~ Joy Harjo ~

From Winter Dens

2009-05-12T22:50:00.004-04:00

After a nearly 6 month blogging sabbatical, I may be ready to begin again. Not that I have figured out what this blog is about, or that I have suddenly been blessed with "extra" time. My hibernation came as the natural result of moving into the world of working fulltime. And it is from that same world that I feel compelled to break back out of my silent den. After months and months of sleeping, the desire comes to stumble back into the world-- a little flabby and growling, a little clumsy --all the while hungering for something more.

This seems the perfect night to begin: my diary drowned in the bathtub tonight courtesy of a 2 year old's experiments with water. Not that it was much of a diary...more a record of "To Do" lists and "Have Dones". The truth is, without regular discipline, I only scratch the surface. So perhaps it is discipline that is the nourishment sought. And writing, ah-- the honey of my desire.

There is meaning to be scratched, and questions to be lived. That's what I am doing here-- belly, bear claws and all.

Where I've been: UU Chalice Lighters

2008-12-08T22:52:00.006-05:00

I have spent the past few months visiting congregations throughout the Metro NY district as a Chalice Lighter Ambassador to raise funds for a new building. As coordinator of the project, I've also been on the receiving end of stories-- the stories of others' journeys and discoveries. With unexpected joy and suprising revelation, I have found more treasures than were known to exist.

I can no longer work under the assumption that all UU congregations are alike...nor can I live under the presumption that we are disconnected. A common thread runs through us, binds us, connects us. And while each pulls at heartstrings a little bit differently-- I find life doing something a little more than I feel prepared to handle.

This past weekend's visit shattered presumptions previously held; maybe it wasn't the most noteworthy of all the congregations I've visited, but something left an impression...but it brought me face to face to my own biases about UUism, and straight into the mirror of my own calling to ministry. It was like holding a seed to a plant that had not quite blossomed-- but, lo and behold, these were heirloom seeds, and the garden that would grow, was most definitely planted at an intersection--a ruined place, we can only enrich with our loving-- a place that I can only call home.

I have one more Chalice Lighter visit to make, and if I have the courage to write it, I hope to chronicle this complete journey-- along with a new one accompanying it...

Here is the truth: a new church is birthing. Perhaps it is a bit of a living room church-- or maybe more likely a church born of corners and intersections... it's the places we meet, and the places our lives are transformed. There is a meaning to this blog after all-- a meaning I have barely had the courage to face, and not yet had the boldness to live. But every now and then life slaps you in the face with a little bit of grace--

and you can choose to run-- or if you dare to live into it-- leaning, leaning, leaning toward the light.

Until January...

2008-11-06T21:22:00.002-05:00

Blog Hiatus continues as I am re-adjusting my life to new circumstances.

January 20th marks the end of 6 months at my current job.

And it marks a new beginning for our nation.

My sister has already reserved a hotel room... and I've put in the request for a week's vacation...

The last time I took my kids to DC in January was two years ago. I wore my two-month old baby, while my best friend carried my two year old on her shoulders. We were there to march for an end to the conflict in Iraq. My children may have been too young then to understand.

But my daughter still talks about that train ride. She wants to go back-- and go back we will, three generations of my family, to march not against fear but toward hope and a new beginning.

Maybe the real march is what we do here every day, in the living and working and creating and the working for justice at the ground level. Maybe it is the daily sacrifices that we willingly give in pursuit of a greater good. And maybe this is the change I am seeking-- not only a change of policy, but a change of worldview. A change that moves us toward wholeness, toward fuller interdependent life.

But for now, I rest. To take those baby steps of "people, not projects"... to find my way back to center.

Until January.

Tired hope..or quiet fire?

2008-09-23T21:56:00.004-04:00

I've been receiving a lot of anti-Palin e-mails lately. Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem, and just ordinary women have had some great things to say. Truthfully, though, I've kind of shrugged at the e-mails...most of them I'd read already in my own online search for political news, and the anger I felt rise in me toward Palin has already ridden its course. I was all ready to dismiss her and get back to the real fight being fought in this election-- a fight I believe is for the voice of the people, for the voices of all people--of different races, classes, and economic statuses to be heard.

But the feeling I got this morning when reading about the practice in the town of Wasilla of charging rape victims for exams, and of Palin's "oversight" of this (While, she wasn't the one directly behind the practice, I still hold her somewhat responsible. However (a)-- if she didn't know, she wasn't fully on top of things, and (b) if she did-- then I am not angry. I'm sickened.)

And I'm tired. I'm tired because I really wanted to take September off, to turn inward. But I just can't sit still...anger and nausea have turned in me, and somewhere there's hope too... Yes, I want to get back to the hope, but it's a tired kind of hope now, and I'm not sure how to describe it.

Maybe if I just got closer to what I'm feeling...

I got the feeling today that I keep trying to light this fire, and then to walk away--hoping the flame would spread and burn. But everytime I walked away, the flame would die. It would only sustain itself as long as I was there to fan it. And I asked-- but is that really leadership?

I got the feeling last friday night when I heard one of our own incredible ministers speak that I was called. And that--once again-- UUism is really the place that I belong--the place that has people such as this who speak with an honesty and wisdom that is birthed in a story and shared from the heart. And I knew that the role of a charismatic leader is not to stand in the spotlight and shine, but to awaken the spark that exists within each and every one of us.

But then I got the feeling on Sunday morning that the flame is dying again. That it is a pale passionless whisper of its former self. And I asked myself-- but what is church anyway if we are standing outside the fire? (Don't ask, but I asked this question once before in my life, and the next day a church I'd not yet attended burned down, and I'm no poltergeist, but the metaphors of my life do have a strange way of manifesting... )

Well until Sunday afternoon... Common fire, and lots of fire signs gathered to dream and vision, and I was the skeptic who wanted to tone down the volume. Over and over again I have been lauded for my enthusiasm, but I was tired of being the cheerleader, and so I found myself in the passenger seat,-- and for once, the driver relaxed and was fine to just go along for the ride.

Perhaps the most important feeling of all that lurks is a quiet fire. It is the quiet devotion that rages against all the pain and despair and ugliness of this world. It is the kind of fire that is steady and never fades.

My past couple weeks at work have been devoted to our Women's Wellness Projects, to supporting the necessary work of healing victims of violence. And so this morning's news about the domestic violence rates in Alaska and the practice of charging rape victims for their own tests in Wasilla was the push that got me angry and ready for work. This time when I hopped in my car and headed off, I felt charged to fight back through whatever simple, mundane tasks I might take on throughout the workday.

But mostly, I felt a real sense of honoring for the real feminists of the world-- the people whose spiritual and emotional wellbeing we are working to support--namely, the shelter workers and staff. They are tremendous people who take on the stories and the pain of the people they encounter in the day to day, and often hold them too close within. But together, we might move toward healing.

Tired hope or quiet fire? I'm not quite sure, but either way...it rages on despite all those ugly attempts to quell it.

Back to Blogging...and Testifying

2008-09-11T22:25:00.014-04:00

I am trying my best not to get pulled in to this really sick "disgust-obsession" thing I'm having with Sarah Palin. I had to listen to some Ani DiFranco on my way to work to get out all my anger...one things for sure-- Sarah really revs up the competitive beast in me.

If it were only just the issues!...But, no, it's the archetype. I have been on all sides of the spectrum, and really what it comes down to is that I will be damned if she becomes the poster child of the new feminist.

So, rather than focus on some analytical digression that will take me off into tangents more emotionally puzzling than I'm eager to deal with right now...

I'll stick to the kind of feminists I can believe in:

And I'd love to include some contemporary pics-- but they'd all be of my friends, none of whom has gotten her face on a poster (YET!). But I am proud to walk among women who are balancing babies on their hips while working toward change.

We are the ones who nurse one-week olds while typing theology papers. Who change diapers on the capital steps during peace marches. Who run social action meetings with toddlers on their lap. Who chase little ones through community gardens...and who balance their lives and the lives of their children-- as community organizers in pursuit of a better world.

I am one of those women, but I am not alone.

And-- because I am of a woman of privilege in this society-- (no silver spoon in the birthing room, but marked by the color of my skin...)

I am called to speak out as a feminist for the women who can't...

Like the one I saw in a New Orleans newsflash three years ago wondering if her baby on a respirator would have enough oxygen to outlast the floods..

Or the sweatshop laborers with hungry mouths to feed who never had the chance to choose. No one asked them if they could handle the difficult job.

We really do lose sight of the big picture, don't we? We really do lose sight of the least among us, caught up in our mommy wars, our bitter cat fights, and our sparkly ivory privilege.

Well, I refuse to let that be the final say. I am one white woman at least, who refuses to let the polls dictate what she represents-- and will be damned if she lets some hockey mom who's oppressed native peoples in her own state, disregarded the wisdom of scientists, and mocked the ONLY thing about politics that has ever created change in America

represent her.

On Blogging Hiatus...

2008-08-27T22:03:00.002-04:00

Until September 8th.... Unless I have time earlier and just HAVE to write!

Spirituality at Work

2008-08-15T07:13:00.004-04:00

I'm leaving work early today. I'll be working the weekend, so my boss felt that I should have some time to myself and with my family beforehand. I will also be taking next Friday off (per her suggestion). Work this weekend and through next Thursday means some assistance to the Education project director, but mostly attending as a participant in a contemplative retreat for educators. I am looking forward to this training in mindfulness, loving kindness meditation, and emotional awareness-- and wonder only how it is that I missed out on this training as a former educator!

In all my five years as an educator, no one was ever concerned that I worked too much, or that I might burn out. Inevitably, teacher burnout occurs. Perhaps, this also happens to UU volunteers-- we often have volunteers who "take a summer off", or need to leave the congregation for a time because they just worked too hard, and got spent.

But working in the contemplative world I am finding the benefits go far and beyond health and dental. Weekly meditation, a chance to sit in on retreats, silence before meetings, all staff contemplative days, and an annual overnight retreat are just some of the benefits that are part of my job. Not to mention the great food and view of the Hudson.

Of course, if these things were not a part of my job, it would seem antithetical to our mission as a retreat center- exporing the intersection of contemplation and activism in the world. But it seems there are plenty of places (i.e. hospitals and schools) that are focused on the well-being of the students, patients, etc. but pay too little attention to the needs of staff (i.e. nurses, teachers).

I don't know about churches, as I've only participated as a volunteer. Do we pay enough attention to the spiritual needs of our ministers, staff, and volunteers? It would seem that given our mission as UU's to "Nurture the Spirit.", that this would be an absolute necessity. Especially if we wish to bring our whole selves to the healing of the world.

In and Out of UUism

2008-08-13T21:50:00.011-04:00

Lately, I have wondered if my connection to a larger UU identity is waning. To begin with, I'm not so sure what a UU identity is. It is a quality defined by more than just a list of principles; it seems to be something tied up in UU culture. When I first joined UUism, I identified this primarily with the characteristics of my first large congregation. But every large congregation has sub-cultures...so really, what I called UUism was something reflected in my relationships with the ministers and with other friends I made through small groups. I identified UUism with the love and connection we shared. Now, there is a whole new set of associations that I place upon UUism that have come to me through involvement in my second congregation, UUCRT, and through engagement with the larger UU world, via online classes, blogs and publications. There are pieces of this UU culture that resonate with me-- the passion for justice and the search for meaning, primarily-- but there are other pieces that do not--specifically a feeling of homogeneity in race and class.

Right now, I am not all that concerned about "fitting in" to UUism or not. Right now, my congregation is my key community, but I have begun to build other communities. At a recent intentional community meeting, a group of people of diverse ethnicity and religion, but common spiritual center and values asked the question: But what do you think about this-- how we all have such different backgrounds and practices, but are looking to share this common spiritual core? What will it mean for us to join together in some common ritual or practice of living?

A new friend of mine smiled and said he found it to be "delicious!" I couldn't help but think to myself-- "Oh, you mean like UUism?" But that wasn't exactly it, either. Because those in that room were both more alike me and more un-alike me than any UU crowd I've been a part of. More like me in shared values and vision. But more racially and ethnically mixed than any UU congregational group I've been a part of. UU's have talked for a long time about opening up to people of color and younger people and people of various economic brackets, but the truth is-- we are still largely a homogeneous group.

I guess what I am wondering is if what I am leaning toward in my life is UUism PLUS. I have never liked the whiteness of our congregations, and that takes me out. I have never liked the upperclassness of our congregations, and that takes me out.

But what I do like--shared values and spiritual core--I am finding both within AND with-out of UU ciricles. The entire concept of diversity in belief and spiritual practice and shared community and values is arising in many pockets all around us. The values of UUism are not just the values of a particular church. They are the values that are sprouting everywhere-- and they are going to have a significant impact upon our future.

I believe our denomination has a lot to offer the world. But I also believe that other communities have much to offer UUism-- especially ones that truly embrace diversity in race and class.

And I believe that my own journey will continue to travel and wind in and out of these various communities.

Choices

2008-08-13T07:12:00.003-04:00

Little one slept on momma most the night last night. She woke up screaming and nothing would comfort her but this. She didn't have a temperature. SHe just wanted mommy.

Meanwhile, my oldest had a tough time with bedtime, too. "Why does daddy work so late?" she cries. It's not that she doesn't get to see daddy very much; he picks the girls up from daycare at 1:00 every day and spends most of the afternoon with them. And he has them all day on Friday, as well. Meanwhile, the girls are all mine on Saturdays-- when he's off to the office for real estate (what's left of it) and the week's lesson planning for classes. Morning and week nights, he teaches.

Actually, my oldest is torn. "I want to stay late at daycare like the other kids." But as we talk more, she tells me what she really wants is the whole family together.

That doesn't happen much anymore. It's tough. We are lucky though--because we like the work we do. Because we are making enough to pay our bills (doubtful we will have any extra for a LONG time, still...but at least we're getting out of debt). Because we are moving closer to dreams that will allow us more time to live into the life we dream of, including more time with one another.

But it's still hard, and I am still torn apart by these choices.

For my Husband

2008-08-11T22:09:00.002-04:00

Too tired to write tonight. I can barely keep my eyes open...but I am thinking of my husband on his 30th birthday. And my wish today is the same I have been wishing for the past 8 years that we have known each other...that he find a way to follow his bliss. And that his heart opens as wide as it will, to glow with a lasting happiness and to love all the precious gifts of his life.

Sunday Worship Lessons

2008-08-10T23:08:00.004-04:00

Beautiful service today-- and I didn't even want to go. I just had the hardest time tearing myself away from my kids this morning. But church just isn't very kid friendly in the summer, and daddy was taking them hiking instead. Mommy went to church, though, mainly to support a good friend who was leading the service-- and to lead a social action meeting afterwards.

I am seriously overcommitted-- I know. Mainly I'm at the point of overlap. I signed on to a lot of things at church BEFORE I knew I would be working fulltime. And I am currently living out my responsibilities, and in the stage of transitioning. I have already given up week night meetings, but Sundays are still workdays for me at church.

Last week, when I led the service, I was not as present as I would have liked to be. It went well, though in ways I did not expect. I remember feeling in the middle of speaking that I wished the time would go faster...I did not really want to be there. This is the first time I have ever had that feeling while leading a service. But it was just that I was at the point of exhaustion. I also had planned a service, expecting children. But it was a rather gray-haired crowd who came. And that taught me a lot about myself, and how to minister in the moment, to the needs that present themselves, and to move gently to Plan B. It also stressed to me the importance of building relationships with the kids during the year through my RE involvement. The movement toward a more intergenerational community is not going to be a one-shot deal; it's gonna have to be something that happens bit by bit over time.

Anyway, that was last week. This week, I was a member of the smallest crowd we've had all summer. But the intimacy of our setting was perfect for the service my friend led on Mary Oliver's poetry. Rather than listen to a lecture, we experienced the gorgeous language, interspersed with musical meditation, and the shared thoughts of those who had gathered.

This service reminded me how important it is to experience worship, not just talk about it. What I dreaded most in coming today was the thought of listening to a lecture. I was tired and just wanted a salve for my soul. And I was so happy I came. This was no lecture; this was prayer.

I know much of Mary Oliver's work well, but my friend chose some poems I had not heard before. She got choked up reading one poem (see below) and had to pass it off to another reader. She was not the only one this morning who cried--reminding me how tears are also a powerful way to connect and to heal, like dewdrops from a heart broken open.

Thanks to my friends and to Mary Oliver, when I reunited with my kids in the afternoon, it was with open heart. I looked into brown eyes, and I looked into green eyes. And I savored the time.

______________________________________________________

The Kookaburras by Mary Oliver

In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to stride out of a cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, pressed against the edge of their cage,
asked me to open the door.
Years later I remember how I didn't do it,
how instead I walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.

Our Christian Neighbors

2008-08-09T22:05:00.004-04:00

I didn't leave home today-- and it felt great! Instead, my daughters spent the afternoon playing dress up, riding bikes, and making mud pies with the two girls who live around the corner. It's an interesting story-- these two girls are ages 6 and 10. My daughters are 20 months and 4. Yet, they play together like best friends.

The older girls are polite, kind, and gentle with my daughters. And they are evangelical Christians. In fact, their father is a Southern Baptist minister who moved here from Georgia to plant a church. A few months ago I wrote about an encounter with one of the people from their church, though it was only later that I learned of the connection.

The family is distinctively missionary in nature. They have traveled throughout the world evangelizing, and the youngest daughter was born in Guatemala during one of their missionary excursions.

In many ways the girls are similar to mine. They like imaginary play, roughhousing, and princesses. They like getting dirty in the mud.

As I sat outside drinking a cup of coffee, I watched the youngest ones playing, and listened to the oldest daughter talk about the random details of her day. I imagine she is a bit lonely, since there is only one other girl her age in our complex. Her church is very very small still, and she has not made friends outside the complex yet because she is homeschooled. She told me how she liked to wear capris because she's not allowed to wear anything shorter-- then kind of blushed and looked away, noticing my bare tan legs, short cuffs landing at mid-thigh.

Religion doesn't come up much in child's play. Do you go to church? they ask and we say Yes. There are even two crosses in my house-- one plain wood, hand carved in West Virginia. The other with pictures of Nicaraguan children painted on pale wood. Both represent to me the essence of what I still hold onto from the Christianity of my youth-- simplicity, hospitality, love.

All in all, it was a pretty ordinary day. Children being children, playing ordinary games. I suppose not much has changed from my own childhood. Growing up, my next door neighbors were Jehovah's Witnesses. The kids were closer to my younger sister's age, but I often joined in too. We made up stories in the backyard, danced, and played with Barbies. I remember asking my mom why they didn't celebrate Halloween or birthdays and she explained about the differences in their religion. Looking back, I am grateful for the experience of this exposure at a young age to people with different religious points of view.

When it comes to openness to relationship with those of other religious leanings, there are very few roadblocks in me. And yet, I fear there is an obstacle I have not yet faced. I think I am deliberately avoiding the discussion of religious topics with the neighborhood girls' parents. And I know exactly the source of this tension-- my own family. If there is any topic that is taboo among my extended family it is religious difference. My own mother cannot fully articulate the religious views of her born-again twin sister because as she puts it, we do not talk religion. And then there is my dad's side of the family. When my uncle (my dad's brother) left Catholicism for fundamentalist Christianity, my grandfather did not speak to him for a year. (I do not use the word fundamentalist lightly here. I am using it to evoke not only a religious viewpoint, but a political stance of intolerance that my family on my dad's side holds. Though don't ask me to articulate-- we do not talk religion. I am only aware from side comments and e-mail forwards of the extent of their views... )

While I encourage my mother to discuss religion with her own sister, she says she's already been down that road. She says she likes how close they are now, and if they were to share religion it would only create a wedge in their relationship.

Perhaps she is right. At first I could not imagine how she and her sister could really be so close-- if religion, which is such an essential part of both their lives, is kept at bay. But, lately, I think my mother may be on to something. For the twin sisters have cried and experienced life and loss together, and if they cannot be united in their answers, they can at least be connected in their struggle to find them. (Though, I doubt their answers would be all that different from one another, as they are both Christian; it is only that my mother is more universalist in her understanding, while my aunt tends toward a more literal biblical interpretation of certain passages.)

But looking at the children chasing ladybugs and ants along on the patio, I wonder if religion isn't a part of our conversations after all.

There are two kinds of religion that we all possess-- the kind that is wrapped tight in the bound fist of belief, protected. Belief can be rigid and even violent, but it can also be strong and empowering.

But there is another kind of religion, and it is this kind I think that allows us to move more fully into relationship. It is the kind that wonders at a rainbow, and that reaches out to the world with openness--most often through the vulnerable tenderness of love.

When it comes to these difficult conversations, I have to wonder-- am I really all that torn? Especially when the questions line up like this-- to talk religion, and risk the rending of relationship?

Or to witness to the ordinary wonder of life-- and leave the children to their play.

Meaning-making; A Spiritual Task

2008-08-08T23:37:00.010-04:00

What is my spiritual task?

Sometimes the path is clear...sometimes I can't quite see the way.

Today I learned what really happened to my old high school boyfriend this past May: concussion and drowning near his boat, off the Florida coast.

Today I learned that his sister's husband committed suicide two weeks ago, leaving two little ones behind.
--

I have not been back to Rochester since April, and I have wondered what is keeping me. I know there is something buried--anger, sadness, loss--that I have held within. Unresolved tensions with family, stirred up in the aftermath of my grandmother's death, along with recent sadness of friends keeps me from returning. I know that when I return, I will need to say more goodbyes.

We will be there for our 6th year wedding anniversary in October. We go to the Finger Lakes every year on Columbus Day Weekend, and my mom will maybe even watch the girls for a night. But I have already begun to list the places I will visit-- a cemetery, a lake, a house, a church-- to pray my goodbyes.

But it's not really such a morbid thing. I am actually really looking forward to this-- ritualizing change and transition is really essential for me to grow my spirit and move me into fuller life. (And my husband is actually just as dreary a soul, I guess, because he sees my ritualizing as a great way to spend our anniversary!)

We are the meaning makers. We are the ones who cannot see life in black and white. Who must create something new from chaos; blessings emerge from disarray of images and events.

___

Today I created mandalas and honored the four directions with domestic violence shelter workers.

Each of us could tell our own story from the drawing. "I feel alive with the flame of life!", one woman spoke passionately when looking at my drawing of my open heart. Another woman saw angels.

It is our stories that save us, our stories shared, It is my spiritual task to share these stories, to do the only thing that can be done in the midst of death and despair-- to make meaning, to make love.

Today I asked my 4 year old daughter what she saw in the mandala drawing. She replied, frustrated, "I don't know. What is it?" in search of some definitive truth. But there was no definitive truth-- only swirls and darkness and jagged lines. So my husband whispered, "Camille, What do you WANT to see?" and her eyes opened wide--

"It's an Oatmeal Man!" she said, and pointed to two red dots--

We begin to make out his eyes. It is one of the stories we can read in the black distorted flakes.

Where We Are Now

2008-08-07T22:12:00.005-04:00

Picnic basket, acoustic folk rock, and lots of kids dancing in the grass tonight. Free summer concerts that even working moms can enjoy on a Thursday night.

But right now I'm checking train schedules for the 2 hour trek into the city. Ugh. Transfers are such a pain....I couldn't imagine doing that every day, like so many do. It was a commute enough when I lived in Westchester and didn't have a family....

But at least the reward at the end of the tunnel is appetizing: Mandala workshop with domestic violence shelter workers. And my job for the day? Learn. So let's see, so far I've been paid to meditate, practice deep listening and mindfulness, read fascinating articles about contemplation and education, and now-- learn? (Of course, I do "real" work too-- edit workbooks, help plan retreat events, write e-mails and meeting minutes, etc...)

The decision to work full-time still pulls at my heart strings when I have to say goodbye each morning. But I have been trying my best to savor every moment I have with my girls-- something I really struggled with when we were always together.

So, tonight, as the music played we danced. We twirled in circles. I picked them up and swung them between my legs. We fell down in the grass laughing.

Tomorrow, it's daddy's day at home with the girls-- and it was kind of strange hearing him tonight making plans with my mom friends to meet up at the farmers' market. Kind of strange, but not bad.

Daddy takes the girls to play date and produce shopping at the market. Mommy hops on the train to work in the city.

And they all eat leftover frittata and dance in the park together on Thursday nights.

Common Fire

2008-08-06T22:33:00.005-04:00

To the outsider, it might seem that I am involved in a lot of projects...(Ok, to the insider too!) But in looking at my life now at this juncture versus say...a year or two ago... it seems that something real has shifted. A year and a half ago I had a lot of projects too....

But today, it's not projects that compel me. It's friends. In particular, new friendships are taking root. It is the kind of friendship that shares a common dream...a common passion...

A common fire one might say???

A new way of living. A new way of loving. A new way of being together in community.

So, there, it is. Out of the bag. "My" latest endeavor. Not really mine. Ours. And not really a project. No, it is so much more than that.

All those associations that might be made with intentional communities (hippy commune, gated, secluded, homogenous...), really don't hold water with this one. Better words would be empowered, just, sustainable, diverse, spiritual, activist, friend.

I have held my vision inside for a long time... I have tried to light its fire too often. But now synchronicity has brought me to a place whwere I don't need to work that hard. It is not a matter of struggling over a pile of wet logs with a tiny book of matches; this flame is already alive. I only need to feed it with my gifts, as others will with theirs.

So you might say we are in the beginning stages of forming an intentional community. With each new meeting, our commitment strengthens.

Or, maybe, better yet, you might say we are becoming friends, growing our common fire, and maybe, just maybe, sharing the light of that beacon with the world.

Bear Mountain Bridge Reverie

2008-08-05T22:01:00.004-04:00

These mornings now I drive. Through winding green roads, those Appalachian foothills, and over the Bear Mountain Bridge. Something is moving in me these mornings. Pictures and thoughts too full, it seems that they would erupt into light if I let them.

Maybe there is something to the spaciousness of this drive, to this feeling that this place between where I work and where I live is somehow out of ordinary time.

But the thoughts and the pictures are rooted securely in faces and moments. See, these mornings I am filled with love and gratitude for what I can only call God.

It is the perfect proud laughter of my daughter this past Sunday as we swam together across our minister's pool; it is the sadness and hope in the eyes of a church visitor with whom I shared a brief conversation. It is the light and peace that I receive from a friend who means more to me than she knows. It is the soft kiss of compassion from another who I will never forget.

These pictures flash through me as I drive, and I can't help but wonder if all the things I worry about and fuss over, even matter at all. If my sense of expectation of how things should be, of what I should be doing, and where I should be going is really anything at all in comparison to love and connection.

I drive on-- past the place where a boat capsized, trapping a young man beneath it in the marshes, taking his life. I drive on-- past the place where a woman lost control of the wheel and crashed headlong into the waters.

Too many headlines lately. Too much sorrow.

At church, we light candles in silence for lives lost, we pray for an end to hatred and suffering. We hope.

And in the end, we must ask ourselves what matters--

if our lives didn't quite turn out as we had planned. If I set the table for sixteen children, and serve a meal to five elderly widows-- why on earth would I waste time wondering that my gift really did not matter?

It is only when I walk away from all the work of the world, and sift through what's left that I see the beauty that remains. Those faces, smiles, hands-- reaching toward mine.

"Ah," my spiritual director would say when I tell her of these things, of that love that brings me to my knees and fills me like light-- "this is God".

It's not the same God I used to know. It is only love, divine and reaching out. It is life speaking. Not the one I had planned, but the one I have been given.

And in the midst of darkness, it is all that I can believe in.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

2008-08-02T13:04:00.003-04:00

Oh-- where to begin, where to begin???? I am supposed to be planning tomorrow's service now, but I am just stuck. This was supposed to be our summer intergenerational service-- a service full of joy and hope and happiness. A service of celebration. But there is heaviness in my heart, and I know also, in the hearts of others, as we stand in mourning with the Knoxville UU congregation.

I was at work when I heard the news last Monday...I took a walk into hallways filled with silent retreatants. I joined the Dzogchen Center meditators in a silent lunch; somehow, in the midst of violence, it was this silence that created a space within me-- a space in which to heal. Tomorrow, we will observe our silence together as UU's-- and our space will be filled with children and elders alike. Just as the sanctuary was last Sunday in Knoxville.

But what about the children? My daughters are young, and they don't know what happened. My oldest daughter only knows that Momma lit a candle Monday night, and we sat on the couch cuddling and sang one of her favorite songs together. Her song. Tomorrow. She knows some of the words; the rest she makes up as she goes along. Afterwards, she wanted to watch Annie, so we watched a little bit of it together, before she fell asleep. My daughter doesn't know about people dying in church...but she does know that there are kids in some place called Tennessee who need our prayers. And she knows that we can send them our love together.

Today we made bread together. My oldest picked sage and rosemary from our herb garden, and the youngest added her little handprint while we kneaded the dough. I had planned this way in advance as part of a ritual that we will share with our congregation, a ritual that not only coincides with traditional Lughnasadh celebration, but also has meaning of healing in my life. There are bread-making and sharing rituals in many relgious traditions, all with their own significance and meaning. For us, though it is the act itself-- of sharing time and joining our hands together in preparation--that carries the deepest meaning. Tomorrow we will share our bread with our congregation, and we will join our hands to stand united in faith with Unitarian Universalists everywhere.

I do not know all of what I will say tomorrow.

But there are a few gifts that we can share together.

Silence. Flame. Song. Bread.

Love. Prayer.

Hope.

All ages, all generations, joining together, when we cannot find the words.

Ministry in the Here and Now

2008-07-21T08:44:00.003-04:00

a new chapter begins. I don't have to be to work until noon, but I dropped the girls off at day care to set ourselves into the full routine. Both hubby and I woke up early...he to read the newspaper, drink his coffee, and go jogging. Me to sit in silence, drink my coffee, water my herbs, and even do a little yoga. And all before the kids were awake!

Somehow we managed the morning shuffle without even a whine from our little ones. I guess they sensed that we were on top of our game--and so they were too. Hopefully, we can keep up this level of organization in our lives without becoming Nazis! That is-- stay centered, stay relaxed, stay organized, stay kind. Not that I expect some kind of perfect stasis-- good Lord, this is life and we're the parents of a toddler and a preschooler!

And we are pursuing our dreams. To actually know what we want to do with our lives, and to have a practical plan to get there seems a remarkable place to be after all the chaos of the past five years! My husband will be looking at graduate programs in the city--- and hopefully by next fall (2009) he will be on the way toward his PhD.

As for me, divinity school is on hold, but ministry is not. I had this conversation with my spiritual director recently how the path of ministry seems to be a lifelong conversion process, a constant deepening of self and spirituality, a continual movement into living one's calling. And how it feels that I have already embarked upon this path, that it does not begin and end with the list of requirements necessary to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. While I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who have gone through seminary and the rigorous processes of becoming a minister, I wonder if commitments to ministry cannot be made in other ways. At this point in my life, I have found that deep listening and answering to the smaller calls around me--mothering, listening,church service, community-building, spiritual deepening, and now--this new working role--are all part of doing the work of ministry. And though I still hope one day to travel that road to become a Rev., I feel that I have much to learn from--and much to give-- where I am here and now.

And now, on to the day--and all it's surprises!

UU Intersections: Looking Ahead

2008-07-15T17:30:00.003-04:00

While I am uncertain of how much time I will have to write in the upcoming months with working full time, mothering, and *just a few* church activities (which I will need to cut back on...we shall see...)... I have decided to utilize this blog for a very practical purpose in the next two months. I have committed to two upcoming Sunday church services, and hope to direct my writing toward deepening my thoughts around the issues of each of these. Thankfully, I don't need to write a sermon (got that out of the way for the summer already!)...but I still hope to give my heart toward creating a fully alive and spirited worship experience.

The first service will take place on AUgust 3rd. It will be intergenerational, and include music, stories, and ritual. The theme for this service is honoring the ordinary moments in our lives, and celebrating the season. I have already devoted much of my blog to this topic, probably, but hope to probe deeper into some resources I have acquired.

The second service will take place first weekend in September, and falls right in line with our new UU Congregational Study Action Issue: Food and Environmental Justice. We will be celebrating our 2nd Annual Earth Dinner on that day, and have already invited a guest speaker (a Buddhist-farmer-activist from our region!). I am thrilled that this issue was chosen as our study-action issue. And not just because I shop the farmers' markets and love to garden...it's just hard to think of any other issue that affects every single human being in the entire world and reveals so vividly how connected we truly are. But more on this later....

I've got dinner to prepare (pasta with zucchini and eggplant from the market:)--and kids to wake up from their naps.

Pulls and Changes

2008-07-15T16:56:00.006-04:00

It is a rare moment these days that I find myself alone in a quiet house. Both girls are napping-- schedules aligning like heavenly bodies in an occurence rarer than a total eclipse of the sun. The older is recovering from lyme disease (early stages, very treatable...though the 104.3 degree temp last week was truly frightening...). And the usually predictable toddler is pleasantly off-schedule, enjoying her second snooze of the day.

Part of me wishes I could just freeze this moment, this moment of preparing dinner while they sleep, of tending to the house--all those things that have defined me as a stay-at-home mom these past four years.

Though there has always been this pull... Even now, I rush to my computer while water boils to sneak in a few moments of writing time. It was like that from the beginning, as I worked to complete graduate research papers, two-week-old baby suckling on my lap. The pull between the pen and the bedtime kiss, between the work of the world and the work of the home has always been a part of my life.

It is reaching a pinnacle at this moment, as I prepare for the next phase in our journey, for returning to the working world. It is exciting news, of course, and hardly the work of corporate America...I will be working as a program assistant at an incredible place-- an interfaith retreat center called The Garrison Institute which focuses on bringing contemplation and awareness to engaged action in the world. I will be working with the directors of two initiatives-- Transforming Trauma, and Contemplation and Education in programming, research, and administration. It's a new field of work for me--and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow in this inspiring environment, and to share my gifts with the world...

but I am also sad. For with each new change, there is a letting go. My girls will spend mornings in daycare, afternoons with dad, and evenings with mom.

This is where I am now. Excited. Anticipating. Full of life. And learning to move into these brand new changes that lie ahead.

Declarations of Interdependence, Sunday July 6th

2008-07-09T07:15:00.006-04:00

(No time to write something new this morning, so here's my talk/sermon from this past Sunday...)

Declarations of Interdependence:
Presented Sunday July 6th @ Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Rock Tavern

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

With all due respect to Thomas Jefferson, I don’t quite buy it. To begin with, those truths, those inalienable rights in 1776 were not all that self-evident …. “Men” for instance, left out a few people. It was not a universal term, but a rigidly exclusive one—referring to white male property owners. And over the past couple centuries countless groups—women, blacks, gays and lesbians, and countless others— have had to assert their OWN declarations of independence within the United States….

The truth of the matter is—when it comes to freedom and independence, we have built brick by brick upon that original cornerstone. AND we are still building, still declaring our independence, still singing We shall all be free…

This is not to disparage those original words. I do believe the Declaration of Independence of 1776 was an important step toward the establishment of democracy. And, it was the uprising of voices away from dependence on another nation, and toward self-governance.

From a spiritual viewpoint, this declaration articulates a longing which we all experience as part of our human development, most intensely perhaps as we move from adolescence to adulthood—namely, the longing for self-actualization and for freedom.

But-- Today I stand—here in the free pulpit—and offer all of us a new declaration to consider. Today, I would like to challenge my forefathers, and make the declaration that those inalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are NOT ours to be attained through independence.

Rather, I stand today and make my Declaration of Interdependence: We hold THESE truths to be self-evident: That all life is connected. And that life, liberty, and happiness are ours to be received as gifts through the transformative power of interdependence.
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I am not the first to make a “Declaration of Interdependence”. The first recorded reference dates back to 1936. Henry Wallace, Vice President to Harry Truman, made the remark "Declaration of Interdependence" in reference to global political interdependence. Wallace also disputed with Harry Truman over Cold War policy, advocating that US security would be strengthened through cooperation with the Soviets, not aggression, and he suggested an “interdependence” of nations. Wallace was opposed to dropping the nuclear bomb, and subsequently landed in political exile.

Simultaneously—but separately—Walter P. Taylor, president of The Ecological Society of America in 1936 linked Henry Wallace’s idea of interdependence to ecology. There is little rugged individualism in nature," he wrote. An ecosystem is a "closely organized cooperative community of plants and animals."

Also, about this time, in 1944, Will Durant, Pulitzer Prize-winning philosopher, made his "Declaration of Interdependence”, referring to relationships between individuals. He wrote: "… just as no state can now survive by its own unaided power, so no democracy can long endure without recognizing and encouraging the interdependence of the racial and religious groups composing it." Durant’s declaration focused primarily on interpersonal relationships between blacks and whites, between Christians and Jews.

Since then, several grassroots organizations, poets, and institutions have attempted their own declarations. What I find most interesting about these initial declarations is that they each focused on a particular aspect of living—global politics, ecology, human relations. Specifically, they were still rooted in delineating a separation between humans and the natural world. It is only in recent years that these movements have begun to converge, that we have begun to see the connections between our own lives and our planet, between the necessity of securing environmental justice—the right to water, for instance—and our efforts to secure peace and human rights globally.

More recent declarations of interdependence reveal that the separate movements of social and environmental justice are beginning to merge. Paul Hawken, in the book Blessed Unrest, believes that native indigenous wisdom is the spiritual glue which binds these two movements. As Hawken writes, in indigenous thought--“Every single particle, thought, and being, even our dreaming, is the environment, and what we do to one another is reflected in our diseases and our discontents…..It is because we have created an artificial divide between people and nature that the social justice and environmental arms of the movement have arisen separately, each with its own history. Indigenous cultures provide the connection, where we might see the two as one.”

This then is most simply the base and foundation of a comprehensive interdependence as I understand it: That all life on earth is connected; that whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. That the web includes all relationships among beings within it---plants, animals, air, water, humans of all races, creeds, and nations in relationship with each other.
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It seems pretty basic and simple, doesn’t it? We assert this as our seventh principle, don’t we—that one about respect for the interdependent web of which we are apart? And if ecology has already established this fact of interdependence, then what is there left for us to declare?

But the fact is, we are still as a culture in denial of our interdependence. We are still asserting our supremacy as a nation, and our ability to live in separation from one another and from the earth as fact.

This past week I had the opportunity to experience and affirm my connection with nature while camping with my family in the Berkshires. Waking up at 5AM, watching the sun rise over the trees, listening to the stillness of a babbling brook, I couldn’t help feel that I was a part of nature. That night I read an essay by Native American author, Linda Hogan in which she describes traveling deep into a cave to bathe in hot springs. I would like to read you the excerpt that struck me:

Other women enter this cave and water. This time there are two other Indian and a group of travelers from Japan. I want solitude, close my eyes, lower myself deeper in the water and try to enter my own silence. But then, something wonderful happens. A woman in one of the back chambers begins to sing, a long clear note that fills the whole tunnel. It echoes, an eerie, mysterious sound so that when she moves to another note, it sounds as if there are two voices, like the beautiful songs of humpback whales… Then, from the men’s cave comes the howling of wolves…

One of the Indian women talks about water medicine. She was sick and has come back to the healing waters of the earth.

We are welcome here. I love this inner earth, its murmuring heartbeat, the language of what will consume us. Above is the beautiful earth that we have come from. Below is heat, stone, fire. I am within the healing of nature, held in earth’s hand.

I am within the healing of nature, held in earth’s hand. I have held onto those words this past week.

Linda Hogan’s experience articulates for me more than just a moment of connection with all of nature, including our own core human nature. Her story is also helped answer for me a question I’d had about interdependence.

Namely: In declaring our interdependence, What do we stand to lose?

In looking at Hogan’s story, the first thing she lost was her solitude—that which she had hoped for in entering the cave. And she lost the ability to control her circumstances.

There is a certain vulnerability to declaring that we are “held in earth’s hand”, that we are dependent on nature for our healing.

It means that sometimes—try we must—we cannot find the cure to our brother’s cancer, or save our friend from depression. It means that sometimes we are forced to face our own helplessness as a nation—that stay or go, there is no “winning” the war.

Declaring our interdependence means that we accept our vulnerability, our inability to control life.

Lucky for us that’s not the end of the story. See, what I have discovered about interdependence--and—here’s the good news-- INSTEAD, when we accept that we are in this together, we open ourselves to many gifts we did not anticipate—to the joys and the surprises of life, to the shared songs and stories of others, to the healing that lies in living as a part of nature.

As a nation, it means perhaps that we do not know all the answers, but might share in solutions together with other nations, that together we might offer each other gifts, to create a sustainable and just future for all life. As a congregation it might mean that we offer one another our most authentic selves—our shared stories, our shared music and artistic expression, our shared work for justice. And as people, it might mean that we move deeper into compassionate connection with the earth and with each other.

When we declare-and live- our interdependence, we open ourselves to receiving gifts. These gifts are, I believe, all around us, wherever we are, as we let go of expectation and open our ears and our hearts. Today, our service has been filled with many sharing their gifts—thanks to Hollis and Diane for sharing music, and to those who’ve shared their stories as part of our Joys and Sorrows, and to all those who’ve shared their presence here with us today.

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I would like to end our discussion today with a personal confession. I would like to end by offering you the story of my own resistance to interdependence.

Last year, around this time, I came to a service here, but I did not come inside. See I’d had a really rough morning with the kids, and I really did not feel at home in Orange County, and to be honest—I had burned myself out with committee work and other obligations pretty early on. I had taken on work, but had kept my truest self hidden. That day I was on the verge of tears. Basically, I didn’t want to come in because I didn’t want anyone here to see me in distress, to see my vulnerability. I wanted to maintain the illusion of self-control and competence.

I don’t think I’m alone here. I think that a lot of times we fight back our vulnerability because we do not want to impose, or because we believe it is easier to be alone.

It took me a while to learn that helplessness can also be a gift we give to one another. I learned it from each of you, from hearing your stories and receiving your gifts again and again. See, there was another service months later where I received the phone call that my grandmother was entering hospice, and I could not avoid church that day—I was scheduled to be worship leader. So I just showed up—with my tears and my vulnerabilities—and what I received was gift.

We come together not only to share our gifts—but to share our needs. And what I’ve learned is that those needs are also gifts. They are offerings to our community of truest self.

This morning we read together the words of our mission statement. These words, written soon after the fire of 2006, are the cornerstone upon which our congregation is rising. These words are the compilation of several voices, of the members of this congregation. I believe they are our declaration of interdependence, calling us to live our connections with one another, and with the world beyond our walls.

To move toward greater interdependence gives way, I believe, to another way of rising. The offering of ourselves in community—our gifts and our needs, our joys and our sorrows, our hopes and our dreams—opens us to something more powerful than what we can find alone. It opens us to gift or grace or Spirit. In my experience, this Spirit of Life does not come down to us in visions from the clouds, but arises from our connections, from our living and from our loving. This Spirit of Life is what I have come to find in community here with all of you—in moments when we speak our most honest truths, when we share our gifts in worship, when we share in our work for a more sustainable world.

This then is the mystery of interdependence—that in admitting our vulnerability, our inability to do it alone, and moving into deeper connection with life that we become most fully alive—and most empowered. We are less likely to become burnt out or depleted, because we are constantly renewing ourselves at the well of inter-being.

It has been proposed by some researchers that we make summer a season of interdependence. It is also, to me, a season of replenishing and spiritual renewal. I am looking forward this summer not to hiding out in my car, but to drinking from the well in community with all of you—

(Raising metaphorical glass...) To fuller life, To liberty, and To the pursuit of happiness.

Life, Change, Fear

2008-07-08T07:05:00.007-04:00

Life is still a whirlwind of changes. Finding the center in the whirlwind is such a challenge! Last week we painted our condo, went on vacation (a wonderful camping trip in the Berkshires!), and--in the midst of these family events--I went on my first job interview in three and a half years (when I took a job working part time as an ESOL teacher). I've been home full-time with the kids since we moved here--two years now--and it's had it's ups and downs. The first year with my youngest was, I believe, essential for our growth together. But now it's time for a little separation...And especially for my oldest, who really needs more than I can give her. Am I burning out from full-time motherhood? Just saying this to appease some guilt for wanting to return to work? Perhaps a bit...but I can't see how hours with stimulating learning activity and socialization in a good day care setting can be worse than spending so much time with a mom who's frazzled, distracted, and run out of good ideas to . Not to mention isolated. Sure, we make the efforts to get together with other families--nature hikes and Friday playgroups, but my kids still seem bored during the week. And I guess so do I. I mean if we lived in an intentional community where we created a cooperative childcare/homeschooling system, it would probably be different... but I don't. I live in a exurban commuter condo complex next to a Mall.

Anyway, I'm rambling with questions...it's second interviews this week, and off to summer camp for my oldest, back to work for my husband, and mom and sister visiting on Saturday, and that firstborn child turning 4 years old on Sunday!

Oh-- and then, I'm still feeling the glow of Sunday's service, which for a holiday weekend in the summer was wonderfully attended. Somehow, in the midst of last week, I managed to write a sermon... (Ok-- while my husband took the kids to a pool party on Saturday, I managed to put some words together...). I'll post what I wrote soon, though- as a novice sermon writer with no speech training, I find that the actual sermon I give also adlibs quite a bit. I am still trying to figure that whole sermon thing out-- I sometimes hear the voices of my favorite preachers making their way into my own... it's kind of funny. Kind of strange evolution of prophetic voice.

How do you measure the success of a sermon? I don't think it can be measured by the words themselves. There is such a dynamic interplay between the words and the congregation--probably this is true especially in a small church when you can see the nods, the tears, and the laughs up close. Also, we add the voices of our congregants to our speaker's sermons afterwards--it is not just one voice giving the morning message, it is many voices telling their stories and sharing their truths. I've heard this does not work in many congregations, but it really seems to work in ours, and is for many, the favorite part of service. We were also gifted this past Sunday with great music--a folksinger congregant just surprised me with this gift, waiting for me in my e-mail inbox when I returned from camping...

Anyway, I got this feeling for a split second while preaching on Sunday--what are these people doing listening to me speak with rapt attention? What do I know? It is a strange position to find yourself in...and a bit overwhelming. I guess that's why public speaking is humans' number one fear...(which really I still don't understand! Public speaking? What about sky-diving? Or death of a loved one???)

Well, what I felt after Sunday's service was connected and bonded, more completely than before with my congregation. More love. More spirit. That is how I judge the success of a sermon.

Such rambling thoughts today...now back to my family and the balancing act of life...

When it comes to fears I will take public-speaking any day over that deep fear that I will somehow screw up or let down the two people I love most in this world: my kids.

Blogging Hiatus

2008-06-29T08:04:00.002-04:00

OK- painting our condo, camping in the Berkshires, planning a July 6th service, AND job interview all in one week. Not to mention my Mom's visit for my daughter's birthday the following weekend....

Deep breaths. Some of this was unexpected.

Right now, I will be on blogging hiatus until further notice. Deep breaths and silence in the mornings is spiritual practice enough.

Hope to resume on July 7th....

The Hardest Job on Earth

2008-06-27T07:40:00.003-04:00

I sometimes think that it is easier to give a sermon on peacemaking to a full church than it is to be a peacemaker at home with my family. In raising two little ones who abound with more energy than I know what to do with, I hope only that we all make it through this period of our lives unscathed and whole!

Time for All Ages is a joke at church. My youngest thinks this is a great time to play "catch me if you can" around the flaming chalice. My oldest has used her time up front to flash an entire church! I do remember a time when I was a child that my parents received an award for their "saintly patience" with two rambunctious kids...maybe it was after my sister dumped a cup of hot coffee on our priest's lap! My own exuberance was usually a little more welcomed, as I was a bit older when we started attending church; it consisted of a weekly gallop down the aisle at the sign of peace--right into the open arms of that same coffee-stained priest.

So maybe it is karma. I'm sure that's what my father-in-law thinks when he looks at our oldest-- spitting image of her father in both looks and willpower. I have heard it said that the characteristics we try to suppress and manage in children turn out to be the ones we favor in adults. Perhaps. If we could just swallow some basic cultural tenets, I'm sure my husband and I could be very successful. But alas, we are still breaking the rules--evoking pedagogies of liberation, rewriting religious language and ideas, working to break free from the constraints of capitalism gone wild.

Maybe my children get their rebelliousness from us. Or maybe they are just acting their age (though I was recently recommended a book about raising "explosive children"-- I already read the one about "the spirited child" --I liked that-- but explosive????)

All in all, when it comes to parenting young children I have only a few wishes. First and foremost, I wish for their health, happiness, and well-being. Secondly, I wish that the seeds of kindness, curiosity, and wonder are nurtured and grow throughout their lives.

Or perhaps I should write these wishes in reverse? For if I were to pass on anything to my children that I have learned, it is this:

That it is by extending to the world our open hearts, that we are filled.
That it is by living and loving fully that we are made whole.

To keep on living and loving and becoming-- despite pain, despite loss, despite oppression. That is the most rebellious thing of all.

New Seeds in Old Pots

2008-06-26T07:18:00.003-04:00

Last night I planted new seeds in a little painted pot. I received this pot as a party favor a couple years ago; it was a symbol of new possibilities, then, the hand-work of a woman I had just met. She had planted seeds, she said-- basil or oregano. We would discover which as soon as they grew.

Well, perhaps I was negligent or the soil unfertile, but my seeds never grew. Though I watered and waited for the sun to nourish, the soil remained barren. Eventually, I emptied the dirt, and held onto the beautiful pot. Recently, I placed it on my bedroom altar/bookcase, along with other gifts I have received throughout my lifetime.

Last night, in contemplation, I saw the pot, and realized I needed to plant new seeds. I had black dirt in a pot on my patio that I had recently collected from my inlaws backyard to transplant mint. Crops grow like wildfire in black dirt; I use it for transplanting herbs...so there was the right soil waiting.

And I had an array of extra seeds--no basil or oregano, so I decided to plant cilantro, since I use it so much throughout the summer. AND I know from past experience--it grows quickly. And I am a bit impatient.

SO, is there a metaphor in all this? Of course. While the first seeds--(read:dream of a community in Rochester)--never blossomed for us, recent events have moved me to plant new seeds.

And yet-- all I have to offer is the seeds. All else is gift.

For, there is soil I have recently discovered--fertile and rich--that is the gift of new friends I have met. And there is the clay pot, beautifully colored-turquoise blue with a sparkling sun, of those who came before-- ideas and dreams we held, visions we shared. These are not lost, though our paths have drifted in different directions. The new will grow from within the structures of old pots. Isn't this always the way in which we rise?

But even these gifts are not enough alone. Seeds are nourished by nature, by sun and rain, fire and water. There is an element of grace, and a certain serendipity to it all. So right now I wait to see what will grow.

Contemplative Activism--and Folding the Laundry

2008-06-25T07:58:00.007-04:00

Right now, I am looking for the line between full and overflowing, between whelmed and overwhelmed. I am excited about new projects in my life, but wondering if my life can handle this sudden burst of energy.

It is my tendency to "aim for the pie, end up with a really good salad--and a messy kitchen!" I have also heard it said-- If you want something to get done, ask a busy person... But, maintaining a centered presence is essential to avoiding burnout; if I am working so much that I do not have time for writing and meditation, then I have tipped the scales too far. Good work with good intention then is fruitless, merely a replica of the forces I am fighting against. It is essential, then, that I maintain a spiritual practice at the borders of my day throughout the most active portions of my life.

There are two quotes, seemingly contradictory, that I was once given to contemplate the pulls between contemplation and action:

The first from Thomas Merton:

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence ....
(and that is) activism and overwork. The rush and pressure
of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form,
of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of
conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone
in everything, is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace.
It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the
fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of
inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

The second by George Bernard Shaw:

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

I wonder--is there a way to live both of these philosophies at the same time? Is "contemplative activism" an oxymoron? Or is it a fully enactable pathway?

The measure of most projects, I believe, is to involve myself only in those things with which I enter into with a full heart and mind, which compel me from the heart.

Of course, there are also those mundane tasks for which I lack real passion, but which need to get done. But women and monks have for centuries instilled the ordinary domestic chores with spiritual significance. (I wrote a term paper on this for a World Religions class, focusing on women in the Jewish tradition...) Right now, I have instilled domestic chores with the meaning that I am creating a home, especially one that I can share with others. I am moving deeper into my place in the world. (Of course, it is also good to lower my expectations in this realm--I have two kids under the age of 4 for god's sake!)

In order to instill the ordinary with meaning, I have to work with mindfulness. The way I resolve these tensions--between busyness and silence, between activity and contemplation--is to eschew the act of "multitasking" as much as possible. Of course, this is tough with young children! My oldest daughter is now at an age where she can help me fold laundry, prepare dinner, water the plants, etc. The youngest is a challenge, still. Finding ways to give my undivided attention to two children with very different needs is tough, especially when they are both very demanding of mom's attention. Sometimes I just have to draw the line and deal with the tantrums--

and, when grace appears in the form of our church greeter donning finger puppets and crayons in the back of the sanctuary...then accept the gift.

Because that is the ultimate secret I have found to "getting things done": Community. We work best when we are working together.

We cannot do it all alone.

Summertime...

2008-06-24T08:30:00.003-04:00

...when the living is easy?

I have a grumpy husband who wonders if camping in the Berkshires with the girls is REALLY a vacation. We shall see next week...but what else are we to do? I told him. We could hang out in our condo for a week, with no school, no work. He could leave us alone to go fishing...(Oh wait, don't suggest that, or he might actually do it...) OR we could go on a real family vacation-- mountains, rivers, campfire, life in the great outdoors. If the babes grumble, it is no less than they would have done at home...the difference is we will be surrounded by natural beauty--the light of stars rather than the flicker of TV sets from condos where we are the only ones, it seems, who dare to venture outside to sip our coffee, plant our herbs, enjoy the early morning dew....

In the meantime, my oldest is home this week. Preschool camp starts up again second week of July. We have a public market festival, a nature hike, and dentist appointments on the schedule for the week...along with a major painting project. After two years of living here, it may be the first home improvement we make, but it is the first time I have begun to see this place as a home. And even though, we may not live in this condo past next summer, right now I want to live as if this is the only time, the only home-- the present.

So we begin painting, putting in a new floor (don't ask what color(s!) our NON-stain resistant rug is right now...), replacing the curtains... My husband ho-hums about these improvements. His love is for books, not hammers and paint cans. But for me they are a rite of passage, a moving from living on the edge between two worlds, and making a commitment to live fully in one place. They are also a passage into real community. I have a long list of folks I want to invite to dinner, to share in meals and conversation with, to create real and lasting community. I am preparing this home, that I might share it with others.

So we paint this week, camp next. Moving in and out of home, that we might return to deepen our roots, extend our branches, into this place in which we reside.

Religious Education & Intergenerational Worship: New Endeavors

2008-06-23T08:31:00.008-04:00

Life right now is abundant and full. The recent decision to stay in Orange County has enabled me to commit myself more fully to projects in my congregation and community, to engage with a full heart and spirit. I am excited about leading summer services, and have signed on to teach religious ed once a month beginning in September. Yesterday I met with the religious ed committee to discuss plans for the coming year.

Teaching in the religious ed classroom is new territory for me. Despite an extensive background in working with children, a master's degree in English Education, and five years of full-time classroom experience, I have steered clear of the religious ed classroom. I guess I just needed a break from kids--especially since having two of my own!

But I do not feel that I can fully be a part of a congregation unless I also know its children. I will be working with the 10+ crowd, mostly middle-schoolers. I am really excited about this!! This is the age group I truly enjoyed working with most as a teacher-- especially in smaller groups. I love their energy and enthusiasm for the arts and creative expression, for sharing ideas and trying new things. Of course, working with middleschoolers in a classroom was also my greatest challenge--since the "energy and enthusiasm" could also overflow and explode in other ways...Classroom management was always my greatest struggle. (That, and the fact that I was more interested in the students and their personal growth then some of the material I was teaching...I wanted to give each and every student individual attention--and when you have 120 students....well...can we say burn out?)

I do not expect to encounter these same challenges in RE, since I will be teaching only once a month, and to a MUCH smaller crowd. AND, I love what we will be working on together cooperatively and creatively--world religions, UU sources, and always, personal development.

My primary reason for getting involved in Religious Education is that I want to get to know my congregation's children better. I know the younger children pretty well, but want to know the older ones, also, who are an integral part of my community. But, I have to wonder why it is exclusively parents who are teachers in our RE program...don't others want to know the children better too? It may be the length of commitment, so we are seeking ways to involve people who are not parents into the RE program on a less-committed basis.

Also, I think sometimes we create a separation between children and adults with our overly-talk-centered worship. This year, I have taken on the challenge of creating intergenerational services. The first will be in the beginning of August...Often, children are absent from church altogether in the summer, as there is no RE. Getting the kids involved mid-summmer then is a new thing, but I am hoping it will go well and we can do a service like this every month throughout the year. We have talked about doing this for so long, but a real effort to create a truly intergenerational worship has never taken off. (If any blog readers have resources or advice for intergenerational worship, please share!)

Over and over throughout my life, my spirit has been fed by children. My own children have about 10 surrogate grandparents in the congregation. I would not be able to do half of what I do at church without their help.

I believe that intergenerational community can be transformative; we learn from each other at all stages of life. All of us, at every age, offers a gift.

I am looking forward to discovering a whole new array of gifts in children and youth this coming year!

A Little Peace and Quiet

2008-06-22T08:18:00.002-04:00

I have been without my kids for almost 24 hours. A community planning meeting yesterday morning and a friend's birthday celebration last night were good enough excuses to request the babysitting services of my in-laws. Those events were wonderful times to connect with people, to engage in conversation and laughter, to sit back, relax, and enjoy life.

Yet, it is the time in between that actvity which comes most as a blessing. There is a kind of peace that I can only find in solitude. At first it feels so strange--what do you mean-- read a book at 3 in the afternoon by myself??? What do you mean--concentrate on one idea at a time? Have a one-on-one conversation with my husband?

We will be leaving soon to pick up the kids from grandma's house and heading off to church. It is the beginning of another week. I miss my kids and can't wait to give and receive gigantic hugs.

But in the meantime, I cherish the pristine quiet of a still house and a focused mind. I hope I can carry these gifts with me back into the busyness of my mothering life.

The Longest Day

2008-06-21T07:04:00.005-04:00

I awoke a little after 5 AM yesterday morning to a yellow sky. Tossing and turning in a newborn light, I wondered if the clocks were slightly off.

Visiting a farm-orchard with my kids and another family, we heard the late-morning roosters crow and crow. The goats bleated, the horses kicked up dust, the peacocks pranced on barn rooftops. Little children stuffed their mouths with strawberries straight from the stem, as mommas bent to fill their baskets. My littlest one signalled she had had her fill by napping her head on my arm. We rested on an outside swing, feasting on homemade donuts and juice, then packed our purchases and headed for home.

Afternoon, time jumbled with too much to do arond the house, and no sense of rhythm. Phone calls I didn't have time to take ate up minutes with problems I didn't know how to solve. Kids screamed in the background for my attention. My husband and I just got confused, and we took it out on each other. There is an impossibility to listening when too many demand our full attention at once; there is a time when I must say no to listening to one thing, that I might give my attention fully to another. The myth of multi-tasking need not apply to the spiritual practice of listening.

It was a LONG afternoon-- and not a peaceful one. Isn't this the way we too often live our lives--detached from the present moment, a million worries, a million voices tugging at our sleeves?

Letting go of anger, learning to love again is a challenge of coming into the present moment.

Evening we rested. We sat on my inlaws back porch swing cuddling, holding glasses of pinot noir, watching a sky lit up in brilliant pink and orange. The sun was late in setting. This, the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, ended on a tranquil note--a note of reconciliation and of time standing still. Tell me, what else should I have done?

_________________

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Confronting My Own Prejudice

2008-06-20T06:33:00.004-04:00

It is all too easy for me to blame the wealthy, to paint the world as an us vs. them scenario, as I take a stand for justice on the side of the little guy. It is all too easy to paint the world in black and white strokes until I take a closer look.

Yesterday, I recognized a prejudice in myself that arose in the shape and form of jealousy. I was jealous of success and privilege-- of perfect children and happy family. And I could not hate them, because they are some of the nicest people I've met since moving here and from the few conversations we've had, I suspect we share many values. But something ugly in me arose--as their daughter received accolades for her talents and perfect character and my own struggled just to keep her hands to herself, her eyes focused, and her body in one place. I thought of my grumbling husband that morning who was anything BUT the prince the perfect child had once declared him...and then I looked at the model Olympic-star lawyer cheering his well-rounded child on-- and grumbled.

A feeling arose that I cannot be friends with people who have it all. It was a feeling of complete separation, reminiscent of highschool experiences where "the popular people" were taboo, and where the nice ones of that crowd who smiled at me were the most difficult of all. But haven't we grown since highschool?

It may sound strange. I have many friends who are successful in their careers. My very best friend since college has achieved tremendous success in her career--financially and status-wise. But she doesn't have kids--and I know in her heart of hearts that what she longs for most in the world evades her. Even more than this, we are connected through shared background, knowledge of each other that can be traced back to some difficult life struggles. But if I met her now and saw only the outside? I do not know if we would be friends...

Basically, what I realize in struggling with in my feelings toward others is that I am really struggling with my own ego, my own desire for approval. Approval is a drug that I have been dependent on my entire life almost. I no longer have report cards with perfect A's to bring home to mom and dad. Instead, I mentally grade myself for everything I do--and usually it is far below that A+ standard.

But isn't there another way of seeing things? I look upon my "certificate of appreciation" that my congregation gave me, not as a diploma to measure my success but as a gift expressing gratitude and connection. It warms my heart, not inflates my ego. I have found a place where the work I do is not rewarded by money or by praise, but by love and joy.

At church I have many materially successful friends. In the beginning, it kept me from connection (especially true in the larger church...). But a truly alive congregation can not last long if it stays at this surface of self-revelation. Now, I rarely think of money at church: I think of people. We are connected not by our shared status or roles in the world; we are connected by our shared joys and sorrows, by our losses and our hopes and our dreams. Our questions and our doubts. Our struggles for justice, and our longing for peace.

I look again at the "perfect" family. I look at my youngest happily at play with theirs. These blockades we build to prevent connection as adults are unreal, unsound, untrue.

When I build walls of prejudice against others, I am denying in them their inherent worth and dignity. I am denying them their stories and their possibilities. And I am also denying my own.

more gifts...the photograph and the song

2008-06-19T07:28:00.006-04:00

The gift of song has woven a special magic in my life this past week. A few weeks ago, a member of my congregation compiled a set of folksy tunes together into cds, which he distributed to members of our Social Action Committee. I have been listening to this cd as I drive, transporting my daughter back and forth to school--past the Walmart and the mega-stores, and into downtown Middletown, where early in the morning, people have already begun to gather at the bodegas and gas stations. I don't know the lives of the people I pass; I don't know their stories. I have worked in the nearby soup kitchen a few times...but still caught only glimpses of the day to day lives of people who pass by.

But I can only imagine how it is. My husband brought home sorrow last night, as a man he works with--a man with five kids, a temporary administrator who never had benefits to begin with--now finds his working hours dwindled to 6 or 7 per week. Economic hardship permeates beyond class lines; there are far more applicants than there are jobs in most sectors. And there are fully employed people who can not make ends meet on their wages. Real estate is a joke right now; the housing market sits as still as a cemetery in our neck of the woods.

Oh, that word 'depression'...seems to linger around corners like a shadow. Not just economic depression, but the onslaught of deadened feeling. I have been struggling with a personal pain, praying, praying, praying-- because that is what feels right. It feels right to see all of life as a gift, and to open to it, and to accept the letting go. But it hurts. Those memories of my life at age 17-- of first love, really...pushed aside, then out of nowhere--BAM! His obituary said it right when they said his first passion was sailing...I found last night the picture he gave me when we first started dating--a picture of a teenage boy standing at the helm of a ship.

June is a month of "Travelers" at First U of Rochester; the irony strikes a chord of pain with the death of one who never stopped travelling. Because some people travel, travel, travel-- yet never find a place they can call home. As one who has also traveled, I have found that home has less to do with place, and more to do with connection. Perhaps it is that fear of connection, that separation, which so many are losing their lives to.

But that music, that music reminds me, pulls me back. I have listened to the song, "Earth" by David Roth over and over--the 11th track on that compiled cd. I have been imagining a world where we live in communion with one another...this song has been working with me, through me toward a new hope, transforming the pieces of pain into some new kind of compassion. It is the work of alchemy I know always to be present in the midst of loss.

So many new possibilities are taking hold as I write... there are seeds of possibility that I cannot yet write about--but will as soon as I know more! Even loss is a seed which will blossom with care, I believe.

For now, I look upon these gifts-- A cd with its simple song. A photograph of a moment. The people at the corner store. Our human lives.

And I give thanks.

The Gift

2008-06-18T07:09:00.005-04:00

The practice of listening deeply is transformative. In offering lovingkindness to others, I have been surprised and awed by the gifts I have received in return. I did not expect that beneath my child's laughter, the story of a friend, the underlayer of a dream, lay this beautiful gift.

It is like the birdsong outside my window, I suppose. On Father's Day, I sat outside on the lawn, and listened to it fill the air. I remembered the scripture verse my dad gave me as a teenager: "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" My dad is not distant; his voice is as clear as those birds. I do not need a medium to tell me he is near. (In response to a sudden surge in friends and mothers seeking connection to the dead via psychics and spiritualists...) "Do not worry," held the crux of my father's faith..."seek and ye shall find".

But the birdsong contained yet another gift, as my husband pulled back the branches to the bush outside our window yesterday, revealing the perfectly designed nest, with the baby sparrow, just learning to fly.

Life is transforming at this moment--loss and pain, joy and discovery, friendship and connection. Opportunities to share my gifts with the world. My family and I are staying put another year in Orange County, New York-- yet more is unfolding where we are now than if we were to relocate. I did not expect that I would feel this much joy for "staying put", but deepening relationships and commitments in my life are creating in me a sense of home that fills my spirit from the inside.

Yet, there is also loss. For in choosing a path, there is a road not taken. Once that road seemed to hold all possibility...but perhaps each love has its season, and way leads onto way. We can not go back. We must hold the gift we were given, hold it tightly, and when the time comes--let it go. The gift of my Rochester church was given when I needed it most. It saved my life.

And perhaps it remains, like birdsong, a voice I carry with me still. A voice that speaks through me.

As I lead worship services this summer at my small congregation, and guide others in leading theirs, I think of the gift of powerful creative worship and intimate connection I have been given--a gift that filled me and transformed me. And now, I think of the outpouring of myself, and of the growing love for the faces of my small congregation, a new gift I am receiving. I think of community that transcends place, that we can touch and connect with, no matter where we are.

And I open to the possibility of that gift.

__________________________________________________

"For it is in giving that we receive..."--St. Francis

"Knock and it shall be opened unto you. Seek and ye shall find."--Matthew 7:7

"To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."--Mary Oliver, "In Blackwater Woods"
_____
(Note: secret to rising early: set the coffee maker the night before!)

Oh, dear...

2008-06-17T11:18:00.003-04:00

Not sure how or when I will ever find time to write again... Now that my little one no longer takes morning naps, my husband is working more hours (which is a GOOD thing...),and I have found that staring at a computer screen right before falling asleep just isn't good for my spiritual health...

Will need some time to figure this out... Probably means waking up earlier in the morning. GROAN...

But giving up writing just isn't an option.

The Music of the Night

2008-06-14T21:12:00.005-04:00

Something happened the night of the musical revue. I was dubbed 'salad girl' that night--the night of our lasagna dinner fundraiser, and hadn't expected to meander outside my corner of the kitchen. Hours of preparing and serving food to over 100 people came and went quickly. I was tired and thought I'd head home.

I just didn't know. I just didn't know my congregation held so much talent--or more precisely--so much spirit.

See, there was salad girl, in the back of the church with her friend (dubbed Gandhi)-- her eyes filled with tears. Gandhi told me later it was my contagious joy that filled him. But it was the music that filled me.

And as our church matriarch said later, it wasn't just a performance--it was spirit-filled gift. One of our performers offered a song that could have been gospel. Two powerful voices sang a duet that expressed connection to all of life. And a jazz trio, including one of our teenagers on sax, just blew me away with feeling.

But I was also a little angry-- do you mean we can sing? We can play music? AND we can do it with spirit? WHY CAN'T WE DO THIS ON SUNDAY????

Right now, we barely have a choir. (I have heard our four-person choir perform ONCE in services.) On Sundays, our congregation struggles through hymns we can barely follow. My husband and I have become nostalgic for our old Catholic songs-- (OH, how I miss those St. Louis Jesuits!) Last Sunday's "Let it be a Dance" was more like "Let it be a Dirge".

But now that I know we have the talent, I refuse to let this matter rest. A congregation that cannot rise up in song with feeling--and with spirit--does not move me. How can we be moved to 'heal the world' if we cannot nurture our spirits on Sunday morning? Music moves more than the mind. It moves the body, the heart, the soul. And I believe it is an essential part of our congregational life.

Right now, I think our problem is just a little lack of organization. As one of my fast-becoming-best-friends-in-the-cong told me later, it is all a matter of nurturing the seeds. Those seeds are most definitely there, and they will grow. And I have seen us grow already in so many ways: new commitments to acting on our principles, new energy and sense of unity.

Now, we definitely have something to celebrate! Let us Rise up and Sing!!!

In and Out of Shape

2008-06-14T11:55:00.002-04:00

A few summers ago, I participated in a 6-week fitness program that involved regular appointments with an exercise trainer, and working out 3-4 times per week. At the end of our 6 weeks my trainer handed me a certificate of completion, and expressed her admiration for my dedication. She said that very few people make it all the way through the program, and thought I had made the commitment to my health, and would most definitely maintain this commitment as part of my lifestyle.

Well, she was wrong. I’m a really good student—as long as I’ve got structure and routine. Without deadlines and expectations, I falter. My gym membership expired long ago, and I have not maintained a regular exercise practice. Physical activity in my life consists of chasing after kids and gardening. Well, those things DO keep me in shape for the most part—along with my love for seasonal, non-processed foods.

If being “in shape” means maintaining a healthy weight, then I’m okay…But if being “in shape” means having the stamina and energy to do all the things I used to do in my life before babies…things like backpacking through the wilderness, canoeing, and rockclimbing…well… I have a hard time just opening jars.

I’m a weakling, put to shame on the monkey bars by my almost-four-year-old daughter. The only muscle I ever really exercise is my brain, and I think it’s time to do something about it….

Not sure what yet. Today we are taking a canoe out on the river near my husband’s childhood home. Some gentle paddling to exercise the arms...

It’s been hot as hell the past week or so, and an air-conditioned gym sounds awfully appealing…

but, I’m just not motivated by an onslaught of television screens, loud music, and machinery.

Getting in shape for me is going to mean more gardening, more biking, more boating, more hiking, more yoga, more dancing, more running after kids. Less slouching.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I have already made a renewed commitment to my spiritual health—even made it through some sticky spots the past week where God’s voice was drowned out by the bored whining of my kids (AH—this heat!!), and my own longing for peace and quiet. Oh, yes, “god is in the whining”….yeah, in retrospect. Or when you’ve got enough distance to appreciate the whole of what you’ve got, but man—the spiritual art of listening this week was an uphill exercise in patience with the wind of my own limitations blowing straight at me. Practice, practice, practice.

The physical, the spiritual, life, life, life.

Miscellaneous Sadness

2008-06-05T19:09:00.007-04:00

I have not written publicly in awhile. It is not for shortage of thoughts, or even shortage of time. It is not even that I have strayed from daily spiritual practice; on the contrary I have been steady in practice, and jotted down notes daily in a paper journal. After completing my "30 Days of Contemplative Poetry" practice, I leapt right into a new one starting this past Sunday. It is a practice of listening and connecting, and I will write more about it later. It is an integrated practice that has led me already into places I did not expect to go--into acts of kindness and compassion I did not anticipate, into joys and sorrows I did not know existed.

So why have I not written publicly? I suppose the answer is that there is simply just too much to write about. If I am anything at all, I am a writer. And I suppose a contemplative. As M. Scott Peck writes, a contemplative is "someone who learns by taking a little bit of experience and milking it for all its worth". Maybe too much experience is just a litte overwhelming, a little intoxicating.

But try to find a focus, a place of entry, an access point to the soul....try to prick the finger of emotion and see what bleeds...

Right now, it is sadness. Such sadness. My sister called me tonight because she just learned (via a Myspace announcement) that someone who had a huge impact on my life when I was seventeen has died. I cannot make sense of it all. He broke my heart when I was 17...what do you do with that? It was almost half of my lifetime ago.

And still, 32 is too young.

I do not know the reason why or how he died. I only know that at 17 he was a wall I could not cross-- I could not even see across it, and I wondered if I had been mistaken, if in fact there was nothing on that other side.

It was so long ago...19 since we last met. I walked away that time. Just another notch in his wall, I figured. I lived. I learned.

But people are not just shapers of my destiny. They carry their histories in their hearts, they proceed with their own lives.

I do not know what became of his life; only that it ended early. I have known too many....and too many reasons that are really no reason at all. War, suicide, cancer, car accidents. I have known too many grieving mothers and brothers and sisters and friends. There is no reason why.

Embodied Prayer

2008-05-20T09:16:00.010-04:00

Forget what the magazines have to say. Not the teenaged stick-figured fashion models promoting their million beauty wares. Nor the buff-built bulging muscle fitness ones, nor the pristine, serene new-age Bermuda yoga vacation ones. They have bodies for sale. I do not know these bodies. I do not know bodies that rise like ressurections; I only know ones that carry the weight of Life. Some carry more than they can possibly hold alone.

These are the bodies I know:

Soft arms that collect me, and carry me home,
...into scars and flab, smells and cramps,
...imperfect and perfect, between sighs and silences.

Body that speaks, urging me forward--
...to sing, to scream, to push,
...into afterbirth, into healing.

The body of the newborn child,
...flesh on flesh, first suckling,
...a trickle that sustains, a sudden rapturous thirst.

The body of the toddler,
...tumbling, swimming, paddling,
...tickly toes and wrinkled cheeks,
...head-on collisions into life.

The body of the old lady,
...her translucent skin, thick blue veins
...rising like rivers to flood through delicate hands.

The bodies we have buried,
...still reflected in our eyes,in our faces,
...the dimples we carry generation after generation.

The body of the child in India,
...born beautiful, two faces, worshipped and divine.

The body of the one in China,
...arising whole from quakes,
...her mother's dead one, like a crescent shield,
...an imprint on infant life preserved beneath.

The body that lives,
...on donated blood,
...on transplanted marrow,
...on borrowed kidney.

My body.
...stretch marks and pulled hair
...gardens under fingernails
...the sun ripping through mousy locks, afire

Bodies that cling to rocks and children
...with a grip that will not let go.

The Body of Christ.

Gaia.

____________________

For this I pray, for the perfect body,

That all we love may be

pulled through like needles, stitched and molded into skin,

forever imprinted and bound to the bodies

in which we move and have our being.

Amen.
_____________________________________________________

Contemplative Poem #18--love the human by Lucille Clifton

love the human
-Gary Snyder

By Lucille Clifton

the rough weight of it
scarring its own back
the dirt under the fingernails
the bloody cock...love
the thin line secting the belly
the small gatherings
gathered in sorrow or joy
love the silences
love the terrible noise
love the stink of it
love it all...love
even the improbable foot...even
the surprised and ungrateful eye

Poems #13-17

2008-05-19T18:53:00.003-04:00

#13-My Cup by Robert Friend

They tell me I am going to die.
Why don't I seem to care?
My cup is full. Let it spill.

_______________________________________________

#14- The Song of the Wild Dove by Cassiano Ricardo

Deep within the backlands I walked along the road,
the coffee plantation was far away.
It was then I heard your song
sounding like the endless sobbing of distance...

The longing for all that is tall like palm trees.
The yearning for all that is long like rivers...
The lament for all that is purple like dusk...
The weeping of all that weeps because it is far away...
very far away.

Translated by Jean R. Longland
____________________________________________

#15- Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (Revisited)

____________________________________________

#16- After Reading Mickey the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed by Rita Dove

I'm in the milk and the milk's in me!...I'm Mickey!

My daughter spreads her legs
to find her vagina:
hairless, this mistaken
bit of nomenclature
is what a stranger cannot touch
without her yelling. She demands
to see mine and momentarily
we're a lopsided star
among the spilled toys,
my prodigious scallops
exposed to her neat cameo.
And yet the same glazed
tunnel, layered sequences.
She is three; that makes this
innocent. We're pink!
she shrieks, and bounds off.

Every month she wants
to know where it hurts
and what the wrinkled string means
between my legs. This is good blood
I say, but that's wrong, too.
How to tell her that it's what makes us--
black mother, cream child.
That we're in the pink
and the pink's in us.

_____________________________

#17- Stay Home by Wendell Berry

I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man's life
I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.

I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.

Writing that Affects the Quality of the Day

2008-05-19T10:16:00.006-04:00

It has been an overwhelming past five days. Ordinary life is just ordinary life, up a few notches. Life is full, spilling over. It is slow enough for the questions to appear, slow enough for the moments of beauty to surface-- but just too fast to crystallize into meaning, to meld into some new artistic form. I can blame the days, but I am the one who has clipped my mornings and evenings short. I have reduced meditations to five minute drifts into sleep, nixed the candles, and chopped the morning writing altogether. Now, all these thoughts and experiences have piled up like unpaid bills, and it will take more than a single morning to sort through and arrive at some kernel of truth.

So, just like a good student, awakening from her mid-semester slump, I am beginning again...moving into finals with a newfound zest. I have already decided my courses for next semester (a more embodied, less mind-focused practice-- with writing every single morning--even if I need to wake up early!)

Writing morning blogs wasn't the original part of my spiritual plan...it just sort of happened. But what I found was that without the morning processing, the whole thing sort of fell apart. That I needed more than the PM meditation on others' words-- I needed my own words to make meaning of it all. What I found was that writing isn't the recording of the spiritual practice; it is probably the most essential part of the practice itself.

I wonder why we might too often leave artistic expression out of our lexicon of established spiritual practices? Do we not think spirit moves through us as fully and creatively as it does through the workings of nature, through the relationships we share with others, through the moments of contemplative silence?

Our speaker yesterday talked about transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, and of many others. And he talked about Thoreau's capacity to watch a block of ice for hours.

But Thoreau could also spend four pages describing that block of ice. Wasn't this, as well, an aspect of that transcendental experience? Not only an observance of nature, but an examination and recreation of that nature into language so erudite and precise, poetic and real?

While Thoreau might celebrate the act of creating an authentic life as "the highest of arts", I wonder if the art of writing isn't essential to the creation of that authentic life. Perhaps Thoreau is too dismissive of the fine arts when he says: "It is something to be able to paint a particular picture...but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

For a writer--and I would suspect for any artist-- to create through a particular medium is essential to elevating his life by a conscious endeavor, to affecting the quality of the day.

As a writer, I am not just creating a blog post, or a poem, or a piece of fiction. I am finding and creating myself-- and all that I bring to the day, to the world, will move forward from this. At this moment, I am renewed and full of spirit, ready to move forward to affect the quality of this day.

Generations

2008-05-14T07:31:00.006-04:00

The poem just caught my eye, and I stayed there. It wasn't what I was looking for last night-- a poem about risking failure. It wasn't even a poem about change. Those were the thoughts on my mind, the ones I wanted to reflect on. But what I found was a poem about growing old.

Well, it is the month of "Elders" at First Unitarian Church of Rochester, and I have been listening to some pretty heart-wrenching sermons on podcast the past couple weeks. I haven't written about these--at least not directly. They have been sitting with me, moving inside me, though.

I have also been thinking about my expanding definition of friendship...The other night I gathered with three other women for a UU writer's group. All the women were a bit older than myself--two forty-somethings, one fifty-something. Yet, age seemed to disappear from view as we shared stories--intimate, honest stories about life, about difficult choice, and deep pain, and heartfelt joy. (I think we spent only about half-our time actually focused on our writing!) We laughed like girlfriends in a college dorm.

I don't have much to write about this morning, but I do want to say this: One of the most under-appreciated elements, I think, of being a part of an inter-generational church community is the opportunity to learn and grow and connect with people in all stages of life. While there is comfort and camaraderie in being generationally grouped, I have learned so much by sitting beside people who are much older than myself and hearing their life stories. And I have felt my words valued and validated by each of them.

We like to separate generations in our culture--from the nursery to the nursing home. There is a time and a place for all of this. But I am so grateful that church has allowed me to make friends with people of ALL ages, to create lasting human bonds across those boundaries.

From my eighty-something friends still working for social change... to the littlest baby crying in the back of the church.

May we grow in the spirit of connection, and find ourselves in their eyes.

_______________________________________________________________
Contemplative Poem #12: “Ebba Dawson: Mardel Rest Home, Haskell,
New Jersey” by Maria Gillan

Ebba sits at the window
patiently waiting
for the few minutes
I can give.

With her, I see all others
trapped in monastic rooms,
rooms stamped with trophies
that shout I am loved,
pictures
of grandchildren tucked
in cheap dresser
mirrors, Christmas cards propped
on plastic doilies though the forsythia
already blooms.

Ebba balances metal canes
down brown carpeted
stairs, trembles as we enter
the restaurant, is pleased by Lipton tea.

I touch her hand, the skin almost translucent
and threaded with lines like fish swimming toward
the river’s mouth.

I bow to that which remains
in us, resilient,
unbroken, our greed for life
leaping
against all odds.

Love the Questions?

2008-05-13T08:58:00.004-04:00

Oh, I love the questions, I told the woman at my door a few weeks ago. She held pamphlets proclaiming "The Good News" and invited me to a Bible study at her church. She asked me if I'd ever asked these questions-- questions like "What is the purpose of living?" "Why are we here?" "What happens when we die?" She told me that the Bible held all the answers.

I told her I was a Unitarian Universalist. We don't just ask the questions; we live them. I don't think that was the answer she was expecting.

It was a brief conversation...I'm not a very good with on-the-spot replies, and the kids were tugging at my sleeves. Anyway, thinking about it now I'm not so sure I agree with myself. I mean...Do I REALLY like the questions?

Today, I'm not so sure. Today, I wish I could turn to a page in some Holy Book and know what I believe. Know the absolutely clear difference between right and wrong. Know why bad things happen to good people.

I wish I did not have to think so hard about all the choices and motives and thoughts. But the thing is, like it or not, I do. I just cannot relinquish my doubt. It is this essential part of me that makes me who I am.

I read about this new movement of emerging churches and simple-living evangelical Christians--people like Shane Claiborne who are REALLY embodying gospel values. Sounds awesome, exciting, invigorating. Sounds a lot like the church I grew up in...

And if I were a Christian, that is the type of Christian I would be. Chip at the yes church asks the question why Sojourners magazine had classifieds with ads for volunteer trips to Africa, and UUWorld had classifieds for Maui beach home rentals. Good question. Makes me wonder if I am in the right religion.

I stand in UU circles, and if Christians are criticized, I will fight tooth and nail in their name--for all the good in Christianity that I have known. I will pray the prayer of St. Francis and read Thomas Merton and stand on street corners at UCC services with homeless men. But I just can't quite call myself a Christian... I am the questioner, the doubter, the wonderer. And I love this exploration. I am the one who wonders how if the spirit of life moves through all, I can possibly stand still in one tradition.

So I choose UUism, and I choose Christianity as one source in my faith. I am compelled to carve my own way. I will continue to visit Christian churches on occasion (I did this past Sunday). I did this because it was Pentecost, and I knew that there are too many in my current UU church who would balk with hurt if we told the story. There are many in need of healing from the wounds of harsh Christian upbringings.

I do not carry wounds, only blessings, from my Christian past. I also carry a wonder at all the religions of the world, including Humanism and Spiritual Atheism. I want to look at the world from every perspective, to see from every angle. To ask the questions.

A Curse? Or a Blessing? Even in this, I am still not sure.

____________________________________________

Contemplative Poem #11: "Inside the Riddle" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Inside the Riddle

It's blue in here.

There are grocery stores, with soap.

I'm looking for someone
who might have an answer
big enough not to be insulting,
but everyone looks preoccupied,
blankly solemn.

I'm staring at an umbrella,
a yard shrine on El Paso Street.
What's it keeping away?
Vagrant dogs, dogs with shark's teeth,
men with anchors,
blurred beneath their sleeves

This little house of Mary,
this concrete grotto studded
with seashells or chipped glass,
I would like to be a Catholic
with such a straight faith.

Or a Muslim, fasting and praying -
I would kneel on stones
beside the men of Cairo

To believe God has reasons
seems too petty for God.

Quiet Fire: Another Kind of Pentecost

2008-05-12T07:11:00.006-04:00

The day is overcast, the schedule unraveling. Emotions feel sticky as morning, not landslides, just humid air. There is a cool breeze, though, and my Tibetan chimes dance now and then to the gentle shifts of breath. My herb garden patio reveals new signs of life--basil, cilantro, and chives greening through the dark soil. It is always this way-- these little cracks that reveal to me, wherever I am in life, a bit about beauty. A bit about spirit.

Of course spirit is chaotic and jubilant too--as in the story of Pentecost. A drunken morning madhouse. Reminds me of some college parties where we stayed up all night and walked for pizza bagels in the Bronx by morning...spirited in a different kind of way. Many of my friendships from those days have lasted, though they are quieter now...(or are they?...I thought we were going to get kicked out of a restaurant on my last birthday!) OK- so when my old friends and I get together, we certainly babble with joy like those apostles on that Sunday...no one could deny our spirit!

Spirit is noisy, exuberant, messy, wild... but there are times when I need just a little peace and quiet, just a tiny flame by which to refocus. (A respite from my two wonderfully spirited children, perhaps??!!)

And there are times I find a person, a human being, in need of that spirit, that breath of new life. A person who seems defeated, who will not allow his own spirit to flame and flare. Who does not see that that spirit within him is goodness, and truth, and life, itself.

Then, for that person, perhaps it is the tiny shoot of chive, the slow chime, or a listening friend that brings spirit back to life.

I refocus my own "quiet fire" (hmmm...isn't that the way a friend described it back in those college Bronx days?).

Rekindling the inner flame with simple haiku, I pray for another who struggles with his own light--his inner jewel-like goodness.

______________________________________________
Contemplative Poem #10--Haiku, by Basho

SEEK ON HIGH BARE TRAILS
SKY-REFLECTING
VIOLETS...
MOUNTAIN-TOP JEWELS

Good Anger

2008-05-11T08:38:00.005-04:00

I may not come across as an angry person--in person or in writing--but when it comes to injustice, I am seething....

Here's an example of why I might be angry...

My husband works full-time. He works damn hard at multiple jobs, which total to about 40hours a week, often more. As an adjunct professor and college tutor, an adult ESOL educator, and a real estate agent he is able to live out some of his vocational interests and earn a sufficient income for our family's lifestyle.

However, while we make enough for our simple lifestyle, we do not make enough to pay the exorbitant costs of health care. We make too much to qualify for state programs, which puts us in the "fend for yourself" category. Fend for yourself means you can pay between $500-$800 per month for the most basic "affordable" Healthy NY coverage. Or we can take our chances.

Maybe it's my fault since I don't work. (I'm the lazy one sitting at home with my soap operas, remember?) But then even when I did work as an ESOL instructor, I did not receive health insurance from my employer. I would have to work full-time, (and, looking at the jobs I'm qualified for, fork over most of my salary to a day-care provider) in order to receive health insurance. I guess there's always that two-hour city commute for a job...

I guess we could give up this whole idea of vocation. But instead, we've chosen to give up 'vAcation'. How very un-American of us.

So, I guess I'm a little angry. Luckily my kids are covered (NY is pretty good with that...). And luckily my husband and I are both healthy. We count our blessings.

Well, I'm just a SAHM... What if I were gay, black, or Mexican? Then, I'd be really pissed...

Oh wait, I already am. Pissed for ALL Of us who have been told in one way or another-- you do not count. You do not compute. You do not matter.

Well, there's my anger for you...I meditated on it last night. The following poem by Marge Piercy got me thinking... I will not let this anger turn my blood to slime. I will act on it. I will transform it into good.
_____________________________________________________

Contemplative Poem #9: "A Just Anger" by Marge Piercy

A Just Anger

by Marge Piercy

Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.
How the streets
of the iron city
flicker, flicker,
and the dirty air
fumes.
Anger storms
between me and things,
transfiguring,
transfiguring.
A good anger acted upon
is beautiful as lightning
and swift with power.
A good anger swallowed,
a good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime.

Mother's Day Intersections

2008-05-11T07:58:00.004-04:00

I was going to post a link to a sermon I heard a couple years ago, a sermon that had a tremendous impact on my life....but looking through the Rochester Unitarian archives, I could not find it listed. The sermon was entitled something like "Tugging at Mother's Skirt", and was about the idea that balance, as the idea is often handed to us by popular culture, is really an illusion. That retreat and dis-engagement from the world are more akin to sleep than to real peace, and that really we are called to live in tension--between parenting and social engagement. And that our social engagement is really a gift we give to our kids.

The sermon affected me deeply. Two weeks previous to that Mother's Day, I'd received news that a boy who grew up on my street had died in Iraq. That Mother's Day, my heart was with his mother. A few weeks after hearing the sermon, I saw the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". I was pregnant with my second child at the time. As I felt my baby kick and thought of the world I was bringing her into, a world in much need of repair, I was moved to renew my commitment to the earth. (At the end of the month, we moved to Orange County, New York...and a whole new chapter was sprung...)

This was the beginning of Intersections--not the blog, which did not emerge for another year--but the theme that began to emerge in my life. It was the theme that the personal is political, and the political is personal. That these two strands are bound by human lives and by a commitment to the good, and that as a writer I must braid these strands together to create meaning and work for justice in the world.

Perhaps this is why the original impetus for Mother's Day-- a Mother's Peace Day, called forth by Julia Ward Howe's "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870--makes so much sense to me. Julia's idea was that "women now leave all that may be left of home/For a great and earnest day of counsel...to promote...the great and general interests of peace." Well, that was the first Mother's Day held in this country....not sure what happened along the way...

In honor of that original intention, in honor of the mothers who have lost their sons and daughters to war, and in honor of our future generations to come who will inhabit this Earth, I offer up the following poems from my journal, the journal I began after hearing that Mother's Day sermon two years ago, the journal that eventually became this blog.

____________________________
Mother's Day Proclamation- 1870

by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

__________________________________________________________
Deadline

by Barbara Kingsolver

January 15, 1991

The night before war begins, and you are still here.
You can stand in a breathless cold
ocean of candles, a thousand issues of your same face
rubbed white from below by clear waxed light.
A vigil. You are wondering what it is
you can hold a candle to.

You have a daughter. Her cheeks curve
like aspects of the Mohammed's perfect pear.
She is three. Too young for candles but
you are here, this is war.
Flames covet the gold-sparked ends of her hair,
her nylon parka laughing in color,
inflammable. It has taken your whole self
to bring her undamaged to this moment,
and waiting in the desert at this moment
is a bomb that flings gasoline in a liquid sheet,
a laundress's snap overhead, wide as the ancient Tigris,
and ignites as it descends.

The polls have sung their opera of assent: the land
wants war. But here is another America,
candle-throated, sure as tide.
Whoever you are, you are also this granite anger.
In history you will be the vigilant dead
who stood in front of every war with old hearts
in your pockets, stood on the carcass of hope
listening for the thunder of its feathers.

The desert is diamond ice and only stars above us here
and elsewhere, a thousand issues of a clear waxed star,
a holocaust of heaven
and somewhere, a way out.

(from Another America)
_______________________________________________________________

Memorial Day, 2006

by Terri Dennehy Pahucki

for Tito

Roadside bomb. The boy is dead. He was the one who waited beside me for the junior high school bus. We waited, too early for sun, our hands stuffed deep into thick pockets. My skinny legs shook beneath a blue and green plaid uniform skirt. He stood straight in neatly ironed blue. We were both too shy to say much, just praying for the bus to arrive.

Mi hijo, she cries, her body sprawled over an American flag. Front page of the D & C. Hasta luego, quizas pronto, his father kisses the coffin. Soldiers play taps, shiny buttons gleam.

Today, I wait at the High Falls bridge. Sweat gathers at the corners of my eyes. The minister wears long blue sleeves. He is speaking now, give sorrow words, his voice in me like a stream.

A stranger sits beside and hands me a wilted flower. For your friend, he says. Together we walk in line to the bridge, say the names of the dead, the ones we cannot pronounce. We toss yellow roses into the Genesee, and hope for the peace we cannot yet see.

Work That Does Not Compute

2008-05-10T06:56:00.004-04:00

I'm not trying to be a radical counter-cultural hippy, here. As a "stay-at-home-mom", I'm just trying to make a living. (And whoever invented that phrase "SAHM" anyway??? It tells absolutely nothing of what I do-- it only tells what I don't do--namely, work for money outside the home.) As far as I can tell, there are no Mommy Wars...and if there were I wouldn't know which side I'd fall on. I have been a Work-outside-the-home mom, and I have been a Work-at-Home Mom (SAHM). In both cases, I was a hard worker. The difference was not the work. The difference was the money.

I chose to stay home when my second daughter was born (I was previously only working part-time). A number of considerations on that one: the cost of daycare, the desire to spend more time with my kids, and the lack of paid vocational opportunities in the new area where I was moving. Nearly every professional woman I know in Orange County, New York is either a teacher or a nurse. If you have a different calling, you either commute two hours to the city (NYC)--or learn to scrape by. (Though even teachers have a hard time getting by in this area...)Many moms I know just get creative--make baby slings, grow herbs, and learn to enjoy the simple life because time is more precious than money. We choose camping over trips to Disney World. Libraries and nature walks over cable and video games. Second-hand clothing and outlets. Community gardens over restaurants.

Maybe the Mommy Wars have kind of disappeared in this area because nearly every mother I know--unless she or her spouse is a city commuter--is struggling financially. We know that we are all doing the best we can. Choices are not so much choices as necessities. And whichever way you choose, the path is difficult.

So what about feminism? Are we SAHM's turning our back on all the hard work our foremothers have done? Are we choosing to spend our afternoons watching soaps and eating bon-bons while our husbands slave away at the office? Are we content to derive satisfaction from a house well-cleaned ?

Well, when it comes to modern-day new-wave feminist mothering neither Peg Bundy nor Donna Reed need apply. The moms I know are hard workers--both in and out of the home. Sure, we try to plan healthy meals for our families (though there are days mac and cheese will just have to suffice...) and keep a clean house (OK, so--at least in my case--it doesn't look like it...). But those are not the defining values or occupations of our lives. The most strident feminists I know are trying to live as authentically as they can. And what this means for many of us is choosing time over money, family over high-powered career.

For many, it also means choosing vocation over prestigious salary. I know minister moms and teacher moms and artisan moms who work for the work itself. Who love for the sake of love. Who live for the sake of life itself, rather than some external material reward.

(All of these are of course choices which certain factors--i.e.education and marital status-- allow for. I also know many feminist single-moms who work at jobs they do not love. They work to put food on their tables, and to make ends meet. There are difficult choices at all ends, and we have created a society which has limited many of our choices. Real feminism I know is also standing for REAL family values in the workplace (i.e. living wages, good affordable childcare, paid leave time)--right beside those hotel-worker and Walmart-clerk moms... )

Last night, as I closed the book on yet another day, I felt the fulfillment of work. Of mothering and cooking and cleaning, yes. Of writing and church committee work, also. And--over and over-- of offering my heart and hands to the small things I love.

Work that does not compute. At least in dollars.

But it computes in the authenticity of my heart and in the home I am helping to create--in my house and in the world--

and I believe that makes all the difference.

_____________________________________

Contemplative Poem #8: "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

Retreat...or Restoration?

2008-05-09T07:18:00.006-04:00

Retreat is such a fine word. The last time I was scheduled to attend an overnight retreat was the day my father died. Needless to say, I never went. And still, three years later, though I have attended a couple day-long respites, I have not been on an overnight retreat. Had another scheduled last July...ironically, a community-building retreat I hoped would lead to the commencement of a lifelong dream: the creation of a retreat center. But so many life concerns got in the way before we even got our feet off the ground, and the retreat was cancelled.

I try to push the thoughts aside. Life now, here in the present reality, is beautiful the way it is. Is this really what I want: to escape? I feel called to be engaged with the world, to be an active participant in its transformation. Why then, in the midst of prayer, would I imagine this solitary path through a darkened wood? Why would I sit beside still waters and long to remain there in the light of water's reflection for as long as I possibly can?

We exist in this tension perhaps--between the quiet call of solitude and peace, and the cry of those who tug at our sleeves with their needs. Last night, I began a meditation on retreat, only to stop midpoint-- called out by the cry of a child not quite ready for sleep. I laugh at my attempt to bring poetry to the playground, stare at that unopened book, and wonder- what was I thinking? There is a time for retreat-- it's just not now. Now is a time to respond to the needs of those around me.

And yet, in order to respond fully, I must also take care of myself, fill my own heart full of peace and spirit. So perhaps it is not a retreat from life's daily concerns that draws me, but the need for restoration. A wellspring from which I drink in this daily spiritual practice-- and maybe, if given the chance, for a longer period of time.

I think of the words once spoken to me -- "I feel calmed in your presence". (I am sure these words were spoken before I had children!) But they have been repeated by others at moments throughout the years, and made me wonder-- could I create a home, a place of restoration, a wellspring for others? This was the seed for my retreat house dream...

And right now, I am working to create this place in me, not a physical space, but an inner spiritual fountain of restoration. That I might respond more fully to the needs around me; that I might have a calm spirit from which to share.

_______________________

Contemplative Poem #7: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Because Tomorrow It Might Rain...

2008-05-08T07:05:00.006-04:00

Some of my friends have told me I am brave. That they would have a difficult time living with such uncertainty of anything beyond the next couple months. (We are doing fine now--financially secure for the next couple months, at least, and I've signed my daughter up for the summer program at her school. But, as I told her preschool teacher yesterday--next year is still a question mark. Our search may take us elsewhere.)

I do not think I am brave. I have been impatient, inattentive to the present moment, worried about making plans and trying to secure our lives--without securing them so much that we lose our selves. Mostly, I have missed living where I am.

And what is this security that others speak of, anyway? Who can plan for the child with cancer, for the mother with Alzheimer's, for the cyclone that devastates an entire nation? Though these burdens did not arise from my personal life, I carry them with me in my heart and in my prayer. And they are revealing to me truth-- that what carries us through troubles is always and only love. That the only preparation we can do sometimes is to ensure those family and community bonds are secure, and to live loving each other as fully as we can in the moment.

It might rain tomorrow.

So tonight we must let go and jump for joy, because tonight we have sun and swings and ice cream.

_______________________________

Contemplative Poem #6: "In the Middle" by Barbara Coker

In the Middle

of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

~ Barbara Crooker ~

Just Tulips

2008-05-07T06:50:00.005-04:00

Oh what gift shall I offer you, my friend? I would offer you these tulips if I could--the explosion of colors that breathes me back into life, out of tears and confusion about what the future may hold, into the kind palm of present day beauty. I would offer you the sweet breath of perfume, like a Sunday morning sun-lit kiss--if I could only capture it in a bottle, bring it home, let it fill up our rooms, our sanctuary. What is this gift the tulips offer? They are only themselves, without condition. They do only what tulips do--open to the world, dance in the wind, let go of petals by spring's end. And offer us courage--beauty in the midst of frightening despair, of loss.

Isn't this what you, my friend, have said to me-- too? When you told me, "thank you for your gift," and I wondered-- "What, this? But I am only doing what I love to do? What I must do." I must write. I must share those words. I must create. I must believe, and live.

And isn't this what you have offered me? And what I want most from you? Your fullest self, you--living your dreams, becoming. I see the gift of my little tulips--- the curious one, investigating each flower, her hand outstretched to pluck their full red heads from neat beds. The other, the wild one who must throw her limbs to the world--into rocks and ledges and waterfalls. I chase them all over this quiet place, mother henning and corraling back into the fold of establishment rules, but inside I am delighted by their joy. Of these children, full of life, being who they are.

So, my friend, my flower. Bloom. And I will do the same for you, I will. I offer you only this--myself, my gift.

_____________________
Contemplative Poem #5: "Landscape" by Mary Oliver

Landscape

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

From Dream Work, copyright 1986 by Mary Oliver.

To Be of Service

2008-05-06T07:38:00.003-04:00

I'm not always all that sure how to "be of service". All I know is that when I hear of other's pain I feel compelled to act. But what if the best and only thing I can do is to listen-- and even then only if they ask? So, then, really the only thing I can do is to make myself available.

When my grandmother died, a friend from church called to check in on me, and I did not call him back. At that time, I just needed a few days to be alone. Later when I saw him and apologized, he said "no worries, I just wanted you to know that I was available if you needed to talk." In his kindness, I saw this-- his offer to help was not about his "need to help" and to be acknowledged for that help; it was about my need to know that others care, and to know that help was available if I needed it. I was moved and grateful.

Kindness, it seems, cannot be given without a huge dose of humility. And I have experienced that humility from friends--often in ways I have not expected. But when one has ministered to you with kindness and humility, how do you offer it back--without condition or need, with only the sincerity of caring? Sometimes those are the friends who are least likely to ask. To feel another's pain in the solitude of my own room just doesn't seem like enough. A phone call or an e-mail: "I'm here if you need me"?... It may not be much help, but I can listen--if you need it. If not, please know I care.

Last night I turned to "The Prayer of St. Francis". I always turn to this prayer when I am looking for guidance, for a way to become light, to become hope, to be of service. This is what I was seeking last night. It was my father's prayer-- the one we chose for his memorial prayer cards. My dad lived this kind of humility and kindness. Over and over at his funeral, people who were moved by his service spoke. They spoke of him "as their friend"--one who rejoiced in their joy, and who shared in their sorrow. And one who always brought light. As my spiritual director told me when I spoke of another friend's kindness to me recently, and the way I felt in receiving it--"That is God". Not the giver himself, but the experience of sharing and connection, the beauty in the darkness.

So, the words of St. Francis, though not a poem per se, were with me last night, with the hope that I too may one day live into those words: To be a channel of light. I offer them here in the form I know best--the hymn version. I believe this song has power--whether we address an incarnation of God (as St. Francis' 'master') or simply sing to beauty and light itself.

Contemplative Poem #4-- "Make me a Channel of Your Peace", St. Francis of Assisi

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred let me bring your love
Where there is injury, your pardon Lord
And where there is doubt true faith in You

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is despair in life let me bring hope
Where there is darkness only light
And where there's sadness ever joy

Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul

Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
It is in giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we are born to eternal life

A Heart Full of Community

2008-05-05T07:44:00.004-04:00

There seems to be a new energy in my congregation....Is it me-- or is it us? Or is it just the weather? I don't know, but the enthusiasm for moving into all that we are capable of becoming seems to have taken hold; there is this sudden movement "beyond ourselves", of feeling transformed by mission.

Maybe one congregant said it best yesterday when she remarked during services that when she first came through our doors, it was out of her own needs. What could we offer her--a community, deeper spiritual experience, etc? Lately, though, she felt that her experience at the UU was asking something of her, was calling her to become her most authentic self, to live out her principles. She felt compelled to look outward, to give something of herself.

These paraphrased comments embody what I am seeing around me. Maybe it is healing; maybe transformation. I guess I'd bemoaned my congregation a bit in the past for its self-absorption. But I came from a very different place. Hadn't I, after all, turned to UUism, to heal my own wounds? Though it was a different place and time, hadn't I turned to UUism first from need--and THEN, after receiving this healing-- felt embedded with a sense of mission and purpose, and wanted to share that in this new congregation?

The very first service I attended at Rock Tavern was four days after the church had burned down. As a homeless wanderer myself, a newcomer to Orange County, missing my old church, I strangely felt that I belonged in this new place with these people who were also "missing their old church". But our griefs were very different, and the path to healing would be also. It has come in sparks and fits, and retreated at moments in setbacks.

But together, I believe, the intersection of our griefs, transformation has begun. Yes, we said there was rebirth when in the months after the fire, membership jumped over 30%. But, I haven't really felt the sense of what I call "church" (and others can still call other things, that's fine!)-- that sense that we exist for something larger than ourselves--until this past month.

But now, we are decided to stand together in our social mission: a real commitment to the environment and to improving the lives of children in our area. At our meetings this past month, I felt the enthusiasm, the "great turning" of committed response. We have begun the application process toward a LEED-certified building, and just received the Metro NY District Chalice Lighters Award for the coming year to put toward these efforts!! Our internal congregational pledges toward the new building have been beyond expectation. We are grateful; we are excited. And, as Social Action and Green Sanctuary chair, I am excited too! Our Green Sanctuary Program--which began as a seed of an idea back in the Fall-- is now blossoming with ideas-- and people who are showing up willing to implement those ideas! Our last Earth Day inner-city park clean-up included babies and children of every age all the way up to an amazing great-grandmother.

I feel new energy, and it is filling my heart. We are growing in size, but more importantly, I feel-- we are growing in spirit. Yesterday's service on "Living our UU Principles" was just one of those examples. Saturday's meeting with a new member to create a childcare-coop for mother-artists was another...

Or maybe it's not them. Maybe it's me. Or maybe it's just the weather! I went to an Orchard Festival after services yesterday with my daughters and spent the time talking with other moms who I've come to know. Those mothers are not church members, but we share values. We go on nature hikes and community garden together.... and we talk about our common financial struggles in an overpriced county-- and how we must live simply and tread lightly on this earth. Well, it was nice running into them and I felt...connected.

So maybe it's just the spirit of community, of knowing we are moving into something called cooperation. Something called "we can't do it alone". Maybe in our own moments of helplessness we recognize that it is connection which sustains us, which fills us, which heals us--

And then, it is from that recognition of our connectedness that we move into our most authentic selves, and recognize our abundance and realize all that we have to give.

Most likely, the direction of movement is not linear; it is an ever-changing, dynamic web. It is the movement of life, in us, through us, around us, over us.

And it is our call.
_____________________________________________

In the spirit of gratitude for friendship that I find in community, as it has filled my life, I used the following poem by Anne Sexton last night in my spiritual practice. In particular, specific images of the "heart, wide as a watermelon" and "the artery of my soul" moved me into a very visual meditation. (And I mentally filled in my own names for "the people I have"!)

Contemplative Poem #3: "The Big Heart" by Anne Sexton

The Big Heart

"Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold."
From an essay by W. B. Yeats

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
in the people I have:
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise,
Joan, Marie, Dawn,
Arlene, Father Dunne,
and all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of conch shells,
they speak back with the wine of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.

They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in--
all in comes the fury of love.

Anne Sexton

The Soft Animal of Our Bodies

2008-05-04T08:09:00.005-04:00

He's the philosopher--the skeptic, the thinker, the seeker of truth. I'm the artist--the weaver of language, the creator of beauty. Together, we're parents--caregivers, nurturers, educators--trying our best to live our values, to create a meaningful existence, within a society that we often feel out of place in.

Sometimes we forget-- we're human, too. And human means not just these thoughts and these ideas. We're also bodies, in need of love and affection, of human touch and connection.

Thank God, for the occasional date night...(even if it does land us in a book store for at least part, each craving the solitude of our own imaginations!). We find our way home together.

So, last night's meditation...(tucked into one of those spaces in our togetherness...)continued with the words of Mary Oliver. This time, I chose her poem "Blossoms" as a way to honor sensuality--and that deep human longing for connection which makes me most alive.

(I also think this is an excellent poem for UU's, too, who can certainly be counted amongst "the most thoughtful among us"...)

Contemplative Poem #2

Blossom

In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another.

Mary Oliver

(poem originally published in projective verse...reformatted for blogger)

Creating a Daily Spiritual Practice

2008-05-03T07:46:00.007-04:00

I have been meeting with a spiritual director now for almost a year. What I receive from my director is sort of a combination of direction and counseling, as we work through issues, and move to understand and deepen the spiritual journey. Though she is a Christian, we speak in a common contemplative language of a Spirit or movement of Life that transcends religious boundaries. Every two weeks, I re-center.

I would like to say that I have been good with keeping up a daily spiritual practice in between those meetings. I was pretty dedicated this past Fall...but in the past few months, I've gotten pretty lazy. Rather than throw out all the excuses in the book (a busy life, an erratic schedule, a couple of young dependents...), I'll just say that I have not been as consistent with daily practice as I would like to be. I have reasoned that "mindfulness in all activities" is a practice in and of itself--but I have had great difficulty in simply being present in the moment, too.

Having experienced life with a daily spiritual practice, and life without, I have to say that I prefer life with. Maybe it is especially important in those times when my life lacks routine, structure, or set direction to create balance with set prayer times. I have found this to be so at different times in my life.

Part of my journey has been to discover what type of practice works best for me. My Dad was a regular Morning Journaller to God, repeating prayers in writing with every sunrise. His parents, on the other hand, were evening rosary prayers, repeating the contemplative practice and each and every day at the same set time.

I have tried a variety of practices and times throughout my life. At age 15, I was an evening journaller to God. At 21, I practiced drawing and dance meditation. At 23, morning silent practice. At 25, afternoon nature walks. At 28, sacred poetry reading. And at age 30, I stumbled on baby-nap-time deep contemplation.

Now, at 32, I begin again. I think it is okay to vary the practice over a long span of time. But for now, I am going to try for consistency in both time and practice-- at least for the next month. Here is the practice I have set for myself.

Nightly sacred poetry or prayer contemplation, for approximately 30 minutes. I have chosen this practice because it helps me to focus without falling asleep. (I lose focus with conventional prayer, and tend to fall asleep during silent meditation!) Last night, I used my favorite poem-- "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver-- as my starting point. As I know this poem by heart, I closed my eyes and repeated the lines, slowly savoring each word, allowing it to move me deeper. If a line struck a chord, I stayed with it, repeating like a mantra. To me, this poem is a testament to moving from self-acceptance and authenticity into finding my place within the interdependent web. It is the perfect UU poem to me, because it begins on a note of self-acceptance (of my own inherent worth and dignity) to a note of greater purpose and belonging (of moving beyond myself into the interdependent web of connection). Moving from our first principle--inwardly directed-to our seventh--outwardly directed. A minister friend told me once that this poem was sort-of-like a creed to him. I think that is how it is to me too.

So, I am starting with the UU, Mary Oliver, and may move to other traditions--Sufi love poetry? Christian mysticism? Buddhist haiku? We shall see... The point is that in contemplation, I am moved beyond thought into deep rumination. And in that concentration, I find connection.

This morning, I awoke to begin the second part of my practice-- morning candle-lighting. Just a simple gesture. Light a candle, sip my coffee-- and maybe play a quiet piece of music. (Or just sip my coffee and watch Elmo dance across a TV screen...my youngest has her own preferences for AM sacred story!) The thing is, to awaken, to experience the sacred in each morning and each evening.

And from the borders of my day, maybe to find the meaning in the middle once again-- in the dish-washing, the chauffering, and the daily antics of a 1 and 3 year old. From solitary contemplation to engaged mindfulness. That is the aim. We shall see...

____________

Contemplative Poem #1

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

Mother, Mother

2008-04-25T22:09:00.015-04:00

We bring out the worst in each other. In many ways, she's an absolute child--selfish, needy, manipulative, harshly critical, defensive, insecure, and fearful. And after just a couple days in her presence, I find myself reflecting those very same qualities. I call my husband on the phone crying, "Can you please tell me who I am????"

It's awful. And why I do it to myself, I just don't know. Is it pity? Because she's a widow, and it's important that she sees her grandkids? Is it some kind of co-dependent relationship that she sucks me into--saying over and over again, really it will be better this time--and I simply believe her? Or is it some sort of over-confidence in myself? Have I convinced myself by age 32, I would have grown up enough not to get sucked back into those awful patterns? I mean, in my ordinary life, I simply do not act like I act after a few days in her house. And I try really really really hard to bite my tongue. But I am a bit of a firebrand... and I have not yet mastered the spiritual patience it takes to subdue my will. I come undone. I forget who I am. I rage.

It takes people like my husband and people like my church friends to help me remember. I fear I spent too much time in a group with some old--and new--UU friends venting about this...Too much time venting, not enough time listening. But they let me.

Thank God they let me. Because it reminded me-- that sometimes there are lines that need to be drawn. I mean you no harm, but I need to be alone now, mom. Sometimes, it is what I need to say, and it is what she needs to give.

But it also reminded me that the separation is necessary in order to protect myself. To define what I value--kindness, hospitality, unconditional love.

She offers it to her neighbors, to her grandkids, to her cats.

I just wish she could offer it to me.

_________________

Her neighbor had just died, so she brought his wife food. She walked with her next-door neighbor, an Ethiopian Muslim woman, to the home of her neighbor across the street. The neighbor is black; my mom is white. But race is never mentioned. They are both widows.

When I was young, my mom planted an inner city garden. I helped her pick up glass from a corner lot, and plant flowers there. She shared conversations with homeless people, men she knew from the supper program where she served. She continued to serve food there even after her purse was stolen. She continued to share conversation with the men.

My mom takes care of disabled people; she buys them pajamas at Christmas time. She takes them with her to church on Sunday.

My mom is reading Dreams of My Father. We watch the Pennsylvania primary results together. My mom fits the profile of a Hillary supporter--white woman, late 50's, working class, upstate New Yorker. But she wants Barack. She believes in his vision. She believes in his ability to unite.

My dad was a union steward and a mediator at work (at the post office). (He was a mediator at home too!). He was also a leader in the Peace & Justice group at his church. I have no doubt that even with his working class job, he used his college degree (a major in sociology). He had the ability to unite too.

These are the values my parents shared with me. People matter. Race, disability, economics do not.

Maybe this is the reason I visit.

__________________________

"Mom, you are racist!" my husband declares.

"No, I am not. I just don't think America is ready for a Black president," my mother-in-law states. But her next statements indicate a real ignornace--

Statements about those who are "not like her"-- and hence, not real Americans.

My mother-in-law's views on issues like immigration and health care are pretty appaling and short-sighted in my eyes. Her husband is a County Legislator--and a member of the NRA.

And, yes, they are Democrats. Northern ones.

I wasn't present for the most recent conversation on race (thank God-- it might not have been pretty. My husband has a much easier time remaining level-headed. I get my emotions all mixefd up in the political thing...there is seldom an issue that does not have a human face to go along with it for me...)

I was able to make it through the gun issue all right a couple weeks ago. That debate with my father-in-law led me to a profound realization. It's not politics; it's worldview.

We see the world differently. We live with different stories. My in-laws see the world as a dangerous place. They live by a model: survival of the fittest. They are democrats because they have come from poor roots, and are sympathetic to the interests of farmers in their area. People like them. My father-in-law represents the interests of his neighbors. But really, I suspect, they're more libertarian-ish...

I also see the world as often harsh. But I do not live by the same model. I live by a model of community and cooperation. It is not the world against us; it is ALL Of US--black, white, Hispanic, disabled, elderly, poor, upper-class-- needed to reclaim, to rebuild, and to restore our world. And I believe this can only happen by tearing down walls between people, not by building them up.

My mother-in-law is always kind to me. She is always hospitable. I embrace these values, and hope to extend the same to any who visit my home.

Not just to "people like me".

________________________

The events of this past week hit home the need that I have to define what I love and what I hate. Yes, Hate is a strong word. (Long Story: It was the topic of our Wednesday night First Unitarian of Roch Soul Matters discussion...basically, there are different kinds of "hate"...) But, I'm not really talking about hate as something to stay focused on. I'm talking about it as a way to lift up and remember what I LOVE.

I love inclusion.
I love cooperation.
I love tolerance.
I love kindness.

I love people.

I need to remember these things, to remember who I am, and where I stand.

In facing the political. And the personal.

And in learning how to better love

both my mothers.

Religion: The End of Isolation

2008-04-09T21:03:00.004-04:00

This is one of the best definitions I've ever read describing religion. Words by Abraham Heschel

“The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder or fear. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder or fear. Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us. It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man’s answer is elicited.”

I'll be working on my Life Now Radio Project this next week...so may not have a chance to do much blogging, as I transition written words to airwaves...)

Anyway, for the radio project I'll be wrestling with that "tense, eternal asking"..trying to find meaning in moments of interconnectedness...and-- AHA!-- the end of isolation--through a series of meditations and reflections...Because I am absolutely convinced that our seventh principle is where religion begins.

Well, at least that's my starting point...writing does have a mind of its own...

Word in Spirit: A Celebration of Life

2008-04-07T21:22:00.008-04:00

Yesterday's service wrote itself. At the end, my friend Marina exclaimed: But you didn't read your own stuff! Well, she's only half right-- I didn't read my poetry, but composing a worship service still feels like art. It's no easy task to create a spiritual atmosphere that feels welcoming and transformational.

Of course, I had a lot of help. Mostly, I had the help of three wonderful writers. It was amazing how well these three pieces: Marina's poems, Marcia's prose, and Lisa's play wove together. They all centered on this essential theme of what it means to be fully human, to be fully alive. I didn't ask them to choose a common themse. It just seems that even from our diverse perspectives and forms, we all feel this similar pull or call-- this call to wake up and celebrate life!

Well, this is why we come together each Sunday, isn't it? Some may say "to worship God", but I'm gonna have to lean more toward the "to celebrate Life" wording on this one. Of course, it's not always a celebration, as in a grand fiesta. Sometimes it's a warm quiet embrace; other times it's a soul-wrenching challenge. But these are part of the celebration too-- the pull of worship to restore our spirits and move us more into the fullness of living authentically and deeply.

Below are the words I shared. This is only an intro... I wish I could share the rest, but as they are not my words, I cannot. My three friends were spectacular! All the messages I could have given on this topic were present in their powerful necessary words.

Introducing Word in Spirit

Tell me you are conscious, my friend Susan writes in her latest poetry column.

Susan is the editor of an on-line poetry magazine, a journalist, and a heart-stopping, brilliant weaver of words. I have never met her. I know her only through her poems, and through the exchange of language we have shared as part of an on-line writing group.

I have never met Susan. And yet, I know her. I know her story. I know the child-- the farmer’s daughter in ripped hand-me-downs, trembling in the night, in fear of her father’s abuse. I know the woman—standing with snapdragon lips, her black scarf lashing from her neck against the Chicago wind.

But mostly I know—through the gift of her words—a little bit more about myself and what it means to be human: what it means to long, to fear, and to kick back at life with an indomitable will to thrive.

~

The power of language to connect human beings—across place, across time, and across difference—is present throughout our lives. Time and again I have experienced this connection with those who share their stories. Time and again I have been moved to tears or laughter by words spoken from another’s most authentic self. And time and again, I have found in shared language the necessary words to restore my spirit, to heal me, to bring me back to life.

Words are powerful. When manipulated or used carelessly they can tear us down and make us forget who we are. But when spoken and shared from the deepest places of the heart, they can help us to remember.

It is these words--these necessary words—spoken because they must be spoken—which we are here to share and to celebrate today. Necessary words are sacred. They move us from confusion to clarity, from isolation and aloneness to connection and community. It is through honest sharing—and through deep listening—that we come to religion, to that which binds and connects our lives.

I have come to know the writers with us today through our shared participation in a writer’s group. I know from their words that they have struggled to articulate meaning of questions and experiences, and have found in language a way to share their stories. Each speaks in a different form—poetry, narrative, drama. And yet we are united by our human experiences and feelings, by our ongoing participation in the dance of Life.

It is this that I derive most from words—an expression of what it means to be human, to be fully conscious, to be wholly alive. Necessary words tell me what it means to search and to question, to love and to celebrate, to suffer and to let go. Words move me through the experiences of solitude into a shared experience of human life.

As we listen to these written words, may we hear not only the stories of others. May we also listen deeply for the familiar chords of our own experiences. And in their necessary words, may we find and celebrate all our lives.

Meditations from a Wondrous Week

2008-04-03T23:15:00.004-04:00

SUNDAY, MARCH 30:

This past Sunday I heard the story of Doubting Thomas, told in a whole new light. The gospel story begins with a locked room, with disciples waiting in fear—and then, receiving the peace of a risen Jesus. I heard the story of that locked room as I stood in front of a dilapidated shelter in Newburgh, along with a number of homeless men and women, a church youth group, and a UCC minister. When the minister asked those around him to describe the locked room experience, voices called out words—“isolating”, “trapped”, “imprisoned”. Prison, drugs, nightmarish circumstances that some among us had experienced were captured by those words; fragments of stories emerged from the crowd.

The minister led us from here into discussion of our world’s woundedness—and the blinders which keep us from seeing those wounds. These are the wounds of Iraqi civilians, of refugees in Darfur. They are the wounds of inner city Newburgh. In the gospel story, Thomas touches the wounds of a risen Christ. He must touch the wounds in order that he might see—and believe—the rising.

Maybe that’s why I left suburbia, left my UU church on the hill, and headed into the poorest part of Newburgh on a Sunday afternoon. I just wanted to touch—if only for a moment—wounds deeper than my own. I needed to move beyond my own isolation, my own locked room of worries and frustrations— and open into something greater that I could believe.

And there was resurrection to be celebrated—a man in recovery, a woman whose son was coming home after two years in foster care. We stood gathered, in front of a shelter which had been shut down years ago, and now—through the hands of these dedicated people—was finding new life.

As I left that crowd, a man on a bicycle called out to me, “What’s going on there he said?” When I told him, his curiosity piqued, he shouted back, “Wow. Sounds great. Maybe I’ll go next week.”

Maybe he will. I will not be there. I will be leading, as social action chair, my own UU suburban church in a discussion: What is our mission? How do we respond to the needs of our surrounding community?

We are rebuilding from ashes, from the fire that ripped through our structure over a year ago. But we are also resurrecting our selves, our sense of what it means to be church. I believe this means moving beyond our isolation—and reaching out to the world to touch, and maybe to heal, its wounds.

MONDAY, MARCH 31

Rock Bottom.

Maybe it was Kaaren’s sermon. Or Scott’s newsletter column. WOW. I have not been ripped apart by words like that since the invitation to join small groups that I read when I first started at First U.

Look what is happening to us!

But I am not a part of that us, right? I am here, alone, moping, crying.

Talk about a locked room. Struggling with the terror of something I could not quite name, doing what I never ever do—pleading with God to help me.

Because God, with all the violence and despair in the world, has nothing better to do than tend to my solipsistic whining “I just want to be a part of THAT. Not this here. THAT THERE.” And, really, the idea of believing in a God who listens to these petitions is just plain silly altogether, right?

But at that point it was like—Screw my disbelief. I need to pray. And if I’ve got to kick and scream like a three-year-old to do it, I will.

TUESDAY, APRIL 1

“So do you feel better now that you’ve slept on it?” my husband asked.

“Grrrr. No.” I pouted. (…hadn’t had my coffee yet.)

But the weather was warmer, and there must have been something in the air…

It was on the way back from dropping my daughter off to preschool that the story hit me. A friend of mine had asked me to write a column for a new town newspaper. I was at first a bit dubious that I could write something spiritually uplifting—and newsworthy—for a wide audience like that. But driving home on that sunny morning, the story hit me.

I knew what I would write. It was a story about seeds…

But I didn’t write it that morning. Instead, I came to my computer during my little one’s nap and wrote an e-mail for my social action committee. I wrote it quickly. Just an invitation and agenda for this Sunday’s meeting right? But I guess something must have clicked…

Because my minister asked if he could forward the e-mail to his entire list. Our church matriarch e-mailed back, “Wow! What an invitation…generated by spirit”.

So now, I am planning a meeting on Sunday that could change the direction of our church. We will see…

Generated by spirit???

The e-mail I wrote contained a line from Kaaren’s sermon and a line from Scott’s column. They certainly weren’t all my words…

But then I came to my computer that night and saw words that were all my own lifted up by another blogger…

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1st

(MORNING)

…and I guess it was exactly the push I needed.

So, here’s where things get exciting.

“Guess what I did, hon?” I called my husband on the phone from the parking lot of our Nature Strollers outing. “I set up a date to record the radio show!”

Yeah, I’m gonna be a UUvangelist!

Kaaren had asked if I wanted to join the LifeNow Radio team back in the fall… (Well, actually her husband asked me right before my daughter threw up in his garage, but that’s beside the point…). But it’s been a long winter, and I haven’t been to Rochester much, blah, blah, blah…

I’m now set to record a set of meditations on April 22nd (you know…if you’re a reader of this blog the kind of stuff I’m talking about…theology ala story).

But what’s more important isn’t that I’m recording this program, but that all the fear and dread that I had somehow felt this past winter toward a lot of things in my life, including this program—is gone, vanished! Now I’m just psyched to be given this opportunity! Yeah!

Anyway, I highly recommend the program as an example of great UUvangelism. LifeNow airs on Saturday mornings in the Rochester area—but if you’re like me, an out-of-towner—you can still get the shows via web. Two of my favorites: Unexpected Beauty and The Art That Saved Me.

It may be awhile, yet, but I will post on this blog as soon as my show is available.

----

(AFTERNOON)

Goose Pond Mountain Park. I last visited with my children in the week before my grandmother died. Then, the signs of spring were barely visible.

But today, the amphibian call surrounds us. Spring peepers piggyback mate—the miracle of life transpiring before 3 and 4 year old eyes. Children reach out to the pond with nets. Two tadpoles dance in murky water; a wood frog hops through the grass. This time my 16-month old toddles gleefully along the boardwalk, renewing her step after each stumble. My 3 ½ year old daughter meanders at her own erratic pace--at first, climbing on rocks and running wildly to catch up with the boys; then, stopping to draw, entranced by sticks and dirt.

There are other signs here, signs of life outworn—a shriveled snake skin, a broken crayfish shell. In this living interconnected organism of which we are a part, there is always both life and death. And sometimes we have to shed those protective outer layers before a wet and sloppy resurrection may emerge.

A friend of mine calls from out West. Four days of camping in Zion National Park. Oh, Terri you would have loved it…

But I can’t imagine anything more dazzling than this: the slow crawl of life rising up from the ground; the hidden treasure in murky water suddenly revealed; the music of spring peepers calling, calling.

Calling me into fuller life in the here and now.

Word in Spirit: GOD

2008-03-28T23:25:00.007-04:00

(The reflection below is in response to a recent PeaceBang post pointing to a California congregation that has a big sign outside its doors stating, "GOD IS OPTIONAL. YOU ARE NOT.” In keeping with my series on words and language, it felt fitting to explore this language a little deeper...)

As a poet, I am choosy about my words. I did not use the word God in my vocabulary for a long time because I needed new words to express my changing faith. I no longer carry the same beliefs about God that I carried as a child. There was a time in my life when it was essential to say the word atheist out loud and to claim that forbidden fruit. I needed to embrace God’s absence before I could rebuild my faith and express it in a language that made sense. A language that embraced a changing theology in which goodness and grace were points of light around me—source unknowable (and inconsequential to the experience of my faith)—, not the gifts of an unseen maker who determined the path of the universe.

I needed a new language, and I found it in other words. Words like life and grace and community. Words like spirit, surprise, light, ground. These un-capitalized words described my faith in an incarnate sacredness, in a holiness that can only be experienced through living and loving, through moments of connection, moments of silence and awe, moments of beauty in the midst of darkness.

When it comes to church, I believe we need a language that expresses and nurtures our spiritual experiences. The word God may be optional. But the experience of God, goodness, grace, love, transcendence, or whatever else we want to call it that lifts us out of ourselves and moves us toward greater wholeness is not.

God is far from optional in church. I would hope that in UU churches God might be even more central because our varying perspectives allow us to see from many different angles. We may worship, doubt, struggle with, and even deny God, but this is all part of the spiritual experience. In the end we may even come to embrace God. Or grace. Or goodness. We are different people with different stories, so we will use different words. And even those who use the same words will each carry his/her own slant in meaning. Language is always an inexact art—this is especially true when dealing with the ineffable!

What is important is not the words we use, but that we are all free to use them—to speak openly of our religious experiences, to share our stories. We must be free to explore and express our own ideas and our own stories in language that makes sense to each of us personally, in language that we have come to embrace. We must choose our words carefully—the measure of those words being the truth we have each discovered within ourselves. And we must be able to trust that others will listen openly to the story in a circle of compassion— not condemn or judge the words because they do not fit with one's own experience. The exchange between storyteller and listener is a powerful one, and I believe one in which God is present.

Yes, I have reclaimed the word God. I have done this mostly because it allows me to communicate more fully with liberal Christians and others of various faiths with whom I have religious conversations--and building bridges with others in communication is as important to me as speaking my own truth. In my mind, God means all those things: life, grace, community, spirit, surprise, light, ground. And other words too. They are all a part of my vocabulary. I still don’t think I’d use the word God in a poem or poetic prose piece though…

Or wait, I guess I did…once upon a time…but that was for church;)