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Kat Liu
:When I remember to orient myself within the bigger picture, it recalibrates my perspective.
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Kat Liu
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Kat Liu
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Recently a fellow climate change activist exclaimed in despair, “The world has never faced a crisis like this before!” I’m not sure how convincing my response was to her then, or how it will be to you now, but I tried to reassure her that while the world may have never faced human-made climate change before, the world has faced crises like it before. Humanity has suffered and survived global plagues and world wars that killed tens of millions and displaced many millions more, my parents included. I would not be here were it not for such a crisis. We are currently in the middle of the sixth great mass extinction, and it is going to get a lot worse. But the fact that we’re in the middle of the sixth means that there have been five others before, and the world survived. Moreover, had there not been five mass extinctions before, we humans would not be here today.
Changing climate patterns will (as they already have) create new niches, which living beings will fill in ways that we cannot predict, for worse and for better. As Buddhism recognizes, all that exists is the result of causes and conditions. Under changing conditions, creative, new ways of being will come into existence. New behaviors. New species.
To be clear, I am not saying that everything is going to be hunky-dory, so we don’t need to do anything, or that global upheaval is “all for the best” because it will provide new opportunities, or any other Pollyanna-ish nonsense. To talk like that ignores that tens of millions of people died in those plagues and wars. That among humans who suffer and die, it is more often people of color, the poor, and other marginalized groups. That even though living species, including us, will adapt, the conditions may change so fast that we won’t be able to keep up. So many have already succumbed.
I am not saying that everything will be OK. That would be a lie. But if history and biology can be our guide, some things will be OK. Something will survive, and hopefully thrive again. While any one life is incredibly fragile, life as a whole, life as a communal web, is incredibly resilient. Even in the face of great loss and sorrow, joy and beauty We are in the midst of a great deal of turmoil—ecologically, socially, economically, and politically. You know what I’m talking about. And many of us have our private crises not known to all. You also already know that the future of the world depends on what we do right now. I don’t need to remind you of that. What I’d like to add is that the quality of our lives right now also depends on how we react. It is OK to smile at beauty even when you’re grieving, if you want to (Obviously, if you don’t want to, that’s OK too.) It is OK to do things that bring you joy even in the midst of turmoil. In fact, that’s probably the only way we’re going to get through this. Have faith that while the world needs you to act, it also needs you to care for yourself, and to enjoy the gift of your one precious life.
Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110131200/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/20_04/04.mp3
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
