The Practice of Freedom
What if we could listen
like the great salmon
who goes about its ordinary life
when suddenly something shifts.
It does not come as a thunderous
revelation, but a quiet knowing
you have been preparing all
your life to trust.
The path lived until now no longer
satisfies but the path ahead
seems thousands of miles
long, and your womb is heavy.
-Christine Valters Paintner
from her poem “Following an Ancient Call”
Who of us doesn’t understand that “heavy womb”? Who of us hasn’t felt a deep hunger begin to grow in our bellies? Who of us hasn’t felt a particular new desire rise up, sure and clear? And who of us hasn’t—at some point—turned our backs on that desire, that call?
Not that we wanted to. It’s just that we were stuck. Imprisoned, so to speak, by circumstances, responsibilities, constraints or assumptions which made that desire seem out of reach. We felt trapped, forced to say “No” when our heart wanted to say “Yes”.
More often than we notice, this is the dilemma when it comes to freedom. It’s not so much about running away from something as it is about wanting to run toward something but not being able to! In other words, there is a big difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to.”
Our Unitarian Universalist faith gets this. At its best, it never simply asks us, “What do you need to get away from?” No, it pushes us to ask the deeper question of “What is it that you want to run toward?” Mature freedom is never about the absence of all constraints; it’s about being able to commit yourself to the things that have your heart. Or to put it another way, true freedom is about constraints of our own choosing.
So what is it for you, friends? Where in your life are you feeling forced to say “No” when your heart really wants to say “Yes”? What is it that you want to use your freedom for? It’s not the bars of a prison that make us want to escape; it’s suddenly noticing what’s on the other side of those bars that makes us want to get out.
So this month, don’t take your eyes off of it. Keep that longing clearly in view. And if you do, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to bend open those bars… and simply walk out.
The Practice of Imagination
Imagination’s great gift is improvement. At least that is what we’re taught. Its deep magic lies in the way it can reshape our reality. We are urged to imagine the world we dream of. A world with more justice. More peace. More love. From that, a mysterious magnetism arises, a magnetism that pulls our imperfect present into an improved future. Imagination moves us forward. It makes our world – and us – better.
Yet there’s a way in which this view of imagination impoverishes us. It steals the stage and shuts out imagination’s other precious gifts.
For instance, think of what happened when a number of us got out of bed this morning. After a shower, we didn’t just pull on fresh clothes, we likely also pulled out a jewelry box and slipped on our grandmother’s ring. As we slid it on our finger, she slid, not just into our memory, but into our day. Now, because of imagination, we aren’t just elegant; we’re accompanied. Or how about that invisible friend of ours when we were children? Imagination made sure we didn’t travel through those early years alone. It conjured up that loyal friend so we had someone by our side. Even today, amidst the hustle and bustle of adult life, tell me you don’t hear the guidance of ancestors when challenges arise. It’s all one giant reminder that imagination doesn’t just improve our lives, it populates it.
It also illuminates it. That’s right. Imagination isn’t just a force that drives us forward toward a better future, it also pulls the sacred into our impoverished present. Imagination is what transforms trees from potential firewood into wise friends. Imagination is what moves us from lording over the natural word to seeing ourselves as part of it. Or to put it another way, imagination is what gives the world a soul. And not just the natural world, but the ordinary world too. Through the lens of imagination, every day experience becomes precious, even mystical. For instance, the laughter of our children becomes the sound of angels. Sunshine on our face becomes a way that life expresses its love for us. The ocean is able to speak, telling us that we are freer and have more choices than we think. And a simple act of kindness from a stranger shimmers, and through it life says to our burdened heart, “This soon shall pass. Everything will be ok.” Yes, this is what imagination does: it enables us to hear the world speak.
So friends, this month, do everything you can to soak in the many gifts and messages of imagination. It’s not just shouting, “Improve the world!” It’s also pleading, “Let the world come alive!”
The Practice of Joy
Welcome to the Practice of Joy
It’s easy to get tricked,
taken for a ride,
convinced that joy
is a possession.
Something to be caught, contained and controlled
just by us.
As if it’s a birthday present,
waiting for us to unwrap it
and keep forever and ever.
And who can blame us,
with pain seeming so powerfully prevalent, and permanent.
If sadness can stay for so long,
why can’t joy?
But maybe it’s elusive
for a reason.
Maybe it’s slippery
in order to help us understand
that it was put here to fly.
Or better yet:
To be flung!
To be passed, not possessed.
To be spread
between you and me,
between the ones who receive its gift
and the ones that have been looking for its treasure
for a very long time.
Maybe it’s a beautiful and elegant contagion,
over which we just might have more control than we think.
If only we share it.
If only we notice that joy is not ours to keep,
but ours to give.
Maybe joy is a gift that opens us
as much as we open to it.
Maybe that’s the way light leaks into our weary world.
The Practice of Inclusion
Welcome to the Practice of Inclusion
You hardly knew
how hungry you were
to be gathered in,
to receive the welcome
that invited you to enter
entirely…
You began to breathe again…
You learned to sing.
But the deal with this blessing
is that it will not leave you alone,
will not let you linger…
this blessing will ask you to leave,
not because it has tired of you
but because it desires for you
to become the sanctuary
that you have found…
– Jan Richardson
Jan Richardson begins with hunger. And so do we. Just saying the word “inclusion” conjures it up: The primal hunger to belong; the longing to be let in. No one likes standing outside the circle. No one likes leaning against the locked door listening to everyone else laughing inside. From the time we are little, inclusion and belonging is the thing we seek. It’s the hoped for Holy Grail. The promised resting place.
But Richardson will have none of that. To belong is only the beginning. That’s what she wants us to know. One minute she’s wrapping us in comforting words about settling in and allowing ourselves to finally breathe. The next she’s shaking us awake and telling us to get up and go.
That shaking should tell us something.
Or to put it another way, hers is not a gentle invitation. It’s not some sweet reminder to think of others. It’s a warning: Beware of the kind of belonging that only wants to bless you!
Deep down we know this. The hard part is to remember it. To use Richardson’s language, if we find ourselves being invited to linger rather than leave, alarm bells should go off. We need to be weary of those who welcome us with a members only card and a soft couch. They may have let us in, but soon they will enlist us into the work of keeping others out. There will likely even be a part of us that wants to keep others out. After all, closed circles don’t just set us apart, they also sit us above.
But they also keep us small. Maybe this is why Richardson’s blessing is so intent on not leaving us alone. It knows that we only grow when the circle does. Circles that keep others out also keep the air out. No one inside a closed circle truly sings; they only suffocate, slowly.
It’s all one big reminder that the true blessing of inclusion is not that you get to come inside the circle; it’s that you get to participate in expanding it. As the circle grows, so do we.
The Practice of Story
Welcome to the Practice of Story It’s dangerous to tell yourself stories are tame. To treat them as something that lives only between the covers of a book. As something that can be easily kept on a shelf, taken down and put back up as we see fit. Stories are wilder than that. And more powerful.
This month is all about remembering that power.
Indeed, who of us hasn’t felt controlled by a story? Stuck in a story? Hopeless about the way our story will end up? Simply put, our stories often write us as much as we write them.
For instance, the author Rachel Naomi Remen talks about how her family clings to the childhood story of her being the clumsy one of the family. Ask her adult friends and colleagues and they will describe her as graceful. They’ve never once seen her trip over her own feet or drop something. And yet, somehow, when Rachel goes back to her parents’ house or attends a family reunion, she spills coffee on at least one outfit, stubs more than one toe and trips on more steps than she can count. By trying so hard to escape her family’s narrative about clumsy little Rachel, she inevitably slips into it anew. Talk about the power of story!
That power plays out on a social level as well. Just think about our cultural struggles with economic or racial justice. The unconscionable income gap is often described as “natural” or “the result of complex global dynamics over which we have little control.” Similarly, the story of race in our country is too often told as an “entrenched” story or minimized with a story about “how far we have come.” The aim of all these cultural narratives is the same: to undermine action, and worse, to undermine our belief that things can change.
Which is why it’s so important to remember that the ability to tell a new story has been at the center of our faith from the beginning. We rarely think of our UU history this way, but one of the beliefs that gave birth to our religion was the belief that human beings are authors of their stories, not passive characters in them.
It all goes back to that old theological debate for which our UU forebearers gave their lives. All around them people were saying that God had “predestined” not just the big story of humanity, but our smaller individual stories too. Supposedly, the argument went, some of us were slotted for heaven and others for hell. And God had written this list of sinners and saints in ink before the beginning of time. So there was nothing any of us could do about it.
“Well,” said our spiritual ancestors, “that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?!” And from there, they argued for a different way of seeing things. “Forget this extreme fate-driven story,” they said. “Freedom has a much bigger role than you’ve been told. God is not so much the all-controlling author of the world’s story as she is the magical muse that lovingly lures us to make our narratives our own.” Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage.” Our spiritual ancestors basically said the same thing but with a friendly amendment added. And it went something like this: “All the world is an improv performance! Our job is to hop on the stage, pick up the storyline handed to us, and then put our own stamp on it!”
So fate and freedom. This month is much more about the tension between these two than one might have thought, leaving us with questions like: Are you an actor conforming to the scripts of others? Or have you found your way to becoming the director and screenwriter of your life? How are you struggling right now to regain control of your storyline? How are you and your friends working to regain control of the storyline of your community, and our country?
No matter which question is ours, the answer, friends, is the same: Don’t give the storyline away
The Practice of Presence
Welcome to the Practice of Presence
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller
Spiritually, presence can mean two quite different things. On the one hand, contemplatives talk of “being present.” Presence from this perspective is all about awareness and remembering to “live in the moment.” On the other hand, theologians tend to come at presence from the perspective of a hidden and divine “otherness.” Their concern is not just that we pay attention to the present moment, but that we notice a transcendent Presence woven through all moments.
This month, we refuse to take sides. Attentiveness or otherness? Who says we have to choose? After all, isn’t it true that, more often than not, they dance together more than they compete? Haven’t we all felt that when we are fully present, the most powerful presences emerge? Pay attention to your child and slowly (and mysteriously) a confidence and unique self reveals itself. Pay attention to the flow of your breathing or the flow of the ocean and something bigger than yourself enters the scene. Look for a long time at a single tree or flower and eventually it presents itself to you as a world in and unto itself.
The underlying message here is that the world is shot through with unnoticed gifts and grace. It’s a message perfectly fit for this holiday month that so often celebrates presents over presence. In the face of commercials and billboards that tell us our lives will finally be complete if we stuff them with a few more shiny objects or plastic gadgets, our spiritual traditions come along and remind us that our lives are already whole, and home. Their message: The greatest gift of the holidays is noticing the many gifts that have been sitting there all along.
So, friends, how will you engage this dance? What powerful and meaningful presence is waiting for you to be present to it? What gift is waiting and wanting to emerge? What will your awareness bring into being this month?
