Meditation

A Prayer in My Pocket

When I was serving as an Associate Minister, the Senior Minister at that church once put me on the spot. He was asked to lead prayer at an interfaith gathering and responded saying he was not good at extemporaneous prayer but that “Douglas always has a prayer in his back pocket.” I always felt this was more than my colleague ‘passing the buck.’ It was a sincere compliment. Over the years, however, I had not imagined it to be literally true until recently.

A few months ago, I put on my brown sports jacket and noticed a paper folded up in the breast pocket. It was a prayer I had written and delivered for the vigil held last June for the shooting that had happened at The Pulse in Orlando FL. I must have tucked it into my jacket after speaking and forgotten it was there for half a year. “Shall we talk about homophobia and finding safe spaces? Do we bring up the need for better gun control laws? Can we talk about Islamophobia and about vulnerable communities being pitted against each other? O Spirit of Life and Love, can we simply talk about how much this hurts? Again?”

In my black suit coat pocket, I found the prayer I had written and delivered a year before the Pulse shooting; a prayer for the June 2015 shooting at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC. “We pray in solidarity with all those who have been touched by violence while seeking a community of support. May we learn, O Spirit, to be tender and gentle with the broken places in our lives and in the lives of our neighbors near and far.”

In another suit, I found the prayer I wrote for the December 4^th vigil in support of Standing Rock. “In this silent moment let us cry out for the suffering of our world.  In particular we cry out for the land and the water that is threatened in Cannonball ND; for the American Indians usually forgotten on the margins; for all those who suffer at the hands of police militarization and corporate greed. Oh, Spirit of life and of love, hear our cry.”

In the back pocket of my brief case, I found the prayer I wrote for the 15^th anniversary 9/11 vigil held at the mosque. “Let us set aside hate, and devote our lives to the ways of peace and justice.  Let us, O Spirit, encourage peace to grow in any garden it can find. Let us remember the tragedies of our days and commit to building a better world. Let us be emissaries of justice, ambassadors of compassion, agents of thee, O Spirit”

I am someone who always has a prayer in my pocket. Sometimes it is not a piece of paper from a vigil. Sometimes it is a stone, a piece of sea glass, or a slip of paper with the word “humility.” I once discovered tobacco in my pocket: tobacco from the prayer offering at the sacred fire in Oceti Sakowin camp. Again and again, I find these prayers in my pocket. And so, part of my work is to take in the pain and turmoil, to take in what is broken and then turn it back out into the world transformed as blessings. May peace prevail on Earth. May I do my part to bring peace.

Because we are all connected

Elisa taught me a lot. She was a member of the first congregation I served. She loved the children of our congregation. She loved the times when I would preach about spirituality and God. And mostly she loved to show up at every Social Action event our congregation hosted. She taught me about the connection between Social Action and Spirituality. “Look what we can do together,” she would say grinning at me as if revealing a secret.

Elisa was talking with me one afternoon about one of our justice projects. I made some off-handed comment about the division I thought lived between social justice and spirituality, as if they were opposites. She looked at me and said, “To me, doing social justice work is the essence of my spirituality.” Elisa’s career had been in the field of drug and alcohol addiction recovery. She saw the individual level of the addiction as well as the systemic level. “One of my core beliefs is that we are ALL connected. So if my fellow travelers suffer, I suffer. If I work to improve the lives of those around me, I will be better off as well as will future generations.”

Elisa always struck me as one of the strongest and best-grounded people I’ve known. Whenever I saw her, she seemed at peace, smiling. She wrote, “Although sitting on a mountain meditating can be helpful at times, I see little value in it if I do not then spread the love that such a connection to the divine affords me to others.” That was the heart of her commitment to our faith community. She could go off on her own to do spiritual work, but she needed a community to make a difference.

Over the years since co-officiating at Elisa’s memorial service, I have tried to integrate her perspective and all she taught me into my ministry. She would say we all have light. We need to let our light shine, she would say, “so others may not feel so alone and in the dark, and know that there is always hope.” That’s what she was doing at all those church Social Action events – shining her light, letting people know they were not alone and in the dark. Look at what we can do together! It is all connected.

A Coming-of-Age Meditation

Rev. Douglas Taylor

My colleague, Edward Searl says we experience four major transitions in a typical life.  These transitions are marked by rites of passage among religious people, and different religions mark them in different ways – though it has been argued that all religions mark these four transitions in some way.

Birth and Death are the greatest; they frame the human endeavor and give it definition.  Both happen within a moment, a space of time that is measureable and quantifiable.  The next major transition that many (though not all) people experience is marriage.  This also is a transition that happens ‘all at once.’  Whether or not you agree with my colleague’s assessment and categorization of these first three transitions, notice that the fourth transition – that of ‘coming of age’ – is a continuing process, a drawn-out journey that transpires over the course of as much as a decade of time.  It does not happen ‘all at once.’

“There are various cultural markers,” my colleague Searl writes, “such as entering high-school, acquiring a driver’s license, or turning twenty-one, but at the heart becoming a grown-up is a private journey.  Each adolescent achieves maturity in fits and starts.  There is no single defining observance.”

Those of us now gathered who count ourselves past this tumultuous and intense time of becoming an adult can likely smile in recognition of the full experience.  Some of us can even wonder if ‘becoming a grown-up’ has even yet happened for us, though we be chronologically years beyond the defined time by which we should have grown-up.  Coming of Age is not something that happens all at once, in one shining moment.  It is a slow unfolding, a gradual becoming, a constant growing into yourself.

        And so I say to all of you in the room, this service today is specifically to recognize these young people among us, the words we say and the rituals we enact are for them.  But in a way these words and rituals are for each of us as well.  This is a time for all of us to consider the questions, “Who are you?  Who will you be tomorrow?  What matters most as you consider the best ‘you’ you are working to become?”