Finding in Unexpected Places

This past July I attended a week long retreat at Pendle Hill called "The Art of Spiritual Discernment" with Nancy Bieber.  I had long wanted to attend a program at Pendle Hill and this one spoke to me strongly.

It was a wonderful week filled with insights.  I had expected it would be but what I did not expect is how I found there what I had long sought within Unitarian Universalism - a truly diverse group of souls, exploring spiritual questions together, respectful of each other's differences and learning from one another.  I have kept in touch with this group, I have asked for their prayers, and held them in mine.  

I knew of Unitarian Universalism long before I joined or even attended a UU worship service.  While I was working at Catholic Charities in the early 1990's I used to walk into the San Francisco UU building.  They have beautiful tall slabs that speak to the equality of the Scriptures - that all are holy, all contain truth.  This is something I had long believed. 

This is what I had hoped to find in joining Unitarian Universalism - a place where people of different beliefs, different backgrounds could risk sharing deeply together.  Yet it has been rare that I have found those places within in UUism I am sorry to say.  Occasionally in a covenant group or a one on one conversation but not generally as part of the whole culture of a congregation.  Too often I have found our congregations to be places of mere tolerance as long as one is not too vocal in one's beliefs.  Too often places where every religion except Christianity is welcome. Places where a great deal of time is spent watering things down to a lowest common denominator.  Often I as a religious leader censored myself before anyone else could - afraid that the words I might use would be too theistic, too Christian or too whatever.  

Yet at Pendle Hill here was this diverse group of people - Quaker, Baptist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, UU (I wasn't the only one) etc. We were diverse in age, diverse in why we had come - yet we were all searching to live our lives more faithfully - to listen to where the Spirit was calling to us. We were invited, actually instructed, to do our own translating - i.e., people were invited to speak using the language and words they were most comfortable with and it was up to each of us to translate it for ourselves.  It was amazing!  Yes people used words that wouldn't be mine and I didn't expect that person to change to meet my needs.  I was invited to take responsibility for my own spiritual understanding - not expect others to change to meet my needs.  It is what I expected to find within Unitarian Universalism but have found there only rarely. I too did not need to censor my words, afraid that they would offend or open up old wounds.

The potential of our UU faith is to offer places for diverse people to explore their faith together.  For that to happen each person needs to take responsibility for their own spiritual journey.  Each needs to do their own translating - and be curious and respectful when engaging with others.  We need to stop once and for all the everything but Christianity attitude that is still all too prevalent.  

It has been my experience that it is in progressive Christian communities that I have found the most respect for diversity.  Both Pendle Hill and Richmond Hill have offered a place for diverse people to gather without watering down their own identity.  They practice true radical hospitality.  They have provided places where I can explore myself, my faith.  I can be challenged in my faith by wrestling with the words of others.

I love the potential of Unitarian Universalism and yet I find myself longing for more actualizing of our potential.  I long for us to be a place of radical hospitality, curiosity and deep respect.  I long for us to speak deeply of who we are which may mean doing some work to figure that out.  I want us to embody revelation as open and on-going through curiosity and openness and a lot less of the "we don't believe...."  

It has been a joy to find what I have been looking for in places like Pendle Hill and Richmond Hill and now I long to find more of it where I had expected to find it ... within my chosen faith.

A Palm Sunday Sermon

Building Up and Tearing Down

Margaret M. Sequeira, MTS

UU Fellowship of the Rappahannock, March 24, 2013

Reading Luke 19:28-40


I begin with a heartfelt thank-you for once again welcoming me and my family here today. It is such a joy to return to you and once again share my thoughts and reflections.  When I talk to people about coming to preach here, I always tell them what a warm and welcoming community you are and what a joy it is to come here.

Today is Palm Sunday.  It marks the beginning of the most sacred week in the Western Christian calendar and is known by Holy Week. The Orthodox Churches operate on a different calendar and for them Palm Sunday is not until April 28 and Easter on May 5 – their Easter may actually feel like spring!   In Christian churches, people will hear this very same reading from Luke, they will receive blessed palm branches to take home – some will even be taught how to weave the palm into a cross.  This week will be marked by a number of worship services, on Thursday known as Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday, depending on one’s tradition, will commemorate the Last Supper where Jesus washed the feet of disciples and the institution of the Eucharist.  On Friday, Good Friday, Christian churches will mark the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.  The week concludes actually on Easter eve – Saturday evening  – with the Easter Vigil Service or at sunrise on Sunday morning with Easter Sunrise Service marking Jesus triumph over death in the Resurrection.

Now it is also important to note that Christians are not the only ones celebrating an important holiday this week.  In the Jewish calendar, Passover begins.  Passover marks the freeing of the Jews from slavery in Egypt and beginning of their forty year journey to the Promised Land.  Moses is the hero of this story – finally convincing Pharaoh to let the Israelites go and then leading them safely away when Pharaoh changes his mind. Moses too is not always a popular hero.  Not long after the Israelites flee slavery in Egypt do we find them complaining about hunger and thirst, how Moses should have never led them out, that they would rather be slaves where they at least had rations.  Passover remembers and celebrates the Exodus and it is the foundational story of liberation and each year the Jewish people re-tell the story and pass it along to the next generation.

Now why begin this sermon on Building Up and Tearing Down with all this information about upcoming religious holidays?  Well, this is our context – these holidays are happening all around us.  We see Easter eggs and bunnies, sales on holiday foods, the Matzah and other Passover foods in the stores.  Maybe even members of our families are inviting us to join them for these celebrations. So we are not isolated or apart from these – we are in the midst of it.  Some of our UU Congregations are participating in and celebrating them in their own various ways.

So let’s talk about this reading from Luke and what this all has to do with building up and tearing down.  The story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is found in all four gospel accounts.  In each of the accounts Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey or colt and the people lay their cloaks and tree branches on the ground to greet him.  He is greeted as hero, as king.  Our story does foretell that not all are happy with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem – our antagonists, the Pharisees – are already trying to figure out how to stop Jesus.  Now a note about the Pharisees and the gospel stories as they are often portrayed as the enemy to Jesus and his message.  It is important to note that the Pharisees were fierce opponents to the Roman Empire and sought to preserve Israelite law and customs in a hostile, oppressive environment.  Their insistence on the law was a form of resistance to Rome and many of them were crucified for their actions.  After the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 AD their role of preserving Jewish law and custom was even more important – yet that often brought them into tension with the followers of Jesus.  Luke’s account, which is addressed to a specific community of Jesus followers, comes after 70 AD – after the Temple has been destroyed.  This is important because for too long the Jews have been the ones held responsible for the death of Jesus – specifically the Pharisees and Sadducees.  The Jews were not responsible for the death of Jesus – the Roman rulers were responsible for executing Jesus.  Dominic Crossan in his book Who Killed Jesus? makes the case that the passion narratives are a form of propaganda for the early Christian communities following the expulsion of followers of Jesus from Jewish communities.

So back to our story, Jesus comes into Jerusalem triumphantly – with the people praising him with the words “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.”  So how is it that one who enters with so much adulation and praise is then by the end of the week put to death?  And not just executed but abandoned by his friends – only three women stay with him during his ordeal.  Among his closest friends, the disciples, one, Judas, turns him over to the authorities, another denies him three times, Peter.  In the end he dies feeling forsaken by all including God. How does this happen?

Now Jesus’ teaching was not always popular.  One of the first things he does upon arriving in Jerusalem is to throw the money changers out of the Temple.  This act alone would have been seen as a threat to Roman rule and occupation - enough to get him executed by the Roman leaders.  He has tough words for people, particularly for the rich.  Jesus was a prophet and the role of the prophet is often unpopular.  Many of the Hebrew Prophets faced persecution and death.  We human beings are often very resistant to hearing the truth.

Secondly the people were longing for a leader that would get them out from Roman rule and oppression. They wanted a revolutionary. Yet the kingdom that Jesus preached was not the one the people expected.  People had heard the stories about Jesus – probably greatly exaggerated – and had built up a particular expectation, a particular hope.  When that did not come to pass, they were disappointed.  When Roman officials came for Jesus, they were too disappointed and afraid to stand with him – even those closest to him.

Let’s turn to some of our most revered heroes and prophets. Today we revere William Ellery Channing , one of the father’s of Unitarianism in America, for his abolitionism – actually all three New England fathers of Unitarianism  - Channing, Emerson and Parker were all abolitionists.  Yet Channing’s own congregation, Federal Street Church, was not pleased with his abolitionism and they eventually came to part ways.  After insisting on officiating at the funeral of a prominent abolitionist, Channing would preach only one more time at Federal Street.  Even we Unitarian Universalists can show a certain aversion to painful truths.

We often build up our heroes to impossible expectations, whether sports, politics or religious.  We also will tear people down when they take positions that are contrary to our own or don’t live up to our expectations.  In all these cases, the building up or tearing is because we have created an image for the person that is based in what we want not necessarily what is true.

One common understanding of Jesus is that as uniquely the son of God and in fact equal to God in divinity.   Ralph Waldo Emerson challenged this notion of Jesus.  Emerson in his Divinity School Address preached “Jesus taught that God incarnates himself in man evermore goes for the anew to take possession of this world.”  He rejected Christian teaching that limited the indwelling of the divine to one or two people – rather for Emerson Divine indwelling was available to all.  Jesus, for Emerson, was a great exemplar of a teacher who lived and showed others how God lived in him and encouraged others to do the same.  For Emerson the projection of Divinity uniquely onto Jesus is to set Jesus on a false pedestal, much like the crowd in our story.  It distorts the reality of Jesus and his message.

In the quote from Howard Thurman in the order of service*, Thurman had built an image of Jerusalem that did not match the actual Jerusalem he was visiting. He writes “the Jerusalem of my present experience was in profound conflict with what the Jerusalem of my imagination had taught me through the intimacy of my religious tradition and teaching. I felt the great gulf that separated the present place and the symbolism of what that place meant in the history of my own life and tradition.  I do not desire to see it again.”  Like Thurman we have built in our imagination an image of Jesus, an image of Jerusalem.  Thurman wants to flee the actual Jerusalem in favor of the one of his imagination.  How often do we do this? We often prefer our own image over reality.

Sometimes we prefer our own image because it lets us off the hook. Emerson makes this point – when we make Jesus divine we let ourselves off the hook to emulate him. After all we can’t do what Jesus did – Jesus was God.  Sometimes we just so want to believe.  All the sports stars, public figures that we or minimally the media put on pedestals. We put standards on them that are impossible and distort who they actually are.  It is detrimental both to us as fans – as we are then devastated when they fall off the pedestal – and the person who cannot possibly live up to the impossible standard.

We need heroes and heroines.  We need their stories for inspiration, encouragement, for hope.  We also need to let our heroes and heroines be flawed and imperfect.  I loved the Harry Potter books in part because the hero was not perfect.  Harry Potter broke the rules, he got his friends in danger and trouble, and then he pushed his friends away.  Yet he is also a great hero.  What if we allowed our real life heroes to be flawed?

Because of course this tendency to idealize people and make them into we want them to be is not just reserved for public figures.  We often do the same thing to family members and friends and then when they fail to live up to our standard we are hurt.  Often in our hurt we tear them down, or toss them out of our lives.  Maybe it is ourselves we set impossible expectations for and then tear ourselves down because we cannot possibly live up to it.   Those impossible expectations we have set are not based on our true self  – but on a false image of ourselves coming from others’ images and expectations, coming because we do not yet truly know our true self.  The further we are from our sense of our true self, the harder it is to see others as themselves.

So I invite us to reflect together on how we may have created others in an image of who we want them to be rather than who they are.  Who have we put up on pedestal that they cannot live up to or torn down unfairly?  Let us seek not to build up people to impossible heights only to be hurt and disappointed when they cannot live up to our expectations.  Let us remember the story of Palm Sunday – of a teacher, a prophet who lived a life in service to others, speaking out for those who had no voice, living on the margins, who was welcomed with great expectation only to be abandoned when he was not what others expected.  Let us reflect that if the message of Jesus’ life and teaching was to show us how to live in the image and likeness of the holy as Emerson proclaimed, how can we see that image of the holy in ourselves and in others.  May we seek to see the true self in the other and not an image we have created.  May we seek our own true self so that we may more easily see the true self of others.  Let us build ourselves and one another up, breaking down those false pedestals and images, and bring forth the holy in ourselves and one another.

*"It is important that I wanted to get back to the long-time security of my Jerusalem, which did not exist in any place or any time but which is a part of the fluid area of my own living experience."  from With Head and Heart by Howard Thurman

For Everything There is a Season...Except

Last week I was on a directed, silent retreat at Richmond Hill in Richmond, VA.  It is a lovely center located in the city of Richmond with lovely views that overlook the city.  It is an intentional community with a ministry of being in continuous prayer for the City of Richmond.  It is a wonderful place for retreat and I highly recommend it.

While on the retreat my director recommended I reflect on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 - For everything there is a season.  I am at a turning of the seasons in my life.  I have just left my position at my Unitarian Universalist congregation and I am reflecting a great deal on the question of vocation.  A season of my life has just ended and I am now in a time of planting and waiting.

As I was reflecting on this passage, I realized that no where in the passage is there a season or time for anxiety or worry.  We are told there are seasons for things that many of us might not include - like killing, tearing, war and even hate - but no worry.  Wow - hate, war, killing make the list but worry is out!

For me it was a call for trust - to trust that wherever we are in life, we are where we are meant to be.  In addition, to trust that things will change, trust that it will not be this way forever - thank goodness!

This particular season I find myself in is filled with possibility and I have much hope and faith that I will find the right next place to live out my call.  Yet I still struggle with anxiety and worry.  I told my director that all those passages in Scripture that tell us not to worry, don't be afraid, in particular the one where Jesus tells us we should not worry about what we are to eat or drink or wear are not so easy to live. Yet over and over we are told, Don't Be Afraid, don't worry, do not be anxious - for I am with you. It is a message of abundance in a world that yells scarcity.  It is a message to trust in a world that tells us that we are each on our own.  It is a message of hope in a world that screams that hope is lost.

Over and over we are invited to "Be Not Afraid" that God is with us.  Ecclesiastes tells us in its omission that there is no season for worry - that we are always called to trust.  In this season of renewal, re-birth, this season of repentance and remembering - may we trust.  Trust that we are part of something larger than ourselves, that we cannot see or know the whole, we can only see our part.  May we trust that our part is integral and important, even if we cannot feel that right now.  May we know deeply that we are not alone.

My Encounter with "A Year of Biblical Womanhood"

I am blessed to be surrounded by a religiously diverse group of friends and one of these friends proposed a book group to read Rachel Held Evans' A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  I didn't know about this and was reluctant.  You see being raised Roman Catholic and then becoming an Episcopalian and then a Unitarian Universalist, the Bible has not held as central a place in my religious and spiritual life as it might have been had I had been raised in different Christian traditions.

The book went on sale for Kindle and I bought the book so that my partner Donna could read it. I decided to at least read the introduction.  Well once I started I couldn't stop.  I found myself reading the book and laughing out loud.  I found myself thinking in new ways about these ancient stories.  I loved Rachel's writing and how she would be going along telling us a very humorous story and then conclude the chapter with a profound truth.  

What I most appreciate about the book and about Rachel herself is the very serious way she engages with the Biblical text and her own faith traditions.  In this I feel I have much in common with Rachel.  I have wrestled with my own faith traditions.  As I shared in my post about Lent, leaving the Catholic Church was a decision I did not take lightly or without mourning.  Rachel does not critique her Evangelical background just to critique but rather she engages with it.

In the book, she engages with notions of Biblical womanhood on multiple levels - intellectually, in practice and through encountering people who have different experiences of Biblical womanhood such as an Orthodox Jewish woman and a woman in a polygamous marriage.  She takes the Bible seriously - more seriously then I usually experience in my religious home of Unitarian Universalism.

I had the opportunity to hear Rachel speak here in Williamsburg - both her talk on the book and another conversation on faith and doubt.  It was wonderful to meet her in person and hear her speak. The conversation on faith and doubt was amazing.  I found myself critical of my chosen faith for being too superficial.  While Rachel is very funny, which we often associate with not being serious, she takes her work and her faith very seriously. She chooses to deeply engage with and struggle, like Jacob struggling with the angel, with the Bible, with tradition and with her faith community.

I would encourage Unitarian Universalists to read this book if they too are longing to engage more deeply, to struggle with the Bible, with the hard texts, with the messages about women found within Christianity and our culture.  Yet be prepared to be challenged because this book calls us to engage not just reject. It calls us to reexamine and engage in new ways.  Sometimes it is easier just to reject and move on then to risk going deeper.  I am glad I overcame my initial reluctance and dived in - my life and my faith are richer for it.

When I Gave Up the Church for Lent

Each year when Lent rolls around, I watch my Facebook news feed fill with articles and posts about Lent and the discussion about what and whether to give something up for Lent.  It always brings me back to my senior at college when at the advice of one of the Jesuits I gave up the Church for Lent.

I was raised in a strong Roman Catholic household.  I attended Catholic school from first grade through college (and you will notice that my MTS is from the Jesuit School of Theology).  While my family was quite devout - grace before meals, bedtime prayers, Mass every Sunday unless you were sick, they were not rigid. I knew that my parents disagreed with church teaching on birth control and made it clear that my sister and I were quite planned.  I was raised on their personal stories of dissent and the use of conscience.

I was also blessed to be raised in the Roman Catholic church as the implementation of Vatican II was happening.  I have no memory of the Latin Mass, nuns did not wear full habits at my elementary school, Communion began to be served with both the bread and the wine, my parents were among the first to be trained as lectors and Eucharistic Ministers, and the confessional boxes were converted from dark boxes to lighted ones that gave options for both face to face and behind the screen confessions.  The music was the Songs of the St. Louis Jesuits - thank you Dan Schutte and all of you for providing the amazing hymns that to this day move me.  Even as a child, I could feel the excitement of a church opening to the world ... a church changing.

I loved going to church - I remember my First Communion vividly and my sense of what an important and sacred moment this was in my life.  I took my Confirmation very seriously and was proud to take my place as a full member of the community.  I prayed constantly. In the eighth grade I decided instead of giving something up for Lent, I would commit to going to 8 am Mass every day (the advantage of parochial school).  I became a lector and Eucharistic Minister while in high school and I was active in my church's youth group.

Yet by the time I got to Georgetown, the church was changing and trying to reverse the changes that Vatican II had brought.  There were reinforcements of traditional teachings on birth control, women's ordination and abortion.  You could feel the hierarchy of the Church clamping down.  I was very active in campus ministry at Georgetown.  The Jesuits at Georgetown were part of my amazing support system as I struggled with depression.  I discovered my love of theology at Georgetown.  I took my first theology class - Introduction to Catholic Theology with Monika Hellwigg. I had no idea that I was taking theology from a prominent and well respected feminist theologian.  I loved everything about that class. I was hungry to know the "why" of what I had been raised to believe.  Yet why can be the most dangerous question there is.  With why came the realization that much of what is the practice of the church came not because of thoughtful discernment of God's will and what was best for humanity but rather petty politics, greed and a lust for power and control.

Throughout my college years, my faith underwent a transformation.  It was no longer the faith of a child.  I had doubts, I didn't know if I could remain Roman Catholic.  At the heart of my struggle was that I could not accept that a small group of men in Rome could dictate faith to the entire world.  My struggle was not over specifics of women's ordination, birth control or the myriad of other issues - rather it was with the whole hierarchy itself.  As a child my father would say to me repeatedly  as if it were a given fact like the world was round, the sky is blue, "Margaret, the Church is not a democracy" and inside I was quietly thinking..well maybe it should be.

So during my senior year of College I was struggling with all of this.  I had been talking about whether or not I needed to leave the Church.  So finally the Jesuit I had been confiding in suggested that I take a break from the Church and it was right around the start of Lent.  So that Lent, I did not go to Church.  Now please understand that I was not just a Sunday only Mass attender. I often attended weekday Mass - 11:15 pm in St. Mary's chapel along with Sunday Mass.  So for me to suddenly say I was giving up the Church was no small feat.

So I gave up the Church for Lent and it was hard. I missed the liturgy, I missed singing, I missed receiving Communion.  So I went back to Church on Easter Vigil, still one of my favorite services (whether Roman Catholic or Episcopal).  It was wonderful to be back.  I still had doubts but for now I was not leaving.

Of course the story does not end there.  I did finally leave the Roman Catholic Church, I became an Episcopalian and then eventually a Unitarian Universalist.  Yet I will always be grateful to that wise Jesuit who encouraged me to take the break I needed, to try out leaving.  For not condemning me or saying I had no other options.  I would hope more people would find religious leaders as supportive of their spiritual journeys as I did among the Jesuits.

However you celebrate, or not, Lent this year, I hope it is a meaningful and true spiritual practice.  May it help you wrestle with your faith.  May the holy break through in new and profound ways.

Blessed Be.

Endings and Beginnings

A sermon preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Rapphannock on Sunday Dec. 30,2012.

Reading:  "We Shall Not Cease" (from "Little Gidding") T.S. Eliot as published in {Risking Everything} 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, edited by Roger Housden


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of fame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Sermon:  Endings and Beginnings by Margaret M. Sequeira, MTS

First my thanks to all of you for inviting me back again. It is always a joy and privilege to come and worship with you.  You are such a warm and welcoming community.

So here we are at the end of a year which of course marks the beginning of a new one.  This time of year truly embodies Eliot’s words “to make an end is to make a beginning.”  Lately our culture has been filled with news of “endings” with the supposed Mayan end of the world.  As a culture there seems to be a lot of attention on “endings” – the end of a year, an era, a way of life.  Some are angry and want a return to “the good old days” – a longing for a better, simpler time.  Some focus simply on what is next – looking only head and cannot wait to put the past behind them – looking to create a better future.  

As Unitarian Universalists we have often been in the later category – focused on the future, less concerned with what has come before.  We are in that way a thoroughly modern faith community.  After all it was Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Divinity School Address that admonished the young ministers “..to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men,..” Emerson called for a direct experience of the holy, to trust one’s own self.  This did not endear Emerson to those at Harvard who of course invested time and energy in training new ministers in the tried and true model of the old.  Of course there is a downside to this future focused, figure it out for yourself approach which is that often we end up trying to re-invent the wheel or we continually repeat the same mistakes because we keep forgetting what did not work.  As the poet and philosopher George Santayana reminds us: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Unitarian Universalists are also optimists. One of key tenets of liberal religion according to UU minister and theologian, James Luther Adams, is that “the resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism.”  Given our optimistic, future oriented faith, how do we approach this time of the year that seems to beckon us into a reflection not just on what is to come but also on what has been?  How do we understand Eliot’s words that the end of all our exploring will be to find ourselves at the beginning?

This excerpt from Eliot’s "Little Gidding," has long been a favorite of mine.  There is a resonance that our exploring brings us back again and again…that time is not linear but rather a spiral.  It is not a simple repetition of the past but rather to come back to the beginning and see it with new eyes, to see what we could not see before, the waterfall, the children in the apple tree, even the very gate through which we enter.  We have been here before and yet we know it again for the first time.

While Eliot gives us beautiful images of waterfalls and children, I know that in my life, sometimes finding myself in the same place can mean finding the same problems and pain.  Ah yes, here we are again or maybe more accurately “Oh No not this AGAIN!”  We wonder if we can ever break free if these patterns and making the same mistakes.  Ah yes, to find ourselves at the beginning again does not always feel like such a good thing. 

So what do we do when we find ourselves in this place AGAIN?  Maybe some of us are feeling just this way at the end of 2012 and we would like to just leave it behind and begin again in this coming new year. How might Eliot’s poem help us here?  Well maybe we can begin with noticing what is different?  What do I know now that I did not know before? Well I know I have been here before and somehow the path I took from here led me back.  So bringing our awareness that we have been here before, we can look at what we have tried before that didn't seem to work very well.  This is where I also look to Eliot’s call for hope, words that echo those of Julian of Norwich, a 14th century Christian mystic, “And all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”  Even if we find ourselves in a mess again, faith calls us to trust and continue on, for all shall be well.  

All shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well - maybe it doesn't feel like it right now but can I, can we, hang onto that in the darkness?  Can we trust as Adams tells us that there are enough resources, human and divine, to change things, to make a difference?  As Unitarian Universalists, as people of liberal faith, we are called to be people of hope…people who believe that all shall be well.   So we trust that this too shall pass, that we have the resources to address the problems, and while we may not see it now, we can work to make it better.  

For those longing for the past, angry about the state of the world (and they are not wrong, there is a lot to be angry about), there is a deep longing for what is missing.  While some look forward, they look to the past, thinking if we just went back to the way things were, that things would change. How often have we engaged in this type of thinking?  It can take on many different guises. There is the “If only I had done x instead of y” then I wouldn’t be here.  There is blame, “If only so and so had been elected or not elected than we wouldn’t be here.”  Yet here we are, having made the choices we made.  It is a type of thinking that we can all engage in from time to time.  

How do we break free of this “what if” or “only if” thinking?  I think it begins with the realization, that we cannot truly know whether a different choice would have been better or worse.  We hope that as we gain maturity and wisdom our ability to make choices gets better.  Certainly as we get older, we have more experience both in making choices and in the information we have to make choices.  When I think about the struggles with depression that many of our youth and young adults experience, something I too experienced, I realize now that often youth and young adult s simply do not have enough life experience to know that things will change.  That we can be assured of one thing, the wheel will turn again and things will change.  So reminding ourselves, being gentle with ourselves, that maybe we did the best we could at the time and that the next time, and, for the most part, there will be a next time, we can make different choices, hopefully better ones.

In my own life, I experienced this with moving.  Back in 2000 my partner, Donna and I decided to buy our first house. Friends and family had been asking when we were finally going to buy.  Mollie was about a year old and it seemed like the right next step.  We ended up buying a house that we liked but not in a location we particularly liked. We were far away from the UU congregation we had joined, from my family and all that we had known.  We lived our life in two places – our house in one place and work, family and faith community in another.  We never truly settled into our new community.  When in 2004 we moved to Berkeley, we made the very conscious decision to be fully where we were living.  We joined a congregation in Berkeley, we built a life where we were living rather than having a house one place and our life in another.  It was a rather painful, not to mention expensive lesson but we learned that the importance of both having our home where our life is and to create our life where our home is.  In some ways this has been a recurring theme in my life…as someone who has wandered a bit in her life growing up in CA, college in Washington, DC, having lived in Maryland, different parts of the San Francisco Bay Area and now in Williamsburg, VA – I need to remember to create my life where I am living and not try to create a life in a place of the past or far away from where I am living.   Ah yes, to arrive where I started and know the place for the first time and being able to make different and better choices.

Another way of thinking about all of this is the image of the labyrinth.  As you know from the labyrinth on your grounds, a labyrinth is a spiral or a circle and the path leads in, sometimes bringing you quite close to the center, while then leading you back to the edge. The path takes you in and out and around and will lead to the center and then the path takes you back to where you began.  I know for myself each time I walk a labyrinth, no matter how many times I have walked a particular one, there is always something new to see, maybe some of you have had that experience here. One of my favorite labyrinth’s is the Jerusalem Mile labyrinth that looks out over the city of Richmond at the Richmond Hills Retreat Center.  Every time I walk it I try to stop at each of the corners, look out over the city, and each time it is new, each time I see something different. Even the path itself feels different each time I walk it.

What if we viewed time as more of a labyrinth rather than a line?  What if we re-connected with the ancient wisdom of living in a cycle of seasons rather than the notion that life proceeds in a straight line with a beginning, a middle and an end?  How might that change our celebrations this New Year’s Eve?  How might that change the way we reflect on our lives and our future?

Seeing time as a spiral does not mean a rote repetition.  It is a pattern with variation – much like the seasons. Some winters are colder; some summers have more rain and others less.  While the pattern repeats, there is variation making each cycle through unique.  

The labyrinth teaches us that even when we are on the edge we are still on the path to the center.   Even when it feels like we will never get there, if we trust the path, continue with the journey, we will reach the center.  What if the twists and turns, even the ones that seem so mistaken, are all part of the journey?  What if we are called to trust this life path, to trust that the life we are living is not in vain? What if the journey is the point of it all?  The spiral calls us to embrace the sorrow and the joy, the light and the dark, the rocky hard path and the smooth plain, for each is part of the journey.  A friend of mine the other day shared with me this quote from John Steinbeck, “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

So where is the journey taking you?  Where is it taking us?  Are we willing travelers or are we busy making plans, creating safeguards against danger?  Or are we embracing the unknown and continuing our exploring?  Are we taking a trip or are we letting the trip take us?

And we do not have to do this alone.  Who have we invited to take this journey of life with us?  What communities are we a part of?  What individuals – friends, family, spouses do we share our journey with?  We can help each other through the rough spots.  Who in your life could use the reminder “And all shall be well”?  Who in your life can remind you?  

How are you as a faith community on a journey together?  What have you learned?  What are your hopes?  I was reading your vision and plans for the future.  The vision draws on what you have done and learned before – you did not leave it behind rather you have brought what you have learned forward.  It is a vision that serves not just those of you here right now, but a vision that reaches out to those not yet here.  

At this threshold of the year, a time of one year ending and another beginning I invite us to see the year as a spiral rather than a line; the journey as the point itself rather than a race to a destination.  We are once again at the beginning, we started on Jan. 1, 2012 and now we stand on precipice of Jan. 1, 2013.  As we stand at the end, which is also the beginning, what have we learned?  Are we longing for something from this past year or years past?  What is at the root of that longing?  Have we reached the end of a particular season of our life?  Is it time to try something new?  What do we notice about this place, this familiar place, for the first time?  Are we saying “Oh No Not this AGAIN?”! Are we saying “Oh yes this Again!”? If not this again, what do we know now that can help us with the current situation?  If Oh yes this again, can we stop, be still and take it in?  

So I invite you to take this moment, in many ways an arbitrary moment, of this changing of the calendar year, to reflect, and to know this year for the first time.     

Reflection on Race and Privilige

Last week, a young adult of color posted about being excited to vote in a presidential election for the first time and how she was making sure she had two forms of ID and "dared anyone to keep her from voting."  Her post reminded me of how excited I was to vote in my first presidential election.  I was a Junior at Georgetown University and I voted absentee in my home state of California.  I gave no thought to having the right ID to vote, no one was talking about voter fraud and as a white young adult - it never dawned on me that other people did not have the same ease of voting that I possessed.

I have learned a lot about race and privilege over the years since I graduated from Georgetown and I have learned most of it outside of the walls of a classroom.  I continue to learn new things about the history of race in this country.  I have learned that simply because of the color of my skin I am given undeserved privilege - including not having to know the reality of the lives of people of color - either in the past and even in the present.  I am grateful for the opportunity to have my eyes opened - to becoming more aware and sitting in the more uncomfortable place of knowing.  I am not perfect, I have not learned it all and I hope that throughout the rest of my life I will continue to learn, to continue to know more.

So as I went to the polls to vote I thought of the 7 hours of waiting some have done in Florida, how white leaders have sought to limit and suppress voting rights, I remembered Ohio where the Secretary of State who defied court orders to count the votes, and I thought of this young woman who is voting for president for the first time.  Even now, after the election, I will remember that I have an obligation to work to ensure that her excitement continues and her right to vote is never taken away.