A hat tip to Iris DeMent

You ever had a bit of lag time on a life lesson?

This past Sunday I spoke at the Anchorage UU Fellowship’s 9 a.m. Forum.  I was talking generally about non-theistic spirituality, and the title of my talk was “Reason and Reverence, Meaning and Mystery.”

A few weeks back at our other service, a folk-singing member sang a song called, “Let the Mystery Be.”  It was light, a little bit funny, and sounded to me like a great intro to my Forum presentation.

And it was.  Three other musical members of the fellowship did a wonderful job, people laughed, and enjoyed the live music (which doesn’t usually happen at the Forum).

As the applause died down and I was resuming my seat on the daïs, John B. (another member) called out that the songwriter was Iris DeMent.

I made a flip comment, an easy joke about growing up in a fundamentalist bubble and knowing nothing about music, and moved on.  People laughed, of course, because joking about fundamentalists is a too-easy target in a largely humanist UU setting.

After the service John B. came up to me, and with an earnestness I noticed but didn’t understand, spoke to me again about Iris DeMent.  ”You were careful to credit everyone you quoted in your talk,” he said.

I was a little brain fried.  Happens when introverts play extroverts in public.  I didn’t get it.

But the intensity of his tone stayed with me, and when my brain-cramp relaxed, I began to think about what he said.

Yes, I did grow up in a fundamentalist bubble.  Yes, that does contribute to my musical ignorance.

But I don’t need to nurture that ignorance, and protect that bias.  Part of honoring the worth and dignity of every person is giving credit to musicians as much as ministers and theologians.

It took me a while, but consider the lesson learned.  Thank you, John.

A place to call home

We’re home again, finally, and we’re not going anywhere for a while.  It feels good to sleep in our own bed, without significant travel looming over us.

We had a wonderful time in San Francisco.  We ventured into the brave new world (for us) of dim sum at Yank Sing.  We loved Muir Woods, Crissy Field, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Stinson Beach.  We bought all kinds of fun things in Haight-Ashbury.  We decided that we would never again rent a car without hand controls; it’s not a good idea to set out on an adventure with the better driver relegated to the passenger seat.

Of course, for me the best part of our trip was taking the concrete step forward from aspirant status to candidacy.  In their letter granting candidacy, the RSCC wrote, “You have made meaning out of the trauma and losses in your personal and professional life.  You bring the gifts of your religious past to your present religious home, which we anticipate will benefit our denomination.”

I found these two sentences both deeply moving and oddly humbling.

In the RSCC interview, like the one with the MFC, the person being interviewed is asked to provide a “first question.”   As someone transferring from another denomination, and as someone with a winding religious path, I chose the question, “Why the UUA?”

My answers all revolved around the idea of “home.”  My initial experience of UUism as a big enough home, one that allows enough room for growth and change.  The mission I see for the UUA, its responsibility to offer a home for the spiritually homeless (the “unaffiliated“).  A place that helps us be the change we want to see in the world.   A place to practice pluralism.  Fertile ground for the non-theistic mysticism springing to life within me.

Home.  Place.  Ground.

I’m home again, finally, and I don’t plan to go anywhere that takes me from this spacious home.

Shattered luminosity

Sometimes we are formed by the persistent pressure of water, and sometimes we are cracked open in single moments by earthquakes.

There was a time in my life when I believed in God.  God was luminous, precious, beautiful.  God was the love that saves, the strength that protects, the light that directs.  God was the singular, self-contained, separate Other.

I sought God with all that was in me.  I yearned for God.  I wanted to know God.

I looked for teachers to help me find my way.

I found many teachers, and finally one I trusted more than any other.

I closed my eyes, and opened my heart.  I reached out, and gently held the luminous orb.

Then the door slammed shut.  Literally.

Startled, I dropped the ball of Light, and it shattered.

In the sudden darkness, I thought light was gone forever.

But now I see that light inhabits everything.

The name of the ball of Light was God.

The luminous shards embedded everywhere have no name.

 

 

 

Shapes With Doors

We are often subtly encouraged to reduce our theologies to a handy label….These labels do tell us something.  Even though our understanding of each of them may differ, they draw minimal descriptive lines within which we see ourselves and with which others in our tradition may partially identify.   –Paul Rasor, Faith without Certainty

I have a love-hate relationship with language.  I love the process of hearing, seeing or feeling a thought within me and then finding the exact words I need to express that thought.  It’s like the satisfying feeling of an image coming into focus through a camera lens.

And yet I hate that, usually when it matters most, words fall short.  I reach for the word and almost have it.  ”It’s …. no, that’s not it.” The camera whirs and clicks, and cannot focus.

I don’t believe in God (at least, not in the usual range of meanings people ascribe to the word “God”).

That would make me an atheist (except that for me the word “atheist” has a flavor I don’t care for).

I could try non-theist (but I don’t like defining myself by what I’m not).

I really do like agnostic (though it does have wishy-washy connotations).

As I read the words of Paul Rasor quoted above, I saw an image in my mind of shapes formed by what he calls “minimal descriptive lines.”  There were circles and squares, ovals, rectangles and hexagons.  And I realized that for me, I always want a door in my shapes.  It’s part of what I like about the word “agnostic.”

Within Unitarian Universalism, as the Rev. Christine Robinson has written, “agnosticism of various stripes is our default theology.”

I really like that about us.  I like that when we draw the shapes of our beliefs, we don’t close the circle or complete the square.  We leave generous openings for doubt, for uncertainty, for admitting that we don’t know everything.

And yesterday’s conversations with Henkimaa helped me to see that leaving doors in our theological labels has a purpose.  It’s not just that it’s more comfortable for me to leave room for doubt.  Doors allow us to invite others into our experience, and they allow us to walk out of our labels into the experiences of others.  Without doors, I am trapped in my circle, you are trapped in your square, and we cannot know each other.

Can I Stay in the Church?

One of the formative experiences in my adult spiritual life was participation in the Spiritual Guidance program of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.  I created the mandala included in this post during one of the program’s summer residencies.

When I was actively using mandala-making as a spiritual practice, I often posed a question, and let the mandala help me find an answer.  I created this mandala in response to the question, “Can I stay in the church?”

Even before I came out to myself as not-straight, even before I went into the desert as a Presbyterian minister and came out as an unemployed non-theist, even then the constraints of orthodox faith were tight enough that I was asking if I could continue to live and serve in the Christian tradition.

One of the great saints of Shalem, Tilden Edwards, had introduced the terms “exoteric” and “esoteric” to us earlier in the residency, and they half-consciously informed the mandala’s answer to my question.  The short form of the answer was, “If the church can balance the exoteric and the esoteric, I can stay.”

The outer rim of the mandala consists of exoteric symbols:  the sustaining sacrament of bread and wine, and the Christian story as told in the bible.  Within that ring are more esoteric symbols:  the water of baptism and the fire of the indwelling Spirit.  Sacred Mystery at the center of the mandala holds within itself the seed of Life.

It occurred to me during one of the chalice lightings at General Assembly that my understanding of the flaming chalice is very much tied to what I learned from creating this mandala: water needs a cup, and a cup needs water.  What I need in a religious community is a balance between reason and mystery, between structure and creativity, between passion and common sense.

So may it be.