breathing

In the cold light of morning, things often look differently than they did the night before.

After a night's sleep, some morning coffee, a gently prodding yet compassionate note from a friend, I was able to regain the focus that had been so skewed last night. On the ride to church, I was able to do some thinking, and I came to some pretty profound realizations.

First, what happened last night was I got triggered. My past stuff got brought right to the surface in a very uncomfortable way. Once again I was a scared kid in the schoolyard, pushed and shoved by kids who fit in and laughed at by everyone, with no one to step in and protect me. Once again I was being bullied at home, humiliated and shamed, screamed at and threatened, and nobody -- no other parent, no grandparent, no aunt, no cop, no neighbor -- came to my aid. I would go outside afterward, knowing that the neighborhood had heard me scream and cry and be ashamed that I was bad and had been punished and they all knew. If I could hear their dinner table conversations in a summer evening from my bedroom, I knew they could hear me screaming and begging from inside my house.

The time I speak of, I was 11. It sucked.

So I was triggered by the idea of an adult who, in my mind, could do something to stop a kid from being bullied, but who did not.

And then there is the other side of that coin.

I am not a huge fan of the concept of sin, but I will use it in this instance.

The sins that weigh heaviest on my soul are the instances in which I could have stepped in to stop a bully but I did not, for whatever reason. I think I have told the story here about a young kid who wanted to wear an outrageous t-shirt to a political march, and some adults took him aside and pressured him to change his shirt so as not to offend anyone. They used their positions of authority as adults to bully this kid into conforming to what they thought he should be. I didn't intercede on his behalf, and it has eaten at me ever since.

So what I've got is a basic case of Freudian reaction-formation: what I cannot abide in myself, I shall loathe in others. I will hold others to a standard that I fail to meet. Ouch.

Oh dear. So it seems that my rage and self-righteous indignation last night are really all about my own shit. Well, ain't that a grand Sunday morning kind of revelation? Hmph.

The question that faces me now, as I begin my path as a minister who must be concerned with people's hearts and not an activist concerned with the often heartless world of politics, has to do with compassion and not judgement. The former will be my job. The latter will not. Nor, for the record, is it now.

How, then, do I arrive at a place of compassion without first wanting to smack someone soundly in the chops? How do I get to a place where I can meet a person where they are and lead them gently to where they can be?

Yes, kids are dying. Yes, this is urgent. But urgency on my part is not necessarily enough to overcome a lifetime of shame and fear in someone else's present.

There is much for me to learn.

Blessed be.

New Year Resolutions, failure and success

Yesterday I preached at the UU church in Pittsfield, Maine. It was the first time I have done so since receiving a call to ministry. It was very different from what I did in Belfast back in November. That was politics and fun organizing. Yesterday was thoughtful worship. And I was keenly aware of just how untrained I am. Bless the host minister for being there to nurse me through and to chat afterwards about ministry and seminary and all manner of things.

I need to leave the house early this morning, so I am going to post my sermon and hope you like it. I'll try for more profound writing later. Please be patient with me.

D

Sermon:

So let’s talk about those New Year’s resolutions.

How’re they coming?

Lots of people I talk to say they don’t do resolutions any more. Not on New Year’s anyway. Too much pressure. They fail and feel bad and give up before Valentine’s Day.

Resolutions are serious business.

Town Councils pass resolutions. The Legislature will make resolutions and issue proclamations. “Be it resolved … such and such and so forth.”

We are frightened of grand things. We think we should try something big like that, but we stumble. We fall. We get discouraged. The task is too big. Too much. We cannot succeed.

So we quit. We give up.

Resolutions we make affect our lives.

I resolve to eat healthier. I resolve to lose weight, to exercise, to be more kind and patient, to recycle.

I resolve to tithe 10 percent of what I earn to my church and give 10 percent of my non-work time to charity.

These things involve a re-wiring of how we operate, and perhaps our finances and how we live within our families. That’s a tall order.

New Year Resolutions are a thing many of us used to do every year, but it seems that very few bother any more.

Resolutions are bold proclamations of our intents, of things we consider important enough to state out loud, or on paper, perhaps taped to the bathroom mirror where we can be reminded daily of our pledge.

Resolutions can stem from a desire to better ourselves, as in the “eat healthier, lose weight, exercise more” vein, or a desire to better our communities as with the “recycle, give to my church and charities, be kind to people” line of resolution.

And what drives us to make these resolutions? Are our aspirations so out of character that we need to write them down to remind us to change ourselves completely from what we are into what we want to become?

I doubt it.

We make resolutions to make ourselves better versions of who we already are. We have things that we believe in, things that we value, things we want to work toward to improve ourselves. We want to get better at what we do.

And yet, when we stumble early in the game, we are quick to give up. Before a few weeks have passed, we despair that we will ever be thin and fit and healthy, or that we can rearrange our finances to adequately support something in our lives as important as our church and we give up.

Oscar Wilde said “good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”

But Webster’s offered me some additional insight into “resolution.”

A resolution is not just a promise, it is an answer.

We resolve conflict.

We find a resolution to a difficult situation.

Resolution indicates an answer, and an answer in the affirmative.

Yet we bludgeon our psychic selves when we stumble with our resolutions. We beat ourselves up emotionally, for being human and having room to grow.

What matters, it seems, is not so much how we came to this place, but how do we get past it. How do we learn again to pedal into life with the fearless enthusiasm of a ten-year-old on a bicycle on a summer’s day? And when we fall and skin our knees, how do we remember that getting back on the bike is what is really important?

I think the “kids on bikes” analogy is a good one.

There is much adults could learn if we’d hang out for an afternoon at a skate park. Yes, kids ride bikes at skate parks. And they ride skateboards, and they ride in line skates. If it’s got wheels, kids will ride it and make it do tricks.

If there is a ramp, a kid will want to go down it. And another kid will want to go up. And a third kid will want to spin circles while going in either direction. A fourth kid will try to do it all while upside down.

And if you watch long enough, you will see an amazing thing.

The kids fail.

All the time, they fail.

They go up, and they come down, and not always on the same set of things they rode up on.

They scramble back up, push off, and try again.

And fail again.

Crash!

Boards and bikes fly off in crazy directions and helmets and pads hit ramps and boards and pavement and parents cringe and wince.

The kids get up, dust off and go again.

They try and they try and they try, they watch each other, they help each other, they offer advice, and the mimic the guy who’s got the move down.

They fail.

All the time.

And unlike us, they get over it.

They understand that there is a big difference between failing and BEING a failure.

You ask a kid with a board and a helmet what his goals are, he’ll likely tell you about a guy named Tony Hawk and name a bunch of moves that would make most adults blanch to contemplate.

Ask if he thinks he’ll ever get that good, and you’ll get a bunch of different answers depending on the kid. Some are cocksure, saying they’ll beat Tony Hawk one day. Others will be reverent, saying breathlessly that they can only dream of such a thing, and others still will say “maybe.”

Maybe.

As in “maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”

But they don’t get hung up on the “maybe I won’t” part. They just keep skating.

If they got each thing right the first time they tried it, there wouldn't be any challenge, now would there?

And the fun is in the challenge, the learning, the mastery. And finally, in moving on to the next cool thing to try.

They don’t get freaked out about failure. To them, it’s a natural part of learning and mastering a new skill.

When a ball player comes home from a game, be it the big leagues or t-ball, all covered in dirt from sliding into base and chasing balls around the outfield, we do not judge her harshly, saying “you should have been able to achieve your goals standing up and staying clean.” Of course not. We know that success often means getting dirty.

It usually means trying more than once.

Trying several times means you didn’t get it right the first X number of times.

It means being like Robert Bruce’s arachnid muse. It means if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Or, as Walter Elliot said in The Spiritual Life, “perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.”

Let me read to you the text on a little card I carry in my wallet. The emphasis added is my own.

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.

The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

These are the principles that make us who we are as a faith community.

These are not small things.

These are big things, huge ideas.

Ideals.

Goals.

Things perhaps forever beyond our reach.

Do we commit ourselves to them once a year, do them imperfectly for a couple of weeks and then quit?

Of course not.

And why not?

Because these principles are too big, too important, too much a part of who and what we are to just abandon them.

Even if we stumble.

Even if we fail.

Recently, the UU Church of Ellsworth held a series of after-service classes for adults focusing on the seven principles of our faith. It was led by members of the congregation and drew a diverse group of participants, ranging in age from 22 to the northern side of 75. It is impolite to ask how far north of 75, I am told. We had some lively discussions and some heartfelt silences. Perspectives varied but stayed within mostly predictable bounds. We all agreed that the principles were good and that we ought to work toward practicing them in our daily lives. And we all agreed that we fall short, often, but that we do what we can and must be satisfied with progress, if not perfection.

The discussion around the sixth principle seemed to be the most anguished. Principle six states a simple goal: “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”

It was so big, so enormous.

A world community?

With peace?

And justice?


For ALL?!

It was so monumental that many of our group despaired of ever reaching this goal. So long as there are dishonest people, and greedy people, and mean people, and hateful people, it seemed like we’d be shoveling against the tide.

“How can we ever hope to achieve something like this?” some wailed.

Our group was split. There were some who decried such an impossible task, and there were others who shrunk it down into something a little more manageable and got to work.

I call this the “light a candle” approach.

As in “better to light a single candle rather than sit and curse the dark.”

Another woman there took the Tip O’Neil approach.

“All politics is local,” she said.

Will the whole world be able to see by the light of our single candle? No.

But the people around us might.

I was reminded of the parable about the boy on the beach throwing starfish into the sea. The beach is covered with thousands and thousands of starfish, washed up on shore and certain to perish as the tide recedes. A man notices the boy and his efforts and questions why he is tossing starfish, one at a time, back into the surf. “There are so many,” the man said. “The birds will eat them and the sun will bake the rest. They are doomed. What possible difference can you make?” the man asked the boy.

The boy holds up a starfish and nods at it before he tosses it gently into the waves. “It matters to that one,” he said.

We do not need to change the whole world to work toward a goal. We only need to change what we can reach. And sometimes that means that the only thing we can change is ourselves.

Sometimes we have to be the single candle we light. It is not easy, but it is the next right thing to do. Just keep doing the next right thing. Just reach out and offer a kindness. Just help someone who needs it. Just eat the salad instead of the fisherman’s combo platter. Just take the walk instead of watching TV.

When we make resolutions, the field is really quite wide open.


We can pick an easy target that we can comfortably achieve, designed to make us feel good about ourselves. “I resolve to return my hymnal to its place and recycle my order of service every week.”

Or we can choose something that challenges us to get outside the place where we are comfortable. “I resolve to tithe 10 percent of my income to my church and donate 10 percent of my time to charity work.”

When we aim for the big resolution, we run the risk of setting an impossible to achieve kind of goal, unless is it something we can peck at and work at and make small progresses as we go.

For me, a resolution is a thing I hold in my heart that I strive for, a principle that is in my thoughts every day, or perhaps most days.

Some days I hit it, and some days I do not.

Does it mean I have failed, on those days when I have not hit the target?

No.

Failure is not permanent.

A single failure does not mean I AM a failure.

Failures teach us what doesn’t work.
The problem comes when we insist that the methods that have not worked will work if we try them again, even if no other variables are different.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as trying the same thing again and again and expecting different results.

So perhaps we need to learn from our kids.

If a kid at a skate park tries a thing a half-dozen times and it doesn’t work, he adjusts what he’s doing until it does work. If he still has problems, he asks someone for help. He’s not too proud. He wants to master the trick.

This behavior is difficult for many adults. We get jammed up at the first sign of difficulty.

We are afraid to skin our knees. We are embarrassed to ask for help.

We fear failure and we fear shame.

We put an awful lot of power and emotional baggage behind the word “failure.”

It stops us from even attempting things that are difficult.

We are Unitarian-Universalists! Do we not thrive on a challenge? Do we not crave difficult concepts, uncomfortable ideas, flexible theologies, things that make us swallow hard and step forward into the fear?

Yet the idea of resolutions, which remember, are answers in the affirmative to difficult things, send us grouching away remarking that they are useless.

We know that our UU principles are important enough that we commit ourselves to them, not just every Sunday when we sit in this sanctuary, but in our everyday lives.

We work to remind ourselves that every person has inherent worth and dignity, and we struggle – and sometimes fail – to treat them accordingly.

We try to work for justice, equity and compassion in human relations. And sometimes we fail. We fall short of that compassionate ideal.

We do our best to accept one another and encourage each in our congregation to the kind of spiritual growth that calls them. And we often fail. We sometimes have difficulty accepting each person. We sometimes disagree with the spiritual truths our neighbors might find.

We try to support and affirm a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, but we fail here, too sometimes. If we’re honest, we can admit we’d really rather others find our version of truth and meaning.

We affirm the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and society at large -- except when things get bogged down in committee. Then we’re not so sure democracy is a good idea.

We believe in the goal of a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all, but we despair that we will ever achieve it. We seem to be up against such enormous odds, in a world filled with greed and hate, we struggle to not get discouraged.

And we respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, although sometimes we wish our neighbors would not bounce the web so violently. It disturbs our place in it, and we begin to forget again that they have inherent worth and dignity.

These are our principles. We know them. We do our best to live them.

And we fail.

Regularly.

We fall short of what we want to be.

When we fail, do we abandon it all, throw our hands in the air and walk away in defeat?

Of course not. We try again.

We stop, take a moment (or several) a deep breath (or several) and then, gently, as we are able, we step forward again into the work that our religious tradition calls us to do.

The UUA issued resolutions to covenant and affirm our principles with the authority of the gathered congregations at the convention.

Have we the authority to covenant and affirm similar broad, grand and sweeping declarations of intent and affirmation with regards to ourselves? Yes.

Do we afford ourselves the same measure of worth and dignity that we struggle to see and affirm in others?

Perhaps we should be gentle with ourselves.

So let us now take a look at our resolutions and see them as solutions, as answers in the affirmative, progress toward a goal of perfection.

We want progress for ourselves.

We want to be as fully human and as fully divine as we can be.

Let us resolve, then, to treat ourselves gently in our criticisms of our humanity while we encourage ourselves to continue to strive.

This we ask, in all the names of the Divine.

Blessed be. Amen.

call drop?

I think I might be experiencing something I can only describe as "call drop."

I'm not talking about poor cell phone reception, I'm talking about the hangover from the euphoria that comes with a revelation, or the call experience I had this weekend.

In the world of bd/sm and power exchange play between dominants and submissives, the sub will often experience a thing called "sub drop" in the day or days following an intense scene. It is sort of like an endorphin hangover, when the brain has to adjust its chemistry to the typical levels that generally get us through our day.

Those chemicals can play hell with the emotions.

That's sort of what I am feeling today.

Sunday's experience was intense and euphoric. It seemed that suddenly a lot of things that had previously been confusing suddenly aligned themselves and came sharply into focus. Aha! I said. NOW I know what to do! And happy chemicals burst forth in my brain.

And Monday and Tuesday, and into Wednesday, that euphoria stayed and I rode it like a wave of happiness. I learned a lot about what lays in front of me, and it's not going to be easy, and I understand that, but the chemicals in my brain made it all OK. I was riding high. I'd figure it out. A way would open and I would be OK.

Today I woke up without the happy chemicals in my brain. Today I woke up with an unsettled feeling about what I might be in for, and it's more than a little bit scary.

I told a friend the news - that I plan to apply to seminary - and that got me a little jolt of the happy juice, but not like the past few days. Not the kind of stuff that made it all manageable.

Ministry is looming large now. Large and scary and intimidating. Like "oh shit, what have I done?" large. Like "why did I have to tell everybody already?" large. Like "oh, god, I hope I can do this" large.

I suppose this all makes sense. I suppose the chemistry explains a great deal and that this is normal, but it is still unnerving.

What have I done? Can I do this? Do I have a choice? It doesn't seem like I do. This thing sits in my lap and won't go away. I know in my gut and my soul and my heart that this is what is meant to be for me, but suddenly it is too big, too scary, too risky, too ... everything.

I'm looking at three years of classroom time, full-time, and a full year of internship somewhere. Tuition is expensive. Housing's gotta be paid somehow. I'm scared. It took me forever to get my four year degree in general trivia, and I have student loans that I can't pay now. Is it even responsible for me to consider such an undertaking?

I have judged people in the past who make what I consider to be foolhardy or irresponsible decisions based on their faith (the Duggars' own personal baby boom, for instance). What makes this decision any different than theirs? I don't know. It is something that is inside me, something that seems to be demanding my attention in a very particular way, something that can be neither ignored nor denied.

So what the hell am I supposed to do now?

Tuesday I got a packet in the mail. It was from AAA, and I was disappointed.

Yesterday I got a packet in the mail from the divinity school of my choice. I have not opened it yet.

I am afraid, as though once I open it, there will be no going back, that I will be locked into something bigger than I can handle, something that requires more brains and money than I've got, something that will require me to learn to be nice and kind to people when I really don't want to.

I am afraid that I will fail.

That's the crux of it. I am afraid that I will fail, nearly to the point where I am paralyzed and unable to make an attempt.

Why do I fear failure? Shame, most likely. I fear being ashamed, being held up as an example of how to fuck things up. I fear being less than. I fear not measuring up. That is the root of my fears, generally; my own insecurity drives them. Can someone this insecure, this scared, be an effective minister? Oh, I can talk a lot of noise and bullshit, but really, when it comes down to brass tacks, can I do what a minister needs to do? Can I treat everyone with dignity? Can I treat everyone with kindness, even when they attack? Can I hold my tongue when morons speak? Can I curb my sarcasm and see the hurt that drives people to make inelegant decisions and statements?

This is too much. I don't know what to do.

The lid is off the jar, it's open and there's no sealing it back up. But now what do I do? I am so scared. This is crazy. No wonder so many ministers seem to be solitary souls. This kind of turmoil is not something too many sane people could hang out with for long. What the hell?

*** Time break of about 1 hour ***

I opened it.

It is scary, but not overwhelmingly so.

There was a nice letter, addressed to me, and signed in real ink by a real person, and while I am sure it is the standard boiler-plate letter they send to everyone who gets an information packet, I liked that they spelled my name correctly and that it carried a real signature and not a computer-generated one.

There were some brochures, nice, clean, simple. Nothing too flashy. I like that. A couple were sort of glossy, but in a non-offensive way. The catalog was good. I got to look at the professors who teach at the school and their credentials, and then a list of classes that are required and offered. I have to say that the classes really looked fascinating. The Old Testament and New Testament ones are intimidating, but the rest looked pretty cool.

There is a number to call to set up an appointment to come tour the campus. I called and spoke to the nice woman who sent me the packet. I told her that I'd like to come see the campus, that I would like to schedule that tour for the last week of February and I'd like to meet with an Admissions person, a Financial Aid person, and a UU student presently studying there. (The Bangor Theological Seminary is a United Church of Christ institution. That means they are Christian, and Unitarian Universalists are not Christian by definition and edict. I want to know what it is like for a non-Christian to study ministry at a Christian Seminary.)

She said she'd set it up and rattled off my phone number to confirm that she had it right from the last time we spoke (again, nice touch) and said she'd get back to me with a date and a schedule for my tour.

I am fighting a kind of panic that seems to be rising in my throat. I am scared. I am so scared. I have no idea if I can do this. So far, all I have committed to is taking a day of my life and driving to Bangor to meet some people and ask some questions. My head is swimming with the details of it all now. What about housing? I need an apartment closer to Bangor. Someplace I can have Kitten and Quinn with me. I wonder if I would qualify for low-income housing? I'm certainly in the low-income range. I'm not nuts about living in Bangor, but that would be closest. I wonder if I can get a job so I can pay my rent while I go to school? I wonder if I'll have time to work with classes and all. I'd like to stay near Ellsworth so I can still come to the church I just joined and where I feel a real sense of belonging. I'm scared. Maybe a mindless job where I don't have to think or anything, so I can just pay some bills and not tax my brain, because I'll need it for all that reading. Oh god. Oh crap. Why couldn't this happen to somebody else? What the hell makes me so special that this thing landed on me? Why not Andrew, the guy sitting next to me in church on Sunday? I could support him through this. Glad to do it. Is it possible that the universe missed? I doubt it. I bet Andrew doubts it, too. And I was sitting on the aisle. There was nobody on my other side that might have been the correct target. It is me, I guess. But why? What the hell have I got to offer? (That is rhetorical, folks, I'm not trolling for affirmation.)

The line popped into my head today "Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

That's Step 12.

Was that call experience the spiritual awakening I have read about in the literature and heard about in meetings? I don't think so. That was more thunderbolt stuff than the (usually) gradual awakening that happens to people who work the steps. If you work those steps, you will have a spiritual awakening. It may or may not be a call like I felt, but there will be a spiritual awakening.

I don't know what's happening to me. It's scary. It is disorienting. It is confusing. It is overwhelming.

I pray again today for knowledge of god's will for me today and the power to carry it out.

Blessed be. Amen.