Category: Meditations

An item of concern

For the past decade or so, I’ve been most concerned with the institutional health of liberal religion: there are human values which are carried best by human institutions, and without a strong institutional structure those values seem likely to wither like a plant without water and adequate soil.

But recently I have become increasingly concerned about the spiritual health of liberal religion in general, and Unitarian Universalism in particular. We religious liberals spend so much time on social justice — and there is indeed an overwhelming amount of social justice work to be done — and we spend so much time on the health of our institutions — and again, there is indeed an overwhelming amount of institutional work to be done — that it has come to seem to me that we are slighting our spiritual well-being.

Along with that, we have come to understand “spiritual well-being” in such individualistic terms that the phrase has almost no meaning within the context of institutional Unitarian Universalism. In the past month or so, I have heard the following mentioned, and even glorified, as activities that foster spiritual well-being: yoga; Zen retreats; shamanic training; dream work; walking the labyrinth; meditation that is rooted in non-Western practices. These are either highly individualistic practices, or practices rooted in another spiritual community; or both.

Yet I rarely hear religious liberals speak lovingly of the core practices that lie at the center of our own liberal religious tradition. Those core liberal religious practices include the following: Continue reading “An item of concern”

People are (mostly) thoughtful

Not everyone is thoughtful — there are plenty of people who are selfish or just plain mean-spirited — but a great many people are thoughtful. One of the guests who has been staying at Hotel de Zink, the 15-bed rotating homeless shelter that our church has been hosting this month, stopped by this afternoon. She had noticed that some of the other guests had no sheets, so she went out and found some sheets, and walked here to the church to drop them off. Of course we had to lock them up so no one would steal or vandalize them (being aware of the fact that not everyone is thoughtful). But still — it’s nice when thoughtful people look out for those around them.

Yet another set of 9/11 memories

Somehow I had managed to arrange to take a day off on a Tuesday. I was going to theological school half time while working three-quarters time as a director of religious education at First Parish in Lexington, Massachusetts. Late summer is always a busy time for religious educators — kids are back in school, they’re coming back to Sunday school and youth group, and you have to take care of a thousand and one details before they return. I had been working non-stop for quite a few days, but finally on that Tuesday I had managed to schedule a day off.

I slept late. It must have been nine o’clock when the phone rang. I came immediately awake, my heart pounding from adrenalin; my mother had died twenty-two months before that, after a long illness, and I still dreaded phone calls that came while I was asleep. “Hello?” I said.

It was Ellen, the assistant minister at First Parish. “Hello,” she said, and paused. “Have you seen the news yet?”

“What?” I said. “No.”

“A plane hit the World Trade Center in New York,” she said. We turned immediately to business. The senior minister was out of town, and Ellen thought we should have a candlelight vigil that night. Continue reading “Yet another set of 9/11 memories”

How to translate “French seaside lifestyle”

Three of us were standing around talking this evening. Terry said she had gone to Paris this summer, and acted as the translator for the people with whom she traveled. Since she obviously knew more French than I did, I asked her if she could come up with a translation of a phrase Carol and I had been struggling with this morning, “French seaside lifestyle.” Would it be “le mode de le vie francais de le bord de la mer”? (Terry said “…au bord de la mer.”) And that got us talking about the French lifestyle.

Terry said that although the Parisians have a reputation of being rude, she liked how people were careful to greet one another: when you go into a shop, you always say, “Bonjour monsieur” or “Bonjour madame” to the shopkeeper, and he or she will greet you in kind. So when you walk around Paris, you may not speak to anyone whom you know all day, but you feel that you have been recognized as a person. This is in contrast to the Bay area, where you often aren’t recognized as a person. Terry said the Bay area can feel very isolating, and we both agreed with her.

Jeremy added that the French find little ways to enjoy life. Families will sit outside and spend two hours eating lunch. There are times and places built in to life that are devoted to simple enjoyment. This is unlike our society, where life can get reduced to work, or to buying and selling, or to being on the go all the time.

All three of us knew that we were idealizing French culture. But even so, U.S. culture can feel very isolating, and in the U.S. we often forget that there’s more to life than just being on the go all the time.

Getting in trouble

Last month, the prompt for our writing group at the Palo Alto church was this: Write about a time when you got into trouble as a child….

The old Hodgman farm was sold, and the road for the new development went in during the summer of 1965. A year or two after that, they started building a a house or two down the new road. The kids in the neighborhood would ride our bikes by where this one house was being built. We knew that when the carpenters were working on the house, we would not be allowed to set foot on the lot. But in the evening, or on the weekend, we might walk a little ways up the driveway to see what progress had been made on the building.

One day, a bunch of us were looking at the house. I know my sister Jean was there, and a couple of other kids her age, perhaps eight or nine years old. There were also a few younger kids closer to my age, perhaps six or seven. I can’t remember who the other children were, but at least a couple of them were members of the extended Hodgman family.

We looked at the house. The walls and rafters were framed up, most of the plywood sheathing had been nailed on, but there were no windows or doors, no siding or roofing. You could see that the stairs to the second floor consisted of nothing more than stringers with some boards nailed on for rough stair treads. It looked very interesting, and very inviting. Continue reading “Getting in trouble”

 

Henry, our music director, stood up during joys and concerns (what this congregation calls “Caring and Sharing”), and spoke poignantly about his mother. Henry said his mother had died in 1999, which was a while ago. But he has learned over the years that while the pain immediately after someone dies does lessen, it never goes away, and remains always, as a kind of “dull pain” (to use Henry’s words). He managed to put into words what I’ve been thinking myself. My mother died in 1999; Carol’s mother died just over two years ago; and this year I’ve been very aware of that dull pain of which Henry speaks. This is not exactly a profound insight; but it’s funny how I manage to forget this repeatedly, until suddenly there it is again.

 

Late winter:
for Roger’s
fiftieth
birthday I
bought two books,
put them on
the kitchen
table. There

they sat, next
to the bills
waiting to
be paid, the
candlesticks,
the tea pot,
and Carol’s
laptop. There

they still sit.
The sun is
higher, the
trees across
the street have
leaves, the bills
have mostly
been paid. The

days flow past
every one
demanding
attention:
eat, sleep, shit,
wash dishes,
water the
garden, and

early spring:
the two books
are still on
the kitchen
table, next to
the tea pot,
and the sun-
light, and us.

for Roger’s birthday, since we didn’t give him the books

 

It’s so green,
I said, as
we drove past
San Bruno
Mountain. Yes,
said Marsha,
enjoy it
while you can.

The rain came
and went. Light
rain, heavy
rain, no rain.
The water
rushes down
creeks to the
Bay. Then stops.

Months with no
rain, no rain
at all. Sun.
More sun. And
San Bruno
Mountain will
turn golden-
brown and dry.

It’s so green,
I said to
myself. I
admired it
for an in-
stant, then fo-
cused back on
the freeway.

If I asked

If I asked
what you thought
about God,

would you try
to tell me
there’s no God?

would you try
to save me
from some hell?

Probably,
like most: an
axe to grind.

All I want
is to talk,
just to talk,

nothing more.