A Reading
by Unitarian Universalist minister Reverend Gary Kowalski
How many of you like to go hiking?
A walk in the woods isn’t a race, after all. It’s not all about seeing how fast
you can go, or how quickly you can get to the end of the trail. A walk can be
like a meditation, a series of moments to be aware of all the sights and sounds
along the way. If you’re in too big a hurry, you forget to hear the birds sing
and might not see that little mushroom growing under the tree, the one with the
yellow cap.
But even when you take your time, a
walk can sometimes be tough going. What if it starts to rain? And what if
there’s a wet, soggy, boggy place where the stepping stones are few and far
between? Well, in those cases, I’ve found a couple of things that help. First
of all, it helps to have a friend or two along, because then even if it starts
to pour and the raindrops are trickling down your nose, you can always sing a
song together, and it’s hard to feel sorry for yourself when you’re singing an
old Beatles song. And for those soggy, boggy places, if you can’t have a friend
along, there’s nothing like a walking stick, which helps you keep your balance,
and whether you’re walking up hill or down makes you a little steadier on your
legs.
Walking sticks make me think about
our faith, Unitarian Universalism, which is a little different from other religions.
Because for us, life is like a long walk, or a journey. It starts when we’re
little children and just learning about our world, and then grows as we grow.
With each step, we’re always gathering more information and gaining more
experiences, finding out about ourselves and as we explore our beliefs change.
The things we imagine might be true when we’re six years old are different from
the dreams we have when we’re sixty. And none of us is just certain where or
how the trail ends, or what we’ll find when we finally reach the mountain top.
But we know that other people have walked this way before and that gives us the
hope and courage to continue on the adventure.
Now just like on a long trail, life
sometimes gets a little tough and can even be scary. And that’s why it helps to
have friends, and a spiritual community like this one. And at times we start to
lose our balance and begin to fall down. And then it’s handy to have a walking
stick along.
Unitarian Universalism, our religion, is like a walking stick.
It’s not a religion that solves all our problems. It’s not a religion that can
magically lift us over the muddy places. It’s not a religion that spares us the
necessity to dig deep and struggle when there’s a big boulder we have to climb
over or other challenges come along. But it is a religion that can help us keep
our equilibrium, that helps us keep our feet on the ground, which reminds us
when the going gets hard that each of us is strong, each of us is resilient,
each of us is capable, however we identify our gender, our ethnicity, our race;
whether we’re big or little. And Unitarian Universalism is a faith that
encourages each one of us to find and make our own beliefs—not a one-size fits
all religion—but one we constantly tool and re-tool as we go.
So this is my personal walking
stick. Perhaps each of you will have the opportunity to make your own stick
sometime, just the right size and weight, the right thickness so you can have a
firm grip, to help you go wherever you need to go. And as Unitarian
Universalists, you too can find and make a religion you can call your own.
The Sermon
Last month I was wondering how I
might preach about intuition to rational, logical, scientific Unitarian
Universalists. And then the Coronavirus
came. And all my bandwidth went to figuring
out how to cope with a world changed by a Pandemic. I thought how could I talk about intuition
when so many people are in tangible need of support, caring, understanding;
when people are feeling disconnected from others, not even able to touch one another,
feeling food or toilet paper insecurity, concerned about access to physicians
or medication. And there is some
information and a lot of mis-information about the virus that is starting to
spread.
And yet,
intuition can be a useful tool in our personal toolbox. Webster’s defines intuition as the ability to
understand something immediately, without the need for conscious
reasoning. Intuition is that gut feeling
that we get about a situation or a decision.
It is not something that is thought-out or considered; it is just
there. For instance, you’re about to
walk across a busy intersection and you see a driver in from of you looking
left as they try to go right on red, but not looking right to notice that you’re
about to step into the crosswalk. Sure
you have the right-of-way, but what does your intuition tell you?
Intuition
can be negative, positive, or neutral. I
have heard people who are in tune with their intuition say that they trust the
vibes they get in situations. Whether
they are talking about reading the body language of the person they are on a
date with or a decision they made about investing in a toilet paper
company. They totally trust their gut.
For me, I
have had mixed feelings about trusting my gut.
Sometimes these immediate understandings or readings of a situation have
been helpful. For instance, years ago I
made the decision to apply for a job that a friend of mine had told me about in
confidence because she was in line to get the job. I immediately felt in my gut that this
decision was the wrong, but I ignored my gut and applied anyway. But my gut kept bugging me, so, I withdrew my
application and told my friend what I had done.
She forgave me and we are still friends.
Paying attention to my gut helped me maintain a connection to a friend,
which was really more important than getting a certain job, and equally
importantly, allowed me to act in a way that was truly congruent with my
Unitarian Universalist Principles and values.
But here’s
the thing, sometimes this intuition, this gut feeling, I have found is based on
prejudice, bias, and racism. For
instance, I am walking down a street in downtown Chicago late one night and I
see a large African American man walking toward me, my intuition tells me this
is a dangerous situation—this feeling is big, immediate, in my face. But that’s childhood conditioning and the
message of a system of white supremacy, not intuition; they are two different
things, but sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
So, I have
mixed feelings about intuition. I am not
always sure I can trust it. Right now as
I consider Coronavirus, my gut tells me at times not to worry about touching
someone’s cell phone or touching my mail, and at other times, when I sway too
close to someone in a grocery store, my spider sense goes off and I feel this
is a horrible, awful, no good situation.
Neither of these extremes is fully accurate. I only realize this when I step back from the
situation and consider what happened using logic and reason.
How do we
ground ourselves to trust both our gut and our intellect in a situation that is
both out of our control—an invisible danger—and in our control—social
distancing, washing hands, and sneezing and coughing into our elbows. Well, I have to tell you it is not by
hoarding food for fear of not having any.
And it is not pulling the covers over our heads for the next couple,
few, or many weeks.
What is it
that will get us through this time of disengagement, fear, seeming scarcity,
and invisible threats? I am not here to
tell you exactly what will work for you, but to give you some reassurances and
maybe a few things to consider. The most
important one is that this community, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation
of Miami, is still here and is still part of your life. Unitarian Universalists are known to be
creative problem-solvers. Phone calls,
Zoom meetings, sharing videos, sending emails, and even snail mail letters. For now, we will need to lean into the soul
connections rather than the physical connections of being with one
another. For now, we will need to see
each other through a screen or window, rather than across a room. For now, we will need to attend to each
other’s voices through a speaker rather than from mouth to ear, and really,
we’re still hearing each other’s voices, just in a different way. We can do this. This week for instance, one of our members
set up a Virtual Art Zoom meetup, where people saw each other’s faces, heard
each other’s voices, and worked on individual art projects together. If you want to set up a Zoom meetup for a
Sci/Fi book club, a discussion of Unitarian Universalist history, or to just be
in community and check in on one another, let me know and I will set up Zoom
for you. You can host whatever meetup
you want.
This is a
brave new world, but with this new world, there are new opportunities. We are finding new ways to stay
connected. We can now livestream our
Sunday services. We are re-learning how
important it is to intentionally make time to stay connected. These are connections we should not lose when
the world returns to some semblance of normal.
This is
also a time when we can find that healthy balance between intuition and
rational evaluation. Perhaps Unitarian
Universalism, our “walking stick” for equilibrium, can help us out. The Principles and Sources of our faith might
be a place to start. You might do some
reading and reflecting on the Principles and Sources on your own to find those
that will help you with your equilibrium. I want to reflect on one of them that
gives me some equilibrium and balances my intuition with rational evaluation,
our first Principle, affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of
every person.
In this new
Covid 19 reality, each person is reacting in a different way. And for that matter, my intuition and
behavior has been affected by it as well.
How I read situations now is influenced by an invisible threat, each
surface and person could be a threat to my health or even my life. And each person is responding to that reality
in unique ways. How do I, how do we,
affirm and promote my worth and dignity and affirm the worth and dignity of
other people when my, our, health and life might be at risk and so might that
of any other person I, we come into contact with?
Letting
others know what our boundaries are important.
Again, people may have very different understandings of what social
distancing means. Martha went to the
pharmacy a couple days ago and found a 35 foot strip of blue painters tape on
the floor at the check-out. The tape was
cross-taped every six feet, so people would know how far to stay away from one
another. We do not need to always
understand each other’s boundaries, but we need to respect them. It would be easy to say to someone, your boundary
is irrational, not based on medical facts as we understand them right now. My friends, in a moment of heightened anxiety
and fear, many people are not in a place to discuss what is rational and what
is irrational. Perhaps during a calm
period, when nerves are less fragile, a discussion of medical facts can be
had. But in the moment, it is better for
you and the person you are in contact with to respect each other’s boundaries,
not discuss them.
And as we
think about setting boundaries, I know many of us are thinking about are we
doing enough to keep ourselves and others safe.
We are washing our hands and staying away from one another physically,
but is that enough? That question, is
that enough, can cause anxiety, fear, even result in feeling paralyzed. We each and together need to affirm in our
hearts and with one another that we are doing enough, right now, as we
understand the situation. There might be
more or less to do later, but we are doing what we can right now. This will give us some semblance of peace.
An aspect
of our first Principle that is often overlooked is self-care. You deserve to have joy and health, because,
just as you are, you have worth and dignity.
And right now you need to attend to your self-care, to make time to
exercise, go outside and breathe in fresh air, eat healthy meals, and find joy
in life; where in simplicity we may move at the speed of natural creatures and
feel the earth's love beneath our feet; where step-by-step we may feel the
movement of creation in our hearts. This
can be a time to reconnect with the joy of watching a lizard race across the
sidewalk or noticing how the wind blows the leaves in the trees or touching the
petals of a flower or walking a labyrinth.
You can still come out to the property and walk the labyrinth as a
grounding meditation; there is no risk in doing that. This is a time to reconnect with simplicity,
with joys and blessings. A time to open
your heart to all those things around you that in your pre-Covid 19 life, you
may have been far too busy to notice.
And our
first Principle is also about connection to others. We all deserve time with others and they
deserve time with us. I will say this
emphatically, you can reach out to anyone in this community at any time you
need because you have worth and dignity.
That person also has worth and dignity.
We are all in different places right now, with different needs, but we
all need to stay connected with others.
We cannot let ourselves believe that either we don’t need anyone to get
through this time or that we aren’t important enough for anyone to give us some
of their time. I know I sound like I am
preaching, and I am. This is really
important. Find ways to stay connected,
you, we all, deserve it and need it to thrive.
My friends,
this is a difficult time, but it also provides us many opportunities. Let us not ignore those opportunities which
connect us with life and each other in new and different way. And perhaps we will find new connections with
each other that we didn’t know we had.
This congregation is not a building; it is a people. People who might be able to grow closer
during these next few weeks by spending some time, other than just Sunday
during the service, with one another.
It’ already happening, because that’s who we are. We are the ones who say “yes” to
opportunities to connect with life and each other, in whatever form we
can. And let us keep a balance between
our intuition and our rational understanding of life, in times of change like
this, when everything, including our perceptions, seems a little wonky.
I care
about you all and wish blessings and love to you. I am here to help, we are all here to help,
one another. Let joy fill our hearts and
love center our actions as we move through this challenging time together.
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