Story of the day - Were you ever loved?

Joe, aged 25, and his dad were walking in the mall and Joe saw a teenager with a pink and purple mohawk one of those big fan things that look like a peacock's tail. The kid also had all kinds of metal bits stuck in his face and ears along with all kinds of tattoos. He had on jeans, jack boots, a leather vest, spiked bracelets and a choker collar. Joe stuck his chin in the kid's direction and said, "What's up with that Dad?"

The father said, "I have no idea, but I'd say the kid has issues."

Joe said, "I guess he wants attention. He sure can't blend in with that presentation in the mall."

"I think you're right," said the father. "I wonder if anyone ever loved him and made him feel valued as a person?"

"Geez," muttered Joe shaking his head.

Before acceptance comes curiosity

The third principle of Unitarian Universalism, acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations, has always puzzled me why "in our congregations" has been tacked on at the end of the principle. Why not "everywhere we go?" or just leaving the "in our congregations" off the statement. I suppose there is a more focused effort on acceptance and encouraging spiritual growth in our specific in-group and denomination, but it seems to me that the responsibility to acceptance and encouragement should go way beyond our church walls.

The immediate faith community is where the batteries get charged, where the juice gets made, where "marching orders" are given and proceeds outwards from there like the ripples in a pond when a rock has been thrown in with a splash but doesn't stop there until the wave generated reaches the banks.

Of course, it is hard to accept other people until we can accept ourselves. As Rev. Carolyn Owen-Towle writes in With Purpose and Principle, "The most difficult, yet first task, is to accept ourselves. Acceptance comes easily when we receive it from infancy. It takes intentional effort, when we have to develop it later in life." p.47 People can't give what they don't have, can't share what they haven't experienced themselves. It seems a paradox to consider trying to give something to others to receive it ourselves, but what we do for others we also do for ourselves because the other is also part of us, and if we were to deeply understand the idea that we are all one, part of what the Perennial Philosophers call the "Unitive Godhead",  the third principle would not be necessary.

However, we are imperfect, still on the road to enlightenment, and so we must develop the understanding and skills to treat others as they prefer to be treated. This presumes we know them well enough to know what it is they prefer: their values, opinions, beliefs, practices, history. The practice of acceptance and encouragement begins with curiosity about the other. Are we interested in their story? Do we have the time and discipline to listen? When we do, people feel respected, validated, valued, yes, accepted and encouraged.

Story of the day - Going down on a sinking ship with people you like

Glen was depressed and anxious. He'd wake up about 3:00 AM like clock work, anxious, and couldn't get back to sleep sometimes for 2 or 3 hours at 5:00 or 6:00 AM and he had to get up for work at 7:00 AM. At work he was anxious, dizzy, at times feeling like he was going to faint and he had no idea what was wrong. No fever, no other symptoms but his sense of dread and impending doom. It was incapacitating at times. He visited his doctor several times over a two week period who kept telling him he could find no medical explanation for his symptoms. His doctor suggested that he might be depressed and he didn't agree. He didn't feel depressed. Glen insisted it was medical not psychological. Finally, he did start taking an antidepressant, citalopram, and in three days he noticed he was sleeping better and his anxiety subsided. He was starting to feel like his old self. Glen told his story to Gary and said, "Jesus, if this is depression, my heart goes out to anyone who suffers from it. It is terrible. One of the worst things in my life I have ever gone through."

What bothered Glen the most, besides not sleeping, was the sense of dread, the impending doom, and there was nothing in his life to cause this. Things were going well. However, he had become scared as he learned more about the climate change. The scientists were in agreement. The scientific findings and trajectory was basically sound, but nobody besides Al Gore and Bill McKibben seemed to be taking this seriously. Glen felt he was trapped in a Catch 22. Who was crazy, him or the people who seemed oblivious or were in outright denial?

While the antidepressants helped with the symptoms, they did not address the underlying concerns and alarm. Glen was in his 60s, getting to the final stage of his life, and he wasn't so worried for himself, but what he was leaving behind for the younger generations. Were they being warned and adequately prepared for the changes they would have to make? No one seemed to be talking seriously about the upcoming years ahead. It was like it was just so overwhelming and unmanageable that people had given up before they'd even started. Glen remembered reading a futurist who said that the biggest threat facing humankind is the "I don't care attitude". As long as I've got mine, lots of luck to you. Leave me alone. Glen didn't want to live in a world like that and it seemed more and more that's what his world, the United States, was becoming. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, and the concern is no longer for the common good, but for vested interests. What goes on in Washington, and in his state, and county, and town disgusted him. Everyone is looking out for him or herself, and worrying about anyone else seems increasingly overwhelming. You can't take care of everybody so take care of yourself seemed to be the new ethic.

Glen didn't know what to do so he thought he would go back to church, and he didn't go back to the church of his youth because he already knew they didn't have what he was looking for. He went to a new church where they talked a good game, but he was skeptical if they played the game they talked. What he found was half and half. They definitely talked a better game than they played, but many of the people there were trying at least. It gave him hope. He felt a tad bit more optimistic. It the ship was sinking, at least these are the kind of people he'd like to go down with.

My Kind Of Church Music - Call It Democracy, Bruce Cockburn

To fix our environment we are going to have to change our people, places, and things

The UU A Way Of Life book of the month for August, 2014, is Mary Pipher's, The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves In Our Capsized Culture.

In the introduction, Mary Pipher describes her anguish at what appears to be a collapsing society and world. She writes: "But when I turned on the news or read about the environment, war, and daily global injustices, I felt like jumping out of my skin.
     I sensed that many people felt this way. For example, most of my news-junkie friends no longer read the news. And people who had once loved intense political conversations avoided any talk about national and international affairs. People were rushed, stressed, and edgy. Everyone looked tired. We were all confused about what was going on and about how to fix it." p.1

And so Pipher tries to describe the problem. She is depressed and because of her depression she is perceiving depression all around her. You might say that with the collapse of the climate, the whole world, Mother Nature, is depressed. And what are we, any of us, to do about it?

As I read Pipher, and I think we are about the same age in our late 60s, I mutter to myself, "Been there, done that." I went though my depression about 5 years ago, and climate change was one of the top items I perseverated about with my sense of impending doom.

Pipher writes that there are great changes which we are experiencing at this time in the world that scientist, Will Steffen, calls the "Great Acceleration" which is a tsunami of urgent and life-threatening planetary changes that can be traumatic to experience and become aware of. Pipher writes further that this trauma can best be managed with transcendence which allows us  to "...be present and focused, to stay calm and balanced, and to attend to the world around us with great love." p.3

Pipher writes:

In his book, Steps to an Ecology Of Mind, Gregory Bateson writes, 'The unit of survival is the organism and its environment.' We cannot protect our inner life unless we protect our outer life. The external is not so external after all. the only way we can be healthy as individuals is to create healthy environments around us. We are all mixed up together; our survival is contingent on the survival of other living things." p.5

What Pipher is describing what we Unitarian Universalists already covenant to affirm and promote in our seventh principle, the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

As people in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction are taught, the success of their continued recovery may require that they change their people, places, and things. If you are in recovery you can't hang around with the same old people, in the same old places, doing the same old stuff because that's where your triggers are. Once we realize that the "unit of survival" as Gregory Bateson defines it is the organism and its environment, then we realize, to return to a healthier balance of interdependence on a road of recovery, we are going to have to change some of our people, places, and things. In order to do this we need to develop a sober support group, a  group of like minded people who will support our recovery. Do you know such people?

Story of the day - How racism is learned

Our little Mary, Shirley Temple look alike, came home from kindergarten, and said with a pout, "I don't like black people!" My wife and I were horrified. How could our darling little white girl with the curly blond hair and blue eyes and polite middle class upbringing, be a racist?

Her kindergarten was in a school which was part of the "urban-suburban" program meaning that inner city children were bused out to school in the suburbs and most of these "city children" were, of course, people of color and lower class. What Mary was objecting to was not that they were black but that they were aggressive, unmannered, didn't use middle class speech patterns, and had values foreign to Mary's middle class upbringing. What to do to help Mary, 6 years old, with growing antipathy towards this behavior? Should we encourage Mary to "stand her ground" and fight back, or be passive and "nice" and continue to get taken advantage of? Perhaps we should find a way to help Mary find a middle ground.

My wife and I had a conference with the teacher who at first was very polite, reserved, and diplomatic, but as the conversation continued she admitted that there was quite a culture clash, and her job as a kindergarten teacher was made much more challenging by the very different social backgrounds of her students. How to help the middle class kids tolerate or constructively respond to the objectionable behavior of the lower class kids was a challenge that the teacher often felt inadequate and unsuccessful in dealing with. The teacher said that Mary was one of her best students, well behaved, followed directions, and tried hard to accommodate the objectionable behavior of the inner city kids, and yet there were times that the teacher said she observed that Mary was hurt and mistreated.

Should we move Mary to another classroom that did not participate in the "urban-suburban program?" As we considered this, a miraculous thing happened. Mary made friends with a sweet, delightful, African American girl, who agreed with Mary that sometimes the boys were "too rough". Mary and Laketa became good friends and Laketa was invited to come to our home for play dates but she never did. My wife and I, I am embarrassed to admit, were just as happy with this for fear that Laketa's mother would want to reciprocate and Mary would go to her home in the inner city.

I became well aware that my discomfort was not about race, but about class. If Laketa had been Bill Cosby's child or Michael Jordan's, no problem, but the child of single mom living in poverty with a father no one seemed to know about, raised fears of the unknown especially when we considered if we would be responsible parents subjecting our daughter to these circumstances.

My wife said to me, "You know Jerry, this is how racism is learned. It's our fears and attitudes as much as anything that get unconsciously shifted to Mary. She knows we are afraid, and wary of these people too, and really don't want her to get too close to Laketa."

"Better than nothing," I said, "at least we are trying. Not perfect, but I hope somehow it helps."

"I hope you're right," is all she said.

My Kind Of Church Music - Ebony and Ivory, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder

Are we looking for the divine spark in everyone?

This month, August, 2014, UU A Way Of Life will be considering and discussing the third principle of Unitarian Universalism: We covenant to affirm and promote acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations."

Ten years ago I attended a UU church in a small rural community and the question came up of whether we wanted to go though the process to become certified as a "Welcoming Community" open to welcoming gay and transgender people to our congregation. There were some gay people already in the congregation, but the idea of going public scared some of the members. "I don't know if it's a good thing for us to become known as "the gay church" in our community. It might create more problems than it resolves." It is one thing to think one thing in private, but to go public is a big step and this church decided not to do it.

We tell ourselves we are open minded, and not racist or homophobic or sexist or discriminatory in any way and perhaps, in our own heart we are not, but to go public with our beliefs especially when they run counter to community norms takes courage and bravery that is all too often sadly lacking. It has been said that America is most segregated on Sunday mornings when we Americans go to church.

Structural and institutional discrimination is prevalent in our society, and while we are sometimes aware of this we don't want to say anything because we are quite comfortable enjoying the security of the practices in place even though we know they go against our consciences. In one UU congregation a person accused of sexually offending was singled out and stigmatized based on the church policy and a few years later was found not guilty of the offenses which he had been charged with. During this period of time, the person left the UU church and attended a protestant church of another denomination where he was welcomed. The UU policy was developed in response to the pedophile priest scandal and the heightened sensitivity and frightened alarm of the time. Congregations rushed to develop policies to assure "safe congregations", but, often wound up with bureaucratic rules which were antithetical to just, equitable, compassionate pastoral care.

I remember being told when I was a teenager that churches were hospitals for sinners, but all too often sinners are stigmatized, and treated as pariahs as we pay lip service to the idea of acceptance of one another with compassion. And so, it becomes unclear what is meant by this idea of acceptance. As Carolyn Owen- Towle writes in her essay on the third principle in "With Purpose and Principle: Essays About The Seven Principles Of Unitarian Universalism" edited by Edward A. Frost, "It is within our capacity to accept someone for their intrinsic worth without necessarily accepting what they believe or how they act. That, in fact, is what we are obliged by our principles to do. But, it does take a certain amount of maturity to separate being from behavior." p.47

As a Narrative Therapist, I have been taught that the problem is the problem, the person is not the problem. We can accept the person, and reject the problem. It is in making this distinction that spiritual growth can occur. People think, feel, and do insane things. The ego can create treacherous scenarios for itself and others, and stepping back and getting things into perspective, we recognize that living on the ego plane can be hell. The miracle, according to A Course In Miracles, is a shift in perception to the spiritual plane, and this miracle is enacted when UUs apply this third principle in looking, like Peace Pilgrim, for the divine spark in everyone and welcoming it so it can be manifested in our lived relationships.

Unitarian Universalist young boy has a special need. Can you, will you, help?

Rev. Lee Richards, Pastor of the Pullman Memorial Universalist Church in Albion, NY, writes a blog and Tuesday, July 29, 2014, this post appeared. I thought some of the readers of the UU A Way Of Life might be interested. Pullman is a very small but old Universalist church in Western New York in Orleans County between Rochester and Buffalo and one of the poorest counties in New York State. In order for the goal to reached to provide Tyler with a Diabetic Alert Dog, people from outside the area will have to help as well. Thank you for your attention and possible assistance.

From Pastor Richards blog:

One of our younger church members needs help...

Tyler was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of 7. He has what is known as "labile diabetes" which means that he has extreme, volatile fluctuations in his blood sugar on a regular basis, as much as from 35-600 in the course of a day. He uses an insulin pump and CGM device to try to control his diabetes, yet even with these amazing technological advances, he was still found on his bedroom floor in a grand mal seizure that almost took his life. The hope is that through fundraising his family will be able to provide a Diabetic Alert Dog (DAD) that is able to smell and alert for high and low blood sugars and possibly save his life in the future.

More information about Tyler and how a DAD can help, plus how you - the reader - can help may be found at: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/bring-home-kenai-a-diabetic-alert-dog-for-tyler-/210944#sthash.UAhwStog.dpuf

Please, if you can possibly can do so, follow the link and make a contribution for this boy and give him a chance to enjoy life more. As his pastor, I thank you.