Fear Never Fixed Anything

This is the text of the reflection I offered on February 3, 2019, to the congregation I serve  in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sam Keen is, as I said during the Story time, a fairly well-known author within a certain niche of readers.  He’s written books like, Your Mythic Journey, Fire in the Belly, Inward Bound (exploring the geography of your emotions), To a Dancing God, and The Passionate Life.  He’s particularly well known to people interested in what’s been called the mytho-poetic movement.  He’s written that we are, “bio-mythic animals.  The true double helix that makes us human is an intertwining of biological mechanisms (IDNA) and cultural mechanisms (or myths).  We are fabric woven of chemistry and narrative, biology and stories, flesh and dreams.”

It’s not too unexpected, then, that he would not only be intrigued by the physical elements of learning the flying trapeze, but it’s mythology-poetic ones as well.  The subtitle of the book Learning to Fly, is “trapeze — reflections on fear, trust, and the joys of letting go.”

It’s a commonly accepted fact among preachers that a lot of adults pay more attention to, and report getting more out of, the story for the children than they do from the more “adult” sermon that is ostensibly written for them.   With that in mind, it’s my intention to give now essentially the same reflection as I did then (with a lot more quotations and, hopefully, a bit more depth).

Keen had, as I said earlier, a lifetime dream of being a trapeze flyer.  But, like most people, as he got older the dream faded into the more quotidian realities of daily life.  [That’s one of the differences – I didn’t so “quotidian” to the kids.]  By pretty much every measure, he had a very successful life.  And yet, there was a point in his life, his career, his marriage, that he found himself troubled.  He asked, “Why was my spirit so heavy?  Why was I so frequently depressed?  So earthbound?  So grave?”  Whether he was conscious of it at the time, he was asking himself questions that made use of the metaphor of the flyer.

“[W]e all yearn to fly.  We are creatures of longing.  We do not need to climb the long ladder to the pedestal or grasp the fly bar to be airborne.  What I call the aerial instinct — the drive to transcend our present condition — is the defining characteristic of a human being.  We are restless animals, eternal travelers who are forever in the process of becoming.  Consciousness itself is a flight from the here and now and to the beyond.”

We are creatures of longing, and Keen still longed to fly.

So, as I also said during the children’s reflections time of this service, one day, when he was near his 63^rd birthday, he saw an ad on television announcing the opening of a new school in San Francisco to teach ordinary everyday people the skill and art of the trapeze.  He went to watch, and found what he described as “an alternating current of fear and fascination.” Interest turned into engagement, turned into a passion.

As with most people who develop a new passion – whether a new intellectual interest, a new spiritual perspective, a new lover, a new hobby, a new passion of any kind, really – he talked about flying all the time.  His friends felt it more than a little odd that this man so known for his insightful intellect would become so passionate about something so physical and so dangerous.  Especially because he was nearly 63 years old.  But about passions Keen has written:

“[A]ll passions are strange passions to those who do not share them.  The passions that animate individuals thrive in the most unexpected nooks and crannies.  There are people who are ecstatic about collecting stamps, old motorcycles, vintage Levis.  Or painting pictures of barns.  I know otherwise normal people who are wildly enthusiastic about riding around on manicured lawns in electric carts and hitting little white balls into holds in the ground.  [I have to digress here for a moment.  I recently read somewhere that golf is the only sport in which the goal is to play less of it.]  I have met numerous cabdrivers who can’t keep their checkbooks balanced but can give you the batting average of everyone who ever played in the World Series.  And many a [person] has kept the smell of the salt sea in [their] nostrils while building a sailboat in a backyard in Iowa.”

He acknowledges that, “Passion is seldom rational and usually blind.”  He says that he has learned, though, that, “it is hazardous to ignore passing fantasies and emerging passions.”  He writes, “[I]n the degree I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears.  When passion no longer waters and nurtures the psyche, fears spring up like weeds on the depleted soil of abandoned fields.”  Hear that again:  “in the degree I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears.”

Many of us would no doubt feel more than a little fear if we were climbing up a ladder to a platform – the pedestal – that’s only six feet long and 18 inches wide, even though it’s 25 feet off the ground.  And that’s a lot of what Keen learned – both literally and figuratively.  He learned about fear.  In fact, as he titled one of his chapters, he became, “a Connoisseur of Fear.”

He’d always been something of a risk taker.  He tells the story of spending an afternoon with the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel.  (Keen had done his doctoral dissertation on Marcel’s work.). At one point they were going through Harvard Square, and Keen was “dodging through the traffic.”  His wife said to Marcel, “Sam likes to take risks,” to which Marcel replied (and Keen remembers there being a twinkle in his eye as he said this), “Only take interesting risks.”

Interesting risks.

Facing our fears, living into our fears, is something that most of us try our best to avoid.  He notes, “It is reasonable to play it safe, not to leap — but it is not always reasonable to be reasonable.”  His begins that chapter about, “Becoming a Connoisseur of Fear,” with an epigraph by Aldo Leopoldo — “It is a poor life in which there is no fear.”  Keen writes,

“As nearly as I can figure, the rock-bottom truth is that life is both wonderful and terrifying.  The German philosopher Rudolf Otto said that our confrontation with that ultimate reality within which we live and move and have our being (which, for lack of a better name, we call the Holy) is always a mystery that evokes both fascination and fear. […]

[T]o ask, ‘Why face danger?’ Is the wrong question.  The right question is ‘What happens if I try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk?’ If ‘security’ and ‘safety’ become watchwords by which I live, gradually the circle of my experience grows small and claustrophobic.”

What happens if I try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk?

“Death says, ‘Play it safe.’ Life says, ‘Risk it.’  At the vital edge something dangerous calls my name.  What will I risk to stay alive?”

Keen says that there are three basic, instinctual fears which all humans share.  Only three:  “the fear of falling, the fear of being imprisoned in a tight space, and the fear of loud noises.”  He adds, though,

“I have noticed that once the fear of literal dangers has been mastered, a more complex fear of symbolic danger emerges.  I am afraid of failure.  I am afraid of what others will think of me.  I am afraid I will embarrass myself.  I am afraid I will lose control.  I am afraid I can’t trust you.  I am afraid I will be abandoned if I do not measure up to your expectations.”

Do any of you know anything about any of that that?  I do.  Oh how I do.  And I know, too, that what Keen says about the limiting nature of a life ruled by fear is true.  And I know, I know, that if I let my life be ruled by my fears I will not really be alive.  And I know that that’s true for each of us.

It’s true of institutions, too.  Groups, communities, organizations, (churches), can become ruled by fear, afraid to make that leap of faith from what we know, from what is safe, into the void of the unknown, because “it is reasonable to play it safe – not to leap.”  We risk – again, our institutions, and us as individuals – we risk so very much when we let go, not entirely sure that we will be caught. And yet, as Keen asks, so should we:  What happens if I, if we, if all of us try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk?  (Even the “interesting” ones.)

It is a poor life in which there is no fear. 

This doesn’t by any means mean that we should be foolhardy and leap at every opportunity.  One of the things learning the trapeze taught Keen is that you should only take risks that you’re ready for.  Every time he went too far beyond his ability, trying to do something that really was beyond his grasp, he hurt himself.  Every time.  And, really, only at those times.

Part of that preparation, as I said to our kids (and to those of you who were listening), is to practice falling.  Notice how similar the words fall and fail are?  Before trying a new trick he learned to practice missing the trick, to practice failing, to practice falling, because the ability to fall correctly is essential.  Fall wrong, and you can hurt yourself seriously.  It’s imperative, then, to recognize our propensity for failing, for falling, to embrace the fact of its inevitability, and to prepare oneself for it.  There is, “a fundamental principle — learn the fall before the trick; prepare for failure.  From the moment when a fledgling accomplishes the first free fall, progress in flying and falling go hand in hand. […] the great flyers have always been great fallers.”

It stands to reason, then, that if you should you prepare for the falls that are unavoidable, you shouldn’t try to avoid them.  Keen writes, “If you aren’t failing frequently it is because you are too timid or too stuck in your rut to try anything new and risky.”  I have heard it said that clergy and congregations need to get better at doing memorial services for ideas, things tried that didn’t work or that have simply run their course.  We too, individuals and institutions, can become stuck in our own ruts.  Too intent on playing it safe.  Too focused on staying safe.  We can make a priority of making sure that we protect what we have and our sense of who we are.  It is, after all, reasonable to play it safe.  It is only sensible to not take that leap. And yet, it is not always “reasonable to be reasonable.”  We can limit our ability to grow, to change, to evolve.  These things always involve a fairly sizable amount of risk.  It’s dangerous.

Keen writes, “If I get stuck in who I am now, I will never blossom into who I might yet become.  Today’s identity is tomorrow’s prison.”  If we get stuck in who we are now, who we have been, we will never blossom into who we might yet become.  This reminds me of something the Catholic priest and Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton wrote, “If the you of five years ago does not consider the you of today a heretic, you are not growing spiritually.”  How many of us here this morning think our self of five years ago would be shocked at who we are today?  Would find it heretical?  Scandalous?  Couldn’t imagine in a million years that we are where we are?  Or would that us-from-the-past be unsurprised, comforted to know that we’re still safe and sound, that nothing much has changed?  (What would the church of five-years ago think of who we are and where we’re going today?)

“No footbridge leads from reason to faith, from doubt to trust.  Prior to the leap, fear seems more justified than trust, isolation more fundamental than communion, and the flight of the spirit an impossibility.

The short leap from the trapeze to the catcher is a flight from primal fear to basic trust, from I to thou, from autonomy to communion, that can be made only by a total commitment of the self.  Flying, like faith, hope, and love, is an existential act that cannot be accomplished by a spectator.”

This is what it means – part of what it means, at least – to be fully and truly alive: not to be mere spectators of our lives.  We are called to live them.  And all living things must change and grow lest they stagnate and die.  This is as true for you and me as for a pond, a butterfly, or a seed.

As Sam Keen learned the skills and art of the aerialist, he learned about more than the need to let go, prepared for falling while simultaneously willing to fly into the unknown.  He also learned about the net.

“Initially, I thought of the net as nothing more than a safety device that would protect me if I could manage to fall correctly on my back, seat, or stomach. As I gained skill in twisting, turning, and landing, however, I realized it was more than a concession to human fallibility; it was also a platform to launch new flight. A modern nylon net is essentially a large trampoline that invites a flyer to convert a fall into a rebound trick — a somersault, a suicide dive, a high balletic leap. Professional trapeze troupes always end their acts with dramatic dives or somersaults into the net. In fact, the trick, that seems to delight audiences more than any other is one introduced by Tito Gaona [of the Flying Gaonos] in which he plummets to the nets, bounces very high, somersaults, and lands seated on the catcher’s trapeze.

Gradually, I am learning to enjoy the creative possibilities of the rebound. I suppose there are exceptional men and women whose lives are an unbroken series of successes, but for most of us the ascending path is punctuated by times of descent, downfall, and depression. My failures have taught me there is always a second chance. What I have managed to create after falling has often turned out to be better than the trick I planned. Failing gives fallible human beings the chance to start over. This is why every man, woman, and society needs a safety net.”

My friends, we can be that net for one another.  We can catch each other when we fall, and help to propel us to new, and perhaps as yet unimagined (and even unimaginable), possibilities.  We can, when we do this “community” thing right, trust one another so that we can more easily let go of the known in order to take the leap into the unknown because we know there is this net before us.  I know that we can do this, and be this, because we have been.  Because we are, now.  (Yes, even now.) 

As we move into this still-new calendar year, and round the corner on the second half of our church year, let us be brave, be bold, in looking for the “interesting risks,” that abound around us.  Let us not live from a place of fear, knowing that fear never fixed anything.  Let us, instead, live within the fundamental and omnipresent realities of faith, hope, and love.  Let us live with courage, boldly, so that we might blossom into who we might yet become.  So that we might fly.

I used the following passage as the Closing Words for the service:

“Paradoxically, when we invite our fears into the hearth of our awareness, they cease to be an undifferentiated mass of terrifying demons and become tolerable guests.  Each day befriend a single fear and the miscellaneous terrors of beading human will never join together to form such a morass of vague anxiety that it rules your life from the shadows of the unconscious.  We learn to fly not by becoming fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.”

I used the following words to introduce the morning's Closing Hymn -- #1019 in Singing the Journey – “Building a New Way”:

“[W]e have become captives, driven by the demands of our corporations, the market economy, and the pressures of globalization, which exist side-by-side with the escalating violence caused by tribalism, nationalism, and anarchy.  It is a hot and heavy world.  Not much joy in high places. […]

We are in the grip of the spirit of seriousness, which Nietzche equated with the devil. ‘When I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn; it was the spirit of gravity — through him all things fall.’”

Pax tecum,

RevWik

An illustration for Learning to Fly

A Place of Peace

This is the text of the reflections I offered at the congregation I serve here in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, July 1, 2018.  I wanted the second half to be less consciously conceptual and more a free flowing of spirit, so this is a reconstruction of what those who were here heard.

Opening Words:

The abbot of a provincial monastery was in something of a tizzy, because the abbot of his school’s main temple was coming for a visit, and he wanted everything to be just perfect.  He had set his students to polishing every bit of wood, and brass, and gold, and to seek out every single dust bunny.  He, himself, attended to the grounds.

An old monk, a recognized Zen master who had retired to this monastery watched as the young abbot spent several hours raking leaves from all of the walking trails.  The abbot wanted the woods to exude quiet, and peace, and … well … perfection.  He imagined walking these clear, unobstructed paths with his honored guest, just as he strove to lead the monks under his care over the clear, unobstructed paths of the dharma.

As I said, the old monk stood watching the abbot at his labors the whole time.  When he was finished, the abbot came to the monk, and with pride in his accomplishment the young man asked the old man what he thought.  “Well … ,” the old monk said, “I have to say, you’ve certainly worked very, very hard at this, and it’s almost right. 

The abbot replied, somewhat anxiously, “Please, tell me what I have to do to make it perfect.”  “I’d rather show you,” the old master said.  He took the rake, and spent the next hour putting the leaves back on the path.  “There,” he said when he was done. “Now it’s perfect.”

He gave the rake to the startled abbot, and walked away without another word.

Sermon:

One hour a day.  One day a week.  One week a year. 

One hour a day.  One day a week.  One week a year. 

I want you to hold on to that formula.  We’ll come back to it later.  (I’ll come back to that story about the monks and the leaves in a bit, too.)

Most Sundays I note that the heart of our sanctuary service is not the sermon, or the music, (or the offering!), it’s what we call the time of “Going Deeper.”  Our lives can be so full, and so hectic, I say (as if it would be news to any of us).  Every religious tradition I know anything about exhorts us to seek, to find, or to create spaces and places in our lives where we are not overcome by the cacophony of life; where our hearts and our minds can find respite; where our souls can be silent and calm. 

In the book of 1 Kings in the Hebrews Scriptures the story is told of the prophet Elijah who asks to see G_d.  After all manner of images pass him by – a strong wind that can destroy a mountain, an earthquake, an all-consuming fire – after all of these things pass him by, Elijah finally recognizes his G_d in what is usually translated as, “a still, small voice.”  (It is alternately rendered, “a gentle whisper,” or, my favorite, “the voice of quiet stillness.”)

We have, hopefully, each of us had our own experiences of such sacred silence, times where the world grew quiet … and so did we.  Spiritual practices such as meditation and contemplative prayer can be understood to be, at the very least, about learning to create and cultivate such peace in a world, in our lives, which are most often anything but.

We need such times.  We need such places.  We need such experiences.  Because just as we have been learning how vitally important sleep is to our bodily and mental health, so too is such peace vitally important to our spiritual health. 

The Unitarian Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (who, a colleague once described as, “wash[ing] out of the ministry early”) had more than a little to say about sacred space.  In his essay Nature, St. Ralph described an experience he had in nature, that has been often quoted (although here I’m going to read a little more than is usually used):

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.  In the woods, too, a [person casts off [their] years, as the snake [its] slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child.  In the woods, is perpetual youth.  Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how [they] should tire of them in a thousand ears.  In the woods, we return to reason and faith.  There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.  Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball.  I am nothing.  I see all.  The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

The Austrian poet René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, better and more simply known as Rainer Maria Rilke had similar thoughts about the ocean:

"When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused."

How many of us have had such experiences?  How many of us – in the woods, by the ocean, at the bank of a river, on a trail, in our gardens – how many of us have found this kind of sacred space and felt its healing balm (at least some of the times)?  I have always loved the power of an incoming storm, when the temperature drops and the winds pick up, and the sky changes color and, almost, texture.  (I’ve read that the Persian poet Khalil Gibran did too – going up to the roof of his apartment in New York City whenever a really powerful storm was coming.)  Like Emerson, I experience “a perfect exhilaration […] am glad to the brink of fear,” and find my worries and woes dropping away.

All of this is why our time of “Going Deeper” is the hub, the heart of what we do here week after week.  This time we set aside is, for some of us, the only time when we can slow down long enough to have even a taste of this kind of stillness.  And for some of us – no doubt for many of us – this place is as important as this time.  We come here, to this sanctuary, as, if you will, to an in-town forest or ocean.  We come here to seek a stillness, to find a stillness, so that that stillness can carry us through the rest of our week.

The Unitarian Universalist pastor and preacher Rev. Phillip Hewett described this seeking in words that are often used as Opening Words in UU congregations (it’s #440 in the back of our hymnals):

“From the fragmented world of our everyday lives we gather together in search of wholeness.  By many cares and preoccupations, by diverse and selfish aims are we separated from one another and divided within ourselves.”

Another story.  (And I haven’t forgotten that earlier story about the monks and the leaves, nor the formula with which I began – one hour a day; one day a week; one week a year.  I hope you haven’t yet either, and if you did I’ve just reminded you.)

I’ve mentioned before that when I was in my 20s I had the wonderful opportunity to spend two months in Japan working with the Kanjiyama Mime troupe.  This was in the midst of the twenty or so year period in which I followed the Zen Buddhist path, so although my work in Japan was centered mostly in and around Tokyo, I simply had to make a side trip to Kyoto, which was the Imperial capital of Japan for over 1,000 years.  It’s also been called “the city of temples,” because of its 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines.

I visited several Buddhist temples while I was there, particularly those with the justly famed gardens of stone and raked sand.  And I have to say, when I walked onto the temple grounds – and this was true of all of the temples I visited – I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace.  It was nearly palpable, and I felt myself infused with it.  Just being there quieted my mind and stilled my soul.  It was powerful, and an experience I hope I never forget (no matter how much else I may come to forget).

And this pervasive and palpable peace was perhaps nowhere more present than in the zendo.  These beautiful, spare spaces seemed filled with the energy generated by the monks who meditated there day after day, week after week, years upon years, over centuries and centuries.  It seemed to me that these halls had been infused by the peace of its monks, just as it held the fragrance of all of the incense that had been burned there.

At one of the temples the monk who was walking me around brought me outside the back of its zendo.  The meditation hall had been built at the base of a cliff, and there was a place where a small waterfall had carved a channel in the rock.  Ice cold water from a mountain stream above still fell, as it had for centuries.  At the base of this channel there was a somewhat circular, somewhat flat rock … about the size of a meditation cushion, actually.  And the monk told me that the most advanced students would sometimes leave the zendo during the time of meditation, that they would get off their cushions and come out here.  They would leave the peace and stillness of the zendo and come out here to continue their zazen practice— here, on that rock, under that icy shower.  He invited me to touch it, and even the brief period it poured over my hand was quite literally bone chilling.  And there were monks who choose to practice here under this freezing flow, rather than in the warmth and peace of the meditation hall.

Since I posted the Black Lives Matter sign on the wall behind this pulpit, I have heard from some of you who’ve said that it disrupted, and for some even destroyed, the feeling of peace you had in this hall, and which you sought still.  For some it’s the “garish” colors, discordant with soft blue of the wall.  Some felt it to be an intrusion of the outer world into this inner space, an imposition of the political – and the divisively political at that – into this place of peace.  “I used to look up at the altar throughout the service” someone said to me, “and it would allow me to let everything go.”  This person continued, “Now I can’t.  Whenever I look toward the altar I see that sign, and I can no longer get away from anything … even for just this one hour.”

I would note that this isn’t everyone’s experience.  I have also heard from some of you who find the presence of this sign a powerfully positive thing.  Many – not all, but many – people of color, and perhaps especially those who are new to the congregation, who are checking it out, have said that seeing that sign not only outside of our building, but inside it as well, has made them feel truly welcomed and safe in a predominantly white faith community … for the first time.  “You see me,” they’ve said.  “And you care enough about me to say that explicitly, here, in this sacred space, even though it must cause some of you discomfort to do so.”  As Unitarian Universalists – particularly as Unitarian Universalists committed to the vision of true Beloved Community, that is truly multigenerational and multicultural and committed to the dismantling of racism and the systems and structures of oppression of all kinds – as Unitarian Universalists we know that having our needs met is not the ultimate measure of our success.  Rather, it’s to be a people who know that what matters most is our collective needs, the needs of our whole community, and that means sometimes setting aside my own needs for the sake of someone else’s.  This is one of my reasons for keeping the sign where it is – while some of us are discomforted by its presence, others (and not just people of color, but some of us who identify as white, as well) are more comfortable because it’s there.

I’ve also said, over the years, that if those of us who identify (or are identified as) white are really committed to the overthrow of the deeply and fundamentally racist culture that is U.S. culture, if we’re really committed to this work, then we are going to have to change.  We are going to have to be uncomfortable, because it is uncomfortable work to let of what we’ve known, and learn to see the world through new eyes.  Yesterday, at the Families Belong Together rally downtown, we were reminded by one of the speakers that as outraged as we are by the separation of immigrant families today, it’s been happening in our country to brown and black families since the founding of the nation – African families, native families, the families of anyone deemed to be “Other” have had their families split up as a deterrent .. a deterrent to even thinking about fighting back against their oppression and their oppressors.  This makes a lot of white folk really uncomfortable, as we want to believe that this kind of behavior is an aberration, and it’s tremendously disconcerting and disorienting to discover that it’s actually been a part of the fabric of our culture from the beginning.  

I’ve preached this need for those of us who identify as white to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” to lean into the pain that brings with it, and to realize that our assertion, our assumption, that we can and should be comfortable is a piece of privilege not shared equally.  Black and brown people – like women, those who identify as part of LGBTQI communities, Muslims, and everyone who’s been historically, and still are, marginalized – have had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because that’s a part of their daily experience.  I’ve preached this, and this message has been greeted with applause and praise for my “courage” and willingness to “say what has to be said.”  The presence of this sign is one way to remind us of these truths.

My two Buddhist stories are another way of understanding what the presence of this sign, in this place, is all about.  It is easy to find peace in peaceful places.  It is easy to be still when there is stillness all around.  It is easy, with apologies to Kipling, for us to “keep our heads when all about us are keeping theirs.”  But try meditating under a shower of ice cold mountain water.  Try finding a clear path when it’s obscured by leaves.  Try looking at the altar and letting everything go when out of the corner of your eye you see a reminder of the pain and the struggle in our world.

I can imagine that some of you are experiencing these reflections as being more than a little … defensive.  And I can imagine that some of you are experiencing them as being dismissive … of your concerns, of your real disheartening discomfort, of your own felt needs.

I hope that I’m not being defensive; I’m hoping that I’ve been offering an explanation of why, in this regard, I am doing what I’m doing.  Agree or disagree, I hope I’m helping you to better understand. 

I am aware, though, that I have often come across as dismissive.  I acknowledge that some of you here – and no doubt many who are not – have felt dismissed, especially this year and especially since the end of February when that anonymous racist note and attack was directed at our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, and her family.  And while I do recognize and acknowledge that for some here that has been the impact of some of what I’ve said and done, that was never my intent.

In her sermon on Sunday morning at General Assembly last week, the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray reminded us that she had been called not just to be a leader in our movement, but also a pastor.  That really struck me.  It struck me deeply.  And it struck me deeply because I realize that – especially since February – I have not been as much of a pastor as I now realize I should have been.  Prophetic, maybe, but not all that pastoral.

I know that I have come across to some of us as if I were saying that there were one, and only one, way of being involved in the struggle for racial justice.  I recognize that I have not always said what I mean to say in ways that have been all too easy to misunderstand.  And I am aware that this has led some people to feeling blamed, or shamed, or, as I’ve said, dismissed.

The Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou said, “If we agree in love, no disagreement can do us any harm.  Yet if we don’t, no agreement can do us any good.”  I’m paraphrasing, but you see what we meant.  We don’t have to agree with each other, we don’t have to see things the same way, we don’t have to be the same amount of “woke” (as if you could measure that), we don’t have to be in the same place of understanding, or in the same place of action … if we agree in love, none of that need matter.  The Beloved Community has room for all of us.  We are all works-in-progress and, again, if we can remember to “agree in love,” we can move forward together.

This is a community of good-hearted people, and we cannot afford to risk complacency – the time is too dire and the stakes are too high.  This is a community of beautiful and loving people, and we cannot let a comfortable appearance of peace supplant our commitment to justice.  The work we have set ourselves to is hard.  Relationships are hard.  For that matter, life itself is hard.  Yet as I say to my younger son, “We can do hard things.”

And the discovery of, or the creation of, the cultivation of places and spaces of peace is something we all have to do – individually and as a community – if we want to do the hard things our faith calls us to.  Our time of “Going Deeper’ is intended to be such a time each week, as I know listening to the musical gifts of Scott and James is for many of us.  But that’s not enough.

And that’s where we come back to the formula with which I began:  one hour a day; one day a week; one week a year.”  The Unitarian Universalist preacher Carl Scovel offered this as a pattern we can use to structure our spiritual lives, to ensure that we’re feeding that sacred silence.  Take one hour a day, each day, for quiet and contemplation.  Pray, meditate, walk your dogs and enjoy the walk, sip a cup of tea … for one hour a day give yourself some space to quiet down enough to listen for that “voice of quiet stillness.”   And then give yourself one day a week.  Think of the Jewish tradition of Shabbat, the seventh day of the week on which you are to abstain from anything that might be called “work.”  I’ve heard the practice of such sabbath time as being, “don’t do anything because you feel you have to do it.”  This one-day-a-week is not the time to do the laundry and the 101 errands that have piled up.  It’s a space for space.  And so is that one week per year.  Scovel suggested that we should strive to shape our lives so that we can have one hour a day, one day a week, and one week a year during which we can set ourselves to the no-thing-ness of stillness.

When we are intentional about creating such space – even if we can’t quite meet Scovel’s recommendations – we will find ourselves in a much better place to find that love in which, and through which, we can agree, letting no disagreement tear us apart.

Closing Words:

I have another story.  In Divinity School I was especially interested in cross-cultural monastic practices, so this is another story of a monk. 

This time it’s a Christian monk who was in her room, engaged in contemplative prayer.  It was a warm day, so her window was open.  Outside, the birds were singing, the crickets were chirping, the frogs were croaking, dogs in the distance were barking, and the wind was rustling in the leaves of the trees.  The cacophonous chorus of life was going on outside of her room, and the monk found that she simply could not concentrate on her prayers.

So she rose and went to her window.  Such was her spiritual power that she did not just close the window, she leaned out and shouted, “Silence!”  And all the world grew silent.  There was no sound at all – no birds, no crickets, no frogs, no dogs, no wind.  The silence was complete and total.

The monk returned to her prayers and, at first, she was able to go deep into her contemplations.  Yet she began to notice that again she was distracted, and this time it was worse than it had been.  The silence was nearly deafening.

So once again she rose and went to the window.  And once again she leaned out.  This time, though, she spoke more softly and said, “Sing!”  All at once, the song of life resumed, and she welcomed the world back into her prayers.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

When There Are No Leaves Nor Fruit

There’s this odd little story in the Christian scriptures, recorded in the gospels of both Mark and Matthew.  Jesus goes over to a fig tree to get some figs to share with his friends, but there are no figs.  Only leaves.  So Jesus, perhaps in a fit of pique, says to the tree, “May no one ever eat of your fruit again.” (Dun dun dunnn)  The next day they’re all walking by that tree again, and one of Jesus’ friends notices that now there are neither leaves nor fruit.  Overnight the tree had withered and died.    

I don’t know exactly what that story is supposed to teach us, but I’m sure that there are as many ways of interpreting that story as there are people doing the interpreting.  For my purposes this morning, I want to leave the bit of magic aside and look at this as a story about a tree that had not lived up to its full potential and, so, withered and died.

There are a lot of reasons plants fail to thrive.  Most often it’s because there’s something that they need that they aren’t getting – too much (or too little) sun, too little (or too much) water, not enough nutrients in the soil.  Plants don’t just come to flower and fruit on their own.  Without the resources they need they may have all the good intentions in the world, all the heart, all the desire to be all that they can be, but they’re not going to make it.  At best they’ll become stunted versions of what they could have been.  At worst, they’ll wither and die.

We see this in our own lives, don’t we?  If our relationships don’t have the honesty, the commitment, the investment of time and heart, that they need, they don’t thrive, do they?  If we’re struggling with an addiction, yet are trying to do so on our own, without the support of family, friends, sponsors, our recovery can be … stunted.  Take just about anything in your life, anything important, anything of value – if it doesn’t get the resources it needs, it doesn’t go very far, does it?

Now … if the teaser on Facebook, or Lorie’s Opening Words didn’t telegraph it to you, I want us to look at the church — this church, our church — through the lens of this metaphor of a tree with neither leaves nor fruit, a tree withered and dead because it hadn’t had the resources to live up to its full potential.  I don’t think we’re on the verge of withering and dying.  I do think that we’re not living up to our full potential.

If this is your first visit, or if you’ve only come a few times, I hope you won’t find this to be too much “insiders talk.”  Because I am talking to you too, actually.  I believe deeply that we make of ourselves members of this community at the moment we decide to come back.  And if you keep coming back, the future of this community will rest as much in your hands as in those of the folks who’ve been part of this place for decades.  This is not their church.  If we do this thing called “community” right, it is ours.  All of ours.  It belongs to us, and, again, if we do this right, we belong to it.

Yet from where I stand — and sit and listen, and work, play, pray, cry, and laugh with you all — it is not entirely clear to me that we are “doing this right.”  All congregations have their struggles, of course.  All faith communities are, first and foremost, communities — communities of trying-our-best-yet-fallible-human-beings.  Still, there are stresses and strains in our systems which worry me. 

The basic needs of plants are often summed up as:  water, sun, and nutrient-rich soil.  Other things are involved, of course, and it’s really the interplay among them that is needed for a plant to thrive, but that shorthand makes some sense – water, sun, and nutrient-rich soil.  For a congregation to thrive there are also a whole host of things it needs, and it’s really the interplay among them that is most determinative, but I’d suggest that the needs of a congregation can also be summed in three things (which, conveniently, all begin with the letter “c”) – committed engagement, courage, and … well … cash.

Each of these could be a sermon unto itself.  Several sermons, I’m sure.  This morning, though, I’m only going to focus on one … the last of the set … cash.  You can guess where this is heading.  But before I go there, I want you all to know that I know that as soon as I, or anyone else, begins to talk explicitly about money, it gets uncomfortable for some people.  So I want to be clear as I can be that I recognize the fact that we don’t all live in the same economic reality.  I strongly believe that one of our strengths as a community is that we are not the homogeneous upper-middle class, overly educated, Prius-driving stereotype so many have of Unitarian Universalists (and which even many of us have of ourselves!).  There are people like that here, of course, yet our membership also includes people whose income is considerably less than upper-middle class, and whose educational background doesn’t include Ph.D.s and is far less formal.  I believe deeply that this diversity is a tremendous asset – if we can learn to really see and value it.  As we said at the start of the service, and say each week, “We all have a place here.  We all are welcome here.”  Admittedly, we still have a ways to go before we’re fully living the truth of that, before we even fully understand what it means, actually, but I believe it is where we’re headed.

All that said, I don’t believe there is anyone here who can’t pledge some amount of financial support.  $1 a month.  $1 a year, even.  Sure, that may not seem like a lot of money, yet to my mind all three of these Cs are intertwined, and a pledge of $1 a month, or $1 a year from someone who is living with little, would be a much more powerful demonstration of commitment than a much larger pledge from someone who’s got a lot to spare.  Oh how I’d love to see more $10, $5, $1 pledges!  That would mean to me that we’ve reached a place where everyone can see that their contribution – no matter how seemingly small – is really valued, and that they are really valued, not matter how seemingly little they had to give. 

On the other hand, to be both honest and blunt, there are a number of us who could afford to pledge far more than we currently do.  Some no doubt think that we can’t really need them to give more – after all, things don’t seem to be going too badly here.  Well, the truth is – blunt and honest – that we do not have, and have not had for some time, the kind of financial support we need to survive, much less thrive and live both into and out of, our full potential.  It may not look like it – hopefully it doesn’t look too much like it – but if we were a fig tree, I’d be hoping that Jesus didn’t come by looking for figs.  The consultant who worked with us this summer said that he was surprised at our remarkably low percentage of congregational giving.  (And that’s from someone who works Unitarian Universalists, who have a national reputation for being among the least financially supportive of our congregations!)  Even in that context, he said he was surprised at how poorly we support ourselves.

But not for lack of trying.  The consultant also said it was clear to him that the people who have been running our pledge drives over the years have known what they were doing, and have run really good campaigns.  We’ve been doing the right things, yet for some reason our level of pledging has remained essentially static for quite some time, declining slightly, even, in the last couple of years.

I’ll name it:  there is no question that the first four or five years of our mutual ministry was … rocky.  There was fairly widespread dissatisfaction with my performance as Lead Minister, and, I would have to say, rightfully so.  Of course, there are lots of explanations, but really, no excuses.  The results of the 2015 Congregational Survey, which the Committee on the Ministry will be repeating this year, were a real wake-up call and a catalyst change, several changes, in the ways I do what I do.  In the ensuing years it seems that most folks say they’ve felt real and meaningful improvement.  Yet, while that dissatisfaction could no doubt explain some of the financial … reticence … of some members, the basic trend we’re wrestling with was here before I came, and has continued despite the improvements.

Some say that we are trying to be too big of a congregation, that our ambitions outstrip our willingness to support them.  We may want to be a larger, so-called “program-size” church, we may try to act like one, yet, these folks say, we demonstrate year after year that we’re really only interested in being a smaller, pastoral-size church, because we show ourselves year after year that that’s all we’re able (or willing) to afford.  The answer to our financial stuck-ness, then, is to stop trying to be what we’re not, find a more natural equilibrium, shift our ambitions to meet our reality, and to “live within our means.”

And we could certainly do this.  There can be great wisdom in vigorously pruning a plant that has grown too large.  Sometimes the cutting back is so severe that it can look to the untrained eye that you’ve killed the thing; yet in the next spring that plant could come back stronger than ever.  So … we could cut back here.  To do so you would have to cut back on staff; there is simply nothing else to cut in our budget that would have any substantive impact.  So you could ask me or Leia to take a 50% pay cut.  You could decide to eliminate one or more of the part-time positions we have here, like the Office Manager, the Assistant Minister, or the Director of Music, asking volunteers to take on these roles.  But make no mistake, cutting staff in one way or another is the only way to “live within our means” through cutting expenses. 

Oh, and since we're currently severely understaffed for the size we are, if you were to cut staff we’d also have to decide which hundred or so members we’d want to ask to leave.  With less staff, in order to “live within our means,” we would have to reduce the number of people who can call this their spiritual home, because we just couldn't serve them all.

There is another option, though.  The only other option as I see it, and to my mind the only really viable one.  Rather than cutting back, we could invest more.  But how we do we that in light of what I’ve been saying about how we don’t have enough as it is?  We do it with faith. With courage.

Farmers, and others, know that sometimes, when you don’t have enough, you need to invest what you don’t have in order to reap the increased harvest that you believe is possible.  Sometimes you sell off some of what you have so that you can invest it in what you need.  We did that when we sold U-House to pay for rennovations on Summit House and the creation of our beautiful Lower Hall.  But sometimes you take out a loan to pay for new seed, or new equipment, or something you don’t have yet, can’t currently afford on your own, yet know in your bones will make all the difference in the world to your future success.  It’s scary, for sure, and is rarely – if ever – a sure thing.  It is always possible to dig yourself even deeper into a hole than you were before, that’s true.  So it’s a risk.  A gamble.  Yet sometimes it is the only thing to do, and you’ll do it if you’re truly committed to a vision, and you have the courage of your conviction.

Last year the Board was courageous in asking the congregation to do just that, to take a little risk, to borrow now so that we can reap a greater harvest tomorrow, to, paraphrasing Dr. King, “take the first step even though we can’t see the whole staircase.”  There was some vocal, and very heartfelt, opposition from some long-time members — who also, it must be said, have their understanding of the best interest of the church in mind.  Even so, the majority of the congregation agreed that the promise of the future is worth a short-term risk, and is worth investing in.

My friends, we are capable of being so much more – we are so much more – than what our long-echoing narratives of scarcity and fear have told us we can be.  A few years back, during a Board retreat, someone used these words to describe their vision for our congregation:  a powerhouse for racial justice.  (I’m hoping we’ll have tee shirts with that on it as part of our celebration of our 75^th anniversary!) 

Recently Sally Taylor, our unofficial church historian, shared with me a copy of a sermon that long-time member Virginia James had given to her.  It was preached here in 1983, the 40^th anniversary of the congregation’s founding, and was delivered by the first settled minister to serve this community, the Rev. Malcolm Sutherland.  In describing the earliest years of this congregation, Rev. Sutherland said, “We stood unequivocally for human justice … and here that meant racial equality.”  From our earliest days we have understood this to be our mission.  He said, further, that in those early days, when there was talk of trying to become a truly integrated congregation, some of the African American leaders encouraged us in our efforts, yet added, “We would much rather see you a strong white church fighting for equal rights for all than a small interracial church too weak to have any affect.”  I see in that a charge to become the powerhouse for racial justice that we are, today, reclaiming as our vision.

And it’s not just an idle vision, this desire to live into our full potential to which we were called in the days of our founding!  The future the Board last year asked you to invest in, and that I, this morning, am asking us to invest in … we’ve seen it!  We saw it, we tasted it this summer, following the awful events of August 12^th, which put the name of our city on the nation’s lips. Many know the story.  One day our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, fielded a call asking if the Rev. Jesse Jackson could preach here that coming Sunday.  Of course, Rev. Jackson could have spoken at any of the prominent African American congregations in the city, but he wanted to speak in a predominantly white congregation as a recognition of the truth that all of us — however we identify — are in this struggle together.  Rev. Jackson said that this congregation, our congregation, had been recommended to him as a predominantly white congregation that not only talked about racial justice, but was active in trying to achieve it. 

This congregation, which worked, in its infancy, for “indiscriminate seating on buses,” the hiring of African Americans onto the city’s police force, the movement of African American patients from hospital hallways into rooms, and the use of respectful titles in newspapers. 

This congregation, the only public place where a small, informal and impromptu interracial square dance could break out in celebration of the Supreme Court’s declaration that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, because ours was the only public building in Charlottesville in which integrated gatherings were permitted (which led to a cross being burned on our property). 

This congregation, which opened the first integrated preschool in the city; this congregation, which the local chapter of Black Lives Matter has said it knows it can count on.

This congregation, in which there are individuals who whose work in preparing for August 12^th can, without hyperbole, be said to have saved lives that day.

This congregation is where Rev. Jackson chose to speak. 

Those who were here experienced the buzzed, like the crackle of electricity, as our members stepped forward, hell, leapt forward to engage, to be useful, to be part of it all.  And we saw our sanctuary filled with to overflowing.  In fact, the Social Hall, which had been designated a place for that overflow, itself overflowed to seating we’d set up outside on the lawn!  And those who were there could feel it – this Unitarian Universalist congregation was living both into and out from its full potential.  It was an extraordinary day.  And Rev. Jackson underscored this vision of who we are when he came to us again and asked us to host a community leadership summit he was calling for when he returned to Charlottesville a month or so later to launch a bus tour across Virginia.

That is who we can be.  That is who we are, even if only nascently.  Yet we can be the “powerhouse for racial justice” so very many of us believe we can, and should, be only if — only if— if we believe in this vision and act on that belief.  We can only ensure that our “tree” has not just leaves, but flowers and fruit as well, and for years and years to come, if we each of us, and all of us, will have the courage to step up the level of our committed engagement and – to be blunt and honest again – to increase the amount of cash we’re

In a moment, the ushers will pass among you to collect this morning’s financial offering, and I hope you will be as generous as you can.  (This is also the time to make your gifts to support the African American Teaching Fellows.)  Following the ushers, others will have blank pledge cards.  I encourage everyone to take one and to reflect on whether you are able to increase what you have pledged for this year (and if you haven’t yet pledged for this year, to do so).  I also encourage you to consider your generous pledge for next year, for which we are already beginning to try to build a budget. 

And whether you can pledge $10 a year, or $10,000 a month, I encourage you to fill out the card today, this morning, right now, as you sit here, and then, as you leave, to put it into one of the boxes you’ll find at each of the doors, and in the Social Hall.  (On the back there is a chart that offers some guidance about what might be an appropriate level for your pledge, as a percentage of your income and as a reflection of your committed engagement.)  If you’re not able to decide on an amount right now, I’d still encourage you to fill out the card as much as you can, noting that you will make a pledge, and an estimate of the date by which you intend to do so.  (You can easily make a pledge at any time online at our website.)

It’s been said that, “the free church is not free.”  The Rev. Gordon McKeeman — Unitarian Universalist minister, and beloved member of this congregation in his retirement — would often remind us that we are responsible for supporting our community.  It is our responsibility — no one else’s — to ensure that it has the resources it needs to achieve its full potential, to ensure that there will be leaves, flowers, and fruit on its branches with which to nurture a world that is so hungry for true justice and all-embracing love.

Pax tecum,

RevWik