The CLF seeks to be a courageous voice for justice, for growth, for community amongst people who would probably never meet with-out our web that connects lives around the world. In a time of growing division, simply bringing people together is a courageous act. Please support the CLF in this important work by sending a check in the enclosed envelope, or by giving online here.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110105539/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_02/02.mp3

As a first grader, Ruby Bridges was part of the first group of students to racially integrate schools in Louisiana. In 1960, six African American children passed placement tests to go to white schools. Ruby was one of them. Two of the six children decided to stay at their all-black schools, three were assigned to McDonough School and Ruby was the one student assigned to integrate William Frantz public school. She integrated that school all on her own. In that first year, many white parents pulled their children from the school, including the parents of the rest of the first grade class. Most of the teachers left too. For all of first grade it was only Ruby and her teacher.

As Ruby remembers it, her mother rode with her in the car with the federal marshals for the first two days of school. After that, her mother had to get back to work and look after the two younger children. So, Ruby rode with the marshals by herself. Ruby’s mom told her, “If you feel afraid, say your prayers. You can pray anytime and God will hear you.”

I highlight this because when I explore faith, I keep bumping up against courage. When we look at faith not as a set of beliefs, but rather as a source of strength that keeps us holding on to our values when it gets difficult, or a source of hope when we feel lost, we are also talking about courage. In Ruby’s story, you hear how her mom was showing her how to keep moving forward even when she was afraid, through prayer, through her faith.

It’s so easy to see courage as boldness, bravery, fearlessness. It’s so easy to ascribe courage to heroic figures throughout time, to put it on such a high shelf that it feels unattainable. I want to rid you of that idea.

Courage is something we all need. It’s something we all can live in our lives—something attainable. More than this, it is needed. Not just in historic lives, not just in dramatic moments, but every day. We need the courage to show another way to live—a way that is not based in ego or control, not out of domination, power or materialism. We need ways of being in the world that don’t place our sense of worth in being right or being successful, but rather in being human, in being true to ourselves. And for this, we absolutely need courage.

As researcher and author Brené Brown says, we need the courage to show up fully as ourselves in our lives and to let ourselves be seen. Vulnerability begets vulnerability and courage is contagious. She points to Harvard researchers who show that real change is sustained by leaders who are able to show vulnerability. This vulnerability is perceived as courage and it inspires others to be courageous. We need this kind of courage in a world, in a country, in a society, that needs great change. To do this, we need to learn how to develop courage in our own lives and how to teach courage to our children.

Courage is not simply a virtue—it is a quality that the rest of the virtues depend on. C.S. Lewis puts it this way: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” Whatever it is we hold highest—if it is a commitment to peace and nonviolence, if it is a commitment to human dignity for all, if it is equality, if it is kindness or compassion, a respect for the interdependence of creation—to live these in our lives, to inspire them in our world, we need courage. To truly live these values, there will come a time where we need
courage to stay true to them, to practice them at the testing point.

Courage isn’t just strength, and it is certainly not just a forcefulness of will. We look to Dr. King, Ruby Bridges, Mahatma Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Harvey Milk and we call them courageous because in their dedication to principles of human dignity and worth, of equity and opportunity, they risked themselves. Their actions made them vulnerable. Brené Brown, in her book Daring Greatly, writes “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.”

Vulnerable comes from the Latin, “to wound;” it means being in a place of risking yourself. Brown talks about the problem of being so afraid (even unconsciously) of our vulnerability that we seek to control everything around us in order to minimize risk and avoid being hurt. When we do this we separate ourselves from others, and even from our own lives, in order to distance ourselves from the possibility of pain. In this circumstance beginning to learn to share yourself—your whole self, your fears, your needs—being willing to be seen is a critical step to developing courage.

It takes courage to let ourselves be seen. But it is so important because it is in being seen, in vulnerability, Brown says, that we find the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, authenticity and courage. The vulnerability of sharing our whole selves opens up a door to a level of connection and being and understanding that is a source of incredible strength and joy.

On the other hand, I want to be careful about how we look at different types of vulnerability. Brown’s definition and perspective is valuable, but it might sound different from a place of social or physical vulnerability. Many of the people I named as models of courage were or are people marginalized because of the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation. They would rightly argue they didn’t need courage to get in touch with their vulnerability; they needed courage not to be victimized by it.

Vulnerability on its own is not courage. We can make ourselves vulnerable out of stupidity, out of a thirst for drama or danger or adventure. Sometimes we are vulnerable because of our position in life, vulnerable because of poverty, vulnerable as children to the power of adults, vulnerable for any number of reasons beyond our control.

Vulnerability and courage are not the same thing. In fact, Brown says “Perfect and bullet-proof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience.” All of us are vulnerable. Of course, we are vulnerable to the elements of nature and illness, but also to the risks of loving and losing, of trying and being unsuccessful, vulnerable to social and political circumstances. We are not all equally vulnerable, to be sure. Nevertheless, it is simply a fact of existence. Courage is how we respond to that vulnerability.

So courage is not the same thing as vulnerability. Courage is an inner strength to recognize our vulnerabilities, yet to go forward in spite of them. The courage to take action is not about being certain about what’s next. It is instead a determination not to surrender to the vulnerability, but rather to try to go forward despite the risks.

This is important because I don’t want to leave you with the idea that vulnerability is something we ought to seek, or cling to. Attempts at perfectionism and control are dangerous, but it is just as problematic to think only of our vulnerability, to deny our power, our agency, our choices, our worth.

When it comes to developing courage, or inspiring it in others, the very first step is being able to be fully yourself.
Sometimes sharing your story of truth—sharing fully the way you doubt or fail, the way you experience the world, that “raw truth” as Brown describes it—is the most courageous thing we can do in a moment. And in those moments, vulnerability not only sounds like truth and feels like courage—it looks like courage. And it can inspire others to be courageous in telling their truths, in being fully themselves and openly engaged.

We remember our agency, and we hold on to the faith—by whatever name we call it—that gives us strength to keep working for what we believe in, to advocate for ourselves and others. We teach courage by living it in whatever ways present themselves, by getting off the sidelines and letting ourselves be seen.

Ruby Bridges says she remembers that her dad didn’t want her to go to the white school. Her mom did. She thought it would give Ruby better opportunities later on and she thought it would matter to other black children and families. She said her parents talked all summer about it and finally her dad was persuaded by her mom. I have no doubt that her mom’s courage, her parents’ courage, and that of the families that stood with them, and the teacher who taught and came to love Ruby, all helped her develop courage—a courage that stayed with her throughout her life.

We teach courage by modeling it. We grow our courage by being able to name our own vulnerability—connecting with others by sharing our truth, but not getting stuck there. We grow our courage by holding to our agency, our sense of worth and our own power to shape our lives. And we grow our courage by living our values, even at the testing point. May we all grow courageous hearts, and may we teach courage to our children.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110105514/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_02/03.mp3

I was a fearful child. And frankly, most of those fears stayed with me into young adulthood. I was scared of…let’s see: Dogs. The dark. Matches (that was a hard one for someone training to be a minister—lots of candle lighting involved). Driving on highways (that was a hard one when I moved to the DC area…it took several years and a lot of early morning practice on the George Washington Parkway).

In fact, I had a whole understanding of myself as Someone Who Was Afraid of Things. A fearful person. Someone without a lot of courage, I guess. Of course, eventually I got wiser than that. You are probably already that wise: you realize that being afraid is in no ways counter to having courage.

Really, most people who act courageously do so full of fear; frankly, if you weren’t afraid, I’m not really sure it would count as courage. For me, that realization came when I decided that I could be near a dog and be afraid and not run away (which, incidentally, isn’t a great choice if you don’t want the dog to chase you). I learned I could stay there and just sit with, and hold the fear. That was the courageous thing for me.

So how do we manage this? How do we find the courage to be with our fear, to face it by walking alongside it, to do the hard things in our lives and in the world?

Because the world seems to require a lot of courage these days, doesn’t it? We are called to work against oppression and injustice all the time, and I know that some of the courage we may be looking for is the courage to respond to the world around us, to go to the march, to shut down the traffic, to resist hate speech, to intervene and de-escalate. Or maybe just the courage to go on, to feel as though there are reasons to bother fighting, rather than hiding away with our heads in the sand. We need a lot of courage these days.

I find that courage is contagious. Consider penguins. Penguins line up, you know, at the edge of a cliff of ice, to jump into the water below and fish. But the thing is, none of the penguins want to be first. They all waddle forward—you can just imagine their little waddles—peering over and pulling back, jostling for position, wondering who will take the dive. Eventually, one of them loses their footing and…swoop! They dive down to the water below. Their penguin friends watch, and wait, and finally see them, surfacing in the water, full of fish. Then suddenly all the penguins want to go, tipping themselves forward to fish together. Sometimes, courage is like that: like penguins, unsure who will be the first to fall, waiting until someone tips over and then…swoop! They find the courage together.

This is what we do for each other, in a community like this one: we inspire each other, we face fears together, we convince each other that we have the power to be courageous. Courage is contagious.

But is courage to resist the only kind of courage there is?

My congregation hasn’t been shy in its criticism of the policies enacted by this US administration, or the values that the administration and some of its supporters espouse, and I don’t regret that. To my mind, that’s not being overly political; that’s continuing our values, including our core value, the idea of the worth of every person.

But how does that value—the worth of every person—come into play when we are fighting for justice…fighting, perhaps, against those we think are creating injustice in the world? It seems to me sometimes that being courageous for the resistance is the easy part. Having the courage to also stay in relationship, to honor our deepest value of inherent worth, is harder…and if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not always sure I want to have that kind of courage.

Does it even take courage? I think so, because I know at least for me, I carry plenty of fear when I think about talking with relatives and friends who believe very differently than I do. I’m afraid I won’t be able to maintain the relationship at all…or that I’ll maintain it, but I’ll do so by betraying my values and not speaking up when they say something I disagree with…or that I’ll try to talk with them and it will all go horribly wrong…or, worst of all, that I won’t want to maintain the relationship, and I’ll decide they aren’t worth the relationship and walk away.

The word courage comes from Latin, by way of Old French, and the word for heart. Hidden in that root may be the key to facing the fears that come with relationships, the courage that is needed to stay connected with all, to be a space where “only love is welcome.” We hold on to those fears with heart.

For me, heart, and courage, are about faith, too. One of the things we say in Ethical Culture specifically is that we don’t find worth in all people (sometimes, indeed, it’s really hard to see it there!) but rather we attribute worth to all people. We believe it’s there, even when we can’t see it.

My colleague Jone Johnson Lewis says it this way:

Here in this community, we value the actions that come from beliefs, more than we value the beliefs. We have no common creed. We have some commitments to act…We say…that we will attribute worth to every person. We admit that we don’t know whether there is such a “thing” as worth, but we will take an action, anyway—attributing worth.

That action, that attribution, is a kind of courage to me.

I’d like to end with a story, one about the football player Colin Kaepernick. I thought he had one kind of courage, the standing up to injustice kind—which he did, and faced harsh consequences for his career. It turns out, though, that Kaepernick also has the other kind of courage, the using your heart as you approach relationships, and seeking to bring out their best.

I found this on Facebook, so I don’t know the author—but I did verify that the story is true:

Why Kaepernick kneels instead of sits:

Do you wanna know how Kaepernick came to the decision to #Kneel #TakeAKnee?

Aug 14, 2016—Colin Kaepernick sat for the national anthem. No one noticed.

Aug 20th, 2016—Colin again sat and again, no one noticed.

Aug 26th, 2016—Colin sat and this time he was met with a level of vitriol unseen against an athlete.

Then on Aug 30th, 2016 Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret turned NFL long snapper, penned an open letter to Colin in the Army Times. In it he expressed how Colin’s sitting affected him. Then a strange thing happened. Colin was able to do what most Americans to date have not… He listened.

In his letter Mr. Boyer writes:

“I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in. It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war. Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it.”

Mr. Boyer goes on to write “There are already plenty of people fighting fire with fire, and it’s just not helping anyone or anything. So I’m just going to keep listening, with an open mind. I look forward to the day you’re inspired to once again stand during our national anthem. I’ll be standing right there next to you.”

Mr. Boyer showed empathy and understanding…and Mr. Kaepernick reciprocated. Colin invited Nate to San Diego where the two had a 90-minute discussion, and Nate proposed Colin kneel instead of sit.

But why kneel? In a military funeral, after the flag is taken off the casket of the fallen military member, it is smartly folded 13 times and then presented to the parents, spouse or child of the fallen member by a fellow service member while kneeling.

The two decided that kneeling for the flag would symbolize his reverence for those that paid the ultimate sacrifice while still allowing Colin to peacefully protest the injustices he saw.

Empathy, not zealotry under the guise of patriotism, is the only way meaningful discussion can be had.

May we all be so courageous.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110105449/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_02/04.mp3

The beloved Senior Minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), Rev. Meg Riley, has announced her retirement, effective August 2020. The CLF’s approaches to worship, pastoral care, providing spiritual resources and otherwise interacting with its congregation have been a blessing to members without easy access to a brick and mortar congregation.

An important component of the CLF mission is ministry to and with people on the margins–a deep and active commitment to anti-racism, anti-oppression, and multicultural community and learning.

In addition, a robust and rapidly growing prison ministry presents both a challenge and an extraordinary opportunity to the CLF. In a world of isolation, the CLF is a place where people can know that they are not alone.

Belonging is at the heart of CLF’s ministry. 

Technical innovations and societal changes require that the CLF adapt its ministries to meet the requirements of younger generations and emerging new communities of congregants. The CLF provides a uniquely open space for entrepreneurial ministerial endeavors. Rather than conduct a traditional search process for both a senior minister and a prison ministry director, the CLF Board of Trustees is taking an open-ended, creative approach towards determining the future leadership structure for Unitarian Universalism’s “Church without Walls.” We are asking you–UU leaders–for your ideas. The CLF will be circulating a detailed request for proposals in the very near future. Applications from both individuals and teams will be welcome. The board, with assistance from appropriate experts, will then evaluate each proposal in detail and select the one most likely to ensure that the CLF and its members continue to flourish in the decades to come.

Put your thinking caps on and watch this space! Please reach out to search(at)clfuu.org with any questions. 

Yours in faith,

The CLF Search Committee

This week we chatted with the CLF Learning Fellows about CLF.

The VUU streams live every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk about social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support 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/20211110100953/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu276.mp3

This week we chatted with the Commission on Institutional Change about what’s new with their work.

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook. 

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110100924/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu277.mp3

Perhaps you are familiar with the concept of The Hero’s Journey, made famous by Joseph Campbell. A Hero’s Journey is a story that is told in all mythologies and times and places, an archetype that reflects our own journey and draws humanity together. The Hero’s Journey story begins when the hero leaves the mundane world and ventures out of their comfort zone. On their way they are likely to be given supernatural aid in one form or another, given instruction from mentors, and as they travel they gather allies. But eventually it comes time to cross the threshold; it’s time for the biggest part of the journey to begin. This is when the hero leaves behind everything familiar and moves into a realm filled with mystery.

A great example of this happens early in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo has been given the ring, instruction from Gandalf, a magical sword and chain mail, and has set off with his closest friend, Samwise Gamgee. After they have traveled a while, there comes a point where Samwise stops, and he says, “This is it. If I take one more step, this will be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” There’s great trepidation within Sam. He hesitates, and marks the moment when he crosses the threshold into what is truly unknown. Sam understands that it’s the point of no return, and if he takes even one step further, he will be committed to the adventure, and there will be no avoiding what’s to come.

Frodo tells him, “Remember what Bilbo used to say, ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step out onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.’” And Bilbo was right…anything can happen, and there’s no way out but through.

Gateways have power. When we pass through from one phase of life into another, it marks a time of great change, an unfolding into something new. We know what it means to come to a gateway, face the inevitable trials, and, finally, pass through…it happens in all sorts of ways. The most common gateways are the greatest rites of passage, which happen to all of us: birth and death. This is where we pass through from the unknown and then back into the unknown. This is where most philosophies and religions are able to really spread their wings and fly around in endless speculation. These are powerful gateways and they can invoke genuine awe in those who witness them, all religion and philosophy aside.

There are other gateways we go through of our own accord—those gateways we work and plan toward, like graduations, marriages and starting a family. These are thresholds we build ourselves that are of great importance, and will stick in the mind because the results are truly life-changing. One moment you’re single, then you arrive at a church, make your vows, get a ring, and BAM! You’re married! Yesterday you were a student, tomorrow, you’re officially a teacher, or a chemist, or an economist. One minute you’ve got a giant belly and you’re screaming in pain, the next, you’re a mother, holding your new baby, and crying with joy at finally seeing that face you’ve been wondering about. The gateway is crossed in a moment, but the work to get there was probably done over years.

Then there are the all the small transitions that take place over the course of a life; thousands of tiny, great moments that change us, bit by bit. Maybe it’s realizing we have a skill, encouraging words from a teacher, a terrific new job, a special day with a parent or child, making a wonderful new friend, or finally getting to kiss that person you’ve had a crush on. These might be small events, but they go far in shaping who we are, creating a patchwork of experiences.

But every year, each of us crosses two thresholds that can be the impetus for change. One is our birthday, the way we each mark the turning of our own years. Maybe we dread it, maybe we celebrate it, maybe we do a little bit of each. One way or another, if we’re lucky, another birthday comes around. The other threshold is the turning of a New Year. Both birthdays and New Years are times when we stand at the start of something new, an opportunity to turn a page, make a resolution to improve ourselves in large or small ways.

What is it about a new year, our own or everyone’s, which makes it so ripe for change? Maybe it’s because those times of turning tend to be points when we look behind and take stock of what we’ve done over the past year, and at the same time, look ahead at what’s to come, wonder at where the journey might take us. Sort of like we’re standing on a fulcrum, caught like Samwise Gamgee with one foot in the air, knowing that the next step we take will be the start of something new. One step in any direction will be a path that opens before us and anything can happen. I think we feel the power of that potential loud and clear when we stand at the threshold of a new year, and it makes it easier to make resolutions. It’s the challenges and trials to come that will test our resolve.

And we know that’s where the gateway leads, right? No matter which direction you put your foot down on, no matter what path you take, there will be challenges and rewards ahead. There are no avoiding the pitfalls, though, and the pitfalls are what test those resolutions we make. Old habits die especially hard and comfort zones are not easily broken out of. So, maybe the key to keeping a resolution is to find a way to renew it. Find a way to make each day the beginning of something. The old chestnut to “live every day like it’s your last,” I would think, would not help us keep resolutions like eating healthier or quitting smoking. It would be more like, “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, hand me anther beer, and cut me a big slice of that cake, please!”

No, I think the power that gateways contain, the potential for growth, comes from appreciating that every day is a new beginning, a new chance to change. Perhaps if we breathe deeply and manage to stay upright as we get swept away with every awakening, we may just be able to keep to our resolutions. It’s so hard, isn’t it, though, to find a way to make every day count, the start of a new year that begins again every day? We are easily distracted and distractible people. But here’s a blessing: if we fail, we try again tomorrow. We are ever-renewed, and the journey begins over and over.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110095758/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_01/01.mp3

Thresholds are sacred. Religions of all kinds, cultures of all times and places, have ways to mark the moments when we are on a threshold between one state of being and another.

As a culture, the United States is a bit lacking in rituals for such moments.  We mark weddings, of course, and deaths, and births and graduations. But it’s a little thin considering all the many, many thresholds that we cross in our lives.

On the other hand, we are a greatly diverse culture, weaving together many cultures with all their riches of millennia of human development. And so we can all learn from the very beautiful traditions that exist among us to mark thresholds, whether or not they are from the cultures in which we personally grew up. For example, some cultures, such as Korea and China, mark the 100th day of life. The Diné, the people of the Navajo nation, mark a baby’s first laugh. Many cultures mark a time of coming of age: 12 or 13 years for a Bat or Bar Mitzvah to mark the taking on of adult responsibility in the Jewish world, 15 years to mark a girl’s becoming a woman in much of Latin America, etc. Around the world, people have devised rituals as needed.

And yet sometimes we feel them to be necessary and don’t have them available to us. When we don’t have such rituals and know we are upon a threshold, we may seek them out or create them. Many feel the lack of a ritual to mark the end of a marriage. We have so many to mark its beginning, but nothing to mark its end. So some people crossing the threshold that is divorce have created “marriage wakes” or other rituals to honor that momentous threshold, to honor the beauty of what is on both sides: the life shared and all the hopes of that marriage, and the new life that awaits on the other side. I think that part of the attraction of neo-Paganism for so many, including Unitarian Universalists, is that it pays attention to large and small thresholds and provides—creates—new rituals to recognize those moments.

And UU congregations do have our own threshold rituals. We have Coming of Age services, sharing of joys and sorrows, the welcome of new members, the dedication of children when they arrive, the memorial celebration of someone among us when they depart, the care that we give each other at times of sickness and birth and dying. Bringing a meal to someone who has just emerged from surgery or who has lost a loved one isn’t just a pragmatic matter meant to help out with a daily task that has become difficult. It is also a way of honoring the occasion and witnessing—being present for, and listening to—a time of transition. It is an offering and a celebration.

Physical thresholds, literal doorways, get a lot of attention around the world for the same reason that we need to have attention given to these figurative thresholds: they are symbolic of those great moments of in-between. The lintel of a Maori meeting house, for example, is elaborately carved with holy images, because as one passes below it, one is moving from one holy domain into another. The outer doors and gates of a Jewish home bear mezuzot, which hold excerpts from the holy Torah, to remind those who pass through of their most important commitments as they come and go—to point out Who is with you as you cross every threshold of your life. In ancient Greece, each part of a doorway had its god: the lintel had a god, the posts had a god, the door, the hinges, the sill (the threshold itself). All of these practices of marking physical doorways, like the practices of marking the figurative doorways of our lives, are meant to say the same thing to us: Pause here with awareness. Know that when you are in the space between, you are in a sacred space of your life.

But why are thresholds sacred? I think there are two basic reasons. They are about identity: they are a place of acute awareness or questioning of who we are, what we are, to what community of people and land we belong.  And they are about change: shedding one identity and taking up another. In other words, they are about being and becoming, that great balance of our lives.

The origin of the word is exactly what you might think from its sound: threshold comes from thresh, threshing being the removing of a grain from its inedible shell. And when we are upon a threshold, we are in the act of stepping out—like the grain that is losing its skin—stepping out of our old identity and stepping into a new one that is yet unknown.

So a question for us as a spiritual community is: what do we need at such moments? What can we provide for each other?

We need to honor what is on both sides of the doorway: to celebrate the whole of our lives, the self we are leaving behind as well as the self toward which we are going.

We need something—some words, some music, some ceremony—that will recognize the significance of this moment, not leave it unmarked as if it means nothing. And we need one another.

Thresholds can be particularly challenging when our culture—which might be our community, our family, our larger culture—doesn’t have a way to recognize the threshold. So I’d like to invite you to take a moment to pause and reflect silently on a time when you might have been at a threshold in your life (perhaps right now), and our culture offered no particular way to recognize it as such.

And before you take a moment of silence for that, I want to acknowledge that in some way it is, if not a trick question, then a tricky question, because to some extent it’s hard even to perceive a threshold when no one else is recognizing it. So here are some feelings and thoughts that might be a clue that we are crossing a threshold, that we are in that in-between land:

We might have an awareness of a first or last of something. We might have tears. There might be a sense of momentousness. Time might get strange: things slowing down or speeding up much too fast.

We might have a powerful sensation that there ought to be music for this moment—some kind of inner soundtrack.

We may have a strong desire to talk to other people about what is happening to us, or a desire to talk to ourselves about it—in a journal, or by the creation of some private ritual marking the moment.

Just take a moment to reflect on whether you have had such a moment.

************

It’s never too late to honor a threshold. If there is a threshold that made you think, “Mm, that never really got marked as such,” in some sense you are still there. And that’s fine. You might always be, in some way. But it is not too late for others to help you to honor it, to recognize that you are in a very sacred place.

Of course, the threshold isn’t always where and when we think it is. It’s not always the spot that gets a highlight, even from our community.

And it’s not only a moment. When is it that love arises, so that people know they wish to marry? Is it just one moment? It’s certainly not the moment in which they say “I do.” When does it die, and they decide to part? That also is not just one moment. Even with birth: a person is born in an instant of gasping for breath, but childbirth takes hours, and gestation takes months, and the preparation for parenthood and for new life takes lifetimes. A person dies, perhaps, in a discrete moment, when the last breath is drawn or the brain ceases its hum, but dying can be a journey of years. We may mark a single symbolic moment later, like an anniversary, birthday, or date of death, but when we are on the threshold, it is much wider than something we can cross in one moment. We feel ourselves in the in-between for long, long periods of time. And that can be very beautiful and sweet and good, and it can, at the same time, be excruciatingly painful.

This, perhaps, is when we need each other the most. This is when we need words and art, music and symbols, stories and the squeeze of a hand, to say: Yes, this time is sacred. It is a time of becoming for you; it is a time of being for you. Time has slowed down and held us here, in mid-step, in the no-one’s land between what we used to be and what we will be. Here we are, not knowing exactly what or who we are in this moment.

So why are thresholds sacred? Because they teach us to live fully in that in-between and that unknowing.

And why is this so important? Because that’s where we really live all the time. All the time. Honoring threshold times is a practice that helps us to live more fully in the in-between, uncertain, traveling place where we always, in some way, are.

Now, the arrivals are real too. Being a wife is real, and being a widow is real. Being a child and being an adult. Being single and being married. Being a student, being a worker. Each of those states is real and we try to live there fully too. And also, in the deepest sense, we are always and at every moment poised between two states, between two times, between two selves.

To be here, fully present when we are neither inside the temple nor outside it, neither child nor adult, neither spouse nor widow, but right on the threshold, in that state of in-between and unknowing, is the hope of our lives. It is the only time that we ever really have.

There is a Jewish prayer that is heard at every holiday and every momentous occasion. The beginning is the standard for a short Jewish prayer of blessing: Baruch atah adonai . . . Blessed are you, Lord, Ruler of the universe. This one closes, shehecheyanu—who has kept us alive—v’kiyimanu—and protected us—v’higianu l’azman hazeh—and brought us to this time. It is called the Shehecheyanu after its key word: who has kept us alive, or you might say, kept us in life, or more simply, en-livened-us. One says this prayer at beginnings: the first night of a long holiday such as Hanukah, the first time one eats matzah during Passover; also at the birth of a child, and upon moving into a new home. It is a threshold prayer, one that may be said at any moment that is a new experience or an infrequent experience, to mark it as a time of transition. And what is it that is being said on each such occasion? Shehecheyanu—“who has enlivened us.” So that we might remember what has brought us life, so that we might remember: this is life. No matter what is happening, no matter how in-between we feel, and how in flux our lives are, we are alive and we are grateful for this very moment.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110095737/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_01/02.mp3

Threshold is an interesting word. As a maintenance clerk I immediately thought of the thing at the bottom of a doorway. Being there requires a willingness to go beyond. And then there is the literary use, which one might find in a novel: “We stand at the threshold of a momentous occasion in a brave new world….” But how do we cross the threshold?

For me it has been by accident and trial and error—mostly error. I’ve reached my error threshold because the pain of being locked up begs for relief. Prison life definitely pushes the pain number up to about a seven or so. Prison is a crucible which brings about a state of desperation which leads to actively seeking the doorway to something better.

Oftentimes in here the doorways open into fundamental beliefs which are not inviting or healing for a liberal believer. I will forever be grateful to the Divine Universe for showing me the threshold belonging to Unitarian Universalism many years ago. The kind, welcoming people who have answered my knock from inside these walls have indeed allowed me to stand at the threshold of a momentous time in a loving community.

I’ve been back on a violation for four years, and much of the initial pain, sadness and loss have subsided. I feel excitement about the day in the future when I can step foot over the thing on the door that leads to the community that supports me while I am here. I definitely have the willingness to step over into the fellowship which supports a free and responsible search for meaning.

As I stand near the threshold, waiting for the parole answer in the near future, I want to close by saying thank you for being on the other side of the threshold.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110095716/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_01/03.mp3

In between, liminal, that space where we wait.
Between moments; events, results, action, no action.
To stand on the threshold, waiting for something to end,
And something new to arrive, a pause in the rumble of time.
Awareness claims us, alert, a shadow of something different.

In between invitation and acceptance.
In between symptom and diagnosis.
In between send and receipt of inquiry and question.
In between love given and love received.

Liminality, a letting go, entering into confusion,
ambiguity and disorientation.
A ritual begun, pause … look back at what once was,
Look forward into what becomes.
Identity sheds a layer, reaches into something uncomfortable to wear.

In between lighting of the match and the kindling of oil.
In between choosing of text and the reading of words.
In between voices and notes carried through the air into ears to hear.
In between, creation thrusts ever forward.

Social hierarchies may disassemble and structures may fall.
Communities may revolt or tempt trust.
Tradition may falter or creativity crash forward.
Leaders may step down or take charge.
The people may choose or refuse.

In between, storm predicted, the horizon beckons.
In between, theology of process reminds us to step back.
In between, where minutia and galaxies intermingle with microbes and mysteries.
In between, liminal, that space where we wait: Look, listen, feel, breathe.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110095655/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_01/04.mp3

There is a passage from the Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke, that has given me inspiration when confronted by the need to change:

Though the reflection in the pool
Often swims before our eyes:
Know the image
Only in the dual realm
do voices become
eternal and mild

I like to think of this as a formula for self-transformation. The verses are about the myth of Narcissus: the youth Narcissus, who cares only for himself, sees his reflection in a forest pool. He does not know it is his own image.

We are all like Narcissus in a way. We only know a part of ourselves, the collection of identities that is our answer to the question, “Who are you?” Yet, we are each so much more. There is an otherness within us all, facets disowned and unrecognized. Rilke counsels us to know the image, the face of the hidden other in our souls. It does swim before our eyes (though we usually ignore it), surfacing in subtle ways—odd thoughts from nowhere and behaviors, both good and bad, of which we never knew we were capable.

Narcissus fell in love with the face he saw. Without realizing it, he began to love his own otherness. This is where inner change occurs, at the surface of the pool—the threshold between our known and unknown selves. Rilke calls this the dual realm. If we have the courage to look into our own uncharted depths, we may just find something worthy of love—beautiful vulnerability, reservoirs of strength and other sunken treasure.

After Narcissus discovers he is the image he adores, the goddess Nemesis turns him into a flower. As a moral lesson, we can understand this as a curse for egotism, but on a deeper level it is a paradoxical blessing and a model to follow: we can pull up the others from our depths and let them transform us. The self and other can become one at the liminal boundary. Our identities anchor and fuse with the new otherness, just as a flower is rooted in fertile soil, constantly fed by new fresh water. The other of Narcissus was Echo, a nymph whose love he had refused. Yet in his flower state he could forever hear her voice, eternal and mild.

When we embrace our otherness, it becomes easier to embrace the otherness of people different from us. It gives us the perspective needed to change. Yet it only happens in the dual realm, the uncomfortable threshold. Albert Einstein said, “We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we are born.” Many try to suppress this curiosity, but I believe Unitarian Universalism calls us to revel in it. Like Narcissus forever looking into the pool, may we forever plumb the otherness of ourselves and everyone else, letting it transform us into ever more beautiful beings, eternally listening to the voice of the other.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110095633/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_01/05.mp3

I want to acknowledge right up front that the story of the Annunciation, the visitation of Mary from the angel Gabriel as described in the Gospels presents us Unitarian Universalists, with all sorts of challenges. Was Mary a virgin, or simply a young woman of child-bearing age? (It depends on how you translate ancient languages.) Is the primary role of women to bear children? What kind of message does that send our children and youth? Does God communicate with us by sending heavenly messengers?

There are many issues with this story, but I want to invite you to put them aside for the moment. I’d like you instead to hold Mary in a different light. Let’s take Mary down from whatever celestial throne she sits on. Let’s make her real, or at least more real than she is in the myths and stories that have grown up around her. Mary is a young girl, probably 13 or 14 years old. She’s from an ordinary family living in Roman-occupied Judea. Her father is probably a tradesman, perhaps a mason or a cobbler. She is to marry Joseph, the son of a local carpenter. It’s an arranged marriage. He’s older than she, but he has learned his craft from his own father and will be a good provider. Mary is resigned to her fate, knowing no other possibilities. She’s never traveled more than a few miles in any direction outside her village, and all her friends, as well as her older sister, have been married off this same way. Mary doesn’t know how to read or write. But her mother has taught her all the skills she needs to make a good home for Joseph and their family. Life, she knows, is hard. The best you can hope for is a few moments of joy within a life that is otherwise filled with hardship. She likely won’t live to see 50 and there’s a high degree of likelihood that she’ll die in childbirth much sooner than that.

So, we have a picture of this young girl living a hard life in a small village. And what happens next is, at least to me, unbelievable. In this little mud home where Mary is perhaps sweeping the dirt floor or mending a dress, there’s a flash, and an angel appears before her. Now, we have to assume she was afraid because one of the first things the angel says is “Be not afraid.” And we know she’s confused, because Luke tells us she was “much perplexed.” Really, who wouldn’t be?

Then the angel tells her that she has been chosen by God for an especially important task, to give birth to the son of God. She does question him. But Gabriel is the ultimate pitch-man, and it doesn’t take long for Mary to say yes. “Here I am,” she tells the angel. “Let it be with me according to God’s plan.” And then he disappears.

Now, I don’t want to go into what happened after this miraculous event. To speculate about how she explained this whole thing to her parents. Or even more, to Joseph. Because what matters to me most about this story isn’t what it took for her to convince Joseph to stick with her and go through with the marriage, even though she was pregnant. Or whether there was a star in the East when Jesus was born. What fascinates me about this story is that Mary said yes to the angel. Think about that. Here we have Mary, a mere teenager, betrothed to a local carpenter. Her future is mapped out before her. She will be an obedient wife to her husband and hopefully bear him many children. It’s likely that she’ll never leave the little hamlet of Nazareth, that her entire world will consist of a few square miles in and around the village. A simple life. A hard life. Perhaps it is all she ever hoped for; perhaps she would be satisfied with such a life. We don’t know if Mary was a dreamer and a hoper, or simply a do-er. But regardless, her whole world was turned upside down in an instant. In one unexpected and uninvited thunderbolt from the heavens, the course of Mary’s life was altered forever. The unseen force of the Divine intervened in whatever plans Mary had made (or had been made for her) and told her, in no uncertain terms, “Here is what you need to do.” The miracle of this story isn’t in the appearance of the angel, or the conception of the child by the Holy Spirit. The miracle was in the fact that Mary said yes. “Here I am, Lord. Thy will be done.”

I suppose it would be easy to chalk up Mary’s response to her youth, to her innocence and her naiveté. Maybe it was her subservience to authority, taught through years of watching her fellow villagers grovel before the Roman guards or watching her mother comply with anything her father said. Mary certainly could not have understood or appreciated what it was she was signing up for when she said yes to Gabriel. She could never have anticipated the life that her son would lead, and how he would be put to death much too soon. Had she known how this was all going to play out, I wonder whether she’d have agreed to take on this task? “Can I think about it and get back to you, Gabriel? I need to weigh my options.” That seems like a reasonable response under the circumstances.

Few of us are lucky enough, if you can call it that, to be struck by the proverbial bolt out of the blue. Angels don’t appear on our doorsteps. Messages from the divine tend to take other, more subtle forms. Maybe it’s a passing thought that occurs to us as we’re reading a novel. Perhaps it’s a persistent nagging at the back of the mind that’s been there since we were kids. It could be a call out of the blue from a long-lost friend. Those are the better angels, really. Our calling might also come from experiences that aren’t so nice. Being fired from our job. The sudden end of a relationship. Having a near-death experience that opens our eyes to new possibilities.

More than likely, receiving our call, or finding our purpose if you’re more comfortable with that language, isn’t a monumental encounter that changes our life forever. It grows over time. It’s the accumulation of our experiences and our responses to them. Sometimes we find it in the confluence of several seemingly unconnected events that, when pieced together in the quiet of the night, open up a pathway to us. We may at first call them coincidences but, if we’re attentive enough to discover the connections, we begin to see what some call “synchronicities.” Gregg Levoy, the author of the book Callings, writes:

When you’re on the right path, the universe winks and nods at you from time to time, to let you know. Once you start noticing these synchronicities, these little cosmic cairns, once you understand that you’re on a path at all, you’ll begin to see them everywhere.

It’s a lot harder to answer our angels when they don’t appear before us the way Gabriel did to Mary, when they appear as subtle hints, persistent intuitions, dots that appear random and unconnected.

And that, of course, is only the beginning. Noticing the signs pointing us in a direction isn’t the same as embarking on the journey itself. Remember what I said was the real miracle of the Annunciation? That Mary said yes. Mary was able to let go of whatever plans or dreams she may have had, to step into the unknown and to cast her fate with the mystery that presented itself to her. Think of the courage that took. Gabriel as much as said to her, “You will be an outcast. Your family will disown you and your fiancé will desert you.” You can be sure that Mary knew all this and more, for under Hebrew law of the time an unwed mother could be put to death. And Mary, although confused and fearful, and surely without fully understanding what her future held, said yes. Despite all of the risk and all of the doubt, she said “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

As mere mortals, groping in the dark for the “cosmic cairns” that Gregg Levoy talks about, hoping that meaning emerges out of our disparate experiences, it’s not often possible to offer up an immediate, outright yes in response. While Mary was able to respond in the moment to God’s call, for us it may take some time. Not to delay or defer the call, but to hear it more clearly. That is what a personal spiritual practice is all about. Creating time and space in our busy lives to hear and to heed, to connect the dots, to peek down the path and prepare ourselves to step onto it. We are not, most of us, firemen trained to run into burning buildings, plunging headlong into the unknown. Nor do we possess the youthful innocence of the trusting Mary. Getting to yes isn’t automatic for us. And so we must carve out of our hectic days the time to reflect, to consider, to meditate, to pray—to find our way into hearts and minds open enough to say yes to the unexpected.

Whether we call them angels, or God, or coincidences or synchronicities, there is something calling us to achieve the fullness and the magnificence that we are all capable of becoming. We are all Marys, pregnant with possibility and potential. And, disguised though they may be, the world is full of Gabriels, heralding new beginnings, urging us in unexpected directions, and revealing unknown opportunities. If we but pay attention and notice them, even in the face of uncertainty, we can choose to respond with a faithful “yes.”

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110085107/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/01.mp3

The call comes on a stunningly
ordinary telephone: the doctor
telling you the test is positive,
the agency saying that you have a child,
the lover who left so long ago
wanting to make amends.
Suddenly the earth tilts.
The path you thought to follow to the lake
heads sharply up the mountains.

The trail through the dense woods
comes around the bend into an open meadow.
Of course you weren’t prepared.
Who knows how to dress
for such a journey? Listen.
Inside your ear there is a high,
insistent ringing. What do you
suppose might happen
if you should answer?

Lynn’s book of poetry, Bread and Other Miracles, is available at lynnungar.com.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110085045/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/10.mp3

Two months ago, Sky was having one of his recurring nocturnal fights against a bad thing, a monster of some sort. Except instead of attacking me, as he usually did, he attacked the air off the side of the bed, and fell out. Gashed his forehead on the bedside table, and needed five stitches. Then refused to sleep in that bed again.

We dragged the mattress onto the floor, took the bed apart and put it in the cellar, and I headed to the furniture store. I bought a new frame that sits closer to the floor and a king size mattress to replace our double. I posted the old bed on Craigslist, and sold it. Given that all of our bedding was for a double bed, I bought new sheets and made a new king-size quilt. I’m glad we had the money to do all this.

Expect the Unexpected.

Also about two months ago, Sky said he felt he could no longer read books—it was too much work keeping track of the sentences, and he often forgot what he had just read and had to go back to the beginning of the sentence to try again. Maybe a Kindle would help? Fewer words on a “page” and he could make the font size whatever he wanted. We downloaded some books from the library. That was better than paper books, but still too hard.

He took an audio book out of the library. We hauled out our rarely-used sound system, and he gave it a try. That was better. With his headphones on, he could sit happily in his chair and “read.” I bought him a small, portable CD player so he could listen to books in other locations — in bed, on the porch, at another house.

Expect the Unexpected.

About a month ago, just as the weather was getting better, Sky started taking long bike rides again. Except he found himself having a hard time swinging his leg up over the seat to mount the bike. He found himself falling off his bike if he didn’t get a fast enough start. He became too scared to ride his bike anymore, even though he never was physically injured, just psychologically injured.

Today we talked about what to do. Did he want to try a recumbent bike? (Closer to the ground, mounted in a different way.) Did he want to try an adult tricycle? (Sturdy, for sure, but maybe too humiliating? After all, we’re in Vermont, not Florida.) Did he want to give up bike riding all together, and take up walking? No clear answers yet, we’re still thinking on it.

Expect the Unexpected.

A handful of times in the last month, Sky has walked away from a hot pan on the stove when he was preparing his lunch. Once the smoke detector went off. The other times I noticed, and sent him back to the stove. I am waiting, and watching, to see if it’s time for Sky to stop cooking for himself. I hate for that to happen, but I would also hate for the house to catch on fire. Good thing the cats know to skedaddle out the cat door when the smoke detector goes off…..

Expect the Unexpected.

Because of Sky’s inability to read books anymore, I recently read aloud Bill McKibben’s new book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?. We are both concerned with the climate change/climate chaos that is transforming our planet. We both are concerned that the human race may be heading for extinction, that it may be too late to bring this dire situation around. We thoroughly enjoyed the book, and have had many deep conversations about what may be ahead for the planet, for the human race, our beloved mountains and lakes, our family and friends, and how we want to live our lives given this situation. We already live in a net zero house, and try to keep our footprint as small as we can. And to that we add the philosophy to live each day to the fullest, and not waste time with things that are not important. And, above all…

Expect the Unexpected.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110085025/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/02.mp3

I have five daughters. I wasn’t always in touch with them all—and one day out of the blue my youngest wrote to me.Her name is Elise. She’s 17. A father could be no prouder. I was able to give her the gift of introducing her to the UU fellowship near where she lives.

It’s not very often that you find—or something finds you—that’s in tune with your inner being. The UU church did exactly that—it was unexpected, yet I happened to be at the right place at the right time for the UU church to come to my attention.

If the letter from my youngest daughter was unexpected, more surprising still was the first sentence she wrote: “Dad, I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life!” I will say the same thing about myself and UUism—such freedom, with limitless possibilities for spiritual searching and journeys—what could be more unexpected than that?

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110085003/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/03.mp3

Joy and woe are woven fine,
Clothing for the soul divine:
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so:
We were made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.
—William Blake

…And the wicked witch turned into a toad and the evil sorcerer was banished from the land. The royal couple celebrated their marriage and were blessed with peace and prosperity and many children and lived happily ever after.

How many of us grew up with stories that ended something like that? First there was challenge and danger and hard work and then riches and blessings and happiness. The wicked were punished and the good were rewarded.

And then we discovered that life doesn’t necessarily work that way.

Twenty years ago, my life spun out of control. For some unknown reason, life started sending catastrophes my way, one after another. My life became a soap opera. Then it became too unbelievable for any self-respecting soap opera audience to swallow. I started to identify with Job. Then I started questioning whether Job had really had it that bad. Eventually I wanted to paint a warning message in huge letters on my wall: “Expect the Unexpected.” While I knew that this is impossible—if I could expect something to happen, then it wouldn’t be unexpected —the words captured how completely out of control my life felt. It seemed that the only thing I could do was to brace myself for the next crisis, to try to gather enough strength to ride it out.

Thankfully, my life has calmed down a bit since then, but I’ve been realizing that there’s more truth in that pithy saying than I realized when I wanted to paint those words on my wall. Because what got me through all the unexpected bad things was, in part, all the unexpected good things. I began to realize that expecting the unexpected didn’t have to mean bracing for the unexpected catastrophes. It could also mean keeping my eye out for the unexpected gifts, the silver linings.

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting that the silver linings in any way negate the bad, that good and bad can cancel each other out. Silver linings don’t make everything okay, but somehow they make good and bad less black and white, less absolute. A friend’s father told me a story about a conversation he’d had with his rabbi. The rabbi said that some good comes out of everything. My friend’s father was incensed. “What about the Holocaust?” he cried. “Surely you can’t tell me that anything good could come out of something so monstrous.” The rabbi paused and then responded. “Were it not for the Holocaust, your wife of forty years would never have emigrated to the United States to escape Austria and you never would have met her.” It’s not that this blessed meeting and marriage make the Holocaust any less horrific. That would be ridiculous. But, nonetheless, these two events are intertwined: out of an event that shadowed the twentieth century came at least one small blessing.

Expecting the unexpected is something we need to learn. It does not come easily. Most of us want life to follow the rules. We want the good to be rewarded and the bad to be punished. We want predictability and control. Sometimes we get to live with that illusion—we make plans and then we carry them out. The person who deserves it wins a prize. Hard work pays off. Good deeds are rewarded. And then there are the times when life appears to make no sense at all, when the walls come tumbling down and suddenly everything we’ve taken for granted is up for grabs. What then? What happened to happily ever after? Buddhism may be correct that the only constant is change, but that’s not always comforting when life seems to be coming apart at the seams. For me, one comfort is knowing that not all of the unexpected surprises will be bad. Sometimes, what first appears to be a calamity may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

An acquaintance told me a story of a dismal time in her life. Her marriage had fallen apart. She was facing serious health problems. The future of her job was uncertain. Just as it seemed that her life couldn’t possibly get any worse, her car was totaled in a car accident. Cursing, she went to rent a car—yet another annoyance. How could she know that the man behind the rental car counter would turn out to be her future husband?

We do not have crystal balls. We cannot see into the future. What appears to be a curse may come with a blessing and what appears to be a blessing may come with a price. Meeting my late partner was clearly the best thing that ever happened to me. The five years we spent together were easily the best five years of my life. Watching him die was clearly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Does the bad negate the good? Not on your life. Would I have traded the joy to be spared the pain? Not for a moment. Did I feel as though I was drowning in grief? Absolutely.

Sometimes it amazes me that the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me were so intrinsically linked. But life is like that sometimes. Events are not necessarily good or bad. Sometimes they’re both at the same time. After my partner died, the Passover tradition of tasting the charoset and the moror on the same piece of matzoh—tasting the sweet mix of apples and honey and the bitter horseradish at the same time—made sense to me in a new way. Joy and sorrow can coexist.

A year of cancer treatment was not something I asked for, not something I would wish on anyone. Parts of it were pure hell. But at the same time it was such a rich year, so full of love and blessings and wonderful people and life lessons that I honestly don’t know if I would give it back if I had the choice. My cancer year wasn’t good or bad; it was good and bad, sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous. Charoset and moror.

Sandy Boucher, in her book Hidden Spring: A Buddhist Woman Confronts Her Life-Threatening Illness, writes about spending time in a large county hospital after major surgery and feeling overwhelmed by the sights and sounds. Desperately craving stillness, she feels assaulted by the loud voices and banging doors, the constant stream of medical personnel, her roommate’s many visitors and blaring television. Boucher’s friends pull the curtain around her bed to give her some privacy and one of them starts humming Amazing Grace, very quietly, to calm her. Suddenly, her roommate’s television set is turned off and she hears three women’s voices join in the song. The strangers in the next curtain have become earthly angels. The song is more beautiful, more precious for the surrounding melee. Boucher writes, “I felt as if I were being rocked and held in nurturing arms. . . Always there was some ray of kindness or beauty available to me, if I could be there for it.”

Shortly after this tsunami of calamities, I attended a week-long Art & Spirit retreat at a Quaker retreat center. During the opening activity we introduced ourselves by painting a crude image in primary colors on an altar cloth. As I sat there waiting my turn, I realized that I was feeling very peaceful—very happy and very sad at the same time. So I created a swirl of blue and yellow paint—yellow for happy and blue for sad, swirled together to show their coexistence. But I wasn’t content with my crude representation. This was a theme that I’d lived with for several years—that joy and sorrow can co-exist. How could I convey this in color and form? This question seized my imagination and would not let go. And thus I began a weeklong personal journey with sketch pad and oil pastels that took me far away from the regularly scheduled program of the retreat.

I wanted to convey the intensity of brief moments of joy amidst deep pain, but that wasn’t enough. Somehow I needed to bring to life the words of William Blake: joy and woe are woven fine. What would it look like to weave joy and woe? That was truly the question of my week and finally at the retreat’s end, I knew the answer. My clothing for the soul divine became a literal weaving of paper strips—charcoal gray interlaced with a vivid rainbow of colors.

I’m not trying to diminish the tragedies, not trying to say that everything will be all right. The pain is real. Bad things do happen. But it helps me to think of life as a rich fabric of joys and sorrows, successes and failures, gifts and losses, so tightly woven that sometimes the two extremes co-exist. And, in times of woe, it helps me remember to look for the silken twine.

We eat charoset with moror.

Life is not a fairy tale in which we live happily ever after. There will be happiness and there will be sorrow and they may even come as a package deal.

“We were made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know, Safely through the world we go.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110084941/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/04.mp3

When I wake up
I find myself in an environment
that’s so different from the one
I once knew.
I find 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 housing 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.
The transition from society has been nonstop to this Satan’s cave.
Here is where I dwell.
In a momentary lapse of reason.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110084920/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_12/05.mp3

There is a large duckling-yellow hardcover book in my mother’s house called a “baby book.” It is my baby book, in fact. The book where my parents recorded the details of my birth and development—I was 10 ½ pounds when I was born, my grandmother gave me my first bath. There are pictures from the first day of school every fall. A tiny ink footprint from my first days on earth.

When I was a kid, this book was a treasure trove of information about the “me” that I didn’t remember anymore. Over time, there were fewer and fewer entries until they almost petered out. Then, in the height of my cantankerous teens, I got into a huge fight with my mother. I no longer remember why we fought, but I do remember that I screamed “[BLEEP] you, mom!”

Except I didn’t say “[BLEEP].” I said something much worse.

My mother calmly walked into the dining room, pulled down the big yellow book from the bookshelf, opened to a new page, and wrote:

1997. Abbey screams “[BLEEP] you, mom!” at the top of her lungs for the very … first … time.

My family members have good senses of humor. There are times when we can laugh at our fights, then use our indoor voices to say why we’re really upset. We can get back into right relationship with one another. I’d like to say that 1997 was the last time I screamed “[BLEEP] you” at anyone, but I’m not that good a liar. I’d like to say that I’ve been able to laugh it off every time, but I’m not that good a person.

So, those of us in the US are about to have Thanksgiving, and I’m guessing many of you will be spending the holiday with family, so you know what I’m talking about, right? The laughter and the dreaded fighting? Anxiety as well as comfort? Gladness and sadness?

Being with family over the holidays can be wonderful—you get to eat second helpings of your aunt’s famous greens, watch your hometown’s football game, and pass around the newest family baby. In my family, we usually have more types of pie at Thanksgiving than we have guests. There are wonderful things about family.

But family can also push your buttons. Dad’s knee is acting up again, but he is too proud to ask for help with the yard work, and you’re worried sick. It’s 2pm, your son-in-law is sitting next to his three-year-old niece, drinking his fourth beer and yelling obscenities at the TV. Cousin Sarah refuses to acknowledge your partnership of ten years and keeps calling your wife your “friend.” We show up, exhausted after a long drive with a screaming two-year-old, only for our mother to criticize our parenting style. Our son returns home from his first psychology class in college and blames us for all of his maladjustment in life.

No matter how patient we are, we know we will erupt into a fight with someone who voted differently than us. No matter how we yearn for love and affirmation from our parents, they will never be able to express their feelings in ways that feel good to us.

It makes sense that our families push our buttons. After all, they are the ones who installed the buttons in the first place. But getting into the same fight, year after year, with the same family member can get wearing. Sometimes it gets bad enough that we avoid the family just to avoid the fight. Or maybe our anger is deeper than irritation. Maybe there is a history of abuse in our family that no one talks about. Maybe our wounds come from years of being put down, neglected, overlooked.

Being away from family over the holidays, having no family, or just being alone, can feel awful even when it is sometimes what we have chosen. Even when it’s the right choice.

No matter what, some of us find the holiday season rivals only the election season as the most stressful and anger-provoking time of year.

And yet, sitting next to the person who pushes our buttons more than any other person in the world, we are told that this is a time for gratitude.

There is a line in the Gospel song by Brian Tate called “Overflowing” where the choir sings “Grateful in gladness, grateful in sadness.”

This line has always struck me, because I have always associated gratitude with the times when we are happy. It is easy to be grateful in gladness. But if gratitude is not simply some nuance of gladness, if gratitude is perhaps not even an emotion at all, then what is it?

Grateful in gladness, grateful in sadness.

Like many of you, I have been looking for gratitude in the midst of a steady stream of horror.

I have been looking for gratitude after reading that we have only 12 years to turn around climate change if we hope to avert utter catastrophe, and that we are on our way to pushing a million different species to extinction.

I have been looking for gratitude for my fellow Americans, who voted for a leadership team that will do nothing to halt the violence against trans people, who will do nothing to halt the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, who have separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents.

I have been looking for gratitude when beloved congregants, friends, and loved ones are in the hospital, or facing frightening diagnoses, or assaults, or uncertainty about whether they will recover—whether they will survive.

If I don’t feel gladness, where can I find gratitude?

Too often recently, the place I have been able to look for gratitude is in the sadness.

Because gratitude lives there too.

Grateful in gladness, grateful in sadness.

I’m talking about the gratitude that makes my body weak and pours as tears from my eyes as I leave the hospital room of someone who might have died, but didn’t.

I’m talking about the kind of gratitude that comes when entering an African Methodist Episcopal church for a prayer vigil the night after a white supremacist radical Christian terrorist massacred nine black people of faith at another African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, and hearing the choir begin to sing:

How great is our god? Sing with me
How great is our god? All will see
How great, how great is our god?

The kind of gratitude I feel when I’m with people who choose faith in the face of devastation. Gratitude for those who choose resilience in the face of fear. Gratitude for those who show up, week after week, to do the work of greeting strangers, or lifting their voices in song, or passing the baskets of nourishment along the rows, all while they feel that the world is unraveling at the seams.

Grateful in sadness

I served as a hospital chaplain in Baltimore several years ago. If you ever want an education in gratitude, go spend some time at a hospital. When one lives in such close proximity to sickness and death, I think most people find practices of gratitude essential for coping.

Though working on the psychiatric unit was my most intense duty, I learned the most about gratitude from my stint with the folks in the elder care program. This was a day program where elders living in their own homes would be picked up in vans and brought to the hospital for group    programs, breakfast and lunch, and wrap-around medical care. It basically provided the community, fun, and medical support of a good nursing home, while allowing its members to stay in their own homes.

When I began, they told me I would be responsible for leading a short worship service every morning I was with them.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

I was a soft-spoken second year seminarian at the time, and had only preached a handful of times. Ever. The idea of leading worship multiple times a week for a multi-faith group of elders, most of whom struggled to even hear my voice, terrified me.

I wracked my brain for worship topics that would resonate with evangelical Christians, members of the Nation of Islam, cultural Jews, and Atheists. And what came to me, over and over, was the theme of gratitude.

So each morning, I would arrive, sweaty palmed and heart beating fast, and pick up the beat-up old microphone at the front of the room. After pressing the on button and making sure I was holding the bottom properly so that the batteries wouldn’t fall out—this wasn’t a well-funded program—I would ask the program participants what they were thankful for.

As they raised their hands, I would walk around the room and hold the microphone out for each of them in turn.

All kinds of gratitude were lifted up.

“I’m grateful for God,” one would begin.

“I’m grateful for my family,” the next one would say.

“I’m grateful for the bus driver who got me here this morning.”

“I’m grateful for this program.”

But the most common thing they said was “I’m grateful that I woke up this morning.”

Each time I invited them to share their gratitude, one after another of them would give thanks for simply waking up that day. Others around them would say “Amen” and then would ask for the microphone and say that THEY were grateful for waking up that morning.

Every day, so many of them said “I’m grateful for waking up this morning.”

They knew that one day, all too soon, they would not wake up again. And that made each waking so much more precious.

Grateful in gladness, grateful in sadness.

As you prepare for whatever Thanksgiving meal you may go to—whatever shared meal you may go to—remember that breaking bread with others is a revolutionary act. Especially if it’s with those who may not be like you, whether that is an Uncle who is a die-hard Trump supporter when you were a Bernie fan, a person who asks for some help getting something to eat on the street, a person who offers that help or even just someone you don’t yet know. Breaking bread together turns “them” into “us.” Breaking bread together turns a stranger into a companion. Breaking bread together joins us in a revolution of loving across difference.

Because we are nurtured by the world around us, our first duty is to be grateful for the world around us. Grateful for the sun, rain, the bus driver—grateful for each day.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110074917/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_11/01.mp3

There’s an old joke—perhaps you’ve heard it. A man and his granddaughter are walking along a beach. It’s a wonderful day, although it seems there’s a squall just over the horizon, and it looks like it’s coming toward them. Even as the man thinks perhaps it is time to call it a day, a giant wave crashes into them and before he can do a thing the child is carried away. Filled with horror he looks up to the heavens and shouts, “God, how can you do something so terrible?” And even before the words slip from his lips another wave comes washing over him and as it recedes deposits the child in the man’s arms. He looks at the little girl to make sure she is okay. She smiles at him and locks her arms around his neck. The man then looks back up at the heavens and shouts, “Hey! She had a hat.”

We laugh. Okay, I laugh. There’s something so human in this. A slice of homemade apple pie is great. But, hey, where’s the scoop of French vanilla ice cream? We can be grasping creatures, missing the apple pie, missing the saved child. We can be resentful and angry about, well… there’s just a ton to be resentful and angry about. But lost in the waves of those feelings something slips away from us, something lovely and beautiful. Gratitude gets washed away in the waves, along with the hat.

It seems our English word gratitude comes to us through the French and back to the Latin gratus, meaning thankful or pleasing. It turns out gratitude is closely related to the word grace, with its various meanings of showing favor, pardon, mercy, elegance, songs, praises, announcements. I really like that—announcements.

But first, a pretty good way to understand something really important is to notice what surrounds it, what can turn our hearts from some deeper matter, what some of my friends call the near enemy of that which is important. And so, what is the near enemy of gratitude? I know how I’ve experienced people who seem to be expressing gratitude for something I’d had a part in, but afterwards I’m left with an uncomfortable feeling. It comes across as flattery, with a sense of manipulation hanging in the air after the conversation.

Here, to really get to the heart of the matter, we need to open our hearts, and perhaps even confess. And, so, yes, I’ve even been that person who expresses gratitude to flatter, to manipulate, often barely conscious of what I’m doing. Maybe some others among us here have also been that person, have embraced some facsimile of gratitude for any number of reasons, maybe even sometimes for good reasons. The world isn’t a very safe place, and a little flattery addressed to the powerful can be a smart thing.

But we need to be careful. There is something astonishingly important, I feel, in the act and the experience of genuine gratitude—the spontaneous arising of those feelings of thankfulness, of pleasure, of being present to the announcement of things. Cicerco claimed “gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.” I think this is so. And if it’s true, we need to attend.

But then, is this gratitude a noun, a state of being, something we achieve? Or, perhaps, does it come mostly as a verb, something we do?

Galen Guengerich, senior minister at All Soul’s Unitarian in Manhattan, delivered a sermon at his home church in 2006. In the following year it was adapted as an article in the UU World, our denominational magazine. Galen asked a very interesting question. “What should be our defining religious discipline?” He goes on:

While obedience, love, and even submission each play a vital role in the life of faith, my current conviction is that our defining discipline should be gratitude…. In the same way that Judaism is defined by obedience, Christianity by love, and Islam by submission, I believe that Unitarian Universalism should be defined by gratitude.

Now, I actually think gratitude lies near the heart of all three of the great Near Eastern faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—not to mention perhaps all the great religions of our world. Still, as a discipline, as something we consciously do, I think he’s calling us in an important direction.

Wandering around the web I’ve found all sorts of advice as to how to cultivate gratitude. There are four-step plans, five-step plans, ten-step plans. For the most part they seem to center on stopping and noticing. With a dash of fake it ‘til you make it. As I consider that stopping and noticing with a dash of fake it ‘til you make it to be the heart of spiritual disciplines, I think most all of them are probably useful.

But reading the lists I found myself thinking of a one-step program. Many, many years ago I came across a small book called Wisdom of the Desert, which is a selection of sayings from the fourth and fifth century Christian monastics and sages called the Desert Fathers, and for those who pay attention, Mothers. This particular volume was collected and translated by Thomas Merton, who brings not only a great eye for matters of depth, but also a style sympathetic to a world religious perspective. I consider it one of the central books in my spiritual life.

And one of the characters who shines out from that collection, and whom I’ve encountered again in other translations of the actions and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, is someone called Abba John the Dwarf. Abba or Abbot John was born around 339, studied under the direction of another of the great Desert mystics, Abba Ammoes, for a dozen years before wandering further into the desert, where, despite his best efforts, people came to listen to and follow his guidance. There are lots of stories about him.

Abbot John would recount the story of a pagan philosopher who told his student that for three years he should give money to anyone who insulted him. When the three years passed the philosopher told the young man to go to Athens, as he was now ready to really learn. At the gate to the city he encountered an old woman who insulted everyone as they passed. When it was his turn and he was insulted, the young man just laughed. The old sage looked closely at him and asked why the laughter. The young man replied how for three years he’d paid for this sort of abuse, and now at the gate to the city of wisdom he was getting insulted for free. The old woman smiled and replied “Enter the city of wisdom, young man. It is yours.”

Okay, maybe that might prove a harder discipline than the three or five steps you can get online. But here’s an easier discipline, this time from that late thirteenth/early fourteenth century German Dominican friar Meister Eckhart. The master once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

Want to be grateful? Then just say thank you.

Now, I think there’s another mystery hidden within why just say thank you is enough. It has something to do with that noun and verb thing.

Leonard Cohen was once asked about his song “Hallelujah,” which is one of those divine thank yous that have caught my heart. He was asked what the song really meant. Cohen replied, “It explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist, and all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value.” Gratitude takes many shapes. There are many kinds of thank yous. Some are perfect. Many, even most, are broken. I think of those near enemy thank yous that are so broken. But, here’s a secret. In fact, at bottom, at the end of the day, even those almost fake thank yous have value. All in some deep and true sense arise with equal value.

The reality is that within the web of relationships, within the world that we live in with all its horrors and all its joys, the moment we stop and notice, we discover we are bound up within a great mystery of intimacy. As natural as our breath, gratitude arises. And in my own experience, I find gratitude, kindness, and generosity all arise together. The mother virtue may be gratitude, but her sisters kindness and generosity walk with her.

I find motivation and sustenance through acting in the world out of this practice. I see the connections. I am horrified and I am grateful beyond any words. And I want to do something. Here, I suggest, is why our own tradition is so caught up with the work of justice in this world. The intuition of connection, of gratitude, calls us to service, to care, to love and action.

So we are caught by noun and verb, our actions and our being. When we attend to gratitude, we find something fundamental, something deeper than the hurts and longing.

We open our hearts to what is; we don’t turn away. And we discover a strange and mysterious and wild beyond imagination universe. And, we find the secret: we’re totally and inseparably a part of it. Noun and verb. One thing.

And as we notice, how can we not open our hearts, and open our mouths, and from that place, say thank you?

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110074856/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_11/02.mp3

Pity the poor dandelion. It is, in many ways, nature’s perfect plant. Its tender, young greens make a tasty addition to any salad. The dandelion’s leaves contain more beta-carotene than carrots and more iron than spinach. Its blossoms, when properly fermented, perhaps with a bit of orange or lemon, make a sweet white wine. That tap root contains medicinal properties, and can be beneficial to both the liver and the kidneys as both a diuretic and blood cleanser. It can also be dried, roasted and ground as a coffee substitute. The flower’s white, milky sap can be used to alleviate bee stings and to remove calluses and moles. Nature’s perfect plant.

Yet, plunk a dandelion down in the middle of a manicured suburban lawn and it is treated like a terrorist. Armies of lawn care professionals are dispatched with chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction to eradicate this menace. It is, after all, a weed. Americans spend more than a billion dollars a year on more than 100 million pounds of herbicides, pesticides and other
lawn-care chemicals in their attempts to rid their yards of these and other pesky plants.

What, then, makes a weed? Is a weed a weed just because we call it that? Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that a weed is simply a plant whose virtues we haven’t yet discovered. But I don’t think that’s quite right. Long ago we discovered the virtues of the dandelion, yet they are a public menace. In his book Second Nature, author and gardener Michael Pollan describes the strict hierarchy of plants, where the top spaces are occupied by what he calls the “hypercivilized hybrids” like roses, and the bottom tier is infested with the weeds, which he calls “the plant world’s proletariat, furiously reproducing and threatening to usurp the position of their more refined horticultural betters.” Weediness, he tells us, is determined by several factors, including how highly hybridized a plant is (the more refined and cultured, the better), the ease or difficulty of growing it (the hearty and easily adaptable larkspur is more “weedy” than, say, a fragile, delicate orchid), and, finally, its color. (White, of course, is at the top.)

Pollan goes on to tell us that there are two primary schools of thought when it comes to weeds. The first holds that “a weed is any plant in the wrong place” and the other defines a weed to be “any aggressive plant that competes successfully against cultivated plants.” “The metaphysical problem of weeds,” he writes, “is not unlike the metaphysical problem of evil: Is it an abiding property of the universe, or an invention of humanity?”

As I’ve considered and encountered weeds, I have become increasingly troubled and uneasy. For as the crops of our country’s farmlands have ripened and, in some cases, shriveled on the vine, I hear the language of weeds being used in our nation’s debate about the “problem” of illegal immigration. We, the precious flowers of our highly hybridized civilization, are under siege from these uncultured invaders. “Aliens” we call them, “Illegals.” Labels that, like the term “weed” imply that they are a scourge, a menace, to be eradicated.

When we label these people—these mothers and fathers and grandparents and children—as “illegal aliens” we dehumanize them. And once they are dehumanized it is easy to talk about them as things, as problems, as so much kudzu to be beaten back at the border, lest our garden be overtaken and all that we have cultivated destroyed. What has been lost in the debate over our immigration situation is the fact that each of the individuals who live in our country without documentation is a human being, a person with a family and a story just like us. They may not be highly hybridized flowers in the top tiers of the garden’s hierarchy (though some of them could be, I’m sure, given the chance). But nor are they weeds to be uprooted and eradicated from the rich soil of this nation.

In describing the process by which we cultivate our gardens, Michael Pollan tells us that “weeding is the process by which we make informed choices in nature, discriminate between the good and bad, apply our intelligence and sweat to the earth.” We owe at least this same level of care, discrimination and intelligence to the human beings who sit at the heart of the immigration debate.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110074836/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_11/03.mp3

Thanks and Praise is is exactly what we have for all of our wonderful CLF members and supporters who contribute so that CLF can be there for religious liberals around the world. I hope you hear a chorus of thanks coming up from prisons and jails, from dorm rooms and rest homes, from houses and apartments and libraries or wherever people find us in print and/or online. Thank you! You’re the best! If you’d like to join in making all we do possible, we’d be ever so thankful for your contribution, either in the form of a check mailed in the enclosed envelope or a gift online at clfuu.org/give.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110074814/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_11/04.mp3

Alice Walker has been in the media in some pretty awful ways, but I still think her book, The Color Purple, is one of the most extraordinary theological texts I’ve ever read. Her description of God wanting praise the same way people do has echoed in me ever since I read it more than 30 years ago:

[Shug says] “Listen, God love everything you love, and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.”

“You saying God vain?” I [Celie] ast.

“Naw,” she say. “Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

“What it do when it pissed off?” I ast.

“Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

I love that. And the reciprocity described is what I feel when I am gardening, that the earth is offering to me as I offer to the earth, and together we co-create beauty and nourishment. Praise be!

For me, gratitude and praise go hand in hand. When I am grateful for something, I praise it. When I praise something, I am grateful for it. And when I am grateful and praising, my generosity follows naturally. Whether it’s the generosity of admiration or the generosity of attention or the generosity of support, I cannot be stingy when I am genuinely praising something or someone.

I think about when I am in a restaurant with someone and order something delicious. “Oh my! You have to try this!” is the first thing out of my mouth. If the deliciousness caused me to say Mine, all mine, it would mean I was not in gratitude or praise, but rather clinging to ideas of scarcity. Generosity comes from a place of abundance. Sharing creates more joy!

Praise generates gratitude, gratitude generates abundance.

Ideally. But those threads can break when the currency of generosity is taken instead of reciprocated. Increasingly, with pesticides and genetic tinkering and huge equipment, agribusiness does not praise the gifts of the earth, but seeks domination, a whole different form of currency.

I see it in a smaller scale when I offer a gift to someone—say, hospitality in my home—and rather than receiving thanks or generosity back, I experience the guest taking from me without appreciation, ignoring my requests or needs, concerned only with their own. My generosity, gratitude and praise can fizzle into resentment over time.

Which makes me think about Job. The guy who was living a good, faithful life, praising God and being ethical and kind, until Satan dared God to curse Job and see if Job remained faithful. So God killed Job’s family, destroyed his livelihood, and otherwise “tested” his faith. When Job finally cries out in anguish God says, basically, What do you know? I created the whole world and can do anything and you can’t do much at all can you? And we’re told Job then praises God.

When you look online for interpretations of this text you find all kinds of folks telling you what a great story it is, and how it shows that we need to praise God no matter what if we are faithful. I hate the story, myself. I loathe it. Years ago, in a religious education class, the curriculum was to share that story with fifth graders and then give them shaving cream on tables with which to finger paint what they thought about God. I needed to step out for a minute during the finger painting, and when I came back into the room they had thrown it everywhere in a giant finger paint fight.

They told me the story made them mad, and that was part of what started the foam-throwing. We talked as we cleaned the room and they were indignant that God would make a bet with Satan and be so mean to Job because of it. And I had to agree with them. The story does nothing whatsoever to strengthen my faith in God!

But maybe there’s another path besides faith in an omnipotent God to find a way to praise and gratitude when suffering profoundly. I note the people who have much, much less material comfort and wealth, societal privilege, and freedom to move about seem to manage better than I do to stay in a place of generosity and gratitude. I also realize that my own ability to remain in the currency of generosity and praise is in part the result of too much privilege. I have been awed, in my life, by the kindness and generosity of people who have reason to be much more resentful about their lives than I do. Praise and gratitude can become a spiritual path, a way out of no way, the only means towards affirmation of what is praise-worthy when none-other is evident. Spiritual practice can be born of suffering like Job’s, which is ultimately not about how great some omnipotent God is, but rather about how the holy can be discovered through blessing what is still possible.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110074752/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_11/05.mp3

We chatted with Quiana Perkins and Rev. Amanda Weatherspoon about what’s new in their positions as Social Justice Coordinators.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk about social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado.

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

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu274.mp3

We chatted with Rev. Catharine Clarenbach and Seminarian Heather Petit about being Neurodivergent and UU.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk about social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support 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/20211110071153/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu273.mp3

We chatted with Shige Sakuri about gender-related pronouns and why it is vital to use them correctly. We will also talk about how spirituality is connected with pronoun usage. Shige will inform us about International Pronoun Day.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk about social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support provided by Antonia Bell-Delgado.

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

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu272.mp3

We chatted with Paula Cole Jones about building a Community of Communities.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk about social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support 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/20211110063836/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu271.mp3

This month we are taking on the gnarly topic of sacrifice. It is a concept that makes many of us uncomfortable, distrustful and a little bit surly, and rightly so. The religious tenet of sacrifice has kept women in abusive relationships, created the justification to wipe out whole nations of people, destroyed landscapes in an equation of loss versus gain that usually involves some form of violence or coercion, and is destructive in its nature.

But today I want to start with trees, trees that say over and over again, “How can I give my love away?” Trees that in essence live out love, and might just share some wisdom about how we can reframe and reconsider sacrifice.

In 1997 a young PhD student, Suzanne Simard, went out into her beloved forests of British Columbia, where she had been born and raised and shaped, to conduct an experiment for her doctoral project. She wanted to see how carbon moved from tree to tree. So she set up an experiment in which she planted a Douglas fir and a paper birch next to one another. She labeled the trees with isotopes, or markers. One tree got C14, and the other C13, so she could track what was being exchanged between the trees. She then went on to shade the trees with little tents throughout the multi-year experiment to create different scenarios to which the trees might respond.

In the first year of the experiment, with the trees growing naturally, the Douglas fir and the paper birch did indeed find connection with one another and exchanged nutrients and carbon in this beautiful reciprocity between species. They used the great underground highway made up of fungi or mushroom networks and their own root systems in this symbiotic communion.

Now, in the second year she tried something different. She shaded the Douglas fir to different degrees with her tents. The more the fir tree was deprived of light and air, the more stressed out the fir became, and the more nutrients and carbon the birch gave to fir tree.

This was the exact opposite of everything science had said so far, that competition was and is the driving force of nature, that evolution depended on survival of the fittest and exploitation is baked into our DNA. Instead, Suzanne was coming to understand the deeply cooperative nature of life, that one species would sacrifice for another’s well-being in some kind of great exchange.

She characterizes this pivotal experiment as elementary in comparison with what we know now, and yet it was such an important awakening in forestry and science. She recounts how people threw rotten eggs at her after her paper was published, because it so upended their notion of the order of things.

In those days no one used the word “communicate” when characterizing the relationship between trees in a forest, but that is exactly what’s going on. Scientists are coming to understand what indigenous folks have been saying for a millennium or more: the trees talk. When you step onto a forest floor there are hundreds of miles of fungal and root networks below your feet, hundreds of miles of communicating software.

• What we call a forest is actually a fraction of what a forest really is. Most of it is below the surface of the ground, far from the human eye.
• Forests have elders, trees who nurture their community of neighbors and young, and provide defense, nutrition, support and structure.
• We know that when a tree is sick or is experiencing some kind of insect infestation it sends out an alarm message to the other trees around it saying: “Protect yourself, I’m sick.” And they do.
• Forests store massive amounts of carbon, and in fact are doing their best to counterbalance the lopsided ratios of greenhouse gases.

This is not what I say as a theologian; this is what scientists are discovering about forests, and indigenous peoples have lived and breathed in their cultural and religious patterns since time immemorial.

The forests are telling us something about love, and sacrifice, and this great exchange that is available to us all if we would but root ourselves in the question How can I give my love away?

I once sat with an old priest as I was trying to figure out my path in ministry. We were talking about living life as a sacrament: making my life a visible sign of an invisible spiritual truth.

He stopped me mid-sentence and asked: “May I?” My journal was sitting open between us, so I could take notes. He took my pen and drew an infinity sign. And then he said, “Sacrament is more than making the spiritual visible. It is more than giving up or sacrificing in order to be spiritually good. There is something in the giving that increases the gift, and comes back on itself in this experience of receiving, an offering that expands the well-being, the life force in the exchange. It is the exact opposite of coercion, or violence or exploitation. It is a way into unitive living.”

I can’t help but think of the forests as I think about that conversation and the concept, the practice, of sacrifice, which means to make holy, a holy exchange. It’s about love.

Love is many things. It is energizing. It is joyful. It is intimate. It is powerful. It is life changing, and it demands sacrifice. Love has costs—that’s the honest truth of it.

I think this is what Jesus was talking about when he was describing the kingdom of heaven, or this idea of right relationship, a network of justice and peace that can emerge in the here and now of human community through love. I imagine him taking us on a walk in a forest, and talking to us about the trees, who know that you love your neighbor—all the hundred thousand species of your neighbors—as an extension of yourself, and when you do that the community is transformed, and health and wholeness of the forest abounds.

If we don’t get our heads around sacrifice I don’t know how we are going to address the huge issues staring us in the face. How are we going to address climate change without coming to grips with love for our planet that costs something? If we don’t get our heads around sacrifice, I don’t know how we as white people will ever get our heads around reparations, by which I mean, as TaNehisi Coates writes in his essay in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations”:

our collective biography and its consequences as the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely…more than recompense for past injustices, more than a handout, a payoff, hush money or a reluctant bribe…but a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.

Coates is talking about sacrifice in its true form, an offering that comes back on itself and is experienced as unitive living.

I for one, will go to the forest. I will look for a mother tree, and ask her to teach me. I’ll say, “I am open. Would you tell me about the meaning of love, and sacrifice, and the great exchange of which you and I are a part?” And I know she will share her wisdom,    because trees talk and they know the true meaning of sacrifice.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063528/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/01.mp3

Sacrifice is a powerful, ancient, evocative word that conjures images of animals slaughtered in rituals to bind a community together in a celebratory feast for a long-awaited harvest after a drought. Sacrifice can be a visual, visceral and vivid concept that attracts our curiosity but repels us morally. Sacrifice is also described as a blessed act of holy reverence, a necessary rite to cleanse the soul of an individual or restore the hope of a people.

The concept of sacrifice is a complex religious, social and political construct whose meanings derive from cultural experiences and expectations, but I want to explore sacrifice as a political act associated with social violence. These days political and social sacrifice seems ubiquitous, from the rhetorical mobilizations at the U.S. southern border; to the ideological sacrifice of austerity for the poor and largess for the rich; to the “necessary” constructs of neoliberalism and libertarianism that emphasize privatization, deregulation, and unfettered free markets over public institutions and government services. We see the sacrificial environmental violence associated with the lack of urgency to address a rapidly changing climate.

Drill down into the data for an hour, and you will see that sacrificial thinking is the new normal. The motif of “sacrifice” or “blessed brutalities” and sanctioned violence permeate all layers of the social and cultural fabrics purporting to offer an explanatory framework for contemporary imperial American practices. Each instance of our blessed brutality—whether it is the execution of Quakers in Boston in the 17^th century, the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of native people, or the abuse of wives in the early American republic—is all a distinct trajectory that is the bedrock of the American empire of sacrifice.

Yes, friends, today American sacrifice is an intentional machine gun mounted on a hill of lies that is aimed at the rule of law, the truth and role of expertise. Everywhere you turn, it seems, some form of sacrifice is rearing its head, demanding tribute and governed by an algebra of expected returns. The transactional nature of sacrifice creates unholy alliances and disturbing binary outcomes of either/or.

When we look more closely at sacrifice, we see that sacrifice is a form of violence that places itself in relation to a desired effect, so that the gain depends upon the loss or destruction of something—call this something the offering. The conscious act of sacrifice links the two. The offering might be a black rooster or a packet of tobacco, but it could just as well be a species, a landscape, the heart of a captured enemy or the youth of a nation. What matters is the necessity of this destruction within a logic that renders the destruction understandable—and worthwhile—as a means to some higher gain. Sometimes the terms are blunt, issued as a judgment: This species is common, uninteresting or of “least concern.” This landscape is worthless, remote or uninhabited—it can be destroyed. The minimal value of what stands to be destroyed will be recovered, many times over, in the projected return.

But friends, sacrifice also comes in the disguise of moral control. Just pay attention to the arguments that weave through the next housing development, the next culled species, the next police review board, the next military intervention, the next cut to the Special Olympics. Sacrifice is almost always a mechanism in which loss and gain have been made equivalent, the balance settled—like trading a mountain for jobs in the mining sector, a forest for a highway and a faster commute.

Derrick Bell was the first Black tenured professor in the law school at Harvard, and founder of the academic discipline of critical race theory. His 1992 book Faces at the Bottom of the Well includes an allegory entitled “Space Traders,” which explores what happens when extraterrestrials make first contact with the United States—using a holographic projection of Ronald Reagan—and offer to solve all of the country’s economic and environment problems. As proof of their power, the aliens turn the Statue of Liberty into solid gold and clean the polluted air over Los Angeles and Denver. The extraterrestrials have a price for this service. All Black Americans must be given to the aliens, for purposes unknown.

Will African-Americans become food, pets, subjects for experimentation? Perhaps they will be feasted, protected or worshiped? The extraterrestrials provide no answers. Could this be the ultimate solution to the centuries-old “Negro Problem”? A Republican president and his administration debate the merits of the offer from the aliens and eventually decide that the American people should vote on the matter.

Of course, this outcome has the superficial veneer of being “fair,” because the outcome was “democratic.” The safety, security, and freedom of Black Americans are treated as something illusory, debatable, something that can be compromised. The historic resistance to providing Black people inalienable civil and human rights makes the results clear for the majority of white voters. “Space Traders” concludes with millions of Black Americans—much like their ancestors being loaded into the bowels of slave ships centuries before—being marched at gunpoint into the cargo holds of the alien vessels. A return is calculated, and the decision is made to execute a sacrifice.

When this book came out in 1992, I remember talking about it with Black and white friends and our reactions were reminiscent of the OJ verdict in 1995. Very different responses. Many white friends were horrified by the story, unable to believe that such a vote could happen in the year 2000 when the story was set. Many Black friends were horrified that the white people were so naïve as to believe that it could not happen. And there was still a small set of us (me included) who pondered leaving the US for what could be a better life with the aliens. Many of us said that anything might be better than this place. I was willing to take that trip on the spaceship because the unknowable future might provide me with a new hope that I lack after 400 years in America. What would it be like to live in a world where I am not vilified, minimized, objectified or pacified by a system that has struggled so desperately to obliterate me and my ancestors?

Friends, remember the basic tenets of sacrifice. The sacrificial offering must be destructible—but also, it cannot be worthless. If anything, it must be exalted, because the destruction of its value is what renders the sacrifice worthy, even heroic. Sacrifice infuses the destruction of value with value, justifying itself not only in the prospect of a return, but also in the inherent nobility of surrender. Here the idea becomes not just dangerous, but also insidious, continuously threatening to identify destructive surrender not just as moral action, but also as the very ground of morality. To be good—to be a good citizen, a good person—is to surrender what you value, what you love, for a “higher” cause. In “Space Traders,” one of the ideas floated by the government was to create a selective service for Black people to volunteer to go with the aliens as a duty to country.

As Unitarian Universalists we have the imperative as people of faith to be spiritually animated by the sacrificial violence all around us. We need to be animated enough to see the sacrificial violence in policies that appeal to our heads and ignore our hearts. We need to be animated enough to dismantle false equivalences of sacrifice. We must be animated so we can demand answers, so we can resist the duplicity of sacrifice. We must make our faith three-dimensional enough to resist sacrifices out loud. When people of faith and goodness charge head on into that sacrificial altar to destroy it, the mechanism of sacrificial thinking will be disassembled, their logic revealed, their syntax demystified, and their weapons made inoperable.

So pause for a moment at the next “justified” sacrifice you are asked to vote on or participate in, the next “trade-off sacrifice,” and dwell on these questions: What is hiding among the lines of spreadsheet calculations and seemingly innocent platitudes of this sacrifice? Where is the scapegoat and how is sacrifice being framed? How does this sacrifice hide in plain sight? Whose hopes stand to be fulfilled in this and whose losses are guaranteed? And where do I stand as a person of faith?

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063450/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/02.mp3

I have learned about faithfulness and sacrifice as a result of a very strange journey I have been on since I inadvertently found some of the men who were in Vietnam with my older brother, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Christian Jr., “Bobby” to me, who was killed on April 11, 1969.

My son, Luke Christian, did an internet search for his own name and turned up a webpage where some of my brother’s Marine brothers paid tribute to him. In the years since then I have met with many of those men and even attended their reunions.

After my brother’s death in Vietnam, I saw him as a victim more than anything else. My brother joined because he received a draft notice after he graduated from college. He wrote a poem questioning war shortly before his death. The Marine Corps took a gentle young man who was taught “Thou shall not kill” in church and turned him into a killer. It’s hard for me to even speak that sentence; but, of course, that is what young Marines are trained to do. The Marine Corps part of his life was not something I wanted to dwell on and so, for many years, I did not.

The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful. Many of the guys end their email messages with “Semper Fi” or “S/F” and I often end mine with “Always Faithful.” We are all faithful, but to what or to whom? When this journey began, I would have said that my faithfulness was quite different from Marine Corps faithfulness. I would have said theirs is a blind faithfulness and that mine is a questioning faithfulness. I would have spoken about the differences in how we view doubt and ambiguity.

But what I have learned has both surprised and humbled me.

Marines have a commitment to leave no body behind. For these men, it meant that they would risk death to haul a body out of a rice paddy. My mom used to say, “Do not spend money on me when I’m dead. Wherever I die, dig a hole under me.” I would have also taken this to mean that I shouldn’t risk my life to haul her body out of a rice paddy.

In one conversation with a Marine, I said, “I can’t imagine my brother would have wanted someone else to risk their life to retrieve his body. I would hate to think that others might have died to do that.” He looked at me like he didn’t know where to start, because I just didn’t get it. He was right, but now I get it. Everything hinges on what we are willing to do for one another. Our willingness to sacrifice ourselves to protect one another is everything. We are all in this together. We are all we have. We are the saviors we’ve been waiting for.

The greatest sin is to put your own safety above the safety of others. The higher your rank, the greater your position of privilege, the greater the sin. When we put our own safety first, we are lost and so is everyone else. There is no such thing as individual salvation. We are lost or saved together. When we know that others will put our safety before theirs, all things become possible.

There is another part of “leave no body behind” that illuminates Marine faithfulness. You are part of something greater. It began before you and it will go on after you. You enter into a stream of history and you will be remembered. You are part of a living tradition. Your memory and your sacrifice will not be in vain. Your Marine brothers will continue to carry you with them, whatever the cost.

And my brother’s Marine brothers have continued to carry him and others who made the ultimate sacrifice. While still in the midst of war, these boys and young men contacted family members of killed and wounded brothers. They sent their own family members to visit the sick and wounded. They came home and named sons after fallen brothers. One son is named Robert Christian Ager. They made pilgrimages to The Wall just to touch a name. One of the men drove 2,400 miles to attend the memorial service of the man whose face he first saw when he woke up after losing his left arm in a firefight. Whenever they gather for Company or Battalion reunions they hold memorial services.

Another part of Marine faithfulness is that the right thing is not always the easy thing. You do it anyway. Let’s say, for example, that the sister of a Marine calls you out of the blue to ask you about a day that you have relived many times. By that, I do not mean you have remembered it, but rather that you have relived it. You were the Company Commander that day. When you think of that day, you are filled with regret and guilt and it is as if you are back in that place and time. The sister doesn’t know that even though you met your wife right after you returned from Vietnam, you have never spoken to her about it. What do you do? You sit down with her.

You ask for a piece of paper and you draw a map and you touch it several times before you can bring yourself to say, “They said, ‘Let’s put a company in there and see if it can survive.’” You look over at your wife who is hearing this for the first time. Her eyes are wide and full of tears. You tell the sister that you called her mother when you got back to San Francisco. It is like you have the phone in your hand again. You hear the mother’s voice, “My boy…. What happened?”

We need one another. Others are in need of us. We owe others a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid; it can only be honored. Doing the right thing often requires sacrifice. It is not always easy. We do it anyway. I can sadly say that the United States Marine Corps did a better job of teaching my brother those lessons than the religion of his childhood.

It is easy to say of Marine faithfulness: “Well, that sort of thing requires an enemy. It requires not questioning authority. It requires brainwashing people. You have to get them young.” At least it has been easy when I have said these things. It’s easy for me to denigrate sacrifice based on what the sacrifice is for and to even lull myself into believing that sacrifice and extremism of some sort seem to always go together. I have often trivialized what people are willing to do for their faith because I have not respected what they put their faith in or the ways in which others take advantage of that faithfulness.

I find that, in the name of liberal religion, we often trivialize sacrifice. In ways both subtle and obvious, we give the impression that sacrifice is for people who can’t think for themselves, less independent-minded sorts. Liberal religion often smacks of the old commercial which tells us “Have it your way.” Life is a buffet and you get to choose. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it. You even get to complain about what other people are eating or what is on the buffet table or how it was served. I have often heard liberal religious folks brag about how little their faith requires. Many of us don’t even want to use the word faith or faithfulness, let alone sacrifice.

We are not sure we even like “clear expectations.” Some of the most heated, emotional discussions in the congregation I served have been about what we could or should expect of members. Some are concerned that expectations might be seen as fostering exclusivity. There is concern that we might “turn people off.” We are reluctant to ask anyone for anything that they may not want to give or be able to give. This is especially true when it comes to financial support. In some religious traditions, it is assumed that people will tithe by giving 10% of their income. If everyone tithed in the last congregation I served, we would have had about an extra $900,000 dollars a year to bend the arc of the universe toward justice.

I think liberal religion can and should stimulate me to ask: What am I living for? What am I willing to die for? What am I willing to sacrifice for? What am I willing to put above my own comfort? To whom or what do I owe a debt of gratitude that can never really be repaid, but only honored? What does a life of gratitude look like? What would it mean to be faithful to what I say I believe?

I have used the word sacrifice the way it is typically used, meaning “to give something up.” But when we look at the root meanings of the word, we find that it is not about giving something up, but rather about making sacred. We might question what people are making sacred through their actions, but do we really question the act of making sacred, of finding something worthy of our faithfulness?

I think war is evil. It’s indicative of massive human failure. If we aren’t going to sacrifice for war, we had  better start sacrificing for peace and for justice. The answer is not less sacrifice; it’s more sacrifice. If sacrifice and faithfulness are only for others, then we need to be prepared to live by someone else’s faith or with the ramifications of their faithfulness. Each of us has cause to live a life of gratitude for all we have been given. We are called to work for justice and to bind up the broken. Imagine what it would look like if we, too, could say that we are “Always Faithful” to our highest ideals.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063421/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/03.mp3

The roots of violence: Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character,  commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles.

This Gandhi quote has haunted me for years, as I’ve wondered: What does it mean to worship with or without sacrifice? Does Unitarian Universalism call for sacrifice? Is it a root of violence if we do not participate in sacrifice?

So, seeking wisdom on the matter, I tried an experiment. First I went to my personal Facebook page, and I asked my wide assortment of associates (the word friends being highly overused)—What is the biggest sacrifice you’ve ever made? Overwhelmingly, the responses were about having or not having children, doing or not doing things because of the needs of a spouse or family member, paths taken and not taken for reasons other than personal choice. No one mentioned religion of any kind, including Unitarian Universalism, as a source of sacrifice.

Then I went on the “CLF Coffee Hour” Facebook page, where discussions flow on all kinds of topics, and asked, What’s the biggest sacrifice you’ve ever made? What motivated you to make it? Do you think Unitarian Universalism demands any kind of sacrifice?

There the conversation got very interesting! Here are some of the things people shared:

• Those of us who came to UU from authoritarian churches had to sacrifice certainty. No longer do we have someone to tell us what we need to believe and constantly reassure us that our doctrines are correct. But when we let go of certainty we open ourselves to seek and find wisdom and inspiration in those traditions we had dismissed as false. So the sacrifice becomes gain rather than loss.
• I feel like UUism has encouraged me to sacrifice easy answers, superficial comfort, and ingrained prejudices. (I don’t know if it has required that of me, but without it, I’m not sure I’m striving towards the principles.) It’s hard work, all this thinking and questioning!
• I would say that UUism has drawn me out of my comfort zone and has caused me to look at the bigger picture and realize that we’ve got to be out in the world to fight for social justice, interact with people and learn new ideas. It is scary at times, since I suffer from panic and anxiety and being gay in a hostile world, but I’m determined to help make a difference.
• When I was young, people told me I had to make sacrifices to achieve success in my life. So I made all the sacrifices, but didn’t get the success I was promised. So now I am very skeptical of anyone who asks me to make a sacrifice.
• We are continually “giving up” something for something else. … sometimes it’s giving up needed change to preserve our ego or comfort. Sometimes it’s giving up our comfort to bring about needed change.

That’s just a sample, and the diversity of responses is compelling, but no one answered “No. UUism does not make me sacrifice anything,” though one person, as you see above, voiced skepticism about being asked to sacrifice after having made futile sacrifices in the past.

As for me, I’m still mulling it about. It’s always easy to compare what I do with what other people do and come up feeling that I have made no sacrifices in my life, or to compare myself with others and believe that I have. But I don’t think sacrifice is a competitive sport. And what sacrifice means is subjective. Over and over, when I exclaim about what I perceive as a huge sacrifice someone else has made, I’m told that for them it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice at all!

When I was a UU kid and the Catholic kids I knew were giving up something for Lent—usually candy—I know that some part of me wanted to join them, despite my love for candy. When my own child grew up with Muslim friends and learned they were fasting for Ramadan, there was an immediate impulse to fast with them, to join them. I think that sacrificing in solidarity—not competitively, not to one-up someone else’s sacrifice or to have sacrifice bragging rights—can be immensely satisfying. Whereas sacrificing when others are not can be immensely infuriating.

I still wonder what Gandhi specifically meant—he who lived in poverty when he could have been rich, who gave his very life for the freedom of his people. I’m pretty sure that our UU religion does call us to some kinds of sacrifice—giving up certainty, giving up easy answers, giving up the comfort of old assumptions and prejudices that do harm to others. And it also calls us to work against the ways that our society seems all too willing to sacrifice the needs of some people in exchange for the comfort of others. I don’t know whether that counts as worship without sacrifice or not, but I’m willing to live inside of that complexity

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063359/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/04.mp3

I confess I’ve never been a big fan of the concept of sacrifice. It’s always struck me as kind of punitive, like it’s morally superior to suffer than to enjoy life’s abundance. And the religious tradition of sacrifice, which is deeply engrained in a wide variety of religions around the world, strikes me as even more suspect. Why would God or gods want you to offer up something that surely a god has no use for? Why give up something so precious as a life, or even as trivial as a basket of fruit, for a god whose divine nature surely doesn’t run to eating or drinking? What kind of relationship is it when you are expected to give up something valuable for no reason other than to prove your love and devotion?

The quintessential religious story of sacrifice is that of Abraham and Isaac, from the Hebrew Scriptures. God tells Abraham that he must make a sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac—that he must take a knife and slaughter his own child as a way of proving his love for God. Now, when the time rolls around and Abraham raises the knife, he finds a ram caught in nearby bushes, and that ram becomes an acceptable sacrifice instead of his child. Yay.

Needless to say, this is a deeply disturbing story. Sometimes it is described as depicting human moral progress from sacrificing people to sacrificing animals, which is, you know, good. But isn’t this kind of a horrible way of God asking for proof of love and devotion? Where was Isaac’s choice in the whole thing? Where was Sarah, Isaac’s mother? Shouldn’t they both have gotten some say in whether taking Isaac’s life was an appropriate demonstration of Abraham’s love for God? For that matter, who gets to say whether God’s demand for Isaac’s life was a reasonable ask to begin with? What kind of a dreadful story is this?

Maybe it is a story that is both dreadful and true. The fact of the matter is that life continually demands sacrifices of us, some insignificant and some heartbreaking. Parenting, for starters, always involves sacrifices. Of course, there are the sacrifices that parents make for their children: the sleepless nights, the severe limitations on your freedom, the financial and emotional cost of being responsible for keeping another person safe and growing. Those are hard enough.

But there are also the sacrifices we make of our children. We walk away from a crying child to catch an airplane for a business trip. We shut down the endless barrage of questions and demands to get the ten minutes of quiet that we need to maintain our sanity. We send a child to school when another day to recover from illness might be better, because we simply can’t miss another day of work. We inevitably fail at the daily balancing act between what our kids want and what they need, or the ongoing push and pull between what we know society expects of them and the perfect freedom of expression that they deserve. And if all that
weren’t enough, we live with the knowledge that the choices of our generation deeply and inevitably affect the world that our children will inherit.

And there is just no way to do it right, let alone do it perfectly. The fact of the matter is that the world is continually making utterly outrageous demands. It isn’t nice or fair or right, but it is true. And the concept of sacrifice is one way of making sense of that painful reality. Sacrifice declares that in the face of all the impossible challenges that the world presents to us, we choose. Rather than just stumbling through whatever happens to be on our path, we try to remember what matters most.

Of course, what matters most changes from moment to moment. But the idea of sacrifice is that, at least some of the time, we are able to choose to give ourselves to what we most care about. We can give up what is lesser for the sake of what is greater. Maybe that looks like a choice to give up eating meat for the sake of the health of the planet. Maybe it looks like sitting through the raucous honking of a middle school band concert so that your child can see your loving witness. Maybe it looks like listening with soft eyes while someone berates you for a mistake you didn’t know you made.

Of course, not every loss is a sacrifice. Sometimes we really just get no choice. But the idea of sacrifice reminds us to consider when we do choose: Who or what is lost because of my decision? Who gains? What price will I pay and what will be the cost to others? What do I have the capacity to give so that someone else can thrive?

The choices, of course, are never entirely right and never entirely wrong. But the idea of sacrifice invites us to meet the challenges of the world with the crucial, ongoing question How do I serve love? and with its partner question Is there a larger love that I might serve? Maybe living in the rich and beautiful complexity of those questions is all that anyone, divine or human, has a right to ask.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110063339/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_10/05.mp3

One fine day in San Francisco, nearly 35 years ago now, I found myself down on Mission Street, standing in line at the unemployment office. Not too many years earlier, as an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation, I had regularly represented people in their disputes with the unemployment office. And just days earlier, I had been the director of legal writing and research at Golden Gate University School of Law.

None of that changed what it felt like to stand in that line. And nobody in the whole place cared a hoot that I had just moved out of a very nice office on almost no notice when the Dean of the Law School decided to solve his financial problem by not having a director of writing and research any more.

When a workaholic is suddenly out of work, when somebody who has measured the value of life mainly by accomplishments suddenly has nothing to do, this is quite an experience. Now I think perhaps my six-month stint of unemployment was some of the best education I ever had. And so a decade later, when I was
studying at Starr King School, our Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, exploring whether I might be called to the ministry, I decided to have a hard look at the meaning of work—what makes work good or not, and what not working means.

I have been revisiting those times here lately, as I think of those who are going through a variety of transitions in their working lives, some on purpose, some not at all on purpose, and as I find myself revisiting my own ambivalences about retirement.

When I lived in Berkeley, California, the streets were filled with homeless people with no work. I wanted to know what their lives were really like, so I spent one morning a week for about a year at the Berkeley Jobs Consortium. Each week I helped some homeless, jobless person compose a resume to get work. They shared with me the memoirs of their working lives.

There is, of course, work that’s so hard that almost anyone would welcome not working as a rest from it. There’s work that, as the song by Sweet Honey in the Rock says, brings you more than a pay check—work that brings you asbestosis, perhaps, or carpal tunnel or back injury, or the possibility that you may be shot in the line of duty.

There’s work that does greater injury to the spirit than to the body. I think of the people on the assembly line who become extensions of the machines they operate, who aren’t even allowed to stop their numbing motion long enough to go to the bathroom.

But I also think of how differently people approach the same work. Studs Terkel’s classic book called Working is a collection of interviews of people in nearly every line of work you can think of. Side by side, we see the check-out clerk who hates the job and the one who loves it. We see the woman who waits tables in a restaurant with aching feet and heart hardened by too many encounters with nasty customers—and the waitress who thinks of herself gliding among the restaurant tables as if she were ballet dancing.

When I lived in Tampa, Florida, I learned the history of the cigar factories in the section of town called Ybor City. The people who sat in long rows rolling cigars saw their work as an art. Many could not read, but they listened all day to a highly revered “lector” (reader) who sat on a high platform and read to them not only the newspapers but also the literary classics. The lector was among the highest esteemed personages in the community, and the factory owners, who didn’t speak Spanish, wiped out the system when they caught on that the lectors were reading from communist newspapers and organizing the workers.

You may know the story of the three stone masons. Someone asks them what they are doing. The first one scowls and says: “I am laboring to break up this unbreakable rock.” The second smiles and says: “I am earning a living for my family.” The third stands up and puffs out his chest. “I am building a great cathedral for the glory of God,” he says. We had better beware of hastily condemning some work as demeaning and lifting up other work as honorable.

For good or for ill, many of us regard work as a kind of self-definition. Dorothee Sölle says that joblessness is a form of excommunication—being prevented from the communication that matters. Made solitary when we are not made to be solitary. It isn’t true only of people who are fired or laid off. It may be true of people who retire as well.

My father worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber for forty years before he retired. He knew nothing but his work and golf. He lived twenty more years, and golf became increasingly less fun for his aging body. He spent more and more time in front of the television set. I urged him to write his memoirs. Young business people could learn so much from his stories of corporate life. But he never did it. Sometimes I wish he had found himself in the unemployment line in his mid-40s.

But I hasten to say that retirement need not be like his. Not working, for whatever reason, need not be like it was for him. I also have in my memory’s eye my partner Alan, in the years when he was no longer able to work but before Agent Orange and PTSD finally took their toll on him.

Alan had been a salesman after he returned from Vietnam. He could sell anything, and over the years just about did—pole barns, jewelry, advertising, shark jaws, pistols, pieces of eight. I believe he could have sold the Brooklyn Bridge if he had tried. I used to
listen to him on the phone, taking care of business. Never hurried, never out of sorts, no matter how he was feeling, no matter what kind of day it had been.

That was his “working.” His “not working” was sitting on the dock, fishing, or not fishing. Or taking the canoe up the Santa Fe River before the sun went down. Maybe checking for the manatee at the mouth of the Ichetucknee River. Or having a ride in the old blue pick-up to Pope’s Store, checking on the neighborhood. “Come on,” he would say, “I want to show you something.” And up at the corner, we would sit in the darkness and watch hundreds of lightning bugs. There was very little talking. Alan, those last years at the river, was able to just be.

Ram Dass says if you focus on doing instead of being, you burn out. It isn’t the nature of the work that burns you out. If you regard your work as an experiment in truth, you do not burn out. Ram Dass also says you can work on yourself anywhere. You can work on yourself as easily at the phone com-pany as at the ashram.

When I finally got a job after my six months of unemployment, I wrote about tax law for a legal publishing company. For the first time in my working life, I didn’t take any work home. I started at 8:00 a.m. and left at 4:00 p.m., and I got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge twice a day—in the opposite direction from all the traffic. If anybody ever tells you this life doesn’t put temptation in our paths, don’t you believe it. You understand—I abhor tax law, and I was making what felt like about five cents a month. But what did that matter?

It turned out to matter a great deal that the work didn’t give me any obstacles to overcome. It didn’t give me any resistance so that I could feel the strength of my being push against anything. It didn’t bring me forth.

I compared my working life with that of my friend David, living on his old boat in the Sausalito harbor. He really did make very little money in his landscaping business. He would say when he got into somebody’s yard, he felt like a musician getting ready to perform. He always wanted to get to know the people, to find out what col-
ors and textures would reflect their style. David died a few years ago, but my memories of him are still fresh. I can still picture him there, spending hours every day engaging people in conversation over coffee at the Café Trieste, walking along the docks and speaking to people as he went. He was one of the happiest people I ever knew.

The Book of Genesis would have us believe that work is our punishment for disobeying God, and that when we were banished from Eden we were doomed to labor. But some contem-porary theologians say no, not so. Rather, the creation of the world is not finished, but continues day by day, and we are co-creators with God. Well, I don’t know about either theory. But I know that my father was cursed in his not working, and my friend David was blessed in both his working and his not working.

And I know that some of the most
important work we do nobody pays us a penny for. All the volunteering. All the work of the church. I know that the hard work we do on ourselves does not burn us out—the work to know ourselves, to make our relationships healthy, the grief work, the work to free ourselves from phobia or addiction. “It may be,” as Wendell Berry says, “that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”

It doesn’t matter whether we are working or not working, or not working any more. There is work for us all to do that is worthy, and we are all worthy of the work.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044217/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/01.mp3

Brian La Doone is a musher—a sled dog racer—in far northern Canada, which is polar bear country. He says he keeps a working distance of about 70 feet from the bears. His Canadian Eskimo sled dogs don’t always do likewise. On one occasion La Doone warily witnessed a polar bear loping toward one of his sled dogs. The dog wagged his tail and bowed. This happened during a time when the polar bears were particularly hungry. The sea hadn’t yet frozen and the bears couldn’t reach the seals they typically hunted on the ice.

To La Doone’s surprise, the two began to play, to frolic. They rolled around and wrestled in the snow. They embraced and nipped at each other. The dog knew something La Doone didn’t know. The bear had signaled its playful intent while it approached. The dog in turn had signaled its playful intent. The bear actually returned every day for the next week to romp with the dog. And then, when the ice finally thickened enough, the bear headed off for its hunting ground.

What possessed the polar bear to want to play with the dog rather than making a meal of him? Why did the dog take the risk? Why did these two unlikely creatures become playmates? Why?

Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughn relate this story in their book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul. The title of the book pretty much tells the story on play, which is as vital to true aliveness as breath is to being alive. Children and animals know this. They engage in play naturally. If left to their own devices, they play. That’s what they do. They intuitively and instinctively play. For adults, play too often comes to be seen as a waste of time, goofing off, or something to do in our spare time. At best, we set aside time for play—times of the day or week or year. The Protestant work ethic, our culture of busyness and drive for achievement, keep a tight grip on us. Many of us are frantically trying to keep up with the day-to-day demands of work, family and household. There is a constant urge and encouragement to demonstrate our worthiness and productivity. We need to get things done. And church can sometimes feel that way too. “Go for a walk” or “take a vacation” get added to the bottom of a to-do list.

The lack of play is no longer just an adult concern. There’s increasing evidence that children are becoming play deprived. Parents are often the ones most aware of this. Ironically, research suggests that the adults most worried about their children’s lack of play are also the ones most likely to lack play in their own lives. Parents, take note. The solution is obvious. Start playing more yourself.

The greatest danger in play deprivation may not be obvious at first. It may just seem like life is a little less fun and a little more serious. But observing those who have stopped playing makes it clear that there are more troublesome repercussions. A person or animal that stops playing becomes disinterested in new activities. When play stops, it becomes hard to find pleasure in the world. When play stops, our creativity, adaptability and intelligence get thwarted.

The opposite also occurs. When animals and people stop finding pleasure in the world, they stop playing. Anyone who has a pet has witnessed this behavior. One of my cats was recently unwell. He was having what looked like seizures and overall lacked his usual pep. A vet visit and blood work revealed a urinary tract infection. He got an antibiotic shot. After only one day, he was bouncing around like he had springs in his feet, livelier than ever at age 14. Play puts an added bounce into our step. Brown and Vaughn point out that play also animates the mind and has physical, social, intellectual, and psychological benefits. Play aids in survival. It makes us smarter and more adaptable. It makes us more creative and innovative. It fosters empathy and enables us to form complex social relationships and groups.

So it might be a good time to take a personal inventory of how exactly your play life is going. How much are you playing? Are you bringing a playful spirit to your work life, to your relationships, to worship? Is there a particular form of play you might engage in more often?

I’ve been reading a lot about play, and trying to practice it more. There are many benefits and attributes. I want to highlight just three that aren’t immediately obvious.

For one thing, the point of play is that it doesn’t have a point. People who study play consistently name purposelessness as a central quality of play. In other words, play isn’t goal-driven. You do it for the sake of the activity itself. Margaret Guenther, an Episcopal priest and spiritual director, says, “Play exists for its own sake. Play is for the moment; it is not hurried.”  During play, there’s a sense of timelessness.

As a child I loved anything artsy-craftsy—coloring, drawing, making things. At Sunday School and in regular school I got so absorbed in my projects that I lost track of time. I struggled with the time limits on arts and crafts projects. I wanted to keep on practicing “holy uselessness.” That’s a phrase Guenther uses to describe this sense of purposelessness. She says in her book Toward Holy Ground:

When we play, we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful.

Similarly, Stuart Brown says, “[Play] doesn’t have a particular purpose, and that’s what’s great about play. If its purpose is more important than the act of doing it, it’s probably not play.” That’s a great distinction. I can’t tell you how often I have tried to multitask my play time. If I go running to lose weight or be healthy, that’s great. But it’s probably not play. It’s possible it will become play while I’m running, but maybe not. On the other hand, if I run just for the sheer sake of running, for its own sake, for the pleasure of it, that’s play.

A second, striking, aspect of play is that it is deep. Soul level deep. It has its own reality. It runs counter to cultural norms, rules, and expectations. Maybe that’s part of what scares and thrills us about it. In her book Deep Play, author and poet Diane Ackerman says:

One sheds much of one’s culture, with its countless technical and moral demands, as one draws on a wholly new and sense-ravishing way of life…. We can lay aside our sense of self, shed time’s continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world’s ordinary miracles…. When it happens we experience a sense of revelation and gratitude.

Deep play invites us to give up control, give up certainty, and give up our preconceived ideas and rules. That’s because play arises from deep within us, not from the world’s standards for us. It is an authentic expression of self. Play taps into our own creativity and innovation. Special equipment and fancy toys can actually get in the way. They can suppress the inner expression of self, rather than cultivating it.

Religion is the third quality of play I want to talk about. Diane Ackerman writes that: “Deep play … reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking [understandable], creativity possible, and religion inevitable.” Religion may seem an unlikely playground. So often we think of religion as being stiff, boring, structured, dogmatic, and serious. That has a lot to do with the kind of religious upbringing and experiences we’ve had. I don’t think of our Unitarian Universalist religion as stiff or boring. And we certainly aren’t dogmatic. But too much focus sometimes gets placed on church “work” rather than church “play.”

UUs can be a driven group of people who want to save the world. That’s part of the reason for religion. But we do well to remember that play helps us do that even better. Play helps build the beloved community we long for. It deepens relationships, builds bridges across our differences, promotes belonging, grows our souls, and cultivates harmony and love.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles and sources don’t mention play. Not explicitly, anyway. But the first and sixth sources of our faith are suggestive of play. The first source draws on the “direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to forces that create and uphold life.” Play and wonder go hand in hand. Play renews the spirit. Play opens us to creative forces. The sixth source draws on “earth-centered teachings which celebrate the sacred circle of life.” To celebrate the circle of life is to sing, play musical instruments, tell stories, enact pageants, share in rituals, share our joys and our sorrows, hear poetry, pray, and meditate. Through these and other forms of play, Unitarian Universalism calls us back to ourselves, to holy uselessness, to the spontaneous expression of true self where creativity, joy, and gratitude abound.

What would it hurt if we were to be more playful in all we do—whether at church, at home, at work? Perhaps if we let go of a bit of our usefulness and purpose we could step into another realm that was more creative, more joyful, more deeply and truly religious. Which might turn out to be our life’s purpose after all.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044154/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/03.mp3

Psychologist David Elkind, in his book The Power of Play, identifies several characteristics of play, including:

1. No worry of failure—whether you win or lose doesn’t matter.
2. Balance between challenge and skill—some risk heightens the experience, but not so much that known talents can’t be relied upon.
3. Action and awareness merge—you’re so involved you’re on autopilot.
4. Self-consciousness disappears—you don’t worry about how you look, if you’re good enough, etc.
5. The activity is an end in and of itself—the doing is what matters, not any reward you get for it.

This experience of delight in the task itself is not just a luxury, it is a need.

We need the lightness of being that play creates to better face the fact that our lives will end in death—and what could be more absurd?

We need the lightness of being that play affords when we do the serious work of relieving, in whatever way we can, the hundreds of thousands around the world who are dying from disease, malnutrition, abuse, neglect, and war.

We need the lightness of being that play offers when bringing groups in conflict together so that bonds can be forged and new hope for peace and healing encouraged.

We need the lightness of being that play brings to young Black men feeling hopeless, police officers feeling under attack and undocumented immigrants fearfully hiding.

We need play to face the work of the world.

We need play to maintain our emotional, spiritual, and physical balance so that we can do the work that desperately needs doing.

Come, let us play, even as we work.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044133/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/04.mp3

Last year my therapist started asking me at every visit, “You having any fun?”

I’d laugh, and say, “Nope.”

Eventually, I realized that I just wasn’t any good at fun. Either I’d never learned, or I’d forgotten how to let loose, kick back, and have a blast doing something.

So I did what we do these days: I asked Facebook. My friends gave me all kinds of suggestions, and some of them actually sounded like things I might enjoy. In the time since then, I have had more fun. But lately, I’ve been thinking that question is a hard one for parents of young children.

Do you remember that Nyquil ad? The one that said, “Moms don’t take sick days”? (And yes, there was a dads version of that commercial. No non-binary parent commercial though.)

For the default parent, there are no sick days. There is no end to the work of child-tending, and every precious hour of respite care, should we be lucky enough to have that, is measured out carefully. We always ask ourselves, “Is this a good use of babysitter time?” There are always dishes and laundry, deadlines and past-due projects—so many things that seem more urgent than self-care of any kind, let alone play.

After five-plus years in the trenches, I’ve decided that there are only two ways that parents get to have fun.

Option one: convince yourself that fun belongs on your to-do list. That it’s not optional. That the well-being of your children depends on your ability to have fun. The oxygen-mask metaphor is so old that we roll our eyes at it, but it’s true. Play is as important as air and water and food and shelter. Without it, parts of us die.

Which leads us to option two: play with your children. I’m not just talking about getting down on the floor with them and making elaborate racetracks. I’m not just talking about doing whatever the things are that your kids think are fun. Find the places where your joy and their joy overlap. For my partner Liesl, that’s the racetracks. For me, it’s art. It’s liberating to do kid art. The kids and I will sit at a table with a big piece of paper, a bin of crayons, and a timer. Every time the timer rings, we switch chairs, and color there. It’s so much fun—free of the constraints of needing to make “real art.”

Last weekend the kids and I went to something billed as a “Clay Extravaganza.” My daughter and I both tried our hands at a pottery wheel—and loved it. Then we watched skilled potters compete—competitions that were silly and serious at the same time. In the first one, a team of three potters worked together—one operating the pedal controlling the speed, and the other two each using one hand only, working cooperatively to draw the clay evenly upward. In the second one, seven potters sat at wheels—with paper bags over their heads, a silly face drawn on each bag. The timer started, and all but one created beautiful pieces. One potter, when she removed the paper bag, said, “That’s not at all what I was imagining!” The crowd’s favorite was the potter whose piece collapsed. I think he actually won.

Had I been alone, I would have loved to stay and watch more of the competitions. I would have taken longer to explore the exquisite works of art for sale.

But it was time for my son’s nap, so we packed up and went home. He had a snack, then went down easily for a long nap.

Did I want more? Maybe. But if I’d been alone, I would have missed seeing my daughter’s delight and mastery. If I’d been alone, I would have missed a lesson in saying, “It is enough. My heart is full.” And if I’d been alone I might have been drawn into judgements of good art and bad, or comparisons between my creations and those of the talented artists I was watching. But my children and I were able to stay with the spirit of art as play, and each of us and our relationships   together came out stronger for it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044111/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/05.mp3

My first memory of what the first of our UU Sources calls “transcending mystery and wonder” is an experience I had when I was quite little, maybe five or six years old. Every summer, my family and I sailed the coast of Maine in our wooden sailboat. Our boat had a nice fat bowsprit (the mast-like thing that sticks out in front of the bow). My two sisters and I thought it was just made for riding on like a horse and we did—as much as our parents would let us.

That day, the surface of the water was very smooth and clear, but there were big, rolling waves—my Dad called them swells—made by a storm way out at sea somewhere. We sat astride the bowsprit, hanging out in front of the bow of the boat, as it glided up one side of a smooth, clear, green hill of water, over the top and whooshed down the other side, over and over again. It felt as if I was flying or riding a sea serpent. It felt as if I were part of the boat and the boat were part of the water and everything was part of everything. It was as if I—the me I thought I was, did not exist anymore, except as part of the boat and the green-blue waves, and the whole universe.

Then I noticed an amazing thing. I looked at the shadow of my own head in the water and I saw that I had a halo! All around my shadow, there was a ring of golden wavy light. I thought to myself, “That’s why I feel so magical. I am magical! I have a halo!” I looked at my sister’s shadows and did not see any halos. I was the only one with a halo! As you can imagine, I thought I was pretty special.

Of course, my halo was simply an effect of the sun behind me. A total solar eclipse of the head. So it turns out I was wrong when I thought I was the only one with a halo. It must have seemed to my sisters that each of them was the only one with a halo. But, in fact, each of us was part of the mystery, part of the wonder.

I was raised Unitarian Universalist in the 1960s. I did not learn to pray, or really to think or talk about God at all. In Sunday school I enjoyed the lessons about other people’s gods, and they may have had something to do with my becoming an   archaeologist, but church was not where I connected with the mystery. For me, that happened in nature. Sailing, on long hikes, keeping a nature journal with my Dad, free-range exploring and playing outside—these were the times I felt most myself and most connected to life.

By high school I had stopped attending church—in buildings. For many years, nature was my only church, and I found great solace there. But often life seemed overwhelming. I felt and saw the brokenness of the world very deeply, but felt paralyzed. I was lucky to find a similarly disillusioned husband, who also enjoyed being outdoors a lot. We put off having children for a long time, feeling that they would cramp our canoeing and bike-riding style, but it also seemed like madness to bring more children into such a messed up world. Thankfully, we eventually came to our senses and had two wonderful daughters.

The births of both our daughters were profoundly moving experiences. Suddenly there was a new person who had not been there moments before. Exactly where did she come from? On one level I knew only too well—on another, it was a mystery. I will never forget their soulful eyes regarding us moments after their births. Steve and I coined a phrase for those newborn eyes: we call them whale eyes. They seemed to peer out from the depths, from another realm or dimension. And perhaps they did. Perhaps part of them was still wherever it was they came from, that place I had somehow forgotten and longed to remember.

Having my daughters, watching them grow and witnessing their unjaded  delight in life helped me begin to do just that—to remember. I still felt worn down and sad for them growing up in a relentlessly materialistic world. But they reminded me of something. Exactly what, I could not say, but I could half feel it, around the next corner, just outside my peripheral vision…a dream? a memory? Like a lost paradise…

But of course having children was not always about close encounters with Mystery. We were working parents raising two small kids while attempting to renovate an old neglected house with very few skills or resources. Our long hikes, bike rides, and canoe trips were no more. Meanwhile the world situation appeared to be only worsening with each passing day. This was the time of the first Gulf War, 9/11, the war in Iraq, an Inconvenient Truth—and I found myself in a kind of numb, helpless despair.

Thankfully, once again help was beamed in from the Mystery. This time it came in the form of Sophie, my dog and guardian angel. I had been working at home as a freelance graphic designer for several years, but I had never allowed myself to do anything but work when the kids were off at school. Suddenly a midday walk in the woods was mandated and Sophie was punctilious and insistent with her reminders.

Together we began to explore the uncharted woods and marshes behind our new home. Walks with my silent spirit guide dog became the center of my spiritual life. And winter, a time when I usual became even more depressed, was the best. That was when we would go on snowshoes deep into the frozen marshes, into a strange, stark landscape much like a desert, that was inaccessible at any other time of year. Walking, contemplating and photographing the same few square miles of creation, season in and season out, was a truly healing spiritual practice. Gradually I became more connected to the reality that underlies and imbues everything, but that was so hard to remember when I was up to my eyeballs in housework, deadlines, and children’s homework.

Around the same time, I started attending a Unitarian Universalist church again. I found it comforting and familiar and like home, but at first I didn’t find there what I found in the woods. One day our then-minister, Kitsy Winthrop, offered a sermon based on the book Epiphanies, by Ann Jauregui, a practicing therapist with a PhD. As I read it I felt a sudden shock of recognition. The stories in the book seemed hauntingly familiar—stories of people’s nearly forgotten childhood experiences of a transcendent joy and
an abiding sense of connection to—something. Something huge. It was through reading the book that I
retrieved the lost memory of the bowsprit ride.

Ann Jauregui says in her book:

Shyly, we venture out with our songs and stories into a world still in the thrall of a reluctant science. Yet even now, science is encountering astonishing non sequiturs of its own, surprises that beg us to reinstate all of our stories and include them in our explorations. Above all, these are sacred tales, profoundly healing as they remind us of—and restore us to—our innate all-right-ness.

Sometimes it felt as if I had to dig pretty deep into Unitarian Universalism to find what resonated for me. I did a lot of that digging in small covenant and adult religious education groups at Fellowship. But I was still thirsty for more. And then there was that part of the first source about how wonder and mystery is “affirmed in all cultures.” So I started studying at ChIME, the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. ChIME is an interfaith wisdom school and is not affiliated with any one denomination. There I learned to become more comfortable with words and practices that would seem quite out of place in a UU service. Words like mystical, which I now use to describe some of my experiences. I could even imagine calling myself a mystic!

I learned that there are mystical traditions in every religion, and that the language used to describe the experiences is amazingly similar across traditions. “The mystery and wonder affirmed by all cultures.” The most important thing I have learned is that I cannot understand everything with  intellect. My rational mind can talk me out of believing in my own direct experiences of ultimate reality, but it can’t experience it. That happens with some other part of me. This revelation, this conversion, is ongoing. I don’t know where it will lead me, but it appears to be picking up speed.

The last section of that first Source says that the direct experience of the wonder and mystery “moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.” The more I pay attention to life and the miracle it truly is, the more I understand that paradise was not in fact lost—just forgotten. It is not around the next corner, but all around us, all the time, right here, right now. Not just in mystical peak experiences, and not just in nature. Not just in a newborn’s eyes, but in everyone’s eyes, could we but see it. Letting this understanding sink deep into my soul is not only my best defense against despair and the resulting paralysis, it is also the only way I can find my true self and my best part to play in life. As I come to feel deeply that I am connected to something bigger than myself, and something essentially good—no, miraculous—I find I might just be able to aid and abet that something, work with it instead of against it. Like catching a wave just right. And that’s when I remember that feeling of riding up one rolling green hill of water and down the other side, just in time to catch the next one, my halo shining around me as I go.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110030742/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_08/01.mp3

And truly, I reiterate, . .
nothing’s small!
No lily-muffled hum of a
summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the      cherubim:
And, — glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, —
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a     vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct.
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes…

Excerpted from “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110030719/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_08/02.mp3

I believe this firmly—that we are sacred beings in a sacred world.

No part of our living is divorced from that reality; this life and all that surrounds it is holy, from beginning to end.Every human being—whatever category or description they might belong to—is a sacred being.

I believe this firmly—that the world we inhabit, from the primordial slime that gave rise to the air we breathe to the American chestnut trees in my backyard, from the thistles and groundhogs, also in my backyard, that will not go away, to the grass that grows through the cracks of crumbling pavement, and even the pavement itself, is sacred. All of it is. All of life is wondrous, and we are part of life. With our very breath, we are witness to wonder.

But we forget. It’s easy to do. I suppose on some level that’s a good thing. We probably wouldn’t get much done if we spent every moment staring in rapturous wonder at dandelions, appreciating the miracle of sneezes even as we breathe in the ragweed. And perhaps that too is a miracle of sorts, as the author Terry Pratchett once commented. “Human beings,” he said, “make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom?”

When I think about things that way it astonishes me that any of us can manage to be bored, but we do. It is in such moments, when I become aware of them, that I try to rise from the sleepwalking of day-to-day getting by and look around me. It is in such moments that I might pick up an instrument and practice that miraculous art which is music, or I might listen to someone else practice that art. Perhaps I will step outdoors for a few moments and walk under leaf and sky. Maybe I’ll pick up the telephone—another miracle—and call someone I love, with whom I have not spoken in too long a time. Maybe I will play with my son. Or perhaps I will simply soldier through, getting done what needs to get done, and wait until later to be grateful for the sacredness of life.

It is common, these days, for people to say that even if they are not religious, they are spiritual, or that they are seeking a deeper spiritual life. Sometimes it’s not exactly clear what we mean when we talk about spirituality. But if by that word we mean a sense of connectedness with something greater than ourselves, or a feeling of wonder and gratitude, or a motivation to step out from familiar patterns of thought and view ourselves and everything around us in a different way, we could do far worse than pay attention to this world as it is.

Then, perhaps, together we can all learn to love this world, this life, this sacred existence into which we were born and in which we will live until the end of our days, and after which the tissues of our bodies will slowly transform back into soil and nourish new life, new wonder, new experiences, new marvels.  Perhaps we can learn to do more than live well in this world—we can also learn to praise it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110030655/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_08/03.mp3

What opens you to wonder?

We hope that Quest and the many other resources from the CLF help to turn toward the wondrous. If you value the wonder that the CLF brings to your life, and to many others around the world, it would be wonderful if you could support the CLF by sending a check in the enclosed envelope
or by giving online.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110030616/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_08/04.mp3

Jack and I met accidentally: He flew into the open hand at the end of my out-stretched left arm. You see, Jack is an adult male house sparrow who had been trapped in the dayroom of my residential living unit. It’s unclear how he came to be inside the dayroom, but it was abundantly clear that he wanted back outside because he kept smashing into the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered parts of two sides of the room.

While Jack flew from window to window, I silently sent him messages to come to me—where he’d be safe and I could take him back outdoors. In my mind’s eye, I saw him receiving my ESP messages, flying over, and landing on my shoulder, after which we would triumphantly march out of the room. That didn’t happen.

What did happen is this: One of the residents tossed an empty laundry bag at him, hoping to entangle him long enough to be captured and released. Instead, it caused him to fly diagonally across the room toward a small window where another resident attempted to grab him. Jack escaped that attempted capture and flew off at a different angle—this time toward me—and I reached out and plucked him from the air. (Later, yet another resident would liken it to a Yankee center-fielder snagging a line drive.)

I carried Jack outside in my cupped hands. While walking I put my lips next to my hands and whispered to him. Later, someone asked me if I was kissing the bird. My first answer was, “No.” But after thinking about it, maybe I was. I whispered the Buddhist mantra om mani padme hum to him, so although I didn’t give him a physical kiss, I did give him a spiritual one.

Much to my surprise, he did not immediately fly off when I uncupped my hands. Instead, he just sat on my palm, hunkered down, breathing heavily. I walked across the courtyard to a bench bathed in bright sunlight and sat down. He remained squatted on my palm for several minutes with his left eye staring up at me all the while. Was he staring because he wanted to remember my face in case we met again? Or was he, like me, just totally in awe at the wonder of this unusual being-to-being encounter?

I’ll never know. But I do know he was safe and unharmed and that’s what mattered. After those few minutes of bonding, my new BFF—best feathered friend— fluttered down to the ground, looked around, glanced back at me, and then flew off to join his buddies.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110030522/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_08/05.mp3

Join our hosts Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino for a live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET.

On The VUU this Week (June 13th), we chatted with Colin Bossen, Danielle DiBona, Vanessa Southern and Kimberly Hampton on The Minns Lectures – The VUU #265

The Minns Lectures are an annual series of lectures on religious topics conducted under the auspices of the Minns Lectureship Committee, whose membership is composed of ministers and members of First Church Boston and King’s Chapel in Boston. With the first lecture, given in 1942 by Walton E. Cole, this series established itself as an innovative force in Unitarian Universalist thought, and the lectures continue today as a source of creative theological and religious advancement.

The lectureship was established by a bequest of Susan Minns of Boston to honor her brother, Thomas Minns. As she stated in her will, Miss Minns wished for six lectures to be given annually by a Unitarian Universalist minister in good standing on a topic of general religious interest. http://minnslectures.org/about.php

Production support provided by Margalie Belizaire.

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

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110022901/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu265.mp3

Join our hosts Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino for a live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET.

On The VUU this Week (June 16th), we chatted with Dr. Bethany McKinney Fox, Rev. Dr. Meg Richardson and Rev Theresa Soto on Welcoming Children, Youth and Adults with Special Needs – The VUU #263

Bethany McKinney Fox (PhD in Christian Ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary), currently works at Fuller as adjunct professor of Christian ethics and runs the Access Services Office, working to make the institution more accessible and welcoming to students with disabilities. She is the founding pastor of Beloved Everybody Church, a community of people with and without intellectual disabilities, participating and leading together. She has a new book: Disability and the Way of Jesus: Holistic Healing in the Gospels and the Church (IVP Academic).

Rev. Dr. Meg Richardson joined the faculty of Starr King School in 2014. Dr. Richardson, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and Durham University, with a certificate in Theology from Manchester College Oxford, has studied our living tradition in both the United States and Great Britain, and was mentored by scholars including Conrad Wright, James Luther Adams, and Sheridan Gilley. In addition to serving as the Director of the UU Certificate program, Dr. Richardson teaches UU History and Polity.

The Rev. Theresa I. Soto is a minister and liberation worker currently living in Ashland, Oregon, with their partner, the Rev. Sean Dennison. Soto’s lived experience informs their way of engaging with others, from asking insightful questions, to speaking difficult truths. Soto is a 2016 graduate of Meadville Lombard Theological School.

Production support provided by Margalie Belizaire.

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

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110021253/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu263.mp3

Have you watched any of those shows on PBS that trace the genealogies and DNA of famous people? They take whatever stories and records the person might have, get a DNA sample, and then do the research. At the end they sit down with the person and show them what they’ve found. The names, the ship manifests, the marriage certificates, the little bit of genetic code that points to a specific branch of human migration.

I love those shows. And I especially love the one with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., because he really addresses the complexities of families, secrets, and the history of race in this country.

A year or so back, my family got up our courage and money and started that line of investigation. We were hoping to sift out fact from fiction, because our family holds a lot of dubious tales from less than reliable narrators. We wanted to find out if a great-great aunt really came from Damascus, or if our great-grandfather came from India, or if our great-great grandmother was full-blooded Mayan. We were curious and hoped our DNA would fill in the incomplete stories. It might answer some questions. But in the end I knew what it would show: I’m a post-colonial mutt in 21^st century America.

As a multi-racial person, I am supremely ill-suited to speak on the experience of white or black or brown. I am all and none of these. But I can speak from my own experience—and I’ve had some interesting experiences! And I can speak as a person whose family contains the whole palette of human coloring. Mine is a calico family with blonde and brown and black hair, hair that is smooth and curly and frizzy. Brown and green and blue eyes, freckles, dimples, and when we grin our cheeks rise high. We have broad shoulders and wide feet. Our complexions range from fair to deep and our babies are especially beautiful.

Some of us identify as white, and some of us identify as people of color. While you’d think that we would be completely comfortable talking about race and identity, we don’t do it. We can—we have—but in general, we don’t. Recently I tugged on one of those loose strings and realized that we don’t talk about race and identity because some of us are still struggling with passing. Passing as white. Passing as not colored. Passing as acceptable.

So, here’s where I can speak from—from the experience of passing, becoming acceptable, striving to be measured by my conduct and brilliance while wearing an indeterminate skin. I can speak from the weird place of holding white privilege and being seen as not-one-of-us. It is a strange place, indeed.

Here’s the awfulness of passing: knowing that your father, your grandmother, your ancestors, sacrificed some of their own identity to make it easier for you to go forward. Now, plenty of our ancestors sacrificed for us to be successful. But denying one’s own identity tends to leave odd scars on the family tree.

As a mutt I’m already used to complexity, and find the white/black racial labels to be both woefully limiting and dangerous. Because those labels allow for convenient boxes, and people don’t live in boxes. There will be many ways we will dismantle the systems of racial oppression, but we’re not going to do it all rationally, or all at once.

This is our work. To start this work I’ll invite you to journey with me a while. I can’t ask you to fully understand the weird place that is my identity, but if you would accept my invitation, as we journey together we might begin to see where you are weird too. I’m going to be bold and suggest that there are plenty of us who are quietly passing in different ways.

Perhaps there are parts of your family that were not acceptable, not spoken of, not included in the family’s history—oral or written. In the work of becoming acceptable, our families routinely edit these histories—sometimes consciously, sometimes out of fear.

Maybe the family name was changed to make it acceptable to English ears. Maybe alcohol or drug addiction twisted limbs of the family tree. Mental illness, violence, poverty, illegitimacy, abandonment or adoption can all get filtered out of the stories we tell.

For some immigrants to this country, the upheaval and culture shock left them weak and unstable. I know that my own immigrant grandmother never quite got used to being colored, and it warped her life in America. I know that my other grandmother was fiercely intelligent and had to slide sideways through a world where women’s lives were circumscribed by domesticity.

As part of this journey together, I would then invite you to go back into your own family and look closely at any gaps in the story—pull on those loose threads and see what knots tighten or come undone with gentle tugging. Was there a time when any part of your family was unacceptable? How did you manage to finally pass? And what was the cost to your grandfather, your mother, your aunts?

What stories did they finally tell you to show that they had succeeded? In those stories are also the quiet warnings not to go back, not to ask, not to undo their work and sacrifice. In those stories you are reminded that being unacceptable is dangerous. And they love you too much to see you go back there.

Now, take those stories, take those fears, and wear them. Breathe into the danger and tension and feel the complexity of benefiting from those sacrifices. Spend time getting used to the complexity.

Did your family benefit from oppressing other people? Go examine that possibility. It’s okay to be objective at first. Before we can learn to hold full empathy for another who seems different, we need to resolve the shame or discomfort that we might still be carrying from our own families. By looking at the compromises and sacrifices made in the past, we can better honor them and honor the struggles of others.

Then, once we’ve looked back at our heritage, the next step is to look at our own selves. There are other ways we might be silently passing, hoping we won’t be looked at too closely, or judged too harshly.

Too often I hear that UU congregations are too homogeneous—too white, too affluent, over-educated—and that’s an easy stereotype to bemoan. But it’s too easy, too simple. And it’s wrong. We’re more complicated than that.

Just like our families may have been shaped by adversity, all of us have struggled somehow. And some of us are still struggling to be acceptable. We’re still struggling to pass by not acknowledging our whole selves, our complicated identities or situations.

Some of us are grappling with economic insecurity—just getting by, and having to make tough choices between medicine and car payments. But we come to church and smile and don’t mention these hard choices. Some of us are grieving terrible losses. And the rest of the world seems to think that we should be upright and optimistic. So we come to church and look thoughtful and don’t mention that our hearts might not ever be done being undone. Maybe it’s hard staying sober or maybe the medication isn’t quite working well enough. Maybe it’s hard not crying when you see a mother and baby even though the miscarriage was a long time ago. But we come to church and hope that no one asks us anything too personal.

Someone might have said, “I can’t be in community like this; people will see me and think I don’t belong there.” And so they aren’t here with us because they weren’t up to the effort it takes to pass, to meet our standards of acceptability, whatever they imagine those are.

And this is why passing for normal, successful or affluent is problematic. It denies the full range of our experiences and prompts us to edit out the problematic parts of ourselves and our identities. It denies us the chance for wholeness and connection.

I often tell people that Unitarian Universalism is a place where we come together to learn new ways of being in the world. One of the things we will learn is how to dismantle racism and other forms of oppression. We won’t get it right the first time, or the second. But we have to keep trying. It is the work that will heal our world. And as always, we have to start with ourselves.

When Rabbi Jesus asks us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, the hardest part of that is the second part—loving ourselves fully. But it gets easier if you think about the people who have loved you forward—your family, your friends, your partners, your teachers. Consider their love for you. It might not have been perfect, but it was love. Look at the love that pushed you forward, and see if its momentum can push you a little further to greater love and empathy for others who are working to be accepted, not just acceptable.

This is our work.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110020049/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/01.mp3

I would have told you with complete certainty and utter sincerity that I was straight, right up until the first time I was seriously attracted to a woman. I was 40, and this was new for me. I was perplexed by the idea that I could be raised in a Unitarian Universalist family, and still only discover this significant fact about myself at that age. What reason, I wondered, would I have had to hide this from myself?

I did what I do whenever confronted with something unfamiliar: I researched it. After finding online articles about women coming out as lesbian or bisexual later in life, I discovered the book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire by Lisa M. Diamond, a professor of psychology and gender studies. She conducted research with 100 women over the course of a decade. On the Kinsey Scale, which places people on a spectrum from “exclusively heterosexual” to “exclusively homosexual,” most of the women chose a point somewhere between those extremes, and the location shifted for many of them during the study.

I recognized that it was possible that I had not deceived myself, but instead had changed—had shifted my location on the Kinsey scale, for lack of a more poetic way to put it. My newfound attraction to women didn’t mean that I’d secretly always been a lesbian and that my past relationships with men were fake or deceptive. It wasn’t about past relationships. It was a recognition that my next partner could be of any gender.

I kept quiet about that realization for a while. Not exactly in the closet—I came out to my parents and some trusted friends—but under the radar. My “Midwestern Modest” upbringing meant that I was inclined to think that because I was happily unpartnered, there was no need for anyone other than my closest circle to know who I was attracted to.

I let it slide when a coworker said: “Well, since you were married, at least we know if we’re going to set you up, it should be with a man.” My response was something about not wanting to be set up at all. That was true, but avoided the issue.

After a few years of that strategy, I realized that if I kept it up, I faced a couple of potentially challenging possibilities.

Waiting to come out until I was in a relationship with a woman or non-binary person would put a lot of pressure on that partner. People who had only ever seen me as straight might assume the new partner caused the change in me, thinking (incorrectly) that someone can be “converted” to a different sexual orientation. That’s hardly a fair thing to do to someone you love.

While any such partner was then purely hypothetical, my calling to ministry was not. When I began to struggle with the decision to come out (or not), I was in the process of applying to theology school. I hoped that in a few years I would be searching for a congregation to serve as their ordained minister. Unless my sexual orientation came up during the interview process, it was likely that members of the church would just assume I’m straight, as so many people do. If I later revealed a serious relationship with a woman or non-binary person, I worried that there could be some shock, some anxiety about what this means for the church, and possibly some anger at being deceived—even though I wouldn’t have intentionally deceived anyone.

The first time I felt really uncomfortable with my choice to remain silent was the first time my religious leadership felt compromised by that silence. For many years, Unitarian Universalist congregations in the Boulder-Denver area had held a worship service on the steps of the capitol building in Denver focused on LGBTQ+ rights, including marriage equality and gender identity and expression.

The first time I attended that service I had to make an unexpected choice. In the service, those who identify as LGBTQ+ were invited to stand and receive a blessing. I wasn’t out and wasn’t ready to make that decision in that moment, so I remained seated. It made me uncomfortable. It made me feel ashamed…not of who I was, but of not being willing to literally stand up and be seen as who I was.

I did have one good reason not to be visibly “out” that day. I was with my son, who was ten years old at the time, and I wasn’t out to him yet. When we got home that day, we talked about it, and I explained that I had wanted to stand up, wanted to be brave enough to do that, but couldn’t because that wasn’t how I wanted him to learn that about me.

He said he would have been surprised but otherwise fine with me standing up, but I realized that day that unless I was fully out, every time I was in a situation like that I would have to think about who was there, who might see me, who might learn in that moment that their assumptions about me were incorrect, and what negative ramifications that choice might have.

I also thought about the positive ramifications coming out might have. What difference might it make in my ministry if, instead of people assuming I’m a straight ally to the LGBTQ+ community, they understood that I’m a member of it?

Who might see me, and know that there are people like them serving as clergy in a faith tradition that honors the inherent worth and dignity of all people? That there are people like them raising happy, healthy children? Who might learn that their assumptions about me were incorrect, and take from that a broader lesson about assuming who people are?

If I remain silent, I wondered, what does that do to the people I minister to? It doesn’t silence them, because they don’t know the choice I’m making. But it doesn’t help them find their voices, either. It doesn’t allow me to be among those who say, “It’s okay. I’ve been there. Look at me—I’m out, and I’m glad, and my life is good.”

These were all important considerations. But neither a theoretical future relationship nor my career in ministry were the most important reason for writing my “coming out” blog post. The most important reason was that continuing to be silent felt, for the first time, like I was actively hiding part of who I am. Unlike the moment of remaining seated at the public worship service, this was an ongoing act of hiding, and the internal pressure I felt about it was increasing. The metaphor of “the closet” was making sense in a visceral way it didn’t before.

In February 2015, when many of my fellow Unitarian Universalist bloggers participated in a #SexUUality blog project, my desire to come out publicly grew. The explanatory paragraph we all put into our #SexUUality blog posts included this statement: “Unitarian Universalists have a long history of courage in tackling issues around human sexuality—from campaigning for human rights to the  pioneering innovative work in the Our Whole Lives sexuality curriculum.”

I wanted so much to have the courage to publish my coming out post that February. I did write it then, but after reflection, I knew that I wasn’t ready yet. I had to do a lot of thinking before I could publish the coming out post: thinking about who needed to hear from me personally before it was in public space; thinking about how much to say, and what to leave out, or leave for another time.

In anxious moments, I’d revert back to my old thought patterns: It’s no one’s business. It’s too private to put on a blog. It’s not the kind of thing I should be talking about publicly. All of that was a defense mechanism, as thinking so often is. But after a few months, alongside all that thinking, there was a feeling. That feeling might best be described as a yearning to be seen. To be seen for myself, and not for some more societally acceptable version of who that might be—who I might be.

Waiting a bit longer was the right decision, just as not standing up at the worship service until I’d talked to my son was the right decision. Still, it bothered me in February, and continued to bother me as time went on—not just because I missed out on my coming out post being part of the #SexUUality project, though I did have a pang of regret about that. It bothered me because I felt invisible, even inauthentic. I felt “in the closet” instead of “under the radar.”

People who are claustrophobic know what it is to be uncomfortable in an enclosed space. Being closeted induces a kind of emotional claustrophobia, which stifles and silences the soul just as a physical closet traps the body.

Eventually I came out, but that was not the end of my struggle with both self-definition and how others defined my identity. In the coming out blog post I finally published in April 2015, I specifically rejected a few labels for myself, but I didn’t give my readers a new label to apply to me. Maybe that was because I was still letting go of the old one—straight—and maybe it was because there wasn’t a choice that felt quite like me to me. It took me a few more years to settle fairly comfortably on “queer” as a way to describe my identity.

A lot has shifted in the four years since I published that blog post. I’m uncomfortable now with the ableism in the use of standing both as a metaphor and as the way people were invited to identify themselves as LGBTQIA to receive a blessing.

I’m now an ordained minister serving a congregation in Peterborough, New Hampshire. I was open about my identity during the search that brought me here in 2016, and about the fact that I was happily single at that time. By the next spring, I began dating a woman who is also a Unitarian Universalist minister, and we are now in a committed partnership. The congregation I serve seems to have had no negative reaction to that change. It’s impossible to know how much of that is because I was already out.

Now that I’ve been out for a few years, I understand that “coming out” is a lifelong process, not something that was done in 2015. I don’t visually
present to a lot of people as “queer”  (whatever they think that’s supposed to look like), and so I still encounter frequent assumptions that I am straight. Even my beloved, when I first began flirting with her, thought I was straight (and thus, clearly not
flirting) until one of her close friends did a quick search online and told her otherwise.

Despite those continued incorrect assumptions and the awkwardness they sometimes lead to, I’m proud to be among those who can, indeed, say:
“It’s okay. I’ve been there. Look at me—I’m out, and I’m glad, and my life is good.”

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110020026/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/02.mp3

Some identities, like being a student or a resident in a particular place, come and go. Others are with you for life. Still others you find yourself easing into and becoming more and more familiar with. For me, right now, aging is one of those gradual ones I find myself thinking more about. I’m in my 60s now. People in their 60s used to be old in my mind—but I find that the word “old” really tends to mean people who are older than I am. It’s not a fixed identity. Suddenly 60s seem like the prime of life!

I hated turning 50. My women friends wanted me to have a croning ceremony, but that was annoying to me. I adopted a child at 40 and I was tired of people thinking I was the grandmother. At the urging of a friend who insisted I should have some kind of ritual, I honored the date in the most honest way I could: I gathered a circle of friends and then climbed under a table with a   tablecloth over it and said, “I don’t want to be 50! Tell me why I should come out!” Friends in their 50s then began to tell me what they liked about it—the increased confidence, the sense of not worrying so much about what other people thought. Finally, bored and sweaty, I emerged, still ambivalent but willing to face facts (and some late arrivers who looked stunned to have walked in on the middle of this).

I had no such difficulty turning 60. Rather, I felt invigorated and excited about it. For one thing, there were discounts attached to the number, and I’m cheap. For another thing, my kid was pretty much grown up and avoiding me anyway, so no one thought we were related at all on a daily basis, and so I wasn’t hearing all those grandma comments.

And I’ve loved my 60s. The confidence remains, and the sense of having nothing left to prove. There is an ease and self-acceptance which is a blessing I wish I could have received earlier, about everything from my body to my inevitable blunders and errors.

But being old…this is kind of a new identity that’s creeping up on me, and it seems to be getting stronger. For one thing, no one is left in my family who is older than me. Parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents—no one of the older generations serves as a barrier between me and death. For another thing, conversation at parties and social gatherings among my longtime friends is beginning to turn to their retirement plans.  Things like Medicare and Social Security are no longer just social issues, but rather are practical topics, as people compare and contrast options and plans. And, then there’s the matter of my body, which is no longer remotely drawn to late night dances or parties or even movies. Sleepy now, thank you very much.

And I’m beginning to wonder and fantasize about my next stage of life. Growing old is an exciting prospect to me because I have great role models for it. Though my mother died ridiculously young from ovarian cancer, my grandmother lived to 106 and enjoyed every minute of it. She eloped at 76, and promptly bought a trailer truck with her new love and hit the road. She continued to travel into her 90s, and planted gardens and got a 30-year mortgage at 82. (She had temporarily moved into a retirement home but found the people there politically incompatible.) She wrote fiery letters to the editor and otherwise behaved in ways I intend to imitate. When she turned 105, she said sadly to me, “Oh, to be 100 again!”

I was reminded of her recently talking to longtime CLF member Jeanne Beatty, who lives up in Alberta, Canada. At 98, Jeanne has been a member of CLF for 50 years. When I told Jeanne I’d be camping in Jasper Park this summer, she said it was only about 4 hours from where she lives and she’d drive over to see me. I was taken aback. “But Jeanne,” I said, “you can’t camp at 98!” “Why not?” she demanded. “I’ve got it on my calendar!” We’ll see if it works out, but I love her spirit!

With great role models like Jeanne and so many of you, “old age” becomes something to look forward to. But not for everyone. I was talking recently with another friend who, at 95, said he wants only to die. He said he’s not in pain, just tired, and he feels like “a waste of space.” I will admit that this upset me. My immediate, blurted out, response clearly surprised him. “I didn’t know you were that much of a capitalist!” I said. “Like you’re only valuable because of what you produce? I thought you knew better than that! You’re valuable because so many of us love you!” He laughed and said he didn’t believe me, but that it was a kind thing to say.

But I wasn’t kidding; I meant it. I love that man dearly, and his loss on the planet will be a sad day for me. Still, I know that the death of his wife and other beloved friends has left him feeling alone. I hear from many of you about the loss of your “other half” and I know that the blow this deals is immeasurable. And aging, grief and loss do seem to come as a package deal.

And yet, my grandmother, and Jeanne, and so many of you inspire me about the possibilities of old age precisely because despite so much loss all around you, you find new ways to love and be loved, new people and places and relationships. I can only hope that I embrace my old age with a fraction of the zeal you show for it.

Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/clf_quest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/04.mp3

“Who are you?” the caterpillar asks Alice in Alice in Wonderland. It turns out that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Maybe the caterpillar would like to know who Alice is in relationship to him. After all, she’s a stranger in Wonderland. The caterpillar is likely wondering where this stranger came from and what to make of her.

It turns out that this side of our identity is something that we run into a lot. We humans are relational creatures, and we want to understand how other people’s lives connect with ours. When you meet a new person they might want to know where you work or where you go to church or where your kids go to school.

Unfortunately, we humans are also quite territorial, and all too ready to decide that someone “doesn’t belong.” After her encounter with the caterpillar, Alice ends up growing so tall that her neck becomes long and snake-like, and a pigeon, in great disgust, accuses her of being a serpent. It doesn’t do Alice any good to protest that she is a little girl—the pigeon has already concluded that Alice is a serpent after her eggs.

This is rather silly in Wonderland—after all, no one ever really eats a mushroom and turns into a giant with a long neck—but it happens all the time that people decide who we are, and then conclude that what they have invented about us makes us a threat. And the less people know—the more they categorize someone as a stranger—the more likely they are to see them as potentially dangerous. For instance, people in locations with very few immigrants tend to be much more negative about immigration than people who live in places with large populations of people from outside the country. People who believe that they don’t know any LGBT folks are more likely to be homophobic than people who have LGBT friends or family.

Our brains want to affirm our identity by identifying who we are not. Evolution has shaped our brains to distrust those we think of as being not like us. But the world changes faster than evolution does, and in the modern world our chances of being neighbors with people who are, in one way or another, not like us are just about 100%.

So how do we re-tune our brains to this world where we constantly encounter people who are outside our “tribe,” who differ from us in ethnicity or race or language or politics or gender or sexual orientation or ability or any of the 1001 ways that people are different from one another?

Maybe some part of the answer lies in our ability to answer the question Who are you? There are so many answers to that question. We are our relationships: parents, children, siblings, partners, friends, colleagues, teachers and students. We are our heritage: race, ethnicity, language, stories. We are our sexual and gender identities. We are our bodies: age, ability, height, appetites. We are our theologies and our philosophies, the things we’ve learned and the things we want to explore. We are our hopes and fears and dreams and disappointments.

And not one of those things is normal. Or abnormal. When we invest the time and attention into deeply and specifically answering the question Who are you? we come up with a long list of precious details that we hold in common with others—and at least as many that differ from people who we know. The tendency to identify people as “strange” or “other” rests in the assumption—often unconscious—that our identity and experience is “normal.” But the more we look at all the facets of who we are, the more obvious it becomes that our intricate set of facets couldn’t possibly be the same for everyone.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle. Alice, in the confusion of falling down the rabbit hole and changing size and meeting beings as surprising as a hookah-smoking caterpillar, loses track of who she is. Or at least loses the ability to define herself in the ways she is used to. But in moving through a place where so much is unknown to her she is challenged to understand herself in new ways. Which is another part of the answer to how we change our brains.

When we dare to enter unfamiliar places, talk with unfamiliar people, taste unfamiliar things (even if they don’t change our size), then who we are expands to meet our expanded world. As Alice experiences, we may run into folks who challenge our sense of who we are—who lead us to the awkward realization that we aren’t sure, that our identity is shifting with each surprising encounter. It isn’t necessarily comfortable, this interview with a caterpillar, or with any stranger. But it is what leads us into a Wonderland of discovery, where we move beyond imagined walls into new possibilities for who we might turn out to be.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110015823/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_06/05.mp3

Join our hosts Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino for a live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET.

On The VUU this Week (May 9th), DeReau Farrar chatted with us on UU Music, Part II – The VUU #260DeReau K. Farrar is director of music at First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, and a member of the board and conference planning committee of the Unitarian Universalist Musicians Network. Before moving to Portland in 2016, he served UU congregations in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, California, led an interfaith community gospel choir, and worked as a freelance music director, vocal contractor, consultant, and arranger. He worked on HBO’s All the Way (2016) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017).

Production support provided by Margalie Belizaire.

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

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110012319/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu260.mp3

Join our hosts Rev. Meg Riley, Aisha Hauser, Christina Rivera, and Rev Michael Tino for a live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET.

On The VUU this Week (May 2nd): Matthew Johnson, Rev Kim D Wilson, Paul Langston-Daley, Jonalu Johnstone Christana Wille McKnight and Wendy Williams chatted with us on What’s New with UUMA Accountability – The VUU #259

Wilson is the chair of the Ethics Guidelines Committee. Langston-Daley is the chair of the Accountability team. McKnight is the UUMA Board Liaison. Johnstone and Johnson are of the members of the Accountability team. Wendy Williams is the UUMA President Designate

Production support provided by Margalie Belizaire.

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/vuu259.mp3

The invitations were elegant. They announced a hunger  banquet. And as soon as people began receiving these invitations, I began  getting calls. They were excited. Which made me smile. Because I knew they didn’t know what a hunger banquet really was.

For those who are unfamiliar with a hunger banquet, it’s not your regular dinner. People are invited to gather and eat, like a regular dinner. But not everyone is served the same things. In a hunger banquet, a hierarchy is established such that some get more than others. Just like our society—and our world. Some get a lot. Some get enough. And some get not enough.

I arranged for all invited to be assigned to one of three tables based on some arbitrary characteristic. I chose eye color. The objective was to make it something people had very little say in—like how we have no say in what family or what class we are born into.

The brown-eyed folks got to sit at the first table—the privileged table. This table was placed on the risers where the choir sat, a little bit above the congregation. They had a floral arrangement, matching china, polished silver and ruffled napkins. Two bottles of wine, sparkling cider, crystal pitchers of ice-water, candles and silk table-cloths sprinkled with little daisies. The table was arranged banquet style, like you’d see at a wedding, where guests sat all on one side looking out over the room.

The green or hazel-eyed folks were placed at the second table, below. It was somewhat less elegant. Real dishes went with paper napkins, a pitcher of water and juice.

The third table, for the blue-eyed folks, was placed around the corner by the entrance to the kitchen next to the big trash cans. They had paper plates, plastic forks, Dixie cups and water. Their location was such that the privileged table couldn’t see them. But the middle table could. Interestingly, 10 of the 14 people at the middle table chose to sit facing toward them, with their backs toward the privileged table.

To provide an indication that some system was in place, I had asked two of our newest—and relatively unknown—members to stand as “guards.” I asked them to dress “officially.” One surprised me by coming in combat fatigues, army boots, sunglasses, with a beret and a nightstick. When the poor table saw him at parade rest, watching over the room, they began referring to him as the man. The guards were given almost no instruction, except to maintain order and civility, which at a friendly invitational dinner might seem unnecessary. But, after all, we were dealing with hungry Unitarian Universalists encountering injustice.

When the dinner was served, the privileged table received the greatest care. They started with tossed salad, fruit salad, bread and butter, carrots and onions, rice and finally, chicken divan.

The second table was served after a few minutes and received the green salad, bread, plain carrots, rice and chicken.

The third table received only rice. And there was an extensive delay before that came. By the time it did arrive, some had grown tired of waiting and sent one among them who was intimately familiar with the children’s religious education program on a reconnaissance mission to liberate half a box of Triscuits and a bag of Smarties from the snack cupboard.

This surprised me a bit. But, I confess, I really didn’t know what would happen. I had fully expected that the artificial groups I set up would quickly dissolve, food would be shared between tables almost as quickly as we set it out, and the evening would be spent talking about the gross inequity in the world.

But I was intrigued to see that this was not what happened. There was a hesitation. And what happened during this hesitation was what taught us the most about our goal of oneness and the work of justice required to move us there.

The people at the privileged table had two kinds of responses. The first—and I will clarify that this was said in jest—referred to how appreciative they were that the superior nature of the character had finally been recognized and that it was about time they were given the treatment that was their due.

The other half of that same table did not seem so proud. They did express discomfort upon realizing that, while they were going gourmet, others were going without. Yet there was also a strong sense of confusion about what the guards would do if they challenged the system. They were reticent to do anything to create a scene. And that reticence held the status quo in place. All in all, it reflected some truth about the privileged group in our society—justifying some entitlement while issuing vague discomfort about the state of affairs and slow to take any action to change their position of privilege.

The second table was, to my mind, the most interesting. One member of the table reported, matter-of-factly, that he knew what we were attempting and considered it old news. Consequently, the conversation turned toward the details of one another’s lives. All in all, a fairly true picture of the middle class: generally intelligent people who work hard, are aware of the dynamics and problems of the world around them, but are too preoccupied with their own lives and those of their friends to effect much lasting change on systemic conditions of poverty.

The third table also seemed very adept at capturing the essence of the group they represented. They were pissed. They were hungry. And they minced no words about it being unfair. They weren’t angry at the guards, who were just doing what they were told. They also weren’t really upset with the other tables—they were just playing their part in the game. But they were, without question, pretty unhappy with me.

They came to see me as the instigator. The maker and the keeper of the system. For all intents and purposes, I played the role of God. A figure whom the privileged throughout history have cited as the source of the privilege they enjoyed, God has always been an ambivalent figure for the middle class, sometimes treated with confusion or indifference. And God is a figure the poor have often felt promised them more. And the poor have been dining on empty promises for a long time.

None among us can deny the tragic inequality in our world. Unfortunately, pinpointing the ultimate cause behind it isn’t as clear in real life as it seemed to be in our simulation. One of the truest statements made during the evening was during the discussion afterward, when someone pointed out that the experience that we simulated that evening was too simple. They pointed out that the roots of all oppression are far more complex and entangled in well-meaning endeavors than is ever initially perceived, and it is hard for any congregation to know how to do the good they so desperately want to do.

Trying to find oneness or navigate our way toward justice isn’t always straightforward. We want to help, but we don’t want to upset others in the process. We want to empower others, but we don’t want to take power from those who have earned it. We want others to have a place at the table, but we hope it is not at the expense of our own. This can lead to paralysis, and eventually, despair.

But beyond despair, beyond the tangled details of cause and effect, beyond the many reasons why it is impractical to work for change, there is something else: a realization that when any in the world suffers, we all suffer. As our inner cities are assaulted with strife, our suburbs are assaulted with fear. As the poor, the Black, the Asian, the Jew, the gay, the disabled and the disenfranchised are denied their due, we all feel the hunger of living on empty promises. And none of us—not the rich or the poor—ever get to know what it would be like to live in one world, where bridges are built and peace is possible for all people.

If the situation in my church had remained at a stalemate of confusion and inactivity we might have all gone home that night in despair. We might have demonstrated the reasons why 1% of the world’s population owns 99% of the combined wealth. We might have justified why prisons are over-represented by the poor and minorities. We might have accepted the inevitability that guards will always be threatened by plastic utensils because crime is the only hope for the poor. And we might have lost hope for the kind of communion we all crave—the kind that says that all differences and all fear can be bridged by love. If the situation in my church had remained the way it began I might have lost hope.

But I knew my community. And I knew deep down that they would get indigestion dining on fear and injustice. That is why I invited them—to show how it is possible to overcome paralysis. And I was not disappointed.

As I was talking to some of the folks at the privileged table, I began hearing the echoes of rebellion coming from across the room. Voices from the underprivileged table started singing. Slowly at first. Softly… “We Shall Overcome…” Some started to join hands or link arms. Then, the people at the privileged table saw their opportunity. They rose above their hesitation, elbowed their way past the guards, and carried food across the room. When the guards feebly attempted to stop them, the middle class quickly surrounded the guards and handcuffed them in debate about prolitarian morality in postmodern capitalistic systems. They were quickly overpowered. The lower class, seeing the privileged people coming toward them with food, unlinked arms and welcomed them into the group. Everyone began to sing louder. Then it was only a matter of a few minutes before we were all—guards and cooks and people of every class—sitting at the same table discussing what happened and in complete agreement: it was all the minister’s fault.

The way out of paralysis came when we heard the voices calling for action and heard the confusion within our own voice—and realized it was the same voice. The difference came when we recognized that all that separated us, whether authentic or artificial, did not, could not, would not divide us in our common humanity. The difference was made in recognizing that the good within us is as powerful as the complexity and the confusion of the system around us.

We will only work for others in their efforts to escape the yoke of bondage and oppression when we see ourselves inextricably linked to them. When we understand that their story is our story, their opportunity is our success. Coming together on the Side of Love is everyone’s reward.

Since that evening, I’ve helped organize hunger banquets at four different congregations. On no occasion have we ever ended hunger or oppression. But I have seen six-year-olds stuffing rolls in their shirt to deliver them to their parents at the poor table. I’ve seen 75-year-olds loading up their walkers and cussing out guards on their way to bring dessert to children. And every single time, I’ve come to know a communion of people who never thought about the poor—or the rich—in quite the same way again.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004746/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/02.mp3

It’s possible to be surrounded by abundance and never notice. It’s hidden in plain sight, and we miss it in the day to day grind—burdened by responsibility, meetings, traffic—waiting for some kind of relief. We miss it as we go about our usual way of thinking and doing, playing the role we’ve been cast in, or the one we’ve cast ourselves in. Too often we just accept the script that is handed to us by our parents, our society, even our churches, without much thought for what’s truly possible. We sigh, and concede to limitations that are embedded in the script we’ve been given.

If we listen to this kind of advice too often we can feel cold, lifeless, alone. We yearn to take in the world, to love and be loved, and this is so hard sometimes. It takes a level of trust we can hardly imagine.

The Buddhist tradition understands this painful predicament. The tradition teaches about a malady where we can be surrounded by life’s abundance, and yet lack the ability to take it in—to let it touch our heart, our soul. We can lack the ability to digest the beauty and possibility that is surrounding us. The tradition refers to these creatures who can’t take in life’s greatest gifts as hungry ghosts. Hunger is a painful thing. It’s horrible to hunger for something that is not available. It is even more painful to hunger for something that proves to be right in front of you, but which you can’t take in or digest. It gets missed. These hungry ghosts are depicted with long necks and distended bellies, showing the limitations of what they can swallow, and showing the toll a narrow neck or a narrow perspective can have on us.

It’s part of the reason I think we need church. We want to live, and we know living can feel small and limited, but we have a sense that perhaps there is a way to live with more freedom, more courage, more love. Perhaps we can find ways of seeing which show us the abundance that is waiting for us, but we’ve been too busy and bogged down to notice. We need help to get fed. In our shared hunger, our shared plight, even our shared sense of scarcity, we have a chance to stumble across something that truly satisfies.

Buddhism holds teachings on re-birth, and tradition says that these hungry ghosts will continue to be in a state of constant hunger until the day they find a way to allow in some kind of satisfaction and be re-born. I have thought a little bit about re-birth, and this is what I’ve come to: Every day is a chance at re-birth. We may feel we were born into a certain kind of life, a certain kind of story, and yet re-birth is possible every waking moment of our lives. We have a chance to wake up and see the life we’re actually living, a life that is expansive, mysterious and connected to every living thing. This is possible, and it’s not based on belief. It can be your experience or mine at any minute, on any given day.

I think this kind of re-birth has potential to show us a truth that is incredibly obvious but commonly missed—by feeding others, we too are fed. We can’t find satisfaction by stubbornly trying to feed and satisfy ourselves. Our culture teaches us that we can, but it’s a lie. The spell can be broken. All it takes is a little imagination. When we begin to develop the ability to listen to the growling stomachs in the world, we see something truly awesome and ordinary—our own hunger. And instead of wallowing in our own dissatisfaction and failed attempts for fulfillment, we reach out and we touch another. And the ghosts find what they were hungering for, and we are reborn.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004725/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/03.mp3

“You were ravenous right from birth!” This is the story I was told through my whole childhood. It puzzled me as I began to spend time with babies, because it seemed to me that when they were hungry, all of them were ravenous. Which is to say that they turned purple and screamed till they were fed. And then they calmed down.

I don’t remember my babyhood, but I do remember a very complicated relationship with food and hunger from earliest childhood. When my parents told me that I was ravenous from birth, it always felt laced with shame and judgment. This, I think, was because of two factors—one, my gender, and two, more essentially, that I was always chubby. When I was young, just a little chubby. As I aged, and largely due to dieting and external controls on food, chubbiness turned to obesity.

As someone who has lived with “weight issues” my whole life, hunger is a complicated thing to talk about. I grew up in a household where there was enough food and we did not worry about where the next meal would come from, so there was never a question of physical hunger. Someone I know who had to live with hunger describes it thus: “I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t keep my energy up…at times I remember thinking about what it would be like to die of
starvation.”

This was never my experience, and I know from others who lived with it that the trauma that comes from genuine hunger, especially in childhood, never goes completely away, no matter how circumstances change. My experience was that there was food around, plenty of food, but that I was not supposed to eat it. That I was bad if I ate it. This led to a different kind of hunger, to a distrust of what my own body wanted and needed and an externalization of how I thought I “should” eat. That kind of hunger led to secret eating, shame about eating, and a sense that my hunger was insatiable.

Beginning when I was about seven or eight, and family photos show me on the chubby side of being normally sized, my parents locked the food in a closet. There was food in the refrigerator—things like condiments and leftovers—but other than that, food was impossible to get unless it was served. Mealtimes, however, were fraught with anxiety. We had to “clean up our plates,” whether we liked the food or hated it. Many nights ended with my father sitting at the kitchen table glowering at me while I sat defiantly by a half-eaten vegetable or half-drunk glass of milk, watching the hours tick away until bedtime. At breakfast, the same food, which had been on the table all night, would be served up as breakfast.

There is an insatiable hunger that arises from being out of sync with your own body, with your own rhythms and needs, likes and dislikes. Other female friends have told me how shame and hunger interacted for them, and I’ve heard a huge variety of stories about women told they were too thin, too fat, or simply hungry when they shouldn’t be—who also felt shamed about hunger or lack of hunger. I did not ask other genders but I suspect they also have complicated narratives to share. Thirty percent of the American people are obese. Depending on which study you believe, between 30 and 75% of American women have eating disorders of one kind of another. These numbers correlate, I think, to the quantity of processed food we consume, but also to some deeper hungers which are not being honored or addressed.

By now, I have engaged in so many forms of controlling what I eat that I couldn’t even begin to list them all. Diets, “food plans,” restrictions from certain processed foods, call them what you want. What I notice is that the times I am in best relationship with food and with my body are when I am eating with people I care about and we are eating food prepared with love and care, living a life where I am engaged with and connected to others.

I can’t get my childhood back, or re-do the shaming messages that permeated my relationship with food and hunger and my body. What I can do is refuse to pass that shame and judgment on to others. I refuse to judge anyone’s appetites or choices, to presume that I know what anyone else needs for their own body, to dictate when or what other people should eat. I refuse to participate in the shaming of anyone about their body or their appetite (or lack of appetite).

And I celebrate good food with friends and family, paying attention to how food makes me feel and honoring those feelings, trusting my own body. For me, it’s been the work of a lifetime, but I am grateful to have made some amount of peace with myself about it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004705/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/04.mp3

For connection? Are you looking for ways to feed your mind and heart and soul? The CLF is available 24/7 to address these hungers and nourish the spirits of all who come looking. Please do what you can to enable the CLF to continue to feed a spiritually hungry world by sending a check in the enclosed envelope or by giving online at clfuu.org/give.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004642/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/05.mp3

If, like me, you are fortunate enough to have a refrigerator and the means to fill it, it is possible that you have a tendency to stand in front of the open fridge, staring at the contents and wondering what there is to eat. It is even possible that some of us do this multiple times a day, staring at the shelves as if something would have magically appeared while the door was closed.

The thing is, when I stare at my open refrigerator—or at my open snack cupboard—it’s not just that I’m hungry. I’m hungry for something in particular, but I don’t know what. And so I stand there, wondering if what would satisfy me at this moment is avocado or cheese—or maybe both together on toast. What exactly is it that I want?

You could quite reasonably argue that my refrigerator-gazing habit is silly—I pretty much know what’s in there with the door closed, since I did the shopping and the cooking myself. And it is certainly not energy efficient to stand there letting the cold air out and the warm air in. But I would contend that the question that goes along with staring at the food is absolutely crucial.

What do I want? What exactly do I want? I imagine that pretty much all of us spend a lot of time dissatisfied with our own personal lives and with the world in general. We hunger for work that is meaningful and restorative rest and caring relationships and fun times and a world that is more just. And many of us have gotten pretty good at recognizing and sharing the many things we see that are wrong with the world—racism and homophobia and sexism and ableism and environmental degradation and corruption in government and the whole long list of very real, and often devastating, problems.

And it matters to identify those problems, whether personal or social. We need a clear analysis of what has gone wrong and why. But it seems to me that we often assume that identifying the problem is the same as finding a solution. Somehow we seem to think that if we tell our partner or our child how their looking at their phone during dinner makes us nuts, it should fix the relationship. Or maybe we figure that by sharing news of the latest police atrocity against a person of color on Facebook we are dismantling white supremacy.

And those are both perfectly good things to do. But they aren’t solutions. Solutions don’t start with what is wrong. Solutions start with the question What do I want? And the more precise we can be about what we want, the more specific we can be about how we might be able to get there.

What do I want from my family at dinner time? I want to hear about each person’s day, their successes and frustrations. I want to look in the eyes of the people I love. I want to share a story about something that happened to me today. I want to make plans for what we will do on the weekend. I want to hear about an idea you had or a book you read or something you learned.

When I know what I want, I can ask for it. I can make a plan for how I might get it. I shift the focus from how the other person is wrong to concrete steps that would move in the direction of something that is better. Of course, getting to those solutions is not necessarily easy. What I want may be in conflict with what someone else wants. Powerful forces may stand in the way of what I want. But creating change is only possible when you move step by step down the path of what exactly do I want?

To be clear, I’m not saying that there is some magic power that will manifest what you want if you just imagine it. I’m not a fan of the power of positive thinking, or of the prosperity gospel which seems to generate so much more prosperity for its preachers than for its followers.

The question What exactly do I want? is pragmatic, useful. What do I want? Justice. What exactly do I want? Well, it’s a long list, and I’m going to have to choose where I will focus my attention at any given point in time. I want an end to racist policing. OK, but that’s really what I don’t want. I don’t want racist policing. What do I want? I want police who understand their job as protecting and serving the entirety of the community where they work. I want police to choose de-escalation over force whenever possible. I want the police department to listen to the community about what would make people feel safer. I want police officers to be accountable for their behavior.

That list could go on and on, and each piece could be broken down into smaller pieces. But when I know what I want I can find other people who want the same thing, and we can find points in the system where we can exert pressure to accomplish those goals.

Maybe my standing in front of the refrigerator pondering what exactly I might be hungry for is a waste of time and energy. And it is possible to get what you wanted purely as a delightful surprise, without even knowing the hunger was there. But if you intend to actively pursue positive change, then the more exactly you know what you want, the better position you are in to make it happen.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110004621/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_05/06.mp3

I kept imagining how it might have gone.

I keep thinking of it like my Universalist Dream Ballet version of the horrifying/captivating Senate hearings on Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. That is, a version of events fueled by my most idealistic notions of redemption and reconciliation. A version that would obviously include spectacle, ornate costumes and over-the-top musical flourishes, and/or non-linear plot devices—because it’s that disconnected from reality.

Which did not stop me from thinking about it.

Like most everyone I know, I listened to almost all of Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford’s testimony. I listened reflexively, out of loyalty more than curiosity. After all, I’ve been off-book on this script for most of my life. All the words, the players, how it turns out. I’ve had it all down at least as far back as that same life stage they were working so hard to recall in the course of the hearings.

There are plenty of things I don’t remember about being a teenager. Still, there will always be those things I will never forget, even if I try…. My first long, slow, increasingly desperate survey of the school cafeteria wondering who to sit with.

Staring down the swimming lane at state finals. Beating all the boys at the math competition. Getting the love note from the boy everyone said liked me. Saying goodbye to my sisters and my parents once they dropped me and all my stuff at the dorms. And a month or so later, that night in the frat house.

The therapist who greeted me the day I realized the memory was not going away agreed with me, it wasn’t rape. But it was questionable— in the consent arena. Fuzzy lines made fuzzier by alcohol and the dark rooms of Greek row. I was 17 when I went to college, still very much a teenager. A couple years older than Dr. Blasey-Ford, the same age as Judge Kavanaugh when he held her down, and covered her mouth, and she wondered if she would survive.

I don’t remember everything about it. Definitely not enough to withstand Lindsey Graham and his temper tantrums. But enough to still know his name. His face. His smell.

In my Dream Ballet version of the hearing Brett Kavanaugh still doesn’t remember doing it, still isn’t sure. It isn’t required for reconciliation to begin, I’ve realized. Because I’ve seen it enough now, the power of denial. The stories we tell about ourselves, stories that if you topple them, would mean toppling over entirely. Facts are no match for these stories. And at 53, he’s been telling himself these stories for decades. “I went to an all-boys Catholic high school where I was focused on academics and athletics and going to church every Sunday and working on my service projects and friendships.”

These sorts of moments challenge Universalists (and others oriented towards a commitment to compassion and our common humanity). Because we don’t believe in writing anyone off. Because we often don’t have a fully formed theology of evil. Because we do have an over-functioning theology of human goodness. Not to mention a totally unscientific faith in human reasoning. Because we too often confuse today’s US court system with anything resembling real restoration.

So, in a different world, in the world of my Dream Ballet, how does restoration happen?

It is a process that requires multiple steps, what I call the Five Rs:

1. Recognize yourself in ways you have not been willing to know yourself before. Recognize the injury. Study it. Not just from your own life perspective, but also from an empathetic view that imagines how someone else might have seen it. Recognize your role, without excuses or explanations. Accept responsibility.
2. Remorse comes naturally after a full recognition. Remorse is more than regret. Remorse means we know ourselves as the one who has caused another pain.
3. It’s this real remorse that inspires our Refusal to ever repeat the same mistake again. Without this commitment, all the other steps are meaningless.
4. It’s not always possible to Repair the damage that was done, but trying matters too. Do whatever you can to put the pieces back together. Repay the money. Restore the reputation.
5. And finally, it requires Revelation. As in, your own out-loud utterance of every other R—out loud to the person you injured, out loud to the surrounding community. Out loud to God, the universe. Bring what has been previously hidden and secret into the open so that it can be accountable.

Despite what any of us might wish, time does not automatically do the work of the Five Rs. Even the time that passes from age 17 to 53. A law degree does not do it either. Nor does a successful career as a judge, or a nice house with a beautiful family. The work requires actual effort. Intention. Starting with that first move towards recognition.

In my fantasy version of the hearing, Brett Kavanaugh does not have to topple over. (Even in a Dream Ballet, we can’t imagine that denial can be undone in one moment.) But even an opening towards the pain Dr. Blasey-Ford was expressing would be a start, a move towards restoration. Rather than amplifying his own sense of pain and entitlement, channeling anger for what was being done to him, in my Dream Ballet Kavanaugh would look toward repairing what was broken.

He would show a willingness to acknowledge that it is possible that he did not have all the information. It is possible that his memory is imperfect. (Dr. Blasey-Ford could teach him a little about the scientific reasons why memory can be deceptive and self-protective.) Any move towards wholeness would have to begin here. With an acknowledgment that there are always things out of our view, a humility, and a willingness to see anew.

Imagine how differently things might have gone if he’d made even the slightest move towards this recognition. In the courtroom or, even better, in the first hour he learned of her coming forward. Or even more incredibly, in any of the days between that night at the party and the day his name was put forward for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the US (so-called) justice system.

Imagine. Instead of trying to accept that we are appointing a self-righteous sexual predator to the Supreme Court, we could even be giving thanks that we’d be appointing someone who knows what real justice looks like. This is the power of this path of real turning, real redemption and restoration.

I know. It’s a wild fantasy, but it’s a fantasy we need not abandon. We can hold this fantasy at the forefront when we are talking to our kids about the lessons of this hearing. About the lessons of the #MeToo movement. About the sorts of humans that we can and must be for each other. About consent. And respect. And love.

We can and must also speak about failure, and regret, and repair. Because we are not perfect creatures. None of us. Science actually shows that we are mostly profoundly irrational, illogical, inconsistent. But I want my kids to know not only that if they have something terrible happen to them, they can and should expect this degree of accountability, and repair—but also that if they do something terrible, there is a path to restoration. Because it remains true that no one is ever outside the possibility of redemption. And because even when all seems lost, truth continues to be revealed. Even for Judge Kavanaugh.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232955/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/01.mp3

To all members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist

Per Article VII, Sections 1 and 2 of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) Bylaws, the 46th Annual Meeting will be held via video/telephone conference call and screen sharing on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 at 8:00PM EDT. The video call link is here.

We will post all the necessary documents and contact information to the CLF website by June 4, 2019. You can download materials and print them. Or call the CLF office at 617-948-6150 and request a paper copy.

The purpose of the meeting is to, from the slate of candidates recommended by the nominating committee,

• Elect two members to 3-year terms on the board of directors,
• Elect one member to a 3-year term on the nominating committee,
• Elect a clerk and treasurer

We will elect a moderator from among members present to preside at the meeting.

Danielle Di Bona, Clerk

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232933/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/02.mp3

If European Americans begin to learn the real stories, and become aware of the level of devastation and grief suffered by Indigenous peoples, our first reaction can sometimes be defensiveness. After all, we think, it wasn’t me, personally, who stole Indian land, or caused disease among the people, or killed anyone. Perhaps our second reaction is a feeling of guilt, because of what our ancestors may have done. But I have learned that neither defensiveness nor guilt is really very helpful. In a way, they keep the overwhelming losses at arm’s length. We must go deeper than that. Is there a way we can acknow-ledge the terrible brokenness? How can we begin to find healing, or a way to restore wholeness?

One first step for me has been to listen to Indigenous people tell their own stories. I needed to learn how to listen to stories of loss and pain. Listening is not about fixing something, or feeling guilty, or giving advice. Listening is about being present and opening our hearts to the experience of someone who has a story to tell. We need to seek out those stories of brokenness, to listen and let our hearts be broken by them. There have been moments when the pain of such listening has felt almost too much to bear, but I reminded myself how much more painful it must be for the one telling the story. Then I felt such gratitude that someone was willing to share these stories.

Let me tell you about one opportunity that used listening to create a path to healing. In the fall of 2012, I attended a presentation about the Maine Wabanaki Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The goals of the commission were three: to find out and write down what happened to Wabanaki people involved with the Maine child welfare system; to give Wabanaki people a place to share their stories, to have a voice and to heal; and to give the Maine child welfare system guidance on how it can work better with Wabanaki people.

The history underlying this effort is soul-shattering. One of the ways the U.S. and Canadian governments tried to solve their so-called “Indian problem” was to take Indian children away from their families and communities. Beginning in the 1800s, children were taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools run by different churches. The purpose was to destroy their Indian identity, and assimilate them into a white way of being. Their hair was cut and their own clothing was taken away. They were forbidden to speak their languages, or practice their religions, and often did not see their parents again for years. This original horror was amplified by emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Many children died. Those who made it home were not the same as when they left.

In the 1950s and 60s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America tried another experiment: they took hundreds of Native children from their families and tribes to give to white families to adopt and raise. Hundreds of others were taken from their homes and placed in white foster care. In Maine, Native children were taken from their families and placed in white foster homes at a higher rate than most other states. The stealing of children has been one of the worst forms of genocidal oppression Indigenous peoples have suffered.

In 1978, after heroic efforts by Native activists, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act. It recognized that children’s tribal citizenship is as important as their family relationships. It stipulated that child welfare agencies should work with tribal agencies to keep children within the community, and prioritized placing children with relatives rather than taking them to strangers outside of the community. They also recognized that there is “no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children.”

The effects of stealing the children persist through generations of Native families and communities. Co-founder of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Passamaquoddy Denise Altvater, spoke of how she had been taken to foster care as a seven-year-old child:

State workers came onto the reservation. My five sisters and I were home. My mother was not home. They took all of our belongings and they put them in garbage bags. They herded us into station wagons and drove us away for a long, long time….

They took us to a state foster home in the Old Town area and left us there for four years. During those four years, our foster parents sexually assaulted us. They starved us. They did some horrific things to us.

No one believed them when they tried to get help. During another three years they were placed in kinder situations, but the dislocation and sense of not belonging anywhere caused lasting psychic trauma into adulthood. Even though Denise eventually became successful in a career and was admired by many, this trauma left her feeling a profound sense of disconnection. She did not know how to be a real parent to her children, and she saw its effects in the struggles of her children and grand-daughter.

Telling these stories is incredibly painful. Denise Altvater revealed that she had a breakdown after she first shared her story. But she persevered because being able to speak the truth is central to the path toward healing. Without her willingness to tell her story, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission might never have come to be. Listening to her story, I felt my heart break open, too, for the hurt caused to those young ones who were so vulnerable, for the pain that repeated itself through generations.

Denise and others who were working to implement the Indian Child Welfare Act in Maine, educating state workers about its meaning and implications, realized they needed a process to deal with the deep levels of hurt and trauma Native people and communities were carrying. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hoped to be a tool for that healing, and for making changes so children do not suffer in the future what Denise and so many others suffered in the past.

The mandate for the Commission was signed by Tribal leaders from the five Wabanaki communities in Maine and by the governor of Maine. Five commissioners were selected and community support was set up for those who told their stories. This was the first Truth and Reconciliation of its kind in the United States. Organizers also established a network of non-Native allies to lend support to the Commission’s process.

Healing becomes possible through telling stories and through listening to the stories. Healing becomes possible through re-building trust and connection between Native and non-Native peoples. When we listen together, there is hope. Native people want us to move beyond myths and stereotypes and learn more deeply and accurately about the issues they face today. Those of us living in the mainstream society can use our advantage and position to be allies and resources for Native peoples’ concerns, and join together in our common concerns for the earth.

In her novel Solar Storms, Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan begins with a story of an unusual feast given by a woman named Bush. Bush was grieving the loss of a small child, Angel, after she was taken away from their tiny Native community by the white county authorities. Though not related by blood, Bush had cared for Angel after Angel’s mother could not. In order to reckon with her grief, Bush prepared food for the whole community, and then she gave away all of her possessions to them. Hogan writes, in the voice of one who had been to the feast:

Going back that morning, in the blue northern light, their stomachs were filled, their arms laden with blankets, food…. But the most important thing they carried was Bush’s sorrow. It was small now, and child-sized, and it slid its hand inside theirs and walked away with them. We all had it, after that. It became our own. Some of us have since wanted to give it back to her, but once we felt it we knew it was too large for a single person. After that your absence sat at every table, occupied every room, walked through the doors of every house.

Through this sharing of sorrow, the sorrow became bearable. Indigenous people too often bear the sorrows of our history alone. Once we let ourselves feel this grief, we realize it is much too large for one people to carry alone. But the more of us who are willing to carry this sorrow, the more of us who are willing to join in the struggle, the more bearable it will be.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232852/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/03.mp3

I watched a man die today. Infirm with age, he was hobbling along with his cane as he went to the commissary window to buy a few snacks when, stepping backward, he bumped directly into Death.

Then men who care nothing for any of us were inconveniently compelled to try to restart the worn-out engine of life, now suddenly silent in his chest. They failed.

It occurs to me that restoration of a heartbeat shouldn’t be more difficult than the restoration of a human heart. People will work tirelessly to restore a heartbeat for a stranger, but shouldn’t we all work just as diligently to restore a “heart” for others? Perhaps even our own heart. Should we not work for restoration of hearts that are broken? Restoration for the lost and lonely and misguided in our world?

If the hearts of all people were restored to a state of kindness, what would our world look like? Almost everyone feels compassion for a sick child or an injured animal. So why don’t we feel the same way for others who are broken, lost and lonely? Why not for the prisoners, the addicts, the confused teenagers or the other down-trodden people all around us?

I believe that in every human heart, from the bitterest to the softest, there is a capacity for genuine kindness and compassion. Somehow, somewhere, something has buried that innate ability in too many people.

Whether we realize it or not, we all need restoration. Restoration of our heart’s deep compassion. Restoration of our faith in basic human goodness. Restoration of our sense of connection with one another and with all people. We need restoration of our genuine “heart” in order to continue, or even to begin, living our lives with real depth and fulfillment.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232831/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/04.mp3

Restorative justice is an act of giving back, not going back, for nothing will ever be the same as before the damage was done. Most justice is seen as retribution, or revenge. The victim is to be made whole again by the act of removing the perpetrator from society, punishing them in the hopes that by this act the victim will gain some kind of restoration, while the perpetrator’s years of incarceration may deter them from future misdeeds.

However, this system does nothing to truly restore the victim’s sense of loss and harm, and it produces even more victims. For every incarcerated person there is likely to be a spouse and children who are made destitute by the imprisonment. There are children who grow up without one of their parents in the home. And the larger system is victimized by what is so often the family’s need to rely on services such as food stamps and public health services.

Those who must manage the prisoners are also victimized by the rules and by being seen by their charges as captors. These guards then go home and may find it difficult to adopt the role of loving and listening parents and spouses. The rate of substance abuse and family dysfunction is high among prison guards, creating yet another generation of victims.

Most of all, the actual victim of the crime is not restored, for vengeance has no restorative qualities. They may well live in fear that they will once again become victims. Their lives are forever changed.

Restorative justice gives the victim the opportunity to take control, to give up that feeling of powerlessness. They may well be able to face their perpetrators and let them know just how their actions have caused damage— often permanent harm. It allows victims to be part of the legal process, not, as so often happens, becoming victimized once again by a process in which they have no say in the outcome. In many cases restorative justice gives the perpetrator the opportunity to perform acts of contrition to try to restore the lives they have harmed through their actions.

Restorative justice is often able to divert the perpetrators from long-term incarceration, and from the high social cost that goes along with it. The goal of restorative justice is to make whole that which was torn, with each of the participants emerging stronger than before, able to enjoy a sense of peace, responsibility and unity.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109232810/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_04/05.mp3

Join our hosts Rev. Meg Riley, Rev. Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera for a live Unitarian Universalist talk show discussing today’s topics from an anti-racist, anti-oppressive and multicultural perspective. The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET.

THIS WEEK (March 21st) ON THE VUU – TRUUsT-What’s New What’s Next – The VUU #253

We chatted with TRUUsT members, Rev Andrée Mol and Rev Dawn Fortune about what’s new and what’s next.

Rev Andrée Mol (pronouns: they/them/theirs) serves as the Developmental Minister for Pastoral Care and Membership at the First UU Society of Burlington, Vermont. They also serve on the Steering Committee of TRUUsT.

Rev. Dawn Fortune is a genderqueer transmasculine UU minister serving the UU Congregation of the South Jersey Shore in Galloway, NJ. They graduated from Andover Newton Theological School with an MDiv. and are firmly committed to never pursuing a DMin. They have a fierce geriatric dog named Quinn and two adolescent cats who break things. They are also a guest host on The VUU.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers.

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

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109231400/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu253.mp3

We chatted with Side With Love Senior Strategist, Rev Elizabeth Nguyen, and Campaign Manager, Everette Thompson about what’s new and what’s next. More information about Side With Love can be found at https://sidewithlove.org.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support provided by Margalie Belizaire.

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

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109180003/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu248.mp3

This week on The VUU

This week on The VUU, we chatted with Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd about her new book, After the Good News: Progressive Faith Beyond Optimism. More information about the book can be found here: https://www.uuabookstore.org/cw_contributorinfo.aspx?ContribID=138878&Name=Nancy+McDonald+Ladd

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Rev Jessica Star Rockers and Margalie Belizaire. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu247.mp3

This week we chatted with author and scholar Paul Ortiz about his new book “An African American and Latinx History of the U.S. Come join the conversation, streaming live on our Facebook page. http://facebook.com/clfuu

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The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109164405/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu245.mp3

This week we tackled two topics in our show. How is the government shutdown affecting government workers? Park ranger Keith Stegall came to offer us some insight. And then we chatted with Dottie Mathews and Rabbi Bruce Elder who worked to successfully shut down the Tornillo Detention Center. We are keeping it current on the VUU this week. Come join the conversation every Thursday at 11am ET, streaming live on our Facebook page. http://facebook.com/clfuu

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The VUU is CLF’s live talkshow specifically for Unitarian Universalists. Join the conversation each Thursday at 11 am Eastern (USA).

Our podcast is the best way to enjoy The VUU if you can’t make it to the live show. Subscribe on iTunes, Android, Stitcher or your favorite app and never miss an episode. Learn more and listen to previous broadcasts at https://questformeaning.org/vuu/.

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera with production support from Jessica Star Rockers.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109162706/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu244.mp3

This week we chatted live on The VUU about the world refugee crisis with Latifa Woodhouse, President of Shared Humanity. Shared Humanity is a nonprofit founded to provide urgent and sustained humanitarian aid to refugees seeking safe haven from war, violence, and oppression.

More info can be found at www.sharedhumanityusa.org.

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109154823/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu243.mp3

This week we chatted live on The VUU about the US Border Refugee Crisis with Alex Dixon.

Links from the show:

https://annunciationhouse.org/
https://www.borderlandrainbow.org/

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The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109073703/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu242.mp3

This week we chatted live on The VUU with Alex Kapitan from TRUUsT and Kris McElroy about ways to support our trans community in these dangerous times. Guest hosting this week was Jaelynn Scott and Dawn Fortune, alongside our regulars Meg and Michael.

Here’s the link to the TRUUsT website: http://truust.wordpress.com.

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109042113/https://media.blubrry.com/clfvuu_latest/www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu235.mp3

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last speech is now called “The  Mountaintop Speech.” In it he seems to predict his own death:

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy,  tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Dr. King was murdered the next day.

“I may not get there with you. But …we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” He knew he wouldn’t get there with us. We are still not there. I won’t get there either; the arc of the moral universe is long. With this knowledge, I am here to lay myself down as one more stepping stone on the road to the Promised Land.

We are all stepping stones. We don’t just stand on the shoulders of giants. Giants aren’t very common, after all. What is much more common are the people whose names and faces and lives most of us will never know. We know they existed, because we exist, but that’s it. What Tim Rice writes in the musical Aida is true, at least for most Black people: “The past is now another land, far beyond my reach / Invaded by insidious foreign bodies, foreign speech.”

I see slave women in photos, and it is painful for me because one of those women could be my kin. The woman with a nursing baby and toddler bears more than a passing resemblance to my own mother. She could be my great-great-great grandmother and I would never know it. She’s a photo on the internet. No name, no date, no place. According to history, she is no body.

Most Black women are No Body to history. They were just hands and feet and breasts and wombs. Their hands tilled the soil, planted and harvested crops, kneaded dough and made good food they weren’t allowed to eat, sewed clothing they weren’t allowed to wear. Their cracked and tired feet walked for miles in all kinds of weather to work as maids and nurses and laundresses. Their breasts fed white babies as theirs went hungry. Their milk wasn’t their own. Their breasts weren’t their own. Their wombs were not their own. The bodies of slave women were for the master’s pleasure and the master’s financial gain.

Many Black people walk around as visual reminders of the hundreds of years of bodily violations our women endured. My grandmother and my great-grandmother are both light-skinned. My grandmother’s natural pre-white hair color is red; a light-skinned, red-headed Black girl whose family migrated out of Kentucky—an “Upper South” border slave state that did not secede from the Union during the Civil War. Kentucky remained officially neutral with a population that was 25% enslaved Blacks. We know why my family looks the way it does.

Delores Williams, womanist theologian, says that for Black women our biblical heroine is Hagar. She is our ancestor. Hagar was the Black Egyptian slave of Abraham and Sarah. When Sarah could not conceive—the greatest shame a woman could endure in the ancient Near East—she “gave” her “servant” to Abraham to have a child with. You might be thinking, Wait, how did this fix the problem of her not being able to conceive? Well, by law Sarah owned every part of Hagar. The child that Abraham then fathered (Ishmael) was legally Sarah’s child. And not in a property way, as it was in the American south, but rather her child, as in her son.

Hagar was a forced surrogate. It was common practice in those days. When Sarah eventually had her own child, Isaac, she told Abraham to leave Hagar and Ishmael, who was legally her son, in the desert. Abraham, knowing this meant certain death for them both in the harsh desert, did as she asked, even though he loved Ishmael.

In the desert, Hagar walked away from Ishmael because she could not stand to see her own child die of thirst or hunger. God heard Hagar’s cries and felt her pain. God knew what Abraham and Sarah did was wrong. God provided them with water and told Hagar that they would survive. God gave her a way out of no way.

Hagar was disenfranchised, powerless, used and abused, living in a foreign land. She was disposable and subject to the whims of her oppressors. Hagar was also resilient, strong, brave, and audacious. She lived and survived to give her child a chance. Ishmael is the biblical ancestor of the Muslim people.

Now, this is a complicated, difficult to understand story. Back when Hagar was pregnant she ran away from Sarah’s mistreatment into the desert. An angel of God appeared to her and told her to go back and submit to Sarah’s rule. An angel of God told her to go back into captivity. Horrible, right? Was God supporting slavery? No. What God did was to make sure Hagar and her baby both survived.

To a slave woman, to Black women, the point here is clear. Freedom is not always attainable. Often times it’s something we fight for with hope that those who come after will get to see it. It’s always a goal, but you must survive first. For yourself, and for your children. God gives Hagar the strength to endure. He toughens her up for the long hard road ahead.

As Alice Walker puts it: “And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see—or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”

In the book Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, Albert J. Raboteau notes the failure of the white slave system to make Blacks docile by stripping us of our culture. “In the New World, slave control was based on the eradication of all forms of African culture because of their power to unify the slaves and thus enable them to resist or rebel. Nevertheless, African beliefs and customs persisted and were transmitted by slaves to their descendants.” One of the easiest ways to link African past and American present was religion.

The slaves brought over were from different villages and areas of their continent. They spoke different languages and had different customs, but most worshiped nature and the indigenous gods of Africa. That was a shared language. The way they worshipped was common to them and that was beyond language. For example, drumming—a staple of African worship—was incorporated into Christianity. Drumming, singing, and dancing were used to spread coded messages to slaves and keep alive the memory of who they were and where they came from. These elements can still be seen in African American culture and religion today.

Christianity colonized Black lives. Now, I could walk away from it all—Jesus, the Bible, the Christian community, God. But I don’t want to, and I think there is courage in the determination not to walk away. In Genesis, Jacob literally wrestled with God all night in the desert. At daybreak God asked Jacob to let him go. But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Jacob wrestled with his faith and did not come out unscathed. He limped away with a broken hip. Still, he walked away triumphant. Faith is hard. Belief is a struggle. Religion both hurts and heals. We are all here as stepping stones for one another as we move from past to future.

Black people and Black women especially have been martyred over and over. Some, like Dr. King, are given sainthood, but most are forgotten. We must remember them. Just as we remember our present day martyrs—the Rekia Boyds, Trayvon Martins, and Sandra Blands. #SayHerName. #BlackLivesMatter. We will make it to the Promised Land one day.

All the people we have lost—but who will make it, too, because we carry them with us—got us here with their determination, strength, and hope. Black women taught us, and continue to teach us, how to survive and how to thrive. #BlackGirlMagic is real. Go live your life in such a way that it honors theirs. Do what they could not do. Be who they could not be. Fight the battles they did not win.

The life blood of the ancestors who came before us runs through our veins. Our bodies come from their bodies. We live because they lived.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109042002/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_11/01.mp3

Like many Unitarian Universalists of color (and many white allies), I get tired of white male dominance within our society and yearn for more diverse representation. Yet I was taken aback one day, while admiring stained glass renderings of some of our spiritual forefathers, when a friend came up next to me and dismissed the images as “old, dead white men.” This was a phrase that I had used numerous times myself in response to images of men who meant nothing to me. But in the narthex of that historic Unitarian church, I recognized some of the men and their importance to our faith.

“Old, dead white men” suggests that these people have no relevance to us now, especially to those of us who are neither white nor male. But these people have relevance to me. They were integral to shaping Unitarian Universalism into what it is. And since UUism is part of who I am, these people were integral to shaping me. They are my spiritual ancestors.

Whenever I lead a communal construction of an ancestral altar, I assure participants that ancestors need not be only those people to whom we’re biologically related. Ancestors can be anyone whose past life now shapes our current one.

We are more than just our bodies. Buddhism describes every being as comprised of five “aggregates,” only one of which is physical form; the rest have to do with how we perceive and think. In other words, those beings who shape how we perceive and think are every bit as much responsible for who we are as those who contributed our genetic makeup.

Still, it’s easier to recognize biological ancestors. It’s easier to see how their genes, passed on through generations, created us. If any one of them did not exist then we would not exist. If any one of them way back in time were different, somebody might still exist in our place who could be similar, but they wouldn’t be us. We know that all our biological ancestors created us, even if they are now so far removed that we might not recognize them.

The ideas that shape who we are come from our spiritual ancestors in the same way that our genes come from our biological ones. One “old, dead white man” whose ideas clearly shaped my life is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson described Hindu theology using Christian terminology. His essay “The Over-Soul” is a direct translation of Hinduism’s Paramatman, param(a) meaning highest and atman meaning self or soul.

Emerson transformed Unitarianism from anti-trinitarian Christianity into a faith tradition that welcomes Hindus and Buddhists, Pagans and atheists and every other theological bent. Because if God or the Over-Soul is not separate from us individual souls, then it is no longer necessary to “believe in” God. Rather, what we agree on is the inherently worthwhile nature of humanity. Without Emerson, I would not be a UU. Many of us would not. His short-comings notwithstanding (and let’s face it, many of our ancestors had short-comings), Emerson is one of my spiritual ancestors.

Emerson was not among the men immortalized in stained glass that day, but William Ellery Channing was. Channing helped create Unitarianism in the United States by breaking off from the more traditional Congregationalists. He both rejected the trinity and asserted that we humans are capable of cultivating goodness, ever increasing our “likeness to God.”

While the Transcendentalists eventu-ally decided that liberal Unitarian Christianity did not go far enough, it was people like Channing who created the spiritual space in which they could arise. Without Channing and his contemporaries, there would be no Emerson and his compatriots. If Emerson is like a spiritual grandparent, Channing is like a spiritual great-grandparent.

To respect our spiritual ancestors is to know that we don’t just come from a lineage of blood, but also of ideas. It is to realize that we are continually re-created and helping to re-create anew as we influence each other. It is to honor those we admire and to feel our connection even to those we don’t. To recognize our spiritual ancestors is to recognize the interdependent web.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109041936/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_11/02.mp3

The CLF’s Nominating Committee seeks members to run for positions beginning June 2019:

• Board of Directors—three for 3-year terms
• Nominating Committee—one for a 3-year term
• Treasurer—for a 1-year term
• Clerk—for a 1-year term

Board members set CLF policy and approve the budget. The Board meets in Boston or other US cities twice annually and periodically by conference calls. Nominating Committee members put forth nominations for the Board.

For more information about the Board and Nominating Committee, click here. You may nominate yourself or another CLF member for any of these positions.

Please contact the CLF office at nominating@clfuu.org or 617-948-6150 by January 15, 2019.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109041906/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_11/03.mp3

On the morning my grandmother died, I squeezed the juice out of citrus fruits and strained out the seeds with a fork so I wouldn’t drink them. My grandmother told me when I was three or four that if you swallowed seeds they would grow inside your stomach. But that is not why I didn’t want to drink them.

I know my digestion will obliterate the seeds into their primal molecular components if ingested—that all the great potential contained in those seeds would nourish me, become part of me. Although I swallowed dozens of seeds when I was young, not one watermelon ever grew in my stomach, somewhat to my disappointment.

My grandmother knew seeds were better in the ground than taking the long journey through my digestive system, so she let me spit watermelon seeds into her garden. When I was small she had an amazing garden, lush and verdant and full of smells, colors, and textures. Later, when she moved into a little one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of Oakland’s busy Park Street by Lake Merritt, she grew trees in pots from the seeds she saved from squeezing lemons. I have never been able to grow a lemon tree from a seed, but she knew how to coax them to grow, flourish and bear fruit.

On the way to work I was thinking about my family’s legacy in California, and how it was more than names in a logbook or dates on a document. People change the land they live in, but also the land changes them. The thin, wiry peasant stock my family came from undoubtedly changed into the robust, well-built bodies of native Californians in a few generations.

My grandmother came from that third generation of American Chinese. The land, the sea, the clean, abundant water and the bounty of food made that generation of my family strong, athletic and tireless. They had the energy to build communities, families, opportunities. They were the establishing generation. In the succession of growth in an ecosystem, the land is first settled by pioneers, is made stable by secondary growth, and becomes dominant in the third stage of succession. My grandparents were the ones who sunk deep roots into the land. They were the trees that gave the forest its name. They were Chinese-Americans.

And my grandmother sunk the deepest root of all. At 106 years old, she outlived her four sisters and three brothers. She held her great-great-granddaughter in her arms a month before she died. I was imagining the root of her sinking into the bedrock of this country, firmly anchoring her family to this place…when my mother called on the car speakerphone to say that my grandmother passed away early that morning.

I felt like a great tree had fallen, toppling like a bridge, cutting off our access to the rest of the family that came before us. We will not know who they were, or what they were like, or what happened to them, because the last one who knew them is gone, too.

But though the tree has been cut down, my grandmother’s roots were profoundly deep. She anchored us with her presence, with her still being alive and healthy and spunky as a spark plug. Keep going. Do your best. Don’t give up. All those old lady admonitions I tired of when young and impatient, but desperately needed to hear when I grew older and times grew tougher. Her favorite song was “Always.” I’ll be loving you, always. With a love that’s true, always.

I sang it as I was squeezing lemons and putting aside the seeds. I’ll remember you always, Nan.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109041756/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_11/04.mp3

Many people think of their ancestors as dead and gone, and therefore to be thought about only occasionally and with no real attachment, as if they have no claim on us who live. But how can we embrace our heritage while turning our backs on the ancestors who carried that heritage forward and gave it to us?

My African-American friends insist on the necessity of honoring our ancestors. To honor the ancestors is to embrace our heritage and carry it forward in our turn. I believe this, and it is one of the things that led me into genealogy. But understanding my genealogy has presented me with a serious problem.

It is easy to honor ancestors when those ancestors were honorable, but what does one do when one’s forbears were dishonorable?

My parents were good and gentle, kind and compassionate people. When I look back through the generations of my ancestors, though, I find an unbroken string of slaveholding, giving way to the neo-slavery of Jim Crow and on into the racism of the 20th century. My family’s dishonorable history begins at least in the mid-1600s and quite possibly earlier.

For just one example, my ancestor, Lockey Collier, was murdered in 1778 by the people he enslaved, presumably because of the harsh way he treated them. How is it possible to honor such a man and others like him? Are we just to ignore these dishonorable ancestors? Do we say, “OK. I’ll honor these ancestors but not those. I’ll honor only the ones I can approve of.”

That won’t do. These dreadful people are also part of our heritage, and we cannot embrace our heritage while ignoring the hard parts, pretending that our heritage is all fine and dandy and has no stains upon it. It is dishonest; it is a kind of lie.

So I wrestled with this problem and for years, I had no answer. Then I watched the film Amistad and found a solution that makes sense to me. In the film, as John Quincy Adams is preparing to argue the case of the captured Africans before the Supreme Court, he has a conversation with the Africans’ leader, Cinque. Cinque speaks eloquently of his ancestors. He says that the line of his ancestors will stand with him and help, because he is the culmination of their line. They act in history through him, and they are honored by his honorable actions and life.

And that is my answer. My ancestors’ crimes against humanity (and what else are slavery and racism but crimes against humanity?) cry out for redress, for atonement. Neither my ancestors nor the people they enslaved are still living. So how can these crimes be atoned for? And by whom?

By me. The ancestors act through us. We honor our dishonorable ancestors by acting honorably for them.

My ancestors call out from beyond the grave for me to atone for their crimes, and I honor them by confessing my family’s sins and working to repair the damage they inflicted on so many people. How can I forgive my grandmother for the racism she worked to plant in my heart? I forgive her by working to erase the very racism she embraced. I do not take their guilt on. I work to heal the wounds they inflicted.

I work to create the heritage that I want my life to carry forward.

From Collier’s 2018 book
The Great Wound: Confessions of a Slaveholding Family

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109041736/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_11/05.mp3

As the nation grapples with the terrorist attempts of President Trump’s political adversaries, we will reflect on how the totalitarian rhetoric and behavior in the political discourse in the United States correlates with a startling rise in social hostilities and violence.

Rev. Dr. Nathan C. Walker is the community minister for religion and public life at the Church of the Larger Fellowship and can be reached via his website www.NateWalker.com.

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109035728/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu234.mp3

We chatted live on The VUU about Collaborative Leadership with Rev. De Vandiver.

Link to Rev De’s article “Hate in the Offering Plate”:
View story at Medium.com

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109033222/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu233.mp3

We chatted live on The VUU with Revs Wendy von Courter and Katie Romano Griffin about the Stop Kavanaugh protest in DC.

The VUU streams live on Facebook every Thursday at 11 am ET. We talk social justice, Unitarian Universalism, religion, spirituality, and whatever else is topical and interesting!

Hosts: Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser, and Christina Rivera; production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers.

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

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109022504/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu231.mp3

My son learned a song at Village Green preschool that he made me sing with him all the next day. Maybe you know it.

We’re goin’ on a bear hunt.
(We’re goin’ on a bear hunt)
We’re going to catch a big one,
(We’re going to catch a big one,)
I’m not scared
(I’m not scared)
What a beautiful day!
(What a beautiful day!)

Uh-oh!
A forest!
A big, dark forest.
We can’t go over it.
We can’t go under it.
Oh no!
We’ve got to go through it!
Stumble trip! Stumble trip! Stumble trip!

So it is with the darkness of our deepest suffering. We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. We can’t get around it. We’ve got to go through it.

In the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 40:31 says: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

The prophet is speaking to those who have been suffering for a long time. He is addressing the Judean people who have been in exile in Babylon. They are tired, beaten down, and in the depths of despair.

The prophet is trying to coax them to remember God’s promises to them, using almost a pleading tone.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told from the beginning? Our God created the foundations of the earth, the people are like tiny ants below. The Holy One created all of this, called it all by name, loved it all into existence. Wait on the Lord. He will give strength to the powerless; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

We know what it is to need that kind of reassurance. We are tired. We have endured daily images of people in the news who need our help and protection: from wildfires and floods, mass shootings and white supremacist rallies, hate crimes aimed at Muslims and Jews and LGBTQ folk, the opioid crisis and the health care crisis, and the list goes on. And so our empathy triggers are on high alert, and have started to wear out. We get compassion fatigue.

Given our exhaustion, it’s pretty impressive that we can still wake up in the morning and go about our business with some modicum of energy, and even joy.

Speaking for my own local community, and perhaps for yours, I would like to add that we are sick of cancer; tired of cancer; DONE with cancer. Really. Cancer is an indiscriminate dasher of spirits. It is a silent killer of faith. It steals lives and livelihoods, children from their parents and parents from their children.

And cancer has much to teach us about the depths of both our weariness and of our strength.

I talked to a beloved church member, Jen Kalnicki, on the phone when she had just had her first round of chemotherapy, and she was so weak that she said she had to drink from a straw all day because she couldn’t lift her head off of the pillow. She was so weary she couldn’t lift her head. She has these two beautiful little girls, and sometimes she can’t lift her head.

The prophet in the book of Isaiah tells the long-suffering Judean exiles to wait patiently on God, who will eventually give us strength. Patience is a virtue, but it’s not my best. My favorite prayer is: “Lord, give me patience. And hurry.”

But scripture says, “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Of course, not all of us walk, and many of us don’t run. Personally, I’m no more likely to run than I am to mount up on eagles’ wings. To be honest, if a bear were chasing me down the trail, I’d just give up right away, lie down and ask the Lord to take me. I’ve led a good life. My children will be fine; they have good fathers.

But it seems that there is something powerful there in the text, and I wanted to know more. So given that running is not my strong suit, I reached out to two of the marathon runners in our congregation. “I’m writing a sermon on how to ‘run and not be weary.’ I have no idea how that’s done. You two are always running marathons. Do you have any advice?”

And I want to tell you what they said, because it’s pure insight about living a good and faithful life. In fact, they were so convincing it almost made me want to do one of those Couch-to-5K running programs. Almost. Jennifer Caron said this:

First of all, there is no such thing as long distance running without growing weary. We definitely grow weary! Endurance training, though, is all about how to push our capacity so that we grow weary later on into the run. When you first start running, weariness might be at three miles, but through persistence and extending the mileage slowly each week, pretty soon you don’t grow weary until 12 miles, and so on.

Also, taking care of our bodies—eating healthfully, getting rest, getting bodywork, etc., is necessary.

Then there’s what we do WHEN we grow weary. You have to take care of yourself physically:

EAT! (And drink.) We love snacks—healthy snacks that nourish us and fuel us at proper intervals for what’s ahead.

Go at a comfortable pace. Tune into your body, and choose a speed that is not too slow or too fast, but just right for that distance.

Most of all, you have to take care of yourself mentally (and this is 95% of it):

You have to make it fun—run with friends, listen to music, celebrate the crap out of it when you’re done!

All the people out there supporting you make you feel stronger. Think of them.

You can’t freak out when the weariness and pain come. An old coach of mine would say, “Get comfortable with the discomfort.” So when the cramping and fatigue creep in, we’re not going to freak out. Instead, it’s familiar and like an old friend. I will often say out loud, “Oh, hello there, groin/hip/back pain, ol’ friend. I thought I might find you right about now.” This helps you keep calm and not despair. Reframing “pain” as “sensations” also helps me.

It’s also worth keeping perspective about people who are suffering way worse, and what they would give to have the good health we marathoners have. This inspires you to push on when all else fails.

Of course, using a trusted coach to help prepare you for the way is crucial.

Kate Pietrovito added this:

The question about how to run and not grow weary makes me think of a Gandhi prayer that we recite weekly in the Spirit Play classroom—specifically, this line: “My wisdom comes from within and without.” Endurance and motivation come from both internal and external sources. To finish a long race, a difficult race, you must leverage both.

Internally, it’s the mental and physical training and desire. This applies to everything: the desire to work hard, the desire to achieve a personal goal, the things you tell yourself to keep you going when you feel like giving up. Think about the work you’ve put in that would be all for naught if you quit.

Externally, our world has so many sources of inspiration. You think of your family. You think of your friends. You think of a favorite phrase at First Church: “We can do hard things.”

And you repeat it as a mantra when your energy is slipping away.

Jen Kalnicki gave me permission to share what she wrote about her first week of chemo:

The past few days have sucked. You really take for granted the ability to lift your head, hold your phone, just breathe. There have been moments of doubt (I can’t possibly do this); moments of dread (What if it’s like this the whole time?); moments of anger (Why are we treating this so aggressively? Others are able to work/walk/exist, why can’t I?); and finally, moments of despair (Just hot, hot tears).

But each time those moments appeared, there was something equally glorious happening—Mark’s steady and calming love crashing over me in waves; Ava and Lili’s ability to comfort and motivate; friends and family swooping in to carry the burden; and the freedom to cry it out. The messages lift and carry us through those lows, even when I cannot respond.

Today, I bear witness to the scandalous generosity and outrageous love this journey has shown me. Today, I woke up able to move a bit more. Today, I woke up. And tomorrow, I’ll get up and do it again.

Friends, in this long, slow slog of us loving each other and loving a beautiful and broken world, as we wait on God to give us strength for the journey, remember these tips from
Jennifer, Kate and Jen:

Start by acknowledging that we will definitely grow weary. We are only human, doing the best we can. Normalize that. Pay attention to it. Then, take care of your bodies. Eat good, healthy food, and drink water. Go at a comfortable pace.

Please, make it fun. Celebrate the crap out of everything. Laugh. Let music be the soundtrack to your life. Use the desire within you and the motivation all around you. Remember you are not alone.

Don’t freak out when it gets painful. Don’t retreat. Get comfortable with discomfort. Treat pain like an old friend who reminds you that you’re still alive, that your heart is still tender. Keep calm and don’t despair. Remember who has it worse, what you are grateful for, who you are living for, and why.

Use trusted coaches who will help you prepare the way. Leverage internal and external sources of strength. Your wisdom comes from within and without.

We can’t go over it, we can’t go  under it, we have to go through it. So don’t quit. Swoop in to share burdens and send messages of love. Give the freedom to yourself and others to cry it out.

Together, we can stumble trip through the darkness. Together, we can move on and not grow weary. Together, we can do hard things. Together, our generosity and love keeps people alive. This grace is a scandal and an outrage, and sometimes it is nothing less than the reason people wake up in the morning.

Tomorrow, we can get back up and do it all again.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109022350/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_10/01.mp3

Until my stroke four years ago, at a very healthy 61 years of age, I did not know what perseverance was. Recently, in talking with my greatly supportive spouse, I referred to needing perseverance. “I wish you wouldn’t use that word.” Why? “It sounds so, well,  severe. Why not say persistence instead?”

This reminded me of a recreation therapist in the hospital who had offered me the chance to try a favorite activity of my past, gardening, so that I could experience how adaptations would make it still possible, even though I was now hemiplegic, with paralysis on the left side of my body. I told her I would try anything offered to me. She remarked, “Yes, you’re rigid that way.” Rigid?

Sometimes our circumstances call for something more severe than mere persistence. After eight weeks of acute rehab hospitalization, and intense love and support of family, friends, congregations, neighbors and colleagues, I had recovered bodily functions and the ability to talk, read, dress, bathe, and walk with a quad cane and an ankle-foot orthotic, but had not regained any use of my left arm or hand. I wear an arm sling during the day and a hand splint at night.

Some of my friends who kept me company at the hospital thought my physical therapist was mean to me, but she knew she had to push me hard in those first weeks. It was important that I try to do what I could no longer do, so that my brain’s plasticity could develop new pathways for communicating with my muscles before too much time passed. She was severe, but not unkind. She taught me to persevere. I loved her for it.

Yes, I still get very discouraged by all I cannot do, and often have negative thoughts. But since my stroke I’ve gotten to know other people who are physically disabled whose abilities are expected to decline (whereas mine are likely to remain as they are now), and some who have never been able-bodied and can’t realistically expect to improve. In these people I have found inspiration and courage to persevere to DO what I can do and BE who I can be.

Even beyond that, my own disability has awakened me to how much remains to be done in addressing the ableism that pervades our society. Recently, one hero, Rev. Theresa Ines Soto, introduced me to the ableism inherent in the use of the word “lame.” As in, “That’s so lame!” and “What a lame excuse!” In those expressions, it means “weak.” Yet now that I am lame and know others who are even more so, I know we are among the strongest people there are. To do almost anything at all, we must persevere, sometimes rigidly. We are hardly weak.

Consider how much perseverance is required for people to endure—and thrive in—other oppressive human realities, such as racism, poverty, exploitation, violence, etc. When we view the world through this lens we can see clearly how all people must join and persist together if we are to eliminate barriers to a full life for all. To persist is to never give up. Perseverance is, well, to persist severely. May we be so!

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109022329/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_10/02.mp3

Across the decades, through changes in technology and staff, through world crises and institutional crises, the CLF has been there, offering people around the world comfort and challenge in the form of our liberal faith. You can help the CLF continue to persist by offering your generous support, by sending a check in the enclosed envelope or by donating here.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109022308/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_10/03.mp3

My first sermon at the first church I ever served (which is also the only church I have served) was called “Swimming Lessons.” Countless seminary papers and exams had brought me to this moment. Now, time had come to climb into the pulpit to impart the kind of great wisdom available to a young man with a divinity degree on his wall.

Here’s the gist: as a swimmer learns to trust that water will hold a body, so, too, must a person learn to trust in the Holy. With my pressed khaki pants, and a haircut that shone, I delivered the message with messianic conviction. I told the congregation that they and I would be learning to risk faith together. It would require us to allow ourselves to be known and to be held in the Spirit, as a swimmer is held by the water. As a sign of my willingness to be seen as imperfect—lest there be any doubt—I confessed to them that I didn’t know how to swim.

But, I assured them, I intended to learn. Was willing to do whatever it took. So, as their new pastor literally learned how to swim, we would all learn to navigate the metaphorical waters of the newness we shared with each other.

What I imagined the congregation would take from the sermon was a fresh understanding of the nature of faith. But, a couple days later, it became clear to me that this was not what most had gained from my talk. What seemed to stick, instead, was that the new pastor was bent at long last on mastering a basic childhood skill.

Obligingly, a few of the church elders had, on my behalf, already inquired at the Civic Center about adult swim lessons. They learned I’d be welcome in a morning class offered for seniors that met three times a week. It was all   arranged. The coach would be waiting. The class was made up almost entirely of women several decades older than I was, and was called “Swimmin’  Women.”

After a lifetime on dry land, had I really intended to learn how to swim? Sure. Almost certainly. Well, probably. I would have, no doubt, looked into the matter. At some point in my life. But the congregation seemed to believe that, simply because I had declared from the pulpit my intent to take swimming lessons, that I actually had an intention to do so. They assumed, in other words, that I meant what I said, and would follow through.

Either I live in a small city, or else a large town. Whichever, news here travels fast. So, within a few days, it seemed that everyone around was aware of my future with the Swimmin’ Women. At the grocery store, at the video rental store, everywhere. Wherever I went, there were kindly smiles that only barely masked gentle smirks. People knew.

To that point, my history of physical exertion had been sporadic, half-hearted. I tended to sign up eagerly for activities, then not follow through. It was my way. No one seemed to mind, least of all me. But it seemed I was now living a life in which my preferred sluggishness might become a matter of public concern. Giving up before I’d really gotten started ceased to be an option.

Bobbie, the coach of the Swimmin’ Women and a retired gym coach, was all business. She lined up her charges according to skill. This meant that, while swimmers who had swum since the Hoover administration took up the far lanes, where their perfect strokes sliced the water, I had the slow lane entirely to myself. Well, except for the kickboard. Bobbie, it turned out, was a stickler for form. I was not going to dog-paddle, nor run out the clock with my limb-draping version of the dead man’s float. No. More was expected of a Swimmin’ Woman.

Bobbie was determined. Consequently, I had no choice but to be determined. As I churned through the water behind a kickboard, making my way lap after lap, there she was, right above me at poolside, calling down corrections to whatever my legs were doing.

Four months later, at the Christmas party, the Women gave me a new swimsuit in recognition that, while any of them could have beaten me in a race, it could now charitably be said that I knew how to swim. The gap between my declared intent and my actual life, at least with regard to swimming, had been closed. In its place, a grudging pinch of integrity, a hint that I was capable of doing what it took to get the thing done.

Everyone knows that congregations are boring, old-fashioned, and more political than Congress before an election. But, on the bright side, they can also be judgmental. Think of an old friend who lets you know exactly the one thing that you need to hear. Now, picture a whole community like that in your life.

Maybe how things are for you matches precisely how you intended them to be. All I know is that, when it comes down to me, for a long time I was only floating. And it was a congregation that finally required me to apply myself to practice, and persist in the struggle of effort. Which, as it turns out, is what it takes to swim.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109022241/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_10/04.mp3

While I explored central Idaho’s Snake River Plain, I camped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. I had a weather satellite photo, on which the Snake River Plain forms a curving band of tan and green, fading to gray where the volcanic track of the Yellowstone Hotspot comes in. Against those muted colors, the black lava fields in Craters of the Moon stick down from the north like a sore thumb.

The eruptions that formed these fields began through a 75-mile crack in the earth’s crust, back in the days of the Columbian mammoth. Lava spewed for thousands of years, finally ceasing while the first Caesars ruled Rome. The cinders have long cooled. Now they stretch as far as the eye can see,
a thousand square miles of blasted desert.

I stood one morning on the highway pullout above Craters of the Moon, gazing at the black horizon of this volcanic sideshow. My eye strayed back from the horizon and lit on a nearby tuft of vegetation growing from a crack between volcanic boulders. At first it seemed incongruous that a wildflower could struggle up from such barrenness. A couple thousand years of dust must have settled into the bottom of that crack to support it. And a seed blew in. A sprinkle of rain now and then, and seeds have no choice but to try to grow wherever they land.

Lava fields are incredibly rugged terrain. Traveling off designated walkways is prohibited, but even if a person tried, basalt edges sharp as broken glass would quickly cut even the stoutest shoes to ribbons. Yet everywhere I wandered, grasses and wildflowers sprouted from fissures and low places. It might take thousands more years, but they are going to show the harsh stone who’s boss. There, it seems to me, is a lesson in persistence.

It struck me like a flash: T. S. Eliot was wrong, April is not the cruelest month, breeding flowers from the
dead land. Flowers breeding from the dead land is an act of heroism which merits deep human reverence. Ever and always, amid Extinction Events or these lava fields or whatever the backside of human technology may do to us, life will ever venture forth upon the blasted land.

If we want the meaning of life, as far as I’m concerned, there it is. Human greatness, I say, is a delusion. Achievement is just a spark against the relentless winds and limitless tides of time and change. But a seed drills into new soil, a hand is offered to a new stranger. As long as our species endures, that will be the meaning and achievement that matters.

Excerpted from Dennis McCarty’s book Reflections: On Time, Culture, and Spirits in America.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109022218/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_10/05.mp3

The VUU is back from our summer hiatus! This week we chatted live with CLF Director of Prison Ministry Mandy Goheen about what’s new with Worthy Now and what’s next.

The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Michael Tino, Aisha Hauser and Christina Rivera, with production support provided by Jessica Star Rockers. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET.

Note: This audio has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on Facebook.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109014509/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/vuu/latest/vuu227.mp3

Some years ago I had the opportunity to work with a youth group to plan their annual worship service. They had a great theme in mind, all about voices. As youth they felt like they had no voice, but were learning how to speak up. They talked about people who were silenced, and people who spoke out anyway. It was going to be great!

During one of our long planning sessions, someone piped up, “Wait! I have an idea! Let’s hand everyone a blank order of service. It will be symbolic, calling attention to the ways people are silenced and the ways people can speak. The absence of words will be really dramatic.”

Inside my head, I thought, “There is no universe in which that is going to be allowed to happen.” But the conversation that followed gave me one of the most important lessons of my ministerial formation, and a strategy I use to this day. Instead of saying, “Yeeeaah, that’s not going to work,” and shutting them down, I said, “Hmm, that’s a really interesting idea.”

The first thing I asked was, “What are you trying to accomplish? What is the goal of the blank order of service?” They then articulated a great set of goals, grounded in their theme and their lived experience. So I said, “Wonderful! Now, will this action accomplish the goals you have articulated?” A longer conversation ensued, in which the youth decided that, among other things, the blank order of service would be so confusing and anxiety-provoking to the recipients that it would be a distraction and would not reinforce their symbolic intent.

I learned from this process that imposing my own assumptions on their idea would have been bossy and unhelpful. I could easily have claimed my authority as their leader and shut it down. Instead, by engaging them in the conversation, I gave them an opportunity to articulate more clearly their own vision and goals.

I ask these questions constantly in my ministry: What are we trying to accomplish? And will our proposed action meet our stated goals?

Last year I joined a group of protestors at a prominent Civil War monument in Asheville, North Carolina. I was asked to be part of a peaceful clergy presence at
a vigil held in solidarity with those who believe that monuments to Confederate figures ought to come down.

The event might best be described by a statement that the organizers of the vigil released later which began: “Four arrested at Robert E. Lee Monument during symbolic action against White Supremacy.” Their message went on to say, “We understand that the removal of this monument would be symbolic of removing white supremacy from the very center of our city. We know that this must be connected to the deep work of ending systemic racism and white supremacy culture here…”

When I received the call to participate, I wasn’t sure if I would go. It had been a busy week, and Friday morning is my writing time. I also take the kids to daycare in the morning and needed to grocery shop. Further, there is so much going on these days, so many conflicting asks and needs, so many different tactics and movements. I am prepared to take my body to the streets, but I want to know why I’m doing it—I care that the things I participate in are effective and meaningful.

I agree that confederate monuments are not useful in our communities. I do not necessarily agree that removing them is the most important focus. And yet, I participated in this action. Why is that? Because I know my goal. And in this case, my personal goal was more important than the goal of the action itself.

My highest value in the context of my work to dismantle white supremacy culture is to support and amplify the marginalized voices in my communities. And that made my decision about the action quite simple. I was asked by the women of color who organized the event to attend as a peaceful clergy presence. So I did.

When I was helping the youth group plan their service, it was my role to shepherd them through their process. In the case of the solidarity vigil, my role was different.

I had a lot of questions—and a lot of theory and experience in my own mind. I’ve planned actions myself. As a white woman, a professional clergy person, I have authority in the system. I could have marched into the slightly chaotic 7am scene and gotten bossy. Instead, I found the people who had called us all together and asked them how I might be most supportive. They answered, and so I set to work singing, holding space, and being a peaceful presence as they had requested.

In another situation, I might have different goals. My highest value might be different. And that’s an important distinction to make as well. If I know my highest value in a given situation, I will make decisions differently. Sometimes my highest value is efficiency. Sometimes it is collaboration, or relationship-building, or something else entirely.

It is important, then, to answer the question: Why does this organization exist? What, specifically, are we here to accomplish?

The congregation I was serving at the time of the protest holds Compassion, Inspiration, Community, and Justice as values to guide who they are and what they do. It is an ongoing process to clarify how those values inform activity both within the walls of the congregation and out in the community.

Goals and values exist on multiple levels, from the most abstract “meta” level to the smallest of mundane details. That is why it is important for each group to do their own visioning work. But each group interprets those values differently, and chooses different places to focus. And so does each individual.

We are the ones. We must figure it out for ourselves, together. All of our voices and experiences are essential parts of this community, and essential parts of the resistance. It’s worth knowing what your own goals are, and how they fit into the work of community.

It is my greatest hope that the violence and despair we see these days is the last gasp of a harmful system. It is my most fervent prayer that the animosity and vitriol we encounter around and within our communities is simply the wound uncovered and lanced, ready to begin to heal. But I cannot be certain.

And so I turn to my own faith. I turn to my experience of community coming together again and again to show one another that love and commitment can overpower fear. I turn to the faith of the people who came before me, and the strength of those who walk beside me and show me the way.

What is our goal? And are our actions accomplishing that goal?

Love and compassion are the ground underneath us. Even when fault lines cause that ground to shift, we return again and again to the fierce and tenacious spirit of the Love that will not let us go—the indelible shape of justice which calls us deeper into the work of building, into the risk of reaching out and the promise of a faith grounded in history, but calling us forth to a new vanguard.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109013404/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_09/01.mp3

I first learned the word “transmogrified” from the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes.

One day, Calvin built a transmogri-fier. To us, it was just an upside-down cardboard box with a dial drawn on the side. But to Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, it was a machine that could turn them into whatever they wished to become—eel, baboon, bug, dinosaur, tiger, toad. While everyone else still saw a little boy and his stuffed tiger, Calvin and Hobbes saw themselves transmogrified—trans-formed in a surprising manner.

I think sometimes we forget that we can transmogrify things—especially in religious communities. Which is why I was struck when my colleague Ian Riddell wrote, “I’m in a bad mood that our principles are in a list. So I transmogrified them.”

Huh. It’s true that our UU principles appear in a numbered list. We even tend to quote them by number: Our fifth principle calls me to fight for responsible gun control legislation. I’m doing third principle work in learning about Hinduism. I’m a seventh principle guy so I invest in renewable energy.

A handy, step-by-step list. Nice. Neat. Ordered. Isolated. Each principle an individual.

But that was bugging Ian, so he devised something new. Instead of an ordered list, a wheel. No numbered principles, but rather a different pattern of organization. A surprising way to approach them.

The center—the axle—is the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It’s where we start, where everything else moves from. Then, encompassing it all, is the interdependent web of which we are all a part. The spokes are the other principles, the ways we understand ourselves in the world, the ways we act in the world because of who we are and where we are.

So what does this mean? How would we approach our faith, our work, our connection to other human beings, our sense of the divine, if we were willing to transmogrify how we think of them?

Let’s start with the spoke calling for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. Alone, it sounds pretty good; it’s the cornerstone of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and Side With Love and of every social justice action we take, both within and outside Unitarian Universalism.

There’s something missing, however.

Unitarian Universalists are good at questioning things, but we can forget to examine what’s underneath our own principles. Often we might ask What?—What do they mean? or How?—How do we affirm and promote them? But rarely do we ask Why?—Why are they important for us to affirm and promote?

But when we change how we see them, we suddenly have a way to question the why of our principles, to interrogate the deeper meanings, to see the connection between the individual and the world.

Why is justice, equity, and compassion so important? Because if I as an individual am inherently worthy of dignity, then every other individual must be as well. And if we are all connected, how can I be like the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm and say some animals are more equal than others? How can I fail to notice that the compassion I hope you’ll show me might be worth showing to everyone else?

This principle calls us to be in that state of becoming just, equitable, and compassionate. We are never JUST just. But if we remember who we are and where we come from, we are becoming just. The justice, equity, and compassion we see in the world helps us become more just—to others, yes, but also to ourselves.

Now I will admit a bit of my own theological struggle here. I don’t always believe that the things I know are true in general also apply to me. In other words, sometimes it is easier to declare that the inherent worth and dignity of every person in this interdependent web of all existence means that there must be justice, equity, and compassion for other people.

But it’s hard for me to accept that I am part of that web and am just as inherently worthy. If that’s the case, then justice, equity, and compassion should also be for me. For you—absolutely. For everyone in the world who faces injustice, oppression, and hatred—absolutely. For me—eh…

And when the principles are in a tidy list, it’s easy to dismiss myself as not really part of it. It’s easy to apply these things to the people I love, the congregations I serve, the larger community.

But this wheel, Ian’s pesky new way of looking at things…well, it’s not letting me off the hook. Instead, it is reminding me of what my colleague David Bumbaugh wrote: “In this interconnected existence the well-being of one cannot be separated from the well-being of the whole…. We all spring from the same source and all journey to the same ultimate destiny.” In other words, y’all can’t grow into harmony with the Divine without me, nor I without you, nor all of us without each other.

It is this connection—from the individual to the collective and back again—that helps answer questions of why. Why do we affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations? Because it’s about me and it’s about you, neither of which can stand alone, so it becomes about us. As theologian Frederick Buechner famously said, “It’s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you, too.”

The question of why can apply to any of our principles. Why do we affirm and promote this? Why, of course, being the question this wheel seems to ask of us over and over. And over and over we see the need both for affirmation of the individual and for commitment to all of our complicated relationships—including those that reach beyond the human realm.

Each principle connects the self to the interdependent web and back again, in areas of truth, justice, community, connection, process, growth, and compassion—leading us from the familiar form that asks what, to the transmogrified form, which inquires why.

Once you see it, it can’t be unseen. Now we can’t think of the principles without thinking about the wheel and the spokes and the interconnectedness. We have transformed our way of thinking about it. We’ve transmogrified our principles, our ethics, and our faith.

And maybe that’s the real message. Not that we become something new overnight, but that we—and our world and how we act in it—are always in process, always rolling forward on this wheel which carries us to new lands, but always brings the essentials with us as we go: You matter. You are not alone.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109013341/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_09/02.mp3

When I gave birth to my daughter, I had already been laboring for days—not hours, but days. Later we learned we were waiting for her to turn so she was in the right position for productive labor. But at the time the excruciating contractions just kept coming and coming. Doctors call this part of labor transition.

Perhaps now our world is in a stage of transition. One of my classmates from divinity school, the Sikh activist Valarie Kaur asks: What if this [time] is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb?

That day in the hospital room, when our daughter finally turned in my womb, all of a sudden it was time. The doctor told me, It’s time to push. And I looked at my husband, Ethan, terrified: Could I do it? I couldn’t.

But he told me I could. He stood beside me and held my hand. So, I breathed and I pushed. And I breathed and I pushed. Ethan rooted for me so loud they could hear him on the whole floor. We all—he and the doctor and the nurses and even my own baby—we all worked together to bring that new life into the world.

Transition. “What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”

Valarie Kaur founded the Revolutionary Love Project. Years ago, a man she considered her uncle was murdered standing in front of his gas station, because he was wearing a turban. He was of the Sikh faith, and the first person killed in a hate crime after 9/11.

Fifteen years later, Valarie returned to the gas station where he was killed. She set down a candle in the spot where he bled to death. His brother, Rana, turned to Valarie and said, “Nothing has changed.”

Valarie then asked, “Who have we not yet tried to love?”

They decided to call the murderer in prison. In her talk, “Three Lessons of Revolutionary Love in a Time of Rage,” Valarie describes what happened:

The phone rings. My heart is beating in my ears. I hear the voice of Frank Roque, a man who once said: “I’m going to go out and shoot some towel heads. We should kill their children, too.” And every emotional impulse in me says, “I can’t.” It becomes an act of will to wonder.

“Why?” I ask [him]. “Why did you agree to speak with us?”

Frank says, “I’m sorry for what happened, but I’m also sorry for all the people killed on 9/11.” He fails to take responsibility. I become angry to protect Rana, but Rana is still wondering about Frank. Rana says:

“Frank, this is the first time I’ve heard you say that you feel sorry.”

And Frank—Frank says, “Yes. I am sorry for what I did to your brother. One day when I go to heaven to be judged by God, I will ask to see your brother. And I will hug him. And I will ask him for forgiveness.”

And Rana says: “We already forgave you.”

Forgiveness is not forgetting.

Forgiveness is freedom from hate. Because when we are free from hate, we see the ones who hurt us not as monsters, but as people who themselves are wounded, who themselves feel threatened, who don’t know what else to do with their insecurity but to hurt us, to pull the trigger, or cast the vote, or pass the policy aimed at us. But if some of us begin to wonder about them, listen even to their stories, we learn that participation in oppression comes at a cost. It cuts them off from their own capacity to love.

We Unitarian Universalists talk a lot about love. Many UU churches say the words every week: “Love is the doctrine of this church.” My congregation preaches love from multiple sides of our building. The quote on our sign out front says: “We need not think alike to love alike.” The big yellow banner on the side of the church says: “We are Standing on the Side of Love.”

What does it mean to Side with Love?

Standing on the Side of Love was an official campaign of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Recently it was changed to “Side with Love” to acknowledge that not all can stand. And the UU composer who wrote the song, “Standing on the Side of Love” recently changed his lyrics to “Answering the Call of Love”—also in response to concerns about ableist and exclusionary language.

The campaign grew out of our denomination’s support for same-sex marriage. We said that while some might side with judgment, discrimination, and shame, we side with love. As playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda says, “Love is love is love is love…”

Over the decade since the campaign’s founding, it has evolved and expanded to include many additional kinds of activism such as immigrant justice and racial justice. Since love is clearly such a central part of Unitarian Universalist identity and theology, we would do well to consider what we mean by love. What do we mean when we say we side with love?

Too often, the kind of love our culture talks about is actually “emotional bosh,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it. There are so many ways that commands to love can in fact be abusive, manipulative, weak, or condescending. For example: “Love the sinner; hate the sin.” I find this refrain is most often used by those who are vehemently anti-gay, both in their attitudes and in their efforts to deny gay people basic rights and dignities. How is that loving?

After the death of so many unarmed black boys and men by police, Regina Shands Stoltzfus reflects on her fear for the life of her own black son. In an essay entitled, “I Cannot Speak of Love to You Today,” she wonders whether love is enough to save his life:

The systemic nature of oppression means that oppression functions despite the good will, intentions, and yes, the love, of many, many people. …At the end of the day I am more interested in my son coming home alive than I am with someone learning to love him.

So if we are going to rely on love, it must be a radical love, a revolutionary love. What is that? The psychologist Erich Fromm said that mature love has four characteristics: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

Likewise, the feminist writer bell hooks says, “Embracing a love ethic means that we utilize all the dimensions of love—care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge —in our everyday lives. We can successfully do this only by cultivating awareness. Being aware enables us to critically examine our actions to see what is needed…”

So love requires us to lean in, to listen, to learn deeply, to be transformed, to act. Valarie Kaur talks about revolutionary love having three directions.

First: Love for others means that we “see no stranger.” Think of what you might do for a family member in danger. Think of the ways you stay in relationship with family even when you don’t like them, or even when they hurt you. What if we fought for every one on this planet as if they were family? If we see everyone as a part of us, we can then wonder about them. We can jump in to protect them when they are in harm’s way.

Second: Love for our opponents means “tending the wound.” Valarie says: “Tending the wound is not healing them—only they can do that. Just tending to it allows us to see our opponents: the terrorist, the fanatic, the demagogue. They’ve been radicalized by cultures and policies that we together can change.”

Third: Love for ourselves—breathe and push. Valarie asks: “How are you breathing each day? Who are you breathing with? …How are you protecting your joy each day?” We cannot do this difficult work of loving others and our opponents if we are not continually grounding ourselves in the reality that we are loved, deeply and unconditionally.

Finally, let’s dig a little deeper into what it means to side with love. Given everything we’ve just said about love, it seems we should have abandoned the idea of “sides.” But, as with most spiritual truths, here we come to the paradox: revolutionary love calls us into the fray, where we must take a side in order to create a world where sides are dissolved.

As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

Radical love allows us to see that we are all interconnected, and so any action or inaction we take mends or tears that fabric. There is no “neutral” position. No way to stay “out of politics” or stay on the sidelines while the bull in the ring is slaughtered, while the Jews are hauled away to Auschwitz, while people of color are treated as second-class citizens. Staying on those sidelines implies that we approve.

The really tricky thing is how we can work to love our opponents—such as torch-bearing white supremacists—while still stopping them from murdering our siblings of color. Or: how we can love ourselves unconditionally, while still holding ourselves to high standards of accountability?

The late writer and activist Barbara Deming wrote about “two hands of nonviolence”:

With one hand we say to one who is angry, or to an oppressor, or to an unjust system, “Stop what you are doing. I refuse to honor the role you are choosing to play. I refuse to obey you. I refuse to cooperate with your demands. I refuse to build the walls and the bombs. I refuse to pay for the guns. With this hand I will even interfere with the wrong you are doing. I want to disrupt the easy pattern of your life.

[And] then the advocate of nonviolence raises the other hand. It is raised outstretched—maybe with love and sympathy—maybe not—but always outstretched… With this hand we say, “I won’t let go of you or cast you out of the human race. I have faith that you can make a better choice [than] you are making now, and I’ll be here when you are ready. Like it or not, we are part of one another.

So radical love requires that we resist and dismantle the systems that oppress some of us more directly than others, and all of us in the end.

As we resist these systems, we hold out a radical love for all the people within the systems—which is all of us. That love isn’t just “emotional bosh.” It’s a commitment to listen, to wonder, to “tend the wound,” to act, and to humbly consider that we can just as easily be hardened by hate, immobilized by indifference, or stifled by ignorance.

As Valarie Kaur says, “Love is more than a feeling—love is sweet labor that can be modeled, taught, and practiced.”

So let us lean into this time of transition. May we know that we are assisted by partners and midwives of many kinds. May we be brave when it’s time to push, and remember to breathe. For when we side with Love, when we labor for Love, something
revolutionary can be born.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109013320/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_09/03.mp3

When I was a kid, it seemed like magic. My mother would take a piece of fabric and somehow bewitch it, so that it became a shirt, or a pair of shorts, or a dress for me to wear. Flat, lifeless pieces of cloth in a drawer, and suddenly—voila! A piece of new clothing!

I asked my mom about it, and she told me to watch her. She took pieces of paper and pinned them to the fabric and cut them out. Then, following a huge sheet of directions with pictures, she sewed them together in particular ways. And plain old cloth became a beautiful new garment to wear.

It was amazing to watch, but I remember as the magic fell away. There was disappointment, but also a way forward. Suddenly, I knew how to move from cloth to garment, and none of it was mysterious at all. Some people do the same thing with words, with images, with food. They create something that, to the untrained eye, appears to have been conjured from stardust and mystery. But actually they are doing it methodically, step by step, following written instructions, or the teachings of their ancestors, or a particular gift that lets them do it intuitively.

Which is how we need to go about making change in the world. Methodically. I was taught history as if it were full of magic—benign acts by which people in authority handed over power to those without it. But watching and listening and reading history has taught me that the words of Frederick Douglass are true: “Power cedes   nothing without demand.” Ceaseless demand.

I study the patterns, the templates, the instructions built by people who have demanded and achieved a shifting of power. I am alert when anyone succeeds in creating something new and life-giving.

After yet another horrific school shooting—this time in Parkland, Florida—young people demanded change. Mainstream media was in awe of the mysterious, magical power that the students had to actually convince corporations and politicians to change their policies.

And yet, further learning said that this was not completely mysterious. These were young people fortified with information gained in Advanced Placement history class about how discussion had previously been stopped in the aftermath of shootings. Gun control had been a subject of a year’s worth of debate for some of them.

Others were theater students, well-practiced at speaking before large crowds. The pieces of what they were doing were not magical or mysterious, but rather specific and well-honed. So much so that detractors accused them of being paid by left wing sources to fake their emotional states.

These young people also got boosts from celebrities, and from mainstream media that could not gush enough about their talent and their heroism.

Making change is not easy for anyone, and my hat is off to these young people. However, watching the assists that they have received, the open doors to power, the millions of dollars amassed to help them with their work, I’ve also noticed a sharp contrast to how the grief and anger of other young people has been met recently.

When Michael Brown’s murdered body was left lying in the hot streets of Ferguson, Missouri for four and a half hours before being tended to, his community, like the community of Parkland, was both angry and deeply grief-stricken. When the people came to mourn their beloved, to hold a vigil, they were met with tanks and militarized police. Mainstream (white) media labeled the protestors as dangerous and violent, when in fact the vast majority of them were grieving neighbors and peers. The scene escalated, and many people and businesses were hurt.

#BlackLivesMatter (BLM) emerged as a powerful, visionary force of collective liberation. These mostly young, mostly women and queer folks pieced together their own pattern for change, for creating a different way of being. Indeed, much of what the Parkland students have done is crafted on the techniques of BLM: create your own video and send it out via social media rather than relying on other sources; use many voices rather than electing one leader to represent the group; speak truth to power.

And yet the young people involved with BLM were not seen as heroes or visionary leaders. They were criminalized and judged and violently assaulted in cities across our land. Some are in jail still. Nonetheless, their work has had a positive impact on many communities across the land.

I am grateful for all people, especially the young, who dare to believe that we can still co-create the world; who can see the world we live in now and somehow find a way to imagine shaping something new from it; who take whatever tools are at hand and, with or without approval or support from others, use them to make something new.

Now that I’m older, I can also see that such leaders, such movements, such moments, are not to be taken for granted. That, in fact, when they happen—when groups are greater than the sum of their parts, when the walls crack enough for new life to come through—there is perhaps a bit of magic going on after all. Method…and magic.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109013259/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_09/04.mp3

Our UU faith encourages us to be agents of change in the world.

Rather than leaving it up to God to reward or punish people after they die, we think that folks should spend their lives not only trying to be ever-better human beings, but also trying to make the world an ever more just and compassionate place.

This is, of course, a tall order. Being an agent of change isn’t easy. Mostly individuals and social systems alike want to stay the same. “Homeostasis” is a high-priced word for exactly that phenomenon. In the same way that our bodies fight to stay at an internal temperature somewhere around 98.6     degrees regardless of what the weather is like outside, relationships between people—including complex social relationships—tend to actively preserve things as they are.

So how do we serve as agents of change? If our mission is to make the world a better place, what exactly is our job?

It seems to me that there are all kinds of jobs, all kinds of agents, and that some people naturally gravitate toward some roles more than others.

Most obviously, there are activists. Activists agitate. They lead protests and other symbolic actions, drawing the attention of both politicians and the general public to wrongs that need to be righted. They get arrested. They take to the streets with songs and banners. They sit in. They write letters, and ask their friends and neighbors to write letters. In whatever way they can, they pressure those with power to attend to the needs of the people.

Blessed are the activists, for they claim power for those who seem powerless.

Less obviously, behind the activists there are strategists. They plan. They identify not only what exactly they hope to change, but also where there are points in the system that might yield to pressure. They organize, build coalitions, foster conversations to help discern what the next move will be.

Blessed are the strategists, for they carry a map for the journey.

Somewhere in the mix of activists and strategists there are communicators, who cast a wide net to draw people toward the work of change. They articulate the message of existing wrongs and new possibilities in ways that change hearts and minds.

Blessed are the communicators, for they widen both the conversation and the community.

Significant social change only happens with the sustained efforts of large groups of people, but not all movement toward change happens in groups. Some agents of change are explorers, bold thinkers who are able to share both a clear picture of the world as it is and also a vision of the world as it might be. Explorers are people who offer possibilities. They are often historians, people who have a clear enough understanding of how we got to where we are to enable them to imagine where we might go from here.

Blessed are the explorers, who know the path we have traveled, and can imagine the road ahead.

Finally, there are artists, the creatives, people who, in music or paint or words or dance or sculpture or any number of other forms, create new worlds for us to inhabit. Artists give us the ability to not only see things as they are and to see other worlds that don’t yet exist, they also enable us to live in the gap between those two. Artists both create visions of what is possible, and invite us to live in the longing for something better than what we know.

Blessed are the artists, for they invite us into worlds of possibility.

Of course, many people operate in more than one of these categories, and a lot of us have a hard time finding our way into any of them. All the roles I’ve described are for different kinds of leaders, and the reality is that in many situations a whole lot of us not only aren’t called to be leaders, we shouldn’t consider ourselves leaders. If we are trying to be supportive of a community we are not members of, being a follower is probably a better choice.

But one way of being an effective agent for change is to look for the activists, the strategists, the communicators, explorers and artists who inspire us, and throw our weight behind their efforts. Rather than feeling inadequate and overwhelmed in the face of injustice, we can look for places where we might lean in, places where our own lives can shift toward something just a bit new, just a bit brave, just a bit outside our familiar comfort zone where we know what will happen because it has always happened that way before.

It might be scary. We might say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or feel like we’re not up to the task. Remember, it is as natural to long for the safety of the familiar as it is for your heart to return to its customary beat.

But what feels natural and what feels possible are two different things. You can, through diligent exercise, actually change your natural resting blood pressure. And you can, through diligent exercise, move down new paths, re-envisioning your journey as one of creating change.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211109013236/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/18_09/05.mp3

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