Dealing with the Unexpected

Matt Alspaugh

INTRODUCTION
I remember the typical Christmas morning when I was a young boy, completely and unconsciously embedded in the American materialist culture. After days of being nearly sick at my stomach in anticipation, the morning finally arrived. After my siblings and I finally persuade our parents to get out of bed, they let us begin the festivities. Now there is a vast cultural divide in how we open presents on Christmas in America: on the one hand there are those families who go in a circle each person opening one gift at a time, on the other are those who just dive in, every person for themselves.

We are of the latter lineage, and can't fathom the one person at a time unwraps mindset. So it's all over in a flash of ripped paper and discarded ribbon. Immediately, and inevitably, disappointment sets in. I didn't get what I wanted. Damn Santa! Or I did get what I wanted, and I realize it wasn't as advertised. Smaller than I thought, or more cheaply made, or less functional than the TV commercials implied. In the coming weeks, as things broke or were lost, I began to understand that having all my desires met was impossible, even on Christmas, when dreams are supposed to come true.

BAD NEWS
Why is it that most news in the newspaper and on TV is bad news? It's true that "if it bleeds it leads", that we're more drawn to misfortune.  In a time when news organizations are pressed by free alternative sources for news, they will naturally give us what we want. In a short course on media and ministry at taught by Fred Garcia at Starr King school, I learned how news-writers look for conflict or contradiction or controversy, and even when there is none, they manufacture some.

So, in the global climate change story, for example, to talk with esteemed scientists about the climactic evidence would be boring. You need to mix in some opposition voices, however baseless or crackpot or fringy they may be. Even better if you can write about an email leak exposing a "vast warmist conspiracy" by environmentalists, a story now dubbed "Climategate" as some media pundits tried to do last month. 

I get it now. Since I gained this new understanding of the media, I've never looked at the news the same.

But we do have a sense that the bad stuff outweighs the good. Even as we review the year, and think about the people around us, the bad stuff often comes out on top. This one died, that one lost her job, that one was in the hospital, another one went to Iraq. Sure, there is the occasional wedding, or birth, or promotion, but the bad seems to prevail.

ENTROPY
Why do bad things always seem to dominate? I want to suggest an explanation from the world of science. There is this concept of entropy in physics. Entropy is a fundamental statistical quantity, every bit as foundational as temperature. Entropy describes the level of disorder in a system. If a system is highly organized, it has low entropy.

Imagine a well-kept library, with all the books organized by their call numbers. If you take a book off the shelf, there are thousands of wrong places to put it back and only one right place. That's why most large libraries have signs warning patrons: "do not re-shelve books". They actually lose books when patrons re-shelve in the wrong place. Re-shelving incorrectly increases the disorder, the entropy.

Now imagine a completely disorganized library, books all over the place. If you take a book from a spot, you might as well put it back in any random spot, for it doesn't matter.  The place already has high entropy.

It is possible to decrease entropy, but it takes work. You have to hire a bunch of librarians to organize the place, and shuffle books around. Even in the well kept library, work is required to keep it that way.

We can think of other systems in this way. This church has many rules, written and unwritten, about where things go, and how things are done. Where do the coffee pots go, how do we lock up the building, which trash is recycled. It takes work keeping those things in their right places, keeping things happening, against the natural tendency to disorder. It takes even more work to increase organization and implement new processes, to in effect, lower the entropy of the system. That's why things don't happen as fast as we'd like around here. We call that slow pace, 'church time'.

Or consider our physical bodies. Disorder can creep in, in the form of an error in DNA transcription, that causes a cell to become cancerous. If the body's cellular defenses against cancer fail to repair that error or eliminate that cell, the cancer can spread, and the increasing disorder can lead to death. Often the organizing defending aspects of our bodies can hold a cancer at bay, until a tipping point is reached, when they are overwhelmed. The end can be unexpected, quick, and tragic.

And there is the disorder that comes out of the barrel of a gun, or a bomb. Think of a pistol as a personal entropy increasing machine, a way to introduce mortal disorder in human bodies, and social disorder in systems of community, and we begin to see why many of us have an almost visceral discomfort with guns. Now, how we use a gun can raise questions of intent and evil, topics worthy of another longer discussion. We'll save them for another time.

So we can see that while much effort and often much time is needed to organize a system, little work or time is needed to disorganize a situation. Bad news doesn't just travel fast, it happens quickly. Good news takes time. When we break open the fortune cookie and find the message, 'Your Luck is About to Change', we can be justified in seeing this as an ominous sign.

TANHA
In Buddhism, there is a concept called tanha, which variously means clinging or attachment and aversion. We cling to what we enjoy, and try to escape what is uncomfortable. We might use food, of drink or tv or video games to escape having to think about unpleasant things. We get wrapped up in fear about what bad can happen, or in selfish desire about what good could happen. We try to control everything, every aspect of life, so that we can engage every pleasure and avoid all pain.

LEARNING TO WELCOME THEM ALL
Part of learning to control tanha is to come to experience all that life offers us, good and bad. The Persian poet Rumi expresses this most clearly in this poem. Now, I note that this is a Coleman Barks translation from his book, Essential Rumi. Barks is rather free with his translations, which makes them more accessible to us. Here is the poem, "This Human Being is a Guest House":

This Human Being is a Guest House.
Every morning is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond. [1]

MEDITATION
In Buddhism and other eastern religions, meditation is used as one tool to become aware of this clinging or desire. Through meditation we to learn to welcome who or whatever comes to our guesthouse. We learn to cut through the chatter of story that obscures our true selves or true nature.

We experimented with a bit of very focused meditation this morning, on pain. When we're in pain, much of what increases our suffering is not the pain itself, but other thoughts. We are fearful about what the pain means, and whether it will get worse. We hope we can control our pain, and make it go away. Other strong emotions may come up too, connected with past pain experiences. Meditating on pain invites us to set these thoughts and emotions aside, and just focus on the pain. It may not get any better, but at least we feel it clearly.

NAVEL GAZING
There is a danger in becoming too attached to meditation itself. Samsara can trick us, and we can find ourselves using meditation or other spiritual practices as ways to avoid pain, to isolate and wall off from the world. We can become omphaloskeptic, that is, focused on navel gazing, self interested.

Even if we have no spiritual practice, we can become self-focused, protective, closed off, isolated. To return to the analogy of the library, if you were a lazy library manager and you wanted to prevent or at least minimize the increase of entropy, you could -- just by ushering everyone out and locking the doors. Nothing would disorganize the books, no work would be required to maintain things, but the library would be of no use to anyone.

It's as if we build up a gated community of our own lives, seeking security and permanence. We are fearful, and we isolate ourselves. We become to self absorbed, too focused on our own physical survival, our bodies. Jack Kornfeld warns us about this self-absorption with our physical bodies. He tells us, "It’s a rental. "We’re all just renting. Would you put a new kitchen into a rental house?" [2]

IMPERMANENCE AND RISK
Our lease will run out -- we are impermanent. Our efforts at trying to stay young or to avoid all health risks, are ultimately futile. That's one of the other great teachings of Buddhism. Life is impermanent. In order to live fully, we have to accept that reality, and be willing to take risks. Your luck is about to change, and it is not about good or bad luck, but simply different luck. Things cannot remain the same. We cannot cling to what we want or what we already have, but risk that change. As Diane Ackerman tells us, in her book A Natural History of the Senses:

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. [3]

May we learn to expect the unexpected, up and down, high and low. May we claim it, embrace it. And at the same time, may we let go of that we cannot hold on to, what is not permanent, what is transient. That was the gift of Christmas to me, so many years ago. The learning that we don't ever get everything we want, and what we do get we can't hold on to forever. But one thing we know for sure-- our luck is about to change!

Notes:
[1] Coleman Barks, Essential Rumi 1995 p 73
[2] Jack Kornfield quote, http://ericmiraglia.com/blog/?p=155
[3] Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, 1991, p. 309.

Christmas Eve Reflections

Christmas Eve Service 2009
Part 1: Changing the Words

INTRODUCTION
I was introduced to Garrison Keillor in grad school back in Indiana and have listened to his show, Prairie Home Companion, off and on for several decades. I enjoy his storytelling, but like many of you, find his assaults on Unitarian Universalism extend beyond humor to snarkiness. Just last week, Keillor wrote a syndicated column called “Don’t mess with Christmas”, in which he ranted for a good bit about Unitarian Universalism:

“Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone.”[1]

Then he goes on to complain about “all those lousy holiday songs written by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of the dreck.”

And I thought I had issues with Christmas!

OUR PART IN CHRISTMAS
I don’t want to take time tonite to respond to the “Christmas is for Christians” crowd. Let me just note that our Unitarian and Universalist forebears had significant influence in making Christmas the popular holiday it is today.[2] Christmas had been in fact outlawed in Puritan Massachusetts in 1659.[3] First the Universalists, and then the Unitarians pushed for the celebration of Christmas as a public holiday around 1800.[4] Maybe we should be careful what we wish for! In any event, we have a long history with the Christmas holiday, and I do not think we should cede that to others.

CHANGING HYMNS
I do want to address Garrison’s rant about changing the words in hymns. As UUs we have been changing the words of hymns for a very long time. Jason Shelton, a UU minister and choir director, notes, “almost from the beginning, Unitarians and Universalists were disparaged for changing the words of hymns to suit their particular needs.”[5] But we loved to write and rewrite hymns. Sheldon continues, “In the nineteenth century, Unitarians and Universalists produced more than fifty hymnbooks – far more than any other single denomination.”

Our changing the words sometime catches people by surprise, especially with Christmas Carols. Some of us wish the words were changed even more, others want to hold onto traditional words. I noticed, for example, that some previous Christmas Eve services had the quote-traditional-unquote words for the Carols printed in the Order of Service. We have a gut reaction to the words. I suspect it reaches back to what we experienced as children: if we learned those hymns and carols one way, then, by God, that’s the proper way they should be sung!

Maybe we shouldn’t focus so much on the fact that we change the words, but that we carefully consider what the words mean; the message behind them. Old words or new words: can we make meaning from them?

Part 2: Changing the Message

Traditionally these Christmas Eve services are organized around lessons, readings about the birth of Jesus, drawn from the books of Matthew and Luke, and some perhaps commentary that connects those readings to the world today. This is combined with a few carols and it’s all wrapped up with a candlelighting ritual.

THE MYSTERY PLAY
Today, lets do something different: let’s take a step back and look at another story in the book of Luke. This is the story of the Annunciation, which is a pretty significant story for Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians. Moreover, this story is significant for Muslims, too. The Quran has a version of the Annunciation: Sura 3, verses 45 to 47 reads:

45Behold! the angels said: "O Mary! Allah gives you glad tidings of a Word from him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and [among] those nearest to Allah: 46"He shall speak to the people in childhood and in maturity. And he shall be [among] the righteous."

47She said: "O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?" He said: "Even so: Allah creates what he wills: When he has decreed a plan, he but says to it, 'Be,' and it is! [6]

We heard a version of the Annunciation as part of the Mystery Play a few moments ago. In medieval Europe, these plays were one of the primary ways of educating the peasant folk, who were largely illiterate. The plays depicted key stories from the Bible, and were presented outdoors, on a certain feast day in late spring. The whole cycle of plays would start before dawn and run until dusk. The plays would be presented on large wagons used as stages.

The play we excerpted today was likely written by monks in York sometime in the 14th or 15th century. [7] It was performed outdoors by the Spicers, one the various guilds of craftsmen assigned the plays. So the Plasterers performed the Creation, the Fishers were assigned the story of Noah’s Ark and the Flood, the Tile Thatchers did the Nativity, and the Pinner’s got the Crucifixion. I like the assignment of particular crafts to the stories: Fishers and Pinners?

THE ANNUNCIATION
Of course, these stories were told ‘straight up,’, they stayed close to the Scriptural text. Any embellishment supported the dominant theology of the Church. As we heard in this excerpt, Mary is hailed for accepting her place in things, bearing the Savior, creating a way for the world to be saved from the damnation brought to it by Eve. The dominant theological story is the same, both for individual humans or for all of humanity: we are sinful, we are damned, unless and until we are redeemed by the Savior. Stay with me on this.

THE MEANING OF THE ANNUNCIATION – NOT
The story of the Annunciation offered earlier would have us believe that Mary bore Jesus as a virgin, that there was no human father involved. This virginal birth became important as later Christian theology developed. This theology suggested that all humanity was fallen, damned because of the actions of Eve consuming the fruit, and this damnation was passed through the generations. The virginal birth, along with the idea of Immaculate Conception, provided a way for Christianity to unlink a pure Jesus with his pure mother, from this stain of sin. We hear this theology clearly in the carol, "Nova Nova, Ave fit ex Eva", which suggests that the world is saved from the sin of Eve by the fruit of Mary.

Now this is a most unsatisfying theology to most of us, including UU Christians! It’s enough to make us want to discard the Christmas stories entirely, and some of us do. But these stories are deeply embedded in our culture. We hear them every year. They have archetypal elements. And discarding these stories would rob us of the opportunity to offer alternative interpretations; to stand against those who would offer narrow, divisive and damning theology.

We need to find a way to reinterpret the story, to change the message. We need a way to see health and wholeness and hope in Christmas.

A NOTE ON HISTORICITY
Now, I need to take a brief diversion and talk about the historical evidence and not the theology. We know that there is only thin historical evidence for the life of Jesus. None of the events around his birth, such as a large-scale census by Caesar Augustus or Herod’s slaughter of male babies, is mentioned in any Roman or Jewish historical text. Careful study of the three synoptic Gospels -- Matt, Mark, and Luke -- the books that attempt to portray Jesus life, show that these too have many historically suspect passages. Especially suspect are the birth stories. In fact, the birth stories are totally absent in Mark, the oldest and most historically trustworthy of these three books.

So we face the strong probability that the birth stories are mythical -- that the stories are older, and the words are changed. Can we still find meaning in any of these mythical stories? Can we distill some fundamental wisdom from these ancient stories?

THE MEANING OF THE ANNUNCIATION – REINTERPRETED
How might we reinterpret the Annunciation? Could this be a story of questionable fatherhood. Stephen Mitchell, in his lovely book, The Gospel According to Jesus, tells us ‘the first thing we ought to realize about Jesus’ life is that he grew up as an illegitimate child’.[8] In that ancient culture, for a woman to have an illegitimate child was scandalous, and such a child would live a life of shame and rejection. The visit from Gabriel didn’t help. Remember, the angel appeared only to Mary, not to the others in the village, and appeared to Joseph almost as an afterthought, when Joseph was prepared to reject Mary.

So we begin to piece together the true story of Jesus birth. He was most likely illegitimate, born to a teenage mother, a woman maybe 12 or 14 years old. She was almost certainly illiterate; a peasant; at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale; in an occupied country.

This is the miracle of the Christmas story. The miracle of the story is not about angels, or wisemen, or a star. The miracle story is that a person coming from such a hopeless, lowly, miserable situation could become a wisdom teacher, a spiritual leader, an agitator for change and a founder of a religious movement.

A friend in ministry, Ruth MacKenzie, tells me there is a term, Theotokos, which means ‘God bearer’.[9] It was used to describe Mary by the early church. Theotokos represents the other part of the Christmas story. Mary bears the infant; she gives birth to new life, and to new hope. In a time of darkness and cold, this hope is what we crave.

When we bear hope, we too become Theotokos – god bearers. We ignite that spark of divine possibility that is in each of us. We create possibility for change, for a new world, for an era where the light of peace, and the warmth of human connection return again.

In the words of Richard Gilbert, “may hope find its way into our hearts even when our minds tell us there is no hope; may charity speak to us even when we have nothing to give: may loving kindness be with us when our store of love is exhausted.

Let it be so, for a time, for a season. And perhaps that season will linger and linger and take hold of us, never to let us go.” [10]

Notes:
[1] http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/garrison_keillor/2009/12/15/cambridge/index.html
[2] See Steven Nissbaum, The Battle for Christmas, 1997.
[3] Ibid. p. 14.
[4] Ibid. p. 45.
[5] Jason Shelton, "Changing the Words: An Historical Introduction to Unitarian Universalist Hymnody", http://meadville.edu/journal/2003_shelton_4_1.pdf p. 2
[6] Abdullah Yusufali, The Meanings Of The Holy Qur'an, http://www.islam101.com/quran/yusufAli/QURAN/3.htm (archaic grammar updated)
[7] “York Mystery Plays”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Mystery_Plays
[8] Stephen Mitchell, The Gospel According to Jesus, 1991, p. 19.
[9] Ruth Mackenzie, "Theotokos", http://www.stjoan.com/homilies/mackenzie11.30.08.htm
[10] Richard S. Gilbert, in Celebrating Christmas, Carl Seaburg ed., p. 107

Paths to the Top

Matt Alspaugh

Today I’m the stand-in, the ringer, the last minute replacement.  On of the lay presenters for today had a medical emergency this week -- she’s better now -- but in the midst of her situation, we agreed to switch speaking dates.

We in ministry are encouraged to always have an unused backup sermon at the ready in case something happens to us.  Maybe locked away in a file somewhere, or in a wall cabinet, like a fire extinguisher. “In Case of Worship Emergency, Break Glass. Pull pin on sermon, and aim directly at base of congregation. Sweep from side to side until sermon is empty.” Unfortunately, most of us have used up those sermons already. I was able to repurpose one I’d used before with another congregation.  But first, a few other observations:

I just read in the newsletter of one of the churches I know well, that they have remodeled their chapel, with funding from a single anonymous donor. However well-intentioned this remodel was, I worry that the congregation doesn’t feel invested in this remodeled room, and that they won’t care for it, because they weren’t included the decision.

At the opposite extreme, a few years ago, I visited a congregation that was preparing to paint its sanctuary. They had hung large poster-boards, painted with numerous shades and colors for the wall and trim paint. They were going to take a vote on the color choices at a congregational meeting. Now I’m mildly colorblind … do you think I should be asked to choose among several subtle shades of paint?

So I’m pleased to see the Channing Hall remodel project here following a process that navigates between these two extremes. It’s hard work, but it shows a level of maturity in the congregation.This will serve us well as we consider other projects, whether they relate to the building, to congregational priorities, or church social justice projects. I applaud the process that has been used.

Now you might not consider the work of having the meetings, talking with stakeholders, planning, dealing with disagreement is spiritual practice, but, I hope to show you, it is, because this morning I am talking about different spiritual paths.

For some of us, great emotional and even spiritual satisfaction, a sense of purpose, comes from this kind of consistent, devoted effort, week after week, year after year. For others, spiritual experience comes in a flash, some momentary event that truly reached down deep inside us, and turned something, changed something. Maybe it was a walk in great natural beauty, or wonderful music, or reading profound poetry.

Whatever the source of such inspirational experiences, I suspect most of us seek to repeat them, to find what it is that opens us to them, to find ways to deepen and better understand them; and thus better understand the world we inhabit. This is the essence of spiritual practice. However we define spirit, the things we do -- be that working, hiking, singing, or meditating -- carry us into place of inspiration are spiritual practices.

There's a well-known religious metaphor that suggests we are each on a spiritual journey, traveling up a great mountain. There are numerous paths on that mountain, paths that wind and cross, that lead mostly up, but occasionally down and sometimes sideways. Some paths are gentle and protected, while others are exposed and treacherous. But the point is that all these paths ultimately lead to the top, to whatever it is that we consider ultimate in religious experience.

Most often we think of these distinct paths as representing different beliefs, the various theologies that co-exist in the religious landscape. Here's the Catholic path, there's the Lutheran one, over there’s a Buddhist path.

And how we bristle when a person or group claims that their path is the 'one true path' and all the others fail to reach the top! For many of us, this brings up anger at such dogmatic exclusiveness. For some, such dogmatism brings up sadness as we recall our own, exclusivist religious upbringing, and the effort it took us to shed those beliefs.

But there is another way to see these paths we follow to the top of the mountain. Perhaps these journeys are more about practice than belief, about what we do, rather than what we think or say. But hard as it is to articulate our theological beliefs, we often find it harder to find the words to describe what spiritual practices touch us and inspire us. We need a topographic map that points out these paths, these Journeys, and gives them names. How might we do this mapping? How might we understand the varieties of spiritual experience?

Since we UUs tend to be rational scientific people, it might make sense to systematize and classify these experiences in some way. Peter Tufts Richardson, a Unitarian Universalist minister, does just this in his book, Four Spiritualities: Expressions of Self, Expressions of Spirit.[1] He develops a model that suggests there are four broad types of spirituality, although they are interrelated. He suggests that our personality or worldview influences which of these spiritual practices we will find most appealing.

Now Richardson does not pretend this is a new idea. He melds an understanding of spiritual practices from many of the great world religions to frame his unifying model of four spiritual paths. Richardson's model also combines these religious ideas with two specific dimensions of Jungian psychology.[2]

The first dimension is how we perceive the world, how we gather information. Do we primarily perceive through our senses or through our intuition? In other words, do we observe things with common sense, or do we know through hunches?[3] Do we trust the data or the theory?

The second dimension is how we make decisions. Do we make choices primarily by thinking things through or by tapping into our feelings? That is to say, do we lead with our head or our heart?4

The two options in each of these two dimensions generate the four spiritual Journeys that we’ll examine shortly. But before we do, let me note that these four quadrants are closely related to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator [5], which many of you may be familiar with. Myers Briggs is personality tool often used to study how people might work together. We don’t have time to explore it more deeply today, but I will mention it as we explore these spiritual types. If you’re not familiar with Myers Briggs, I'd suggest a little Internet research; you can evaluate your 'type' on-line, and it can be quite revealing.

So, Richardson’s model outlines four pathways through which we experience the realm of the spirit. I'm going to spend a little time exploring each of the four Journeys, and touching on how they relate to each other. I think as we explore these pathways, some of you may recognize yourselves or maybe your friends or family.

(Move to first location, equipped with a large book - open it to reading.)
The first path is called the Journey of Unity. The Journey of Unity focuses on the great organizing principles of the universe. What are the great questions, and what might the answers be? The focus here tends to be an intellectual one, with deep theological or philosophical explorations as part of the conversation.

People on this path perceive the world through their Intuition, these are the folks who try to read between the lines, and consider future possibility. They base their decision-making on Thinking; that is on the head, depending on rationality, rather than the heart.

Followers of this particular path are a minority in the general population, but they are significant in Unitarian Universalist communities. Our worship experiences reflect this. We love discussion groups. In most UU churches, the sermon is the center-point of the worship, with academic quality talks, carefully prepared, even down to the footnotes. Does this sound familiar?

(Move to next location, with Equal Exchange coffee: “Regular or Decaf?”)
The second path is the Journey of Works. The people in the Journey of Works are focused on getting things done. This is where the folks planning the Channing Hall remodel come in. These are responsible people with a job to do. People here are head oriented, reasoning things out, and they see the world as it is now, through their senses. They see what is missing, or what is not working, and move to fix it.

Often they prefer to have rules, they love tradition, and they want people to follow the rules and respect the tradition. Tradition and rules are important here, but that doesn't mean that people on the journey of works are necessarily conservative. In fact, I'd suspect that in our congregations, many of the folks on the front lines of social justice work would say they are on the Journey of Works.

(Move to the next location, equipped with a votive candle - light it.)
The third path is the Journey of Devotion. This path is about ritual: lighting candles, reciting the words, singing familiar hymns, joyful celebrations, these are all important. Repetition, symbolism and stories are important, especially stories about heroic people from our past.

This is one of the two heart-centered Journeys, and we see a subtle shift, to the realm of emotional response in spirituality and worship. Like the Journey of Works, those on this journey are focused on the here and now, but the focus is on the ritual or the experience itself.

The Journey of Devotion is well represented in larger society, but I think it is less represented in Unitarian Universalist communities. I think our history in the radical side of the Protestant dissenting traditions caused us to be leery of ritual for a long time.

(Move to the final location, equipped with a singing bowl - sound the bowl.)
The fourth path is the Journey of Harmony. This is the realm of the mystics, of those who have a sense that the world is not fully revealed to us, but who get glimpses of the ultimate reality that they struggle to put into words. Meditation and silence are key elements of spiritual practice for those on this path. This particular path merges the Intuitive ways of knowing the world with decision-making based on Feeling, on the heart.

In our Unitarian history, the Journey of Harmony flowered most profusely in the Transcendentalist movement. When you read the works of the Transcendentalists like Emerson or Parker, you struggle to understand what they are saying, because they struggled to find words for their newly felt experiences of the divine. Everything is connected, god inside us and all around us, knowing oneself, these were all difficult concepts that to some degree have to be lived to be understood. And we live them through turning inward.

(Move to center of space)
So I want to ask you to choose: which of these paths best fits your own personal spiritual nature? If you feel comfortable doing so, I’d like to ask you to stand and remain standing, as I call out these paths. (Hold up the objects as the types are named)
Let’s start with Journey of Unity, seeking the answers? 
Journey of Works, getting things done? 
How about Journey of Devotion, who love ritual?
Journey of Harmony, lovers of mystery?
Look around!

If some of you struggled to choose just one path, that's good! I think a well-developed spiritual life should draw practice from each of these paths. I know that for me, the Journey of Harmony is most natural path. I find daily meditation an easy practice. But I try to engage the other paths, through reading, walks in nature, and my work here at the church. Perhaps you might want to explore what spiritual practices might broaden your horizons.

Now that we understand a little more about our individual spiritual journeys, how can we apply them to our communal worship life? Corianne Ware, in her book, Discover Your Spiritual Type[6], develops a quadrant model similar to Richardson’s.

It’s a little more Judeo-Christian in focus, but she extends her model in an interesting way. She suggests religious communities also have preferred styles. A congregation develops a spiritual “style” just as surely as individuals do. Our worship may emphasize great preaching, or maybe well executed drama or ritual, or silence and meditative music.  But we should also ask, is there enough balance for everyone?

She described a man who finally understood his discontent with his long-time family church -- he was of one spiritual type and the church was strongly opposite that type.  His longtime family ties kept him at that church, but he understood that he needed to fill some of his spiritual needs in other ways.[7]

Once a congregation understands its own worship style, it can make changes in its style to better provide for people on the other paths. Changes to the typical order of the Sunday morning worship, or to the music program, might be called for. Or, maybe separate worship groups, like meditation groups or small group ministries, or discussion forums are needed.

This little exercise we did today -- when you stood up as I named the four Journeys --brings up deeper issues around identity and belonging. I'm sure you were curious when your friends stood up!  By more or less artificially segmenting ourselves into these four categories, we create new identities and labels for ourselves.

Such labeling can be helpful if it serves to deepen our understanding of one another and ourselves. Such identities are valuable if they urge us to greater wholeness and balance, and if they instill a greater compassion for those who are different from us. Ultimately, if we do that compassionate work, we find we can put the labels aside, and see that our identities are less important than realizing that we are all on the same journey.

In that ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita, written two to five centuries BCE, the human protagonist Arjuna questions the god Krishna about achieving enlightenment and eternal life, and asks, 'which way is swift and sure, love or knowledge?'.  Krishna answers in much detail, finally noting in chapter 13:

Some by the path of meditation,
and by the grace of the spirit,
see the spirit in themselves;

some by the path of the vision of truth,
and others by the path of work.

And yet there are others who do not know,
but hear from others and adore.

They also cross beyond death,
because of their devotion to words of the truth.[8]

And we see that all of these spiritual journeys lead to the same unknowable and mysterious end.  May we be cognizant of this truth both in our individual spiritual lives and as we live together in this gathered community.

Notes:
1 Peter Tufts Richardson, Four Spiritualities: Expressions of Self, Expressions of Spirit : A Psychology of Contemporary Spiritual Choice, 1996.
2 ibid. p. 21
3 ibid. p. 6
4 ibid. p. 8
5 ibid. p. 3
6 Connie Ware, Discover Your Spiritual Type, 1995.
7 ibid. p. 85
8 Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita (Classics of Indian Spirituality), 2007.

Gatekeeping at the Welcome Table

Rev. Lynn M. Acquafondata
November 29. 2009
For First Unitarian Universalist Church
Youngstown, Ohio

      Cerberus [1] had an important job to do. The giant three headed dog with serpent’s tail, lion’s claws and a mane of snakes guarded the gates of the underworld. He fiercely challenged any ghosts who tried to leave or any live people who tried to enter. As we heard Orpheus managed to find a way past Cerberus, but Cerberus had back up. Hades would make sure that Orpheus paid a heavy price for his transgression.

      Back in Pennsylvania earlier this fall a modern version of this story took place when a group of three visitors attended First UU Church of Indiana one Sunday morning carrying Bibles. After the sermon, one of the guests stood up and started to proselytize for Evangelical Christianity and attack UUs for devil worship. The minister asked him to sit down. He refused. Again she made it clear that his speech was inappropriate at this time and in this place. He continued speaking. She turned to the congregation and asked them to join in the closing hymn. The congregation stood to sing loudly and enthusiastically drowning out the words of the visitor. Afterwards the minister called the police for advice on handling the situation if that visitor should return. As a result of hate crimes that have taken place around the country including in a UU church in Tennessee a year ago, the police said do not let him enter, but call immediately if should return.

      Gatekeeping plays a vital and necessary role whether it takes place in mythology, business or a UU church. The role and the methods of the gatekeeper need to fit the situation and serve the long term health and purposes of the region or organization it guards.

      What do we UUs guard? Who are our gatekeepers? How do we know when we act wisely and enforce healthy boundaries or when we respond passively or reactively and prevent the growth of development of our congregations?

      We can not recognize productive gatekeeping without first having a clear understanding of what we protect. Some people like to say that because Unitarian Universalists do not have a creed, we can believe anything we want. They are wrong.

      In religious educations classes here this year the younger children are studying world religions by hearing the stories of children from around the world who follow a variety of faiths. They are learning how the teachings of other religions have inspired UU principles. Yet the classes make it clear that we do not believe all the same things or share all the same practices.

      The older children are watching scenes from popular films and discussing the themes those films raise about life, belief and theology. Both curriculums show that UUs draw our wisdom from a wide variety of sources. We filter that wisdom through our own perspective and through the basic values of Unitarian Universalism. We believe that as long as we treat all people as valuable and worthwhile, there are multiple valid ways to live and practice religion. We believe in acting with respect for other people even those we do not agree with or understand. We do not accept religious perspectives in our communities which condemn others or assume that an individual or a group is bad or wrong because their views are different from our own.

      When the visitor at the church in Indiana stood up and spoke, the Rev. Joan Sabatino did not criticize his views or try to convince him of UU beliefs, she just told him it was inappropriate for him to proselytize during a Sunday morning service. It would be equally inappropriate for a humanist UU to stand up in a worship service of born again Christians and present the merits of atheism. In fact doing that would go against our principles because it would show disrespect to other people and to their spiritual journey. We can treat people well and value our common humanity without agreeing with or accepting their religious views as our own.

      That’s why basic UU principles are an ideal way to address some of the major problems in our world. As Scott Alexander wrote in our responsive reading today, Unitarian Universalism can make the world a better place through such actions as treating people with love in the face of hate, acting compassionately and seeking justice when we encounter brutality and fear,  speaking from our conscience and modeling the use of the democratic process as a way to counteract tyranny and oppression. The gatekeepers of our religion guard a very precious treasure that has the power to change the world.

      Despite our openness and acceptance, Unitarian Universalists do need to set boundaries and turn some people away. Although from time to time we are justified in acting as fierce guardians of the front door by asking people to leave, ideally setting boundaries takes place in a gentle, open and non-confrontational manner.

      Congregations do this through sharing information about Unitarian Universalism and about our own congregation, handing out pamphlets, explaining what to expect in a typical Sunday service and letting visitors know our basic values and approach to religion. Unitarian Universalism is not a religion for everyone. We want people who think for themselves, who are actively engaged in theological interpretation and who wrestle with choices of how to live out this faith. Most of us came to this religion because we value this approach. Some people want a very different kind of religious experience. One woman who visited a UU church felt so overwhelmed by the pressures and struggles of daily life, that she wanted her religion to be the one place where things are clear. She wanted to come and sit quietly while the minister told her what to believe and how to live her life. Unitarian Universalism expected her to get involved in religion in ways she didn’t find nurturing, healing or comforting. There is nothing wrong with what this woman seeks, but she won’t find it in one of our congregations. We don’t need to send someone like this away. We can receive her warmly and explain what our religion is and what it asks of people. She will decide if this fits her needs or not.

      We also let visitors know who we are through personal sharing. One of the congregations I belonged to held “This I Believe” Sundays on a regular basic in which two or three members share a personal story about why and how they became a UU and what it means for them to live life as a UU. When I lead introduction to Unitarian Universalism classes I always include a time for people to reflect on their own spiritual journey and then share a part of that journey. One typical class included a wide variety of people:

a recently divorced single father who had grown up Jewish, married a conservative Christian and later became agnostic;

a newly engaged couple who had come from Christian backgrounds, the woman helped lead her church youth group in high school, now she finds a spiritual connection in earth centered pagan practices;

a woman who had grown up Catholic, then spent a couple of decades sleeping in on Sundays and taking long hikes to nurture her spirit;

a man who had not grown up in any religious tradition, but is going through major changes in his life and seeks a community in which he can make friends and explore his philosophical ideas; and a woman who had rejected her conservative Protestant upbringing during a Christian Education class at the young age of 10, then raised her own children in a liberal Christian congregation, now she and her husband want a free and creedless religious community.

The people in this group, like all the classes I’ve led find intriguing commonalities as well as an interesting diversity of perspectives. The act of sharing and listening and acknowledging the value of each person’s life in progress says a lot about what it means to be a UU. Some people participate in this sharing feel at home in Unitarian Universalism. Others come and realize they seek a different kind of religion.

      This sharing takes place in informal settings as well. When greeters and other members of the congregation smile and approach visitors, when they take the time to share a piece of their personal journey with a visitor, then the gate swings open and welcomes our guests to stay awhile and explore who we are. This doesn’t always happen naturally, so it helps to have a system in place to make the roles clear and easy to carry out. The church I served in Pittsburgh had a membership committee which organized a list for each Sunday including basic greeters and visitor greeters. Basic greeters say hello to everyone who arrives on Sunday morning and hand out bulletins. Visitor greeters focus on guests, showing them where to make a nametag, how to sign up to receive the newsletter, getting them information and a pamphlets about the church, making sure they find a comfortable seat, inviting them to coffee hour and introducing them to others. The gate swings wide when we leave seats available in especially inviting locations such as near the back and on the aisles and when we wear nametags so repeat visitors don’t have to struggle to remember the names of everyone they met last week. Nametags also serve as a convenient “cheat sheet” for those of us who struggle to remember names of people we know well.

      There are so many ways to be welcoming while also giving a clear picture of who we are and are not. There are also many ways that we can and unfortunately do go wrong, sometimes without even realizing it.

      I grew up Catholic, but as a teenager, I visited an Assembly of God church in my home town of Syracuse, NY. Everyone greeted me with the same question. It wasn’t, “What is your name?” or “How are you today?” or “What are you interested in?” Instead each person asked me, “Are you saved?” I returned two more times only because my brother gave me a ride and because the pastor’s son was cute. Obviously I wasn’t saved.

      I used to tell that story with a smug attitude. “See what those Pentecostal Christians do! They don’t care about people. I’d never be one of them.” Then I started reflecting on things I’ve seen UUs do to visitors on Sunday mornings. To reassure any guests this morning, I’m just a visiting preacher myself, so none of these stories took place here.

      During coffee hour at an unnamed UU congregation in the mid-West, a visitor started to share a story with a congregation member about the way God is moving in her life. The member shifted uncomfortably and interrupted. “We like to joke here,” she said, “that the last time anyone mentioned God at this congregation was when the janitor fell off the ladder.” The visitor never finished her story and didn’t return. What made the member say that? What did she protect? This UU may have thought that if too many of these spiritual and God focused people join, atheists may feel like a marginalized minority. But UUs do hold a variety of theological views including many UUs who are theist and affirm the influence of God in our lives, as well as many are pagan and many who are who are atheist or agnostic and those who don’t think in traditional spiritual terms at all. In addition we value a free search for truth and meaning. Unitarian Universalism thrives on a diversity of perspectives and ideas and an acceptance that there is not one true way even my way.

      Some UU congregations portray this value by holding a congregational reflection time during the Sunday service after the sermon, in which anyone present can share their own perspective on the subject the minister just spoke about. It can lead to a profound exchange of ideas. Unfortunately this open sharing time degenerates in some congregations. In one UU fellowship, a woman stood up “talk back” time and berated people for drinking out of her well marked coffee mug the week before. No one stopped her, so she proceeded her tirade for a full 10 minutes of the Sunday service. Who lulled Cerberus to sleep at that congregation? The members willingness to tolerate this speech communicates that the impulses of one individual far outweigh the needs of the group.

      At another church, the gatekeepers in this case, every member of the congregation used another technique. I’m sure they didn’t consciously think about it, but at coffee hour they gathered in small circles of three or four. One group tried to figure out whether they should continue holding the annual meeting on Saturday night or move it to Sunday morning. Another group started discussing the latest decision by the board to hire another staff member. A circle of close friends talked excitedly about last week’s service auction and shared a concern they had about a friend who didn’t make it to church that morning. No one noticed the visitors standing awkwardly and reading pamphlets.

      In this case, members liked a small gathering. When visitors arrived they feared the congregation would grow too large and they wouldn’t know everyone anymore. They didn’t say directly to the guests, “This congregation is big enough already, please don’t come back,” but their actions achieved the same goal. The visitors didn’t feel a welcome place for them at this UU congregation.

      We sometimes have gatekeepers in our midst who communicate barriers which do not accurately reflect the essence of Unitarian Universalism. Those guests do not know the truth, they just leave.

      If we only let people into Unitarian Universalism who make us feel safe and secure, we lose the essence our religious tradition. To live out the values of Unitarian Universalism involves embracing people who will challenge our ideals in productive and growth inducing ways, even if we think of them as enemies and they make us uncomfortable.

      This has happened in various ways throughout UU history. John Murray grew up a strict Calvinist in the 1700s. As an adult he became a committed Methodist. One day he was sent out to convert a young woman away from her heretical Universalist faith. They engaged in a conversation in which, though Murray did not admit it at the time her arguments convinced him instead of him converting her. He left feeling mortified and avoided Universalists for a period of time, but finally he sought out the Universalist church. John Murray went on to become a minister of that heretical faith tradition and ending up coming to America and starting Universalist churches here.

      Moving forward to the late 1900s, Margot Adler, a Wiccan priestess and author became involved in Unitarian Universalism. You might know her as a National Public Radio correspondent. She wrote many books including Drawing Down the Moon, a history of paganism in America. I’m sure a few UUs felt nervous when she first walked into their congregation. Did she fit in our movement? What would she do to us? In an article from World Magazine in 1996, Margot Adler wrote, “ I guess I chose Unitarian Universalism because I need to live in balance. I love the fact that Unitarian Universalists have a good many atheists and humanists among them. After all, it's important to have a reality check, to have people who will bring us down to earth and say, "Stop all this intuitive garbage and look at the reality: this is a ceiling, this is a table, this is a floor. And by the way, get out of that trance: look at that homeless guy lying in the street. I can do all those wonderful, earth-centered spiritual things: sing under the stars, drum for hours, create moving ceremonies for the changes of seasons or the passage of time in the lives of men and women. But I also need to be a worldly, down-to-earth person in a complicated world--someone who believes oppression is real, that tragedies happen, that chaos happens, that not everything is for a purpose….And I think, in turn, the Pagan community has brought to Unitarian Universalism the joy of ceremony, and a lot of creative and artistic ability that will leave the denomination with a richer liturgy and a bit more juice and mystery.”

      That describes the ideal reciprocal sharing and development that comes when we welcome people to our faith who aren’t exactly like us, who fit our tradition in their own way. Ideally our visitors will learn from us, but also give us new perspectives which challenge us to grow and become more than we already are.

      Each one of us got involved in Unitarian Universalism because we have found something very special and important, something worth preserving. In fact I’ve heard many newcomers say with longing, “I wish I had known about this religion many years ago.” Even more sad are those who spent their life looking for what we offer, but when they finally visit a UU church they are ignored or treated defensively or simply can’t find a seat without walking to the front of the church. These people leave empty and we remain unaware of the loss of a valuable companion on the journey. It’s our responsibility to stand at the gates as new people walk through our doors and protect our core identity as UUs, sharing who who we are, teaching them what this tradition has to offer. When we do this with hearts and minds open, we are ready to receive the precious and unexpected gifts our guests might offer us and our faith tradition. 

1. “Orpheus” from The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greek Myths, Retold by Cynthia Rylant

Choose to Give Thanks

Matt Alspaugh

Please join me in singing just the first stanza of Hymn #128, "For All That Is Our Life"[1]. We've been using this hymn in most of our services over the last month, so many of you will find it to be familiar.

For all that is our life, we sing our thanks and praise; for all life is a gift which we are called to use to build the common good and make our own days glad.

I was in Ottawa last week for a ministers meeting they hold every seven years. There were nearly five hundred ministers present. Jason Sheldon, a premier choir director, had organized a choir which was going to sing at the closing service. I did not sign up, thinking most every minister has a far better voice than I do.

On the second day, the choir director put out a request for basses and tenors, so I felt obliged to help out.  My contribution was small, my range is limited, but I felt great joy being part of this one hundred person choir. I had forgotten how much fun such singing can be. There's something empowering about finding your musical voice.

So first a pitch. Marcellene is organizing a choir for our Christmas Eve service. Our group, the Sometimes Sunday Singers, will meet for the first time on Sunday December 6, at 10:15. I encourage you to join us, even if you think you're not a strong singer.

So let us sing our thanks and praise! It sounds so much more joyful than when we merely speak our thanks and praise.

Many of us are ambivalent about the hymns we sing. The old joke goes "why do Unitarian Universalists sing so poorly? Because they are busy reading ahead to see if they agree with the words."

Many of us, including me, have thought that our hymns are just revisions of old Lutheran hymns, many of those which were just old German drinking songs. This may be true for some of our hymns, but not all. This particular hymn, "For All That Is Our Life" was written just a couple decades ago by a British Unitarian minister, Bruce Findlow, near the end of his own life.[2]

Findlow served as head of Oxford University's Manchester College, which has historically been a hot-bed of British Unitarian nonconformist thought. Among Findlow's books are Religion in People and I Question Easter.

The tune was written by Patrick Rickey, a composer and organist in Oakland California.  The tune is named for Sherman Island, which is one of Rickey's favorite places for windsurfing.

So let's continue in our journey through this hymn. Along the way we'll give voice to those things for which you are thankful, and I'll offer a few thoughts and stories. On to sing the next stanza.

For needs which others serve, for services we give, for work and its rewards, for hours of rest and love; we come with praise and thanks for all that is our life.

When Liz and I lived in Denver, we had a small vegetable garden at our house. It was small because our house was blessed with four ancient and huge elm trees, and so most of the lot was too shady for a garden. But there was one bright spot beside the garage, so we grew peas, and squash, and herbs, and raspberries, and lots of flowers.

I tried to grow tomatoes. I remember the joy of tomatoes from my dad's garden when I was growing up, so having tomatoes from the garden was important to me. And I learned that in Denver tomatoes are an exercise in misplaced hope, a study in chance, a lottery with nature with long, long odds.

The first year, we planted after the last frost, and this was too late. A cool summer meant the tomatoes were still green when the fall cold came. And these are those green tomatoes that you can't get to ripen indoors - they just stare at you from the window sill in bright light green defiance.

So we learned to put them in early, and take a chance on the last frost, sometimes losing that bet. Then we tried the 'Wall of Water', a contrivance used in the mountains to try to prevent plants from freezing. No success here.

Then there was a wet, rainy summer, where few tomatoes set. Then there were those giant nasty green tomato worms that did the plants in.

Finally one year, all was coming together just right. Lots of tomatoes on the vines, big, beautiful, unblemished. Enough summer heat and sun that they were nearly perfectly ripe. The early ones tasted great. Then the hail came. Golf-ball sized chunks of ice. Ok they were small golf-balls, not quite regulation size, but they were enough. There was nothing left, but a few bare, broken stems.

We give our thanks and praise for services we give, for work and its rewards. Too often, we get focused on the rewards of work or of service; the outcomes. We expect our labors in the garden to literally bear fruit. We expect our hard work, our nights at the office to lead to a promotion or a bonus. We expect our efforts helping the homeless or teaching in an after-school program to yield housed, educated, and grateful recipients of our service.

Sometimes, none of this works out like we hoped. The people we help never get their lives together. The career languishes. The garden whispers to us, 'maybe next year'.

Like David Budbill, in the poem "Sometimes" [3] we still feel a sense of gratitude.  He tells us, "I've got to say, right now, how beautiful and sweet this world can be."

Our gratitude can emerge from what we have accomplished, our achievements, but it can be so much larger than that. We can give thanks for that which is possible, even if it does not play out exactly the way we hoped. Our gratitude can emerge, when we realize how beautiful and sweet this world can be. Even with agony, and dying, and torture, this world still can be beautiful and sweet. Can be -- that's the operative phrase here. We find gratitude in what can be. We give thanks and rejoice in  our efforts, our work and service, as we strive to make a world that can be. Let us continue:

For sorrow we must bear, for failures, pain, and loss, each new thing we learn, for fearful hours that pass: we come with praise and thanks for all that is our life.

People move quickly through the hospital these days, from unit to unit and then to rehab or home care.  As a hospital chaplain I saw many people just once. But a few people I saw many times over the course of weeks or even months. You see, one of the units I served was Psych, and I cared for people both in the locked units and those who participated in our outpatient group therapy. In this 'day treatment program' I'd both lead groups and meet with people for individual pastoral care.

One woman I met first in the locked unit, and I saw her for several months.  I've of course changed some of the details of her story to respect her anonymity here.  I learned of all of the troubles she was having, a marriage on the rocks; a job that was once creative and satisfying was now dry, dull and repetitive; serious problems with teenage kids. On top of all this, she was a deeply religious woman, involved in her church, and the church was blowing up, coming apart at the seams. It seemed that she had run up against the shadow side of synchronicity, that life seemed to have dealt her a lot of bad cards at once.

She progressed in our treatment program, which was most satisfying for me to watch. It was almost as if the color came back in her life.  We had many conversations, often about God. Why was God distant, wrecking her life, and on top of that, wrecking her church? Now, you need to know that as a professional chaplain, I do not try to evangelize, but I tried to stay with her as she worked through this.

In the end, her understanding of God deepened. It moved from the big Daddy guy in the sky kind of God to something much deeper, a mystical companion who accompanied her and suffered with her. In this new understanding, she found a deep sense of thankfulness. She told me that while she would not wish this experience of depression on anyone, that she was able to look back on it with a sense of gratitude for the growth that emerged from it.

If we choose to live full lives, we will bear many sorrows. It is how we deal with them that frames our lives. I don't want to suggest that we can simply "look on the bright side" whenever something bad happens.

But we can begin to reframe the stories we tell ourselves about bad things that happen. Are they always someone else's fault? Do we always get the bad deal? Or do we make the attempt to see if there is another way to tell the story, that makes bearing the suffering easier.

Maybe fault and blame are not helpful ideas. My patient stopped blaming God. Maybe some bad deals are just bad, but some are opportunities for a new thing. My patient concluded she needed to leave her church and find a new religious home. That was sad, but necessary.

I never saw this patient again after she left the hospital, which is good, as it means she did not return to the psych ward, as many do. I don't know what happened to her, but I like to think she's doing well and finding a life of balance. It's part of how I remain thankful that I could be of service to this patient in this hospital.

Let's sing the he final stanza:

For all that is our life, we sing our thanks and praise; for all life is a gift which we are called to use to build the common good and make our own days glad.

There is a relatively new field within psychology called positive psychology. It's only a couple decades old, and developed when some researchers noted that all they focused on was disease and disfunction, and that no one was studying the psychology of healthy, flourishing people.

Barbara Fredrickson, a researcher at UNC Chapel Hill, recently published a book called Positivity [4], which explores the benefits of positive emotions; emotions like awe, compassion, joy, amusement, contentment, and gratitude.  There is plenty of evidence, based on controlled scientific studies that increasing these positive emotions does improve overall physical health, for example.

Fredrickson then suggests what we might do to have more of these emotional experiences. Again, studies point to the effectiveness of things like walking in nature, meditation, losing oneself in an activity all can contribute to positive emotional states. As an aside, I'd note that these sound like spiritual practices to me!

What doesn't work is trying to think our way to an emotion. We can't say, "I am now going to be joyful" or "I am now in awe".  But it does turn out that the easiest emotion to access consciously is gratitude. We can intentionally think of things for which we give thanks, and gradually the feeling of gratitude comes to us. Just the act of thinking about people you love, the good in the life you live, the small gifts and graces in your life, can bring on this feeling of gratitude. It's no wonder many religious traditions include gratitude practice as part of their overall spiritual practices - it is not difficult, and it is effective in raising our spirits.

So as part of my spiritual practice, I found myself walking the trails of Mill Creek Park earlier this week, enjoying the now bare trees over me, noticing the bits of green that remained: ferns, with their jade green, willows with their faded leaves. It was early evening, and crows were beginning to settle down in trees above me, calling to each other, caw, caw caw.

I thought about how this earth has a thin veneer of life overlaying its surface. The bulk of life extends not much farther down than the roots of the trees around me, nor much higher than the crows above me. A thin layer, on a small planet. The only place we know in the universe that life exists. I felt connected to those crows, not crow by crow, but to all of them together as a combined presence. A field of crow energy that enveloped me and held me. An embrace of crow, with all of that black fluttering, calling, cawing, crying vitality.

I have been told that birds are the most direct descendants of dinosaurs, so I imagine the crying of crows to be a primeval sound. I hear dinosaur words in their voices, as they fluttered around warning or gossiping about my presence. I felt connected in crow song, these powerful throaty voices, deep into the history of life here on earth. I felt completely contained and held, fully part of of life, woven into life's past, and into the vitality of the present. I walked in gratitude. I gave thanks.

All life is a gift, I am supremely grateful, I give thanks, and I am glad.

Let us, everyone, choose to give thanks. Let our words and our songs flow, "let us sing with thanks unto the end."  Let us all be grateful for these gifts of life.

Notes:
1."For All That Is Our Life", Singing the Living Tradition, UUA, 1993, #128.
2. Jacqui James, Between The Lines: Sources for Singing the Living Tradition, 1998. p. 36.
3. David Budbill, "Sometimes", http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/11/17
4. Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive, 2009.
see also, "Gratitude, Like Other Positive Emotions, Broadens and Builds", Barbara Fredrickson, in The Psychology of Gratitude, Chapter 8, ed. by Robert A. Emmons & Michael E. McCullough, 2004, p. 145.

The Call to Create

Matt Alspaugh

"How many of you are artists? There must be some here, with all this beautiful art around here?" That's how Gordon MacKenzie, a steel sculptor, would begin his talks with schoolchildren. He describes his experience in his book, "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" [1], and I quote:

The pattern of responses never varied.

First Grade: En masse the children leapt from their chairs, arms waving wildly, eager hands trying to reach the ceiling. Every child was an artist.

Second Grade: About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher. The raised hands were still.

Third Grade: At best, 10 kids out of 30 would raise a hand. Tentatively. Self-consciously.

... By time I reached sixth grade, no more than one or two did so and then only ever-so-slightly — guardedly — their eyes glancing from side to side uneasily, betraying a fear of being identified by the group as a “closet artist.”

And this story was from well before the passage of 'No Child Left Behind'! But today is not about schools or kids, but about all of us.

In Praise of the Arts returns here at First UU after several years' absence and I'm grateful for the energy and efforts of many who organized the art show, hung these banners, put together the wonderful reception last night, and did all the other tasks involved in this two week event. In praising the arts, we praise the possibility that all of us are artists, that we all know what those first graders know. We praise creativity, We praise that gift which we all are born with, that ability to make the world more satisfying and beautiful.

So if we've come to see ourselves as not artistic, or uncreative, how do we summon our creative selves back? How might we recover our innate call to create?

One of our readings today [2] described how, as a child, poet Ruth Stone wrote, or rather didn't write, poetry. The poems just showed up, and they were not meek. These were powerful, thunderous, almost terrifying experiences that barreled through her, and if she was fast enough she could grab the poem and get it down on paper before it rumbled past. The creative force seemed to be outside Ruth, and it came in, or she grabbed it and pulled it in.

Are there any of you who have had those experiences? Maybe not so physical, but still, many of us have experienced a flash of insight, the appearance of a complete creative idea suddenly popping into our consciousness.

I've had only a few occasions in which I've had such an inspiration, where a text, or a creative solution appears nearly whole in my mind's eye. It's as if your muse, or your genius, some entity outside yourself just hands you the work, fully formed or nearly so. In ministry, we might say that 'the Spirit moved though you'. Whatever we call it, when this happens, about all we can do is just say 'thank you', because we are in awe and we are grateful.

The second form of inspiration comes from deep within, and it is born of waiting, and listening. This form is far more familiar to me. As in the May Sarton poem [3], we wait as the phoebe does, nurturing the egg of the life of the idea that emerged from us. We sit with it, we incubate it, we give it silence and time to break out.

Except it is not quite that simple. The waiting time does not mean we sit around doing nothing. We are working. We are often hard at work, in this kind of creativity. But the work has a certain silent quality, in that the better part of this creativity we must do alone. There may be many drafts of the poem, many sketches in the sketchbook, many preliminary renditions, before the final layer is placed on the canvas. This is work! and it emerges slowly, from within. We start with that divine spark, and we blow on it, carefully, we give it our breath, by offering it our stillness and steadfast efforts.

Melissa mentioned Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way [4], as a tool to recovering your creative self. This book has been around a while, and remains a popular resource. There was at one time a study group here at First UU that used The Artist's Way through the twelve-week program.

In the book, Cameron talks of two critical activities for opening up one's creative self -- these are Morning Pages and Artist Dates. The idea of Morning Pages is simply that you commit to write three pages every morning in a journal. The writing can be on anything, you can even write "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over. But you do three pages, and you do it every single day.

The idea of the Artists Dates is that once a week, you set aside two hours or so that is time for just you and your creative self to have fun. Time in solitude, maybe walking, taking in a show or a museum or going to an amusement park, this is recreation in the original meaning of the word: re - creation.

I see these two activities as spiritual practices, things you do regularly in order to move toward fullness and wholeness in your life. What Cameron observes, and what others who have used the Artist's Way have told me, is that people tend to love one of these two practices and hate the other. Some love the routine of the Morning Pages, as they feel productive and grounded by them, but they see the Artist's date as frivolous, a waste of time. Others love the fun of the Artist Date, and see the Morning Pages as a boring, daily grind.

Perhaps these two activities line up with the two ways in which creativity can manifest itself to us. If creativity usually comes from outside ourselves, we may enjoy the stimulation of the Artist's Dates. If our source is within us, the rigor of writing pages may nurture that source of creativity.

Now I suspect that the duality I'm describing here -- that creativity either emerges from an outside source or from within us -- is a false one. It's a helpful fiction as we try to understand our patterns of creating. If we are wise, we understand that our creativity depends on both the interior and exterior sources of creative energy.

And as creatives, we get stuck. There are many ways in which our call to create goes unanswered or gets blocked. We already considered the question of identity with the schoolchildren that MacKenzie talked with. When you identify as an artist, of course you are creative. But it is pretty easy to let other life choices drive us to lose that innate sense of creativity. As I look back on my business career, I realize the times when I was most unhappy were when I found myself in situations where 'creativity' didn't seem to be part of the job description. Money, recognition; these did not fill that gaping hole.

Even if we hold on to that identity as artists and 'creatives', we may still find many things, mostly internal, may block our creativity. Perhaps the biggest block is the fear of being inadequate, of being not good enough, even of being laughed at. It takes courage to create, and it gets even harder when we realize that there is always someone who will find our efforts wanting.

I practice Interplay [5], a kind of group expression in movement, dance, song and story. I introduced some of you to Interplay during our Adult Forum time this morning. Our focus is on the play, being in our bodies, creating, having fun, and not on right or wrong or 'improvement'. In Interplay, we experiment with these various activities we call 'forms'. One form is 'run-walk-stop', which is just that: people running, walking or stopping as they wish. Another form is babbling, where we tell very brief stories to one another about mundane things. We may do dance forms, like 'three-play' where we try to have three people moving and the rest observing, but any observer can jump in at any time. So you get the idea: the forms are very loose, it's play, shaped by the people, and it's just a lot of fun.

At the same time, Interplay can provide a space for people to explore the difficult stories in their lives: a dying father, a lump in a breast, a shooting in a church, a suicidal patient at work. Without the sense of performance, or judgment, people can go to amazingly deep places with movement and story and song. And the results can be profoundly beautiful.

Another block to artistic creativity is our sense of isolation. Not only do we feel we do it alone, we may even feel overly competitive with others artists. Yet much of our creation builds quite directly and honestly on the prior work of others, and that is as it should be. This morning Marcelline explored a variation on the tune used in the hymn we sung earlier, and Mi Sook Yun our guest musician, offered a piece based on the 23rd Psalm. Not long ago I attended a traveling exhibition of the art of Picasso [5] and his American contemporaries. I was surprised at the amount of what to me seemed to be outright copying of image elements among artists like Jackson Pollack, Willem De Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. I immediately thought, "this is plagiarism", but no, the copying furthered these artist's exploration of Abstract Expressionism and what followed it. We can actually be more creative when we work in collaborative community with other artists.

These are just a few of the blocks to creativity: loss of identity, fear, isolation, competition. There are many others, as you well know. We can work to overcome our blocks, realizing that overcoming is hard work, the work of a lifetime.

Where does our creative energy actually come from? For many of us, this is a deeply spiritual question. Strong emotions arise when we create. I have on many occasions found myself weeping as I write out a sermon or even practice the beginning piano pieces I can play. There is sweet joy in this! There does seem to be something larger than me that these emotions are connected to; they well up from something deep and divine.

In my own belief system, I see the creative force as the center of everything. Creativity works by evolving the universe through the process of natural selection, and this particular process abides in much more than just the evolution of life. Even our universe may have been selected out of many universes as one compatible with life.

As humans, we evolved and are aware. Research suggests that many of our moral behaviors result from our evolution as a species. So things like altruism and fairness are part of our nature; they help us survive in groups. It may also be that creativity is a selected evolutionary response. So when I create, and offer the fruits of my efforts up into the world, I work in alignment with this larger creative force; and I feel this.

Now that is just my own window into the understanding of what goes on; it too continues to evolve. In any event, it helps me comprehend what drives me to create, and helps to sustain me during the dry spells.

We who create, create because we must. The poet Wendell Berry tells us, in his poem, 1994 [6]:

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.

But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.

....
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.

So. We are artists; we create, because we love this world. And perhaps the end of our creation will be life beyond words, life beyond our art.

Notes:
1. Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace, 1998, p. 19.
2. Elizabeth Gilbert, on nurturing creativity, TED Talks, http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html; text transcribed at http://lateralaction.com/articles/elizabeth-gilbert-creativity-divine-inspiration/
3. Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way, 1992.
4. www.interplay.org
5. Whitney Museum, "Picasso and American Art", see http://www.whitney.org/www/exhibition/past.jsp

6. Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p. 182: "1994, VII", excerpted.

Sharing our Bread

Matt Alspaugh

This is a sermon about bread. Not about dough or baking, or wheat or gluten, but about the colloquial term. Bread. Money. This is a sermon about money, and sharing money, about generosity of money and life.

Now, money brings up a lot of anxiety for most of us. Even in preparing this sermon, I noticed my own anxiety talking about this topic.  Joseph Campbell said, "Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life's possibilities."[1]   Money is, in a way, a distillation of what we value. So how we use money really points to the larger values and concerns we face, and our anxiety about money is a reflection of angst or tension about these larger issues.

There are three particular areas of tension that get reflected in money that I want to speak about today: these three areas are trust, sharing, and purpose. These connect up with money not only in our individual lives, but also in the economics of our society. After all, the word economics comes from the Greek oikonomia, 'the management of a household'. So these areas of tension -- trust, sharing, and purpose -- overlap to touch how we live our personal lives, how this country and the global society functions, and -- as one would expect in a sermon on  Stewardship Sunday -- how we relate to this church community.

Let's start with trust. The act of breaking bread together -- with a friend or a companion-- is a classic image of trust. The derivation of companion, from the French, is com - pan - ion 'with bread, being'. To be with bread, to take a meal together implies a certain degree of closeness with the other person, a time where we can relax and let down our guard.  Who do you choose to sit with when you take lunch at work? Who do your children sit with when they take lunch at school? Theologian John Dominic Crossan in his book "Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography"  suggests that one of the most radical things Jesus did was not his teaching or miracles, but that he simply had meals with people outside his social class. That was unheard of in Hebrew times.[2]

Today, for many of us, it is less about trusting who we break bread with as it is  trusting the source of bread, and the overall food supply. Our trust in the production and delivery of food has been shaken with outbreaks of food poisoning from food we once thought was safe and healthy. We've come to realize that terms like 'organic' and 'free-range' and 'fresh-squeezed' have no real meaning, that perhaps they cannot be trusted. We want to trust our sources of food, and one way to do that is to buy locally. I think that trust is the primary factor driving the local food movement, maybe more than the ecological cost of transporting food from afar. You can come to our local farmers market, and actually talk to the farmer about how the food was produced. You can visit their farm if you want. That builds trust.

In our larger society, many voices have suggested that the economic meltdown of the last year or so is due to misplaced trust. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times Magazine last month, asking "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?"[3]  He suggests that most economists put too much trust in their theories -- theories that assumed we were all rational economic beings working the free market to maximize our 'utils', our desires. This misplaced trust led to systemic changes in our markets that led to the meltdown of the last year or so.

In religious communities like this one, trust is always in tension. We have to decide which decisions need to be made by everyone, and which ones can be delegated safely to the board of trustees (there's that word again) or others. When does this tension really stretch and strain us? It is when we are talking about money. I've seen some congregations suffer through long congregational meetings, arguing over the smallest details of the budget. Not pretty. Better to find ways to build the trust in committees to make those decisions. Better to work to develop a history of good decisions around money, so we trust that the money is raised and spent wisely.

Trust, in a way, is a spiritual practice. It requires balance. If you are too trusting, you put yourself and those around you at risk. Not trusting enough, and we close off opportunities that life presents us, and we miss the chance to interact with new people or try new things.

The second tension that money places in bold relief is sharing.  How do we create a system in which we contribute according to our ability and receive according to our need, and do this efficiently? I remember as a kid, trying to convince my folks to raise my allowance. When that failed, my brother and I tried to talk them into a kind of 'fee for service' arrangement where we'd get paid by the chore. Nope. My mother was pretty adamant that our allowance was paid just for being part of the family, not on the basis of what we did.

In churches, this same sort of dynamic sometimes pops up. I've visited churches, both in our denomination and outside, where it seems everything has a price. There's a jar set out -- $2 for a cup of coffee. There are fees for children's and adult religious education classes.

Some of our old historic Unitarian churches even rented pews. If you visit some of the old Boston churches, you'll find pews sectioned off by low walls -- creating pew boxes, that wealthy families would rent by the year. In a few churches of our Puritan forebears, these pew-boxes even had separate outside entrances, so you didn't have to interact with the hoi-polloi.[4]

I rather prefer the idea that we all share together in the various expenses of this church, that there are few items that require extra fees. Certainly there is the possibility that some will take more than they choose to give, but this process ebbs and flows with the changes that life brings. Part of our challenge as a community is the discernment that helps us know when people should be supported by us because they are in need.

In the larger society the tension emerges between the idea of common-wealth,  and individual ownership and rights.  I am convinced that a large part of what made this country great was a sense of shared responsibility in creating public schools, public libraries, freeways and open roads, national parks, among other resources of our common wealth. Many of our early Unitarian leaders were instrumental in founding some of these institutions. While it is true that private ownership and the free market also contributed to our greatness, I worry that we are out of balance now, and we've lost this sense of common-wealth. That loss makes all of our lives smaller, more separate, and less full.

The third item of money tension, and perhaps the most important, is purpose.  Does how we earn our living fit into our sense of life purpose? Does it track our values? Often there are tradeoffs here, tensions, as people try to balance supporting their families with doing work that is worth doing.

Similarly, how do our values align with how we spend our money, save it, and give it away?  I do not need to delineate the details of this conflict, as most of us face this daily, for we are bombarded with advertisements urging us to spend, save, or give in specific ways.

These tensions arise even in making our pledges or estimate of planned monthly giving to this church. I hope we all will think carefully about how much we can give based on how our values align with the sense of purpose of this community, our mission, what we are doing in the world. The generosity of each pledge should be deliberate, it should be well thought out. Each pledge represents a personal linkage of your life purpose to the larger purpose of this institution.

Lynne Twist worked for many years as a fundraiser for The Hunger Project. In her book, the Soul of Money, she describes learning the importance of purpose early in her career. She had two back-to-back fundraising visits. The first was to the CEO of a major agribusiness concern that had been receiving some bad press. Lynn described how this executive half-listened to her pitch, then slid a preprinted check across his desk to her for $50,000, a huge sum for her. But, as Lynn said,

... he had no genuine interest in our work, ... to end world hunger. This was a purely strategic move. He ... wanted the company to look good in the media. In purely financial terms, it was to be a simple transaction: Handing me this check for $50,000 bought his company an opportunity to mend its reputation. But as he slid the check over to me, I felt the guilt of the company coming right across the desk with the money. He gave me the money and the company's guilt.[5]

As a good fundraising professional, Lynn thanked the man for the check and went on to her next meeting, which could not be more different. This was in a church basement in Harlem, in an old building where rainwater was dripping in all around in buckets placed to catch it. Lynn realized she was the only white-skinned person in this crowd of about seventy-five people. She made her pitch, and then there was silence, one of those kind of long silences we who speak publicly dread. Finally, near the back of the room, Lynn saw a middle-aged woman stand up. Lynn recalls what she said.

"Girl", she said, "My name is Gertrude, and I like what you've said and I like you. Now, I ain't got no checkbook and I ain't got no credit cards. To me, money is a lot like water. For some folk it rushes through their life like a raging river. Money comes through my life like a little trickle. But I want to pass it on in a way that does the most good for the most folks. I see that as my right and my responsibility. It's also my joy. I have fifty dollars in my purse that I earned from doing a white woman's wash, and I want to give it to you."[6]

She came up and handed Lynn $50 in small bills, and the others came up too. Lynn realized that this money, barely 1% of the check she received earlier, would do more good to end hunger, than that big check. For behind these small bills there was good intention, and joy.

Lynn made a decision. When she got back to her office she returned the check with a note suggesting that the company put the money behind something it could believe in.

Now the story doesn't end there. Lynn heard from that same CEO years later. He told her he had retired, and as he reviewed his career, the returned check stuck out as a pivotal memory. He realized that he now wanted to do something with his money, he wanted to make a difference, he needed a new sense of purpose. He ended up supporting The Hunger Project and donating many times the amount of the original check out of his own funds.

Lynn concludes,

"No matter how much or how little money you have flowing through your life, when you direct the flow with soulful purpose, you feel wealthy. You feel vibrant and alive when you use your money in a way that represents you, not just in response to the market economy, but as an expression of who you are. When you let money move to things you care about, your life lights up. That's really what money is for."[7]

In our reading, UU minister Lynn Ungar tells us,

This is the lifeline --
the etched path from hand
to grain to earth, the transmutation
of the elements through touch
marking the miracles
on which we unwillingly depend.[8]

It is through our touch that grain and flour become our bread, our sustenance. In the same way, money is nothing without our touch. It is only when we share it and put it to use that it has any meaning at all, any chance of satisfying us. It is wise for us to consider how we put our money, our sustenance, to use in this community. So we should ask ourselves some questions.

What are the possibilities, the dreams of this church community? Can we trust others in the community to share in the efforts that carry us toward our common purpose? How will this community sustain us in the future? What miracles will emerge from our involvement, our touch, our support?  What can we offer toward this higher purpose.

Following this service when we sit together and share a meal of soup and bread, we will explore some of these questions. Our visitors today are welcome to join us, and as you are our guests, we will not ask you for a financial pledge.

If as Joseph Campbell suggests, money is congealed energy, then perhaps our pledges are distilled gratitude for this community.  Let us release the energy behind money, releasing our gratitude, and release life's possibilities which this church represents. When you direct the flow of your money in alignment with your life, you find deep joy.

Notes:
1. Jerrod Mundis, Making Peace with Money, 1999, p. 168.
2. John Dominic Crossan, "Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography", 1999. Chapter 3.
3. Paul Krugman, "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?", New York Times Magazine, Sept. 6, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html
4. Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 1891, p. 33.
5. Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money, 2003, p. 99.
6. ibid., p. 101.
7. ibid. p. 119.
8. Blessing the Bread: Meditations, Lynn Ungar, 1996, p. 1.

The Veil Becomes Thin - A Day of the Dead Service

Matt Alspaugh

Part I
Reading: from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. [1]

Aren't you just amazed by the fall colors this year? I was driving over to Cleveland this week and was enraptured by the trees. Such color: that bright orange, crimson, even magenta and occasional purple. Those almost fluorescent yellows, and that bright chartreuse as some trees begin to change late. I wondered whether other drivers were as attentive, or inattentive, as I was, whether we'd all just drive off the road following this visual ecstasy, cars lined up in the ditches, struck dumb in amazement.

The colors of fall leaves are not like the colors of flowers, in nature. Flowers are colored by design, by the force of natural selection that drives them to advertise what they have to bees and insect and some birds. But tree color, that's just a by- product of the colors of certain leaf chemicals, the yellow carotenoids and the red anthocyanins. In a way they are an unexpected gift of nature to us. Or perhaps a gift of the divine. This is grace, an unexpected gift.

It's worth noting that this gift of color comes as a byproduct of senescence, the process of controlled death of the leaves. In the process of dying, the green chlorophyll degrades, and these other colors are gradually revealed to us. The stunning colors remind us that the leaves will soon be gone, that after this burst of glory the trees will be bare, and the world begins to become quiet, preparing for the time of cold and dark.

Many cultures have celebrated this time of year with a mixture of gratitude for the gifts of the harvest and a recognition of the dying time to come. Here in the US we celebrate Halloween, which is an adaptation of the Gaelic festival of Samheim. In that Pagan tradition, this is the time when the veil between heaven and earth was at its thinnest, and contact with the dead, in ghostly form or otherwise, was more likely.

One of the things the Catholic church was very successful at doing was merging other religious beliefs into an expanded Catholic religion. This is why Christmas happens near the winter solstice, and why Halloween is celebrated as All Saints Day. As Barbara Kingsolver suggested in the reading, The Catholic Church simply dropped a holiday about saints on top of an existing Gaelic holiday. On the other hand, the Catholic missionaries encountering the Aztec ritual of of the Dead were able to shift the date for that ritual to All Saints Day, but they failed to get the Aztecs to abandon their theology or holiday practices in favor of going to Mass.

As both Ellen and Barbara Kingsolver noted, the various Hispanic celebrations around death are often joyful and celebratory. They are not focused on horror or morbidity, as our Halloween tradition is. There is no sense that the dead will return to harm us, rather that this is a time for reconnection with the dead.

A few years ago, a new Latino minister, Reverend Peter Morales, brought a celebration to the church I attended. This was Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, and it is what we will celebrate here today. Our version will be a bit more modest than the way many celebrate: we won't travel to grave sites with blankets, we don't have bread babies, or nibble on candy skulls, or imbibe plenty of local alcoholic brew. But we will take time to acknowledge and remember our dead, those we loved who are no longer with us.

But first I feel I must address the topic of misappropriation. This is the term we use to denote the improper borrowing, maybe even stealing of traditions or music or art from other cultures. Misappropriation has been a particular concern of Unitarian Universalists, since we tend to draw from so many sources to create our own traditions. We want to do this borrowing and combining and creation with respect, even if we lack specific permission from those from whom we borrow. I hope and trust that we can see that this ritual and other parts of the Day of the Dead tradition are gifts to us, gifts that we share with each other today with the utmost honor and respect.

Within this gift there is a message, offered freely, as in grace. It invites us to ask-- how do we see our relationship with those who have left us, those who have gone beyond? Some of us may have a very real, tangible sense of connection with our dead. We may have dreams, we may have had visions or presence or conversations with our departed. For others, this is all much more metaphorical. We may have conversations with the deceased, but they are of a more hypothetical nature: you know, what would my mother say about that! Or we may just learn to live with the normal emotions of grief, the ones that continue on and never completely fade. Emptiness. Loss.

What we in this culture seem to be re-learning, after having almost forgotten it, is that it is important to celebrate grief, to make time for grief. Memorial services, funerals, internments are all important for everyone, including children. Also important is the periodic return to such celebration, as in this Day of the Dead. As we return again to our memories, we may find feelings that are more complex than just a generic sense of sorrow. We want to remember those we have lost in all their complexity, in good and bad, in what they left us and what they took away. We want to remember them as real, living people who were important to us, that we loved and who loved us, and we can still find a real and deep connection with them.

So it is that we have this celebration of the dead here today. On this, our common table or altar, you are invited to place photos or mementos or other objects of those who you remember today. If you did not bring an object with you and you would like to take part in the ritual, the ushers have flowers, and you are invited to place a flower on the table as a token of remembrance. My experience is that this is most powerful when done in silence. I invite you forward as you wish to add your tangible reminders to the larger memory of this place.

Part II
Reading: "The White Museum" [2]

One of the first things I learned as a hospital chaplain is that the conversation with the family of a deceased person about organ donation is a delicate one. Even people who are normally rational and who hold liberal views about such things are sometimes tripped up in the chaos following death, even an expected death. People often make decisions using a worldview resurrected from their childhood. So it was that when my mother died, her request that her body be donated to science was somehow ignored. Instead of having some first-year medical student wander through the museum of her brain, she came back to us in a brown plastic box.

My Dad finally decided what to do with her. We threw her off a cliff. Those were my words for it. It was probably illegal, but we didn't think about that at the time. We took her ashes to a state park in Texas, where a path overlooked the Brazos River, and in turns, spread her ashes over the edge of that path onto the slope below. We return to that site, more frequently in the beginning, less frequently now, twenty years later. When we go there, it is a time for remembering my mother's life. Perhaps for me, and my siblings, this remembering and grieving and letting go is as Carl Sandburg writes [3]:

Gather the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women
Gather for keeping years and years.

And then ...
Loosen your hands, let go and say good-by.
Let the stars and songs go.
Let the faces and years go.
Loosen your hands and say good-by.

This letting go is how my siblings and I did it. It wasn't a sad thing for us. We don't do it because others compelled us to do it, it just made sense for us. We loosened our hands, let go, and say good-by. This happened for us just as a natural course of things.

In some circumstances, though, some of us will find the sense of loss does not diminish, that the grief remains at some significant level. Sometimes those around us push us to 'get over it and get on with life'. Some of the old models of grief, such as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving -- you know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance -- suggest that one has move through steps with grieving to 'get it right'. I'm not sure this is helpful, for we all relate to loss in our own way. Some of us -- very appropriately -- grieve longer and more deeply than others. My experience in the hospital has led me to the point of view that any way we relate, whether in sorrow or with the kind of joy of remembrance that Latinos bring to Day of the Dead, is OK, providing it doe not become all- consuming.

Of course, as we think about others who have died, we must confront our own mortality. We must consider perhaps someday someone else, children, grandchildren, friends, may place our pictures, our own pictures, up on an altar like this one.

What happens after we die? This is one of life's persistent questions, one that we UUs often avoid. A minister friend told me it was one question that he thought not useful to explore. I differ on this, though I know with some certainty that I have no answers.

I think it is important for us to acknowledge that this question is a mystery, that there are many possible answers, and that we operate contingently, trying to make sense of these possibilities. For some of us, visions of the world of the dead are just a matter of curiosity. For some people, those visions inform their faith, and guide their choices and behavior in this world. Is someone watching over us, tracking our every move? How does this world relate to some world to come? For this world is just a temporary way-station, like a dirty bus terminal filled with strangers, a place to be endured while you wait for your bus to take you away.

But for a great many of us, there is a sense that there is no world other than this one, that this world is a place to cherished, and the people around us are to be cared for. After we die, we live on through the legacy of our actions, the things we did while we were alive in this world. How will we be remembered? What do we leave behind? Who did we love?

Rumi tells us, in a translation by Jonathan Star [4]:

The secrets of eternity are beyond us
And these puzzling words we cannot understand.
Our words and actions take place on this side of the veil.
O soul, When the veil is gone, we are gone.

This is the time of the year when the veil is thin, when we are invited to puzzle over the secrets of eternity. Those secrets will not be revealed to us on this side of the veil. To some degree we create our own understanding of such eternity, and we do so through the ones we love who have gone beyond the veil. We all enter and exit this world through the same gate. No matter how different each of us lives in this world, the exit is the same for all of us. Those who have preceded us in death can be our guides to what lies ahead for us. In their continued presence, in our memories of them, we can be joyful. We are not alone. In some sense, they are with us still.

Lifting up and remembering those who precede us, who have left this world, as we have done today, connects us deeply with one another. Let this table serve as a reminder, and let us revel in the profound joy of the connection, perhaps unspoken, that binds all of us who dwell together in this place and on this earth.

Notes
1 Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 2007, p. 289.
2 "The White Museum", George Bilgere, http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ index.php?date=2009/03/23
3 Carl Sandburg, Smoke and Steel, 1920. - V. Mist Forms.
4 Jonathan Star, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, 1997, p. 169.