A quick search of books on Amazon in the self-help category yields just about 614,000 results.  Sex, just for comparison, has only about 314,000 results.  Amazon may therefore be the only place on the Internet where the topic of procrastination beats out fornication.  Let me also note that searching once for books on sex radically changes your “you might also like” suggestions.  
I myself have bought a number of so-called self-help books over the years.  Some have been truly helpful, a number less so—but even when the book itself has been helpful, I find myself often slipping back into the very patterns of behavior I hoped to change.  I find myself continuing to disappoint myself and others.  I’m not neat or well organized.  I procrastinate.  I’m much more acquisitive than I would like—I’ve rarely met a backpack or a book I didn’t want.  I don’t eat as well as I’d like.  Don’t exercise as much as I would like.  None of these are deal breakers in my life.  But I still feel this sense of frustration with myself.  After all, it’s my brain and body, why should I have any difficulty doing what I say I want to do?
This isn’t recent.  I’ve struggled with this for the past maybe 30 years.  Much of my life, I have questioned how one creates change within oneself.  As I’ve grown over the years, I’ve come to wonder about this frustration and dissatisfaction and question the general concept of self-help as it is sold and bought by so many of us.
I grew up in a household characterized by chaos, emotional abuse and neglect, and even some violence.  My home was not a Dickensian hell, but it wasn’t healthy and the emotional scars I have I’ve come by honestly enough.  And the emotional trauma of youth produces lifelong effects.  From early on I felt a powerful need not to repeat these patterns.  Not to treat my wife as my father treated my mother, not to treat my son as my father treated me or my brother.  Some of the chaos of my childhood left me without much ability to know where to set the bar.  What’s good enough?  As with many people who have traumatic childhoods, I usually wind up setting the bar unreasonably high. But I’m not much of an overachiever, instead I just feel bad about myself.
I started studying Karate when I was 11.  Japanese martial arts became the rock I could cling to.  When everything was craziness and out of control at home, I found peace in the discipline and values of Karate, Judo, and Aikido.
My first contact with Buddhism was through Karate.  Buddhism promised a path to deeper meaning and understanding, a path to personal transformation I started learning little bits about “enlightenment,” and I began to believe that I could, through hard work and practice, become a different person—or more specifically the person I would be if I hadn’t gotten all messed up along the way—the person I was meant to be.  All the things that I didn’t like about myself, I came to believe could be burned away, purified, transcended.
When I was 20, I went to Japan to continue this journey.  I eventually went to a small Zen temple to live, study, and meditate.  I believed that the qualities I found unattractive in myself were like, following a number of Buddhist metaphors, just so much dust and dirt hiding the surface of a mirror—once polished sufficiently I could see myself clearly and that person would no longer be burdened by such substantial flaws.
Twenty years later, I can see all of that as youthful naïveté and a fundamental misunderstanding of what Buddhism and other wisdom traditions actually offer, but a quick perusal of self-help books, seminars, and gurus shows that a lot of people are themselves looking for a truly transformative experience or method.  And maybe it’s out there.  Maybe Tony Robbins really can, as his book title claims, awaken the giant within me, and perhaps Dale Carnegie can teach me how to win friends and influence people.  I may have been naive, but I certainly was not alone.
It’s part of our own tradition too.  One of our Unitarian saints, His Holiness, St. Henry of the Pond, Henry David Thoreau, wrote in Walden, “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”
Japan was 26 years ago, and for my entire adult life I have primarily identified as Buddhist.  For much of that time I continued to believe in the chance for profound transformation.  Now I don’t claim to be a particularly good Buddhist.  While I’ve done a fair amount of meditation, I haven’t had a regular practice for many years.  That said, after my years of academic studies, I shifted to more practical education.  I have over the past ten years spent many many hours with people from a much wider swath of humanity than I had before I became a chaplain.  I’ve sat with people’s pain, suffering, and disappointment.  I have seen an entire catalog of human suffering.  I’ve spent many years in counseling with a variety of therapists.  I spent two years going through the professional training for chaplains which is a combination of really intense group and individual therapy all in an effort to prepare you to be present to others in their struggles without having too much of your own baggage getting in the way.  While I haven’t been a particularly dedicated Buddhist, I have been working on myself and trying to grow.
 And while I have certainly grown and changed, many of the flaws that bother me most are still right here with me and now I start to suspect they will follow me to my eventual end. This is, of course, not unique to me nor unknown in the spiritual literature.  It’s right in the New Testament in the Paul’s letter to the Romans.  In this passage he points to the central struggle I’m talking about.  I recognize myself in these words written a couple thousand years ago when he laments, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do. …I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
So I have these things about me that I don’t like—my housekeeping skills can only charitably be compared to how Jackson Pollack painted.  I put the pro in procrastination.  Clearly I’m not talking about more profound challenges like addiction or abusive relationships, problems that threaten your life literally.  Those are a different order of magnitude in terms of challenges—I’m talking about the small things that make my life run less smoothly, that drag at me, that cause friction between the life I want and the life I have.
So what do I do with this?  The problems are small in the bigger scheme of things.  I am reasonably successful, reasonably happy.  Nietzsche famously said that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  I’d also say that which doesn’t destroy you, just annoys the crap out of you.  So what do we do with all the ways we disappoint ourselves and those we love?
Last weekend was Rosh Hashoneh, the Jewish new year—a time of celebration and joy.  The high holy day that follows next, Yom Kippur, which starts this coming Tuesday, is a more sober one.  The ten days between Rosh Hoshoneh and Yom Kippur are called the Days of Awe when observant Jews repent from their sins.  On Rosh Hashoneh, God writes in the Book of Life deciding who will have a good year, who will have a bad year, who will live and who will die.  On Yom Kippur the book is closed and your fate is sealed.  These ten days are an opportunity to change God’s judgment by making amends, seeking forgiveness and finding reconciliation.  Two interesting elements.  First, you cannot ask God for forgiveness from a sin against another human being—that forgiveness has to come from the offended party, not from God.  Second, forgiveness itself is not enough, you must also achieve reconciliation.  You can forgive someone, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve come back into relationship.  Forgiveness can be a solo activity—I can forgive my father for how he treated me, but at this point, he died in 1999, we can no longer be reconciled.  Forgiveness is where we start and can be hard enough, but it is critical for our own well-being.  Lewis Smedes, one of the pioneers of forgiveness research said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”
Forgiving someone else can be hard to do.  If I am honest, there are a couple of people in my life that I struggle to actually forgive.  But in my experience, I often have a harder time forgiving myself for my errors and flaws.  I have seen the power of self in the past decade as a hospital chaplain.
On any number of occasions I have sat with someone who is facing their own death.  These are often, as one might imagine, fairly intense conversations and for those who are traditionally religious, a time that can be filled with literally mortal terror.  I remember the first patient I had such a conversation with.  I had myself given up any fear of divine judgment, stopped believing in a literal hell many years before.  But for this poor fellow, the belief that he had sinned against God, and more importantly, his very real fear that what he had done was simply unforgivable in the eyes of God was petrifying.  I tried for some time to reassure him that God’s grace and mercy was limitless and that if we had true repentance then we could be forgiven.  And yet despite my assurances and citing particular passages of scripture, he remained unconvinced.  He was actively dying and in absolute terror of what he was sure awaited him on the other side.  I sat there trying to think about how I might provide some comfort to him when a question came to me.
Now chaplaincy is often a bit of a tightrope walk.  We usually have very little time with people, no preexisting relationship to draw on, and the emotional and spiritual stakes are frequently very high.  Any good chaplain takes chances on saying something that might be just the right question and might help the patient come to some resolution…or it may be the wrong question entirely and throw gas on the fire and destroy any good done so far.
This was one of those moments.  My patient was incredibly fragile—struggling with a terminal diagnosis and in a true existential spiritual crisis.  After reflecting for a moment I said, “I’ve told you that I’m not worried about God’s forgiveness, but have you forgiven yourself?”  I was shocked at the intensity of his response.  He began to weep like a child and eventually shook his head no.  The real source of infection had been opened up and now we could begin the deeper work of healing that was needed.  I’ve seen this enough to realize that the challenge of forgiving ourselves is fairly universal and often some of the hardest work we do.
It’s true for me. I can be very unforgiving of myself.  To ask myself for absolution is often to face my harshest critic, my least forgiving opponent.  And in this we can add in the greater mistakes we have made.  We have to acknowledge that some of our failures have been catastrophic:  relationships destroyed, people suffer, people die from our actions or inactions.  As I look back at my life there are a few mistakes that still make my stomach feel hollow and ashamed.
Indeed, forgiving others—-let alone ourselves—-is so difficult that we have created incredibly elaborate rituals of forgiveness in our religious traditions.  Catholics, they go to confession.  Jews, at this time of year, they go to a body of water to cast their sins away.  
For those of us removed from traditional theologies, we must still find a way through the narrow gate that leads to a fuller life.  No matter what you’ve done, once you’ve done what you can to seek forgiveness from anyone else involved, once you’ve made the effort to become reconciled with them you’ll have to—-at some point turn—-that gaze inward.  And you’re going to have to forgive yourself at some point if you are going to heal and grow.  Once the trauma is done, to persist in being unforgiving to yourself doesn’t reduce the damage.  Sometimes that guilty, stubborn, refusal only makes it worse and predisposes us to other errors.
This is what I’m coming to see about the failings that seem to follow me.  I can spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to change them.  All of us, have finite amount of time and energy in our lives. There’s not a minute that goes by that you can get back to spend differently.  And I have a better use for that energy and time than trying to change things that ultimately won’t make much of a difference when I’m gone.  I don’t believe that people will be discussing my procrastination or the fact that my desktop was theoretically somewhere underneath the mass of papers obscuring it.  And I want to spend the time I have being more present to the joy in my life with Julia and Ben and my friends and family.  All the efforts to change myself can wind up—-if I’m not careful—-being a distraction from what’s actually important.  
One of my favorite songs is titled, “Still Climbing.”  The central metaphor of the song is that we are essentially climbing a mountain backwards—we can only see where we’ve been.  It’s a beautiful image that speaks to the uncertainty of our lives.  Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20, and so beautifully horribly seductive. We can recall the innocent simplicity of our childhood and youth. We see all the ways life could have been different.  We can see all the ways we make mistakes and become entranced by our errors.
Middle age, I’m finding out, clouds much of what I thought would be my reality and the future seems even less certain as I grapple with the reality of life that seemed so distant when I was younger.  Friends have heart attacks and cancer, get divorced, commit suicide, children have real problems that call for desperately unclear solutions, and career can become an odd trap catching us between the comfort of and contempt for the familiar.
But with all due respect and love to the songwriter however, we don’t climb mountain backwards.  We climb them facing forwards.  We may stop from time to time to rest, take stock of our position, and maybe reflect on how far we’ve come, but ultimately we turn to face forward again, and walk on.  In truth, we can never see where we’ve been.  We may remember, we may imagine, we may dream.  But when we open our eyes, the only thing we can actually see is right where we are.  And life can only actually proceed in one direction, forward.  We march inexorably toward our end.
My growing suspicion is that forgiving ourselves, and better yet, doing the work to become genuinely reconciled to ourselves is the main way to get where we want to go.  No matter how painful or scary, we will need to come back into relationship with the most damaged, vulnerable, broken parts of ourselves.  And it is this work that may be the only thing that actually gives us the power to choose either to change or to simply let go.
I hope its obvious that I’m not trying to discourage people from self work, but we do need to be thoughtful about where we put our energy and not punish ourselves for being human.
I am starting to find some peace with is the understanding that some of my bad habits are here to stay.  Maybe I could get rid of them with enough work, maybe I couldn’t.  Either way, I’ve decided to stop focusing on my faults.  I am coming to terms with the fact that I will continue to disappoint myself and others.  Perfection is just not on the menu.  The return on investment simply isn’t great enough at 47 to spend much energy on these things.
Instead I am trying to see myself as a whole.  And, on the whole, I’m good enough.  Great at a couple of things, bad at a few others, and sufficient at most everything else.  And so the question shifts from what can I fix about myself to how can I honor the talents I do have and, perhaps most importantly, how do I extend sufficient compassion, forgiveness, and grace to myself?  How do I encourage instead of berating?  How do I inspire instead of demeaning?  Over the years one thing I’ve seen is that people often speak to themselves in ways they wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else.  All the self-blame, shame and recrimination don’t move us forward.  No matter how minor or major, trivial or tragic your faults are, most of us are still better off cultivating that a far gentler internal voice.  A voice that is sympathetic and speaks to you like wise friend or parent.  Seek to extend a deep gentleness to yourself.  Don’t talk to yourself in ways that you'd never tolerate from someone else.
  I’m trying to stop fighting battles with my past ideas about who I am and will be.  I guess it’s just part of middle-age, though I’ve seen people at every stage in life struggling to free themselves from the bondage of expectation, self-doubt, and the voice of that harsh critic inside our hearts and minds.  I remember going to see the great teacher Ram Dass in ‘92 or ‘93, a man I thought was as close to enlightenment and freedom as I was likely to encounter.  Someone asked him how he had freed himself from desire and fear.  He laughed, a good hearty laugh and explained he still had desires and fear but that they were more like old friends or little “schmoos” he called them, little things that would come to back to visit from time to time.  They were still there, but he could see them now without being moved by them.  I didn’t understand what he was saying back then, but I think I’m starting to see get it a bit.  I can see all my shortcomings and failings and be moved by them.  Moved to fear and shame, moved to putting on fronts to deny my vulnerability and humanity, moved to spending way too much time on aspects of myself that are as much a part of myself as my face or my hair.  I don’t have to be happy with them.  I can keep making small overtures to whatever is still hurting in me that keeps me struggling in ways that come out as procrastination or desire.  I’m trying to come to peace with the variety of ways I disappoint myself and others and transform it from a painful mess into an art—the art of reconciling myself to myself with love and grace.  And isn’t that where much of the world’s great art has come from—the transformation and expression of an inner vision imperfect though it may be brought into the world by an artist with enough courage to be vulnerable.  I encourage all of us to work on this journey.  Amen and blessed be.

David Francey will be playing the Fresno Folklore Society at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fresno CA on... http://fb.me/1JCBGdc0R 

David Francey will be playing the Fresno Folklore Society at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fresno CA on... http://fb.me/1JCBGdc0R 

This post examines the harm the administration’s policies may have for some of the most vulnerable immigrants: asylum-seekers. The post Asylum-Seeking Families at Risk Under Trump’s Aggressive Immigration Policies appeared first on Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. This post examines the harm the administration’s policies may have for some of the most vulnerable immigrants: asylum-seekers. The post Asylum-Seeking Families at Risk Under Trump’s Aggressive Immigration Policies appeared first on Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Elaine McArdle

Elaine McArdle

Can you guess the top 5 answers that a survey of 800 UUs has come up with for each question? 1. Name a UU principle a. Inherent worth and dignity of every person b. Respect for the interdependent web of … Continue reading → The post CUC Month 2017: Popular UU Answers appeared first on Canadian Unitarian Council. Can you guess the top 5 answers that a survey of 800 UUs has come up with for each question? 1. Name a UU principle a. Inherent worth and dignity of every person b. Respect for the interdependent web of … Continue reading → The post CUC Month 2017: Popular UU Answers appeared first on Canadian Unitarian Council.

Popular UU Answers Can you name the top answer when 800 UUs were asked to: Name something that shows up at a UU potluck? Find out how your answers compared to the top 5 popular answers and find instructions on … Continue reading → The post CUC Month 2017 appeared first on Canadian Unitarian Council. Popular UU Answers Can you name the top answer when 800 UUs were asked to: Name something that shows up at a UU potluck? Find out how your answers compared to the top 5 popular answers and find instructions on … Continue reading → The post CUC Month 2017 appeared first on Canadian Unitarian Council.

Part of a successful youth ministry is creating and maintaining sustainable systems and organizational tools, like calendaring, directories and templates, to keep the youth ministry program running as a vital part of the congregation and so it can live on after a volunteer or staff member leaves. Adults need to be competent in practicing compassionate communication, handling conflict with grace and humility, expressing needs, and being a good listener. And they need to be able to model these skills for youth. Youth Ministry Advising: A Complete Guide has some tips for developing these skills. Volunteers and staff must be competent with social media. Supervisors should inform volunteers and staff if their congregation has something akin... Part of a successful youth ministry is creating and maintaining sustainable systems and organizational tools, like calendaring, directories and templates, to keep the youth ministry program running as a vital part of the congregation and so it can live on after a volunteer or staff member leaves. Adults need to be competent in practicing compassionate communication, handling conflict with grace and humility, expressing needs, and being a good listener. And they need to be able to model these skills for youth. Youth Ministry Advising: A Complete Guide has some tips for developing these skills. Volunteers and staff must be competent with social media. Supervisors should inform volunteers and staff if their congregation has something akin...

EVENT: Kent Environmental Council- Come Learn about Community Solar Monday Feb 27 7pm Unitarian Universalist Church pic.twitter.com/YTSFJMhJth

EVENT: Kent Environmental Council- Come Learn about Community Solar Monday Feb 27 7pm Unitarian Universalist Church pic.twitter.com/YTSFJMhJth

EVENT: Kent Environmental Council- Come Learn about Community Solar Monday Feb 27 7pm Unitarian Universalist Church pic.twitter.com/iUyBwg7wZu

EVENT: Kent Environmental Council- Come Learn about Community Solar Monday Feb 27 7pm Unitarian Universalist Church pic.twitter.com/iUyBwg7wZu

Orland Couple to Present Standing Rock Event at Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor - http://bangordailynews.com/community/orland-co …...

Orland Couple to Present Standing Rock Event at Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor - http://bangordailynews.com/community/orland-co …...

Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing is hiring a part-time bookkeeper AND a building use coordinator.... http://fb.me/5EeuzUjfN 

Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing is hiring a part-time bookkeeper AND a building use coordinator.... http://fb.me/5EeuzUjfN 

Elaine McArdle

Elaine McArdle

Elaine McArdle

Elaine McArdle

Low-income families with children who face health care challenges are in danger of losing Medicaid and/or their CHIP health care insurance. Please contact your Senator and ask him/her to vote against Tom Price for Secretary of Health and Human Services. For more information www.promisethechildrenuu.org/blog.   To quote from First Focus: “The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted by a bipartisan group of lawmakers…. to provide funding to states to reduce the numbers of uninsured children. CHIP focuses on low-income read more... The post Losing Medicaid or CHIP appeared first on Promise the Children. Low-income families with children who face health care challenges are in danger of losing Medicaid and/or their CHIP health care insurance. Please contact your Senator and ask him/her to vote against Tom Price for Secretary of Health and Human Services. For more information www.promisethechildrenuu.org/blog.   To quote from First Focus: “The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted by a bipartisan group of lawmakers…. to provide funding to states to reduce the numbers of uninsured children. CHIP focuses on low-income read more... The post Losing Medicaid or CHIP appeared first on Promise the Children.

Reposting from the Indigenous Environmental Network: Join the Resistance! – Send Your Comments on DAPL EIS Write YOUR comment to the Army Corps of Engineers demanding a comprehensive environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Click: “Click to Open and Write Comments” to go to IEN page and follow instructions there. We have added 25 Reasons to Oppose […] Reposting from the Indigenous Environmental Network: Join the Resistance! – Send Your Comments on DAPL EIS Write YOUR comment to the Army Corps of Engineers demanding a comprehensive environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Click: “Click to Open and Write Comments” to go to IEN page and follow instructions there. We have added 25 Reasons to Oppose […]

By Lynn Hall The accomplishment of climbing one of the Seven Summits changed my entire psyche going into the publication of Caged Eyes. During the three weeks between summiting and book publication, my outlook has been very different. There have been a few harder days of panic and somatic upheaval, but overall I’m much more focused on my successes and the journey which brought me to this destination. I’m much more focused on my original intention of the book: dismantling cultures of shame and silence. By Lynn Hall The accomplishment of climbing one of the Seven Summits changed my entire psyche going into the publication of Caged Eyes. During the three weeks between summiting and book publication, my outlook has been very different. There have been a few harder days of panic and somatic upheaval, but overall I’m much more focused on my successes and the journey which brought me to this destination. I’m much more focused on my original intention of the book: dismantling cultures of shame and silence.

Elaine McArdle

Elaine McArdle

Doug Muder When our values are threatened, a congregation is an anchor against despair. Doug Muder When our values are threatened, a congregation is an anchor against despair.