help create peace now...

Returning Home Again...

2007-09-24T07:06:00.000-06:00

The leaves are changing here on these hills and the geese are flying above and calling out their dramatic songs. We remember our roots in the Jewish tradition in the celebration of the Holy Day, Yom Kippur this past Friday. We also honor our source of earth-centered wisdom in celebrating the Fall Equinox – a balancing of light and dark on that same day. It is time to return home again, to our congregations and to ourselves. It is a time of remembering and a balancing of our actions. Have we said or done things that we regret? Are there areas of our lives that need to be examined? This is a turning of the year and a time for reflection.

balancing change and constancy...

2007-06-08T14:57:00.000-06:00

There is something infinitely healing
in the repeated refrains of nature –
the assurance that dawn comes after night,
and spring after the winter.

~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder ~

Spring did come. Actually summer has arrived in Vermont...and it is hot! And it is beautiful. We are involved in a continual changing process within ourselves and all around us. In just a matter of days or sometimes what feels like hours, plants have grown and flowers have bloomed. I was reminded recently that Rachel Carson, the scientist and writer who invigorated the environmental movement with her book Silent Spring, was a Unitarian Universalist. Yet another leader and activist in our midst! The UU Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee is on the path to becoming a Green Sanctuary and has been holding an annual Rachel Carson Memorial Dinner and interfaith gathering each year as part of this effort. Rev. Patricia Cahill, the local Episcopal priest who will be speaking at the event this year says that ‘As we cope with the environmental effects of dramatic climate change, people of faith need to become beacons of hope in the world. We can respond to the call of God’s spirit in actions that help to mend Creation; a good place to light that spark is through Rachel Carson’s writings especially Sense of Wonder.’

Every piece that we work on, no matter how small it seems, does matter. We are involved in an interconnected and intricate web of creation that needs our care and attention. Rachel Carson wrote that “it is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” As our physical senses are heightened on these beautiful spring days, let us also allow our sense of both wonder and humility to emerge as we walk through the daily ritual of our days.

Everyone Needs Beauty...

2007-04-26T19:10:00.000-06:00

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength
to body and soul alike.”
~ John Muir ~

Yes to John Muir’s words. Yes, we need beauty as well as bread. We need beauty in our daily lives, whether it is a painting or image we can rest our eyes on and gather nourishment we can take with us out into the world, or a book of new poems we have just discovered that will sustain us as we do our work. It might be an unexpected conversation or connection we have with someone. We must be nourished and bread is not enough. Our souls must be nourished; our hearts must be fed. In one of David Whyte’s poems he says: “people are starving and one good word will feed a thousand.” I believe he is speaking about the nourishment of our souls. There is a way that we are starving in this society. We are bombarded by images and words every day, yet we are hungry. We need places to play and be creative in. We need spaces and times when we can pray. When I enter our sanctuary for worship or when I sink to the floor for our meditation circle in the ballroom, I do feel nourished. The beauty of our spaces is nourishing and it can sustain us. But John Muir sends us outdoors “where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” His temple, his church was the forest. He stood among the ancient redwoods and spoke of it as a cathedral of tall and majestic beings emanating peace and wisdom. If you have stood in a grove of redwood trees, you know what he is speaking about. Or if you have stood at the edge of the sea and looked out into that great rolling expanse of waves that never ceases to move and change, a never ending cycle of change and power. As a congregation, we are involved in a never ending cycle of change and power together. It is true. Together we create communities and sustain them with our gifts. And these gifts are many and unexpected. Each one of us is needed. Each one of us has something to give and receive. We might not know what that will be on a given day but there are reasons we are together; there are gifts to be heard in the stories of all of us. There are gifts to be found in everyone we meet. We need our congregations, our churches to be sacred places where we can be ourselves and perhaps places where we can become someone new. We can be reborn here in these communities of love and longing. There is a place inside us all that longs to create and give to the world. Let us offer ourselves, and our gifts. There is no doubt that we can make the world better and we need to begin today.
blessings, Rev. Telos

Local and Global Justice...

2007-03-28T07:43:00.000-06:00

Last Sunday was Justice Sunday for UU congregations around the country. I collaborated with the chair of our Social Action Committee (in Chester, VT) to offer a service that focused on Local and Global actions we can take. The Local action came in the form of offering people the opportunity to purchase Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs to reduce their energy bill and to "green" their homes. A member of the congregation agreed to purchase light bulbs for the 14 lights that illuminate our sanctuary. We can be more environmentally conscious, more green on a local level; right here in our sanctuaries, in our houses. We can buy bulbs that will allow us to decrease our energy use now. Education, worship, community connections and physical changes, all important steps we can take together. Every step we take matters.

Our Global Action was to unite with congregations around the country to highlight and take action toward reducing the violence and devastation in Darfur. As Unitarian Universalists today, ministry has become interwoven with social action and truly living into our principles. I was with a local minister last week and he shared that three years ago, ending the violence in Darfur was the one issue that the fifteen clergy there could agree on. It went beyond differences in theology and belief. They sent a letter to their local newspaper signed by clergy from all denominations and traditions. This was three years ago. We need those letters now. The killing hasn’t stopped in Darfur; it has increased in the past year.

This is a report from the organization, Human Rights Watch. (http://www.hrw.org/) “Since early 2003, Sudanese government forces and ethnic militia called “Janjaweed” have engaged in an armed conflict with rebel groups called the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). As part of its operations against the rebels, government forces have waged a systematic campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the civilian population who are members of the same ethnic groups as the rebels. Sudanese government forces and the Janjaweed militias burned and destroyed hundreds of villages, killed and caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people, and raped and assaulted thousands of women and girls. As of January 2007, approximately two million displaced people live in camps in Darfur and at least 232,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad, where they live in refugee camps."

I realize that this information is sobering and terrible to hear but we are being asked as people of faith, people who are committed to social justice, to equality, to furthering peace in areas of violence, to do something. We are being asked to write letters to our legislators, to the current administration so that the situation in Darfur is not forgotten. We need to educate ourselves and others about the situation that has meant 200,000 deaths and millions of displaced people so that the violence can end. We need to ask ourselves why we aren’t reading about Darfur in our newspapers, why aren’t we hearing more about this situation, this place in the world?

But there is hope in this story. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (http://www.uusc.org/) is part of the Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance of 167 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations pressing for a stronger, international peacekeeping force to stop the genocide that already has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. The Million Voices for Darfur campaign delivered 1 million postcards to President Bush last May as a common voice in saying, the violence in Darfur must end. Together we are making a difference. President of the UUSC, Charlie Clements: “When a million people from across the country can speak with one voice on this issue, it sends a powerful message. But we must acknowledge that much more work needs to be done to reach our ultimate goal of ending the genocide in Darfur and bringing peace to the region.”

Justice means that we need to keep the chalice of hope lit, even if it is a small chalice and we are but a few voices. We are not alone. There are thousands of Unitarian Universalists learning about the devastation and violence in Darfur and taking action. We are holding this pain together. And we are going to take action together. We are individuals committed to having less violence and more justice in the world, as people who know that a letter to the editor, to our representatives does matter. It is difficult to be working on all fronts at the same time and keeping the global world and our local one in our minds and hearts but there isn’t a choice. We have to live into our commitment to being religious liberals. It is the realization that we have no choice but to promote justice.
Action Steps We can take:
Go to the UU Service Committee web site link
http://www.uusc.org/news/alert020607.html
there are ways to call your representatives and encourage divestment, push for a UN peacekeeping force and increase awareness.

When I was in college, some of us knew that we needed to work to push the university to divest from South Africa because we knew that the system of apartheid had to end. We new that even though we were a group of white college students in New Hampshire, far from the towns and roads and struggles of African peoples, and people of color across the planet, we had to at least make the effort. Just our university divesting wasn’t going to stop the system of apartheid. But if enough universities and corporations divested, then it would make a difference. The government would have to respond. And they did. There is a call for companies to divest from Sudan in order to pressure the government, in order to shine a global light on the situation. Millions of people died in the concentration camps during World War II. 800,000 people died during the crisis in Rwanda. 200,000 people have died in Darfur. We know the words that need to be said and the actions that need to be taken. Justice Sunday is a way for UU congregations to come together and be united around a common issue of concern. It is a reminder that we are not alone in this step by step process of changing the world. It is hard to do these actions ourselves and feel like they will really make a difference, really save any lives. They are bound to. One more step, we will take one more step. One more prayer, we will say one more prayer, one more song, we will sing one more song until every song is heard by everyone we will sing one more song. The light is shining in the darkness and will not be overcome. May it be ever so.

Hope For the Future

2007-02-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, we had a service at the First Universalist Parish called "A Service For All of Us" that involved people ages 2 and up - an Intergenerational Service in all aspects. What impressed and moved me the most were the youth who shared with the congregation their learning and reflections of other faith traditions. They had studied Quakerism, Catholicism and Islam through the Neighboring Faiths Curriculum so we heard a Muslim call to prayer, sat together for three minutes of silence in the Quaker tradition, and listened to the Nicene Creed being recited. Where is the common ground between these faith traditions and Unitarian Universalism? How did it feel for them to participate in a Quaker meeting or witness a Catholic service? Their responses were honest, thoughtful and I found, incredibly inspiring. They are the hope of our future. We need to find common ground as people of faith, as neighbors across the road and the ocean. We must find and celebrate what we hold in common. And confront our own fears of difference, join in healing our past experiences of religion that might prevent us being able to see the commonalities. There are many Unitarian Universalists who have had negative, traumatic and difficult experiences with another faith tradition. This is true. And as part of a UU congregation, we can support each other in the journey through that experience that may have been painful, into another way of seeing, another way of connecting with what is sacred to us. In those wonderful words of Rumi: "There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground." I felt honored to participate in this service with these young people for they were voices and open minds that reminded me of this reality. There is hope for the future.

Stillness of the Earth

2007-01-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

this sermon was given at First Universalist Parish in Chester, Vermont.

The prayer of the Ute Indians begins: "Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light." Well, there have been some nights recently that weren't still. The wind has whipped around our house. The wind chime outside the door rings and rings. There have been some wild nights, at least in Saxton’s River, Vermont. And then there would be times that were completely still. There were also times of silence and stillness. "Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me." I’ve been humming that chant for the past week in preparing this sermon and realized that there were three pieces that were involved and that each required something of me. Find a stillness. I imagined what it felt like for me to have lost something and be looking for it. Frustrating! Where is that piece of paper, those glasses, my keys? And I end up going around the house, trying to re-trace my steps, it takes effort and what a relief when it, the lost thing is found. Here it is! And finding stillness can feel like that I think. It takes concentration and may end up being frustrating and come upon us unexpectedly. A moment to sit and be silent. A moment to appreciate the quiet or the sounds. Stillness isn’t necessarily going to be in silence. There might be quite a lot of noise and activity happening and that stillness is inside. So when we find that lost stillness if it has been lost, then…we have to hold it. The work isn’t over. Hold the stillness. Hold the stillness? How do we do that? For this piece, I think it is good to have silence. It helps to be in a sanctuary. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “Not insulation of place, but independence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the cottage, the forest, and the rock, are a sort of mechanical aids to this, that they are of value. Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred.” For him, these places and elements of nature – the forest, the rock were needed in order to remember and gain insight, divine insight. He goes on to warn the audience not to use solitude to the exclusion of society. Both are needed. We live in the world, in a community, in the public. He says don’t fool yourselves. “You can very soon learn all that society can teach you for one while. Its foolish routine, an indefinite multiplication of balls, concerts, rides, theatres, can teach you no more than a few can. Then accept the hint of shame, of spiritual emptiness and waste, which true nature gives you, and retire, and hide; lock the door; shut the shutters; then welcome falls the imprisoning rain, -- dear hermitage of nature. Re-collect the spirits. Have solitary prayer and praise. Digest and correct the past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life.” Dear hermitage of nature, dear earth. The stillness of the earth. Emerson doesn’t shy away from saying that there will be perhaps shame – from being too much in the world and letting it rule us. And that we need to accept that shame, that spiritual emptiness and waste, which knowing our true selves can reveal. We do need to know ourselves, our true natures. It is good to remember he wrote this in 1838 and he is speaking to a group of intellectuals, a literary crowd that might really need the reminder to hide and shutter the windows. They might really need to retreat into themselves and deal with what they might find. They needed some silence. And they needed, we all need time to heal. We all need the stillness.

We need to be close to the earth, whether it’s in our backyards, in the mountains, and we need to remember to look up and see the beautiful moon shining down; we need that time. In Nancy Wood’s poem she finds her help in the mountain where she takes herself to heal. And the stream give her comfort and the trees keep her company. By allowing ourselves to be held and becoming a part of the earth - becoming the water, becoming the stone - we can be transformed.

“So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.”

In our Religious Education program, our older children in the Neighboring Faiths class are exploring common ground they have found in the faith traditions they are exploring. They are studying Islam this morning, they went to a service at the Catholic Church and they attended Quaker meeting a few weeks ago. Prayer is common to all three but there is quite a variety of ways to pray. What I immediately thought of was silence – moments of silence in a group, in a service – this is common ground. Or if not silence then stillness. This is what Quaker meeting is all about and is one of the reasons I particularly loved attending. Both because we sat in silence for many minutes, most of an hour usually and because each voice that spoke was valued as coming from an inspired place, coming from a still place. And those words needed to be shared in that moment, that morning with that group of people. And the rest of the people there are holding the stillness in order for them to speak. It’s a relationship. We have our time of silence together at every service. Many would say it’s the most important part for connecting with each other, for connecting with whatever power or energy sustains you. In that moment of stillness, unexpected insights might come in; you might hear your own voice. So we find that stillness, we hold it. And we are holding it for not only ourselves but others. And with all three of these tasks – “tasks of stillness” I’m calling them, a bit of faith is needed. Knowing, hoping you will be able to find some stillness, holding that for yourself, for others around you. And then…and this is the hardest part of all – let the stillness carry me. Let the stillness carry me. Imagine when you are swimming and you turn on your back for a moment and let the water carry you. I actually can’t stay that way for more than a few seconds, I find it very disconcerting! But letting the stillness carry us is again, letting that still, small voice speak.

Muhammad Yunus heard a small voice (or maybe it was a giant voice!) say to him, you can help to end this grueling poverty with just even a dollar of your own money. Give your money to someone who needs it. And if you put your faith in people then, amazing things will happen. He brought an idea to life in 1974 and then thirty-two years later he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His name has become a familiar one but it wasn’t when he began. He was teaching economics in Southern Bangladesh that was devastated by famine. When he began seeing all of the people that began coming to the capital – everyone looked the same. Old and young and they were starving. He couldn’t just go back and teach lofty economic theories in his classes, he needed to understand a poor person’s life and then figure out a solution. Gandhi’s words: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Muhammad Yunus has been called a revolutionary for coupling capitalism with social responsibility. He had many who thought he was crazy for what he was doing. Offering money and loans to people who had nothing? He transformed what economics in rural villages could be. And I know he must have had some moments of stillness, some “Quaker time” as it is sometimes called, where he could listen. And then he had to heed the voice. I think he felt like he had to do something, anything to combat the poverty. And he empowered people by making the money a loan – not with any time frame on paying it back but again, putting his faith in them. He saw them as individuals with the potential to transform their own lives with a little help from him.

And the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. We just celebrated his birthday and we all know that his dream, his vision was and is still a radical one. Yes, all citizens of the United States can vote and yes, our schools are integrated. But the devastation of Hurricane Katrina is a striking reminder that we are far from an equal society. The number of African American men in prison today is staggering. The infant mortality rate for African American children is high and the statistics go on and on. These are hard and overwhelming truths to contemplate. We have to live with them. But we can live with them together. We can talk about what we want to do as a congregation to combat poverty, to lend our dollar to a project or cause, to put our faith in someone. The last hymn we’ll sing today is in honor of his work: “I woke up this morning with my mind, it was stayed on freedom.” Muhammad Yunus knew that he would have an impact, a lasting impact if he gave a dollar to a person that he met in a village in Bangladesh. But I don’t think he was doing it for that reason. I don’t imagine he had any idea that thirty years later he would be accepting the Nobel Peace prize. He did it because it was the right thing to do. When Martin Luther King shared his “I Have a Dream Speech” that day in 1968, I don’t think he knew what might happen but he had to share his dream.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.” He spoke of transforming racism and prejudice and about faith. His faith, his sense of what had to be done, of how the society, this country needed to change, had to change was strong. It had to be!
“This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

It isn’t always clear to me what I should do. What action should I take? Give a donation to this cause? Write a letter to one of my representatives about an issue? There is so much to be done and it feels overwhelming. So I think it’s remembering that the small gestures do matter. Collecting canned goods to donate to the food shelf, volunteering at the teen center or the library, and...you probably know what I’m going to say – finding those moments of stillness and letting them carry you.
“Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me. Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.” There is a stillness when I am out among the pine trees and grasses. The trees sigh in the wind; it gently or vigorously bends their branches. But there is stillness. It’s there. I can let my breath out. (when I remember.) Sometimes when I’m inside a building or in my car, I feel like I am holding my breath. Waiting…always waiting to exhale. It’s as if by exhaling I am letting go and by letting go, things might fall apart? Perhaps. But it’s the letting go that those small voices can speak – that idea that someone might think is crazy or ahead of its time. The revolutionaries began as ordinary people living their lives and became revolutionary because there was something they needed to do and they couldn’t not do it. Muhammad Yunus. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each one of us. Those revolutionary acts of kindness, the willingness to be held, the faith to listen to the voice. Mary Oliver’s familiar words in her poem, The Journey that during a wild night that was already late enough she has to walk away from all the clatter, all of the people demanding her time and attention “and little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.”

In this new year…of remembering and beginning again, let’s remember to cherish any moments of stillness and let them carry us to new places, new awareness. Through the healing found in the mountains and land and earth, let us allow the earth to teach us kindness. Let us allow the stillness to bring us home.

May it be so.

Resources and Readings:

Earth Teach Me
A prayer from the
Ute Indians of North American

My Help Is In the Mountain
by Nancy Wood

The Way of the Heart by Henry J.M. Nouwen, theologian

"I Have a Dream" Speech by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

"Find a Stillness" and "Oh I Woke Up In the Morning", hymns from Singing The Living Tradition

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Keeping The Peace

2006-12-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

This sermon was given Sunday, Dec. 10 at First Universalist Parish in Chester, Vermont.

We all began a pilgrimage. We are all on a journey that began a couple of weeks ago and will culminate at the end of December. The pilgrimage from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It’s a pilgrimage that everyone takes whether or not they believe in Jesus, whether or not they want to engage in the holiday spirit. It’s here, it has descended upon us. The stores and advertisements will not let us forget. But it is also the time of Advent – a time of waiting and preparation. And the concept of Advent can be expanded beyond the preparation for the birth of Jesus and its Christian frame. It is a time that can be used for looking back and reflecting on the year and looking inside. Catherine Doherty writes that “Advent is a time of standing still, and yet making a pilgrimage. It is an inner pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in which we don't use our feet. We stand still; yet, in a manner of speaking, we walk a thousand miles across the world - just because we chose to stand still.”
This time is often referred to as a time of “peace.” If you pick up a variety of holiday cards, the words inside often wish the receiver a peaceful season or year. May the peace of the holidays come to you and yours or something to that affect. And because it is a time of various religious traditions coming together, peace is often the common ground. If Merry Christmas or Happy Hannukah isn’t broad enough, wishing blessings for a year or time of peace is a safe bet. And a wonderful message! But what about peace and how do we actually get to having some moments or times of peace during this incredibly busy time of year? This is a time of year when we are bombarded by holiday music, decorations, advertisements, pressures. It is a shock to our systems that is introduced sometimes as early as Halloween! And amid all of the lights and music, it can sometimes be a hard and lonely time. Hard because we can be reminded of who in our family or community is not here this year. Hard because we can feel like we must participate in some way – buying or making gifts, giving more than we do normally, even feeling holiday cheeriness can be a pressure. It is a balancing act during these weeks. One aspect that I do appreciate is that religious and cultural traditions seem to come together more than other times of the year – Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice. The common threads between the faith traditions are there. And these weeks are a strong and powerful time for reflection, community and gratitude. And there is common ground - the coming of light, the coming together of communities, birthing of new life, new ideas. And the wish, the prayer for peace. Peace can be this common ground.

The peace poles are white with black lettering. They stand about eight feet high and usually have six sides. There is a peace pole in front of a UU church in Salt Lake City, Utah. There is a pole in front of a Buddhist temple in California. There is a peace pole on top of a hill at a retreat center in Vermont. The words on each of the sides says “May Peace Prevail On Earth” in Chinese, Russian, Korean, English. From the Peace Pole Project web site it reads “When you plant a Peace Pole in your community, you are linking with people all over the world who have planted their Poles in the same spirit of peace. Every Peace Pole proclaims the prayer May Peace Prevail on Earth in the language of the country and often four to six other languages as well. The more than 200,000 Peace Poles around the world are on all continents, in every country you can think of. They are in simple places, such as churches and gardens, and extraordinary ones, such as at the Pyramids of El Giza, Egypt or the Magnetic North Pole in Canada. They are promoting healing of conflict in places like Sarajevo and the Allenby Bridge between Israel and Jordan.” Bethlehem and Bagdad. Salt Lake City and Vermont. They serve as constant reminders for us to visualize and pray for world peace.

During a storm the only place of peace is the eye in the middle. A space in the middle that is calm when everything else is wild. The eye of the storm. In the middle of the storm where it is quiet is the eye. I just finished reading a book called The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It is a wild and fantastical tale about a 16 year old boy from India who ends up in a 24 foot life boat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger for about 7 months! The author makes no claims that this is a true story or that it is plausible. But what the boy and tiger must end up doing is inhabiting the same small space together in order for both to survive. A life boat in the middle of the ocean. And they have to come to a sense of peace about their predicament. It is essential that they keep the peace with each other in that 24 foot space! Neither is able to be and act in the ways they would normally act but must adapt and adapt to this wild situation. It is worth reading and a grand escape! And before the ocean adventure, the boy explores and adopts three faith traditions – Hinduism, Islam and Christianity and calls on God and gods of many names during his time at sea. He is a spiritual seeker at a very young age, exploring these three traditions and not wanting to settle on one, he embraces all of them. He prays on Friday at the mosque, he is there Sunday morning at the Catholic Church and he visits the Hindu temple. He finds common ground and decides he doesn’t have to choose – why can’t I be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim? His faith is what saves him when he is lost at sea. He is on this long and fantastical pilgrimage. He finds a kind of peace as he prays whenever and however he can. And it was hard. Sometimes Pi doesn’t think he can go on. He is hungry and lonely and fearing for his life. “At such moments I tried to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and I would say aloud, “This is God’s hat!...I would pat my pants and say aloud, “this is God’s attire.” I would point at the sky and say aloud, this is God’s ear.” And in this way I would remind myself of creation and my place in it. But God’s hat was always unraveling. God’s pants were falling apart. God’s cat was a constant danger…God’s ear didn’t seem to be listening.” He said that the darkness did always end up passing. Fish came along to be caught, the wind would shift and the sun would come up. And there was a point of light in his heart where God was, where his faith was that kept him going, that gave him strength through this pilgrimage of physical and spiritual survival.

Louise Diamond lives in Bristol, Vermont and she is the author of the Peace Book. She writes that there are basic assumptions underlying our society that go against peace and that by changing or challenging these assumptions, we can transform our society and ultimately the world. She writes that “a true culture of peace is based on four basic principles that promote trust, harmony, and healthy human relationships.” She offers four principles of Peace. (and you’ll be able to hear our UU principles within these!) The first, Community. “We come-in-unity first with ourselves, then with others, acknowledging we are all in this together, interconnected and interdependent. Therefore, what hurts one, hurts all. To honor the equal dignity and worth of all…and a commitment to social and economic justice.” Sound familiar? The interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. What happens in one corner of the world, of the web, impacts all of us.

Her second principle is Cooperation. Finding common ground. Knowing we will all win if we work together. Again, that web of interdependence. The third principle is Nonviolence. She writes “with dialogue and creative problem solving – and with a moral conviction to avoid the suffering caused by violence – we can address the toughest issues of our individual and collective lives.” And the fourth principle is Witness. With Life as our witness, families all are we. “Peace is a living presence within all of us,” she writes. “It is encoded in us as natural wisdom, our spiritual birthright.” There is a seed of peace in everyone and it is relating to that place. It takes work, I’m not suggesting it is easy. I was recently driving and late to a meeting so I was following a car quite closely. I kept having to put on my brakes but for some reason, it didn’t dawn on me that it was because I was following the car ahead of me too closely. Well, we get into the town and suddenly the driver stops suddenly in the middle of the road. I look behind me and several trucks had to stop. She gets out of her car and yells loudly at me to get off her blank tail and stop following her. I have kids in the car, she yells. She got back in her car and started driving again. I waited and followed at a safe distance, feeling really silly for having been yelled at in the middle of town by an irate mother. She was right. I had been following too closely. I wasn’t driving safely. It wasn’t safe for her to get out in the middle of the road either but if I’d kept my distance that might not have happened. So I would be a few minutes late to the meeting. It is better and more important to keep the peace.
UU Minister Rev. Rob Manning reflected in a sermon he wrote four years ago that “This is one of the great times of the Christian calendar, a month of contemplation and spiritual preparation. If the birth of Christ is the coming into the world of light, hope, and peace, what are these things in our world today? How do we make room for them within ourselves, among us as people, and among the nations of the world? This is the time, the opportunity, for all of Christendom to contemplate and spiritually prepare for the coming of light, and hope, and peace. It happens every year, you know. Advent is on the calendar every year. But advent as a season tends to be something like the Chicago Cubs World Series: it’s always scheduled but it never really comes. Christmas always comes. The entire economy would be ruined if some grinch somehow managed to make Christmas not come. Christmas always comes, but Advent never comes.”

It’s true. Christmas does come and it goes. It comes early! It sweeps into the stores and the neighborhoods in a flood and sparkle of lights and colors – signs that proclaim and do not allow anyone to forget that it is Christmas. But I think Rob is right. Advent doesn’t actually come. This time of waiting and preparation, this time of quiet preparation and reflection is not rewarded usually with a flash of insight and a magnificent change. The light doesn’t actually flood the world in sudden brilliance that we are all witness to. At least not literally. But we can welcome in the quiet peace of advent. What a welcome opportunity to reflect, to bring in a bit of peace amid the flash and overly bright decorations and too loud music. By the time the 25th comes, we will have been bombarded by sight and sound. We have seen so many lights…advent may be a waiting for light to come in the darkness but it’s pretty bright already! That is why the candlelight services that are held take on a new meaning. We have to turn out our lights. We have to rest for a few minutes together. We have to be in the darkness. We have to feel the peace that already exists. Peace is here now, every breath is a prayer. I used to say that statement a lot during a time when I did not feel peaceful and needed those words to calm me.

But when I open the paper, it seems that the opposite of peace is what I see and read about in the larger world. Peace does not seem to be beginning, it seems to be hiding. Rob says Advent never comes. Peace doesn’t seem to come either. At least not everywhere, not all the time. But I think it’s like love. A small bit of peace goes a long way. A peaceful gesture towards someone. Not responding in anger to the woman who got out of her car. It took will on my part. I don’t like getting yelled at. No one does. But peace at the beginning of the day…peace in the middle…peace around the edges. Like a giant weaving we are all and each helping to make. We are all helping to weave it. John Lennon’s words are in there: “Imagine all the people, living life in peace....” It can’t hurt to keep that thought as the eye of the storm, as the spark of light, as that prayer.

Peace Pilgrim began walking in 1953. Yes, she did have an epiphany, a revelation, a grand insight on a mountain top. It doesn’t always happen so dramatically but her life took a drastic turn so I think it needed to come as a dramatic. She knew she had to dedicate her life to peace. That was all there was to it. She heeded the light that came flooding in – the message was. You need to start walking for peace. And you don’t need to take anything with you. You will need to have faith that people will offer you food, that you will find places to rest, that you will be taken care of. So she embarked wearing only a blue tunic that said “peace pilgrim” on the front and 25,000 miles for peace on the back. She actually added that after she had walked that many miles. She was a remarkable woman. Walking for peace…yes, she did begin during the Korean War and wanted the war to end. But it was more about peace between individual people, between each other that she wanted to promote. She said that “Peace is a state of mind and a path of action. It is a concept, a goal, an experience, a path. Peace is an ideal. It is both intangible and concrete, complex and simple, exciting and calming. Peace is personal and political; it is spiritual and practical, local and global. It is a process and an outcome, an above all a way of being.” Peace begins with me. Peace begins with us. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There are some great stories about her travels, her walk, her pilgrimage over many years and thousands of miles.

“Advent is a short season, yet it covers a long distance,” Catherine de Hueck Doherty writes. “It is the road of a soul from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It seems such a short distance as we are accustomed to thinking of distances. Yet it is a road into infinity, into eternity. It has a beginning, but no end. In truth, Advent is the road of the spiritual life which all of us must start if we do not want to miss the way. So, then. Let us enter, you and I, into the pilgrimage that doesn't take us from home. For ours is a journey of the spirit, which is a thousand times harder than a journey of the feet. Let us 'arise and go'.”

And we won’t know. We have no idea where our pilgrimage this year will take us. Most likely not a lifeboat in the ocean with a tiger…we probably won’t don a blue tunic and start walking for peace, at least not all the way across the country. But something unexpected might happen. A point of light might cross our path and it is so bright we have to notice it. A pilgrimage that doesn’t take us from our houses but leads us down new and unexpected paths. I’ll meet you there.

Blessed Be and Amen.

Sources drawn from for this sermon:
The Peace Book by Louise Diamond
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Sermon written in 2002 by UU Minister Rev. Rob Manning
reflection on Advent by Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Peace Pole Project - http://www.worldpeace.org/peacepoles.html

Thanks Be For Those Holy Times...

2006-11-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from sermon given Sunday, Nov. 19 at the Walpole Unitarian Church

Holy times can happen in the kitchen, the sidewalk, the path in the woods. Life is holy. It certainly isn’t confined to what happens between these walls or the walls of any temple, mosque or church. But why is it that sometimes, we are caught by a quickening of the heart as we behold a painting, orange leaves against blue sky, the back of a whale as it gently graces the surface of the water, someone’s eyes shining with excitement? What are these moments about? Why might we consider them holy? In the gathering of these moments, as Joyce Rupp says – she discovered with surprise how quickly her inner room became “a harvest place of gold.”

“Holy becomes the quickened breath; we celebrate life’s interval.” Life’s interval. These are words from the hymn, Thanks Be For These. The time in between the big and undeniable moments. The interval is the time in between. Holy becomes the quickened breath. When does our breath quicken? For me, it has quickened when I realize I am in a holy moment, an interval. This Thursday many of us will celebrate Thanksgiving. We will most likely be sharing a meal with other people, expressing gratitude. And someone just shared with me that they have an "unThanksgiving" day where they can wear and do whatever they want. Never mind about turkey! Pajamas and knitting and chocolate anyone? “I do the very best I know how. I do the very best I can.” Abraham Lincoln, the president that finally said yes to Sarah Hale – Yes, we need a day that the country celebrates together and is thankful. And could our thanksgiving prayer extend beyond the day, out into every day. Every day is a day for thanksgiving – a giving of thanks.

Several years ago, I had the privilege of attending a workshop in Vermont led by healer from Peru. His name was Puma and he was 21 years old. I had expected I think someone much older – an elder, a wise one, steeped in wisdom as evidenced by graying hair and a lined face. This man was young, very young. And wise. Beginning when Puma was six years old, he began his training by his grandfather to become a healer. What I remember most about meeting him was his smile. It seemed like he was always smiling. And he breathed a sense of peace and well-being. He is a Quechua Indian from the central Andes - people who are making daily offerings to the land, to the natural world and believe that they are in communion with these forces. What I learned and witnessed was that all of Puma’s life was holy. If he was sitting and eating breakfast, when he was playing his wooden flute, when he was walking down the path. He was teaching us to create offerings, and to allow time. All of the time we spent together was holy time.

There were about twenty of us and he led us through a training and ritual of creating gratitude offerings that are then burned or buried. You create the offerings in pairs – two of you sitting across from each other. One brings the other a few seeds and petals, pebbles and sugar to the one creating the offering and they create a beautiful design on white paper. I had given this workshop as a gift to my brother so he and I were partnered in creating our Pujas. When the offerings are finished, the paper is folded in a certain pattern, tied with a string and then a flower and a dollar bill is placed under the string. The Peruvian indigenous people have done what I believe is an amazing job at incorporating Western religious beliefs with their own, and preserving their own ways of praying and honoring the land. Every being in nature is alive to them – the stones and mountains are living beings that they call by intimate name. “Apu Camel's Hump" - grandfather Camel’s Hump, grandfather Mansfield, grandfather Machu Piccu. And the bodies of water are female – momma Champlain, momma Connecticut, momma Atlantic. Every element in nature is alive and is meant to be honored and offered blessings of gratitude to. There is this continual communion with everything. For a time after I did the workshop with Puma, I kept a bowl of flower petals by my door and would offer a blessing each morning as I left my house. Craig and I offered a blessing of petals as we crossed the Connecticut River when we first arrived back here. As we crossed from Canada into Vermont, a flurry of color, of petals floated out of our window and down into the river. We wanted to offer thanks and gratitude for a safe journey home.

Communion, rituals of connecting with a source larger than ourselves, the ingesting of bread to symbolize a connection. It is not the bread itself but the energy we infuse into that bread. We are part of a body. We are part of a community. We are connected. Communion, union with others. Unitarian Universalists have re-claimed communion for themselves. We have said – we can re-envision these rituals to be broader, to be meaningful for us today. Communion does not need to be limited to the Christian understanding but can be a relationship we are in. And we may be in communion with nature, with the land. We may be in communion with God, with an unseen presence larger than ourselves. And we are in communion with each other. When I sat in the grove at Deer Park Monastery and watched Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh drink his cup of steaming tea, it was a moment of communion. The only sounds were the soft rustling of leaves, an occasional bird call. In those moments, time stops. I felt a sense of oneness, of connection. It was a holy time. There is a smile, a certain peace on a person’s face that to me, indicates communion, a union with a sense of oneness.

Jim MacLaren’s face had that peaceful quality. He is a man with an amazing story. He was in college and a star athlete – a football player, and he was biking through a city when he had this sudden realization that something was about to happen to him. Right after that he saw the grill of a bus coming toward him. He woke up in the hospital not remembering anything and had to have his leg amputated below the knee. Well, he didn’t let the fact that he didn’t have part of his leg stop him. He went on to compete in the Iron Man competitions and to become a world-class athlete. One night a few years later, he was packing for a race and again had this wave of feeling like something was going to happen. Actually, that his life was going to be blessed in some way. He had a premonition, a feeling, a sense that his life was about to change for the good. He went to the race and while he was biking, he saw a car coming toward him again. In that moment, he thought, if I peddle faster, maybe I can beat the car. And then everything went black. Again, he woke up in the hospital and this time he was paralyzed from the neck down. When I saw him speaking in this documentary, he said that he had this sense that his life was going to be blessed, that something amazing was going to happen to him. What happened was that he became paralyzed from the neck down. And he went on this time to advocate for athletes and people with physical challenges. The Challenged Athletes Foundation grew out of his friends coming together quickly to raise funds for his recovery and organizing the San Diego Triathlon Challenge – to make sure people with physical challenges – not “disabilities”, not handicaps, but challenges. So that people that have different physical abilities can enjoy sports that anyone else. As I listened to Jim talk and watched his face, I realized why I felt so amazed. I knew why I was so touched by him. He was grateful for what had happened to him. He felt blessed. He felt like something spiritual had happened to him, was meant to happen to him. And to be able to see the reality of a car hitting you and causing you to become paralyzed from the neck down as a blessing is truly incredible! Thanks be for that attitude of acceptance. And what he was also saying, asking for was not pity. He was challenging people to the opposite – instead of feeling sorry for someone who we believe is less fortunate because they have a physical challenge, he was saying – we have taken hold of our lives and are making them better. Do the same. The Dalai Lama says: “Basically, we are all the same human beings. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendships and good relations.” It takes a willingness to surrender our own sense of protection, our boundaries, our frame that says we might be different than each other, and allowing our hearts to be open. It is remembering that we can be in communion with each other, and with all of life, all the time. All of time is holy time.

I will close with the words of Joyce Rupp:

“November gestures with a wrinkled brown hand, beckons me wisely to consider those fleeting moments of grace, in things quickly passing: A walk on a musky-wooded path, a cup of coffee silently savored, a birdsong in the squeaky hours of dawn, the gentle touch of a hand, a loving letter from a grateful stranger, a fading crescent moon in a royal blue sky. I turn to gather finely layered remnants like these in the come and go of my days, and discover, with surprise, how quickly my inner room is a harvest of gold.”
Blessed Be and Amen.

Sources and Gratitude:
Out of the Ordinary by Joyce Rupp
Emmanuel's Gift - video documentary
http://www.challengedathletes.org/
Thank You, Sarah - the story of the woman who saved Thanksgiving by Laurie Halse Anderson

Thank you to Puma and the other people who participated in his workshop and gratitude to Thich Nhat Hanh for continuing to be a source of inspiration.

With Much Gratitude...

2006-11-11T10:59:00.001-07:00

A whispered prayer and a deep sense of gratitude… I am filled with gratitude for all the work that went into my Ordination service and celebration on October 29 - what a blessed day. Thank you to everyone who created a lovely and memorable service and celebration. Your food, your voice, your presence in the church meant a lot. You helped to create the experience we had. The voices of the members of First Universalist Parish and the Walpole Unitarian Church rang throughout that sanctuary and ordained me into Unitarian Universalist ministry. I am grateful.

Someone shared with me that your ordination is supposed to be a service where you listen as others talk to you, as people give you advice and offer you the “charge”, as they extend the right hand of fellowship and welcome you formally into the ministry. It is a service where the voices of your congregation ordain you. So that even though the service is about you, your voice shouldn’t dominate. Well, that's exactly what happened! As I sat in the pew at the beginning of the service, I realized with a start and a feeling of panic that I had no voice left. My voice had completely disappeared. Someone told me later that it was perfect. Well, and it is what happened. I had to use my hands to sing the closing hymn, “This Little Light of Mine” instead of my voice. I had to whisper the closing prayer…I am grateful to be able to serve with my heart, mind and spirit and usually my voice!

Writer and Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast helped to found A Network for Grateful Living (ANG*L), a member-supported, non-profit organization with a vision for “worldwide community dedicated to gratefulness as the core inspiration for personal change, international cooperation, and sustainable activism in areas of universal concern.” What a great and needed vision. He writes about how fear and negative experiences can close us off our sense of being connected and our ability to experience gratitude. “After all, what breaks when our heart breaks? Only a narrow fear which deludes us into believing that love comes solely from a limited source. When we let go of this anxiety, we tumble into an expansive truth: We have always belonged to something infinitely greater than our small selves. Each sorrow and each joy gratefully accepted opens our heart further, until we come to know that we are fully loved at all times and in all places, and even beyond time and space. Gratitude then knows no bounds.” [http://www.gratefulness.org/]

Much Gratitude...

2006-11-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

where purpose might lead...

2006-09-30T19:29:00.000-06:00

This month, I've been exploring Purpose as a theme...A broad and far-reaching one, that's for sure! And one that can be applied to our own individual lives and to the communities we are part of. It seems like we are perpetually on a quest to find our purpose in life. Or perhaps it's to remember what it is, or to realize it has changed into something new.

In gathering material for her book on finding one’s spiritual life, Lisa Langford Heron discovered common ground across an incredibly wide variety of faith traditions and beliefs. She wrote: “I have discovered that a basic yearning for spiritual meaning in our lives unites us. We all seek to give meaning to our lives, feel a sense of purpose, and understand our connection to the world around us.” Yes. This is the common ground where we can meet each other and anyone we come in contact with. We have a basic, even subconscious need to know that our lives have meaning. There is a need to know that our presence is having an impact, is making a positive difference in the world. This is something we share, not only within our community but across faith traditions and beliefs. I find this comforting to remember. That when I am struggling to remember what my purpose is, I know I’m not alone. We aren’t alone. Human beings have always sought ways of giving meaning to their lives. And they would often need a community to come home to in order to have a place to share what they discovered.

Helen Keller wrote that “Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” Communities of faith do have a worthy purpose. In helping to create an environment where each of us can bring all of who we are, or as much of ourselves as we can on a given day, we are helping to create a world that is more loving, more responsible, more open. This is good and sacred work. Thank you for being part of creating such a community.

Blessings,
Telos

Sharing the Waters...

2006-09-14T15:20:00.000-06:00

Water communion is one of my favorite rituals...The last weeks of August and first weeks of September mark the time when many Unitarian Universalist congregations share in their annual Water Communion service. It is often a time of sharing where members and friends bring water to pour in a common bowl and share the origin and meaning of their water. The stories and reflections are intimate and personal, ranging from water dipped from a stream out behind someone's house to a family trip to the ocean. The water is then blessed by the congregation and minister, and used for child blessings, holy unions and other rituals throughout the year.

People have been using water for rituals for thousands of years. People have been baptized in the rivers and lakes and the sea. People have dipped into wells or gathered water and carried it for miles and miles. Our Unitarian Universalist ritual of water communion has a history too that is more recent. Only twenty-six years old. Two women - Carolyn McDade and Lucile Longview were asked to create a ritual for the Women and Religion Conference at East Lansing, Michigan, in 1980; their service was intended to honor and celebrate women’s voices and involvement in Unitarian Universalism. As McDade, a social activist and songwriter, remembers "It was a strong service, about community taking power…about creating a political and liberating theology." The two women spent created a ritual that McDade said "broke the long silence of laywomen. The creation of a sacred space for and by women happened with a circle and a simple bowl." The water symbolized all the water on the planet and the water within our own bodies. It was a celebration of interconnectedness. The women brought water from places of spiritual importance to them and the ceremony embodied a connection with women all over the world who are traditionally the carriers of water. Twenty six years after its creation, the water communion ritual symbolizes our knowledge that there are many people who do not have access to clean water. This ceremony of joining our water in a common bowl and sharing our stories is a visuable symbol of our interconnectedness with living beings all over the planet. The sacred element of water needs to be celebrated and cherished.

I also wanted to share a story that reveals the transformative power of water. There was a girl named Helen Keller. She was born in 1880 and when she was about a year and a half old. (the age of Isabelle) she got very sick. She almost died. And when she got better she couldn’t hear or see anymore. Close your eyes with me. Feel how it is to only see darkness. Now put your hands over your ears for a minute. She could see only darkness and couldn’t hear any sounds. So the sense she had left were…smell – how things smelled. And taste. She could taste her food. And touch. Her ability to feel would transform her life. So when Helen Keller was six years old, there was finally someone who came to help her. Her teacher Ann Sullivan came to begin their time together. On that memorable day – the most memorable day of her whole life, Helen Keller’s world opened up. In “The Story of My Life” Helen writes: “We walked down the path to the well house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w – a – t –e – r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!” Amazing story. She could communicate with people, she could learn. Water, that stream of water coming out of the pump transformed her life. And she then went on to share her story with many, many people. She wrote books and traveled. She was an incredible person with a special story.

We are here to share our stories, to pour our water into the common bowl. To bless our water with memory and hope, compassion and forgiveness.

Telos Whitfield, Sept. 10, 2006

The Days of Summer...

2006-07-27T15:49:00.000-06:00

Today is a day of sunshine and soft breezes in St. Albans, Vermont. Although the myriad and many details of life crowd in on me, I feel blessed to be able to have some time to sit by the shores of Lake Champlain. I am so glad to be home!

Beloved Hank, a man with a big heart, always dependable and ready to help or lighten the load, passed away a few days ago...we will miss your presence, Hank so much.

Always it seems, we are balancing the celebrations with the sorrow, the heaviness with lighter news. A beloved friend or family member dies, a new life is born or encountered for the first time. This balancing of it all never seems to end.

accepting the calls with gratitude

2006-05-15T11:18:00.000-06:00

I am grateful and thrilled to share the news that I have accepted the call to serve two UU congregations - First Universalist Parish in Chester, Vermont and the Walpole Unitarian Church in Walpole, New Hampshire, beginning this August. Both communities have a strong and committed core of people leading their congregations with much potential for growth and new learning in worship, religious education and community involvement. It is an exciting time! And this is my "home" territory so I am grateful to be returning to the land and people that are close to my heart. As I enter these first settled ministries, I look forward to deepening my connection to the mysteries of life and the sacred, and to sharing all of who I am as a minister, teacher and leader with two special congregations. We are embarking on a creative journey together.

"We seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways."
- Marge Piercy

Resurrection, Liberation...Remembering...

2006-03-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

Resurrection...Liberation...Spring. This time of year is overlaid with powerful Jewish, Christian and pagan symbolism; the concepts of new life, resurrection, renewal and liberation offer so much to remember and contemplate. How do we want to renew and re-make our lives in new ways? What can we take from the life of Jesus and the symbolism of death and resurrection? We can explore the ideas of new life and growth, of “resurrecting” elements of our lives. And how does the significance of Passover and liberation relate to our lives today as Unitarian Universalists? This is a month rich with symbolism and opportunities to reflect on our lives and the life of our faith community.

There are elements of this time of year that are close to my heart - the image of Jesus on his knees, washing the feet of his disciples in a humble and powerful act... imagining a group of people sitting intimately around a table sharing a last meal, knowing there is much work to be done to transform the world they live in, but believing they are not alone in this work. They formed a close community based on faith. South Valley UU Society is also a community of faith, and a vital center of power and liberation in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Themes of new life and growth, of liberation flow through this month. We can all see and celebrate the flowers and grasses coming up through the warming ground and the snow melting faster. There is a quickening in the air, a renewed sense of freedom as we all prepare to welcome spring. There is the energy of freedom that comes from remembering the Exodus and the liberation it represented. We can imagine what in our lives do we need or want to resurrect, to breathe new life into or to liberate!

Our theme at South Valley for April is Remembering. There is so much to remember. I remember when I first drove into Salt Lake City across the long, brilliant expanse of the salt flats last July, and slowly began to get my bearings in this new place. I remember when I first walked into this sanctuary and saw the beautiful vaulted wooden ceiling and the brilliant blue chairs. I remember when I first preached here about “going down the unknown path” and the gratitude I felt at being welcomed into this religious community and seeing your faces looking back at me. I have been working with a group of people at South Valley using movement and personal reflections to create community, connection and learning. We have explored the following statements: “I Am…, I Come From…, I Believe…, and I Remember When…” and the reflections that have been shared have been grounded in spiritual and physical life and are beautiful! The work has left me feeling heartened by the intimacy that can be created simply when people are given an opportunity to share the experiences that have formed who they are. This is the work of a faith community! This is where transformation occurs – when we share with each other where we have come from, who we are and what we believe. This is sacred work. Thank you to each one of you who comes through our doors every week with an openness to learning and remembering, being and becoming.

A Chalice Lighting by Reverend Dillman Baker Sorrells
For Easter and Passover

“For holy days on which we recall the old stories, we light the flame.

For Passover which reminds us of the courage and strength of those seeking freedom in the past, we light the flame.

For Easter which reminds us that love is our greatest challenge, we light the flame.

For gathering today in this sacred space, we light the flame.

For the opportunity to be together as a community, to remember the past, to plan for our future, to be alive in our present.”

The Practice of Generosity

2006-02-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

The theme we are exploring at South Valley UU Society in March is Generosity. I have definitely experienced that it is easier to be generous at certain times in my life rather than other times. If I feel like I have had my time, my space, and have been able to take a walk outside, eat a good dinner, have a cup of good coffee, then I am much more able to be generous. But I think that generosity is actually a practice we need to nurture so that it isn’t dependent on having all of the other aspects of our lives taken care of before we can be generous. And what does it really mean to be generous, or to be a community of generosity? I think there are several aspects of generosity to examine. First, I believe that yes, generosity does spring out of an “abundance of heart,” meaning that we have to feel like there is space within us to be generous. In the words of Mother Teresa, “…it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing, a lifelong sharing of love with others.” Within all of the religious traditions, generosity is held up as a virtue and a way of living that is in alignment with God, the Divine, the great mystery, however you conceive of the sacred. Buddhist teachings offer that an open mind and a generous heart are necessary to lead a spiritual life. In the gospel of Luke in the New Testament, Jesus advises his followers "to give and it will be given to you." And for Muslims, generosity is one of the major tenets of Islam during the month of Ramadan and throughout the year. I often find that no matter what theme I am exploring, it is often found throughout religious traditions, across cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Learning how to be generous with ourselves, with each other and in our lives is a practice. It is a practice that is desperately needed in our communities and around the world right now. We often see generosity surface during a trajedy or a crisis. Let's not wait until those times to give to each other and ourselves.

Thank you Dr. Martin Luther King and all those leaders...

2006-01-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

It has been several days since we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, and I want to say Thank you. Thank you for being a leader we continue to hold up as an example of what true leadership is all about. Thank you for having faith that the world will change, that transformation is coming...That we are in this together.

when going home isn't possible...

2005-12-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to witness Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado's exhibit at the Leonardo gallery in Salt Lake City. He has taken hundreds of images of people in countries all over the world who are refugees. Millions of people who have left their homes or their homes have been destroyed, and are living in plastic shelters, caves, under train tracks, anywhere they can find to survive. Salgado spent over six years documenting the lives of people in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East; so many, many children, who are fleeing from war, famine and natural disasters.

I spent about an hour and a half there, walking from image to image, letting the eyes of people sink into mine. Sending many wordless prayers. I knew of Somalia, of the oppresssion of the Kurds. But a prison camp outside a city in Asia with high concrete walls, six feet high barbed wire where people are kept that are "in between?" Beyond the walls of this camp, you can see the sky scrapers of the modern city. Many of the photographs seemed surreal - how could this be happening now? I left the exhibit quite devastated and committed - committed to do what I can to alleviate suffering when I encounter it here, in this city in Utah; and committed to continuing the conversation about ways we can help. It does feel overwhelming, and the suffering is immense. And as religious people, as people dedicated to principles that promote freedom and justice, we need to do whatever we can. Supporting the UU Service Committee is one way. Having conversations with each other, in our families, congregations, communities.
Thank you Sebastiao, for being willing to go to these dangerous, desperate and unlivable places and bring the faces of people home to us. Your images and work are absolutely vital and so needed. We can create revolutions of kindness and care that begin with knowing what is real, how lives really are, where people are having to scrape out a place, a life. When going home isn't possible, we have to build sanctuaries in our hearts.

"We are all interconnected, and we depend on one another more than we know."
Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway

I Felt Held...Thank You

2005-12-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday I had my interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the UUA. What a wonderful, compassionate and knowledgeable group of people - UU ministers, lay leaders, counselors, and people committed to Unitarian Universalism. They are offering a true "ministry of presence" in their work with candidates. I felt held in their presence during my interview, and held by my larger community of friends, colleagues and family. Thank you to everyone for your prayers and thoughts, wishes and energy. I am now in preliminary fellowship and feel blessed to be a religious leader in this denomination. Thank you. If you are curious, some questions I was asked to speak to included: what do I believe happens when we die; how would I handle a difficult person; what is the foundational document that US polity is based on, how do I see systematic racism playing out in our congregations; and a range of other questions. I had a really enjoyable interview - we laughed together and I felt like I was able to be myself and reveal my presence as a minister.
"Breathing in, I know I am here, Breathing out, I know I am home. I am here. I am home." thich nhat hanh

Seeds of Contemplation and Compassion - Exploring the Lives of Jesus and Buddha

2005-11-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

It was still dark and I could see a few stars in the sky as I walked down the hill. There were others around me but the only sound was the occasional stone on the road that our step disturbed or the night sounds of birds and wind through leaves and grasses. I slipped off my shoes by the door and entered the great hall, taking my place with the women on one side facing the men. Many of the people around and across from me seated on low cushions wore brown robes and had their heads shaved. They were monks and nuns of Buddhist teacher and leader Thich Nhat Hanh who had gathered for the winter months at Deer Park Monastery in the mountains outside of San Diego. I had arrived by airplane and shuttle that had taken many more hours than I planned or expected. My first lesson in serenity occurred when the van we were traveling in had engine trouble at the base of the mountain. The driver had already dropped off six people and I was the last person. It was growing dark. He eased the van to the side of the road and turned the engine off. We looked at each other and he said: “It’s too far for you to walk from here. We will need to go back to the gas station.” It took us another two hours before I finally arrived at the monastery. I was met by a monk with a gentle smile who assured me that there was still dinner being served, and pointed the way down a long set of stairs. I had finally arrived.

I spent seven days at Deer Park where much of the time was spent in silence. Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice is embodied in all that we did there. When we walked, we were invited to engage in “walking meditation.” And whenever we heard a bell sound, we stopped whatever we were doing, and brought ourselves into mindfulness. Bells would ring throughout our days. Each ring, a reminder to stop and remember. Each ring, a seed of contemplation, a reminder to be compassionate and mindful.

There were over three hundred of us there – two hundred monks and nuns and about 100 lay people. We would wake at 5:30am and dress silently, walking the dark road down to the big meditation hall under the stars, and have morning meditation and prayer. Then we would walk to the dining hall and have our breakfast in silence, we would check the board to see what time our daily work shift would be, and then would spend most of the day in silence. As someone who does quite a bit of talking and doing, this was a very good experience for me. This was the longest retreat I had been on; before this week at Deer Park, I had done three-day solo retreats at a Catholic convent in Maine, but they had been unstructured. I had chosen not to enter into the daily schedule of the nuns that lived there and had wandered freely, always on the move, always moving. But even though my time at Deer Park was quite structured, with the day being divided into meals, meditation, work and time for rest or reflection, I entered into a life of contemplation. I spent time walking on winding paths through tall fields of grasses; through the garden with its Buddhist sculptures, offerings of stones and flowers at their feet; the small pond of peaceful orange fish swimming slowly by and rabbits hopping through silently at night. Throughout the week, I was continually reminded of how important it is to simply be in my body, to be in the present moment. I had believed that this retreat was a way for me to deepen my knowledge and practice of Buddhism, and it was. But something much more important took place for me there. I accepted the seeds of contemplation and compassion – true contemplation, and complete compassion for all those around me. Ways of being that I could embody. Thich Nhat Hanh has created and offered a unique form of Buddhism to the Western world; one that combines aspects of Mahayana, Pure Land and Zen into a philosophy and practice, a way of being that allows people to be agents of transformation in the world. A form that embodies both action and contemplation. He has been an advocate for peace since the Vietnam War and received the Nobel Peace prize for his work. Thich Nhat Hanh embodies peace – to see him walking up that dirt road in his brown robes, it is almost as if he is fused with the land around him. He led us on walking meditations, and it was quite profound to walk in silence, slowly down the road as a group of three hundred people. He might stop to look or listen, to notice a flower or stone along the road, to breathe. We would all stop with him as if we were one body moving together. I had never felt so peaceful, so at home inside myself.

One morning, he led us on a walking meditation down into a sun-dappled grove with tall, green grasses and oak trees, their thick branches almost touching the ground. He sank to the ground and we sat with him. What followed was quite simple and quite profound. A nun sitting near him offered him a steaming glass of tea. And he proceeded to sit and drink his tea and we sat with him. A small child played near him, and at one point he smiled and spoke to her. Another time he looked around at us with a face that was so peaceful, so accepting. I felt I was in the presence of a Holy person. I felt that this was how the disciples and followers of Jesus may have felt as they sat with him, awed by his peace, his ability to pray in the face of insurmountable struggle; his endless compassion for those who had been forgotten, despised or shunned. And the disciples had to be ready to go and do whatever was needed, to allow their lives to be completely transformed in a moment when they decided to surrender. There were undoubtedly times when Jesus was not teaching, when he simply sat with them in silence. When what he offered was his embodied faith, his sense that there was a larger ground of being that all of humanity was contained in. I had this experience in the grove with Thich Nhat Hanh and the monks and nuns. Buddha and Jesus were there as “living” teachers offering seeds of contemplation and compassion. I believe that one of the biggest challenges we face today in the modern society most of us live in – is to embody compassion and to practice contemplation all the time. Not just during our morning meditations; not just at our church services on Sunday but in every moment.

In the introduction to Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, writer Elaine Pagels speaks of the connection and resonance between the teachings contained in the Gnostic Gospels and the lessons of Buddhism. She writes that “…the sources discovered at Nag Hammadi, like Buddhist sources, direct the disciple toward loving compassion for others….” (xxvi) I believe that Thich Nhat Hanh’s exploration of these connections is a gift for Unitarian Universalists, for we are committed to the search for gnosis or knowledge and the use of compassion in human relations. In his book, Thich Nhat Hanh shares that accepting Jesus as one of his spiritual ancestors was challenging given the colonization and disruption that Christian missionaries and powers had wrought on Vietnam over the centuries. He writes that “it was only later, through friendships with Christian men and women who truly embody the spirit of understanding and compassion of Jesus, that I have been able to touch the depths of Christianity. The moment I met Martin Luther King, Jr., I knew I was in the presence of a holy person. Not just his good work but his very being was a source of great inspiration for me.” (p. 5-6)

Every day of the retreat we would have a working meditation task to do, whether it was dishes or cleaning or chopping vegetables. There were continual reminders to be mindful, to have gratitude, to remember that each day and moment is there to be appreciated. To be in an environment of mindfulness and intention as someone whose mind is often racing ahead thinking about and planning for the future, was very important. It was a chance for me to work with the “doing” part of myself, and to encourage that aspect to loosen and relax. Living at Deer Park Monastery for seven days was an important experience for me in many ways. To be in the presence of a spiritual leader such as Thich Nhat Hanh felt like a rare opportunity to witness someone whose life is dedicated to promoting peaceful interchange and transformation in the world through meditation and practice. Deer Park is a living example of a community where this is visible. I felt at home there, and managed to retain my own sense of inner peace for quite some time after returning; there are scenes like the one in the oak grove that I call to mind when I need to be reminded. One of the reasons I wanted to spend a week on retreat at Deer Park was to be surrounded by people who are living their faith, and to witness and participate in a community committed to principles I believe in. I re-discovered my own passion and commitment to bridging faiths and bringing people together. The first time I met monks and nuns of Thich Nhat Hanh’s order was at a meeting focused on global peace the year before. We were a group of community members, seminary students and ministers, artists, monks and nuns who had in common a strong desire to promote peace in whatever way we could. My time at Deer Park reinforced both my commitment to my meditation/ prayer practice as a way to find peace and balance in my life, and my commitment to my Unitarian Universalist faith as a way I can live and be compassionate. We are a tradition that bridges faiths.

The first Noble Truth of the Buddha is the awareness of suffering. To be aware of the presence of suffering causes one to be compassionate, to want to alleviate the suffering. This compassion encourages the will to want to follow the Way. This process is paralleled in the teachings of Jesus. Through his compassion towards those who were suffering, toward those who were cast out members of his society, he offered his life as an example of one who was not bound by external laws but by an internal compass of love. Jesus sowed seeds of contemplation and radical compassion.
In his book Meeting Jesus, Italian writer Luigi Santucci writes: “Jesus, bent over a bowl of water, removed the dirt from the feet of his friends….” On the night before he died, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Santucci offers us a beautiful description of how he would use this example in his own life: “If I had to choose some relic of the passion, I wouldn’t pick up a scourge or a spear but that round bowl of dirty water. To go round the world with that receptacle under my arm, looking only at people’s feet; and for each one I’d tie a towel round me, bend down, and never raise my eyes higher than their ankles, so as not to distinguish friends from enemies….” In his book Meeting Jesus, Santucci presents stories with such intimacy; it was as if Santucci actually knew Jesus as a friend, teacher, prophet and revolutionary, and was not afraid to present both his humanness and divinity.

With the Unitarian Universalist commitment to social justice, religious freedom and equality, I feel that we need to reclaim Jesus as a model of dissent – a compassionate teacher and radical leader. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan says “to remove, however, that which is radically subversive, socially revolutionary, and politically dangerous from Jesus’ actions is to leave his life meaningless and his death inexplicable.” I would put forth that it might be that Jesus offers a challenging example of resistance and surrender and a model of embodied justice, compassionate action and religious leadership.

Turning back in time to the mid-1800’s, we can see that Jesus was a central figure in both Unitarian and Universalism, and a growing number within both faiths proposed living by the example of social justice and compassion that Jesus emulated, rather than simply accepting what was written in the Bible or the doctrines of hierarchical religious institutions. Reverend William Ellery Channing describes the character of Jesus in a discourse on the “Evidences of Revealed Religion”: He writes “…We discover in Jesus Christ an unparalleled dignity of character, a consciousness of greatness, never discovered or approached by any other individual in history; and yet this was blended with a condescension, lowliness, an unostentatious simplicity, which had never before been thought consistent with greatness.”

What I find particularly inspiring about the life of Jesus and why I find him such an important model for our work in the world today as Unitarian Universalists, is that he offers this model of revolutionary compassion. And I see how far away the term “Christian” and the vast and complicated structures and hierarchies of many Christian churches have moved from true contemplation and all-embracing compassion. I have been brought to my knees by people who write of Jesus’ life and teachings as if they really knew him. He is someone that they speak with on a daily basis; he is someone they ask advice of, turn to for comfort and reminders of how to be in the world. People like Dr. Howard Thurman who felt that Jesus was a close and intimate companion that he walked and talked with at the shores of the Atlantic ocean. Writer Luige Santucci. There are many scholarly works out there on Jesus and believe me, being in seminary I encountered many of these texts. There are also many books on Buddhism that do not breath life into that tradition. These texts did not bring me closer to who Jesus and Buddha really were, to the work they were really doing, to what they were ultimately asking people to do. Part of that could be that the lives they lived seem impossible for us as mere ordinary people to actually embody. No, I picked up the book Meeting Jesus because of the cover – a stone sculpture of Jesus face with eyes closed in deep and peaceful prayer. It was a beautiful image and I wanted to know what the author who had chosen that image was going to say. Santucci wrote in a way that I had never encountered before. He wrote in intimate, poetic and real terms about a man that has had so many, multiple texts and thousands upon thousands of pages written about him, it is almost unfathomable to imagine that there is anything new to say. But Santucci succeeds. For he writes as if he is describing a friend. A Holy person, yes but someone he cares about, someone who is human and has feelings, is touched and pained deeply by the world in need of healing, hoping desperately for salvation. Luigi Santucci describes his own relationship to the Lord’s prayer and to Jesus himself. He writes: “It’s stretching myself out in Christ’s company. I despair of my life and he tells me ancient stories about myself, he pours into my soul wonderful hours I’d forgotten. He never converts me, but now and again he sets me straight. Even when he says, ‘this isn’t a sin, my friend: it’s a mistaken way of reaching a better understanding of each other’." (p. 143)

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations. We proclaim our principle but what does it really mean to live it out in our daily lives? I believe that it starts with the prayer that Thich Nhat Hanh evoked in the reading: “Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things.” This source of being, this ultimate mystery, energy that surrounds and envelops everything, is a source that we can draw from in being compassionate, in exercising true justice. Buddha and Jesus were founders of two great traditions of faith and I would dare to say that neither would perhaps recognize what Buddhism and Christianity have become today. Their lives and actions, though they lived in very different societies of two thousand and twenty-five hundred years ago, charge us to embody and live our values today. To be what we believe. If we believe in justice and compassion in human relations, what does that really mean? For me, it means responding when the homeless person on the street asks me a question. By responding to her words, I am acknowledging that she is another human being I am encountering on the path. She is worthy of compassion. She causes me to contemplate my own actions, why I might need to hurry by and not respond. My own fear of difference, of the “other.”
The compassion that Jesus exhibited for all people – those of the lowest social status, women, and criminals, people who were deemed the “untouchables” of Mediterranean society - formed the central core of his teaching. He presented compassion and the healing of people’s suffering as the response that overrode all laws and morality codes. Biblical scholar Marcus Borg describes that “For Jesus, compassion was more than a quality of God and an individual virtue: it was a social paradigm, the core value of life in community. To put it boldly: compassion for Jesus was political. He directly and repeatedly challenged the dominant sociopolitical paradigm of his social world and advocated instead what might be called a politics of compassion.” The concept of taking compassion as far as it will go; there is no one who is not deserving of compassion, is still a radical stance today. In connecting a politics of compassion to the shaping of our UU social justice programs, congregational life and presence in the larger world, it means asserting boldly that this is a way of life, a way of being in the world every day. Through knowing that love is a powerful force, and by allowing true compassion to drive our actions, we are making a political statement and creating truly beloved communities.

Jesus and Buddha created relationships with people that transcended the bounds of their societies, and encouraged their followers to do the same. They presented models for relationship that allowed people to experience a sense of eternal peace, and emphasized the importance of faith grounded in compassion. Jesus offers a radical example of someone who defied authority and ignored social constraints to promote justice and equality he did this work from a place of compassion. And Buddha provides a model for contemplation that can transcend difference and promote peace.
May we embody the contemplation and true peace that Buddha offers, allowing ourselves to simply be and knowing that our peaceful presence is a powerful gift. May we embody compassionate action and leadership that is so needed in our communities, on our streets, in the world today. May we look to these living models for inspiration, guidance and strength as we go forth to offer ourselves to the world.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a small book called The Long Road Turns To Joy where he offers insight into walking meditation as a practice. I want to end with his words that remind me of what is truly important, what I need to remember that will allow me to be a transformative force in the world. He writes:

I have arrived
I am home
in the here
in the now
I am solid
I am free
in the Ultimate I dwell

The Common Language of the Body

2005-10-28T18:59:00.000-06:00

When we give ourselves a moment to sit in silence, to take a deep breath in, we touch our own sacred ground. It is a spacious and timeless feeling, a place within us that holds endless possibility. We can feel that there is common ground between us. There is a sense of connection without words.

Let us begin with the heart, located in the center of our chest. Place your hand on your own heart. Our heart is this incredible life – sustaining muscle and source from which a unique power springs forth, that of love and compassion, the power of healing. Lately, I have been hearing people speak of loving those that we might deem unlovable or undeserving of our love. I believe that love is an incredibly powerful force that can bring transformation and healing into the world. Who is to say that if a certain crucial number of people send their loving energy to someone or to a situation, that it wouldn’t help in opening that heart, in healing that suffering? When do you let your heart lead? What are the dreams that are hidden there? In the hidden place within your own heart, lie the answers to all of the questions you might ever have.

I believe that we are made up of several bodies in addition to the physical one that we inhabit. Our individual bodies are actually four realms – the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. I want to examine this idea of unity or oneness within our own bodies. How do we integrate these separate bodies into one? And do we even realize that we are doing this at every moment of our lives. We can be walking down the sidewalk and hear a siren. Immediately, all four of our bodies suddenly become engaged. We have an emotional response, our physical body perhaps tightens, we may have thoughts and our spirit is engaged, perhaps in sending a prayer to the destination of the ambulance, those who are riding in it. It is as if we are in a continual process of integration all the time.

I worked with an incredible person named Liz Lerman. She is a dance choreographer and community leader in the most transformative sense of the word. She is someone who has the visionary capability to access her own heart and create positive change in any environment she is in. She has been a great inspiration to me, and has truly proven that Everyone Can Dance. She is a person who thrives on bringing together groups of people who feel that they are opposing each other – people of very different faith beliefs, ages or backgrounds. And these people would come together reluctantly and through movement and stories, common ground would be created in that moment. There would be an understanding of our common humanity. She is the reason that I know creating movement can be transformative, and it is a sacred act.

My work with Liz reinforced my belief that all living beings on the earth make up a collective body, a system that we all belong to, and help to grow, help to sustain. What would it mean to see all of us as one body, a body of beings undergoing a collective journey. As the words of Mary Ann Williamson state: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” I believe this is true at a core level – there is power in numbers of people, and in one person’s commitment to truth and justice. We can make a difference, and I believe it can start by acknowledging that we are a collective body. We are connected not only to every living being on the planet, but to the earth itself, and the cosmos that surrounds the earth. Being able to embrace the idea that we are all connected can lead to liberation both for ourselves as individuals in realizing that we are never alone; and also the realization of our own power as a “body” of people. The Unitarian Universalist faith is a body in itself that is waking up to its own power. We hold beliefs in common and share a commitment to creating a world of equality and justice. This is power. This is what makes up the continually changing fabric of our collective body. When we surrender to our own hearts, to the opening of our minds, to the true spaciousness of our bodies, we strengthen the collective body that we belong to. We can speak a common language together.

May we feel our bodies as we each enter our own journeys of awakening. May we allow our minds to be like open doors where learning can come flowing in and wisdom can flow out in all that we do. Our thoughts do matter; our actions do make a difference. May we allow ourselves to do the radical act of letting our hearts lead in our lives. Through our own compassion, we will be speaking and acting in communal ways. If our common language can be one of love and unconditional acceptance for ourselves and all those we come in contact with, we will be helping to create beloved community.
I want to end with this prayer by Wayne Muller:
“Remember who you are. Remember what you love.
Remember what is sacred. Remember what is true.
Remember that you will die and that today is a gift.
Remember how you wish to live.”
Amen