I love the phrase “praying with our feet.” It often comes to mind for me in protests at the Texas Capitol, when I wait in line to vote, and perhaps most especially every Friday, when I lead my Zumba class, where we pray with our arms, our hips, our everything.

“What is your intention for this hour?” I ask folks Zooming in from around the world. “What are you dancing for today?”

On a recent morning, the answers included, “my 18-year wedding anniversary!” “another job interview,” and “seeing my grandkids again for the first time in COVID.” A woman in College Station, Texas, showed us her wrapped wrist and asked for healing prayers after surgery. A dancer in Canada requested the song “Best Friend” by Saweetie and shared sadness about a friend in hospice care.

We took deep breaths and held each other across the miles. Then we danced — for joy, hope, and grief. For the chance to move together as one, even in a time of isolation.

Happiness ain’t something you sit back and you wait for
Feels so good to dance again”
—Selena Gomez, “Dance Again

Since finding dance nine years ago, it has become my joy practice and a form of embodied prayer. I choose music and choreography to reflect Unitarian Universalist principles like interconnectedness, equity, and acceptance. Moving to the music of Lizzo, Kesha, and Gente de Zona, I am praying to the Spirit of Life — to summon the energy for another day of pandemic parenting, to feel in my hips and heart that I am enough. We are all enough.

Uruguayan journalist and novelist Eduardo Galeano wrote, “The church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta.”

As UUs, I hope we can bring church and science into the body’s celebration (and do our best to ignore advertising altogether).

Lately, my own body and spirit have been telling me to slow down. I am feeling the impact of pandemic trauma, plus the natural effects of aging (and a decade of jumping up and down to Pitbull songs).

Thankfully, Zumba can be medium-impact or low, on your feet or in a chair or swimming pool. Sometimes just listening to the playlist is enough. When I forego a high-impact jump in favor of a grounded shimmy to protect my back, I am not failing my class — whose members range in age from elementary school to their 80s — but honoring the sacredness of all bodies.

PHOTO BY DYLAN NOLTE ON UNSPLASH

Similarly, when my brain is tired and I forget a move, I try not to apologize (as I have been conditioned to do for the most human of mistakes). Even though I feel embarrassed on the inside, I throw my head back and laugh, improvising through the moments Richard Simmons used to call “accidental solos.” I remember that we are called to let go of perfectionism — a piece of dismantling white supremacy culture in ourselves and our institutions. I remind myself that we need these moments, to dance through discomfort and even embrace mistakes, having faith we will learn from them.

I remember the wise words of Cynthia Winton-Henry in her book, Dance – The Sacred Art: “As much as you might want a ‘perfect’ spot in which to dance, it is really the other way around: You make the space around you holy when you dance.”

What does prayer look/feel/sound like to you?

ROBERT
CLF Member, incarcerated in MA

Little things, big things, anything; people pray for them. From the mundane, like to perhaps hit the lottery, to the serious, like for someone’s life. (Though perhaps, for some, winning the lottery isn’t mundane at all, but a serious need.)

It all cycles around to prayer. A want, a need, a desire, leading to hoping, wishing, possibly even begging, some greater power to hear you, to help you.

Do I pray? Probably not enough. I attend services, I meditate, I take part in my faith, and take it seriously. But praying? In here, it can be hard to do.

PHOTO BY PEDRO LIMA ON UNSPLASH

There’s a mentality that pervades all here: avoid weakness, lest you be preyed upon. To pray, is, in a way, a surrendering yourself to another, to ask for help to do something.

Is that weakness? No, but in here, it can be viewed as such. So that energy hangs in the air, sapping you, putting you on edge.

But when I pray, it, in its way, helps and hurts. That surrendering lifts a weight off of you, it can be an emotional release, a reset of one’s self, an acknowledgment that you can’t do it all on your own, and that everything will, in its time, be okay.

So pray. Not for me (though admittedly I wouldn’t mind), but for you. For your world, big, little, whatever size it is. May it help you.

That is my prayer.

KEVIN
CLF member, incarcerated in VA

We all should know that though the look of prayer could be one on their knees with hands held upright, fingers straight up, palms together, prayer can look many different ways. For me it is often sitting down anywhere — on the ground, in a chair, at a desk or table, with my hands held together. Of course it might be alone, or it could be with someone who needs a prayer more than me, as I say a prayer for them. I pray anywhere, anytime, needed or not, as a way to think about what the situation needs.

If I see a death happened in the news,  I say a prayer for the family for strength, a prayer for the deceased. A flood — I say a prayer for support, goods, rescue. A fire — the same and more, to have shelter along with healing. A nice day with no huge troubles — a prayer of thanks and gratitude, with a prayer for more of these days.

The sound of prayer: it could be noisy, mildly busy with the hum of every day life all around, or it could be complete silence, a prayer said or thought.

The feel: if nervous, anxious, or feeling the weight of the world on one’s shoulders, then a prayer feels like relief. A great feeling of no burdens.

I’ll end with a prayer of thanks and acknowledgment, for the gift of all that prayer is for me.

VYLET
CLF member, incarcerated in FL

Quiet as kept, be slow to speak
The tongue of death is death indeed
Let temperance and virtue be thy speech
Consider silence and still thy feet

Be thou fearless, feel not dismay
For thou art spirit to what is pain
Deep meditation shall make things clear
The weapons of war that thou should fear

Speak no lies, be not the fool
Boomerangs of deception bareth dark rile
If a word be uttered, let freedom reign
Sever the yoke and break every chain

If I be bound, may they be free
If I face danger, let them have peace
If I must die, let them live
Return I shall and with them sing

Divine decrees establish the link
Of things unseen, oh what of faith
This body clad of clay and dust
But I am greater, the creator’s touch

Infused in soil, the morning star
A living soul, the lawful heart
Ponder the path thy foot is upon
Consider the workings thy hands have wrought

Be thou calm in every endeavor
And radiant as the sun
Forever-ever, forever and ever
I and my father are one

DALE
CLF members, incarcerated in TX

PHOTO BY DENIS DEGIOANNI ON UNSPLASH

Looking at the night sky,
Staring at the galaxy,
Watching the Milky Way swirl.

Pondering things like,
“What is my purpose in life?”
While I’m watching the stars
Coalesces into a ball of fire
Brighter than the sun.

As I watch it forms
the face of God.

Burning white hot,
Igniting my world,
causing my fears and doubts
to flee, clearing my mind
and chasing away the shadows.

Enlightening.
Searing through me from the ashes
A phoenix arises,
stronger than before.

And as I look at the face of God,
I see me.

GARY
CLF member, incarcerated in NC 

Farlow, Gary 2020-10-16 Artwork – October Walk.

September 2021

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. –Maya Angelou

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Last semester, in a class on global Christianity at Meadville Lombard, I was reading examples of the early Christians in the Roman Empire taking a stand and becoming martyrs. I was inspired by their resilience and sacrifice as they were being persecuted for their conversion to a new faith. Those who became martyrs could have possibly saved themselves by denying who they were and who they served but decided that it was better to die in faith and in truth than to live in denial and a lie. They were followers of Jesus Christ and followed his example of faith and commitment unto death— his Crucifixion—for they believed that the ultimate sacrifice would yield the ultimate reward—for them, it was everlasting life.

The early Christian martyrs’ sacrifice of their lives made me reflect and think: For what cause would I be willing to risk my life? For what cause would I give up my security, my comfort, my safety? For what are we called to martyrdom now, in this time, and in this place? In my practice, I call upon my ancestors for guidance.

When I do, the spiritual Wade in the Water comes to my mind almost instantly. “Wade in the Water, God’s Gonna Trouble the Water.” But then the Civil Rights Movement comes to mind, and the risks it took to bring about change that was felt globally. By the later years of the Civil Rights Movement, activists began to realize that water had already been troubled. It was no longer about, “God’s Gonna Trouble the Waters,” but that the waters were already troubled, as activists through the years had been rocking the boat of white supremacy and racism through their own successes, through boycotts, through protests, through massive voter registrations, through sit-ins, and through marches, and we saw backlash of against all of them by segregationists and racists, peoples and institutions that did not want to see them succeed.

PHOTO BY JASON LEUNG ON UNSPLASH

As a professor of African American history, I remember lecturing about the Freedom Singers leading those gathered in Black churches, mostly in Alabama and Georgia, with rousing songs to lift up their spirits and get them ready for what they were about to face. These resistance fighters staged many peaceful, nonviolent protests met with fury, violence, and incarceration—like the early Chris tian martyrs. Their songs went from “Wade in the Water” to “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” to “This May Be the Last Time.” It was the last time for some of them, but the looming threat made them prepare for the inevitable. They may have to give up their lives like the early Christian martyrs.

What about now? In this time and in this place? What kind of lives are we living, bowing down to fear and oppression? For what cause would YOU willingly risk your life? For what cause would you give up your security, your comfort, your safety? For what are we called to martyrdom now, in this time, and in this place?

Where in your life have you felt most at home?

We posed the above question in the most recent issue of the Worthy Now newsletter (a biannual newsletter sent to all incarcerated CLF members), and received the responses on the next two pages in response. Thank you all for offering us this window into yourselves and the experiences of your lives through your reflections — we are so grateful.

ROBERT

CLF Member, incarcerated in MA

Home. A small word with big meanings.  They say that, “home is where the heart is,” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s been nine years since I’ve been home, and I feel every day that yearning to return.

Growing up, I never thought I’d have a home to call my own. I had loving parents who provided for me, so there was always a place I could call home, but the fullest meaning of home never fully resonated within me. Since I have autism, I thought that I’d never find someone to love, who could love me. I thought I’d never have kids, be a father, a teacher, a protector.

Then I found her, and it all clicked. It just made sense, felt right, all the way to my core. We had a little one, we got our own place, and another little one was on the way. All was right in the world.

Until it wasn’t. I was torn away from my home. I fought to have the opportunity to go back, but was denied. Separated from them, I was emotionally torn to shreds. The pain is still so great. Now, they are still torn apart, neither of our kids under her care, or even cared for by the same person. Our family of four now lives in four different places.

So I end with this: home is a precious thing. It’s delicate, fragile, nearly ethereal. It is perfect in its imperfections. Never take it for granted, for you never know when your world will be upended, and it will be gone.

KEVIN

CLF member, incarcerated in VA

I feel most at home where I both give and receive respect from those around me. Respect leads to a great deal of appreciation in which accountability is held. This appreciation and accountability from respect can and should lead to honor and loyalty, which combined, should lead to trust. Trust leads to love. With love comes a place that we feel comfortable and safe — an environment we can call home.

This can be anywhere as long as we hold all these things together. We must have courage to make that first step, and hope and faith that it will all lead to a place one can call home — not necessarily a house or a building, but a place of real peace, a sanctuary called home.

In my life, I find this sanctuary with my girlfriend of 37 years, along with my son, mom, sister, and those who have the qualities I’ve described above.

EDWARD

CLF Member, incarcerated in OH

PHOTO BY FLICKR USER ANTHONY VIA FLICKR

This is an easy one to tell. Every year I would make the journey down I-75 to a town called Middlesboro, Kentucky. My travel was always around the fourth of July. It is a tri-state town with neighbors called Tennessee and Virginia. There is a spot that I would go to that is located at the top of a small mountain. The spot is called “the Pinnacle.” It is located about 2,200 or 2,400 feet up the mountain. To get there you drive up a winding road with hairpin turns. Once there, you walk a path that is maybe a hundred yards to my favorite spot, the pinnacle. It is a man-made ledge that stretches about ten feet over the edge of the mountain. Up there you can see all three states. On a very clear day you can even see North Carolina from there. An airport sits off to the right. A man-made lake is in the middle. To the right is the town of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.

While there, I feel Gaia’s strength flowing through the spot. The view is spectacular. It is a calm and peaceful place where you can talk to God or the Goddess and God, whatever your preference. There is where I feel at home.

TALON

CLF Member, incarcerated in CA

​​Home is such a strong word. For most of my life, I have never really felt at home anywhere. From living with my family, to foster housing, to juvenile hall, to prison, home has been seemingly unattainable for me.

The closest concept of home that I have is when I was 13, in a court-appointed group home for a bad decision I chose to make. It was the first time that I felt truly safe. There was no more violence, abuse, and expectations to be someone that I never really was. I was happy.

My current incarceration is due to another bad string of choices I made. I have spent the last eight years working on myself to create a new me dedicated to helping others and living a productive life. During this process of self-improvement, I have learned that happiness comes from within.

So, I realized that as long as I am happy, home is where you make it. Home is within oneself, and family is who we choose. Despite my incarceration, I am at home, and the CLF is my family.

ERIC

CLF member, incarcerated in TX

PHOTO BY DAVID GAVI ON UNSPLASH

For me, home was never really a place. It has always been more about the people I’ve surrounded myself with. I’ve never had a place to call home, but I’ve felt at home with people who loved me, and in nature, with the full cycle of life. We come from earth, are placed in the bosom of earth, to be reborn again.

I think there is no better place to call home as the place where life begins: in the wild, like our ancestors once had. Not in a building, but a place you can go to rest. One day I’ll have that again.

Some prefer a house or apartment, but for me, home is outside where the wild things roam.

Hello beloveds,

I’m Rev. Aisha Ansano, and I am thrilled to be serving as the new Chair of the Board of The Church of the Larger Fellowship!

You may recognize my name from the last few years. I just completed my first 3-year term on the Board, and I’ve served as the Board liaison to the Nominating Committee during this time. I was also a member of the search team that called our amazing lead ministry team, which was a complete joy.

When I joined the CLF Board 3 years ago, I didn’t know much about the CLF besides a general familiarity. When I got the email from the Nominating Committee, I wasn’t sure if I would say yes—but during the conversation, I got excited for the work that the CLF was doing, and the potential work that could be done. And so I said yes, decided to make a commitment to this congregation, to give my time, energy, and resources to help make it thrive. And I said yes again to serving on the Nominating Committee, because I knew firsthand just how much the conversations had by the nominating committee have a huge impact.

And when the Board was putting together a search team for the new lead ministry of the CLF, even though the task felt daunting, I said yes, again. I said yes because I was excited to be part of the visioning for the next phase of the CLF. I said yes because even though I knew it would be a lot of hard work, I wanted to be part of the conversation to help shape the next chapter of the CLF.

I have not said yes because I think I’m the perfect person for any of these jobs. I’ve said yes because the CLF is important to me, and important to Unitarian Universalism. Even when I’m nervous about taking on a new role, or not sure what to expect, I say yes to service to the CLF over and over again, because the CLF gives me hope for our faith and how it can live into our dreams of what it can be.

A little bit about me: I’m an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister living in Malden, MA, a city north of Boston. I am the affiliated community minister at First Parish in Malden, which means that, while I am not on staff, I serve and support the congregation in other ways. My dream is to plant a dinner church, to create a community where people gather together around the table for worship and a meal, where all are welcomed exactly as they are. The pandemic has put those plans on hold for the moment, but I’ve been lucky to create Nourish UU Dinner Church Consultants with my friend and colleague Rev. Emily Conger. Through Nourish, we help Unitarian Universalist communities create communal, embodied worship experiences through the model of dinner church.

I’m excited to continue to serve the CLF in my new role as Board Chair, and can’t wait to experience what comes next for the CLF,  together.

Yours in faith,
Rev. Aisha

PHOTO BY MELISSA ASKEW ON UNSPLASH

After the close of Summer,
before the land lies ‘neath snow,
there comes the Magic of Autumn,
when all nature is aglow.

Days grow ever shorter,
harvest time is nigh,
‘tis Mabon now my love,
as the earth breathes a sigh

The Moon doth shine her glory,
reflecting Maiden, Mother, Crone,
the Wiccan Year comes full circle,
like our love which we have shown

So arise my love and come away,
let us sing, feast, and make love,
for Wiccan Mabon is a celebration,
of the Goddess’ bounty from above.

The body is the slowest part of ourselves. Our thoughts, emotions, spirits — these can move at lightning speed, switching from one state to another in an instant. The body, though, takes time to learn. The metaphor shifts from lightning to ocean liner, changing direction in the vast sea: slow, laborious, needing time before it can complete the turn.

The other side of that, though, is that once the body gets it, it knows how to keep moving steadily in the direction of healing. It demonstrates what a loyal and powerful ally it can be.

Everything we do in our lives is mediated by the body. Ultimately, our deepest thoughts are transmitted by electrical pulses along neurons. A parent’s profound love for a child involves a massive dump of hormones into the endocrine system. Peak spiritual experiences may expand the chest or cause tears to stream down cheeks.

We are in this world, embedded in this physical reality for however long we’re alive. What’s more, we need not delay finding paradise until after death — it’s available to us in the here and now. This is known as a radically realized eschatology. (Eschatology is the theological term for how we understand final things.)

Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker notes that radically realized eschatology “begins with affirming that we are already standing on holy ground. … Instead of striving to get somewhere else, our goal can be to fully arrive here and greet each day of life with gratitude.” This applies as much to arriving fully in our bodies as in the world.

For years, due to my own trauma history, I spent most of my time away from my body. With time and practice, I started recognizing the signs that I was dissociating: the edges of my vision would grow a little hazy. I’d lose track of what I was saying. My sense of presence turned into a notable absence.

I also learned techniques to come back to myself. I’d wiggle my toes within my shoes, or I’d go around the room noticing objects and their colors: brown table, blue shirt, yellow book. By grounding myself in the here and now, my body became an anchor in my current reality rather than my traumatic past. I came alive rather than merely existing.

I know that this can get tricky when the trauma is still ongoing. But I also know — after decades of hating my body and believing that it had betrayed me — that our bodies are always on our side. They alone remain with us from birth until death. They consistently lean towards healing as best they can, even if they can’t make it to wellness.

Whether or not the spirit is willing, the flesh is not weak. It is the magical machine that makes the human experience possible. We find paradise, Dr. Parker reminds us, through “a profound embrace of this world” — including our own embodiment.

If we can feel at home in this world — truly at home, without any asterisk about our size or disability or anything else — we won’t just benefit from the steadfast gifts of the body. We’ll also have better access to the gratitude, compassion, and peace that keep us connected to all the beauty of this sacred world. May we always remember that we, too, are holy ground.

This might sound strange, but I have felt the most present, the most interconnected mentally, spiritually, and physically when I have experienced loss. It’s easy to see life and acquiring good things as blessings, but loss is a pretty powerful catalyst for change that a lot of people don’t recognize because, let’s face it, who wants to focus on things that make us suffer, give us pain, and can sometimes be traumatizing?

Everyone wants to reach for the light (carpe diem!), but few want to give themselves over to the dark night of the soul, to look at your own shadows, face them, and be thankful for the opportunity to embrace that pain and hardship and grow from your past (carpe noctem?).

Life and creation are just as sacred as death and destruction — both are needed for existence to even be possible in the first place. Some trees can’t grow without the occasional forest fire. Mothers sacrifice their life force just to bring in new life. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Loss has been a gateway to com passion. It shifted my perspective, forcefully and not too gently, but sometimes we need to be shoved out of our comfort zones to get to where exactly you need to be, whether it’s to learn something yourself or to be there to help someone else.

RACHEL
CLF member, incarcerated in MO

Thank you to Rachel for your above piece, “Loss as a Gateway to Compassion” — this reflection is prompted by and written in response to your words.

As I write this, I’m about two months into the most significant and all encompassing grief journey of my life. My beloved mother passed away at the beginning of April — a fact that still feels completely impossible, no matter how many times I share it.

I’m new to the experience of this level of grief, so I won’t pretend to have particular wisdom on it. But I can say that so far, this has been the most embodied experience of my life. I’ve never felt more completely in my body than in the moment I learned my mother would soon be leaving hers, and every day since is teaching me more and more about how to care for and love my full, embodied self.

My family had a precious almost week between my mom’s stroke and her death, during which we knew that she was dying and that the most we could do for her was to sit by her bedside and surround her with our presence and love. Every inch of my body hurt that week, and I found myself uninterested in numbing the pain — feeling it made this unfathomable thing that was happening more real, somehow. The pain was as appropriate and warranted as my sobs and panic attack I had by her bedside, each one a physical expression of my complete love for her, and how very much I wanted things to be different.

I could barely eat for that entire week, as if my love for her was taking up too much of my being for there to be room for anything else. I’ve regained my appetite in the time since, but it often feels like my body chemistry has been changed by this loss. My mom loved cooking nourishing, vegetarian meals, and these days, any food that’s even slightly less healthy than what she would make doesn’t sit well anymore (and food that does remind me of her feels even better than it did before).

As I’ve waded into grief, I’ve found that it’s impossible to describe without some level of contradiction. I never experience it as just one feeling: for me, pain and sadness have been woven so tightly together with love and gratitude, there is no

separating them out. Noticing and naming where I’m experiencing each of these feelings physically, in my body, has become a necessary and almost constant practice for me just to move through the overwhelm.

The pain and heaviness usually shows up in my back and my limbs, building up as tension in moments when I feel the wrongness of a world without my mother’s physical presence. But that pain is always coupled with a feeling of warmth and protection wrapping around my heart: what I understand as her presence and love as it’s with me now.

I do feel that warmth around my heart as my mother’s spirit, with me now as she is with all that she loved in life — and I try to simply rest in that feeling as much as I can, and to ignore the nagging pull of my mind when it doubts the ‘realness’ of what I’m feeling. It is easy to doubt, because our minds can’t ever fully make sense of even our deepest spiritual truths; they can simply be experienced, known at the level of the body, and disembodied Western culture has taught so many of us to mistrust what is felt.

Through the heartbreak and exhaustion of feeling so much all of the time, in grief, I’ve also found myself more able to appreciate the everyday pleasures of simply being in a body. When I feel the sun on my skin and smell the spring flowers coming alive in my mother’s garden, each of those sensations feels like a huge gift, anchoring me to my love of this life. There’s no more room for me to take for granted the miracle of physical presence on earth while I’m this close to the otherworld of death.

Loving my physical body, caring for it through its overwhelm and pain, also feels like the most important, everyday way to honor my mother. She cared for me, for my body, so completely in life — caring for myself with that level of love is perhaps the most simple and most significant way for me to carry on her legacy.

If you are on your own grief journey — whether from a recent loss or one still carried close from many years ago — I hope that some of these words have landed gently in your body, either as a mirror or comparison point for your embodied experience. There is no one right way to feel or live with grief; each of our experiences plays out within our unique, messy, infinitely complex bodies, and I think the most important thing may be to simply be with what our bodies are feeling. I hope that’s true, anyway — being with all my body is feeling has been my way of making it through so far, so I’m holding on to it and trying hard to understand it as sacred. Our bodies are sacred, without a doubt, so all their experiences of love and grief must also surely be so.

The CLF held its Annual Congregational Meeting on Sunday June 6, 2021. Anyone who could not attend the meeting was invited to vote by mail ahead of the meeting. To date we have received 440 votes via mail, with over 400 coming from our incarcerated members. 33 members voted in person at the meeting. We are still receiving ballots that were postmarked prior to the meeting and will have final tallies in next month’s Quest.

CLF members voted for the slate of nominations presented by the nominating committee (preliminary vote 445 yes, 1 no, 21 abstain). Annalee Durland-Jones, Aisha Ansano, and Julica Hermann de la Fuente were all voted onto the board. Danielle Di Bona was voted as clerk. John Hooper was voted as treasurer. And Debra Gray Boyd was voted onto the nominating committee.

CLF members voted to affirm the 8th principle, which states that “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: Journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.” (preliminary vote 420 yes, 34 no, 19 abstain)

CLF members also vote for the new revised bylaws developed by the board (preliminary vote 427 yes, 8 no, 24 ab stain). For those with internet access, the new bylaws can be found on the CLF website by choosing About on the main menu and then About again.

“I loved my grandmother every moment of my life. I still do.

I know she did not invent the racialized trauma that both white and Black people blew threw her. None of these people, or their parents, or their grandparents, or many generations of their ancestors, invented this trauma. It was passed down and passed down and passed down and passed down. It is now up to us — to you and to me and to everyone else who cares about human beings — to put a stop to this cycle of trauma. This means metabolizing trauma in our bodies.” —Resmaa Menakem

When I first came to somatics practice, I had been in talk therapy for most of my life. I could tell you, at great length, all of the things that I was working on. I knew myself very well. Changing my behaviors was still a big struggle. My trauma responses to triggers were so hard to shift. My body had absorbed so much and given me coping mechanisms for survival.

Healing is a physical act. It happens in our soma, our body. Our bodies are incredible at carrying so much pain and trauma and memory for us – until we are ready to release them by moving through them. Research shows that our bodies carry more than even what is ours, though. They carry the pains and joys of our ancestors.

In his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathways to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, therapist, teacher and somatics practitioner Resmaa Menakem lays out a theory of how generational trauma must be healed in order to overcome racism in the United States. He ties the brutalism of early colonizers of what would become the United States to the terror and torture of the Middle Ages, explaining how a whole people could inflict such trauma on another. Deeply hurt people hurt people. He describes the different ways in which white body supremacy impacts BIPOC bodies and white bodies today that must be healed.

Healing the trauma in our bodies is particularly fraught for those of us who have our own trauma history. If you have a history of trauma in your life, take it slow. Give yourself a lot of grace. Do not go it alone, ask a trusted friend or therapist to support you. Take breaks whenever you need to. Embodiment can be risky and scary for those of us who have stored painful memories within ourselves. It is an amazing gift that our bodies have taken this in for us. The process of feeling and releasing it needs to go at the pace that feels right for you.

Central to the practice of somatics in the practice of centering. It is how every somatics class or gathering begins. We can do this practice standing, sitting or lying down.

First, we find our core, just above the belly button. We can place a hand there if it helps us connect. We center from this place.

Next, we center in length or in our dignity. We can lift one arm up and one arm down. We allow our lower body to settle into gravity and our upper body to lift in our full height.

Then, we center in our width or in our connection. Perhaps we reach our arms wide to feel our wideness and our interdependence.

And finally, we center in our depth or in our place in history. We feel the space between our back body and our front body. We feel our ancestry behind us and our future before us.

If you take up this process of healing, it will be uncomfortable. Remember, refusing to heal is always more painful over time than the pain of healing. And remember these words from Resmaa Menakem: “When we heal our own trauma, individually and collectively, we don’t just heal our bodies. By refusing to pass on the trauma we inherited, we help heal the world.”

It is our job to do what we can while we are here. To pass on just a little less to the next generation. To heal as much as we can. We are not either traumatized or healed — it is an ongoing process of healing that we all must engage in to stop the cycle of racial violence from continuing to pass from generation to generation.

Healing is hard work. Embodiment can feel dangerous. And it can awaken within us more joy, more compassion, more resilience. It can build a stronger connection between our mind and our body. It can help us more easily access the power and wonder that lives inside of us. It can bring our actions into alignment with our values. And it heals the world.

May 2021

There is no freedom with out justice. No divine peace without holy struggle. —CLF Lead Ministry Team

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Download this entire Quest Monthly issue as a PDF

Dearest Beloveds,

We come to you once again following the state-sanctioned murder of yet another Black man, Daunte Wright. We write to you with anger, grief, rage, and hearts torn asunder. We know many of you will feel similarly. We also feel fear, afraid for the next Black person whom police will murder. Will it be our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, siblings, parents? When will it touch us even closer, as it is bound to do?

We know this to be true because the system is working as designed. The policing system of the United States is working exactly as designed. There is no reforming a system that is predicated on the belief that Black and brown lives are worth less than white ones. That Black and brown people are to be over-policed, feared, caged, and their lives are worthless. This belief has been part of the national consciousness since the arrival of colonizers. It is easy to deny Black and brown people their rights to humanity. Rights that include democratic representation via voting, housing, health care, food, and education. And also the right to simply exist — to walk down the street eating candy, to play in a park, to sleep in one’s own bed, to drive home to one’s child — without being killed by the police.

As the Church of the Larger Fellowship moves to center the lived experiences of those from historically marginalized communities, there will be disagreement over how to live out our Unitarian Universalist theology. As your Lead Ministry Team, we can make clear that there is no police reform but only abolition. There is no freedom without justice. No divine peace without holy struggle.

A Prayer for us all: Spirit of life and love, give me the will to notice and say the things that need to be said. To gain resolve and respite in the shadows and then move into the light with renewed courage to speak and fight for the truth. To remember that I am not free until we are all free.

In Unitarian Universalist Service,
Christina Rivera
Aisha Hauser, MSW, CRE-ML
Rev. Dr. Michael Tino

In response to my November article about why we use the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” Clifford, a CLF member incarcerated in Illinois, asked me to look into the work of political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about power and accountability from her vantage point as a survivor of the Holocaust in Germany.

Specifically, Clifford challenged my assertion that “I do not blame individual officers” for police violence against Black people. Drawing on Arendt’s work, Clifford wrote, “by not placing blame for particular action or inaction on the individual officers we not only strip them of the personal responsibility necessary to holding them… accountable, we undermine the importance and significance of the actions of those officers brave enough to stand up against the system.”

Hannah Arendt, in the essay Clifford asked me to read, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” writes, “where all are guilty, none is.” Making the case that “it is better to suffer than to do wrong,” Arendt says that individuals have a moral obligation not to perpetuate systems of injustice, even when their own lives or livelihoods are at stake. Clifford, and Hannah Arendt, of course, are correct. It is vital—even in an unjust system—that the individual perpetrators of acts of injustice be held accountable for their actions.

Arendt also notes that politically, “those who chose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.” “Acceptance of lesser evils,” she continues, “is consciously used in conditioning the…population at large to the acceptance of evil as such.” This is precisely how systems as violent and unjust as modern policing in the United States have become institutions that most white Americans support and trust—those of us acculturated to whiteness have been conditioned to accept evil.

Clifford is also right when he asserts that the notions of responsibility and accountability are not limited to extreme cases. Each of us makes moral judgments every day. Each of us makes choices for good or bad every day. Each of us has the option, again and again, to choose to participate in perpetuating wrong or to oppose it. And each of us should be held accountable when our actions cause harm to others.

It is here that we find tensions inherent in the principles that Unitarian Universalist congregations covenant to affirm and promote. One example is the tension between freedom and responsibility. Our fourth principle says we affirm “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Freedom has limits. Elsewhere, the “right of conscience” promised in the fifth principle is not always compatible with the “justice for all” we seek in our sixth. Conscience has limits, too.

As a covenantal faith, we rely on how we agree to be together to help us decide what to do. And we rely on processes that help bring us back to covenant when we cause harm—processes of accountability in which we are asked to stop the harm that we are doing, to understand the harm we have done, to make amends for the harm, and finally, to agree not to do it again. Within our faith, just as in our society at large, these processes are imperfect. And yet, they are how we move forward towards creating better systems.

Dear Quest readers,

Hi, I’m Cir L’Bert, Jr., the new Prison Ministry Manager for The Church of The Larger Fellowship.

I’m 35 (which I think makes me the oldest possible millennial), a single father, and have worked as a waiter, warehouse picker, and indie theater manager.

My hobbies include combat sports, history/folklore, and podcasting about pop culture. I’m a lifelong hip hop head and lover of the blues. I’m also a lifelong native and product of Akron, Ohio, where I’m active in the local arts and organizing scene as a writer, public speaker, and racial justice advocate.

A decade ago, my place within my community was less assured. In 2009, a night out with friends resulted in my arrest, and subsequently charged with OVI, drug possession, and carrying a concealed weapon.

After lawyer fees and thanks to my demand to be treated fairly, the drug and weapons charges were dropped (the drugs were revealed by lab analysis to be postnatal multivitamins that I’d purchased for my partner at the time, and the weapon in question was a knife I’d bought at a flea market in high school).

Even so, I spent two years on probation, with six months of that under home monitoring, thirteen days in jail, and one weekend at “DUI school.” Even though I’d only dealt with a fraction of our carceral system, the experience left me frustrated, drained of energy, and depressed about the time I’d lost.

During the final phase of my probation, I’d been required to show proof of attendance at two AA meetings, though I had the option of substituting one of those with a church event.

My parents and brother had started going to a UU church so I decided to give it a try. The open dialogue on religion was refreshing to me, who’d been raised Christian. The focus on social justice was especially important, as my experience with the court system had validated so much of what my parents had taught me about systemic racism and inequality.

More than that, UU gave me a path to deepen a lifelong passion for philosophy, reconnect with my local and wider community through service and advocacy, and helped restore my own sense of worth and dignity, which had been damaged by the carceral system.

I believe that Unitarian Universalism is a liberatory religion. Our First Principle affirms “the worth and dignity of every person” (including the incarcerated), our Fourth Principle calls for a “free and responsible search for meaning,” and our Sixth Principle calls for “justice for all.”

And now, we are widely adopting the Eighth Principle in our churches, which calls us to “dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

Unitarian Universalism has helped me find a community where I can continue my journey of liberation and abolition. I’m glad it has led me to this moment and I look forward to serving as your Prison Ministry Manager.

AFGHANISTAN — I can never go back, but it doesn’t let me leave. It latches on to you like an addiction, mentally and physically, and tears you apart like a ravenous dog. The jewel of the orient, along a highway of silk, into the graveyard of empires.

It gnaws at you, especially when you know you can’t go back, mustn’t go back. Yet you go back, like a bad habit, finish a mission started but never completed. Always passing it along to your relief/replacement. Not knowing if they will ever be as good as you see yourself.

You want to go back to finish what was started for the ones who have fallen, not wanting all of the past 20 years to have been in vain for the sacrifice by them and their families.

Every time I left I’d say I’ll never return, I’ll find a new job; but never did. Like my addiction, “I quit, and never again,” but always going back.

A bad compulsion that eventually became exposed to the truth and justice at the barrel of a gun pointed at me, and my family as they slept. I had turned into the monster just like the ones I fought in Afghanistan. Unable to return on my next mission and finish honorably, I ended in shackles with a stain I cannot get rid of. Head hanging low unable to comprehend why I let myself fail. Why I didn’t do more to help myself instead of walking down the path of destruction I made.

Failing to do my part and seek help for a habit that was getting out of control. Not letting someone, any one, help me. All the tools, weapons, and loving support were there, but I spurred them away. Saying, “I can handle this.”

This war I have been fighting; long before Afghanistan became part of my vocabulary. Fought long before the Soviets were there.

Afghanistan is the “graveyard of Empires,” but for me it is my mind. Trying everyday to stay out, and in the light,

locked up by the Commonwealth in an institute of supposed “Corrections.” Trying to resurrect something; salvage the positive from this disaster I created.

I was headed back to “The Stan,” but ended up here! Locked away from society, thrown away, seen as a worthless cause, my honor stripped away by my behavior.

Is it possible to return with honor? Salvage something of my life left, and the family I hurt so bad? Make something good out of all this?

Working day by day, one step at a time, working the steps, seeking the counseling, having faith, and soldiering on.

DERECK
CLF Member, incarcerated in VA

Photo by Sean Bonner via Flickr

Perhaps the very simplicity of grace is what makes it hard to describe. I’ve been in more than one meandering conversation with Unitarian Universalists about what is grace anyway. Rather than focus on the what today, I want to tell you about the who: Grace Lee Boggs.

Grace was a Chinese-American activist who lived in Detroit and worked for seventy years, connected in community for Black liberation. She was a teacher and writer who believed that freedom was possible and that people could learn how to achieve it, especially by working together to make change. In one conversation with journalist Amy Goodman, Grace Lee Boggs said:

“One of the difficulties when you’re coming out of oppression is that you get a concept of a messiah. You have to get to the point that we are the leaders we have been looking for. We are the children of Martin and Malcolm. I don’t know what the next American Revolution is going to be like, but you might be able to imagine it if your imagination were rich enough.”

Grace Lee Boggs offered the wisdom of change; as Unitarian Universalists, we find ourselves swimming in the deep end of the ocean of change. Most congregations have not been meeting in their buildings for going on more than a year now. We find the political climate and even the meteorological climate to be in the process of change. This would not have been a surprise to Grace Lee Boggs. She viewed change as a container for possibility. She also gave this encouragement:

“Keep realizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.”

What does that mean for Unitarian Universalists in this particular moment? First, it is true that no one is coming to save us. If one of the definitions of grace is refined movement, we come to the legacy of Grace Lee Boggs as a framework that can allow refinement of our movement, or the embodiment of grace. As a movement, we will continue to change. As the risk level of COVID-19 transmission decreases, we will move into multi-platform modes of worship, or online and in-person combinations of worship that continue to keep our communities safe and move toward a goal of in-person worship. We will encounter the changing political climate with courage and the stamina that it will take to change both feelings and ideas, toward equity, toward Beloved Community.

One of the ideas that we have the opportunity to embrace as refinement of our movement is the Eighth Principle.

“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountability dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

It is both a new idea and a new practice to say this out loud and to plan to live into it. And we, who have now endured a season of change in which we had few choices, can use our adaptability to continue looking for the ideas that will allow us to live into who we say we are, Seven Principles, then Eight, by which we love each other, our communities, and the world, into healing, into wholeness, and into a new horizon of joy. Come. We are the ones who must lead us forward.

Does believing that God’s grace extends to everyone prove there’s an end to suffering? The contradiction mollifies itself because a loving, wrathful God is graceful and merciful from a Christian Universalism point of view.

When I was six or seven years old my mom read to my brother and I the Bible. I lit up! I believed all of it. She read to us for a few more years, and then we grew up. After that I rarely picked up the Bible, but I remember, one time I opened it to the book of Revelation and attempted to decipher it. I soon gave up.

Then, at twenty-two years of age, I was incarcerated because I went undiagnosed and untreated for more than a year with a major mental illness. This disorder did not allow me to refrain from thinking (and acting out) a false reality, in which my crime was necessary and sufficient to help — save — humanity from suffering, as well as my well-being, and my own recovery. This was a grandiose delusion, even though I should have known I was wrong from a black and white perspective, my mind colored every perspective in support of my delusion. Thus, I was strongly compelled to act on it contrary to the law, regardless of the real consequences which compromised my promises to society due to my insanity.

I could not understand why a loving God would allow my life to turn into, what seems like, a crash course with no end in sight. Fast forward eighteen years of incarceration with another twenty-two years remaining on this course and, in short, it seems God has let me down at every turn. I expected to finish the racecourse.

Fortunately, this is still the case because in my recurring delusions, this life is still the best, most true, and most real life I will ever have, unless the reality is far greater than the delusion. The point is that much did turn out far better for me than I had expected! I can explain every circumstance and event, because I have tasted that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:1-3).

Moreover, I have a peace that I know I have a choice. It is human nature, and the peace I feel comes from faith in my interpretation (from my experiences). It is my truth. Can I share it with you? May I? It is this Christianity — that almost has it right! That is much better than I expected, but it was that curiosity when I attempted to do something I thought no one on earth has done — justify my life with anything less than grace.

ASHER
CLF member, incarcerated in FL

I know her
In times of turmoil she is unexpected respite
I cherish what she is, what I am not
Her countenance is hopeful
Her words are kind without rebuke
Hers is not charity, yet no debt is incurred
She assumes I am worthy. I am sure I am not

I know her, but I have never been her
When the turbulence passes
She departs with this wise impress
Do not wait for others to prove worthy
They are already
You are able to be Grace for them
Are you willing?

One of my favorite books is Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune. The story centers on the desert planet Dune, where enormous sandworms burrow under the sands. People who attempt to mine the valuable substance known as “the spice” constantly have their machines destroyed by the sandworms. Later in the story, the main character, Paul, manages to turn the sand worms into an asset rather than a liability.

I grew up in the Bay Area of California, which is well known for being balmy and temperate. Yet, life’s slings and arrows pushed me south into the blaring hot Central Valley; it might as well have been the desert of Dune as far as I was concerned. Although I did not think of them as such at the time, l was also haunted by my own sandworms: depression that robbed me of my strength and hope, fears that devoured my courage. There is something about these unseen terrors that sabotage the best of intentions. The wounds endured early in life have the tendency to fester and become their own unmanageable monsters. For a long time, I saw no way to overcome them.

In our culture, we have a lot of platitudes related to overcoming adversity. Many have become cliches, and I have never met someone who said they were saved by a cliche, myself included. How do you make lemonade out of lemon without sugar? That is what I always wanted to know. And how exactly do you pass a “test given by God”? Professor G. never gave any lectures, and no angel ever came down to provide some tutoring. The alleged textbooks I was given second hand always left me with more questions than answers, I know people were just trying to be helpful when they told me these things, but their words became bricks in the wall I built around my heart.

That wall was there for a long time. However, no wall stands forever. There came a time when I could no longer hide my pain and was desperate enough to seek help. The healing was slow, but it did happen. My epiphany came when I realized all those problems I had helped make me the person I wanted to be: depression and fear made me sensitive to the struggles of others, making me an adept teacher — I now work as a paid tutor and I plan on becoming a professor. In the dark night of my soul, I found grace.

In Dune, Paul turns the sandworms into an asset by cooperating with the indigenous people of the desert. He learns the creatures are actually essential to the production of the sought-after spice. I have found that grace works the same way; it is a gift hidden within our struggles, within the everyday muck of life, rather than being bestowed from on high in the aftermath. So, now I make a habit of looking for sandworms, the power that burrows in the fell clutch of circumstance waiting for me to become its ally.

Ali speaking during the February 28th online meeting in which the CLF voted to ordain xer to Unitarian Universalist ministry.

In our UU tradition, ministers are ordained by congregations. Only the vote of a congregation can give someone the title “Reverend.” Only the vote of a congregation can place that sacred bond of trust onto the shoulders of someone seen as a minister.

It is with great joy that the membership of CLF on February 28, 2021 voted to ordain Ali K.C. Bell (who was previously known as Antonia Bell-Delgado) to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. It is with deeper joy that I report that our vote included some 92 “yes” votes from our incarcerated members, able to vote because of the tear-off sheet we printed in the January Quest.

Ali will be ordained by the CLF along with the UU Congregation at Montclair, NJ (where xe is completing a ministerial internship) and the First UU Church of Wilmington, DE (xer home congregation). The ceremony will be Saturday, May 22, and we hope to feature an excerpt from the ceremony in our summer edition of Quest.

Is it any wonder that we have a crisis  of relationality in our nation? After  diligently equipping our children to  out-perform one another in a narrow  number of ways—which becomes  the primary focus of their young  lives and formal education—it is left  to congregations, to community centers, to social groups of various kinds  to teach us how to be in complex  relationship with one another—if  that. By and large, even in relationally-oriented institutions, very few  offer classes or training in how to  engage well in the most fundamental of human needs: how to be  in healthy, mutually meaningful  relationship with one another. It is  as if, en masse, we have collectively  decided that these skills are somehow  acquired by osmosis. And, if they are  not learned by osmosis, we wait until  someone ‘screws up really bad’ (gets  into difficulty with their community,  at their workplace, or in their personal relationships) and then we enact  a disciplinary model: punitive action  must be taken and boundaries put in place.

Indeed, at times, healthy boundaries  and accountability are needed. But why do we, as a society, make almost  no effort to teach, not just the fundamentals of human relationship, but  the more advanced skills related to:  what do we do when we screw up?  How are we present to one another  across deeply held differences?  What should we do in the midst of  volatile conflict? How do we ‘show  up’ in meaningful ways for the  diversity that we claim to value and  constantly stumble over? What do  we do with our own subjectivity  and reactivity in the midst of such  critical relational needs?

This is a spiritual crisis, for ‘spirit’  (however we choose to understand  it) is ultimately about interconnectedness, interdependence, and the  connective tissue invisibly binding  everything and everyone to each  other. When we are struggling with  how to relate to one another—how  to even care about one another—in  one of the wealthiest nations in the  history of planet Earth, a nation in  which no one need ever starve or  sleep without a roof over their head,  and yet people do—there is a profound crisis of disconnection. When  it feels ‘safer’ to only be among those  who almost exclusively think like  ‘us’ —cutting off neighbors, family  members, community members,  and co-workers who hold divergent needs and experiences—we are  deepening that disconnection, not  healing it or working with it.

The frayed connective tissue of our  society must first be strengthened  locally, wherever we are, with  whichever groups of people we are  immediately connected to. Only as  tissue gets stronger, as it first heals  and then grows, can it bear the harder  and more weighty loads. Social, civic,  and communal healing requires more  than convalescence, or worse, hiding  in cliques of uniformity. It requires  building muscle, in this case a spiritual-relational muscle. This muscle,  this connective tissue, requires  challenging and transforming the  faulty assumptions that have been  shredding it; it requires practice with  relational skills that many of us were  never taught and some of us may feel  embarrassed not to have or intimidated in learning; it requires patience  and grounding in love, love, and then  even more love. We are already—each  and every one of us—siblings to one  another and to all that exists at the  level of ‘spirit,’ essence, the ontological  nature of ‘all that is.’ We just need to  start behaving like we really get that.  The good news is that intentional  practice and learning—not osmosis— can get us there.

This piece is an excerpt from a larger essay of the same title.  A link to Rev.  Manish Mishra-Marzetti’s full essay is available on our website, clfuu.org. 

In the Fall 2020 issue of the Worthy Now newsletter, we asked for responses on a simple question: How does the CLF feed your spirit?

We’re so grateful for all of your beautiful responses — hearing from you truly feeds our spirits! Here are excerpts from just  a few of the responses we received.  

GARY

CLF member, incarcerated in NC

Growing up as a Christian in the  South meant church on Sunday,  fried chicken for lunch, and  youth group that night. We never questioned the “rightness” of it  all or ventured to think there just  may be another road available.  Doctrine, ritual, dogma rules our  lives, often crushing the very  spirit it was meant to uplift.

Enter CLF. Coming to prison has  strangely been a liberating experience. Formerly having to live a  life in secret, being gay, and worries about a reputation and name, prison opened doors for my spirit.  CLF-UU has given my spirit the  wings to see that church does not have to be a stodgy, dry experience. It can be uplifting!

As my poem [on the next page]  says, stripped of my armor, incarceration has laid me bare, and  removed the trappings I once hid behind. Replacing beliefs no longer my own, CLF-UU has provided the spiritual communion every  person seeks, whether openly or without even realizing it, as we  all ponder the mysterious and  wonderful thing called life.

AUGUST

CLF member, incarcerated in WI

Focus is often directed toward growing physically and mentally. The  problem is a person can be physically  and mentally to their capacity and  still experience a sense of emptiness.  This begins to point to bread alone not being what sustains life. CLF has helped me reframe my mindset so growth is viewed in a more holistic way. No longer do I confine growth to  the physical and mental domain. The spiritual growth CLF has produced  within me not only allowed me to  recognize my worth and dignity, but  more importantly the worth and  dignity of every person. CLF so far  has highlighted the importance of  feeding the spirit. This has forced me  to wrestle with how something so  valuable (i.e. feeding the spirit) can  ever be considered invaluable.

SCOTT

CLF member, incarcerated in CA

The CLF is one of the few windows I  have into the uplifting and inspiring  parts of the world. When surrounded  by bleakness, it is easy to forget that there is plenty of good happening all over the world. In the Worthy  Now newsletter, I am reminded that  there are strangers who care about me even if they can not comfort me  on my darkest days. Reading the Quest Monthly enlightens me with  viewpoints I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. The free books and courses are essential tools I use in my own rehabilitation. I share them with those who attend self-help groups with me, and I even introduce some of the materials in workshops I design.

There are plenty of mainstream Christians around who simply want to save my soul. Yet, the CLF is helping save me from the hell that is life  in prison. Thank you for empowering me and being a welcoming community. Your compassion feeds my spirit in ways that help me stay resilient in the face of daily hardship.

For thirty years I was blacksmith of my soul.
I put it in the furnace of austerity and burned
it in the fire of egotism.
I laid it upon the anvil of reproach and beat it
with the hammer of blame until I made my soul a mirror.

For thirty years I was the mirror of myself, and was forever polishing that mirror with diverse acts of stoic harshness and detachment.
I now reflect on what trappings I had embraced as my own:
On my waist, I wore a belt of insecurity; a breastplate of dishonesty; a shield of mistrust.

My campaigns have taken a turn.
I am now a prisoner stripped of my armor,
I can no longer run, no longer hide.
I have cried out for understanding, to a memory, a part of my life no longer denied.
I have reached out and found my strength.
My redemption.
Now, I look into that mirror and what do I see?

Girded around my waist is truth; integrity is my breastplate; and faith, hope, and love are
my new shield.

I have seen that the garments I once fashioned for myself were but temporary and hollow.
They would perish like chafe in the wind.

Now, I have been bestowed with the garb
that is eternal, as my prayers were
answered—for now I tread the path
lighted by knowledge: art, poetry, and music.
My Guides are Monet, Frost, and Bach

1. There is a unity that makes us one.
2. All souls are sacred and worthy.
3. Courageous love transforms the world.
4. Truth continues to be revealed.
5. Salvation in this life.

The five jagged rocks were created by Rev. Nancy Bowen, Rev. Mike Morran, and others within the Mountain Desert District of the Unitarian Universalist Association. They are a specifically UU understanding and expansion of what James Luther Adams called “the five smooth stones of liberal religious tradition.” In turn, Adams created the smooth stones with inspiration from the story of David and Goliath, a Biblical tale in which King David defeats the Philistine warrior Goliath by slinging five smooth stones at him. Adams believed that liberal religion just like David with his smooth stones, could have a powerful impact on the world as long as it had the right tools at its disposal. This newest adaptation, the five jagged rocks, recognizes that Unitarian Universalism is rough around the edges. We aren’t perfect, theologically or otherwise, and that’s okay.

I talk about the five jagged rocks all the time: I’ve led workshops for youth, preached sermons, taught adult spiritual development classes, and rambled on about them to anyone what is needed to make this world
and this life the best it can be for all.

I believe that Unitarian Universalism has the potential to be life changing—and many of us know that firsthand. But too often we shy away from using the tools to share it with the world, and often that is because we just don’t know where to start.

A few months ago, I had a conversation about the five jagged rocks with my friend Rose Gallogly, who serves the Church of the Larger Fellowship as Publications Coordinator. I asked her to design a tattoo for me, a reminder of what Unitarian Universalism has the who asks me “so can UUs believe anything?” They resonate with me more than any other description of our faith, stating boldly how our never ending search for truth and our deep love and connection to each other are potential to be, and a reminder that I can be a part of that potential.

Every day I look at my tattoo and am reminded of the commitment I have made to Unitarian Universalism and the commitment Unitarian Universalism has made to me: to be a place where I share my full self, to challenge myself and others to dismantle systems of oppression, and to live deeply into Beloved Community.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic truly started months earlier, March 2020 was the month when its life-changing realities hit many of us in the US and other Western countries. In those early weeks of stay-at-home orders and new health and safety protocols, few of us could have imagined just how long and devastating this pandemic would become. There have been over 2 million recorded deaths from COVID-19 worldwide — with over 500,000 deaths in the US alone — and, as enormous as those numbers are, they fail to capture the full scope of loss that this year and the governmental mismanagement of the pandemic have brought. COVID has highlighted and exacerbated every one of the deep inequities in our society, and as those of you who are currently incarcerated know well, it has made our already-deadly prisons into places of even more violence and pain.

As we reach this one year mark of the pandemic as its been experienced in the West, it’s hugely important for us all to acknowledge the collective and individual loss we have experienced. Acknowledging and tending to our grief expands our capacity to hold it, allowing us more room to also hold the joy, resilience, and hope that may exist alongside that grief.

Below is an outline of a simple ritual for acknowledging and honoring the grief of this year of pandemic, as well as the gifts that this year may have brought. I believe that grief and gifts are inseparable — the losses we experience shape us, and we can honor them by making meaning from all they have taught us. Feel free to adapt or expand this ritual in any way that makes sense to you.

A prayer for grief & gifts

If you are able, I invite you to begin this ritual by gathering a pen and two pieces of paper, and finding a quiet spot to sit or lie down. Take a moment to breathe deeply, in and out, until you feel settled and calm in your body. You may then choose to light a chalice if that practice is available to you, or to sing or chant — whatever allows you to mark this time as sacred.

Then, call to mind all that has brought grief in the past year. As a list or in sentences, write down whatever comes to the surface. You may be grieving loved ones lost in the past year, or the continued absence of in-person community, or the loss of the sense of security you felt before the pandemic. Try not to filter what you’re feeling or compare your losses to that of others — all grief is holy and deserves to be honored.

Whenever you feel ready, turn your attention to the gifts or lessons of the past year. Perhaps this year has taught you to slow down, and listen more closely to the needs of your body. Or maybe you have learned more about your capacity for resilience, that you’re able to survive through heartbreak. Again, try not to filter what arises when writing down the gifts of this year — no matter how short or long your list of gifts is, each one deserves your attention.

Next, turn toward the year ahead. What do you hope to leave behind you from this year of pandemic? What do you hope to bring forward with you? Write down whatever rises to the surface, whether or not it is completely within your control.

When you have answered all of the prompts fully, go back through your answers and highlight or underline words that stand out the most. On a new piece of paper, use the format below (or your own version of it) to turn your words into a prayer or spell. Once you are done, read your prayer out loud. Then, fold the paper that has this prayer written on it and place it under your bed or beside your pillow. These words will now be with you as a loving companion in the coming year, a reminder of all that has been lost and all that has been gained, and the choices you are making about what to carry forward.

After a year of pandemic, I honor the heartbreak that I am carrying for all that has been lost. I am grieving ….

By holding my heartbreak tenderly, I also make space to take in the gifts and lessons this past year has brought. In this year, I have received the gift(s) of ….

Turning toward the year ahead, I hope to leave behind ….

In this next year, I seek to carry forward ….

By naming the grief and gifts of this year, I honor all parts of my experience as sacred. With these words I set my intentions for the year ahead, knowing that I am loved and held in care. May it be so.

“Every disaster movie starts with the government ignoring a scientist” — social media meme, unknown origin

In times of collective stress in a society, people often turn to humor for relief. Social media has been full of pandemic-related memes for months, but the one above particularly hit home for me as both funny and naming a painful truth. The same meme could apply to both the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change; in both cases, so many people in the US and around the world deny a reality that mainstream scientists have confirmed over and over again. Our climate is really changing, and climate chaos is already harming marginalized communities all around the world. We know that more disaster is imminent if those in wealthy countries don’t make drastic changes to the structures of our lives and economies, but in a lot of US political discourse, there is still ‘disagreement’ about something that is factual.

The COVID-19 pandemic is very much real, and it continues to rage on throughout the US with a devastating toll on already marginalized communities, especially those held in jails and prisons. There has been evidence for a long time that wearing masks works to slow its spread, and that this fast-moving virus could have been much more contained if people in power acted quickly enough and believed what experts named.

There’s a pattern here: on the whole, the US seems to be exceptionally good at denying reality, and having widespread rejection of truth and facts resulting in dangerous consequences.

One of the most recent distressing recent examples of this pattern was the attack on our nation’s Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. A group of armed insurrectionists, encouraged and supported by our former President, attempted to overthrow an election because of denialism. They have continued to deny that the presidential election was free and fair, despite overwhelming evidence that it was.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith continually calls us to examine what we think we know. We are called to reject denialism and embrace a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, as named in our fourth principle. I’ve always appreciated that the fourth principle particularly names that our search for truth and meaning in the world must both be free and responsible. Our faith espouses that revelation is not sealed, that the search for truth and meaning always continues. What does it mean to engage in an ongoing and responsible search for truth?

I believe in part that it means we must always keep in mind our responsibility to each other as we search for what is true. We have a responsibility to make sure our understanding of the world always takes into account the experiences of those who have been most targeted and oppressed throughout our his tory, including understanding how differently Black, brown, and white people experience this country.

Mass Moral Monday March and rally for voting rights, on the occasion of the start of the federal court’s consideration of “North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory”

After the January 6th attack, I saw many UUs express shock and anger on social media that the facts of the election were being denied by the insurrectionists. Though the magnitude of the facts being denied are particularly striking, to anyone who has experienced marginalization or listened deeply to those who have, the pattern of denialism was familiar. To white UUs in particular: I want to invite you to consider how you may have also participated in denialism at different points in your life. Has your culture taught you to listen only to one set of experiences, one set of facts? Have you ever questioned (or seen other white people question) the truths of people of color when they have named their experiences of racism and white supremacy?

Denialism is nothing new; it’s baked into the history of white supremacy and the history of the US. As Unitarian Universalists, our faith calls us to something different, something more. We must continue to search for what is true, and to center our responsibility to each other in our search.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110223114/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/01.m4a

The 8th Principle of Unitarian Universalism

The proposed 8th principle of Unitarian Universalism states: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountability dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”

The 8th principle was conceived by Paula Cole Jones, a lifelong UU who believes that Unitarian Universalism needs to expand beyond our current seven principles to make space for true, deeply multicultural beloved community. She discussed and workshopped this idea with Bruce Pollack Johnson and others in their region, and the 8th principle was created. It has been formally adopted by a number of UU congregations, and some people are working for it to be adopted by the whole denomination.

A common response to this proposed principle is, “Why is it even important that we ‘affirm and promote’ any of that? Don’t we already do that? It seems easily summed up in the other principles.” Some say that it feels like we are lifting up one group of people, and leaving others to think that they are less worthy, because about 400 years ago, their ancestors did something bad to the ancestors of others. In other words, some think: why can’t we just let it go and move forward?

I have heard this and more hurtful responses to the 8th principle. As a Black Unitarian Universalist, those responses mostly make me sad.

How do I even begin to be in community and talk about who I am and how I see the world when conversations about race are often so laden in shame, anger, bewilderment? We all seek to protect ourselves from feeling bad, and questioning that which causes discomfort can be a tool to shield ourselves from that feeling. Often, we (including myself) as UUs live in the ‘whys.’ We are a community of seekers. Perhaps it’s even built into our principles.

Yet only asking why allows us to disconnect our brains from our emotions—the perfect out. I am not saying that we should never ask why. Rather, we should not only ask why but also ask how, who, what, and when. Only then can we get a more holistic answer.

Read the 8th principle to yourself again. How does it feel in your body when you take in those words? Check in with yourself—what are you noticing? Track that. Now, how does it feel in your body when you read just a tiny segment of my experience living as a UU? Track that, too. Are you surprised, or does this feel familiar or expected? I know that in my body, I have often felt discombobulated as I have struggled to build an understanding of this faith that has both created a space in which I can belong, and has also disregarded me, covertly asking me to live small to fit in.

I can’t live small. I have to live authentically, and in living authentically, I know that it is my job to offer love and compassion. It’s my job to speak my truth.

If we are to create a beloved community we need to know that everyone won’t agree on everything and that’s okay. It is in those times that we circle around each other to build a better community: a community in which we are all seen and valued.

The truth is that people of color are tired. We are so tired of holding the fragility of white people to be able to be in community with white people. We are already holding so much. I am asking white people to hold what is yours.

Conversely, from speaking to my white allies, I know that some white people are tired. They are tired of getting it wrong. They are tired of trying to do the right thing and having it be the wrong thing. Some are even tired of being responsible for their siblings who are unwilling to do the work. Can you hold that, too?

Recently, a CLF member commented that they were sorry that they missed a recent worship service, and that it was probably one of the only services this year that can’t be turned into shaming old white men. Ouch.

In response, I was reminded again of our community. A community that holds the dichotomy of me, stumbling upon this racial aggression and of the person who posted it, who seems to feel so unsettled by the work of the UUA to eradicate white supremacy that they feel personally attacked. Then I thought about my kids who have been raised UU since birth. I thought of how even in their church home, they have inherited this dichotomy in the only faith they have ever known. This is a complex ity that is lived in and through our congregations every day. How do we begin to heal this divide? How do my children and this person live in the same space and both feel valued?

Some people believe that we already have that and nothing needs to be done. I hold them in compassion, too. I continue to draw the circle wide with the 8th principle, and I invite you to do the same. I invite you to do the work of understanding and account ably dismantling racism, because until we all do this work, we cannot be liberated. Until we all do this work, we cannot maintain safety in our congregations. Until we do this work, we cannot heal our denomination. No matter how difficult it is to do, we must do this work.

About eight years ago I started a meditation practice of drawing or doodling that I call “inklings” —as it gives glimpses both inward into one’s self and outward into connection with others, the earth, or the great unknown. I do this by putting ink to paper. For the first year, I focused on drawing chalices over and over again, which grounded this practice in Unitarian Universalism for me. At other times, I’ve drawn as a method of prayer or meditation, focused on other people or myself, to send energy for healing or comfort. The benefits of doing a drawing or doodling spiritual practice like this are a lot like the benefits of any spiritual practice. It calms me when I’m anxious. It focuses me when I’m scattered. It connects me to my faith and to a sense of something larger. In times when the world feels out of control, it gives me a sense of order and places something small within my ability. And in a time of change, it gives grounding.

Here are the steps for a simple inkling practice of creating a prayer for the self. There are no mistakes, no wrong decisions, and no rules—every step is adaptable to your own wishes. This is not about creating great art. I will describe what works for me, but you will know what works for you and adapt it to fit into your location and available materials. It is also flexible in that it can be done with full attention or with divided attention. (And it is more socially acceptable to doodle in a meeting than to play a game on my phone!) The basic idea is to translate a spiritual practice— a prayer or meditation or worship service or ritual—into a doodle format.

Spiritual practices often begin and end in very specific ways. In Unitarian Universalism, we often light a chalice. So I often begin the inkling process with creating a sense of the sacred around the drawing process— lighting a candle, saying some words, or just finding a special place. And then the process is about focusing thoughts on the self or another person or idea and doodling about it. I do this in a few easy steps.

First, I begin by drawing something on the page to represent the focus of the practice. This might be a circle or a written name, but in this instance I used a circle with a moon in it to represent myself. (“Cynthia” means goddess of the moon.) Then I draw a circle or spiral or petals around the circle. These will be spaces I will fill with the things I am praying for. Anything can go in these spaces, but I often focus on things like love, hope, faith, family, health, friends, and home. And re member, none of these shapes have to be perfect. This is about the process, not the product.

An Unfolding Inkling

If this were a worship service, this next step would be the sermon—it’s the heart of the practice. I fill in the spaces with words, patterns, or images, or a combination, to represent the things I want to increase in life, attract into my life, or just to contemplate more, like health or happiness or love. I like to use a combination of written words and patterns that are meaningful to me. I often draw spirals, a symbol connect ed to the Goddess, and to labyrinths, and to feminist spirituality. When thinking about hope, I draw feathers, from the line from Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul.” But what is most important here is to meditate or find a sense of peace while drawing. When I draw a pattern I like, particularly simple ones, I can get lost in the repetition of it for a while. Conversely, Celtic knotwork is beautiful, but I’ll think more about drawing the knot than about the meditation subject, and this is not about creating great art.

Every worship needs a closing, and so lastly, something I do if I’m still not feeling the energy flowing to me that I was hoping for, is to add arrows, directly linking the concepts to the symbol representing myself. The arrows represent the hoped-for flowing of energy. Or if I’m feeling full of good energy, I can direct an arrow out of the circle towards another person or the community or the world. And then, for a closing as I’m finishing the inkling, I just add things around the edge and inside the patterns that I like to draw—spirals, dots, springs, leaves. Some people enjoy doing shading, or adding color, and coloring can be its own spiritual practice. Remember, there are no rules to this!

I invite you to try this process and find ways to make it your own. And if you’ve enjoyed this process, you might find it interesting to delve into two methods that inspired me when I got started, Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts’ “Zentangle” process, and Praying in Color, by Sybil MacBeth. There are a lot of different ways to create your own artistic spiritual practice, and it can be rewarding to try out different ideas and concepts. For me, putting patterns and shapes together to make a bigger image gives me just an inkling of how our 7th principle works—each little thing I do is a part of the larger picture, and each action we take contributes to the interdependent web. Through setting pen to paper, I hope that not only am I centering myself, I’m adding peace to the world.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110223045/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/03.m4a

Once upon a time
I rejected the concept of surrender
without hesitation or investigation Would not even risk
thinking it (surrender, indeed!)

and yet…

when I remember the exquisite shade of red my white girl farmers tan turned
the first time I began to give a speech in Mr. B’ 9th grade Communications class and how I threw up in the girls’ bathroom at the thought of having to speak publicly

when I think of how I went to the microphone at General Assembly
my first one ever
to speak in front of over a thousand delegates on behalf of those too young to vote my heart pounding so hard
that the chalice on my necklace
was bouncing on my chest

when I reflect on my ever-emerging ministry facilitating conversations with first dozens,
now thousands of folx
organizing, teaching, preaching, creating, collaborating
and always learning
about white supremacy and systemic oppression and our faithful work
on the journey of collective liberation

when I re-member of these things
I have no other word than
surrender

I surrender to the call
of love and life and liberation
of life and liberation and love
of liberation and love and life
again and again and again

Each day
we are invited to risk
holy surrender
to the call of life and love and liberation.

and

we do not have to wait to be unafraid.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110223024/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/04.m4a

Become a Worthy Now Prison Ministry Pen Pal

The Church of the Larger Fellowship is comprised of over 2500 individuals serving Unitarian Universalism—half of whom are currently incarcerated. As those of you reading this who are incarcerated know, most of our members in prison are new to Unitarian Universalism and learned about our church from friends or cellmates. With no access to the internet or Sunday services, people who are incarcerated can only learn about Unitarian Universalism from the mailings we send and letters exchanged with our staff and other Unitarian Universalists outside of prison.

Our Prison Ministry provides all people who participate an opportunity to live out our Unitarian Universalist values by connecting with a pen pal. At the Church of the Larger Fellowship, our message is that all of us are part of the interwoven fabric of the universe. We are deeply and undeniably connected. We acknowledge that while our behaviors can vary from loving to hate-filled acts of disruption and harm, our inherent worth remains unchanged. This is the foundation of our pen pal program.

For free-world pen pals (those who are not currently incarcerated): this relationship has the power to bring you into proximity with the issues of those people who find themselves incarcerated. In turn, your heart may be renewed by witnessing the power of Unitarian Universalism present even in the most difficult of places. For members in prison: this relationship will bring you connection, community, and a deeper understanding of how others experience Unitarian Universalism.

The experience of being a pen pal can be transformative for everyone involved. If you are in the free world, you can learn more and apply here. If you are incarcerated and are already a CLF member, you can write to Beth at our Boston office (Worthy Now Prison Ministry, 24 Farnsworth St, Boston MA 02210) to ask for a pen pal application or check where you are in the matching process. Anyone who has completed our New UU course is eligible for a pen pal, though as many of you know, we currently have a waiting list for new matches and the process may take some time. We don’t currently have enough free world pen pal applicants—so if you’re not incarcerated and are interested in being a pen pal, please do apply!

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110222908/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/21_02/05.m4a

The Church of the Larger Fellowship is a vessel for change. We are continually evolving and adapting as we learn more about how we can best serve our congregants, parishioners, and faith community as a whole. We allow ourselves to reshape in ways that will make us able to serve the movement of Unitarian Universalism better. From funding innovative ministry to finding new ways to embody the ministerial search process, to increasing the resources we put into our Prison Ministry Network, we continue to build on a foundation of progressive and bold leadership as a model for how Unitarian Universalism can thrive while centering liberation, justice, and love.

As we embarked on this journey of learning and change together, we noticed that Quest, our monthly print publication, was not serving all of our readers as well as it could have. We saw that not all voices were being heard, ministered to, and given the platform to speak to their experience. That’s why you might notice that this issue is different. You will read reflections from our members, see opportunities to respond to thinking prompts, have the chance to interact with activities on the pages, and even vote on important church business. Our vision is to create a monthly publication that adds value to your life and connects you to your church. A magazine that is interactive, relevant, and made by and for the community who reads it.

We are inviting you, the reader, to submit reflections on a range of ideas and topics. Topics you could write about:

• Why do you love the CLF?
• Why are you a Unitarian Universalist?
• How do you put your faith into action?
• What theological and spiritual questions do you grapple with?
• How can we more intentionally minister to and with CLF Worthy Now Prison Ministry members?

Email submissions to editors@clfuu.org or mail them to the Church of the Larger Fellowship; 24 Farnsworth St. Boston, MA 02210.

We know that not everyone can access our online resources. This is especially true for CLF members in prison. We hope that between the pages of Quest Monthly, you find a place that connects you to your Unitarian Universalist faith. Wherever you are, however you are reading this, and whenever you get this, know that it was created with you in mind—the marginalized, the lonely, the left out, the little bit different. Whoever you are, you are welcome here.

We hope you enjoy this inaugural issue of the new Quest Monthly. We made it just for you

Since the bricks-and mortar congregation I serve first affirmed that Black Lives Matter and hung a banner with those words, we have had a steady stream of push-back to that phrase.

 Most of the people who object do so in anonymous letters and phone calls, and most of them argue that we should affirm instead that “all lives matter.” This is the public response I wrote to those people. Perhaps you, too, will find this helpful.

Of course all lives matter to us. Respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person is the very first principle of Unitarian Universalism. And yet, all lives are not equally threatened by violence in our society. To simply state that “all lives matter” ignores the very real inequities faced by many.

It is easy to issue a blanket condemnation of all violence. It is harder to realize that a good deal of that violence is tied to systems and institutions that must be changed or dismantled.

It is easy to say that all relationships should be free of violence. It is harder to understand that the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women, and that the misogyny in our society contributes to every blow.

It is easy to say that all children are precious. It is harder to understand that LGBTQ+ youth are given such negative messages about their self worth that they are six times more likely than straight or cisgender youth to attempt suicide.

It is easy to say that we value a diverse society with people from all nations and ethnicities. It is harder to understand the anti-immigrant bigotry behind calls to separate and isolate poorer, browner schools filled with children of immigrants from wealthier (and mostly white) ones.

It is also easy to say that no one should be shot dead for a broken taillight. It is harder to understand that systemic racism leads us to a reality where unarmed Black men are seven times more likely than unarmed white men to be killed by police in a traffic stop.

I do not blame individual officers for this. I would imagine that there are very few police officers who signed up for their jobs with the explicit intent to perpetuate the racism built into our society. And yet, once you look at the reality of policing in this country, it’s clear that is overwhelmingly what is happening. The white supremacy baked into our society is endemic also in institutions given power and weapons by our state.

“Black Lives Matter” is a declaration that an emergency exists, not a statement that we value one race more than another. The emergency is that the lives of our Black siblings are being taken at an alarming rate in a society that systematically devalues them. The killing must stop. The dehumanization must stop.

All lives cannot matter until Black lives matter.

I believe that our job as Unitarian Universalists is to love loudly. Louder than the hate in the world. Louder than the broken ness, the despair, and the darkness. We have to love so loud that everything else sounds like white-noise. This is my style of Unitarian Universalism. This is what draws me to this work. I want to be a part of a ministry that calls us to unleash a bold, fearless, and brave kind of love—a courageous love.

Growing up, I could never do Unitarian Universalism subtly. It just wasn’t my style. Even when I was really little, I have such distinct memories of 6-year-old me in 1st or 2nd grade telling all my classmates that “my church was the coolest church ever.”

That passion and vigor never really went away. In middle school, I was practically obsessed with drawing chalices on everything. I would doodle on my arms, my shoes, assignments, and a million other things. In high school, I started to figure out what it meant to be a faith leader. I served on committees at my home congregation (which is like a right of passage for any UU, right?), I became an active leader in the youth community, and had the opportunity to do some really amazing work with really incredible religious leaders.

At age 16, I served on the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Board of Trustees. Seriously, I could not do Unitarian Universalism subtly. It was just not my style.

This is the call that led me to become a religious professional and eventually led me to the Church of the Larger Fellowship. When I heard about the mission and vision of this community, I could not turn away.

I’ve recently joined the church full time, my job, in this new role, is to help people find and connect to the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Wherever they are, however they are, whoever they are. I am here to welcome them—to welcome you—to our church.

I’m living my 6-year-old self’s dream. It is literally my job to show people the tremendous power of Unitarian Universalism. If we haven’t already, I hope that we cross paths. I am so excited to serve this congregation in this role, and I know that together we will love so loudly that the whole world will know who we are.

We are so glad that so many people are receiving and loving Quest Monthly.

If you are not yet a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, please reach out to us to discuss whether church membership may be the right fit for you or your family. The CLF is a vibrant and growing congregation where over 2,400 adult members and hundreds of children and youth share the mission of building a global spiritual community. It would be an honor to formally welcome you into our faith family.

Learn more about becoming a free-world member at clfuu.org/join. You may also email us at clf@clfuu.org or call us at 617-948-6150.

If you are currently incarcerated, send a letter to CLF Worthy Now; 24 Farnsworth St. Boston MA 02210, and we will reply with more information about what’s included in membership and how to join.

“Darling, the body is a guest house;
Every morning, someone new arrives.”
— jalal ad-din rumi

I do not espouse the theology that “everything happens for a reason.” I simply just don’t believe that. I don’t believe that pain and sorrow in our lives is deserved, even if it is a part of the universal human condition.

I don’t believe that suffering is redemptive or that God (or any other larger purpose) calls us to endure it. Too much damage has been done to people’s lives because of the belief that passively accepting pain and suffering purifies our souls and makes us worthy in the eyes of the divine. Way too much damage.

I do, however, believe that the hardships of our life can be opportunities for spiritual growth. To paraphrase Rumi, 13th century Persian mystic and poet, sometimes sorrow is a guest that sweeps our house clean so that joy may enter. Listening to our pain and learning from it is not the same as letting it take us over. Of course, we have to learn how to encourage the guests of sorrow, malice, and meanness to move on when they’ve overstayed their welcome.

The practice of moving through a labyrinth is very much a process of opening ourselves to feeling whatever is present for us, learning from them, and then releasing those things. You begin the process with an open mind—sometimes with a question, sometimes with an ache in your heart, sometimes with uncertainty, but always with an open mind.

As you make your way through the winding pathway towards the center, you must pay attention. To the lines. To the twists and turns. To lose that attention is to get lost in the labyrinth—it is the only way you can get lost, actually, since it’s just one pathway.

And keeping that attention with an open mind allows in the guests. Some of them—like the guests of joy and companionship and community—are ones we want. Some of them—grief, sadness, despair—are ones we didn’t invite but have to learn from anyway.

And then you get to the center.

In the center of the labyrinth is a chance to pause. A chance to sit with the guests that have come into your soul during your journey. A chance to listen to what they have to tell you. And a chance to make peace with the fact that they’re visiting you.

After whatever time you need to do this, you make your way out, following the same, solitary, serpentine path. The way out requires the same focus as the way in. And that focus signals to our guests that it is time for some of them to move on. I have found that moving through a labyrinth on a regular basis is a clearing, cleansing, and balancing ritual for my spirit.

The finger labyrinth included in this issue of Quest can be a spiritual practice you use anywhere you can have a piece of paper. Rather than walk or roll through a large labyrinth set on the ground, trace the line with your finger. The intention is the same. The practice is the same. I hope our Quest labyrinth allows you some measure of balance in your spiritual life.

How to use a Finger Labyrinth

1. If you can, try to find a quiet spot where you can sit down and put the labyrinth on a flat surface.
2. Sit still and quietly until you can focus just on the labyrinth. If you have the option, you could try ringing a chime, playing calming music, or humming a single note.
3. Start with your finger where the path opens to the outside of the labyrinth. As slowly and carefully as you can, trace your finger over the white path, until you get to the open space in the center of the labyrinth. Take your time; it can be hard to keep your place on the path.
4. If you wish, when you are tracing your finger along the path, you can try to focus your mind on thanks, regret or hope. Or, allow your mind to find its own focus for your meditation.
5. Pause when you get to the center of the labyrinth. When you’re ready, follow the same path back out. How did it feel to go on this journey?

Working at Greensboro Health Care Center, a nursing home, was a rewarding experience for me in many ways. Not the least of these was meeting David. David came to work at the home after I had been there only a short time. Possessed of a quiet countenance and mild demeanor, David worked as a custodian. He treated every person, without regard for race or age or resident or staff, with dignity and respect.

David was a nature lover, and often took his lunch outside, where I would find him reading Thoreau. I would frequently lunch there myself, simply to have an excuse to join him and listen to his wisdom on the beauty of God’s gifts to be found in nature. Our friendship grew, but still remained a casual work-related one, so I was quite surprised when one day in late January of 1983 David asked me to join him for breakfast on the first of February at the downtown Woolworth’s lunch counter. Although I’m a history buff, I must sadly confess that the date and occasion of our breakfast didn’t register in my mind as significant. That would change forever.

You can imagine my shock when I walked into the Woolworth’s on February 1^st to find the lunch counter packed, and reporters and camera operators from all the national television networks focusing in on David and three other African-American gentlemen. What in the world…? I asked myself. David caught my eye, smiled, and motioned me through the throng of on-lookers and media to take a stool beside him.

“David,” I whispered, “What is all this about?”

“Gary, I wanted you to join me for an anniversary breakfast.”

“Anniversary? Whose anniversary?” I asked.

“Today is the 23^rd anniversary of the Woolworth sit-ins,” David replied.

“You mean…you?” I asked in awe.

David just shyly smiled and nodded. I quickly learned that David, the same man who would take the time out of his busy day to read to an elderly nursing home resident, was David Richmond, one of the four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro who, on February 1^st, 1960, demanded equal service at Woolworths. The icy winds that swept down North Elm St. in downtown Greensboro were second only to the icy reception that David Richmond and his fellow students received at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. Taking stools at the counter, they endured fierce stares from bankers, clerks and lawyers having lunch.

David said, “Sure we were afraid. We were four scared college kids challenging the status quo. Separate but equal was being defied. Jim Crow, nearly one hundred years after our emancipation, was on his deathbed. We were four very frightened young men, but our quest for recognition as equals allowed me and my fellow students to overcome that fear. We were not alone. The spirit of our fathers—their bondage, their blood, their tears and sweat from which this republic was built; their sacrifice made both at home and on the battlefields overseas—their courage was in us.”

There were only four, but soon there would be ten, then 50. The numbers were growing daily that would merge into one voice, one message, one song: equality.

David Richmond passed away in 1991. His friendship, guidance and belief in equality of all people will forever remain a part of my heart, mind and soul. His quiet wisdom, thoughtful perspective, rare insight and deep understanding of the human condition is one I shall always miss.

Although I was just a baby during the turmoil of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, I can well recall the hope in the words, songs and speeches of the era’s heroes. David Richmond was such a hero, who held a vision of the possibility of justice for all.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110184205/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_11/01.mp3

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

When you’re a capable, confident, 28-year-old child of privilege and experience, then you are accustomed to taking the challenges that come up in life and simply…managing them.

By the time I was 28 I had lived in three countries by my own initiative, and several others by tagging along with my parents. I had been married for six years and was a mother for two, and had gotten a BA in psychology and a master’s degree in sociology. My husband, Stefan, who was 29, was a chief financial officer for a division in his insurance corporation. As a result of his job, we moved from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Minneapolis, with all the attendant tasks and responsibilities an international move entails. In addition to those events, I was seven months pregnant with my second son at this time, so I was also busy finding myself somewhere to have a baby in a strange city. So as you can imagine, at this time Stefan and I had a major to-do list, but nothing that two people with skills and resources wouldn’t be able to manage.

And I swear to you, although it may seem ridiculous, that when Stefan was diagnosed with a brain tumor right in the middle of all this, in some very practical ways taking care of his illness became simply more items added to the list of to-dos. Granted, these to-dos were scarier, and the stakes were higher. But we used the same system, you see, to manage the illness that we had always used to manage our lives together.

Gather resources. Get educated. Make decisions. Take charge. Do the right thing, so you’ll get the right outcome. Assume that everything will work out fine.

This methodology was our foundation, our grounding. We had the energy and efficiency needed to tackle a ridiculous list of to-dos. And when Stefan’s energy flagged with his disease and the treatment, I took over everything. The list never came to an end, but I didn’t notice because I knew my job was to be in charge. Not only did the list not come to an end, but it increased exponentially as we went along.

We did extensive research and decided on a course of treatment. Brain surgery led to unexpected paralysis on Stefan’s right side, which necessitated its own course of research and treatment. I had my baby, Jake, and continued to care for my two sons on my own. I got settled into our community and new house, availed myself of at-home-mom resources, and found preschools.

I managed Stefan’s care, including his radiation and fifteen months of inpatient chemotherapy, which involved a surgical procedure every five weeks. Blood tests every week. Periodic setbacks with low blood counts. Doing the dance of making sure the medication balances were correct. Periodic seizures when they weren’t. All this in a town, a state, with no family, and no friends except for some brand new ones, no church, just us.

Any normal person, especially one involved in ministering to others, can tell you that this all is just too much for the 20-years-ago me to be in charge of, to be expected to manage. But I was not normal in that time period, and I was not involved in ministry, and this is what I thought the world was like: You were in charge of the success and failure of your own life. Problems were unfortunate, and they called for extra competency, and so you rose to the occasion. This is what life is, decided the 10-years-ago me. I am in charge, and the degree to which I can’t meet the challenge is the degree to which I fail, and let my family down. That was inconceivable. So, simple enough—meet the challenge. Always.

After the first six months in Minnesota, things sort of leveled out for me and my family. After a year and a half, Stefan completed his course of chemo treatment, and was declared cancer-free. He was weak from the treatment, skinny and bald, and still used a cane. We were told that this sort of cancer does tend to come back; but really, that was an issue for another day. For now, the to-do list was complete. Time for the next one.

We began to plan our return to “normal” life, still thinking such a thing was possible. In our rush to get through this whole event as efficiently as we could, we hadn’t noticed the ways in which we had already fundamentally changed—and not for the better.

We hadn’t noticed that although Stefan and I were still quite a team when it came to his treatment, in other areas of our relationship things had started to slide. We hadn’t noticed, or at least I hadn’t, that I was wound tighter than a drum, and was nearing the end of my capacity to ignore my own needs in order to deal with babies and health concerns.

And we certainly hadn’t noticed, or at least I hadn’t, that we actually already knew that our belief that we could manage and fix anything was wrong. After all the major drama, we weren’t giving ourselves the space to see that we had been in the wilderness this whole time, a new place entirely. We were still in the desert, and being in the wilderness called for a new perspective, a new game plan. We were like people in the middle of the Sahara with nothing but a bottle of sunscreen, telling ourselves we were having a beach vacation. Or at least that the rescue chopper would be there very shortly.

Things did not stay calm. Stefan fell and broke his hip in December of 2001. While waiting for surgery, he fell into a coma, and no-one was sure exactly why. I pulled out my best medical management expertise, talking to doctors and organizing treatment, figuring out the best course of action.

And herein lies that moment when it all changed, and I saw that I was in the wilderness, had been in the wilderness, lost in the desert for real, and it was time for something new.

I was on the phone with some doctor or another, and they were reporting in. No change in consciousness. A shadow on the MRI—was the tumor returning? Probably not. Why the coma? Sometimes the brain shuts down for a while—that’s a good thing. He could pop out of it just fine. We’ll monitor this. We’ll take a look at that. Oh, and by the way, Stefan has osteoporosis, likely caused by the steroids he’s been taking for years to help with the seizures. That’s why his hip broke when he fell. And on to this. And on to that.

There was something about that osteoporosis part. I remember how I was standing—I was on the phone in the front room of my house with my head bowed, one foot up on the sofa. But inside of me, my body did something else entirely. Inside, inside my spirit, when I heard about the osteoporosis, the one last straw, I opened out my hands.

I let go.

This is too much for me. This may turn out fine or it may turn out terribly, but You’re in charge. Who I might have been talking to, I did not know, but it didn’t matter. It is Yours now, Hand of Fate or whatever is out there. You take it.

Faith is like a mustard seed, Jesus said. It’s just a speck, the smallest of all the seeds on earth, and yet it grows a shrub so large that birds can make nests in its shade (Mark 4:31-32). My experience on the phone was the mustard seed of my life.

It could have been just a temporary thing, a brief respite from a path that didn’t change at all from the one I had been on. But as it turned out, it was not a temporary thing at all. That seed of letting go became the foundation of everything I then did, the foundation by which I experienced all that was to come: Stefan’s death and the choices I made, first in coming to DC, and then in getting re-involved with Unitarian Universalism, and getting remarried, and then in choosing to go to seminary, and all the rest. It’s the foundation I use now, and I don’t think I could be without it if I tried.

I open my hands. It’s Your show, not mine. I turn it over. You’re in charge. Show me what’s next, and that’s what I will do.

The Tao Te Ching says that trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place. When you handle the master carpenter’s tools, Lao Tzu tells us, when you handle the tools, chances are that you’ll cut your hand. Hands off the tools. They aren’t yours.

I couldn’t know at the time the blessings and miracles that would grow out of this moment of transformation. I just let go, and walked off into a different kind of wilderness, one where, like Jesus in the desert, I was waited on by angels. I hope, when it comes to your wilderness, that you have seen them waiting on you, too.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110180929/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_10/01.mp3

One of the many ways to carve meaning out of grief is to honor the memory of those we have lost. We welcome gifts to sustain the work of the CLF made in honor of those who are gone from this earth, but remain in memory. To arrange a memorial gift, please call the CLF office at (617) 948-6150.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110180907/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_10/02.mp3

The movie Gravity, which came out in 2013, is about grief. And it’s worth watching with this in mind, because what Alfonso Cuarón, the director and co-writer, and Jonás Cuarón, the other co-writer, have to tell us about grief can help us through it.

When we first see Dr. Ryan Stone, she is floating in space. She doesn’t seem to belong there. She’s fighting nausea, and she’s not an astronaut or engineer by training—she’s a medical doctor. But she has a reason to have signed up for this space-station repair job. Her young daughter died from a fall in a playground, and ever since then, Ryan has tried not to touch the ground.

Gravity has not been good to Ryan. You can see why she wants to leave it behind. Of all the things that could kill a person, drowning or poisoning or a car crash, the writers chose a different fate for her child: she fell. She died from gravity. That moment of gravity inflicted upon Ryan one of the weightiest losses a person can endure.

And then there’s the very word gravity, so similar to grave…. Gravity, grave, and grief all come from the same root, the Old English for dig. Earth holds us, which is all very well when we are happy. But when grief comes, we may want to float above everything. It is so, so hard just to be awake, to be aware, to continually encounter the solid reality of a world that reverberates with absence, because the one we love is nowhere to be found. There is no escaping our feelings, we know that, but if we could just float, maybe we could float away and never feel anything again….

Ryan gets her chance, because the mission goes wrong, and suddenly it is very likely that she is going to die up there, that very day, in space. Alone and unmoored, she is tempted to just give in and give up.

But by the close of the movie, she wants to live. And in its final moments, she digs her hands into the earth, grateful just to be here, and when she stands up on those shaky legs, the camera looks up at her as if at a colossus. With that shot, Cuarón is telling us that Ryan Stone is heroic, and she is. She hasn’t saved the world from invasion or her city from destruction. She has simply done what each of us must do at some point, when even to be on earth, of earth, is excruciatingly painful. She chooses life, the whole weight and heft of it.

When sorrow comes for us, we may want to just float. And that can be good medicine. Music, sleep, the shadow worlds of movies or books, might give us some relief for awhile. In the end, though, we are creatures of earth, and we need gravity. We must remain tethered to reality and all the pain it brings, or else float forever in a half-existence. As the introduction to the movie says, as the camera pans an unimaginably large, indifferent expanse, “life in space is impossible.”

When we realize that we cannot float forever and we find it unendurable to touch the ground, friends can be the bridge we need. The touch of a hand, the sound of a voice, good food made by good friends, tether us gently: not demanding that we return to gravity’s relentless pull until we’re ready, but letting us know that we are of this life, this earth. Creating something together, whether a cantata or a conversation, offers threads of connection when we still feel as if a stronger one would hurt too much. When others express their griefs and losses, never as a comparison or competition, but humbly, out of their own need, they anchor us to the life we share. And bit by bit, we may follow that lifeline back to healing and joy.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110180846/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_10/03.mp3

When you lose someone you love, there are some things that are just really hard to hear: They’re in a better place. Time heals all wounds. I know how you feel. These are probably the three least helpful things for someone who is grieving to hear.

Maybe they are in a better place, but it doesn’t make me miss them any less. Maybe time will heal the pain of their loss, but right now it still hurts. And maybe you have felt the pain of losing another, but if you really knew how I felt, you would not say any of those things to me right now.

That’s how I felt when I lost my mother 21 years ago, when I lost my father six years ago, and when I lost my best friend four years ago. And I imagine that’s how I’ll feel each and every time a loved one dies. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

People deal with grief in different ways. Some get angry, some get sad, and some pretend that everything is all right. None of those things are the “right way,” and none are the “wrong way.” It’s just the way we deal.

I can’t offer those grieving any great advice on how to get past the grief. And, honestly, most of them don’t want to hear it anyway. But for those who know someone who is grieving, I do have some great advice: They don’t want to hear it.

What they do want is someone they can cry with, someone whose steady presence will help them move past the anger, sorrow, pain and loss. You don’t need words for that. You don’t really need to do anything. Just be there. No words needed.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110180805/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_10/04.mp3

Grief is more than just an intense form of pain. It is the emotion triggered by severe loss—a loss of a part of the self. The part has many names, but let’s just call it ego. Ego makes meaning in life by defining itself in relation to its surroundings. Some of those surroundings—such as a spouse, a parent, a child, a longtime intimate friend—are so incredibly close that the ego experiences them as part of itself. When one of those critical parts is lost, the ego is shattered. Its job is to manage life, and it suddenly cannot do that job.

A grievous loss does not necessarily involve a loved one. It could be a calling, such as music, lost by a physical trauma that makes that form of musicianship impossible. It could be something we think of as merely a backdrop in life, like the expectation that people and things around you will not be blown to bits. It could be something that just happens to you, like fate, shattering the bedrock expectation that things happen for a reason and life is fair. Or it could be a loss that flows from your own obliviousness to what is happening in your life, such as hurting someone close and causing a relationship to come crashing down.

What, then, is to be done with this shattering? Often, the ego’s immediate impulse is to do anything to shut off the pain. Left to its own devices, without deeper sources of meaning, the ego traffics mostly in seeking pleasure and comfort, and avoiding pain and suffering. Our market economy has responded impressively to this impulse, with anesthesia and distractions of every description.

Many books about grieving counsel strongly against acting on this intense desire to turn away from the pain. They advise engaging with the grief and experiencing it fully as a healing process. Engaging with the grief means inviting in the full awareness of how much you cared about what you have lost, instead of pushing it away.

No matter how much you appreciated whatever or whomever you have lost, grieving brings more gratitude for it. Along with that awareness comes a heightened sense of gratitude for what remains with you of the person who is gone—and even further, a greater appreciation for all of life. Grieving also calls for separating out what must be held on to from what we must let go. This process brings a heightened ability to be present to life, rather than living in the past that has become never again or in the future that has become never shall be.

It’s hard to separate anything out, of course, if you’re standing in the dark. And that’s where grief puts you—in a dark cave with the winds of painful emotion howling in your ears. Part of the work of grieving is to learn to trust that you do actually have a kind of spiritual night vision, which allows you to treat the dark not as an enemy, but rather as a place where something new and valuable can be cultivated.

The spiritual practice of grieving entails intentionally doing whatever will sharpen, rather than dull, the edges of loss. This practice is likely to include a mixture of solitude and companionship, particularly with people who have known grief. Companionship might also be found in poetic voices that can give words to your sorrow when your own words won’t come, such as these by Tennyson in a poem called “A Farewell”: But here will sigh thine alder tree, and here thine aspen shiver; and here by thee will hum the bee, forever and forever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, a thousand moons will quiver; but not by thee my steps shall be, for ever and for ever. No more strolls by the river with that one who has departed. How sharp the sweetness of those strolls becomes.

Moving from grief to grieving calls for hard work at the very time when you have been laid low, but it can bring great rewards. It is tempting to think of the spiritual practice of grieving as basically a matter of pacing, of regaining one’s balance without trying to “bounce back” too soon. But after a grievous loss, things will never be like they were.

The results of the grieving process—a heightened capacity for gratitude, a sharper sense of presence to life, and the ability to see your way in spiritual darkness—represent a foundation on which a newly constituted ego can arise from the wreckage of the shattered one. This is the destiny toward which grieving shows the way.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110180745/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_10/05.mp3

One of the best ways I know to get things moving when I’m facing significant change is to engage my imagination. The facts of my situation, and the logic and reason I use to arrange them, will only take me to the edge of what I know. Even using my five senses will only extend as far as the range of my sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. But imagination has the ability to reach farther by accessing the deeper well of the unconscious and creatively rearranging what I’ve known before. The uniquely human capacity to imagine is a valuable threshold skill that can open a way into and through the unknowns of a future filled with change.

When we cling to what we know, it is easy to forget about the massive storehouse of knowledge hidden within each of us, a vast library filed away behind a door aptly labeled “the unconscious.” It is there, in the back stacks of the mind, that our experiences first get shelved. Cognitive scientists tell us less than one percent of that material gets transferred to our conscious mind. Like a “closed stack” library where patrons submit requests for materials to be retrieved by librarians, our unconscious stores an expansive collection of knowledge entirely out of sight. Some of it is also out of reach of language itself, collected and shelved as pre-verbal feelings, sensory experiences and images that constitute the knowledge we call intuition. Dream worker and author Jeremy Taylor called this knowledge “not-yet-speech-ripe,” using an old Anglo-Saxon term for the unconscious.

Fortunately, accessing the treasures of the unconscious does not require mastering the Dewey decimal system or turning to a librarian. Rather, we can be assisted by the colorful cast of characters appearing in our dreams at night, or by any piece of music, poetry or art that speaks to us. We only need to pay attention to anything flinging open the doors to the unconscious and beckoning us in to wander among the hidden stacks, often without knowing what we are looking for.

Imagination, dreams, ritual and the arts are all tools for accessing this larger pool of consciousness. In dominant culture today, these ways of knowing are often disparaged as less reliable and useful than science and historical fact. But any scientist worth their white coat knows that exploration begins with a dance between curiosity and imagination. We need to access a larger body of knowledge, especially when facing an unknown future. Our imaginations, creativity and dreams all extend our awareness to do just that.

Wang Maohua, a tai chi master in Beijing, once gave me an important lesson that changed my understanding of tai chi and now also guides me on the threshold of change. He began our time together by asking me to show him the tai chi I practiced at home. But soon after I launched through several forms, he stopped me. I was pushing myself through the moves, he observed.

“Try to focus your attention on the space above your head and below your feet,” he advised instead. “Extend your awareness to the space beyond your fingers.” He then led me in a meditative journey through my body, awakening me first to the space within my body and then beyond it. He told me to stop pushing my body. “Instead,” he said, “let your body move by a gentle intention into the space around it, where your awareness is already waiting to meet it.”

We can borrow this practice of “gentle intention” when living on the threshold, casting our awareness across the gap of the unknown. By imagining ourselves on the far side of our threshold, we are actually stretching our attention beyond the limits of our senses. Gentle intention will open our awareness, allowing us to perceive what lies beneath the surface of things. It is a way of open-ended wondering, imagining what we are moving toward. Then, having imagined ourselves on the far side of the threshold we are crossing, we look up to find our own self waiting there, encouraging us on, and welcoming us as we arrive in a place where we have never been before.

excerpted and adapted from Living in the Between: a thresholder’s guide to personal and global change, by Karen Hering, to be published by Skinner House in late 2020.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110172819/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_09/01.mp3

When I was in college, a professor began the term by assigning a novel set in a dystopian future, where everything was grim and hope was absent. I diligently read the book, a science fiction story by Ursula LeGuin. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person thinking that the term was already heading in the direction of being a serious downer. But the professor surprised me. When we arrived back at class the next week, he split us into small conversation groups, asking that we reflect on our ideal society. Get as far away as possible from the world the book imagines, he urged. In the utopia of our personal dreams, what would life be like?

We had some interesting conversation. One of the cool ideas I remember being tossed out was free public transportation, locally, and also globally. Can you imagine that? One fellow student in my group had recently interned with a collective that built housing using environmentally sustainable materials like cob (which is a mixture of clay, sand, straw, water and earth that’s similar to adobe). He shared a long convoluted plan about everyone getting to create their own one-room living space that would adjoin huge communal compounds he described as being like beehives. I was 19 and remember thinking it was very sophisticated.

But I have been forever haunted by the comment of a smart, thoughtful young woman. She was very quiet and listened to all the ideas presented. Then she said, “In my version of a perfect and ideal culture, anyone who abused or mistreated anyone, especially children, would be severely punished.” That’s the only contribution she made during that assignment.

I hope I will always be first in line to advocate for accountability when wrong has been committed, especially against another person, let alone a child. But in my dreamland of total bliss and complete equality, people would not be harming other people. Couldn’t we at least even fantasize about what it might mean to inhabit a place where children were not violated? Where we did not have to fear for the safety of our littlest ones?

This experience, of being confronted with an intelligent and worldly person who had so little capacity to dream big and think outside the box when the opportunity presented itself, helped teach me that imagination is complicated. It can be hard to imagine.

In Unitarian Universalism, one of the ways we have access to imagination is through Humanism. The worldview of Humanism can help us imagine. This might seem incongruent, but it’s not! Humanism often gets a bad rap because it can be mistaken for an overly rational perspective, one that is too literal and rigid for expansive beauty and joy. That is one kind of humanism, but I would characterize the flavorless and crotchety kind as secular in nature. In other words, it’s not interested in religious questions, and it can even be a fundamentalist sort of humanism.

By calling it fundamentalist, I mean that it’s an absolutely certain viewpoint, unable to allow for the mystery of the world or the possibility that another truth might be valid in another context or for another person. There’s no imagination in that.

Religious humanism is not confining in this stereotypical way; rather, it’s one of the least limiting forms of religious expression available to us. The reason it’s long been one of the most imaginative religious forces is because it says yes to so much! It asks us to accept that our physical and spiritual lives are the result of vast and diverse influences, including science, history, human thought and natural beauty. It even holds a place for those mysteries that have not yet become known to us. All these perspectives—philosophical, biological, environmental—are resources. They’re tools that we can use to fashion lives of worth and dignity for ourselves.

For the religious humanists (and in the past hundred years religious humanists have also tended to be Unitarians), imagination is the key that provides hope to alleviate suffering. Rather than imagination being rooted in privilege, it’s the opposite. When times are hard (even oppressive), that’s when it’s most important. This was a new idea to me, that suffering could be addressed by imagination.

The Rev. Lewis McGee called this “creative imagination.” Although he was born into an AME (African Methodist Episcopal) family in Pennsylvania in 1893, by 1927 Lewis McGee was connected with the burgeoning humanist movement and its many illustrious Unitarians. These included signers of the first Humanist Manifesto in 1933, which outlined humanist principles in a splashy fifteen-point platform. Here are some highlights in brief:

Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant…. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained…. Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man [we might broaden that language today but I think the fact that all the signers were straight white men somewhat limited their perspective]….

The goal of humanism [it continues] is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. [My favorite part:] Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.

Lewis McGee loved this. He wanted more. But when he eagerly approached a Unitarian minister of his acquaintance about entering the ministry, he was told candidly that he would have to supply his own church since it was of course out of the question for a Black man to serve a white congregation—and there were only white Unitarian congregations in existence.

He bided his time, not giving up on Unitarianism, but not able to move forward with it either. Finally, when he was in his mid-50s, he entered Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago to prepare for the Unitarian ministry. And then, in 1948, he did start his very own Unitarian congregation, a predominately Black but somewhat multiracial congregation called the Free Religious Fellowship, located on Chicago’s South Side.

Imagination is an idea that was central to McGee. This is how he summarized his theological beliefs: “We believe in the creative imagination as a power in promoting the good life.” For him and for other Black humanists of his time, creative imagination wasn’t an abstract, theoretical concept too vague to be pinned down. It was clearly, tangibly, irrevocably located in human capacity. Imagination helps to resist suffering.

So, according to McGee and his contemporaries, here is how the world works: We, flawed yet mighty humans, contain within our minds and bodies the capacity to solve individual and social problems. These African American theologians were understandably motivated to address, in particular, white supremacy and racism. They didn’t see the suffering that resulted from oppression as an opportunity for redemption. Since they didn’t believe in a God who called the shots (and they reasoned that only a twisted, sadistic slave master type of God would force suffering on people for their own good), they blamed white racism and other forms of unfair pain and sorrow on human folly. Instead of participating in what they termed a collective God delusion, humankind should quit shirking the task of righting the wrongs caused by evil behavior.

Human effort and moral struggle are the only ways to alleviate oppressive conditions and rebuild a kinder and more just collective existence. The task of social progress is ours and ours alone, since humans and not God possess the agency to make change happen.

Nor is this a fools’ mission; with imagination, our world can actually get better and more livable. McGee and Black humanism are clear that by dint of human effort and wisdom our world can and will improve. We’ll get there eventually if we are committed. This process itself is important. McGee wrote that inherent in existence is a “continuing search for truth” and so he called life an “adventurous quest.” Our creative imagination is a necessary travel accessory as we embark on the adventure of lifework that must always include addressing suffering. Henry David Thoreau, another Unitarian from a different time, geographical region and social location, put it this way: “The world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

In a way, the dystopian novel I was assigned years ago tells the truth. The world can feel grim, and hope can seem absent because the reality is that many people are suffering, nearby and around the planet. It can be tempting to succumb to the idea that all we could ever hope for is to contain the damage by keeping life from degenerating even more.

We might swiftly impose consequences for unacceptable behavior, but not restructure society so that our children are born into a society where they are safer. The “shared life in a shared world” demanded by religious Humanism will not be easily realized. We are going to have to work for it—and we are.

People all across the globe are striving for it, but the task is immense. It’s so huge that in the meantime, in order that we not forget what it is we’re struggling for, we must imagine it. Lewis McGee reminds us that the creative imagination is a powerful aid in promoting the good life. Our brains and sweat and a whole lot else is required. But without imagination, how will we know where we’re going?

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110172756/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_09/02.mp3

We live in a world that seems bereft of potential, a world that seems to have lost its imagination.

I read recently in a Connecticut newspaper that: “at least 1,967 students age 6 and under were suspended last school year—almost all of them Black or Hispanic. According to a report from the Connecticut Department of Education, the number of students suspended is actually higher, but privacy issues restrict the state agency from releasing information.” That’s preschoolers we’re talking about—the article also mentions a seven-year-old being arrested.

I could never have imagined this. I would never want to imagine this.

We are in an endless war on drugs and terrorism…and no one seems willing to imagine what the end of those wars might look like. We face unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide in the air, and yet we cannot imagine a world without oil and coal.

I wonder at times if we are so cynical that we have lost the capacity to imagine a different kind of world. I wonder at times if we are so deadened that we cannot lift our head from the cold, hard concrete to look at what is around us.

When I am feeling most cynical, most hopeless, most helpless, when I am feeling most desolate and alone, when I have no vision beyond my bed at night and only the thought of doing it all over again tomorrow, I can be overtaken by hopeless boredom, and the monotony of helplessness and lost creativity.

Where has my imagination gone?

When I was a child, I remember playing for hours in the fields around my house. Imagining we were swimming with sharks, exploring the ocean, climbing the highest mountains and tracking lions and elephants. The top of the slide at the play ground was a rocket to the moon. The sand was quicksand—don’t slip and fall in! Don’t fall in….

Pay attention. Watch where you step. Stay awake. Don’t fall in…. I guess a lot of us fell in, and fell asleep.

Where are the dreamers, the lovers, the poets, the artists—the ones who cause us to see the world with our head cocked to one side, or standing on our heads, our left finger in our ear? These are the ones who awaken us. They do not wake us with dire predictions of death and destruction; that only causes us to want to drink more Koolaid, to check out—Why strain ourselves? It’s all going to crash and burn; I might as well sleep through it.

No, the dreamers are the ones who see a light. They are the ones who see the world as a giant ball of possibility. The ones who shake us gently and whisper in our ear: Wake up! Look around; it’s so beautiful here. Hey!—another gentle nudge—Hey, wake up. Look at all this endless possibility. Look at this awe and wonder!

The dreamers invite us to wake up and participate in the world. They inspire us, by their own faith, to see the invisible and to wonder about the future.

We slowly open our eyes and allow them to focus, and we are invited into the world of endless fascination. The dreamers ask us to participate in its creation, to consider its intricacies and its diversity. We are invited to wonder at the options and imagine the possible future outcomes of the choices we make. The artists, the musicians, the writers, the dancers, the poets, the actors invite us to consider together the world that we are bringing into being.

Imagine for a moment that the binary world no longer exists—because it doesn’t. There are instead shades and tones in a spectrum of life—human identity spilling over and filling many cups at once. Each cup a moment of memory, a snippet of story, a wellspring of wisdom. Each cup a new opportunity to share ourselves with others, to inspire deeper understanding and to develop deeper wisdom about this thing we call life.

Imagine for a moment that our ancestors matter, that our history matters, that our culture matters, that all cultures matter. Each culture is an aspect of us as human beings, inspiring curiosity and respect for our complex nature, as well as the complexity of all life.

Imagine for a moment that all paths to the holy are sacred, and we hold each other’s paths in the palm of our hands. Would you hold your palms open to guide others on their way, or close your fists so you can get there first?

We can imagine we all belong, because we do. We can imagine that we are all loved because we are. And we invite others to belong with us because we know the pain of being unwelcome, of feeling unloved.

Imagine for a moment a world of peace—but with an element of chaos. (I don’t mind a world of chaos, so long as the chaos isn’t violent.) Perhaps like the chaos of an English garden: lush and colorful, a surprise in every corner, a seemingly random cacophony of color and texture. Imagine a world not without conflict, but one with ingenious and inspired ways of responding to the conflict. Ways that honor and value the dignity and inherent worth in all life.

Each choice we make shapes the world, creates new possibilities, brings love or pain. Each choice is made with intention or made in deep sleep. The artists, the dancers, the puppeteers ask us to wake up, to pay attention, to consider and to think. They remind us of our interdependence, the cause and effect of life lived.

Nothing we do in the world is done in a vacuum. Our actions ripple out beyond ourselves in ever-widening circles that intersect the ever-widening circles of life all around us.

The poets and dreamers have invited us to look behind the curtain, to see beyond the veil. Tu-shun, the First Patriarch of Huayan Buddhism, offered the image of the jeweled net of Indra: a net that stretches across the universe, with a jewel at each juncture of the net. Each jewel reflects all the other jewels in the cosmic matrix. Each jewel represents a living being, intrinsically and intimately connected to all the others. A change to any one jewel is reflected in all.

We are intrinsically and intimately connected to one another, reflected in each other’s eyes, the beauty and grace of the divine spark shining in each of us. We are buoyed by each other’s dreaming, imagining together a future we have set in motion. Our children and our children’s children will live in a world so different from our own we cannot even begin to conceive of it.

Their world is shaped by our actions today. Imagine one year from now, five years from now, one hundred years from now, seven generations from now. What kind of world will our actions leave them seven generations from now? If we are awake, we teach them to walk gently on the earth. If we are awake, we teach them to care for the smallest, and recognize the sacred and profound in all life. We teach not just with our words, but also by our actions, by our example.

If we are awake, we see that we must help awaken others, because our children and children’s children live in a world that is shaped by our actions today.

The painters, the sculptors, the dreamers, the songwriters shake us and call to us in our sleep—disturbing us, stirring us, rousing us to participate thoughtfully in the creation of the future. Calling us away from the love of power and towards the power of love.

The poets remind us that our intentions, thoughts and actions carve the world into being each day. But if we are in deep sleep, we may act as though we are awake but tumble through the world stumbling and tripping, hacking away at the life around us. We hear the news of war and death, of terrorism and fear. We hear of children sold as slaves, children forced to fight wars, children with little opportunity and even less hope.

And we sleep…unable to dream except in restless dreams of no, no more, of what if? and I’m only one…. And then we feel that tugging on our elbow, that persistent ache, that nudge at the edge of our consciousness calling us awake. The artist, the singer, the poet, the song, inviting us to try something new, to take a risk and open our eyes, to experience the world again from a new and different perspective. Inviting us to imagine together a world in which we can be both awake and be in deep joy. Singing a song of love and peace, inviting us to imagine a world beyond our wildest dreams, calling us to imagine what the world would be like if we lived our lives on the side of love.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110172734/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_09/03.mp3

When I was a boy, I had a vivid imagination. Some might have even called it overactive. It found expression in many ways and my parents, along with our neighbors, encouraged it, as long as it didn’t stray in the direction of fabrication.

Long before our family owned a car, my father began replacing our potholed asphalt driveway with concrete. He did it a patch at a time, cutting away the failed asphalt down to the gravel base and replacing it with concrete that he mixed by hand in a wheelbarrow. Each slab was irregularly shaped and their sizes varied. He tinted each batch of concrete a different color. After pouring each slab, Dad finished the surface with a corn broom for texture and then carefully edged it with a smooth trowel. Over the course of a summer or two, he made his way up each side of the driveway, leaving a remnant of asphalt in the center. The result looked a little like the shape of San Francisco Bay—without the Golden Gate channel. The asphalt was the bay while the concrete was the surrounding landscape, albeit a prairie terrain rather than a mountainous one.

It didn’t take long before I was using the edging as “roads” for my Dinky Toys and Matchbox cars, which fit perfectly along the roadways Dad had created. The textured surface on the rest of each slab made perfect fields, not unlike the wheat fields we passed on the real highways. I had a few hundred miniature vehicles—I was a bit spoiled!—so it didn’t take long for traffic jams to develop around Riverbend Bay as I laid out my toys. It’s a good thing we didn’t have a car to park on the driveway, although I did have a toy or two crushed by vehicles turning around at the end, seemingly unaware that this particular driveway was alive with imaginary people and places.

Stories unfolded in my imagination as I drove my vehicles up and down the roadways. There were wars and disasters, deliveries and country drives—every conceivable circumstance that a youngster’s imagination could dream up. I spent hundreds of hours in this landscape, my imagination running wild. I’m 60 now, but I still keep some of those toys I played with when I was six in a box downstairs, and whenever I take them out, my imagination still overflows.

I graduated eventually from toy cars to a paper route, but that didn’t interfere with my imagination. Delivering papers is boring work, so there was plenty of time to think as I pulled my wagon filled with newspapers from house to house. Along the way, I would talk to myself out loud, sing or whistle, and keep my mind occupied by letting it drift to other places. Some of my customers would just shake their heads as their daydreaming, tow-haired paperboy meandered along the street—usually late—delivering the day’s news. Other customers actively engaged my imagination, encouraging my storytelling and singing, playing along with me when they could.

The curious thing in all of this is that I grew into who I am through the unfettered growth of my imagination. Looking back, I realize that the values I treasure were shaped through my imaginary wanderings as a child and refined through my experiences as an adult. But whoever it is that I am today, that person can be glimpsed in a boy who played on the driveway and delivered papers. If I am impatient with the world as it is, it is only because I learned to dream of a better world as a child. And I’ve never ceased believing that the world of our dreams could become a reality if we pursued our dreams with imagination instead of caving in to so-called common sense and practicality.

In The Conduct of Life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by our sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of illusions, which he does not like to have disturbed.” I agree that we live most fully when we live by our imaginations, and I acknowledge that, as a child, I was surrounded by heaps of illusions. But if my imagination and illusions have been disturbed, it’s only because, as adults, we allow ourselves to become disenchanted and estranged from our imagination, which happens to be where our better angels reside.

Imagination, whatever our age and circumstances, is vital.

Which is why I am so excited to see a new leadership team come on board at the CLF. The board and the search committee were bold in imagining the CLF’s future—a future that responds to the urgent call of justice that we feel in the present moment. They were bold in imagining ministry as something that goes beyond those who are ordained, and chose a leadership team that includes two religious educators as well as an ordained minister. And I am so eager to see what the vivid imaginations of the CLF’s new lead ministry team—Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera and Michael Tino—will bring us as we imagine the future together.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110172715/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_09/04.mp3

I have to say that I feel like I am writing this to you from another country. Our Quest publication schedule is such that I am writing in March for publication in September. Which is generally not too much of an issue, except that March 2020 feels like a date that will go down in history, like the War of 1812, or 9/11. At the moment I am writing this, all of California, where I live, has been told to stay home to avoid spreading COVID19. I imagine the rest of the country will follow. I imagine that we are just at the beginning of enormous loss of life. I imagine hospitals in the US will soon be overwhelmed the way they already are in Italy. We are all, right now, pretty much in shock, but I imagine grief is on its way.

I imagine, but I don’t know. This is a message in a bottle, sent out to the future. I imagine (but don’t know) that by the time you read this in September, the worst of this crisis is past. I imagine being able to dance with my friends, to sing together, to go out to dinner or to a play. When you read this, you will either think “Of course!” or “How could she be so naïve!” I don’t know what September will bring, but I can imagine.

And perhaps that need to imagine is the real blessing in this time of crisis. Usually we go about our lives assuming that one day will be very much like the next. Some lousy days, some special treats, but generally all of a piece. Then a novel virus comes along and it’s all, well, novel. New. Unpredictable. We have some models based on the experiences of other countries, and the reasonable predictions don’t look good. But maybe we will have a medical breakthrough. Maybe people will be so careful for one another’s sake that we will stop this thing in its tracks. You know the answer, although I don’t.

But what I do know is that in this time of crisis an enormous amount of imagination is being required from us. Churches are re-imagining worship in a world of enforced social isolation. Musicians are re-imagining what a concert is as they continue to try to share their music with the world. Parents whose children are home from school are re-imagining education and family time and work and leisure and what a day might look like.

At this moment I am furious at the US government for what I would consider a criminal lack of preparation. But the rest of us have no choice but to be unprepared. We couldn’t imagine the place where we are now. But we’re working on it. I have to say that I am wildly impressed with the creativity and generosity of spirit that I am witnessing. So far this week I have done Zumba with a man who was live-streaming from some unknown country, attended a couple of virtual house concerts and watched live on Facebook as a friend drew a Venn diagram for her dogs to illustrate appropriate and inappropriate barking. The dogs watched studiously.

When everything is different, we have no choice but to live imaginatively, to create things that have never existed before. Radical disruption invites radical imagination. So now I am wondering just how radical our imagination might become. I wrote this poem today:

Imagine

Imagine with me for a moment—

don’t worry, I’m not saying it’s real.

Imagine, if you can, that there has been

not a calamity, but a great awakening.

Pretend, just for a moment,

that we all so loved our threatened earth

that we stopped going on cruises,

limited international flights,

worked on cherishing the places

where we already are.

In this pretty fantasy, everyone who possibly can

stops commuting. Spends the extra time

with their kids or pets or garden.

We have the revelation that everyone

needs health care, sick leave, steady work.

It occurs to us that health care
workers

are heroes. Also teachers.

Not to mention the artists of all kinds

who teach us resilience and joy.

Imagine, if you will,

that we turned to our neighbors

in mutual aid, trading eggs for milk,

checking in on those who are elderly

or alone. Imagine each of us

felt suddenly called to wonder

In this moment, what does the world

need from me? What are my gifts?

Yes, I know it’s just a fantasy.

The world could never change

so radically overnight.

But imagine.

Whatever life looks like in the world of September, I’m sure that we will still be imagining a better world.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110172652/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_09/05.mp3

In college, I majored in Women’s Studies. My sense that I lived in a world that objectified and devalued women was strong. And, like many college students, I was passionate about social justice issues. On Saturday mornings I stood outside an abortion clinic to counter-protest the anti-choice group that met there. I went to campaign rallies and protest marches. I went to hear justice speakers and panels on campus. I was involved.

In the spring of my last year in college there was a scandal that high-school-age boys at a California school were using a point system to keep track of and compare their sexual attacks, including attacks on very young girls. This group made national news, and the boys were treated like celebrities. They were arrested at one point, but were not ultimately prosecuted.

I was deeply affected by this news. After four years of college and activism, this felt like the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. The world seemed overwhelmingly terrible to me. These high school boys treated girls like they were nothing, and nobody seemed to really care. I cried and cried.

So when I graduated college, which is already a stressful time, I welcomed the chance to unplug from social activism. I was busy looking for a job and figuring out big questions like what do I want to do with my life, and with whom, and where should we live? I did look into meeting with the League of Women Voters, but their meetings were at a time I couldn’t attend, so…that was that.

To be honest, justice work had exhausted me, and I was glad to retreat from it. I remained a responsible voter, but when it came to other kinds of involvement and activism, I wasn’t involved. There are names for this withdrawal. Activism fatigue. Activist burnout. Compassion fatigue. I certainly reached a point where I felt recovered from the exhaustion and hopelessness I had felt, but the memory of it stayed with me. I didn’t want to go through all that again. I felt like I had learned that I shouldn’t do justice work.

It was just over ten years later that I joined a UU church and began once again to be involved with something bigger than just my own life and concerns. It was a big deal for me to join in protest again, but this time was different. In religious community, our gathering began with an interfaith prayer service. And then we marched in silence through Balboa Park, carrying signs to convey our commitment to peace and our opposition to war. It didn’t just feel good to take action, it felt nourishing. I didn’t feel depleted by our protest, I felt restored.

I continued to get involved, joining a group at the church called Allies for Racial Equity, committed to doing anti-racism work together. I wasn’t a justice leader as a congregant, but I was involved when I felt called to be involved.

So what was the difference? At the time I would have said that it felt different to do justice work in community, but then, I was in community in college. I was surrounded by people I knew, doing justice work with friends. Or I might have said that I was simply more emotionally mature, that there’s some wisdom and balance that comes with age. There might be some truth to that.

But as I look back, I see more clearly now that what made the difference for me in making justice work and activism more sustainable—and making me more resilient—is that I had a regular spiritual practice. I attended church every Sunday.

Regular spiritual practice has been shown, again and again, to have many benefits. These include increased clarity, focus and equanimity; improved mood; and stronger self-awareness.

Okay, but what is spiritual practice? The idea of spiritual practice gets thrown around a lot these days, and there’s a tendency to describe almost anything as spiritual practice. I’ve heard that washing dishes can be a spiritual practice.

There are many different criteria used to define spiritual practice, but here’s mine: an activity whose primary purpose is to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Spiritual practice is intentional, can be performed daily, and—this might be the most controversial part—is nonproductive.

Let me say those again: The primary purpose is to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Spiritual practice is intentional, can be performed daily, and is nonproductive.

By nonproductive, I mean there’s no reason to do it except that it’s a spiritual practice. Your practice may produce something—a piece of art, for example—but you create the art because doing so quiets the mind and brings you into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence.

This is why something you enjoy doing—like creating art—so often stops being fun when you decide to do it for money. Once it becomes a productive task, it loses some of the benefits that spiritual practices bring. Spiritual practices are things like prayer, meditation, worship, journaling, chanting or singing, playing music, sitting in silence, dancing, walking a labyrinth.

For me, things like washing dishes are not spiritual practices, because their primary purpose is not to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Their primary purpose is practical matters like clean dishes.

I think we tell ourselves that washing dishes is a spiritual practice because we want to check off the box that we have a spiritual practice, but we don’t have much time, and we have to get the dishes washed, and if we could just make that one thing, wouldn’t that be convenient?

But spiritual practice isn’t really meant to be convenient. It’s not even necessarily meant to feel good. Sometimes it does, but ask anyone who meditates regularly. They’ll tell you: a lot of meditation is sitting, convinced that you’re doing it wrong, or not good enough, and how much longer do I have to sit here?

It is the daily aspect of spiritual practice that is ultimately so powerful and transformative. Now, you’ll recall that I said attending worship every Sunday was my spiritual practice, and I do count worship as a spiritual practice. I don’t attend worship every day because that’s not an option, but the hourly gathering, attended weekly, can also have a transformative impact on people’s lives. I know that from my own experience, and I know that because other people have told me it’s their experience.

My spiritual practice was to attend church every Sunday. Not many Sundays. Not almost every Sunday. Every Sunday. We did not wake up on Sunday to see how we felt and then decide whether or not to go. We just went. It was a discipline. That’s what made it a spiritual practice.

Church attendance is still my spiritual practice, but I’m also working on a daily prayer practice. And I want to encourage you to consider developing a regular spiritual practice if you don’t have one already.

Here’s why—because the news is terrible. Every day that you open the newspaper or turn on the news or look at your phone or computer is a struggle to stay hopeful. Because we’re so tired and busy and everything is different and it’s a challenge to go to the grocery store and it’s easy to feel completely knocked over by small things.

It’s called “spiritual practice” because what we’re doing is practicing. We’re practicing what it is to try and be calm and quiet and centered because so much of the time, we aren’t calm and quiet and centered. We practice and we feel awkward and like we’re not doing it right, but if you keep at it, like building a muscle, you’ll find that you do not feel so knocked down by what life throws at you.

Your practice doesn’t have to be long, just a few minutes a day. Whatever practice you might like to develop, start small and build up. The discipline of daily practice is more important than the length of what you’re doing. Five minutes of meditation each day is better than an hour of meditation once in a while.

We’re carrying a lot these days. Which is why spiritual practice is so important. Please don’t wait until the day you feel you cannot get out of bed. Find a daily practice to work on. Do what you can to take good care of yourself. Do the dishes, but also take care to refresh your heart and soul so that you have the strength to move forward in this difficult world.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152929/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/01.mp3

In college, I majored in Women’s Studies. My sense that I lived in a world that objectified and devalued women was strong. And, like many college students, I was passionate about social justice issues. On Saturday mornings I stood outside an abortion clinic to counter-protest the anti-choice group that met there. I went to campaign rallies and protest marches. I went to hear justice speakers and panels on campus. I was involved.

In the spring of my last year in college there was a scandal that high-school-age boys at a California school were using a point system to keep track of and compare their sexual attacks, including attacks on very young girls. This group made national news, and the boys were treated like celebrities. They were arrested at one point, but were not ultimately prosecuted.

I was deeply affected by this news. After four years of college and activism, this felt like the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. The world seemed overwhelmingly terrible to me. These high school boys treated girls like they were nothing, and nobody seemed to really care. I cried and cried.

So when I graduated college, which is already a stressful time, I welcomed the chance to unplug from social activism. I was busy looking for a job and figuring out big questions like what do I want to do with my life, and with whom, and where should we live? I did look into meeting with the League of Women Voters, but their meetings were at a time I couldn’t attend, so…that was that.

To be honest, justice work had exhausted me, and I was glad to retreat from it. I remained a responsible voter, but when it came to other kinds of involvement and activism, I wasn’t involved. There are names for this withdrawal. Activism fatigue. Activist burnout. Compassion fatigue. I certainly reached a point where I felt recovered from the exhaustion and hopelessness I had felt, but the memory of it stayed with me. I didn’t want to go through all that again. I felt like I had learned that I shouldn’t do justice work.

It was just over ten years later that I joined a UU church and began once again to be involved with something bigger than just my own life and concerns. It was a big deal for me to join in protest again, but this time was different. In religious community, our gathering began with an interfaith prayer service. And then we marched in silence through Balboa Park, carrying signs to convey our commitment to peace and our opposition to war. It didn’t just feel good to take action, it felt nourishing. I didn’t feel depleted by our protest, I felt restored.

I continued to get involved, joining a group at the church called Allies for Racial Equity, committed to doing anti-racism work together. I wasn’t a justice leader as a congregant, but I was involved when I felt called to be involved.

So what was the difference? At the time I would have said that it felt different to do justice work in community, but then, I was in community in college. I was surrounded by people I knew, doing justice work with friends. Or I might have said that I was simply more emotionally mature, that there’s some wisdom and balance that comes with age. There might be some truth to that.

But as I look back, I see more clearly now that what made the difference for me in making justice work and activism more sustainable—and making me more resilient—is that I had a regular spiritual practice. I attended church every Sunday.

Regular spiritual practice has been shown, again and again, to have many benefits. These include increased clarity, focus and equanimity; improved mood; and stronger self-awareness.

Okay, but what is spiritual practice? The idea of spiritual practice gets thrown around a lot these days, and there’s a tendency to describe almost anything as spiritual practice. I’ve heard that washing dishes can be a spiritual practice.

There are many different criteria used to define spiritual practice, but here’s mine: an activity whose primary purpose is to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Spiritual practice is intentional, can be performed daily, and—this might be the most controversial part—is nonproductive.

Let me say those again: The primary purpose is to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Spiritual practice is intentional, can be performed daily, and is nonproductive.

By nonproductive, I mean there’s no reason to do it except that it’s a spiritual practice. Your practice may produce something—a piece of art, for example—but you create the art because doing so quiets the mind and brings you into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence.

This is why something you enjoy doing—like creating art—so often stops being fun when you decide to do it for money. Once it becomes a productive task, it loses some of the benefits that spiritual practices bring. Spiritual practices are things like prayer, meditation, worship, journaling, chanting or singing, playing music, sitting in silence, dancing, walking a labyrinth.

For me, things like washing dishes are not spiritual practices, because their primary purpose is not to quiet the mind and bring us into deeper connection with the interdependent web of all existence. Their primary purpose is practical matters like clean dishes.

I think we tell ourselves that washing dishes is a spiritual practice because we want to check off the box that we have a spiritual practice, but we don’t have much time, and we have to get the dishes washed, and if we could just make that one thing, wouldn’t that be convenient?

But spiritual practice isn’t really meant to be convenient. It’s not even necessarily meant to feel good. Sometimes it does, but ask anyone who meditates regularly. They’ll tell you: a lot of meditation is sitting, convinced that you’re doing it wrong, or not good enough, and how much longer do I have to sit here?

It is the daily aspect of spiritual practice that is ultimately so powerful and transformative. Now, you’ll recall that I said attending worship every Sunday was my spiritual practice, and I do count worship as a spiritual practice. I don’t attend worship every day because that’s not an option, but the hourly gathering, attended weekly, can also have a transformative impact on people’s lives. I know that from my own experience, and I know that because other people have told me it’s their experience.

My spiritual practice was to attend church every Sunday. Not many Sundays. Not almost every Sunday. Every Sunday. We did not wake up on Sunday to see how we felt and then decide whether or not to go. We just went. It was a discipline. That’s what made it a spiritual practice.

Church attendance is still my spiritual practice, but I’m also working on a daily prayer practice. And I want to encourage you to consider developing a regular spiritual practice if you don’t have one already.

Here’s why—because the news is terrible. Every day that you open the newspaper or turn on the news or look at your phone or computer is a struggle to stay hopeful. Because we’re so tired and busy and everything is different and it’s a challenge to go to the grocery store and it’s easy to feel completely knocked over by small things.

It’s called “spiritual practice” because what we’re doing is practicing. We’re practicing what it is to try and be calm and quiet and centered because so much of the time, we aren’t calm and quiet and centered. We practice and we feel awkward and like we’re not doing it right, but if you keep at it, like building a muscle, you’ll find that you do not feel so knocked down by what life throws at you.

Your practice doesn’t have to be long, just a few minutes a day. Whatever practice you might like to develop, start small and build up. The discipline of daily practice is more important than the length of what you’re doing. Five minutes of meditation each day is better than an hour of meditation once in a while.

We’re carrying a lot these days. Which is why spiritual practice is so important. Please don’t wait until the day you feel you cannot get out of bed. Find a daily practice to work on. Do what you can to take good care of yourself. Do the dishes, but also take care to refresh your heart and soul so that you have the strength to move forward in this difficult world.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152857/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/01.mp3

I grew up in a music school—that is to say, our home was filled most afternoons and evenings with music teachers and students playing scales and études. A couple of times a year our living room was transformed into a recital hall for those students to show off what they had learned, and to practice performing.

Over those 16 years I studied music at the Hegvik School of Music, I would occasionally ask my mom if I could quit. We argued the various merits of learning to play an instrument, but ultimately she believed there were benefits to studying music beyond the music itself. One of those was being able to stand up in front of people confidently, and the other was learning how to practice.

As a child growing up in a house full of music students, I heard examples every day of the most common misunderstandings beginners have about practicing (one I often made myself). Folks think “If I want to learn to play this piece fast, I should practice it fast.” What we don’t realize at first is that what we are actually doing by practicing this way is training our fingers to stumble and trip. However, if you slow it down until every note is just the way you want it, your body and mind are creating neural pathways to play it just the way you want it. Another mistake beginners make is that they want to play the piece the whole way through over and over, mistakes and all. Again, by doing that we are training those mistakes into the brain and the muscles. At some point you just have to stop and do the thing in little bits and pieces until body and mind really understand. Then, and only then, do you put it back together in bigger and bigger pieces until is second nature.

Gradually it dawned on me that if you practice a piece without beauty, without tone, without feeling, that is how you perform it. If we practice joylessly, the music we make will be joyless. If you hate practicing, it’s time to make a change. It’s so much easier to sit down and practice a piece you love than one that doesn’t speak to you. Sometimes it’s more fun to collaborate with friends when our solo practice has lost its vitality. Sometimes you just have to practice goofing around, improvising spontaneously, making silly sounds. If we want joy and creativity in our music, we must practice bringing joy and creativity into our music. This is the opposite of what so many young musicians learn—they somehow learn that playing music should be difficult, joyless work, and it’s no wonder they quit.

Perhaps the most important lesson is not to get attached to your mistakes. I would so often hear moans and groans from the lesson rooms, and have myself many times slammed my fingers down on the keys of the piano in frustration. Practice is specifically time to make mistakes. We must learn compassion for ourselves, and patience while we practice; we need a safe space to make ugly sounds, to play things imperfectly as we begin to smooth and polish and shape.

Knowing how to practice is useful in unexpected parts of our lives. I remember when we got a brand new video game called “Spyro,” and all my friends took a turn playing it. Most of my friends, when it was their turn at the controller, raced forward toward their goal until they plunged accidentally off a cliff and had to start over with a new life. When my friend Akire, who had studied classical cello for many years, took the controller, she pulled over to a meaningless clearing and started running in circles and making little jumps into the air. “What are you doing!” we all cried impatiently “there’s nothing over there!” “I’m practicing” she replied. Her strategy was to learn to jump and glide in a safe area where death would not be the consequence of messing up.

In fact, the skills you learn practicing apply to just about every part of your life. This is never clearer than watching a toddler practice walking, or obsessively opening and closing doors, or putting things into a box and then dumping them out and starting it over. It takes hours of repetition to develop skills that now seem second nature to us—walking, talking, closing and opening doors, putting keys in your pocket and taking them out again later when you need them. This is why we do fire drills—so that in the moment of an actual emergency the procedure is second nature. I went to a master class many years ago with the great singer Leontine Price. When a student asked if she thought about technique while she performed, she told the packed house that the time for thinking about technique is in the practice room. When you perform you just think about the music you are making and the character you’re playing.

Spiritual practice is no different in this respect than any other kind of practice. Some days it will not seem like much is happening, but things we repeat day after day have a way of sinking down deep into our muscles and spirits. There are many stories among healers and ministers of visiting an elder who has lost much or all of her memory. She doesn’t recognize family or friends, but when the old hymns of her childhood are sung, or the rosary beads placed in her hands, something old and deep wakes up. Her fingers start to move on the rosary, she nods or even sings along with the hymns. What we practice most we know in a deep way; our bodies remember even when our minds are distracted or    diminished.

There was a funny headline in the satirical paper The Onion the other day: “Man Who Downloaded $2.99 Meditation App Prepares to Enter Lotus Plane of Eternal Serenity.” This could have described me at my first meditation class. I, like many other new meditators, was constantly frustrated by my early attempts. I wanted to power through to enlightenment the same way I had, as a beginning flute student, wanted to power through to the end of the piece, without taking time in the difficult spots so they could become smooth and clear. I chose forms of meditation that were very challenging for me right off, rather than choosing forms that were enjoyable, so I dreaded my spiritual practice rather than looking forward to it. I was so miserable in my meditation practice at one point that I took a class called “Removing Obstacles to Meditation,” which was full of other people who were also having trouble meditating. The best advice the teacher gave in that class was “encourage yourself” —it turns out beating yourself up for your perceived failings in your spiritual practice is not actually helpful. It’s important to be compassionate with yourself as you practice.

Then I discovered yoga, which I looked forward to and dreamed about. No matter how much I practiced I wanted more. I took a break from meditation that lasted almost a decade. I realized that meditation was just one of many spiritual practices. Sure, the Buddha realized enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi Tree, but meditation is not temperamentally or developmentally appropriate for everyone.

Perhaps it was because of all those years practicing music that I took so readily to practicing yoga. I was reminded of the power of repetition. As I entered Down Dog pose the other day, I considered that if I have been practicing yoga for about 12 years, at least three times a week, and took Down Dog about ten times each class, I had been in the pose about 20,000 times. When you do something 20,000 times, not only do you learn it more deeply, it changes you. Not everyone is going to be able to twist themselves into all of those yoga pretzels you see in photos, but everyone will change and grow with practice.

One yoga teacher called this “slow surgery,” because the capacity it has to change muscles and joints and connective tissue is so powerful. This is why form and alignment are so important in yoga. Yes, if you practice carefully you can become more flexible and strong. But if you don’t practice mindfully you can easily blow out a shoulder or acquire an array of injuries.

Think of all the things you have done 20,000 times so far in this life. That probably includes brushing your teeth, which is why the humans alive today have better teeth than any humans who have ever lived before. It also probably includes sitting at a computer, which is why we have problems like carpal tunnel syndrome that millennia of humans have never had in this magnitude before.

Even if you don’t practice ukulele, or meditation, or yoga, you are practicing something. You already have a spiritual practice right now, whether you think of it that way or not. The question is—what are you practicing? Some people might not realize they have a spiritual practice, that they have shown kindness, or shared a warm smile 20,000 times. It now comes so easily to them they don’t even have to consciously choose to be kind; it arises naturally out of habit. Some folks notice the natural world around them on their daily run or their walk to work, or watch the slow growth of a tree through the kitchen window while they sip their coffee. They know just by looking at the fresh, green shoots whether spring is early, or what tree is fighting off parasites. One spring when birds and butterflies come back in reduced numbers, they notice the change and wonder what is wrong—they have become that in tune with their eco-system through years of practice.

Practice is the patient expression of our intentions. In the same way that devout practitioners in Hinduism, Buddhism

or Catholicism use a rosary to help them stay connected as they repeat prayers to the divine, so can our repetitions of scales, Downward Dogs or compassionate acts help us stay connected to ourselves and to our intentions to grow and bloom. Depending on our intention, the action itself becomes a prayer. In fact, many UUs understand their work helping others, or working for social justice, as their spiritual practice, as their prayer.

Every life is filled with repetition. All those thousands of repetitions of simple things when taken all together have power. Like drops of water that wear away a stone, we are shaping ourselves every moment with the simple repetition of our daily lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. Let us choose carefully what we practice, because that is what we are becoming.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152836/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/02.mp3

I grew up in a music school—that is to say, our home was filled most afternoons and evenings with music teachers and students playing scales and études. A couple of times a year our living room was transformed into a recital hall for those students to show off what they had learned, and to practice performing.

Over those 16 years I studied music at the Hegvik School of Music, I would occasionally ask my mom if I could quit. We argued the various merits of learning to play an instrument, but ultimately she believed there were benefits to studying music beyond the music itself. One of those was being able to stand up in front of people confidently, and the other was learning how to practice.

As a child growing up in a house full of music students, I heard examples every day of the most common misunderstandings beginners have about practicing (one I often made myself). Folks think “If I want to learn to play this piece fast, I should practice it fast.” What we don’t realize at first is that what we are actually doing by practicing this way is training our fingers to stumble and trip. However, if you slow it down until every note is just the way you want it, your body and mind are creating neural pathways to play it just the way you want it. Another mistake beginners make is that they want to play the piece the whole way through over and over, mistakes and all. Again, by doing that we are training those mistakes into the brain and the muscles. At some point you just have to stop and do the thing in little bits and pieces until body and mind really understand. Then, and only then, do you put it back together in bigger and bigger pieces until is second nature.

Gradually it dawned on me that if you practice a piece without beauty, without tone, without feeling, that is how you perform it. If we practice joylessly, the music we make will be joyless. If you hate practicing, it’s time to make a change. It’s so much easier to sit down and practice a piece you love than one that doesn’t speak to you. Sometimes it’s more fun to collaborate with friends when our solo practice has lost its vitality. Sometimes you just have to practice goofing around, improvising spontaneously, making silly sounds. If we want joy and creativity in our music, we must practice bringing joy and creativity into our music. This is the opposite of what so many young musicians learn—they somehow learn that playing music should be difficult, joyless work, and it’s no wonder they quit.

Perhaps the most important lesson is not to get attached to your mistakes. I would so often hear moans and groans from the lesson rooms, and have myself many times slammed my fingers down on the keys of the piano in frustration. Practice is specifically time to make mistakes. We must learn compassion for ourselves, and patience while we practice; we need a safe space to make ugly sounds, to play things imperfectly as we begin to smooth and polish and shape.

Knowing how to practice is useful in unexpected parts of our lives. I remember when we got a brand new video game called “Spyro,” and all my friends took a turn playing it. Most of my friends, when it was their turn at the controller, raced forward toward their goal until they plunged accidentally off a cliff and had to start over with a new life. When my friend Akire, who had studied classical cello for many years, took the controller, she pulled over to a meaningless clearing and started running in circles and making little jumps into the air. “What are you doing!” we all cried impatiently “there’s nothing over there!” “I’m practicing” she replied. Her strategy was to learn to jump and glide in a safe area where death would not be the consequence of messing up.

In fact, the skills you learn practicing apply to just about every part of your life. This is never clearer than watching a toddler practice walking, or obsessively opening and closing doors, or putting things into a box and then dumping them out and starting it over. It takes hours of repetition to develop skills that now seem second nature to us—walking, talking, closing and opening doors, putting keys in your pocket and taking them out again later when you need them. This is why we do fire drills—so that in the moment of an actual emergency the procedure is second nature. I went to a master class many years ago with the great singer Leontine Price. When a student asked if she thought about technique while she performed, she told the packed house that the time for thinking about technique is in the practice room. When you perform you just think about the music you are making and the character you’re playing.

Spiritual practice is no different in this respect than any other kind of practice. Some days it will not seem like much is happening, but things we repeat day after day have a way of sinking down deep into our muscles and spirits. There are many stories among healers and ministers of visiting an elder who has lost much or all of her memory. She doesn’t recognize family or friends, but when the old hymns of her childhood are sung, or the rosary beads placed in her hands, something old and deep wakes up. Her fingers start to move on the rosary, she nods or even sings along with the hymns. What we practice most we know in a deep way; our bodies remember even when our minds are distracted or    diminished.

There was a funny headline in the satirical paper The Onion the other day: “Man Who Downloaded $2.99 Meditation App Prepares to Enter Lotus Plane of Eternal Serenity.” This could have described me at my first meditation class. I, like many other new meditators, was constantly frustrated by my early attempts. I wanted to power through to enlightenment the same way I had, as a beginning flute student, wanted to power through to the end of the piece, without taking time in the difficult spots so they could become smooth and clear. I chose forms of meditation that were very challenging for me right off, rather than choosing forms that were enjoyable, so I dreaded my spiritual practice rather than looking forward to it. I was so miserable in my meditation practice at one point that I took a class called “Removing Obstacles to Meditation,” which was full of other people who were also having trouble meditating. The best advice the teacher gave in that class was “encourage yourself” —it turns out beating yourself up for your perceived failings in your spiritual practice is not actually helpful. It’s important to be compassionate with yourself as you practice.

Then I discovered yoga, which I looked forward to and dreamed about. No matter how much I practiced I wanted more. I took a break from meditation that lasted almost a decade. I realized that meditation was just one of many spiritual practices. Sure, the Buddha realized enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi Tree, but meditation is not temperamentally or developmentally appropriate for everyone.

Perhaps it was because of all those years practicing music that I took so readily to practicing yoga. I was reminded of the power of repetition. As I entered Down Dog pose the other day, I considered that if I have been practicing yoga for about 12 years, at least three times a week, and took Down Dog about ten times each class, I had been in the pose about 20,000 times. When you do something 20,000 times, not only do you learn it more deeply, it changes you. Not everyone is going to be able to twist themselves into all of those yoga pretzels you see in photos, but everyone will change and grow with practice.

One yoga teacher called this “slow surgery,” because the capacity it has to change muscles and joints and connective tissue is so powerful. This is why form and alignment are so important in yoga. Yes, if you practice carefully you can become more flexible and strong. But if you don’t practice mindfully you can easily blow out a shoulder or acquire an array of injuries.

Think of all the things you have done 20,000 times so far in this life. That probably includes brushing your teeth, which is why the humans alive today have better teeth than any humans who have ever lived before. It also probably includes sitting at a computer, which is why we have problems like carpal tunnel syndrome that millennia of humans have never had in this magnitude before.

Even if you don’t practice ukulele, or meditation, or yoga, you are practicing something. You already have a spiritual practice right now, whether you think of it that way or not. The question is—what are you practicing? Some people might not realize they have a spiritual practice, that they have shown kindness, or shared a warm smile 20,000 times. It now comes so easily to them they don’t even have to consciously choose to be kind; it arises naturally out of habit. Some folks notice the natural world around them on their daily run or their walk to work, or watch the slow growth of a tree through the kitchen window while they sip their coffee. They know just by looking at the fresh, green shoots whether spring is early, or what tree is fighting off parasites. One spring when birds and butterflies come back in reduced numbers, they notice the change and wonder what is wrong—they have become that in tune with their eco-system through years of practice.

Practice is the patient expression of our intentions. In the same way that devout practitioners in Hinduism, Buddhism

or Catholicism use a rosary to help them stay connected as they repeat prayers to the divine, so can our repetitions of scales, Downward Dogs or compassionate acts help us stay connected to ourselves and to our intentions to grow and bloom. Depending on our intention, the action itself becomes a prayer. In fact, many UUs understand their work helping others, or working for social justice, as their spiritual practice, as their prayer.

Every life is filled with repetition. All those thousands of repetitions of simple things when taken all together have power. Like drops of water that wear away a stone, we are shaping ourselves every moment with the simple repetition of our daily lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. Let us choose carefully what we practice, because that is what we are becoming.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152814/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/02.mp3

A spiritual practice is something which you repeat regularly that grounds you in depth and connection. For the CLF, supporting us by making a regularly scheduled donation not only builds the depth of our connection, it gives us a vital stability and capacity to plan for the future. You can sustain the CLF by scheduling a monthly or quarterly donation online, or you can call the CLF office at 617-948-6150.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152752/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/03.mp3

A spiritual practice is something which you repeat regularly that grounds you in depth and connection. For the CLF, supporting us by making a regularly scheduled donation not only builds the depth of our connection, it gives us a vital stability and capacity to plan for the future. You can sustain the CLF by scheduling a monthly or quarterly donation online, or you can call the CLF office at 617-948-6150.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152731/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/03.mp3

It was sometime in the 1980s. We were at a UU Religious Educators retreat northeast of Minneapolis and I remember my roommate saying from the other twin bed in our room, “Ginger, I think I should let you know I am a lesbian.” My response was, “Oh, I just thought you were a graduate student.”

Well, that graduate student, the Meg Riley we all know today, has become a student of American 20^th & 21^st century culture beyond all expectations, and a religious educator extraordinaire.

At that early RE retreat Meg Riley was creating programs to help young people feel like they belonged and that they had worth. Her entire ministry has focused on that—helping people of all ages and from all circumstances of life feel like they belong and have worth.

I remember when she invited me to lead a workshop at GA on supporting youth advisors. It was my first GA and she thought I had something to offer. Today she doesn’t so much create programs as she embodies them, as she nurtures others in their innovative creativity. She pulls people into the midst of the fray and holds them up and has their back. The song “Lean on Me” comes to mind.

When she became the Director of the UUA Youth Office she identified young leaders, took a chance on them and supported their development. Many of them shine today in our congregations and in our movement. And from her role at the Washington Office, look what “Standing on the Side of Love/Side with Love” did for the voice and identity of Unitarian Universalism—of understanding who we are and the impact we can create in the world.

As an outstanding student of our culture, Meg has challenged us and sounded the alarm again and again. She was an early prophet studying and warning about the dangers of the radical religious right and alerting us to the rise of white supremacy. She was early at calling out our role in the white supremacy culture. With love and compassion, she has consistently been willing to make us uncomfortable and to call us to task when we seemed oblivious or wanting to ignore hurt, pain, injustice and evil. Meg is present in the world as it is.

This enables her to listen, comfort and share the pain and longing with many of us when we lose heart. Many have called her a “ministers’ minister.” I think it is fair to say hundreds of disillusioned ministers, religious educators, administrators, youth and congregants have called and emailed Meg to be heard and to be understood. Another song, “You’ve Got a Friend,” comes to mind.

All of the above is why Meg has been such an outstanding leader of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. It is Meg’s being and wisdom that has enabled the growth of our prison ministry, of our support for our military chaplains, of creating a home for innovative learning fellows and a sanctuary for those longing for Unitarian Universalism but not yet able to find it in their immediate environment.

It has been a gift to have Meg Riley as the senior minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. We will do all in our power to continue the strength, purpose and heart that Meg has given us. She has been our prophet, our teacher, our minister, and yes, our friend. Thank you, Meg. And may the world continue to be blessed by your wisdom, your strength, your empathy and your love.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152709/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/04.mp3

During the ten years of Meg Riley’s leadership as senior minister for the Church of the Larger Fellowship, we have changed and grown in a wide variety of ways. Embracing the motto “Always in Beta!,” Meg’s innovative leadership has taken us in many exciting directions to serve the needs of Unitarian Universalists around the globe:

• The Quest for Meaning website, with significant resources available online;
• Weekly online worship services;
• Live online vigils in response to national crises;
• The VUU, a weekly online justice-centered talk show;
• Development of the CLF Learning Fellows program, which helps seminarians and others prepare for innovative ministry;
• Covenant Groups that meet in real time through video conference technology;
• Faith Rocket—a program that shares CLF worship and religious education materials in a format designed to support small congregations;
• Blogging;
• CLF Facebook groups, including Coffee Hour;
• Immediate pastoral care in response to world-wide crises;
• Growth of the Prison Ministry program from 400 in 2010 to over 1,100 in 2020;
• In-person contact with congregations throughout the US;
• Growth of the CLF staff to include a director of technology and a communications coordinator

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152649/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/05.mp3

During the ten years of Meg Riley’s leadership as senior minister for the Church of the Larger Fellowship, we have changed and grown in a wide variety of ways. Embracing the motto “Always in Beta!,” Meg’s innovative leadership has taken us in many exciting directions to serve the needs of Unitarian Universalists around the globe:

• The Quest for Meaning website, with significant resources available online;
• Weekly online worship services;
• Live online vigils in response to national crises;
• The VUU, a weekly online justice-centered talk show;
• Development of the CLF Learning Fellows program, which helps seminarians and others prepare for innovative ministry;
• Covenant Groups that meet in real time through video conference technology;
• Faith Rocket—a program that shares CLF worship and religious education materials in a format designed to support small congregations;
• Blogging;
• CLF Facebook groups, including Coffee Hour;
• Immediate pastoral care in response to world-wide crises;
• Growth of the Prison Ministry program from 400 in 2010 to over 1,100 in 2020;
• In-person contact with congregations throughout the US;
• Growth of the CLF staff to include a director of technology and a communications coordinator

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110152627/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_07/05.mp3

The Church of the Larger Fellowship has concluded its nationwide search for new senior leadership and is thrilled to share the news with all of you before General Assembly!

Tune in here for the live announcement and to celebrate this news on Tuesday, June 23 at 5pm PT/8pm ET.

The Commission on Institutional Change sits down for their penultimate episode in the spring series reviewing the findings of their report, the results of a multi-year effort to examine what is required to change UU institutions to dismantle white supremacist structures upholding them.

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110145218/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu302.mp3

The fundamental belief in the value of the individual has long held a central place in liberal religion, and finds a modern expression in our faith’s first principle, an affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Such a conviction comes with specific meaning, serving to counter another ancient religious principle, that of original sin.

Original sin teaches us that each of us is born in a state of sinfulness, fallen and unclean. Some interpret this as the simple imperfection of humanity, while others decry an inherent wickedness in us all. As both Unitarian and Universalism were forming in America, the utter iniquity of humanity was preached widely. Calvinist Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” serves as a prime example. He wrote:

The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire…looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire….

In many ways, Unitarianism and Universalism gained a strong foothold in American society because of their response to this horrible theology.  William Ellery Channing, considered the father of Unitarianism, delivered a powerful sermon entitled “Likeness to God” in which Channing advised:

Let the minister… hold fast… [to] a faith in the greatness of the human soul…. Let him strive to awaken in [people] a consciousness of the heavenly treasure within them.

Affirming the inherent worth of each and every person serves as our great response to one of the most damaging theologies ever spoken. As Unitarian Universalists and religious liberals, it is something we can be proud of and continue to speak loudly when the times call for it, as they sadly so often do.

Yet, sometimes, I wonder if we misunderstand the fullness of our first principle. In a very success-driven society, I think we sometimes see it as affirming not so much our unconditional worthiness as a complete goodness in ourselves, allowing us to ignore the less savory aspects of our character. Affirming our fundamental goodness has its value, but such an emphasis can also lead us to miss the most essential implication of our inherent worth—that we need not be good to be loved.

To know this truth is to be healed. It is to embrace wholeness over perfection, to honor ourselves not as we might be, but rather as we are. I think interpreting our inherent worth as our inherent goodness can lead us to be very fearful about owning up to our own mistakes, failures, and even at times, cruelty. Without a deep acknowledgement of our capacity for, to use the Christian term, sin, we lack a useful theology of accountability, forgiveness, and even love. And yes, despite our inherent worth, despite our basic goodness, we—each and every one of us—do sin. The power of our first principle is not that we do not sin, but that even in our utter failings, even in our most horrible of mistakes, we are worthy of love.

As a young man of 24, just entering seminary, I suffered deeply from an inability to embrace my failings. I resisted acknowledging all the wounds and weaknesses in myself, feeling the incredible need to be good, to be right, to be perfect in order to be loved. I went through a ministerial career assessment, a required part of the process of becoming a minister, and was very nervous. I was afraid to give the wrong answers on the psychological tests. The therapist asked me what my flaws were and I didn’t have the self awareness to answer. It was a painful three days that ended with the group facilitator telling me the therapist had placed a nickel bet with him that I wouldn’t be able to handle ministry. As hard as it was, the experience, for me, began a very painful, yet ultimately liberating, path of growing acceptance of myself not as I want to be, but as I am, even when I fail, even when I am not liked.

Life seems to test these insights. And subsequently I found myself challenged more deeply than ever before. While serving my last church in Princeton, New Jersey, I fell in love and married a woman from Bloomington, Indiana. She had two children and the three of them moved out to Princeton to live with me. Over the course of our time, I found myself consistently torn between the needs of my congregation and the needs of my family. My wife desperately wanted to return to Bloomington, but I felt a deep calling to continue to serve the Princeton congregation. My marriage suffered. My work suffered. I struggled mightily and fiercely and arrogantly to hold on to both, yet never had enough of me to do either well. After three years of struggling, at last I gave in and we moved to Bloomington to raise our family near my wife’s parents.

I learned so much about being incomplete from that experience. I was not enough. From the beginning I pressed on, hurting both my family and the church. I so badly wanted to have both, and refused to see the inevitable—that the situation was unworkable. I also had to give up something very precious to me, something that made me feel like I was a good person—not only my work as a minister but also my dream of one day being an important minister. These were humbling awakenings.

Letting go of parish ministry was perhaps the most painful experience of my life. But I surrendered to a humbler life—and I found a much deeper love inside, both for myself and for others.

In full disclosure, after four years in Bloomington, my wife and I sadly decided to divorce. Self-acceptance remains an essential aspect of this transition for me. I never thought I’d be someone whose marriage would end in divorce. Yet here I am—incomplete, imperfect… and loved.

There are a variety of things I find difficult with conservative Christianity, yet I believe the Christian story, perhaps better than any religious tradition, addresses our human capacity for failure. As the most obvious example, Jesus failed. Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah. He was supposed to take on the Romans and usher in a new kingdom of peace for the Jewish people. But instead, he died—mission not accomplished. All kinds of beliefs have evolved to turn Jesus’ death into a victory, most notably the belief that he died for our sins. But I find Jesus so much more powerful as a failure, as the man who lived and loved, struggled and hurt, succeeded and failed. Jesus, as a metaphor for God, knows us in his humanness, knows us in his weakness, knows us in his failure.

While in seminary, I had a professor, Rosemary Chinicci, who was also a Catholic nun. She told me something fascinating—she believed the resurrection came too soon, that people did not have enough time to sit in the loss, to be present to the failure. I think that’s a powerful insight.

When approaching the pain that comes with failure, we tend to find ways to pass over the experience quickly, to not allow ourselves to be present and actually feel what we’re feeling. We get busy. We criticize ourselves. We criticize others. We dive into one self-improvement project or another. We try to see “the positive side.”

When we fail, any response we make that does not invite in our simple experience of failure removes us from the wholeness of who we are. In so doing, we reject that part of ourselves that does not know success, alienating ourselves from a very real part of our humanity, damaging ourselves by withholding the love that we all deserve.

It is certainly not in our interest to use failures as a means to belittle our worth. Yet, I think it is also not in our immediate interest to take our failures and turn them into something positive—the “lemons to lemonade” approach. To attempt too soon to turn our failures into something “good” can be another way of avoiding the pain of failure, thus avoiding the healing that comes when we compassionately offer our presence to our hurt.

Twelve step programs are just one example of another way. Countless people have been transformed by openly admitting to their failures in the presence of loving community. This is why Rosemary Chinicci’s idea of more time before the resurrection makes such sense. When we fail, we need to allow ourselves the time to simply feel the pain, experience the hurt. In so doing, we allow ourselves to remain open and true to ourselves. For this is ultimately what love is all about. Compassion means to feel with. When we feel our failures, when we allow ourselves to be present to them, without trying to change them or alter them, we know compassion. We know love.

And this, I believe, is the true meaning, the greatest gift of our first principle—the inherent worth and dignity of every person. You need not be good to be loved. And I believe this extraordinary gift bequeathed to us by our ancestors compels us to continue to offer this love to each other and our larger world—beginning with ourselves. May we surrender the need to be perfect, set aside the pretense of success, and enter into the humility of our full selves. We succeed and we fail; in the midst of both, let us show love.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110144453/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_06/01.mp3

I used to be someone who beat myself up for every fault, even ones that no one else knew about. There was a compulsion to be the best, the brightest, the most admirable person I could be, and when I did something that interfered with that perception, I would dwell on it for years.

When I was about six, we were hiking, and we had a picnic lunch in a hut in the mountains. Part of my lunch was an apple, and after I ate the apple, I threw it away…but in a can that was labelled “recycling: cans and bottles only.” When I realized my mistake, I was horrified, and I realized that I should fish my apple core out and find a better place to put it. But the can was nearly as tall as I was, and it was filled with smelly trash and sharp edges. So I walked away. I am now forty-four years old, and I still remember that moment with perfect clarity. Most especially, I remember the feeling of shame that enveloped me. All over an apple core that I put in the wrong bin.

It was important to me, in that moment, to do the right thing—to put the apple core in the right bin. But it was somehow more important to me that no one know that I had done the wrong thing. So I kept this fault secret. If I had been able to embrace the fault, I would have been able to go to my parents, or to one of the people who worked at the hut. I’m certain that I could have explained my mistake, they would have said, ‘no big deal,’ and I would have skipped on my merry way.

Embracing our faults means admitting to them, telling people about them. To do this, we have to know in our bones that this evidence of our imperfection won’t keep people from loving and respecting us. We have to trust that we won’t be judged harshly. And when we are judged harshly, which we might be, we have to be able to keep that judgment from lodging in our deep sense of self. This is tricky stuff.

A common response to failure is to make excuses—blame the failure on other people’s actions, or circumstances beyond your control. The dog ate my homework. My idiot boss kept talking about golf and the potential client was so irritated, she didn’t really even see my fantastic proposal.

This is counter-productive, though it’s very human. When we tell ourselves, “Well, I would have succeeded, but all this other stuff got in my way,” we give away our power.

Another common response is to over-react. “I can’t do anything right. I always mess up when it really counts.” So we give up our power again, and stop trying. We give in to a sense of learned helplessness.

A healthy response to failure is to find a balance between these extremes—to accept that we’re supposed to fail. It’s a normal part of life.

In reality, we fail for a variety of reasons, some internal, some external. When there is no fear or shame associated with failure, it’s easier to figure out which mistakes we might have made, and what we might want to do differently the next time. We accept the things we have no control over, and focus on the things that we can change.

My first truly spectacular failure occurred in my first paid ministry job. I had a newborn and a two-year-old, and to be frank, I was terrified by the prospect of staying home with them. So I took a job as the assistant minister to families. The congregation hadn’t done their homework. The job wasn’t well-defined or well-thought-out; I didn’t even have an office or a desk. Meanwhile, I had no real experience in religious education ministry, and yet I was supposed to completely reimagine and redesign their program, all in twenty hours a week.

The longer I was there, the more out of my depth I felt. I did some really crappy ministry. Also some good stuff. But the best thing that I did in that job was to decide to resign. Suddenly, the growing sense of anxiety and overwhelm melted away, and I was able to be present to myself and the congregation in a much healthier way.

I learned what it felt like to fail spectacularly—which made me better able to minister to folks who had lost their jobs or who were struggling with failures of their own. I learned how important it was to look for a good fit, and not assume that smart people of good will can make anything work. I learned a lot about myself, my strengths and weaknesses. And I faced my fear of stay-at-home-mothering and went on to three and a half years of being there for my kids when they were little.

Embracing failure as a natural part of life helps us weather the inevitable ups and downs. When we reject the “success at all costs” model and embrace a more realistic, “you win some, you lose some” outlook, we don’t waste precious time and energy on situations or challenges that aren’t really ours to fix or face. When we embrace failure, it allows us to find ourselves at the end of the day, happy to be alive, secure in the knowledge that whatever our track record, we are successful human beings, worthy of love and able to love others in all their faults and failures.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110144412/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_06/02.mp3

This past summer my husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary by going hiking in the mountains. Being in the mountains always reminds me of an incident on our very first backpacking trip. One morning in 1990 while my husband, Michael, was building a fire to cook breakfast, we swapped stories about childhood camping trips. I told him about my favorite camping breakfast: stick biscuits. Biscuit dough wrapped around a stick and toasted over a fire, then cut open and smothered with jam.

By the time the fire was crackling, I was mixing the dough and my mouth was watering. We hunted up a few good sticks and put on the dough. But before we’d hardly gotten our sticks over the fire, dough was starting to fall off in heavy biscuit blobs. It seemed as though I had put too much milk in the batter; the dough was too thin.

We were now out of flour, so our next idea was to add a little more milk and make the dough into pancake batter. Which we did. But then we realized that we didn’t have a frying pan in which to cook the pancakes. All we had were the metal camping pots that doubled as bowls. Our last ditch attempt, and we were getting pretty hungry by this time, was to dump the batter in a pan, add some fresh blueberries, cover it up and see what happened.

The result? The most incredible blueberry muffins I’ve ever had. Granted, we had to eat them with a spoon, but, oh, they were good. The first time these muffins were a mistake, but now I know how to make muffins over an open fire. A splendid failure.

That cooking experiment was a good spiritual lesson for me. You see, 30 years ago, I had much more absolute ideas about what constituted a success or failure. And sometimes I made the judgment call too soon. My husband, being the scientist and the experimenter, brought a different perspective. In a situation like the “stick biscuit disaster,” I could have too easily given up, thrown away the batter, gotten out the granola and milk, and started the day off a little crabby. I hadn’t really learned on a gut level that, in the words of Lewis Thomas describing DNA, “the capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel.” I wasn’t always able to hear the unexpected music formed out of the moment.

But that morning in the Rocky Mountains I started learning the lesson of “splendid failures,” the lesson that even though situations don’t turn out as I had planned, they may be salvageable. So what is it that turns plain old mistakes into splendid failures?

First of all, it helps to stay in the present. I have a neighbor who works with at-risk youth. One of the tools she gives them is yoga. She teaches them yoga so that they can learn to stay focused on their breath. Because if they can learn to really pay attention to their breathing, it begins to affect every other part of their lives. They can manage their anger and their other impulses. They can learn to take time making decisions. If they can learn to stay present to their own life-giving breath, they can better handle the stress and complexities of life. They can see ways to repair some mistakes and learn to avoid others. And if they can learn to be with their own breath, they can learn compassion, for themselves as well as others. With compassion comes forgiveness.

A second spiritual quality that seems to turn failure into success is keeping an open and flexible mind. About 15 years ago we took possession of our current family home in Minneapolis. During the years of slow renovations I splurged on some beautiful but expensive fabric roller shades for our bedroom. The problem was, I made a mistake, and the fabric I chose was too sheer and didn’t block the light. Over the years it has become harder and harder for us to sleep in a too-bright room. While doing some other house projects these past few weeks I took down an old plastic roller shade that had some cracks in the material. I was going to throw it away, but then it occurred to me that I could sew sections of that “black out” fabric to the backs of my bedroom shades. Bingo! We finally have shades that darken our room. A splendid failure.

Finally, in the case of failure, perspective matters a great deal. How we label our experiences and ourselves can either diminish us or empower us. In the wake of a failure, we can get stuck in our despair or shame. Or we can go through the natural stages of failure, which are similar to the stages of grief, and then use our new wisdom to step more wisely into the future. A failure is really nothing other than our own judgment about an event. It’s not a deep truth about our character or worth as a person. It is not a permanent state, unless we make it so. Choose a compassionate frame for your failures.

When we can approach our failures with awareness, honesty, compassion, and a willingness to learn, then they reveal small miracles to us: greater clarity about our gifts and weaknesses, and our options for the future; paths that perhaps we didn’t see before; ideas that didn’t work in one time or place, but that may work in another.

When we are able to stay in the present; keep an open and flexible mind, and choose a compassionate frame to put around our failures, then we are able to truly enjoy the muffins we never meant to make.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_06/03.mp3

So far, I suck at this vegetarian thing.

The problem is pretty simple: I keep finding myself with a chorizo burrito in my hand, and oops, I did it again. In the first seven days of 2020, I’ve eaten far less meat, and probably more vegetables, than usual, but I am definitely failing any purity test out there. And not intentionally; it’s just that 40 years of habit is hard to break, and my specific commitment to the not-eating of meat is at the moment a shallow one.

So, deal off, right?

Not at all.

Do you at least feel like a failure?

Ha. No.

And I also don’t feel like a vegetarian, exactly. What I feel like is a work in progress, and I trust that. I trust my ability to learn and grow. I trust myself to lean toward my commitments, and I trust my body to build the muscle to do it better day by day.

I have a shallow commitment to not eating meat, at least at the moment. But I have a very deep commitment to trying to live in fuller concert with my values and with the earth. I’m also profoundly interested in exploring the question of what can be leveraged by consumer-level choices. There’s a lot holding me here in this experiment. None of which dies of imperfection.

And I’m going to level with you: the above is a true story, but I’m not telling it to you as confessional. I don’t need a witness or arbiter for my eating practices.

I’m here (and, secret: you are too) for the metaphor.

Because sometimes we suck at things at first, even when we care about the larger implications. And you know what? Sometimes your friend or neighbor or colleague does, too.

And a thing that American culture, and Unitarian Universalist theology (interesting overlap there, for sure) are both averse to grasping is that we as people can commit to a thing, and suck at doing what we committed to, and still keep going in the service of our commitment.

We are averse to grasping that it’s possible, and it is frankly alien to us to consider that this kind of try and then try better is in fact what integrity looks like where gravity is applied.

Amid this backdrop, I was recently charged with overuse of the word covenant. I pled guilty; it’s an occupational hazard. And I said that I would try to find another word; but the truth is, I don’t have one. Because where relationship is concerned, covenant is the only word I know that means that we—you and I—are going to try, and mess it up, and then we are going to try again.

Covenant is one of the most powerful tools I know in growing toward the person I want to be, because that so often means building toward—not discovering ready-made, but co-creating, month by month—the relationships I hope to have.

And I need that word, because what’s left otherwise, namely some brittle and therefore broken promises, seems unlikely to allow our best care for one another. Insufficient to facilitate the best of what I have experienced between us. Unworthy of the complexities of human love, including its concerning capacity for hate and the mystifying and magical and sometimes highly uncomfortable realms of discovery of self and other.

Without covenant, a conversational and relational right of return, what we have when we mess up is cutoff. That’s effective, in the most surface-level sense, at removing discomfort, but its ask, or our ask of it, is that we be left where it found us. It’s the opposite, in short, of change through growth.

I have pretty strong muscles for that particular process; I know it better than I wish. But it’s a limited-value tool. Walls are ok for separation, but if it’s connection we seek, we are going to need strategies for when it’s hard. For when people are, well, human. For when we ourselves are in-progress more than we wish.

Trying, and failing, and trying again.

And this is where covenant makes asks different from what our culture is used to. Where we might learn to say, “Oops, that didn’t work” and to follow that with a considered, “Let’s try this instead.”

I might, someday, be an actual vegetarian. What I am, right now, is someone willing to learn out loud, a person with tools better than shame, and a believer in the power of relationship in the pursuit of personal and relational growth.

I am not yet good at this year’s resolution, but I’m not worried. I know through long experience that my grit is made out of my practices.

And guess what: yours is, too.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_06/04.mp3

I make no mistakes. I do not err.
A charge of fault is so unfair.
While others protest in despair
I shift the blame with great fanfare,
then put on an innocent air.
I do not try, so mistakes are rare.

Mistakes are made by those who try,
those who work and question why.
They take their lumps, do not deny,
make no excuse, no alibi.
“I know more now” is their reply,
then move on without tear or sigh.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110144255/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_06/05.mp3

A funny thing happened on the way to this Quest issue. We switched our topics from one month to another, and I neglected to notice it when I reached out to colleagues for submissions. I recruited great material for an issue on spiritual practice (which you’ll see next month), happily left for a wonderful two week-break, and thought I was prepared for our editorial meeting the day I returned.

Then, the night before I was coming back, I saw an email from Lynn Ungar, Quest’s editor, reminding the team that we’d be meeting the next day on the theme of … what!?!?!? MISTAKES!!! I had recruited nothing. I had prepared nothing. I had done…you guessed it…nothing! Except that I had lived out the theme, by making a colossal mistake!

Hastily, I reached out via social media to my colleagues to explain this ironic situation…could they please, immediately, without hesitation, send me stuff they’d written about mistakes? With love and humor and willingness, a record number of submissions were in my mailbox within a couple of hours.

My experience, and many other experiences just like it, show to me over and over that when I make mistakes, other people are ready to lean in and support me, to pick up what I dropped, to help me out. In fact, the mistake I made encouraged my colleagues to be quicker with sharing what they had written than if I had asked them far in advance to do so. My own imperfection, I suspect, invited them to send in pieces which, given time, they might judge too imperfect to share.

Of course, I recognize that part of my privilege as a white middle class person is that I am allowed to make mistakes that other people—immigrants, people of color, people who defy gender binaries, poor people—are not allowed to make without punishment. We need only look at who is incarcerated, for how long, for what charge, in order to know that not all mistakes are treated equally. And not everyone has a community ready and willing to support them in times of vulnerability.

Which is one of the main reasons I have spent my life’s work in spiritual communities. We exist, first and foremost, to provide support for one another’s essential nature, which is vulnerability. In spiritual community, mistakes aren’t graded. We aren’t ranked and valued in order of our ability to perform, to act perfect, to measure up to one another’s expectations.

Some years ago I was practicing Vipassana meditation at a retreat with the teacher Sharon Salzberg. Salzberg has brought the practice of Metta, or lovingkindness, meditation to many of us in the west. At this retreat, she said that she has come to define the act of meditation as the lovingkindness we show to ourselves when we notice that, once again, our attention has wandered. This definition brought delight to me because my attention wanders over and over and over. “Oh!” I said, “That means, the more our attention wanders, the more chances we have to be kind to ourselves about it!” She beamed at me. “Yes,” she said.

What if our communities were centered in this same way, that we understood that we were at our strongest and finest when we showed kindness to those who make mistakes? Even bad mistakes? Instead, in the United States, we have become increasingly intolerant, cruel, and judgmental about others’ mistakes, or even perceived mistakes. Too often, social media has become a platform for judgment, indictment, contempt. This is why CLF often says that we like to bring grace to the internet: we affirm people, just as the vulnerable messes of contradictions and spectacular beauty and pain and failure that we are, from birth to death and every day in between.

Can you imagine a time when everyone’s mistakes are the wake up call to lovingkindness, the type of lovingkindness that my colleagues showed to me? Can you imagine a world in which every breath is an opportunity to love again, no matter how far astray our mind has wandered again? Do you, like me, long for a world in which every one of us believes that despite all of our mistakes, we are still worthy of love? As far as I’m concerned, that’s what we’re doing here now, in our own radically imperfect way: Trying to build that world in which love is the constant through all our wandering and our wobbling.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_06/06.mp3

A special series on the Commission’s report: Religious Professionals, Educating for Liberation. Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110142855/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu300.mp3

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110142118/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu299.mp3

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist will talk show discussing topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

This week on the VUU the host will talk with members of the Commission On Institutional Change.

Production support for this episode is provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado and Lori Stone.

The VUU is brought to you by the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110140933/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu298.mp3

To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” The poet e. e. cummings wrote these timeless words in 1958. Each of us, young and old, receives messages about who we ought to be. How we assimilate these messages with who we know ourselves to be is the spiritual discipline of living with integrity.

Have you ever felt like you weren’t being true to yourself, perhaps even that you were living a double life?

LGBTQ and other marginalized people know this reality well—it’s called passing. Others of you may know this feeling when you’re at work if you can’t be your full self—there’s a divide between work life and home life. Or maybe you feel a gap between your vision of how best to live and the reality of your life currently. Or perhaps you are a proud UU at church, but “in the closet” with more conservative family members or friends.

If you’ve ever experienced this divide, you know that it’s not a very joyful or fulfilling way to live. The truth we hold within is the core of our humanity, so when we are disconnected from the soul of who we are, we can feel lost.

The Quaker writer and activist Parker Palmer has focused much of his energy and writing on the challenge of living a whole and undivided life, aligning soul and role. Essentially, he is interested in what it means to have integrity. In his book A Hidden Wholeness, he describes this dilemma using the image of a strip of paper that is white on one side, colored on the other.

The white side is your inner life—your ideas, intuitions, feelings, values, faith, mind, heart, spirit, true self, soul. The colored side is your outer life—the image, influence, and impact you project.

As adults, at one time or another, or maybe as a way of life, we put up a wall of separation between our inner life and outer life, protecting the vulnerabilities of our inner life from the world we live in. This might include parts of our identities that are not safe to share with our communities. If the paper stays with the white, inner side invisible long enough, if we live behind the wall long enough, our inner life can disappear even from our own view, and the wall becomes all we know.

But when we recognize that the wall exists, we can take a step toward integrity by trying to reorder and reintegrate our inner and outer lives, values, and beliefs. We join the ends of our strip of paper to form a connected circle. The thing about this is that there’s still an inside and an outside, white on one side, colored on the other.

So what does true integrity look like? It looks like what happens if you put a full twist in the strip of paper before you join the two ends, creating a Mobius strip.

The Mobius strip was discovered by German mathematician August Ferdinand Mobius. In mathematics, the Mobius strip is a surface with only one side and one boundary. If you trace your finger on what seems to be the outside, you find yourself suddenly on what seems to be the inside. But if you continue, you will find yourself back on what seems to be the outside.

If life is a Mobius strip, there really is no inside or outside; there is only one reality. Integrity is the state of being whole and undivided, which is why the Mobius strip is a beautiful representation of this way of living.

As Parker Palmer says, the inside and outside—of the Mobius strip and of ourselves—are “co-creating each other.” “Whatever is inside us continually flows outward to help form, or deform, the world,” he says, “and whatever is outside us continually flows inward to help form, or deform, our lives.” We travel the Mobius strip of life making choices—about what we project and what we absorb—and these choices can be “life-giving for the world, for other people, and for me”…or not.

The poet David Whyte writes: “hold to your own truth at the center of the image you were born with.” This is what it means to live with integrity. And when we hold to this truth it shapes our friendships, our work and our life choices in ways that are life giving, because we know and are being true to who we are.

Our integrity is constructed, in large part, by the choices we make. Even by what may seem like little, everyday choices.

The other day I was at the store buying cushions for my patio furniture. They were big cushions, seat and back attached by plastic ties, piled high in the cart, shoved in there so as to keep them from spilling out all over the floor or knocking over displays in my path. When I went to pay, the checkout person said “two?” as she scanned the tag nearest her. I paused, and said, “no, there are three.”

I could have just said “yeah” and taken advantage of the situation, having to pay for only two cushions instead of three. Some people might have jumped at the opportunity, not even hesitating. But that’s not who I am, it’s not “the center of the image [I was] born with.” I’m not someone who takes advantage of others and lies to save a buck. I’m someone who is, or tries to always be, honest.

But integrity is about more than honesty, or telling the truth. It’s about being true to who you are, what you believe, and what you say. It’s the sum total of all those small, everyday choices to be honest, choices that are life-giving instead of life-diminishing.

I think we generally expect integrity of one another. I can recall multiple times that were like the patio cushion incident. I stood at the checkout, my arms full of pool noodles or bubble wands (birthday party—what can I say?), and the checkout person just asked me how many I had, without verifying or counting. There’s undoubtedly an element of privilege at play here, and I believe there’s also something deep within us that makes us want to believe others have integrity.

We are called to live with integrity by expecting it of one another. When someone expects me to be real and true, they are calling me to hold to that inner truth at the core of who I am. There is a spiritual invitation in this exchange.

Integrity is a spiritual practice—not a characteristic or quality of an individual, but a way of being and living. The first part is to identify and listen to our core. Who am I, what is that image I was born with, my core, my soul?

Then there is the spiritual work of strengthening this core, of amplifying this voice, which we do by making choice after choice. Every time we make a choice about what we project and what we absorb it’s like we’re working our integrity muscle.

JoLillian Zwerdling, quoted in the book Emergent Strategy, writes:

From starfish I have learned that if we keep our core intact, we can regenerate. We can fall apart, lose limbs, and re-grow them as long as we don’t let anyone threaten that central disc’s integrity. We can grow so many different arms, depending on what kind of sea star we are. We have to nourish ourselves with the resources we are surrounded by…and by doing so we help keep ecosystems delicately balanced.

I love this image of us as starfish. By fortifying your core and keeping it intact you can weather whatever comes. Whatever temptations present themselves. Whatever messages you receive from this “world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.” When you know and listen to your true self, you can be like the starfish, regenerating when needed. And this helps contribute to a balanced ecosystem.

If you’re like me, you may need some help with this spiritual practice. It helps to have a community who will remind you of who you are, and support you in holding to that core. A community that models integrity. This is one of the many reasons to belong to a church.

All institutions, including churches, struggle with integrity just as individuals do. Are we who we say we are? Do we walk our talk? Our actions must be reflective of the core identity we claim, and of the values that run deep in our tradition and our bones. In a time when integrity is not being modeled by those in charge of our government and most powerful institutions, we as individuals and as a church have an important role to play.

Just as the choices we make about what we put out into the world and what we take in co-create our individual integrity, I believe the choices we make as individuals and as a church help co-create a society with integrity. Each time we are honest, true to ourselves, humble about our shortcomings and mistakes, and practice discernment and fortification of our core, we model integrity in life-giving ways, helping transform the culture in which we live.

We are all surrounded by forces that tempt us to be other than who we are. But as the poet David Whyte writes: “There is only one life / you can call your own / and a thousand others / you can call by any name you want.” Let’s live our own, and live it with integrity.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110135718/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_05/01.mp3

There’s a reason why we as a religious people covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It’s because we believe that our spiritual wholeness depends on confronting the real facts of our lives and the world we live in. We believe we can live free, awakened, and aware; we can be loving, compassionate, and kind; we can live into who we are and use our gifts to help save the world only in the presence of the truth. And from that truth we derive meaning.

And there is no question that we are living in a precarious time for the truth. We find ourselves in a world of “alternative facts” that amount to a torrent of lies from those in the highest offices in the land. How are we to respond in a way that is centered in integrity, in a way of living that is grounded in what is true and what is right? Several years ago I heard a presentation at a minister’s conference that stuck with me. The speaker argued that over the last century different memes embodying cultural ideas or practices have tended to prevail.

For example, she said, in the 1960s the predominant mode of thinking centered on the notion of rights—who had them and how they would be protected. It was a powerful driver of all kinds of things, she said, but in time its importance faded, to be replaced in the 1980s by a different idea, the rising notion that people shouldn’t look to others to make their way in the world, that we are responsible for our own destiny. She identified this with an acronym she gave as “YOYO” or “you’re on your own.”

She argued, however, that in this new century the old notion is beginning to fade and a new meme is rising that acknowledges more directly our interdependence on each other. It’s the recognition that while we are responsible for our individual lives, we can’t get by on our own. She described this with the acronym, “WITT” or “we’re in this together.”

I think that, Donald Trump notwithstanding, WITT is the acronym of our age. It embodies the recognition that we are fundamentally bound to each other and the Earth across races, ethnicities, gender identities, economic status and nationality. Every person matters.

Our work, then, involves building ties to know each other better, and exploring how to empower all people to live with purpose and meaning. It means widening our circles of concern to embrace all people, including those who today are marginalized. It is a powerful center of meaning, grounded in the truth of the unity of humankind.

But it is challenging, too. It requires adapting ourselves to difference, stepping outside the echo chambers of the narrow silos of our lives. We do this through the choices we make in how we conduct our lives, about how we spend our time, who we associate with. Let’s be honest, giving ourselves to this work is not easy.

Easy is living our quiet lives in our quiet circles. Hard is putting ourselves in places we’ve never been, in the company of people different from us. It isn’t comfortable, and yet it puts us in touch with something so remarkable and compelling that it can astonish us when we first experience it. Annie Dillard describes it as the substrate that underlies everything else in our lives: “our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here.” The simplest word for it is love: an elemental truth so basic, so vital that it eludes our conscious minds, as Rumi puts it, like the water that fish swim in. Choosing to love is speaking out when we see others demeaned, reaching out to neighbors when they are threatened, listening when another is in pain.

Let us say a blessing for the complexities of this world, all the imponderables that unhorse our prejudices and preconceptions, that force us to shake our heads and look again. Our human brains evolved to locate patterns and construct scenarios that distill complicated circumstances down to a few simple elements. It’s a great boon to us, but it also gets us into trouble time and again when the messy world with all of its inconvenient truths trips us up.

Thankfully, complexity forces us amid all our hubris to admit to a little humility. Ah, humility, that not-so-gentle reminder that to be human is to be fallible, requiring us to be open to correction, to learn tolerance and forbearance, and so to be open to grace. Through the power of humility and grace we find our way to love, which is the core of integrity.

The work that Unitarian Universalists around the country and the world are doing in the election process, the work we do in our local communities, all of this is part of the same work of creating the beloved community. And whomever we elect, this work will continue.

Friends, vote for the most intelligent, experienced, and compassionate candidates. And then go love the hell out of the world, each of us in our unique ways. The world cries out for our efforts, and no election alone will end that.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110135648/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_05/02.mp3

Helen was revered as a good person, and I was happy to be her friend. She was a manager, a mother, an artist, a neighbor. My experiences with her were always warm and affirming. Everyone trusted her integrity because she lived her values.

But one day we find that she has done something horrible—something offending our moral code. In an instant, Helen becomes disturbing to me. How can I trust her? The experiences we shared are erased by a biting fear that all she was is a lie.

Then Hope—an acquaintance, not even a friend—steps forward with a gift of love. Hope and Helen talk, and affirm their relationship is still authentic. With this assurance, Hope is with Helen as she answers for the harm she created. Hope sees Helen as an artist, a manager, a neighbor and a person who violated a tenet. Hope insists we all are more than the worst thing we’ve done, and should not be carelessly discarded. She forces me to ask if integrity is only the memory of unblemished experience, or if it is simply capricious perception. Hope doesn’t say it, but I admit to myself: shame on me!

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110135628/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_05/04.mp3

“Finding yourself.” Nearly everyone wants to do it, and many are willing to pay for the trip. It’s worth the effort because when you find yourself, your true self, you dwell in authenticity, creativity, and power. Right?

Not so right. Unfortunately, the Western idea of finding yourself goes only half way. After all, what we discover when we find ourselves is what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant called “the crooked timber of human-ity.” Kant said, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

As Kant knew, what we do with ourselves after we find ourselves is the real work. After we find ourselves, there’s a whole lot of sawing and hammering and sanding and shellacking to be done. As a matter of fact, we’ve got to saw, hammer, sand, and shellac ourselves every darn day. Perfection isn’t the goal. A life well-lived is the goal.

One tool we can use is a working definition of integrity. In my mind, integrity is born out of a match between inner ideals and outer action. For example, if creating justice is my goal, I can’t just seek to discover what justice means in the abstract, I need to determine what justice means in my own actions toward the greater whole.

Sure, “finding yourself” is great. But it’s only a step in the right direction. Next we’ve got to grab some tools and work on that crooked timber of ourselves.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110135540/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_05/05.mp3

When I Wake Up

When I wake up ,I find myself in an environment

That’s so different from the one I once knew.

I find that I’ve not merely traveled out of society,

But to a place no one warned me about.

I collect my thoughts for a moment

While gazing from the window of my cell.

The rain-slicked razor wire in front of the house unit

Is being cleaned again by nature.

I never fail to be surprised by the same landscape

Time and time again.

Just as I perceive this,

Suddenly the texture of reality has changed once more.

It’s as if the transition from society

Has been nonstop to this Satan’s cave.

Here is where I dwell.

In a momentary lapse of reason.

This week we are chatting with Dr. Elias Ortega from Meadville about what’s up at our UU identified seminary in Chicago.

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Production support for this episode is provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado.

The VUU is brought to you by the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110132736/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu286.mp3

Let’s dig into how to best honor our 5th Principle – affirming and promoting the right of conscience and the democratic process in our congregations.

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Production support for this episode is provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado.

The VUU is brought to you by the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clfvuu_latest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu284.mp3

This week, Becky Brooks and Erika Hewitt, authors of Sparks of Wonder: Theme-Based Ministry for the Whole Congregation.

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Production support for this episode is provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado.

The VUU is brought to you by the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110132553/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu283.mp3

This week, we talk to representatives from UUs for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME), Black Lives of UU (BLUU), UU Peace Ministry Network (UUPMN), and UU Refugee and Immigrant Services and Education (UU RISE) working to pass a business resolution at the 2020 General Assembly to strengthen the use of corporate investment/divestment and shareholder advocacy in support of human rights.

Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino host this live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook (or sometimes on YouTube) every Thursday at 11 am ET.

Production support for this episode is provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado.

The VUU is brought to you by the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clfvuu_latest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu282.mp3

I’ve known the song Spirit of Life by heart for longer than I can remember.

Spirit of life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea.
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close, wings set me free.
Spirit of life, come to me, come to me.

Carolyn McDade, who wrote the song, tells the story of where it came from. I had heard through the grapevine that McDade wasn’t happy with the way that we often sing it, that it isn’t about celebration, it isn’t about triumph. If you listen to the words, you can hear that: it’s a request, a need, a longing. And when she was asked to tell the story, here’s what she said.

She was coming home from a meeting about Central America—this in the early 80s, when the US government was supplying arms to oppressive regimes, when people, including nuns and priests and activists were being massacred. She was coming home from a meeting, as she had done so many times as a life-long activist. The reporter Kimberly French records it:

What McDade remembers most clearly was the feeling she had. “When I got to Pat’s house, I told her, ‘I feel like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years. Just open wide the door, and I’ll be dust.’ I was tired, not with my community but with the world. She just sat with me, and I loved her for sitting with me.”

McDade then drove to her own home in Newtonville. “I walked through my house in the dark, found my piano, and that was my prayer:

May I not drop out. It was not written, but prayed. I knew more than anything that I wanted to continue in faith with the movement.”

Spirit of life, come unto me.

It’s a prayer, a longing. It comes out of that place of feeling like a piece of dried cardboard, of feeling tired, empty, spent. That we cannot carry the load by ourselves for one more minute.

We yearn. We yearn for renewal because sometimes we feel like a piece of dried cardboard. We need renewal: a renewal of faith, a renewal of hope, a renewal of joy. I’ll tell you that lately I’ve been right there—dried cardboard, ready to be blown away.

Sometimes the candle is burning low. Sometimes it goes out. Parts of my life are good, and parts are really hard. There are parts of this work of ministry, this calling, that I deeply love, and there are parts that feel like slogging through a swamp. Like Carolyn McDade, sometimes I come home from the meeting on this or that, and feel like What was the point of that? The world’s problems seem so huge, and I’m just one person, and a tired one at that.

I’m yearning for renewal, and I’m feeling like dried cardboard. We’ve all had those dried cardboard moments, haven’t we? Stretched too thin, with no more tears to fall, because we’ve used them all up? Frustrated by the injustice of the world and despairing about how to fix it?

Yearning. And we reach for a language of that yearning, that longing for renewal. And, because we are Unitarian Universalists, because we know that language points to the mystery but isn’t the mystery itself, because we are suspicious of creeds and easy answers, this is complicated.

We want to be healed by some ancient ministry of stars, but language is tricky. For a long time we just avoided the subject all together. We didn’t talk about it; or, we spoke about it in psychological terms and not spiritual ones. We spoke about justice, but less about how to cultivate the spiritual resources necessary to stay at the work over the long haul, when things didn’t go according to plan. Sometimes we even dismissed this yearning as juvenile, something we had grown out of.

But that began to change a while ago. Partly, it was women like Carolyn McDade and others, who gathered to offer each other healing and comfort and solidarity, who expressed their yearning for the spirit of life, lived in community with one another. They kept their language open-ended, and focused on the heart. Others among us resurrected the old Universalist story of a God of love and mercy for all people everywhere, who loves us without needing us to be perfect.

As the culture has become more secular, the folks who come now to church don’t come for psychology—there are plenty of therapists to choose from, after all—they come for something deeper, something, dare we say, religious. Spiritual at least.

Some 15 years ago Rev. Bill Sinkford, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said we needed a “language of reverence.” He talked about his own long night in the hospital with his son, and how he reached for that language of yearning, and prayed—with open-ended language, but prayer to God—without apology. He was, by the very act of speaking of the yearning in his heart, renewed.

And he encouraged us, whatever our understanding of the holy, the sacred, the ultimate, to cultivate a language of reverence—a sense of mystery, humility, wonder and hope in how we spoke about and experienced our lives. A language of poetry.

There was a huge controversy at the time; folks thought he was saying we all had to say God, but that’s not what he meant. And when things settled down, it began to happen. Naturalistic atheists spoke about the sense of wonder and awe and community they felt when they stood upon the shore, under the stars.

The theists among us spoke of the love of God, how they prayed and yearned and felt that presence in their heart. Unitarian Universalists who were following the paths of Buddhism, Paganism, Islam and other wisdom ways of being in the world began to speak about their own languages of reverence: their yearnings for wholeness and healing and hope, their feeling of being dried cardboard, sometimes, and needing the spirit of life—however understood—to come unto them.

I’ve been feeling like dried cardboard, but I know that renewal will come. In time; you can’t force it. I know some of the things I need to do to set the stage. Reaching out to friends is one of them. Singing, that’s essential. I need to take Sabbaths. It’s really important to have that quiet, Sabbath time, because in the midst of a complicated life, when time is running down and urging us on, we need to put away our phones and lie on the hammock, and let Sabbath time renew us. We need to get out into nature and let water, sky and earth renew us for the journey, And I need to pray. To express my yearning, in the language of poetry and metaphor.

In time, renewal of the spirit, renewal of faith, will come. It was this kind of thing that we Unitarian Universalists began to talk about as part of the conversation about the language of reverence: our yearning, and our experiences of renewal.

We yearn, we seek, we long to be connected and renewed and inspired—and it’s right here. The holy isn’t gone from the world, it’s everywhere. Miracles happen every moment, if we open our hearts and minds—our friends, music, Sabbath time, nature, poetry—these things are each a sacrament, a sign of the holy in the world. In the beloved words of UU musician Peter Mayer, “Everything is holy now.”

I know there are moments that don’t feel like that, and suffering, pain and injustice are real. But even in these hard places there is holiness, there is compassion and solidarity and mercy and truth.

I may feel like a dried-up piece of cardboard right now, but these practices of holiness, of sacrament, have carried me through the journey before, and I know they will again. It’s the journey Bill Sinkford made from his son’s hospital room to the pulpit. It’s the journey Carolyn McDade made from the meeting about Central America to the piano. It’s the journey I’ve seen so many people make in their own lives, from a place of trouble and sorrow to a place of hope, solace and peace.

Each spring we celebrate renewal, as life comes back, but there really isn’t any seasonal limit on renewal. Open yourself to be renewed. Open your heart to all that is holy everywhere, every-now. Open yourself to life and love, even in your sorrow and grief, your fear and pain, for this too shall pass, and life is a gift, not a project. The Holy is here, is now, however you see it and feel it and name it— right here—so trust it will come.

And when it does, rejoice and be glad, and share your good news in this world which needs more than ever to be renewed as well.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131244/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/01.mp3

My heart sank as I watched Notre Dame de Paris burn and its spire fall. That great 850-year-old landmark which thousands of stoneworkers and glass blowers, metal workers and wood carvers crafted for over two centuries, that great site of so many musical, artistic and religious developments, had been burning already for hours. Crowds had lined the streets, singing hymns, pleading for the church to survive. But when the spire fell, I think many of us assumed the church was gone.

But then a new picture emerged, blurry around the edges, but clear enough to make out that it was of the inside of the nave, the large stone worship space inside the cathedral. It was obvious some damage had been done, but the nave was still standing, the altar somehow unscathed. Some called it a miracle. However the main body of Notre Dame managed to survive the inferno, it was certainly, to borrow Howard Thurman’s phrase, a glad surprise.

We can only imagine the glad surprise of the women in the Easter story. They rise very early and go expecting to prepare Jesus’ broken body for burial, to anoint it with good-smelling herbs and oil so that his friends and followers could gather around his body comfortably to offer their last goodbyes. They go expecting to encounter death, but instead they find an empty tomb, and a stranger with the unbelievable news that Jesus isn’t dead anymore. They don’t know what to believe. But then the story says that Jesus appears to each of them, urging them to travel far and wide, teaching the saving message of his ministry. He tells them that the true path of salvation lies not in military might and occupying force, but rather in work toward justice, mercy, compassion, and the understanding that every single person bears the image of Love.

With no dead body, no final resting place to visit, Jesus’ survivors are denied the possibility of dwelling on his death. They are beckoned into looking forward toward new hope, toward a future they believed impossible only moments before. And from there they carry his ministry forward. Jesus’ death was meant to be a humiliating deterrent. As black liberation theologian Dr. James Cone wrote, crucifixion was the lynching of the Roman Empire. Jesus’ execution was meant to shatter the threat to the Empire posed by the movement Jesus was building.

But Jesus was not defiled by his death; his ministry was not undone because the Roman government attempted to frame him as a criminal and a fake. As my colleague, the Rev. John Buehrens, explains, “… the resurrection was a vision—one deeply connected to a radical hope… that death, exile, and seemingly utter destruction can never put an end to Divine Love, to the Sacred story.” In other words, it was a vision of glad surprise.

What a blessing that we have this holiday set aside to remember again and again the glad surprises that buoy our lives and shape human history. What a blessing to have a day to honor the astonishing ways that renewal happens in the face of what seems like certain defeat. This is the day we celebrate that pain, hate, and death don’t have the final word, that something wonderful, something holy, can come out of even the worst experiences.

Many of the symbols of Easter testify to this idea. After a long winter when crops are just beginning to grow again and game is still scarce, it is the rabbits that first begin to appear in great numbers, probably because they will eat just about anything that grows. They are symbols of fertility and the abundance of spring. The egg, likewise, is a symbol of fertility and new life.

A friend recently told me about something I think is an even more powerful symbol of renewal—the Sahara resurrection plant. This plant can survive months and even years of dehydration, rolling through the desert wherever the wind blows it. It looks dead—way past dead, actually. But when it does finally roll into some water, the plant transforms from a brown, withered, tumbleweed-looking thing to a vibrant, green plant.

The Sahara resurrection plant seems an especially fitting Easter symbol. It’s kind of a hard sell to preach about resurrection in the same month as Earth Day, given what we know about how the planet is doing. Human activity has affected the planet in lasting ways, ways that could literally come to annihilate much of life on Earth as we know it.

This isn’t hyperbole, it’s science. A UN report on climate change from a year ago suggests that humanity has only 11 years to make big changes before the damage we’ve done is irreversible. This isn’t new information, it’s just much more urgent. Yet despite decades of scientists’ warnings, many governments around the world, including and most especially the US, are doing little or nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and even deny outright the mountain of evidence that climate change is caused by human beings.

Without government support, getting everyone from individuals choosing not to use single-use plastic to big business choosing to invest in renewables instead of fossil fuels seems next to impossible. The problem feels too big. It’s too wrapped up in economic and political systems. It is all too easy to feel hopeless or powerless about the planet and our future on it.

And yet, the earth has amazing powers of renewal. Like the Sahara resurrection plant, entire ecosystems revive when given the opportunity.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the harm we’ve done to the Earth can or will all be undone. Scores of species have gone extinct. Radiation from nuclear bombs permeates an entire layer of matter on the Earth’s surface. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, climate change will have significant impact on life on this planet.

In another telling of the Easter story, when Jesus appears to his followers after the resurrection, his hands, feet, and side still bear the wounds from his execution. The wounds and scars of the past will never be erased. But if Easter has anything to teach us, it is that life and love are more powerful even than death. Though the path towards a sustainable relationship with the Earth is unclear, we must not lose hope that life will find a way.

When we’ve gone in expecting the worst, only to have the opposite happen; when we’re convinced there is no hope, and suddenly it dawns, filling the empty tombs of our hearts not with the finality of death but the possibility of new life, that is the glad surprise.

That is the power of resurrection and renewal. That is Easter.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131222/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/02.mp3

Recently a fellow climate change activist exclaimed in despair, “The world has never faced a crisis like this before!” I’m not sure how convincing my response was to her then, or how it will be to you now, but I tried to reassure her that while the world may have never faced human-made climate change before, the world has faced crises like it before. Humanity has suffered and survived global plagues and world wars that killed tens of millions and displaced many millions more, my parents included. I would not be here were it not for such a crisis. We are currently in the middle of the sixth great mass extinction, and it is going to get a lot worse. But the fact that we’re in the middle of the sixth means that there have been five others before, and the world survived. Moreover, had there not been five mass extinctions before, we humans would not be here today.

Changing climate patterns will (as they already have) create new niches, which living beings will fill in ways that we cannot predict, for worse and for better. As Buddhism recognizes, all that exists is the result of causes and conditions. Under changing conditions, creative, new ways of being will come into existence. New behaviors. New species.

To be clear, I am not saying that    everything is going to be hunky-dory, so we don’t need to do anything, or that global upheaval is “all for the best” because it will provide new opportunities, or any other Pollyanna-ish nonsense. To talk like that ignores that tens of millions of people died in those plagues and wars. That among humans who suffer and die, it is more often people of color, the poor, and other marginalized groups. That even though living species, including us, will adapt, the conditions may change so fast that we won’t be able to keep up. So many have already succumbed.

I am not saying that everything will be OK. That would be a lie. But if history and biology can be our guide, some things will be OK. Something will survive, and hopefully thrive again. While any one life is incredibly fragile, life as a whole, life as a communal web, is incredibly resilient. Even in the face of great loss and sorrow, joy and beauty We are in the midst of a great deal of turmoil—ecologically, socially, economically, and politically. You know what I’m talking about. And many of us have our private crises not known to all. You also already know that the future of the world depends on what we do right now. I don’t need to remind you of that. What I’d like to add is that the quality of our lives right now also depends on how we react. It is OK to smile at beauty even when you’re grieving, if you want to (Obviously, if you don’t want to, that’s OK too.) It is OK to do things that bring you joy even in the midst of turmoil. In fact, that’s probably the only way we’re going to get through this. Have faith that while the world needs you to act, it also needs you to care for yourself, and to enjoy the gift of your one precious life.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131200/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/04.mp3

When I arrived at North Carolina’s Central Prison I wore my fear and trepidation like an aura as I, a pallid 128-pound weakling, stepped into my worst nightmare. All conversation and card games came to an immediate halt when I walked into the dorm. My first thought was, I’m going to die tonight. I was about to learn just how misleading first impressions can be.

I never knew his real name. “Preacher” was probably in his late fifties and, despite imprisonment, carried the demeanor of one who hadn’t a worry in the world. As fate would have it, I was assigned to the bunk immediately over him. After a couple of days of observing me in my self-imposed isolation, Preacher approached me carrying a soda and a Bible.

Now, I always considered myself to be a Christian. I mean, I was brought up in the church, baptized, and “saved,” so I must be a Christian, right? Yet, I tended to view God as some sort of celestial Santa Claus who I called on only when I wanted something.

“You look like you could use a friend,” were Preacher’s first words, as he handed me the Bible and soda. My suspicions must have been obvious. Preacher tilted his head back and laughed. “Don’t worry yourself. I ain’t gonna hurt you, and I want nothing from you. My friendship and the Bible are free. You can repay the soda when you’re able to.”

My relief, as well as all of the anxiety and apprehension I’d kept bottled up inside, suddenly burst forth. Tears flowed.

“You can live in prison one of two ways,” Preacher explained. “You can serve time or it can serve you.”

Puzzled, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s obvious. God intends for you to learn something. You have a choice now, just like you did when you committed your crime. It’s called free will. You can spend your years consumed in anger, bitterness and blaming everyone and everything else, or you can accept responsibility for your actions and make this time work for you and count for something.”

“You mean, sort of like when life gives you lemons and you make lemonade?”

“Kinda,” Preacher responded. “You have the opportunity, albeit forced upon you, to better yourself—get a handle on your problems, pursue an education, develop a talent. It’s all up to you.”

I stared dumbfounded. “It sounds as if you think I should be thankful to be here, Preacher.”

Shaking his head, Preacher replied, “No, Gary, not at all. What I’m trying to tell you is that you should make the conscious choice to not waste this time. Have something to show for it when the time comes.”

Preacher left Central Prison just a few days later. Inmates are a transient population. That was nearly 29 years ago. Since then I’ve earned four college degrees, and banked over 300 credit hours. I’ve published six books, four plays—all of which have been produced on stage—and innumerable stories and poems. Equally, I’ve developed an appreciation for art that once upon a time I would never have taken the time for—all of this while making time serve me.

Most importantly, I’ve gained a greater sense of who I am and a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God. I no longer see God as a celestial Santa Claus who I run to with a wish list of prayers. I now see God as my Creator, with whom I spend time every day.

While I am still not grateful for prison, I have come to accept it and to find renewal in making time serve me.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131139/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/03.mp3

The CLF exists because of your generosity. Each gift we receive renews our ability to serve UUs around the world. In countless ways, from our online show The VUU to pen pal letters between incarcerated and free-world members to conversations on Facebook, CLFers renew one another’s spirits with faith and courage. Please give generously at clfuu.org/give to help continue this cycle of renewal.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131116/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/05.mp3

In light of all that is happening right now with the spread of Covid-19, our team has decided to extend the CLF Leadership RFP deadline to midnight on Sunday, March 22nd. For those planning to submit a proposal, please feel free to contact us at search(at)clfuu.org if you have any concerns about meeting this new deadline.

Beyond this change, we will be moving forward as planned with our search timeline to conduct virtual first round interviews in April and finalist interviews in early June. In May, we will make a determination as to whether we can safely host finalist interviews in person, or if we need to move these interviews to zoom.

We also recognize that many ordinations planned for this spring are currently in jeopardy of being postponed. Please know that if you have been granted preliminary ministerial fellowship by the MFC but have not yet been ordained, you will still meet the requirement of having a minimum of one UU minister per proposal.

We hope you are all staying safe and connected (virtually) to loved ones and our faith community during these difficult times.

The CLF Search Team

“Come with me, and you will be, in a land full of imagination…”

If You Want to See Paradise (Don’t Ask me for a Picture)

Poem by incarcerated member Vylet

Yeah, I know you want something a little more upbeat.

And all my poems are sad.

I’d write about being happy more often,

If I were happy more often. eee, Gad!

But for you, let me try this.

It’s no big deal.

For you, I will write

What I do not feel.

With imagination it’s easy.

Word play I create.

A mind set to set minds.

In a World. Realist. State.

Happy happy joy joy.

Ahhh, forget this.

What do you want from me?

My heart is dark as midnight

And only death holds the key.

I hate people. I hate life.

I wish death, I stir strife.

I talk proper and fool people.

Sophisticated learned evil.

I wasn’t always full of resentment.

Bitterness and sorrow

Pain and depression.

But that story will not be told,

This morning or after lunch.

Use your imagination

And make one the hell up.

Ah yes,  I imagine and daydream it’s true

That one day I won’t have to imagine

What it’s like to be happy

And happily write a poem for you

1-25-2020

Imagine…if you believed democracy were essential. Not just a “choice” among variations of how to govern a group of people, but an essential structure. This is the claim authors Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen make in their new book, Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want. They write:

Creating democracies truly accountable to their citizens is essential to our very survival—to the flourishing of societies supporting human life, and now, because of climate change, to the survival of the Earth as we’ve inherited it.

This is a colossal claim, we know. But there’s one point on which human history makes us absolutely certain: it’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit…. What most defeats us is feeling useless—that we have nothing to say, nothing to contribute, that we don’t count.

Imagine that each of us could play an active, meaningful part in shaping the world we want to live in. Imagine a system in which the people share power. All the people—without limit or ranking according to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or the amount of money in their accounts.

Or, maybe we should imagine instead what it would be like to not live in a democracy. In some ways, it’s not too hard to imagine. Perhaps, like me, you have a fondness for period TV shows and/or for historical fiction. Any other fans of the PBS show Victoria? Over the years, there have been many such shows depicting life under a monarchy. I watch mesmerized by the beauty of palaces and gowns, feasts and gardens. And yet, I wonder—why do such portrayals of inequality of wealth and power have such a draw for me and for so many others in our democratic nation?

On an episode of Victoria, the young queen decides to visit the French king. Although the English prime minister seems wary, Victoria confidently exclaims that she would think that a self-made king should be very pleased to receive a visit from an anointed queen. I know it’s just TV, but think about Victoria’s attitude. What she says reflects the centuries-long belief that the authority to govern came from God, the Universal Ruler. Anointing a ruler was the sign of this divine blessing, this divine choice. So, this offhanded comment of Victoria’s reveals her clear bias that a ruler chosen by God would be better than a self-made ruler.

Yet, what is democracy if not a collective of self-made rulers? At its best, the democratic process allows people to “rule” themselves by sharing the power of governing. Choosing how to share power, how to govern, is of course the purview of politics. And yet, underlying these political choices are assumptions about who or what is the source of authority and power. In other words, underlying the choices of politics are ideas about human nature and the nature of the universe. Such ideas reflect religious commitments about the ultimate nature and purpose of existence.

For example, if the God of your understanding is an all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the Universe, then the source of all power must be understood as coming from that God. God holds the power and can divvy it out to those God chooses. This theological point of view supports the notion of the Divine Right of Kings that Victoria alludes to. Such a view of God as a power over others, who is due allegiance and obedience by “His” creation, generates an acceptance of hierarchal power as the natural order of the universe. When one accepts hierarchy as natural, the application of the same principle among human beings can be vast. Aristocrats with land are better than landless peasants. Men are higher than women. Whiteness is superior to people of color. And so on.

Of course, not all views of God support such a hierarchal understanding of power. For some, God may be all-powerful, but God created humankind as equal to one another. In my own training in feminist Christian theological discourse, I learned to rely heavily on Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In this view, God remains unquestionably superior to humankind, but among humans there is the expectation of equality. Indeed, this kind of just society is the fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity.

And what of us as Unitarian Universalists? As inheritors of a Unitarian legacy, we hold fast to the individual capacity of a person to make moral and religious decisions. We have faith in our reason and in our ability to do good. And, as inheritors of a Universalist legacy, we claim an inclusive vision that values all persons, in a love that embraces people universally. Together these threads of individual capacity and universal inclusion emerge in our fifth principle: “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregation and in society at large.”

Our commitment to conscience and democracy emerge because of a long religious tradition that values the worth and dignity of every person. When we take these values as foundational to our understanding of how the world is, this is a religious claim.

I believe that religion is bigger than politics. I believe religion is about answering the biggest questions about who we are as fragile, fierce creatures; about where we find ourselves in this complex, beautiful, maddening world; and about how to navigate the ever-shifting dynamics of being who we are in the world in which we find ourselves. I believe religion is making sense of life by naming the landscape of how things are and values that will help us chart a course. I have chosen to be a part of the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition that values the capacity for moral choice as well as the dignity of each life, that promotes equity in human relations and the use of the democratic process in an effort to share power.

And it is from the basis of these moral commitments, these religious commitments, that I then take political action. It is from the basis of my humanity, my effort to craft a meaningful life in a shared world that I engage both my religious life and my political action.

And so I think that as religious persons and as a religious community we can engage in actions that seek to shape the kind of world we want to live in. We can promote and support issues that align with our inclusive values of human worth and dignity, of equity and justice in human relations, of the use of the democratic process in our larger society. We can live our values and religious commitments through our actions—through public social witness and the political process as well as through direct compassionate care to individuals in need.

There are limits to what we can do and to what we should do. By law, engaging in partisan politics endangers our non-profit status. Neither the congregation nor I can endorse or denounce political parties or candidates from the pulpit during an election. Nor do I think we should do this—even if it were legal. As a religious organization, we are exploring a much larger and bigger world than that of politics. We are reaching out to understand the expanses of meaning and the contours of moral action. I would never want who we are and what we do to be reduced to any political party’s platform.

And yet, I also do not want us to be curtailed in our relevance because we fear engaging in issues and actions that seem political. I believe that we can act in a public way as Unitarian Universalists with a religious voice, that we can call any and every political party to uphold certain shared values in their proposals and in their votes. We come together with a commitment to valuing every person—even those from a different political party. And we come together to live out those values in our actions—some of which may be to engage the political process.

We may not always agree on how to live out our values. It is a bold thing for a congregation to take a public position on an issue—to hang a Black Lives Matter banner, to offer sanctuary for a person facing deportation, to fly a rainbow flag on our steps. But, it is something we can choose to do as a religious act. Deciding what we should or should not do as individuals, groups, or as a congregation—that is a matter of conscience and the use of the democratic process.

Democracy is essential not because it is the only possible form of government. Democracy is essential because it is shared power that aligns with valuing the right of conscience and the worth and dignity of every person. Democracy is essential because to live out the fullness of who we are as human beings we need to feel like we can meaningfully shape the world we share.

Imagine what kind of world you would like to live in. Imagine believing, really believing, that you can be a part of making that world come to be. Imagine that democracy is essential.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110122023/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/01.mp3

The Unitarian Universalist minister David O. Rankin liked to relate a story from his career. In 1968 he preached a sermon just before the presidential election in which he was not thrilled between the choice of Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey. Instead of making the case, however subtly, for either candidate, he chose instead to recommend that everyone vote for the most intelligent, experienced and compassionate candidate. Moments later, in the receiving line after the service, he was confronted by a man loudly and angrily shouting at him, “How dare you use the pulpit to support Hubert Humphrey!”

I endorse no candidates here, nor even stake a position on individual items on any ballot. No, let’s talk politics, but not parties. For decades now, we have repeatedly been told about values voters, and the moral majority, and the religious right, and family values and “pro-life” voters and so on.

It’s time to change the script.

Because friends, I’m a values voter. And the values I hold dear are taking care of my fellow human beings, ending oppression, and making sure that people have healthy food and a safe place to live. My values support     people of all gender expressions and sexual orientations, people of all races and ethnicities, of all national origins. My values are truly pro-life, not just pro-birth.

I consider myself both moral and part of a majority. I try to live a good life, to not harm others as much as possible, to do the right things and to be a good person. And I believe that the majority, perhaps all of us, are doing those same things, even if we might sometimes differ on how to accomplish them.

And I hope it goes without saying, I’m religious, though not right. I’m tired of the conversation about religion in this country assuming that religious people span the gamut from fundamentalist Christians to conservative Christians. There are liberal and radical people of faith, and there are Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and dozens of other religious groups who are here and politically engaged! If we could get this word out to the major news networks sometime soon, that would be great.

I think I have great family values. Those values include supporting same-sex couples in living their lives the way they choose, with the same access to rights and privileges I have as a heterosexual, cisgender man in an opposite-sex marriage. And I have family values that say children should grow up in a home where they are loved and cared for and supported, and that matters more than other concerns.

And I’m pro-life, but not in the narrow, nonsensical way I often hear used by those who claim that title. I support life—I want to support the flourishing of all human life. I recognize that women have a better understanding of their own bodies and decisions than I do. I oppose the death penalty—again, because I support life. I’m anti-poverty and pro-prison reform, because I’m for life. I’m pro-medicine and pro-science, and even pro-socialized medicine, because I’m for life.

I’m even, and here’s something you probably didn’t expect a minister to say, pro-gun. At any rate I’m not totally anti-gun, and that feels radical in an age where there’s precious little middle ground. Though I don’t own any, I’m not opposed to guns. I’ve lived in places where guns are important, and not as a symbol or for some inflated sense of self-defense. I lived in rural Mississippi and spent time with people who hunted, for whom guns were part of a way of life, with people who each donated hundreds of pounds of meat a year to a local children’s home as part of a program called Hunters for the Hungry. So I’m pro-gun, and I’m pro-responsible gun ownership, and I’m pro-sensible gun control—something this country lacks right now.

Maybe you think at least some of these same things about yourself. Perhaps you cringe at the destructive, divisive policies and platforms you hear from people who are too eager to lift up their moral framework as the right, and proper, and only one for this country. You might see the US as a country too large and too diverse and too amazing to be contained by any one system of thinking or seeing.

We follow the prophetic calls of those who have come before us, like Frederick Douglass and Barbara Jordan and Rosa Parks, and those like the Rev. William Barber working today. Barber has called upon people of faith to lift up and defend the most sacred moral principles of our faiths. We support pro-people and anti-war policies, equality in education, healthcare for all, fairness for all people in the criminal justice system, and rights for all people, especially people of marginalized identities.

The work that Unitarian Universalists around the country and the world are doing in the political process, the work we do in our local communities, all of this is part of the same work of creating the beloved community. And whoever we elect, this work will continue.

Friends, vote for the most intelligent, experienced, and compassionate candidates. And then go love the hell out of the world, each of us in our unique ways. The world cries out for our efforts, and no election alone will end that.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121926/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/02.mp3

Do you trust democracy? In your bones, do you trust it? Do you trust yourself and your fellow citizens?

Have you ever feared the democratic outcome?

Rhetoric is high and relentless these days. While we like to claim our openness to difference, I sense there are times we feign deep listening. Or maybe it’s just me. As the posturing and gamesmanship barrages our senses, we retreat to our corners, sure in our truth. Or we may even retreat to our well-honed middle position.

We duck as the messiness of ideas fly back and forth. “They” are not listening and are not going to listen. It feels tough to engage—there is a hopelessness in the political climate of today.

Religion on its own, or politics on its own, is each fraught with triggers. Mixing the two is dicey, and yet the spheres aren’t separate.

Our 5th UU principle directly states that UU congregations will affirm and promote “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” Right there—we view the democratic process as a principle of faith.

It’s not new. When the Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961 it was stated this way: UU congregations “affirm, defend and promote the supreme worth of every human personality, the dignity of man, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships.”

Lifting up “democracy” as one of our religious principles goes back even further. In the 1940s, Rev. A. Powell Davies, minister at the All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC, had the democratic method identified as a nationwide core value of the faith.

Davies was born in England at the turn of the century, and in England was trained as a Methodist minister. He came to the US in 1928 and was a persistent public advocate for civil liberties, government accountability, family planning and desegregation. In time he shifted and in 1933 was fellowshipped as a Unitarian minister.

Consider his context. He was raised during WWI in Europe, lived through the Depression in the US, and was developing these Unitarian values well into WWII. He’d experienced fascism, was part of a world struggling to respond to communism, and he still held his long term social justice concerns.

In the mid-1940s Rev. Davies was appointed to a national committee charged to “advance” the Unitarian faith. The group focused on rejuvenating and growing the Unitarian faith, in large part by clarifying its purpose.

The committee only agreed to five principles, and one was Unitarian faith in “Democratic process in human relations.” It stuck. It is still around.

Recall that Rev. Davies was the spiritual leader of congregations around the DC Beltway, the center of the US government. A decade later, he still was expounding on democracy. In a sermon in 1954 he offered:

“[Unitarianism] is an inclusive, not an exclusive faith, based on individual freedom of belief…finding salvation not through someone else’s martyrdom, but by education and the disciplines of democracy….

A …commitment of the Unitarian faith is to democracy—not merely as a political system but as the just and brotherly way in human relations.…

We think that discussion is the path to true agreement. We are educators one of another, and all can learn from each.

We are well aware that democracy can be a discipline—sometimes a harsh one. But this is part of its value. We grow by learning to get along with other people. We grow even more when we learn to respect and like each other, to have a concern, each for all, in the words of the New Testament, to “love one another.”

For Rev. Davies, democracy was not only a public institution, but was a moral institution as well.

He worried democracy would be taken for granted. He saw modern democracy needed advocates and protection. It was not a squishy niceness. Davies had seen the alternatives, and put his trust in an engaged democracy. An engaged democracy. Not a vote and move on democracy. He saw the best method of protection was to live into the deep ideals of democracy by working through difference.

And differences we will have. While humans have a propensity to cooperate with one another in social groups for survival and fulfillment, we also have a propensity for violence within and among groups.

I sense our trust in the institution of democracy is slipping.

Our founding documents, adjusted over time, have checks and balances that spell out the processes for self-government. Let’s be real here—the initial set up was for white, male, land-owners to do the deciding and the governing. But slowly these principles have changed. The democracy created was to be deliberate and slow.

This foundation is sturdy, but not a guarantee. Frustrations are high and cynicism festers. Our democracy is not a guarantee. I hear this as Davies’ central point. The imperfect institution needs to be protected, and improved, and this is the mantle we are called to carry.

Modern democracy offers a path toward affirming the inherent worth and dignity of all. It is a moral assumption. It is a moral aspiration.

What are we individually and collectively ready to risk for democracy? To heal democracy?

Democracy is about voting, but it has to be more.

For democracy to work we need to bring our whole selves to the process—head, heart, and energy. We have to be in connection across our differences. Yet, as challenges have mounted, many have pulled back, often living in echo chambers with those who agree with them.

We are called to deeply engage, even knowing that probably means our hearts will break. Will our hearts break open to possibility instead of breaking apart? Parker Palmer, in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy, suggests that if we gain “greater capacity to hold the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the result may be new life.”

Isn’t that what it takes to live in democracy? To authentically participate. To listen, and to speak up. To risk to trust in a democratic system we know as imperfect, but which in its most engaged forms may be our best hope to get through the challenges of human relations.

We’re called as citizens in a democracy to hold life’s many tensions consciously, faithfully, until our hearts are opened. It is in doing so that we sustain and build trust so we may live into the responsibility of governing ourselves.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121839/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/03.mp3

One hundred years ago the state of Maine was sharply divided between Republicans and Democrats. The little lakeside town of Naples suffered animosity so severe that the village had two stores, two libraries, and even two schoolteachers, a Republican and a Democrat. Unfortunately, they only had one schoolhouse. The Democrats and Republicans took turns locking one another out. In the middle of this political turmoil, a reporter asked a five-year-old boy whether he and his family were Republicans or Democrats. Thinking hard, the little boy scratched his head and said, “I think we’re Baptists.”

Politics and religion.

In the South about twenty years ago, a group began growing in power and influence within local conservative churches. The movement soon spread to other parts of the country. They published voting guides, and surreptitiously (and sometimes not so surreptitiously) supported candidates, until ultimately the Christian Coalition was told by the Internal Revenue Service that if they did not curtail their political activities, they risked losing their tax-exempt status. That status was indeed taken away in 1999, and with it went several local congregations. Meanwhile, hundreds of other churches have been left in tatters, irreconcilably divided between those who wished to pursue partisan agendas and those who decried the loss of the spiritual core of the faith. The little-known side effect of the infusion of politics into their religion was schism and grief.

Politics and religion.

One hundred seventy years ago, a Unitarian clergyman named Theodore Parker developed a vision of American democracy, one with no remaining elements of aristocracy, monarchy, or that scourge he saw as the largest obstacle to the human spirit, slavery. He criticized the Mexican War from the pulpit, and at great personal risk preached openly his resistance to any form of government that fell short of “direct self-government, over all the people, by all the people, for all the people,” a phrase that would later be adapted by President Abraham Lincoln.

Politics and religion.

Only five or six decades ago, Unitarian and Universalist churches struggled with the issue of civil rights. Many who resisted change did so not because of open bigotry, but simply because the change itself was uncomfortable. It was too much to keep hearing about integration and racial justice. They wanted a feeling of comfort and refuge from church; they didn’t want to be challenged. Others felt the challenge should go further than it ever did. We owe part of who we are as a religion and as a society today to those courageous Unitarians and Universalists who decided that sometimes justice takes precedence. Some, like Rev. James Reeb, lost their lives for what they believed.

Politics and religion.

Politics and religion—these are the two proscribed dinner table conversations, the topics to be avoided at all costs. Like it or not, though, you can’t ignore politics, or separate political views completely from religious views. We live in a political age, no less so than Theodore Parker or James Reeb or Susan B. Anthony, or anyone else. Our lives are infused with politics, and to ignore that fact is to waive the responsibility our faith calls us to.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121815/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/04.mp3

I grew up in a deeply political UU family. From the earliest time I can remember, we talked about politics and religion at the dinner table. I don’t know if my parents did this to counteract the influences which were coming at us from our conservative Baptist neighborhood, or if it was simply what they liked to talk about, but my three siblings and I were all weaned on political discourse.

By the time we were adolescents, my siblings and I had done things like make lobby visits on issues we cared about, campaign for chosen candidates, put unpopular bumper stickers on our bikes, argue with our schoolmates during recess about the issues of the day and write letters to the newspaper. It has been surprising to learn, especially as an adult, how rare this experience was. Many of my friends have told me that they never thought about politics, and that their parents never talked about the subject.

The small UU fellowship in West Virginia where I spent my elementary school years in the 1960s was awash in the political issues of the day, mostly connected to civil rights. It was, after all, Adlai Stevenson who helped my parents find Unitarian Universalism. Stevenson, who ran for U.S. President in 1952 and 1956, shared that he was a Unitarian. My parents had never heard of Unitarianism, but they decided if Stevenson, whom they loved, was a Unitarian they wanted to check it out. The story goes that my mother went to church in Houston, Texas in 1956, while my father stayed home with the three of us kids, aged baby to five. When my mom got home, she said, “Church was fine, but coffee hour was great! I have found our people!” They spent the rest of their life as UUs, though not as Texans.

I think about how it must have felt for them to find their people in those days of the McCarthy hearings, living in a very conservative place where they had just moved for my father’s first job. To find a community that was open-minded and progressive, to meet other people who had similar values and commitments to fairness and democracy. And I think about all the people now who could benefit similarly, who are bereft in a world gone increasingly authoritarian, who are lonely for human contact in a world that is increasingly driven by technology, who are longing for a place to reconnect with fundamental decency and kindness. This is one reason why I am so committed to sharing Unitarian Universalism—because people need spiritual homes in hard times!

For me, politics and religion have always been inseparable, using the definition of politics which folks like the late Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone espoused:

Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.

But that connection of religion and politics is complicated. In the US today, politics have increasingly become equated with partisanship, with politicians seeming to dream of and aspire to nothing more than re-election. That kind of politics has no place in spiritual communities—our faith is not on the ballot.

I spent 10 years living in Washington DC and directing the UUA’s justice work there. We worked in interfaith coalitions for bills that supported our faith commitments to justice and equality and democracy. I can also say that we never worked on a bill that we felt 100% good about. Every single one of them was problematic in one way or another. That, I think, is what partisan politics is about—profound compromise, and 51% of the vote.

I think that getting the necessary percentage of the vote, in the United States at least, has been part of the divisive place to which we have gotten—that all of the major cities and even the larger towns are much more progressive than the rural areas. Political parties in the US significantly wrote off rural areas because we can achieve 51% of the vote without them. No outreach, no education, no campaign efforts to speak of. I wish progressive folks spent more time reaching out to rural areas, where (again, in the US) white nationalists and other hate groups have been actively recruiting for decades.

I get why political parties use limited resources to win elections. That’s their goal. Don’t get me wrong; winning an election is no small thing! But faith, unlike partisan politics, is about clear and uncompromising values, and including all of the people. People of faith have a different charge around spreading our values than political parties do. Whether our chosen candidates in the elections have won or lost, our charge is to keep reaching out with values which are more clear, consistent and sharp than what is possible to pass in the legislature. It’s up to us, not the politicians, to be clear about our values and to insert them into public discourse.

My siblings and I raised our own kids the way we were raised—to see the value in serving the common good, to work for a better world. This next generation lives in three countries now, and the form the work takes varies from person to person and place to place. But the values I was raised with continue on in my family, and I remain grateful for my early grounding in connecting up spiritual beliefs with work for justice, and for Unitarian Universalism’s commitment to a democratic and fair world.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121754/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/05.mp3

I had a proud parenting moment the other day. My young adult daughter texted me “I have officially become the kind of annoying adult that won’t shut up about politics.” I replied “This makes me so happy.” Yes, I do feel that it says something good about my parenting that my kid is paying attention to politics. When she was little I made a point of taking her along with me to the polls to vote, so that we could talk about how important the process of informed voting is. And yes, when she turned 18 I badgered her into actually filling out her ballot and getting it in on time. My daughter is a young Black woman, and I feel like the world needs her vote, and she needs to feel that she can have an effect, however small, in shaping our country toward the way she wants it to be.

When I was her age, I did vote—I haven’t missed a presidential or congressional election since I turned 18. But I was hardly the kind of adult that wouldn’t shut up about politics. Politics seemed to me something like flossing—an annoying chore that you attended to because apparently it was important. Understanding issues was complicated and the information tedious. Politicians were better or worse, but not inspiring.

Then, in women’s studies classes in college, I learned the phrase “The personal is political.” That began to capture my imagination. How we live our lives, the choices we make, the way we treat the people around us, the words we speak or write, the songs we sing—it’s all political. Who we are as individuals shapes who we are as communities and who we are as a nation. That made sense to me. It also gave me an out. If I wasn’t going to protests or writing letters or campaigning, well, I was doing other things. Personal things.

Beyond voting and the very occasional protest my politics stayed pretty personal for some time. I just couldn’t bring myself to get invested in any activist way. I moved to Idaho in 1991 to serve my first congregation as an out lesbian. Surely, that was a personally political act! Well, in 1992 Kelly Walton, a local minister far into the right wing of Christianity started collecting signatures for an initiative that would stop gay people from having “special rights” like employment non-discrim-ination. And the personal got a whole lot more political. Somehow, two years later, when they had gathered enough signatures to get Initiative 1 on the ballot, I ended up as the chair of a faith-based organization opposing the initiative, and got out on the streets canvassing people to talk about why Prop 1 was wrong. In the end the initiative was defeated 50.38% to 49.62%, and we couldn’t help but feel our efforts made a difference.

I’d like to claim that my experiences of turning the personal political turned me into a life-long activist, but that would be a considerable exaggeration. I hate calling people with a nearly phobic passion, and standing in a group of people yelling just makes me feel squirmy. I make the occasional phone call, write the occasional letter, attend the occasional march. But I read about politics, and as the political situation gets more extreme and more bizarre my reading takes on an almost frantic quality. As if by knowing more I would have more control over the political tidal waves crashing through my country. Politics has gone from being tedious, to horror movie levels of jaw-dropping terror.

And I find that I have become the kind of annoying adult who won’t shut up about politics. To my friends. To strangers on Facebook, to anyone who will read what I write or engage in a conversation. Because it has become clear to me that not only is the personal political, the religious is political. Who I am as a minister is not more separable from who I am as a political person than it is from who I am as a mother.

And while it is not anywhere explicit in our UU principles and purposes, I believe that it is a central tenet of our faith that we are called to be in conversation. We are called to have convictions about how human beings are treated—with inherent worth and dignity. We are called to have convictions about how the earth is treated—as inseparable from our own lives. And we are called to talk with passion about what matters to us. We are also called to listen intently to what matters to others. We don’t have to agree, but we are called to be in the conversation. And we are called to move that conversation beyond the bounds of comfort into the wider world, boldly bringing all of our personhood into the realm of the political, working for a world in which everyone’s full personhood can flourish.

It isn’t easy. We will never do it “right” and we will never be done. But’s that’s how it is in any relationship. We talk. We listen. We choose. And then we do it all some more, trying to nudge ourselves, each other and the wider world toward something that looks more like wholeness.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110121732/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_03/06.mp3

The CLF Search Team is excited to announce the release of our Request for Proposals for the next Senior Leadership of the CLF! Both individuals and teams are invited to apply! We are excited to learn more about your vision for the future of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Please feel free to reach out to our team with questions at search(at)clfuu.org. The RFP deadline is March 20, 2020.

Request for Proposals

Download the  PDF version.

Request for Proposals

Download the Word version.

In her TEDTalk “What Fear Can Teach Us,” novelist Karen Thompson Walker tells us that fear can be understood as an amazing act of the imagination; as an unintentional storytelling that we are born knowing how to do.

Fears have the same elements as stories, she points out: characters, usually us and the ones we love; plots, usually catastrophic ones; and plenty of suspense. The task, she argues, is to read our fears like stories, for the glimpses of wisdom and insight they have to give us. This makes sense to me, because over the years, stories themselves have helped me manage my fears.

As a child, Maurice Sendak’s beloved book Where the Wild Things Are, controversial at the time for its scary monsters and gnashing of teeth, gave me a safe place to look at those terrifying beasts on the page in front of me and confront them there, at a safe distance.

As a teenager, the diary of Anne Frank and novels set during the Holocaust allowed me to dip my toe into acknowledging the evils of this world from the safety of my own soft bed—to encounter even the idea of such evil, to see the tenuousness of all our lives in such a world, and survive that knowledge. Every child deserves to first encounter evil at such a distance. All too many don’t. Still, all children need tools to help manage their fears.

In an article for The Atlantic about Maurice Sendak, Joe Fassler writes:

In his book The Uses of Enchantment, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim suggests that fairy tales help children externalize, and ultimately diffuse, their deepest anxieties. ‘The child must somehow distance himself from the content of his unconsciousness and see it as something external to him [if he is] to gain any sort of mastery over it,’ Bettelheim writes. This is why so many fairy tales take place in the deep and mysterious woods, he argues—it is the realm of the subconscious, where the wandering child-mind can encounter its fears and wants in reified form, then neutralize them.

Alas, I must not have neutralized them all, as I have gone from being a worried child to a worried adult. The other day, when my husband forgot to tell me that he was going to be home late, and then didn’t answer his phone when I called, for just a moment my imagination ran away once more. What if the lights had gone out on his bike? What if he was in a ditch somewhere?

When he got home, I yelled. No, I declared forcefully, “I was worried about you. I pictured you in a ditch!” He apologized, and when I had calmed down he said, “I love you too.” Aha.

If our fears are themselves compelling stories, then they most often have something to tell us about what we value, as all stories do. Our fears are not something to shun or shut away, but rather powerful stories about the true depths of our care.

In other words, our worries are drenched in love. And honestly, sometimes I think it’s a miracle we don’t all walk around this world scared out of our wits all the time. Our hearts are so tender, and the world around us is beautiful and awesome, but it is not tender. Life is fragile, contingent on so many things, and we love it so much.

From the storybook Wild Things to the wilds of life, eventually we grow up and realize that we don’t get to control the story. The monsters don’t stay on the page.

Somehow we keep on loving anyway, keep on living. And that is courage. Not our capacity to overcome fear, but the capacity to move through life in the face of loss, in the fact of change.

Perhaps courage is simply the beating heart of our story, or better yet, the story of our hearts. In this way, courage is a fact of our lives. Life stretches our hearts, and lo and behold, they grow and do not burst or shatter.

The poet David Whyte says:

We are here, essentially, to risk ourselves in the world… we seem meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work or for a gift given against all the odds. And in all this continual risking the most profound courage may be found in just the simple willingness to allow ourselves, amidst the hazard and vulnerability, to be happy along the way…

After all, when we’re doing it right, we walk this earth giving away pieces of our hearts, and not always into safe-keeping. It is a huge risk. But what joy it brings us. It takes courage beyond belief to trust our hearts to love, and yet every person, perhaps every creature on this planet, does so every day. We are already brave.

Listen, you are here with pieces of your heart scattered across the country, the world. And you are already brave. Because some of those pieces have been shattered by betrayal, or loss, or tragedy, or simply change. But still you give them, and have found a calling in life to give more. You are already brave.

The miracle is that love has not left me quivering on the floor in fear. Love has made me braver. I have climbed mountains for the love of my spouse, and dealt with worms for the love of my dog. I have pursued this wild and crazy calling with the love of my family and friends. I have pursued justice with your love and partnership.

If I did not love, I’m not sure I could leave my house each day. So, yes, opening our hearts puts them at risk. But opening our hearts is also what makes us brave. Perhaps courage, like the heart, is just a muscle—in us already, pumping away without notice half the time as we move through our days, sometimes noticeable only when working hard or causing pain, but always, always made stronger with exercise.

As you move through the challenges of life, I invite you to remember that you are already brave. We can, each of us, practice the courage that sustains us, not through acts of valor or physical prowess, but through the simple willingness to extend our hearts a little further, fill our stories a little fuller, keep our imaginations working away in the service of love, so that our story becomes an exercise in compassion, strength, and hope.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110105651/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_02/01.mp3

We see them on big screens and small ones
In comic books and in toy stores
Wearing their fancy outfits
With capes or masks or armor

They save the world
In big dramatic ways
Fighting the bad guys
Defending the helpless
Always on the side of good

Isn’t that what we do, too,
Or at least what we hope to do?
Together we work for a better world

Speak out against tyrants and bullies
Use our privilege
In service of those with less power
Trying always to answer the call of love

And this is where we learn to do it
Or learn to do it better
Or teach others to do it

This is superhero school
And we are all invited to enroll,
To choose the path of good
And become the kind of superheroes
Our world needs.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110105603/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_02/10.mp3