Lenten Reflections, Day three, Friday after Ash Wednesay, Put away your smartphone

Day three, Friday after Ash Wednesday

Put away your smartphone and just listen with undivided attention to others.

Some people miss the point of Lent. Lent is not about fasting as deprivation and giving things up like some kind of game to prove how pure and fastidious we can be. Lent is about turning away from the idols of the ego and turning toward the things of the Spirit.

Do we harbor resentments when we should be understanding and compassionate? Do we like to play the victim to obtain sympathy and manipulate others? Do we project our guilt thinking “I might have done some bad things, but thank god I’m not as bad as them.?”

We love to play the game of “what about them” and “they did it first,” and “they are just getting what they deserve” as we play tit for tat.

Lent is a time to give up the games. It is a time to fast from being mean and spiteful. Lent is a time to put away our defensiveness, our arrogance, our narcissism and open our hearts with generosity, care and concern, and a desire for the well being of the other.

It is written in Isaiah 58: 9-10

“Then you will call, and the Lord will answer, you will cry for help, and he will say: ‘Here I am if you do away with the yoke of oppression, and the pointing finger and the malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed then your light will rise in the darkness, and you night will become like the noonday.’”

The God of Isaiah calls us not to bodily deprivation but to love and justice in the way we treat others. During Lent we are asked to give up our self centeredness and think more of others. What would you give up and turn away from if you were to treat others with more kindness and love?

We give up our bodily attachments in order to be more available for loving others as we do ourselves. Could you put your smartphone away and just listen with undivided attention to the people who cross your path today?

Virtue develoopment - Kindness, what is the measure of a person?

Part two - What is the measure of a person? Kindness

Kindness cannot co-exist with attack whether that attack comes in the form of judgment, contempt, disdain, cheating, lying, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, or physical abuse.

When one deals with one’s shame and guilt by blaming others, how can any good come from it other than to save face, avoid one’s own accountability, and live a lie pretending things are one way when they are really another?

Kindness does not harm, does not gloat, does not avoid responsibility and certainly does not attack another to benefit one’s ego.

When one is unkind, one further contributes to hell on earth. Rather than choose harm and a further enhancement and extension of hell on earth, choosing kindness does the opposite and bestows a blessing on oneself and others. Kindness is one more step towards heaven on earth.

Choosing kindness is facilitated by always asking “What would Love have me do?” and then doing it.

Because of our socialization and conditioning by society, kindness does not come naturally but is a skill that is strengthened by practice. By being mindful of what Love would have us do and doing it, we become stronger with every effort at extending kindness. After much practice, kindness seems to come more habitually and be natural.

What is the measure of a mature person? It is their skill and competence in employing kindness in their interactions with themselves and others?

How much of the time do you interact with yourself and others in a kind way: 100%, 50%, 25%? How could you increase the percentage of the time that you act kindly? What would it take? Are you willing to deliberately practice being kind?

Religious literacy - Is the enhancement of religious literacy a part of UUs mission?

Chapter Eight

Is the enhancement of religious literacy a part of UUs mission?

When it comes to religions other than Christianity, Americans fare far worse. One might hope that US citizens would know the most basic formulas of the world’s religions: the Five Pillars of Islam, for example, or Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. But most Americans have difficulty even naming these religions. In a recent survey of American teenagers, barely half were able to come up with Buddhism and less than half with Judaism when asked to list the world’s five “major religions.” Far fewer could name Islam or Hinduism. According to Harvard religious studies professor Diana Eck, “Christians in the United States are pretty abysmally ignorant about the religious traditions of the rest of the world.”10

Prothero, Stephen. Religious Literacy (p. 6). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

One might think that given the Unitarian Universalist’s profession that the third of the six identified sources of their “living tradition” is “wisdom from the world's religions which inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life”  most UUs could name the five major world religions and describe what each religion teaches about God, and some of their major practices and holidays. But the religious literacy of UUs is no better and some say  even worse than the religious members of other faith traditions.

To what extent is this deficit in religious literacy an indication of poor faith formation in Unitarian Universalist congregations?

Poor faith formation programs is a major problem in the viability of Unitarian Universalism as a living tradition. Most UUs don’t understand their own religion let alone the other major religiious traditions. How many UUs could name the seven sacraments of the liturgical Christian Churches such as Catholicism? How many UUs could tell you the differences between Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans? How many UUs could tell you the five pillars of Islam or the four noble truths of Buddhism? How many UUs could identify Krishna and tell you what the Bhagavad Gita is? How many UUs could tell you what Moses did that is important to Jews, or Joseph Smith to the Latter Day Saints?

What could/should UUs do to increase the level of religious literacy among its members or is this of little or no concern and relevance to what Unitarian Universalists consider to be their mission?

Climate justice - Working alone or together in solidarity?

Chapter Eighteen

Working on climate warming mitigation: alone or together?

Individual actions to mitigate climate change do count and in the last analysis they count  because as these individual actions aggregate, the cumulative effect arises to change systems.

Putting cardboard in a yellow recycling box doesn't do as much as voting for representatives who will work on environmental issues does. Also, boycotting businesses and investing in companies that are environmentally conscious makes a big difference.

Simple example - What do you think the election of Bush over Gore made for US environmental policies? How about Trump over Clinton? How about your state governorship?

Here in New York State plastic bags are no longer permissible for most purchases after March 1, 2020. The heck with the recycling bins, get rid of the problem at its source - get rid of the bags.

My village, Brockport, NY, has been working for the last 3 years on creating a solar farm to create all the electricity for our municipality. That's big. No longer have to worry about turning off the light switches.

Individual actions are very necessary, We just need to become more sophisticated about the targets. The fossil fuel companies want us to sort our garbage as long as we keep using fossil fuels. How much of all this recycling stuff is fueled and supported by fossil fuel industries to fool people into thinking they are doing something to offset the carbon footprint while they keep burning coal, and oil?

Think systemically as well as individually. Unitarian Universalism is a faith tradition based on a covenantal model. It is based on faith in collective activity not individual activity alone. UUs understand that there is more power in solidarity with one another than in individuals going it alone.

If you haven’t done so already, connect with others to work toward the mitigation of carbon emissions which contribute to climate warming.

Lenten Reflections, Day two, Thursday after Ash Wednesday, Our will or God's will for us?

Day two, Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Our will or God’s will for us?

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose of forfeit their very self? Luke 9: 24-25

We live our lives on the path of the ego dichotomizing. We are constantly forced to choose between “this or that.” “Both and” is usually out of our awareness.

God is the Oneness from which we have separated ourselves which has created our own hell. We humans think we are the author of our own existence and can call our own shots and do our own thing. We are arrogant and prideful and deeply dishonest and inauthentic and disingenuous. Lent is a time of humility. Lent is a time when we give up our illusions of control. Lent is a time when we give up our willfulness for a willingness to discern and do God’s will for us. Lent is the time when we give up our faith in dualism and put our faith in the nondualistic presence of God’s love.

In Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve step programs we read the second step which is “came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” That is what Jesus is suggesting that we do when He says that for whoever wants to save their life will lose their separate willful ego.

The third step of Alcoholics Anonymous is “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.” This Jesus states as “what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, but lose their very soul?” We become aware of our true Self when we give our faith in our little, individual ego self.

Lent is that time when we reflect on this question of which we will choose: the path of the ego or the path of the Spirit? Will we pursue our own will or focus on discerning God’s will for us? Will we choose the separate path of the ego or the magnificent, mysterious path of the Spirit back into Oneness?

Ash Wednesday - Dying to things of the ego and pursuing the things of the spirit.

Day One - Ash Wednesday.

Dying to things of the ego and pursuing the things of the spirit

Here we are in the middle of the week in the middle of the winter with Christmas and New Year’s long gone and looking forward to spring and Easter.

In the dreariness of mid winter we are tired of our old life and it dawns on us that in our present and future life we could find a better way. Perhaps it is time to renew our search for that which really matters deep down in our hearts. It is time for a renewal of interest and focus in that which we consciously or unconsciously yearn for: peace and bliss.

In our search we come to realize that peace and bliss are not to be found in the things of the ego. The idols which society holds up to us as the source of happiness we have come to realize as false: money, power, status, romantic love, hedonistic pleasures. We have come to recognize the lies and have decided to turn away so we can search for something more substantive. We cannot invest time and energy in our search if we are distracted and innervated by pursuit of things counterfeit and transient.

And so at lent we decide to deliberately give up the pursuit of these earthly things of the ego and focus our attention on the spiritual qualities of the virtues. With this decision to turn our attention from the things of the ego to the things of the spirit what will I pursue: honesty instead of pretense and disingenuousness, kindness instead of selfishness, unconditional positive regard instead of judgmentalism, faith in what matters instead of distraction and preoccupation with mood altering substances and activities?

On Ash Wednesday, I make a commitment to die to the ways of the ego and pursue life in the ways of the Spirit This lent I will change my focus from the path of the ego to the path of the spirit and see where this new path takes me.

Virtue development - Kindness, the expression of awareness of inherent worth and dignity

Chapter four - Kindness

Part one - the expression of awareness of inherent worth and dignity.

What is the measure of a person: money, power, status, adulation? The bumper sticker says, “The person with the most toys wins.” We laugh embarrassingly because there is a kernel of recognition in our having played this game of the ego. It is one thing to play this game as a child and even as an adolescent but not as a mature adult.

Some people may have tried to teach us that money can’t buy us love, and the key to friendship is not in taking but in giving, and the good life is characterized by kindness not by competitiveness and selfishness.

Doing harm intentionally is impossible for a person who practices kindness. A person who has perfected the skill of kindness can neither harm nor be harmed. The kind person does not function in the space where harm is done.

Harm comes from judgment and judgment comes from dishonesty and dishonesty comes from a lack of genuine faith. Judgment is a verdict of guilt upon a brother or sister, a guilt which is not part of their inherent worth and dignity. If we judge another guilty we have, at the same time, judged ourselves guilty by passing the judgment of guilt on a brother and sister of inherent worth and dignity. We have missed our opportunity to exercise kindness.

Kindness is not the same thing as being nice. Being nice is often being false, pretending things are okay when they are not. Kindness is truth telling not with the intention of punishment but with the intention of accountability and joining which is born from honesty..

Judgment and harm interferes with peace and learning. We have chosen the path of the ego which plays the games of “one or the other” and “give to get.” Playing these games is never kind.

The first step in the development of the virtue of kindness is the nonjudgmental attitude and the second step is to look for and focus on the inherent worth and dignity of every person we meet.