When Elephants Weep and Dolphins Laugh

Growing up in the woods of the New York’s Hudson Valley, I never spent much time thinking about “nature”. It was just “the woods”, a place to get away from my sometimes sad existence as a rather inward and awkward young boy. I spent countless hours walking through the woods, gladly not yet suburban, and hopping odd streams, swinging at trees with sticks and climbing large rocks. When I did have friends over we would head into the woods, to play fort, army, or Indians. As always our dogs were with us. The Nature was a part of my life, much like cars are for us adults today, an extension of me.  I was Nature, not the same nature as a plant or bird, but of that same Nature.

It hasn’t been that long in the march of history for us to have gotten to a place where we now worship this “thing” called Nature. Our hilltop sanctuary, is revered for its sweeping view of the canyon, the red tailed hawks soaring over head. We have moved in a broad anthropological sense from seeing ourselves as no different from Nature,  Native people’s anywhere, to an exploitation of Nature, bequeathed to us by some biblical injunction, to the necessity of worshipping Nature as if this thing were inert.

I have always been of nature, even now, which is why I need occasional sojourns into the wilds to remind myself of that.  And part of my nature has always been dogs.  I grew up with dogs, two dogs, always two to keep the other company.  Cats too, but mostly dogs.  Dogs are domesticated wolves, and contrary to myth, they are more comfortable in families, than in packs.  In fact, Temple Grandin, a professor of animal behavior and an autistic, points out that most packs of dogs have just created their own families. And dogs not only have an emotional live, they are, I am convinced deeply spiritual.  Animals have souls, as any one of you here today with a pet can tell, but it wasn’t so long ago that Christian Orthodoxy taught they didn’t; after all wasn’t the devil portrayed as half beast?  Think about it, after all dog is god spelled backwards.  Maybe they are gods, laughing at us all the way.  One flea turned to the other on the back of a dog and said, “you know I am beginning to wonder if there really is a dog”.

Mammals and possibly reptiles and other sentient beings have not only emotions but a spiritual center that they teach us from.  Elephants never forget, which is why they are known to weep, dogs inspire us to our better selves, “be the person your dog thinks you are”, dolphins laugh, which is one of the reasons I live here and walk along the ocean, and cats, well, they call us into humble servitude don’t they.  As the author Jeff Masson puts it “Perhaps one central reason for loving dogs is that they take us away from this obsession with ourselves. When our thoughts start to go in circles, and we seem unable to break away, wondering what horrible event the future holds for us, the dog opens a window into the delight of the moment.” (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs)

Temple Grandin in her work, Animals Make Us Human, outlines a fascinating dichotomy that we share with all sentient beings, almost Buddhist in its simplicity.  Animals, including us humans, make meaning from two or three competing emotional states, on one side, such emotions as Fear and Mortality and on the other Curiosity and Play.  We need both the positive and negative to survive.  The negative helps us survive, the positive helps us thrive.  Big game animals that are allowed to roam and explore are vastly healthier than those who are kept confined.  I personally boycott zoos.  I find them cruel and, here’s an ironic word, inhumane.

Animals are so important to us, and not just for food or research.  They actually remind us to be fully human, fully faith full to the project of protecting life and community.  And animals remind us of the sacred power of that common ground between surviving and thriving that we call a community,

With Grace and Grit,  John

Crossing Borders

There are many kinds of borders we are asked to cross in our lives.  Borders of class, relationships, jobs, cultures, age, and religion to name a few.  In many ways all of us are immigrants crossing borders, if not temporarily, then more subtly.  

I think of my friend Tom, who came from an upper middle class family, his father was quite wealthy.  Tom went on to college fully expecting to work in the family business.  Until his dad died in car crash on his way to visit him.  Tom, whose mother had died years before, now was alone, with a new found wealth which he quickly squandered.  He crossed another border literally when he came to California and tried to rebuild his life after the drugs and the booze.  Married, divorced and finally married again.  He lives a very quiet life as a therapist helping hundreds of people cross the borders of their own lives.

Of all the borders people are challenged to cross, crossing a country’s borders is the most dangerous of all.  Immigrants whether they are documented or undocumented have little if any of the rights that we as citizens take for granted.  No habis corpus, no right to a trial by jury, virtually no appeal.  Documentation only lessens the danger, and of course, undocumented workers face even more troubles.

Every day, thousands of migrants, risking their lives and in terrible conditions, cross borders to reach the land of their dreams. What attracts people to migrate are the lifestyles, the commodities of the rich countries, the ability to earn money to buy things and to escape from poverty.. In the contemporary world, despite the current economic crisis, the lifestyle of people in the rich countries is the prevalent paradigm.

Crossing a physical border into a land where you have nothing in hopes of a better dream is an act of courage.  How many of us, as American Citizens wish we could cross a new border into more meaningful work, safety from economic calamity and the realization of our dreams for our own children now?  How many of you?  I know I do.  We have six kids and all of them face more uncertainty than I ever did.  Is it any wonder those who are worse off than us materially, cross our borders?  Isn’t this a matter of human survival and worth?  Ultimately, isn’t that what we are talking about? As the song goes, We aren't crossing the border, the border is crossing us.

With Grace and Grit, John

Called to Good Work

Labor Day means something more than just a celebration of organized workers…it is a holiday that celebrates work.  

All of us need to work, no matter what our age.  And as our retirees know all too well, work doesn’t end when you retire.  You may not get paid money for it but you do get paid, and you can live a tremendously busy and fruitful life up until the day you die.  As the Catholic mystic Matthew Fox put it “There is a priesthood of all workers (all who are doing good work are midwives of grace and therefore priests) and this priesthood ought to be honored as sacred and workers should be instructed in spirituality in order to carry on their ministry effectively.” (from The Reinvention of Work, 1995)

When we think of work, we too often think of it as a function – what we do to get “it” done – and so the vocae of our souls are left to chance.  We may or may not find meaning in what we do for money.  The problem of our modern working life has less to do with efficiency and much more to do with the lack of meaning in what we are called to do. Repetition of tasks, whether they be with our hands or with our heads pushing paper and keys from one place to another robs us of the meaning we crave. 

It is never easy to reconcile these contradictions in our lives.  The better paying jobs are more often than not the ones that lie at the edge of what we value as a people.  

Single parents who struggle to raise their families and not quite so able to just give up a well paying job and maintain the environment they want for their children.  

I do believe that money does make a difference in raising a family.  But I am asking us to examine the gap between what we do and what we value.  And just as we should question making money at a job that has little meaning to us, we need to also question making enough money at a job that does have meaning.  It is a tragedy that some of our most socially beneficial vocations pay far below what the people do them need to live on. 

Answering the call to good work, then, is doing what we find meaning in.  “Right work” wrote the Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh “is the result of being present in the moment of doing”.  Whatever we are doing becomes meaningful when we pay attention to all that the work means.  The process of working, whether it is paid or not, whether it is your vocation or your occupation, it is a spiritual opportunity. 

With Grace and Grit, John

Swimming Towards The Light

Just before I left our island home to come back to California, my granddaughter Iris, who has a fierce devotion to living things, found an injured frog at the quarry where we swim.  She was on the far side of the quarry, and storm clouds were rolling in.

“Grandpa”, she yelled, “I need you.  This frog is hurt and I can’t swim across with him in my hands.”  

So I dove in and I swam with all my might.  Iris jumped on my back with injured frog in hand and we swam across the quarry as hard as we could.  I could feel my own limbs burning against the water, and her own little heart racing with passion and purpose as she held my neck with one hand and a wounded frog with the other. 

When we reached the other side, rain drops started to fall and everyone clapped.  Either for our passion, the drama or perhaps just for the frog.  The frog found a safe haven and we dried off and I thought of my Dad who had just died, of any of us who go through the storms of life with passion and resolve.  We can do it.  

We were made to do it.

We dream of how the other could change, or perhaps how we might change, but at the end of our lives it won’t matter how many titles we held, how much money we had, what accomplishments we saw.  What will matter is that we went through the storms with only a glimmer of light that tells us to hang on. Just keep swimming. 

With Grace and Grit, John

Going Through the Storm

We were on our way back East, Frances and I and Madeline and our blind pug, enjoying a glorious day in Yellowstone.  Driving along the glacier lake, I was seized with a sudden urge to go swimming.  “Pull the car over” I asked Frances.  “Where?” she said.  “Anywhere… by the shore.  I… I need to go swimming.”  So she did, a little off the road.  I got down to my skivvies and jumped in the icy cold water.  I thought my heart would stop.  I came crashing to the surface and when my breath came back I yelled as loud as I could “YES!”.  God that water was cold!  I climbed out grabbed my clothes, dressed and we were on our way again.  “Odd decision” my lovely wife said to me.  “Yes” I agreed, “odd”.  Not sure why I felt so compelled to do that.

About an hour later as we neared the end of the lake, my cell phone buzzed,  we had been out of range, it was a message from my brother.: “Call me now”.  We pulled over along the shore.  I had just enough of a signal to get through.  “Dad had a heart attack about an hour ago.  While swimming in the pond.  He’s in a coma.  I need you here.  Now.”  I told him I was on my way.  I would find an airport and fly to home.  As we came out of Yellowstone down the Eastern side of the Rockies into the rolling prairies of Wyoming, I was on the phone for the next hour, finally finding a flight out of Billings, MT two hours to the north that would connect me to the Twin Cities and onto New England.  As we raced through the open prairie, my thoughts raced through a thousand memories, many of them having to do with water.  My father and I share a great love for water, he for the ponds and rivers of New England, me for the mighty oceans we spend our lives near. 

Just then, as we were driving, a storm came upon us.  Not one of those placid storms but a real drencher.  A gully washer as they say.  It rained buckets. Lighting and thunder.  “Should we pull over?” asked Frances.  “No”,  I said, “we have to through it.”  Through the storm, with determination and passion.  I was so glad she and Madeline were with me and with such calm as the storm in my heart raged as much as the skies around us. 

I caught my plane in Billings, and in Minneapolis and then to Hartford.  As I turned on my phone taxing to the gate, there was a message from my brother.  My dad died while I was in the air, above the storm clouds.  He simply slipped away.

As I drove from the airport to the hospital in Northampton, MA I suddenly realized what had happened.  I dove into that glacial lake in Yellowstone at the precise moment that he had a heart attack swimming in pond in Mass.  Our hearts had passed through the storm.  His heart was all done now after 83 rich years.  Mine still beating through the many more storms before me.

With Grace and Grit, John

Standing Up for Love

I arrived late Saturday night  from Phoenix and our General Assembly of Unitarian Universalism, a gathering of the tribe, replete with drumming, dancing, laughter and, this year, more than a few tears.  There are always tears at GA, in part because of the realization of the wounds of our world and the great work we have before us.  It might also be due to the heat this year, where the average temp was well over 100 degrees. Its a dry heat but then so is your oven. I had a small part in the process that chose the site although my advice was anywhere but Phoenix. It was between Long beach, downtown LA and Phoenix, oh, and hell, hell was also on the short list.

This was the year we marched in support of our undocumented sisters and brothers in protest against SB 1070 right up to Sheriff Joe’s tent city door.  It was immensely moving.  Stories abound of the grace of love and strength that came from strangers meeting to protest the human and civil rights abuses the State of AZ visits upon its Latino population.  One of the most moving stories came from ayoung man who had served in the Marine Corps but was jailed unjustly for DWM –Driving while Mexican because of the color of his skin and because he didn’t happen to have his license on him.  What are we to make of those who have been lost by our confusing and painful times?  In some ways I believe our country is in a new cold war of values, between those who sincerely believe that a rule of order and religious values should override the rights of those who look and act differently and those who see the role of government to help others.  It’s still a war and in the end nobody survives intact without all of us picking up the pieces.  Regardless who wins in the election.

As I was walking back to my hotel, I was approached by a homeless man who asked who all these yellow shirted people were.  I told him we were Unitarian Unversalists and we were here to protest SB 1070 and call for the humane treatement of those detained.  He smiled.  He had friends who had been arrested.  It wasn't right he said.  And then he asked me for five dollars.  As I handed him the money, I  thought how much of a difference it makes to show up and stand up for love.

With Grace and Grit, John

Grace. Period.

Amazing Grace is my favorite hymn.  I really can’t tell you why.  It was my mother’s favorite as well.  The tune, the words, have such a stark truth they haunt me.  “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me” (although we of course give you a theological choice to change wretch to soul, but that is another sermon for another day). John Newton, the son of a Methodist ship captain who had squandered his fortune as a young man found himself conscripted aboard a slave ship.  Through hard work and because he was white, he won his freedom and made captain, now himself plying the evil trade for many years.  On a return trip to Africa, facing a tremendous storm he prayed for deliverance , with the promise he would give up the trade if saved.  The storm abated and Newton kept his word for the first time in his life.  He married his long lost love and became one of England’s most ardent anti-slavery proponents of his age.  It would take such later activists as William Wilberforce  in parliament to eventually undo the slave trade in England and it took a civil war for it to end here.

The words we sing are altered for UU Sensibilities and are frankly somewhat tame.  Grace will lead us home, sure enough, but the fourth stanza of the original is much stronger “The Lord promised good to me, His words my hope secures, He will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures.”

That line gets to the heart of what makes grace so powerful for Christians.  God has promised us a gift, no matter what we are or have done.  We Unitarian Universalists assume that we are not the wretch the song proclaims nor do we need to be saved, we even  have our doubts about God.  But despite this, I still believe Grace is a powerful idea especially now.  The real power of the song and the idea is that we are always given another chance.  And sometimes, when we least expect it or even earn it we are given some gift, if only the breaking of hope when days are dark.

We belittle grace by assuming that only we have control over events.  After all we are a religion of deeds not creeds.  We end our service with the words “now the service truly begins”.  But doing good in the world does not negate grace.  Grace happens.  You need a solution, the phone rings and someone has an idea.  You don’t know how you are going to pay the bills and you receive a bonus, or even a job offer.  You have learned you are dying of cancer but your family heals and comes together because of it.  Grace happens all the time.  Some will call it chance, or serendipity, but I like Grace better.

Sometime grace even comes through suffering.  Many years ago I was invited to lead a service for “Families of Murdered Children”.  The service was outdoors in a park. During the service we would plant a tree.  During the service I noticed a lone man standing at the edge of the park.  The service, very moving, ended and everyone left except for this young family.  I knew their story, they had lost their three year old son to a drunk driver.  This was their first service of this kind and it was very hard for them.  As they stood and turned the mother gasped, staring at the man across the park, her husband’s fists clenched, this was the man who had killed their son.  Slowly the lone man walked towards them, I was trying to play through what I would do if this turned violent.  He stopped about ten feet away. Tears were streaming down his face.  He whispered with as much voice as he could manage.  “I’m sorry”. The silence which followed could have birthed triplets.  The husband put his arm around his wife and nodded and the man turned and left.  The mother broke down.  The whole exchange lasted less than two minutes but changed me forever.  Here I understood what Newton meant when he said, “I once was lost but now am found”.  Not that the killer or the family or anyone was saved, just found.  Found their humanity again.  Found life.  Grace given and received just like that.  Grace. Period.

As the Dutch theologian Henri Nowen observed “Who amongst us doesn’t want to come home?  Who amongst us does want to be forgiven?” Forgiveness is what helps grace along most of all.  John Newton’s father never forgave his son for squandering his future.  God and perhaps even Newton forgave himself for the evil he had done.  More importantly, grace was made real as Newton worked to undo what he had done.  In the period between failing and rising again, grace happens. Sometimes grace lies just inside a new day.  One of my favorite poets W.H. Auden wrote of grace “In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountain start, in the prison of his day, teach the free man how to praise.”  Amazing and mysterious and as old as time, grace comes unbidden to each and every one of us.  “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun.  We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, Then when we’d first begun.”

With Grace and Grit,  John

Faith in the Post Modern Age

I believe that post modernism is destroying us. It has robbed us of the generalist view that allows for cross disciplinary solutions both in fields such as medicine but also in education and even ministry. I am buoyed by recent attempts in universities such as MIT and industries to look at the world in something larger than our little box of concern. In fact, our own Mercury project, a collaboration of three or four committees towards the end of growing our church is most decidedly not post modernism. Protecting our turf is. Post modernism makes us cynical and culturally sterile. After all, what can I do about global warming? Isn't that a national policy problem? What can I say to someone who is suffering from depression? Shouldn't they see a therapist? Yes, they should. BUT WE can still provide hope, faith that they don't travel alone by simply listening. We used to call that cheering up, some call it friendship. WE CAN still plant this garden and march in the streets. WE CAN still write elected leaders. WE CAN in fact, do a lot more. With faith.

And faith is my answer to post modernism. The simply profound and utter belief that WE can make a difference by simply acting, witnessing and doing. I titled this a faith in the post idea age; because I do believe post modetnism has one thing right: most, if not all the great ideas, have already been thought. What we are doing is post idea work, re-working, re-invigorating ideas to make them new and that is tremendously powerful and useful. You do this all the time at work. You hopefully do this with your families; when relationships breakdown, we try to re­invent them building or- the same love which was always there. That is the faith: to believe that old ideas, if they approach wisdom, can be re­done in new ways. Unlike post modernism, OUR faith must embrace not the particularity of relative belief but the meta-narrative of such luminaries as Albert Schweitzer, Lydia Maria Child, and Ralph Waldo Emerson all Unitarians, who believed that humanity was as a whole basically good and worth saving.

Sure we live in a world of Facebook, internet and twitter. But could we imagjne these as sort of a new front porch? What if there was a way to say, "howdy neighbor, would you like to come in for Some pie and coffee"?   The point is this: we are still people, who can work together, who can think about old ideas in new ways, and who can, with a little faith, solve the most complex problems around us.

With Grace and Grit, John

When Easter Interupts

The story of Easter, whether Christian or not is a story of suffering and meaning making.  When Jesus died, when any of us die to some part of our life that is no longer, our world is interrupted.  His disciples, his followers, the women who were so much a part of his life were shocked, bereft and lost.  How do we make sense of his suffering, our own suffering, how is it possible to be re-born in this life again?

I think the real answer to that question is how we look at suffering itself.  Suffering in and of itself is never good.  This is what the church had so tragically wrong; there is no redemption in suffering.  But suffering’s interruption can teach. Not always for the sufferer but those of us who respond to that suffering with compassion. “To live the moments we have and not grieve the moments we lack” as the poet Gilbert Friend Jones put it. 

What was reborn wasn’t so much a physical Jesus as a different reason to go on with life in spite of the suffering. When tragedy strikes us, when our life is interrupted, we are forced to come down off the cross of fear, climb out of the tomb of despair and face the new reality

With Grace and Grit, John

Who Was Mary?

As women's history month draws to a close I have been thinking about why there are so many Mary's in the gospels.  Just who were these Marys?

What we do know is that Mary the mother of Jesus, was absolutely devoted to her son and his ministry.  That she herself had knowledge of healings and herbs, and that she was the embodiment of so much Sophia or wisdom, itself an ancient idea that what is truly wise resides in the mystery of the divine feminine.  Think about it: where would a Jewish man get the idea that the first shall be last and the last shall be first?  Where would an itinerant preacher who had no standing on his own, learn to heal the sick and give comfort to the downfallen?  Where would even the messiah, stoop down, write in the sand and answer the angry men who wanted to stone an adulterous to death, “he who is without sin, cast the first stone”.  Where but through the women in his life, starting with his mother?  Not just any mother, but a Jewish mother.

What we do know is that Jesus loved Mary Magdalene most of all.  Although the women in the story are conflated into virgins and harlots, was it Mary who cleaned his feet with her hair and perfume before he was crucified?  Was it Mary who Jesus defended to the male displaces as doing God work and not their constant doubting?  Was it not Mary the Magdalene who the gospels are really referring to and not John, painted as a woman in Da Vinci’s last supper?  And would not a powerful and wealthy woman in her own right have taught her husband to stand up for what he believes in?  While Mary his mother, imparted wisdom and healing, Mary his wife, gave him courage.  Isn’t this the best of the women in our own lives?

What we do know is Jesus and all compassionate men have been taught and cared for by strong and compassionate women; they who embody the goddess.  The goddess is not just for women but for men who can learn from the power of intuition, powerful, if not always predictable emotions, and the courage to stand up for what is right.

With Grace and Grit,  John

Setting the Truth Free

More than one couple has faced the difficult challenge of navigating telling the truth with compassion. Standing before a mirror anyone can say to their mate, “look at me, my waist has grown, my hair is thinning and my arms are flabby” to which the appropriate answer is not “well there is nothing wrong with your eyesight.” It was Gloria Steinem who said, ‘the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off’. True enough. Most of us can’t or perhaps shouldn’t handle the truth in its fierce nakedness. It was Edward Murrow who said:


“Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up at least for a little bit” The question now is and has always been “will the truth set us free?” Gospel of John 8:31.

When Moses came down off that mountain top with the ten commandments and found his people worshiping the golden calf, apostates that they were, he did not argue with them that his new law was better than their old pagan ways. He destroyed the tablets in anger, melted down their idol, forced them to drink the gold, and went back up the mountain to get the truth all over again. It took a while to set the truth free. Will the truth set us free? It depends on which truth.One of our principles as Unitarian Universalists implores us to affirm and promote a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” It’s part of our identity as a church, to which we add service, although I was always a bit uncomfortable with being in search of service. Of all of our principles, I find this one the most difficult. Just who is it that decides what truth is? Is truth relative to each of us or is there an absolute truth? How do we even know where to look if truth is located only within our own hearts? Psychologists now agree that the perception of what is true is wired into us, in large part. Those who perceive the world using mostly their right neo-cortex tend to be more optimistic, seeing the good in most of the world, while those who primarily use their left neo-cortex tend to be more anxious. As Milton put echoing the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” (see The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathon Haidt)

What will your truth be?

With Grace and Grit,  John

Loving Choices

A story crossed my desk several weeks ago about a nine year old boy in Memphis TN who lived in his house for over a month with his dead mother. She had died of cancer and the child, not knowing what to do, covered her up, went to school, shopped for food, cooked his meals and slept near her as long as he could. There was no extended family. The boy knew enough to know that the state would put him in foster care. So he made his own choice for as long as it lasted until finally the school figured out what was going on and social services stepped in. There was a time when the African American community would have known about this and would have been there to help (From Barbara Holmes' Race and The Cosmos)


The stark fact of the matter is even without the force of poverty weighing so heavily on people, many of us are forced to make difficult choices at the end of life. Even had this boy’s mother had a family and a community to help decide on his future care, they might not have the financial resources to do much of anything. Our moral choices are rarely between good and evil, but between two evils; in this case, placing the boy in a foster system wherein he will struggle his entire life or with some distant family member that may not want him.

Its no less agonizing for those who have to make decisions regarding children with special needs. Its tempting for those of us not facing the choice to give a child ritlain or place him in an institution to condemn the parents. But we don’t know what its like to live with a child who we can’t take care of because they are too violent. Sometimes the best choice is to let other people or drugs help us survive. Its no less true for those of us near the end of life or helping those near the end of life. When is the right time to place a loved one in skilled care? How can we afford it? Is there an alternative to institutionalizing them and do we have the strength to manage that as a family?
to live with the difficult but nonetheless loving choices we are forced to make. One of the most tragic results of the Nazi holocaust was the guilt survioros of the death camps lived through afterwards. Even in the early post war years in the newly formed State of Isreal, there was a general disdain by other Jews who had not lived through the horror. “Why didn’t you do more to stop the Nazis? Why didn’t you resist?” They called the survivors, “soap”, a horrific insult to the victims of a culture they had no power to stop.

Theologically this is known as theodicy, the blaming of God, or the victims themselves for the horrors we have to face. I wish they would just blame God or the Nazis. But they didn’t. The first point about how to make these hard loving choices is to survive. We here are not facing the same horrific choices, but survival is the primary value, survival of you as the care giver. I have watched entirely too many parents of special needs children and children of special needs elders throw themselves on the pyre of obligation and end up in need of drastic care themselves. Just as I mentioned several weeks ago, the first part of loving is caring for you as the lover. Put your own oxygen mask on before assisting others. Dr. Sharon Welch in her seminal work “The Feminist Ethic of Risk” tells of African American mothers who hid in the bushes with their children as their husbands were being lynched and while they wanted to run out and try to stop it, they knew they had to stay alive for their children. Its not unlike that when you are the caregiver. You owe it to the ones you love to care for yourself. It’s a matter of degree of course but there is value in staying alive.


But the ethic of risk extends beyond ourselves as well. Because the fact is that we do have to make choices. We do have to decide to help those we love even if we feel incrediablly guilty about it. I believe that God lives in the intersection of our relationships with one another. If we have the best intentions at heart and we are caring for ourselves so that we can continue to care for the ones we love, then the choices are easier. So we face the choice concentrically, surviving first and then helping others to survive and realizing that God lives in the love in between. I have come to believe that love is a lot of work. That real love is like praying with your life; constantly deciding what’s right to do, staying true to your own well being while trying to enhance the ones who depend on you. Its the difference between coercion and persuasion. You can rarely coercise someone with love, you have to persuade them that this is the best outcome for all, even when you are racked by the choice you feel you are being forced to make.

I believe that too often we feel we must suffer our of some mis-guided sense of responsibility. But we will get through by sharing the load not isolating ourselves to deal with it alone. This is what I take to be this new ethic of risk. This recession has brought the struggle of these loving choice into focus. And we can, indeed we must respond to these struggles whether personal or collective with the theological conviction that this is survivable and possible to find love in the decisions themselves. After all the fact that we wrestle at all with whether to place some one in skilled care is evidence that love is present. And that is good enough.

With Grace and Grit, John

Occupy Your Heart

L.B. White the famed reporter for the New Yorker once wrote: “I awake torn between saving the world and savoring the world. This makes it difficult to plan the day”. It’s an old struggle: We want to enjoy life but so often we find it difficult to not feel guilty about not doing enough good.


There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about this tension. Have that cup of Starbucks and then wonder if I just supported a system that exploits child labor. Sign up to spend the day building for Habitat for Humanity even though I could be taking my grandson to the beach. Even in our effort to stand up to the large corporate interests by standing on the corner of Torrance and Hawthorne with the Occupy movement, I was conscious of the fact that most of us were pretty well fed and cared for; people who had savored the world most of their lives.

But perhaps all this middle class angst is a false dichotomy. Is it just a remnant of puritan guilt that makes us worry about enjoying life or saving lives? After all wasn’t it H. L. Mencken's observation that Puritanism is “a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.”?

And it is there that I want to begin. Because I contend that to save anyone, we have to first start by saving ourselves. This Valentine’s day, I am asking you to first occupy your own heart before galloping off to save the world.

With Grace and Grit,  John

Promise Keeping

All of us have moments when life is wonderful and inviting, magnetic with promise. But, of course, there is also the other foot, life of trouble and pain. How do we move from one to the other? What drives us onward, even in the worst of times, to get up and keep going or perhaps if life is really bad, to even just live. This New Year’s I want you to promise to keep living and striving onward.

Life itself keeps us going. When we were born we had little choice in the matter. We were pushed into existence. Life lives us. Something drives us. Call it spirit, will, or fate, we are moving forward because we must move forward, as if some unseen hand - perhaps God? – wants us to go on. Sometimes it is even an obsession. I am reminded of the farm family who had to climb on top of their home to escape the coming flood. “Where’s grandpa?” asked one of the children. There was a straw hat floating around the water in front of the house. Grandma replied “Grandpa said he was going to cut the grass today, come hell or high water!”

Baring high water, hell is a very real problem for most of us who want to get on with our lives but we don’t know how. Not the hell of the afterlife but the hell of the present. Just recently someone outside of our congregation told me that her mother had died, her husband left her and she had been diagnosed with cancer! What do we say to that? Gee, I’m sorry? Some days it really does rain frogs; borrowing a wonderful metaphor from the plagues of Egypt in the Hebrew Bible. And then what? What do you do? Come on, you all know the answer. You get up and start again. Driven still by the promise that today is a new beginning.

Twenty five years ago when my religious life began in earnest, I thought I would change the world. As I finished my graduate training I thought “well, at least I can change the congregation I serve.” After putting a few churches behind me, I thought, “O.K. at least I can change a few lives.” Now I say, perhaps with a bit too much cynicism “At least I will change myself.”

I met Tan, my Buddhist teacher almost 25 years ago during a retreat. My life was more of a mess than it is now. I learned to “sit” from Tan. Not sitting in the sense of putting my posterior down on a chair. But cross-legged, on a cushion, quieting the mind, save for my breath. It wasn’t easy. The Buddhists say that the mind is like a drunken monkey on a hot tin roof. Always filling up with new ideas. After the second day, my legs were cramped, my behind sore and I was really wondering what in the world I was doing there. And I was getting really tired of Tan barking at me to sit up straight. Finally, I snapped. “Stop yelling at me.” Tan dismissed the group and then sat down across from me not saying a word. My temper had once again made me a fool. I was regretting the moment immensely. Finally, in a whisper he said “Your life is a mess. All life is a mess. Sitting for half an hour a day may be the best it gets; like a new beginning in the midst of a continual journey. You think I don’t know how to sit? When I was in Vietnam, the Vietcong came to our village. They raped the women, and shot the old men. My mother and father disappeared. Only my grandmother survived holding me in her lap inside of a large basket. We survived because she had taught me to be very still – to sit. We sat for our lives. My grandmother brought me to a monastery and they took me. I was scared and angry. It took me 30 years to learn to let go of the images of that day in the village. Each day I reminded myself, today is a new beginning. Sit and be with this day. Keep that promise.” He stopped, he closed his eyes. I closed mine. And a new beginning was before me.

My 2012 be the year of keeping the promises which truly matter.
 
With Grace and Grit, John

Brave New Roads of Thanks

The story is told of the first few years of the pilgrim’s residence in the wilds of New England. Camped precariously on the edge of the great woods, this little band of white settlers had lost much to find their new home in North America. Battered and decimated by the long journey across the ocean, the Pilgrims set up their small settlement at Plymouth Rock. We all know the legend of that first Thanksgiving. Short of food, unfamiliar with the crops of the New World, they were saved; it seems by the generosity of the Native Americans whom they would someday make war upon.

Several years into the new settlement, the Puritan fathers had exhausted their resources, even with planting by the shore. The proposal was made to build a road into the interior to bring wood and other resources to the settlement. Much was said at that meeting but in the end, the fathers voted to not build that road. One young woman stood up after this decision and asked to address the meeting. Reluctantly given permission she said: “Here we have traveled thousands of miles over the most dangerous seas, fleeing a mighty persecution on account of our religion; facing savages not all of who are friendly, and staving off starvation only to be afraid to build this road several miles into the wilderness! Why would God give us such a magnificent creation if not to be seen and used? Wherefore that same courage good gentlemen that carried you here, cannot carry you on?” The assembled voted to build the road.

We can argue, of course, as to whether or not such a road was ever a good idea. After all, these Euro Americans would build a great many roads at a great cost to the environment. We would come to exploit all that the land had to offer and we would, most tragically, come to decimate the native peoples of this land. But the salient message in this apocryphal story is not the road but the courage to create something new. Ours is a world rent and ravaged by war and injustice, this great land for which we give thanks is a torn by sectarian and political divisions. The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And yet, we have the power to create something new, the power to build a new road into this wilderness of despair and bring people together as we are doing this evening, if only in our own small way. We have the power if we have the courage to speak our mind, and be who we are destined to be like this powerful young woman.

As we journey through the holidays consider the gift of courage for yourself and those you love.  We are destined to change our world.

With Grace and Grit,    John

Need What You Have

Perhaps the first act of living a temperate, balanced life is to realize that you need most of what you have; the love of a family, the love of friends, food, shelter, comforts, this church. As we approach a season filled with consumption from things to food, ask yourself what do you really need? I will admit I ask myself this question all the time and it’s not easy to answer. Certainly I don’t need seconds of anything, from food to cars. We live with one car between us; it helps to focus your life and plans. We think about the food that goes into our bodies, it helps create justice for those poor of nutrition and spirit. We think about what we buy, almost always for someone else. We have all we need and then some. There is a distinction to be made though between having enough for your family and having enough for a community. Because a community is made up of people who need as much as they want and giving generously allows the community to respond to real needs such as shelter, health and spirit.


The harder part is needing what you don’t want. None of us wants to get sick but it teaches. It teaches all of us. I had a little reminder of this last week. It had been a full weekend. Frances and I were looking forward to getting home. As we were packing our bags and preparing to leave for the Denver airport, I felt a sudden twinge in my back. No, I thought. Not this. I know this. Within minutes my back was in spasms. Painful spasms. The kind that wrap all the way around your rib cage and with each contraction take your breath away. I laid down on the hotel bed. Now what? How was I going to drive in a car, manage a bus, get through security? There is nothing like pain to sharpen your options. Frances found some painkillers. She drove to the airport. She arranged for a wheelchair. She carried all the bags. She got me home. I laid there for two days. I realized that while I didn’t need the pain, the pain needed to teach me a lesson. To let go, to let God, or at least to let Frances do what she was always capable of doing. None of us is completely alone. Even those who travel alone, have kind strangers to help them along the way.

May we learn to truly want what we truly need,

With Grace and Grit,  John

Finding the Hallowed in Halloween

I ran across this piece by Maria Semple in the New Yorker which I want to share with you. I speaks to the essential angst so many of us feel about Halloween, the Day of the Dead and Autumn festivals. It is a series of emails from a pre-school teacher to her parents.

"Dear Parents: The Mountain Room is gearing up for its Day of the Dead celebration on Friday. Please send in photos of loved ones for our altar. All parents are welcome to come by on Wednesday afternoon to help us make candles and decorate skulls. Thanks! Emily

"Hi again: Because I’ve gotten some questions about my last e-mail, there is nothing “wrong” with Halloween. The Day of the Dead is the Mexican version, a time of remembrance. Many of you chose Little Learners (preschool) because of our emphasis on global awareness. Our celebration on Friday is an example of that. The skulls we’re decorating are sugar skulls. I should have made that more clear. Emily

"Parents: Some of you have expressed concern about your children celebrating a holiday with the word “dead” in it. I asked Eleanor’s mom, who’s a pediatrician, and here’s what she said: “Preschoolers tend to see death as temporary and reversible. Therefore, I see nothing traumatic about the Day of the Dead.” I hope this helps. Emily

"Dear Parents: In response to the e-mail we all received from Maddie’s parents, in which they shared their decision to raise their daughter dogma-free, yes, there will be an altar, but please be assured that the Day of the Dead is a pagan celebration of life and has nothing to do with God. Keep those photos coming! Emily

"Hello. Perhaps “pagan” was a poor word choice. I feel like we’re veering a bit off track, so here’s what I’ll do. I’ll start setting up our altar now, so that today at pickup you can see for yourselves how colorful and harmless the Day of the Dead truly is. Emily

"Parents: The photos should be of loved ones who have passed. Max’s grandma was understandably shaken when she came in and saw a photo of herself on our altar. But the candles and skulls were cute, right? Emily

"Ok Parents: It’s late and I can’t possibly respond to each and every e-mail. (Not that it comes up a lot in conversation, but I have children, too.) As the skulls have clearly become a distraction, I decided to throw them away. They’re in the compost. I’m looking at them now. You can, too, tomorrow at drop-off. I just placed …. Finally, to those parents who are offended by our Day of the Dead celebration, I’d like to point out that there are parents who are offended that you are offended. Emily

"Dear Parents: Thanks to their group e-mail, we now know that the families of Millie and Jaden M. recognize Jesus Christ as their Savior. There still seems to be some confusion about why, if we want to celebrate life, we’re actually celebrating death. To better explain this “bewildering detour,” I’ve asked Adela, who works in the office and makes waffles for us on Wednesdays, and who was born in Mexico, to write you directly. Emily

"Hola a los Padres:  El Día de los Muertos begins with a parade through the square, where we toss oranges into decorated coffins. The skeletons drive us in the bus to the cemetery and we molest the spirits from under the ground with candy and traditional Mexican music. We write poems called calaveras, which laugh at the living. In Mexico, it is a rejoicing time of offerings, picnics, and dancing on graves. Adela

"Parents: I sincerely apologize for Adela’s e-mail. I would have looked it over…For now, let’s agree that e-mail has reached its limits. How about we process our feelings face to face? 9 A.M. tomorrow? Emily

"Dear Parents: Some of you chose to engage in our dialogue. Some chose to form a human chain….So we’re all up to speed, let me recap this morning’s discussion:
—Satan isn’t driving our bus. Little Learners does not have a bus. If we did, I wouldn’t still need parent drivers for the field trip to the cider mill. Anyone? I didn’t think so.
—An offering is just a thing we put on the altar. Any random thing. A bottle of Fanta. Unopened, not poisoned. Just a bottle of Fanta.
—We’re moving past the word “altar” and calling it what it really is: a Seahawks blanket draped over some cinder blocks.
—Adela will not be preparing food anymore and Waffle Wednesdays will be suspended. (That didn’t make us any new friends in the rest of the school)
—On Friday morning, I will divide our Room into three groups: those who wish to celebrate the Day of the Dead; those who wish to celebrate Halloween; and Maddie, who will make nondenominational potato prints in the corner.

"Dear Parents: Today I learned not to have open flames in the same room as a costume parade. I learned that a five-dollar belly-dancer outfit purchased at a pop-up costume store can easily catch fire, but, really, I knew that just by looking at it. I learned that Fanta is effective in putting out fires. I learned that a child’s emerging completely unscathed from a burning costume isn’t a good enough outcome for some parents. I learned that I will be unemployed on Monday. For me, the Day of the Dead will always be a time of remembrance.

Happy Halloween!

Emily ♦"
(adapted)
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/10/24/111024sh_shouts_semple#ixzz1c0SOfW5R

Halloween is a big deal in my family. In our last church we had a huge party for the entire church and community which we called ghost town. Our entire two acre farm was devoted to the festival. Each year had a theme, one year it was Aladdin and we had live camel rides! Most of our more conservative neighbors politely declined our invitation, one neighbor, a fundamentalist, told me he was considering forming a prayer circle around our property to protect them from evil spirits.


So inflammatory is this holiday that most schools don’t try anything as creative as poor Emily our preschool teacher. Most call it a Fall Festival. Which is really too bad. It’s too bad that Halloween has been hijacked by the gruesome and satanic. A little scary is kinda of fun, clowns that eat children, not so much. It’s too bad for another reason. That this scaring little kids and forming prayer circles to keep the devil at bay are not what Halloween or the Day of the Dead are about. What they are about is honoring the dead while affirming the living. What Halloween is about is scaring off the bad and making fun of the suffering that gets in the way of living. Like Christmas, another great pagan holiday, the eve before all Saints or Souls Day on Nov. 1st and 2nd is about preparing for a celebration of life. On Christmas eve we sing of the coming of prince of peace, and new hope for the world which arrives Christmas morning.

All Hallows Eve is the night of mischief and laughing at the ills of our world preparing a way for the re-affirmation of life the next morning.

For the past three Wednesday afternoons we have been standing on Hawthorne Blvd in Torrance with a large coalition of ordinary people who want their fellow citizens to know that the system of this country is broken, and pretty scary. We were all a bit conscious that there had been bloody clashes with the Occupy movement in Oakland and Atlanta. Still we were there, “looking ridiculous” as one motorist called us, dressed up as ordinary people protesting a corporate world. There were over fifty people, the most ever. A newspaper reporter was there. One motorist made a veiled threat about our rainbow flag, many waved, one woman told us to "get a life".


It was that last comment that made me pause. If anything, we were there standing on the side of love and compassion so everyone can “get a life”, so that everyone can celebrate the life we have been given, to stand up for those who can’t stand, the hold those hurt by the scary evils of this system in our hearts. We stood there on the eve of a new beginning to do precisely that, “get a life”, not just our lives but the lives of those being shattered around us. We are holding the hallowed in our hands, so that others may know the dawn which breaks upon even the most frightening of nights. Happy Halloween.

With Grace and Grit,  John

The Challenge of Compassion

Last Wednesday about a dozen of us stood in front of the Wells Fargo Bank on Hawthorne across from the Del Amo Mall protesting that banks treatment of American Vets returning from our wars to get relief on their mortgages. We were protesting under the Occupy Wall Street movement the fact that 99 per cent of us are being held hostage by a system of government and business that concentrates wealth in the hands of few fed by taxpayer dollars while 20 per cent of this country is unemployed.

We were protesting the fact that lives are being destroyed by a system that is broken and unjust and that needs to be fixed by either huge taxes on the very rich and their corporations or seeing these same corporations, who seem to have piles of cash, use that money to train the workers they claim they need. We were protesting because the system is morally bankrupt and this makes it our religious concern. We were there to stand on the side of love, to stand, at the very least, on a sidewalk in front of one of the most corrupt banks and let people know they are not alone. We didn’t expect to change the world that afternoon but we did want to witness our faith that people, ordinary people, of all colors deserve better.


Many of the motorists who drove by honked in support. We noted that they were mostly Priuses, old cars and public buses, which says a lot. At least one motorist gave us the finger. To which I and others among us felt like giving him one back. As I reflected on that obscenity and my reaction to it, I came to heart of our challenge as religious people. If we stand on the side of love and want to show compassion to those in need, how can we do it when some of those in need either don’t know they are in need or are fearful of what they think we stand for. Compassion is all well and good when the person you are showing it to wants your help. Quite a bit more challenging when they don’t want your help.

I still remember working in a soup kitchen when one of the clients threw the food back at me. I remember how angry I was at his ungratefulness until Frances reminded me that I had the privilege to think receiving a free meal was worthy of gratitude since it only reminded the desperately poor how dependent they are on the largess of the rich. A more compassionate response to either the finger flipper or the homeless man would have been to step away until my anger released its deadly grip. And to realize that it is more likely fear and her sister anger that force others to attack us, just as our reaction is naturally to return that anger and fear.

Compassion begins when we remember our own pain and then realize that anger and hurtfulness are expressions of that same pain in others.  I am not saying we let people walk all over us.  What I am saying is that we give people, even strangers, victims of injustice, the benefit of the doubt.  What I am saying is that if you sat down with them and were able to hear their pain you might be able to judge them in a different light.

With Grace and Grit,   John

Butterfly Kisses for Buddha

My granddaughter Iris was delighted when she discovered what a Butterfly kiss was. “Come closer Grandpa” she said as she fluttered her eyelids against my check. “Now it’s your turn” We went back and forth for ages. She was completely lost in the joy of the moment and I thought of the Buddha’s teaching that happiness resides only in the present. Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. By living in the present we are so much more likely to be happy than in the past or the future.  Happiness then depends on living as much as possible in the present and in showing compassion with to others.

In my last congregation one of my members was a postal carrier. For his entire life he had carried the mail on the same route. He brought letters (remember letters?) bills and checks, good news and sad. He knew his route so well that they would chat with them if they were home, sometimes opening the mail right in front of him and sharing their lives. But his personal life was a mess. His wife died years ago and he had struggled to raise their children. He took care of his mother as she battled Alzheimer’s until she died. He was looking forward to retirement; to spending time with his grandchildren, being able to volunteer at the church, working on his garden. Several months before he was due to retire he asked to see me. He told me he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, it was inoperable and terminal. He only had a short time to live. He wanted to know why God did this to him. I told him I wasn’t sure that God did. But more importantly I asked him what he wanted to do with the rest of his time? What would make him happy? Without hesitation he told me that he thought he would keep working. That doing what he did best for as long as he could would make him happy. And so he did. He never told his postal patrons he was dying. He just kept working and living in the present. More than three hundred people came to his memorial service. It was a testament to his life.

Ultimately we are only drops in the great ocean of life. And when we die, the Buddha teaches, we become the drop in the ocean, no longer cognizant of us as being but only one with the ocean. Compassion is the fastest way to realize in this life that you are already that ocean. Several years ago there was a terrible incident in Belgium of a man who kidnapped and tortured six young girls. Three of them died before he was captured. A Buddhist monk by the name of Claude Thomas went to visit the mother of one of the dead girls. For hours she spoke with anger and vengeance. Finally Claude asked her “how can you best acknowledge the meaning of your child’s life by killing her killer or working to change the world in which such crimes happen?” What a challenge! Claude was connecting the mother’s suffering to the suffering of all people. He was connecting her happiness to the happiness of others. Those who take refuge in the present must not ignore the suffering but accept it and seek to change it. Ultimately we are only drops in the great ocean of life. And when we die, the Buddha taught, we become the drop in the ocean, no longer cognizant of us as being but only one with the ocean.

Living in the present. Needing what you have, being who you are, doing what you can. I go by the same coffee shop every morning, and there are the same old men talking about the way things were. Are they happy? It seems to me that the ones who are happy are the ones who talk more about what they are doing now; sharing their stories and their time. I thought to myself, what if each of them, turned over just three hours a week to helping others whether in this church or with an agency instead of watching television, the great teat of consumerism? I am sure some of them do volunteer. But what if we all did. What if we all gave ten percent of our tine and income to making the world better than it is; whether feeding another or building a home for a family in need? What if we saw the world through the eyes of a child? Wouldn’t that make us happy?

With Grace and Grit, John

Beyond 9/11

The 10th anniversary of the tragedies of 9/11. On a Sunday. A friend asked me if I would preach about 9/11. Why? I asked him. Why re-live the horror of that crisp and clear fall day, why rehase the squandered opportunity to change the world when everyone on this planet was with us, but instead we turned it into a war on an enemy that could never be seen, leaving the devastation of two countries, millions of lives and trillions of dollars in its wake. Why re-visit a horror that has left a culture of fear, and distrust, not to mention the political theatre of the TSA. Why?

We remember this tragic day in passing so that we can first eulogize the fallen, internationals all. I thought it no small irony that the funding for the twin beams of light that shine up from ground zero in NY will go dark tomorrow from lack of funding. Perhaps it is time we buried the horror and came to account for what we have before us now. Beyond 9/11. Right now. I run the risk of course of sounding political here, and I am, a bit. But what we all need to do, our president leading us, is to lean into our reality, not keeping pushing it back like it wasn’t our fault. What did the psalmist say, all is forgiven but many are responsible?


There are conditions to finding happiness: The first is to determine what matters most to you, whom or what do you ultimately serve. Serve that before yourself. The second is to learn optimism, especially in the face of adversity. Most of my children are under if not unemployed, all of them are working hard to make ends meet, and still we laugh. Finally, adopt an attitude of gratitude. Realize that only by being thankful for what is right can we face what is wrong in our lives.

And yet, ultimately we have to face what is wrong. I contend that we have the same potential for happiness today as we had on Sept. 10, 2001. The potential to find happiness hasn’t changed, it’s just harder to realize. And perhaps that realization will be all the more powerful if we can find it in the face of tragedy.

With Grace and Grit,  John