Past Services

by Rev. David Usher

Sermon from Sunday September 14, 2014.

I was at a dinner party a little while ago, in England, and I found myself sitting next to a woman I had not met before. So we went through the usual getting-to-know-you pleasantries – what’s your name, where do you live, what do you do. Now let me tell you, I like being a minister. I don’t want to be anything else. But in social situations like that, I always rather dread being asked what I do, particularly in the UK where even going to church is generally regarded as a sign of mental deficiency, let alone being a minister. Because invariably I get one of three reactions. The first is that I can see the instant look of fear in their eyes, and the quick checking of the nearest exit as they apparently think I am about to get all evangelical on them, and then for the rest of the evening they apologise if they happen to say anything even remotely irreverent, given that as a parson I obviously have such delicate sensibilities. The second is that they spend the rest of the evening interrogating me, as if there is no other subject I could possibly be interested in or be able to talk about. But the third response, oh the third response is by far the worst. That is when they spend the rest of the evening telling me all the reasons why they do not go to church. Whether or not they go to church is entirely a matter for them, I really don’t care, but they seem to feel the need to justify to me the fact that they don’t, with all the most specious rationalisations you could think of, all of which I have heard a hundred times before.

This particular woman fell firmly into that third category. She proceeded to tell me, at great length, about her disdain for church and her reasons for not going. Churches are full of hypocrites, she said. It is not true, by the way. Churches are not full of hypocrites. There is room for more. Religion is bunk, she said, nothing but superstition and nonsense, and think of the wars started because of it, blah, blah, blah. I tried to keep my head down. I tried to pretend I was intensely interested in my Brussels sprouts. I was a guest after all, my mother brought me up right, I know it is not good manners to start an argument at a dinner party, but then this woman said that anyway, going to church does not make you a better person.

It was then that I kind of snapped. I turned on her. That is exactly where you are wrong, I said. Going to church does make me a better person, and that is the whole point. I go to church in order to be a better person. Not a better person than you, or a better person than anyone else, but a better person than the person I would be if I did not go to church. How could it do otherwise? Going to church reminds me of values the world would otherwise make me forget. Going to church puts me in the company of the wisdom of humanity’s great spiritual teachers and exemplars. Going to church means I learn the stories of everyday folk who have overcome great adversity with serenity and equanimity through the steadfastness of their faith. Going to church means I hear poetry and music which touch my soul, which comfort and inspire my sometimes tremulous and fainting heart. Going to church does not make me a better person than anyone else. It makes me a better person that I would otherwise be. It makes me a person who is trying to pay attention to the business of being faithful in life, faithful to life, holding myself accountable to that which is greater than myself.

The other day I came across a definition of faith I had not encountered before. But before I tell you this definition, let me ask you a question. How would you define faith? If you worked at the Oxford English Dictionary and were responsible for words beginning with the letter F, what would you say about faith? I was once at a dinner party – and yes, my life does consist of nothing but dinner parties – where another guest did work at the Oxford English Dictionary, and he was an expert in words beginning with the letter P.

How would you define faith as an objective phenomenon in human life? And perhaps more interestingly, how would you describe faith as a subjective phenomenon in your life? What is the basis, the reality, the significance of faith to you?

Well, the definition I recently encountered was that Faith is believing things you know are not true. Believing things you know are not true. A rather cynical definition, it has to be said, but then Mark Twain was not known for being entirely without criticism of the many foibles of organised religion. Twain’s rationale was the if you know something is true, then believing it does not require faith. Therefore, faith is believing what you know is not true.

One of the subjects I had to study for my theology degree was The Development of Christian Doctrine up to the year 461AD. I know, wild and crazy times. Those first few hundred years were very important in the life of the Christian Church as it tried to make sense of itself. The Church got side-tracked into the mistaken idea that being a Christian meant believing the right things. It is the only major world religion which is based on the primacy of belief. None of the others are. Not Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism. All of them are about practising the life of faith. But early on Christianity got stuck in the idea that it was all about believing the right things. This was largely thanks to the efforts of Roman Emperor Constantine, who for entirely political reasons converted to Christianity and wanted to impose his own hegemony over the empire. Hence the Council of Nicaea which came up with the Nicene Creed, recited weekly to this day. Note something very significant about the Nicene Creed. It is all about believing things about Jesus. It says nothing about what Jesus taught, or how you might live as a follower of Jesus. Very cunning, that Constantine.

So the early church fathers were duped into trying to formulate it all into a coherent system of beliefs, separate from but consistent with the Judaism from which it had been hewn, and compatible with the predominantly Pagan gentile world within which it had taken root. What could it all have meant, for Jesus to have been the Saviour and yet to have died so ignominiously, to have been both god and man. It was a great intellectual challenge, a puzzle over which endlessly to fret.

Those early Christians kept holding Councils, not just at Nicaea but for the next century, at which Bishops from throughout the Christian world would assemble to argue for weeks and weeks and weeks about the tiniest detail of doctrine. They would meet in smoky back rooms, do deals, cajole and threaten, and finally they would hold a vote. And those on the losing side who did not immediately repent the error of their ways were then banished, imprisoned or executed. By the way, we will be introducing that at congregational meetings here. It should certainly raise the stakes, liven things up, don’t you think?

Anyway, it was Tertullian, in the early part of the third century, who wrote a vast tome on the doctrine of the trinity, trying to make sense of how three could be one and one could be three, and each was separate but they were both the same, and though Jesus was the son of God he was as old as God even though ordinarily a father does come before the son. Thousands of pages, going around and around and around. You can see why studying it gave me high blood pressure. Heady, exciting stuff. Poor old Tertullian got himself into a terrible tangle, and the more he tried to explain it, the more of a tangle he got himself into. Until finally, in exasperation, he threw up his hands and declared, “It is absurd! That is why I believe it.”

I guess some things haven’t changed. When I look critically at some of the details of what some churches expect you to believe, I too throw up my hands and exclaim, “It is absurd!” The difference is, that is why I don’t believe it.

But, for all that some things that some people believe as articles of faith might, in my entirely non-judgmental opinion, be completely unreasonable, having faith itself is not unreasonable. Not only is having faith not unreasonable, having faith is essential. Without faith, all is lost.

The story is told by a tribe in West Africa of the Sky Maiden. It happened once that the people of the tribe noticed that their cows were not giving as much milk as usual. They could not understand why this should be, so one young man volunteered to stay up all night to see what might be happening. After several hours of waiting in the darkness, he saw something extraordinary. A maiden of astonishing beauty came down from the sky on a moonbeam. She carried a large pail, and she milked the cows one by one, filling her pail and then climbing back up the moonbeam to the sky. The young man could not believe what he had just seen, so he lay in wait again the following night and, sure enough, the maiden appeared again to milk the cows and then return up the moonbeam to the sky. On the third night he set a trap, and when she came down again he sprang the trap and caught her.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

She explained that she was a Sky Maiden, a member of a tribe which lived in the sky and had no food of their own. It was her job to come to earth at night to find food. She pleaded with him to let her go, but he was so enchanted by her great beauty that he demanded that she marry him.

“I will marry you,” she said, “but first you must let me go back to my home for three days. Then I promise I will return and be your wife.”

The man agreed, and three days later, true to her word, she returned, carrying a large box.

“I will marry you and I will make you very happy,” she told him, “but you must promise never to look inside the box.”

For several weeks they were very happy together. Then one day, when his wife was out, the man was overcome with curiosity, and he opened the box. There was nothing in it. As soon as she returned, with the intuition only a wife can have about her husband, she knew what he had done.

“Yes, I opened the box” he confessed, “but I don’t understand why you forbade me from looking inside an empty box.”

“I cannot be your wife any more” she said.

“Why?” the man demanded. “What is so terrible about looking inside an empty box?”

“I am not leaving you because you looked inside the box,” she replied. “I was sure that one day you would. I am leaving you because you said it was empty. It was not empty. It was full of sky. When I went home for that last time, I filled the box with everything that was most precious to me to remind me of where I came from. The box contained the light and the air and the smells of my home in the sky. How can I be your wife, when everything that is most precious to me, is mere emptiness to you?”

Having faith is not about what you believe. Having faith is fundamentally about how you see the world. Is the world mere emptiness, in spite of all there is of beauty and charm and miracle and wonder and delight? Or it the world precious, in spite of all there is of pain and anguish and bitterness and ugliness? Having faith is ultimately about how you see the world.

When he was fifty three years old, Ed Guiton, an Englishman, went on a rock climbing holiday in Bolivia. He was a very fit man. He had always been very active in strenuous outdoor sports. One evening, after a satisfying but tiring day of climbing, he was back in his hotel room when a combination of high altitude and low blood pressure made him do something he had never done before. He fainted. As he fell, he hit his head on the bedpost, and broke his neck. A freak, meaningless accident, and now Ed Guiton is a quadriplegic.

My God, how would you cope if such a thing happened to you? How would you cope? The fact is, every single one of us, all of the time, is just one second away from the possibility that our safe, predictable, contented lives will be wrenched irredeemably from us and twisted into some unimaginable new shape. How would you cope? How would you adjust the way you see the world so that you could continue to live in it, so that the world had become not mere emptiness but remained full of things precious to you.

In an essay about his experience, Guiton says this.

“There is still immense pain and frustration. But I am heartened, if by nothing else, then by a change of direction in my dreams. There is one recurring dream, in which I’ve got two walking sticks and I’m hobbling painfully down the road, jerking about a bit, and people are walking past and I can hear them muttering “Poor old sod”. And I’m saying, “No! you don’t realise. This is me, getting better!”

Being a person of faith, ultimately, is knowing that, in spite of everything which might appear as evidence to the contrary, in spite of the feeling sometimes that we are strangers and pilgrims in an inhospitable land, in spite of whatever misfortune or malady or malice might befall us, in spite of it all, life is good, life is precious, it does make sense, it is worth while, and though we might not know what it is, there is meaning and purpose to it. Sometimes people construct elaborate theologies and observe strict rituals and write endless tomes to remind and reassure themselves of that basic article of faith. And sometimes people just feel it in their bones.

There is the story of the Jews, prisoners in one of the Nazi horror camps. One day they decided to put God on trial for allowing the terrible suffering that was all around them. One was the prosecutor and the other counsel for the defence, the rest were the jury. After each side had put their case in this mock trial, the jury decided the case for the prosecution was overwhelming. There was no God, and if there was, such a God was not worthy of their worship. And just as they delivered their verdict, one of them noticed that the sun was setting.

“Look” he said, “the sun is setting. It is the start of the Sabbath.” And together they all turned, and prayed.

Having faith is what enables you, in spite of everything, still to turn to your God and pray. It is the way you see the world. And coming to church is a way of being reminded that there is this way to see the world, it is to be in the company of all who have seen the world and everything in it as wondrous and holy, and have centred their lives on that vision, a vision that sustains them through whatever might have been their fortune or otherwise.

And if there are people out there, who look at us and say in their condescending way, “Poor deluded sods”, we can reply, “No, don’t you see, this is us, and we are getting better!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote….

We pray without ceasing. Every secret wish is a prayer. Every house is a church, the corner of ever street is a closet of devotion. Every desire of the human mind is a prayer uttered to God and registered in heaven. Those are not prayers, which begin with the normal appellatives of the Deity and end with His Son’s name and a ceremonial world – those are not prayers, if they utter no one wish of our hearts, no one real and earnest affection, but are formal repetitions of sentiments taken at second hand, in words the supple memory has learned on fashion. But the true prayers are the daily, hourly, momentary desires, that come without impediment, without fear, into the soul, and hear testimony at each instant to its shifting character. And these prayers are granted. For is it not clear that what we strongly and earnestly desire we shall make every effort to obtain, and has not God so furnished us with powers of body and of mind that we can acquire whatsoever we seriously and unceasingly strive after?

In that spirit, let us pray.

We pray to live reasonably and wisely.

Which is to pray that we shall not believe too easily nor doubt too readily, but what we shall have the understanding faith of the wise.

We pray to live reasonably and wisely.

Which is to pray that we shall not face life with cowardice, not yet with foolhardiness, but with a calm and measured courage which can suffer no defeat.

We pray to live reasonably and wisely.

Which is to pray that we be not slaves of our passions, nor yet unfeeling, but that we shall strive to guide all our ways through all our days with just and careful thought.

Living thus reasonably and wisely, we shall be building out of life immortal things – the things that shall endure.

by Olivia

Throughout the process of the Coming of Age program, there’s been one question that comes up a lot. “Do you identify as a Unitarian Universalist?” For me at least, this is a difficult question, a question that leads to all sorts of other questions. What is Unitarian Universalism? What makes someone a Unitarian Universalist? Or, for that matter, what makes someone a member of any religion? What even is a religion?

Now I, as a lazy teenager, tend to avoid philosophical questions in such numbers at all costs, but eventually I forced myself to sit down and really think about it. In most faiths, there’s some sort of deity that the members worship. However, we don’t exactly have one of those. So what is it that makes Unitarian Universalism a religion? Then it hits me. Religions aren’t based solely upon a deity, there’s generally some kind of text associated with it, for example, the bible in the case of Christianity. And UU’s do have something like that, there’s one that almost all of us can agree on, a small but mighty one. Our Seven Principles. So I think, maybe that’s what makes a UU: someone who follows all the principles. So I sit there in defeat, vividly aware that I must NOT be a true UU. And then I laugh. Not every person that considers themselves Christian follows every single thing in the bible all the time, nor do Buddhists always live up to the morals they value. These sacred guidelines are there to help us realize what we’d like to live up to. So I come to my conclusion, in my mind being a part of a religion means attempting to live up to the guidelines set by the religion, and/or participating with spiritual practices associated with that religion. So I can proudly say, I consider myself a Unitarian Universalist, even though I don’t always manage to live up to our principles, I do try.

On a similar note, another question I was commonly asked in the Coming of Age program, was to describe my spiritual practices. At first, I truly thought I had none. But after a wee bit of contemplation, I realize I actually do have a few. The simple act of coming to church and being a part of my community is one, I also go to retreats called “cons”. These conferences are a place for UU teens to gather and celebrate UUism, our community, ourselves and our beliefs in a safe space. Another one of my more unique spiritual practices is the use of prayer beads. I loved the sermon Reverend Denis gave on prayer beads, if you were lucky enough to hear that.

Whenever I’m sad, stressed, angry, or anything really that I feel I need to sort out internally, I whip out my prayer beads. They can almost always calm me down. Except when I break or lose them, which is about every other day, including today.

In addition, there’s a few social issues I feel very strongly about. I’m hesitant to call myself a feminist, because the word alone comes with the idea that women are better than men. I don’t believe that. In fact, I’m kind of over the whole gender thing in general. I mean, the biological part is important for babies and such, I have nothing against babies, don’t worry. but all this “You should wear pink because your a girl” and “guys can’t wear dresses”. Seriously. What’s the deal with that. Dresses are pretty cool. And also the whole thing where you’re expected to align with one particular gender. What if I don’t want to? What then? Well, then I suppose you become a UU, but that’s another topic. So instead of “feminist” I like to refer to myself as a humanist, meaning I support the equality of every single person.

So what is my big social issue, you ask? Equality. Mainly, gender equality and sexuality equality, which, in my terms, are really one thing. When I say gender equality, you probably think equal wages and women out of the kitchen and all that. I think equal wages are important, don’t get me wrong, but what I really mean when I say that, is equality in sexual expression. I’m in high school, so I get daily exposure to discrimination based on sexuality. I think heteronormativity is SO ridiculous. There are so many ways in which people’s sexualities vary, that I think it’s outrageous for “straight” to be the norm. I think everyone should have the same right to express their sexuality. Now, here’s where I get in to being humanisty about this. When people talk about equality in sexuality, they tend to glance over the discrimination against woman, of any sexuality. Women are expected to not have any of that sexual teenage hormone stuff. Nope, not at all. That;s where words like “slut” come in. These so called “sluts”, I believe, are some of the bravest people. They’re the people who aren’t afraid to express their sexuality freely, despite discrimination. Also, that thing I said earlier about getting women out of the kitchen? I don’t agree with that. I think that if someone wants to be a stay at home mom, or even a stay at home dad, they shouldn’t be put down for not getting out there and having a career. Being a parent is a job in of itself. Basically, I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

However, I can’t say all the things I believe fit into a religion, a social issue, or even a set of spiritual practices. I believe in second chances. I believe in inspiring and being inspired. I believe in the healing power of art and cuddling, especially with puppies. I believe in forgiveness for even the worst of mistakes, but only with sufficient regret (bonus points for groveling). I believe that everyone has the right to be happy. I believe that everyone has the right to be upset, even if their life story isn’t as tragic as yours, sometimes you just need to cry over your spilled milk, no matter how insignificant it may seem to someone else. I do not believe in god. I believe in science. I believe in karma. I believe in intuition. I believe in music. Lots of it. Every day. I believe in love. I believe that honesty forms all four cornerstones to any good relationship. I believe in the beauty of rain, and dancing in it. I don’t believe in nonchalant promises. I believe that every human body is beautiful, no matter the shape or size. I believe in expressing yourself freely. I believe that you can learn a lot about yourself through writing. I believe that the real god is found in the diversity formed by each and every one of our beliefs. I believe that these beliefs will not be entirely mine in 5 years, a year, a month, or maybe even tomorrow. But I can tell you, that in this moment, I am ever so grateful for the freedom to express what I believe, to you. Thank you.

Doing What’s Right

by Indra

I have been growing up in a Unitarian Universalist community; it is a community which fervently believes in the common good and that we,as humans on planet Earth, shall overcome all the violence, segregation, and injustice in the world at present, sometime in the future.  I am being raised to value and carry on charity work and other forms of social action to help the world.  But during all this teaching from the church and my parents of acceptance, tolerance, and caring, I’ve quite often wondered why.  Why should I take time out my day, my life, to help others when I could be reclining in bed reading books or on the couch watching TV or playing videogames?  Furthermore, why should I even care for the needs of others?  Some believe doing good deeds earns you a place in heaven with God; others believe that if they do something great and of worth to the world they’ll be remembered, immortalized; and others still, believe in doing good deeds not because it gives them credit with themselves or others, not to earn themselves a place in heaven, and not for fame and fortune, but because the deeds are right.  Many people do right deeds for the wrong reasons, whether it be out of fear of damnation or of longing for popularity.  I believe in doing right deeds because, and only because, they are right.

Unfortunately I often feel that I might not be doing any difference in the world at all.  I don’t think enough people have the devotion, confidence, or even care to do anything; and at this point in time I believe most of everyone needs to pitch in their time and efforts to make any difference in the world we all live in.  So what’s the point of good deeds then?  I have struggled trying long and hard to answer this question; and I’ve come to the inferring that, for me, the reason I should carry on doing what good I can, even if for a lost cause, is because it makes me happy.  I believe that humans need a sense of right and wrong to make decisions.  Unless a person follows his or her judgement of right and wrong, he or she won’t be content with themselves; otherwise they would be complacent at most.

The other thing, though, is I try to be aware not to get caught up in worrying too much about my actions: whether or not I’ve been doing the right thing or whether or not I’m doing enough of the right thing.  I try to live in the present and make the best choices as problems present themselves instead of fretting how I’ll go about being a part of the solution to all the world’s problems (since there’s no way I can.)  I’ll try to do my best to help the people I can and avoid overworking myself.  There’s only so much one person can do by themselves.  I have no vision of an utopian world to work towards; I don’t believe all the world’s peoples can ever be united as one; all I want is to be the best person I can be, regardless of whether or not other people notice.

by Rev. Denis Letourneau Paul

Once upon a time, in Once Upon A Time Land, there was a tortoise who was very dependable.  He would always get where he set out to go.  It just took him longer than it took most people.

One day, Rabbit saw Tortoise walking slowly down the road and said, “Tortoise, you are so slow, I could probably grow hair faster than you run.”

“Oh yeah?” said Tortoise slowly.

“Yeah,” said Rabbit.

So, they decided to race.

On the day of the big race Tortoise and Rabbit lined up at the starting line.  Owl said, “On your mark.  Get set.  Grow!”

Tortoise started to run.  Rabbit started to grow his hair.

Tortoise ran.  Rabbit grew his hair.

Tortoise ran.  Rabbit grew his hair.

That was a long time ago.  Tortoise is still running.  And Rabbit is still growing his hair.

That’s the way life is.  Sometimes, we get competitive, just for the sake of competing.  We make everything a race, just to keep from being bored to death.  But that kind of competing can get very old very fast, so that what was meant to prevent boredom actually becomes boring!

Has that ever happened to you?

A good way to prevent getting bored to death by the week-after-weekness of our weeks is to just pay attention to life, pay attention to everything that is going on around us, and to try to understand it.  A good way to really live life, instead of just racing for the sake of racing is to slow down and ask a simple question:  WHY!

Do you ever ask why?

Of course you do!  Asking why keeps your mind engaged, keeps life exciting, and more importantly, helps you understand yourself and other people a little better.  Asking why is one of the most important things we do when we gather here on Sunday.

In my last sermon, I talked about why Sundays are so important to us as Unitarian Universalists, about why we set this day aside as something different from the other days of the week and about why we gather.  Now, some would say that they come here in order to ask tough questions about what other people are doing…especially the government, or big corporations, or dictators in other countries.   We want to know about the world.

It is very important to ask questions like this?  But why is it important?  I think, it’s important for us to understand what our role is the world, to ask why we do what we do.

It’s important that I understand what makes me tick…what I do well, and what I could stand to improve.  And as I improve myself, as I understand how each thing I do affects everything else, I improve the world.  To reflect on myself and my actions…to ask hard why questions about myself…helps me make meaning of my life.

Sundays help us understand ourselves better by allowing us a little time where we get away from the hustle and bustle, the distractions and competitiveness, the need to acquire more stuff and more distinctions.  Sundays help us return to our true selves, the selves that cry out, hoping to be heard.  Sundays get us to listen to each other, and to the suffering and celebrations of the world.

But on all those other days of the week, Monday through Saturday, we can be so much happier, so much more effective, if we can take the time to connect to something greater than ourselves and our needs.  That’s what spiritual practices help us do.  Things like prayer, and meditation, and chanting help us to dive into the mystery of the universe, to become more compassionate.  Calmer.

Prayers help us to be grounded.  Centered.  Connected to other people who share our faith.  But there are other ways of getting the same effects.  Like running, or bicycling, or cooking.  Anything entered into with the intention of expanding yourself, challenging yourself, even forgiving yourself will help you be better at lovingly challenging others, forgiving them as you forgive yourself.

A couple months ago, on my second weekend here in Grass Valley, Paige and I got to share a very silly story with you, a story about a farting wolf, and Aneka, Julia and Eli helped us out by playing the roles of the animals.  After the service, Aneka came and asked me a question.  She said that in her Soul Explorers class they’ve been studying the prayers of different faiths around the world, and she wondered if Unitarian Universalists have a special prayer, that is all ours.

Well, we don’t.  There are some songs that a lot of our congregations around the country sing with some regularity, and there are plenty of readings in the back of our gray hymnal.

Some would say that Mary Oliver poems or Pete Seeger songs are pretty sacred to most of us, but there are none that we all know by heart, that we all recite together regularly, across every single congregation.

Around the world, there lots of different traditions that have very specific practices of prayers.  Jo Waters and the Soul Explorers are going to share some practices with you.

My favorite is the Muslim practice of praying at specific hours, five times a day, facing the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam.  Imagine the planet turning, millions of people praying in waves across time zones.  As morning prayers are recited in one time zone, afternoon prayers are recited in another, and evening prayers in yet another, ripples of prayer moving across the globe like the ripples in a pond after throwing a pebble into the water.

My hope for us is that we can all stop racing around, let go of the boredom of life, and settle into prayers, so we can pay attention to the pebbles and be the ripples in the water, with Unitarian Universalists all over the world.  And in doing so, love each other more, and honor the ancestors, elders, leaders and youth…all of whom make us who we are.

by Rev. Denis Letourneau Paul

All across the United States, families were sleeping in tent cities, in make shift cabins, not unlike the way millions continue to live in developing countries around the globe.

I’ve had the chance a few times now to visit Nicaragua, where I stayed with families in concrete block Managua houses that had no glass in the windows and corrugated tin roofs that didn’t quite meet the walls, so that when the dust kicked up from the late afternoon wind everyday, the houses would fill up with dirt.  My friend Heidi is always grateful when North Americans come to – as she says – eat dirt with the locals.  

 I also stayed with people like Ramon and Marta, who live in a beautiful, well maintained home in the northern village of San Diego.  The have earthen walls and thatched roofs over dirt floors.  They cook on wood-fired clay stoves and haul water from the common well shared by the entire village.  They grow vegetables and raise livestock, while they sell sticks to the nearby global tobacco farmers in order to make a couple hundred dollars a year for staples like oil, sugar and rice. 

The first time I met Ramon, he asked me how many acres I own in the United States, and was incredulous when he learned that I paid $1200 a month for a rented room smaller than his kitchen in a city where 90% of the residents will never own their apartments, let alone a million dollar 2,500 square foot building lot. 

Our conversation made me wonder how, in the short span of 75 years, we in the US had gone from building homes out of the materials we found on the land we acquired, to building McMansions…the image the rest of the world has of our average homes.

Witold Rybczynski is an architectural historian I have come to think of as an “Ethnographer of the American Dream.” In his classic book Home: A Short History of an Idea, he charts the history of residential building from the first single-family homes to concern themselves with domestic privacy, through the trends of capturing light and air, to refining ease and efficiency, to displaying style and substance as markers of success. 

The truth is, the idea most of us have of home is remarkably recent in human history.  As recently as four hundred years ago, even the richest people in the world didn’t have separate rooms for discrete purposes.  The rich had servants bring them whatever they wanted, wherever they were, while the poor just piled everyone into one single space, the way they still do in most of the world.

The most recent innovation in the history of the home is that of seeking comfort and well-being, which isn’t surprising when you consider how much our houses reflect not only our values, but how we see ourselves. 

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the first architects to consciously use the medium of building to express a specific world view.  His mother was one of the Wisconsin Lloyd Joneses, commonly called the “Almighty Jonses” for their staunchly liberal stances.  Her brother was Jenkin Lloyd Jones, the Missionary Secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference who planted newly-ordained female Universalist ministers in nascent churches across the west.  The family motto was “truth against the world.”  Frank Lloyd Wright etched “Truth is Life,” above the fireplace of his own home, and made hearth-top inscriptions a common feature of all of his early houses. 

The Heath residence’s inscription stands out: (from a person seated in the congregation):

 

The reality of the house is order

The blessing of the house is community

The glory of the house is hospitality

The crown of the house is Godliness

Wright was a vocal humanist who never went to church.  He was reviled by neighbors to whom he owed huge sums of money.  He left his wife and children to run off with a client’s wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, who was later murdered by household servants repulsed by her “wanton” lifestyle.   Wright probably didn’t have much order, community or godliness in his own home.  

But, those were the values he wanted to project, and the image the Heath family wanted to show to the world, celebrated in cast concrete.

Growing up, my own home very much showed the world how my parents wanted to be seen.  They were painfully aware of how the word “dirty” was attached to their immigrant status, so they made our house immaculate.  Pristine walls and floors and perfect furniture defined a space that was void of plants, art, books, music or indoor pets.  They also didn’t want to be seen as argumentative, so our house was quiet…teeming with people, but somehow silent.

I would imagine that most of us have childhood memories that are less than perfect, memories of  poverty, loneliness, fighting, neglect, or even abuse.  Most of us are probably like Sophia’s friends, a little envious of her home and her family, but as wonderful as her family is, she still looks forward to leaving, because that’s what a good family does: it prepares the children for life outside of its emotional comfort and well-being

There’s more to a good home than emotional comfort and well-being, there’s also the physical, which is being challenged and redefined by the tiny house movement.

Ten years ago Jay Shafer started appearing on TV and in magazines with his Tumbleweed Tiny Homes, built in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau’s shack at Walden Pond.  At 84 to 144 square feet, they are as movable – and legal – as any recreational vehicle, and so charmingly traditional that they don’t challenge anybody’s idea of what a house should look like, except for the fact that they require their inhabitants to pare their lives back to the bare essentials, and to use the outdoors as a living room.

The Summit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Santee California is so enamored of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, they bought a trailer and began their own, which they are calling – appropriately enough – The Walden Project.  The plan is that once the tiny house is done, individuals, couples and even families will live in it for one- to two-week stints, and blog about the experience of intentional living. 

They want to learn to do with less in San Diego California, so there is more for San Diego Nicaragua.  They want to make the world smaller and more inclusive by living in a way that is smaller and more inclusive. 

It’s not so crazy for a family to live like this. 

All over the United States people are moving into tiny homes, converted garages, and micro apartments to simplify their lives and make their families closer.  They are realizing that to reduce expenses and space, is to free up time and force togetherness.  There’s no place to hide, so they must really live into that covenant that is unspoken in most families, the bond that makes them a family no matter what happens.

Last week, something amazing happened here, that challenged and strengthened our covenant.

My sermon, which outlined an unusual way to imagine the divine, touched off a response that surprised me, and a conversation via email that could have grown contentious very quickly.  I’ll admit, the initial post on the listserv scared me a bit.  Sure, it was critical of my sermon, and not addressed directly to me, but that wasn’t the issue.  The issue was that people could have taken sides, could have started calling each other names, could have gotten defensive, or worse, offensive.  Instead, there was remarkable gentleness present in the comments, and lively theological discussion followed, the kind that every minister dreams of.

All that talk got me thinking.

What if we could take this energy, this mutual respect and willingness to assume the best of intentions of one and turn it into something else, something greater?  What if we could really be present to one another every day, even the people that we normally don’t see, in the way that a tiny-house-dwelling family has to be?  Right now, this congregation is a lot like nearly every other UU church in the United States. 

There’s still just enough room that generations can avoid each other, children at one end, and adults at the other, during what is arguably the most important hour of the week, the hour that rejuvenates our souls, grounds us in what is most important, connects us to the world outside of ourselves, and renews the covenant that binds each to all.

I’m going to go out on a limb here.  I bet Sophia’s family doesn’t live in a giant house, and I’ll bet they do things together.  On purpose.  Like sharing meals, doing projects, making music, and entertaining guests.  They live their covenant every day, and that practice, that constant engagement and attention to one another is exactly what makes the covenant livable over the long haul.

So now that you are at a crossroads in your life as a congregation, as your home is starting to feel small and your beloved minister has left, you have the chance to assess how you want to be with each other in the future.  Do you want youth to be separated by square footage and programming?  Or do you want to maximize your opportunities to engage with one another as you live out that which you come together to celebrate each Sunday: the covenant that binds you together as a family of faith… dare I say it, the godliness of this family of faith. 

This space gives you a unique opportunity to create the kind of home that all the other churches on the block would envy, a place with the reality of order, the blessing of community, the glory of hospitality, the crown of a covenant well-lived.  The scale of this place, and the way you occupy it, gives you the chance to do no less than to teach your children to see the world in a completely different way, to experience the light of the universe in a unique way, and to use that vision to go out into the world and bless it, to create a world where everyone has a home, and to live out the values of inclusion and justice they learned here.

May it be so.

Finding Your Saving Message by Julie Brock
April 16, 2013 at the
Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains

Good morning. It is a pleasure to worship with you this morning. I want to thank Rev. Meghan for sharing her pulpit with me. She is off to general assembly, and it happens that my flight is a day later than hers, so I get the honor of being with you today. I have to say, though, I’m already getting a little excited for general assembly. This morning Gini Courter wrote on her facebook, “What would it be like to have thousands of people to sing Blue Boat Home with?” Magical! There is always something kind of magical when thousands of Unitarian Universalists gather in one place. It is so validating. We are such a small religion that sometimes it is difficult to remember that there are that many of us!

Although, according to the Pew research center, Unitarian Universalist grew 15% in the last ten years. When every other Protestant denomination is shrinking, our numbers are exploding at record rates. The folks in Boston are very excited about this. In fact the UUA has hired a full time congregational growth specialist. Her name is Tandi Rogers, and it is Tandi’s job to study all the congregations that are growing and find out what they have in common, so we can tell everyone to do the same thing. Tandi researches growth trends and presents her finds at general and regional and district assemblies, and at other business-like meetings where UU congregational leaders gather.
Amazingly enough, according to Tandi, there is one thing that growing congregations have in common across the board. Across geographic location, and starting size, and
theological leaning, and budget, and year of congregational establishment, the congregations that were growing had one crucial thing in common: They all had a clear saving message that they lived-out in the world. Those were the words Tandi Rogers used: a clear, saving message that they lived-out in the world.
When I heard Tandi say this at last year’s Pacific Central District Assembly, I was thrilled, and, if I’m honest, a little perplexed. Immediately, my mind started pondering what this meant. I mean, it wasn’t really super all that useful, because it isn’t directly actionable. It isn’t telling me to advertize a certain way or offer a certain kind of service. In fact it doesn’t really mean anything except that somehow, I understood that … actually … it means everything.
Having a saving message means that a church has a purpose beyond self perpetuation. Having a saving message means the congregation has thought about and decided on what is ultimately important in life, and advertized that their church is a place where reverence and honor is given to that ultimately important thing. And they don’t advertize it by putting their message on the order of service. They advertize by being of service in the world, making connections in their communities, and choosing pathways for the church that are about things larger than what is going on inside the church walls.
Imagine with me for a moment a UU church: a cute, smallish church with an aging population, because most people who attend that church have done so for years. Week to week the only thing that changes on the order of service is the sermon topic and the title of the hymns. The most important thing that happens from month to month is the 3rd Sunday potluck put on by the women’s circle. The sermons often discuss the latest social theory, or send support and love to the victims of the world’s latest atrocity that the congregation morns from afar and possibly takes up a collection for. It is a happy congregation, a comfortable congregation, a stable congregation. It will exist this way until it ages into oblivion.
But ask yourself the following questions: Why do they gather? How do they grow? What do they serve?
Comfort and stability are not bad things, but they have no business being the goals of a church. Church is about more than that—or it should be. Comfort and stability can be isolating; they can reduce the need for us to need one another, the need for us to save each other. Those who are comfortable lose the compulsion to seek.
Now imagine with me for a moment a church that, whatever size, is bustling, is moving. Imagine with me a church where the message each week is one that upsets at least a couple of congregants, because it is asking them to consider things outside of their comfort zone—it is asking them to change and expand. And the congregants who attend have signed on for this. Not only have they agreed to be stretched they are funding their limbering. Heavy dense questions are considered and then acted on, both inside and outside the sanctuary walls. People from all walks of life flock to this church because they understand that we can only appreciate true human potential when we see people in all their forms. And even though it is hard to be in a diverse community, people stay and work on it because they get that, in the end, it’s not about them being comfortable. It’s about how many folks are saved.
Why does this church gather? How does this church grow? What does this church serve? Which would you rather be a part of?
It is a valid question. Creating a saving message is powerful work. It is also extremely difficult work, and some churches are quite happy to remain comfortable. The work of crafting a message of salvation is particularly difficult in a Unitarian Universalist context. Most major religions do the heavy lifting for you. They have a broad saving message that is suppose to apply to everyone. Christian and Islamic faiths have a omnipotent God figure that judges how you live your life or express your faith, and it decides the status of your salvation based on that. Buddhism says that there is a state of enlightenment that can be attained by letting go of worldly attachment, and this state will save you from suffering. Hinduism also has a state of enlightenment one can reach and be saved from the cycles of reincarnation. But Unitarian Universalists don’t exactly have a message of salvation that applies across the religion. We used to. Universalism came to be as a direct reaction to a salvation theory that did not sit right. John Calvin brought about a message of predestination that said God had already decided who was damned and who was saved, and basically we should just not worry about it. Leave the thinking to the holy folks. To which our Universalist ancestors said, “Um … no that’s not it.” And an entire new religion was created.
Our ancestor felt the all encompassing love of God and knew that it was for everyone. And I think, inherently, that we still know this today. We know that every being has worth and dignity, and deserves love, justice and compassion. We might not use the same vocabulary but we’re still here, we are still gathering Sunday mornings in a church, not a social hall or library, or a political rally. We’re here in a sanctuary. So … this begs the question: What are we taking sanctuary from? From what do we need saving?
Clarence Skinner is called the father of modern Universalism, and he, along with many liberal theologians, had this idea that the only hell possible was one we created on this earth by being out of right relationship. As I observe the world around me, I find evidence for this theory every day. It seems that most every act of evil perpetrated by a human being is done so out of some kind of fear. Wars are started because someone fears the loss of power. Hate crimes are committed because someone fears their lifestyle will no longer be dominate. People fear the loss of influence and control, but it seems to me that the real fear goes much deeper than that. We covet influence and control because we are really afraid of being alone. We are terrified of facing a world where we have only ourselves for comfort, companionship, or distraction.
Our deepest collective fear as a species is isolation. That is what we take sanctuary from in this room. We come here to create a beloved community that we may save each other from isolation. We come to dwell in the presence of the all-pervading all-encompassing, many named, but never-ending love. That ever-present company that the first Universalist knew belonged to all people.
What if isolation was the thing that we ultimately needed saving from? What if being saved simply meant you truly understand that you will never be alone? Could salvation be as easy as sensing the never fading divine presence and understanding every moment that you are deeply okay? What kind of Grace could you live out if you felt that way? What amount of anger could you let go of? What kind of peace could you spread? What new and beautiful perspective on life would be opened up to you if you were immune to the deepest kind of human trepidation?
But we Unitarian Universalists are apprehensive. We are apprehensive as a people to truly engage the power of that love. For some reason it is more comfortable for us to think about saving others. We are going to save the communities that are forced to live on the margins and we are going to save the disinherited. But then it becomes us and them, and we are in a different form of isolation.
Instead of trying to save the others, what if we created a message so inclusive, so universally true that it brought folks out of their isolated states and made us come together to worship, and rejoice that we are here, and that life has an infinite possibility for beauty?
Barack Obama crafted the pithy and invigorating message of “Yes we can!” And people heard it, and they believed, and thousands flocked to the polls. Martin Luther King, Jr., believed in a world where the content of one’s character meant more than the color of one’s skin. He proclaimed it possible, and millions took to the streets. Mohatma Ghandi preached that non-violence and revolution were simultaneously possible, and countless numbers put down their arms. So what is your saving message? What do you have to proclaim that will cause the human soul to pay attention? Jerry’s story: When he was at the new-member orientation, when it was his turn to speak, emboldened by the candor of others, he proclaimed, “I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I don’t believe the virgin birth, and I don’t believe in the literal resurrection, and—” About that time, Rev. Meghan interrupted him, leaned across the table, looked him in the eye, and answered, “You are welcome here.”
Tandi Rogers said that the churches that are growing are doing so because they have considered what it means to have a saving message. The ministers and congregational leaders and members have engaged that God love, they have felt the penetrating connectivity, and they have decided how the presence of such a force calls them to be in the world. They examine all of those callings, find the common threads, and name that truth. They demonstrate the veracity of that truth by turning it into a lived gospel. And all of a sudden their souls are on the line too. It is their human connection and their life mission that are in question, and, with matters that sacred, there are no people in the middle and people on the margins. There are just people, and we all need to save each other.
I don’t know what happens after this body lets go of this life. I’m becoming increasingly ok with that, because … well … I don’t’ think that I have a choice. I’m certainly not presumptuous enough to assert that I have a message that will work for all people or even for all of Unitarian Universalism. But I have one for myself. It might be cliché, but I’m kind of a first and seventh principle kind of girl. I believe that every voice is sacred, and we are all connected. And while this human container causes me to be extremely fallible, it is my life’s mission to remember that message each and every day, and each and every moment. If I could look at every person and perfectly remember that 13 billion years ago we all originated from the same single point of light, if I could keep permanently in my consciousness that we are all made of the same star stuff, that my body is our body, if I could always hold up that another person’s perspective on life is another window unto the face of God, then I would be infinite. I would disappear into the connective force that created life, no longer having use for a singular body. My consciousness would melt into a defiance of time, no longer needing to separate what was, is, and will be.
If I had to come up with a story to describe the end of time, that’s what would happen. We would all realize the depth of our connection, soften and permeate one another, and return to that original point of light with a lot of new stories to tell. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe we got bored hanging out in eternity knowing everything, so we created this life game to keep ourselves entertained.
These are stories I tell myself from the land of maybe. But right now, we are living in the land of what is. We are watching people flock to churches that have a clear and urgent message. People have often said to me that Unitarian Universalism has a weak theology, because we don’t provide concrete answers. We are an unnerving religion because we don’t tell you how to get saved. Unnerving maybe. But weak? I don’t think so. I think it is the stronger message that our salvation lies in our own hands, that our scripture is written from our own saving messages, and that our gospel is lived through our action.
Our growth will not come from a stellar membership committee or the world’s best potluck casserole. We will grow when we decide what kind of church we want to be, when
we demonstrate what kind of people we are by considering and deciding on a saving message that we live out in the world. Because we believe in love, and we feel our unbreakable connection, every day, right now, from now on.
Blessed be and amen.

Joy and Woe

By Rev. Meghan Cefalu

June 9, 2013 – UUCM

A poem by William Blake has been running through my mind in these last few days, as I’ve been preparing to stand here and speak to you this morning. He writes:

Joy and woe are woven fine, A 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, Through the world we safely go.

On Thursday of last week I sent a letter out to the members and friends of this congregation. I know that for a number of reasons not all of you here this morning have received or had a chance to read the letter. I will take this opportunity to read parts of it so you all have the same information.

Dear Friends,

It is with both deep sadness and the excitement of a new adventure that I let you know that I have accepted a position in another congregation and will be resigning as Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains as of December 31, 2013.

Serving the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains has been one of the greatest joys in my life. And so the decision to leave has not been an easy one to make. It has been through prayer and reflection, conversations with my spiritual director, friends, family and colleagues that I have come to realize that this is the right time. I truly believe that the congregation, and especially the current and incoming leadership, is well positioned to navigate this transition with grace. Just as I trust that I am ready for a new challenge, I have every confidence that the strength and resilience of this community will serve you well through this period of change.

This congregation and I have both grown a tremendous amount over these last seven years. It has been such a privilege to get to know and love you during this time of shared ministry. The idea that I will have to say goodbye to every single one of you breaks my heart. Thankfully, we will have six more months to celebrate and honor our ministry together, bring some closure to this chapter of UUCM’s life, say goodbye and wish one another well.

I will begin my new position as the Assistant Minister for Congregational Engagement and Pastoral Care at the First Unitarian Society of Newton in Newton, Massachusetts (ten miles west of Boston) in January. I am excited to have the opportunity to work collaboratively with the senior minister and a large staff team. My focus will be on bringing in and integrating new members, creating programs that will encourage multigenerational engagement in the congregation, and facilitating the lay ministry program.

The letter goes on with some more logistical points that I’ll talk about this morning.

I know that this news may come as a shock to you whenever it was that you first heard it. I wish there was a more gentle process of letting you know. It has been said that, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”[1]

I want to reiterate that this was not an easy decision to make. While the new job is just exactly what I’ve dreamed of, there is still a part of me keeps asking, “Are you crazy?”. This congregation and I have grown up together. I am your first settled minister. You are the first congregation to call me. We have fumbled our way along and learned how to navigate this minister/congregation relationship together. It has been a delightful journey thus far. And now things are really humming. Why would I want to leave such a good thing, especially when it is going so well?

And how can I possibly say goodbye to all of you people whom I have gotten to know and grown to love? How can I leave before watching with pride as next year’s high school seniors, Sophia and Willow, bridge into young adulthood? How can I miss hearing the kids in the next Coming of Age program read their credo statements? And, strange as this might sound, I can hardly stand the idea of someone else performing the memorial services for some of our more fragile elders. Who will know them and love them enough to do it right? Leaving this congregation might just break my heart.

And that is okay. My heart has been broken before and it will be broken again. I am a big believer in that saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Or as William Blake reminds us, “We were made for joy and woe.”

Just because it will hurt like hell is no reason to halt the forward momentum of life. Life’s transitions are never without some pain. You cannot have learning, growth and change without some degree of loss. So, as much as it will hurt to say goodbye to you, and as much as moving across the country and leaving my mother and the rest of my family and friends pains me, I feel the tug of a new adventure pulling at me. And, I am taking a leap of faith.

Maybe you are reminded of a leap of faith that you have taken in your life. Maybe it was when you went off to school, or joined the armed forces, or came out of the closet, or asked someone to marry you, or said ‘yes’ when someone else asked, or finally broke down and sought help for an addiction because your life was spinning out of control. When was it that you took a leap of faith?

Whatever the situation was, it was your decision to say ‘yes’ to a deeper calling within you that changed everything. You had to be willing to let go of what had been in order to take those first tentative steps towards something new. Do you remember? Do you remember feeling scared? Did your decision upset someone else?

Eckhart Tolle writes, “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

It is my deep faith that my choice to leave UUCM is ultimately in the service of life and creativity and growth for everyone involved. Or at least it can be, if we choose to respond from that perspective.

May it be so.

 

Part II – Sophia McKean

Part III – FAQ

 

The Board and Committee on Ministry and staff have had the chance to sit down with me and ask me questions and share their thoughts about this decision. I’d like to offer some of their questions and my answers, as I’m sure you all may have similar questions.

 

Q: Why didn’t you tell us this was a possibility? It would have been nice if we could have known.

A: I have longed for this process to be more open and transparent. It was painful to be keeping this possibility a secret from you. But all of the wisdom I’d received from colleagues and the advice of the UUA office of ministerial settlement told me that I should not inform anyone at the church until I had been officially offered another position. Part of the reasoning is that if the new job had not come to pass, my ministry with you might be compromised.

I am committed to transparency and healthy process. So after I received the official offer from the board chair of the Newton church on Wednesday morning I wrote the letter of resignation and called meetings with the Board of Trustees and the members of the Committee on Ministry for the following day. I called and spoke directly with those leaders who would be the most affected by my leaving. I would like to make myself available in these next few weeks to speak personally with any of you who might have a particularly difficult time processing the news.

 

Q: Why now? Especially right after you were gone on renewal leave last year?

A: I was told in seminary that I would know when a ministry with a particular congregation is complete. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever feel that way about UUCM. Until I did.

My time away on renewal leave was a time of rest and spiritual growth. And, inevitably, the time for reflection gave me some clarity about my career path. I became clearer about what I enjoyed the most about parish ministry and those aspects that I would like to spend less time on. This new position will allow me to more deeply explore those areas that light me up.

I learned recently that the average length of a ministry is now about 6 years. UU ministers are encouraged to take their sabbaticals in their fifth year. I don’t think that this is a coincidence. It makes sense to me that once people have the down time to gain some clarity they may come to realize they are ready for something new. That is the reason the contract often states that the minister will serve the congregation for a full year following the end of a sabbatical leave.

While it might have seemed like I was away all of last year, my sabbatical actually ended in December. I was taking my accrued vacation and study leave during the months of February and March. Just to make sure I understood the language of my contract correctly I sought and received confirmation from the UUA settlement office.

I know it may seem awfully soon to be leaving you. But this new job was slated to begin in

August of this year. It was such an ideal position to me that I let the search committee know I was interested, but that I could not possibly start until January to honor my commitment to this congregation. Ultimately, they decided it was more important to wait for the right person than to have someone else who could start in August.

The other part of the answer to “why now?” has to do with you. I have no doubts in my mind that this congregation will continue on its upward trajectory – even through a major transition. Last year while I was away you all did more than simply survive my absence; you thrived. Attendance on Sunday mornings did not suffer. The board made great headway in a number of important areas. The RE program grew by 100%. Pledges increased. People had disagreements and worked them out. New members were drawn in. You did all of that without my guidance and support. Your new leadership is organized and competent and ready. There are members here who remember this congregation before I arrived. Their long-term perspective will help bridge the community through the interim ministry and then into your next settled minister. You are ready.

And this may be harder for you to take in, but I believe you are ready for new blood too. There are several projects that I know need to happen in order to further the ministry of the congregation. And I honestly don’t feel like I have the drive and motivation to spur them on. Someone new will inevitably come in all fired up with the energy to move with you to the next level.

I am committed to several major projects before I leave. We will hire an Office Administrator, and go through the process to re-envision and restate our congregation’s mission. Adding an administrative staff person will help provide some continuity and improve our communication. Having a well-defined and dynamic mission statement will sharpen our focus towards our true goals as a congregation.

And there are other significant changes already afoot. Under the leadership of the Director of Religious Education, the Religious Education Committee has recently decided to become the Lifespan Religious Education committee. This new model will encompass Adult Religious Education and will include multigenerational learning and service opportunities. I know this congregation is bound for even more greatness!

 

Q: What is the process? What will happen next?

A:  Most likely the board will hire an interim minister to begin in January. Interim ministry is a specialized ministry. Interims are specially trained to help a congregation grieve the former minister and prepare themselves to call the next minister. They are like the official rebound relationship of ministers.

The UUA helps match interims with churches in need. The interim will probably be with you for 18 months during which time a search committee will form and begin the process of finding your next settled minister.

I want to reassure you that you will not have a hard time attracting another wonderful minster here. This is a very desirable congregation. Not only is Grass Valley situated in one of the most beautiful places in the country, but this congregation has what ministers look for most: you know how to love a minister. That matters a great deal. And this congregation has a healthy emotional system, meaning that you do not tolerate anyone holding the community hostage by using intimidation, bullying or bribery. You have no idea how rare and precious that is.  You have a covenant of right relations that truly influences your interactions with one another. You have a demonstrated commitment to fair compensation for your staff. This will be a dream job for a wide number of very talented ministers.

And so we will have these next six months to say goodbye in all the ways we need to.

Goodbye is not easy. There is a reason last week’s service was on the topic of letting go. They say a minister preaches what she most needs to hear. We will help one another let go and embrace and even get excited about the upcoming changes.

Eminent Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”

Every goodbye brings up all the other goodbyes we’ve had to say. Every grief surfaces all our other experiences of loss and feelings of abandonment. There may be buttons pushed in you by this news that surprise you. Remember that the process of grieving is never tidy. It is messy and unpredictable. Feelings of anger, sadness, indifference and excitement about new possibilities will cycle around and around. It can be helpful to simply know to expect this and allow whatever feelings you have to simply be there.

In a few moments we’ll have the opportunity to participate in a ritual that will allow you to explore and express some of the reactions or feelings you may be having this morning.

First, I’d like to move us into a time of meditation and inward reflection.

Remember that under the level of your thoughts and emotions, exists a deeper state of mind that is peaceful and calm. This state is always available to you. It takes some practice knowing how to find and rest in this place.

I invite you to close your eyes, take slow deep breaths. Call all of yourself back into your body. Feel yourself rooted firmly to the planet. Bring your awareness into the center of your head.

Susan Sanford shared this image with me this week and I’d like to pass it on to you.

If you imagine yourself as the water in a lake you can see that even when a large rock splashes into the water upsetting the surface and sending out waves in every direction, the rock is not the lake. The lake remains. It grows calm again. And when fish and other creatures move and muddy the bottom of the lake, the fish are not the lake. The mud settles and the water grows still again. When wind ripples the surface causing whitecaps to form, the wind is not the lake. The lake remains fundamentally unchanged.

There is in you a deep inner stillness that is not upset when your life situation changes around you.

Take some more deep and slow breaths. Bring your awareness inward, into the center of your head. Call all of yourself back to this present moment.

Let us rest for a few moments in the stillness and peace of our inmost calm.

We’ll come out singing our sung prayer, Spirit of Life…

 

[1] Mary    Shelley.           Frankenstein.

Ruts and Grooves

By Rev. Meghan Cefalu

May 5, 2013 – UUCM Readings:

 

Dust By Dorianne Laux

 

Someone spoke to me last night, told me the truth. Just a few words, but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and I was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks. Now, I remember only the flavor — not like food, sweet or sharp. More like a fine powder, like dust. And I wasn’t elated or frightened, but simply rapt, aware. That’s how it is sometimes — God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you’re just too tired to open it.

 

Things to Think ~ Robert Bly

 

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message Larger than anything you’ve ever heard, Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

 

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,

Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

 

When someone knocks on the door,

Think that he’s about

To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,

Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time,

Or that it’s been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Goethe said: “We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves, otherwise we harden.” I read a human-interest story in the news last week about a church in Moscow, Idaho. Here’s the story:

“Longtime church-goer Gert Rizzoli was so devoted to her spot in the pew at Featherside Congregational church that when she passed away last month, her family received permission to bronze her body and set it in the pew. Now, to the consternation of some church members, her body is permanently located in the aisle seat she occupied every Sunday for forty years.

“She loved gazing at the pastor from that spot, being the first in her row to receive Communion, having quick access to the bathroom,” says daughter Sofia. “It gave her a sense of deep, spiritual comfort.”

But fellow church-goers also remember Gert’s stiff response to anyone who tried to take her place.

One man was shooed away by Gert on several occasions when he arrived early and inadvertently took her spot, he says. Now the bronze statue serves as an irritating reminder of the encounter.

“It’s like she’s still there defending her seat,” he says.

When church members enter the sanctuary now, they can’t help but catch the glare of light off of Gert’s bronzed pate. Visitors find it inconvenient to climb over her, and children have stubbed their toes on her hardened shins.

“She was a Christ-like lady, except when it came to giving up that spot,” says a family friend. “She had a real sense of her turf. To her, it was like the Israelites: Once you get land, you don’t give it up.”

Pastor Len Kerralt, who agreed to the odd memorial, looks upon Gert’s frozen smile each Sunday from the pulpit.

“It’s nice to know at least one person is enjoying the sermon,” he quips. But others still mumble about the nuisance.

“What if more people request the same thing?” one woman asks. “Pretty soon the church will be filled with bronze statues.”  

***

The story is a satire, of course, but still a parable about the danger of becoming hardened if we don’t renew and refresh ourselves every once in a while.

It is remarkable easy to get into a rut. It is natural that once we find a way to do something that works we keep doing it the same way over and over. After all, “Why reinvent the wheel?” we say. And, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We may drive the same route from our homes to the grocery store; make the same ten to twelve recipes for our family’s meals; dress in roughly the same style of clothing for decades. Each of you can probably identify a rut or two in your own life.

Organizations can be even more resistant to change than individuals are. When a new member offers a fresh idea in a committee meeting someone else might shoot it down by saying, “We tried that back in 1984 and it didn’t work.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with habits and customs. I love my morning ritual of making a smoothie and tea and sitting on the couch with my dog curled by my feet to engage my spiritual practice every morning. Parents and teachers know just how much children thrive when they have rituals throughout the day to anchor them. We all need a certain balance between the familiar and the novel. If there is too much upheaval we can lose our bearings and run adrift.

But if there is not enough newness in our lives we run the risk of getting stale. When we do only what we’ve always done, or think only the same thoughts we’ve always thought, our world view shrinks, our lives close in on us. Our vision grows so myopic we can barely even see the well-worn rut we are in.

More concerning though is the fact that when we are in a rut we limit our capacity to experience life. Listen again to the way the poet Ms. Laux said it in this morning’s first poem, Dust:

“That’s how it is sometimes — God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you’re just too tired to open it.” Friends, this life we have been given is a miracle. That we each have our very own perspective is amazing. Consider that when two people see the same piece of art, taste the same dish or hear the same song they can have wildly different experiences.

One of the things I like to think is that we are the perceiving body of the Divine. I don’t claim to know that this is true in any provable sense. But it is fun to think that part of why life has arisen on this lonely planet – improbably suspended among the stars in virtually infinite space – is to experience everything that is possible to experience. The way I imagine it we are like God’s feelers. We are the sense organs for that boundless body of all-pervading Love. Each of us individually and collectively has an opportunity to experience: opulence and poverty, bliss and pain, freedom and bondage, beauty and horror, belonging and isolation, violence and tenderness. Experiencing all that there is enriches life itself.

So, if we get lazy or complacent and allow ourselves to wallow in the comfort of our timeworn beliefs and practices, if we yield to our fear of the unknown and limit our capacity to take in information and have new experiences  – we are essentially saying ‘no’ to life.

So how do we intentionally shake ourselves out of any ruts we’ve gotten into?

Do something you’ve never done before. Ruts are the same old pathways being plodded over and over again. While learning something new actually creates new neural pathways in your brain. Learn to play a musical instrument, or a foreign language, or how to play a new game, or take dancing lessons. Change the radio presets in your car, put the silverware in a different drawer in your kitchen, find a new route to your house, and by all means, challenge your assumptions. Knock down the cobwebs in your mind.

If you haven’t had a new thought in ten years your brain is aching for stimulation. Think new thoughts! Robert Bly says, “Think in ways you’ve never thought before…. think that a moose Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.”

Decide you want to truly understand a viewpoint you don’t personally hold. Seek out someone you disagree with and ask them to explain to you their reasoning while you withhold your judgments.

***

There are times when our life situations force us out of our ruts. A graduation or retirement, a birth or a death in the family, a new job, a new diagnosis, a new relationship – all of these will shake up your way of being whether you like it our not.

As a congregation we will be climbing out of a number of ruts in the coming months.

Some of you may not be aware of the big change in our congregational life that is currently shaking up this congregation. Anita Wald-Tuttle, who had been living in the apartment above the chapel and supporting the day to day functioning of this congregation for ____ years as our Facilities Manager, has moved out and resigned her position. We are so grateful for all that Anita has done for us over the years. The congregation’s leadership is looking at the possibility of hiring an administrative staff person in a few months. In the mean time a team of volunteers have stepped up to try to cover all the tasks Anita had been doing for us so seamlessly. And with the upstairs apartment now vacant we are considering our options for how to best use the space.

In just a few weeks we’ll hold our annual congregational meeting where the members of this congregation will elect several new Trustees to the Board. New leadership is rejuvenating to an organization. Fresh eyes bring new perspectives and the congregation as a whole benefits.

Also, in this next church year this congregation will be revising its mission statement. To my knowledge the mission statement we currently have has never been revisited since it was first adopted about seventeen years ago. It is long overdue. So we will summon our collective energy to do the work of naming who we are and for what purpose this congregation exists. Having a clear mission statement will give us clarity about everything we do making it much easier to decide how to spend our energy.

Big changes can be exhilarating and they can be frightening – sometimes both at once.

Having faith means that when you get to the end of all the light you know and it comes time to step out into the misty unknown, you can choose to trust that one of two things shall happen: either a stone will rise up to meet your foot or you will be taught how to fly. ***

It is one thing to get out of a rut. It is another to get into the groove. Without bringing intentionality to the process you might end up in yet another rut.

Once you’ve been shaken out of your routine, it is time to back up and consider the wider view. Given the infinite span of all of existence and your brief lifetime, how would you like to spend your time and energy? What will you do with your one wild and precious life? Imagine what new habits you might create that support this grander vision of what you truly want to do with your life.

I find inspiration from the stories of two subsets of people: those who have had near-death experiences and those who have been in outer space and had the opportunity to look back at the earth. Hundreds of people who have died and come back to life tell a similar story of being profoundly transformed; of having the undeniable realization that love is really all that matters. Many of these people made significant changes in their lives as a result of their new understanding – often quitting high powered or meaningless jobs to spend more time with their loved ones.

I watched an interview last week with one of the astronauts who first circled the moon. He said what surprised him about being in space was that the most amazing thing of all turned out to be looking back at the Earth hanging there in space – so fragile, so incredibly beautiful. He spoke of really grasping for the first time that humanity is truly one species, and our mutual survival is tied to the health of our delicate planet. He has dedicated his life to healing and sustaining the Earth.

When you dedicate your life to your highest ideals – so that your habits and behaviors support your highest priorities – then you are in the groove.

I can always tell when I’m “in the groove” because it feels good. I feel vital and alive. Being in the groove means you are stoking the fire of your spirit with the right fuel, and your inner flame is burning clear and bright.

The poet Rumi wrote: When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

That joy is always waiting for you, beckoning you, longing to sing in your heart. As Bev learned as a girl, as scary as it sometimes might be, you have to let go of the railing before you can make the leap.

I hope you will let this community be your cheering section. Look around at these people sitting here with you this morning. These people want you to soar! They will celebrate with you when you take a risk that scares you. They will help love you into becoming your best self. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.

And these people need your support too. Can we each dedicate ourselves to one another this morning? Nod your head or say Yes if you dedicate yourself to the joy and love that beacon each of us to our higher purpose…

Let us together try new things, let go of our ego’s need to be right all the time. As we sang together earlier, let us not be afraid of some change.

So that when God shows up all bright light and black wings may we fling open the window!

May it be so. Amen. Blessed be.

On Learning How to See

Jerry Jacoby

Given at the Unitarian Universalist

Community of the Mountains,

April 28, 2013

 

Opening Words

            The subject today is learning how to see, and I’ll offer you a few examples of how I’ve learned to see.  A year ago, before she went on sabbatical, Rev. Meghan put out a call for sermon proposals.  She put me on the schedule for this Sunday, with this sermon title, before she went on sabbatical.  So I’ve had nearly a year to work on it.  The early drafts were like my previous sermons:  intellectual efforts, with perhaps two dozen references.  You can read them on the church’s website.  Over the months, as I did more research and found more examples, the drafts became more intellectual, with more references.

Then Rev. Meghan returned from sabbatical, and everything changed.  Three and two weeks ago, she told us about her experience during deep meditation of what she called Big Love.  I believe her, both because who she is, and also because her experience is consistent with the experiences of others that I’ve read about.  She said, “After spending some time in the presence of the Oneness of all creation, and feeling first-hand the unfathomable, unconditional love that permeates existence, I see things a little differently.”1  I surmise that the phrase, “a little differently,” must be a vast understatement.  Empowered by her, I rewrote this whole sermon.  There aren’t any references anymore, because it’s all personal experiences.

1.  Rev. Meghan Cefalu, “Becoming Love’s People,” delivered April 14, 2013, at UUCM, page 1.

 

Sermon

            I would like to begin with a simple example, seemingly trivial, in and of itself.  But nothing is ever “in and of itself,” now is it?

The time was the spring of 1985, if memory serves.  The place was Amarillo, Texas, and the occasion was the Amarillo Chess Club’s annual chess tournament.  The previous year I had played in that annual tournament and had not done well, with emphasis on the word not.  Between then and 1985 I had studied the game.  Prior to that tournament, I had spent years as an average tournament player, either just below the first-round cut—which meant I played one of the top-ranked players in the tournament.  Those games were always short.  The second case was just above the cut—which meant that during the first round I played one of the lowest-ranked players in the tournament.  Those games were often short, as well.  At the 1985 Amarillo tournament the second case happened, so for the second round, I was near the bottom of the second quartile, playing someone in the first quartile.  In the middle game, in an incredibly complicated position, suddenly, with no forewarning, I saw the board with greater clarity than I had only a moment before.  I saw lines of attack and defense that I had not seen just a moment before.  For the first and only time in my career of tournament chess,

I moved both rooks with the queen between them to the half-open king file.  But the position was still closed.  After ten minutes of study I saw the winning move:  a classical bishop sacrifice:  Bishop captures king pawn.  Black replied bishop pawn captures bishop.  With scarcely a second’s thought I moved rook captures pawn.  After castling, black had moved his king rook to his king-one square, so he played rook captures rook.  I replied queen captures rook, with check—and the black player resigned.  In order to avoid checkmate in just a few moves, he would have had to sacrifice much material, and at that level of play resignation is the honorable thing to do in a lost position.

Suddenly, I was playing well above average chess.  That experience was very addictive, and I spent many years chasing it.  Eventually, I came to see what I was doing and realized that elusive experiences cannot be captured.  They are like shafts of sunlight between thunderclouds.  A person can remember them, learn from them, and then move on.

Moving on to a more substantive issue, Saturday, October 7, 1973, was a very bad day for me, although it started out okay.  I was taking a night course and needed the computers at work to do my homework, so I walked the mile to my office.  My wife, Sally, took our fouryear-old daughter, Tracy, to Santa Fe for a day of shopping.  So far, so good.  I finished the homework by late afternoon and walked home.  No Sally.  I took our dog for a walk.  Back home, there was still no Sally.  We were going to a movie that night, so I took a bath.  As I dried off, the front doorbell rang.  I put on a robe and walked to the front door.  Two policemen were outside.  When two policemen come to your door, it is a bad sign.  I put on some clothes, we chatted a few minutes, and they took me to the hospital.  They must have called ahead, because our family pediatrician met me in the hallway outside the emergency room, and took me by the arm to her office.  She had me describe the clothes Sally and Tracy wore.  And then she said those terrible words, “There can be no doubt.”

The next two weeks or so are a haze.  I had a good friend, Bob Seamon (who passed on a few years ago), who took me by the hand, so to speak.  He said, Jerry you need to do this.  So I did this—whatever it was.  Then he said, Jerry you need to do that, so I did that.  I recall a few snatches of a double funeral at the United Church in Los Alamos.  Then there was a double funeral in Caldwell, Idaho, Sally’s hometown, about thirty miles west of Boise, but I have no memory of how I got there.  Then there was a double graveside service at a cemetery south of Caldwell.

I recall one incident vividly.  Right after the graveside service, Sally’s mother got into the back seat of the limousine on the left, behind the driver, and said, “That has got to be the most barbaric custom.”  I could only agree.

I have no memory of how I got back home.  At work, I was blessed to be doing a computer programming project that was in the chug and grind phase.  All the creative work had been done back in September, and through the fall it was just plug along.  I got it working shortly after Thanksgiving, and it let the users do in one night what had previously taken two nights, or sometimes even three.

Then came the Christmas vacation, and I drove to visit my mom and dad with my dog in the back seat.  My hometown was Portland, and Caldwell was right on the way, so of course I stayed a couple of nights with my in-laws.  While I was there, Sally’s mother had the need to tell me some things about Sally that only she knew.

Then, with my parents for a week, my mother had the need to tell me some things about Sally that only she knew.

Christmas 1973 was the year of the gasoline shortages in major cities throughout the land.  I recall waiting in line for half an hour at a station in Portland.  But in Hood River, Oregon, there were no lines, and there was plenty of gasoline.  I remember thinking at the time, that that was very strange.  I had no problem getting gasoline anywhere else, either.  I also remember taking Interstate 80 all the way east to Cheyenne, because of the snow storm that had blanketed the west.  Then I drove south on Interstate 25 around the south end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to Santa Fe.  In Santa Fe, I can recall driving in the ruts of previous cars, with snow scraping the undercarriage of my car.

Back home, January 1974, Sally’s best friend came over one Saturday afternoon and we talked.  She told me some things about Sally that only she knew.  I wondered at the time why everyone felt the need to dump on me.  When I was about twenty, my grandfather observed that it doesn’t matter how old a person is, they aren’t really grown up until they’ve come to terms with the fact that some questions don’t have answers.  My amendment to that observation is that many of those questions that don’t have answers begin with the word

“why.”

And so, of course, to that witches brew of unwanted information, I added a few things that only I knew, and all that information bubbled and gurgled around inside my head.  A week or so later, by some unhappy coincidence, I went through the family photographs, deciding which ones to keep and which ones were redundant.  I came to the one of the scene of the accident that I had clipped out of the local newspaper.

And, primed by that witches brew of information, I saw it:  The car was completely on the wrong side of a double-yellow line, and there were no skid marks on the pavement.  It’s called vehicular suicide.  Actually, in that case, it was murder-suicide.

That was more than I could take.  I knew nothing of therapy, or dealing constructively with feelings, so I took up serious drinking.  I quickly discovered that three ounces of Jack Daniels would make all those feelings go away.  The booze had the additional benefit of making me a “good old boy” at work.  I mellowed out and was easy to get along with.  At one point, my doctor even enabled my drinking, saying I could have one drink after dinner as long as I didn’t need it.  He neglected to say what “one drink” meant, and I didn’t ask.

I’ll skip lightly over the next twelve years.  They include a failed marriage that didn’t last five years.  Marrying that particular woman at that particular time was the most stupid thing I’ve ever done.  I also did not see that my drinking was slowly progressing.  Three ounces had become five or more by August 1985.  And that didn’t include an evening of drinking every Friday.  Humans don’t do well with “gradually,” and I simply didn’t see it.

August 1985 was pivotal.  I had a serious girl friend, and we had really hit it off.  She had taken me to see her parents, and they pronounced me satisfactory.  And why not?  Mellowed out, I was easy to get along with.  I had taken her to see my parents, and they were delighted.

In late August 1985, she announced without notice that she was going to a place called Cottonwood, south of Albuquerque, for treatment of alcoholism.  On the way out the door, she gave me a little book, I’ll Quit Tomorrow.  I read it, but I couldn’t identify, especially with the stories of alcoholics.  I vividly recall, on August 31st, 1985, reading the last story, closing the book, picking up my one drink, and guzzling it.  Thank you very much, but I did not have a problem with alcohol.  It’s called denial, and I had it.

The next day the magazine The American Heritage of Invention and Technology arrived in the mail.  One of the stories was the history of the bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Toronto.  It collapsed while being built, killing 58 workers and injuring more than a hundred others.  The article also told a little of the lifestyle of the engineer that designed it.  That was circa 1912, twenty-three years before Alcoholics Anonymous was founded, and alcohol wasn’t mentioned.  But reading between the lines, and having just finished I’ll Quit Tomorrow, I suddenly saw myself in that engineer.  Terrified that I might someday make the same kind of mistake, I picked up my one drink and poured it down the drain.  I have not had a drink of an alcoholic beverage since.

My first full day of sobriety was September 2, 1985.  It occurred to me that I had better re-read I’ll Quit Tomorrow, only this time I’d better pay attention.  A month and a half later I voluntarily joined Alcoholics Anonymous.  Through the guidance of the twelve-step program, I came to see that the sequence of events in late August had to have happened exactly as they happened in order to get my attention.  It’s called a synchronicity, which means a meaningful coincidence, and it was beyond doubt a very meaningful, life-changing experience.  But I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.

You might ask, what happened to that relationship?  No longer being mellowed out by alcohol, one of my character defects reared its ugly head, and she gave the ring back.

Eventually, I dealt with my alcohol problem with the help of AA.  In addition, through a lot of personal growth, I learned how to deal with issues and people at work without being mellowed out by alcohol.  That was difficult.

One incident stands out in my memory.  The time was March 1986.  At work, I had been tasked to write a user’s manual for one of the computer programs I‘d worked on.  Like everyone else, I was using one of the big main-frame computers as a word processor.  Midafternoon, in the midst of a sentence—in the middle of a word—the computer crashed.  That was a frequent occurrence, and I had developed an algorithm to handle the problem.  I leaned back in my chair and watched the second hand of a wall clock go around once.  The computer was still down.  The next step of the algorithm was to go get a cup of coffee and deliberately stay away from the terminal for five minutes.  The computer was still down.  Next, I went to the library to have a look at the new books, and stay away from the terminal for fifteen minutes.  It was still down.  Next, I called the operator and asked what was happening.  He replied that the computers had all had a hard crash, would be down for the rest of the day, and furthermore I would have to re-do everything I had done that day.

I was enraged.  That word doesn’t really describe it.  Actually, I believe that in that moment I was clinically insane—unable to function in polite society.  Under similar circumstances I had broken many things, including a few relationships.  But I had been going to AA meetings for about five months, and I saw that I could make a different choice.  I took a walk, and my monkey mind was going full speed.  A block from the office, I was alone, and a voice came into my head, “Is there anything else in your office you can do?”  The monkey mind instantly switched gears, so to speak, and rattled off a dozen things that were demanding attention.  Then the voice said, “Why don’t you go back to your office and do one of them.”  It caught me between steps, and I almost fell down.

So I returned to my office.  I finished one of them, and I ended up having a good day.  And now, when my life gets hectic with too many things on my plate, I remember to focus on one of them.  The principle is:  One thing at a time.

Now this I insist:  That voice could not have come from my brain, because at the time, I was insane—crazy.  I further insist that that voice represents a power greater than I am, because it did for me what I could not do for myself—it restored me to sanity.

I’ve heard that voice two more times.  The second was at the Pizza Hut in Los Alamos, and it was just two words:  “Go home.”  So I got a box for the pizza, paid the check, and went home.  I arrived just in time to answer a phone call from a distraught acquaintance, who was contemplating suicide.  We talked for three quarters of an hour, and I persuaded her to postpone her action until the next morning, banking on a night’s sleep and perhaps breakfast making her perspective different.  I don’t know if it was my words that made the difference, but she was still alive when Jan and I moved to Grass Valley fifteen years ago.

The third time was here in Grass Valley, and its simple driving instruction enabled me to avoid a car accident on Highway 49.  Repeating myself for emphasis, that voice did for me what I could not do for myself.

I am not unique.  Over the years, by simply listening without judgment and doing my best to accept and validate the speaker, I’ve collected half a dozen such stories.

 

A man back in Los Alamos had an experience almost identical to mine.  A technician, he ran experiments.  One day after lunch his group leader called a meeting and announced new safety regulations that would make everyone’s job much more difficult.  He said the room erupted in a cacophony of shouting.  But having been in a twelve-step program for awhile, he saw that he could make another choice.  He went back to his office and shut the door, where he was alone.  Like mine, his monkey mind was going full speed.  Eventually, a voice in his head asked, “How are you right now?”  For some reason, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs came to mind:  food, clothing, and shelter.  His monkey mind switched gears just as mine had, and he recalled he had had a good lunch.  It wasn’t gourmet food by any means, but it was good, healthy food.  And he had put on clean clothes that morning after his shower.  They weren’t swanky by any account, but they were adequate for the task.  And third, he was sitting in a comfortable chair in an office that had central air conditioning and a roof that didn’t leak.

Then he stopped.  His monkey mind chatter turned off, and he said there was silence in both heaven and earth for about half a minute.  Then he said, “Oh.”

Both his experience and mine of March 1986 are called a moment of clarity, or as AA puts it, a blinding flash of the obvious.  The principle is:  Live in the present.  How are you

… right now?  Or, maybe, change the emphasis:  “How are YOU … right now?”

And like me, he insisted that that voice could not have come from his brain.

There remained for me one overriding issue:  Sally’s suicide.  A friend told me about a weekend workshop called Beginning Again.  I didn’t really want to, but I went anyway.  The participants were recent divorcees and widows who were united in wanting to put closure on the past so they could … begin again.  There were sessions on Friday evening, Saturday morning, afternoon, and evening, and Sunday morning, afternoon, and evening.  Each session started with a lecture, followed by a living example, where someone told their story.  Then we had writing assignments for an hour or so.  Each session concluded with a small group meeting.  My small group was five people who were all very motivated to do whatever it took to get it done.  There were two “councilors,” who had been through it before, and three

“students,” so to speak.  The student/teacher ratio was thus three-to-two.  The weekend can only be described as intense.

Fast forward to Sunday evening:  My writing assignment, being a widower (which was the issue I was there to resolve), was to write a letter to my deceased wife.  We had been instructed by lecture and example to let it all out.  I wandered around the facility, looking for a place to be alone, but all the usual places were taken.  I ended up in the cafeteria/meeting room, a bit larger than this sanctuary, sat down at one of the tables and began to write in a composition book.  I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote some more.  I have no idea how long it took.  I wrote until I was done.

Only later did I realize that the counselors saw what I was doing, blocked the doorway with their bodies, and made people wait until I finished.  It was obvious when I was done, because I snapped the pencil in two and dissolved in tears.

There was one remaining activity.  The letter had to be read aloud, someplace meaningful.  Sally, Tracy, and I had a special place we called the picnic rock.  Actually a huge boulder, it was flat on top, from where a person could see clear across the Rio Grande Valley to Santa Fe, thirty miles or so to the east.  I went there and sat on the picnic rock, under a ponderosa pine tree.  The air was still.  Not a pine needle moved in all the trees around me.  As I began to read aloud, spirits came and read over my shoulder.  I could not see them with my eyes, but they were just as tangible as this building.  A gentle breeze rustled the pine needles of only the tree I sat under.  As impossible as it sounds, meteorologically, the pine trees in a circle, twenty feet away, were motionless.  The letter was of understanding and forgiveness.  By virtue of a huge amount of work, I had come to see and understand why Sally did what she did and also my part in the whole affair.

I finished the letter.  Once again, there was silence, and everything became absolutely

still.

And then I was free.

Before the Source I believe in, call it Big Love if you like, and before all of you as witnesses, I declare, by my life and my love of it:  The Spirit World is real.

Amen.  Namaste.  Shalom.  And blessed be.

—————  3381 words – 25 minutes  —————

 

Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.