Real Pro-Life is Pro-Earth

April 21,2024

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/0fT5t3xZ4ls

Tomorrow is Earth Day and I will focus today on the earth our interconnected relationship with the earth. But first, I must acknowledge the twist in my title. The real Pro-Life, I say, is pro-earth. But of course, ‘Pro-Life’ means something else to most people.

“Pro-Life” is a slogan, a stance that specifically refers to the anti-abortion stance in the Reproductive Rights debate happening in our country. Pro-Life is one side of a debate between two sides. My convictions land me on the Pro-Choice side when we are limited to picking sides in this debate.

I remember years back reading an argument that in terms of slogans, (not the actual position – just the slogan,) Pro-Life was a clear winner. Who doesn’t support life? It is similar to the argument that the name Universalism is a winner – you mean ‘everything?’ How can you argue against everything? Just in terms of the name, the slogan ‘Pro-Life’ is a great idea to get behind. Yes. I am in favor of life.

And I am far from the first to suggest that in truth the Pro-Life crowd is not really pro-life, they are pro-birth. That stance known as Pro-Life is really a small, narrow focus to promote birth, and when I allow my more suspicious side to speak, I would say it is a contrived power play to control women more than anything else.

And this idea that life begins at conception is a very western Christian philosophy. Other religious traditions have different answers. Judaism, for example, claims that life begins with the first breath. And science seeks a definition between conception and birth when scientists speak in terms of viability outside the uterus. It really is a very Christian argument at base to say life begins, that ensoulment occurs, at conception. There is not a universal agreement about the point of when life begins, especially as it pertains to termination of a pregnancy – but I’m not all that interested in that part of the debate, if I’m honest.

When we can step back from slogans and debates of when life begins, when we really allow an honoring of life to lead us, then I can joyful claim a Pro-Life stance. I can see a person’s choice to terminate a pregnancy as a choice made while authentically honoring life. I can do this because I see life and death intertwined. Because I have a larger understanding of life than merely birth.

Because a real pro-life stance expands far beyond a debate about reproductive rights and abortions. A real pro-life stance cares for people every day after birth as well. A real pro-life stance also promotes universal healthcare and fair housing. A real pro-life stance works to build systems of support for children and families and communities. A real pro-life stance fights against poverty and racism. A real pro-life stance acts to combat hunger and the spread of disease. A real pro-life stance protects our earth and our water from poisons and oil spills and the ravages of capitalist greed. A real pro-life stance is also pro-earth – not merely pro-birth.

And the earth is brimming with examples of the interplay of life and death; the ebb and flow of the tides, the turning of the seasons each year, and the lifecycle of dragonflies. The natural world shows us the way of life – the way filled with beginnings and endings and returning, cycles of growth and decay and new life. In this perspective, the termination of a pregnancy is held within the ongoing give and take of life. In this perspective, the urgency of denying death, of refusing endings, is eased by the contexts of cycles and circles of life ever returning.

Is this an earth-day sermon? Yes. Is this a pro-choice sermon? Yes. Both? Yes. Because this is about intersectionality and interdependence. I want to not compartmentalize the conversations into little boxes as if they don’t overlap. Because what we know of the earth can help us understand the complexity of a situation involving abortion.

Why, for example, do we argue between the life of the fetus and the life of the mother as if the two are not deeply intertwined? It is such an individualistic perspective to assume the best way to decide is to pick one over another. When we turn people into ‘the other’ we build distance and disconnection – that is where hatred and oppression can thrive. But a person working through the choice to terminate a pregnancy is perhaps the most elegant example of interdependence. There are layers of impact and import in such scenarios. Why would we isolate people in situations like this, demanding they value only one thing – this life or that life – when all life is interconnected?

Philosopher Charles Taylor talks about the balance of positive and negative aspects of individualism.

We live in a world where people have a right to choose for themselves their own pattern of life, to decide in conscience what convictions to espouse… The dark side of individualism is a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.

Too often we push ourselves or push others into that flattened and narrowed place of isolation. What can support really look like for someone facing this decision?

Every choice is a story. Here is what I do not know: I have never been and never will be pregnant. I will never experience new life growing within me like that. I will never face that choice to terminate the pregnancy or not. What I do know is that every choice is a story. What I do know is that whichever way such a decision goes, none of us are truly alone. We may be isolated, but we are not alone.

When we are feeling stuck or isolated or pressured by society – it can be of great help to reconnect with nature. I know it can sound like a non-sequitur to suggest that. “I struggling with a decision.” “Have you checked in with the rushing river or the ants? Have you taken your troubles to the maple trees or the dandelions?” I know how that might sound. But we can reframe it to ask the same question with slightly different words. We can ask, “When is your next appointment with your therapist?” or “Have you prayed with God about it? Or made art or done journaling or checked in with your mother or your best friend about it?” Really the question is this: when you are struggling with a decision, have you connected?

For me, the earth is a connection to Life.  For you it may be different, you may find your connections in other ways. But I will still smile and say we all can grow in our connection with the earth.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has written:

When we suffer, the Earth embraces us, accepts us, and restores our energy, making us strong and stable again. The relief that we seek is right under our feet and all around us. Much of our suffering can be healed if we realize this. If we understand our deep connection and relationship with the Earth, we will have enough love, strength, and awakening to look after ourselves and the Earth so that we both can thrive.

The suffering is about not being connected. When I can slow myself enough to remember my deep connection and relationship with the earth, I find the resources and the reasons for all my efforts to build a better world – a more connected world. When I can sit among the tall trees and the undergrowth, breathe in the breeze and the beauty, these things become part of me and keep me grounded.

My small, isolated self expands and I become part of the intricate and connected pattern that is Life. Experiencing life this way is why I care about the environment and about reproductive rights and about racism and peace and clean water. When I see myself as part of the pattern, as part of Life, as part of God, I become a partner with all that is: the beauty and the pain, the ebb and the flow, the war and oppression, and the gentle breeze and the songs of birds. This is why I care, because I feel the connections.

When things are tight, where there is pressure to be isolated. Reach out and get connected. When I can slow myself down enough to really experience Life, then I find myself in the pattern of things. And every isolated, lonely act becomes reframed and held in a grace of connection. And together we thrive, even through the heartbreak and hard decisions, we thrive.

May we lean into our connections, may we move closing to what looks like trouble, and may we thrive.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Deeper into the Well
Douglas Taylor
3-24-24

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/LKJZAGz27lc

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

This is a little snippet of a song by Emmy Lou Harris I heard on public radio once several years back and it has stuck with me.

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

The rest of the song has never hooked me musically, for whatever reason. The overall message of the song had a sort of an Ecclesiastes feel to it: Been there, done that, didn’t help.

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

Ecclesiastes says, “I applied my mind to seek and to search by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:12-14.)

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

Why? What’s going on that we need to look for a deeper well? This is not a new song; written back in ’99. It picks up on the growing desire for depth and meaning in life. This yearning has been bubbling among us for some time now, a yearning for more depth, for more connection.

There has also been a narrowing happening around us. We are driven into consumer niches, sold divisiveness and fear. And yet, along with this increase in fear in politics and public morality, there has also been more reaching out to other cultures and between different faith traditions. Many walls have been built up, but many more have been torn down. Interesting isn’t it, the parallel explosions of very shallow, surface level exclusivity and narrow-mindedness alongside unprecedented cultural exchange and a startling openness and mingling of religious practices and understanding. I remember reading an article in a conservative Christian magazine that warned its Christian readers against the practice of Yoga because it could lead people to Hindu beliefs and away from pure Christianity. Like Yoga is some massive secret plot against Christianity!

More and more, people are experiencing other cultures and other religious practices and mixing things together to create a satisfying spiritual life independent of the exclusive rules of most religions. Religious conservatives and fundamentalist see this as a big problem. I see it as people yearning and searching for something meaningful, for something deeper. So many people come through our doors searching for connection and meaning. They are lonely and empty. So many people, to one degree or another, feel empty and they hunger for something more.

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

Why the increased interest in looking for a deeper well? What’s wrong with what we’ve already got? The problem is: it’s empty. What do you do when you’ve spent your life trying to gain financial security, only to lose the reason why you wanted to be secure? What do you say when you spend your life making a name for yourself, only to forget what your name means. What do you do when your well is empty?

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

Our society actually encourages this emptiness. Your emptiness is not a problem, only an as-yet unmet market opportunity! So many people buy into this success-oriented, achievement-driven, market-manipulated, soul-draining way of life. When we find that we are empty, we reach for anything that we think can fill the void… romance, work, a fast car, a big TV, status, power; anything, even religion. And yet, we remain lonely, we remain yearning for something more.

Everybody gets lonely. Everyone gets that gnawing emptiness every now and then. When nothing works and no one seems to understand or care. When the students don’t respond to your carefully prepared lectures, when your parishioners doze through your thought-provoking sermons, when that attractive person you’ve tried to impress doesn’t pick up on your obvious hints, when your boss dismisses your suggestions, when the committee you’ve been steering still can’t get anything done. We all know that sense of futility, where you burn with such a passion for something, only to get burned out. And we find ourselves alone and empty. What was it all for, anyway? And it doesn’t matter if it is burn out, depression, or just general aridity, it is borne out of desperate encounters with loneliness and emptiness.

So what do we do? Where are we to turn? Where do you go when you are empty?

Well, there was one time when my life seemed particularly empty and dry, and I jumped into Lake Michigan in the middle of December. I remember I was in the midst of a very difficult time with depression at that time. Different people experience depression different ways. For me, there is a Psalm I have found which really hits the nail right on the head and describes what it feels like.

I am poured out like water, and my bones are all out of joint. My heart is like wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; I am laid in the dust of death (Psalm 22:14-15.)

This is the same Psalm that begins: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Number twenty-two. The next one is number 23, famous number 23, “The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, …” great psalm, beautiful psalm. But the one just before it, number 22, oh! So, after a week of my life tasting like ashes in my mouth, a friend suggested that, as a winter solstice ritual, we jump into Lake Michigan. I have pictures.

I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Chicago, but my friend Daniel and I went out to the beach next to Lakeshore Dr., just off of 57th street. We stripped down to our swim trunks and Daniel looks at me solemnly and says, “This is my way of letting winter know I’m not going to hibernate.” I looked out at that cold, churning lake and tried not to think about what I was about to do. “Ready?” he asked. “Yeah,” and I took off running down the beach to the water with Daniel right next to me. I bounded in, ten feet, twenty feet, I got in up to my waist, (it was shallow) about forty feet out I’d guess, when suddenly I stopped. I looked down at my legs and said “What?!?” My legs looked up at me and said “Hey, we’re cold. Besides, he said we could stop.” I looked behind me and sure enough; there was Daniel about ten feet back shouting: “Uh, I think this is far enough. Let’s get this over with.” So we dunked under and ran back to shore as fast as we could.

As I dried myself off and wrapped up in a towel, I yelled something like, “So there, Winter!” (Not the most eloquent of prose or protest, but I was quite numb at the time.) I had exposed myself to the bitter winter wind and waves, and was still able to cry out in response. From the depth of my wintering soul, I was able to respond.

So, you’re lonely, you’re empty. Find a way to respond. Find a way to get meaning into the equation. Reach out. The answer almost seems too simple. We need to get out and do more together. We should be community-oriented. To starve the emptiness, we must engage with other people; respond to the loneliness by reaching out.

Unfortunately that is only half of the possible answer. The other half centers around the idea that to really respond to the emptiness we must first be truly empty. To relieve the loneliness we must learn to be alone. Sometimes the answer is to climb out of the well, expand our experiences, our engagement. Other times, the answer is to go deeper into the well.

We seem to have this notion that we are called to relieve one another’s loneliness, to eradicate all the emptiness. Not so. We need lonely times. Loneliness is powerful. It keeps us grounded in who we are. Henri Nouwen, the author of “Reaching Out” writes: “When all our attention is drawn away from ourselves and absorbed by what happens around us, we become strangers to ourselves, people without a story to tell or to follow up (p. 96 Reaching Out.)” The empty times in our lives are often openings into greater depths, or at least clues that such openings are available.

If you are following me, you’ll see I said at the beginning that in our loneliness we lose sight of who we really are. Now I say that only in our loneliness can we see our true selves. This is not a paradox or a religious puzzle sort of thing. It is simply this: to counter this epidemic of emptiness, to stop it from enveloping you, you need to embrace it. It is within moments of withdrawal and lonely silence that you find both the emptiness and the hunger; the emptiness that will pull you down and the hunger that free you if you will but follow it out.

Henri Nouwen says in another book, “Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger. Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures. The careful balance between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the [religious] life and should therefore be the subject of our most personal attention.” (pp 14-5 Out of Solitude)

We talk a lot about community and service and justice here in our congregation. But I say that all of that action needs a source, a source from within you; a source that will not simply drain you and burn you out.

I am reminded of the parallel which I love that brings the opposite element – I’ve been talking about water from the well and for a minute I want to tell the same thing but with fire. In the early part of the Moses story, God appears as a burning bush. I think that is a fantastic image: what is God like? God is like a bush on fire, but the fire doesn’t consume the bush, it’s just on fire. You’ve got to watch out; I should have warned you earlier to watch for the Biblical references, see how many you find in the sermon this morning.

One parallel of the story of the burning bush is found in the chapter immediately preceding. Moses, witnesses an Egyptian beating one of the Hebrew slaves. Moses gets angry at the injustice; he gets hot, and he rises up against the Egyptian and kills him. Then he gets scared thinking that he’ll be found out, so he runs off to the desert for a few years, working as a simple shepherd, which is where he bumps into the burning bush. And it’s like God is saying, I burn and do not consume. Moses, you burn with your passion and it burns you up. You burn and all you do is consume. Your fire burns from that empty desperation. You need to be tapped into the source of life, that source from within you that is a hunger.

You’ve got to watch out, though. I don’t want to make this seem to easy. You need to watch out because the emptiness and the hunger can look a lot alike. If the fire that burns within you burns from an empty desperation, then it is a fire that will consume you. And that is not why this community is here. We are not here to fill up people’s empty places; we are not here to serve your burning need to consume. Ours is not a consumer religion. This is not a consumer congregation. Ours is a community of faith and justice where people come with longing, thirsty souls to get away from the emptiness, to get away from your market niche, to tap into your source and to find your hunger.

As Ecclesiastes says, “It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after the wind” (1:13-14). Anything you set yourself to do, any task or dream you pursue, any injustice you seek to make right, anything can be motivated by vanity and the need to fill that emptiness. Likewise anything can be motivated by a hunger from your soul. One of my favorite quotes is from Howard Thurman who said, “Do not ask what the world needs, instead, ask what makes you come alive; then go do it. Because what the world most needs is people who have come alive.”

To fight against this invasive loneliness, this epidemic of emptiness, you need to find a lonely place, a place of solitude: a source. You need to know the well that will give you deep water. Before you can love your neighbor as yourself, you must love yourself. For this, you will need to learn how to sit with your solitude comfortably. Embrace the yawning cavern of emptiness with you; do not seek to fill it. Move through it unto your very source and find there your hunger. Find your way to give pout your whole heart with extravagances and endlessly renewing love.

I know my source. I am familiar with the lonely places in my life, with the wells I can go to for deep water when I am in need. That lonely place in my life is where I find the strength to then go out to the world and serve others. I know I’ll be able to see and recognize my emptiness and my hunger. When I can stand even in the bitter winter of my soul and remember that I am not alone, I can be about the business of healing the brokenness in the world. I put it to you then, find your source and your hunger, and take it to the world.

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

“Well, … Looking for the water from a deeper well.”

In a world without end, may it be so.

Faithful Anxiety

Rev. Douglas Taylor

3-10-24

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/LaGRs84tPK8

The big summer blockbuster movie for kids scheduled for this coming June is Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.” The original movie all about feelings debuted in 2015, almost ten years ago. The premise was that we all have a base set of emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Now, with puberty, our protagonist also gets anxiety along with envy, embarrassment, and ennui! I do not doubt that I will be seeing this new Pixar at some point.

Because we can relate! We all get anxious and worried at times. And I don’t mean the level that gets to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Anxiety Disorders are real and some people have an experience of anxiety that is beyond what most folks experience and it is debilitating. What I want to talk about today is more that sense of anxiety that we all get.

As we heard in our reading this morning, “Anxiety is nervous apprehension about the uncertain future.” And we live in uncertain times. There is so much going on in our world and in our lives that can lead us to feel anxious.

When I was a young minister, I learned a great deal about how to be a Non-Anxious Presence. When counseling a person dealing with uncertainty, or leading a congregation through uncertain times, we were taught the importance of being a non-anxious presence. This phrase comes from Ed Friedman and the Family Systems school of thought. Life has a share of trouble for everyone. But we are alone, we can support each other in our trouble. And it can be surprisingly helpful, supportive, and empowering to be a non-anxious presence with people. To be a non-anxious presence is to be calm in the face of trouble – to not try to fix or save or move or defend anything. It is instead to simply be present to what is going on; to be open and curious with people.

It is not much of a leap to hear in this the message that anxiety is bad and that we need to tamp down and get rid of all our fear and anxiety. In her book When Things Fall Apart Pema Chödrön shares this story about facing our fears.

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

            (When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön; pp33-34)

Fear and anxiety live on the same wedge of the emotion wheel. They are similar. This Buddhist story of the young warrior is written with ‘fear’ as the adversary. It is worth noticing the distinction made by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary in our reading this morning. (Excerpts from an interview) Fear, she said, is rooted in the present moment while anxiety is about an uncertain future. But the description from the story is still apt: “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face.”

Anxiety is a normal part of our lives – we worry about things. We all feel fear. When faced with problems and trouble, we can get caught up worrying about what might happen. Anxiety prompts us to imagine the worst, to borrow extra fear in the form of worry over uncertainty before anything has happened.

Shantideva, an 8^th century Buddhist monk said, “If you can solve the problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?” Or as a contemporary proverb has it: “Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.” But the twist that anxiety plays on us is when you don’t know if you can solve it yet.

This leads us to have a lot of energy and attention around how to get rid of anxiety. Buddhist thought, however, leads us away from the idea that we need to stop having such feelings and experiences. Buddhist thought suggests instead that we embrace them, accept them not as good or bad but simple a fact. This way, when we feel anxious, we can – in good Buddhist manner – accept the feeling as simply something we are feeling.

When we can separate the experience from judgement, we can receive it as information. If we can receive it, even as it ‘talks fast and gets very close to your face,’ we can take a breath and be curious. What is this anxiety revealing to me? I won’t pretend this is an easy practice. In my own experience, the information takes a lot of interpretation and translation and usually just sounds like alarms and panic. But with practice, we can learn the language of our anxiety and what it has to offer.

When we can step back from the anxiety and take a breath, we open up the possibility that our anxiety is not just a stumbling block or burden. It can be information that reveals something important to us. Anxiety can be a source of energy for change in our lives and in our communities. 

A few years back there was an article in the UU World magazine by psychologist and author Robert Rosen entitled, “Do you have just enough anxiety?” Rosen suggest that there is a health level of anxiety, just enough. It is the “amount you need to respond to danger, tackle a tough problem, or take a leap of faith.”

He acknowledges that anxiety is usually unhealthy. Anxiety can interfere with our good judgment and normal functioning. Anxiety blocks our ability to respond, it can close us off to possibilities that would serve us well, it narrows our vision and focuses us on our fears, our inadequacies, our failures, and our feeling of insignificance. That is our anxiety talking fast and getting close to our faces. Anxiety can close us down or send us off frantically in strange directions. Too much anxiety is a bad thing for our physical and psychological health. 

This much is well known and acknowledged by psychology and common sense. What Rosen adds to the conversation is this: 

Too little anxiety … is the face of complacency. It comes from the belief that all is well, and an unfounded expectation that good times will continue unabated, with no need for change or improvement. Too little anxiety leads to passivity, boredom, and stagnation.

https://www.uuworld.org/articles/do-you-have-just-enough-anxiety

What are the things that trigger your anxiety? What makes you anxious? Often our anxiety is tangled up with our sense of self – but as often it is about the news and worries have about war and politics.

Buddhism teaches us to take a step back from the heaviness of our fears and anxieties. The step back is not a disassociation however – it is not a disengaging or ignoring. It is a way to keep your own footing and remain within your integrity.

To touch back on that Pixar movie I mentioned at the begin, I’ll illustrate my point. In the original movie, the five base emotions all shared a ‘control panel’ inside a person. Sometimes Anger would seize control of the buttons and other times, fear would jump in and deal with something when the others froze up.

So my invitation to you is to imagine your anxiety – when you feel it – has taken over the control panel. When I say we can take a step back, take a breath, and just receive the anxiety as information, it is like moving anxiety away from the control panel of our brains. I’m just saying don’t let anxiety drive the bus whenever possible. It’s still there, it’s still the alarm sounding, it’s just not at the controls.

It is important to acknowledge that what I’m describing is not a technique to get rid of your anxiety – it is a technique to give your anxiety a proper hearing without turning over the reins.

And I’ll also touch back on the idea of being a non-anxious presence – or at least a less-anxious presence perhaps. I’d like us to noticed that sometimes I am not sufficient alone to regulate my own anxiety and could benefit from having another person nearby to co-regulate with me. Simply from a physiological level – if I am with a person who is breathing slowly and easily, has a calm presentation, and is simply being present with me; then my breathing slows, my body begins to calm to match the calm of the person I am with. Co-regulation is a powerful way to keep anxiety out of the driver’s seat.

Having another person helps when I am struggling on my own. Perhaps you’ve heard this inspirational story before, it’s been floating around social media for a few years:

“I was 13-years-old, trying to teach my 6-year-old sister how to dive into a swimming pool from the side of the pool. It was taking quite a while as my sister was really nervous about it. We were at a big, public pool, and nearby there was a woman, about 75-years old, slowly swimming laps. Occasionally she would stop and watch us. Finally she swam over to us just when I was really putting the pressure on, trying to get my sister to try the dive, and my sister was shouting, ‘but I’m afraid!! I’m so afraid!!’ The old woman looked at my sister, raised her fist defiantly in the air and said, ‘So be afraid! And then do it anyway!’” https://www.facebook.com/lovewhatreallymatters/photos/a.710462625642805/1113400108682386/?type=3

Do it afraid. The trick is not to avoid all anxiety. The trick is to learn, instead, to acknowledge my anxiety but not let it determine my actions. Anxiety, like fear or guilt or anger or any other unwanted emotion, is information about what matters to me and what has a hold of my heart. But anxiety should not be given free rein on my response to situations. I can instead have faith that a little anxiety can be a healthy. It can keep me just uncomfortable enough that I’m paying attention. And there is always the option for us to support each other in maintaining our balance.

Change and uncertainty will always unsettle us and make us anxious. And if we always avoid anxiety then we will always avoid change and uncertainty in life. Allowing for just enough anxiety – allowing anxiety a seat at the table, just not a hand on the controls – we can lean in to the trouble, trusting our own centered integrity to hold us. With both faith and a little anxiety, we can respond to all the challenge and the beauty that comes our way.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

The Distortion of our Best Values

Rev. Douglas Taylor

2-25-24

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/uN4RYgFPs4g

A few years back I discovered that, as a clergy person, I had to become fluent in recognizing online scams and phishing schemes – and more importantly – how to teach everyone in the congregation how to recognize and avoid them.

Here’s what would happen: some grifter or thief with a modicum of internet savvy would create an email address that was not quite mine but believably close enough. Then they would hack a list of contacts and send messages around to people asking for money, pretending to be me. “Blessings,” they would write, “I am in a meeting at the moment and can’t call. Email me back if you can help me out with something.” If you respond, the scammer will then say something like “Thanks, I have this group of adolescent cancer patients I’m helping out and I need to you go buy me gift cards, scratch the backs, and tell me the numbers so I can run off with this untraceable information.”

So I learned to say, repeatedly, that I would never, ever ask someone to send me gift card information using a fake email address. Ever!

It’s not that I would never ask some of you for money. And it’s not that I would never be part of a conversation to financially support people in need. I do talk a lot about helping people and supporting the vulnerable among us and using our money as a reflection of our values and about how important empathy is. It’s just that I will never do it with gift cards and a fake email address.

It is frustrating to have scammers take advantage of our kindness, empathy, and willingness to help others; to take advantage of the trust built up among us as a congregation.  I want us to continue to be kind, empathetic, and trusting. But we also need to stay curious and even skeptical. I’m thankful that curiosity and skepticism are also religious values we hold together. It is part of what helps us stay open and resilient.

We live in a world that is constantly pushing us to be fearful of each other, to be on guard against threats, to be vigilant against potential dangers. I want to be cautious about sounding that bell myself this morning. In the reading we heard this morning, from the beginning of the book Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Pamer warns us that the collapse of our democracy will happen not because the communists or the fascists have taken over, not because of a foreign invader, and not even because of greed and dishonesty among some elected officials; but because we “become fearful of each other, of our differences.” (p9)

Unitarian Universalism, as a faith tradition, has long held a deep value of honoring the differences among us. We prize our capacity to be together as one people without insisting on a coerced conformity of belief or practice. We have made ‘honoring our differences’ as one of our highest values.

Our diversity is like the prairie. Allow me to explain. Parker Palmer starts one of the early chapters in his Healing the Heart of Democracy book with the following story:

For nearly an hour, we had been driving the back roads of southern Minnesota, past acre after acre of corn lined up in orderly, tedious, and mind-numbing rows. As we crested a hill, my friend broke the silence: “Check it out.”

Afloat in the sea of uniformity called American agribusiness was an island of wind-blown grasses and wildflowers, a riot of colors and textures to delight the eye. We got out of the car and walked through this patch of prairie my friend had helped restore, dotted with the kinds of plants whose names make a found poem: wild four o’clock, bastard toadflax, Ohio horse mint, prairie Indian plantain. After some silence, my friend spoke again, saying something like this:

“There are more than one hundred fifty species of plants on this prairie – to say nothing of the insects, birds, and mammals they attract – just as there were before we first broke the sod and started farming. It’s beautiful, of course, but that’s not the whole story.

“Biodiversity makes an ecosystem more creative, productive, adaptive to change, and resilient in the face of stress. The agribusiness land we’ve been driving through provides us with food and fuel. But we pay a very steep price for this kind of monoculture. It saps the earth’s vitality and puts the quality and sustainability of our food supply at risk. The prairie as it once was – a state to which it can be restored – has a lot to teach us about how we need to live.” (p11-12)

Palmer declares that if our democracy were to collapse it would be because we had become fearful of each other; fearful of our differences. And, conversely, a healthy democracy is like healthy prairie – the biodiversity of our ecosystem helps us remain resilient and to thrive. And yet, there are those who claim diversity is destructive. Diversity and differences are used to stoke fear, but that is a distortion of one of our highest values.

I suppose one of the arguments against diversity can be echoed by the argument against the biodiversity of the prairie. The prairie does not provide us the corn we demand. The rows and rows of monotonous corn is what fuels our country. We all need food and the monoculture of corn provides it efficiently. Similarly, the monoculture of white, heteronormative, patriarchal consumerism is also efficient. As if being efficient is the best quality allowed to us.

But here we honor that our differences, we see that our differences are good. Here, we strive to be more like the prairie. Diversity is one of our best values.

In my description for this morning, I listed other values as well – Hope, Tolerance, Peace, Self-Respect and even Love. Consider that list, they’re good values! Let me unpack how they can get twisted.

The negative side of hope is a kind of naïve optimism that does not accept reality. We are in favor of reality around here. A false hope blocks us from accepting reality. Therefore, hope is for naïve, weak people who can’t handle reality.

Tolerance is good, but it’s always been the weaker version of true acceptance. Tolerance says ‘I’ll let you continue unhindered over there;’ while acceptance opens the door and ushers you in. Tolerance is okay if your not willing to do the real work of inclusion.

Peace is important, I’d be delighted to have more peace around the world. Let’s call for the full ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine. But in saying that we must acknowledge that peace without justice is too often appeasement. Peace is not enough; sometimes oppressors need to be challenged and stopped – which isn’t exactly the same as peace, is it.

Let’s talk about “self-respect.” Surely everyone can see that self-respect is a key value for all people. Hmm, let us consider the difficulties of how self-respect can be corrupted into entitlement. Let us consider how privilege and ego can narrow a person’s perspective as to think they deserve special treatment when they don’t get their way. I know that’s not what self-respect is really about, but that is the distortion. If you don’t believe me, I’ll remind you of the story Fox News ran 15 years ago saying Mr. Rogers ruined a generation of kids with his talk of self-esteem. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-fred-rogers-evil/ Their complaint was he made young people feel entitled when we told us we are loved just as we are instead of suggesting we could all stand to put in a little hard work to earn our place in society.

And love. Let’s not forget love. The proposed change to our Article II statement of Unitarian Universalism shifts us away from the Seven Principles to instead have a constellation of values with Love at the center. To distort our best values, even love, is to puff up the worst version of them; to imagine how these values are actually terrible things. Even love? Yes! Even love; soft, mushy, touchy-feely, kumbaya, let’s-all-just-get-along love. No thank you! That is a version of love that asks nothing of you; a version of love that is flakey and weak. We would do better to align ourselves with strong values like … the rule of law and free markets, I guess.

*Deep breath*

I refuse the distortions of our values. I am committed to truth and love and hope. I’m open to the critiques, I’ll listen. I am more than willing to temper a call for peace so that is aligns with justice – that is a great correction, a worthy conversation. And I have room in my world-view to let an idea like tolerance be the base, the bare minimum while acceptance becomes the truer goal. I can get behind that. And I will continue to laud our values of empathy and diversity and respect (including self-respect.)

And love. I will not be dissuaded of the centrality of love. The love to which I am committed is not mushy or soft. When I speak of love I mean something different from the feeling, from the romantic emotion of love. I mean love as the action, the behavior, the promise – love as the choice to treat others in a particular way. And it will not matter to me if other people misunderstand me – even if they do so on purpose. When we say love holds our center, we need not let others sway our definition of that value.

This calls to my mind that poem found on Mother Teresa’s wall at the children’s home in Calcutta. It’s the one with the lines “If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.” The poem attained fame with attribution to Mother Teresa but she never claimed to have written it. It was written by Kent Kieth under the title “Paradoxical Commandments.” And the sentiment gets at what I’m trying to say this morning. 

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never (only) between you and them anyway.

In other words – hold onto and stay true to the best values you have – even when others distort them. Stay true to them because you know they are true. And do not worry if my list of great values does not line up with your list of the list from the Seven Principles or the new UUA values constellation. Because diversity is one of our best values; and by our differences, we are made more beautiful and we will find greater resilience.

By grace and love, our diversity will help us to thrive; we will be like the prairie and we will thrive. Even as forces around us distort our words, whisper fear into our dreams, and threaten to destroy what is precious.

We are part of the prairie, my friends. We will not be scammed or fooled or bamboozled into abandoning our best values. Stay curious and even skeptical, my friends. Be not fearful of the differences among us and around us. Love will be our guide, truth will be our daystar, and compassion our constant companion. We will be the prairie.

In a world without end

May it be so.

Rest Is Resistance

Rec. Douglas Taylor

2-11-2024

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/yh3LKDd51wQ

In 2022, Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop, published her book Rest Is Resistance. In part, the book calls on us to take more naps. As part of my research for this morning’s sermon, I will share that I have been napping quite a bit lately.

Is it weird that I feel a little guilty telling you all that I take naps; as if that is a mark against my character? But there it is; it’s true. I take naps.

For a long time, my napping habit was sporadic, occasional. But during my recovery from Covid-19 a few years back I began napping regularly. For a few months I was napping nearly every day. Covid will do that to you. With time, my penchant for naps settled into a reasonable few-times-a-week; not every day, but certainly a still a common event.

But napping is an odd thing to talk about in our culture, as if it is a weakness or an indulgence. And while I will occasionally just say, “I’m going to take a nap,” I am more likely use one of the euphemizes we have, like, “I’m going to just sit here for a minute” or “I’m just resting my eyes,” or “I was meditating.” My favorite one is a line I picked up from my mother: “I’m going to lie flat for a bit.”

Maybe napping is becoming more acceptable in society since the pandemic. I’m not sure. We’ve certainly developed a strong market for Self-Care in our society in recent years, although it has a tendency to slip into pampering – which is not exactly the same thing. Naps, of course, are not marketable – there’s no money changing hands for a chance to nap. So, our society has focused on defining Self-Care as the massage and spa treatment instead.

But napping is equitable! Because it doesn’t cost anything, everybody has access to napping! Of course we’ve built up expectations and rules about who deserves naps and who does not. And we heap praise upon exhaustion and busyness and burn-out as marks of success and high status. Rest has been relegated to the level of a luxury only the privileged can enjoy. We’ve created a society in which we glorify exhaustion and some people can’t afford to rest.

An old Taoist story tells of a master walking along the banks of a river with a young disciple. At one point the master stopped and looked up at a gnarled, old tree. The disciple waited politely, having glanced at the tree for a few moments and seen nothing remarkable. Still the master continued to stare at this tree.

Finally, the master said “Tell me about this tree.”

“It is an old and gnarled tree.”

“Indeed,” the master agreed. “And what can we learn from this tree.”

“I do not know, Master.” 

“This tree has grown crooked. It is not useful to the carpenter who would have long ago cut it down for boards if it had not been so crooked. Because it was useless to people, it has been left to grow tall and old.”

With a twinkle in her eye, the master turned to the disciple, “We should be more useless as well.”

This is certainly not a message we hear a lot in our society – ‘be more useless.’ If anything, we are encouraged to be of use! I have included Marge Piercy’s excellent poem “To Be of Use” more than once in worship over the years. This would seem to be a contraction on my part. Piercy says, “The people I love the best jump into work head first …” And yet this small Taoist story about the gnarled tree cautions against that.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

But the master in our small story wants to be with people who have been left alone by the machinations of humanity, left alone to grow free even if it means growing twisted and unattractive, to be useless rather than useful. Perhaps the two perspectives are not opposites, perhaps it is a matter of agency.

I suspect the distinction is this: being useful is not the same as being used.

I need to give a little extra shout out to Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop. Hersey has been advocating for “the importance of rest as a racial and social justice issue” since 2016 when she formed the Nap Ministry. She is talking about rest – certainly as a spiritual practice – but also as an act of resistance; as a refusal to be used by the systems that continue to exploit people, particularly people of color.

Hersey wrote: “I don’t want a seat at the table of the oppressor. I want a blanket and pillow down by the ocean. I want to rest.” There is a photo I found of Hersey sleeping on a bench in a garden. It is quite striking. Part of Hersey’s focus is to recognize and honor the way sleep deprivation was a regular tool the slavers used to abuse black people. “[I refuse] to donate my body to a system that still owes a debt to my ancestors,” She wrote.

For people who work three jobs to keep afloat, who are on the edge of homelessness, or who live in fear of punishment if they do not produce enough; rest is too risky. And there are people for whom chronic illnesses causes rest to be just out of reach.

This is not simply a conversation about how we should take better care of ourselves. Self-help culture is not enough when the system is trying to destroy you. When you consider it from the perspective on the vulnerable, a conversation about resting shifts from an indulgency to an act of power.

A part of Hersey’s nap ministry is to host nap experiences. She hosts public, collective encounters where people nap together for 30-40 minutes. The news will show you protests and marches, rallies and riots. But a park full of people napping seems a little decadent, indulgent, lazy even. Angela Davies once said:

“When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles and the goals that you’re striving for – not in the way you reach them.”

The goal the Nap Bishop is striving toward seems to me to be one of agency, to be in control of our own healing and wholeness. Rest is how we access all our other power. When we are denied rest, we begin to lose something basic to our humanity.

Our own Henry David Thoreau with his Unitarian connections similarly suggests that rest is the occupation of the wise. I have regularly cited Thoreau with that time he talked about two types of hikers. There are those who climb to the top of the summit and once arrived they sit and rest and enjoy the spectacular view. And then there are those who rest in every step. This weekend I went looking for the exact quote from Thoreau on the internet because for years I have just had this idea in my head that he said this. I found the source in his journals – 1839, the same journals with that beautiful line “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

I was close, the exact quote does not talk about climbing mountains or stopping for beautiful views. The actual quote is far more in line with what Tricia Hersey is talking about with the importance of rest and reasonable pacing. Thoreau wrote,

“Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed?  The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step, while others never relax the muscles of the leg till the accumulated fatigue obliges them to stop short.” (Thoreau’s Journals 1839, Sept 17)

Thoreau argues the same point as Hersey. Don’t wait for exhaustion to stop you. Be wise and take your rest regularly, with each step! Be more like the natural world, do not make haste! Instead, take your rest like breathing: in and out, like the cycles of night and day, of rest and activity. The resting part is deeply important, not a neglectable bug we can work around. Ignore your exhaustion at your own peril.

“We want more than a life lived exhausted,” (p158) opens the prayer we had this morning. The prayer is from a collection of poems, reflections, and prayers by Cole Arthor Riley in her new book Black Liturgies. One of her reflections, on ‘rest’ includes this passage:

Rest will never feel urgent to those who don’t understand the violence of exhaustion. In a world that uses the body as currency, rest is a sacred defiance. A reminder that we will not be owned.”

Resting is healthy. It is interesting to think of resting also as a spiritual practice and even as a form of resistance. When we rest, we begin to reclaim our power. We set a firm boundary – a vibrant “no” to the violence of exhaustion. Rest is a form of empowerment. We protect our bodies from the harm and we begin to heal. Hersey says it more potently:

“To not rest is really being violent toward your body, to align yourself with a system that says your body doesn’t belong to you, keep working, you are simply a tool for our production.”

No one else is going to honor your need to rest. There will be no praise for you when you rest. The riches of the world will not be poured out upon you. And yet, the violence we do to our bodies, the way we push ourselves to produce for a toxic system that does not care – that will get praise, that will be celebrated. But to learn the true strength of resting is to tap into your full humanity and power.

We need to unlearn that which leads us to the brink of exhaustion. We need to honor the cycles of rest so that we can rise. The way to build our energy and to accomplish good things is through the dynamic back and forth or rest and rising – not through constantly pushing and pushing and pushing. We must regularly step back so that we may thrive.

There is no shame if rest does not come easily to you. Our society has concocted ways to keep you from rest. And if rest does come easy for you, consider its power for those more vulnerable than you. They need this message from you in word and deed.

Draw your attention to this next time you lay down to sleep: Your rest is holy act. Resting is like meditating or practicing yoga or zen sitting – a practice that can lead you deeper into yourself and your relationship with the holy.

Draw your attention to this next time you lay down to sleep: Your rest is an act of resistance. Even if you are not vulnerable or exhausted – we participate in a society that uses people up. When more people rest and are rejuvenated, the world will be more whole because we as individuals will be more whole.

Draw your attention to this next time you lay down to sleep: we are inexorably part of the natural world. Let us learn to follow nature’s lead, and take the time we need to rest and heal and live.

In a world without end,

May it be so.