Responses to Questions III

This past Sunday, July 22nd, I facilitated the "Questions & Responses" service we have annually in the congregation I serve.  Congregants write questions on index cards, which are then collected, and to which I offer my in-the-moment responses.  Over the next several weeks I plan to devote this page to attempts to offer written responses.  If you'd like to see the entire list of questions asked, they're the bulk of my post-Sunday post on July 23rd.

For the most part I expect my responses to the questions I was able to play with on Sunday to be very similar to what I said them.  (Although I reserve the right to have changed my mind in the meantime!)  There are also several questions that were asked more than once (in slightly different ways).  I'll group them together here.  (And I'd remind readers that these are only my responses, and my responses today, at that.)

You love superheroes.  What is a superhero with a particularly spiritual lesson?

I've just started reading what promises to be a fascinating book, The Caped Crusade:  Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, by Glenn Weldon.  (Simon & Schuster, 2017).  I heard about the book when an article appeared on my newsfeed titled, "Meet the Professor Who's Going to Teach a College Course All About Batman."  In that interview, the professor, Steven Levya of the University of Baltimore, talked about how Weldon's book had really inspired him to develop the course.  Part of Weldon's premise is that, besides being a human with no extraordinary super power, the Batman is also different from his heroic colleagues in at least one other way -- over the years he has changed.

Superman, for instance, over his more than 70 year run has always been basically Superman, "the Big Blue Schoolboy."  His personality, his way of being in the world has been pretty constant.  So too, let;s say, Spider Man, who has been almost invariably angst-ridden.  Batman, on the other hand, has been depicted in numerous ways, from the campy portrayal of Adam West in the TV show of the 1960s, to the quasi-fascist of Frank Miller's seminal (and truly awesome) The Dark Night Returns.  He has been unshakably self-assured, and neurotic as all get out.  And to a large extent, the various version of the Caped Crusader can be seen as reflecting the zeitgeist of the times.

Yet the many moods of the Batman can also be viewed as a mirror we can hold up to ourselves, for we're also filled with more than one version of ourselves.  As Whitman famously wrote, "Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large, I contain multitudes."  So the Batman shows us a hero with no special powers (except, perhaps, his fortune), who is able to overcome virtually any obstacle placed in this path, even while expressing a panoply of possible selves, a person who, like us, "contains multitudes."



How do we prepare for August 12th?

This is a hard one, because each of us had our own experiences of last August 12th which we'll be bringing to this August 12th.  And none of us know exactly what is going to happen -- there are no planned events like the "Unite the Right" rally, yet it is virtually certain that there will be some kind of hate-fueled presence.  It is likely that there'll be more than one "spontaneous" action popping up without (at least much) warning.  So ... how do we prepare when we're not really sure what we're preparing for?

I'd say that one think we can do is double down on whatever it is that connects us to "that inner place of peace" and that outer experience of connection to others and to all that is.  Call it Love, call it Community, call it The Interconnected Web of All Existence -- call it God, if you wish -- yet what we call it is not as important as being intentional about feeding ourselves with it.  For love to conquer hate we must do all that we can to be in touch ourselves with that Love ("known by many names yet by no name fully known").

It's also really important to remember that we are always stronger together than we are alone.  There a whole lot of people throughout Charlottesville who are also trying to figure out how best to prepare for this date -- both the way it will bring up memories of the past, and whatever may happen this year.  The Charlottesville Clergy Collective is offering a number of events leading up to, and on, August 12th.  (We have them listed on our website.)  There's also the #resilientcville website, the city's effort to inform people of the constructive things being planned.  Congregate Charlottesville, a group that began as a subset of the Clergy Collective membership and which favors nonviolent direct action, has also been making plans for the 12th of August.  Each of these, all of these resources offer ways to connect with, and be with, others both as that anniversary approaches, and on the day(s) itself.

Our congregation is going to be proactively organized than we knew to be last year.  We will be asking people who plan to participate in one or more of the events to let our leadership know so that we can spread the word -- "There'll be a group of UUs meeting at such-and-such a time, in such-and-such a place.  Contact so-and-so for more information."  This way folks can know that they do not participate alone, even in the midst of a crowd.

One last thought -- it may take a long time, it may not seem as though it is true, but love is always stronger than hate.  Always.


Pax tecum,

RevWik

Lessons From (and for ) the Circus of Life

This is the text of the reflection I offered on Sunday, March 19th, 2017, at the congregation I serve, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist.  This is the version from the 11:15 service, which was slightly edited from the one given at 9:15.

As I said earlier, this month we’re looking at “risk,” which is something we have to deal with every day, whether we’re conscious of it or not.  There are the big risks of course – telling someone you love them, or that you no longer do.  Leaving the security of the job you have, to find a job that you’ll love.  Going deep with someone, revealing who you really are.  Committing to changing who you are because it’s not who you want to be.  Giving up an advantage because you know it isn’t right. Showing up in solidarity with people who are marginalized, oppressed, vulnerable, even though that might put you at risk for the same. 

Yet even if we aren’t doing any of these kinds of things, we’re dealing with risk all the time.  If I walk down a set of stairs there’s the risk I could fall.  If I drive down the street there’s the risk of being in an accident.  If I decide to eat some pizza that was left out overnight, or drink some milk that’s a little past its “Use By” date …

Those who are newer to TJMC may not know that before I entered the ordained ministry I was a performer – a juggler, magician, clown, escape artist, fire eater …  None of these is without a certain amount of risk; some of them are flat-out Risky with a capital “R.”  And over the years – I started performing when I was about 11 – I’ve learned a lot more than just the skills I was practicing.  I have come to see that the circus arts offer metaphors for ways we can live our lives more richly and fully.  I believe that the things you can learn as a juggler-magician-clown-escape artist-fire eater are lessons that can apply to our lives.

How often have you felt as though you’re balancing on a tightrope, where a wrong step this way or a wrong step that way could spell disaster? 

You might think that the logical thing to do, the safe thing to do, would be look down at your feet to make sure that you put each one in just the right place … but you’d be wrong.  In fact, doing that actually makes it virtually impossible to maintain your balance.  Instead, the tightrope walker lifts their gaze and focuses on the end of the rope.  And perhaps counter intuitively, it’s that forward gaze that makes all the difference.

Now … I’m not a tightrope walker, but I am a juggler, and Cypress just read a great piece about some of the lessons you can learn from that art.  I’ll add one more.   A lot of us feel at times that we’ve got “too many balls in the air.”  I can’t tell you how many check-ins, in how many committee meetings, at least one person has said something like this, or in how many personal conversations it comes up.  But one of the things you learn when you’re juggling is that although it seems like there’s too much going on, the truth is that there’s always only one thing happening at a time.  You’re catching a ball, or you’re throwing a ball.  Catching a ball or throwing a ball.  That’s it, and that’s true if you’re juggling three balls, or the world record of 11.  

But I’ve been building up to something here.  Of all of the odd skills I’ve picked up in my pursuit of sacred play, nothing is more risky than fire eating.  First … well … there’s the fire.  And then there’s the beard.  And then there’s the fire again.

My teacher was a woman named Margie Brown – Rev. Margie Brown, actually, because she was an ordained United Methodist minister.  She learned to eat fire from a man named Ken Feit – Father Ken Feit, to be precise, because he was a Catholic priest.  Now … you might not think that fire eating is the kind of thing that clergy folk would do, but according to Maggie, Ken once made the insightful observation that every religious tradition we know anything about has used fire as a symbol of the sacred.  And every religious tradition we know anything about has some form of communal experience of eating.  So, Ken said, it’s only natural to bring the two together in religious fire eating.  [He also said that the way to learn to eat fire is to sit for an hour in a darkened room, staring into the flame of a candle.  Then ... eat a habanero pepper, and you’re all set.]

Margie was a nationally known storyteller.  But when a conference or other big event wanted to hire her for that, she had condition – they had to give her a place where she could teach fire eating.  I can’t imagine how many people she taught over the years and, through her teaching and her presence, influenced.  But talking about fire eating is like talking about a recipe.  It’s good as far as it goes, but the thing itself is better.  So …

Why was Margie so committed to teaching fire eating?  Why do I love to do it so much?  Well … for one thing … you gotta admit that it’s pretty cool.  But there’s a lesson in it, too.  A pretty important one.

At the end of her workshops Margie would tell her students that she didn’t really care if they ever ate fire again.  What she wanted us to take away from the experience was the memory, the experience of having come face-to-face with something scary, something dangerous, and that rather than running from it we moved in closer.  We didn’t push it away, we pulled it towards us.  There was a risk in doing so, of course, but when we did – with full conviction and commitment – we saw that scary, dangerous thing transformed into something beautiful and awe inspiring.

I haven’t always had the courage to do it, to take that risk.  But I’ve never forgotten the lesson, nor the ones I’ve learned from magicians, jugglers, tightrope walkers, elephant wranglers, ring masters, escape artists, clowns, and fire eaters.


Pax tecum,

RevWik