Sermon as Story

I've been attending a wonderful storytelling class offered at Unity Church. Last week, Loren Niemi spent time with us on ghost stories and other stories of grief and loss. In the craft of telling, he was masterful in the use of long pauses between parts of the story. These I began to see as white space, which is the essence of good visual design of printed materials. This is just one lesson I learned from this series of gifted teachers and tellers.

Loren described how, in telling his stories, he longs to put his audience into a sort of trance in preparation. I said, perhaps a little flippantly, "that's called worship", and he agreed. While I hesitate to use the word 'trance', which has connotations of hypnotism or suspension of belief in our culture, the idea of being in an enhanced state of readiness, in a contemplative or meditative state does make sense to me. Good liturgy creates this enhanced state. This just puts more weight on the sermon to deliver an authentic and worthwhile message, one that begins to address people's needs for healing and wholeness. In this awareness, I am humbled by the possibility that the pulpit offers, and I become more respectful of those who listen to my words and engage in conversation with me.

A Weekend of Music

This weekend has brought the confluence of two major musical events in at Unity Church, offering an overwhelming amount of energy and activity.

The Arthur Foote Music Festival has been in planning for some time, and it came to wonderful fruition on Sunday, with both choirs, percussion, and strings, leading to powerful performances of Eric Whitacre's "Cloudburst" and Ben Allaway's "From This House To The World".

Through the efforts of Unity Church member Rick Heydinger, the Shades of Praise gospel choir was flown to St. Paul for a weekend of performances at various local churches.
The choir was fabulous and energized, and had even us arrhythmic and reserved types up moving and clapping. We hope these event will lead us into partnership with both historically black and white churches to work on common social concerns, to 'build the Beloved Community', to use M. L. King Jr's. language.

While one could play or listen to music in isolation as part of a personal spiritual practice, making and enjoying music together as part of a religious community has a tremendous power that goes far beyond the personal. We need to remember the importance of music in our various religious communities.

Backups

A friend of mine at school wrote a plaintive note to the school list asking for photos of her time at school, as her computer disk had crashed and she lost all her photos. When we were in New Orleans, we talked with Matt, the homeowner whose house we helped repair, and he noted one of his most painful losses was all his photes, which he had backed up to CD, but not stored offsite. I worry about my photos. And then I worry more about all the documents I create in ministry: sermons, articles, lesson plans, notes and other stuff I want to hang on to.

I'm beginning to make my acquaintance with Jungledisk, a front-end program for backing up to Amazon S3. S3, or Simple Storage Service, is a web-based data storage service, redundant, secure, industrial strength, but not designed for the ordinary user. Jungledisk acts like a disk drive that pushes your data to S3. You can copy things to and from this disk drive. You can also set it to back up your data periodically; I have it back up every four hours, and keep old copies up to 60 days. The service is relatively cheap: roughly $0.15 per gigabyte stored plus $0.10 per gigabyte transferred in; my backups for my home and work machines are costing me about $2 per month. Jungledisk is a $20 shareware app that you can try for free.

I'm not sure this is the ultimate solution. Jungledisk is a little crufty on the user interface. But I do know I am more comfortable knowing my stuff is 'out there', backed up remotely as well as locally.

Ceili Gets Nervous

Our dog Ceili has just watched Liz pack a bag for a weekend trip. This always upsets her. She sometimes is relieved to see her own bed and bowl as part of the luggage, but even then, she's never sure she is included until she is invited into the car.

Liz is visiting her friend Ruth, who is working on a program called Singing Meditation. This is a small group spiritual practice consisting of cycles of singing interspersed with times of silent meditation. Liz will help Ruth with a retreat this weekend, at St. Bede Monastery, but Liz's primary activity is working with Ruth on a book about this practice. Liz's website is here.

Thoughts on Grieving

I've been the officiant for a couple of memorial services recently. To prepare, I speak with the family, and write an eulogy, prayers and other words, and help them choose readings or hymns if they wish. I'm finding this work is emotionally challenging on many levels. Certainly, I'm helping people who are in various states of grief. Sometimes I connect and offer help, and sometimes I fear I'm of little help.

I also find myself triggered, and my own grief is stirred up. We usually include a brief 'Words on Grief', and in this, we remind people that every loss brings back every previous grief and loss they've suffered. I'm finding that this applies to me, too. One of the recent services was for a woman who was a nurse in the War, and this brings back thoughts of my mother. I can't normally share this with the grieving people, so I carry it elsewhere. But it is there, and in a peculiar way, I appreciate that this comes up. It is a gift that comes with serving people who suffer a loss, that I can connect with that suffering through my own past losses.

Photo by Milad Gheisari [Sepulture {regret}]

Return from NOLA

For me, the New Orleans pilgrimage offered a chance for self reflection - it uncovered some weaknesses, some aspects of myself that I want to change, but it also brought an upwelling of gratitude. I am reminded that I am fortunate, and that yes, I work hard, but others work hard too, and they face larger challenges. We are grateful to be of service to them. Here are some pictures of us at work.

Where we Worked

The house we repaired was a "double shotgun", a duplex about 26 feet wide by 70 feet long. The rooms are connected together without hallways, with the living room followed by the parlor, a bedroom, bath, bedroom, and finally a kitchen. It didn't make any sense to me why such a layout was used, since there is no privacy. Then we had a day of 80 degree weather, with a light breeze. With the front an back door open, every room was pleasant. There are few closets in this house. We were told that closets used to be taxed as rooms, so people didn't build them.



Matt and his wife Jewel own both sides of this house. Before Katrina, these two lived on one side, and his nearly grown children live in the other. The family cooked and ate on his side. Sounds like a great arrangement, and they look forward to returning to it. He made sure to rebuild both sides the same, so when his children move out, he can rent one side. He hopes to leave each child half the house, if they want it, when he and his wife are gone.



This family has put up with many trials after Katrina. They are dispersed with extended family throughout the region. Matt's job was displaced to Baton Rouge, and he hopes to transfer back to New Orleans. Their house and storage locker have been broken into several times, their belongings taken, even the copper water pipe they had installed under the house was stolen. I am amazed at the perseverance of Matt and Jewel. They are only two of the many strong, enduring, and tenacious people that make up New Orleans; people that are what I came to love most about this city.



Photo: Lunch break on the porch of Matt's house.

Staying Behind

Today is the first day I'll go to our work site, the home belonging to a man named Matt in the lower ninth ward. We are doing significant finish work with the hope that he can move into it in the next week.
First UU Church of New Orleans, where we have been staying, has asked us to leave four or five people behind each day to work on projects around the church. Some of us groused about this request. I have chosen to stay behind the last two days. I have found myself in the role of informal crew chief, since our real construction talent is out on the work site. We've installed some drywall and replaced a bathroom sink.
In its own way it has been satisfying work. I see all these things as interconnected, and the work on this church is as needed as the work on the house of a Katrina survivor. This church has made supporting pilgrims like us a part of their mission, and I am glad to support that mission, and through that I indirectly support the work of rebuilding community.

Photo: Several of us working with Matt on exterior siding.

NOLA - First Impressions

Liz and I are part of a group of fifteen Unity Church members here in New Orleans for a week of pilgrimage. This is a pilgrimage, more than a service project, because while we are doing rebuilding work, we are also invited to witness, to reflect, and to share our experiences with this devastation and suffering.

Our first day involved a driving tour through much of the city, exposing us to a small part of the devastation. Even two and a half years later, vast areas of rawness and destruction remains, and immense numbers of people are affected. This immensity is the hardest thing for me to grasp. We are also reminded how close to the edge of disaster we all are. It is only a matter of degree. Even though we may think we have financial resources, family connections, government support, and we have followed the scout motto, 'be prepared', the bottom may drop out at any time. This is a humbling realization for me, and it reminds me to be grateful for all the ordinary times, as well as the good times. I am reminded of this especially in this town that very dearly wants to "Let the good times roll!"

Photo: Ninth ward near levee break; only a few houses remain.

Sermon: I Tripped and Fell

This sermon is part of a Lenten series called "Stations of the Breath", based on the Dylan Thomas poem, A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London. This was intended to explore our reluctance to admit failure, process the aftermath, and receive help. I give great credit to Mary, my worship associate for helping to identify and frame this issue, and for finding powerful and focusing readings.


Almost two decades ago, Liz and I were vacationing with my siblings and their partners, sailing and scuba diving in the British Virgin Islands. We decided to dive a shipwreck off one of the islands, and were assured by our local captain that he was familiar with the dive spots. Our captain wasn’t a diver, however, so he anchored the boat in a spot with fairly strong current, some distance away from the wreck. We began to descend, and found ourselves beginning to drift away from the wreck.

My siblings, all strong and experienced divers, were able to overcome the current and swim toward the wreck, but Liz and I couldn’t. As all good dive buddies should do, we communicated with hand signals, and we decided to surface.

Now we found ourselves in even stronger current, far from our boat, and drifting at an alarming rate toward the open sea. We finally waved down another boat that happened to be passing by, and after we convinced them that we weren’t waving just to say Hi, they gave us a lift, or rather a tow, back to our own boat. Only then was I able to track the panic that had been coursing through me; fortunately, Liz’s inexperience as a diver kept her from being too upset, either with the situation, with me, or with the captain of our boat.

This story is only one example of many personal experiences I can bring to mind of living through a close call, a failure, a disappointment. I am sure, that most of you could also recall such times too, without much effort. A time when we fell down, hard.

Sometimes our plans are foiled, as in our scuba experience. Sometimes, we get surprised by an unexpected turn of events, a job loss, a medical crisis, a betrayal. Sometimes we find the going much harder and slower than we expected. We think we are making good progress toward a destination when we begin to realize, if our eyes are open, that the destination is wrong for us. Sometimes we simply find ourselves adrift, and unable to swim against the current that is carrying us away.

I think the first step in dealing with a fall is admitting that we have fallen. This is sometimes harder for men than women. I’m sure that the underwater communications between myself and Liz that day went something like this: [dive hands signals] (ok?) (somethings wrong) (ok?) (follow me) (not ok) (go down) (not ok) (go up) (ok?) (ok).

I think back to when I was laid off from a job. I had ignored all the warning signs, the souring economy in high tech, previous layoffs at the company, the marginalization of my job role. Yet I was still surprised to be given the pink slip. I’ve spoken with other men – after all, I was with many of you men this weekend at the Unity Men’s Retreat – and know that this pattern common: we ignore the danger signs, denying even the possibility of a fall.

And the reality is that we take many falls in our lives. I think of traditional Catholic devotional, the Stations of the Cross, which forms a mini-pilgrimage reenacting Jesus condemnation and death. I think it is significant that in three of the fourteen stations involve non-Biblical references to Jesus tripping and falling. Those who practice use the Stations of the Cross are invited to contemplate their own failures and shortcomings. In this pilgrimage they confront their own falls, their own hurting and suffering.

Once we understand we are hurting – assuming we do get to that point – who do we turn to for help? How do we ask? Are we clear, or do we expect people to intuit our situation? Like the boaters who thought we were just waving to say hello, our potential helpers may simply not recognize our need for help.

But even when people can see that we need help, we sometimes refuse to accept it. We are wary of those bearing help, because all too often they show up with a mouthful of advice or, worse, a face frozen in judgment.

Sometimes we fear that if we ask for help, some form of reciprocation will be expected, and we don’t want to be held accountable for that. After all, in our society, help in many forms can be purchased, whether healthcare or therapy or even spiritual direction, so it might feel easier to pay a professional than to make a personal connection – the kind that might come if we accept an offer of help from someone in a caring community like this one.

There is a deeper reason we fail to seek or accept help. To admit we need help is to give up power, to give up our independence. I know this is true for me. Finding myself down and grappling with the question of whether to seek help or go it alone, has been a recurring struggle for me, returning at different points in my life. Yet when I do seek help, from friends, or from my minister, or from a professional, I’ve always felt a sense of joy and relief as we resolve the issue at hand. The landscape of despair, ashen grey, filled with vaguely recognizable contorted forms, gradually opens into green, moist fecundity of new possibility and new life.

But my reluctance to be vulnerable runs deep. Each time I find myself crossing again into the land of desolation, I tell myself, this time I can do it alone. There is pride involved in this. It’s hard for me to ask for help. People around me – my wife, friends, teachers – find themselves walled off by a cordial but stubborn self assurance. I’ve been told it is called, “Minnesota Nice” here, but I can tell you, it is practiced in many other states, and I learned it well, growing up in Houston, Texas

Poet John Tagliabue [in The Bare Arms of Trees] reminds us

I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear
And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these branches
And the cold space between.
I think of the vastness and courage between this step and that step
Of the yearning and fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire held apart.

And each time I try to go it alone, in lean coldness and fear, with terrible desire held apart, I learn again that I cannot. At best, my go it alone solution is a shadow of what might have been had others been involved. We all need the resources of the spirit, and those resources of the spirit are manifested in the help of other people. We need the courage to move from this step to that step, to meet, to accept, to surrender to the possibility of help.

If we can get past fear, if we can find the courage to ask for help, it can come in many forms. I want to speak of the most basic, and yet the most difficult, which is simple human presence.

When Quaker teacher and author Parker Palmer was in one of his times of depression, – we heard about another one last week, and notice how openly this very wise teacher instructs us about the many lessons he has learned from falling, – his friend Bill visited with him. Bill found the one body part of Palmer that still had feeling, his feet. Bill connected to Palmer by rubbing his feet, and observing Palmer’s response. Palmer notes [in Let Your Life Speak], “Bill rarely spoke a word. When he did, he never gave advice, but simply mirrored my condition. He would say, “I can sense your struggle today”, or, “It feels like you are getting stronger.” For Palmer, these words “reassured me that I could still be seen by someone – life-giving knowledge in the midst of an experience that makes one feel annihilated and invisible”.

Why the simple presence of another human being is so helpful is not fully understood by science. One possibility is the ‘simulation theory of empathy’. In this theory, when one observes someone else’s behavior, certain systems of neurons in the brain are activated. These may be the system of ‘mirror neurons’ that have been identified initially in monkeys; these same neurons are active either when a task is either performed or observed in others.

So empathy works something like this. Suppose you are present with someone. You observe them carefully, or listen to their story attentively. In the act of observing or listening to their experience, your mirror neurons fire, and you have some emotional sensation that is similar to their experience. The emotions roil up in you, and the person you are with observes them. Now their mirror neurons fire, responding to the fact that you have experienced vicariously their situation, and the loop is closed. In a spiritual sense, we are bound more tightly to their experience, and our connection with them enables them to hold on to the emotion, really experience it, until they are able to transform it.

Note that the connection is subtle and purely emotional. If instead, we give advice to our hurting friend, rather than just allowing the emotions, we move to the mode of rational thought, and the connection is broken. If we make judgments, even unconsciously, about their situation, these get translated into emotional expression that moves both people away from the experience, and the connection does not close.

But we can listen empathetically, as Jim Moore suggests [in To a Young Woman Whose Hurt Has Never Stopped],

But what did I hear as you spoke?
I heard your pale forehead.
I heard the trembling in your fingers.
I heard the silence of the birds
all around us, as if they knew
someone was speaking, who must be heard.

Can we learn how to do this kind of empathetic relating? I’m convinced it is more a matter of unlearning what we have been taught all too well. We need to be able to put aside all the judgment and technique and rationality. I have no science to back this up, but we can see it anytime we play with a baby or interact with a small child. Those who do not yet have anything to unlearn offer us a marvelous transparency into the empathetic connection.

In the context of the spiritual work we do in this community, our Pastoral Care Associates practice this sort of empathetic relating. They learn to empty out judgment and technique, and practice just being with the people they visit. I commend this to you as a beautiful and satisfying way to minister to people in this community.

Narsinha Mehta, a fifteenth century Hindu mystic, summarized this empathetic work:

They are the real lovers of God who feel others’ sorrow as their own.
When they perform selfless service, they are humble servants of the One.
Respecting all, despising none, they are pure in thought, word, and deed.

So to open to others requires certain courage. We first have to have the courage to admit that we have fallen, that we are finite and imperfect and not at all who we thought we were. Then we must have the courage to risk the response of others, which in itself may be imperfect and honestly not always helpful. But when we are able to receive help with gratitude, we are also giving: we are creating the possibility that more of us can be interconnected in a network of mutual support and caring.

Finally, with what spiritual companionship we have, we must have the courage to enter the wilderness, to travel step by step through the inky gloom, to allow the emotions connected with the fall – be they fear, despair, or grief – to make themselves known and receive our full attention, to begin a transformative process that leads to new life and possibility.

The danger is that instead of traveling through this wilderness, we too often try to skirt it or sneak around it. The temptation is to do what recovery counselor Charles Whitfield calls 'spiritual bypass'. Bypass occurs when we use religious belief or spiritual practice as a distraction or avoidance from facing the pain that has come because we have taken a fall.

Ram Dass tells the story of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Marpa, in his book, “How Can I Help?"

One day, Marpa's eldest son was killed. Off by himself, alone with his grief, Marpa wept. One of his students approached him and said, "I don't understand. You teach that all this is illusion, created by the clinging and desire and resistance. Yet here you are weeping. If all this is illusion, why do you grieve so deeply?"

Marpa replied "Yes, everything here is an illusion. And the death of a child is the greatest of these illusions."

Even after learning of the death of his son, Marpa concludes that even with his beliefs intact, grief still exists. It is necessary. In this knowledge he allows himself to grieve.

If we choose to travel through rather than over, to engage rather than avoid what psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan calls the 'dark emotions', we invite an emotional flow, a kind of alchemy that transforms these emotions into other spiritual strengths. Greenspan tells us, “I've found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair renews and deepens our faith.”

She goes on to say: “When we really get it that everyone alive experiences sorrow, fear, and despair, when we can tolerate these dark emotions in ourselves and others, [then] they transmute into gratitude for life. They remind us of the exquisite fragility of life and our need to protect it. And they open us to a meaning system in which empathy and compassion are elevated to their true importance for ourselves and the world” [Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair]

Back on the boat, all those years ago, shed of our dive gear, and with the sun on our faces and the sea breeze in our hair, Liz and I were acutely aware of the fragility of life. We had also learned yet another lesson about our imperfections. About our weakness and inexperience, about my family’s tendency toward independence over interdependence, Over time, and by talking with each other and telling the story to friends, we were able to tell the story in a new light. What started as a situation that engendered fear and embarrassment and narrowly missed tragedy transformed into an adventure, an experience remembered with at least some measure of joy and with a great deal of gratitude. My hope for us today is that we open ourselves to the possibilities that come when we are able to transform the experiences of our tumbles and falls into spiritual strength.

Photo by SteelCityHobbies

Going with the Flow

I've been slow at posting because I've been so busy working on the Men's Retreat, among other things. The retreat was this last Friday and Saturday. Sunday, I preached at Unity Church. Normally, I take some time in advance to prepare for the service, but this service was a bit compressed. I did write the sermon early in the week, but was editing it Sunday morning. So that, plus my tiredness from the retreat gave these services a more improvisational sense. I made a lot of little gaffs, and tried to correct them as best I could.

• I left the wireless microphone on while I was getting coffee and conversing with a congregant serving coffee. The early arrivals hear all this in the sanctuary.
• I forgot to light the chalice in the first service, and had to be reminded by the worship associate.
• I said, 'Wellspring Wednesday Worship Circus' instead of 'Worship Service' (and admitted that it sometimes is!)
• I completely forgot what the ritual words are for singing the children out at the second service, so I just pulled some words out of the air.
• I grabbed too many offering baskets for the late service, so again ad-libbing the ritual words, I held onto two baskets.
• My worship associate and I have to deal with where to stand for singing and how to recess at the late service, because the stage for the children's musical has been erected. We do this with hand signals and by watching each other closely.

In earlier days of my learning, I'd have really beat myself up for any of this. Now I just chuckle. There is joy in this, even in the gaffs.

Interplay Visits Unity Church

On Sunday I received word that the recently restarted St. Paul Interplay group had been flooded out of its regular meeting place at the Friends Meeting House and needed a place to meet on Thursday. I arranged for them to use space at Unity Church, and played with them on Thursday.

What fun to connect with this new playgroup! We had almost a dozen people there, and moved up into the Ames Chapel to have enough space to move and because the chapel has a live, bouncy floor. Everyone enjoyed the ambiance of that space, with its stained glass windows, clear light, and massive architecture.

I was especially pleased that one of my Interplayer friends from Oakland was in town, and came to play with us. I hope she enjoyed some of the creative forms of the Twin Cities group, like the 'directed duet' form, in which two persons are each directed in their movement by two other persons. Directing consists of simple instructions like 'swing', 'be joyful', 'you are confused', or 'roll around'. The mixture of leading and following and interacting and aloneness that emerges from this form can be especially rich.

After that, my friend contributed joyful music to the group. She introduced a wonderful toning and singing form, having us lie on the floor with our heads touching, and then singing a harmonious song together. Having her with us reminds me of the interconnectedness of this small, but vibrant community of movers and singers and improvisers.

Intern Gathering at Starr King

I just returned from the gathering of interns and their supervisors at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley. The Bay Area locals were complaining about the cold weather we brought with us, and I quietly enjoyed the relative warmth. Our hotel was being remodeled and didn't have heat, but that wasn't a problem for me!

The two days of the gathering were a microcosm of Starr King pedagogy, lots of deep discussion and sharing, using techniques like the 'fishbowl' to encourage more open sharing than might otherwise occur. I relished watching my friends emerging as ministers, I suffered in solidarity as struggles were brought into the group. We had tense times too, as we considered what it means to be a white ally (both individually and as a congregation) to people and communities of color. In that process, I realized that I still have far to go in the work of anti-racism and anti-oppression.

More Blogging at 'Unity Men'

I'm working with Justin on the Unity Men's Retreat, on February 22 - 23, and decided to start another blog, Unity Men (unitymen.blogspot.com), to more effectively provide information on this event and other men's programming. Since the Unity website will likely be in transition and redesign during the time up to the retreat, we wanted more access and control of the information we put on the web. It's another experiment.

In a discussion with the Elders group yesterday, we touched on blogging. We were talking about journaling, and I mentioned that I blog. While none of this group blog, they were all very aware of the dangers of putting information out into cyberspace that one would later regret. I'm glad they have that awareness; I know that elders are often targeted for fraud, and much of that these days is computer related. Yet I hope some of the elders may find these tools useful as a way to stay connected with their families and perhaps leave a somewhat more accessible and permanent written legacy than cards and letters might represent.

Photo from an earlier Unity Church Men's retreat.

Slaughter of the Innocents - A Sermon

A tradition at Unity Church is to have one of the ministerial interns speak on the Sunday after Christmas on Matthew 2:13-23, "The Slaughter of the Innocents." I know this has been done for at least five years. This is my offering. Two readings in addition to Matthew were "After the Titanic" by Derek Mahon, and "Questionnaire" by Wendell Berry. Thanks to Sharon, my worship associate, for these readings, which guided the direction of this sermon.


Last week, I was talking with Kerri Meyer, our Director of Religious Education about teaching in the coming months, and we discussed Unitarian Universalist history, which is taught to the early grade levels. She told me that we no longer teach about some of the martyrs in our tradition, people like John Huss or Micheal Servetus, who were both burned at the stake. It’s not that the young children are terrified of such stories; rather, they’re overly fascinated. They are transfixed by the idea of martyrdom by burning, and they keep asking questions, and the class just stops.

We too are both fascinated by, and recoil from, such sensational stories, and today’s story, the Slaughter of the Innocents, is no exception. Different faith traditions struggle with how to deal with Biblical texts like this one, and respond in different ways. When they read today’s selection from Matthew in church, the Roman Catholics skip carefully over the two verses that describe the actual killing of the infant children. Most Lutheran and many other Protestant churches consider the whole story, but only once every three years. But this is Unity Church, where we boldly examine this story every year.

The book of Matthew is the only Biblical text that describes the Slaughter of the Innocents. Matthew tells the meat of the story in just two short verses: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, according to the time that he learned from the wise men.”

Like many Biblical stories, this one remains meaningful today because its message is ambiguous; it doesn’t offer easy answers or an obvious lesson. We can go in many directions trying to find meaning in this story.

One direction is to approach this story technically. We can use Biblical criticism to try to learn more about its historical accuracy, and why it is presented the way it is. Since Matthew is the only Biblical or extra-Biblical source to mention the Slaughter of the Innocents, most scholars doubt the historical accuracy of the story. But even if it is not actually true, we can read the story on a different level. To paraphrase Ruth MacKenzie, ‘this story is not fact, but it is also not fiction”. Let’s look deeper: Why is this story here and what purpose did it serve?

The book of Matthew was almost certainly not written by my namesake, that disciple of Jesus named Matthew. This book was written at least a half-century after Jesus’ death, assembled from at least two sources, and so wouldn’t be admissible as an eyewitness account. This book was written during a time when the early Christians were beginning to establish a separate identity from the Jews. The author of Matthew tried to establish that Jesus was the Messiah of Jewish prophecy, and therefore worthy of serious attention.

To show Jesus as fulfilling Hebrew prophecy, the author of Matthew uses a number of so-called “formula quotations”. These are the lines that say something like, “this was to fulfill what was spoken by Lord through the prophet”. Even in our reading today, there are three examples of such formula quotations in just ten short verses.

The Slaughter of the Innocents story allows Jesus to fulfill prophecy: to be born in Bethlehem, steal away and come out of Egypt, and land in Nazareth, where he grows up. All of these details fit various prophecies. So some Bible scholars look as the Slaughter of the Innocents as merely a plot device to move the larger story of Jesus along in a particular way. That’s kind of interesting, but also unsatisfying.


Another way to approach the story is to look for its theological message. The story compels us to consider the meaning of a God that acts in the world, who allows some innocent people to die and saves others. This is the question of ‘theodicy’, in the lingo, and it is a difficult question. How can an all-knowing, all-powerful, completely good God allow suffering and evil to exist?
During my training I worked as a chaplain in a hospital. Patients would occasionally ask me the question: “Why did God let this happen to me?” I could only respond to their questions with other questions that helped them to make sense of it all for themselves, for I did not have any answers.

Some found an answer in their faith. Surely their suffering is all part of God’s master plan, which will be revealed to them in the great by-and-by. For others, such a sense of God’s plan is not enough.

I recall a friend in seminary, a man with conservative politics and a Southern Baptist preacher’s understanding of the Bible. This man had transferred to our liberal seminary from the big fundamentalist seminary in town. When I asked him why he transferred, he told me the story of his son who died of cancer. He had asked friends at the conservative seminary why this happened, and the answer they told him was: “Romans”. I said, “Romans?” He said, “yes, Romans 8:28", ‘all things work together for good, to them that love God, that are called according to his purpose’. When he could not reconcile his son’s suffering and dying to some divine plan, he found his way to liberal Christianity.


A third way of approaching a story like the Slaughter of the Innocents is to expand the story. As religious liberals, we can do that! For example, let’s imagine what would happen if Jesus learned of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Maybe, he was asking his family about his birth, as we reenacted in our Children’s Candlelight Service last week, and someone let the story slip. Perhaps Jesus asked Joseph, “Why didn’t we return to Bethlehem?” and Joseph, caught off guard, said something like, “Well, son, that wouldn’t have been a good idea because you wouldn’t have any playmates.” Jesus next question would certainly begin with the word, “Why?” and Joseph would want to say, “Lets change the subject.” Imagine for a moment, what first encountering that bit of information would have been like.

Several writers have considered this possibility. Albert Camus, in ‘The Fall’ suggests that such knowledge might have led Jesus to self-destructive behavior, to acts that led to his crucifixion. That may be taking this too far, in my mind, but the question remains: How does one face the knowledge that they have survived and others did not?

This is often described as Survivor Guilt. This was first noticed in Holocaust survivors, but is encountered with war veterans and survivors of diseases like cancer or AIDS. Today Survivor Guilt is considered a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With Survivor Guilt, the gratitude for being alive is replaced by guilt over those who did not survive, whether or not one’s actions had any effect on their survival.

People respond to this in many ways. I think of my Dad, a World War II veteran, a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge and other European and Pacific actions. Like most veterans of World War II, he seldom talks about his experiences. Only rarely, at special times, has he felt comfortable sharing the more horrific aspects of his wartime experience. Veterans of more recent wars may have had greater access to treatment and come home to a civilian community that didn’t demand silence, but I understand their struggles are similar. They ask: Why am I here, while my buddy who was sitting next to me, is not? Gratitude and guilt coexist in a complex mixture.

Survivor Guilt becomes even more complicated when issues of moral culpability are involved. Our second reading today, After the Titanic, considered the life of J. Bruce Ismay, the director of the White Star line, the company that owned the Titanic. Ismay was on the boat for its maiden voyage, and as it was sinking, he saw a partially filled lifeboat and jumped in. So he got away rather than going down with the ship. He was blamed for the disaster and branded a coward by the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst. The poem portrays a man broken by guilt, going into deeper isolation, seeking the solace of sleep and chemicals. His guilt leads to an icy depression, from which emerges only this plea: “include me in your lamentations”.


There is a larger question here. Are we not all survivors, by virtue of still being alive? Do we not all carry some compassion, perhaps even guilt, for those who do not survive? This is the hard question. If we are not asking it at least occasionally, we are not awake.

Consider the environment. Consider the growing evidence of global warming. We all contribute to global warming by virtue of our production of carbon dioxide, that harmless gas that we exhale in every breath. We all produce too much CO2 in the normal everyday actions of heating our houses, driving our cars or riding the bus, or sitting here under these lights today. We contribute to a climate change that is resulting in increased flooding and death in some regions; to increased drought, famine and war in others; and to environmental degradation and possible mass extinctions. This suffering, these deaths are not easy to face. I know we can all think of many other examples in which our actions contribute, through indirect connections, to the suffering of others in the world. I won’t make you feel worse by listing them here.

We must confront the fact that the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part, our cherished seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, has a dark side. We cannot escape this. If there is evil, or suffering, however we define it, in the world, it is not confined cleanly to particular locales or particular individuals. We are all connected, in good and in evil. How we respond to this awareness is a measure of our lives.

How do we respond? Some react by attempting to artificially divide the world and its people into separate spheres. Those who respond this way often define their own acts as ‘good’, and define the various acts of others as ‘evil’. There are many ways to draw this line. One can simply define some higher principle, and ignore those suffering who somehow fall outside that principle. Many who support a libertarian form of the free market economy do this. Those who suffer because the economy marginalizes them are blamed for not somehow ‘getting it together’ as individuals. By blaming individuals, there is no need to confront the systemic complications of family violence, racial oppression, or environmental degradation those individuals face. In this way we build “strange and foolish … walls of separation that divide us”, to use A. Powell Davies’ words.

This compartmentalization and separation allows some of us avoid awakening to the reality of such suffering at all. We stay anesthetized, and go about our lives walled off from the reality of such suffering.

Some of us do open ourselves enough to acknowledge suffering, but we do so by maintaining a safe distance, by trying to stay at 10,000 feet high and avoiding the view on the ground. Wendell Berry brings us down to earth with this warning:

State briefly the ideas, ideals or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Others of us seek absolution by taking minor steps that appear to address the suffering, but actually keep us separate from those who suffer. This is too often the liberal response. Friends at another UU church tell me they are having a drawn out conflict over how the church shall decide to pass resolutions about social justice issues. I’m proud to see that Unity Church acts, not by issuing statements, but by actually doing the hard work of social justice through its many associations with organizations like Amicus, the Center for Victims of Torture, the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition for Affordable Housing, and others. Actions like passing resolutions allow us to feel good for a little while – and then we can go back to sleep.

So, how do we stay awake? How can we respond fully to this reality that we survive and others die? We must work to be both accepting and accountable. We must accept that our influence is limited, but at the same time it is all that we have. To be accountable, we must do what we can to make change and reduce suffering in the world.

How do we keep from becoming paralyzed by the horror and sadness of suffering in the world? We must remember that we are not alone in this. We can build caring connections with others. We can share the reality that we are all survivors, in one way or another. To the degree that we transform our guilt into compassionate action, we begin to awaken, to atone, and to become at-one with the possibilities of hope and redemption that exist in the world.

Finally, let us return to J. Bruce Ismay, the man who escaped the Titanic. His real story is more interesting and hopeful than this morning’s poem would have us believe. Scapegoated in America, removed from leadership of the White Star line, Ismay returned to England, where he served on the board of a shipping insurance company. This company paid out many large claims to families who lost people in the Titanic disaster. Thus, at nearly every company board meeting over the next twenty-five years, Ismay re-lived both the disaster and his role in it. Through his work, he confronted his accountability as a survivor.

Let us also hold ourselves accountable. Let us act in the world with a greater awareness of the suffering of others. Let us love one another a little more, knowing our imperfections. Let us love one another a little more, knowing that we are all interconnected in good and evil. In the midst of a complex world that we cannot fully comprehend, let us endeavor, however difficult it may be, to remain fully awake.

I Survived Christmas Eve

Unity Church offers six services on Xmas Eve. I helped lead three, and attended two others. These services have evolved to fit the congregation, and it was a learning experience for me to understand the relation of tradition and change in these services. For example, the Christmas Pageant has been changed very little since it was written in the 1920's by Frederick May Eliot, a beloved minister who went on to lead the Unitarian denomination out of a time of crisis. Even many of the costumes survive from the early 1960's. The two pageants were heavily attended by members of the community and friends of the many children involved. It's little wonder that many of visitors who have only attended the pageant might have a confused idea of what Unity Church is about.
Rob told me that the 10 PM candlelighting service grew to its present size from just 25 people attending 25 years ago. The minister at the time started that service as a way to offer something besides the pageant. We still use an order of service based on that minister's format. Rob and Janne have created a Christmas Communion service at 11:30 PM. I will not be surprised if it, too, becomes a tradition and one of their legacies at Unity Church. For someone from novelty-loving churches in the West, all of this tradition is a new thing to me.
Photo by Duane Romanell

Advent

Last night at the board meeting, a focusing question was, "Should UUs celebrate Christmas?", and everyone said "yes". I think a more interesting question would be, "Should UUs celebrate Advent?"

I had not even heard of Advent in UU circles until a couple of years ago, when an interim minister brought it to my UU congregation. I vaguely remembered Advent from my Methodist past, but that was the simple ritual of a child, focusing on lighting the candles and the wreath.

I'm finding I love the focus on quiet, on darkness, on expectation that Advent brings. This attention is a wonderful counterbalance to the commercial frenzy, the network of obligation that Christmas has become for many of us. Advent allows some of us to acknowledge that this time of year is an ambivalent time, and create space in the season to reflect on losses, pain and difficulties we've had. Some would do this with the rituals of Blue Christmas, but I think Advent has room to explore these in its ambivalence, and yet to also hold up hope for something new.

Photo by Per Ola Wiberg

Before the MFC

Last week, I appeared before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. This meeting is an important step in the path to UU ministry. It has been compared to a thesis defense, so now I know how hard those defenses must be! I was quite nervous going into this process, even though I prepared carefully, and employed various practices to calm down. When I waited on the platform waiting for the train to go into San Francisco for the meeting, I told myself, "Notice this anxiety. You will never feel this particular anxiety again."

I had a grueling hour with the 9 person committee. This started with me giving a sermon to an intentionally stone-faced audience, which was not easy for me, who craves connection with the listeners. This was followed by detailed and probing questions. Then the wait in another room while the decision about my future in ministry is made. Fortunately I waited in the company of a dear friend in ministry, who served as chaplain for the morning for us candidates.

I received a '2' in the parlance of the committee, which clears me for preliminary fellowship (i.e. I can look for a job), provided I work on certain aspects of my development that they had concerns with. I am quite happy with this grade-B result. I am able to move forward in my career, and at the same time, I received some valuable ego decompression. After all this, it was so good to connect with a handful of school buddies for pizza, beer and celebration.

Photo by Andrea Dell'Amico

Turning Comments On

A friend noted that she found my blog, and wanted to leave a comment for me, but I had comments turned off. I'm going to turn them on. But based on a cautionary note on the Blogger Help Group, I am turning comment 'word verification' (Blogger's captcha system, see illustration). Let the battle against comment spam begin!

Joy in Integrity - A Sermon at Unity Church

This is the first sermon I presented at Unity Church, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 25. This is a traditional sermon date for interns. The topic reflects a larger sermon series on Global Integrity. Neely, my Worship Associate provided two wonderful readings, "The Chance to Love Everything", by Mary Oliver, and "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front", by Wendell Berry, which I used as my texts.

Sometimes on Friday mornings I’ll bring Ceili, my little dog, to the office here at Unity Church, so she can play with Abby, Duncan Baird’s poodle. The two dogs both drop down on their front haunches in that classic ‘let’s play’ stance, and then they tear off in a game of chase around the Center Room and up and down the halls. Now when dogs play chase, the fun is in the chase. They switch roles back and forth, chasing and being chased. The game is more important than winning. Dogs will even handicap themselves, slowing down when they are playing with an older or slower dog, so that the game remains fun.

For most of us humans, there is a deep, vicarious pleasure in watching dogs play. We tap into the simple joy of play, and remember the kind of undirected, purposeless activity that only children, and sometimes their grandparents, seem to be allowed to enjoy in our culture. This kind of play is non-competitive and spontaneous and creative, with rules made up and thrown out at will.

Play is more than mere fun. Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has found that play is essential to the development of children. He was able to show that many of the most violent criminals had early lives where parents kept them from any kind of play. This resulted in these people being unable as adults to connect meaningfully with other people, and they turn to violent behavior.

Play is essential not only to social development, but also appears to encourage cognitive development and even moral behavior. According to a recent article in Harvard Business Review, neurological research on mammals has “identified play as a primary human drive and the brain’s source of joy.”

I’d like to invite you, if you are willing, into a little time of exploration. The subject of this exploration is hands – your own hands. If you will, take a look at one of your hands. Stretch your fingers out, and notice the tendons running along the back of your hand. Turn over your hand and notice the muscles, especially as you begin to close that hand into a ball. Try opening it, and marvel at the beautiful pattern of folds and lines. Make a shape with your hand and fingers. Make any form. Your hand is so flexible. Make another shape. Don’t worry that it is the right shape. Make another shape. Rearrange things. Make another. Your hand has so much creativity in it. Make another shape. And another. Make shapes so fast that your mind cannot think ahead, cannot judge the shapes. Now make smooth and gentle shapes, slowing down. Soft and easy. Thank you.

This little exercise came from a program of improvisation and movement called Interplay. Interplay invites people to creatively explore movement and voice and story in a non-threatening way through small exercises like this one, that build up incrementally into larger creative forms.

I want you to notice for a moment what that little exploration felt like for you. What thoughts and feelings did you have? Whether you participated yourself or observed others, I’m sure some of these thoughts and feelings came up.

I’ll bet some of you may have thought: Am I going to look silly in front of friends or my family? This is awful risky!

Or you thought: can I trust this person, who has never spoken in this pulpit before today? Can I trust him to not ask me to do something embarrassing or stupid? After all, isn’t he from that flakey seminary in Berkeley?

Or you might have thought: I finally persuaded my out-of-town guests to join me at church, and this is happening? After you told them, don’t worry, this is Unity Church and we don’t do those weird things that some other Unitarian Universalist churches sometimes do?

So not only was this little exercise about play and creativity, it was about risk and trust.

Mary Oliver, who is in a way the de-facto Unitarian Universalist poet laureate, explores this risk taking in its full ambiguity. She describes her encounter with the creature outside the tent: “some shambling tonnage [with] red eyes and broad tongue” :
Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.

So, to play, to explore, to move into the space that creativity requires, is to take risks. We have to call up a certain kind of courage. Not necessarily the courage of life or death, of firemen entering a burning building, or even the moral courage of standing with your principles against an angry crowd, but a more subtle, but no less essential, courage. Creative play calls on the courage of being in touch with your body and your self in all its wholeness, and exploring its possibilities and limits.

This is the courage that The Interplay improvisation program required of me. If you had suggested to me that before I started Interplay, I’d be dancing and storytelling, solo, before an audience of maybe a hundred eyeballs all focused on me, I would have said you were dreaming. Yet, that is what I did a few months ago, before I left California to come out here. That experience was both terrifying and intensely joyful.

It was terrifying because I was sure that I would dance badly, and I probably did. I had so many preconceived notions about how this should be done. I should be more prepared for this improv segment. I should make my stories funnier. I should make this piece shorter, or longer. A whole cloud of ‘shoulds’ often murmers in my head as I step in front of a group. When I am able to transcend these ‘shoulds’, then there is the pure joy of spontaneous creative action.

Joy, when it comes in these spontaneous ways, is a sweet surprise. But when we seek joy as a goal we can too easily get focused on things that fulfill the desires and pleasures of our senses. We have a tendency to try to fill our need for joy with external material objects and sensations.

Many of the contemplative traditions express concern about sense attachments and selfish desires, and we would do well to pay attention. An old Zen Buddhist poem warns us, “selfish attachment forgets all limits; it always leads down evil roads.” Yet, we live in a culture where amplifying these desires through marketing messages is a central part of our approach to commerce, and is becoming a central part of the liturgy of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls our Civil Religion.

As Wendell Berry tells us ,
Want more
of everything ready-made….
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

I know this well, these drawers, these cards: I used to work in product marketing. But we all know this, too. Especially at this time of year, we as ordinary consumers feel we barely stand a chance against this onslaught. Our children need body armor against the targeted messaging they receive. If I’m to believe the paper, soon we’ll all be shopping at 2 in the morning on Black Friday.

And then what of the other side –

Vocation, work worth doing, whether raising a family or a job we love, can be a source of joy. But for many of us, the joy of vocation gets blurred over time. We learn to set aside the creative and experimental pleasure that arises from following a vocation we love in favor of the linear, critical-path oriented realm of the competitive workplace. We learn to compartmentalize aspects of our lives, at a minimum to separate work from leisure. We are expected to separate what we truly love from the daily grind that is our working life.

As Wendell Berry says, we learn to:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay.
When we get focused on these, as opposed to doing what we can to make our work, our vocation, truly meaningful, we risk being ready to ‘die for profit’.

This can lead to a feeling of ennui, a sense that what we are doing has no value. When this is identified as a morale problem in the workplace, the problem is sometimes oversimplified and the solution becomes not: “Lets make work meaningful,” but: “Let’s make work more fun.”

At the last place I worked before I entered seminary, we had a well-equipped game room full of classic arcade video games. Even though I found time for an occasional game of Space Invaders or Tempest, I remained bothered by this particular juxtaposition of work and play. This may have been because I am a baby boomer, and this is a new era, but I think there is something more profound here. The video games seemed to be a distraction from what was real, they did nothing to contribute to a sense of deeper satisfaction, something that should ideally have come from the work itself.

I believe it is important for us to be aware of the distinction between the ephemeral pleasures that come from satisfying the senses, and a deeper, more integrated joy that comes from action that is aligned with what is important to us: our values and our deep intention.

And Berry reminds us:
Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
When we do that, when we tap into that intuitive sense that would lead us if only we would let it, then we can be joyful even after considering all the facts.

Several years ago, when I lived in Colorado, a good friend of mine, Dave, had talked to me for some months of his work with Network Coffee House. This coffee house was a gathering place for the homeless in Denver, and Dave encouraged me to volunteer there. I finally took the bait, mostly because I had persuaded him to take a committee position in the church and I felt I owed him one. I must admit that there also was a certain amount of ego playing into this, a sense of yes, I can prove to him I am up to this.

I agreed to work with him on a Wednesday night when he opened the coffee house. My job was simple, just serve coffee, empty ashtrays, and monitor the list of people waiting for the shower stall. Mostly I talked and listened to the men and women who came in as darkness fell. I found myself filled with amazement by the stories of some of this community. Like Harry, a former seaman, who loved to recite details of great naval battles. Or John, who had dreams of get-rich-quick schemes and tried to convince me to partner with him. Then there was Peggy a former street person, who now works as a sort of Pentecostal street minister. She showed me her Bible that she believes is the literal word of God, except for the large sections crossed out because they don’t fit her personal feminist theology.

After we closed the coffee house, I said goodnight to Dave, went to my car, and sat there and wept. Certainly, I wept in pain, and in despair. This despair is familiar to us all: the enormity of the problem of homelessness, and how we just can’t seem to solve it. And now it was personal: I knew that many of these people I had just met would sleep under bridges by the Platte River that cold night.

In such situations, I always look for glimmers of hope. St. Francis of Assisi reminds us, “where there is despair, sow hope”. But in this case it was hard for me to find hope in the current political climate where living on the street is seen as a failure of individual will, where mental illness and addiction are viewed as character flaws and not diseases. At first, I could not find the hope in this.

But as I unwrapped the layers of despair, another emotion was enclosed, and this was Joy. I had done something, however minor, to begin to bridge the gap. So even though there was great pain for me, at the heart of the pain, I was able to find the joy of connections made, of acquaintances established, which continued over the coming months. Joy after all is Hope brought into the present. Joy emerges from compassion, it emerges from doing the right thing, it emerges from connections, it emerges when we act from our human integrity. So even though I went in for the ‘wrong’ reasons, it was joyful to discover the real reasons. The joy gave me hope when hope was hard to find.

So what brings us Joy? How do we know that we are feeling true joy and not merely some sense pleasure or ego boost or satisfaction of desire? We need to be mindful when we find ourselves experiencing an emotion that seem like joy. What is the source? Does it emerge from superficial things, sense pleasures, isolating diversions, or is its source deeper, heartfelt, an awareness that we are in integrity with who we really are? Is our joy emerging out of relationships, whether playful or serious, Is it arising from creative expression Or an encounter with beauty? Is it arising because we are courageously taking the small steps to be who we are called to be?

As voices from my Methodist past would say, “our hearts are strangely warmed”. I now understand this warmth. I know this is the strange and wonderful warmth of the Joy that emerges from seeking, little by little, an authentic life, and living bit by bit, a life of integrity.

May it be so, and Amen.