I
had an experience about 10 years ago, while serving Peoples Church Unitarian
Universalist in Cedar Rapids. Tensions
were high between the Jewish and the Islamic communities due to what was going
on in the Middle East. These communities
had family and friends who had been wounded or were in imminent danger due to
the fighting in Israel. The local Rabbi
defended the right of the people of Israel to protect themselves against the
bombings of innocents, and one of the local Imams compared Israelis’
persecution of the Palestinians along the West Bank to the Holocaust. You can
imagine how well that went over. They took this dialogue to Facebook, and
predictably, the tension between the two groups escalated. A number of faith leaders in Cedar Rapids, of
which I was one, decided to hold a Peace service on neutral ground, Peoples
Church. Both the Imam and the Rabbi were
invited and attended. They consciously
put aside their reactive and inflammatory words. During the service, the Rabbi asked the Iman
if he could pray for the Palestinian children along the West Bank. The Imam said ‘yes’. And then the Rabbi offered a beautiful,
elegant, and loving prayer for the Palestinian children along the West
Bank. The Iman stood up, thanked the
Rabbi for his words, they shook hands, there were tears between them, and then
the Imam prayed for peace for all the people who live in Israel. I was reminded of something Mother Teresa wrote:
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each
other.” During the service, the Rabbi
and the Imam and their communities remembered that they all had been in right
relationship with each other and had been close for many, many years,
supporting each other, caring for each other.
The question that the Rabbi had asked, the question about praying for
the Palestinian children along the West Bank, was a gift, an answer to all that
was being asked, however inarticulately, within our multicultural community.
I want to share with you a poem,
“The Gift” by Denise Levertov that touched me and inspired me as I wrote
today’s service:
Just
when you seem to yourself
nothing
but a flimsy web
of
questions, you are given
the
questions of others to hold
in
the emptiness of your hands,
songbird
eggs that can still hatch
if
you keep them warm,
butterflies
opening and closing themselves
in
your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their
scintillant fur, their dust.
You
are given the questions of others
as
if they were answers
to
all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this
gift is your answer.
Early
in my adult life I was not on the receiving end of the questions of others, at
least the questions that I experienced as transformative, that led to change
within me. As a psychotherapist, I was
the one asking the questions, holding space for others as they searched for the
answers within themselves that might lead to healing, hope, a path forward in
their life.
“What
brings you here today?” “What is the
problem from your viewpoint?” “How does this problem typically make you
feel?” “If you could wave a magic wand,
what positive changes would you make happen in your life?” Outwardly directed, simple questions. Asked by me of someone in need, in despair,
in desperation, in fear, or even anger.
Questions that might offer a light, a way forward, even a gift. Sometimes a person just needed a question,
almost any question, to begin to move beyond the problem they were
experiencing.
This
week we, myself and other members of this congregation, asked many of you
simple questions: “How are you?” “Are your needs being met?” “Are you staying
connected with others?” And while many
of you affirmed that you were doing well, in the asking of those questions you
were gifted with a knowing; this community is still in your life and still
cares about you. A surprising, or
perhaps not so surprising, trend developed as our calls multiplied over the
last week: some of you offered to help others in this congregation, and some of
you reported being in the process of helping others, within and outside this
congregation. It became evident you were
also asking questions of yourselves and others.
In the gift of the questions we asked you--that we are still and care
about one another-- each of us received an affirmation, something we already
knew intellectually, but perhaps not recently felt in our hearts, this building
is just that, a building. We, all of us,
are the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami, whether we’re sitting
side by side in this building or seeing each other screen to screen in our
homes. Wherever we are, however we’re
connected, we are a beloved community.
Chances
are we have all asked ourselves questions as we go through our days—and being
who we are, perhaps we ask ourselves rather more questions than others
might. Unitarian Universalists do love
to ask questions. We ask the mundane
questions like: “Will I be able to fit this or that into my busy schedule?”,
“How will I make time for dinner before the kid’s soccer practice?” “Why can’t
the barista get my coffee order right?”
And the more meaningful and purpose driven questions: “Will the
government move immigrant children back to the facility in Homestead?” “How can I help returning citizen get
registered to vote?” “How can I be a
Buddhist, Humanist, Panentheist, and a Unitarian Universalist all at the same
time?”
But
then, two weeks ago, everything changed.
And when everything changes, so do our questions. Some of us suddenly have so much extra time
gaping before us, most of us are restricted to our homes, I wonder how our
questions have changed. Do they still
offer us a way forward? Or a light? Can any of what we’re going through now
possibly be construed as a gift? And I
don’t mean the Trojan Horse variety. I
mean, what gifts, what insights, what revelations about ourselves and our
congregational community and our world are being revealed during our time away
from each other?
At
the beginning of our church year, I remember asking the religious exploration
teachers to come forward for a ritual blessing from the congregation--which
included blessing the hands of the teachers with water, something many of them
probably had never experienced before.
In asking them to come forward, and in asking you as the congregation to
bless their work, some gifts were offered: appreciation, support, and
love. The circumstances are now
different, but that appreciation, support, and love we have for one another? That hasn’t changed.
When
I joined this congregation, I asked many of our members some questions. Which of our Unitarian Universalist
Principles—inherent worth and dignity of every person, acceptance of one
another and encouraging spiritual growth in each other, affirming the
interdependent web of all existence, compassion, justice, equity in human
relations, searching for truth and meaning, the right of conscience and the use
of the democratic process, and promoting a just, equitable and peaceful world
community—which of these Principles touches you most deeply? Which of the
Unitarian Universalist Sources fills your spirit so that you can cope with the
chaotic world we live in—personal experience of mystery and wonder, wisdom from
any of the world religions, wisdom from other people, or from Humanism, or from
earth-centered traditions? What social justice issues most quicken your
heart? How does being a member of this
church impact your daily life? What was
your most moving moment here at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of
Miami? What do you hope to see in this
congregation in 5 years? What would a
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami superhero be like? This last question got a variety of answers,
and I learned about your real-life superhero forebears, and of those
superheroes that have kept this congregation alive over the past few
years. While each of you offered
different answers to these questions, what I observed and heard from many of
you, is that being asked these questions, seemed to answer some of the
questions you had about my ministry to this congregation and what our future
might be like. I wonder if I were to ask
those questions of you today, would your answers be different. Would there be different gifts in those
questions?
Questions
being an answer; answers being a question.
I want to explore this from one more angle for just a moment. I took a course a number of years ago on
Spiritual Direction. Uh, what is
Spiritual Direction? “Spiritual
direction cultivates attentiveness, specifically the ability to notice [the
stirring of the spirit] in one’s life and in the world. Spiritual direction, typically, is
[relationship-based]...[person to person or person to group] A commitment to
spiritual direction reflects a conscientious commitment to tend one’s
relationship with [spirit], to listen deeply to one’s life, to explore gently
the uncharted terrain of one’s spiritual landscape, and tenderly cultivate
one’s vocation … Spiritual direction awakens the [person to] ‘the full range of
the human heart, mind, soul, and strength.’ … [orienting the person to live]
more purposely and more fully into [their] vocation and to intentionally shape
their lives into a more generous response to [spirit and to life]” (Kay
Northcutt, Spiritual Director). Since
the course I have been leading Spiritual Direction groups, though I haven’t
started any here. When a person wonders if they would benefit from a Spiritual
Direction group I ask: “Have you found that your description of the spiritual,
or the sacred, or what it means to be human is no longer sufficient?” “Would
you like to find comfort in the questions rather than always needing an
answer?” “Have you lost your footing and sense that there is an invitation
there?” Many of the people I ask these
questions of find a desire to dig deeper into these and other questions, to dig
deeper into themselves; to seek within themselves something about who they are
and who they want to be. Questions can
be like that. An invitation to go deeper
within. The question becomes the answer
and the question is a gift.
We are all stuck in our homes with
no definite end in sight. Perhaps this
is a good time for some new kinds of questions.
Questions about the feelings we are experiencing and questions about the
particular thoughts that now have so much extra time to race through our
minds. Unanswered questions can result
in anxiety, fear, sadness, but they don’t have to. They can be doorways into parts of ourselves,
into places we haven’t explored before because frankly we didn’t have the time
or make the time to do so before now.
Questions can create connections between us that didn’t exist
before. There is hope in questions—if we
open our heart and mind to them and to it.
There is energy in questions—if we engage with them and commit to
channeling it positively. There is love
in questions—when offered in the spirit of respect and kindness and when we
answer “yes” to love.
Just
when you seem to yourself
nothing
but a flimsy web
of
questions, you are given
the
questions of others to hold
in
the emptiness of your hands,
songbird
eggs that can still hatch
if
you keep them warm,
butterflies
opening and closing themselves
in
your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their
scintillant fur, their dust.
You
are given the questions of others
as
if they were answers
to
all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this
gift is your answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment