resilience – bodily integrity

Gratitude and Generosity

September 17, 2017October 10, 2017Meghann Robern

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook:

Today’s service grew out of a learning group in this congregation devoted to stewardship. They met throughout last year, and as you heard in our meditation today, their experience was much more than just memorizing facts from books and videos. These dedicated members of our community learned as much about themselves and each other in their shared journey as they did about expanding their visions of what it means to build, sustain, and care for this congregation and the work it does both inside and outside its walls.

This, to me, is a living example of the Buddha’s message from our choral prelude today: Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence; hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp. Live your lives with love and passion in a world that craves to heal. With your hearts warm and embracing, care for those who long to feel. Truth and light and understanding help us mend a world of woes. From our hearts and from our souls be ye lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence; hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp.

And then, in our reading today from James Baldwin, we are reminded that while each of us hold the truth of our own lamp — the lived experiences and sustaining beliefs that help each of us navigate our lives — we do not exist in vacuums. One of the base elements of our historical Universalism is the radical idea that since we would all be equal in heaven, therefore we must, we must, strive for equality in the here and now. Today in our tradition, we do not share a communal belief in heaven, or even any afterlife at all, but we do share the legacy of that communal value — that this community gathers to change lives and make the world a better place for all. We do it with our bodies, with our minds, with our hearts. And, since none of us can remove ourselves from the currency-based society in which we exist, we also do it with our money.

And now, I wonder, how many of you cringed when I said that last line. Maybe even winced. Don’t worry — this isn’t a stealth kickoff to the pledge drive. That’s still in February. But talking about money openly is often taboo. The dominant culture teaches us that it is uncouth, inappropriate, that we open ourselves up to judgement and shame if we venture into that territory. I would offer up to you that this money taboo, so pervasive in our modern lives, is born out of a culture of wealth and privilege that did not want to be held accountable for hoarding their resources at the expense of those who had less than them. And I am not speaking of individuals here. I am talking about the systems at large. By creating a culture of stigma around talking about money — how to earn it, how to save it, how to spend it, how to redistribute it to serve the greater good — entire generations have been cut off from learning the best possible ways to care for themselves and for others. When we cringe at the mention of money in church it is because we have been taught we shouldn’t do that, when in fact the opposite is true. This congregation exists entirely on the generosity of its members and friends — unlike other many churches we do not receive money from a governing body — and so we need to talk about what that means year round.

And this is what the stewardship learning group has been doing — they have been engaging in the work of undoing the entrenched systems that keep us from being the best people we can possible be — with our treasure as much as our time and our talents. Your household budget is a moral document. The church’s budget is a moral document. This congregation is an employer of staff, really excellent staff with whom I am proud to work, and our salaries are a moral statement about the value of sustaining this community.

The church is not the building and the building is not the church, but the House and the Sanctuary are where the church does its work. The choices we make about caretaking our beautiful and historic buildings make moral statements about who we are and how we live into our values. When this congregation built the Sanctuary, an elevator shaft was put in. There is still no elevator — we keep putting off that expense. This means that two entire floors of our space are inaccessible. This is heartbreaking for those already among us who struggle with mobility. It is devastating to a church that wishes to be welcoming, and yet cannot welcome a child using a wheelchair to join their faith development group downstairs. And the only way we can ever change that, the only way we can ever learn to be better in all parts of our lives — not just our minds and hearts — is to talk about it openly. Without shame. Without judgement.

Because what I really want to tell you today, is that you are amazing. Our newcomers who came here for the first time — you came here into a group of strangers for a new experience, and that is amazing. Our visitors, who have been here more than once, offering more of themselves to this community. You’re amazing. Our congregational friends, who find themselves coming back, again and again, engaging with the precious Unitarian Universalist idea that diversity is our strength, and that makes each service a little different. You’re amazing. And our members. The lifeblood of this community, the spiritual and religious heirs to three congregations and 125 years of Unitarian Universalism in Winnipeg. You bring your joys and sorrows, your blood, sweat and tears. You bring your voices, in speech and song and poetry. You bring your senses — not just ones of our bodies but also those of our hearts — sense of justice, sense of bravery, sense of covenant. You are amazing. I moved here, bringing my family on a journey of over 2000 kilometers, because you are amazing.

And amazing doesn’t mean perfect. I’ve spent many years, a lot of therapy, and a lot of spiritual direction on letting go of my tendency towards perfectionism. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect is the enemy of better. I want to return to the words of my dear friend and colleague, the Rev. Theresa Soto from our opening this morning:

I know that people
Have told you that before you can give
You have to get yourself together. They
Overstated the value of perfection by a
Lot. Or they forgot. You are the gift.
We all bring some broken things, songs
and dreams, and long lost hopes. But
here, and together, we reach within.
As a community, we begin again. And
from the pieces we will build something new.
There is work that only you can do.

If we spend all our time working towards perfect, we will wither and die, having done nothing at all. The real work is in our relationships with each other, which will be always changing and shifting, as life does. This congregation will not always look and feel like it does today, but if we commit ourselves to a culture of stewardship, we can ensure that it will inherit our shared values and the legacy of our covenants, our promises to each other. And this is the real test of sustainability in a community — are we willing to devote ourselves to the lives of people we have never met, and may not ever meet? Whether they are people suffering and in need in our community today, or the generations to come after us in this congregation — how are witnesses for them, as Baldwin tells us we are? How are we creating now a safe harbour for them away from the roll, as in the anthem sung by our choir? What is the work that only you can do, your precious gift to the world, and how can we help you do it?

Ultimately, though, a culture of stewardship and giving — in all aspects of our lives, not just our wallets — comes back to us in a sense of fulfillment. No matter what some people have tried to claim, human beings are not actually hard-wired for selfishness, and that way of life is not how we thrive. Pervasive, unrelenting selfishness may allow some few to control others through hoarding wealth and the power that wealth offers in our modern culture, but it stunts our growth and limits our potential. And I’m not talking about living an ascetic life, like monks, unless that appeals to you. I don’t want people to give up much-needed vacations or other opportunities for joy. I want to help people thrive, not just survive. And it has been proven that the more people talk about money and how to handle it, the more resilient they are when it comes to making good decisions about it — finding a balance between their needs and the needs of others. And when we give to others, as we are able, we are forging a connection with them, we become part of their story and they become part of ours. Without connections, we are nothing.

And, “as you are able” means something different to every person. For some, five dollars is a drop in the ocean. For others, five dollars might be the difference between the luxury of a bus ride home one day or paying rent this month. No matter where you fall on the financial spectrum, you are welcome here, and you are welcome in how our community lives into the circle of gratitude into generosity into gratitude, and on and on. Let us be intentional in learning how we care for ourselves and each other, and always remember that together, we can be better than any one of us alone.

May it be so.

Shaking Out Your Gear

September 3, 2017October 10, 2017Meghann Robern

Watch and listen to the sermon on Facebook:

One of the things you’re taught when you’re training to be a religious leader, no matter which faith tradition you call your own, is to figure out what spiritual practices nourish you so you can serve others, and to try to always find inspiration and connection in your daily life, not just on Sundays. As Unitarian Universalists, I think these are important things for all people to develop in their lives, not just the clergy. It’s part of my work here with you to help you on your individual spiritual paths, and to help you build a covenanted, beloved community.

We do this by expressing our shared values through our seven principles, and exploring the six sources of our faith. Today in particular, I’d like to share an example from a source that we Unitarian Universalists describe as “direct experience of the transcending mystery and wonder”. It comes from a friend of mine, an Episcopal priest named Jana, who serves the communities of Southern California in the United States. We went to seminary together, and soon became good friends. We were both women in traditions historically dominated by men in the clergy–this congregation being an exception, of course. We both were finding our way through graduate school and credentialling requirements while being married and co-parenting. We both had sardonic, sarcastic senses of humour that sometimes got us in trouble.

One thing we didn’t have in common, however, is a love of hiking. As many of you found out last weekend on the church camping trip, while my partner, Josh, made the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, I am Troop Beverly Hills. I enjoy camping, but I have my limits. For Jana, however, deep trail hiking and camping is not just time she devotes to her self-care and bonding time with her family, but it is also a spiritual practice in the same way that running — or in my case, wogging — is for me.

For a class project, Jana shared with us one of the most important spiritual lessons that she had learned from these endeavours, while preparing to hike the John Muir Trail. This trail is famous, even outside of hiking and camping communities. It runs 338 kilometres from the Yosemite Valley to the peak of Mount Whitney, and then you have to do another 17 kilometres to get from the official end of the trail down the mountain. The elevation gain is 14,000 kilometres. It’s called the backbone of the High Sierra. While parts of it are accessible even to the likes of me, hiking its length takes multiple days, ventures through deep wilderness, and is not for the unprepared.

What Jana taught us for this class project, and I’ve carried with me as an essential tool in the spiritual kit since then, is the concept of shaking out your gear. Before you actually go up on the trail, committing to hundreds of kilometres and several days in the wilderness, you do test runs. You pack up with the stuff you *think* you will need, and go out for a test hike somewhere less dangerous, for a shorter amount of time. And you *pay attention*.

A pack that feels fine at the beginning on day one can be dead weight by lunchtime. By the end of the day, you could have slowed down so much that had you been on the real hike, you might have run out of supplies halfway through the trail. So — you go through all the things you brought with you. Be ruthless. What do you *really* need, and what can you leave at home? What might useful for another situation, but not this one? What can you get rid of entirely? What can be shared among the group instead of each person carrying their own?

What I’d like you to consider is how what we did this morning, cleaning out my bag, might be helpful in our internal work. So much of our culture is about perfection, and about getting rid of the parts of us we don’t like. Pretending they don’t exist and never did. The problem with that is it causes erasure. It prevents wholeness, it prevents integration between our minds, bodies, and spirits, and it keeps us from living into our full potential.

One of the key components in the definition of trauma and its side effects is the inability to create a narrative out of one’s experiences. Things that we have experienced are kept in our memory banks isolated from everything else, with no connection to things before or after. In extreme trauma, the memories are imprinted on the brain without even a stamp or time or place for filing, which is what leads to flashback experiences for those living with post-traumatic stress disorder. With PTSD, our brains have no system to file these memories of trauma in the archive, so they keep coming back as a present-day experience. Therapy and other treatments help the brain assign traumatic memories a place in the past, so they can be examined with some distance, and integrated in a personal psychological narrative.

That’s a lots of psychological terminology to say that we as human beings are hard-wired to tell stories. We tell our own story to define who we are. We tell stories in groups to teach each other what it means to human, and to be in a particularly community. Multicultural understanding comes when we learn stories not our own. For Unitarian Universalists, stories are the bedrock of our tradition — our stories help us journey on our personal spiritual paths, and our stories guide us in how to be together and live into the covenants of community we make with each other. Stories allow us to be flexible and responsive, and to always be learning and evolving and adapting, instead of being tied to creeds or doctrines.

Some stuff that comes out of our bag is stuff we need to get rid of. The ways we’ve been cultured to allow -isms into our culture, to become entrenched in our systems. It’s the protein bar that fell to the bottom of the bag, broke open, and melted over everything else, including the inside of your bag. It’s permeated, and gonna take a lot of time and effort to get it out. Might even take more than a few attempts. But knowing it’s there is so much better than ignoring it and letting it mess up everything else in your bag. Pretending it was never in the bag prevents you from actually being able to use the bag.

And so it is with all the stuff that makes us who we are — our flaws and faults as well as our talents and shining abilities.

I’m someone who likes being prepared. I have multiple backup plans for any given situation. My lists have lists, and sometimes all my lists are catalogued in a spreadsheet. Organizing my resources into easily accessible forms is soothing for me. It helps me work through anxiety and fear about the unknown. And these are skills that someone in my position should have, as a sole minister of a mid-size congregation. But what this also tells me about myself is that I like to be in control. I like consistency, reliability. Many years ago, before a lot of therapy and spiritual direction, I would allow my need for control and planning as a comfort mechanism to interfere with my ability to be person in relationship with others.

What I’ve learned from my spiritual work with shaking out my gear is that while making all these lists and plans are helpful for me, to help me assess and process what happening in my life — sometimes to actually live I need to throw out the lists. To truly be in community I need to be disrupted by the needs of those around me. To acknowledge that it’s not all about me, to check my own selfishness and self-absorption, I need to be willing to ask — what would be helpful for you right now?

Even more importantly, I know that this tendency of mine is part of who I am. It is not something I can simply pretend doesn’t exist. What I *can* do is recognize it for what it is, and spend intentional time figuring out how it is helpful, and how does it hinder? When I “shake out my gear”, is it something I need to leave behind for this excursion in the wilderness? Or is it something I can use to help all of us get to the end of this particular adventure?

And shaking out our gear is not a one time operation. Especially as Unitarian Universalists, who have built adaptation, growth, and learning into the fundamental values of our tradition, we should always be willing to examine our ways of being — on both the personal and communal level — to see what work needs to be done. What has had its time, and can be shifted into fertilizing our roots? What new innovations are before us, to give us wings? How can we take all of who we are, as whole yet imperfect people, and love each other so profoundly that we find ways to thrive even in the midst of maelstrom. That we find ways to share that love even in the deepest cracks where rot seeks to take root.

I leave you once again with this blessing that survived the shakeout from my ministry in Nashville to here: May our minds be open to new learning; may our lips bring truth into the world; may our hearts know love; and our hands do the work of justice; as we go our way in peace.

May it be so.