WORD UP SOCRATES

It was Socrates who said that “An unexamined life is not worth living.”  Of course, being a philosopher in the 4 century B.C.E., one didn’t have Voice Mail, Email, Facebook, Twitter, and Super Bowl predictions amidst a countless sea of daily to-do’s clamoring to distract you from this special task.

But is it a luxury, examining your life, or is it a necessity?

It seems the answer is the latter.  The challenge of finding meaning and orientation in life appears to have been one of our most basic of needs since the beginning of recorded time.  Psychologist James Fowler  describes human beings as “creatures who cannot live without meaning.”

While this need for meaning is present in each of us, it cannot be addressed exclusively-or even primarily- as an individual matter.  And none of us really gets to start from scratch.  We have been born into traditions, as a member of a family or as a member of the society we live in, and this has helped us to orient ourselves in the world, for better and for worse.

This meaning making is always BOTH a solitary endeavor AND eked out in relationship with others. Relationships being the vehicle in which we garner context in order to do any kind of self-examination and vice verse.

Maintaining relationships, having conversations with others, and choosing to be in community with those who are also trying to live their lives with intention helps to correct the all too human tendency (this correction is exacted sometimes with a feather, sometimes with a 2×4!) to make and keep assumptions about people, places, and things.

FEEDING THE RIGHT WOLF

A Native American grandfather was speaking to his grandson about violence and cruelty in the world and how it comes about.  He said it was as if two wolves were fighting in his own heart.  One wolf was vengeful and angry, and the other wolf was understanding and kind.  The young man asked his grandfather which wolf would win the fight in his heart.  And the grandfather answered, “The one that I choose to feed.”

I think this is the spiritual work for all of us, the challenge for me, anyway.  So many of my reactions are automatic and cause me to unwittingly feed the wrong wolf.  Just last week, I made a commitment to myself to not respond in the same predictable ways with my boundary pushing-prone 17-year-old son…to pause before engaging with him in any ‘discussion’ about consequences, truth-telling, accountability.  Yet it was only minutes later that there I was, at it again.  Quick with a comeback,  not fully engaged in listening in a way that invites conversation, having already made up my mind, keeping us stuck in a loop of frustrating dialogue.

It just reminds me of the vigilance required to notice which wolf I am feeding in the first place.  As Budddhist nun Pema Chodron points out in her book, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears: “The first step in this learning process is to be honest with ourselves.  Most of us have gotten so good at empowering our negativity and insisting on our rightness that the angry wolf gets shinier and shinier, and the other wolf is just there with its pleading eyes.  When we’re feeling resentment or any strong emotion, we can recognize that we are getting worked up, and realize that right now we can consciously make the choice to be aggressive or to cool off”.

Pause, pause, pause.  Just the slightest turn towards remembering myself, a hiccup really, brings my reflexive thoughts, feelings, and actions briefly into clear focus; it reminds me I am the one doing the thinking, feeling, and acting . From there, I’m in a better place to choose.  A sense of humor is vital, the journey really impossible without it; with myself and others.  Taking yourself too seriously on the spiritual ascent is deadly, killing both the spiritual and the ascent!  Realizing that the pull to be busy in a thousand different ways is really just a distraction that gets me caught up again.  Recognizing how I get twisted up in my own story, some crazy yarn being fabricated out there in the recesses of my mind.

Potent fantasy most often, that’s what’s usually going on in my private movie while these two howling hounds are duking it out for primacy.  Ruminating about what she’s going to do, about what he’s thinking, about what’s going to happen to me next week, next month, next year. Taking things personally as if that were ever really true, especially seeing as everybody is busily building their own twisted tale of good and evil, villian and victim.  I can choose to say “No thank you” when someone pours me their ‘poison’ and asks me to drink.

Instead the low growls and the sharp bites of a fearful wolf; I can pick the wolf of warmth.  I can welcome a stranger or one estranged from me back into the pack.  I can howl at the moon in search of company.  And I can lick my wounds, trusting that healing will follow.

If I can do this for a few moments today and today and today, there will be more peace. 

ANAM CARA

We all like to hear stories about how two people met.  We listen around the dinner table or watch on the big screen movies like “How Harry met Sally” and it makes us feel good, comforted in the way that only something life affirming can do.  We are reminded too of our own stories of “coincidence”, chance encounters when we met our love of 50 years, or our oldest and dearest friends, or those whose time with us was short but whose impact on our lives was great.  These are our own anam cara, our soul friends. 

In the Celtic tradition, this is the beautiful notion of divinely bestowed love and friendship.  It is the idea of soul-love.  An old Gaelic term, anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend.  In the early Celtic church, it originally referred to someone who you revealed the hidden intimacies of your life.  With the anam cara, you could share your innermost self, your mind and your heart.  

Celtic wisdom deems that you cannot manufacture or achieve this kind of love or friendship by a sheer act of the will or even by intention. It is simply the act of recognition

Whether it be a meeting on the street or a banal introduction, there is a flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow.  There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient belonging.  The Celts believe this to be an eternal connection. 

Ancient Irish lore metaphorically speaks of anam caras rising from the same pre-historic clay.  The clay shapes, once part of a whole were separated, lost in the creation of the world, and are searching for their related pieces. The allegory pointing to a larger reality, a conscious break from the overly-analytical nature prevalent in today’s world and an entering into the realm of mystery.     

The recent resurgence of Celtic spirituality reflects this growing ache for more sublime, more Real (with a capital R) notions of intimacy and relationship than our current neon culture provides.  Everybody, it seems, is always talking incessantly about relationships.  Even Yahoo has a category for relationships on its home page, as if you could get your fix alongside the weather report and the latest entertainment news.  All this overcooked verbage that ladens the media gives an illusion that even love is a consumer item, something that can be acquired.  

The temptation is to be more concerned with what you have and who you should be and who you should be with. It often overshadows the more important how you should be.  The stance of open-hearted faith and gentleness that opens the door to real intimacy which at its best is a sacred experience.  You must be ready to receive it.

In everyone’s life, there is  a great need for an anam cara.  In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension.  A precious understanding dawns so that you feel really understood. You feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul.  As Pablo Neruda perfectly describes, “You are like nobody since I love you”.  

John O’Donohue asserts the grace of an anam cara: “The greatest gift new love brings into your life is the awakening to the hidden love within.  This make you independent.  You are now able to come close to the other, not out of need or with the wearying apparatus of projection, but out of genuine intimacy, affinity, and belonging.  It is a freedom.  Love should make you free.  You become free of the hungry, blistering need with which you continually reach out to scrape affirmation, respect, and significance for yourself from things and people outside yourself.  To be holy is to come home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call the soul“.

You do not have to DO anything.  You just have to BE ready.

MYSTERY

Underpinning all our knowledge of the world and its workings is mystery. 

The Christian theologian Karl Rahner writes: “Mystery is something familiar, something that we love, even when we are terrified by it or perhaps even annoyed or angered and what to be done with it… In the ultimate depths of our being we know nothing more surely than that our knowledge, that is, what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea.  Hence the deepest question for us humans is this.  Which do we love more, the small island of our so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery?”

I have discovered for me that “the small island” that comprises the traditional religious beliefs I was raised with and the dogmas and creeds that were spoon fed to me give me no reliable information about the nature of mystery.  The tenets and closed ended affirmations, the once and for all proclamations of what brings salvation and what is the meaning of life, may bring for many a craved sense of security, and be enough.  But they leave me feeling like I’ve only stuck a timid toe in, never plunging down into the depths of the ineffable.  

Religious practices that place us in relation to the real, transforming power of mystery, the power of God, the ones that have as a participant with this creative force, this energy alive but resisting definition, that puts us squarely in the face of mystery, in a direct experiential way; that’s what I’m talking about. Hoping to risk my significance for this.  Hoping I can. 

What has been most imperative it seems is that I empty myself, or perhaps more accurately, be more self-giving.  I must commit myself to the process, as much as I can each day.  And as only God knows, this level of commitment shifts from day-to-day, moment to moment. 

How do I know if I’m actually floating in this vast sea of mystery?  It’s usually what I never initially intended.  It always when I am not attempting to shape the world closer to my own heart’s desire but instead am somehow having my heart transformed so that what I now want is something very different that what I desired at the beginning. 

While I can dally in the idea of God beyond space and time, I need a religious reality than must be some aspect of the observable, natural world. It is infallible because it holds together when I am broken, and while great disasters are not averted here in the real world, personal ones, local ones, global ones, they are not the final answer.

When what had once appeared as mundane events in a life of what can at times feel like an endless loop of dry cleaning, dog walking, work, dinner preparation, sleep, repeat again,  now is punctuated with encounters and events pervasive with meaning. Where once had been merely material happenings randomly occurring, there is now richness and trust in the very process of life, perhaps even prophecy, that is mystery.

There is not longer just my story, my will. Letting go of control, of plans,what is exposed is a collective tendency within the world to create ever-increasing complex wholes, in which the parts work together to enhance and magnify each other. 

That these daily moments of grace happen is a practice of noticing.  How they happen is mystery.

UBUNTU

Ubuntu is an African term that says, “I am because you are, you are because I am.”  It is an age-old African philosophy of compassion and being in harmony with all of creation.  This idea of harmony can be a helpful construct when learning to live at peace with yourself and others.  It allows for flexibility and individuality, and a mutuality of purpose. It clears for us a vision of shared humanity.

Musically speaking, harmonizing is essential.  An orchestra may all be playing the same piece but the various instruments are stressing minor and major chords and their own particular sound to enhance the piece.  Without each of the players in harmony, the finished work would be different, less, or just plain awful.

This can be applied to our personal and professional lives as well.  Do you harmonize with other people or do you expect them to harmonize with you?  When someone says no to something, do you find yourself ready to argue?  If you ever feel like you are forcing a situation with a little too much self-will, what would happen if you just said, Okay?

If we can bend a little or are willing to see something from another’s point of view, we can find resolution’s not seen when we are trying to force our hand.  We find compatibility, when at first all were seeing is discord.  We can remember Ubuntu, “I am because you are, you are because I am”.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  If we really aren’t compatible with certain situations, it may be time to leave.  In addition, there are moments when we do need to stand up for ourselves. There are also times when it’s fun to say or do things to deliberately challenge or provoke others.  A good banter now and again has its pleasures.

However, we (myself included) self-reliant types would do well to practice a wee bit of nonresistance.  We do NOT lose our identity when CHOOSING to harmonize. Wouldn’t our energy poured out in harmony, instead of attempting to overpower someone or to resist for resistance’s sake, be cleaner and more efficient?!

Ubuntu is not just saying live and let live.  It’s living together.  It involves enough self-awareness to be ourselves, and enough adaptability to fit that self into different situations.  We can be ourselves and still be part of a couple, team, environment, or group.   Interdependence really does provide for the healthiest and most creative solutions for our relationships and our world.

When you begin to practice Ubuntu, friends, lovers, and colleagues will most likely notice a change in your interactions with them, and ask what’s up.  You can simply say, “Ubuntu.”

An Ode to Late Bloomers

What a gift it is to be a late bloomer.  How wonderful to sense that the best of what is to flower in us is still around the corner!

Unitarian Thomas Edison’s 4th grade teachers said he was “unable to learn.” Another Unitarian friend, Louisa May Alcott, was told by an editor that her writing would never appeal to the public. And believe it or not, Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for his lack of good ideas!

So today’s post is about no one else predicting for you what your future will hold.  It is about persistence, about staying true to who you are or more accurately, discovering who you are.  I have lived long enough to recognize that those that live in the past of their “glory days”  are inhabiting a life too small and confining for the ocean of possibilities out there.

When my eldest daughter was in high school, she oftentimes felt (as so many others at that tender age do) like an outsider.  Pep rallies, the hottest Juicy Couture, or the latest teen craze never quite resonated with her.  She maneuvered the daily mores of the social hierarchy in her own quiet way, trying not to appear awkward, avoiding attention.

Never seeking the limelight, her passions, perhaps peculiar for her age,  were what consumed her thoughts and shaped her life in a way quite different from her peers.

Hair in a disheveled bun, with clips carelessly attempting to contain a mane of hair, she would move through the halls with an oversized satchel, overflowing with papers, read and unread.  Flyers for social justice events, calls to raise awareness for the victims of Darfur, fund-raising to assist the  microlending  opportunities for women in the Dominican Republic, all shoved and crumpled in the bursting sack.  One history teacher humorously remarked, “You always come to school looking like a homeless person.”

She now thrives at one of our finest universities, with friends, an authentic and confident voice, and finding connections and pathways to help foster the changes she wants to see in our world.

I don’t know how old you are.  We always say that age doesn’t really matter, “you’re as young as you feel”.  But I also know that aging is a big deal in our culture, and that youth is an idol like no other.

Yet remember that you still contain buds ripe for blossoming.  Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until her 70s.  Never count yourself out.

“Why should she give her bounty to the dead?  What is divinity if it can come only in silent shadows and in dreams?  Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, in pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else in any balm or beauty of the earth, things to be cherished like the thought of heaven.  Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued elations when the forest blooms; gusty emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; all pleasures and all pains, remembering the bough of summer and the winter branch.  These are the measures destined for her soul.”

The poem, Sunday Morning; the poet, Wallace Stevens- published in his fifties.

Loving Kindness Meditation

There is an ancient and transformative meditation that the Buddha encouraged that elicits a gentle spirit, towards ourselves and others.

It is a practice that opens the heart toward forgiveness, even towards those who we may have deemed enemies. We may have people in our life who have caused us great pain or we may feel have stolen from us our essential self.  This, of course, is an illusion (though it can hold a powerful and long lasting spell on us if we are not awakened to it).  With loving kindness meditation, we can be restored to remember who we are, to listen our own good heart, our own best Self.

We can discover the wisdom to open the doors and windows of the Spirit.  It begins, always,  with a loving kindness towards ourselves.  It is after all, almost impossible to truly love others…until we know, love, and accept ourselves.  From this touchstone, we can spread our ability to love towards those in our inner circle, and then out into the wider world.

Begin with the breath of mindfulness, it is the breath that calls us to this moment.  It is life’s breath.  It is the breath that breathes through you, that you do not have to control, that you do not ultimately control. Be in your body.  It is a good body, and worthy of your care and respect.

Each day, for as many days as you can be present, repeat these ancient words:

“May I be filled with loving kindness/May I be well in body and mind/May I be safe from inner and outer dangers/May I be happy/Truly happy and free”*

*(taken from Jack Kornfield’s Audio Meditation on Loving Kindness)

I do this, dear reader, and it is changing me.  I watched a woman laughing on a 100 degree day in Charlotte, NC with her labrador retriever, getting cooled off in a beautiful fountain in the park.  She was directing her dog to the places that he could catch a drink of water.  She maneuvered him so deftly, so joyfully…it was only as I left that I realized that she was blind, and that this dog was her eyes.  Or perhaps something more?

With loving kindness, we are given eyes to see.  She was seeing, though not without the aid of  natural sight.

And last night, I caught a glimpse of early summer evening light on two church steeples and the glint  of their brass weathervanes…signs of old New England, and felt blessed, blessed to be exactly where I was.  Steeped in love and kindness towards myself, the ones I have been given to love, and towards those who crossed my paths…all bathed in this light.  Blessed be.

A FAITH WITH FEET

How to articulate the Unitarian Universalist message more succinctly? When asked the question, “What is it you guys actually believe?”, the response is often times begun with “well”, “um”, or an occasional pontificating that renders the listener bleary eyed.

Of course, the question itself is a misguided one.  You do not have to share a certain belief or set of beliefs to be a part of our liberal free thinking faith tradition. Instead, a soundbite answer (which our culture has a penchant for) is this: “We are a faith with feet.” A cornerstone of modern Unitarian Universalism is SOCIAL ACTION.  We place great value on living out our faith in works of love and justice and efforts on behalf of the most marginalized in society. 

It is well for us to remember this. One of the major forces in 20th century theology, a tireless proponent of social action and volunteerism was Unitarian minister, social activist, writer, and scholar James Luther Adams (1901-1994).  

A Harvard and Andover Newton professor for decades, popular with his students for his unabashed passion and candor, Adams vehemently fought against the tendency of religious liberals to be theologically content with vague slogans and platitudes about open-mindedness.  He believed, having witnessed the atrocities of WWII, that liberal churches must dig a little deeper or they would be rendered irrelevant and impotent in face of the world’s evil. He stated this conviction loudly and frequently.

Adams advocated volunteerism across a broad spectrum of issues as a powerful and necessary component of an authentically free spirit in a free church.  He penned many  essays and articles focusing on the theology of voluntary associations and social ethics, on topics ranging from politics to the grotesque in the arts to AIDS. 

He spoke with his feet as well.  Adams was interrogated by the Gestapo and almost thrown in prison while in Germany under the Third Reich for his association with the Underground Church Movement.  Using a home movie camera, he filmed Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer, and others, to spread the underground resistance to the Nazi regime.  

At home, he worked tirelessly for an independent grassroots political organization whose goal was open and honest government.  He interpreted participation in voluntary associations, whatever the character of the government, as the chief means by which beneficial social change has been effected throughout history, and as key to the meaning of human history. 

James Luther Adams described the free church as “a body of believers freely joined in a covenant of loyalty to the holy spirit of love, intentionally inclusive of dissent, governed by its own members and fiercely independent from government control, with the reign of the spirit of love among members to be seen in their voluntary assumption of responsibility for the just character of their whole society.”

His influence continues to extend to the many institutions his former students of many faith traditions now serve, some with high distinction.  He was impatient with lifeless abstraction and wanted to know what you were DOING, what are your stories, about how your service work is working or not, what are the struggles? 

This is at the heart of our Unitarian Universalist faith.  To be worthy of our rich religious history, we must strive to be nothing less than a faith which is intellectually accountable and moves the spirit to action.  Pledge to be doing something that calls to your heart and helps to heal the world.

THE PRACTICAL ART OF BEING A MENTOR

Life Coaches have been an extremely popular phenomenon for some years now. These are men and women who are trained (for the most part) in certain areas of psychology, business, sports, and their accompanying motivational models.  Much of it has to do with the science of human development.  There is no doubt that many have benefited by reaching personal or professional goals through working with these life coaches.

Similarly, we hold up as role models those who exemplify passion and vitality and a commitment to excellence combined with an unyielding compassion. Personalities such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela,  or Albert Schweitzer come to mind.   

Yet, we can be and are “life coaches” to people in our own lives.  We are role models to our children certainly (for better or worse).  This is at times, a scary and daunting truth, but an important one to hold.

At our best, we are sources of inspiration, consolation, and powers of examples to those whose lives we touch on a daily basis.

So, how do we assure that the kind of mentoring we are giving to others and just as importantly, accepting from others is fostering growth and wisdom?

I think that I would answer that with the 3 P’s: Presence, Passion, and Practicality.  You work towards being a practical, passionate presence to others.  This means being fully yourself with the other person.  It may be that your personality is exuberant or laid back and reserved, your type of personality is not at the heart of the matter.  Passionate here refers more to the commitment you make to your life than a particular way of being.  This includes honesty, with yourself and others.   

You help your children, coworkers, family, and friends by encouraging them to find their own wisdom in overcoming obstacles by sharing and modeling how you have gotten through difficult and painful times.  His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said, “If you utilize obstacles properly, then they strengthen your courage, and they also give you more intelligence, more wisdom.  But if you use them in the wrong way,” he added, laughing gently, “you will feel discouraged, failure, depression.” 

A listening, caring presence is vital.  This means that you must also take time daily to be alone, even if only for a few minutes, so that your emotional battery has some charge in it.  You often can not immediately fix problems presented to you. These are THEIR issues (hard to remember with loved ones) that by working through them will create happier and more empowered individuals.  Listen, ask questions to gain clarity…and then share your own strength and experience.

Much of what I share in times of trouble is to not be afraid of your feelings or being vulnerable.  Feel all your feelings (even the painful ones), cry, get angry, bake a cake.  Let these feelings have their way with you, they are going to anyway.  And then it becomes easier to let these feelings go, let them flow away from you. 

Mentoring means giving of yourself so that others can determine for themselves what lessons they are going to take and keep for the journey.  Hopefully, the ones you mentor gain a sense of mastery by coming out the other side of a difficult challenge and to a certain extent, may even find gratitude by going through the situation.

Lastly, mentoring is infectious.  It what’s Robert Wicks in his book Sharing Wisdom calls positive contamination: “Mentors are infectious.  They model fresh, frank, and innovative ways to live life.  To do this they need not be brilliant, famous, wealthy, good looking, or accomplished.  They simply need to be enthusiastic and genuinely themselves, and to see life as precious.  Who they are provides as much to the pepople seeking mentoring as what they know.”

This does not mean that the mentor didn’t have pain, experience shame, make mistakes-even big ones. It means they didn’t settle.  They live life fully and find value in themselves and their experiences. They learned and can model how to reframe both the questions in their lives and the answers.”

WAITING AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Waiting as a spiritual practice is found in almost every religious tradition I can think of. 

For Muslims, the month of Ramadan, the 9th month of the Islamic calendar, marks a month of fasting, giving alms, abstinence from all things of the flesh,and active prayer. This is in an attempt to cleanse the soul, but also it is thought that using these methods of emptying out the cares and desires of the physical world, one is preparing and waiting for the revelations of God to be experienced.  This is what happened to Muhammad.  In fact, the holiest night of the Muslim year is Laylat al-Qadr, it falls just before the close of Ramadan, and commemorates the night when the Qu’ran was first revealed to the prophet Muhammad. 

In Jewish tradition, waiting and the practice of patience in the face of daunting circumstances, has been a recurring theme since the Book of Exodus and those ensuing dark days in the desert.  The Jewish people wait for the angel of death to pass over their households during Passover and recreate the stories of bitter times and the promise of sweeter days in the Seder.  Again, fasting, prayer, and self-denial carve pathways to this opening up of the soul.

The Christians now find themselves in the heart of Lent.  Christians too share these same tools of purification.  Yet they wait for something unique to the other monotheistic religions.  They wait for the day of Resurrection, the Day that Jesus rose from the dead.

And, yet, even if one does not believe in the actual physical revival of the Christ from the dead, the stories that rise up from the New Testament can resonate with each of us, teaching us the power of waiting in faith.

These are stories that speak of yearning and suffering.  Yearning for a better life, a purpose, a meaning, and the reality of pain.  The stories of Jesus of Nazareth are stories of hope and fear, loyalty and betrayal, acceptance and denial, life and death.  Jesus tasted both the success of his mountain ministry (see Matthew’s feeding of the 5000) and yet was still determined to go to Jerusalem, with death threats and a certain persecution.

His followers were waiting for a triumphant crowning of a king as the culmination of a glorious ministry.  Instead, they were confused and angry by a leader ridiculed and crucified.  Jesus tried to point out that this path he was on, was not one easily understood by the ways of the world, that his lessons were those of the spirit and not of earthly successes and kingdoms.  Certainly choosing to undergo great suffering is not a natural inclination. 

Our own stories of waiting for a better day, whether for a job that has not yet materialized, a healing from an illness (our own or a loved ones, or even a death), can find much solidarity with the Bible stories of Lent.  They are filled with expectation on one day, as Jesus heals a leper and brings the dead to life, and then disillusionment, despair, and death on the next.

 One of the definitions of resurrection that I can hold up to a broader, secular audience is the Greek notion of resurrection as the “state of one who has returned to life.”

We all have seen the grief-stricken and the broken find a way back to a full and happy life after the most unmitigable tragedies, this is the promise of resurrection that casts it net wide and yet does not strain the boundaries of the intellect.  It is the faith of waiting. 

Quote for the day: “Even if one glimpses God, there are still cuts and splinters and burns along the way.”