Thankful for the Infinite that Holds Us

Small in the face of large things

So... It is a lot to hold... the hydrogen bomb in N. Korea that could maybe fit on a missile that would reach the US. The devastation of Harvey and the unrelenting hurricane season of 2017. The fires that ravaged Oregon, Montana, California. Earthquakes killing people and angry, frightened men with guns killing and traumatizing people. Worry about my aging dad who lives in Chile, so far away from me.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water... and broken Spirits. Elemental destruction and brokenness. We are small and the brokenness is immense.

None of these things are something I can do anything about. So I need to just hold them.

Taking Action

Composite: Alice Popkorn, Flickr CC

My allergies and the highly unpleasant reaction I had to the new allergy meds... They are things I can take action to address. But there are things somewhere in between... the daily damage of white supremacy culture and rape culture, writ large and small. The continued destruction of our earth... our lifeboat on this starry sea. These are things I can do my one small part about. (At the same time as I'm handling my own physical, mental, spiritual health and the well being of my near and dear.) It is a lot to hold.

I remember the family ritual... Thanksgiving day, Mom and we two daughters preparing a large meal. Dad's grad students, from countries I couldn't pronounce, bringing gifts of food and bright curious spirits. Dad, telling the American Thanksgiving Myth, with no nuance about colonization or white supremacy. And the lesson that I took from it: that Thanksgiving is for sharing harvest bounty with everyone and that Thanksgiving is a time to bring people who are different from you closer, to learn about one another and share family, food, and home. The myth wasn't what was important, the living out of gratitude and welcome was.

These days our religious movement provides us boxes, similar to the "March of Dimes" boxes of my childhood. These little cardboard boxes go home with members of the congregation and sit on our Thanksgiving tables where we are reminded of people who could use a little help. Neighbors close by and in other countries. We can't invite all these people to have Thanksgiving dinner with use, so we put money in these "Guest at Your Table" boxes and send it to the Social Justice office for our movement.

Guest at Your Table 2017

These acts of neighborliness are good, and not enough. We also need to go "upriver" to change the laws that that cause inequities, to change the social structures that allow angry, broken men to escalate from domestic violence and rape to mass shootings without intervention and help. We need to break down the insulation between those enjoying an opulent meal together and those who don't have enough to eat because the were thrown out of the house after they came out. We need to show up for the family that is caring for their neighbors even in the shadow of violence that has devastated them, and their ancestors, violence and inequity in the streets, from the authorities or the white supremacists.

Drawing on strength

It is hard to imagine doing all of these things: Mourning together, celebrating together, working together, getting out of our comfortable protected homes (or protective emotional shells), creating change, sharing our gifts, holding the weight of our shared heritage... Yet, we can do this, together.

So much gratitude that we have each other.

So much gratitude I can draw on the strength of divine love that will cherish me deeply while I cherish this life that is all around me.

May you breath in peace. May you breath out love. May we all be grateful for all that is our lives.

The Bounce - Voices of Resilience

The Bounce 

Why do many people and organizations crumble in the face of difficulty, while others use adversity to bounce back even stronger? The experience of bounce can range from an uncanny feeling of levitation to a supreme tranquil relaxation. It is precisely when all seems lost that the opportunity exists to rewire your brain. It's often during life's most difficult times that we discover our most critical hidden strengths and that we forge our most important capabilities.

We all go through desperately awful times. When we can transform those experiences we are stronger. You may have heard of "crisistunites" or "Another bleeping learning experience." These experiences can make us angry and afraid. We all have these moments. The question is what we choose to do with them.

Are you in such a time right now? You may be working too many hours for too little pay, feeling drained and exhausted or ineffectual and frustrated. You might be on the soul journey that the Goddess Persephone took, into the underworld. It may feel like the journey that Jesus took, losing everything and resting in the tomb. Or maybe your dearest wish is to retreat into the womb or your safe and cozy clay pot of a regulated life. You may be speaking truth to power, hoping to make the world a better place, and feeling shut down and helpless. You may be desperately clinging to your life vest as you hurtle over the waterfall, through the underground river, heading toward rebirth in the vast ocean. These are the feelings that EVERY hero in EVERY story has: hanging over a precipice or facing an un-climb-able mountain or seven impossible tasks.

Sunrise at Lake Tahoe
Photo by Clint Sharp

Or maybe you feel, like I felt during one memorable season of my life, 6 months which I wish i could forget: Like I was standing lonely on a hill and life was sneaking up on me hitting me with bad news, wacking me with a stick, again and again and again.

Here’s the good news, the journey continues on: you don’t have to stay in the tomb, you don’t have to desperately cling to that life-vest forever. The season of despair passes. You can emerge, like a chick, bruised, and battered from the shell. And when that change comes, we get a gift. We deserve that gift. The gift of transformation. We owe it to ourselves, and our loved ones, to wrest all the transformation we can out of the jaws of those difficult times. No matter how messy it is, we deserve the richness and deepening of transformation. We can rise like the sun.

Five Voices

-Victor Hugo: "Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings."

- Attributed to Harriet Tubman : “if you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches, keep going. If you hear them shouting, keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going."

- bell hooks : “Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen

Mountain Bluebird Flickr Creative Commons

suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”

- Howard Thurman : "I have never since lost sight of the far-flung mystery and redemption of the sacrament of pain. -- It is small wonder that so much is made in the Christian religion of the necessity of rebirths. There need not be only one single rebirth, but again and again a man may be reborn until at last there is nothing that remains between him and God."

Alice Walker:...”after the close of a magical marriage to an extraordinary man that ended in a less-than-magical divorce. I found myself unmoored, unmated, ungrounded in a way that challenged everything I'd ever thought about human relationships. Situated squarely in that terrifying paradise called freedom, precipitously out on so many emotional limbs, it was as if I had been born; and in fact I was being reborn as the woman I was to become."

Martin Luther King

Words from Coretta Scott King from the book "Standing in the Need of Prayer"

Martin Luther King, Photo credit Beacon Press

“Prayer was a wellspring of strength and inspiration during the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the movement, we prayed for greater human understanding. We prayed for the safety of our compatriots in the freedom struggle. We prayed for victory in our nonviolent protests, for brotherhood and sisterhood among people of all races, for reconciliation and the fulfillment of the Beloved Community.

For my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. prayer was a daily source of courage and strength that gave him the ability to carry on in even the darkest hours of our struggle.

I remember one very difficult day when he came home bone-weary from the stress that came with his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In the middle of that night, he was awakened by a threatening and abusive phone call, one of many we received throughout the movement. On this particular occasion, however, Martin had had enough.

After the call, he got up from bed and made himself some coffee. He began to worry about his family, and all of the burdens that came with our movement weighed heavily on his soul. With his head in his hands, Martin bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud to God:

"Lord, I am taking a stand for what I believe is right. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I have nothing left. I have come to the point where I can't face it alone."

Later he told me, "At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. It seemed as though I could hear a voice saying: 'Stand up for righteousness; stand up for truth; and God will be at our side forever.'" When Martin stood up from the table, he was imbued with a new sense of confidence, and he was ready to face anything.”

Sing It

By Abbie Bettini, words from Victor Hugo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEANteNY0h0

By Libana, words adapted from Victor Hugo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSvUafvUBvQ

Live It

courtesy wikimedia commons

"Every once in awhile as I'm swinging along on my trapeze bar of-the-moment I look out ahead of me into the distance and I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one." - Danaan Parry

Guns, and terrorists, and harassment, Oh My!

A couple nights ago I watched a West Wing episode that addressed extremist Muslim terrorism and the tendency to blame all Muslims (one line from the show was "Extremist Muslim Terrorists are to Muslims as ___ is to the Christians." and the answer was "KKK".) (season 3 episode 3 I think) Tonight I am watching season 3 episode 6, about a church shooting and the gun debate. What is freaking me out is that WE'VE BEEN HAVING THESE CONVERSATIONS FOR YEARS AND THEY HAVEN'T CHANGED.

Is something changing? Not unless we take action! Here's some writings I found useful this week.

True Security

A colleague has a vision of what can be different, we can create true security:
https://baptistnews.com/article/looking-security-church-thats-got-us-mess/#.WgflcGiPI2z

Undoing the Doctrine...

Photo: Lynn Friedman, Creative Commons

A colleague, Reverend David Pyle, names one key source of pain and destruction that needs to be undone:

"I believe there is a "Doctrine of Original Sin" that is specifically about men. Call it the Doctrine of the Violent Man, for want of a better term. It is the belief that there is something inherently violent and abusive rooted at the core of maleness.

Of all the "Original" doctrines, I will admit this is probably the one there is the most evidence for. And some of the more ardent believers in this doctrine are violent and abusive men themselves, because of how it allows them to evade responsibility for their violent and abusive actions. And for the billions of people in history who have been subjected to violence and abuse at the hands of men, it is a rational extrapolation from personal experience.

I almost said "lived" personal experience, but that would be inaccurate. Too often people do not live through those experiences.

And yes, there are violent and abusive people who are not men, that is true... and does not affect the functioning of the Doctrine of the Violent Man in all of human society.

Photo: David Maiolo, Creative Commons

This Doctrine (this widely accepted and societally enforced belief about the nature of things) has many effects. I named one of them above, the belief by some men that it excuses violent and abusive behavior, because it is simply their nature. When combined with white supremacy it leads to profound excusal of white male violence while also creating deep fear of any black male as dangerously violent.

It leads to the belief that State Power must primarily rely on violence to maintain its power and authority, with expressions from offensive military power to a coercive incarceration based legal system.

It leads to "strength" being defined as capacity for violence. It leads to diplomacy that is based in coercion. It leads to young boys being celebrated for displaying capacity for violence, and humiliated for showing anything else.

Because, at its core, the Doctrine of the Violent Man says that men cannot help but be violent, because it is an inherent part of their being. It says to men who are violent and abusive that they cannot help being what they are. And so some revel in it, believing that violence and abuse makes them more of a man. To others, it centers them in their violence when they are feeling powerless or afraid.

And to those who are less naturally inclined to violence, the Doctrine of the Violent Man says that they are not really men. That they are something other than male.

The effect of this Doctrine on what it means to be a man is profound. It goes to the core of personal and societal assumptions about maleness. I am aware that I write this from a position of privelege... that of the male who "proved" his capacity for violence (through a state-approved means), and now restrains that violence and practices peace. But even this conception of male identity, celebrated though it is, has violence at its core.

The Doctrine of the Violent Man requires that almost every conception of male identity be measured by the relationship to and capacity for violence. It is a doctrine for which there is a lot of evidence, in society and even in my own heart. The reality of male violence will not change until we have deconstructed the doctrine that upholds it."

What about you? Why do you Protest?

A colleague, Rev. Jeremy Rutledge, asks the following question:

"People often ask me why I protest. And I want to say, I don't know, because I have a conscience, because I have a kid, because I have a sweetheart, because I have a church, because I have examples, because I have love, because I am half woke, because I am not a cynic, because I believe that my life is about more than myself, because I buy what Jesus said about the greatest commandment and the second like unto it, and because I was raised by Hawaiʻians who taught me aloha. I mean, these are the first reasons that come to mind.

What about you? Why do you protest?"