Who Is My Neighbor?

This is the text of the sermon I delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, August 4th 2013. 
To hear the sermon as delivered, click here.

 It was November 14, 1999.  A Sunday.  NBC aired a Hallmark made-for-TV movie called, “Mary, Mother of Jesus.”  It starred, in the title role, the actress who would go on to play Shmi Skywalker, Anakin’s mother, in the first two episodes of the Star Wars saga, and as her son Jesus, the man who would one day be Batman in the Chris Nolan trilogy.  I remember all of these details so clearly because . . . okay . . .  because I googled it a couple of days ago.  It was, actually, an incredibly forgettable film.
 

Except for one thing.  I think it was before the first commercial break, Mary was putting her young son to bed.  Like so many children before and since, the boy asked his mother for a story.  And so she began, “A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was set upon by robbers.  They beat him and robbed him, stripped him, and left him for dead by the side of the road.”  This movie proposed the very cool idea that at least some of Jesus’ teachings came not from his heavenly father but from his very earthly mother.  I’ve never forgotten that.  It seems so . . . right.

The New Testament version of this story begins with a person identified as “an expert in the law” coming to “test” Jesus.  He asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  And Jesus, ever a model for Unitarian Universalist ministers (whether we realize it or not), turned the question back on the questioner – “What does it say in the law?” he asks.  “How do you read it?”  And the person who’d wanted to test Jesus now finds himself on the hot seat and responds, “’Love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  We’re told that Jesus thought that that was a pretty good answer.

And it is.  Jesus himself, in another recorded encounter, says that the greatest of all the commandments is to love God and that there is another, “like unto it,” which is to love our neighbor.  On these, he says, “hang all the law and the teachings of the prophets.”  The great rabbi Hillel the Elder, who was actually still alive when Jesus was a young boy, was once challenged to sum up all of the teachings of the Torah while standing on one leg.  The rabbi raised one foot off the ground and said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.  Everything else is commentary.”

So this expert in the law had given a good answer when he’d said that to inherit eternal life all he had to do was love God and love his neighbor.  That answer was perfectly satisfactory for the letter of his question, but not its spirit.  It was an answer directed to the head, and not to the heart.  And so he then asked a new and different question.

And it’s interesting that the story in Luke says that the law expert did so “to justify” himself.  In other words, he knew that his first answer didn’t go deep enough, didn’t get to the heart of the matter – or, to put it another way, he knew that he, himself, didn’t go deep enough to get to the heart of the matter – and, so, he asked, “Well . . . who is my neighbor?”

Good question, right?  I mean, I got it.  I’m supposed to love my neighbor.  But surely that doesn’t mean the folks from the Westboro Baptist Church who protest at funerals with those signs that say, “God hates fags.”  Surely not them, right?  Not the folks who are actually into mountaintop removal, who think that it’s a good idea, right?  Not the darlings of right wing media who spew such hateful and hate-filled lies, right?  Not them.  Oh, you probably have your own group – or person –  you’d like to see stay outside the circle.  Right?

But Jesus was ever Jesus, and rather than give the guy a straight answer – you know, like the bumper sticker “God bless everyone – no exceptions!” – instead of being as clear as that Jesus answers with this story.  Mike read it earlier, so let’s “unpack” it a bit:

A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He was going from the big city – the hub where everything was happening – to the suburbs.  In the last sermon he ever got to preach, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about how he and his wife had once driven on that road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He remarked on what a dangerous, treacherous road it is.  He mentioned how steep it is.  He got his facts wrong but his idea was right – rather than dropping, as he said, from about twelve hundred feet above sea level at Jerusalem to twenty-two feet below sea level at Jericho, it’s actually quite worse than that, going from twenty-one hundred feet above to over eight hundred feet below in the span of about eighteen miles.  Talk about “going down” from Jerusalem to Jericho!

Dr. King also noted that it’s a “winding, meandering road . . . conducive to ambushing.”  It came to be known as “The Bloody Pass,” he said, because of how dangerous it was.  So it’s not surprising that the main character of Jesus’ parable was ambushed, robbed, and left for dead.

The story continues that a priest was traveling down the same path, saw the man, yet did nothing to help him, choosing, instead, to “pass by on the other side [of the road].”  Similarly, a Levite came down the path, saw the wounded man, and also went on without trying to help.

Now, in their defense, there were proscriptions against having anything to do with a dead body and, so, the priest may not have wanted to be defiled and made unclean, which would have prevented him from doing his job.  So, too, the Levite may have had religious qualms – the tribe of Levi had boasted such notables as Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, as well as Samuel, Ezekiel, Ezra and Malachi.  Both of these figures might have assumed that it was a corpse they were looking at, and getting too close, by going over to check it out, could have created real problems for them.

Even more, these guys must also have known the reputation of this road.  How were they to know that the guy lying in the ditch wasn’t faking it?  Waiting for some unsuspecting “good Samaritan” to come by so that he and his thug friends could jump up and rob them?  Or maybe the gang that had attacked this guy was still hanging around.  They might have had real concerns about their own safety that led them to want not to get involved.  I don’t know about down here in the friendly south, but I know that up north a lot of people choose now not to stop when they see a car in trouble on the side of the road.  Who knows what you might be getting yourself into?  And let’s remember, when Jesus was first telling this story there were no cell phones to call AAA.  And so the priest and the Levite just pass by.

But then there comes this Samaritan.  And he sees the guy in the ditch and he jumps off his donkey and runs over to see if he’s okay.  He was, as the story says, “moved with compassion,” and he binds up the guy’s wounds, pours wine and oil on them, and sets him on his own animal for the rest of the trip.  Upon arriving in Jericho he gets them both a room, and in the morning he pays the innkeeper to take care of the guy, promising to come back and pay whatever is owed for his care.

The Rev. Dr. King suggested that the priest and the Levite had seen the man on the side of the road, wounded, lying in a ditch, and had fearfully asked themselves, “If I go over to try to help, what might happen to me?”  The Samaritan, on the other hand, King said, saw the man and compassionately asked, “If I don’t go over to try to help, what might happen to him?”  Big difference.  And we’ll come back to this.

But first let me tell you something about this Samaritan.  For one thing, he was a Samaritan.  And that means that he was a hated outsider.  Jews hated Samaritans, and Samaritans hated Jews.  Their animosity was both mutual and about as bad as it could get.  To give you an example of how bad, shortly after the attacks of September 11^th I used this story in a sermon but changed “Samaritan” to “Al Qaeda jihadist.”  The Good Al Qaeda Jihadist.  And today?  Well, maybe I’d use Rev. Phelps from Westboro, or Glen Beck, or ask one of you to fill in the blank.

The point is, the Samaritan people were about as despised by the folks to whom Jesus was talking as any group of people have ever been despised by anyone.  And that actually should cause a problem for people who think that the moral of the story is to “go and do likewise;” that this story is encouraging us to be “good Samaritans.”

Let me take a step back for a minute and share a bit of Storytelling 101.  You want to make the main character of your story somebody that your audience will relate to; you want that man or woman to be somebody in whose place they’ll be able to see themselves.  This way, as your character has an experience or learns a lesson your audience will be able to share in it too.  It will be transferrable because your main character is someone people can identify with.

Now I’ve said that the Samaritans were as despised as despised could be.  In fact, some commentators have suggested that the reason the author of Luke has the expert in the law say that the real neighbor was “the one who showed mercy” was that he probably couldn’t even bring himself to say the name, “Samaritan.”  So the Samaritan really can’t be our main character, because there’d have been nobody in the audience who would have been able to relate to a Samaritan.  Much less consider one, “good.”

Likewise, the main character of the story can’t be the Levite or the priest because they leave the guy lying on the side of the road for goodness sakes!  Oh they may have had understandable reasons for not being helpful, but in the context of the story those reasons sure look like excuses.  So who’s going to want to identify with either of them?

And that leaves only the character I’d earlier described as the main character of Jesus’ parable, the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and was fallen upon by robbers.  In other words, the point of this parable isn’t that we should offer help, like the good Samaritan did.  Rather, Jesus seems to be saying to that expert in the law, “friend, if you have to ask who your neighbor is then you’re in a heap of trouble.  You’ve been knocked on the head, you’ve been beaten to within an inch of your life, your things have been absconded with, and you’ve been left for dead along the side of life’s highway.  And not only that, but none of your peeps are stopping to help you out.”

Not exactly the message we’ve been conditioned to hear, but I’d contend that it’s the only message it would have been possible for Jesus’ first century Jewish audience to hear.  And here’s the kicker.  This story also tells us that when help finally does arrive for us – and it seems to want to assure us that it will – it may very likely come from a very unlikely and perhaps even unwelcome source.  The thing that helps us and heals us may be the very thing that we most wanted to avoid.

Who is my neighbor, indeed?

I thought about this story in the days after the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.  Of all the things I read the one that resonated with me most powerfully was said by the Rev. Greg Brewer, the Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida.  He said, “I want to live in a world in which George Zimmerman offered Trayvon Martin a ride home that night to get him out of the rain.”  Right?  Isn’t that the kind of world we want to live in?  But you see it seems that Zimmerman didn’t realize that he was the guy bloodied and broken on the side of the road, in need of help, and that Martin was the despised Other who nonetheless – or maybe even because – could be moved by compassion for him, and pour Skittles and Iced Tea on his wounds, and help him to heal.  It seems that all he saw was the danger.

Just as the people who fought the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnayav seem to have been able to see only his role in that abominable bombing at the marathon and, so, couldn’t see that responding to violence with love might actually be a balm to soothe their shattered souls.

I don’t know about you – although I’ll admit that I have my guesses – but I can tell you for sure that I far too often take on the role of Levite or priest.  I fearfully worry about what might happen to me if . . . and that “if” can lead almost anywhere, really.  I see people of color on the side of the road; I see transgender folks on the side of the road; I see the poor (both the working poor and the plain old poor poor), the homeless, the disenfranchised by a myriad of means; I see the environment; I see nations at war; I see all of these things wounded and desperate for help but I’m far too often afraid of what might happen to me if I get too close.  So I hold back, keep my distance, and far, far too often pass on by.

You?

As we enter into this month of considering “the web of life” I am reminded of just how truly, how radically, how deeply we all – each of us and all of us – are interconnected with everyone and everything else there is.  As Dr. King said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail (although, admittedly, not exactly in this order), “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  We are all connected to one another.  We are all each other’s neighbors.

And I am reminded not only that when I take on the role of the passerby I leave to fend for themselves whoever is ostensibly wounded by the side of the road, but that my very capacity to walk on by is a sign of just how broken and bloodied I am and, so, I leave myself there as well.  And, paradoxically, when I instead shift my focus from asking what might happen to me if I help to asking what might happen to them if I don’t, then my own healing begins.  What affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  We are all each other’s neighbors.

So . . . in this religio-spiritual context . . . who is my neighbor?  Who is yours?  Whoever we would least like it to be, I’m afraid.  And that is exactly who we are called on to love.  Now . . . how to do that is precisely one of the reasons places like this exist – to help us figure it out.

In Gassho,

RevWik

As an added bonus:  During the service we played two videos from the incredibly wonderful Playing for Change series.  These videos demonstrate an on-going project which brings together the music of musicians who are, themselves, in physically distant places, to create a truly global ensemble.  When I was at UUHQ I contacted the folks at Playing for Change and they were excited at the idea of their videos being used in worship services.  Do check out their site, their project, and their other videos.  It's really an amazing thing.

He (Might Be) Heavy . . .

There are all kinds of heaviness.  There's the obvious -- physical heaviness.  As a people, we in the "developed" world have . . . well . . . develped into a severly obese people.  It has been said that this is the first generation of children expected to live shorter lives than their parents.  And this is largely because of the epidemic of obesity, and the myriad of conditions associated with it -- diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.

But there are lots of ways to be heavy.

Some of us are carrying the weight of guilt and shame.

Some of us are weighed down by depression.

Some of us are lugging around a few extra worries.

Some of us have packed on problems and pressures that are crushing us.

When I was in high school I was in just about all of the school plays.  I remember that one night -- an opening night as I recall -- I had a 106 ˚ fever, but I went on anyway.  "The show must go on!" and all that.  After the show was over I was a bowl of jello, of course, but no one in that audience (except my parents) had any idea that I was feeling anything but 100%.

Right now, at this very moment -- or soon, very soon -- you will cross paths with someone who is acting in just such a valient effort to keep the "show" going on.  Perhaps it's someone you know well.  Maybe it's just an acquaintance.  It could be someone you don't know at all yet whose life will be intersecting with yours, if only for a moment.  And, of course you might be this person, weighed down in ways no one else can see.

To all those whose "weight" is not as visibile -- blessings on your day.  Remember that you are not alone (no matter how much you might wish it!).

Pax tecum,

RevWik

And Not Only Dolphins . . .

Playing in surf. Photo: ms4jah@flickr.com
License: Creative Commons attrib/noncom

The title of this post came from something I'd posted on FaceBook.  I'd been with my elder son on his 5th grade field trip to Virginia Beach. (Cool, right?  I love VL Murray!). We'd gone out on a dolphin watch cruise, and I'd posted a couple of photos of the dolphins we saw.  I titled this post "DOLPHINS!"

On the way back in we were treated to the practice session of a squadron of planes for an air show later that weekend.  For a couple of their runs they went directly over our boat!  When I posted about this I wrote, ". . . and not only dolphins!"  One of my friends remarked, "I like any post that begins, 'and not only dolphins!'"  Another suggested that it'd make a great book title.

I'm thinking, maybe, a children's book   One looking at the miracles that surround us every day, those tastes of life's goodness, what a friend of mine calls "love letters from God."  

So, of course, there's the sight of of a family of dolphins, frolicking in the waves.  And not only dolphins, there's:

• The sight of a  group of Japanese macaques sitting in the hot springs with snow falling around them.
• The feel of a cup of hot chocolate warming your hands after a long day in the snow. 
• Sun on your shoulders and a cool breeze on your face. 
• The smell of salt at the beach. 
• Getting into bed with fresh cleaned sheets
• The smell of baking bread . . . or cookies. 

These are some of my ideas.  What are some of yours?

In Gassho,

RevWik
 

Walking Around Shining Like The Sun

Today I got to live out one of my dreams.

I know that even the best of us are, well, like the rest of us -- each and every human being has the potentials for greatness, and each and every one of us has gifts that are only ours to share.  No person is worth of "worship."

And, yet, there are some people who have a profound effect on individuals . . . or on the world.  To me, Father Thomas Merton is one of those people.  And today I stood on the street corner in Louisville at which Fr. Merton famously had an epiphany.  This is how he described it in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

I can honestly (yet I hope humbly) say that I've had this same revelation; I believe I know exactly what he was experiencing.  And that is one of the many things that makes Merton such a powerful teacher for me.  So the opportunity to stand where he stood?  One of the things I've long wanted to do.

After this, though, it got even better.  My friend James Ishmael Ford (whose on blog, Monkey Mind, is well worth following) drove me about an hour out of town to the Abbey of Gesethemi.  This is the monastery where Merton lived . . . and where he's buried. It was, as much as any place on earth, his home.

As a way of thanking this teacher -- not only of me but of millions -- I placed a set of my prayer beads at the base of his stone.  I got to live out one of my dreams . . .

In Gassho,

RevWik

And So It Goes With God . . .

A couple of nights ago both of my children were sleeping over at a friend's house, so my wife and I fired up the DVD player and popped in something I'd seen in the cinema but which she'd not seen yet -- The Life of Pi.  (I saw it originally when I'd taken my kids to watch Wreck-It Ralph.  We got there we saw that Ralph was sold out and I suggested that we go to Pi instead.  Turned out to be not exactly a one-for-one trade!)

At the end of the movie, and apparently the book as well, after telling two very different versions of his tale the main character asks which is the better story.  When the journalist (in the movie) chooses "the one with the tiger," Pi responds, "And so it goes with God."

I've heard several interpretations of what this line is intended to convey, but here's what Yann Martel, the author of the book and, so, the line itself, as said:

". . . Pi makes a parallel between the two stories and religion. His argument (and mine) is that a vision of life that has a transcendental element is better than one that is purely secular and materialist. A story with God ("God" defined in the broadest sense) is the better story, I argue, just as I think the story with animals is the better story. But you choose." 

(I found this in a transcript from the ABC's Good Morning America Q & A with the author as part of their "Read This!" book club.)

A lot of time and intellectual energy by a lot of people has gone into the project of coming up with convincing arguments for a belief in God and here Martel, through his character Pi, is essentially saying that the reason to believe in God is that it makes for a "better story."  And he acknowledges that it is, fundamentally, a choice.

I've thought this for a long time.  It's not my only answer to the question of why I believe in God (and, as Martel says, "defined in the broadest sense") but it is one of my favorites.  And last night, coming across this "argument" again I remembered two of the sources that long-ago influenced my thinking.

One is the wonderful book Illusions:  adventures of a reluctant messiah, by Richard Bach.  Bach had gained huge fame with his earlier Johnathon Livingston Seagull, but it was Illusions that really grabbed me by the collar and has refused to let go.  It tells the story of Bach himself, during one of the summers he spent barnstorming around the country in an old biplane.  The story tells of his meeting a man named Donald Shimoda who, it turns out, is actually the Messiah who had returned to earth but had essentially quit that job when it became clear that people really didn't want to listen to his message.  Still, one doesn't quit being Messiah too easily and, so, he agrees to teach Bach what he knows about the meaning of life.

Word eventually gets out about this mysterious stranger and the wonders that seem to follow him, and he gets interviewed on the radio.  After sharing some of his teachings the host asks him why he believes such things.  Instead of saying, "I live my life this way and it works" or something even faintly convincing like that he says, simply, "I believe it because it's fun to believe it."

This is, I think, echoed in another book that shaped me -- The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada.  One of those teachings has to do with "the path with a heart."

"All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you."

All paths are the same -- they lead nowhere.  Still, you need to chose, and so you might as well chose the path witha heart.  The path with a heart will be more fun.  It will make for a better story.

And so it goes with God.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Vice Versa

I can no longer remember who I was reading at the time, but a Christian author made the following assertion:  in every encounter each of us has we have two options -- to see Christ in the other person, or to be Christ for the other person.

I've been thinking about that a lot for a while, trying hard to remember it.  (Although, I'll admit, I've probably only gotten to the point of trying to try to try to remember it, if you know what I mean.)  Yet while this particular phrase resonates with me, I realize that it may well be "too Christian" for lots of folks.  So here are some alternatives:

In every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to be either a teacher or a learner.

I every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to either be a healer or receiving healing.

In every encounter you have you will have the opportunity to either rise to your best self or to help someone else to rise.

This last one kind of gives it away, doesn't it?  I mean, it's hopefully become obvious that these are not really two things.  Truth is, there's only one option.  Because . . .

if you rise to your best self you will naturally help others to rise as well;

and if you are a healer you will receiving healing in the process;

and there is not a teacher worthy of the name who is not also a learner.

Naturally the inverse of each of these is true as well -- learners are always teachers, those who receiving healing themselves offer healing, and those who help others to be the best have already become their own best selves.

But what of that first one?  It works this way too, because the surest way of being the Christ for another is seeing it in them . . . and vice versa.

Now maybe because I've written it down I might remember.  If I do, I'll remind you;  if I forget, I'm counting on your.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Where Did It All Begin?

Last week the staff with whom I work had a "retreat."  It was really just an ever-so-slightly longer than usual weekly staff meeting, but we did have a different agenda.  Well, again to be honest, we had our usual agenda but we whipped through it double-time so that we could do something different -- we wanted to intentionally work on deepening our relationships with one another. After all, we're all working for a church -- an intentional faith community -- and so it seems to make sense that we shouldn't just be to each other people who happen to work at the same place.  We, too, should be about cultivating connections among ourselves.

And, so, after our usual work was done I invited everyone to think of a time when they most fully felt their "calling."  I was purposefully vague by what I meant about that, and I offered alternatives to the question such as:  "Can you think of an early spiritual experience?"  "When did you first feel yourself stepping on to the path you're on now?"  "Would you talk about a time when you felt profoundly alive?"  (To be honest, I figured that folks would all have their own interpretations of the question anyway, no matter how specific I got, and after all the point really wasn't the particular answer as much as the sharing.)

When it was my turn I talked about a time when I was at either Camp Westminster or Denton Lake.  (Both were Presbyterian camps that I attended during elementary school.  I think it was around 5th or 6th grade that I switched over to the Methodists, so this event happened pretty early in life.)  I remember a conversation between a couple of counselors that had begun around the camp fire which eventually moved over to the picnic table near our cabins.  This conversation has a lot to do with who I am today, what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it.

One of the two was a guy we all called "Rev. Ev."  His name was Evan, and he was going to be going to seminary that next year.  He'd earlier that evening told us the story of his sense of "call."  He'd been in a terrible car accident a year or so before.  The entire car had been demolished, it was truly totaled, except for the driver's compartment.  His door opened easily, and he was able to walk out of his mangled car without a scratch.  And right then and there he dedicated himself to serving the God he believed had saved him.

The other participant in this late-night conversation somewhere around forty years ago was one of the female counselors.  I don't remember her name.  But I remember the way she challenged Rev. Ev, the way she pushed, and prodded, and refused to accept too-simple answers.  My memory is that she wasn't being mean, although I think she was certainly somewhat enjoying the discomfort she knew she was creating.  But at her core she was truly curious; she really wanted to understand; and she took all of this too seriously to be satisfied with pat answers.

Visually I remember the way the campfire highlighted only their eyes as they talked.  And if "eyes are the windows of the soul" then there was a true conversation, perhaps even a true communion of sorts, between those two souls.  I can close my eyes today and be vividly back there in an instant.

And one of the things I believe that evening did for me was to awaken a delight in such conversations that has only grown over the intervening years.  I find them thrilling.  Delicious.  ("Taste and see that the Lord is good," is one of my favorite of Biblical verses for describing the delight of the spiritual life.)  There are few things that bring me to life more than really engaging deeply and courageously with someone else's spiritual journey; seeing how it's been for them and sharing how it's been for me.  And as an ordained minister -- a professional spiritual person -- I get to have these kinds of conversations a lot.  Not as much as I'd like or as my non-clergy friends might imagine, but a lot.  And every so often I get to have one during which it seems that everything else fades away but our eyes, and I can almost smell the woodsmoke.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Musings on Money

Last Sunday, Mother's Day, I noted that I'd much rather preach the annual canvas sermon to my congregation than the annual Mothers' Day sermon.  (I said, "Nobody wants to talk about money, but some people actually like their mothers . . ."  I said that on Mothers' Day it's harder to find the right balance.)

But that got me thinking about money and, specifically, the giving of money to the church.  That and the fact that last week we also announced to the congregation I serve that a goodly number of people have paid nothing on this year's pledge and that, two months out from the end of our fiscal year, if we were to add up all of the currently unpaid pledges from folks who've paid 50% or less of this year's pledge we'd be looking at approximately $100,000.  That's $100,000 that our community members have promised to one another, and that we've budgeted for, but that at least so far looks like won't be coming in.  (And if we add up all the pledges from folks who've pledged for this year but not yet for next year then we'd be looking at $200,000 of shortfall next year.)  And, yet, most of the folks I see on Sunday mornings seem to be feeling really good about our congregation; seem to be feeling really engaged and energized.  So something's not clicking; there's some kind of disconnect.

I know that a lot of people from Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist read this blog, yet a lot of folks from other UU churches (as well as from churches of other stripes and no churches at all) do too.  So I'm really not musing here about the fiscal foibles of the congregation I'm currently serving.  I really am thinking about money, and the giving of money to the church, in a wider context.  I'm really dancing with a pretty generalized question.

Why is it that so many faith communities have so much trouble raising the funds needed to do the things they do from the very people who are the primary beneficiaries of those things?  

It seems odd, and I know is frustrating to church leaders widely, that this is so.  In general congregations -- again, at least the liberal/progressive congregations I know the most about -- are almost always one small problem away from disaster.  No matter how excited their members are about what's happening in the church the annual budget process is always a matter of figuring out how to squeeze the most out of every last dollar.  Year after year congregations "muddle through," knowing how much more they could do if they were better funded, yet not being able to increase the congregation's financial offerings.  There's an old joke -- the minister ascends to the pulpit and says, "I have good news, and I have bad news.  The good news is that we have all the money we need to create the church of our dreams!  The bad news is that most of it is stuck in your wallets." 

I think that there are probably several reasons for this.  Here are three:

People no longer know what's appropriate to give.  This is a big one, especially in congregations in which a lot of folks grew up outside of "the church."  This is definitely true of a lot of Unitarian Universalist congregations -- where in many cases a majority of members grew up in other denominations or outside of any organized religion -- but it's increasingly true within all liberal faith communities. That institutional memory of just what it takes to keep a church alive -- and the institutional commitment needed to do it -- just hasn't been passed down efficiently from one generation to the next.  My parents, and even more my parents parents, knew and understood the meaning of the phrase "sacrificial giving."  They understood that the goal of giving -- especially giving to a church -- was not to try to get away with giving as little as you can, or to give only what one is comfortable giving, but to give to the point that you feel it.  To give to the extent that there's a little sacrifice in one's giving.  I'm afraid that this is a foreign concept to the majority of people in the majority of today's congregations.

I've known double-income couples where one is a doctor and the other a lawyer and yet whose annual pledge to their church was less than that made by a single-income elementary school teacher.  To be fair, the former probably also gave to other charities as well, and may have had other expenses like country club dues and marina fees for their boat that the teacher didn't have.  It really doesn't work to compare one person's donation to another's on a dollar-to-dollar basis.  It is fascinating, though, to think about our giving on a percentage-of-income basis.  (And, as my mentor was fond of saying, "if you're asking gross or net you're missing the point.)

So . . . my family and I give roughly 3% of our income to the church.  It's a stretch for us, yet one that feels really worth it to us.  We believe in what church, in general, and Unitarian Universalist churches, in particular, can do for individuals and for the community.  And while 3% is nowhere near the tradition of a tithe -- 10% -- I feel pretty good about.  In part that's because it's an amount that, as I said, is a stretch for us.  In part it's also because I know that I've heard the figure that the average Unitarian Universalist gives 1% or less.  (And if you add up all of their charitable giving it comes in at less than 3%.)  I know that there are plenty of people giving considerably more than that, but there are considerably more who are giving a whole lot less.  In fact, I've heard it said that if everyone in the average congregation were to give only 2% of their income to the church -- and that means both that the folks below that mark increase but also that those above decrease to it -- most congregations would be able to double, if not triple, their budgets.

Another reason for the challenges many churches have in this area is that churches never really learned how to ask for money.  If you think about the congregational appeals you may have received -- or participated in -- over the years I think you'd agree that the vast majority of them sound something like this:

Well!  We barely scraped by last year, and that only because we cut everything to the bare bones.  We'd really like to do some good things this year, so we really, really, really hope you'll give our church some money because otherwise we're going to be in serious trouble . . . again.

Right?  Yet have you ever received an appeal from any other non-profit that sounded like that?  No matter how tight things might have actually been, most non-profits frame their appeals for donations in terms of all the good they are doing and all the visions they have of the future.  Rather than begging you to solve their desperate problems they invite you to help create new solutions.

This observation comes from a wonderful new book that I recently discovered.  (Actually, I didn't discover it.  A colleague who's recommendations I greatly respect, Tandi Rogers, mentioned it on FaceBook a month or so ago, and I immediately ordered myself a copy!)  The book is Not Your Parents' Offering Plate: a new vision for financial stewardship by J. Clif Christopher.  Rev. Christopher, a long-time parish minister and now professional fundraising consultant for churches, challenges much of the conventional wisdom of congregations about how to ask for money and, for that matter, why we do it.  A bottom-line summary of the book might be this:  organizationally, the church is a non-profit, so it might be wise to heed the lessons learned by virtually every other non-profit when it comes to successfully soliciting donations.

Here's one practical ramification of this notion -- how many other institutions give each and every one of their potential donors their entire line-item budget?  Not many.  Pretty much none, actually.  That's because these other institutions realize that people don't give to support such a detailed description of costs incurred; nobody donates to ensure that an organization can buy more copy paper next year.  People donate to a vision and, even more, to a vision enacted -- people give their money (as well as their time and their energy) to people served, lives changes, impact made.  Yet it is the rare congregation that actually engages its constituents at this level come pledge time.  More often it's making a plaintive plea for folks to increase their pledges enough so that they might be able to make a minute adjustment to a budget that barely allowed them to scrape by this past year.  Not particularly inspiring.

There may be another, perhaps even more fundamental, reason than this.  Today I was listening to the TED Radio Hour on NPR and heard a wonderful program about giving.  One segment looked at Dan Pallotta, whose original TED Talk is below.  Pallotta asserts that even non-profits really don't understand what's needed when it comes to inspiring philanthropic giving and that, "the things we've been taught to think about giving, and about charity, and about the non-profit sector are actually undermining the causes we love and our profound yearning to change the world."  As I listened I thought about the situation at TJMC, and the situation in liberal/progressive faith communities generally, and I thought it worth sharing some of these musings.

I know I've been away from the blogosphere for a while, and I know that this is an awfully long re-introduction, but I hope that you'll give this topic just about 18 more minutes so that you can listen to what Dan Pallotta has to say.  I hope you'll find it as worthwhile as I have.

In Gassho,

RevWik

I've Lost Weight!

No.  It's not what you think.  Although I've been blogging incessantly about the fresh vegetable and fruit juice I'm on -- along with members of the TJMC community -- this is not a report about the incredibly shrinking minister.  In fact, in a weird way, I'm not interested in my weight.  That's not why I'm on the fast.

I'm interested in my health -- my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.  (My "relational" health, too.)  My weight is a symptom, and I'm interested in getting at the cause.

But this post actually isn't about the juice fast at all.  At least, not directly.

The other night, as I was going to bed, I was feeling overwhelmed -- weighed down by problems and pressures.  I was feeling as though my life had become too heavy.  And for some reason my not-quite-ready-for-sleep mind focused on -- of all things -- my phone. 

I found myself longing for a phone that was . . . well . . . a phone.  Just a phone.  Something to make and receive phone calls with.  Instead, I carry around with me a phone; an address book; my calendar; my e-mail; FaceBook; twitter; the internet; copies of the Bible, the Qur'an, the Bahagavad Gita, the Upanishands, a Book of Shadows, the writings of St. Francis and Brother Lawrence; a set of tarot cards and rune stones; and a host of other apps that virtually guarantee that I will never have a quiet moment to simply look up at the sky and marvel.  (No, I've got a camera with me all the time that'll turn that sense of awe into the action of trying to get a good picture of it!)

So . . . two days ago . . . I lost some weight.  I spent about half an hour unloading apps from my phone.  I dropped most of the games I'd accumulated (mostly because my kids were playing them on their devices).  I dropped some of the cool gizmos that no one really wants or needs.  I even dropped my mobile connection to FaceBook.

And I feel lighter.  It's only been a couple of days, but while I am amazed at how often I reach for my phone, it feels good to remember that I don't have that app with me anymore so I can put the phone done and just be where I am.

A fast -- whether from solid food, or from certain kinds of food, or from particular forms of media, or from specific behaviors -- as fast is just a tool to help us recognize how "heavy" we have become in our daily lives and to remind us that we have choices to make.

Some day I might even get that phone of my dreams.

In the meantime, I will bow to you . . .

In Gassho,

RevWik

Day 7

Most people are no doubt familiar with the phenomenon of the motivational poster -- a compelling image with a pithy quote intended to uplift and encourage.  One of my favorite spots (by far) on the internet is the website of Despair, Inc., makes of de-motivational products. I have whiled away many an hour perusing their posters, chortling much of the time.

I mention this because today is Day 7 of this month-long juice fast.  The end of the first week.  And this has seemed to me to be one very long week.  And to be honest and transparent, it has not gone exceedingly well, at least if by "well" I mean that I stuck to the plan day in and day out and could be used as a poster-boy for vegetable and juice fast consistency.  Nope.  I messed up.  More than a couple of times.

So I look to the beginning of Week 2 with a bit of trepidation.  Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm scared.  Well, maybe "a little nervous."  I've chosen to put my juicing journey in quite a prominent light -- these blog posts are only one way that I'm out in front on this, offering my face as the public face (in this community at least) of both the problems associated with unhealthful eating and an attempt to make deep and lasting changes.

There is a danger in this, of course.  Whenever anyone lets her or himself become identified with something like this there is the risk of over-identification.  It's easy to see that individual as somehow special or unique -- particularly courageous, for instance, or strong.  Maybe she's more profoundly spiritual, and that's why she could do something like this.  Maybe he's more grounded.  And when some leader becomes the personification of the ideal, it's easy to distance ourselves.  "Oh, I could never do that," we exclaim.  "I'm not that <whatever it is we think that person is more of than we are>."

That's one of the reasons I've chosen to be as open about my own struggles as I have been.  I'm hoping that my discouragements might end up being encouraging to others.  "Shoot!  If he can do it, anyone can!" is kind of what I'm going for.

But that leads to the other danger in this . . . the one that's got me "a little bit nervous."  What if I can't do it?  What if sometime during the rest of February I give up?  What if I decide that it's all too much for me?  Or what if it's not even a decision and I just fall flat on my face?

Well here's the secret that I realized while tossing and turning last night:  one can only fail at the end.

I'm not sure that that's the most eloquent encapsulation of my thought, but it will have to suffice.  (As Steve Martin once famously observed, "Some people have a way with words and other people . . . not . . . have . . . way.")  What I mean, to use a sporting analogy, is that one team can only be declared the loser at the end of the game.  As long as the game is still in play, it's conceivable to come back from even tremendously far behind.  And this applies here because the game is going to remain in play as long as I'm alive.

Even if I totally fall apart during this month-long juice fast . . . well . . . this month is just part of this, my 50th year breathing air, during which I've dedicated myself to getting healthy.  So there can be no declaration of failure until this whole year is over, no matter what I do or do not do during this month.  And even if I regress to my worst eating and non-exercise habits during this year, I'm committed to seeing that the entire decade of my 50s is invested in increasing wellness in body, mind, and spirit.  That mean's even a bum year won't spell failure.

All the more, of course, if we go in the other direction.  If this is true about my "blowing" a month or a year, all the more so if any particular week of this month goes awry.  Or any one day.  Or a particular meal-time.

This lesson -- that we can only fail at the end, when all's said and done -- goes hand in had with my recent post about how this moment is the beginning of the rest of our lives.  And as long as that is true, "failure" is not really possible.

I'm starting to look forward to next week!

In Gassho,

RevWik

PS -- last night, while I was worrying about all of this, I remembered this demotivational notion from Despair, Inc. and smiled:

Day Five (or is it day one?)

There is a story told in the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous about a man named Jim.  Jim was a young man who was in many ways a successful person.  He was also an alcoholic.  He'd made several trips to the asylum because of his drinking.  He'd also came into contact with the early AAers and had, at the time of this story, come to understand his problem and had managed to stay sober for quite some time.

But one day he'd had a difficult encounter with a co-worker and decided to hit the road to try to make some sales.  Along the way he stopped at a diner for some lunch, a place he'd frequented and where he thought he might also be able to make a contact and, perhaps, a sale.  He noted in his story that he'd had no thought about drinking -- he'd just ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk.  He'd eaten here several times during his period of sobriety.  Nothing wrong here at all.  Nothing to be worried about.

And then, he notes, "suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach.  I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk.  I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach.  The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and pured it into more milk.  That didn't seem to both me so I tried another."

As the Big Book notes, "Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim." (Jim's story can be found on pages 35-37.)

Notice these parts of his story:  he'd gone into the restaurant with no thought about drinking.  No urge; no cravings.  As far as he was aware he was just going in to get some lunch. And then a thought "crossed [his] mind" -- he wasn't consciously aware of thinking this thought, he felt as though he were a passive recipient of it.  He was even conscious of a "vague sense that he was not being any too smart," but this thought that came upon him unbidden was more in charge than he was.  It's no wonder that addicts often personify their addiction.

So on Sunday I was rushing from the activities of my busiest day of the week knowing that I was on my way to take my 9 year old son to a friend's birthday party at a local pool.  I was hungry.  It was the third day of the fast so I was feeling a little depleted.  And I decided to eat a little something to "give me strength."  Instead of going to Burger King, however, I went to Food of All Nations and got some sushi.  Not a terribly unhealthy thing to do, even if it did technically break my fast.

But yesterday, coming in for a meeting of the church's executive committee, having myself, as I now realize, had an unsettling encounter with someone, I decided that it'd be okay to have another bit of sushi.  It was okay yesterday -- why wouldn't it be okay today?  But when I went in to the store they were out of sushi.  And suddenly the thought "crossed my mind" that because I'd come in to buy some food I might as well still do so, and that that chicken and linguine dinner looked fine. And so did those cheese sticks.  And as with Jim there was a "vague sense that I was not being too smart," but that vague sense couldn't argue against the stronger sense that this was somehow okay.

Of course, there's no asylum for me.  On the way home, when the urge to swing into Seven Eleven to get a couple of their giant hot dogs was particularly potent, I was able to regain control, take a swig of water, and keep driving.  A slip is not necessarily a fall, and even a fall is not necessarily failure.  There's always an opportunity in each moment to make a better choice.

A month or so ago a member of the church shared the pulpit with me and eloquently spoke about his own addiction and his powerful recovery.  We named that service, "Do You Know What Tomorrow Is?" because Mike likes to ask the question, "Do you know what tomorrow is?" and then give the answer, "it's the first day of the rest of your life."  An important lesson that can be surprisingly hard to learn.

Yet I would like to change Mike's question a little bit.  Instead of asking what tomorrow is, I'd like to ask, "Do you know what time it is right now?"  The answer, of course, will be the same, "it is the beginning of the rest of your life."  Right now.  This moment.  Choose.

So today is Day 5 of my juice fast.  It's also Day 1.  As will be tomorrow.  And each of the tomorrows after that.

In Gassho,

RevWik


 

I Really Don't Want to Do This, But . . .

 

I know that there are some people who say that they're totally okay with being overweight.  They say they have no need to conform to our culture's sick standards of beauty and that they can be comfortable in their own skin . . . no matter how much volume that skin covers.

I am not one of these people.  For as long as I can remember I've avoided looking at myself in mirrors.  So much so, in fact, that it's no longer active avoidance; it's now more a habitual neglect of them.  I just don't think about looking at myself, and when I do, I'm not happy with what I see.

I am, on the contrary, embarrassed.  Distressed.  Disgusted, even, isn't too strong a word.  Disappointed, for sure.

Remember, I'm a comic book fan from way back.  It's not just the female characters who have impossible body types!  I mean . . . have you ever taken a good look at Batman or Captain America?  So I'll cop to having my own distorted body image issues to deal with.

So why am I posting so publicly a photo of my bared basketball belly?

One answer is, because it's expected.  I keep making reference to my first vegetable and fruit juice "reboot," and the fact that I lost about fifty pounds.  I wasn't Kwai Chang Cane slim yet, nor Nightwing buff, but I sure looked different than I had at the beginning of the month.  And people noticed.  Yes, even though I've been wearing all black on Sunday mornings since I got to TJMC -- and black is supposed to be slimming, right? -- people noticed that I'd lost weight.  And since I was blogging about this experiment I had friends old and new from all over the country following my "journey."  And I can't tell you how many people asked for "before" pictures.

So here's the "before" picture.  Now you know.

The other reason for posting these pictures is to face my own disappointment, distress, embarrassment, and, yes, disgust.  There is an old saying from the Christian traditions:  God loves you just the way you are . . . and loves you too much to let you stay that way.  Whether I weigh the 305 lbs I've started this fast at, or the 175 or so that's my ultimate goal, the "me" within my body deserves my love and affection.  Certainly my acceptance.  And one way of dealing with shame is to shine light on it.

So this is what I look like under my "slimming" black pulpit attire.  I do not like what I see, but I need to be able to affirm that I like who I see.  Because if I don't there's no way I'll be able to make it through the challenges of this fast and, even more importantly, make the long-term changes this "reboot" is cleaning the decks for.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Movie Review: Food, Inc.

Wow. 

That's my one-word review of Food, Inc.  Wow.

If I had as many as three words they'd be:  Oh.  My.  God.

I knew that the Standard American Diet is pretty . . . well . . . sad. Yet this movie opened my eyes to just how far the ripples spread.  It's not just that my food choices affect my own personal health.  There is an interconnected chain of effects that stems from our industrialized model of food production.

Agribusiness is a term that's been used to describe the industrialization of farming.  It involves not only the increasing sale of the farming enterprise, but a serious shift in the process of farming itself.  Traditional farming follows an organic model -- grazing cows, for instance, fertilize the soil where they graze.  This makes that patch of ground ultimately more productive.  And through rotating crops and animals a cycle is developed which nurtures each and every step in the process.

Modern agribusiness, on the other hand, utilizes a factory model -- emphasizing efficiency over effectiveness.  And so we do away with grazing cattle, for instance, because it's far more efficient to pack all of the animals together into giant barns and treat them as cogs in a production line . . . a meat production line.  And since it takes a while for a cow to grow up, it makes sense to feed it a diet that will maximize growth . . . even though it's a diet that isn't natural to the cow.

The consequences of using a factory model are, roughly, two-fold.  On the one hand, more and more animals can be raised more and more quickly, making more product more readily available for lower cost.  As with the machine factory, economies of scale increase production and decrease cost.

On the other hand, imposing a mechanized model onto an organic process leads to unintended consequences.  When animals are housed in such close quarters and are not allowed their natural exercise, they are far more prone to disease.  And so farm animals are routinely immunized and given antibiotics, and these things get into the food chain, and into us, and many scientists think that one of the major causes of the increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria is this routine and overuse of antibiotics in our food supply.

And feeding animals a diet which has been determined to maximize growth, yet which is not their native diet, has had unintended consequences as well.  It has been demonstrated that modern beef is high in Omega 6 but low in Omega 3 fatty acids.  Too much Omega 6 can cause serious health problems, as can too little Omega 3.  Most Americans suffer from both problems.  Yet beef that has been raised using traditional grazing actually has a completely different balance of these two fatty acids and is, instead, a much more healthful choice as a protein source.  Our modern methods of factory farming have actually changed the nutritional composition of the meat being produced!

In Food, Inc. we see just how sick our system is, yet we also hear from people -- like Virginia's own Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms -- who are demonstrating that all is not lost.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Internal Dialogue

There's a scene near the end of the movie The Jungle Book.  We come across a quartet of vultures -- who share a remarkable resemblance with a certain mop top boy band of the era.  One of them keeps asking, "Whacha wanna do?"  To which another answers, "I dunno, whachu wanna do?"  They go back and forth like this for a while until they realize the futility of this circular conversation.

I'm on Day Two of my juice fast.  (I know that some of the other folks at church are starting today, or don't plan to start until Sunday or Monday, but I started yesterday.  It's easier if Day One is actually on the 1st of the month.  Easier to keep track.)

Anyway, this is Day Two.  And inside my head there's been a fairly constant dialogue.  "Wacha wanna do?"  I keep asking myself.  "Eat."  I reply.  "No, seriously," I'll say, "what do you want to do?  "Eat." comes the reply.  "Eat.  That.  Now."

This is not surprising.  Never before in human history have we had so much access to so much food.  Or, at least, food-like stuff.  In truth, many of us are hardly ever eating actual food most of the time, so perhaps it's more accurate to say that never before in human history have we had so much access to so many calories.

The Standard American (processed) Diet is calorie rich and nutrient poor.  We are capable of consuming incredible amounts of calories while hardly getting any of the nutrients our bodies need.  In fact, this is one of the explanations for our current obesity epidemic -- that even though we're eating more than enough calories to fuel our body's functioning our bodies keep crying out for the nutrients they need.  This causes us to eat more food, and the food-stuff most readily to hand is the same stuff that didn't give us what we needed in the first place.

And so the activity of eating becomes nearly completely removed from the function of eating -- giving the body the nutrients it needs to live.  Instead, eating becomes a comfort.  Or a reward.  Or an escape from boredom.  Or an escape into boredom.  Or a self-medication to reduce stress.  Or anger.  Or depression.  Or . . .

So it's Day Two of the juice fast.  And I'm getting all of the nutrients my body needs.  And my digestive system is beginning to relax a bit from its usual overworked state.  And the toxins are beginning to be dislodged from the places they've taken up residence in my system.  And all of that is to the good, but I've also stopped trying to escape my boredom, or my feelings, or my whatever it is I've been escaping through eating.

And this is one of the benefits of a fast -- whether it's a fresh vegetable and fruit juice fast, or a FaceBook fast, or a fast from media.  One of the benefits of a fast is that it separates out a behavior from the myriad of meanings we've superimposed on it so that we can once again engage it for its own purpose. After a period of withdrawal from these activities we can see them again for what they really are -- I eat to fuel my body; I go on FaceBook to connect with friends; I . . . 

Of course, all of those things I've been trying to avoid or deny will begin to come more clearly into focus.  While this is uncomfortable, to say the least, it also provides me with an opportunity to devise new ways of coping with them.  Because, as I already know, eating is not the best way to deal with my emotions.

In the meantime, though I'm going to keep asking myself, "whacha wanna do?"

And while my habituated answer is "eat," at least for today I'm going to answer instead, in the words of Joe Cross:  Juice On!

In Gassho,

RevWik

And So It Begins . . .

 I packed my car with brand new Breville juicers.  I drove to church.  And realized that I'd forgotten my keys.

Luckily someone was there so I was able to get in and set up for tonight's showing of Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead and the launch of both the month-long juice fast and the Health and Wholeness Initiative.  I was excited.  I was nervous.

I was also hungry.  I'd started my own fast this morning.  I'd had some "Carrot/Apple/Ginger," some "Mean Green."  Also a leftover's mix of apples, blueberry, strawberries, and kale.  All that wonderful juice had me feeling pretty good, but hungry.

Eight people came to tonight's program.  I'd been hoping for 25 or 30, but I'd been afraid of 2 or 3, so this was good.  I was really looking forward to sharing Joe and Phil's stories, but technical problems got in the way of our watching the film -- again and again and again, in fact.  (Thanks goodness that it's so readily available on Netflix and that we'll be showing it again on Tuesday the 5th and Wednesday the 13th.)  But I think that the juicing demonstration went pretty well and we had some really good conversations.  Three people went home with juicers, and several of us said that we were planning to give this a go.

Tonight's is going to be a short entry.  More tomorrow.

In Gassho,

RevWik