Back when I was still new to Texas I met up with black eyed peas for the first time. I was not impressed. Despite the seasonings, to my Upper Midwestern palate they tasted like dirt. So I avoided black eyed peas for several years, until I was talking with a friend from Alabama and the subject of the peas came up. I probably wrinkled my nose and said “I don’t get what the fuss is all about. They taste like mud.” My friend tipped her head and said “Well, that’s part of their charm.” Hmmmm… Once I realized that it was part of their charm, I tried them again, but this time approached them as if that muddy taste might be charming—and within a few more tries, I was hooked. Now, I might love a red bean or a butter bean a bit more, but I have truly found the muddy charm of a black eye pea.

Living as if flies against strict rationality that tells you to deal with only and exactly what is, and encourages you to consider what might be. I consider it a way to break up my certainty and remain flexible in this world.

Consider something that is uncomfortable, annoying, muddy-tasting, or flat-out ominous, and go exploring into how you can engage or respond to it differently. In psychotherapy, this practice is called “reframing.” Cognitive reframing consists of identifying and then displacing certain thoughts with ideas or thoughts that are more positive.

It’s a useful way of reducing the power that fears have over us. Examine your thoughts and see if you can shift them in a less fearful, more affirming direction. Dreading an upcoming conversation? Think about how it might go well, how you will probably learn something that you didn’t know before, about who you want to be after the conversation. And then go have that conversation as if all of the positive things are possible. It might still be difficult, but you will have more control over how you respond to and interpret the outcome.

What about an impending snow storm? What if it gets icy? What if, while going out to pick up the newspaper, I slip on the ice and bust my backside? Yes, that is possible. But, instead, I can reframe my anticipation of the cold weather differently. If it gets icy I can stop to marvel at the ice patterns on my windows and notice how the sunlight is broken into a million shimmering rainbows on the grass in my front lawn. Perhaps then I will walk as if this world is filled with beauty instead of danger. I might also just wait for the snow to melt and read the news online, or take a cue from the weather and just not pay attention to the news for a day.

What might this mean in terms of our interactions with one another? Do you find yourself disappointed by other people on a daily basis?

How would you go about your chores and errands as if every person you will meet today has a gift—including you? What would be different if you acted as if each person matters—even a person who is really different from you? What might be different in your interactions with that person? Can you still see a spark of the divine in them, or a gift, or their simple desire to be a good person?

If your life was made difficult by another person, consider living as if that person had been trying to do their best. Most people are. They might have harmed you and made a wreck of things, but unless they were seriously unwell, they probably thought they were doing the best thing. It might take some visits with a counselor and some serious reframing work, but in time the pain can be eased.

Here’s another way I practice living as if: When we do some of our Tai Chi forms, we move in a way that imitates animals and elements of nature. We imitate birds and snakes and tigers. We create waves of water, grow like trees, rise up like mountains, and blow like the wind. I know that I am not a tree, an ocean, or a snake, but in moving as if I were, I come to understand them better. By drawing the shape of branches and leaves, or moving my arms like wings, I have more awareness of what makes a tree beautiful and what makes a bird powerful.

What would be different if you lived as if animals have feelings and important concerns? Would you have to adjust how you interpret their behaviors and your own? Would you eat them differently?

How would you conduct yourself, living as if your life were an ongoing process of discovery?

What might happen if you carried on as if there were a Great Mother who was with you during the awful moments? A love that abides with you and laughs at you and nudges you to be your best you?

What would be different if you prayed as if prayers you utter were heard by the universe and manifested as change within you and ultimately out into the world?

What might happen if you went about as if the world wanted you, was expecting you? Would you show up and participate more fully? Could you dance more freely and say “yes” more sincerely when a flower blooms at your feet?

I would suggest that all these are possibilities. It’s worth a try.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110184143/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_11/03.mp3

In February of 2015 I went to the Unitarian Universalist Minister’s Association Institute for Excellence in Ministry, and I had the opportunity to spend a week in a workshop with activist, eco‐philosopher, writer, and spiritual elder Joanna Macy.

Joanna is well‐known in spiritual and ecological activism circles. Her work focuses on Work that Reconnects, naming ways that we have been disconnected and how that feeds despair and apathy, and working to build community and connection in response to the reality of ecological devastation and destruction.

We know that our world is facing a climate crisis. And there is much that could be said about the science, the statistics and the rising temperatures and the extreme weather events and the NASA reports and parts per million. I’m not here to talk about any of that. My own eyes start to glaze over at the numbers, and when I zoom out, I just feel my own helplessness and overwhelm welling up inside me until I want to shut it all out and push it away, pretending I never heard any of it.

So here was Joanna Macy, 84­year‐old spiritual elder, grounded in the Buddhist tradition, brilliant and effusive and leading this workshop alongside the young activists of Movement Generation, an environmental justice organization led by low income young people of color committed to a just transition away from profit and pollution and toward healthy, resilient and life affirming local economies.

Throughout the workshop, Joanna kept saying “What a wonderful time to be alive!” And I found myself thinking “Yeah, right, Joanna, have you read the news lately?”

Joanna had us begin in her four‐step process of the work that reconnects, which begins with gratitude. And let me tell you, I wasn’t feeling too much of that, so I thought it was a particularly annoying place to start. Mostly, what I was feeling was anger.

That anger was primarily directed at my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. The generations immediately preceding me had not left things in better condition than they had found it. I felt a sort of “What on earth are we supposed to do with all this mess?!”

So gratitude wasn’t quite happening for me yet.

Then Joanna asked us to honor our pain for the world—and that I could do. Pain at the ways we see violence and oppression destroy families and communities, pain at the ways that we see suffering all around us, pain for the ways we are so disconnected from one another, from our natural world, from God, from our own deepest desires.

And then, Joanna announced that we were going to time travel—we were going to talk to a descendent from seven generations into the future—which is estimated to be about 200 years. She assigned half of us to be present day beings, our own selves (I was in this group) and the other half of us would be seventh generation beings—humans from around the year 2215. She then facilitated a conversation with imaginary ancestors and descendants, talking together about this time we live in.

We present‐day ancestors began. The future beings—our imaginary descendants, asked us a series of questions about the time we, all of us, live in here and now. The questions were along the lines of “ancestor, I’ve heard stories about the critical time you live in—how much of a crisis your world was in. What was it like for you to live with that knowledge every day?” and “You must have felt confused and lonely at the beginning. How did you get started in helping our world to heal?” and “You must have felt scared and discouraged throughout it. Where did you find the strength to continue?”

Those of us embodying the role as present‐day beings each answered these questions, and then we got to hear from these pretend future beings, reflecting back what they had heard about these hard times we live in.

This was when my moment of personal transformation happened. Because in my answering of these questions, I felt defensive, like it was me, my generation, young adults who won’t be young adults forever, trying to offer an explanation for the world we might leave to the future beings. And yet all of these people in the workshop—the ones role­playing our descendants, who in reality were older than me—were part of a generation of people I had just hours before felt that flare of anger toward. And then, all of a sudden, I had this rush of compassion, a flood of transformative understanding and patience and deep knowledge of the critical questions the next generation might hurl toward mine.

My point is this: none of us alone created our climate crisis, and in part it was created by a very short view of time—a view that expects immediate profit or loss, a view that can’t fully comprehend the consequences of our choices beyond our own lifetimes. And it wasn’t until I was invited, albeit skeptically at first, to literally converse with our descendants that I had an emotional connection to the future that allowed my moral imagination to take root.

We need a moral imagination of the possibilities we hold if we are going to stop ourselves from exporting our problems to the future. We need this sense of deep time when we think about problems that span across generations, and when we are making choices that will affect future generations.

In this, there is cause for hope. Joanna Macy again: “Passive hope is about waiting for external agencies to bring about what we desire. Active hope is about becoming active participants in what we hope for. Active hope is a practice…it is something we do, rather than have.” Joanna makes very clear that active hope does not require optimism, but rather a clarity about the outcome we would like to see, letting our intentions and our values, rather than our calculations of likely success, be our guide. Active hope cannot be discovered in an armchair or without risk. In active hope, we choose our response and act on that choice. In active hope we not only envision new possibilities, we create them for ourselves and for generations to come.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110184122/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_11/04.mp3

What could a convict have to say about possibilities? At a time before prison, I would have thought Not very much. Then, there I was, no longer free, in jail, asking myself: How could this happen? How is this possible? Who takes the time to consider such a thing, especially before the fact?

On the other hand, what are the chances of simply having a negative thought—and acting on it? Well, there I was, one of many behind those walls, enclosed, confined.

Possibilities are essentially pathways, alternative spaces, but jail is, by design, restriction and stagnation. In such a place I was surrounded by others who had exercised bad thoughts followed by bad actions. This kind of environment is, on the surface, full of hostility and wickedness, trickling falls of futility and hopelessness flooding in like bad waters, pooling up bit by bit, rising.

Prison brings physical harm, but also psychological damage. Consider the favored prison wisdom phrase: “It is what it is.”

Think about that string of words. What do they convey? I have always cringed at its sentiment, considered it unhelpful at best and unwise at worst. It implies that there are no alternatives, and its essence is surrender.

No alternatives? This could not be so. I needed options, second chances. I heard that arrogant phrase of so-called wisdom, with its absolute conviction, over and over again, and watched as others lived by it. Try and understand the context of such a mindset in the prison environment: What’s done is done. My limits are what they are. My reality is what it is.

No, no, no, I thought. That is the wrong way to view our situation. The mantra stank of defeat, and defeat means that it’s over and can’t be undone. There was a feeling of being lost, with no sense of direction or even destination. I kept replaying the past in my head, wondering. Things had appeared so set in place, so inevitable. Refusing to give in to the flow of my surroundings, refusing to filter life through a layer of impossibilities, I had to admit to myself that the path taken—the one that led to prison—was not the only option I had. Wrong thought and wrong action on my part had kept me on a single course. I had been my own worst enemy. I was following poor directions, and could not afford to continue.

Okay. So in the past I had had options, but didn’t heed them and wound up here, in prison. What now? Inside, dealing with the rising swells of obstacles, what remained? At first it seemed that the answer was bleak. I struggled as waves of stress and doubt trapped me, threatening to drown me.

I was ready for anything, and without realizing it, I had found a life preserver—only it didn’t look like one, at least not at first. Help came as soon as pen met paper. When I came across an address, any place offering resources to the incarcerated, I responded. I wrote letter after letter. Using the written word, I extended my consciousness beyond the perils of prison, seeking reprieve.

Merriam-Webster’s thesaurus lists several words as related to or synonyms for possibility. These words were reflected in my actions: My thoughts were potentiality. Paper and pen, stamps and envelopes, were attainable. Writing and corresponding were practicable. Fortunately, too, I had available family and friends who supported me. Soon I had several correspondences. And momentum.

From the seclusion of my bunk I could very easily have stared at the fuzzy ceiling, raised a white flag and given up. Instead, I learned from my past, acknowledged my terrible choices, maintained right thought during tough times, and discovered that possibilities could still happen. Writing became an opportunity for me, a way of having control and exercising better principles, like empathy and sharing and being proactive. This is a new journey I look forward to, but is it an easier trek now? No. I see it this way: the journey will always have its difficulties. Had I focused my outlook on a limiting philosophy, gotten lured in, I could easily have been hooked and sunk by its impossible weight.

Possibilities are hope and hope is possibilities. Sometimes those are closer than we realize. Mine was right under my nose. In most cases it was cheap, if not free, and became easier to find and more rewarding with each new word. It is what it can be—if we are willing to believe. Don’t give up. Keep searching. Keep trying. Keep the hope alive and keep your outlook open because the possibilities are out there, even in the toughest of circumstances.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110184055/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_11/05.mp3

Attached media: https://external-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCzAWg0PFL9OX0E&url=https://wisconsinexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IMG_3854-scaled-1.jpg&_nc_cb=1&_nc_hash=AQCD5dqUti2BK4p3

    There is a story told of a rabbi in ancient times who gathered his students together very early one morning, while it was still dark. He put this question to them: "How can you tell when night has ended and the day has begun?"

     One student made a suggestion: "Could it be when you can see an animal and you can tell whether it is a sheep or a goat?"

     "No, that's not it," answered the rabbi.

     Another student said: "Could it be when you look at a tree in the distance and you can tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?"

     Again the rabbi answered: "No."

     After a few more guesses the students said: "Well, how do you tell when night has ended?"

     The rabbi answered: "It is when you look on the face of any person and you see them as your brother or sister. If you cannot do this, then, no matter what time it is, it is still night."

          This is a difficult teaching for me right now.  I have heard so many lies, conspiracy theories, and hate speech over the past four years in our country and most especially during this election cycle.  Maybe the same thing has happened in past election cycles, but it just seems to be impacting me so much more right now. And I find it increasing difficult to look upon the faces of some people and see them as my relative, sibling, even possible friend.  I am not even sure I want to be their acquaintance.  I know I am supposed love thy enemy as thy self and if anyone slaps me on the cheek, I'm supposed to offer them my other cheek so they can smack me again.  I know I am supposed to listen to all sides in a disagreement to effectively resolve a conflict.  I aspire to justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.  But I am really struggling with some people right now.  And I am wondering how I will listen to some people after this election cycle is done, when I am already sick to death of their voices.  How am I going to do that?  How are you?  Or, are you?

          On the night after the 2016 election, I remember opening my church to anyone who wanted to come.  I began our shared time with a chalice lighting and an explanation of how I would hold the space for everyone to share their thoughts and feelings.  I could not believe what I heard from some people.  They spoke of never being able to talk again to lifelong friends.  They spoke of fractured families.  They spoke of bankrupted respect for certain politicians.  Well perhaps that last one about politicians not being respected was not really a surprise.  

          In 2016 this became more personal for me as a couple members in my extended family were espousing certain ideas and political affiliations that I couldn't understand.  Even my best friend's mother, whom I have known since I was in Junior High, was in tears over her eldest son who had become aggressive toward the rest of her family because they wouldn't believe in his new-found conspiracy theories.  Now, here we are 4 years later.  I wonder if some of you can relate.

          I know this country needs to find a way to heal and come back together, not that we have to agree with one another politically, but we need to find a way to listen to one another again.  But how do we listen to people who are accusing democrats and movie stars of being pedofiles, holding rallies saying "save the children" when they are doing nothing to actually save children, and proclaiming that pizza joints are places where pedofiles gather.  One Qanon follower declared that pizza is a code word for pornography, cheese pizza means child pornography. 

          Perhaps things will settle down once the election is over, but I still wonder how all this rancor, conspiracy theories, and bald-faced lying has affected how I listen to others.  I ask myself will I be able to listen to those who have ideas seem so destructive and damaging to certain people and to our country?  I don't know if I can.  And yet I know healing for our country will come from listening to those who I disagree with. 

          A teacher in the Insight Meditation community, Christina Feldman, in her article "Doing, Being, and the Great In-Between” wrote: "The Buddha pointed out that the seeds of liberative understanding and clarity, of kindness and compassion, lie within each of us. And the path to their fruition lies in our commitment…. I would suggest that it is the beautiful and the good that we aspire to and value above all else. In the midst of the beautiful and the good, we feel most alive, most awake, and most present. The Buddha’s teachings are about cultivating the beautiful and the good, the seeds of possibility that live in every human heart: generosity, kindness, and compassion. These qualities ennoble our hearts and leave no residue of regret in our minds." 

          So many of the world's religions hold the concept that the seeds of generosity, kindness, and compassion lie in every human heart waiting to be nurtured and cultivated.  It is essentially what I heard growing up Catholic.  And I think the same concept is at the foundation of our seven Principles, the idea that people can change, that the world can change, and there can be a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all, that there can be justice, equity and compassion in human relations, and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

          I have always believed that listening to one another, deeply listening to one other, and for that matter listening to what is within ourselves, is the main way that we can achieve the over-arching goals of peace, justice, equity, compassion, interdependence that we Unitarian Universalists affirm and promote. 

          Maybe I am a little idealistic about listening to one another.  Time, as it so often does, taught me that listening can makes a difference.  I have had some successes with Republican legislatures, with evangelicals, with conservative union workers.  We found common ground on things so we could work together on issues.  Issues like getting mentoring for disadvantaged children of color, helping a city rise up from a devastating 500-year flood, and working on marital equality.  I've had enough positive outcomes that I'm not quite yet ready to put my idealism aside. 

          And maybe some of you here at UU Miami are also not yet quite ready to cast off your idealism.  Think of the work you've done personally and as a faith community.  Members of UU Miami with various religious and secular groups closed down the Homestead temporary shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children.  And think of the work UU Miami forebears have done.  On January 2^nd 1950 UU Miami members set up Miami's first integrated nursery school.  To quote Rey Baumel, "In our pulpits we have had Rabbis, priests, ministers, swamis, Hebrews, Blacks, African Americans, Native Americans, Black Panthers, Grey Panthers, gay men.  Their voices could be heard here…and former presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy spoke here [in the late 1960's]."  Historically, even when there was pushback, like a cross being burned on the lawn of the church, members of UU Miami listened voices of many people and worked with them to achieve significant social justice reform.  It makes sense that you would have some of the same idealism that I have about what can be achieved when we listen to ourselves, each other, and the voices of those who thoughts and ideas are different than our own.   

          And so today, I wonder, as James Thornton does in his article “Radical Confidence”: "How does one come to a confident and positive view that is not naive, given the state of the world? By walking through one’s own anger and despair and emerging into serenity."  I don't want to be a naïve idealist. I want to be an informed idealist.  I want to face my own feelings of anger and despair, and not get stuck in them, but use them as a springboard toward hope.  Toward making a positive difference, even with the divisiveness in this country.  There are voices I don't think I can listen to right now—voices that try to convince me of conspiracy theories and whose voices that are flat-out lying.  But there are so many other voices I can listen to with empathy and compassion.

          Recently I took a class called the Compassionate Warrior Bootcamp for White Allies, the Unitarian Universalist version with Dr. David Campt and Unitarian Universalist religious educator Allison Mahaley.  They have an idealistic vision of teaching white allies to speak to other white people about racism.  In so doing they hope to change the minds and hearts of 10% of white people about the issue of racism in this country.  Not 100. 10.  They taught me a way of talking to others who have different ideas than mine.  They called it the RACE Method.  RACE is an acronym for Reflect, Ask, Connect, Expand.  This method encourages the use of curiosity, compassion, and empathy in discussions about difficult issues.  Reflect has to do with considering your own feelings and issues before having a conversation, in other words preparing yourself for a difficult conversation.  Ask has to do with actually reaching out and being willing to ask the thoughts and feelings of another person, someone who you have some differences with.  Connect is sharing some of your own feelings and thoughts that are similar to the person you are talking to, not to affirm that you agree with all of their thinking, but to express empathy for what they are thinking and feeling.  And then you can Expand the conversation to go deeper into issues and feelings with that person.  This Expand step might occur over many conversations.  The ground work of showing that you will listen to their thoughts and feelings and not reject them, out of hand, builds the trust for future conversations.  If you are interested in more in-depth learning about this method, let's talk.

          I shared a brief overview of this method with you because I believe, as UU idealists, we are being called to reach out to people in our country to begin a dialogue to heal the rift that exists in the fabric of our nation.  I know this is might be a lofty goal, but haven't we, at one time or another, tried to achieve something that felt enormous or even impossible? I think there are people out there who are ready to listen and hear; people perhaps we would not ordinarily talk to.  After this election has passed, I am committed to initiating these conversations with people on the other side of the political and religious spectrum from me.  I haven't lost my belief that we all human beings have some common feelings, values, and desires for positive change.  I believe in the power of conversations to make real change happen.  That's why I, along with Terry Lowman and other Unitarian Universalists, talked to Marco Rubio's staff on Wednesday about environmental justice.  In that conversation we all came to some common ground, and identified some things Rubio's staff member felt that Rubio is willing to work on. 

          I have, as many of you have probably have, concerns about the healing of our country.  But I still hold hope, idealistic, irrational, or otherwise.  And I invite you to search within yourselves for hope as well, because deep down in you, it's still there, and because there is work to be done.  We do not have to listen to everyone, but we do have to listen to more than one or two who have different ideas than we do if healing is going to happen.  Hellen Keller may or may not have said the following, but they're still powerful words that are strengthening me as I face this post election time, and perhaps you might find them empowering, too.

"I am only one,

But still I am one.

I cannot do everything,

But still I can do something;

And because I cannot do everything,

I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."

A podcast of this piece can be heard by following this link

In recent weeks I’ve been trying to show various ways by which, and why, I think both our own liberal, democratic European and North American culture in general — and its liberal religious, Judaeo-Christian traditions such as the Unitarian one to which I belong — can confidently reconnect with its two major religious and philosophical fountainheads, namely, the human Jesus and Socrates. The need to do this is particularly pressing at the moment because it is clear the wise, reasonable, loving and just ways of proceeding that — at our culture’s best anyway — have both been drawn from, and watered by, these two fountainheads, are now under many, many political, religious, economic, financial, ecological and epidemiological pressures. I should add that the felt intensity of this pressure has been exacerbated by our own neglect in nurturing, protecting and promoting these fountainheads in both the private and civic domains of our culture’s collective life. 

However, I am acutely aware that the temptation in such pressing moments is to try to make any kind of “return to tradition” as thick, or maximal, as possible, in the mistaken belief that such an approach will provide us with the most effective defensive wall.

But, one of the things our culture as a whole values extremely highly is openness to new evidences and insights and the freedom to employ our faculty of critical reason on these same evidences and insights so as to be able to change our minds/opinions when we need to. 

Consequently, one significant problem is that all thick and maximal returns clearly opens up the possibility that we’ll simply end up returning to too many of the old philosophical and religious dogmas and creeds that, within Christianity and Platonism, became wrongly and problematically attached to the names, ideas and ideals of the human Jesus and Socrates. 

In short, which ever way you cut it, it is almost always the case that projects claiming to “return to tradition” — even when they are intended to protect liberal, democratic and rational ideals — are likely to imperil that same freedom and openness and, in the end, only serve to steer our culture in an increasingly illiberal, anti-democratic and anti-rational direction. 

So, to be clear, from where I am standing, any return to tradition which helps restore in a substantive, creedal or doctrinal way, the Christian religion and Platonic philosophy would, ultimately, be a disaster for us. Whatever is required must assuredly remain heretical to its open-minded and open-hearted core.

So, if the project is not about restoring Christianity or Platonism then what is it I am hoping to achieve when I suggest European and North American liberals should, with the utmost seriousness and urgency, consider making a confident return to the human Jesus and Socrates as providing them with their best models of how best to be in the world? 

Well, an important thing to note is to remind you that the project I’ve been outlining over twenty five years of professional ministry, and now, in this first series of podcasts, is an extremely minimalistic one. 

In the first instance, it is important to realise that this minimalist project does not rely, in any fashion, upon belief in God. It doesn’t doctrinally rule out the possibility of traditional belief in God — that would be to close down a still unproven, if rather unlikely, possibility way too soon — but it most assuredly seeks to make it clear that belief in God is neither central, nor necessary, to the project.     

In the second instance when I talk about returning to the traditions of the human Jesus and Socrates it is vitally important to remember it is a return only to two very minimal presentations of them as models worthy of imitation. 

With regard to the human Jesus it is to learn from him a way of being in the world which is concerned to dissolve all of religion’s former supernatural God-talk, superstitious and apocalyptic ideas into a simple, if infinitely challenging, existential, ethical demand to show justice and love to our neighbours, enemies and all creation, right here, and right now. 

With regard to Socrates it is to learn from him a way of being in the world which helps people, through the disciplined employment of the Socratic method, freely to exercise their faculty of critical reason in seeking out new clues and empirical evidence about how the world is (and isn’t) and our current place in it.

That’s it. No more, nor any less.

Naturally, individual people and local communities, to more or less greater degrees, will always make their own images of Jesus and Socrates thicker than these minimal ones. But it is vital to the success of the collective project that these thicker images should never be imposed on everyone, everywhere as being either central, or necessary.

OK. But now I need to offer you an accessible and memorable picture of how these two minimalist strands might be understood to be woven together so as to provide a defence of secular, liberal, democratic European and North American culture and which does this in a fashion that preserves for us an appropriate, sturdy, structured way of remaining open to difference and new evidences and insights.

To do this I want to turn to a short, powerful poem by the contemporary poet, essayist, and translator, Jane Hirshfield (b. 1953).

“The Supple Deer” by Jane Hirshfield

The quiet opening 

between fence strands 

perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves,

four feet off the ground, 

the deer poured through it.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don’t know how a stag turns 

into a stream, an arc of water.

I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer—

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

[This poem can be found in her wonder collection, Come, Thief (Knopf, 2011). I highly recommend it.]

Hirshfield begins by presenting, in a very minimal, almost calligraphic, brush-stroke way, the two characters who will play out before us an exquisite, miniature drama. The first is the wire fence, the second, a supple deer — a stag.

    The quiet opening 

    between fence strands 

    perhaps eighteen inches.

    Antlers to hind hooves,

    four feet off the ground 

These characters meet in the event when the deer suddenly pours through the wire fence leaving not even a scrap of hair as evidence this had occurred:

    the deer poured through it.

    No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

Now, if you have ever been privileged to see this happen you will know it occurs so fast and fluidly that, like Hirshfield, there is no time fully to comprehend how such a large and substantial creature like a stag

    turns into a stream, an arc of water. 

Like Hirshfield, in that mobile, moving moment of heightened wonder, we, too, may feel envy.

On my first reading of the poem this comment somewhat jarred because envy is strongly felt to be a problematic emotion. So why on earth, in this extraordinary moment, does Hirshfield seem to sully things by using the word “envy”? And why, too, does she modify it with the adjective “accurate”?

I think she does this to remind us of a vital human reality, that although we don’t often like to admit it, envy always exists and plays a significant role in our lives in at least two distinct ways, namely, as inaccurate (false) envy and accurate (true) envy. 

In this specific case, an inaccurate envy for me would be to envy the deer’s own particular kind of speed, grace and suppleness. Although, as a fifty-five year old, through a mix of cycling, walking and Tai Chi, I try my best to keep up my own appropriate human kind of speed, grace and suppleness, it would clearly be inaccurate to envy the kind of speed, grace and suppleness the deer is capable of expressing because I am not, and never will be, a deer. 

An “accurate envy” on the other hand would be for me to become envious of something which I am not yet like but which I both can — and perhaps should — become more like. 

So, if I cannot become like the deer, then what can, should I, become like?  

Hirschfield answers this by employing what journalists or film-makers called a delayed drop, when she suddenly, and wholly unexpectedly, tells us her envy is “Not of the deer” — something which the poem’s title might have led us to believe was the case — but, my oh my, her envy is of the wire fence’s. In particular the wire fence’s ability 

    To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

This epiphanal moment reveals the poem is only secondarily focussed on the deer and that its suppleness and largess is primarily functioning as an aid to seeing something else, something which is usually unseen, in the poetic image this is the wire fence. And as a poetic image the wire fence stands for the many often unthought about structures which everywhere shape, define and delineate all aspects of our world and which helps make us this and not that kind of thing, creature, or culture.

OK, now I can return to a consideration of the project with which I began this piece.

I would gently, but strongly suggest that the fence we should be appropriately and accurately envying is one our culture has, and may yet still make, out of the interwoven, strong, minimalist strands of the human Jesus and Socrates I presented to you earlier. 

By appropriately and accurately envying them, and then trying to imitate their basic actions and methods in a disciplined fashion, we find there is released in us what the contemporary philosopher, James C. Edwards, has called the two “sacramental energies . . . that used to be bound up in the stories of the gods”. They are: “energies for limitation in the face of hubris and for transformation in the face of complacency” (James C. Edwards: “The Plain Sense of Things – The Fate of Religion in an Age of Normal Nihilism”, Penn State University Press, 1997 p. ix).

Naturally, Jesus and Socrates individually offer us examples of both energies at work. But, particularly with regard to energies for limitation in the face of hubris, we find Socrates’ dialectical method reveals, again and again, that the energy which helps drive a person towards developing an appropriately humble and truly wise manner of living is found in the moment they discover they know they know nothing, or at least when they come truly to know — to borrow the felicitous turn of phrase by the poet A. R. Ammons which appears in the introduction to this podcast — they know that there is no finality of vision, that we have perceived nothing completely and that, therefore, and thankfully, tomorrow a new walk is a new walk. 

And, particularly with regard to energies for transformation in the face of complacency, we find Jesus’ example reveals, again and again, how this energy is accessed only insofar as we learn to respond to the radical, infinite, ethical demand to show love and justice to our neighbour, our enemies and all creation right here and right now, and regardless of what our often complacent selves and culture would often have us do — namely simply to walk by on the other side of the road.

When we willingly give ourselves up to the accurate envy of Jesus and Socrates’ what we also learn is that together they have, and may yet still create for us a shared, wire-fence like, structure which helps meaningfully to shape and define how the world is and our place in it but which, at the same time, remains highly porous and open to the constant flux and flow of the world and so always capable of having “such largeness” and sacramental energies constantly pass through it to challenge our hubris and change us in the face of complacency. 

As I have noted elsewhere, and often, different cultures will, quite naturally, be able to weave their own porous fences out of different materials which they deem appropriate to their own histories and all my foregoing words simply serve to remind me — and I hope you — that own culture is clearly not the only one on the block and nor could it, and nor should it, be. 

However, having said that, I do wish strongly to claim that thanks to its very thinness and nearly-not-there-ness the minimalist form of liberal, democratic European and North American culture that I wish to promote and defend, still has great worth and, despite it’s many failings and real crimes through history, it continues to carry undischarged within it many things worth preserving and bringing to the common table and conversation of humankind. 

But, in the end — and in the spirit of Jesus and Socrates — I can do no more than simply invite you to consider this claim further and to invite you into a conversation about it.

—o0o—

LIVE EVENING ZOOM CONVERSATION

If you would like to join a conversation about this piece on Wednesday 4th November at 19.30 GMT you can join a live Zoom event. Please note that the event will be recorded. 

Here’s the timetable:

19.15-19.30: 

Arrivals/login

19.30 - approx. 20.00: 

Streaming of the most recent podcast "Making Footprints Not Blueprints" 

<https://www.buzzsprout.com/1378024/6155470>

20.00 - 21.00: 

Questions to, and conversations with, Andrew James Brown moderated by Courtney Whalen Van de Weyer

21:00: Event ends 

Those of you who have already listened to the podcast and who only wish to join in the conversation are invited to login to the meeting at around 19.50

Topic: Cambridge Unitarian Church Wednesday Evening Conversation

Time: Nov 4, 2020 07:30 PM London

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86872616081?pwd=T1pqZ2dzS2hCL3E5UUtnWDRmN3UvUT09

Meeting ID: 868 7261 6081

Passcode: 827730

Note—This annual chestnut is back!  But this year the observations are muted by true horror—the mounting death tolls of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Trick or Treating is iffy or banned in many places.  Bars are closed in Illinois and elsewhere.  We are advised not to let anyone in our homes who do not live there for parties.

Halloween traces its origin to the Celtic harvest festival Samhain.  It was one of the four festivals that fell between the Solstices and Equinoxes and which celebrated the natural turning of the seasons.  Samhain was particularly important because it was the gate in time to the death and starvation season of winter, as well a time to celebrate the recent harvest. 

This association with the death of winter also extended to the spirit world, which was considered to be closer to the mortal plane than at any other time of the year.  The Celtic priests—the Druids—marked the occasion with the lighting of bonfires and with gifts of food and drink for the spirits of the dead.  Some consider it also analogous to a New Year’s Celebration launching a new cycleof the seasons.  It was popularly celebrated by the peasantry long after the Druids passed and well into the Christian era.

Too popular to squelch, as with many paganobservances Catholic Church co-opted the custom as All Saints Day on November 1.   In rural regions especially Samhain customs continued to be observed on the evening before the Holy Day—which came to be known as All Hallows Eve, or Hallowe’en in Scots.

Immigrants from the British Islesbrought some of their customs with them to the New World, but Halloween does not seem to have been widely celebrated colonial America.  The Puritans spent a lot of time trying to squelchother pagan customs like the May Pole dances associated with the spring Celtic festival of Beltane, but for all of their obsession with witchcraft, usually associated with those who continued to keep the old pagan traditions, there is no evidence of suppressing Samhain or Halloween.

In fact there is little mention of Halloween in America until the second half of the 19th Century.  By the 1880’s and ‘90’s greeting card companies were printing colorful post cards featuring images of witches, black cats, skeletons, and pumpkin Jack o’ Lanterns—all of the classic images associated with Halloween.  Period photos from around the turn of the 20th Century show both adultsand children in costumes, most commonly some variation of witch or ghost themes.   

A few scattered newspapers began reporting ritual begging on Halloween by masked youths accompanied by general hooliganism, threats, and acts of vandalism.  This was probably introduced by the wave of poor “country” Irish immigrants that began after the Potato Famine and continued through most of the rest of the century.  The ritual begging in costumes and general hooliganism more closely resembled rural Irish Wren Day—St. Stephen’s DayDecember 26—customs than those celebrated in either England or Scotland.

Rowdyism by boys and young men was reported in big cities and small towns alike and often included setting small bonfires of junk in roadways; tipping or stealing outhouses; pelting houses with eggs, rotten vegetables, or manure; letting horses and livestock loose from barns and pens; and sometimes blocking chimneys so that houses would fill with smoke.  Sometime significant damage was done.  The Halloween scene in the classic MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis shows a rare screen glimpse at the rowdy shenanigans most Americans associated with the celebration.

As it spread, customs for observing the holiday varied regionally. Communities started to organize activities to keep the kids and hooligans off the streets, with mixed success.  Parties with games such as bobbing for apples and the telling of ghost stories were fairly common. 

Animated films of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s such as Walt Disney’s 1929 Silly Symphony The Dancing Skeletons showed the popularity of the holiday and light-hearted images of death, witches, and black cats.  The Skeletons perhaps show a tip-o’-the-hat familiarity with the Mexican customs around The Day of the Dead which is celebrated on All Soul’s Day.

The custom of trick or treating seems to have spread slowly.  It combined the ritual begging with toned-downtricks that were a little less extreme than the wild rampages reported earlier.  What progress it was making was largely interrupted by the Depressionyears when families had little extra money to spend on treats and by the sugar rationing of World War II.

Trick or treating was still far from universal until after World War II when it became a topic of popular radio programslike the Jack Benny Show and Ozzie and Harriet. 

In 1947 the popular children’s magazineJack and Jill published a story on the custom of Halloween begging and described it in detail, spreading the practice widely and with amazing uniformity.  By 1951 the practice was wide spread enough that a Philadelphiawoman, Mary Emma Allison and the Reverend Clyde Allison decided to channel the energy to constructive purposes by introducing Trick or Treat for UNICEF to support the work of the United Nations international children’s relief.

By the mid 1950’s with the strong support of the candy companies and the introduction of cheap masks and pajama style costumes for children, the practice of trick or treating had become ubiquitous and had even taken on a feeling of a long standing practice.

What started with ghost stories and the like, soon spread to all types of horror, and fueled by the growing popularity of increasingly violent Hollywood films.  Gore became and more and more common theme and showing horror films for the whole month of October in theaters and on TV was standard by the early 1970’s.

About the same time the first generations of trick or treaters grew up but continued to enjoy the dress-up and parties of Halloween.  It is, year by year, an increasingly popular adult holiday, incorporating many of the features of various world masquerade festivals with macabre twist.

Halloween is now the second most widely celebrated holiday in the United States and is an economic powerhouse, generating sales second only to Christmas.  Popular American media have spread the customs of trick or treating and celebrating gore around the world, often supplanting truly ancient celebrations of Halloween in the Celtic countries.

The resurgence of Christian Fundamentalismin the U.S. has led to a counter movement to strip the “Satanic” festival from public schools and the wider community.  Although they get it wrong—there was never any connection between Satanism and Halloween—the Fundies, ironically, at least recognized a religious tradition hiding under the commercial hoopla. 

At the same time re-invented“traditional” paganism like Wicca, one of the most rapidly growing religious movements of the last decades, has striven to recapture the nearly lost significance of the holiday’s roots in Samhain—and sometime invented traditions on flimsy or non-existent evidence.

Go thou, and celebrate as thou wouldst.   

Samhain, or Halloween, marks the moment when, in the pagan tradition, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is at its thinnest. It is a time to honor the dead, to celebrate their place among us, to revisit cherished memories and to pledge ourselves to carry forward their work in the world.

Who do you feel close to this Halloween?

The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!

Please join us on Sunday (1 November 2020) at 11:00 AM for “What Choice Do We Have?” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Join us as we continue our season of focus on our Unitarian Universalist Identity.

Larry Androes will lead us in meditation and we will have a new video performance from the All Souls Choir.

We will have a  virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

Please join us on Sunday (1 November 2020) at 1:00 PM for our weekly family religious education online class via Zoom.

The Zoom link will be on the All Souls Religious Education Facebook group and on Slack.

If you aren’t currently a member of either online group and you are interested in having your children participate, email Susan to get an invitation to either or both online groups.

This Sunday — “The Story of Halloween” — We will look at the Pagan celebration of Samhain and the Christian observances of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day.

We will also play some Halloween-themed games.

Please join us on Sunday (25 October 2020) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class — UU Elevator Speech — Session 3 — “Sharing Your UU Elevator Speech.”

We will continue the “UU Elevator Speech” series of the Faith Forward program.

We will role-play some conversations that might come up around the question “What is Unitarian Universalism?” and we’ll talk more about the difference between an elevator speech and a credo.

We also have a new Slack channel for the group (#sundayadultRE) on the All Souls Slack workspace (AllSoulsUU).

If you haven’t yet been invited to the AllSoulsUU Slack workspace, email Susan and you will get an invitation right away.

The “New UU” class will continue this Sunday (25 October 2020) with facilitator Bennett Upton at 1:00 PM via Zoom.

This Week is “Session 5 — How Are Decisions Made? Governance and Polity.”

Bennett has started a new session of this course that offers insight into Unitarian Universalist history, theology, and practice as well as a deeper dive into our own congregation.

This is a great way to learn more about our faith and our church and to spend some time with other members in a small group setting.

It’s not just for newcomers and not just for those who’ve never taken it before — a refresher is always good.

“Scare Out the Vote!” will be happening across Louisiana on Saturday (31 October 2020) from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Get together on Zoom at 2:00 PM, get a list of voters in your neighborhood who haven’t voted yet, and either phone bank or safely hit the streets to be sure they turn out to vote.

Block captains should have received an envelope this week full of push cards and Together Louisiana “Precinct Organizing Project” swag for this.

Register here for Saturday’s call.

And if you haven’t voted yet, remember to vote no on Amendment 5 and tell your friends to do the same.

Need more resources? Visit Fight5la.com for social media posts to share, and more.

While you are there, you will have an opportunity to make a short video about why you are voting no on Amendment 5.

Need a quick one page flyer for talking to friends? Find it here.

We need to find a new time for our weekly gatherings.  As soon as we discover what day and time works for all us, we will let you know.

Meanwhile, the middle and high school youth group is also invited to join the Sunday morning 9:00 AM adult religious education class where we will have one more session on “Your UU Elevator Speech” followed by our continuing exploration of the 8th Principle beginning on 8 November 2020.

Please join us next Wednesday (4 November 2020) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

This a chance to connect and catch up midweek.

At some point we may decide to bring in speakers but for now we’re just hanging out and enjoying each other’s virtual company.

Hope to see you there!

Please join us on Saturday (31 October 2020) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

If you wish to join the group, please email Larry Androes for Zoom meeting link, meeting ID, and password.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, we have begun to broadcast a livestream video of our Sunday morning worship services.

This worship video will be available live and in recorded formats.

For our livestream video of our worship services, we are using Facebook Live.  One does not have to log into Facebook or have a Facebook account to view this video.

You can find the 25 October 2020 worship video here.