Part I: Workshops
1 -- Global Economic Justice: Small group discussions of the inequalities of the current systems, and various strategies for change. The basic themes emerged: the culture of consumerism, the dominance of multinational corporations, the growing gap between rich and poor. The solutions we came up with were obvious and oft-cited: “eat locally”, return to cyclical, sustainable (organic) agriculture; secure water rights and clean water for third world/indigenous cultures; and anything we can do to gain and help others to gain our independence from the corporate-global megasystem. The consensus was that effective strategies are community-based, and augmented by global-cooperative networking, such as Fair Trade.
But in the course of discussion it came out that the real task and necessity is basic change within the culture, beginning with ourselves and our own habits of consumption. –Easy to say, but even we UU’s, though we “talk a good fight”, are slow to act. One lady summed it up: her congregations is mostly made up of very well-off, many of them retired people who, while they support the needed changes in principle, and may make a few adjustments (recycling, etc.) in their own lives, cannot or will not undertake the kind of basic lifestyle changes necessary to support the creation of a just and sustainable economy. Which basically leaves it to the younger people; to whom the leadership torch is already passing, if this GA is any indication. And I think it is. It’s only fair to them, who’ll have to bear most of the burden of change, and of the consequences of our own failure to take action.
I try to set a good example, and offer encouragement, albeit it “from the sidelines”, through poetry and writing. But I feel like I’m caught in the middle here: too old to be one of them; too young (in spirit) and Earth-attuned to have much patience with the ways of the past, or with those who cling to them. And disgusted with the continued complacency, denial, and outright and in some cases willful ignorance of an American public which thinks that life/business “as usual” is still an option. Clearly, it is not.
2 – Energy, Climate, and Sustainability: A very informative lecture put on by our UU United Nations Office. (I have some of their literature for the info table.) Speakers again emphasized cyclic-organic, non-petroleum-based agriculture as foundational to a sustainable global economy. –I couldn’t agree more; we need all the organic farms, farmer’s markets, and community gardens we can get, and I’m glad to be in the forefront of that effort, locally.
They also discussed the (largely failed) climate summit in Copenhagen, where the U.S. and the top 4 emerging economies (China, India, Brazil, and one other) basically sidestepped the whole process and substituted an agreement-in-principle between themselves which, if honored, would achieve maybe half of the scientifically-recommended benchmarks for carbon reduction. But even this is mostly contingent on the U.S. fulfilling its part of the bargain. The House passed a bill that begins to do so; the Senate has yet to move, and must move before the fall elections, which will probably produce a less-sympathetic Congress than the one we have already. The average voter thinks short-term, “where’s my paycheck?” not long-term, as in, how our our children (what to say other people’s children) going to live in twenty or fifty years? So, this may be our last chance on climate. Critical negotiations are underway as we speak. --Talk to your Senators, NOW.
Again, it’s the youth who are at the forefront: a delegation went to Copenhagen, through the Will Steger Foundation, and lobbied with negotiators. They’re deserving of our support. See the info table in coming weeks.
3 -- The U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: we heard from a Haida activist from Alaska, and from Winona LaDuke, prominent Ojibwa leader from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. The upshot was that these peoples, who’ve lived off and in harmony with the land for thousands of years, continue to face eviction from and restrictions on what they can do with that land and its resources, and the continuing erosion of their cultural integrity, language, and way of life. In the past this took the form of outright cultural genocide, the forced removal of their children to government-mandated boarding schools in which they were forbidden to speak their own language, effectively cutting them off from their parents, elders, and culture. It traumatized many for life: the combined plagues of alchoholism, drug use, and general loss of meaning and hope in life, from which native peoples are stilll struggling to recover throughout North America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Some have issued official apologies for these practices, though such “apologies” contain no promise of or hint of any right to reparations to these peoples, nor assurances that their land rights will be respected in the future. The main reason: oil, gas, and mining interests, and a growth-based global consumer economy whose ever-rising demand necessitate the taking of more, more, and more indigenous lands, further violating of the rights of these peoples. It’s happening all over the planet. And, as with the Gulf oil spill, mountaintop removal in W.Va., and the Canadian tar sands disasters, the ultimate cause is our own refusal to conserve resources and to find clean alternatives to fossil fuels. If these cultures are to survive, our own has to change, and the very cultural models which would serve us best in this regard, are the ones we’re in the process of wiping out! Language and all.
I can’t find language strong enough to express my own sense of shame, guilt, and disgust at all this, and with the culture I’m reluctantly a part. It only reinforces the points made above. I hope that people can see how closely interrelated all these issues are, and how clearly we, in our own choices, are either part of the solution or part of the problem. Though in all honesty, each of us is some of both. We live and define ourselves within that tension. And that brings up the deeper spiritual issue I’ll speak to in the next section.
Cry
Creator of All, hear the cry
of these we lift to Your remembrance:
Remember those whose lands have been conquered,
their culture destroyed, their holy men murdered,
their temples and sacred sites desecrated;
their country polluted, wild creatures slaughtered,
the inheritance built over centuries, squandered,
lost to their children. Lord, hear their cry.
Remember all creatures facing extinction,
the loss of their rightful place in Creation
before the crush of our human dominion;
our engines and appetites for consumption
like death and the grave beyond satisfaction;
nor any less cruel. Lord, hear their cry.
Remember all those whose lives are uprooted
by spiralling technological forces
unleashed by people whom they’ve never seen,
whose agendas have no further use or concern for
hard work and loyalty, years with a company,
the need for security, roots and stability,
friendship, nor places beloved in memory;
homes left behind. Lord, hear their cry.
Remember the children being left stranded
by drugs and divorce; abused or abandoned
for fast-track careers and adult ambitions;
cut off all working day from their parents
and from the beauty of wild, living creatures,
from the knowledge of God in man and in Nature;
for the love they’re denied. Lord, hear their cry.
Remember the wives and husbands abandoned
when the marriage vow is heedlessly broken,
when the covenant of the lips is forgotten
and the first, true love of youth is forsaken;
who find that there’s nothing left they can trust in,
believe in, or live for. Lord, hear their cry.
For every promise and covenant broken,
for every lie and heedless transgression
of the law of love which binds us together,
Lord hear our cry, and grant us repentence.
Show forth Your works, a fresh revelation
to open the eyes of this generation.
Unleash Your awesome beauty and power,
that Your covenant may again be remembered.
In wrath, remember mercy…
Thursday, July 1, 2010
II: Too Full to be Filled
Thursday afternoon, right after the environmental workshops, I attended a communion service put on by the UU Christian Fellowship. It was the first communion service, or Christian worship or fellowship of any kind, I’ve taken part in in the 8 years since I left L.A.
The Rev. Alma Faith Crawford, a woman of color herself new to UU, preached from her own experience of the Christian faith and UU traditions. I’ve been waiting for a very long time to hear the message she delivered, speaking as it did to the heart of my own concerns.
She first spoke of “hoarders”: people with an obsessive-compulsive need to hang onto things, who can’t throw out or give anything away, even when it takes over their living space, crowds out everything else in their lives, and alienates their friends and family. “No, I can’t throw that out; I might need it!” Rooms stacked to the ceiling with things they’ll never actually use, but “might need someday.” A scarcity mentality masked, or rather compensated by a façade of abundance. An apt metaphor for consumerist culture in general; for all those habits of thinking and feeling, greed and clinging, which most stand in the way of the changes needed if we’re ever to build an equitable and sustainable economy. A just world.
But she took it even further: There’s also a kind of intellectual hoarding, a spiritual greed if you will, which she cited as typical of our own tradition: We don’t just hoard material things, we hoard ideas, “principles”, spiritual beliefs and practices. We gather them from all over the world, from other traditions, throw in more from secular, academic, and scientific disciplines, top it off with a little Thoreau and King and Gandhi, some Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, and… well, you get the idea. We’ve got rooms on rooms on mental rooms, whole libraries of things we like to quote and hang onto, and wouldn’t dream of prioritizing or thinning out because, well, “we might need this someday”. Someday, when we finally get around to making up our minds what it is we really believe and stand for, and are prepared to do something about. An actual choice as to which path to follow. (If you follow one, the reasoning goes, you might lose the benefit of all the others…! What would I be missing out on?)
So we lock ourselves in, and lock spirit out. From a Christian perspective, lock God out; lock Christ out. Or stifle their inner presence and witness. Too many voices, not enough inner witness. Too many opinions, not enough inner listening. (What was that joke: UU’s are “Quakers with attention deficit disorder”!) We’re too full to be empty. Too full to be filled. Because you can’t fill a cup that’s already full.
I think it goes even farther, emotionally: we’re not attentive to, and often don’t even know what we’re actually feeling, let alone what anyone else is feeling. And what we’re all deep-down feeling now is just the kind of guilt, shame, and disgust at the personal and collective failings, inadequacies, and complacencies, that came up for me as I attended and reflected on these workshops. Especially the guilt: for what I/we have done, but more for what I/we have failed to do, even in the midst of boldly stating and holding onto our “principles”. The inner tension just gets to be too much. We fall into denial, depression, despair, anxiety, and other symptoms (exacerbated by our personal histories and our peculiar brain chemistries). And until or unless we can face all that, get honest with ourselves about it, and begin to find forgiveness for it -- forgiving OURSELVES being the hardest part-- it all just stays in there, and we remain stuck, individually and collectively. As go the individual members and congretations, goes UU as a whole. We’re stuck, and we’re trying to get un-stuck.
The thing about the Christian faith-tradition from which the Rev. Alma spoke, and from which I come and so often write, is that it gives us a path to becoming unstuck: through the confession and forgiveness of those felt-guilts and shortcomings which have traditionally been referred to as “sin”. A process, an inner transaction whereby you acknowledge rather than deny what’s going on inside; name and ask forgiveness for the source of guilt, rather than rationalizing or excusing it, or compensating through over-work or hyper-activism, as so often happens in a humanistic, social justice-conscious movement. You just lay it bare before God and ask that it be taken away, and that one’s true divine identity be restored in its place, along with the love and freedom and acceptance that naturally flows from that. With experiencing the reality of your own inner beauty, as revealed in God, through Christ (the inner divine) and the Holy Spirit (that which connects through the heart, through compassion.)
--It works! It’s often worked for me. It worked for me again at GA. So, why doesn’t it seem to work for most traditional Christians, those who stay within the regular denominations and their various creeds and orthodoxies? Well… because they never REALLY dealt with the guilt; that’s the only answer I can see. They never really opened up or emptied out; they just went through the statements and the motions, and nothing really changed, and over the years and centuries they only grew more locked in, not freed up. Their theology, and all too much of their social, economic, political, and “moral” ideology, reflects just that unhealed inner division, and projects it onto other people (gays, for example) and onto society as a whole. And believes in and calls down divine wrath and judgment on the whole thing. –The tradition that I, like many of us, have spent my life trying to get away from; only to find that I’ve carried it with me in other forms. Like, wanting to call down fire and brimstone on the entire State of Texas (starting with George W), or at the very least, on BP corporate headquarters. “In wrath, remember mercy”…
How do we become empty, that we may be filled? And re-filled, and refilled to overflowing: with beauty, with grace, with compassion? That seems to me to be the real challenge facing Unitarian Universalism/ists. Our UUA President, Peter Morales, just puts it differently: he states it in terms of how do we open ourselves to others to whom we’ve previously been closed? Be they gay, latino, some other minority, or whatever. To my mind it’s basically the “social justice” (or extrovert) way of stating the same question. And it’s a spiritual question; though one can easily lose sight of this amid the recent fervor for and heated discussions of social justice, inclusion, and the need for institutional reform that we I at this GA; much of it an attempt to assuage guilt for the sins and omissions of our own past. A step in the right direction, no doubt, but I’m still not sure it’s getting to the root of the problem.
In trying to get to the root of my own inner conflicts and divisions, and to a place where healing can happen, I’ve tried meditation (inner silence/mind-emptying), with but limited success. I’ve tried getting out of my shell a little more with people, but it seems that I’m close to being a “congenital introvert”. There’s only so much of my inner space that I want to, or know how to share person-to-person. I share, and open up sharing-spaces, more through writing or outdoor activities like gardening and birding. We can’t entirely change the way we’re made; though if we’re open to the leading of the Spirit, and respond to the call according to the gifts and leadings that we do have, that will eventually change us from the inside.
But in all honesty, I’ve not yet found in UU, even with all the open sharing and fellowship that we do have, what to say freedom of ideas and expression, anything that helps me the way Christian worship and communion once did. And if there are other KUUFers who come from the same background that I do, I’d guess that they haven’t found that in UU, either. It may be time for us to get together and see what we can do about it. All of us who feel that humanism and agnosticism are not enough. Who want to be emptied in order to be filled, and haven’t yet found a way to do that.
Broken Bread
We are wielded as one by divine orchestration,
comrades in arms in a war of liberation;
a struggle for freedom and inner release,
for light of His face and depths of His peace;
That our eyes may be opened to see things afresh,
that these hearts of stone may become living flesh;
that our reason and vision be Spirit-befriended;
that the nightmare of hell in our minds might be ended;
For victory in battles gone on for years,
we lift up our prayers, groanings, and tears,
to grace and to mercy together appealing,
become broken bread for each other's healing.
In conclusion, the real heart of the Gospel isn’t moral perfection, it’s freedom. Perfection is not a goal to be morally striven for, but something -- a process – which happens from within as we cast off these external measures and values, and respond to the calling of Spirit’; which is basically the calling of Love. This, I think, sums up what Jesus REALLY taught. And lived. And died. And now rises again in you and me…if we will.
I conclude with a direct quote from her message that day: “They don’t need our perfection, they need our presence; our compassion.” Our brokenness, our emptiness, our transparency, through which alone God’s healing grace can pour.
Scarlet Cord
How often I’ve seen it: God’s secret servants,
guardian angels, some of them human;
the saving stroke, the outstretched hand,
the line flung to save the drowning man;
the cord strung across a Jericho doorway,
marking the ones set aside for protection;
the scarlet streak on Israel’s dwellings,
the five scarlet wounds flowing rivers of healing,
the signs of His covenant-love on the altar,
seals of betrothal, standing to witness:
“This one is mine, and noone may touch them!”
And there is a River faithfully flowing
down through the years of my life’s many seasons,
like a thread running through a tapestry, weaving,
binding the wounds and stitching the edges,
the ripped, ragged seams, the gaps in-between
these striving attempts and sad incompletions,
the things I did and my heart’s real intentions;
A touch of grace when I least expect it,
a song in the night, the words of a poet,
the music contained in a reddening sunset;
a face in the crowd, the smile of a sister,
the soft, secret force which binds us together.
And so I have found that it’s not by compulsion,
nor by decree, nor force of persuasion,
doctrines, religions, organizations
that a heart is redeemed and bound to another,
but by covenant-love, faithful, persistent,
the gentle betrothal of spirit to spirit.
Prophet of old, truly you saw it…
“Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit”,
says the Lord Almighty. Zech. 4:6
The Rev. Alma Faith Crawford, a woman of color herself new to UU, preached from her own experience of the Christian faith and UU traditions. I’ve been waiting for a very long time to hear the message she delivered, speaking as it did to the heart of my own concerns.
She first spoke of “hoarders”: people with an obsessive-compulsive need to hang onto things, who can’t throw out or give anything away, even when it takes over their living space, crowds out everything else in their lives, and alienates their friends and family. “No, I can’t throw that out; I might need it!” Rooms stacked to the ceiling with things they’ll never actually use, but “might need someday.” A scarcity mentality masked, or rather compensated by a façade of abundance. An apt metaphor for consumerist culture in general; for all those habits of thinking and feeling, greed and clinging, which most stand in the way of the changes needed if we’re ever to build an equitable and sustainable economy. A just world.
But she took it even further: There’s also a kind of intellectual hoarding, a spiritual greed if you will, which she cited as typical of our own tradition: We don’t just hoard material things, we hoard ideas, “principles”, spiritual beliefs and practices. We gather them from all over the world, from other traditions, throw in more from secular, academic, and scientific disciplines, top it off with a little Thoreau and King and Gandhi, some Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, and… well, you get the idea. We’ve got rooms on rooms on mental rooms, whole libraries of things we like to quote and hang onto, and wouldn’t dream of prioritizing or thinning out because, well, “we might need this someday”. Someday, when we finally get around to making up our minds what it is we really believe and stand for, and are prepared to do something about. An actual choice as to which path to follow. (If you follow one, the reasoning goes, you might lose the benefit of all the others…! What would I be missing out on?)
So we lock ourselves in, and lock spirit out. From a Christian perspective, lock God out; lock Christ out. Or stifle their inner presence and witness. Too many voices, not enough inner witness. Too many opinions, not enough inner listening. (What was that joke: UU’s are “Quakers with attention deficit disorder”!) We’re too full to be empty. Too full to be filled. Because you can’t fill a cup that’s already full.
I think it goes even farther, emotionally: we’re not attentive to, and often don’t even know what we’re actually feeling, let alone what anyone else is feeling. And what we’re all deep-down feeling now is just the kind of guilt, shame, and disgust at the personal and collective failings, inadequacies, and complacencies, that came up for me as I attended and reflected on these workshops. Especially the guilt: for what I/we have done, but more for what I/we have failed to do, even in the midst of boldly stating and holding onto our “principles”. The inner tension just gets to be too much. We fall into denial, depression, despair, anxiety, and other symptoms (exacerbated by our personal histories and our peculiar brain chemistries). And until or unless we can face all that, get honest with ourselves about it, and begin to find forgiveness for it -- forgiving OURSELVES being the hardest part-- it all just stays in there, and we remain stuck, individually and collectively. As go the individual members and congretations, goes UU as a whole. We’re stuck, and we’re trying to get un-stuck.
The thing about the Christian faith-tradition from which the Rev. Alma spoke, and from which I come and so often write, is that it gives us a path to becoming unstuck: through the confession and forgiveness of those felt-guilts and shortcomings which have traditionally been referred to as “sin”. A process, an inner transaction whereby you acknowledge rather than deny what’s going on inside; name and ask forgiveness for the source of guilt, rather than rationalizing or excusing it, or compensating through over-work or hyper-activism, as so often happens in a humanistic, social justice-conscious movement. You just lay it bare before God and ask that it be taken away, and that one’s true divine identity be restored in its place, along with the love and freedom and acceptance that naturally flows from that. With experiencing the reality of your own inner beauty, as revealed in God, through Christ (the inner divine) and the Holy Spirit (that which connects through the heart, through compassion.)
--It works! It’s often worked for me. It worked for me again at GA. So, why doesn’t it seem to work for most traditional Christians, those who stay within the regular denominations and their various creeds and orthodoxies? Well… because they never REALLY dealt with the guilt; that’s the only answer I can see. They never really opened up or emptied out; they just went through the statements and the motions, and nothing really changed, and over the years and centuries they only grew more locked in, not freed up. Their theology, and all too much of their social, economic, political, and “moral” ideology, reflects just that unhealed inner division, and projects it onto other people (gays, for example) and onto society as a whole. And believes in and calls down divine wrath and judgment on the whole thing. –The tradition that I, like many of us, have spent my life trying to get away from; only to find that I’ve carried it with me in other forms. Like, wanting to call down fire and brimstone on the entire State of Texas (starting with George W), or at the very least, on BP corporate headquarters. “In wrath, remember mercy”…
How do we become empty, that we may be filled? And re-filled, and refilled to overflowing: with beauty, with grace, with compassion? That seems to me to be the real challenge facing Unitarian Universalism/ists. Our UUA President, Peter Morales, just puts it differently: he states it in terms of how do we open ourselves to others to whom we’ve previously been closed? Be they gay, latino, some other minority, or whatever. To my mind it’s basically the “social justice” (or extrovert) way of stating the same question. And it’s a spiritual question; though one can easily lose sight of this amid the recent fervor for and heated discussions of social justice, inclusion, and the need for institutional reform that we I at this GA; much of it an attempt to assuage guilt for the sins and omissions of our own past. A step in the right direction, no doubt, but I’m still not sure it’s getting to the root of the problem.
In trying to get to the root of my own inner conflicts and divisions, and to a place where healing can happen, I’ve tried meditation (inner silence/mind-emptying), with but limited success. I’ve tried getting out of my shell a little more with people, but it seems that I’m close to being a “congenital introvert”. There’s only so much of my inner space that I want to, or know how to share person-to-person. I share, and open up sharing-spaces, more through writing or outdoor activities like gardening and birding. We can’t entirely change the way we’re made; though if we’re open to the leading of the Spirit, and respond to the call according to the gifts and leadings that we do have, that will eventually change us from the inside.
But in all honesty, I’ve not yet found in UU, even with all the open sharing and fellowship that we do have, what to say freedom of ideas and expression, anything that helps me the way Christian worship and communion once did. And if there are other KUUFers who come from the same background that I do, I’d guess that they haven’t found that in UU, either. It may be time for us to get together and see what we can do about it. All of us who feel that humanism and agnosticism are not enough. Who want to be emptied in order to be filled, and haven’t yet found a way to do that.
Broken Bread
We are wielded as one by divine orchestration,
comrades in arms in a war of liberation;
a struggle for freedom and inner release,
for light of His face and depths of His peace;
That our eyes may be opened to see things afresh,
that these hearts of stone may become living flesh;
that our reason and vision be Spirit-befriended;
that the nightmare of hell in our minds might be ended;
For victory in battles gone on for years,
we lift up our prayers, groanings, and tears,
to grace and to mercy together appealing,
become broken bread for each other's healing.
In conclusion, the real heart of the Gospel isn’t moral perfection, it’s freedom. Perfection is not a goal to be morally striven for, but something -- a process – which happens from within as we cast off these external measures and values, and respond to the calling of Spirit’; which is basically the calling of Love. This, I think, sums up what Jesus REALLY taught. And lived. And died. And now rises again in you and me…if we will.
I conclude with a direct quote from her message that day: “They don’t need our perfection, they need our presence; our compassion.” Our brokenness, our emptiness, our transparency, through which alone God’s healing grace can pour.
Scarlet Cord
How often I’ve seen it: God’s secret servants,
guardian angels, some of them human;
the saving stroke, the outstretched hand,
the line flung to save the drowning man;
the cord strung across a Jericho doorway,
marking the ones set aside for protection;
the scarlet streak on Israel’s dwellings,
the five scarlet wounds flowing rivers of healing,
the signs of His covenant-love on the altar,
seals of betrothal, standing to witness:
“This one is mine, and noone may touch them!”
And there is a River faithfully flowing
down through the years of my life’s many seasons,
like a thread running through a tapestry, weaving,
binding the wounds and stitching the edges,
the ripped, ragged seams, the gaps in-between
these striving attempts and sad incompletions,
the things I did and my heart’s real intentions;
A touch of grace when I least expect it,
a song in the night, the words of a poet,
the music contained in a reddening sunset;
a face in the crowd, the smile of a sister,
the soft, secret force which binds us together.
And so I have found that it’s not by compulsion,
nor by decree, nor force of persuasion,
doctrines, religions, organizations
that a heart is redeemed and bound to another,
but by covenant-love, faithful, persistent,
the gentle betrothal of spirit to spirit.
Prophet of old, truly you saw it…
“Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit”,
says the Lord Almighty. Zech. 4:6
III: The Jewel Within
On Friday at GA I attended the John Murray Distinguished Lecture, with the Rev Dr. Rebecca Parker, head of Starr-King, on the relationship between beauty and justice. Fusing theological, psychological, and poetic insight, she further elaborated the meaning of “sin”: a delusion, a disease or distortion of perception in/by which external appearances, or rather prejudgments based on them, blind us to the true beauty and worth of another, of ourselves, of anything with which we share life and being. This denial of or blindness to the beauty at the core of each being, results in those attitudes of irreverence, indifference, and insensitivity, or plain disrespect, which manifest as to injustice. And one might add, further compound the insult by ideologically or even theologically justifying it, even in its most brutal and systematic forms, i.e., racial or other discrimination, the denial of the rights of indigenous peoples, and the recent immigration law.
I hardly need to add to what’s been said already. Better, for contrast’s sake, to show the flip side of all this: what we can experience when we’re emptied enough, transparent enough in our feeling and perception, to see the beauty in one another and in Creation all around us, and so walk in the harmony, grace, and blessedness of that beauty. From a church hike to Big Sur:
We walk in beauty
where the mountains meet the sea.
We walk in beauty
where the shining river runs.
We walk in beauty
where the green meadows roll.
We walk in beauty
where the wildflowers bloom.
We walk in beauty
where the fierce winds blow.
We walk in beauty
where the breakers roar.
We walk in beauty
where the seabirds sail.
We walk in beauty
where the sealions lay.
We walk in beauty
where the redwoods soar.
We walk in beauty
where heaven touches earth,
land, sea, and sky,
body, mind, and spirit,
heart with living heart,
God walking with us.
< --Adapted from Navajo prayer-chant.>
When your eyes are clear, your heart become transparent in this way, even the humblest creature speaks of the blessed interdependency of the web of all existence:
Blessed are you, little one,
for all that you are and all that you need
in order to live and sing and soar
has been ordained and provided for
from the Big-Bang Beginning of time;
from the very foundation when
this molten Earth was formed
from the dust of exploded stars.
And though you be small, you are yet born
of the same lode of matter
as comets and planets
and the very Sun.
Blessed are you, little one,
for you reveal another aspect
of that divine Wisdom
in which all these are formed.
Blessed are you, little one,
for your every feather is numbered;
the angels watch over you,
and all of Creation feels it
when you fall.
Blessed are you, little one,
for in your humble way
you are a reflection
of those very angels;
melodious in song,
joyous in energy,
clothed in beauty.
Blessed are the little ones,
for theirs is the Kingdom
of Earth and Heaven.
--So, why are we so consumed with getting and hoarding things? Even ideas? The Rev. Parker explains much of it in terms of fear-conditioning: we’re always afraid of want, of lack, of someone taking away what we have, or need, or think we need. The very fear on which an oppressive culture, political regime, and most corporate advertising systematically plays in order to get us to work, buy, and hoard more fervently; and which works against any kind of openhanded sharing and mutual empowerment. All our energies are taken up in defending what we have against threats both real and imagined -- or deliberately manufactured -- until that fear colors, and polarizes, our whole perception of the world: black and white, friend or enemy, with us or against us. So we end up divided not only against each other, but against ourselves.
“The abuser takes possession of the soul through the body”, she quoted. Fear becomes imprinted on, and in the case of torture, systematically and deliberately imprinted on the physical nervous system, straitjacketing perception, imprisoning the soul in a web of fear and lies. All of it reinforced by the propaganda of church, state, and commerce, which engenders paranoia against designated “enemies” of the Faith, the State, or in our case the Free Market. We see it all around us; but, can we discern, and break, its hold within us? Particularly the effect of the “stupefactive poison” of advertising, which turns even our wants and desires away from Heaven, and toward all that, those idols, which cannot feed the soul.
Under the sway of such conditioning, it’s as hard to see who even we really are, as to see the other as they are. –Who are we, really? Who am I? I’ve so often asked this; but, rather than trust in the cracked and distorted mirrors of society, I’ve usually looked to Nature to tell me. To water:
When the waters are a calm, clear mirror
spreading unbroken to the horizon,
and everything in Earth and Heaven
is caught, reflected on their surface,
then I can almost see His face.
And when the wind blows over the waters,
creating a sparkling field of diamonds,
spreading ripples in all directions,
their infinite fields of interconnection
reveal of the tracings of His hand,
the intricate patterns of His mind,
oft-hid, now openly-displayed
where the wind and sunlight play…
As I continue on my journey,
this lifelong odyssey,
breathe your breath of life into me;
open and heal these eyes to see
the great and unbroken Unity.
Fill in the empty spaces in me,
my mind, my entire reality,
until I can see your face more clearly,
mirrored still more faithfully
upon the shining face of the sea,
in the beauty of a mountain stream,
in the River of Life which flows through me
and all of the living world around me.
And may your glory be revealed
in all that’s good and free and wild;
in the shining eyes of a little child,
in the glory of a loved one’s smile.
And may I even ask the grace
to be able to see the original face
I had when you first conceived of me;
show me my true identity!
I pin much of my hope on the belief, however childlike (--what’s wrong with being a child?) that some part of God’s Creation, if not the human part, is still capable of mirroring the truth and beauty of who we are, if we’re able to open to that. My main task as a poet has been to open and remain open to that. This is the faith I live and create by, and it’s served me well as far as it goes. But it only goes so far. The harder faith to come by is the one that we can, somehow, be that kind of mirror to one another.
Sometimes I’ve been enabled to see another person in this way, just as a few key people in my life have, from time to time, through the lens of poetry, art, or of Christian faith, been able to see me in this way. In moments of insight and compassion, of extraordinary emptying and opening, one may catch a glimpse of the beauty of the soul, beyond all fear, prejudice, and delusion:
Forming within the deep hidden places,
born out of silence and dream, of the Dreamer;
(can you hear? can you see? I can begin to...)
The heat and the pressure, the fiery furnace
of conflicts unseen, unshared, unsuspected
in times spent alone when noone could reach you,
lost in the dark...the lines on your face tell.
Yet.....this beauty emerging before me
layer on layer, facet by facet,
this deep-wrought miracle flashing in sunlight,
this infinite treasure......how comprehend it?
Though the darkness has not understood it,
the light has again taken tangible substance
of body and mind, of soul and of spirit,
both yours and mine. I see a reflection:
the treasure I've sought for, wandering endless,
appears to my eye, unfolding within us.
Sometimes it comes as a revelation, a profound religious experience which opens the inner eye for a moment. The trigger can be the face or smile of another person, or it can be something glimpsed within: a radiance in the sun, the sky, the world all around, suddenly come to a focus. A sudden glimpse of what poet Rainer Maria Rilke (after Sufi tradition) named “the Angel”:
This love-haunted face, this never-told secret,
this form which describes my inmost desire…
I find my sight reshaped around a smile.
Your heart, your eyes are so like a diamond
refracting the innermost rays of the Sun
through all the colors of living Creation.
Something divine again shines through the human,
and the world becomes bearable, meaning/truthfull
at least in some small part I might cleave to.
Your coming to light is a tangible witness
that beauty is real and hope never wasted,
that God hears the heart and knows every longing.
Open your heart, allow me to know you,
for you were made to be known, and so I was
made to know you, so endlessly, always.
Who knows how endless this love may yet be,
this infinite sky, this angelic chorus,
the gates of eternity opening for us.
One may even glimpse the Angel in the Earth, in the face of Gaia, rising in the heart, forming within the mind’s eye, even in the midst of all the heartbreak and destruction we are witnessing. Amid death and breaking of the world we knew and loved, comes the birthing of a new and greater, more beautiful world. I try to view the Earth’s suffering through the lens of the passion of Christ:
And God becomes flesh
and bleeds among us,
nailed to the cross
of all our contradictions,
the denials of all those
who can no longer feel;
of our techno-world logic,
cold, hard as steel.
Lifted from the ground
against a barren sky,
her arms spread wide
to embrace all mankind,
Her throes are upon her;
she is Earth-stuff in labor,
a new birth in Nature,
in space and time.
I feel her pulse within me;
her cry has become mine.
Light shines out of darkness,
beauty out of ugliness,
life out of death,
she the deathless,
words of divine substance
dripping from her breast,
birthing her children
in tears, blood, and sweat.
The meek shall yet inherit...
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed ar the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness,
for they will be filled;
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted
because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matt. 5 3-10
--So spoke the poet-prophet Jesus, 2,000 years ago. After two millennia of creed, greed, and conquest, will we finally listen to this poetry, and to the Voice, the Word, the Spirit of God which speaks there, so as to take it to heart? Can we become that poetry, as he did, so that it echoes on in and through us, our lives, our work, our witness, for the next 2,000 years? Isn’t that what the world most needs? Isn’t that the New Creation to which Gaia would give birth? One that loves and embraces her as she does us? For, surely she takes part in the pain and anguish of our birth, or rebirth, just as we take part in hers.
Christ, said Rev. Parker, died on the cross not to expiate our sins (substitutionary atonement), but to reveal the beauty, the compassion, the all-inclusive and forgiving heart of God. If regular denominational Christians ever REALLY GET THIS, I might consider rejoining them. But I’m not exactly holding my breath…
Thus endeth the Lesson.
I hardly need to add to what’s been said already. Better, for contrast’s sake, to show the flip side of all this: what we can experience when we’re emptied enough, transparent enough in our feeling and perception, to see the beauty in one another and in Creation all around us, and so walk in the harmony, grace, and blessedness of that beauty. From a church hike to Big Sur:
We walk in beauty
where the mountains meet the sea.
We walk in beauty
where the shining river runs.
We walk in beauty
where the green meadows roll.
We walk in beauty
where the wildflowers bloom.
We walk in beauty
where the fierce winds blow.
We walk in beauty
where the breakers roar.
We walk in beauty
where the seabirds sail.
We walk in beauty
where the sealions lay.
We walk in beauty
where the redwoods soar.
We walk in beauty
where heaven touches earth,
land, sea, and sky,
body, mind, and spirit,
heart with living heart,
God walking with us.
< --Adapted from Navajo prayer-chant.>
When your eyes are clear, your heart become transparent in this way, even the humblest creature speaks of the blessed interdependency of the web of all existence:
Blessed are you, little one,
for all that you are and all that you need
in order to live and sing and soar
has been ordained and provided for
from the Big-Bang Beginning of time;
from the very foundation when
this molten Earth was formed
from the dust of exploded stars.
And though you be small, you are yet born
of the same lode of matter
as comets and planets
and the very Sun.
Blessed are you, little one,
for you reveal another aspect
of that divine Wisdom
in which all these are formed.
Blessed are you, little one,
for your every feather is numbered;
the angels watch over you,
and all of Creation feels it
when you fall.
Blessed are you, little one,
for in your humble way
you are a reflection
of those very angels;
melodious in song,
joyous in energy,
clothed in beauty.
Blessed are the little ones,
for theirs is the Kingdom
of Earth and Heaven.
--So, why are we so consumed with getting and hoarding things? Even ideas? The Rev. Parker explains much of it in terms of fear-conditioning: we’re always afraid of want, of lack, of someone taking away what we have, or need, or think we need. The very fear on which an oppressive culture, political regime, and most corporate advertising systematically plays in order to get us to work, buy, and hoard more fervently; and which works against any kind of openhanded sharing and mutual empowerment. All our energies are taken up in defending what we have against threats both real and imagined -- or deliberately manufactured -- until that fear colors, and polarizes, our whole perception of the world: black and white, friend or enemy, with us or against us. So we end up divided not only against each other, but against ourselves.
“The abuser takes possession of the soul through the body”, she quoted. Fear becomes imprinted on, and in the case of torture, systematically and deliberately imprinted on the physical nervous system, straitjacketing perception, imprisoning the soul in a web of fear and lies. All of it reinforced by the propaganda of church, state, and commerce, which engenders paranoia against designated “enemies” of the Faith, the State, or in our case the Free Market. We see it all around us; but, can we discern, and break, its hold within us? Particularly the effect of the “stupefactive poison” of advertising, which turns even our wants and desires away from Heaven, and toward all that, those idols, which cannot feed the soul.
Under the sway of such conditioning, it’s as hard to see who even we really are, as to see the other as they are. –Who are we, really? Who am I? I’ve so often asked this; but, rather than trust in the cracked and distorted mirrors of society, I’ve usually looked to Nature to tell me. To water:
When the waters are a calm, clear mirror
spreading unbroken to the horizon,
and everything in Earth and Heaven
is caught, reflected on their surface,
then I can almost see His face.
And when the wind blows over the waters,
creating a sparkling field of diamonds,
spreading ripples in all directions,
their infinite fields of interconnection
reveal of the tracings of His hand,
the intricate patterns of His mind,
oft-hid, now openly-displayed
where the wind and sunlight play…
As I continue on my journey,
this lifelong odyssey,
breathe your breath of life into me;
open and heal these eyes to see
the great and unbroken Unity.
Fill in the empty spaces in me,
my mind, my entire reality,
until I can see your face more clearly,
mirrored still more faithfully
upon the shining face of the sea,
in the beauty of a mountain stream,
in the River of Life which flows through me
and all of the living world around me.
And may your glory be revealed
in all that’s good and free and wild;
in the shining eyes of a little child,
in the glory of a loved one’s smile.
And may I even ask the grace
to be able to see the original face
I had when you first conceived of me;
show me my true identity!
I pin much of my hope on the belief, however childlike (--what’s wrong with being a child?) that some part of God’s Creation, if not the human part, is still capable of mirroring the truth and beauty of who we are, if we’re able to open to that. My main task as a poet has been to open and remain open to that. This is the faith I live and create by, and it’s served me well as far as it goes. But it only goes so far. The harder faith to come by is the one that we can, somehow, be that kind of mirror to one another.
Sometimes I’ve been enabled to see another person in this way, just as a few key people in my life have, from time to time, through the lens of poetry, art, or of Christian faith, been able to see me in this way. In moments of insight and compassion, of extraordinary emptying and opening, one may catch a glimpse of the beauty of the soul, beyond all fear, prejudice, and delusion:
Forming within the deep hidden places,
born out of silence and dream, of the Dreamer;
(can you hear? can you see? I can begin to...)
The heat and the pressure, the fiery furnace
of conflicts unseen, unshared, unsuspected
in times spent alone when noone could reach you,
lost in the dark...the lines on your face tell.
Yet.....this beauty emerging before me
layer on layer, facet by facet,
this deep-wrought miracle flashing in sunlight,
this infinite treasure......how comprehend it?
Though the darkness has not understood it,
the light has again taken tangible substance
of body and mind, of soul and of spirit,
both yours and mine. I see a reflection:
the treasure I've sought for, wandering endless,
appears to my eye, unfolding within us.
Sometimes it comes as a revelation, a profound religious experience which opens the inner eye for a moment. The trigger can be the face or smile of another person, or it can be something glimpsed within: a radiance in the sun, the sky, the world all around, suddenly come to a focus. A sudden glimpse of what poet Rainer Maria Rilke (after Sufi tradition) named “the Angel”:
This love-haunted face, this never-told secret,
this form which describes my inmost desire…
I find my sight reshaped around a smile.
Your heart, your eyes are so like a diamond
refracting the innermost rays of the Sun
through all the colors of living Creation.
Something divine again shines through the human,
and the world becomes bearable, meaning/truthfull
at least in some small part I might cleave to.
Your coming to light is a tangible witness
that beauty is real and hope never wasted,
that God hears the heart and knows every longing.
Open your heart, allow me to know you,
for you were made to be known, and so I was
made to know you, so endlessly, always.
Who knows how endless this love may yet be,
this infinite sky, this angelic chorus,
the gates of eternity opening for us.
One may even glimpse the Angel in the Earth, in the face of Gaia, rising in the heart, forming within the mind’s eye, even in the midst of all the heartbreak and destruction we are witnessing. Amid death and breaking of the world we knew and loved, comes the birthing of a new and greater, more beautiful world. I try to view the Earth’s suffering through the lens of the passion of Christ:
And God becomes flesh
and bleeds among us,
nailed to the cross
of all our contradictions,
the denials of all those
who can no longer feel;
of our techno-world logic,
cold, hard as steel.
Lifted from the ground
against a barren sky,
her arms spread wide
to embrace all mankind,
Her throes are upon her;
she is Earth-stuff in labor,
a new birth in Nature,
in space and time.
I feel her pulse within me;
her cry has become mine.
Light shines out of darkness,
beauty out of ugliness,
life out of death,
she the deathless,
words of divine substance
dripping from her breast,
birthing her children
in tears, blood, and sweat.
The meek shall yet inherit...
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed ar the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness,
for they will be filled;
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted
because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matt. 5 3-10
--So spoke the poet-prophet Jesus, 2,000 years ago. After two millennia of creed, greed, and conquest, will we finally listen to this poetry, and to the Voice, the Word, the Spirit of God which speaks there, so as to take it to heart? Can we become that poetry, as he did, so that it echoes on in and through us, our lives, our work, our witness, for the next 2,000 years? Isn’t that what the world most needs? Isn’t that the New Creation to which Gaia would give birth? One that loves and embraces her as she does us? For, surely she takes part in the pain and anguish of our birth, or rebirth, just as we take part in hers.
Christ, said Rev. Parker, died on the cross not to expiate our sins (substitutionary atonement), but to reveal the beauty, the compassion, the all-inclusive and forgiving heart of God. If regular denominational Christians ever REALLY GET THIS, I might consider rejoining them. But I’m not exactly holding my breath…
Thus endeth the Lesson.
IV: On General Assembly--2012
Part IV: GA 2012
On Sat. June 26, 2010, the UUA General Assembly took up the issue of the immigration law recently passed in Arizona, and similar measures under consideration in other states. Going in, the conventional wisdom was, and the UUA Board of Trustees’ recommendation was, that we should join the boycott along with/called by many other advocacy groups, and move our 2012 GA to somewhere other than Phoenix. –So was I prepared to vote. And I believe that it would’ve been more immediately effective than anything else we could’ve done.
Instead, at the urging of President Peter Morales, the Phoenix UU fellowship, their Latino allies, and a passionately outspoken and well-organized Youth Caucus, the vast majority of delegates voted for a scaled-down, specifically-targeted “Justice GA” in 2012 (see the UUA website) whose whole focus will be the immigration issue and related justice concerns. The intent being to make it a platform for “a second Civil Rights movement”; another Selma, Ala., in which the UUA will be a driving force on the religious side. A public act of witness in solidarity with people who’ve been made to live in constant fear. Which would involve living and working with them in their churches, homes, and neighborhoods, rather than meeting in a convention center as usual. Only essential official UUA business would be on the agenda.
--In other words, those planning to go to GA in Phoenix, 2012, would have to be prepared to set aside their own comfort and security for a time, what to say their own agendas, in order to extend compassionate solidarity to others whose own meager comfort and security, what to say personal dignity, are being threatened. –How’s that for self-emptying?
Though I couldn’t help but honor this intention, and ultimately voted in favor, I also supported amendments (all failed) which would have left more options open for those who want to pursue other, closely related issues such as climate change, environment, and economic justice, and so address what’s actually driving the influx of immigration. To paraphrase Thoreau, it makes more sense to get at the root of the problem, than to keep hacking away at the branches, however obnoxious. But we have two years time in which to address this, and adjust to changes on the ground. And it may be that this hands-on, take-it-to-the-streets approach will galvanize these wider concerns, into a stronger movement overall. Or, one can hope so. Because it does strike at the main root of the problem in our country: the complacency and insensitivity of those who “have”.
I also supported amendments which would have been more accomodating to those, the meek and the elderly among us, who wouldn’t be comfortable with “taking it to the streets” in a hot, strange city amid angry people (on both sides), with all the related personal safety concerns. But the people driving this movement wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m not going to cross a picket line to do ‘business as usual!’ ”, shouted one angry young woman. So, depending on what happens between now and 2012, things are going to get hot, indeed! And anyone who can’t take the heat, had best stay out of the kitchen: so they seem to be saying. And, in view of their own zeal, it might also be best to stay out of their way. They’re won’t take “no” for answer.
I felt a little hurt, as did many in the hall, that so much was debated and decided before I or most of us had the least idea what was going on, or of the stakes involved. Some of it in mini-assemblies, some of it online before GA even started. It’s too reminiscent of my recent experience with Houghon County politics, and with politics in general. This came out during the debate, but proposed amendments to the decisionmaking process itself were also defeated.
More work needs to be done here.
Gladly, the Youth Caucus brought a resolution providing for a proxy-presence (and vote?) for all who, for whatever reason, can’t or won’t attend. Many older members were touched by this consideration, and it may help to heal or prevent a potential rift between the younger and older generations within the movement. It shows that the radically activist among us are not without compassion for those who need to keep a modicum of comfort and security. So, it may be that we can yet find a way to live and walk in harmony, even when things get “hot”. We’ll see.
A tribute to justice-seekers:
Friend of My Longing
New-old friend, just to be near you
is to feel the heat of pent-up longing;
to bear the wounds, to see the scars
of broken hearts and old betrayals,
dreams deferred, denied ideals,
home and friendship and belonging;
yet there is a joy in longing...
I am still drawn to be near you
like a moth is drawn to flame...
years go by; it's still the same.
Why do I keep on returning
when I know how much it burns me?
The pain I see within your eyes,
yet sparkling with deeper joys.
All your hopeful words to me,
visions of what's yet to be,
things that you say God has shown you
about yourself and about me...
I wonder where you get the courage
to believe so readily?
Faithful heart, always seeking,
glimpsing far, yet never able
to bring the thing within your grasp.
We both share in this blessed curse,
this strange ability to see
the endless possibilities,
so many things which yet could be,
still bound up in the tyranny
of that which is; this captive Earth.
We share the common pangs, the labor
of visions not yet come to birth.
-----------------------
Song of Ascents
Long have we waited in dark empty spaces,
lifetimes of longing in still Sabbath places
for vision of you to become form and substance,
flesh of our flesh, we bone of your bone.
Nakedness, lostness, longing to be clothed,
these jars made of clay, these frail earthen vessels,
these old wooden ships whose gray timbers groan
with the wind and the storms and all of Creation,
longing for freedom from death and decay.
They say you once dwelt amidst wood and stone
in a house set with altars, candles, and incense;
Bezalel’s craftsmanship, Solomon’s wisdom,
years in the building; demolished in a day!
These, only shadows of things of the spirit,
only a pointing toward what is to come,
the promised far Zion, the house of your glory,
the house with no walls but the hearts of your people.
That vision still beckons across the world’s wasteland,
war and vain conquests, the squandered centuries
piling up bricks which crumbled to dust,
raising up temples to dead mens’ visions,
would-be prophets who died giving birth
to wind and utopias soon gone awry;
kingdoms and empires, creeds and religions.
--Could any of these have built Love a home?
Yet we draw near with hearts full of gladness,
rapt with the wonder of wide open spaces,
great purple summits soaring to heaven.
The trail is steep and full of hard climbing,
but the goal can be seen, as if for the first time,
by eyes trained in faith and love’s secret longing.
Road-weary limbs now grow lighter beneath us,
ready at last to leap on the mountains.
Nor was the blood that was shed shed in vain,
nor years of sweat, nor tears spent in sorrow;
they become to us rivers flowing with healing.
And the deep lonely reaches, the desolate places
left hollow and empty, are bright hallowed spaces
made ready to be the divine holy dwelling,
set aside and made wide to hold all the treasures
stored in Your heart from before the beginning.
On Sat. June 26, 2010, the UUA General Assembly took up the issue of the immigration law recently passed in Arizona, and similar measures under consideration in other states. Going in, the conventional wisdom was, and the UUA Board of Trustees’ recommendation was, that we should join the boycott along with/called by many other advocacy groups, and move our 2012 GA to somewhere other than Phoenix. –So was I prepared to vote. And I believe that it would’ve been more immediately effective than anything else we could’ve done.
Instead, at the urging of President Peter Morales, the Phoenix UU fellowship, their Latino allies, and a passionately outspoken and well-organized Youth Caucus, the vast majority of delegates voted for a scaled-down, specifically-targeted “Justice GA” in 2012 (see the UUA website) whose whole focus will be the immigration issue and related justice concerns. The intent being to make it a platform for “a second Civil Rights movement”; another Selma, Ala., in which the UUA will be a driving force on the religious side. A public act of witness in solidarity with people who’ve been made to live in constant fear. Which would involve living and working with them in their churches, homes, and neighborhoods, rather than meeting in a convention center as usual. Only essential official UUA business would be on the agenda.
--In other words, those planning to go to GA in Phoenix, 2012, would have to be prepared to set aside their own comfort and security for a time, what to say their own agendas, in order to extend compassionate solidarity to others whose own meager comfort and security, what to say personal dignity, are being threatened. –How’s that for self-emptying?
Though I couldn’t help but honor this intention, and ultimately voted in favor, I also supported amendments (all failed) which would have left more options open for those who want to pursue other, closely related issues such as climate change, environment, and economic justice, and so address what’s actually driving the influx of immigration. To paraphrase Thoreau, it makes more sense to get at the root of the problem, than to keep hacking away at the branches, however obnoxious. But we have two years time in which to address this, and adjust to changes on the ground. And it may be that this hands-on, take-it-to-the-streets approach will galvanize these wider concerns, into a stronger movement overall. Or, one can hope so. Because it does strike at the main root of the problem in our country: the complacency and insensitivity of those who “have”.
I also supported amendments which would have been more accomodating to those, the meek and the elderly among us, who wouldn’t be comfortable with “taking it to the streets” in a hot, strange city amid angry people (on both sides), with all the related personal safety concerns. But the people driving this movement wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m not going to cross a picket line to do ‘business as usual!’ ”, shouted one angry young woman. So, depending on what happens between now and 2012, things are going to get hot, indeed! And anyone who can’t take the heat, had best stay out of the kitchen: so they seem to be saying. And, in view of their own zeal, it might also be best to stay out of their way. They’re won’t take “no” for answer.
I felt a little hurt, as did many in the hall, that so much was debated and decided before I or most of us had the least idea what was going on, or of the stakes involved. Some of it in mini-assemblies, some of it online before GA even started. It’s too reminiscent of my recent experience with Houghon County politics, and with politics in general. This came out during the debate, but proposed amendments to the decisionmaking process itself were also defeated.
More work needs to be done here.
Gladly, the Youth Caucus brought a resolution providing for a proxy-presence (and vote?) for all who, for whatever reason, can’t or won’t attend. Many older members were touched by this consideration, and it may help to heal or prevent a potential rift between the younger and older generations within the movement. It shows that the radically activist among us are not without compassion for those who need to keep a modicum of comfort and security. So, it may be that we can yet find a way to live and walk in harmony, even when things get “hot”. We’ll see.
A tribute to justice-seekers:
Friend of My Longing
New-old friend, just to be near you
is to feel the heat of pent-up longing;
to bear the wounds, to see the scars
of broken hearts and old betrayals,
dreams deferred, denied ideals,
home and friendship and belonging;
yet there is a joy in longing...
I am still drawn to be near you
like a moth is drawn to flame...
years go by; it's still the same.
Why do I keep on returning
when I know how much it burns me?
The pain I see within your eyes,
yet sparkling with deeper joys.
All your hopeful words to me,
visions of what's yet to be,
things that you say God has shown you
about yourself and about me...
I wonder where you get the courage
to believe so readily?
Faithful heart, always seeking,
glimpsing far, yet never able
to bring the thing within your grasp.
We both share in this blessed curse,
this strange ability to see
the endless possibilities,
so many things which yet could be,
still bound up in the tyranny
of that which is; this captive Earth.
We share the common pangs, the labor
of visions not yet come to birth.
-----------------------
Song of Ascents
Long have we waited in dark empty spaces,
lifetimes of longing in still Sabbath places
for vision of you to become form and substance,
flesh of our flesh, we bone of your bone.
Nakedness, lostness, longing to be clothed,
these jars made of clay, these frail earthen vessels,
these old wooden ships whose gray timbers groan
with the wind and the storms and all of Creation,
longing for freedom from death and decay.
They say you once dwelt amidst wood and stone
in a house set with altars, candles, and incense;
Bezalel’s craftsmanship, Solomon’s wisdom,
years in the building; demolished in a day!
These, only shadows of things of the spirit,
only a pointing toward what is to come,
the promised far Zion, the house of your glory,
the house with no walls but the hearts of your people.
That vision still beckons across the world’s wasteland,
war and vain conquests, the squandered centuries
piling up bricks which crumbled to dust,
raising up temples to dead mens’ visions,
would-be prophets who died giving birth
to wind and utopias soon gone awry;
kingdoms and empires, creeds and religions.
--Could any of these have built Love a home?
Yet we draw near with hearts full of gladness,
rapt with the wonder of wide open spaces,
great purple summits soaring to heaven.
The trail is steep and full of hard climbing,
but the goal can be seen, as if for the first time,
by eyes trained in faith and love’s secret longing.
Road-weary limbs now grow lighter beneath us,
ready at last to leap on the mountains.
Nor was the blood that was shed shed in vain,
nor years of sweat, nor tears spent in sorrow;
they become to us rivers flowing with healing.
And the deep lonely reaches, the desolate places
left hollow and empty, are bright hallowed spaces
made ready to be the divine holy dwelling,
set aside and made wide to hold all the treasures
stored in Your heart from before the beginning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)