The Need for Change

There is a struggle going on right now for the heart and soul of the faith tradition I serve.  Actually, I believe that the "heart and soul" of the faith is safe and well, but the institutional expression of that faith, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Affiliated Congregations, is struggling with how to live in to our stated commitment of becoming a truly anti-racist, anti-oppression, multi-cultural community. 

The Unitarian, Universalist, and modern Unitarian Universalist traditions have a long (although decidedly mixed) history regarding issues of racism.  This history has been powerfully covered in the writings of the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, and the nearly exhaustive book, The Arc of the Universe is Long: Unitarian Universalism, Anti-Racism, and the Journey from Calgary.  Yet many see the so-called Black Empowerment Controversy of the late 1960s, as the catalyst for all the successes, failures, and struggles which form the foundation of where we are today.  Over and over again, this majority-white religious tradition has been challenged to look at just what it means to be a majority-white institution committed to the dismantling of the white supremacist culture in which we all "live, move, and have our being." 

In recent years there has been a strong call by people in historically, and still, marginalized groups within our movement for us -- as individuals, as congregations, and as an Association -- to really, fully, deeply come to terms with the ways in which we participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of the white supremacist culture that is the dominant culture in the United States and which informs and "infects" every institution.  Especially those of us who identify or are identified as white are being challenged to recognize that we, ourselves, though good-hearted and well-meaning, are mired in the very muck we claim we are committed to cleaning up.

This is not to say that the commitment we claim is false.  When I first moved to Charlottesville, Virginia -- where I have been serving the UU congregation for the past 8 years -- I met with an African American pastor with whom my predecessors had established a relationship.  I'm paraphrasing him a bit here, but he said to me, "We know about you Unitarian Universalists.  We know how you've shown up over the years to support the African American community.  We know how you answered Dr. King's call to march in Selma.  We know about your commitment to racial justice."  And when the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr. came to Charlottesville to speak following the events of the summer of 2017, it was not by coincidence that he choose to speak from the pulpit of the Unitarian Universalist congregation.  Many UUs have spent a good deal of their lives, and a lot of their heart and soul, working for the cause of racial justice.  That's a fact that simply cannot be denied.

Yet that fact, that commitment, is not what's being challenged today.  What's at issue is not whether we UUs are committed to racial justice, but rather what that commitment calls on us to do -- again, especially those of us who identify or are identified as white.  In the years since the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and '60s the analysis of the many, and often insidious, ways racism works has evolved. 

One example is the growing insistence on using the phrase "white supremacy" where in the past one might have said, "white privilege" or, more simply, "racism."  For some whites the term is thought to be too provocative, too inflammatory, especially when it's being applied to us.  We might be willing recognize that there's a sense in which we are "racist," because of the inherent "racial bias" with which we've been inculcated from our earliest days, and we might even be comfortable acknowledging that we benefit from "white privilege," yet we draw the line at using the phrase "white supremacy," because we think that it should be reserved for those who march with tiki torches, while waving Confederate and Nazi flags.

Yet anti-racist scholars and activists note that the term "racism" is rather vague because it doesn't explicitly say anything about the power dynamics involved.  The bizarre notion of "reverse racism" can conceivably exist comfortably within the term "racism."  "White supremacy," however, clearly indicates that the issue is not just racial prejudice, but specifically all that follows on the idea that white history, culture, assumptions, norms, practices, perspectives, etc., are superior to those of people of color or, to put it another way, are "supreme."  So, while not every white person is a white supremacist, we all participate in, and benefit from, the culture of white supremacy.

What is being questioned today is whether or not we white UUs will evolve with this evolving understanding of the dynamics of white supremacy culture -- an understanding that comes directly out of the lived experience of people of color and those of intersecting oppression.  Another way of asking this is, will we who identify as white actually listen to and believe what we're told by our siblings of color about how we (even if unintentionally and unwittingly) participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of the oppressions we are committed to ending?  Will we believe what we're told about what's needed to actually dismantle the culture of white supremacy, even if what we're told is different from, and maybe even contradicts, what we've always been told and what our own assumptions and "reason" tells us?

This is the challenge with which we are struggling today:  will those of us who identify as white within this predominantly and historically white tradition be willing to see ourselves and our institutions through the eyes of people of color, and will we be willing to change because of what we then see?  This is the direction a great many UUs desire to see the Association move, discomforting and disorienting though it will necessarily be.  We believe our faith calls us to nothing less than such a transformation. 

There is not universal agreement, however.  This disagreement gained public attention in Spokane, Washington this past week where our Association was having its annual General Assembly.  A member of our clergy distributed copies of his self-published book in which he decried what he sees as the Association's fall into "safetyism," "political correctness," and "identitarianism." 

The Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance responded with "An Open Letter From White UU Ministers," which was signed by over 300 ordained Unitarian Universalist ministers.  It is even more important to read the responses from DRUUMM -- Diverse  Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries -- and POCI -- the People of Color and Indigenous Chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association -- as these provide the perspective of the people of color who were most directly harmed.

Although I was not in Spokane, I asked to have my name added to the "Open Letter" because even without reading the book I have heard other UUs from historically, and still, marginalized groups describing the pain they felt and the harm the book's content caused.  I believe their testimony, and need no more "proof" than that to know that I must place myself in solidarity with them.

I will read the book, though, because as a person who identifies as white I think it is incumbent upon me to know what other white folks are saying, what "case" they're making to push back against the call to be transformed in and through the work of transforming our society.  In the little I've read so far I'm saddened, though not surprised, to see arguments that I've heard in the congregation I've been serving from people there who think that the way we were going about the work of racial justice was wrong.  The struggle that's going on in the larger Association is going on in local congregations as well.

I do not believe that I know everything about the work of our mutual liberation.  I know for certain that much of what I think and see has been conditioned by the very culture I am committed to changing.  I recognize that the truly anti-racist, anti-oppression, multicultural Beloved Community I am committed to working for will be entirely different than the world I know, undoubtedly unimaginably so.  And I know that getting there will require, will demand, that I undertake the painful work of transforming myself.  I do not like this.  I would rather not.  Yet if I truly am committed to dismantling the white supremacy culture I know that I have no choice but to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Reflections on a Ministry

This is the letter I sent to the members (both formal and informal) of the congregation I serve regarding my decision to end our mutual ministry as of the end of this church year (June 30th).  If you're interested, you can read the formal announcement to the congregation, as well as the reflections I offered the Sunday after the congregation was informed.

To the people of TJMC, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Charlottesville:

Eight years ago you called me to serve this community as your Lead Minister.  I promised that I would do my best to accept the challenge you offered:  help you move into the next phase of your journey, help you to write the next chapter of your history, help you to grow into something new, help you to be more fully the Unitarian Universalist congregation that Charlottesville needs in these times.

As I have often been the first to admit, I have not always satisfied everyone’s expectations of what a Lead Minister should do and how it should be done.  I have dropped balls, and I have let people down.  During candidating week I told you that one of the ways I understands local UU congregations is as “laboratories” for discovering how our faith tradition should manifest in a particular time and place.  Some of the “experiments” I encouraged us to try were dead ends; I don’t deny this and never have.  Over the years, in response to feedback, I made changes, course corrections, and led us to try new things – some of which have excited and inspired many here; some which have taken our congregation to the cutting edge of our Association’s evolution. 

I have championed a radically shared leadership and ministry model aimed at addressing systemic issues of racism and misogyny by refusing to continue the clergy-centric structures and assumptions so common in faith communities.  Leia, Chris, and I have twice been invited to teach a session at Harvard Divinity School about our Senior Staff model, in which the Director of Faith Development, the Director of Administration and Finance, and the Lead Minister collaboratively and co-equally share the responsibilities and authority of “running the church.”  Our approach to shared ministry was also influential in the decision to create a tri-Presidency at the UUA during the interim between Peter Morales and Susan Frederick-Gray.

I have also unflinchingly demanded that we – myself as much as anyone – recognize in ourselves and our institution the ways we participate in and perpetuate the systems and structures of our white supremacist culture, however unintentionally and unconsciously … especially those of us who identify as white.  It is challenging for us good-hearted, well-meaning liberal white folks who have long been committed to racial justice, among whose number I count myself, to hear that even we are complicit in the continuation of the very oppression(s) we are trying to dismantle.  Yet as we learn to listen more fully and faithfully to the voices of people of color, this truth becomes unavoidable and our denial of it just provides more evidence.  The myriad of ways Christina has experienced racism during her time here, and the difficulty so many of us have had in believing her when she’s named it, brought up close and personal the need for us, as individuals and as an institution, to address white supremacy in here if we want to have any hope of making changes out there.

Not everyone has agreed with my methods or my understanding and vision of what a UU congregation needs to be.  Some have felt that I was going too far too fast, while others thought I was leading in the wrong direction altogether.  In the past two or three years this divide has grown increasingly visible and deep.  In 2016 we watched together as our country elected a misogynistic, xenophobic, regressively bigoted, and entirely unqualified man to be our nation’s President.  In the summer of 2017 our city became ground zero for a newly (re)empowered expression of the basest expressions of hate when first the KKK and then the “Unite the Right” rally gathered (from far and near) in our own downtown.  In February of 2018 our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, was the target of a racist attack in the form of an anonymous note delivered to her office, with the perpetrator most likely being a member of our community.

That February marked the 75^th anniversary of the founding of this congregation.  Throughout that history there have been many times when a division erupted between those who believed that our congregation was called to take the risky position of moving to the forefront of efforts for change, and those who were less enthusiastic about taking risks because of their deep desire and heartfelt commitment to the quality of this community and the need to respond first-and-foremost to the needs of those who called this place “home.”  (We could call these the “risk friendly” and “risk reluctant.”)  Neither is “right” nor “wrong” – both can create loving community and both can work for justice.  Yet they are different from one another, and it is extraordinarily difficult to be both at the same time.  It might even be impossible.  Each pulls the congregation in a different direction.  And while there is a good deal of overlap, ultimately a decision must be made.  Or, at least, a decision must be made if the congregation wants to be its most healthy, vibrant, and Alive.

Time and again this congregation has bumped up against this divide, and according to all of the history I’ve read and been told about by people who were there, the congregation’s decision has been not to decide.  “The wounds were never healed,” I have read, “the issues were never fully addressed.”  To paraphrase one of our long-time members, “we’re really good at sweeping things under the rug.”  This has made it possible for folks to come back together comfortably, to “heal,” while leaving the underlying issue of identity unresolved.

Some of the conflict that has grown among us in the past couple of years is unquestionably about differing opinions on my performance, my message, and my style, and there are people who disagree about the way our finances have been handled, and decisions the Board has made, and no doubt other things.  I don’t deny that, and have tried to acknowledge the validity of those disagreements whenever possible.  Dissent within a community is essential for its health and longevity.  Yet I believe that beneath and behind those things is the never resolved division between the “risk reluctant” and the “risk friendly,” between two competing visions of what a Unitarian Universalist congregation should be, and what a healthy congregation looks like.  The greatest predictor of the success in solving a problem is a clear understanding of what the problem is.  If one tries to solve the deep root of a problem by addressing only its surface layers, change can take place only at the top of the iceberg, not the estimated 87% that remains unseen.

Two years ago an organized effort began to bring an end to our mutual ministry by forcing me to resign or asking the congregation to terminate my call.  Their stated assumption was that my departure would fix what they see as wrong here.  There is no doubt that things would change with another ordained minister in my role.  Yet if my ministry is identified as the source of our current conflict, the underlying issue of who this congregation is and wants to be may once again go unresolved. No one, and no institution, can be all things to all people – at least not healthily.  So much energy gets spent trying to react to the needs of whoever is unhappy at any particular moment.  Yet there will always be someone unhappy if you try to please everyone, and this futile effort at achieving the impossible leaves little left with which to respond to the real needs of the community as a whole, and the demands of the wider world.

The decision to end my ministry with and among you is not one I’ve made lightly, nor is it one that I want to make.  I would like to continue to serve this congregation; I would like to continue exploring and expanding the ministries that have been nurturing and exciting to so many here.  We have done some really good things together, and have been moving in a direction that I deeply believe puts us more fully into alignment with the Call of our faith.  I know that many of you feel that way, too.  And there is so much still to do.  We continue to be beckoned forward on the journey toward becoming a truly anti-racist, anti-oppression, multicultural Beloved Community that will be a living, breathing alternative to the White Supremacist Culture which pervades every facet of our society.  I do not want to leave with so much undone, nor to leave all of you who are eager to embrace the discomfort of change.

Yet as much as I want to stay I nonetheless feel compelled to leave.  Over the past two years it has become undeniably clear that there are those who are willing to withhold or withdraw their resources to ensure that my continued ministry cannot succeed and that the congregation cannot continue down its current path.  I want to be very clear — I truly do not disparage most of those who oppose my continued ministry; I believe that many of them do have the best interest of the congregation in mind, albeit an entirely different understanding than mine of what that is.  These are honest disagreements, and as I have repeatedly said, honest disagreements are essential to a healthy community.

Yet I must also say that there are some who have demonstrated that they are okay with the environment in our community becoming terribly unpleasant, extremely unhealthy, and, as many have said, toxic.  These few folks are willing to see the congregation hurt in their effort to see me gone, so strongly do they believe that I am the problem.  I cannot in good conscience allow this group to damage the congregation any further in the name of their opposition to me, nor can I continue to put my own physical, emotional, and spiritual health at risk or that of my family. 

I honestly don’t know how much my leaving will “fix,” yet I feel certain that nothing will be fixed as long as I remain.  I have said since before I arrived here eight years ago that this is an extremely strong, beautiful, and committed congregation.  I still say this today.  Unitarian Universalism is truly needed here in Charlottesville and this congregation can be a beacon, a true powerhouse for racial justice, and an amplifier for the life-save message of our faith.  I pray that with the issue of my ministry resolved you will be able to focus on the fundamental question of what kind of Unitarian Universalist congregation you truly wish to be, and that this time you stick with that discomforting question until you have finally found its answer.

It has been an honor to serve as Lead Minister in the midst of this community of ministers.  The staff I have worked with have been incomparable, rightly respected throughout our Association.  The lay leaders have been inspirational.  And this congregation has been like no other I have served.

I bow deeply in gratitude,

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Let's Not Keep From Singing

These are the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve on Sunday, May 19, 2019.  They had just a few days earlier received the news of my decision to bring our eight-year mutual ministry to an end, as well as the decision of our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, to resign.  This was my first opportunity to talk with them after they received the news.

In case anyone's interested, I sang, instead of read, the two verses of the hymn at the end of these Reflections.

What can I say?

Many of you received an email on Friday from Adam Slate, the President of the Board.  For those of you who are new here, or may not have gotten it for some reason, the email was an announcement of my decision to step down as Lead Minister effective at the end of this church year (June 30^th).  It also shared the news that our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, has also made the decision to resign.

For some I know this is a shock; some have no doubt been anticipating it.  Since the email went out I’ve heard from a lot of folks who call this their spiritual home.  They’ve shared with me expressions of their sorrow, their confusion, their anger; their feelings of loss and grief; their fears for the congregation’s future.  I know all of those emotions, because I’m feeling them too.

And, though no one has said this to me yet, I am certain that there are people who are feeling something of a sense of relief, hoping that the painful divisiveness of, especially, the past couple of years may soon come to an end.  If I didn’t admit that I understand this feeling too, I wouldn’t be telling you the truth — it’s been a hard few years.  And while I do not share these feelings, I have no doubt that there are some people who received this news gladly, happy that the goal they have been working for has finally been achieved.

All of this is to say that there are undoubtedly a wide array of emotions in our community, our church family right now.  In this sanctuary right now.  There are undoubtedly a wide array of emotions within any one of us, individually!  Emotions are so rarely clean and simple; most often they are convoluted and more than a little tangled.  Complicated, to say the least.

In the days and weeks ahead, and in the months and maybe even years after I’ve left, it will be important to remember that everyone has a right to their own feelings about this.  Not only do we not have to think alike — as the well-known maxim goes — to love alike, we don’t have to feel the same way as one another either.  Yet if we stay in covenant with one another — not something we’ve always been able to do, of course — then the words of the late 18^th and early 19^th century Universalist preacher and theologian Hosea Ballou will hold true:

If we agree in love, no disagreement will do us any harm;

Yet if we do not, no other agreement will do us any good.

"If we agree in love, no disagreement will do us any harm; yet if we do not, no other agreement will do us any good."

Christina and I are writing letters in which we’ll share our stories about what led us to the decisions we have made.  Those should be going out early- to mid-next week, and I am sure that after you have read them both Chris and I will be open to talking with you.  We always have been.  It is, after all, part of our covenant with each other.

There will be opportunities for you to talk with one another, too, beginning after this service when there’ll be gatherings in several locations —  The Parlor, Lower Hall 2, and right here in the sanctuary.  Choose the space that works best for you.  These meetings were designed in a particular way to help facilitate the immediate sharing of feelings, the first asking of questions, and the initial expressing of hopes for the future.  There will be other gatherings, designed in different ways, aimed at serving different needs, in the days and weeks ahead. 

I want to say another word, to be clear about today’s sessions — they are designed to gather questions, not provide the answers.  The Board will take these questions and incorporate them into the FAQ they’re developing that will go out mid-week as part of the materials for the upcoming Congregational Meeting on June 2^nd.  At that meeting the congregation will be asked to support the Separation Agreement the Board and I have negotiated (with the help of staff from the Southern Region of the UUA, and other consulting religious professionals).  Throughout these negotiations we kept asking, “How do we stay in covenant with one another?” and, “What does Justice look like in this situation?”  It took a while, to be honest, yet we finally came to a place we all could agree was fair and in keeping with our values.  I hope you’ll come to that meeting on Sunday, June 2^nd (following the service), and with those two questions in your heart and mind I hope you will vote to ratify this Agreement.

When people have asked me what I planned to say today, or even why I thought I should talk at all this morning, I’ve repeatedly said that I believe times like these need a sermon — times of change, times of a sudden shift in our lives, times of loss.  Even when the loss is anticipated, even welcomed, it still can be so very hard when it comes.  When someone we’ve known and loved is in hospice, for instance, or has been struggling with an illness for a long, long time … we know that our parent’s, partner’s, sibling’s, friend’s, child’s death is coming, maybe even coming soon, yet when it does it is still so very often a shock.  Their death was expected … but not expected that day, or in that moment.

The suddenness of most (actually, maybe all) major life changes catches us off guard.  A pregnancy lasts roughly 9 months, yet after the delivery first-time parents often find themselves feeling as though the whole world just changed in an instant, that moment they first saw or held their child.  Even women who have labored mightily for hours to bring their baby into the world have told me that there’s still a moment after all that when they suddenly feel the reality of now being a parent, as if a switch was flipped.  And they tell me that even with all that preparation they’re still shocked and knocked off their feet a bit by it.

Anyone who’s ever changed a tire knows the experience of pulling, straining with all of your might, trying to loosen a lug nut that seems to have been welded in place.  You know the thing’s going to move at some point, but … until … it … does …  Andthensuddenlyitdoes!  Wham!  I’ve smacked my knuckles more than once when that nut finally let go.

Sudden change can hurt.  It can hit us upside the head, kick us in the gut, knock the wind out of us, or make us weak in the knees.  Sometimes it’s all of the above.  Even when it’s a change we’ve been looking forward to, its sudden arrival can leave us feeling disoriented.  Because change — even welcome change — is hard.  And hard change — change we didn’t expect or want — is even harder.

The change we’re in the midst of here is even more complex to navigate because there are so many moving parts to it — so many people involved, so many different understandings of just what brought us here, so many different responses to it.  Some people see things this way, others see those same things that way, and others aren’t looking at those things at all but are looking at different things altogether. 

And there are so many tempting places to place the blame.  “We wouldn’t be in this situation if only you hadn’t …” or, “… if only you had ...”  It’s human of us to want to find a cause, to identify a reason, to, in short, seek a place to place the blame for the change we wish we weren’t in, and all the cacophony and chaos, all the pain that comes with it.  A week or so ago I heard about a tee shirt that says, “I’m not saying that you’re responsible.  I’m saying that I’m blaming you.”  Right?  I’m seeing more than a few heads nodding.  Of course we get it; it’s so human of us.

It doesn’t do us any good, though.  There’s hardly ever — and I think I’ll go so far as to say that there isn’t ever — one person who is entirely at fault, or even a group of people who are entirely in the wrong.  It’d be nice if life were that clear cut, but it’s not.  It really isn’t.  This is not to say that none of us should be accountable for our actions — people do make mistakes, and people do consciously make decisions and take actions that are … problematic … and cause harm.  I’m not saying that we should always accept every kind of behavior in the name of “getting along.”  I am saying that blaming people is not helpful.  In fact, it can make it harder to hold them accountable. 

Blame is easier, of course.  We get to distance ourselves, create a comfortable buffer of righteousness around ourselves.  Lovingly holding someone accountable, “lovingly calling them back into community” (when that’s possible), is harder and infinitely more uncomfortable because we have to stay engaged, have to bring our own selves right there into the midst, the mess of it, have to acknowledge that there are no angels and no devils.  Not even us.

In the days and weeks, months and years ahead I encourage you to stay engaged, to stay connected.  Don’t write anybody off.  Don’t give up or give in.  This won’t be easy, but living authentically in covenanted community never is. 

There’s one other thing I’d recommend — don’t let this become everything.  This morning had been scheduled as far back as the beginning of the church year to be our annual Music Sunday.  When it became clear that Adam’s email was going out this past Friday there was discussion about whether we needed to postpone Music Sunday to some future Sunday because people would very likely want to and need to focus on … this.  In those discussions the words of a hymn kept echoing in my head.  (It’s #108, “My Life Flows On In Endless Song,” otherwise known as “How Can I Keep From Singing?”)

My life flows on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation.

I hear the real though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing.

It sounds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing?

What through the tempest ‘round me roars,

I know the truth, it liveth.

What through the darkness ‘round me close,

Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love prevails in heav’n and earth,

how can I keep from singing?

As a congregation, as a community, a people … as individuals … we have just received news that even if we kind of expected it, even if we wanted it, signals a sudden shift from things as they’ve been to … something else.  And some of us are sad, or confused, or angry; feeling the pain of loss and grief; fearing for the congregation’s future.  (Or all of the above.)  These feelings are real, and we should pay attention to them.  Yet we should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by them.  Through all this tumult and this strife, though we may feel a tempest ‘round us roaring, let’s not keep from singing.  For, my friends, love does prevail “on heav’n and earth.”  The Love on which, in which, this congregation is grounded is stronger than any disagreement, any discomfort, any struggle, any loss.  That Love calls on us — each of us individually and all of us collectively — to be our best selves, to bravely follow where it leads, and … whatever else we do or don’t do … to keep on singing.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

On Falling and Rising

Her marriage had imploded, leaving her a divorced, single mother, dependent on welfare to get her from day-to-day.  She was severely depressed, and things felt so bad to her that she considered suicide.  To make matters worse, perhaps, she also was an aspiring author.  She said ever since she had learned what a writer was, she wanted to be one.  So she would take her baby and a number of yellow legal pads down to a local coffee shop, where the baby would sleep in her carriage, and the woman would nurse one coffee, and write.

She finally did finish the novel she’d been working on, but then couldn’t find a publisher.  Some say she was rejected 9 times, others 12, but it is certain that the head of the publishing house that finally did pick the book up never actually read the manuscript himself.  He’d given it to his eight year old daughter, who proceeded to nag him for months, wanting to know what happened next. 

And, so, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published.

As far back as the 5^th century B.C.E., the Chinese Philosopher Confucius was teaching, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”  Nanakorobi Yaoki is a Japanese saying that translates as, “Fall seven times; rise eight times.”  (This is metaphoric, of course.  It’s not the physical act of “falling” and “rising” that we’re talking about here, but the “falling” and “rising” of our spirits, of our courage, of our resolve, of our living.)

There are so many stories about people who proved that on that eighth time rising miraculous things can happen.  (A quick search turned up hundreds of such stories, and I’ve got tell you – editing them down to the one’s I’m going to tell you was really, really hard.)  Here are a few:

• Harrison Ford was told by movie execs that he simply didn’t have what it takes to be a star

• Before I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball was widely regarded as a failed actress, nothing more than a B movie star.  Even her drama instructors didn’t feel she could make it, telling her to try another profession.

• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”   But he went on to start … a number of businesses that didn’t last too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure.

• After an aspiring actor’s first screen test, an MGM Testing Director noted, “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” He was talking about Fred Astaire.

• Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1800 works, yet had fewer than a dozen poems published in her lifetime.

• Madeleine L'Engle's, A Wrinkle in Time was rejected 26 times before it was picked up.

• Early in Elvis Presley’s career, the manager of the Grand Ole Opry fired him after just one performance, saying, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

• William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies. — often included on lists of best novels ever written — was rejected 21 times.

• Robert Pirsig’s highly influential, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was turned down 121.

• Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times.  In his early days, King has said, he would take all of the rejection notes he got and put them on a nail in the wall.  Eventually there were so many that the nail fell down.  So, he replaced it with a spike and kept on writing.

Nanakorobi Yaoki Whether they knew the words or not, all of these people fell a whole lot more than seven times, and all of them rose at least one more time than they fell.

Three more stories.  (I can’t resist):

• Ludwig van Beethoven’s teachers thought he was hopeless and would never succeed as either a violinist or a composer.

• Thomas Edison’s earliest teachers thought that he was “too stupid to learn anything,” and he was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. And you may have heard the famous story that when working to create the filament for his incandescent light, he made something like 1,000 attempts before finally getting it right.  When asked how he dealt with so much failure he said, “I never failed.  I successfully discovered 1,000 ways it wouldn’t work.”

• This last story is one of someone who is perhaps best known for his starring role in the seminal film Space Jam, or maybe because he’s often referred to as the greatest basketball player who ever lived, Michael Jordan has said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” 

Look at it from either side: “I never failed.  I successfully discovered 1,000 ways it wouldn’t work.” or “I have failed over and over again in my life.  And that is why I succeed.”  It essentially comes down to Nanakorobi Yaoki and the promise that if only we can rise more than we fall …

I would wager that most of us haven’t faced situations as dramatic as these, yet I’d also bet that we’ve all had times in our lives when we felt as if the cards were stacked against us, as though nothing would – or could – go right, as though we knew that other shoe was going to drop pretty soon (and that there was an infinite amount of shoes after that one).  No doubt most of us have been knocked down more than once, and I know that in my own life there’ve been times when I thought I just simply didn’t have it in me to get up again.  Any of you been there?

Now keep in mind: the reason the stories I’ve just shared are so inspiring is that we know the outcome.  We know what the people in them didn’t know at the time, because at the time most of those people probably felt just as badly as we do when we’ve been knocked down (or out).   They did not know that success was around the corner.  After Carrie was rejected so many times, Stephen King gave up, and threw the manuscript in the garbage.  It’s a good thing that his wife fished it out and encouraged him to try again, because he’s now published more than 90 books. At the time, though, he had no idea of what lay ahead of him.  At the time, all of that rejection, all of that “failure,” all of that falling down was as devastating for him as it can be for us.

Brené Brown, who has her own story of falling and rising, has put it quite simply, “The truth is that falling hurts. The dare is to keep being brave and feel your way back up.”  There it is.  When you don’t know how things could possibly turn out okay in the end, all we know is that falling down hurts.  Because it does.  It hurts a lot. 

So it’s no wonder that a whole lot of people simply stop daring, stop taking risks, stop … well … stop starting up again when all that we know has come to a grinding halt.  “The truth is that falling hurts. The dare is to keep being brave and feel your way back up.”

I recently read somewhere that that Japanese proverb has a second part.  Fall seven times.  Rise eight times.  Your life begins today.

That is why we are encouraged to rise that eighth time.  That is the reason we’re told to get up again even when getting up seems like the last thing we can possibly do, the last thing we can possibly want to do because the falling down has hurt so much and we really don’t want to get hurt any more.

The author, historian, and philosopher, Will Durant, collaborated with his equally impressive wife, Ariel Durant, in writing the 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization.  I’d imagine that after all that he’d know a thing or two about the human experience.  Here’s something he said:

“Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you are going to do right now, and do it. Today is your lucky day.”

It is worth our continuing to risk falling, to actually experience falling, and failing, over and over again, because, no matter how many times we’ve fallen, when we rise again our lives can begin again.  Living this way is worth the risks because the promise of a new start, the promise of a new path, the promise of a (re)new(ed) life is waiting for us.  This is true whether we’re talking about individuals or a community like this.  Taking the risk – the risk of falling, the risk of failing, the risk of hurting is worth it because of what we can find on the other side.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Living Dayenu

This is the text of the reflection I offered on Sunday, March 28, 2018 at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, VA.

The poet, peace activist, and Buddhist monk, the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, makes quite a bit of “smiling” as a spiritual practice.  “Breathing in, I relax body and mind,” one of his breath prayers goes, “Breathing out, I smile.”  “Smile, breathe, and go slowly,” is his advice on how to live.

A woman came up to him during a retreat to ask him how she was supposed to do all of this smiling when she had some real grief and pain she was going through.  He told her, essentially, that she was being like a television set that thought it was NBC29 just because that was the station playing at the moment.  She thought that she was grief and pain because that’s what was “playing” in her life at that time.  But a TV isn’t just one thing, isn’t just whatever channel happens to be on, even if that channel is on most of the time, making up the background of our lives.  All the other channels are always broadcasting, too.  Yes, there was a lot of grief and pain in this woman’s life, but it wasn’t the only thing, and he told her that she could choose to tune into the Smile Channel, if you will.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that when you find this Smile Channel the Grief-and-Pain Channel has gone off the air.  This isn’t the all-too blithe assertion we should just think “happy thoughts” when things are bad, and all the bad things will go away.  Whenever I hear someone say that I think, “Oh yeah.  I'm just supposed to pretend to be happy.; I'm just supposed to act like everything’s great.  But when I'm done, all my very real problems are still going to really be here, so what’s the point?”  What Tich Nhat Hanh’s television metaphor reminds me is that all too often I pretend, I act like everything’s going wrong, focusing only on my problems and my pain.  I forget that my very real joy is also very much really here.

What makes Tich Nhat Han’s “smiling” a spiritual practice, a spiritual discipline, is that it’s both really simple, and nowhere near as easy as it seems.  It takes work to “change the channel.”  Not like today.  When I was a kid, if you wanted to change the channel you had to actually get up out of your chair, walk across the room, bend down, and turn that clicky little dial.  Now you don’t even have to exert yourself to pick up the remote, you can just say into the air, “Alexa, please change the channel and put on Grey’s Anatomy.”  Changing channels used to be a bit of work; changing “spiritual channels” still is.

But why do it?  And why do it even in times like these?  Cypress asked some really good questions in her Opening Words:  “Is it appropriate to sing “Dayenu!” [she said] when it seems that so much is going wrong in the world?

Our Chalice Lighting, from the American Jewish World Service’s “Global Justice Haggadah” explicitly reminds us that sometimes is simply is not enough.

And a couple of weeks ago, and a month or so before that, we said together a litany which its author, Viola Abbit, titled, “The Promise That Binds.”  Repeatedly we lamented that, “the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love.”

Sometimes, apparently, and perhaps obviously, it is simply not enough to smile and say “Things as they are are enough.  Things as they are, the way the world is, the way my life is, is enough.”  Not at all.  Sometimes, as Dr. King said, we need to be “maladjusted” to the way things are.

And yet … (And there’s that “and yet” I love so much.)

And yet it can be so easy to get caught up in those things, to get lost in them, to forget that the world is not just ugly, and brutal, and mean (in both the sense of nasty and base).  Said another way, it's so easy to think that the world is FOX News, forgetting that Rachel Maddow and John Oliver are both broadcasting, too. 

The  problem here is that when we get so caught up in what is wrong with the world, when we forget that it’s also beautiful and good, we can easily drown in the pain, and become cynical, overwhelmed, and, eventually, numb to it all.  When we see only what is not “enough,” pay attention only to what isn’t okay, we too easy to crawl into a false comfort, pretending that everything is okay.

If we want to really be alive to the full experience of Life, then we need we need to be able to see both Life’s pain and its promise, its beauty as well as its brutality, its grotesqueries and its glory, both.

Which brings us back to smiling, and brings us back to dayenu.  The spiritual practice of living dayenu is not at all about pretending that everything’s okay even when it’s not.  It is about realizing, recognizing, remembering that even when everything’s not okay, something is.  Recognizing that “something,” realizing that there is always something to smile about, remembering that some things are “enough,” grounds us when the maelstroms of malevolence which makes up so much of life threatens to render us mute and impotent.  Living dayenu can give us strength when otherwise our strength might be sapped; can give us hope “when hope is hard to find;” can give us a reason, and a means, to “keep on singing.”

Many of us today have no doubt come here in some sort of pain, worried by some kind of problem that seems pervade every corner of our lives.  Our congregation is right now in the midst of the kind of turmoil it hasn’t seen in a long time, a disorienting dis-ease that some are calling a crisis.  And our country?  Well, I don’t think I need to say too much about that.

But there is so much that is good, and beautiful, and inspiring in the United States – just look at the youth who are taking to the streets and the hall of power.  And there is so much that is well worth celebrating in this congregation – just think about all the loving ways we have reached out and touched one another’s lives, been touched ourselvesand the community around us.  And no matter how it might look to you in this moment, you have had, there are now, and there always will be things in your life to bring a real smile to your face.

I want to end these reflections with a way of practicing dayenu, a tool, if you will, to assist in the changing of our channel when our channel needs to change.  I’m going to teach those of us who don’t already know it the song “Dayenu.”  Not all 15 verses, but even if the chorus is all you know … well … dayenu.  It will be enough.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Why?

Sometimes . . . okay, often . . . someone will come up to me, knowing that I'm an ordained minister, and ask me "Why?"

Why did this bad thing happen?

Why didn't this good thing happen?

Why is life the way it is?  (Why is MY life the way it is?)

Usually I try to refrain from giving any kind of answer.  It's my experience that most people, when asking the question, are not really looking for some kind of answer.  The question is a way of giving voice to grief, or anger, or confusion.  So instead of providing some kind of answer that's not really wanted anyway, I try to find out what other thing is embedded in those words that seem like a question.

But every once in a while I do answer.  And when I do, I usually go to the place that Rabbi Harold Kushner went in his classic book When Bad Things Happen To Good People.  This is my interpretation, of course, but what I took away from that book is that the reason bad things happen to good people is . . . well . . . because.

There's a story told about a man who was living a really miserable life.  It had been miserable for some time and seemed like it was only going to get more miserable as time went on.  He sought help from psychiatrists and psychologists.  He talked to ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams.  He sought out philosophers and poets.  And then one day, after seeking for years the answer to why his life was so miserable and what he could do about it, the man found himself in a remote wilderness area where there was rumored to be an incredibly wise guru.  He found this guru and said to her:

"My life has been filled with disappointments for as long as I can remember.  One thing after another seemed to go wrong or didn't live up to my expectations.  There has been pain and suffering -- both physical and mental. Things I wanted I wouldn't get; things I had I'd lose.  Why, oh why, is my life like this?"

The guru paused for a moment.  She looked on the man with eyes filled with compassion.  And then she said, simply, "because everyone's life is like that."

That's what I remember Rabbi Kushner as saying -- bad things happen to good people because bad things happen sometimes.  There is no "why" to it.

At the same time as I was reading Harold Kushner's book I was also reading James Gleick's book Chaos:  making of a new science.  I remember thinking that there was a connection to be made between the two.  Chaos theory holds that what at first might appear to be chaotic randomness in fact contains at a deep level a tremendous amount of order and that, at the same time, what might seem orderly and structured has within it incredible levels of chaos.

I thought of all of this because, this evening, someone asked of me the question "why?"  And also because I came across this video.  I think that there's a connection to be made:






In Gassho,

RevWik