April 2018 Worship Theme: What Does It Mean to Be a People of Emergence?”

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of
self-examination - but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring
and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests,
an altar for an unknown God.     ~ Henri-Frederic Ariel

Make a bit of room. Leave a little space. Keep a lookout for the unexpected. These directions may not sound like anything radical or revolutionary. But it turns out that these are often Life’s favorite ways to help us emerge into something new.

Henri-Frederic Ariel’s reminder about leaving room and letting some things be is especially important as we move into the season of spring. During this time of year, it’s not just farmers but us all who turn to the work of “tilling and turning up our whole soil.” All around us, the culture shouts its heroic talk about striving and perfecting. Struggle is the dominant metaphor of the day. We talk of “fighting” to become all we can be. Images of sprouts breaking through concrete start showing up everywhere. Yet, we need to be careful because, more often than not, emergence and transformation is a much subtler art. It’s about stillness, listening and waiting to be led, not conquering, struggle and taking charge.

In other words, when it comes to emerging into something new, the message of spirituality is “Be careful with what you’ve been taught and told because much of it takes us in exactly the wrong direction.” As a people of emergence, we are called to take a different tack. We’ve been entrusted with the wisdom that emergence is most often about breathing rather than becoming better, patience not perfection, depth not dominance; acceptance not striving, attention not constant improvement.

That part about attention instead of improvement is especially important. It’s so easy to get transformation mixed up with fixing. And fixing is emergence’s biggest foe. Trying to perfect or prove ourselves is the surest way to stay stuck. The pursuit of constant improvement and perfection focuses us on our inadequacy and inferiority, causing us to overlook those unexpected guests that Henri- Frederic speaks of.

And, friends, we don’t want to miss those unexpected guests! Those seeds brought by the wind and those passing birds are the partners that make emergence possible. They help us notice new paths. They invite us to walk with a new step. They awaken in us new songs. They remind us that new life is not something we do alone. They assure us that transformation doesn’t have to be a long and lonely struggle, but instead can be more like learning a new dance with a new friend. All we have to do is trust, take the hand of that “unknown God” and follow its lead.

So, this month, leave some room on that dance floor of yours. Keep your eyes peeled. And when that unexpected guest reaches out its hand, make sure you’re ready to take hold.
~ text from Soul Matters thematic resources

March 2018 Worship Theme: What Does It Mean to Be a People of Balance?”
When we talk of balance, it’s natural for calm and rest to be the first things that come to mind. There’s no getting around it: many of us are tired. We’re overworked, over-busy, over-committed. Striving and stress have become the badges we wear to prove that we are of worth. We are often so weighed down by responsibility and worry that it only takes one drop of something unexpected to tip us over. So, yes, we long for rest. Yes, we want less to manage and juggle. Yes, we need balance’s reminder that a place of calm and peace is possible.
And yet, pointing us to peace and calm is not all that balance is about. Remembering this is at the center of this month’s work. Indeed, there is no better month than March to help us embrace balance’s many meanings.
For instance, take the religious holidays in March. Lent reminds us that balance is a place reassessment, renewal, preparation, and even repentance. It honors the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert preparing for his ministry and the path to the cross. The balance he sought in the desert was not that of restful escape, but that restorative re-centering. Balance got him ready, rather than simply offering him relief. Passover also puts its own spin on balance. It is a time to retell the story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt after centuries of slavery. For it, balance is a matter of remembering, of pausing to put yourself back into a story that connects you with others and anchors you in a counter-cultural narrative. During Passover, the balance one finds is not that of calm but that of reconnection. There’s also Ostara, the Pagan celebration of the Vernal Equinox. It honors the balance of day and night, but more importantly it celebrates the way this balance is a tipping point on the way to Spring. It’s a reminder that stillpoints are rarely still. They are a place of turning, a space where shifts happen and new life emerges. And finally the Hindu holiday of Holi also needs held up, with its ritual of restoring one’s belief in the power of good over evil. It’s a reminder that balance and calm isn’t just found by taking a break from life, but by trusting in its goodness once again.
March is also the month in which we honor many people who gave their lives to the cause of justice. The list is large:

• The Selma–Montgomery March happened March 21-25, 1965
• James Reeb was murdered on March 11, 1965
• Viola Liuzzo was murdered on March 25, 1965
• March is Women’s history month with its call to remember the long history and continuing work for Women’s equality.
• Susan B. Anthony's death was March 13
• Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed on March 24, 1980

These anniversaries remind us that being a “people of balance” is often the opposite of keeping things calm. In order to move toward a balance of justice, we have to upset the current state of things.

Oppressive systems need challenged and toppled. We need to sacrifice our calm and comfort, and instead “go all in.” Achieving a balance of equality requires us to be purposefully off-balance with our culture, or as Martin Luther King Jr. said, we need people who are “maladjusted.” Being out of sync with “the way things are” is the first step toward a better balance for all.

Add all this up and suddenly “balance” takes on a new meaning. Actually, it takes on many new meanings. The observances of March remind us that balance is not simply a destination, but also a place of invitation. It’s not a static space of peace, as much as a still-point on which we pivot and turn to something new. It’s not just about rest, but about resting up for a journey. Yes, balance allows us to catch our breath, but it’s also about finding our center so we can end all our aimless wandering around. It’s fine to think of balance by imagining the Buddha sitting peacefully under a tree, but we can’t let that overshadow the image of a diver balancing way up there on her diving board, pausing to re-gain her composure and courage so she can leap and go “all in.”

Another way to put all this is to ask, “What is your balance for?” Maybe instead of asking each other, “Have you found balance?” we need to ask “Where is your balance taking you?” Yes, balance sometimes can be an end in itself, but this month and its observances remind us that more often balance is a means to a greater end. In other words, maybe balance isn’t the prize but the springboard. Maybe balance isn’t the goal, but the source of strength that gets us where we need to go.

Which means that our most important questions this month might actually be, “Do you know where you’re trying to get to?” and “Which kind of balance will help you along your way?”

- Soul Matters Sharing Circle 

What Does It Mean to Be a People of Perseverance?

“People cry not because they are weak. It’s because they’ve been strong too long.”     ~ Shane Koyczan

"This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players or singers to hold a note longer than they actually can hold a note. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger when we took a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breathe, and the music stayed strong and vibrant... So let's remember the advice of music: Take a breath. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. Rejoin so others can breathe. Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don’t have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song.”     ~ Michael Moore

So, have you been strong too long?

It’s not the usual question when tackling the topic of perseverance. Most often, we’re asked, “Are you ready to be strong?” The standard recipe is well known: Buck up! Grin and bear it! Keep pushing! Keep moving forward! Dig deep; you are stronger than you know! But maybe Koyczan is right. Maybe this typical roadmap isn’t the path to perseverance; maybe it’s just the path to breakdown.

And when we combine Koyczan’s quote with Moore’s invitation to breathe, we suddenly see that balance plays a bigger role in perseverance than we often assume. As a people of perseverance, we are being called not just to grit and strong wills, but to gentleness and self-care. Constantly pushing ourselves without also giving ourselves the gift of pause gets us nowhere. Digging deeper without making time to deepen and fill our wells is a recipe for self-inflicted pain.

All of which is to say that maybe vulnerability is the real secret to perseverance. Maybe admitting you’re tired and asking for help is the real strength that gets us through. That dominant myth of Sisyphus pushing his rock up that endless hill hasn’t done us any favors. We assume that Sisyphus is suffering because his work is endless, but maybe it’s his isolation and lack of a place to rest that is his true torment.

So, friends, this month, let’s not torment ourselves. We don’t have to give up those pep talks about digging deep and being stronger than we know. But right alongside that, let’s make sure we’re also doing the more tender work of propping each other up and reminding each other to breathe.

Rabbi David Wolf tells a story that we all should carry with us this month:
A boy and his father were walking along a road when they came across a large stone. “Do you think if I use all of my strength, I can move this rock?” the child asked. His father answered, “If you use all of your strength, I am sure you can do it.” The boy began to push the rock. Exerting himself as much as he could, he pushed and pushed. The rock did not move. Discouraged, he said to his father, “You were wrong. I can’t do it.” His father put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and said, “No son. You didn’t use all your strength – you didn’t ask me to help.”

What a gift to remember that perseverance isn’t a solo act. May that be the gift this month gives us all.

“Here’s what I discovered. Intention is different from setting goals or resolutions in that it “pulls us into” who we truly are. Goals and resolutions “push us out” into future possibilities. To set intentions, we listen to our inner voice which tells us who we truly are.”
~ Katie Covey

So here we are again, in the month of January with its talk of daring resolutions and its demanding call to “become better.” It’s hard not to buy into it. After all, it seems so wellintended. I mean, who could argue with the goal of self-improvement? And so most of us gladly go along and declare “This is the year I’m going to finally be a better me!”

But are we sure this is what we really want? When you read that quote above about being “pulled in” rather than “pushed out,” what happens in your heart? Do you find yourself still excited about the New Year’s work of striving to become a brand-new self? Or do you suddenly notice an internal whisper that says “I long to be pulled in more deeply to the self I already am”? In other words, maybe our real New Year’s work is not about leaping into self-improvement, but about pausing, stepping back and asking “What hunger really has my heart?”

There is, after all, a big difference between becoming better and becoming ourselves. Self-improvement is not the same as self-alignment. Wanting to get from point A to point B is something quite different from longing to find your inner anchor. Goals and intentions may indeed be more distinct than we have thought.

​So, this month, maybe our most important work is to make room. All around us, there’s going to be plenty of busy talk about being “a people of goals and resolutions.” We are going to get more than enough advice about how to stay focused on a new future for ourselves. But in the midst of it all, may we, as a people of intention, also carve out a quieter place that keeps our attention closer to the present and who we already are at our center. May we make space for listening before we leap into the striving. And as we do that, maybe we will discover that this isn’t the year of “finally becoming a better me.” Maybe we’ll decide it’s enough to simply “finally be me.”

What Does It Mean to Be a People of Hope?

Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in [all of us]. Those who hope...can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. [True hope] means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”
~ Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian

It’s not always easy to hear well this time of year, especially when it comes to hope. The dominant messages are about hope offering us calm: “The light will come.” “A new day is on its way.” “Justice and joy are growing in the womb and will soon be born.” Hope, from this point of view, is a voice that reassures. It’s a welcomed whisper that says, “Yes, the sky may be dark now. Yes, the road you’re on at this moment may be hard. But trust me, just over that horizon, there’s a new world waiting for us all.”

This soothing message comes to us as a gift. During dark days, we all get tired. The fruits of our efforts are hard to see. We feel alone. The promise that things will change offers us relief. We are released from the burden of believing that “it is all up to me” or that it all must be solved now. It’s a beautiful and needed message. But, as Moltmann and others remind us, it’s also only half of what hope is trying to say. Hope doesn’t just whisper “It will be different,” it also shouts “It should be different” and “It can be different.” Yes, it speaks soothing words about trusting and waiting, but it also takes the form of a holy impatience that declares, “Enough is enough. The time is now!” As Moltmann puts it, hope is not just that which calms the unquiet heart; it also is the unquiet heart.

In other words, hope doesn’t just promise us that change will come in the future; it also changes who we are in the present. When we believe that a new day is dawning, we don’t just sit down and wait. We get up and go out to meet the light. When hope convinces us that there are unseen forces working for the good, we begin to look around more closely, and in doing so we notice that darkness and pain are not all that is there. When hope’s holy impatience gets into our bones, we start acting as if we deserve that new day now. Which in turn changes others by convincing them that we all have waited long enough.

Bottom line: listening fully to hope, makes you dangerous, not just soothed! It doesn’t relieve us of duty as much as it reminds us that wind is at our back and unseen reinforcements are at our side. Yes, hope reassures, but it also emboldens. It doesn’t just offer us a promise; it gives us a push. But all of this only happens if we listen fully. So maybe the most important question this month is:
“Are we listening to everything hope has to say?”

What Does It Mean to Be a People of Abundance?

When it comes to abundance, our culture and our religion are clearly at odds. Our culture cries, “Accumulate!” Our religion counsels “Appreciate!” The mantras couldn’t be more different: The commercials tell us to “Go out and get what you want!” The pulpits plea with us to “learn to want what you have.”

So, yes, appreciation is central to this month. Noticing the abundance around us is clearly the work we are called to do. But one wonders if that’s enough. It all depends on what you do after the noticing is done.

Sometimes there’s a passivity to appreciation that leaves nothing changed. There’s a big difference between appreciating the blessing of family and committing to sitting down together for dinner at least three or four times a week. It’s one thing to notice the beauty that fills your own backyard; it’s quite another to pull yourself out of the rat race so you have time to enjoy it. It helps to have a sermon remind us that our spouse or parent is doing the best they can, but that insight rarely sticks without a commitment to action that helps us truly let go of all the things we wish they were and embrace the limited but wonderful abundance of what they are.

In short, appreciation only gets us part of the way there. Noticing places abundance in view, but only new commitments put it within reach. Without a decision to change our lives, noticing becomes nothing more than nostalgia.

So, what needs to change? Maybe that’s the real question this month. What needs altered so you can dance with what is plentiful rather than worrying about what is scarce? What clutter finally needs cleaned up so there is room for new abundance to enter in? What changes will free you from the urgent and allow in the important?

Yes, people of abundance make time for noticing, but they also make tough choices.
​Choices that, after they are made, don’t really feel tough at all.

Spiritual abundance is waiting for us friends. May this be the month we choose it.

~ Soul Matters Sharing Circle


Personal Reflection Resources on Abundance
If you missed getting a copy of the personal reflection exercises on abundance that Dawn offered at the conclusion of worship on November 26, you can download them here.

On Courage: Writings and Resources for October 2017
Courage - by Karen Hering, Consulting Literary Minister for Unity Church-Unitarian, St. Paul, Minnesota

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Franklin Roosevelt announced in 1933, evoking a stiff-upper-lip kind of courage meant to assure a nation in the throes of the Depression. And we have repeated this ever
since, as if by banishing fear we could overcome it.

Ask any group of children about courage, though, and they may offer a different wisdom. Courage, they may
say, is an attitude of “anyway.” It’s when you know something will bring trouble or pain or embarrassment and
you do it anyway.

Courage and fear, it turns out, are not opposites. Rather, they define and shape each other. Fear sets a
boundary within which most of us pass most of our days. It separates what we name as safe from what we
deem as threatening – and each of us draws that line differently. Courage, on the other hand, allows us to step
across that boundary when life or love or a higher value demands it. It beckons us to act anyway, knowing full
well we are stepping toward risk or danger, which requires knowing what and where our fears are in the first
place.

Under FDR’s advice, we don’t get close enough to our fears to know them. Whistling our way along, pretending
not to hear fear’s footsteps, we lose a key source of guidance. After all, fear is our built-in warning system. It
taps us on the shoulder and says “Wake up! Pay attention!” It can be critical to survival. “Fear is a natural
reaction to moving closer to the truth,” says the Buddhist monk Pema Chodron. Why would we send it
packing?

The root of the word courage is coeur or “heart.” In Buddhist teachings, the soft spot in the center of our heart
is one of our greatest treasures, the seat of compassion where we find our connection to all other beings. So
the courage of the spiritual warrior is found not in the fearful act of armoring and protecting this tender spot. It
is found by opening the heart up wider.

“You faced the death bombs and bullets,” writes poet Anne Sexton…“with only a hat to cover your heart.”
Now that’s courage. Dropping the armor that shields us from relationship and stepping deeper into the world
anyway.

This is what Unitarians Waitstill and Martha Sharp did in 1939. Leaving home and family behind in
Massachusetts, they traveled to Europe to help over 2,000 Jews escape to safety. For this brave work, in
2005, the Sharps posthumously joined only one other U.S. citizen honored by Israel as “Righteous Among the
Nations,” non-Jews memorialized in Yad Vashem for courageous resistance in the Holocaust.

Lest we consider the Sharps’ courage as some extraordinary gift, their daughter advises us otherwise.
“They were modest and ordinary people,” she said of her parents. “They responded to the suffering and needs
around them as they would have expected everyone to do in a similar situation.”

Courage is not just available to warriors and heroes. Courage has been tucked into every one of us, if we but
learn to tap it. Can we take down our defenses and walk out into the world with only a hat to cover our hearts?
Vulnerable and exposed, we are invited to step over the lines of fear we have drawn around us, to expand our
boundaries ever outward to that place where we might truly and tenderly meet one another.

“God is always revising our boundaries outward,” the Quaker Douglas Steere says. Are we willing to conspire
in such a courageous act of growth and connection?

May this, then, be our ordinary way with courage: May we know where our fears lie and learn to step beyond
them when needed. For each time we cross a line of fear, it breaks open a little more; and with each opening,
the circumference of our lives, and of history itself, is revised outward.

“We have not come into the exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love,” writes Hafiz,
“. . . or to confine our wondrous spirits, but to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and Light!”


Our friends at Soul Matters Sharing Circle write:
Courageous people change the world. There are so many examples of that this month. October is LGBTQ history month and reminds us of the many who bravely moved (and continue to move) our world toward greater acceptance and affirmation. The revolutionary prophet of peace, Mohandas Gandhi, was born on October 2. Our Christian friends celebrate Reformation Day and Martin Luther’s courage that changed how we all think about religious authority. We rightly honor such giants. The problem is most of us aren’t that tall.

Or are we? Here’s what we have to help each other remember: In addition to the heroic acts that alter history, there are also the daily choices that prevent history from altering us. Battling evil and bending the arc of the universe toward justice deserves praise, but there’s also the ordinary work of integrity and not allowing yourself to be bent. This needs to be noticed as well. There’s the bravery of embracing your beauty even when it doesn’t fit the air-brushed images surrounding you. There’s the courage of calling out the micro-aggressions that happen almost every day at work. And what about resisting the persistent seduction of status and stuff? The list is long: Turning down that drink one day at a time. Making yourself get out of bed when the depression tells you to stay there. Holding your partner’s hand in public. Make no mistake, there are dozens of ordinary acts of bravery we rise up to everyday!

Or maybe we should say there are dozens of ordinary acts of bravery we help each other rise up to every day. Courage is not only noble; it’s contagious. The bravery that makes it into the history books may save the world, but our ordinary courage keeps each other going. Watching someone else make it through another day helps us endure. Witnessing someone else confront bigotry allows us to bravely be more open about who we are. They say that courage is found by digging deep, but most often it is passed on.

So don’t worry so much if you haven’t changed the world yet. And certainly let’s stop comparing ourselves with those giants. Our work rests less in looking up to them and more in looking over at and gaining strength from each other. And remembering that others are looking over at and needing strength from us.

Worship Theme Resources
- with gratitude to Unity Church-Unitarian, St. Paul, Minnesota for these resources…

Books
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron

The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich’s classic work on how we can confront the anxiety which drives our lives. He writes of the courage
it takes to be part of a larger whole, the courage to stand alone and the courage to accept the fact that we are
carried by “the creative power of being.”

The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer
This is an inspirational book for teachers and also for those who love actually and learn actively. The Courage
to Teach argues that good teaching comes from the integrity of the teacher. This is true, of course, for all of us.
We are asked to turn our minds inward to develop a deeper understanding of what it means to fulfill one’s
calling. As actual teachers and as active learners, we weave a complex web of connections among our
subjects, our students and ourselves.

The Human Line by Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass is a wonderful poet. The author of The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child
Sexual Abuse, Bass muses to ”pay attention, appreciate, give praise, struggle, grieve, rage, and pray.”
Through poetry (and humor), she embodies her great love of this world…

…When I get home,
my son has a headache, and though he’s
almost grown, asks me to sing him a song.
We lie together on the lumpy couch
and I warble out the old show tunes, Night and Day...
They Can’t Take That Away from Me . . . A cheap
silver chain shimmers across his throat
rising and falling with his pulse. There never was
anything else. Only these excruciatingly
insignificant creatures we love.

The Strength to Love by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Coretta Scott King wrote: If there is one book Martin Luther King, Jr. has written that people consistently tell me has changed their lives, it is The Strength to Love. I believe it is because this book best explains the central
element of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence: his belief in a divine, loving presence that binds all life. By reaching into and beyond ourselves and tapping the transcendent moral ethic of love, we shall
overcome these evils.
In short meditations, Dr. King articulates his commitment to justice and to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual conversion that makes his work timelessly powerful.

Films
Stand by Me (1986). “Do you think Mighty Mouse can beat up Superman?” “Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman is a real guy. No way a cartoon could beat up a real guy.” “In all our lives, there is a fall from innocence, a time after which we are never the same. It happened in the summer of 1959…a long time ago.” Stand by Me is a story of beauty and becoming. A group of young boys set out on the adventure of their lives. And they sure find it, with courage, in one another.

The River Wild (1994). Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon star in a thriller. Gail Hartman (Streep) is struggling through what seems like the last stages of a marriage. She decides to dust off her old skills and take the family on a rafting trip. When her adolescent son is abducted by other rafters, the adventure begins for real. Gail must navigate dangerous rapids and even worse, her own fear.

I Am Sam (2001). Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) loves Starbucks coffee. He loves The Beatles. Most importantly, he loves his daughter who is seven years old. Her name is Lucy Diamond, as in Lucy in the sky with diamonds. The problem is that Sam Dawson has the mental capacity of a 7-year-old boy. He fights courageously to keep his family together.
​
What films would you add to the list?

To the White Anti-Racists Who are Nervous about Stepping Up Against Racism…
Dawn shared this May blog post written by Chris Crass on The Good Men Project website as a 
large part of her sermon message on Sunday, June 21. If you weren’t able to join us, please read.