Tuesday, October 17, 2017

2017.10.1 Draw the Circle Wide: My Love Letter

2017.10.1     Draw the Circle Wide: My Love Letter
Rev. Laura Bogle             Foothills UU Fellowship

Time for All Ages:  “Swimmy” by Leo Lionni
You can listen here:  https://youtu.be/IQlepfKYtUU
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This isn’t a sermon.  This is my love letter to you.
Dear Foothills UU Fellowship,
Five years ago this morning was my very first morning sharing worship with you.  5 years!  Some of you were there that morning.  Some of you had no idea that over at the Everett Senior Center on Sunday mornings there was a bunch of UU’s gathering to sing and tell stories and worship and share food with one another.

And a little later this month – on October 19—this congregation will mark 9 years as a chartered congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Plus a couple more years as a satellite ministry of the Tennessee Valley UU Church.  Next year I want us to celebrate 10 years in a big way!

None of us, including me, has the full story of who we are and how we came to be.  Each one of us has our own experience intersecting with the collective story.

Last Sunday afternoon I gathered with 15 leaders of this congregation, representing our Board, our Stewardship and Finance teams, our Congregational Growth Team, our Leadership Development Team, our Community Outreach Project Team, our worship coordinators and youth advisors. 

We spent some time recalling the story of this congregation by building a timeline, individual stories creating the collective story.  Just like today, we had people in the room who were founders of this congregation, and who worked from the very beginning to build a Blount County congregation.  And we had people in the room whose journey has just intersected with us in the last year.  And lots of folks in-between.

Here’s one thing that was apparent to me:
We are a congregation that is not afraid of vulnerability.

Any group of people who sets out to start something new has to take some risks, has to confront the possibility that it will fail, has to wade through times of uncertainty, times when there is debate about the way forward, has to live through the pain of times when some people decide this is not for them and part ways.
You all have done that.

This congregation was chartered just three months after the horrific and tragic act of violence that targeted TN Valley UU Church, precisely because of its open and progressive religious values.  A reminder of vulnerability if there ever was one.  You were birthed in the midst of vulnerability.
And yet, this congregation moved forward in courage to found a congregation for liberal religion here in Blount County.

This congregation has been willing to move and adapt to new places as we grow and change – this is our 4th worship location, if you don’t count meeting in people’s homes!

This congregation took a risk to hire me as your part-time minister in 2012, even though it meant having a deficit budget for a couple of years.  And then you have been willing to collaborate with other congregations, and make hard decisions, in order to meet our needs in creative ways—so that by 2015 we were back to a balanced budget.

A leap of faith!  We are not afraid to do things differently, trusting that when we simply say YES the way forward will open.

This congregation boldly and publicly proclaimed itself as welcoming to the LGBT community in 2013, and invited community partners in when we held a special ceremony of re-naming for a transgender member in 2016.
We are willing to be who we are, joyfully, trusting others to join us in that.

You approved your first Congregational Covenant in 2014 – the fundamental agreement about how we aspire to be with one another, treat one another, even in times of disagreement or conflict.  And in that process we were vulnerable with one another and expect ongoing vulnerability as we seek to stay in respectful right relationship with one another.

You began your first Community Outreach Project in 2016—setting aside a significant amount of funds to do something new and creative, and empowering a team of members to go and use it to do good.  And the Talking with Kids and Teens about Race project has been doing just that, impacting lives way beyond our congregation.

Just last year we welcomed over 20 new members.  Plus lots of new friends journeying with us.  Every time we welcome new members, as a congregation you say to them in our new member ceremony “We are ready to expand our love and to be changed by your presence among us.”  Again, I see a willingness to be vulnerable, not stuck in a particular way, but flexible and open to an unfolding future.

I know this practice of vulnerability can at times lead to feelings of anxiety.  Anxiety is a pretty normal response when you care deeply about something and aren’t sure what will happen.  Sometimes leaders have felt tired, trying to hold it all together when things were a little too fragile.  Sometimes people, newcomers and old-timers alike, have expressed a need for more safety, and the security of knowing exactly what’s what.

But here is what I think, my friends:  I think this congregation is not fundamentally about safety and security.  It is fundamentally about courage and bravery.   Being a place for creativity, compassion and courage—all in the service of LOVE.

What will help us live through the inevitable anxiety that comes when we are vulnerable and practice openness of heart?  Two things:
Staying rooted in our values. 
Remembering we are not alone.

These are the common core values that arose through our timeline exercise last Sunday, as we reflected on the actual lived experience of our common story: 
acceptance, welcoming, progressive, caring, truth-telling, courage, resilience, perseverance, independence, sacredness, respect, awe, healing, hope.

What would you add to this list?

One of you used the phrase, “We Live Our Love” to simply describe who we are and what we are about.
As we stay rooted in our core values, we will be able to live our love, no matter what.
I noticed this person didn’t say “I Live My Love.”  But “We Live Our Love.”

So the second part is that we don’t do this alone.  We share the work, we support one other, we learn from one another, we deepen our relationships with one another.  There is joy and excitement alongside the vulnerability.

When I said YES to coming to be with you in 2012, I had no idea what would happen.  I moved my family across the country.  I had a one year, half-time contract.  I just knew I wanted to try it out with you, and see what would happen.  I wanted to serve this life-saving religion, here in the South that so needs it, in the place of my birth. 

When I came, I already had this small tattoo on my wrist: a simple line circle.  I got this at a time when my partner and I were waiting and hoping to expand our family.  I got it as a reminder that I and we were already whole and complete—and that there’s always room for more.  A circle can always expand.

When I stop to review my own story of the last 5 years, I see how incredibly grateful I am to this congregation for helping me to be more vulnerable, more myself as your minister, more able to grow and push us all to grow.

I see even more risky, vulnerable, courageous actions in our future.

After all, if we stay hidden out of sight in a place of safety, we miss out on so much.
In our story this morning, Swimmy the little fish says “Let’s go swim and play and SEE things!”  But his friends don’t want to—they want to stay hidden in the rocks, they are too afraid of being eaten up.  Until Swimmy helps them get organized.

If we are swimming together, in more or less the same direction, towards our vision of what could be, an expression of the Beloved Community right here in Blount County– the more of us there are, the more powerful we can be.  Unlike a real school of fish, we don’t all have to be the same.  It takes each of us in our wild diversity to make us whole.  Alone we may be vulnerable, together we can be strong.

 Last Sunday our timeline exercise ended with an opportunity to think creatively, no censoring! – about a vision for what we could be in 10 years. All I will say now is that I can’t wait to see what will happen!

This year there will be lots of different opportunities for everyone in the congregation to engage in that kind of conversation.  What do you envision for us? 
Let’s say YES to the next stage of our vision, and I feel confident that with all of us working and worshipping alongside each other, the way forward will open. 

May we continue widening our hearts, widening our welcome,
being a vulnerable and strong kind of congregation,
caring deeply, journeying together, singing and laughing and playing and learning, telling our stories, seeking understanding, making mistakes, asking for forgiveness, loving ourselves, each other and the world.

With all my love,

Laura

2017.9.24 Join the Broken Hearts Club

2017.9.24     Join the Broken Hearts Club
Rev. Laura Bogle             Foothills UU Fellowship

Time for All Ages: The Tree of Broken Hearts (adapted by me from “The Tree of Sorrows” as told in Doorways to the Soul, edited by Elisa Davy Pearman
Once upon a time there was a Rabbi who served a small community.
He was used to his followers coming often to talk with him about their woes and griefs.
They would tell him all about their broken hearts and who and what broke them. 
They often thought that no one else’s heart had been broken like theirs had.
And sometimes they would come and talk to him about how they had broken someone else’s heart, how they had done something hurtful or disappointing. 
Sometimes, how they had done something outright unforgivable, or so they thought.  Or at least they couldn’t forgive themselves.
And some also thought: no one else has done something so hurtful or as unforgivable as I have.
And they were all very lonely.
And so the Rabbi came up with a plan.
He sent word out through the village that everyone was to come to the center of town on a particular day, to the great big tree that stood there.
“Bring your sorrows and what has broken your heart.  Bring the things you wish you could be forgiven for—the ways you have broken another’s heart.  Write them all down and place them in a bag. When you come to the tree, hang your bag up on the tree. Everyone will be allowed to exchange their broken hearts and go home with the broken hearts of your neighbor.”
The villagers were excited, imagining how much easier their lives would be after they exchanged their own broken hearts.
And so they came.  And with string and ribbon they tied their heavy bags to the tree.  The lower branches of the tree bent with the weight of so many hearts.
“Now, you are free to move around and to inspect the bags, and you may choose the one you’d like to claim, freeing yourself from your own broken hearts.”
The villagers rushed at the tree and began peering into the bags, one after the other.  Excited and quick at first, then gradually more slowly, more thoughtfully, around and around the tree they moved.
Eventually, feeling quite tired out, slightly foolish but also wiser, every villager claimed their own bag of broken hearts.  And as they walked back home, they looked at each other in the eyes, with renewed tenderness. And something quite strange also happened: their bags of broken hearts were not quite as heavy.
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In the mystical Jewish tradition there is a creation story, related to but different from the biblical account we find in Genesis. It is a relatively new story, having been created by medieval Rabbi Isaac Luria in the 1500s—and it has become a beloved and central organizing myth for many Jews around the world.

This story says that at the beginning of time God’s presence filled up every part the universe.  In order to create the world, God contracted, drew in a breath, became smaller to open up space for something new to come into being.  When God said, “Let there be Light” 10 holy vessels filled with a primordial light (remember the sun had not yet been created) came into existence.

They were perfect.  But they were too fragile to contain the divine energy within and they burst open, they shattered, sending sparks of light out into the universe. “Like sand, like seeds, like stars,” as Howard Schwartz says.  http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/how-the-ari-created-a-myth-and-transformed-judaism

And that is why humans were created—to gather up the sparks of light, of divine energy, wherever they are found, to reunite the bits of holiness that are scattered all over with the ultimate goal of tikkun olam or repair of the world. 

In this story, creation does not arise out of nothing, neither does new life arise out of perfection – but existence of the whole world comes from an experience of brokenness, a mistake, fragile vessels broken open, spilling their contents, leaving a seed, a spark of light where they fall.

It is good to remember that Rabbi Isaac Luria lived just after the expulsion of Jews from Spain – a time when Jewish people were once again dealing with the experience of exile, of the brokenness of their communities.  This myth was one that spoke to their experience, and gave a meaning to their existence as a scattered people in strange lands.

Still today it is an important organizing story for Jewish folks involved in social and environmental justice work – to understand that repair of the world, tikkun olam, is about seeking out and lifting up and reuniting those original sparks of goodness which can be found everywhere.

And, as current day Rabbi Audrey Marcus-Berkman points out, “A major creation story of our people is founded on brokenness. … What does brokenness mean in our life, in the universe, and what can and must we do with it…?”

This time of year in the Jewish calendar is known as the Days of Awe – the 9 days between the New Year of Rosh Hashanah, and the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur which falls this year on Saturday the 30th.
It is a time when observant Jews take account of their lives, where they have hurt or wronged others or themselves. 
During the Days of Awe there is an encouragement to actually go make amends with those you have individually wronged.  But in the end, at the High Holy Day services of Yom Kippur, repentance and forgiveness happens as a collective, communal experience.  

In her reflection for Yom Kippur several years ago, Rabbi Marcus-Berkman said, “Just look—the holiest day in our year is the one in which we acknowledge brokenness.  Not only do we acknowledge that we have failed ourselves and others and we hope to do better, but also that we are broken in the sense that others have failed us, that God has failed us; that we are disappointed, that we are missing something, someone.  That some aspects of our lives are not as they should or could be.”

The Hebrew word usually translated as repentence is tshuvah which literally means to turn or return. 
She says, “Each of us will inevitably find different things when we experience this process of self-examination, of teshuvah as a return to the innermost self; but all of us will find that in some way, we are broken, and broken-hearted.”

Last week at our first Building Bridges class, an exploration of major world religions this year, we asked the question: “What is religion for?”  And one answer among many others was, simply, Trouble.
Not causing Trouble! (Although there is a case to be made there, too.)

But one of the reasons religion exists in all places and times in so many different forms is as an answer to the fundamental human experience of trouble, of suffering—the ways we break our own and each other’s hearts, the way the world itself can break our hearts.
Unitarianism, historically, with its sunny outlook on the goodness of humanity, and belief in the perfection of character, has sometimes downplayed this part of existence. 

Also, the culture of our congregations has mostly –and I’m generalizing here—been built through the culture of those with privilege—white, middle and upper class culture.  A culture that says trouble, broken heartedness somehow indicates a moral failing.  A culture that places a premium on having it all together as a sign of success. 
And, a culture that frankly has suffered and endured less trouble.  While brokenness is a common human experience, we also know that suffering is not evenly distributed in our society.

And yet this is also true: if our Fellowship were for people who’d never been hurt or harmed, only for people who didn’t at times need to be forgiven for transgression, only for perfect people, this worship here would be an empty room.

The paradox is this: when we are able to name and acknowledge our brokenness, we are able to be more whole, more fully human with one another. 
Perhaps this is one meaning of the Hasidic Jewish saying, “There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.”
Like the shattered vessels, when we let our hearts break there is room for something else to enter:  God, Love, Wisdom, perhaps simply a deeper understanding of the common experience of being human.

Like the tree of broken hearts in our story this morning, when we are able to share this part of ourselves with one another, we find our burdens might be lighter.  There might be room created for more compassion, more softness towards one another and ourselves. 

An unbroken heart is an inhuman heart; and very often an inhumane heart.  An unbroken heart is a hard heart, like the heart of Pharoah who enslaved the Jews.  He was stuck in the empire of his own making, unable to find a way out or through. While the Israelites, whose hearts (and bodies, I might add) were broken by the experience of being enslaved, found a way out.  A way opened up for them and their freedom, crossing over the sea to a new land.

Alice Walker has a collection of stories entitled, The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart. 
The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart.  The title is enough.  This is the resilience wisdom of oppressed peoples of many times and places, whether enslaved Israelites or enslaved Africans in this country. 

It is the resilience wisdom that most anyone who has had the private experience of grieving a loved one knows. 

It is the resilience wisdom that those in recovery from addiction know.

The only way forward is through;  the only way to cross over to a new life, a reoriented existence where flourishing is possible, is to let your heart break open. 

I can think of a few world leaders right now who might could benefit from letting their hearts break open. 

A few years ago a UU congregation was hosting a multi-generational event where everyone was encouraged to create a heart.  They had scissors and construction paper and glue and even some glitter.  One young girl named Emily worked really, really hard on her heart.  It was perfect and beautiful.  Symmetrical with sharp lines and beautiful glitter evenly distributed.  She was very proud of it.
As the event came to close and she was leaving, she noticed someone else’s heart sitting all by itself at a table.  She knew it belonged to an elder in the congregation, and boy, she thought, that heart is a mess!  It was made of all these different colors of ripped up pieces of paper, it was kind of lopsided and wrinkled, and there was even a little hole in the middle.
Emily found the grandmotherly woman and offered to help her fix her heart.
And she replied, “oh, there’s nothing wrong with my heart.  It shows all the different good and sad things that have happened in my life.  The times when I’ve loved someone and I’ve received a bit of their heart and they have taken a part of mine.  The hole is for the ones I’ve loved and lost.  It’s an imperfect, broken heart, but it’s the heart of my life.”
And the young girl looked down at her perfect glittery heart, and right then and there she ripped off a piece of it, gave to the woman, and she did the same.  (from Tapestry of Faith stories)

May we be so brave and wise, to live into our future, sharing our own beautiful and broken hearts.
Amen.

2017.9.17 Resilience in a Time of Climate Change

2017.9.17     Resilience in a time of Climate Change
Rev. Laura Bogle             Foothills UU Fellowship

Time for All Ages:  “Flood” a South American folktale, told by Sheri Liles
In which two boys survive a catastrophic flood because they heeded the warnings of animals, and were saved by the food and nurture brought to them by magical parrots.

Last Christmas we were sitting down to a rare adult-only dinner with my partner’s family.  We had been focused on family togetherness and private grief, it being the first Christmas without my partner’s step-father who had died earlier in the year.
 Into the dinner table conversation, my partner’s father asked a question. I don’t remember if there was a graceful segue or if he just asked it. 
Basically he asked, Can we talk about a family plan for when things get really bad?  When the climate gets so bad that things start to fall apart?  Can we decide as a family where we will all live together, how we can best take care of each other? Taking into account who has access to land, and what areas may be less likely to be burning up or submerged by ocean?

And, hoo boy, I can tell you no one wanted to have that conversation. 

Not my brother and sister-in-law who live in New York City.  Not my mother-in-law who lives in Indiana.  Not me.  Not even my spouse who works on projects related to climate change for a living.

We could argue that maybe it wasn’t best moment to pose the question—and you know, Christmas dinner tables always have all kinds of family dynamics.
We awkwardly moved on.

Yet still:  I haven’t revisited those questions in any significant way. I haven’t asked my neighbors or my immediate family the question either.  Even though the headlines are bleak.

Bleak headlines
These headlines are all from the NASA Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website from just the last month—( https://climate.nasa.gov/news/ )
August 15, 2017:  July 2017 equaled record July 2016:  July 2017 was statistically tied with July 2016 as the warmest July in the 137 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by NASA scientists.
September 6, 2017: Wildfire smoke crosses U.S. on the jet stream  Smoke and particles from numerous fires burning across the West ride the jet stream 3,000 miles to the East Coast.
September 7, 2017:  Hot water ahead for Hurricane IrmaAs the storm approaches the Bahamas and Florida, it will be passing over waters that are warmer than 86 degrees Fahrenheit — hot enough to sustain a Category 5 storm.
September 7, 2017: Evidence of sea level 'fingerprints': For the first time, scientists have detected sea level "fingerprints" – patterns of variation in global sea level due to changes in water and ice on land – in GRACE data.
September 12, 2017: NASA flights map summer melt of Greenland land ice: Operation IceBridge is flying in Greenland to measure how much ice has melted over the course of the summer from the ice sheet.

Then there’s this one that I’ve been pondering, from June, in the NY Times:
“As Climate Changes, Southern States Will Suffer More than Others” 

Watching the devastation unfold in Texas, the Carribbean, and Florida the last few weeks, I believe it. 

And I frankly, at times, have felt fear and terror grip me.  Watching a hurricane 400 miles across.

Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt, the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, has said, that it’s not the right time to be asking about climate change.  We need to worry first about people’s private griefs and losses.  After Hurricane Irma he said, “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people… is misplaced. …To use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to the people in Florida.”
Pruitt is doing what I and my family essentially did around our Christmas dinner table, said: “We’ve got more immediate griefs to handle, we can’t talk about that right now.”

Yet, we know that one of the three main qualities that resilient people and communities have is the ability to face reality.
My partner Katie works on land management projects related to climate change – all over the world.  Basically, she studies and tracks how forests can capture and store carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere.  How can smart forest management help mitigate the relentless release of greenhouse gas emissions, which is leading to climate change? 
And how can developing countries tap into resources and basically get paid for *not* cutting down or degrading their forests?

What she and her colleagues are seeing is a big increase in global funding towards “climate resiliency.”  Basically, it is an admission on the part of the international development community and climate scientists that global warming is happening, is already adversely impacting communities around the world, and that its going to get worse much faster than many had imagined.  So we’ve got to help people figure out how to adapt and reorient.  Those scientists, and funders, and especially the communities they are working with, are facing reality—much more than most people in this country.

Katie has worked over the past several years in Guyana—a small country sandwiched between Venezuela and Suriname.  Even when she was there 6 or 7 years ago, it struck her that every-day people – the taxi cab driver for instance—talked about climate change as a matter of fact.  They were well aware of the effects climate change was already having on their country and on their individual lives.   

I also think this morning of my life-long friend Susanna. Born and raised in East TN, she moved to the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands over 20 years ago for an internship after college and she’s never left.  She married a man from there, a marine policeman, and she has worked in journalism and government there.  And today as we sit here, she and her family and community there are waking up to an island that was blown away by Hurricane Irma.   Islanders have been well aware of their vulnerability, they’ve been talking about it, and they’ve been planning for it.  But it doesn’t mean they are getting all the resources they need to make it through.

Why is it so hard to ask and talk about the Big Question in this country?  Not, “Is it really happening?”  But “What will we do, because it is already upon us?”
Last weekend I was driving into the National Park and could see clearly the scars on the mountain from last year’s fires.  A visible reminder that is hard to look at.  It hasn’t even been a year since our mountains were blazing, and people lost their lives.

Opening up to the question “What will we do?”  requires considering a very hard future for our communities and our children – not our not-yet-born future generations, but our children who are living today.  The children we know and love.

And it is hard question to talk about because, really, it means considering our own death.  Not just my individual death, but the death of the human race, not to mention the already completed extinctions of many species.

It is so, so huge; it is overwhelming.
In her article, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Deal with Climate Change,” Eve Andrews says:
“No one likes being told what to do. They also don’t typically enjoy pondering their demise. But resistance to confronting climate change is essentially choosing not to think about your own death.”

 So I want to ask us to stop for just a moment this morning, and really feel--
What about this earth, and who on this earth do we love? Let us hold that close.
What are we losing?  Let us grieve that.
What scares us?  Let us name that.
How have we participated in the process of climate change (because we all have, it is unavoidable)? 
What do we need to confront about our own participation and choices?  How have we forgotten and ignored one of the principles of our faith – that we are all deeply interconnected.  Let us confess that.

Making Meaning
As we feel, and grieve, and confess—then we might be able to make meaning out of our time on this planet during the age of climate change.  And making meaning is another quality of a resilient people.

Katie tells me that some developing countries are realizing they are a place of hope for the rest of the world: they can assist the mitigation of climate change because they have carbon sinks that haven’t been destroyed yet.  They have skills and knowledge about living in balance with the land.  They can offer those up to the global community. 

And other countries, like Norway, have said: those carbon sinks are important enough for us and our survival, that we are going to put resources to those countries to preserve and protect them.  They are not being altruistic, it is a symbiotic relationship.
Perhaps one way we can make meaning out of our lives in this time is to really experience our interconnections with a global community, people and creatures and plant life and sea life, in a new way.

Joanna Macy, a Buddhist eco-philosopher, and environmental activist said in an interview last year (http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/joanna-macy-on-how-to-prepare-internally-for-whatever-comes-next/ )

“Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. …In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings…. You learn to say ‘It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.’
…. This may be the last gasp of life on Earth, and what a great last gasp, if we realize we have fallen in love with each other.
….  If we are going to go out, then we can do it with some nobility, generosity and beauty, so we do not fall into shock and fear.”

What is the identity you want to cultivate for yourself during this time?  Healer?  Activist?  Farmer? Earth lover?  Warrior scientist? Teacher?  Bicyclist? Green entrepreneur?  Artist?
What is the meaning you want to make of your life, your one life, in the context of this global grief?

The Houston Chronicle has been collecting poems about the great flood after Hurricane Harvey.  Some are long.  Some are haikus, like this one, by Ayokunle Falomo:
I woke up today
even though it is in a
bed that isn't mine.  

We here in this room are alive.  How will we share that life with one another?

Improvise – Do what we can with what we’ve got
Each one of us can do only what we can do.  But I am challenged by the work and writing of climate change activist Bill McKibben.  He says that in his travels around the country, organizing people to get active for climate justice, the question he gets asked most is “What can I do?”

He says that’s actually the wrong question. What we need to be asking is “What can we do?”
He said, just earlier this year: “By ourselves, there’s not much we can do. Yes, my roof is covered with solar panels and I drive a plug-in car that draws its power from those panels, and yes our hot water is heated by the sun, and yes we eat low on the food chain and close to home. I’m glad we do all those things, and I think everyone should do them, and I no longer try to fool myself that they will solve climate change.” (http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-04-04/question-get-asked/ )
He says “the most important thing an individual can do is not be an individual” but be part of a group, a movement, an organization, that is engaged in the political, policy-making arena, and engaged in creating together a different future.
Resilient people and resilient communities know how to make interesting connections, we know how to improvise with what is at hand. We may not live in an area of the country where there’s lots of radical environmentalists. 
But we live in an area of the country that is beautiful, where people—whether they’ve lived here for generations, or moved here from somewhere else—feel attached to the landscape.   What can we make of that?
Our Hope as Unitarian Universalists is rooted
in a revolutionary kind of Love
that is available to all,
and that calls us to acts of mercy and generosity and courage.
A Love that also calls us to humility, and a recognition that sometimes we’ll be the ones needing to receive the help.
We are both the children stranded at the top of a mountain,
while the waters rise around us, in fear and trembling, wondering what is happening, and looking for a way to survive. 
And, we are the parrots, the unexpected bringers of salvation,
the ones who can come to the rescue when it seems all is lost,
and the ones who stay to build something new.
May it be so.  Amen.



A Body Meditation

Body Meditation
Scan your body and consider--
What has it done recently?
Dug in the dirt – Planted seeds – pulled weeds
Held another’s hand
Changed a diaper of a child or an elder
Chopped food – cooked a meal – cracked an egg –
Fed yourself or another
Created art – held a pen – colored a picture
Hovered over keyboard and mouse
Scrubbed the bathroom – washed the dishes
Wiped away tears – caressed a loved one
Carried a load – steered a car
Exchanged money -- Turned a page
Played a game, laughed in joy
Clenched, in anxiety or anger or hope
Opened, waiting for gifts, perhaps you’re not even sure what
Bled from a paper cut, or worse
Ached from illness or injury
Healed from illness or injury
Remained your still companion while you slept

…consider how nothing happens, no experience, no learning, no revelation, except in and through our bodies.  Even our dreams and thoughts and ideas come through physical matter, through the physical workings of cells and synapses.

...consider how no relationship, no connection with the earth or with another person or with the Spirit of Life happens except in and through our bodies.

…consider how nothing that happens to you happens to you alone.  In our physical presence we are bound to all of creation.


2017.9.3 Sabbath as Practice for Resistance and Resilience

2017.9.3          Sabbath as Practice for Resistance and Resilience
Rev. Laura Bogle         Foothills UU Fellowship

Time for All Ages A version of the story found here: https://philipchircop.wordpress.com/tag/doorways-to-the-soul/

Readings
From The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (published 1951):
“Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work.”
           
From Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (p.xii) by Walter Brueggeman (published 2014):

“In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety,… [the sabbath is resistance] because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.  Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from the family to the national budget.”
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It’s been 13 days since it happened, an eternity in our instant-news-cycle driven culture.
It’s old news, but I’m still thinking about it every single day.
It was the day, August 21, when something out of the ordinary happened.
Schools closed.  People took off from work early, or even the whole day if they could.
Some people had parties, and gathered with family and friends to play and eat and enjoy each other.
For about two minutes, even people still at their desks or shops or factories or driving their cars, stepped outside at the same time, and looked up and focused their attention on something else, something beautiful, something much much bigger than themselves.

And you didn’t have to pay for it. Sure, you could pay for parking near a good spot, I’m sure their were some t-shirts you could buy.
But the total solar eclipse itself could not be commodified.  We have not yet figured out how to control the path of the sun and the moon for maximum profit.
For a moment, I felt as if we had entered a different dimension.  The light dimmed and the cicadas struck up their chorus in the middle of the day.  We could see some stars that normally are hidden from us at 2:30 in the afternoon.  Some people cheered.  Others, like my children, became very, very quiet.  The heavens that many of us don’t pay much attention to suddenly became the focus of our excitement and awe and amazement.  And it didn’t seem to matter your religious preference or your political orientation or your age or your race or your social status.  We were all there together.  And I was so thankful to be witnessing it—both what happened up above, and what happened down here.  Why did it take something on this scale of magnitude—a total solar eclipse!—for this kind stopping, just to be in awe.
I loved it so much, I wanted it for everyone.  I thought about those locked away in prisons and those locked away in jobs they could not leave – those who could not or would not step outside and look towards the heavens and a moment of freedom.
The experience made me think about other times and other cultures that respect a kind of rhythm of rest, a rhythm of gratitude and awe at regular intervals.  A rhythm that many of us in this country have mostly left behind. A rhythm of Sabbath.
The great 20th century Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his book “The Sabbath” in 1951: “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.” 
He’s talking about the 4th commandment, to observe the Sabbath.  It’s a time to imitate God, stopping your work and appreciating the gifts of creation.
In 2005 his daughter, Susannah Heschel, also a great scholar and theologian in her own right, wrote a new introduction to his book.  In it she reflects on what observing the Sabbath was like in her home growing up:
“When my father raised his Kiddush cup on Friday evenings, closed his eyes, and chanted the prayer sanctifying the wine, I always felt a rush of emotion.  As he chanted with an old, sacred family melody, he blessed the wine and the Sabbath with his prayer, and I also felt he was blessing my life and that of everyone at the table.  I treasured those moments….
My mother and I kindled the lights for the Sabbath, and all of a sudden I felt transformed, emotionally and even physically.  After lighting the candles in the dining room, we would walk into the living room… facing west, and we would marvel at the sunset that soon arrived.”
There again is a turning to the heavens and the gift of creation that we receive no matter what.  There is turning the ordinary —wine, candles, sunset—into the out-of-the-ordinary during a special realm of time.
When and how do you enter a realm of time where the goal is simply to be, to give, to share?
When and how do you enter a realm of time where your attention is tuned not to CNN or NPR or Facebook or Twitter or your to-do list or your – fill in the blank-- But tuned to something much bigger and much smaller at the same time.  Tuned to something like the sunset.  Tuned to something like the cricket sounding in the middle of the all the noise.
Walter Brueggemann writes, “It is unfortunate that in U.S. society, largely out of a misunderstood Puritan heritage, Sabbath has gotten enmeshed in legalism and moralism and blue laws and life-denying practices that contradict the freedom-bestowing intention of Sabbath…. Sabbath is a bodily act of…resistance to pervading values and assumptions behind those values.”
If the intention of Sabbath is about Freedom, I want us to consider this morning, some ideas of Sabbath that are not about:
-deprivation, and strict laws, like not being able to buy wine on Sundays
-not about simply escaping and ignoring the world
-not even primarily about resting, though that can be part of Sabbath observance
-and not about a kind of piousness that probably wouldn’t fly with our Unitarian Universalist sensibilities

The poet David Whyte tells a story about a time earlier in his life—he wasn’t yet a published poet, though he wrote poems.  He was a in a time of his life where he was working very hard, working at a non-profit organization, trying very, very hard to save the world.  And he was exhausted, and he knew it.  He just didn’t know what to do about it.  He happened to have a friend who was a Benedictine Monk (shouldn’t we all have a friend who is a Benedictine Monk??) and he asked his friend for advice—what should he do to not feel so exhausted all the time?
And his friend, Br. David Steindl-Rast, said to him that the cure for exhaustion is not necessarily rest, it is wholeheartedness.  Find what you can be wholehearted about, says Br. David, and you won’t be so exhausted. You’ll feel more free.

A practice of Sabbath for wholeheartedness can help us find the resilience to move through a busy week, hard times at home, hard news week in and week out.  A practice of Sabbath for wholeheartedness can move us toward what matters most in our lives. 
A practice of Sabbath for wholeheartedness and liberation can help us resist the pressure of our capitalist culture that says our value comes from our production and consumption—how much we can sell, earn, or buy.

And the good news is that this kind of practice can look many different ways. 
My confession to you is that I’m not always particularly good at it.  Just last week I was preparing to meet a couple of leaders in the congregation and I had been late getting the girls to pre-school and I had too many things to do that day and the meeting room wasn’t set up and I just wanted to be my best for them… but I was frazzled.  And they could tell!

That’s why it’s called a practice.  Because we just have to keep at it, trying, not doing very well, and trying again.  How do we build in moments of Sabbath rest and listening throughout our days and weeks?  I encourage us to think about a practice of Sabbath that does not necessarily mean taking a whole day, though those of you more practiced can show us how to do that.

Here’s a simple practice that I do with my younger daughters most mornings.  We kind of stumbled organically into it but it works for us.  Monday – Friday as I drive them to their preschool we cross the TN River. As we cross the river, we simply say “Good Morning river!”  And sometimes we note: is the river foggy, is it calm, is it shiny, can we see any boats or birds?
Now, there are plenty of mornings that I forget.  I am sometimes wrapped up in my head thinking about the day ahead, or sometimes wrapped up in listening to NPR.  But usually my daughters remind me.  Good morning river! They call from the back seat.

A couple of times recently when we have forgotten they have made me drive back so that they can say good morning.  And now we have taken to saying Good morning fishes in the river!  Good morning sky and clouds!  Good morning Birds!  And sometimes we sing “I’ve Got Peace like a River.”

That’s it.  A few moments on the morning drive.  But it turns my heart towards what I love and what loves me back– my daughters and the land.  And it resists the relentlessness of urgency.  We stop and we look.  We treat the earth as a friend to whom we say good morning.  I carry the spaciousness and freedom of that moment in my day.

Here’s another practice that is a kind of mindfulness practice you can do anytime, anywhere, to create a moment of Sabbath in time.  Choose a color – say, the color yellow.  And spend some time out walking or driving, and put your attention on looking for the color yellow.  You’ll be surprised how much yellow you see when you start looking for it.  It’s like listening for the cricket in the middle of the big city.  Practice enough and it becomes easier to find what we look for, even in the midst of noise.

Here’s another:  choose a time each week – maybe just an hour, maybe a whole day—and put away the thing that usually takes your time, attention, energy.  You might even physically put it away in a box for a while.  Put your phone or your iPad out of sight.  Put your to-do list of things left undone into an envelope and seal it up.  Cover up your TV with a cloth. 

Write down what is making you anxious and resolve to put it aside for a time, knowing it’s mostly out of your control anyway.  And see what happens.

If you are someone who goes, goes, goes: try taking a nap in the middle of the day, if you can.  See what kind of time opens up for you, what comes up in you when you stop and let yourself rest.

Play can be a kind of Sabbath—Wayne Muller calls it “engaging in purposeless enjoyment of one another.” (in Sabbath:Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Daily Lives)  Just do it with intention—delight in your friend or your partner or your kids or your neighbor.  Focus on that for a while.

And here’s another, that can be a whole family practice: At the end of the day, try lighting a chalice candle and simply asking – What was good today?  What was hard today? What do I need to let go of? What do I hope for tomorrow?  Create a few minutes of time out of time, tuning life to bigger questions.

And what about Sundays?  How is coming here on Sunday morning part of a Sabbath practice for you?  Many of us come here and have a “job” to do.  Making coffee, setting up chairs, counting the offering, being a greeter.  How might we together approach these ways of serving not as jobs, but as Sabbath practices—ones that help us to share the fullness of time with one another.  Your value here is not about how good you make the coffee or how straight the chairs are set or how much you financially contribute. Your value here is simply your presence, your wholeheartedness brought as a gift for others, so we might find freedom together.

Each week in our prayer and meditation time, I say  “until all people have access to the gifts of this life.”
A Sabbath practice helps us recognize those gifts, gifts that can’t be bought or sold, gifts that every person has a right to enjoy.  As we find the gifts, may we share them.
May it be so, Amen.