Sourcing to Sacred - August 6 in Oregon City

Sourcing to Sacred

What follows is the reading I wrote for the Sunday Service August 6, 2017, at UU Congregation at Willamette Falls (in Oregon City)

Nature

copyright Hawthorne Post

While driving my car across the united states from Oregon to New York State I saw a lot of sunsets. I was driving east, of course, so the sun was always setting in my rear-view mirror. In the middle of Montana. Sagebrush country. Flat. 70 or 80 miles an hour and no-one else on the highway. Hour after hour. Ennervating mid-summer heat. Singing to myself to stay alert. A flash of orange, no, pink, in the rear view mirror. what?! I pulled over, got out of the car, and Stepped into shimmering heat... The sky was awash in color, Orange, red, pink, lavender, deep blue. I felt myself tiny, expanding and melting into the limitless glory. Later, as I returned to my self under the quieting purple sky, I noticed tears on my face.

Years later, returning from my best friend’s memorial service, making the same trip. At night in Utah,  I found myself driving toward the glowing disc of the full moon over the stark crags of the rocky mountains. My awe and wonder were too great to contain, I had to call someone: “You would not believe how HUGE this moon is. So bright, the snow on the mountain is gleaming!”

(Bill Blevins, Creative Commons)

As Annie sings in “Annie Get Your Gun”

Got no silver, got no gold,

What I've got can't be bought or sold.

I've got the sun in the morning

And the moon at night.

The sun, and the moon. The sacred.

Relationship

Judy Grahn writes, in “Love Belongs to Those who do the Feeling” -  “Love rode 1500 miles on a greyhound bus & climbed in my window one night to surprise both of us. The pleasure of that sleepy shock has lasted a decade now or more because she is always still doing it and I am always still pleased. I do indeed like aggressive women who come half a continent just for me; I am not saying that patience is virtuous.

Love, like anybody else, comes to those who wait actively, and leave their windows open.”

Come with me now to another hot summer afternoon. I’m drumming for African dance class. Sweat is dripping into my eyes and the dancers look exhausted. It has only been 40 minutes but it has been 40 long minutes of listening to us ALMOST get it. One drummer is dragging behind, another is Taking out his aggressions on his drum. Another is glaring at the rest of us, and others are doggedly, heads down, whaling away, mumbling “Bok-o-bok, bok-o-bok” as they play.

Then it happens. Maybe because of a dancer’s laugh. Maybe enough of us took a deep breath. Maybe the loud one backed off and the slow one sped up. Whatever it is. Magic happens. We look up, amazed smiles on our faces. The dancers have a new spring in their steps. And we hear what sounds like a choir, the invisible choir, singing with the drumming. Barbershop singers call this the angels in the rafters. An ENERGY runs through the whole group. We are no longer individual drummers making sounds in patterns. We aren’t making music. Music is making us. We are part of a greater whole.

When the invisible choir shows up, we know we’ve found the sacred.

The divine comes to those who wait actively, and leave their windows open.

I Speak Slowly Now

I speak slowly now.

Or, at least I try to.

It is often awkward.

And I often need to forgive my mistakes.

When I am about to speak of the place where my religious community meets, I pause. I meditate on the history of the way the church has oppressed Jews and Pagans. I remember my internship on Long Island and the conversations I had with children of holocaust survivors and with students of history. I recall the way I used to lock down my protective boundaries when talking with a professed Christian. I reflect on my recent visit to the UU congregation in Salem, housed in the same place of worship that housed the puritans who oversaw the Salem witch trials. And I say "congregation."

Love calls me to speak more slowly, and I try to respond when love calls.

 

They say "sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me" but as a child who was teased, a fat teenager who was ridiculed, a lesbian who was threatened, a woman who gets cat-called, a queer Pagan minister who can be the subject of curious gossip... I know different.

 

Learning to say congregation was fairly easy for me. But once I started listening to other people's stories I found more reasons to speak slowly.

 

I often speak publicly hoping to invite more love and justice so I talk a lot about how we are connected, how we are one human family. When I am asking people to notice their relationships with others I pause say an internal prayer for those whose gender assigned at birth does not fit, and I say siblings. This shows up a lot in songs. "Come on people now, you're my only sibling, try to love one another right now." If the song is in copyright it is an opportunity to talk about the word choice. Out of copyright? Easy to change a word or two! And when singing I invite low voices and higher voices, rather than men and women.

 

I find myself pausing when I speak about you in the third person. What pronoun do you prefer? She? He? They? Per? And then I meditate on the way you have been mis-gendered, not valued. How your family may not have accepted you or you may be unable to keep a job or the bladder damage you have incurred because you are afraid to enter a bathroom where you are not welcome. I remember the times you got pulled over for driving while gender-queer, the ritual you were not welcome at, the tension of having a brain that know you are a man and a body that telegraphs "I am a woman" and the millionth time someone said "sir, I mean ma'am, I mean sir, ... what are you?" Then, even though the pause in our conversation has gotten very awkward by now, and my sixth grade English teacher is yelling at me in the back of my head, I try to use a neutral pronoun, or if I know it, the one you prefer.

 

When I ask you to rise to sing together I mention that you may want to do so in spirit and not in body, or both, and it is your choice. And I remember the time you could not get in the door to join us at worship. I see the path to the outdoor ritual space that was impassable to your walker, and then I hear the person who insisted they didn't need the mike and you missed their words, or the time you overheard me say "that's crazy" to describe dumping toxic waste the day after your meds stabilized enough for you to try leaving the house.

I want to call upon others to act in solidarity with a movement for social or climate justice. And since I know that standing hurts, and you do your justice work from your chair or your bed...I slow down. Again. The word I want... May feel clumsy to find. May not flow or feel right at first. Or, it could be even better!

We are traveling together on the side of love. Let us rise to the invitation ... To BE more love. Let our dancing for justice be of heart, mind and soul. I pray that I can slow down enough to receive your story and to respond with care and compassion. And I pray that we will forgive each other, again, and ourselves, again. Let us begin, slowly, in love.

From Camp Fire Girl to UU Minister

Greenwood Fire Circle at Camp Kilowan

My earth & Deities-relating spirituality is rooted in my experience as a “Camp Fire Girl.” From grade 2 through high school I met weekly with a group of girls obsessed with the outdoors. We learned from the Camp Fire lore and our experiences together as “Earth Maidens in a Circle.” We sang together, we canoed and hiked together, we learned together and we fell in love with the Camp Fire camp in the Oregon rain forest.

Sacred Fire Circles and Sacred Singing!

WoHeLo badge

Our watch-word was “Wo-He-Lo” - which stands for work-health-love. Our law was a sung pledge “Seek beauty, give service, and knowledge pursue. Be trustworthy ever in all that you do. Hold fast onto truth and your work glorify. You will be happy in the law of Camp Fire.” You can hear the Camp Fire Law here.

At our annual grand council fire we processed in with song, processed out with song, and sang many times during the ceremony. As a high school senior, at my final grand council fire, I was proud to receive the WoHeLo medallion: an award for completing a year of work, equivalent to the Eagle Scout rank. Listen, for instance, to the grand council fire processional (which mentions "Great Wokanda.)"

Camp Fire's link with Native American lore

Much of Camp Fire’s lore was written by a Sioux man (Ohiyesa/Dr. Charles Eastman) for his friends Luther and Charlotte Gulick, philanthropists involved with the YMCA and other authors, artists, and visionaries. (For more context on the history see Alice Beard's page.) They were interested in creating a character-building club for girls in America, based on relationship with the natural world, to complement the emerging group for boys: Boy Scouts.

Camp Fire logo circa 1975

I don't know what inspired Ohiyesa to share parts of his language, culture and spiritual practices with the girl children of the well-to-do. I do know I am grateful for the gift, even as my adult self recognizes the colonizing, marginalization, oppression and cultural appropriation interwoven in that process. I have received so many gifts from that heritage that I am still learning how to give back and be properly thankful. Here is one person's take on the complexity of Native American girls who had lost their heritage in boarding schools, learning fragments of their own heritage from participation in Camp Fire Girls.

From Camp Fire Roots to Earth-Relating Branches

Through Camp Fire, years before I encountered Greek Gods, I learned that there are other ways to experience God. I also learned that worship, ritual, and spiritual practice could look different from what I was taught at my childhood church. Circling around a campfire, processions with pageantry and song, communing with nature, collaboratively created rites and storytelling are still a part of my spiritual practice.

Camp Fire beads
photo: Kathy Groner

Through Camp Fire’s reward system (earn a bead for each new skill, experience, or lesson accomplished) I was motivated to learn about ecological diversity, the civic process, orienteering, solar cooking, conservation and more. I gained a lifelong thirst for learning.

Through My Camp Fire group I learned that I could be friends with people who were not like me - who I might not ever talk to at school - and that the relationships we formed from showing up together each week allowed us to have each other's backs in the rest of our lives. I recognized this lesson when I heard the Unitarian Universalist phrase “we need not think alike to love alike”

Unitarian Universalist Blossoms

For me, I think that my early training in ritual, spiritual connection, learning, and community still are my preferred default styles. Now I don't dress up in pseudo-Native American costume, nor do I call on “great Wokanda.” I grew up and learned some things about cultural appropriation, building your own spirituality, cultural roots, and respectful learning, and I'm still learning. I do continue to find campfires and singing sacred. I go to the rain forest and coast, and my own backyard garden to renew. I seek community with people who are different from me. For me, these are some of the earth & deities-relating branches that bloom as my UU Ministry.

Worship and How we do it

Every Sunday thousands of people gather together for what they call worship. Every holy day many more gather. Pagans circle, Christians may assemble in pews and sing, Buddhists may chant or tend shrines, Muslims kneel and bow, Sufis dance, Hindus may light candles... So many forms.

As a UU minister and a Pagan leader I have led worship of various forms for over 30 years. I have developed preferences for how I lead services.

Symmetry
People need ritual assistance in entering and leaving the worship state of mind
Beginning: Casting a Circle and calling the directions (Pagan) or A Call to Worship and Lighting the Chalice (UU)
Ending: Opening the circle and thanking the directions (Pagan) or Benediction and Extinguishing the Chalice (UU)

Ritual is more meaningful without distraction
Announcements and dialog need to be before or after the ritual start and end (call to worship and benediction)

Message or Purpose
Services exist for a reason, and the whole service needs to be in service to the reason or message
When I come to a congregation to provide worship I work with the music coordinator, the worship coordinator, the religious education person, and collaboratively build a service that is "of a whole." The readings, the time for all ages, the call to worship, the songs, the music for reflection, the sermon or "working" all are in service to a full exploration of the topic. That exploration needs to support those who are hurting and challenge those who are ready to grow, it needs to connect the community to one another and to the larger community of which we are a part.

The Time for All Ages is for all ages, not just the children
It is not an opportunity to show the children off or have them perform for the amusement of the congregation. It is not a time to read a book aloud like happens in a library. It IS an opportunity to include all the senses, to tells or convey stories, and to appeal to the multidimensional beings who we all are.

A Pastoral Moment can be off-putting or it can be a critical part of the service
Having a pastoral prayer can tie it together, even if you have individuals speaking their own joys and sorrows. Credit goes to Rev. Dana Worsnop for a truly lovely prayer practice: After hearing the various joys and sorrows, the worship leader summarizes with the phrase "We hold tenderly (the worry for ill family members, those who are saying goodbye, those who are struggling financially...). We hold joyfully (new born babies, marriages, etc.) We give thanks for ALL that is our lives."

The Homily/Sermon/"Working"
When I share a sermon or homily there are a few things that will usually appear. I will almost always speak about the divine, in language connected to relationship, nature, or, love. I will often refer to Jesus, or other great teachers like Buddha or Ghandi. I will often sing and will invite folks to engage physically (perhaps using a finger labryinth, perhaps writing something on a paper leaf...)

It is a joy and a privilege to create a worship experience and share with a community.