To Love Eternally

Sometimes I wonder if I really know how to love others. I mean, love them, as in totally accepting them for who they are and how they live their lives.

Life experience tells me that this doubt is shared by many. We are human, after all, and no one is so confident in themselves that they feel themselves perfected and capable of unconditional love. I know from studying the Christian Scriptures that even Jesus wondered if he could love this way.

To love others in the sense of eternal love, or as some would say, "God's love," we must love them despite our inadequacies and their capabilities. We must set aside how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about them, and love them past and through it all.

It might even be, that we have no contact with a beloved parent or child, for whatever reasons. It might be a friend of whom we cannot agree politically or religiously, and it is best not to be in contact. It could be a desire to love a spouse in a deeper, more meaningful way. It might even be a relative who has committed a horrible crime.

Whatever the situation, to love another with an eternal love, means to let go of everything: feelings, opinions, needs, expectations, desires, or, as Buddha would say, attachments, and love them beyond our manifested self.

Love them with that self within that is beyond our conscious self. It is difficult at first to love beyond our self. We have to learn to let go of everything but love.

Whatever causes us to love this way is a blessing. A gift from the Infinite. It is a taste of true Grace. It is an experience which takes us out of this reality and into eternity.

Home at Christmas May Be Somewhere Else

For all of us who can't go home for  Christmas, know that we are not alone. And there are as many reasons as there of us.

How many times have I suggested to another that it is all right not to go home. It is all right to create one's family from friends who love us, who accept us, and who do not judge. It is all right to create a family that will be with us when we most need them, and who will be there when joy is abundant.

Yes, I know how painful it can be to "not go home." Even after we have our family who loves us and with whom we will be spending the holiday, it can be painful.

Some may laugh and say, "Yes, painful as in the pain you feel when you're abused, but you love your parent anyway!" What seems natural, may not always be wholesome.

Remember, for reasons of health and sanity, we have to let go, really let go, and "let God." Or, as Buddha would say, it is only because we are attached that we have pain. When it is for our emotional and spiritual well-being, we need to practice non-attachment.

For to let go is really to acquire something greater.

And as you build an alternative home to which you can go at Christmas, be assured, that you are among many, too many, who have to do the same.

God is Back! ... for those UUs Who Believe in Religious Freedom

Our faith is a free religious faith. It allows all of us to make a

difference in our community and in our world.

In the latest UUWorld there is an article “Faith in Our Future.” Five UU ministers of some of the largest churches in the UUA were invited to share their thoughts on the future of Unitarian Universalism. The occasion was a symposium to celebrate the fifty years of the UUA. They were supposed to address the challenges of the future and what Unitarian Universalists need to do to ensure the continued existence of, as one minister wrote, our “miniscule” presence.

UUWorld Winter 2011

It struck me that each minister used the metaphor “G-d” in her/his talk. And one even said they pray in his church, even though “… they do not share a common understanding or experience of G-d.” Praying out loud, he wrote, reminds them of “their shared hopes” for their community and for each other.

It wasn’t that long ago when more than half of the men who signed the Humanist Manifesto of 1933 were Unitarian or Universalist ministers, professors, or in some way had a connection to Unitarian or Universalist religion. The Manifesto declared, “We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modern­ism, and the several varieties of ‘new thought.’"  

Now, seventy-eight years since the first Humanist Manifesto and G-d’s back!

Intense debate at Harvard and the University of Chicago Divinity Schools, Meadville Lombard Theological School, and Unitarian gatherings continued throughout second and third decades of the Twentieth Century. James Luther Adams and Gene Reed were the leading exponents of their rival views: Adams being a Unitarian Christian and Reed being a Unitarian humanist. However, it must suffice, that the debate raged, and sometimes the seminarians and professors were enraged; I’ve heard it said there was more than one time when “it almost came to blows,” whether humanists should leave the Unitarian churches and go down the street, so-to-speak, and join humanist societies or free religious societies.

Eventually, everyone agreed that the free religious church called Unitarian could handle deists, theists, and atheists.

Unfortunately, the atheists soon outnumbered the theists and deists and made anything spiritual, taboo. And there are storical justifications for this. It continued this way until about a decade and a half ago. Then UU ministers began to be brave enough to speak of their personal, spiritual inclinations. Which in turn, gave those deists and theists in the UU congregations the courage to speak out about their beliefs.

So, now, some are beginning to believe G-d has as much to do with science, as it has to do with spirit. And Thoreau said it so many years ago.

"With all your science can you tell

how it is, and whence it is

that light comes into the soul?"

~ Henry David Thoreau

In the book Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, and Vince Rause study the brain while sub­jects enter deep meditative states. Using advanced imaging equipment, they have found an area of the brain that is affected and acts differently when their subjects meditate. It seems the part of the brain that places us in time and space is affected by meditation, and when this happens, the Self begins to see itself as limitless. They quote Eknath Easwaran to give us an idea of what happens:

As the river[s] flowing east and west

Merge into the sea and become one with it

Forgetting that they were ever separate rivers,

So do all creatures lose their separateness

When they merge at last into … [One]

This brings me to the salient point of my Words today: Our faith is a free religious faith. It allows all of us to make a difference in our community and in our world as One. No other faith—only a free religious faith—can do that. When we believe in something, whether it is atheism, Humanism, deism, theism, Buddhism, Daoism, or Other, if we practice that belief, then we find the courage, strength, desire, and hope to make the world better and to make ourselves better. It doesn’t matter what we personally believe, it matters that we believe.

One Without the Other Isn't Enough

There is a poem by Oriah, a poet, author, and mystic who grew up in northern Ontario, Canada. The first stanza of “The Invitation,”

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

What an invitation to relationship! It goes straight to the heart of the meaning of “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations,” our third Unitarian Universalist Principle.

Yet, in contemplation, the poem is more personal and demands more from one another than “mere acceptance.” It seems to require compassion and a willingness to travel with another in their search for spiritual growth.

This is what brings us to church. Our need to be with others on this journey we call Life.

Oriah does not shriek from the complexities and demands of relationship.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.   

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

If you can dance with the wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you …

Yes, she makes it clear there are joys and sorrows which we must share if we are to travel together.

But she does not forget what we must do on our communal journey:

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

Once we commit to being together, there is more to our communal, religious life than the spiritual journey. There is the call of those who are in need of food, water, medical attention, clothing, and compassion.

When service is our prayer, it is empty if we are not seeking, as Jung would say, a deeper, more meaningful existence than the superficiality of our culture.

Nor would spiritual growth alone be enough, for without both, something is missing.

For pondering – see you in church, Rev. Lil

You can find Oriah’s complete poem at http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com

The Busy Mind and Deep Peace

Sometimes, ever so often, we might take time from our busy lives to sit down a moment and think. At those times, our busy mind may put forth an entirely mundane question such as, "Now what did I need at the drug store?" or it may present us with something deep and reflective, "Am I a happy person?"

These two questions are examples of the depth and breadth of our busy mind. We all know, though, that our busy mind cannot answer those questions. It only wants us to "stay busy."

Psychologists and mystics know more about the busy mind than I do. All I know is that while my mind helps me understand reality, it also offers a never-ending perspective of "What could have been" and "What could be." It rarely lives with me in the present moment.

Psychologists and mystics would agree, that is if they were in the same room, that our busy mind may indeed keep us sane and cognitively aware of that which keeps us alive, but our busy mind also keeps us from deep peace.

Deep peace is a psychological and a spiritual dimension that is possible through meditation, contemplation, or prayer. A lot of people, a lot, do these things and find that their lives are better for doing them. The Buddhists call this sitting.

But there are also many of us, many, who can't find time, for whatever reasons, to sit. Perhaps it is not a priority, or our personalities are not suited, or we just don't relate to sitting.

There is hope though, for us to find that deep peace.

We can find ourselves deep peace when we are involved in something as routine as vacuuming, ironing, or washing the dishes. We don't have to sit and "empty our minds," or "fill our minds" to get to a place of deep peace. Somewhere in the repetitive actions of mundane tasks it is there.

We may not even be aware of getting to that place, or how we did it, but we find ourselves there quite easily. So easily, that our busy minds don't even know it, and thankfully, don't interfere very much, if at all.

And when we finish our task, we find our lives are better.

All of this has scientific merit. Several researchers have shown that the effects seen in the brain are the same, whether a person is sitting or performing mundane tasks that bring about a sort of meditative state.

We don't have to dedicate hours to sitting, unless we want to or need to. We can get lost in the routine of our mundane lives and find deep peace--if we but allow ourselves to go there.

Our busy mind doesn't like us to be in the present with our deep peace, but heck, there are lots of things we don't like about our busy mind. Turnabout is fair play!

Our "Self"

Each of us has a Self. You know, the one we talk to all the time. "Why did you do that?" and "Smile, don't go there," or "If I want that brownie, by G-d, I'll have that brownie, shut up!"

It is not the "busy mind" of our ego that interferes with our praying, contemplating, or meditation. It is the part of our psyche that takes care of us, challenges us to grow emotionally and spiritually, and tries to lead us to maturity.

Carl Jung says some of us get there and some of us don't, and then, there's us in-betweeners who try and try and try, and sometimes we are and sometimes we aren't! I always relate to the pregnant-woman tee-shirt that has an arrow pointing down to her growing tummy and the words say something like "... work in progress."

Our Self is what calls us to our better selves. We have to listen though. We have to be quiet and listen!

Sunshine

Have you noticed how many commercials have references to ... or ... talk about the sun?

There is sunny lipstick, and sunshine sausage, and a bright sunny day to driver your "new car," etc.

We cannot live without the sun, yet it shines on us only half the time. The other half of our time is darkness with the moon illuminating us.

I can't help but surmise that we need the dark equally as much as we need the light.

I used to want to "cut out," or throw away the "dark of me." A wise therapist told me that dark is the fertilizer in our lives. "We all need fertilizer to grow--plants and us," she said.

Well, I've got plenty, does anyone need some? Just kidding! We all have the amount we need to become the person Life needs us to be.

Celebrate the sun and the moon of our being, share our whole selves, oh, not by telling others about the fertilizer, but by being authentic and loving in relationships. By showing our sun-side and growing from our moon-side.