Venal or precious, secular or holy?

From Chapter 4 of Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver:

     "I didn't mind when it was just people from church coming up," Hester complained to Valia, "but now everybody and his dog wants the grand tour. After it came out in the paper. It was about thirty of them up her the Friday after Thanksgiving. I want to tell you! That's not normal, for the day after Thanksgiving."
     "No, it isn't," Valia agreed. "People should be at the mall." p. 77

Laugh if you want but this is portrayed as serious conversation between two working class, white, women in Tennessee who have bought into the American dream of rampant materialism and the holiest of High Holy Days, Black Friday, is being eschewed in favor of tramping up a mountain side to view the winter roost of a wonder of nature, Monarch Butterflies. To the worshipers of Mammon this appears blasphemous and sacrilegious. We have become so inured to our materialistic values that this behavior of communing with nature and reverencing the works of Mother Nature seems unnatural and dysfunctional and both Hester and Valia agree that going to see butterflies instead of to the mall the day after Thanksgiving doesn't seem natural.

However the venal impulse and mercenary values are so deeply ingrained that Crystal says to Hester, "Here's what you ought to do, about all these people coming up? You should charge them."
     "See, that's what I told Bear," Hester said. "We both think that."
     "What's stopping you, then?" Valia asked.
     Hester raised her eyebrows and pointed her chin at Dellarobia, as if her daughter-in-law were a child, oblivious to the codes of adults.
     "Hey, don't look at me. Your son's the one that spilled the beans in church, blame him." Dellarobia got up and dumped an armload of tied bundles into the sink. Brethren, fix your thoughts on what is true. Bobby's (the pastor) words came to her out of the blue, and she nearly spoke them aloud. Instead, she said, "Let's blame Bobby Ogle, while we're at it. And Jesus, why not Jesus? Credit where credit is do."
      "Missy, you are asking for it with talk like that."
      "It's Mrs. And you know what? I never said it's the Lord's divine hand at work up there. Go ahead and charge people if you want. Why wouldn't you?
     Hester met her eye, and they held a moment in deadlock. The words born again rose to Dellarobia's mind, and she contemplated a world where Hester no longer scared her. To turn her back on permanent rebuke, and find motives for living, wouldn't that be something. Like living as a no-heller, as Bobby was said to be." pp.81-82

The worlds of Mammon and Mother Nature, venal and precious, secular and holy collide and while Dellarobia won't take full responsibility but deflects it onto Bobby Ogle, the pastor, and sarcastically onto Jesus she none the less somehow finds the courage to stand up to her mother-in-law by whom, previously, she had always felt intimidated, and assert a different view based on different values than those of her mother-in-law and the materialistic, secular world she found herself ensconced in.

While on one level it seems like an important and reasonable thing to do, protect the habitat of the butterflies, human beings have been used to the idea for the last 2,000 years, and especially the last 200 since the advent of the industrial age that the environment be damned. It is there simply for the pleasure and the profit of human beings and God, in the story of Genesis, has given homo sapiens the permission to dominate Mother Nature to their will and to do with her as they would including pillage and rape. These women appear to have an intuitive inkling that this attitude is corrupt and evil and, while they discuss the possibility of taking monetary advantage of the situation. they feel guilty in the presence of Dellarobia, and the religious and spiritual discourse which has been brought to the situation.

Jesus has said in Mark 6:36, "What good is it if a person gain the whole world, but forfeit his or her soul?"

As Unitarian Universalists, a people of faith, we get the point, we see the issue, we reverence the interdependent web at least in our words if not always in our actions. Would UUs stand with Dellarobia in solidarity, be supportive of her newly found values, be a witness to the quandary the women, the Turnbow family, the community, and the world find themselves in? I would hope so, and hope is an important initial motivation for faith as one embarks on a new and better path even if it is not always clear where this path is taking the person.

Thought for the day - We are a light unto a cynical "I don't care" world

"We are a light unto a cynical world. We are a group that still believes that justice, equity, and compassion is important in our personal lives as well as in our community and corporate. It takes great courage, energy, and sacrifice sometimes to stand in solidarity with those oppressed and speak truth to power. "

David Markham, UU A Way Of Life, 07/18/14

Why be just, equitable, compassionate if a person didn't have inherent worth and dignity?

The second principle: justice, equity and compassion flows from the first principle: the inherent worth and dignity of every person for without recognizing and acknowledging the inherent worth and dignity of every person we might not be motivated to treat them with justice, equity and compassion.

Feelings and attitudes of entitlement, moral superiority, a sense of specialness, competitiveness, all act to undermine our sensitivity for justice, equity, and compassion. We live in a capitalistic system supposedly based on merit, a free market, an even playing field where everyone has the right to pursue happiness but some people have more advantages and resources in playing the societal game than others. We describe upper class people as born with a "silver spoon" in his or her mouth, or having started life on "third base". The idea of a free market, merit, an even playing field is a societal myth when the sociologists actually look at the class structure in the United States and consider the life prospects of groups of people with certain demographic characteristics such as ethnic, racial, religious, sex, and class. In objectively considering the second principle we must recognize that circumstances of birth, upbringing, and education both informal and formal heavily skew the reality of what we might consider just, equal, and compassionate.

We can deal with the injustice, inequality, and institutionalized oppression at a macro-systemic level attempting to influence social policies, laws, and organizational regulations and practices, and at a micro-systemic level in our personal relationships face to face, person to person. As a practical matter, Unitarian Universalists apply the principle at both levels macro and micro, and yet something happens at a macro level which is much more pernicious and evil when becomes part of a group and organization. Corporate behavior, with its incentives based primarily on profit, often is unjust, inequitable, and incompassionate. Countries go to war, corporations pollute the environment, and organizations operate in self serving ways to enrich their prime operatives while exploiting the people they serve.

People do things to other people as a representative of a corporation or organization they would never do to a person face to face if they knew them personally. When personal relationships are involved, people often expect and receive "special treatment", rules are bent, individual circumstances are taken into consideration, and a more "human face" is put on the encounter.

There is a popular literature emerging with titles like "Assholes: A Theory" by Aaron James, and "The Essence of Jerkitude" by Eric Schwitzgebel. As a society we have become very cynical and feed on a daily diet of irony. We have become inured to injustice, inequality, and a lack of compassion as "the price of doing business" or "that's just how things are." In our high paced, stressful, digital age of social media, rapidly changing economy, governmental corruption by a radical capitalist ethic, we have come to accept the small injustices and sometimes large ones as "par for the course". Watching the injustice, the inequality, and the lack of compassion around us has led us to slowly accept what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil." Like the proverbial frogs in the pot of cold water heating up on the stove, we are stewing in the hell of our own making creating what Gerald Celente at the Trends Research Institute has named the "I don't care" state.

It seems that Unitarian Universalists do care, though, at least on paper when they drafted and adopted their seven principles, the second one being to covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion. We are a light unto a cynical world. We are a group that still believes that justice, equity, and compassion is important in our personal lives as well as in our community and corporate. It takes great courage, energy, and sacrifice sometimes to stand in solidarity with those oppressed and speak truth to power. This courage, and willingness to sacrifice comes from our faith and commitment that The Good Life is based on a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that this belief is not just empty, pie in the sky, psychobabble, but based on practices of justice, equity, and compassion, not just for some who are deserving, entitled, morally superior, special, but for all our brothers and sisters who share the interdependent web of life with us all.

Thought for the day - Hitting bottom means recognizing there must be a better way

“Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however, dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point.” ACIM, T-2.III.3.:5-7

A Course In Miracles

The seed of reverence is born

"So she was what Hester called a 911 Christian; in the event of an emergency, call the Lord. Unlike all those who called on Jesus daily rain or shine, to discuss their day and feel the love. Once upon a time, she'd had a mother for that. Jesus was a more reliable backer, evidently, less likely to drink himself unconscious or get liver cancer. No wonder people chose Him as their number-one friend. But if the chemistry wasn't there, what could you do? Dellarobia scrutinized life too hard, she knew that. For a year she'd gone with Cub to Wednesday Bible group and loved the sense of going back to school, but her many questions did not make her the teacher's pet." p.61

It is written in the second chapter of A Course In Miracles:

“Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however, dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point.” ACIM, T-2.III.3.:5-7

This may be the Course's version of what Hester calls the 911 Christian.

As it is written in the Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley:

"...it is, for very many persons, much easier to behave selflessly in time of crisis that it is when life is taking its normal course in undisturbed tranquility. When the going is easy, there is nothing to make us forget our precious selfness, nothing (except our own will to mortification and knowledge of God) to distract our minds from the distractions with which we have chosen to be identified; we are at perfect liberty to wallow in our personality to our heart's content. And how we wallow!" p.42

Osho says that the first step on a truly spiritual path is rebellion, questioning. As Rev. Galen Guengerich when he left the Mennonite community of his upbringing and went to seminary, many members of the church worried he would lose his faith. Guengerich writes that he didn't lose his faith but the faith of his family of origin.

Dellarobia is an adult child of an alcoholic and has learned to be skeptical of authority figures like her mother, because her alcoholic mother could not be relied upon, depended on, trusted. Dellarobia has learned from an early age to survive by her own wits and so while she is encouraged to believe, and wants to believe, as she puts it "the chemistry" wasn't there and what could she do? Then, the butterflies appear while she is engaged in the pursuit of what she has been taught is sinful, and she has an awakening which she still doesn't know to what it will be, but she has become aware that there must be a better way, that she is being called to a better way, a better self.

Many of us, I expect have had experiences like this probably born out of crisis and tragedy of some kind as well. Most of us are nudged to look deeper at the meaning of life at the 911 moments in our life. It is in our suffering that Unitarian Universalism has something to offer, not in terms of required beliefs, creeds, dogmas, but in terms of values upon which to create and develop a happy life. Dellarobia is becoming awakened to the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part and all the awesome mystery that implies which begs for the development and assumption of a reverent attitude towards self, others, and the world.

Compassion requires following the Platinum Rule

The word "compassion" means "suffering with", but it is different than sympathy which usually means the same thing. Compassion is more like empathy, being able to put oneself in the shoes of the other person, to understand the person's suffering, but not to feel the same thing, to maintain a position in one's own world and yet not allowing oneself to get into the position of the suffering person completely. Compassion in this sense is often a "one down" dynamic, someone in a better position understanding, and caring and trying to help another person in a worse position.

It takes a big person to be compassionate, to get out of one's self and consider the feelings, situation, and circumstances of another. Often people refer to the Golden rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" when they think about and talk about compassion. How would you like to be treated like the other person is, or be in the other person's situation? However, the Golden Rule doesn't quite get to the essence of compassion because it is based on an ethic of self interest. Treat other people the way you want to be treated or you can't expect them to treat you the way you would like to be treated. In A Course In Miracles, this is called "give to get" which is the game of the ego. This "give to get" game is not true compassion in the spiritual sense that the second principle is asking us to affirm and promote.

The compassion of the second principle is much deeper and more demanding than the Golden rule; it implies the Platinum rule. The Platinum rule is "do unto others as they would have you do unto them." As a 68 year old white middle class male, if I treat a 16 year old pregnant, inner-city, African American,  female the same way I want to be treated, I probably would be way off the mark. If I am to treat her as she wants to be treated, I would need to know several things. What it's like to be African American, What it's like to live in poverty in the inner city. What it's like to be a teen ager in this day and age. What it's like to be female. What it's like to be pregnant. And these questions are only the tip of the ice berg.

Before I can exhibit compassion, I would have to have some curiosity and interest in people who are very different from me. I would most likely have to be willing to explore circumstances, and dynamics that are outside of my comfort zone and usual experience. I would have to be willing to place myself in a not knowing position in proximity to the person I profess to want to understand and care about. I would have to be willing to listen and learn about a person's experience of suffering as well as the person's joys and experiences that are precious. I would have to willing to appreciate the meaning that another person makes of themselves and the world that is quite different from my own and even threatening.

I haven't found many people in my life who are mature enough, over themselves enough, to be truly compassionate. It is much easier for people to be superficially sympathetic, but to be truly compassionate takes courage, the courage to overcome the fears of people and situations and events so different from those we would want to happen to us. People don't say this verbally, but their behavior and attitudes often demonstrate the thoughts like these, "I don't want to listen to this." "I can't handle this. I'm not going there." "I'm busy enough and stressed enough with my own life than to get involved in this." etc.

Linda McCullough Moore writes a telling passage in her story, On My Own Way Now, in the Sun Magazine in April, 2014 about at elderly demented woman in a nursing home:

     This singsong woman here tonight: I want to ask if she knows my mother, what with them both having light-brown hair, both playing the guitar and singing "Side by Side."
     "Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money/ maybe we're ragged and funny/ but we'll travel the road/sharing our load/side by side."
     "Do you know my mother?" I ask the woman.
      She scowls and looks around for someone who might rescue her. She's got songs for us, but nothing else."

The singsong lady, god bless her, has sympathy and songs, but no compassion. Volunteering to sing songs for the old folks perhaps is nice enough. It's better than nothing. But the singsong lady is too frightened, to unsure about working with demented, geriatric nursing home patients, to have anything else for them.

Most of us don't have what it takes to be compassionate. Our fears of other people's differences and suffering frighten us so we keep distance, and protect ourselves. Compassion takes tremendous maturity and courage. It is a very difficult virtue to cultivate and practice. Compassion requires us to move outside our comfort zone and that is a requirement that often blocks us from becoming our better selves and being there for a person in his or her suffering.

We are called by the second principle to "suck it up", overcome our fears, rise above our egos, and extend the Love of God to another of God's creatures. After all, a brother or a sister is a part of us. When we realize that we are all in this thing called life together and that we swim or sink as part of the interdependent web of existence as one, we will have finally experienced what the second principle is naming compassion.

Thought For The Day - Follow me or worship me: What did Jesus really say?

"Jesus clearly taught the twelve disciples about surrender, the necessity of suffering, humility, servant leadership, and nonviolence. The men resisted him every time, and so he finally had to make the journey himself and tell them, “Follow me!” But we avoided that, too, by making the message into something he never said: “Worship me.” Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk-free; actually following Jesus changes everything." Richard Rohr